Guest

by SJ Bradley

  ‘You talk to Roxy.’ Samhain put a bend in the box without really meaning to: his hand came down harder than he intended. ‘I’m never speaking to her again.’

  Frankie was busy with the merchandise, occupied in putting things right. Shuffling and stacking CDs into a neat pile, and propping them down in place with the shirts. ‘Come on. Don’t be so hard on her. She was in a tough position.’

  ‘Not nearly as tough as me. She should have said something.’

  ‘Yes, but–’ Frankie faced away, picking something up from the floor. ‘Why do you think she’d do a thing like that?’

  ‘Fuck knows, but it sounds like her and Charley have been having a good laugh about it all behind my back. Here, better use that other box instead. I’ve just put a big hole in the side of this one.’

  ‘The one with the cat in it?’ Frankie looked distracted: he was trying to get Mama Cat out of the old box, and into the new one, and she didn’t want to go. She slid from his hands, and settled back into the box she liked. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘They’ll never do what you want them to, will they? Here, you have a go.’

  ‘She won’t even talk to me,’ Samhain said. ‘Charley won’t. I can’t find her on MySpace anywhere. And god knows what Roxy’s been saying to her, because from what she said, it sounds like they’re mates now. She won’t even give me her number. So you tell me – what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe get a lawyer?’

  ‘What with?’

  Two kittens stalked each other around the CD spindle. Ginger kitten pounced, making a prey of the calico kitten’s tail. They rolled, wrestling, gummily biting each other’s ears.

  ‘You never know. Maybe she’ll change her mind.’ Frankie was struggling with wonky folds on some of the covers, and it seemed to be costing him some effort. Flattening, refolding carefully, pressing the new line down, over and over, to make it stick. ‘You know how girls are. It’s all one thing one day and something else the next. She’ll come around.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know so. Of course she will – Charley’s not going to keep you away from your daughter forever. I mean, we both know she’s mad. But she’s not that mad.’ Frankie was really engaged in the folding now, looking hard down at the crease. ‘And you know that whatever happens – I’ll always be right behind you.’

  16.

  The lady of the house looked on, holding a clean white Westie firmly under one arm.

  ‘Careful around the doorway,’ Samhain’s new workmate, Kebby, called.

  Samhain lunged, groaned, trying to move one end of the Welsh dresser around the front door without catching any corners. When they’d designed this house, they’d done it without thinking about furniture coming in and out. The stairs were not far from the side door, and the hallway was shallow and awkward. Everything came through this narrow crick of hallway around the front door.

  The lady winced. ‘Please be careful. That piece came from my great-grandfather. It’s been in the family years – totally irreplaceable...’ she shielded the dog’s eyes: ‘I’m saving it for my granddaughter.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d be more comfortable waiting in the kitchen, madam?’

  Samhain’s workmate Kebby was more than a lad. A man really, father, and a grandfather. All tough hands and tight afro hair turning wiry grey and white. He had the sort of face that invited children to climb up on his knee. ‘We haven’t packed the kettle yet – you could make yourself a cup of tea.’

  ‘You’re right. And I’m being terribly rude.’ She half-jumped, hand fluttering. ‘I should have offered to make you all a drink hours ago. What would you like – tea? Coffee?’

  And Kebby also had this way about him that could get the customers to do anything he asked, even though he was a paid hand, just like Samhain.

  ‘Nothing, thanks,’ Kebby said. ‘We have a lot still do to. We won’t hold everything up by stopping.’

  These men had a long-standing system.

  Always clear the upstairs first, to get the legwork out of the way. Then the same at the other end, as best you can. There were still boxes in the kitchen and living room, and three of them, on this job: Samhain and Kebby and another lad called Simon, who always went off to the gym as soon as they knocked off at night. Kebby ribbed him about it: ‘I don’t like to make Simon work too hard,’ he said. ‘That way he can save his energy, and get his money’s worth from his gym membership.’

  The money wasn’t bad either, £60 per day, cash in hand. All there was to it was brute force, moving things from one place to another.

