by Jess Kidd
The saints make sounds of agreement. St George growls something about hurling sticks before snapping his visor shut.
The waiter comes over with a look of high begrudgement on his face. Undeterred, Sam orders coffee and an all-day breakfast sandwich. The waiter departs and Sam watches me, his manly fingers playing with the lid of the ketchup bottle.
St Valentine grimaces. ‘Get in there, say something suggestive, sexy voice, play with your hair, bite your lip, stick out the chest. Every second counts.’
Sam glances out of the window as a black car passes by.
‘He’s losing interest,’ says St Valentine.
I glare at him. Haven’t I enough on my hands with looking like Deborah Kerr?
Then Sam, his eyes fixed on an old man struggling past with shopping bags, asks, ‘How’s Mr Flood?’
‘He’s grand.’
‘Any more mad crazy stuff up at the house?’
Only the poltergeist in the kitchen. ‘No. Not really.’
Sam nods. ‘You’re too sensible to be swayed by it anyway.’
St Valentine winces. ‘Ah Jesus, sensible is it? Hit back, Twinkle—’
‘I’m not in the least bit sensible.’
Sam smiles. ‘Pragmatic then?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Practical?’
I frown.
‘Rational?’ Sam ventures.
‘I’ll take that.’
Sam laughs.
St Valentine breathes out.
The waiter brings the drinks.
Sam smiles at me. ‘Just a coffee, that’s right?’
I smile and nod and poke the froth on the top of the cup with the teaspoon.
‘Any sign of Gabriel?’ asks Sam in a low voice when the waiter has himself anchored back behind the counter.
‘None whatsoever.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way.’ He takes a taste of his coffee. ‘Although, that was a great plan of his: getting the old man out of the house. With a clear day to sift through the rubbish God knows what someone might find.’
‘So there we have it, Twinkle,’ announces St Valentine. ‘This here fella wants to get into the house and not your knickers. That’s what he’s after.’
I scowl at him.
St Valentine winks back. ‘Although, all is not lost, of course, if he’s planning to get into the house via your knickers.’
At the next table St Rita shakes her head and St George sniggers behind his visor. I hear it; it comes with a metallic echo. St Monica in the corner throws him a sullen look.
St Valentine holds up his hands. ‘Wha’? I’m only saying what you’re all thinking.’
Sam mops up ketchup with his sandwich. ‘I’m not going to suggest again that you let anyone in the house – me or Gabriel. You’ve made your position clear, Maud,’ Sam hesitates, ‘and I respect you for that.’
‘Sure he does,’ says St Valentine. ‘Look at him, isn’t he full of respect?’
I look at Sam lounging on his chair with his grey eyes shining. The waiter brings the food order. Sam watches him walk away and then he turns to me with a wide, rakish grin.
‘Of course, if you do change your mind I’d be more than happy to have a root around.’
St Valentine laughs gleefully.
I ignore the lot of them as I measure three sugars into my coffee and stir it. I don’t take sugar but I like the whole routine of it. It’s calming. I stir until I find myself equipped to change the subject.
‘So I expect you’ll be heading back up north soon, Sam?’
Sam puts ketchup in his sandwich. ‘Not for a bit. I thought I’d stick around and see how things pan out here.’
I take a sip: it’s far too sweet. I add more sugar. ‘What things?’
‘The investigation for a start; I want to see if any more clues surface.’
I measure in another spoonful. ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Sam shrugs. ‘Renata tells me you are starting to gain the old man’s trust.’
I wonder what else Renata tells him. I glance at St Valentine but he has his toothpick out and is deep in thought, going after his few teeth.
‘Maybe Mr Flood will enlighten you one of these days,’ says Sam. ‘And unravel the mysteries of Bridlemere.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘And then there’s the envelope. The one you found at the house. Another message from Mary Flood?’
‘Renata told you what was inside it?’
Sam pushes his plate away, glancing up at me, perhaps catching a note of censure in my voice. ‘No.’ He smiles. ‘Renata said you were waiting until I came round to open it – when the gang was all together again.’
