by Yaba Badoe
‘Doesn’t Miss Fielding want these things?’ I wanted the shawl for myself.
‘Not where she’s at,’ Polly said.
‘Where’s that?’
Polly pulled a face, slitting her throat with a forefinger. ‘She’s six feet under, kiddo.’
Then, in a frenzy, she tossed garment after garment over her shoulders: jodhpurs, nightdresses, evening dresses, skirts. Beth and I dived into them like a pair of bargain-seekers at the January sales, wanting to try on everything.
We were playing at being mannequins in a matching set of striped cotton pyjamas as Polly tried to force open the second trunk. The clasps of its lid were stiff, so she hammered them loose, prising them open with a combination of strength and determination.
I saw her pull out a heavy astrakhan coat, marvelling at the softness of its texture and its silk lining. Polly seemed about to try it on; she unbuttoned it, gliding her fingers over the lining. I saw her pause to feel something between the lining and the lambskin. Carefully she teased out a small bundle wrapped in black cloth.
‘Weird,’ she said.
Beth and I stopped playing. Polly was opening the bundle, her deft fingers unpicking well-tied knots. She spread the contents out.
‘What is it?’ Beth asked.
I turned away. I had seen it and I didn’t want to see it again, for I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it meant trouble. According to Malone and Leboeuf, the Fourth Principle of Detection was intuition: ‘Whatever happens, trust your gut instinct because it’s handing you clues you can’t yet untangle.’ My instinct taking hold of my body, made me turn my back on the contents on Polly’s lap while she stared, bewildered.
‘What is it?’ Beth asked again.
‘I don’t know.’ Then, wrapping the contents back up and scrambling to her feet, Polly ran downstairs, Beth and me running behind her.
Theo was home that weekend, so we ran to his room first. He was practising tai chi, his right hand travelling slowly through the air as his knees dipped. He froze when he saw us.
‘Look, Theo!’ Polly thrust the bundle into his face.
Maintaining his position, he stared coldly at his sister.
‘Look!’
He kept staring at us, the iciness of his silence forcing Polly to take a backward step. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ he said.
‘But we’ve found something, Theo!’
‘Shove off, will you?’ He dismissed us by closing his eyelids. Opening them with a deep outward breath, he added, ‘And for God’s sake don’t go disturbing the parents, Polly. They’re wading through their shit again.’
At the mention of her parents, Polly bridled: ‘Why not try and tell me something new for a change? Like something interesting? But, hey, you don’t know how to, Theo, because you are so totally uncool, you suck!’
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Polly.’
We ran down to the kitchen. Peter was in the chair Mrs Bradshaw had sat in earlier. He was sitting opposite Isobel, and from the expression on their faces I knew something unpleasant was happening. Isobel was laughing unnaturally with short, furious barks of contempt that defied the despair on her face. Her eyes, glittering with tears, seemed unable to contain her anger. She was bolt upright, her palms flat on the table, the altar she worshipped at whenever her husband was at home. Peter was slouching, his body half-turned away from her, disengaged from whatever was being said. It appeared that Isobel, itching to move her hands closer to Peter, simply wanted to touch him again. Polly dumped the bundle between her parents.
‘Open it, Peter.’
Peter covered his face with his hands.
‘It’s not that gross. We found it in the attic.’
Polly was trying to sit on her father’s lap, but he stood, shepherding us out of the room. Ducking from his grasp, she grabbed the bundle from the table. ‘Please, Daddy. Please look. This is really important.’
‘Later, kitten. Not now.’ Despite Polly’s protests, he shut the door in our faces.
We retreated to the silence of Peter’s study; a sanctuary lined with music and books from floor to ceiling. It had a calm, cloistered atmosphere, very different to the rest of the house, which was unashamedly luxurious in colour and texture. On the desk was a chunky grey PowerBook computer, on a shelf a cumbersome fax machine. The study was the one room that was truly Peter’s; its wealth of books and music and a single painting on the wall its only decorations. On the lower shelves were long, leather-bound manuscripts, antique maps Peter had bought in the countries he had lived in. They looked unappealing until their rough pages opened to reveal glorious new worlds.