  ‘Would you do something important?’ Kebby asked. ‘Could you go upstairs and do one last check?’

  Empty rooms.

  Samhain ran up the wooden stairs. He stood on the blank floors, around what had been the bedroom. Space, now, and sun glowed through the windows.

  In here, a double bed and standard lamps and matching bedside tables had all been pushed into the middle of the room, ready to go. Kebby had told him that it wasn’t always like that. Lamps standing slightly away from the walls, with their electrical cords wrapped around them like tails. He didn’t know the names of these clients, but they’d had all of their soft furnishings, including the duvet cover, in a soft, gauzy brown fabric. And now that, like all of it, was downstairs in the van.

  There was nothing left. Just dust, visible in balls around the skirting. Grey mites and hair. Little scraps of paper, splashes of dropped coffee, single buttons. Signs that said, we were here.

  ‘Sam.’ Kebby’s voice echoed up the stairs. ‘When you’ve got a minute, maybe you could come back down here.’

  Downstairs, boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes. Plates wrapped and folded and packed in newsprint. Others a rattling symphony of egg whisks and spatulas. ‘Get a move on,’ Kebby said. ‘We can’t hold these good people up from moving into their new place.’

  The lady of the house perched in the bay window, feeding the dog treats, and Samhain picked up a box that was far heavier than it looked.

  ‘Books,’ she said. The dog barked and licked her fingers. ‘I’m sorry, they must be terribly heavy. I’m afraid I couldn’t bear to part with any of them. Here, let me get the door.’

  ‘Not necessary,’ Kebby said, but she hopped over to the far side of the room anyway, and placed her hand on the already open door.

  ‘You see, it’s only myself and my husband in the house now,’ she said. ‘No good us rattling around in a house this size.’

  Her voice grew louder, more pointed, as Samhain took the box outside.

  They were moving these two in one of the largest vans Peter had. Samhain shoved the box on the tailgate, and looked resentfully at the wardrobe from upstairs that had nearly done his back in; the dozen or so boxes of clothes and shoes that had come from the wardrobe, things with their smell of soap and dust and mothballs, things they must have been keeping around them for years, in drawers and cupboards which they probably never opened. The van was already three quarters full, and there was plenty more to come.

  All this stuff, for two people and a dog.

  ‘Come on, dreamboat,’ Kebby said, pushing a box into the back with a grunt. ‘You’re not at a yard sale.’

  They settled into the van. Kebby driving, and Samhain in the middle seat.

  He had the map open on his lap. It was two page turns to the new house.

  ‘This book,’ Kebby said, jabbing a finger at the A-Z, ‘will become your very best friend, if you want to stay a removals man.’

  ‘Kebby ever tell you about the time we spent an hour driving around Hawes Industrial Estate looking for a four-bedroom detached house?’ This was Simon, on Samhain’s other side, texting.

  ‘Simon ever tell you about the time he was looking for Sleaseby in an A-Z on the wrong bloody county?’ The engine roared into life. ‘Now wave bye-bye, everybody, the lady’s waiting.’

  And so she was. On the doorstep of her old home, dog in her arms, whipping its tail against her bosom.r />
  ‘Turn right at the end,’ Samhain said. It was his third day in the job, and muscles he didn’t even know he had were troubling him. Forearms, upper arms, thighs, the small of his back, the large of his back; cricks in his wrists and fingers and small muscles in his chest and underarm – every time he moved, some new part of him hurt.

  ‘Peter’s just text me,’ Simon says. ‘About another job tomorrow. He says she’s got a load of stuff.’

  ‘I hope you’re in this for the long haul,’ Kebby said. ‘Which exit now?’

  ‘Rather a lot of stuff’ was right. It was like moving a museum.

  Up four flights of stairs to a cramped flat on the fifth floor, every inch of it crammed with costumes and feathers, metal that glinted.

  Everywhere he looked, something caught a dim glowing light. The lady had not one, but two, large wire bird cages – both empty; a stuffed kestrel on a plinth, a mannequin in a tutu and leotard. He looked more closely at a canvas framed in textured gilt. It was a frightening old painting of a man with sharp eyes.

