The Eavesdroppers

by Rosie Chard

  “It’s going okay.” Missy held her hand up to push her hair off her face. Her arms were freckled, but it was hard to see all the freckles because of the bandage.

  ‘You okay, Missy?” I said.

  “Yes. Why?” She slipped her arm beneath her back.

  “Just that I saw your bandage.”

  “Oh, that. Silly me. I stroked a cat in the street and he didn’t like it.”

  “Never stroke a cat in the street,” said Eve. “It’s not infected, is it?”

  “No. It’s fine. Just a cat that didn’t like to be stroked.”

  EVE knew Word but she didn’t know InDesign. She wasn’t even sure what desktop publishing meant but every time she googled ‘make your own leaflets’ she got sent down the same path. And that was after she’d clicked her way through the rows of print shops offering her deals on leaflets by the thousand. But she didn’t need a thousand. She only needed one.

  She was proud of her computer skills. At risk of being stranded on the shore of middle age she had agreed to be sent by her employers on a course entitled Computing for the Over-40s. To her way of thinking the title alone was telling and for a woman of sixty-two years of age, comforting. Even those twenty years her junior must be struggling to connect finger to cursor, and maybe, just maybe, there were other people out there who also didn’t know what a cookie was.

  Feeling dispirited, she drafted out her leaflet in Word. No need to involve anyone else, she thought. She could print it out herself and stick it on the back of a piece of card to show it was professional. It took about two hours, what with all the corrections and all the copying and pasting, but by the end it looked good. It looked really good.

  Turn garments inside out to wash and dry.

  Separate contrasting colours.

  Wash at the temperature shown on the label.

  Do not iron, rub, twist or wring

  Wash woollens by hand in warm water.

  Dry flat.

  Eve sat down in her usual spot on the bench. She wore a flowery skirt, which, she only noticed when she sat down, rode above her knee when she was seated. She went through the motions: she slipped her hand into her bag and felt inside. She patted the back of her hair, wondering if any grey had crept back. She pulled her skirt down over her knees. She was calm; she was decent; she was ready. An hour passed before a shout from the street made her jump.

  “Let me in!”

  Eve turned towards the door. A foul face was at the window, the mouth an elongated ‘O’; an armful of dripping sheets was soaking a tweeded arm.

  “Open this fucking door!”

  Eve scuttled to the door and pulled it open, but before she could speak someone barged past her – a woman.

  “You’re too late,” the woman said. “We’re closing in five minutes and – what the hell have you got there?”

  “Sheets! My fucking sheets.”

  The woman straightened her back. “You can’t bring them in here. Not dripping like that, you’ll soak my floor. You’re too late.” She closed the door and locked it. Then she turned around and walked to the back of the launderette on dictatorial heels.

  But Eve’s feet had put down roots. She watched helplessly as the man turned to go and a revengeful back took shape out on the street – his head sunk into shoulders, his arms clenched. Then the man turned and accusing eyes, familiar accusing eyes, locked onto her face.

  Eve inched her way back to the bench, sat down and fingered the leaflet in her bag. She smiled.

  CHAPTER

  28

  ‘Why can’t I see? It’s the bandage, dear. Over your eyes.’

  It had been several weeks since I’d thought of my hospital bed. My bed at home was the same length as that one had been, same width too, but my duvet was not scant and worn but thick and warm and the smell of my room was my own. I reached onto the floor, picked up a discarded sock and placed it over my eyes. It smelt of my feet but it felt like the hospital bandage, cutting me off from my surroundings. Missy had a bandage.

  I threw the sock back onto the floor and tried to sleep. But images of surgical dressings kept coming into my mind. They wrapped my face; they wrapped Missy’s arm. Finally, I got up and made myself a bowl of cornflakes in the kitchen. Still unable to sleep, I pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of shoes and went down into the street.

