by Judy Astley
Simon’s beep sounded before Emily had decided what to say. There hadn’t been time to rehearse anything impressive in her head. She should have just hung up and started again but she had no more money. ‘Er, it’s er . . . Oh shit,’ she waffled and slammed the phone down. ‘Jesus, what a stupid prat he’ll think I am, like some dopey little lovestruck kid fancying one of Boyzone,’ she muttered. She’d have to try later, try his work number this time and pretend the other message was nothing to do with her. She picked up her bag of books and swung them over her shoulder carelessly, banging her hand hard against the wall. ‘Ow!’ she yelled, licking the bruise and rubbing at it. Too late, she realized what she’d done: the phone numbers were no more than a blue blur smeared across the back of her hand. Oh well, she thought despondently, it must be fate.
‘Emily’s gap year. Do you think it would be a good idea to meet up and discuss it?’
Joe sounded very business-like, Nina thought, as if Emily’s future was simply the next thing on life’s agenda. He’d probably had this programmed into his electronic organizer since before her GCSEs and now it had made a punctual ‘bleep’ and reminded him. Nina felt defensive: she didn’t like it when he called her at the gallery, for out of sheer consideration to customers she was forced to be politely acquiescent, whatever he said. The gallery was unusually full. Nina wished she’d remembered to put some music on. At least seven browsers drifting near her desk were able to hear every word she said and interpret for themselves what Joe’s end of the conversation might be.
‘With Emily as well, do you mean?’ she asked. ‘After all, it is her own time, isn’t it. She’s sure to have been thinking about it.’
‘Well, I just thought the two of us to start with, and then see what she comes up with.’
‘Actually I think it should be the other way round, but whatever. Funny you should be calling about this now,’ she went on. ‘I told Emily to have a word with you about it when she came round to see you last Sunday. If you’d been in, you could have chatted to her, see what ideas she’s got, if any.’
‘Sunday?’ Joe sounded as puzzled as if he’d never heard of the day. He used to do that sort of thing a lot, Nina remembered with irritation, doing one-word questioning, head on one side, whenever she asked him something he didn’t have an honest reply ready for. ‘Holidays?’ he’d puzzle, when she’d try to pin him down to discuss the wheres and the whens, as if waiting for her to define the term. Later, just after the first of his many extra-mural romances, she realized he used it simply to give himself time for the concoction of excuses.
‘Yes Sunday,’ she hissed into the phone. ‘God’s day off, great hunks of roasting meat, you know. Emily came round to see you after lunch, and you weren’t there.’
‘No. Right,’ Joe said blankly. Nina gave up. Why should he tell her, anyway, where he’d been? Did she really want to hear that he’d had some socially thrilling day out with stimulating and amusing people so that she could have a good masochistic brood about walking her aged dog and mother round the windswept Common?
‘OK, maybe we should get together. Why don’t you come to the house?’ she said. Don’t, she prayed, let him him say ‘House?’
‘Better than that, what about a mid-month lunch? Just a sneaky little extra one,’ he suggested. She could hear by the increased breathiness of his voice that he was now holding the phone very close to his mouth, being secret from those who might be tempted to overhear. She’d seen him do that at home, when one of his silly smitten girlies, despairing (rightly) of ever hearing from him again, had plucked up the courage to call him and he’d had to do some swift verbal fending off. She remembered how vivid and excited he’d looked afterwards, positively sparkling with the danger of illicit naughtiness, hovering around her grinning and waiting like a puppy for her to notice. This time, he must be gleefully anticipating not telling Catherine. Sally, battle-wise from long experience, would say this was the typical behaviour of a man who liked the idea of infidelity far more than the reality.
Nina, now faced with two people lined up at the counter tapping their feet and waiting to pay, agreed quickly and hung up. She smiled at the customers. ‘I’m so sorry. I do hate it when people in shops do that,’ she apologized to the first one, a neat woman in stiff navy blue with a white crisp collar standing to attention round her neck. ‘When they conduct their private lives over the shop phone and you feel you’re interrupting.’