  ‘Be careful, won’t you?’

  She was a highly-painted woman, pale-faced and with red lips. She moved slowly, like a large ship. If he’d had to guess her age, Samhain might have said the mischief in her eyes put her at about twenty-five. But then, how could she have collected all this if she was anything less than forty?

  ‘It might look like a load of old junk, but to me, it’s important.’

  ‘We’re always careful,’ Kebby said.

  In the bedroom was a rosewood sleigh bed, its covers thrown back and left unmade. A rose red, deep, pulled silk cover, and two wardrobes packed with full-skirted, highly boned clothes, like Victorian circus costumes.

  Had Samhain been on his own, he wouldn’t have even known where to start.

  ‘Get the boxes,’ Kebby said. ‘Let’s get on with this.’

  Gathering things was pointless. Or that was how it had always seemed, to Samhain. It was no use accumulating things, bedding down, when he might have had to move again at a moment’s notice. Every extra thing was a weight to carry from one place to the next. Things held you down, like muddy boots in a quagmire.

  ‘Which road do I want?’ Kebby barked. ‘A58 or A660?’

  ‘A58. Westbound,’ Sam answered.

  And now they were moving over the tarmac, the back of the van full to rattling with just one woman’s things; things in the back knocked and made soft thumps when the van went over a pot hole. If there had been a piano on the tailgate, they might have heard the keys playing themselves.

  She had said, ‘Be careful – that was my mother’s table.’

  It was not the antique value of things that worried the woman, but the memories. A table that had come from her mother’s house. A mirror bought in a flea-market. Dresses bought for student drama productions. It was those memories, not the wood or fabric themselves, that mattered.

  Over the course of too many moves, Samhain had lost even the goggles a kind stranger had given to him in Genoa. He didn’t even have a picture frame, never mind a picture.

  He wondered how long it would be before he lost the bit of information he had about Graeme Stokes.

  ‘I’ll never understand why people end up with so much stuff,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because you’re a removals man now,’ Kebby said. ‘Every time your girlfriend wants to buy furniture, you’ll look at it and think – I’m going to have to move that again. You’ll never want to buy any furniture again, especially not if it’s heavy.’

  ‘Always the way,’ Simon echoed.

  ‘Always the way,’ Kebby agreed.

  ‘Time off!’ Simon hooted. ‘You hear that, Kebby? He’s only been here three days, and already he’s talking about time off.’

  Past new build apartments. Low, two stories, with wood-slat sides. They were down a dip, then up a side road, and along a long country lane with overhanging trees. All green, like the inside of a tent.

  ‘Are you worn out already?’ Kebby said. ‘My God, and we thought you were a keeper. We were telling Peter all about how great you were. Now he’s talking about abandoning us. Getting out! Making his excuses!’ Out into the open: broad golden fields of rapeseed, yellow as hi-vis, a brightness to make your eyes ache. They passed sheep, then a trio of horses wearing jackets. ‘Do you have good reason, Samhain?’ His eyes were still fixed on the road: he spoke without turning.

  ‘Going on tour with my band.’

  ‘A tour!’ Kebby’s face opened into a huge, beaming smile. ‘Well, that, you can’t miss. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’

  ‘My brother-in-law plays in a band,’ Simon said. ‘They’re great. They do Mustang Sally, Come on Eileen... what else... all the songs from The Commitments, actually. They played my mum’s wedding reception.’

  ‘I was in a band.’ Kebby had gone all nostalgic; he was looking at the road as though it were an old photograph. ‘We supported Janet Kay at the Irish Centre.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, come on. Janet Kay. You know Janet Kay – Silly Games? Of course you know her songs. She was a huge star. Then another time, we played at the same festival as Thomas Mapfumo. The Thomas Mapfumo!’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Thomas Mapfumo – you’ve never heard of Thomas Mapfumo? The biggest jit-jive star ever to come out of Zimbabwe – and you don’t know who he is?’ Kebby shook his head. ‘Look it up!’

  ‘I didn’t know you were in a band,’ Simon said.

