The Keeper of Lost Things

by Ruth Hogan

  They had been to see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre the previous evening and had both been truly horrified. But it wasn’t a nightmare that had broken Eunice’s sleep. It was a dream come true. She climbed out of bed and hurried to the bathroom, where she smiled happily at her slightly rumpled reflection. Bomber had held her hand. Only for a moment, but he had actually held her hand.

  Later that morning, on the way to the office, Eunice warned herself to be careful. Yes, Bomber was her friend, but he was also her boss, and she still had a job to do. At the green door on Bloomsbury Street, Eunice paused for a moment and took a deep breath before galloping up the stairs. Douglas rattled over to greet her with his usual enthusiasm, and Bomber called out from the kitchen,

  “Tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Eunice sat down at her desk and began sorting studiously through the post.

  “Sleep well?”

  Bomber thumped a steaming mug down in front of her, and to her horror Eunice felt herself blushing.

  “That’s the last time I let you choose the film,” he continued, oblivious to, or perhaps kindly ignoring, her embarrassment.

  “I didn’t sleep a wink last night, even though I had Douglas to protect me, and I kept the bedside lamp on!”

  Eunice laughed as she felt her red face returning to its usual color. Bomber always managed to make her feel comfortable. The rest of the morning passed as easily as usual, and at lunchtime Eunice went out to fetch sandwiches from Mrs. Doyle’s. As they sat together eating cheese and pickle on granary bread and looking out of the window, Bomber remembered something.

  “Didn’t you say that it was your birthday next Sunday?”

  Eunice suddenly felt hot again.

  “Yes. It is.”

  Bomber passed a piece of cheese to Douglas, who was drooling hopefully at his feet.

  “Are you doing anything fabulous?”

  That had been the original plan. Eunice and Susan, her best friend from school, had always said that to celebrate their twenty-first birthdays, which were only days apart, they would go to Brighton for the day. Eunice had never been fond of parties, and her parents were happy to pay for the trip instead of hiring a hall with a bar and hirsute disco DJ. But Susan had found herself a boyfriend, a David Cassidy doppelgänger who worked in Woolworths’s, and he had apparently planned a surprise for her birthday. She had been very apologetic, but chose new love over her oldest friendship, nonetheless. Eunice’s parents had offered to come with her instead, but that wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. Bomber was distraught on her behalf.

  “I’ll come!” he volunteered. “That is, if you don’t mind your aged boss tagging along.”

  Eunice was thrilled. But tried very hard not to show it.

  “Okay. I suppose I could cope with that.” She grinned. “I just hope you’ll be able to keep up with me!”

  On Saturday morning Eunice went to the hairdressers for a cut and blow-dry, and a manicure. In the afternoon, having checked Sunday’s weather forecast for the umpteenth time, she tried on virtually every item of clothing in her wardrobe, in every conceivable combination. She eventually decided on a pair of purple high-waisted flared trousers, a flower-printed blouse, and a purple hat with a huge, floppy brim to complement her newly purpled nails.

  “How do I look?” she asked her mum and dad as she paraded up and down the living room, intermittently blocking their view of The Two Ronnies on the television.

  “You look lovely, dear,” her mum replied.

  Her dad nodded in agreement but said nothing. He had learned, over the years, it was wiser for him to leave opinions on fashion to the ladies of the house.

  That night Eunice hardly slept at all, but when she did, she dreamed of Bomber. Tomorrow was going to be an extraordinary day!

  CHAPTER 9

  It had seemed like a perfectly ordinary day. But in the weeks that followed, Laura scoured her memory searching for missed clues and portents that might have gone unheeded. Surely she should have known that something terrible was going to happen? Laura often felt that she should have been a Catholic. She did guilt so well.

