I handed him the bag of fruit. ‘I bought myself some Tarot cards,’ I explained, conscious of the bulge that remained inside the carrier. ‘I’m not really into it. Not yet.’
He nodded. ‘My mam was into all that.’
‘I know. We found a deck at her flat. Maybe that was made me think of it.’
‘I hope you held your nose.’
‘You hadn’t seen her then, I mean before …?’
He stared at me, unblinking. ‘I threw the other stuff away,’ he said, watching my face. ‘I just kept the box.’ He nodded at the Tesco carrier. ‘You said you didn’t want the scarf.’
‘It was a shame to throw it away.’
‘You said you didn’t want it.’
‘I didn’t mean it quite like that. It’s the job,’ I said. ‘It’s against the rules to take gifts.’
‘You mean to say you play by the rules then, Louise?’ He laughed. ‘Well it’s probably still there if you want it. I left it over the road at the Sally Army clothing depot. No use nor ornament it is, just like mam said I was: You’re no use nor ornament, Roy. No use nor ornament.’ He was taking the Tarot cards out of their packet. ‘I’ll do you a reading if you want.’
‘How much?’ I reached for my purse. I had wanted to give him money, rather than apples, but had feared causing offence. ‘Your mum’s friend, Mrs Blank, told me she charged a tenner.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re helping me out with the you know what. How are you getting on with that then?’
‘I said I’d try, Roy.’ I still held the note in my hand. ‘Give me till the end of next week.’
‘Put that away,’ he said. ‘Shuffle the cards. Go on, give them a good shuffle.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then you’re supposed to hold the crystal, only I haven’t got one of them. She had this great big lump of rose quartz. You were supposed to hold onto it while she felt your bumps.’ He cackled. ‘You’ve got to shuffle the cards and think of a question, any question. You don’t have to say it out loud. In fact I think you’re not supposed to say it. When you’ve thought of something to ask, she deals the spread.’
‘Who are you asking?’
‘The cards, of course. The Tarot.’ He shifted the emphasis onto the second syllable, like he did when he said ta-ra.
‘You think they’ll tell me?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.’
I shuffled for about thirty seconds, conscious of him watching me. The radio still played. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. I’d had a Technicolor poster of them pinned up on the wall in my bedroom near the Mersey. That would be after the Beatles had split, after Roy’s time. He was older than me, probably, by maybe as much as ten years. But he could have been younger, or older. With men like the flabby concierge who had buzzed me into this place, and especially men who lived out on the streets, like Roy, it was impossible to tell.
He was laying out a spread of images which quite upset me: The Three of Swords, crossed by The Tower, and following these, a rapid chain of what appeared to be bad luck: The Nine of Swords, The Ten of Swords, The Devil, and finally, as though it was lying in wait for me, Death.
‘I don’t think I really want to do this,’ I told him, pushing the cards to one side.
‘What did you buy them for then?’
‘I don’t know. Something to do.’
‘More money than sense, Louise.’
‘How do you get by?’ I asked shyly. ‘For money, I mean?’
‘I told you, I’ve got my line.’
‘Which is?’
‘I’ve told you, you’ll have to come and see me.’
‘As long as you get by,’ I said.
‘I get by,’ he said. ‘I get by. D’you want one of these apples you’ve brought? I haven’t got anything else. My mam always used to offer folk a cup of tea. The cup that cheers.’ Again he gave that cackle. ‘She was a little ray of sunshine, my mam. I don’t think,’ he added sombrely. He was trying to put the cards back in the box with his bandaged hand.
‘Let me do that,’ I told him. ‘The apples were for you. I don’t want anything. Look Roy, if you want to talk to anyone, about your mother … I mean, I guess you can see Dr Veil, but if you want to talk to someone who was involved with her funeral and everything, I’d be glad to go over it again with you. It’s tough not being able to say goodbye,’ I finished, conscious of a blockage in my throat.
