4.30 in the morning
This time Serena sat on the black-and-white tiles by the front door and looked out through the glass, in case they came back. Such a disgrace to have let people in through the kitchen. The kitchen was for the sort of painful person who volunteered to do the washing-up at the end of a party, like Mab. Everyone else pissed as a parrot, and her at the sink, smiling up from the suds like a sainted martyr. For all Serena knew, she was still there. Last night’s lot seemed to leave a hell of a mess and have taken half the food with them when they went. In a coach.
The truth was, she was not at all sure of what had happened, although she did remember being put to bed with half her clothes on, tsk, tsk, drunk again, she supposed The people from the party had stayed on, including her own son, which was surprising, because she could not recall him being much of a party animal. Poor little boy, the one she had missed most of all. Other boys hurt him at school, and she had not looked after him. Mab said playgrounds should be fun. Her son, big boy now, had told her they were hell.
It was sad for him to be afraid of playing.
It all made her contemplate the strange and charming magic exerted by a convivial crowd of people. She drew a smiling face in the air, too lazy and tired to leave her miserable daughter a message to that effect. She wanted to say that they should do this kind of thing more often and, if the child really wanted to persist in the lunacy of wanting to preserve her mother’s miserable life, all she had to do was arrange for similar injections of spirit at regular intervals. Rooms should be cleared to make room for lots of men, without their boring wives. They could have parties for the fire brigade.
Of course once she got hold of that fucking recording thingy darling George had brought it would make life so much easier. It would save her from writing down her daily list of words, in the same way she had done in a small vocabulary notebook in school in order to learn at least twenty new words a week. But the words she remembered best were the ones that were forbidden, also the shortest: fuck, cunt, bugger, shit and damn. Words that sounded like exclamations, easy to expel in a series of gasps.
She had worked out on paper various permutations that did not sound as good. Tunc, rebugg, tish and nadm, to say nothing of raft for fart and palc for clap, not as satisfying at all. They lacked a certain resonance. There were no replacement words.
Serena sighed impatiently. So many tasks, so little time. Her room sailed over the house and she doubted if it was still attached after all this junketing. She had to go and unlock the door in case it snowed. Duty was a terrible thing.
She followed her usual route, hands outstretched, ready to touch the pictures and the chairs, the sofa, the clock, the table, the candlesticks. The dark was not really dark when it was occupied. There was a kind of light dancing around things.
Once she got away from the glass it was blacker than the inside of an oven. She felt, all of a sudden, as if someone had cut off the last joint of every finger, leaving little stubby knuckles waving at air, nothing to touch at all.
Nothing to direct her feet.
She clung to the door and waved at her own reflection. Beckoning for someone to come and show her the way back to bed. Footsteps came and went and she could not move for terror.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
An old lady with a worn-out mind was a mixture of animal, vegetable and mineral. She had to be made to ingest all those things. That was all there was to it.
She’s significantly worse than when I last saw her, the psychiatric nurse told Isabel.
‘Quite some time ago, wasn’t it?’
‘Three months. You could have called us before,’ she said defensively. ‘There are far more critical cases than this.’
‘I’m sure. What do you mean by worse?’
‘Memory loss, worse. Lack of social awareness, worse. She bothers less with the façade. No greeting today.’
‘You aren’t a man, you see.’
The woman ignored her. ‘Lessened ability to perform ordinary domestic tasks, rather more eccentric about appearance, less physical coordination. Suffers slightly from persecution mania, which I don’t remember noting before. Claims to have been bludgeoned by the cat.’
Isabel was silent.
‘But still compos mentis in flashes. Busies herself, fairly careful in her movements. Conspicuously clean.’
‘Early toilet training never forgotten,’ Isabel quipped. ‘And yes, she loves a bath. Absolutely independent about that. It’s the only time I’m grateful for the fact she can’t bear a locked door. She plays with toys in there, floods the place. Great fun.’ Stop burbling.