  That morning, Anthony went for his walk as usual. The only thing that was different was that he didn’t take his bag. It was a beautiful morning, and when he returned Laura thought how happy he looked; more relaxed than she had seen him in a long time. He didn’t go into the study, but asked Laura to bring his coffee to the garden, where she found him chatting to Freddy about the roses. As Laura placed the tray down on the garden table she deliberately avoided catching Freddy’s eye. Perhaps it was because she found him attractive that being in his presence made her uncomfortable. He had an easy confidence and was blessed with both charm and good looks, which Laura found rather unsettling. He was too young for her, in any case, she thought, and then immediately ridiculed herself for even considering that it would ever be an issue.

  “Morning, Laura. Lovely day.”

  Now she had to look at him. He was smiling at her, and held her eyes in a steady gaze. Her embarrassment made her sound clipped and unfriendly.

  “Yes, lovely.”

  And now she was blushing. Not a flattering, rosy tint, but a vivid, scarlet mottling that made her look as if she had just had her head in the oven. She hurried back into the house. The cool calm of Padua soon restored her equilibrium and she went upstairs to change the flowers on the landing. The door to the master bedroom was open, and Laura went in to check that everything was all right. The smell of roses was overpowering that day, even though the windows were closed. The clock downstairs in the hall began chiming midday, and Laura automatically checked her watch. The long case clock had been gaining time, and she had been meaning to arrange to get it fixed. Her watch said 11:54 A.M. and suddenly a thought struck her. She picked up the blue enamel clock from Therese’s dressing table and watched as the second hand ticked rhythmically round the dial. When it reached the twelve it stopped. Dead.

  Anthony had his lunch in the garden room, and when Laura collected the tray she was delighted to see that he had eaten almost everything. Perhaps whatever it was that had been troubling him in recent months had been resolved, or perhaps his visit to the doctor had resulted in some improvement to his health. She also wondered if finally sharing with her his story about Therese had helped in some way. Whatever it was, she was glad. And relieved. It was wonderful to see him looking so well.

  Laura spent the afternoon sorting through Anthony’s accounts. He still received some royalties from his writing and would occasionally be asked to do a reading for some local book group or branch library. After a couple of hours poring over the paperwork, Laura leaned back in her chair. Her neck was sore and her back ached. She rubbed her tired eyes and made a mental note, for the hundredth time, to get them tested.

  The lure of the study eventually proved irresistible for Anthony, and Laura heard him go in and shut the door behind him. She slipped the sheets of paper in front of her into their respective files and then went out into the garden to stretch her legs and feel the sun on her face. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still hot and the sound of bees on the honeysuckle throbbed in the sultry air. The roses looked magnificent. Blooms of every shape, size, and hue combined to create a shimmering sea of scent and color. The lawn was a perfect square of lush green and the fruit trees and bushes at the bottom of the garden burgeoned with the promise of late summer bounty. Freddy clearly had a gift when it came to growing things. When Laura had first come to work for Anthony, the only part of the garden which was lovingly cared for was the rose garden. The lawn had been patchy and ragged with weeds, and the trees had been left to outgrow their strength, with branches too spindly to bear the weight of fruit. But in the two years since Freddy had come to work at Padua, the garden had been brought back to life. Laura sat down on the warm grass and hugged her knees. She was always reluctant to leave Padua at the end of the day, but on days like this it was even harder. Her flat held little attraction in comparison. At
Padua, even when she was alone, she never felt lonely. In her flat she only ever felt that way.

  Since Vince, there had been no other long-term relationships. The failure of her marriage had knocked her confidence and mocked her youthful pride. The wedding had been arranged so quickly that her mother had asked her if she was pregnant. She wasn’t. She was simply swept away by a handsome Prince Charming who promised her the world. But the man she married was a flashy rogue who, instead of the world, delivered insipid suburbia. Her parents had done their very best to persuade her to wait; until she was older, knew better her own mind. But she was young and impatient, stubborn even, and marrying Vince had seemed like a shortcut to growing up. She could still remember the sad, anxious smile which her mother had fixed on her face as she watched her daughter walk down the aisle. Her father was less able to hide his misgivings, but fortunately most of the congregation mistook his tears for happiness and pride. The worst thing of all was that, on her wedding day, she too had feared for the first time that she was making a mistake. Her doubts were buried in a barrage of confetti and champagne, but she had been right. Her love for Vince was a callow, fanciful love, formed as quickly as the silver-edged invitations had been issued and as frothy as the dress that she had worn down the aisle.