‘Sam’s given me an honourable discharge.’ He laughed. ‘I spent the best part of thirty years trying to get away from my mam. She’s dead now. I’d say dead and buried, only it didn’t quite work out like that, did it?’ He sniffed. ‘It’s no skin off my nose if she fried up in the furnace. Ashes to ashes. But it’s not what she wanted, and you know what? I’ve got this thing about her coming back and giving me some stick for it.’ He rolled his eyes at me. ‘You think I’m mad, Miss Moon?’ he said dramatically. ‘You think I’m crazy? You think the sleep of reason begets monsters?’
‘No, no, of course not.’
Again he broke into that cackle, only there was more pleasure in it this time, it came out as more of a giggle. He glanced over at the Tesco carrier. ‘And as for dust.’ He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. ‘You’ve seen her place.’
‘You said you wanted the memorial, a place to visit her maybe.’
‘So I can keep my eye on her more like.’ He laughed. ‘It’d be good to have it in the gardens. I can keep an eye on her when I’m working.’
‘So you work in the Park?’
‘All will be revealed, Louise. I said I wanted a place for her, I didn’t say I wanted to talk about her.’
‘No, of course not.’ I waited. ‘But sometimes, usually, when people lose a close relative and there’s no support from family or anybody, usually, sometimes, I mean, it helps to talk. It can help. You need a support network in these circumstances, you need that.’
‘OK, let’s see if I can help you then. What do you want to know?’
‘I don’t want to know anything, Roy. I don’t want to pry. I’m offering to listen.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat, Louise.’ He winked at me. ‘You might hear something you’d rather not hear.’
‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ I said. ‘In total confidence, of course.’
He thought for a minute. ‘Well, I could tell you I think you’re lovely looking,’ he began. ‘You’ve got that lovely hair and eyes to die for – lovely eyes. But you’re kind of shy, aren’t you? Like you don’t dare to make the best of yourself. Those pants now,’ he shook his head. ‘You should show off your figure. And you need to wear more colour. Mam said black was very draining. How about a nice light blue, or pink – you probably don’t think that would go with your colouring, but I think you’d be wrong there. I saw this coat in Selfridges by Ally Cappellino. I spend a lot of time looking in shop windows, you know. That would really suit you. Ally Cappellino. Remember that. Remember that name.’
I leaned back in my chair. This was not what I wanted to hear at all.
‘It’s all right, Louise,’ he went on softly. ‘You want to help me get it off my chest, like Sam the Whale, spouting his stuff all over the place. Funny thing with psychiatrists, the more you tell them about yourself, the more crazy they tell you you are. Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t take any more. A Working Class hero, eh, John? Something to be. At least I get my drugs free off the taxpayer.’ He leaned forward. ‘I just didn’t like my mam, that’s all, and now she’s dead I still don’t like her any better. Well, she didn’t like me, so I had good reason.’
I sat stock still, waiting, as I had been trained to wait. We could hear the occupant of the room next-door, snoring above Roy’s radio. ‘You didn’t like her,’ I said. ‘But you want to make a memorial for her. You were angry with the City for putting her away before you had a chance to say goodbye. I can understand that. You want people to remember her.’
‘You ever slept out on the s
od, Louise, under the stars? It’s all right in the summer, but these chilly nights now, brrrr …’ He hugged his arms around himself in a mock-shiver. ‘She won’t like it out there, not mam. She wasn’t exactly what you’d call house proud, but she liked her home comforts all right. Didn’t like kids though. She used to turn me out to play in all weathers. Get out from under my feet, Roy-Boy, she’d say. And don’t come back till I tell you.’
‘How long did you stay in The Nunnery?’ I asked. ‘Just out of interest.’
‘Out of interest, eh? You’re interested in me then, Louise?’ He shut his eyes, calculating. ‘On and off, including all the visits, I suppose about six years. Longest I’ve ever lived anywhere.’
‘You moved a lot then, when you were little?’
‘I was shuttled about a lot, yeah, until my dad died. Then it was just me and mam, and she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’
‘Why do you think like that?’
‘Because it’s true, she did, she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’ He got up and opened the wardrobe door. His parka and other layers of outerwear were thrown in a heap on the floor inside, letting a strong smell of compost into the room. ‘I can’t see for the life of me what this has got to do with carting my mam away,’ he said.
