Come to Harm

five

Keiko, walking back through to the kitchen to wash the cups, threw a grape up in the air and ducked with her mouth open. It bounced off the bridge of her nose and fell back onto the table. She put it in between her lips and sucked it in, then coughed it back out of her windpipe and bit it in two before it could damage her any more.

“Chucking out time,” she said out loud. “Check the state of her hair. Since that weirdo niece stopped coming.” That was what she had been pining for: good, natural, idiomatic English that would stop her sounding like a schoolgirl.

“I wouldn’t stir my tea with your comb,” she said and shuddering again decided her: she would indeed ask guests to remove their shoes. Which meant she needed a genkan.

In her bedroom, she tipped clothes out of the big case onto the floor, pulled out the thick plastic sheet that her mother had insisted she use to line it-I’m going on a plane, Mother, not a sailing ship-and carried it back to the front door. She would go to the hardware store later, the ironmongers as Fancy had called it, and see if there was something more sturdy, but for now she shook out the plastic and laid it flat, tucking it under the edge of the doorframe, trying to thread it along under the bottom of the radiator. But no matter how she worked away at it, pulling and coaxing, something was stopping it from going all the way.

Holding her hair back, Keiko bent her face down close to the carpet and peered under the radiator. What she saw there made her smile: the Pooles, the Traders, whoever it was who had painted the flat, had done it the easy way, just reaching in around the radiator with a brush. Here, right underneath it, the top half of the base-board was a dark glossy green, and Keiko could see the faded stripes of old wallpaper too.

Now if she could just work the edge of the plastic past that little valve… But that was not what was blocking the way. Something else was in there. She stood up, but there was a shelf above the radiator and she couldn’t see down behind it. She knelt again. She didn’t want to put her hand under there without knowing what she was touching. But it couldn’t be anything too bad, surely not anything organic because, trapped behind the hot coils of the radiator like that, it would have smelled and someone would have noticed. Keiko wondered for the first time who had lived here before and how long the place had been empty.

She was beginning to get a crick in her neck from crouching. And anyway, there were no snakes in Scotland, and there surely could not be mice in a flat with a stone floor. Very tentatively, she curled her fingers up between the pipe work and the wall, then she let her breath go in a rush. It was only a piece of paper. She gripped it between two fingers and drew it out. An envelope. It must have fallen down the back of the shelf above and been forgotten there. Then she looked at the direction on the front and frowned.

for you, it said.

For me? thought Keiko.

She sat back on her heels and stared at the thing. It was yellowed and brittle, dusty from its time in there. So, not me, Keiko told herself. But who then? And what was it? Was it a love letter? for you seemed very intimate, somehow.

She knew all about invitations and thank you notes and letters of application and complaint, but her English teacher had never covered love letters.

Whatever it was, she decided, it was the business of the flat’s owner not its tenant. Slipping on her shoes, she trotted downstairs to hand it over to the Pooles.

She hesitated in the shop doorway for a moment, expecting smells to match the exuberant sights in the window, but it was mostly cold and soap with just the faintest metallic base note.

“Hello?” she said. The shop was empty-her voice rang back at her off the tiled walls and the glass counter-but there was a light on in a cubicle at the back, behind a frosted window. She craned around the counter to where a tiled passage with a red painted floor disappeared into darkness. “Mrs. Poole?” she called out. She stepped behind the counter and tapped on the door of the cubicle. There was a slow, shifting noise inside and the door opened. Malcolm Poole was standing there.

“Sorry,” said Keiko and stepped lightly back so that she was standing on the customer side of the counter again. Malcolm, turning sideways through the door, came towards her.

“I’m sorry I frightened you. Before, I mean,” he said. His voice was low and muffled, and Keiko had to lean in to catch his words.

“Not at all,” she said. “You were very kind.” And she held out her hand to shake his. Malcolm’s hand did not reach far beyond his body and he leaned forward, apparently from the ankles, his white rubber boots squeaking. His hand was hot, as if he had just washed it in scalding water.

“And what can I do for you now?” he asked her.

“It’s about… mail,” Keiko said. “What to do with mail that’s not for me. If any arrives.” For some reason, she didn’t want to give this man what might be a love letter. She had, without thinking, put the envelope behind her back.

“It shouldn’t,” Malcolm said. “Wee place like this. The postie knows where everyone is and when they move and where they move to. It’s not like Tokyo.” Then he moved forward again, just a pace. “You’re… you’re okay up there, are you? Finding everything? Don’t need anything? Groceries or what have you?”

“Need?” said Keiko, stopping at the door. “I’ll never use up what’s there. I’d end up like an elephant.”

Then feeling her face change colour, she bobbed a little bow and left him.

Mrs. Watson was in the window of her shop and rapped on the glass as she caught sight of Keiko. She held up a cauliflower and mouthed something.

“What?” said Keiko, putting just her head round the door.

“Just in,” said Mrs. Watson. “Do you know how to make cheese sauce?”

“I’m going out tonight,” said Keiko. “To a banquet.”

Mrs. Watson hit herself gently on the head with the cauliflower, leaving a few sprinkles of its curds among her sandy hair.

“Of course you are,” she said. “So am I too. Cheerio just now and I’ll see you th-”

Keiko was halfway out the door and couldn’t be sure, but she thought Mrs. Watson’s voice had dried suddenly. She looked back in through the window. The little woman was standing quite still, staring at Keiko, at her hand, at the envelope she was holding, and her face had fallen out of its crinkled smile. She swallowed and, as if her strength had suddenly been sapped, the cauliflower dropped out of her hand and rolled away.

“What is wrong?” Keiko said, coming right inside. “Are you ill, Mrs. Watson? Do you need to sit down?”

“You’ve only just got here,” Mrs. Watson whispered. She shook her head. “You’ve only been here a day.” Then she hoisted a smile back onto her face and wiped her hands together. “Never mind me,” she said. “I’ve not got the sense God gave geese.”

“Geese?” asked Keiko.

Mrs. Watson laughed. “See? That’s what I’m saying. Never mind me.”

Keiko went slowly up to her flat again. She had put her hand against the glass door when she leaned in. How had she been holding the letter? Could Mrs. Watson have seen what it said on the front? Could she see for you?

Inside again, standing on the makeshift genkan, Keiko turned the envelope over and over in her hands. It was so dry from the heat the glue would give way if she flexed it, more than likely, and then… Stop it, she told herself. She was here for one reason and one reason alone. Of course, she was very grateful to the people of Painchton, for the flat, and she would thank them tonight and acknowledge them in her thesis when it was done, but their feelings and their expressions-their leftover mail, for heaven’s sake!-were nothing to her.

She laid the envelope down on the shelf and walked away.