by Alex Marwood
‘Tea,’ says Cher.
Vesta laughs. ‘Oh, sorry. Were you expecting cocktails?’
Cher pouts, just a little bit. Of course she was. She’s a teenager. She wants to be out carousing, not eating finger sandwiches with a crew of middle-aged strangers. We must all seem ancient to her, Vesta thinks. Practically mummified. Same way she looks like a baby to me.
‘We could have some cider, at least,’ says Cher.
‘No,’ says Vesta, firmly.
Chapter Thirteen
The Lover is a great reader. He loves to read. He lives in a world where not many people do, where his learning is an anomaly and treated, often, with suspicion, but without reading he wouldn’t be the man he is. He wouldn’t know about the forty days, or about ritual and how its basis often lies in accidental coincidence and pragmatic use of the surroundings in which it developed. And besides: reading helps stave off the loneliness, in more ways than one.
The things he has read about Ancient Egypt, for instance, and its burial traditions. While venerating the corpses of the great is common all over the world, the means of disposing of them often reflects the circumstances of their lives. Thus the Vikings, facing solid, deep-frozen soil for much of the year, would, unsurprisingly, dispose of their heroes in fire and water. And a country in which the combination of climate and shallow topsoil would frequently turn up desiccated corpses from shallow burials might well eventually ritualise the natural order. Egypt’s arid plains, dotted with salty lakes that threw up great heaps of sodium, was ideal for experimentation. With skilled evisceration, and the right combinations of salts and herbs, forty days would be the perfect time to turn wet and putrefying dead bodies into leathery facsimiles that, at least passingly, resembled the original owner as they were in life.
But in a south London suburb – even a suburb that is going through the longest heatwave in living memory – the process needs a little help.
He’s learned as he’s gone along. Practice, after all, makes perfect, and besides, he’s had to learn two sets of skills where his teachers only had to master one. In Egypt, two sets of priests were responsible for rendering their royalty fit for the afterlife: the parichistes and the taricheutes, the cutters and the salters. Necessity has forced the Lover to master both roles, and there were bound to be errors along the way.
He doesn’t like to think about his first two attempts at making himself a girlfriend; is just grateful that he didn’t live in this crowded house when the first experiment failed, at least. A body is easier to move before the rot has set in. Jecca left the house in a series of carrier bags, flesh falling from bone like a five-hour pot roast; but at least, coming from a garden flat, she didn’t have to go through any communal areas. Katrina, her body cavities cleared more studiously, was a steep learning curve. His incision, down the front of the abdomen the way a pathologist would do it, left the trunk loose and floppy, and her nose was ruined by his clumsy attempts to remove the brain with the crochet hook. The parichistic entry, via a slit in the left-hand side, though it means having to plunge himself arm-deep in viscera, produces a neater, more human-shaped final product. He discovered the barrel drill in Homebase soon after that. He figures that the Egyptians would have used one too, had they had access to electricity and geared motors. He thinks of them sometimes, his two lost loves: Katrina sacrificed to fire and Jecca to water. He wonders if they are lonely, now, as he no longer is.
But he’s not happy with Alice. She’s an improvement on the two who came before, but it was only once her forty days were up and he had to break her from her crust like a salt-baked chicken that he understood that he needed to change the desiccation salts as the process progressed. The Egyptians had the help of the blazing sun to preserve their kings. For his princesses, he has dehumidifiers, and the close quarters of their confinement means that the juices have nowhere to go.
He moves Alice and Marianne to the sofa to watch the TV while he attends to Nikki. Some tender part of him wants to spare her the indignity of exposing her half-cooked nakedness to the gaze of his more finished beauties. As he carries Alice, he sees that her smile has spread again, as her skin is contracting back towards her hairline. He can almost see her wisdom teeth and is painfully aware of the bones beneath the surface. I haven’t done you justice, my dear, he thinks. I should have read more. If only I’d known before it was too late that a girl like you deserves her share of moisture once the natural wet is gone. He puts her gently down in the armchair, unwinds her arm from round his neck. She settles with a rustling whisper. Her hair is thin and brittle, her eyes sunken and hollow beneath their drooping lids. I wonder, he thinks. Soon you’ll be nothing but skin and bone, flaking and shedding over my carpet. Perhaps it’s time that we started to think about parting company.