I didn’t answer but let the radio play right through the introduction to Waterloo Sunset as Roy stood there with his back to me. Terry meets Julie at Waterloo Underground. I had come to make myself feel better, but I had made Roy feel uncomfortable. Was that what happened when you showed too much interest in a person? It was what happened to me, I thought, but did not care to pursue that line of thinking.
‘I’ll come and find you early in the week maybe, when I’ve had a chance to make those calls,’ I said. ‘I’d like to help, with the memorial, I mean. It’s in the rose garden, right, your line, or I can always find you here?’ Still, he said nothing. Feeling as though I had let him down in some way, which was to become a pattern with Roy and me, I went out into the corridor and made my way towards the disinfected stairwell. No one passed me this time as I went down. The concierge slid over the ledger in which I noted my time out. It was still only five forty two.
***
Chapter 10
Back home I lay exhausted in the bath, an egg-cupful of lavender oil poured in to soothe my headache. The sheen of the oil on the water made me think, with a pang, about Chas. A woman with a Fat Boy was a ride made in heaven. I had to let Chas go, and with whomsoever he wanted. I had to drain him from my mind, like water down the plughole. Roy Woods and I had more in common, in our dingy Liverpool home. I tried not to think about him following me that night, just after I’d removed his mother, but the thought tormented me. I didn’t like my mam, he’d said. I had good reason. I didn’t care for my remaining family either. I could not even have found my brother’s house without breaking a lot of closed doors. But Roy had been back to his mother’s. Had he been back that very day, the day she died? A terrible curiosity egged me on to know, like the drive to carry on watching some horror show, even though the outcome would be bloody. There had been blood on Edith’s head. (These scalp wounds bleed a lot, Chas, or was it Janice, had commented?) Had Roy been back and pushed his mother, was that it, was that the thing he had told me I wouldn’t want to hear? He seemed right enough in the head, a little eccentric maybe, but who wouldn’t be, living the life of the streets, in the crazy confines of Hammond House? He seemed as all right as I was at any rate, or the Bubba certainly, even Chas, who was also getting his behaviour-regulating drugs free off the taxpayer. Had Dr Veil labelled Roy too soon because that was what his mother had wanted: to be shut of him, to put him away in the asylum? We are not here to investigate our clients, Cassie had warned. We have no right to ask questions just to satisfy our own interest. But my interest in Roy Woods and his mother demanded satisfaction.
It was getting near the time for Sammy Veil’s show. I had a clockwork radio on the shelf above the bathtub and tuned it in to the London channel, timing out to Dr Veil’s hoarse whisper: ‘Here is Sammy Shrink,’ he breathed, ‘live and alive for the next two hours with a listening ear for all you out there, and for all your personal issues. Our first caller on the line is Julie from Willesden. Hello there, Julie.’
A woman’s voice came on the air. ‘I’ll get straight to it, shall I Sam?’
‘I’m all ears,’ Veil said.
‘Well, I had a miscarriage three months ago.’ She sounded tearful now. ‘I’ve tried to talk to my husband about it but he just switches off. He said we could try again, but it was my baby that died. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it, ever. He says I should move on, but that don’t seem right.’ I heard the now familiar sound of aspirated smoke. Veil must be totally addicted, I thought. Where is his sense of restraint?
‘Your man is right,’ he was telling the woman caller. ‘Your husband is there for you, Julie. You should focus all your thoughts on your relationship with him. That’s how you will move on.’ There was a squeak, as though the woman was attempting to respond, but the listening shrink cut her off.
‘And now,’ Veil said, ‘We have a short musical interlude, by special request from an old friend, a gentleman of the road. This one’s for Roy …’ I bent my head impulsively towards the set: ‘I give you Blackbird.’
Another Beatles song. I saw Roy listening along in that bare hostel room, the Irishman stomping around outside, shouting fuck off! to no one in particular. Blackbird, fly. Right into the heart of darkness.