Of course she did.
Sam picks up his coffee, swirls it a little, eyes lowered. ‘You know you can call me if you ever need to. If things get out of hand.’
St Valentine glances up, then he stops picking his teeth and stares at Sam. A look of wonder dawns on the saint’s dim raddled face.
He points at Sam with a trembling finger. ‘Look—’
‘If you’re ever in trouble.’
‘Mother of God,’ whispers St Valentine. ‘Would you look at his ears?’ He turns to the other saints. ‘The tips of them: reddening. Do you see them?’
St George gets up and lurches over to Sam. Leaning down, his armour grinding, he pushes open his visor and studies Sam intently. Then St George straightens up, his face red with effort, and gives a curt nod.
‘I bloody knew it,’ mutters St Valentine. ‘Son of a gun.’
Sam shifts in his chair. ‘Any time you need me—’
‘Ears lit up like two little beacons,’ sighs St Valentine.
‘Any time at all—’
‘Like two little flags.’
‘I’d be there for you.’
St Valentine gazes at Sam with an expression of rapture. ‘It’s working down to his cheeks.’
‘I mean it, Maud.’
‘He’s going scarlet!’
‘That’s kind, Sam,’ I say. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
‘He can’t help himself.’ St Valentine turns to me. ‘Can you believe that? Jumping Jack Flash is blushing.’
‘So if anything kicks off, anything at all, in that house . . .’
‘Yes, Sam?’
Sam gives me a smile that appears to be located somewhere between apology and confusion. ‘Then I’m your man.’
‘He is!’ roars St Valentine. ‘By God, Maud, he’s your man!’
St Valentine clears the table with a cry of joy and runs a circuit of the cafe with his red cloak flapping. St George laughs and shakes St Valentine’s hand and they pat each other on the back. St Rita throws me a congratulatory smile and St Monica purses the thin line of her mouth.
I give my coffee one last stir and gently put down the spoon.
Chapter 24
There’s no dance when I return home and open Renata’s gate. No dress ring knuckles at the kitchen window and no bobbing headscarf. I am puzzled; this is not a day that Lillian usually visits. As I round the house I see that the front door is open and the chain has been broken. Renata’s shoes lie scattered across the hall and Johnny Cash looks up from the doormat, his frame buckled and his face properly pissed off. Jesus Christ is nowhere to be seen.
I walk into chaos: kitchen cupboards open, smashed crockery, the fondue set in the sink. In the living room the bookcase is toppled and novels are ripped in half; pages confetti the room. The display cabinet is smashed; twinkling gemstones stud the carpet. The moon rock has landed in the fireplace.
The string cockerels in the picture are no longer fighting; someone has put a foot through them. The drinks cabinet is empty; liquid runs down the wall behind the television: Advocaat congealing in yellow drips, splattered veins of blue curaçao.
What have I done?
I think of the shattered shot glass in Cathal’s kitchen.
Did I raise this? Did I call up angry spirits?
I run past the wreckage, shouting for Renata.
The bathroom door opens. Under the mess of tears and make-up is a frightened man I’ve never seen before.
‘Are you hurt, Renata?’ I force an even tone. ‘Did they hurt you?’
She puts her hands up to her poor head, as if to hide it from me. It is hairless, pale, with a few fine grey strands at the sides.
I put my arms around my friend.
There are no saints for this.
There were these three young guys: one had a crowbar, one had a hammer and one had an adjustable wrench.
It sounds like the start of a joke.
They had pushed their way in, filling the hallway and shutting the door behind them.
At first Renata was calm. She walked forwards into the living room like they told her to. Adjusting her headscarf, raising her eyebrows, she asked them what it was they wanted in a light, even voice.
They ignored her and said things to each other that she didn’t quite catch. They spat out the big gobs of spit that they worked up in their throats. One lit up a cigarette and one glanced at the television. Then they went to work. One stayed in the living room with her, the others spread out. Renata could hear them crashing about in the other rooms.