‘The burglary must have upset her,’ the woman suggested with grave professional concern.
Isabel tried to prevent herself snapping. In another situation, she told herself, I might like your cheerful countenance and pity you for your impossible job, but at the moment I loathe the sight of you. Mother is not upset about the burglary. I am. It is me in pain, not her.
‘The local authority can provide various aids. Rails, handles for the bath. Day Centre, twice a week?’
They can also piss in the wind. Isabel accepted the Day Centre suggestion and the offer of home help as occasional babysitter, both designed to give her a respite. All problems can be cured by tinkering. She lied to Robert on the phone, said there was more. New locks, a security system loaned by the police. There was. Mother had watched the installation of it, carefully. Hidden in the hall cupboard, once turned on it would detect movement beyond the kitchen. But as long as Serena wandered at night it was impossible to leave it on. The police had been called out and cancelled in time twice already.
‘She’s sort of on the cusp,’ the nurse said, not without admiration. ‘Extraordinary case. She seems to keep the worst at bay by sheer effort of will. Tells me she writes everything down.’
‘On the cusp of what?’
‘I don’t quite know. Complete change, or breakdown? She swore at me, you know.’
‘That’s nothing different. She has a penchant for rude words.’
‘Funny, isn’t it, what we retain? Admirable, really.’
‘Fucking disgusting, really.’
Isabel had the feeling that while Mother had passed a test, she herself had not. She no longer exuded that air of compassion; nor was she gentle; not actively unkind, but not particularly patient either. She was like someone who, resigned to a sentence of imprisonment, has decided to play by the rules, albeit resentfully. The home help appeared the next day, equally resentful, easily intimidated by both of them. Isabel used her presence as an escape route. Looked over the promised Day Centre, where there was not a single male person in sight among the crocks lined up against the wall, and left in a hurry, despair, failure and revulsion dogging her heels. Stocked up with animal, vegetable and mineral, came home and locked them both in. She bought a tapestry to keep her hands busy and stop them itching to slap. She bought soap, shampoo, gel and facial scrubs, scoured herself nightly, trying to eradicate the lingering odour of shame.
The Day Centre would not work. Without quite defining why, Isabel was sure of it and took no steps to warn or prevent disaster. Allowed them to take Mother, resplendent in hat, skirt, with three cardigans adding to her breadth, plus ghetto blaster under one arm and handbag carried like a cudgel under the other. Watched, without much sympathy, when the car came back three hours later, the woman driver resembling a person who had endured three rounds inside a boxing ring with unfair opposition. Ghost-coloured, she was. Mrs Burley had caused mayhem. Loud music, blaring. Telling them all they were a load of old farts, or was it tarts, and why didn’t they get up and dance. Tried to haul them out of wheelchairs. Fought all the way home, wanting to drive the car back. Had them all over the road.
‘Perhaps she got a bit overheated,’ Isabel suggested, smiling sweetly.
‘It was nice,’ Serena announced, refusing to get out of the passenger seat. ‘Very nice.’
‘Nice for you,’ Isabel said, pulling her out
without any attempt at persuasion. ‘Not so nice for them.’ She scowled at the driver, challenging. ‘Same time on Thursday, then?’
‘I’ll have to check …’
‘Of course you will.’
Perhaps, Isabel reflected, four days after the emptying of her mother’s house, it is me who has made her worse. Why on earth did I ever think I could make her better? I offered comprehensive care to someone I loved, thus taking away what little responsibility there was left in her; maybe the downhill path would not have been as swift without me. I am silly. Silly and sullied. There were times when a jumbling of words seemed a useful saving of any kind of analysis. She did not speak to her mother; she hissed at her.
And then there was George. Sitting on her conscience like a heavy toad, his absence filling the house, even though it was a relief. In the early afternoons Serena set out a tray for tea. It took a full half hour, all her movements indecisive, looking at cups and saucers, moving in and out of awareness of what they were for. Then sitting beside them with her gaze fixed on the back door, waiting with the dog. Waiting.