‘Quite. Absolutely,’ the woman said brusquely and with no smile, handing over a velvet beaded evening bag to be wrapped. The tall, youngish man standing behind her stuck his tongue out rudely at the back of the woman’s head and winked past her to Nina who had to fight down a schoolgirl giggle.
‘Forty-five pounds fifty please,’ she said, trying to sound efficient and rummaging in the till to hide her face.
‘Well she wasn’t the forgiving type, was she?’ the man said as the woman left the gallery, shutting the door behind her with a smart, cross tug. He looked familiar, but this was an area inhabited by many actors, so Nina was careful not to assume she’d actually met him.
‘No, she wasn’t. But then I expect she’s one of those lucky people whose life slots into convenient compartments that never overlap.’ He was buying a pink and white spotted teapot with a silver-edged lid. Nina found herself speculating as to whether it was for him, his wife, mother, girlfriend or boyfriend. It was probably just for himself, she decided as she folded it carefully into bubble-wrap. He had a kind of confident, arty look (old black jeans and a collarless teal blue shirt that looked vaguely Chinese) that would easily carry off serving tea from something boldly pink. The tea would not be in bags and would not be cheap and there would be coffee cake oozing gloopy chocolate cream with a hint of brandy . . .
‘I’ve seen you in the Crescent. We’ve moved into number 26. Am I right to take it you live there too?’ he went on. Without waiting for a reply he held out his hand: ‘I’m Paul Brocklehurst.’
‘Oh of course! So that’s where I’ve seen you. A few mornings ago, early,’ Nina said. She shook his hand over the counter, feeling foolish. She must have sounded as if she spent every waking moment peering across the road. When he went home, he’d probably be looking to see if she had net curtains twitching. She wondered who ‘we’ referred to, whether it was a wife, or the man she’d seen him going into number 26 with.
‘I’m Nina Malone,’ she told him. ‘Number 23. Welcome to the Crescent. I’m sorry if I’ve been very remiss as a neighbour, I should have been round with a bottle or a cake or something.’ Nina had a qualm as soon as the words were out. He could interpret it as fishing for another meeting. That was another irritating difference from the days of Joe: the simple change in implication that so-ordinary sentences could have. It could only matter to her: there was no way he could know she was a Lone Woman, unless there was some special alerting scent that went with the state, Eau de Solitude, or Abandonée, that only men could smell, a warning like the kind of whistle that only dogs can hear.
‘That’s soon remedied. Come over tomorrow night for a drink, I was going to put a note through your door. Er . . . with your husband?’ Well if she had been fishing, it had more or less worked, she then thought with a tiny tweak of triumph. She was too old (she supposed) for him, (and possibly the wrong sex), but this was just a spot of flirt-practice.
The gallery doorbell clanged and she saw Sally come in. Sally caught her eye, winked and mimed a disappearing act before creeping out again with exaggerated tact.
‘I don’t have a husband,’ Nina admitted. ‘Not any more. There’s just me and the daughters now.’ And a gruesome hell-house full of ricocheting hormones that sounded, she thought.
‘Oh I’m sorry. I thought, well I saw you leaving the house the other day with that chap with the grey hair, and I just assumed . . .’
Nina thought for a mystified moment and then burst into laughter. ‘Oh no, that’s just Henry. He’s from number 7. Very good at borrowing, but also very g
ood at tap-fixing and video-tuning.’
‘Any good at babysitting?’ Oh well, thought Nina, he was bound to be married, really.
‘Your babies?’ Well he could have meant hers, she thought.
Another customer approached, clutching a pleasingly expensive vase. Nina bent to retrieve more bubble-wrap from under the counter. When she looked up, Paul had backed away without replying to her question, making space for the vase-buyer.
‘Tomorrow night then? About 6.30ish for drinks?’ he said, heading for the door.
‘OK, thanks. See you then.’
At the door he collided with Sally making her way back in. Nina wrapped the vase, put cash into the till and then turned to Sally. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.
‘Mmm, please. God, the traffic. So who was that? I could tell from right out on the street you were being blatantly chatted up.’
‘Come on Sal, he’s only about thirty.’