He pulled the novels off the bookcase, flicking through each of them with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, as if he were looking for a good read. He tipped out her drawers and rifled through her papers. Renata had stood motionless.
He glanced up and asked her what she was looking at. Faggot.
He walked over to her. What was he, seventeen or eighteen? With the whey-pale look of the badly fed, the underfed, the fed full of crap. A thin, bland face, with spots around the mouth. His trousers were slung low, halfway down his arse with his underpants showing. Renata fought the urge to laugh. She fought the urge to tell him to pull his bloody trousers up.
He walked up to her, close to her, and in his too-high, whining, strung-out voice asked her what she was fucking looking at. Nonce. It was a ducking, edging kind of walk; he could be a crab scuttling sideways, his arms out as a counterbalance. As if he was walking through an earthquake—
Crashes in the other room: as loud as colliding tectonic plates, slamming, shattering, rending noises, then pauses and exclamations.
He told her to walk to the mirror. She didn’t understand. He pointed. She moved, numb, dulled. She didn’t think to refuse.
Take it off.
She didn’t understand.
He pointed to her headscarf. Take it off.
She had reached up and he had watched her. She fumbled with the knot. He put his cigarette in his mouth.
Here, Faggot, he murmured.
He ripped it off her head.
Time slowed and stopped.
Together they looked in the mirror, him standing over her shoulder. She saw her face through his eyes. Sad old clown.
She was surprised by how naked her head was, how obscene, with its skin puckered, scaly even, and the little wisps of grey hair above the ears. He stood smoking, on his face an expression of disgusted fascination.
What is fucking wrong with you, man?
He swore emphatically, stepped back and swung his crowbar. Not at her but at the gemstones in the cabinet, aiming for the moon.
We stay in the bathroom, the only room they did not destroy. I bring two chairs in from the kitchen, shaking splinters of glass from them. Then I close the door against the carnage.
I can call the police, Renata agrees grudgingly, but only when she’s decent. I clean her face very gently, with baby lotion and cotton wool from the bathroom cabinet. Sometimes she grabs my hand and holds it against her. Sometimes she just sobs for long furious moments on my shoulder. I find her shower cap and carefully pull it down about her head and she nods and breathes out. In her bedroom I find spilt boxes of make-up. I gather what I need along with a hand-held mirror and take them into the bathroom.
Renata sits quietly in her shower cap and kimono, with her face clean and blank: small, pale and genderless.
I hold the mirror in front of her but her hands shake too much to use tubes and wands, applicators and brushes.
‘Do your worst, darling,’ she says with a stiff little smile.
She looks for the longest time in the mirror. She is not herself but it is enough for her to face the world. My version of Renata’s face is softer, smudged in places, so that she looks a little baffled.
When the police arrive I find Renata a headscarf to replace her shower cap. When Lillian arrives we find paper cups and make coffee.
Renata sits at the kitchen table with her hands folded on her lap and I sit next to her. The police officer, a tall heavyset girl with a ponytail, sits opposite. She calls Renata madam and asks if she has been a victim of hate crime before.
Renata glances over at the sink. Lillian has her back to us but I can see that she has stopped what she is doing; in her stilled hand she holds the broken crockery she’s pulled from the plughole.
‘Yes,’ says Renata.
‘Recently?’
‘Ten years ago.’
The police officer writes in her pad. ‘So no connection to today’s incident?’
‘No.’ Renata reaches for my hand.
The police officer looks at her. ‘Was there a conviction?’
Renata half turns to me and I squeeze her hand.
‘No.’
‘And that was . . .’
Renata’s voice is suave and careless, as if she’s extending an invitation to a top-drawer party. ‘Indecent assault, darling, behind Waterloo Station.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ says the police officer, who looks like she really is.
Lillian puts the crockery in the dustbin, dries her hands on a tea towel and walks out of the room.