  That evening, Laura picked at her supper in front of the television. She wasn’t really hungry and she wasn’t really watching the flickering screen. Giving up on both, she unlocked the door and stood out on the cramped balcony of her flat looking up at the inky sky. She wondered how many other people in the world were looking up at the same vast sky at that exact moment. It made her feel small and very much alone.

  CHAPTER 10

  The midnight summer sky was a watercolor wash of darkness with a glitter of tiny stars thrown across it. The air was still warm as Anthony walked down the path toward the rose garden, inhaling the rich perfume of the treasured blooms that he had planted all those years ago for Therese, when they first moved into the house. He had been to the post box, his footfalls echoing softly through the empty streets of the village. The letter posted was the final full stop to his story. His solicitor would pass it on to Laura when the time came. And now he was ready to leave.

  It had been a Wednesday when they had moved into the house. Therese had found it.

  “It’s perfect!” she had said.

  And it was. They had met only months earlier, but they had not needed an “approved” passage of time to bind them to one another. The attraction was instant; illimitable like the sky that hung above him now. At first it had frightened him, or rather the fear of losing it had. It was surely too potent, too perfect to last. But Therese had absolute faith. They had found each other and that was exactly as it was meant to be. Together they were sacrosanct. She was named after St. Therese of the Roses and so he planted the garden as a gift to her. He spent October in Wellingtons trenching the ground in the new beds and digging in well-rotted manure while Therese brought him cups of tea and unstinting encouragement. The roses arrived on a dank, foggy November morning, and their fingers, toes, and noses froze as Anthony and Therese spent the day setting out and planting the garden around a perfect patch of lawn. But the washed-out palette that painted the November landscape was rainbow-tinted by the descriptions Therese read aloud from the labels that named every rose. There was pink and fragrant “Albertine” to climb over the trellis archway leading to the sundial; the bloodred velvet “Grand Prix,” the pure white “Marcia Stanhope,” the flushed copper “Gorgeous,” the silvery-pink “Mrs. Henry Morse,” the dark red “Étoile de Hollande,” “Mélanie Soupert” with pale yellow petals suffused with amethyst, and the vermilion and old gold of “Queen Alexandra.” At the four corners of the lawn they planted weeping standard roses—“Albéric Barbier,” “Hiawatha,” “Lady Gay,” and “Shower of Gold”—and when it was all done and they stood close together in the spectral drear of a winter twilight, she kissed him softly on the lips and placed something small and round into his cold-bruised hand. It was a picture of St. Therese of the Roses framed in gold metal and glass in the shape of a medallion.

  “It was a gift for my first Holy Communion,” she said. “It’s for you, to say thank you for my beautiful garden and to remind you that I will love you forever, no matter what. Promise me you’ll keep it with you always.”

  Anthony smiled. “I promise,” he solemnly declared.

  Tears scored Anthony’s cheeks once again as he stood alone among the roses on a beautiful summer night. Alone and bereft as he remembered her kiss, her words, and the feel of the medallion pressed into his hand.

  He had lost it.

  It had been in his pocket as he stood waiting for Therese on the corner of Great Russell Street. But she never came, and by the time he got home that day, he had lost them both. He went back to look for the medallion. He searched the streets and gutters, but he had known that it was a hopeless task. It was as though he had lost her twice. It was the invisible thread that would have connected him to her even after she was gone, but now it was broken along with his promise to her. And so it was that he began to gather other people’s lost things; gather them in and keep them safe, just in case one day, one of them could mend a broken heart, and thus redeem a broken man. But had he done enough? He was about to find out.