Polly had told me that the painting, the only one Peter possessed, was a Paul Nash landscape. On the few occasions Peter returned home, I remember watching him, his attention poised mournfully on the canvas’s dark splashes of colour. He would stare as if realigning himself to a hidden constellation of stars that could take him back to a happier time. He appeared distracted, a traveller who had misplaced an inner compass and lost his bearings completely.
I gazed at the picture, wondering what Theo had meant when he’d warned us against disturbing Peter and Isobel. Immersing myself in purple and black brushstrokes, I delved deeper, intrigued by the source of Peter’s sadness, until I found myself in a barren place without sun, the trees’ dark silhouettes hobbled by wind and rain. As Polly spread out the bundle on Peter’s desk, revealing its contents again, I was alone and frightened, submerged in the desolation of the painting. I didn’t want to look at what was on the desk. I preferred the emptiness of the landscape in front of me, yet eventually I felt compelled to turn around for the same reason that I had played True Murder, and why I came home with Polly week after week. I was irrevocably drawn to her, and whatever interested her eventually held my attention as well.
The parcel contained the remains of what seemed to be small animals. There was little left of them apart from fragile bones and tiny fragments of skulls. Tears came to my eyes, yet my uppermost feeling was a thin thread of fear tugging at my heart. Emanating from the parcel, strong and corrosive as the touch of acid, was the suffocating stench of a grave disturbed.
‘I think we should bury them,’ I said.
‘The poor kittens,’ said Beth, her face flushed with sympathy. ‘Whoever did this was disgusting.’
‘I think we should bury them.’
Putting down the pencil with which she was prodding the bones, Polly looked at me dumbfounded. ‘Bury the evidence and let the perpetrator escape? No way!’
‘But Polly, they won’t rest till we bury them. They want to be at peace again.’
I believed in omens and portents, in a golden bullet killing an Ashanti general. I believed in the blood-soaked dress of a child’s broken body, in the faces of witches in my mother’s mirror. And Malone and Leboeuf were whispering in my inner ear, telling me to go with my gut, to trust the shiver of revulsion making me recoil from whatever it was in front of me. A gash was appearing on the Venus veneer and I wanted to cover it quickly. Polly, however, had other ideas.
‘Hallo? Am I hearing things? Did she say what I think she said? Wise up, Aj. We’ve got to find out who hid them. They could have been buried alive, for all we know. Right, Beth?’
‘Poor little kittens.’
‘They’re only animals,’ I said, desperate to suppress the implications of our discovery. ‘Who cares?’
I was caught in a vice of terror and desire; desire to protect myself from an unspecified threat that was inching towards us and terror at stepping deeper into Polly’s clandestine world. ‘Whoever did this must have done it a long time ago. It makes no difference now. We should let it rest.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Aj.’
‘If something happened to you,’ I persisted, ‘would you want someone poking about with your bones? Bones should be laid to rest, it says so in the Bible.’
‘Jeez, Aj, give me a break! If anything happened to me, I’d want you to investigat
e and find out what happened, like we’re going to do with these bones. Right, Beth?’
Beth nodded half-heartedly, torn between Polly’s instinct to solve the mystery we had uncovered – in a quest for knowledge I was drawn to as well – and my need to preserve the status quo. In the end, her choice came as no surprise: ‘Whoever hid these kittens is despicable. They’re wicked and should be punished. The least we can do is stop it happening again. I think we should call the RSPCA, Aj. Polly’s right.’
‘Yes! Gimme the phone book, the yellow one,’ Polly instructed, indicating a pile of multicoloured books under her father’s desk. Beth brought the yellow one over. Flipping though the pages, Polly found the section she wanted. She reached for Peter’s phone and punched in the number for the RSPCA.
I spent the afternoon hoping they wouldn’t come, hoping they’d think the call a hoax and disregard it. In an attempt to sound like an adult, Polly had tried to make her voice deeper. Giving the address of Graylings, she claimed to be her mother. She wouldn’t have fooled me, so I thought it unlikely that they’d be fooled either.