  The street sounded different when I stepped outside into the night. The building site opposite, normally characterised by the whine of power tools and the irritating beep of reversing trucks – God’s tool of torture – was quiet, and I could hear a bird singing a misjudged evensong. I couldn’t see it but I could still hear it, tweeting its incomprehensible message to whoever cared to hear. A blackbird, I knew it from my childhood bird-listening days. Then I heard another sound. I couldn’t identify it at first. Was it wheels? Badly oiled wheels? I imagined a large pram, the sort I slept in as a baby. A man came into view. He was pulling a suitcase on wheels. But the wheels were broken and the case bumped across bumps in the pavement. He walked past me, seemingly oblivious to the racket he was making, clackety clack, clackety clack, clackety, clackety. Someone was going somewhere. Someone was leaving.

  I watched his back until he disappeared from view - then a lull in the air. Then another sound - I looked towards the other end of the street and saw a man and a woman talking at the corner, far in the distance.

  “You sound like death,” he said.

  “I know. Part of me died yesterday.”

  “I think–”

  “What? Bill. What’s the matter?”

  I put my finger to my lips and got out of my chair.

  “Bill, what the–”

  “Schh!”

  I tiptoed towards the office door, trying to keep my bones quiet. I opened it. “Got y–” Outside – nothing. Just the corridor: beige carpet, fluorescent light, air.

  James was looking at me when I turned round to speak. “You know, I could have sworn I heard someone out there.”

  “Bill,” said James. “You’ve been spending too much time with eavesdroppers.”

  “Aren’t we all eavesdroppers?” I said, returning to my seat.

  “If you mean listening at keyholes, no.”

  I glared at the door. “Are you sure you didn’t hear something out there?”

  “Positive.”

  I glared again. “Soddit. It doesn’t even have a proper hole.”

  “Exactly,” said James. “Hey, Bill, why don’t you go home and get an early night. You look wrecked.”

  I checked my watch. “Yeah, maybe I will.” I gathered my stuff and put on my coat. “See you.”

  James had an oddly expressionless shape to his face. “Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

  I went out into the corridor and closed the door behind me. So quiet out there, just the beige carpet and fluorescent light and air, and the smell of myself. I pressed my ear against the closed door; the wood gently hummed with the sound of James’ voice.

  MISSY removed the lightbulb from the cardboard package, carefully, very carefully, and then held it aloft in her right hand as she levered herself up onto the stool. She unscrewed the red bulb and replaced it with the blue. She jumped down and switched on the light. Blue – everything blue: blue walls, blue sofa, blue shoes and blue shadows. She lay on the floor, stretched out her legs and held up her arms and looked at the back of her hands. No bulging veins, no signs of misuse, just perfect fingers attached to a blemish-free wrist. She touched the bandage on her arm then stroked the back of her hand. It was easier to think in the cool blue light. It was easier to think inside a perfect body.

  She thought of the eavesdroppers. They had knocked on her door so loudly the day she’d missed the meeting, it had taken a few seconds to compose, to switch to herself. It was like a party, the way they’d sat on her sofa and sipped orange juice, so much so she’d forgotten to show them her real glasses, the multipacks so useful if catering for large numbers. She’d gone out the next day and bought an eighteen-pack se
t of tumblers from the Pound Shop on the Caledonian Road and found three quartz ashtrays at the Salvation Army shop and a second-hand fondue set that didn’t need much cleaning. Now she was ready for unexpected guests. And when she didn’t have guests she could have a party of her own.

  The entrance to the underground toilets was surrounded by the abandoned parts of a market stall when she arrived, stacked milk crates and tarpaulin held together with clamps, and she wondered at the trader who would leave so many wares in the street unattended. She rummaged through a bucket of flowers on the verge of death, and then walked down the steps. Even before she reached the toilet floor she felt goose pimples pop up on her arms. But no one was down there, just a grey mop leaning against the wall and the newspaper open on the day attendant’s table.

  Missy went into the first cubicle, put down the toilet seat and sat down. It was cold but she’d bought an extra sweater so she pulled it on, placed her elbows on her knees and rested her jaw in her hands. Such was her pose. The cold statue, waiting for words to enter her ears.

