“I’ve dug a hole in the flower bed, Tom,” she said, without even saying hi or explaining why she’d come back. She was smiling. Her face was shining with sweat. She looked almost pretty, and very bright.
I said: “Oh, right. OK.”
“And tomorrow I’d like us to plant a tree!”
Her voice was very forced; her smile was wide and seemed to be stuck there.
I offered her a slice of pizza. She came on over to the sofa, picked up a slice, and sat down beside me. Her boots were muddy and old. I could smell the soil on her. I didn’t want to ask about the cool bag. I thought that she’d had some food and forgotten about it on the train. Something had gone off, and in her hurry to get back she hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t like her to be like that. She was such a clean and hygienic, practical sort of woman. But she was acting strange. I wanted to ask what had happened up there to bring her home.
“Have you had a good day?” she said, turning very deliberately on the sofa to look at me. She folded her hands and placed them demurely in her lap.
She said how much warmer it was in the south of England than it had been in Scotland.
“Did the men come to take the freezer?” she said.
I said that they hadn’t turned up. “I called them but no one answered the phone. It didn’t go to voicemail so I couldn’t leave a message.”
Lizzie turned around again, sat back against the sofa, but was still very erect. She looked around, and sniffed the air, as if she had never sat on that sofa or breathed the air in that room.
“How strange that they didn’t come,” she said, and then she turned to me with that fixed bright smile again.
“I could ring them tomorrow,” I said.
“No matter,” she said. “I will.”
“Maybe they felt they couldn’t get the lorry up the lane. Maybe they came and tried. It’s muddy down at the bottom there. And bumpy.”
“They wouldn’t have come in a lorry too big to fit down the lane. I said it was small, quite tight. With overhanging branches. I said it would be a job.”
“I’m sure they’ll come,” I said, and I went for another slice of pizza.
I didn’t ask her how Scotland had been. It was obvious it hadn’t been great. I looked at those small, very round, slightly panicky blue eyes, so close together, like the eyes of a doll.
“I’m not asking for anything,” she said. “You can stay here with me or you can go. It’s entirely up to you.”
I said nothing. I just looked at her and smiled.
“It’s perfectly all right. Tom?”
I smiled again, and I felt my whole face crinkling with it and my heart leaped into my mouth with apprehension for her, for us, for everything. She could feel it too. She sat back. I saw her shoulders drop. After a while she took a very deep breath, and then collapsed back into the sofa.
“I can stay in the shed,” I suggested. “If that would be easier?”
She shrugged. “Don’t be silly. The shed!”
“But you said before you thought it was a good idea. It is. It’ll be great! I’m sure I’ll like it!”
“It’s fine,” she said. “Just stay in the house.”
We said nothing much else that night. We finished the pizza and then we sat in the warmth of the fire, and we made cups of tea to take upstairs. I had my book. Lizzie wanted to lie down on the mattress and sleep. She brushed her teeth. I brought a blanket up. I opened up my sleeping bag and put it over both of us. She didn’t say a word. We were still in all our clothes. I put my arm under my head and I lay there for a while with my book while she fell asleep.
13
Once the potatoes had boiled, Lizzie ran up the lane towards the farm. If she ran, she felt, she would work up an appetite for his head. It had been defrosting overnight in the small space at the front of the shed—and the shed stank, so she’d left the door open and would need to go in there later in the afternoon and give it a good dousing with bleach.
She came to the farmhouse and crunched across the gravel, past the two saloon cars both spattered with mud, and up to the front door. She knocked. There was nothing. She knocked again. Inside someone was calling. One of the twins came to the door and opened it a crack.
Lizzie stood on the front step with her shoulders hunched. The door opened a little more. Lizzie could see a bony shoulder in a pale pink vest, a hip protruding from gray tracksuit bottoms.
“Are you Claire?” said Lizzie, placing her foot just inside the door so as to ease it open a little.
“Hi,” said the girl. She called back into the house. “Mum!”
There wasn’t a response. Lizzie looked beyond the girl into the wide hallway of the house. She remembered doing the babysitting here and thought about how people could go to a new experience happily, bounding forward, full of hope. She had been like that too. She had felt uncomfortable, but she had quite liked the challenge. Though they had thought her weird. She could have found someone to help. She could have gone to see a therapist of some description, or made a friend. There would have been someone to talk to, wouldn’t there?
“Are you Claire, then?” she said, her eye on the foot of hers that was now wedging open the door. She straightened up and folded her hands, nun-like, in front of her waist.
“Yeah. I’m Claire. Nic’s not back yet. She’s back tonight. Mike’s here. He’s upstairs. Do you want to speak to him?”
“Actually, I’d like to speak to your grandad,” said Lizzie.
The girl looked at her watch. “Still asleep,” she said.
A black Labrador slid around the girl’s legs and bounded down the steps. Claire said, “Ralph.” The dog went on.
Claire grimaced. Lizzie turned and watched the dog bound across the grass and down towards the pool of muddy water around the fence to the field. She wouldn’t have to do this again. She wouldn’t have to be here anymore. There was only the head left. Then she was free.