Isabel could scarcely bear to touch Serena. She did not want to touch anyone, or to be touched. Not on the hand. Not anywhere on the skin. Especially when the van came up to the back door. Andrew and another greeted by Serena like honoured guests, while Isabel quailed, heart in mouth. Impossible to imagine the dancing men would come back, not in daylight, not so soon. How easy it was to terrify with an act of kindness. By the time she had stopped shaking, Andrew had explained himself. A spare sofa and a couple of armchairs, he said. My father thought you could do without a dining-room table for a while, didn’t use it much anyhow, did you? But the living room, that nice room with the fire, well, pity to waste it.
They were not the family of sofa, chairs and rugs that anyone present would have chosen, but they were clean and they were adequate. They sat in the vastness of the drawing room like forlorn creatures seeking warmth, comic caricatures of the real thing, refugees from an alien culture, speaking to no one. Isabel was aware that gratitude was in order, spoke it, but could not feel it.
‘What’s happened about George, Andrew? Do you know?’
Of course he would know, sooner than she. Via the all-male network that was morally obliged to tell her last, in case she got upset.
‘They had to let him go. On bail to return in a couple of days. Pending further inquiries. Condition of bail not to come here.’
He watched her closely, wondering why exactly she had become so brittle and what it was such news might provoke in her. Anger? Amazement? Relief? Robert Burley was reported to have expressed the first two, while she seemed indifferent. He wished she would open her arms instead of hugging them to her chest, let him melt some of this fierce and secretive resentment.
‘Oh, I collected the post,’ he said. Three letters.
‘Mine,’ said Serena, grabbing them with the speed the dog took a titbit.
Andrew watched. He felt as if his fingers had been bitten.
‘Mine,’ said Isabel, seizing Serena’s wrist, squeezing hard until Mother’s fingers succumbed and she gave a sharp shriek of pain. Her protest was not coupled with surprise. It was as if such treatment had become commonplace. Andrew did not like what he saw, Isabel hugging rage and fear against her ribs, her face as sharp as a beak.
You can go home now, George Craske, for a day or two, and bad luck to you. Don’t shake my hand, will you? Come back the day after tomorrow, or we’ll come looking.
What have we done to you? Nothing, in any obvious sense. Oh, they could have been violent, but then George’s own experience of the police, admittedly not recent by any manner of means, had never included rough stuff. Persistence to the point of tears, yes, violence as such, no; he had never even feared it. All they had done before giving up in disgust was to use a kind of malevolent chumminess to turn his life inside out and leave the raw nerves of it exposed. About those previous convictions, Georgie Boy? You were a cook, weren’t you? Yes, for a works canteen. Could do with you in ours, Georgie. Three works canteens, wasn’t it? Two arrests for thieving from your employers. Then there was that girl in the third, amazing you could get another job, wasn’t it, but I suppose way up north they might not be fussy about someone who can actually cook what real men eat during the night shift. Is that right, George?
He could feel himself beginning to weep. Felt grateful for that little hostel room where anything of value was already gone and there was never any point in saving things, not like his other rooms in olden, golden days, stuffed with items he might just need later: packet soup, tins, foil containers, napkins, towels; things which even he could see no logical reason to steal. I had a hungry childhood, he said. Not much of an explanation to the supervisor in the last set of kitchens. He’d taken a shine to her and been ignored, ain’t that right, George? Like Isabel Burley, is it, George? Like the teapot in your car? We know you’re a thief. The question is, how much of one?
‘No!’ he shouted. Although, perversely, it calmed him. At least they had got something totally wrong. Reassuring, that. Don’t touch me.
So why did you rape her, George? Why do that to the poor girl? He could still hold on to the way they had not got their facts quite right, because it had not been a girl, not as such. A mature woman who’d given him the wink, put him on the day shift to be under her eye, although the crowds and the noise drove him witless. He couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t explain. Whichever God allocated vocabulary had been unkind to him. Can’t talk, George, that’s your problem. Haven’t got the words.