  She could have listened somewhere else. Violet sipped espresso in cosy coffee bars while Eve huddled against a warm drier on chilly days. But many things about this room drew her underground: the quiet, the dankness, the dark square of the attendant’s window.

  The air above ground was always crowded, a constant cacophony of competing sounds testing her ears, which long ago had learned to catagorise, to separate the shrill shriek of her house mother from the slumped and sodden sounds of her house father. Underground rooms held cold, clear sounds, one after the other. And cold ears are sharper ears.

  A noise coming down the steps broke her reverie. Kitten heels: half a size too big. Then the shoes were on the floor; then the shoes were outside her door.

  “I know you’re in there.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  “Where’s Eve?”

  “Haven’t seen her.” Stanley’s reply was spokesmanlike.

  I glanced at my phone beneath the table. No messages. “Okay, I expect she’s missed her bus, let’s get started, we can’t wait any longer. Can everyone get their notebooks out, please?”

  Yes, Sir,” said Stanley.

  I wasn’t imagining it; his eyes were definitely twinkling. They contrasted sharply with the dull irises in the faces of the others.

  “So, who would like to go first?” Had a pin dropped onto the meeting room floor at that moment you would have heard it. “Anyone?”

  Stanley flicked his lips back and forth, half confessant, half monkey. His teeth were whiter than I remembered.

  He cleared his throat. “The general consensus in the dentist’s waiting room is that orthodontic success is directly related to the size of one’s mouth.”

  I was truly astonished by the nature of this remark and did a surreptitious survey of the mouths round the table. ‘What’s better, little or big?”

  “Big, of course. More work space.”

  “More space for his equipment,” added Jack, helpfully.

  “What equipment?” Missy said. She wore a hairy sweater; it looked itchy.

  “Scrapers, sluicers, filers and fillers,” replied Stanley.

  “Stanley,” I said, “did you hear anyone talk about anything . . . significant? Politics or–”

  “Or someone planning a murder,” said Violet.

  Jack giggled. I’d never heard Jack giggle before.

  Stanley commanded the pause in the room. He now had a cocktail stick in his mouth and he rolled it between his lips, the point darting back and forth like a sharp little fish. “No. Nothing political. No murders. Just lots of talk of mouths.” He looked around the table.

  “So what else were they talking about, Stanley?” I said.

  He smiled – a flash of teeth followed by a slacking of lips. “To be honest, I wasn’t really listening.”

  “Why weren’t you listening, Stanley?” Funny how nervous I felt.

  “I was distracted.”

  “By what?” Violet asked.

  “I saw a lovely little girl.”

  I gazed at him. ‘Lovely little girl’ was not a phrase that could be easily said about young girls by elderly men who weren’t their grandfathers.

  “Did she look scared?” Missy enquired.

  I flinched. “Why would she–?”

  “I was always scared at the dentist,” she added.

  “Not scared . . . more . . . hopeful,” said Stanley.

  “You didn’t talk to her, did you?” A memory rose up in my head. The memory of the day in the shopping centre years earlier when I’d found a lost child and taken her by the hand and led her towards the manager’s office and bumped into her mother and heard the accusation.

  “No.”

  “Men can’t talk to little girls any more,” said Violet. “Not old men, anyway.”

  Stanley gazed sadly down at his notebook.

  “Did you listen to her mother?” Eve enquired.

  “Her mother wasn’t there. But the little girl . . . she was lovely. She had lovely teeth.”

  We all looked at him. Gathered together.

  “Can I give my report now?” said Violet.

  “Oh . . . yes. Yes, do.” I realised I was picking at the skin down the side of my thumb as Violet began her presentation. The cafe had been busy she told us and she had sorted her overheards into categories listed in alphabetical order. Buttons and their annoying habit of coming off was followed by neglected children, then the state of Sunday night telly, but all the time I was thinking of Stanley and his little girl. He seemed harmless enough – no, he was a great bloke. The lovely little girl probably thought he was a lovely bloke. He had a budgie, after all. He could cook curry.