“It’s just that I found one of his signs yesterday,” she said. “It was taped to the back of my car. Could you tell him please that my husband left me and eloped to South America with a woman from the Pearl. It’s in Guildford. Do you know it?”
Claire was looking at her fingernails.
“It’s a prostitute place,” said Lizzie. “Where people go for—”
“Yeah, I get it,” said the girl.
“Obviously, it’s my own private matter, and I don’t appreciate being stalked…”
“Grandad’s not exactly well,” said Claire. “I’ll tell Mum and everything and we’ll definitely make sure it doesn’t happen again, but don’t worry. He’s not all there.”
“Does he find it funny?”
“No. He’s just not sure.”
“Not sure?”
“Of himself. Or anything. Of where he is. Who belongs where. Guess he thinks like he’s alive and trying to mix with people somehow. Trying to…don’t know.”
“Does he stay in his room most days?”
“Most days. He comes out when it’s quiet. Like once or twice a month he goes for a walk. Or goes to the pub. Sometimes he gets lost. He’s in his own head. Can be hard to keep tabs on him.”
There was a pause.
She turned back into the house again and shouted for her mum.
Mum didn’t come.
Claire looked like she wanted to go in and wanted to find something to say to please.
“I like your jumper,” she said.
Lizzie wasn’t sure she’d heard her. It was as if her senses had become precisely and finely tuned now to getting only what she needed. It was cold, and ever so slightly exciting. It was her determination now—her wits—being tested against the world. It was as if her own head—in preparation for eating his—had become detached from her body, and she was up now, in the clear, clean, cold air, enough of her money in her wallet to get her away from here and into a new life, and fuck everyone else. Yeah. And she liked that feeling.
Then Tom came to the door, slinking
up behind his sister, in a T-shirt and jeans. His cheeks were still bright red; his eyes darting a little in their sockets.
Claire slid away and Tom was standing there, six foot two with a bit of tissue on a bleeding spot on his neck.
Lizzie smiled. She said: “Hiya.”
“Hi,” he said, shyly. “I’ve been thinking about the shed. Can I come tonight?”
Lizzie paused.
“To look at the shed?” he said. He put a hand on his stomach and two tears popped out of his eyes.
“Man!” he said. “What is it with you?”
Lizzie backed away.
“Don’t worry,” she said, lifting a flat palm up in the air like a policeman. “I’m going anyway. It doesn’t matter what happens.”
“No, wait!”
He came after her, ankles creaking. He wasn’t wearing shoes. They stood in a thin patch of sunlight on the gravel driveway.
“I want to come and help you clear the shed,” he said. “Please. Let me come and help?”
198. You are now in the final stages.
199. This is excellent.
200. Say to yourself: I am a remarkable woman.
201. Say no to Tom Vickory if his intentions are more than clearing out the shed with you.
202. Having him round this evening, whatever you intend to serve him for supper, could jeopardize your chances of ever getting out.
203. Think what it might do to the poor boy if he ever knew.
She got the head from the shed and brought it into the kitchen and put it down on newspaper on the floor. She took the twisty off the bin liner and peeled the label off. She reached into the bag and pulled his head out, cradling it against her stomach with the plastic underneath it to prevent any loose hairs dropping off him and onto the floor. She felt the cool wet slime against her stomach. It had passed through her apron and was seeping through her shirt. Her pale yellow apron from the farm shop in Seale would have to go in the wash now. She would put it on a hot wash and leave it out on the line to dry while she was gone.
She ran her hand down the back of his head and drew an imaginary line where an incision would be made with an axe.
She would get the brain out, cook it in the oven, eat it for lunch and then think about what to do with the rest. The cheeks could be cut away easily and fried as they were in the frying pan, and the eyes could be used, also, taken out with a knife and blanched in a little oil. Or steamed, wrapped in a lettuce parcel. She ran her fingers round to the front of his head on her stomach and made sure that the lids were closed. She felt the matted hair. She closed her eyes and trembled. She tried to imagine that she was holding a sculpted head in her hands, and then it was simply a matter of chipping away at the bits she needed.
“Fine,” she said, and she took a breath. There was no sound in the kitchen. Rita was running round and round the garden. Inside the house it was only her. She wasn’t afraid.
Out on the grass she took the axe high in the air and thwacked it down on the back of his skull.
Jacob’s head split open in two clean pieces and Lizzie bent down with the carving knife to cut out his brain. It was easier than she’d thought it would be. She peered down and found the inside of his head very pink, very delicate, some white in places: not an awful lot to see. The brain was distinctive: snug in its socket, it was exactly like a piece of white coral, with the consistency of toothpaste when she touched it, and much smaller than she’d imagined.
She scooped the brain out with a spoon and tipped it into a small ceramic roasting dish. The dog barked and trotted after her as she carried the dish back into the kitchen. Then she put it in the oven with nothing at all to go with it. There was milk in the fridge, and Lizzie felt compelled, suddenly, to pour the milk into his head and then press the two bits of his skull together, filling him back up somehow, correcting the difficulties he’d grown up with, the ways in which he’d let himself down. Something to do with the whiteness of milk, not the symbolic significance, but the taste of it, how soothing it was, made her want to pour it into his head. Instead she pressed the two pieces of his skull back together, then wrapped him back up in the bin liner, tied it with a twisty and went out to the fine rain in the garden, where she stood holding it under one arm and looked at the trees.