He goes back to the bed, to his Princess Nikki.
The base of the bed is covered with a thick plastic sheet, liberated from a building site. Sleeping above his girls has never been a problem for him – indeed, it gives him a feeling of warm companionship – but the process of transformation, even with the alkaline, deadening effect of his home-made natron, tends to produce sudden bursts of smell that wake him, gagging, in the night. He props the mattress – lovely soft, lightweight memory-foam mattress – against the wall and peels the plastic off. Waits, breathing through his mouth, until his stomach settles, then tugs on the cloth ties and allows the lids to lift on the two compartments below. He spent a long time making his choice on the internet once he’d seen the possibility of such a bed, clicking through faux leather after faux leather, until he finally settled on this workmanlike black hessian covering. Cloth tends to soak up smells, but it’s breathable; and when the bed is empty and the plastic cover off, the memory of its former contents dissipates over time. He has drilled air holes where the walls meet, to allow the bank of dehumidifiers in the head section to do their work. The collection tank of each one – and there are six altogether – is nearing full. This was where he went wrong with Jecca and Katrina. You can never believe, until you experience it first-hand, how much moisture there is in a human body. It comes and comes, for the first few weeks. In week two, once the natron really starts to work its magic, he has to empty the chambers on a daily basis.
Two by two, he unclips the chambers and carries them to the kitchenette sink. The water is strangely greasy, as though it has been used to wash up with after a full Sunday roast. He doesn’t bother to flush around the sink. He’ll be chasing it down soon enough, after all. He grabs the bucket and the trowel from the cupboard under the sink, and returns to his darling.
The natron has settled, as it often does, and one shoulder peeks out from above the surface. This is one of the reasons that he’s opted for the weekly fuel change. He left Alice alone for the full forty days, and chipping and scraping her out from her hard-set casing was the full work of an afternoon, a chore that made him admire the stoical patience of archaeologists in a way he never had before. And he has been forced to dress her in sleeves since he got her out, to hide the deterioration of her exposed left arm. No little sundresses for Alice; no pretty evening gowns. Every time he looks at her, he feels sour and sad. So close, and yet so far.
‘Never mind,’ he says to Nikki. ‘I’ve got you, now.’
He digs from the walls inwards. The powder is still dryish in the corners away from the flesh. It pours like sand into the bucket, almost good enough to use again. But the Lover no longer believes in shortcuts. Precision, he knows, means the difference between failure and something to treasure for ever. He fills the bucket and takes it to the sink. His natron, made by mixing simple washing soda with equal parts of bicarb, has the added advantage of acting like a drain cleaner. Everything that goes down his sink – tea leaves, bacon fat, scraps of visceral matter scrubbed from his parichistic hands – is periodically dissolved and flushed away from the pipes as he changes his preservatives. He upends the bucket, turns on the cold tap and watches, pleased, as the natron fizzes, smokes and vanishes do
wn the plughole.
He works with the windows thrown wide, but the heat is heavy on his shoulders and, as the digging becomes harder, his breath is damp and stuffy behind the surgical mask he wears to protect his lungs. Three weeks in, and Nikki has given up the greater part of her moisture, but still the natron has solidified around her and needs prising out in lumps. He sweats as he works, sees drops of it run over his goggles, feels it drip from the end of his nose to mingle with Nikki’s body fluids. It takes a full half hour of digging and flushing before he has her uncovered, and can brush the final sticky coating off with the help of a stiff paintbrush in preparation for the final cleaning.
He never likes this part. She is lying on her left side, so he has to roll her over to access the entrance to her abdomen, to get at the packing that both dehydrates her torso and prevents it from losing shape as it does so. Then he goes in with a serving spoon, scooping out the natron like stuffing from a Christmas-day turkey.