‘Thirty plus. He’s got a few lines.’
‘Probably sunbathes.’
‘Crows’ feet. A teeny bit jowly too. Could be pushing forty, just.’
‘Hey what is this?’
‘Just finding you a new playmate. I can tell you need one.’
Nina sighed. ‘Do you know, I’m beginning to think you’re right. It’s really annoying. When Joe and I finally split up, I felt nothing but relief. It was so blissful not to have to think about how to keep a man. So restful just to find I was perfectly OK without. Now I’m beginning to wonder. Do I really want to be on my own for ever more? Does staying celibate for the rest of my life just so I can feel restful really compensate?’
‘Ugh! I should hope not!’ Sally said with some vehemence. ‘I don’t approve of celibacy, I’m sure it leads to trouble in the downstairs area. I know, I’ll take you out with me for one of those dinner party dating setups. They’re good fun and much better for the beginner than the one-to-one, Waterloo Station/red carnation type of thing. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it.’ Sally was grinning happily as if all in Nina’s life was now safely sorted, and she rummaged through her bag for a cigarette.
Nina stamped off into the little kitchen at the back of the gallery and switched on the coffee machine. ‘OK maybe I’ll give it a go. What’s to lose, especially if Joe’s moving right on to the baby-and-family stage? I don’t want to be stuck for ever in the abandoned wife mould, like something turned to stone. It’s all right for men. They all get snapped up by piranha women the moment they’re back in the pond. Joe must have been on the loose for what? a month or less before Catherine sidled up with the handcuffs.’
‘I thought you said Joe always behaved as if he was on the loose,’ Sally interrupted.
‘Not really, not now I’m looking back. He just played at it. He always came home.’
‘Huh. Just like a little boy bringing his football kit home for Mummy to wash.’
‘I suppose so. I suppose in the end I just decided the metaphorical washing machine was terminally broken. But then he found another mummy.’
Chapter Six
It was the lady with the pink baby-cardigan and the hurt leg. She was looking very peaceful now, laid out ready for collection, her white hair neatly brushed to show her at her dignified best for the viewing relatives. Graham wondered if she’d got any, if they’d been in to see her like this. They’d have been told, offered the chance. Some of them didn’t want to know till they could visit days later in a chapel of rest when the undertaker had had a go, then they could say how wonderful the dead one was looking, you wouldn’t think, would you? Seeing a body in hospital just moments after the event like this, well some of them, he’d heard them saying it was all too fresh, like it might still be just a silly mistake. They were afraid, scared the body might take one more heaving breath, or that some lingering reflex would make it sit up. They’d all heard stories like that, ones they never thought they’d believe but now weren’t so sure, you could tell by the looks on their faces.
Graham pushed the big metal trolley further into the room, wondering what had happened to the bag of onions she’d had with her down in A & E. He couldn’t smell them, but then when deaths happened, he was always careful not to breathe too hard. Some illnesses were more odorous than others. Some deaths made him sick.
‘It was the shock, probably.’ The nurse, clutching the black bin-liner that contained the patient’s possessions, stood beside Graham. ‘She’d probably managed fine up till the fall. Some of them just give up.’ She sounded sorry, and kind, which might be because she wasn’t so young – probably a couple of years older than him. A silveriness that he couldn’t quite pick out in her dark brown hair was catching the light as if grey hair was in there somewhere but doing its best to hide. Some of the younger nurses were really hard. He’d heard them accusing old people of ‘just giving up’ – saying it with contempt, as if they’d died on purpose, just to spite them. Then they’d hassle him to be quick getting the body out, they needed the bed.
Graham eyed the plastic bag. He hated it that dead people’s stuff went into bags meant for rubbish. It diminished the owners, as if they and their things were now unworthy of a better-quality container. Didn’t matter how rich or grand they thought they were: whatever smart luggage they’d brought in with them, on death they all got a bin-bag, standard issue. Perhaps the onions were in there. They’d make her pink cardigan smell. There might be a relative, a sister or a cousin, who’d want it. It had been so carefully knitted.