After a while she perched at the outside table. She sat for a few minutes and did not reach a conclusion.
She listened to the sound of the woods and willed her thoughts out into the trees. After she had done this, thoughts would come and they would drive her mad.
She put the head down on the table and left it there while she went back into the kitchen to check on the brain.
She looked at her watch. The brain had cooked. It didn’t smell. It had gone a pale golden color, and when she pressed it, it felt firm, slightly crisp at the edges. She put it back in the oven. It might work with some soy sauce. If she crisped it up a little more in her small frying pan, it would be like eating a pile of crispy noodles.
She heated sesame oil in the pan and broke the brain up with a fork while it fried. She used a slotted spoon to transfer it onto a plate and ripped off a sheet of kitchen roll. She sat down at the table with a glass of wine. It was the last of the fourth bottle from the fridge. That was fine. It was perfect. She took a bite. The brain had a bitter flavor, something very deep and pungent—a grainy texture, but nicely crispy and salty on the outside.
She ate his brain in ten mouthfuls. Then she washed everything up in the sink. The head was still on the outside table in its bag. Lizzie looked through the kitchen window at it, and then she gave up trying to think about how to make eating the rest of it easier for herself. There wasn’t an answer. So she put it back in the freezer and piled the garden cushions up on top. Upstairs she brushed her teeth, had a shower, and dried herself with the only towel she had left. Then she lay down on her bed and placed her hands on her chest.
Tom
I hadn’t done anything about the three little sculptures she found at the back of the shed. She was so tense and tired when she came in from the garden that first night that she didn’t even notice them. She’d given me the number of a woman in London to call, but I didn’t think there was any rush so they were still there on the kitchen table.
I don’t know much about art, but even I could see that they were nice—and that they’d been made by someone who’d been “present” in himself and with his gifts at the time of creation. There was definitely an energy in each of the little sculptures, but I never imagined that they would make as much money as Joanna went on to get for them. It was Joanna who got in touch with me by email, months afterwards, to let me know that they had sold. No one would have thought it would work out like that. Not of this guy who just lived out in the woods and made the odd piece from time to time. I’d moved up north by then and I’d lost touch with everyone. In her email Joanna said that she would try to track Jacob down to let him know about the sale. “I think Lizzie really underestimated his talent,” she said. Of course I would never reply.
“You’re a funny one, Tom,” Lizzie said when she woke up next to me on the first morning back from Scotland, and stretched her arms out. We were lying on the mattress on the floor. She stretched her arms back and looked at the trees.
“I could say the same for you,” I said. “You’re still in all your clothes from the train.”
“Funny One Tom,” she said.
We were both a little awkward, and being friendly, cheery, polite.
“Today I’m going to plant a tree in the flower bed,” she said. “And then I’m going to go and get a job.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s possible I’ll be all right here. If I like the job then I will stay.”
She was speaking very matter-of-factly, and there was this strange sense of excitement about her. I mentioned the figurines, and that I hadn’t done anything with them, and then I reminded her about the freezer.
I took up my book and pretended to read a little more. I w
as too bewildered by her return and her excitement. I remember feeling really hot. And then suddenly really cold. I closed my eyes again and let all the feelings of warmth and confusion and cold and comfort and loss move through me until Lizzie got up in her jumper and jeans and went through to the bathroom. Then I sat bolt upright and went to the window to open it for some air.
We had breakfast, but not together. We were both used to having toast and coffee standing up, while fiddling around in the kitchen, and that’s what we did the first morning. Even though it was still quite cold we both preferred to have the back door open and to stand there in jumpers letting in the fresh air. I stood at the kitchen window and looked at the shed; I knew it was only a matter of days before she would ask me to move in there, whatever she had said the night before about me being free to stay or go. This was her home. It had been her home for decades. She wasn’t just going to start sharing it with a total stranger, I thought. Even if she was a woman feeling alone.
“I cleared the shed out, and I swept it,” I said to her.
Lizzie looked at the pieces standing on the table.
“I’m going to invite the woman who wants them. In a few days I’ll ask her to come here. You can meet her, Tom. I think we’ll both find her glamorous. And you’ll be able to help me work out if she genuinely wants to be my friend or if she’s only interested in getting her hands on these.”
“It’s one of life’s lessons,” I said, and Lizzie squinted at me.
“What is?”
“Knowing who you can trust,” I said, and swallowed the toast. She was still on edge. Blimey, she was on edge. I felt a bit weird again. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to stand it.
She said she’d come with me to the garden center when I went for the early shift. I wanted to go on my bike, because I really needed the fresh air. To start with she drove behind me, going really slowly on the main road. Then I pulled over onto the verge and waved her on. I saw the driver’s window come down and a hand come out with a thumb pointing upwards, and it made me laugh.
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