This packing is more solid than that on the outside; interiors are more permeable than skin designed to keep out the rain. And it’s dark brown in colour, where that which surrounds the body is a blend of khaki and yellow. And it stinks. The stench that rises from the depths of Nikki makes him gag repeatedly as he buries his arm to the shoulder and scrapes out its filling. This won’t wash down the sink so easily, either. It’s one for the toilet. Once again, he makes a mental note to keep a bucket of clean powder back to chase it down the drains.
It’s worth the effort, though, he tells himself. Two more weeks of this, and she’ll be perfect.
Chapter Fourteen
He thinks you’re still in Spain. Don’t sweat it. He’s not looking for you here; he still thinks you’re in Spain.
It’s only two or three miles to Collier’s Wood, but the trip involves two trains and a tube. Five stops to Clapham Junction, two stops to Balham, then three on the Northern Line. London’s transport system almost invariably involves going round an unnecessary corner, the neighbouring boroughs often the most laborious to get to; she’d forgotten that factor, when she picked Northbourne on the map. It will be almost two hours to get there and back each time, and because of the change of transport and the enforced trip into Zone 2, would cost the best part of a tenner without an Oyster card. Suddenly, the thought of taking one of those minicabs from the kiosk at Northbourne Junction seems less of an extravagance.
She makes sure to travel well out of rush hour, but still, by the time the tube doors open, she is bathed in sweat and nursing a dry, crackly throat. The air as she comes up the escalator, usually a moment’s pleasure, provides little relief. The day is still, hanging over the streets like punishment.
She buys a bottle of water at the little shop by the station, and searches the phone menu for the satnav. She’s not bothered to buy a new handset this time, just replaced the SIM. She’s getting better with each move at slowing down her spending, finding new ways to move to a new city on the cheap. If she wants to keep ahead of Tony Stott, she needs to string the cash out for as long as she can.
The thought of Tony makes her check, instinctively, over her shoulder. Fuck’s sake, Collette. He doesn’t know where you are. He doesn’t know where your mother is. It’s not like we’ve shared a surname since I was eight. And it’s not like anyone at Nefertiti’s spent their nights having cosy chats about their families. He thinks you’re still in Spain. But still, the years in hiding have taken their toll on her, made her fear each passing shadow.
Sunnyvale is a ten-minute walk away, in a cul-de-sac off Christchurch Close. They’re always a way away from public transport, these places, though there’s a bus stop at the end of the road for the people who’ve really mastered this city’s labyrinthine routes. It makes sense, really: it’s not as though the residents are going to be going anywhere, and a lot of them don’t get a visitor from one month’s end to the next. God preserve me from dementia, she shudders. She sets off up the main road past the bookies and the Royal Mail sorting office, weaves her way between mid-morning knots of uniformed smokers. The bottle of water vanishes down her throat as though it were just a thimbleful. It’s the sort of weather that makes you wonder if you’re diabetic, she thinks. Christ, I’m getting middle-aged.
All these suburbs, blending into one. Collier’s Wood is slightly newer than Northbourne and lacks, from what she can see, the networks of Victorian artisan terraces and solicitors’ villas that have made Tooting, and now her own area, so appealing to the fixer-uppers with an eye on the Cotswolds thirty years down the line. She passes a sad little arcade, a pretty church marooned in a field of 1930s semis. Edwardiana is right back in with Londoners, now, so how long until these stuccoed porches and low-silled windows begin to look attractive to generations who no longer remember them as nasty-modern? It’s the way of the British, she muses. We like old things. And when we can’t afford the old things, we start seeing newer things as old, stake a claim of our own, and drive the renters and the drifters and the immigrants on to somewhere newer.
She turns off the main road into Christchurch Close, and the tarmac gives way to cement block paving; a high, wire-topped wall along one side and blocky 1950s brick housing on the other. When her mother was young, she thinks, these were the sorts of places people dreamed of being located to: the bombsites filled in with affordable housing. There’s a symmetry to Janine coming to somewhere like this on her downward slide.