  “Are you listening?” Violet was leaning across the desk. I hadn’t noticed before how low her voice was.

  “Yes, sorry. Carry on.”

  But then, before she had a chance to proceed, everything changed.

  No one had heard her coming. None of us were ready for what happened next. The door opened. Everyone turned to look towards it.

  “Eve!’ exclaimed Missy.

  Whitehall was deserted by the time I left the office. I never knew streets in central London could be so deserted, but on this evening the entire pavement was visible and I watched an empty bag of crisps dance back and forth across the road without being flattened by passing traffic. Yet on the fringe of the street there were people: a homeless man wrapped in a nylon sleeping bag and reading a novel by the street light, and a maid sweeping some embassy steps with a broken dustpan and brush.

  I sat down on the steps of the Cenotaph, rested my head in my hands and took my eyes off the city. I didn’t have children, I’d never even considered what it would be like to have that amount of responsibility, but at that moment I felt like a parent who had failed. Something was terribly wrong with the eavesdroppers. Stanley had noticed a little girl; he’d mentioned her; he’d thought about her. And Eve. Her arrival at the meeting had caused Stanley’s cocktail stick to fall from his mouth.

  She was different. Her skin was different, caked with orange make-up and her hair was a rich, unnamable colour, auburn verging on auburgine. She appeared to be wearing false eyelashes that had become unstuck at the corners and they batted up and down like the skeletal wings of a dead bird. And when she spoke, her voice shook. I’d wanted to rush back to my desk, dig out a bar of chocolate and chew quietly, alone, just me and the Internet. But no, I had to face this new and disturbing development.

  In the early days of the group someone else would have come to my aid: Violet would have summarised the situation neatly and efficiently, Stanley would have charmed out a solution and Eve, yes Eve, she would have known what to do when faced with such a transformation. But it wasn’t the Eve I knew who stood in the doorway.

  I’d offered her a seat and even through my shock I noticed she moved differently, bringing her body down onto the chair with great delicacy and holding her neck in a way that seemed to say
, ‘don’t say a thing.’ But I felt reassured when she rummaged in her bag in a familiar way and soon even Stanley stopped giving her sideways glances. We proceeded with the meeting. It seemed too difficult to ask. Even Violet, connoisseur of makeovers, had refrained from comment, and we’d concluded our reports in a show of normality, closing our notebooks, waving our departure and heading down the stairs in quietly chatting groups.

  A sound returned my attention to the street. A pigeon had landed on the edge of the Cenotaph steps, one foot a stump. But he ignored his useless limb, pecking on a stale crisp and going about his life as if nothing ailed him. My stomach flexed as a single muscle. I felt nauseous. Something was terribly wrong with the eavesdroppers.

  Ladies Toilets Camden High St.1 am.

  Angry girl: You’re late.

  Shy girl: I’m sorry.

  Angry girl: Give me the money.

  Sound of a bag being opened.

  Scared girl: Here you are.

  Angry girl: What the hell’s that?

  Scared girl: It’s all I have.

  Angry girl: Look, little miss watery eyes, I need more than this.

  Scared girl: I’m sorry.

  Angry girl: I don’t want ‘sorry.’ I want money. When am I gonna get it?

  Scared girl: When I get paid.

  Angry girl: When the fuck’s that?

  Scared girl: Next week.

  Angry girl: How am I supposed to survive until next week . . . ? I said, how am I going to survive until next week?

  Scared girl: I don’t know.

  Angry girl: What’s your name?

  Scared girl: Jane.

  Angry girl: Jane! It’s not fucking Jane.

  Scared girl: It’s . . . Missy.

  Angry girl: Oh come on. Little Miss Missy?

  Scared girl: Yes.

  Angry girl: Hey, Jane.

  Scared girl: Yes?

  Angry girl: You better be here tomorrow with the money or else I’ll be inviting myself to your place for a cup of tea.