You told her a lot, George. Actions speak louder than words, don’t they? She came and found me after dark. A pound of bacon in my bag. There’d been an argument, end of shift. Waiting in line to be checked out, leaving me last. They had music on in there all day. Wasn’t a man worked there didn’t shout and scream. Pay was awful too, we were expected to steal things. See? She did see. She was a nice woman. I hit her with something and found myself giving her one. Last time I ever gave anyone one, if you take my meaning. Never again, I swear, and never on a kitchen floor. Although, God knows, my life’s been spent in kitchens. Poor cow. She was going to shop me and I thought she liked me. Thought it would put things right, and it went too far.
Women are a bit difficult, George, aren’t they? You did hit her quite hard. I mean, no one could have said she was consenting. Not what with being unconscious at the material time. I suppose she moaned in appreciation, did she, George? Brutal rape, it says here. You even pleaded guilty. Your sort of bastard stops at nothing.
Don’t know what you mean, George said. He didn’t. The translation of ethics from one offence to another made no sense to him. Couldn’t they see? A petty thief and a haunted, limited man did not automatically meld into other forms of dishonour. They did see. They believed him, literal men that they were. Questions about friends were met with the same confusion. Questions at the hostel, indifferently conducted since everyone was bored by now, seemed to reveal a welcome, if friendless, inmate who cooked. Not a skill common with burglars.
So that was what he was. A harmless little rapist with a connection to a burgled house. The sort of face and boyish hair for whom some mad old lady might invent the friends which a sweet motherly woman like that might wish him to have.
Not the violent, claustrophobic man who walked into the ice-cold air in search of Derek. Derek, who would survive any questions, the reformer’s dream, because he was never short of the words. Derek would hit a princess and walk away with an explanation about a cupboard door attacking him on the way out. Derek made shit smell of roses. He had no scars. Mr Milk Froth. Pimply, purply rat-haired fuck of a cunt, was he.
The one thing they had done was give him back his dictaphone.
The warden looked at him with sorrowful opprobrium, told him his room had been searched. He knew, did he not, that his tenure in it was temporary, dependent on him not being charged with another criminal offence. Sod off, George told him, I’ve not been ch
arged and I won’t be either. Have you seen Derek? The man looked at his watch. Oh, he’ll be away at his work, now. They brought back your car and he borrowed it. That’s what I want to see him about, George said, neutrally. The warden was proud of Derek. Kept himself smart. He did not know that he was facing in George the only criminal he might ever meet who had accepted what he had done and was sorry for it.
George was hungry. He supposed, quite irrelevantly, that the only bonus of a couple of days in police cells was not spending money on food. Not that this kind of hunger was the same as the desire to eat; he did not want to give himself that kind of comfort, slow himself down, stop him jogging past the neat little houses into town.
Fog was wreathing around the old church hall near what used to be the railway station. It added anonymity to the innocence of daylight. George knew he would find Derek there, because a sense of justice informed him that that was the way it should be, simply on account of the fact it was his turn for something to go right. He had told himself that all he wanted to do was ask Derek why? Why steal the furniture and drop him in it? Why pick that particular house and not another?
Fate was kind enough to deliver him Derek without allies. Everyone else gone, and him left in charge of the shop. The boss at home, nursing stiff legs and business was slack, anyway, the way it was as soon as people got a sniff of Christmas. Seeing Derek, whistling at the back, ignoring the creak of the door, George paused for a moment to wonder what anyone would ever want with all this stuff. To live in such confusion: a warehouse full of furniture was something disgusting when he considered how futile it was and how empty that room of Serena’s had been. Furniture with numbers on, waiting to be possessed, made no sense.
Derek, still whistling, pushed his bantamweight against a table, getting it lined up with the next thing. Gave it a wipe with a cloth, totally absorbed when George hit him. So much for questions and conversation.
Let's Dance Page 18