Collette turns up the Sunnyvale cul-de-sac, skirts the metal bollard that blocks off its maw, there to stop stray cars from seeking out a parking space but allow the ambulances in when the need comes. The home straddles the end of the road, forty feet up past the garden fences, its concrete turning circle jollied up by resin pots of dying geraniums. A line of hanging baskets – busy Lizzies, salmon-coloured, jarring with dark purple petunias – droops in the sun trap of the yellow brick frontage. It’s clear that someone’s tried their best to cheer the place up, alleviate its functional air, but no amount of watering can combat this heat. The little border of grass on the far side of the pavement is dusty and frizzy, like neglected old-lady hair.
Collette stands for a moment and looks up at the white plastic lettering that runs along the parapet of the lean-to porch. SUNNYVALE, it reads. She’s found her mother’s final home.
Inside, it smells as she had expected: floral disinfectant, floor polish, the graveyard scent of chrysanthemums in a vase on the reception desk, food cooked till it no longer needs chewing and the faint, unmistakeable odour of unchanged nappies. A woman sits behind the desk, in polyester scrubs. She’s turned a fan straight on to her face and leans back, eyes closed, cooling herself in its blast, until she hears the door open. She looks up and assumes the robotic smile that seems to have become part of the healthcare canon. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes.’ Collette advances across the small lobby, glimpses a huddled figure, dressing-gown tied tightly round a shapeless torso, making its way slowly up the corridor to her right with the help of a walking frame. ‘I’m Elizabeth Dunne. I called this morning.’
The woman shifts through a list on a clipboard, importantly. ‘And you’ve come to see…?’
‘Janine Baker.’
She runs her pen down a list, ticks something off. ‘Ah, yes, Janine. I saw she was due a visitor.’
Since when did they stop giving old people the dignity of a surname? ‘That’s right,’ says Collette.
The woman presses a bell on the desk beside her. It sounds out, Big Ben chimes with a shrill electronic top note, somewhere not far away within the building. ‘Someone’ll be along in a minute,’ she says.
‘Thanks,’ says Collette. Looks about her for somewhere to sit and, not finding anything in the Spartan lobby, stands awkwardly before the desk like a supplicant.
‘We’ve not seen you before, I think,’ says the woman, and there’s an edge of judgement to her voice. Your mother’s been here for three months, now, says the tone. Where have you been?
‘No,’ says Collette, an
d feels the blush creep further up her cheeks. Cheeky mare. You don’t know anything about it. ‘I’ve been away.’
‘Away?’ Lucky for some, says the single word. Wouldn’t it be nice for all of us, if we could be away when responsibility called?
‘Abroad,’ she says. Adds, defensively: ‘Working. I couldn’t get away before.’
‘No, dear,’ says the woman. ‘Well, it can be a terrible inconvenience.’
Oh, fuck you, thinks Collette. Who do you think you are? Do you really think that the ones who end up here, the ones with no one to take them in, are totally innocent of their situation? Don’t you think we’d have at least tried to have them with us, if they’d been nicer when we were young? And it’s not like I haven’t been drip-drip-dripping my cash into her bank account, to pay for your services and keep her out of council care.
She doesn’t voice it. It can’t be a greatly rewarding job, this. Making the families feel guilty must be one of the few pleasures she gets.
‘Well, I’m back now,’ she says. ‘For as long as it takes.’
‘Good for you,’ says the woman, patronisingly.
I just hope it’s not too long, thinks Collette. God help me, I shouldn’t be wishing her life away, but it’s only a matter of time before they find out I’m in London, even if they don’t know why. They seem to have contacts everywhere.
‘Actually,’ says the receptionist, ‘while I’ve got you, we probably need to update your contact details, if you’re not in Spain any more. Have you got a phone number? In case of – you know – emergencies?’
She’s not memorised it yet; has to look on the menu to reel it off. The woman types, hits the tab key. Looks up. ‘And where are you living?’