By mid-afternoon, I could see she was growing tired of waiting. I imagined her burying the bundle in the garden, as I’d suggested, believing that if I imagined it, it might happen. The strand of fear around my heart slackened momentarily, only for it to tighten again when I heard Peter shouting: ‘Why can’t you leave me alone, woman! I’ve said all I want to say.’
From Polly’s room, we could hear Isobel’s voice begging, ‘Let me in, Peter. Please let me in.’
As the afternoon progressed, Isobel became increasingly agitated. I heard her roaming the house with the restless rage of a caged lioness, opening and shutting doors; pushing windows ajar, only to close them again before pacing back to Peter’s door.
While we were upstairs, I heard Isobel’s muffled knocking. It was the fourth time she had made the journey to Peter’s lair and on each occasion he compelled her to leave. He had barricaded himself in his study in response to a campaign she was waging to re-establish contact with him. I knew this was what she wanted for after knocking, she pleaded: ‘Peter, we’ve got to talk. We’ve got to thrash this out.’
This time, however, Peter bellowed: ‘Isobel, if you disturb me again, I promise you, I’m going back to London.’
Beth and I glanced nervously at one another.
‘Don’t take any notice,’ Polly reassured us. ‘They’re always fighting. Parents, huh?’
Polly’s phlegmatic attitude was in direct contrast to mine. I associated the contagion of melancholy permeating the house and infecting her parents with the bones we’d uncovered in the attic. After all, the Venuses’ distress and our discovery had occurred on the same day, so in my mind the two events were inextricably linked. It was more than mere coincidence. Something vital pertaining to all our lives was beginning to unfold and I desperately wanted to rearrange events, turn back the clock. Indeed, I prayed that the RSPCA would ignore Polly’s call and that by nightfall, when the bones had been buried, the listlessness oppressing the house would lift and Isobel and Peter would be happy again.
As I breathed deeply, my anxiety began to ease. When I smelt the aroma of baking bread seeping from the kitchen through the house, I almost believed that all would be well. Isobel was cooking again: a sign I had learnt to associate with recovery. But at four that afternoon, just as Polly’s anticipation of the RSPCA was waning, and Beth, having exhausted the pleasures of whacking Mexicans in one of Polly’s video games, was bored, I heard a van travelling up the drive.
‘They’re here!’ Polly cried.
We ran downstairs. The doorbell rang just before Polly threw the door open.
‘Hi! Come on in,’ she cried, grinning at a burly, balding man in navy blue.
He said, ‘Good afternoon, I’m Mr Burroughs, RSPCA.’ Then he seemed unsure what to do next. He looked at us through tired eyes. I could see that he wanted to talk to an adult.
Luckily, Peter, having heard the doorbell, came out of his study. ‘What’s going on?’
Mr Burroughs replied: ‘We received an emergency phone call, sir.’
‘I’m sorry, there must be some mistake.’
‘This is Graylings house, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but no one called from here.’
‘I called you,’ Polly admitted.
Peter glared at her.
‘Well, you wouldn’t listen,’ she protested. ‘I found these upstairs.’ She handed the bundle of animal remains to the RSPCA man, who began examining them closely.
‘They’re bones, Daddy. Dead bones.’
Peter looked embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been called out on a wild goose chase. I’m terribly sorry.’
‘It’s no trouble, sir. If you don’t mind, I’d like to see where these were found.’
Yes! Polly mouthed, punching the air.
We took the man up to the attic, to the astrakhan from the second trunk. The garment was lying on the floor, a handsome stray wantonly discarded. Polly showed Mr Burroughs where the bundle had been hidden: between the lining and the coat’s soft brown fur.
‘I knew in my gut something was wrong,’ she said.
Peter smiled. ‘You’ve made my daughter’s day, Mr Burroughs. But there’s bound to be a simple explanation.’
‘What would you suggest, Mr Venus?’ Unlike Peter, Mr Burroughs wasn’t taking the matter lightly.
‘Perhaps it was someone’s idea of a practical joke?’
‘Some joke!’ Beth muttered.