The police have gone and Lillian is sweeping broken glass into a black bag in the living room, picking out the rock samples as she goes. The string cockerels are not salvageable, but no one liked them anyway. Jesus Christ has been found in the bedroom with his face against the wall, still exuding calm and perfect radiance. Like Johnny Cash, he has been restored to his rightful place in the hallway.
Renata opens the oven door and pulls out a manila envelope.
‘The newspaper cuttings?’
‘Now you know where I keep the valuables,’ she whispers. ‘It was what they were looking for.’
I frown. ‘Really?’
‘It was obvious. They went through every book, all my papers and they stole nothing.’
I speak as gently as I can. ‘But if it was a hate crime—’
‘It wasn’t.’ She looks me dead in the eye. ‘I know it wasn’t.’ She taps the envelope. ‘It was this they were after.’
‘But who knew we had it?’
‘The old man, his son?’ Renata says. ‘Someone must have seen you take it from the house.’
‘But how?’
‘I don’t know. You feel watched in there, don’t you?’
I nod. Ghosts, cats, mechanical card-playing stoats, you name it, to say nothing of an ancient shape-shifting giant who can stand a foot away without me knowing.
‘What made you hide the envelope, Renata?’
‘Instinct.’
‘So what next?’
Renata’s face is sober. ‘We keep going. This shows that we’re getting warmer.’
Chapter 25
There’s an arrow on the kitchen table sketched in spilt custard powder. It appeared in the time it took me to turn and take up a cloth. Not just any arrow but an arrow fletched with feathers. This ghost is quick on the draw.
The arrow is pointing to the pantry.
I open the door and see scrubbed shelves and orderly packets, regiments of tins and rows of bottles. Cathal eats like a man under siege, preferring the preserved to the fresh. Everything is arranged with a pleasing neatness. I nudge a tin of minted peas into line; there are no clues here.
To the left of me, a jar of pickled beetroot
edges forwards diffidently. Its neighbour, a box of savoury crackers, follows suit with more conviction. As does a bag of sugar and a bottle of brown sauce, sliding boldly out of their places as if they are offering themselves up for a dangerous mission.
I wait. Nothing else happens. I clear the shelf, checking each item I move. Then I see it. A key, taped underneath the shelf above.
Bright black iron, long-shanked.
There is the door we mustn’t open.
I peel away the tape, put the key straight into the pocket of my tabard and emerge from the pantry to see a nose nudging through the back door. Then a snout, then two eyes and a gaze of molten honey. The fox comes cautiously, ready to retreat. His musk reek is bolder; it stalks into the room, signalling his arrival before he has entirely arrived. His shoulders follow, so that Larkin stands half inside, with his front paws on the doormat. He gives a yawn that comes with a faint whine and closes his muzzle with a snap. Then he looks at me meaningfully.
By the time I’ve crossed the kitchen to the back door, he’s at the bottom of the steps standing on the garden path.
I know better than to follow a fox in life.
Larkin leads me past car batteries and suppurating bin bags, beyond bedframes and rusting bicycles. I wonder if we might stop at the caravan but we don’t, although he hesitates there, one paw held up.
We weave through bushes and shrubs, stacks of roof tiles and broken window frames. I tread gingerly through piles of scrap metal and rotten planks of wood with proud nails. Even in my excitement I’m mindful of the risks of lockjaw and septicaemia and ear spiders from the webs that break over me like sticky curses.
Larkin shuttles forwards and back, perhaps impatient at my slowness.
Out past the refuse there’s an untouched jungle of plants: legions of fat-stalked weeds furious with bristles and wonderful mushrooms in unreal shapes and colours. Some speckled scarlet like brilliant, cautionary tales, others the shape of baby ears, sprouting neatly all in a row.
Stems snap with pungent smells, leaving sap on my legs. Twigs break and twist. Burrs stud my cardigan and thorns pull at my skirt. Soon my hair is spotted with ladybirds and my ankles are ringed with ants. On my shoulder a caterpillar rides: a ferocious orange-quilled monster in his world.