‘I’ll help you move her,’ the nurse said. Her name tag said ‘Jennifer’. As she leaned forward over the old lady, Graham watched her large breasts strain forwards in her overall. The buttons had trouble staying fastened. Graham moved the trolley in closer to the bed and closer to Jennifer. ‘I’ll take her feet, OK?’ she said.
‘OK,’ Graham grunted. He had pictures in his head that he wasn’t used to. Pictures of Jennifer’s overall, pulled wide open and her big hips shoving against him. He looked away and concentrated on being more reverent. He was in the presence of death. The lady’s soul might still be in the room, disapproving. He disapproved.
‘Ready? One two three . . .’ Together they lifted the dead woman onto the trolley. Graham covered her face with the sheet and closed the lid.
‘When I was little,’ Jennifer told him, ‘I went to a hospital once to visit my grandad, and I saw one of these trolleys being wheeled in. I remember rushing round the ward telling the patients that their dinner was coming and pointing to it. I just thought it was a big tin box full of hot food, like the ones at school.’ She patted the lid gently. ‘Bye, Mrs Cox. I hope they give you a good send-off.’
‘We could have a drink, after work,’ Graham heard himself saying. He could feel a hot blush starting and sweat welded his shirt to his back. He looked at Jennifer, waiting over the canned corpse of Mrs Cox for her to answer. What he most wanted now was to be already far away in the service lift, halfway to the mortuary with his companion who would require no tricky conversation.
‘OK, I’d like that,’ Jennifer said simply. ‘Do you mean tonight?’
‘Er . . . yes.’ He supposed he did. Tomorrow would be better, give him time to get used to the idea, but then she might be offended, think he was looking for a way out. Mother, with supper on the table at exactly 6.45, came into his head. ‘Eight o’clock? The Green Dragon in Church Street?’ he suggested, then added, as he felt he should, ‘Or would you like me to collect you from home?’
She laughed. Graham looked down anxiously at Mrs Cox’s trolley. They were talking across her, rudely it seemed, talking about life things. That couldn’t really be bad, surely?
‘I could collect you from home if you like,’ Jennifer teased. Graham, for a moment, was horrified. Mother mustn’t know about this. Mother would have none of it, would know just how to get rid of Jennifer, just as she had with all the others, and keep him for herself. She’d say she had his best interests at heart and convince him she was right, but right now this was something he didn’t want to risk.
It was appalling really, just how little Nina knew about her neighbours. The Crescent was one of those shrub-barricaded roads where everyone was forever on their way out. There wasn’t a play, exhibition or art film in London that any one household wouldn’t be able to analyse and argue over. But if there’d been a grisly murder right next door, no-one would have heard a thing or known the victim even well enough to do holiday cat-feeding. TV news crews would find only a collection of diverse and bewildered folk who’d have to admit, in a prim, net-curtain way, ‘We tend to keep to ourselves.’
‘We’ve lived in the Crescent for over ten years, and I couldn’t tell you the names of even half the inhabitants. I only really know Chrissie and Jack up at the top end and posh Penelope with the Weimaraner. And even that’s only to chat to on the Common when we’re out walking dogs. Isn’t that dreadful and unsociable?’ she was telling Emily as she applied mascara using the badly lit kitchen mirror.
‘Hmm,’ Emily murmured, from the depths of Marie Claire which was propped up at the table on a pile of neglected homework.
‘After seeing them that once early in the morning, I didn’t even notice number 26 moving in. And I don’t think that actually was them, I think there’s a wife. I must have been at work, unless they sneaked their stuff in during the night, like a reverse moonlight flit. Perhaps they don’t have tons of junk like the rest of us,’ she said, looking round the room, where, in spite of what she considered ruthless sorting and disposal, newspapers, homework and assorted shoes and bags seemed to be reassembling. It too seemed to creep in in the night, sneaking out of its pre-painting storage. ‘Imagine being truly minimalist, like those architects in magazines who don’t seem to have anything but one perfect chair and a glass bowl of a hundred white tulips,’ she said wistfully. Emily, who owned much of the room’s debris, didn’t deign to comment.