‘Peter, only a pervert would do something like this. It’s not funny in the slightest. In fact it’s totally, totally sick, Daddy.’
‘I think we should take a closer look at these remains,’ said Mr Burroughs, placing the bones in a plastic container, the frayed black cloth in another.
‘Is this really necessary?’ There was a note of impatience in Peter’s voice, as if he thought the man overzealous. ‘Miss Fielding died years ago, and her estate has been trying to sell the house for four years at least.’
I think he wanted the matter dropped; like me, he wanted the bones left alone. Mr Burroughs disagreed.
‘With respect, sir,’ he said firmly, ‘we have to make sure these are what we think they are.’
Of course, Polly was delighted. And in the evening her pleasure at what she had accomplished, the discovery of the bones and their removal, prevented her from seeing what was obvious to Theo and me: Isobel’s misery.
Isobel had cooked roast lamb and haricot beans for dinner, taking extra care with her roast potatoes, which she had parboiled and coated in salt and flour, so that when she removed them from the Aga they were battered crisp and crusty, the way Peter liked them. I remember that she smelt of bluebells that evening. Bluebells and something else: her unhappiness added a layer of decaying, crushed violets, so that she exuded the strong, sweet smell of fear. Glancing at her, I saw the image of my mother on her face.
‘Go and fetch your father,’ she asked Polly, when we were at table.
At her mother’s request, Polly’s delight at the day’s events melted away. ‘Why don’t you get him yourself, Isobel? I’m not going to talk to him for you. I’m not going to pass messages again.’
‘Polly, this is not what I need from you right now. Please ask your father to come to the table.’
‘I’ll go,’ Theo volunteered.
‘No, I want Polly to do what I asked her.’
Staring above Isobel’s head at a celestial audience she was performing for, Polly sighed, exasperated: ‘Jeez, I wonder why you want Polly to do your dirty work for you, Mommy dearest? Is it because Polly gets better results? You see, folks, Peter listens to her cos Polly’s his pearl; his little girl. Sorry, Isobel,’ she said, eyeing her mother. ‘I’m not going to do it again. This is your headache. You deal with it.’
‘Please, Polly.’
I couldn’t bear to hear her pleading with my friend. My mother had never begged me to do her bidding; I had interceded wi
llingly between my parents. Getting down from the table, I went to Peter’s study.
‘Will you come and eat with us?’ I asked him.
He was staring at that picture again and it took him a few seconds to register who was talking to him. When he saw that it was me, he smiled.
‘Of course, little one. Have you had a good day?’
‘I didn’t like the bones,’ I confessed. Peter was always easy to talk to, always sympathetically inclined to me.
‘Well, that makes two of us. They’re best forgotten, I think. Let’s pretend they never existed, OK, Ajuba?’
‘I’ll try,’ I said.
Peter ate dinner with us as Isobel had wanted, though it was evident to everyone but her that it would have been better if he hadn’t been there. He ignored her comments, drinking steadily until his eyes, a sodden turquoise, appeared amused, puzzled by his surroundings. He kept looking around as if he couldn’t see the point of Isobel’s possessions cluttered about him, couldn’t quite understand where they’d all come from. As soon as he finished eating, downing Isobel’s lemon sorbet in a single, wolfish gulp, he returned to his study.
The awkwardness of the meal and the speed of Peter’s departure made me realise that unless something changed quickly there would be no more music or dancing around the kitchen table. There would be no more singing of Van Morrison’s song, and Sam Cooke would fall silent. I couldn’t understand how, in less than a month, Aunt Rose’s sacred joy had evaporated. What had Isobel done? I wanted the family to return to what they’d been. I wanted to be kissed by them again and again.
That night, Isobel’s unhappiness seeped into my sleep and, catching sight of my mother again, I woke up from a nightmare to hear the house whispering to me. My mother was calling me, pleading with me to come home. I’d seen Mama in my dreams before, but this time the dress she was wearing made me recoil. She was in a flowing full-length indigo boubou embroidered with rows of eyes. The eyes blinked shut. When they opened again, they glistened with the brightness of Peter’s eyes. She wanted me home again, so I would see what she had seen.