  ‘I played the drums.’ Kebby thumped a paradiddle on the wheel. ‘I had a Tama kit with pink sparkle, and nobody could heat it up like me – nobody. “Kebby could get a dead man dancing,” that was what people used to say.’

  ‘Your drums were pink?’

  ‘Yeah!’ They were up on the hilltop now, and in the spread beneath them opened up a village of stone houses. ‘Nobody else had pink drums. Mine was the coolest kit anybody had. Where do I turn?’

  ‘After Aystalby Shelf.’

  ‘Right. So you see, Mr Foss, you’re not the only one with musical talents. I had my own band, and after that, I did a stint on the cruise ships. All the standards – These Foolish Things, Take Five, you know the kind of stuff. Every evening, whilst the posh ladies and their husbands were eating their dinner. Very well paid, good money, far more than I ever earned when I was playing in my own band. And you’re stuck there on the boat, so you can’t spend any of your earnings. Everything’s paid for – room, board – you even got your meals for free.

  ‘When I came back to dry land, I had hundreds in the bank. Thousands, actually. And Gloria said, we should use that money to put a deposit on a house, not just spend it on this and that, so that in a year we’ve got nothing again. That must have been in 1986.’

  ‘And now look at him,’ Simon said.

  ‘Comfortable for almost twenty years now. Far better than throwing your money away on rent.’

  ‘But don’t you miss going on tour?’ Samhain asked.

  ‘Which part?’ Kebby turned, eyes wide. ‘Carrying a drum kit out of a stage door up two flights of slippery steps at two in the morning? Sleeping in the back of a van with all of the amps and guitars? Trying to catch the promoter to make him pay your fee? Waking up with a mouth tasting of old carpet?’ Kebby shook his head. ‘Anyway, we had Ayesha, and after she came along, I wasn’t so keen on spending time away from home anymore.’

  There was a church up ahead, a pale grey thing with a pretty gold clock. In front of it was a bench, with a laminated sheet strapped to its beams with clip ties. An old lady in a heather-coloured Barbour studied the village noticeboard.

  ‘This must be the place,’ Kebby said.

  Simon waved his mobile around the cab. ‘Awww, man. I could not live in a place like this.’

  ‘No signal?’

  ‘That, and only one pub, look.’ Simon set his phone down on the dash. ‘Here Sam, you should bring your band’s CD in to work. We could listen to it in the van.’

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nbsp; ‘I don’t know if you’d like it,’ Samhain said.

  ‘Of course we will.’

  Down the village’s only side street, and past the village Primary school. Sunflowers grew in stacked tyres behind a chain-link fence. It was a small building, not much bigger than a through-terrace. A little girl with blonde hair stared sombrely out of the window.

  A moment later another of the children was up, a boy wearing the same dark-green jumper as the girl: greasy fingers sticking to the glass, as he jumped up and down.

  ‘I really don’t think you would.’

  ‘Couldn’t be any worse than some of Kebby’s CDs.’

  ‘Well, OK then. If you insist.’ Samhain was still watching the classroom window as a teacher came and took the boy away from the window, while the girl still looked, holding her pencil tight.

  17.

  ‘Keep this door closed – they’re so small, and one of them could easily sneak out. And they’re too young to go out yet.’

  ‘Right.’ Marta was on the bed, sitting with the black one on her knee. Its hind legs were splayed over her tights, and it was guzzling her finger.

  ‘There’s two litter trays,’ Samhain said. ‘One here – and another one in here,’ opening the wardrobe door, ‘and I think I’ve got homes for two of them, but since they’re not going to be rehomed until I get back from tour, there’s no rush. They can’t really be separated from their mother until they’re nine weeks old, anyway.’

  ‘You’ve got it all figured out.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Samhain looked around for the pound shop nappy bags. ‘They’re my responsibility, aren’t they? I read up all about it in the library. They chose me. And now I’ve got to look after them. If the smell gets really bad – which it does sometimes, with there being so many of them – you can always open the top window. There’s no way any of them can get out that way, it’s too high up. I leave it open when I go out, sometimes. It’s perfectly safe.’