I got out of the bath, wrapping myself in a still damp towel, and went to lie down on my bed. I didn’t think I would fall asleep, there were too many questions. How could Edith Woods have put her son away like that, have pushed him out into the world? What had happened between them? Why had she let him go? I switched the radio off and searched around for the painkillers. Chas said I could comfortably take two, but I took three instead. Put out the light, I thought. Again, put out the light. I hoped that death was not like falling asleep, as some people claimed. I hoped death was the Alpha and Omega, the Be All and the bloody End All, the end of questing, grubbing around in the dark for answers and insights that amounted to little in the end. Didn’t Socrates say that death was the cure for life?
A drilling by my ear woke me up. My head felt as though it had been hot wired as I raised it up from the pillow. But the drilling sound was coming from the bedside phone. ‘Louise?’ Chas said, as I picked up. ‘Can you come and get the door, please?’
‘Why, where are you?’
‘Outside on the steps. I want to talk to you.’
‘What time is it?’
‘About ten thirty in the morning.’
I pulled myself out from under the duvet and slapped through the flat on clammy feet. ‘Do we have anything to say?’ I asked as I let him in.
‘I thought we couldn’t just leave it like that yesterday. Well, could we?’
‘I don’t want to go there,’ I said. My head was fuzzy. The painkillers had knocked me sideways. Chas followed me back into my bedroom, but did not sit. ‘I’m sorting myself out,’ I said. ‘I’ve given Bubba notice on my job. This accident has helped me clarify a few things, like how sick of it I was. I want to concentrate on my training course.’ The bottom sheet, I noticed, had a rip where I had put my toe through it. Make do and mend. Or not mend, as was usually the case with me.
‘That sounds like a good move.’ Chas scratched his neck. ‘If you’re looking for something to fill in, I can always use a good technician.’
‘There’s always Byrne & Co,’ I said. ‘Or maybe I should switch to law so I can buy myself a Fat Boy.’
He was not going to rise to that. ‘I’ve been down to the market,’ he told me. ‘Come round and eat with me. You look a bit pale.’
‘But not pale as in pale and interesting,’ I said, unnecessarily. Chas was pulling at his fingers, a nervous tic. His fingers worried me. They reminded me of latex gloves and butcher’s knives, the buzz of the saw on the skull
.
‘I wonder about all this therapy stuff,’ he said
‘OK, you disagree with it. That’s tough.’
‘Not all of it, no. I think it’s good to talk things over. I just mean it can be self-perpetuating, producing nothing but the need for more therapy, more fucking therapists. Where’s the outcome?’
‘Why does there have to be an outcome?’ I challenged. ‘And talking’s fine, talking’s what it is, but what if you haven’t got any friends? What if you’re homeless? What if you don’t know how to talk? What if your friends let you down?’ I clutched wildly at my head. It was really hurting now.
‘Have I let you down?’
‘You conceal things,’ I winced. ‘You concealed that woman. I can’t see why you couldn’t have mentioned it. You need to be able to trust your friends.’
He sat down on the bed next to me. ‘Are you still taking painkillers?’
‘Yes, why not? They said it would hurt for some time.’
‘Let me fix you up with someone I know – a top neurologist.’
‘You think it’s that serious?’
‘I think there’s no harm in bringing your appointment forward.’
‘Jump the queue, you mean?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘These psychwhatsit drugs,’ I said. ‘Psychoactives …’
‘Psychtropics, psychoactives, yes,’ he nodded. ‘You’re not taking those, Louise. You’re taking painkillers and sedatives. You’ve got light bruising of the brain, consistent with a heavy blow to the head, like falling off a bus …’
‘Or falling against a wardrobe.’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Edith Woods,’ I said dismissively. ‘The woman whose stroke – you said – precipitated her fall.’
‘Possibly. But she didn’t have a head injury either – well, not like you have. She had an aneurysm.’
‘Never mind Edith, I was thinking about her son.’ I turned to the glass on my night table and swallowed some water. ‘He’s been labelled schizophrenic.’
‘Labelled?’
Grave Truths Page 9