  The grass was still warm and smelled like hay. Anthony lay down and stretched out his long, dwindled limbs toward the points of an imaginary compass, ready to set his final course. The scent of roses washed over him in waves. He looked up at the boundless ocean of sky above him and picked a star.

  CHAPTER 11

  She thought he was asleep. Ridiculous, she knew, but the alternative was unthinkable.

  Laura had arrived at her usual time and, finding the house empty, assumed that Anthony had gone for his walk. But an insistent unease was tapping on her shoulder. She went to the kitchen, made coffee, and tried to ignore it. But the tapping grew faster, louder, harder. Like her heartbeat. In the garden room, the door to the outside was open and she went out, feeling as though she were walking the plank. Anthony lay covered in rose petals, spread-eagled on the dew-soaked grass. From a distance he could have been asleep, but as she stood over him, there was no such comfort. His once blue eyes, still open, were milky-veiled, and his mouth gaped breathless, hemmed by purpled lips. Her reluctant fingertips brushed his cheek. The tallow skin was cold. Anthony had gone and left behind a corpse.

  And now she was alone in the house. The doctor and the funeral directors had come and gone. They had spoken in hushed voices and dealt with death kindly and efficiently. It was their livelihood after all. She found herself wishing that Freddy had been there, but it wasn’t one of his regular days at Padua. She sat at the kitchen table watching another cup of coffee grow cold, her face scorched red and tight by angry tears. This morning her whole world had blown away like feathers in the wind. Anthony and Padua had become her life. She had no idea what she was going to do now. For a second time she was completely lost.

  The clock in the hall struck six and still Laura could not bring herself to go home. She now realized that she was already home. The flat was just somewhere to go when she couldn’t be here. Tears spilled down her cheeks again. She had to do something; a displacement activity, a distraction, however short-lived. She would do her job. She still had the house and everything in it to take care of. For now. She would keep doing it until somebody told her to stop. She started a tour of the house; upstairs first, checking everything was in order. In the main bedroom she smoothed the covers and plumped the pillows, dismissing as ridiculous her suspicion that the bed had recently been slept in. The scent of roses was overwhelming and the photograph of Anthony and Therese lay facedown on the floor. She picked it up and returned it to its place on the dressing table. The little blue clock had stopped as usual: 11:55. She wound the key until the ticking started, like a tiny heartbeat. She passed the bay window without looking out at the garden. In Anthony’s room she felt awkward in a way that she ha
d never done when he had been alive. It seemed too intimate; an inappropriate intrusion. His pillow still smelled of the soap he always used. She pushed away unwelcome thoughts of strangers pawing through his things. She had no idea who his next of kin might be. Downstairs, she closed the windows in the garden room and locked the door to the outside. The photograph of Therese lay flat on the table. Laura picked it up and gazed at the woman for whom Anthony had lived and died.

  “I hope to God you find each other,” she said softly before replacing the picture in its usual upright position. Laura wondered to herself if that counted as a prayer.

  In the hall she stood by the study door. Her hand hovered above the doorknob, as though it might burn her if she touched it, and then dropped back down by her side. She was desperate to see what secrets it might hold, but the study was Anthony’s private kingdom, and one which she had never been invited to enter. She couldn’t yet decide if his death had changed that or not.

  Daring herself, she stepped outside through the kitchen door and into the garden. It was late summer and the roses were beginning to shed their petals like fragile, worn-out ball gowns coming apart at the seams. The lawn was perfect again. It bore no imprint of a corpse. Well, what had she expected? Not this. As she stood in the middle of the grass in the ebb and flow of the sun-warmed, rose-scented air, she felt lifted; strangely reassured.

  On her way back down to the house, the glint of setting sun on tilted glass caught her eye. It was the study window, left open. She couldn’t leave it. The house would not be safe. Now she would have to go into the study. She had no idea where Anthony kept the key when it wasn’t in his pocket. As she tried to think where it might be her fingers closed around the cool wooden handle. It turned easily at her touch and the door to the study swung open.