Vacant Possession

CHAPTER 8

Christmas was celebrated quietly at Buckingham Avenue. In the morning, Francis and Hermione called round between services to have a glass of sherry. Their general air was far from festive. Austin had turned down a place on the Youth Training Scheme, saying that he was self-employed as a satanist, and had failed that week to keep an appointment with his probation officer.

“Of course, young people must rebel,” Francis said. “But why Satanism? Why has this spirit of vicious irrationality got abroad? Tell me that, Colin.”

Sylvia went to and fro, carrying a wine box. She seemed dazed. A smell of burning carrots came from the kitchen. She had aged, Colin thought: deep lines from nose to chin.

“I asked you much the same,” he said to Francis. “I asked you why I found teeth in my front garden. Something’s happening round here. Did you see that advert in The Times for the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology?”

“I don’t read The Times, I’m afraid.”

“I read it in the staff room. It said you have to have an interest in the way some individuals interacted with the environment other than by normal channels. I’m sure somebody’s interacting in this house.”

“It’s true,” Sylvia said. “We keep getting these electrical faults, but we’ve had the wiring checked. The milk keeps turning sour. Things go missing.”

“I’m disappointed in you,” the vicar said.

“Have you thought of trying Unigate?” Hermione put in. “You can get low-fat yoghurt as well.”

“We read a book about it,” Sylvia said. “We thought it might be Suzanne. Her amassed discontent finding expression.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want an exorcism.”

“That might not be a bad idea.”

“What about this woman Blank? If objects are missing, you probably need look no further. Have you checked her credentials?”

“She doesn’t have credentials,” Sylvia said sulkily. “She’s a cleaning woman.”

“I think it’s our unhappiness that does it,” Colin said. “It’s the accumulated misery, bouncing off the walls.”

“Are you unhappy, Colin?” the vicar asked. “I didn’t know.”

Florence arrived just as Francis and his wife were leaving; reporting in as usual for Christmas dinner. “I’ve given her double pills,” she said. “It should keep her quiet for an hour or two.”

“You have to watch dosages, with the elderly,” Francis warned. Florence scowled at him.

“I didn’t like your sermon. People want the ox and the ass, not the National Coal Board. I agree with that man who stands outside with the placard.”

Suzanne, swaying around in the kitchen, upset a pan of sprouts and scalded her feet. Alistair lay on his bed, the door locked and his eyes closed, breathing raggedly with the breathing of the room. Karen locked herself into the bathroom and squeezed her spots till her face flared with scarlet patches. Claire put on her Brownie uniform. “Enjoy your day,” Sylvia said at the door. “Christmas is no holiday for me,” the vicar replied.

The Ryans had begun the day late. Jim had long ago given up taking Isabel to see his family, and this year there was no need to go to the hospital. Christmas dinner was a silent affair. Jim watched Isabel’s face, waiting for the wine to enter her bloodstream and make her voluble. First, she would fling accusations at him; second, she would cry into the bread sauce. After a while she would talk about concentration camps. Later still she would collapse. He would drag her onto the sofa and throw a rug over her, and go for a walk round the park.

At Mr. K.’s house, Mrs. Wilmot and Miss Anaemia sat with their landlord at the kitchen table. Although it was now some time since Mr. K. had been beaten up by the woman in the street, he still bore traces of his injuries; patches of greenish discoloration showed on his face where his bruises were fading. As for the dismay, fright, and humiliation, it might be years before he recovered from those.

“That was no woman,” he said, for the third time that morning. Gloomily he adjusted the yellow paper hat that Miss Anaemia had insisted that he wear. “That was a man in disguise.”

“A Transylvanian,” said Miss Anaemia. “Leave it out, Mr. K. Your dinner’s getting cold.”

They had decided to incorporate the traditional Christmas trimmings—crackers, a game of pass the parcel—with the kind of food each of them liked best. “After all,” Miss Anaemia said, “we’re three loners, we’ve only ourselves to please.” Pickled cucumbers were put on the table, and dumplings with caraway seeds, and All-Bran; tinned ravioli, and chocolate digestive biscuits. Wheezing as he moved across the room, Mr. Kowalski produced from the cool pantry some bottled beer. He squeezed out a few tears, thinking of carp on Christmas Eve, of his little sister with new hair ribbons, of candles burning in the windows to light them home from midnight Mass. He did not know whether it was his own past he was grieving for, or other people’s; the images flickered and ticked behind his retina like shots from silent films. Miss Anaemia thought of growing up in Burton-on-Trent. Poor Mrs. Wilmot thought of nothing at all, for she had no past to remember; but she shook with silent mirth when she read the mottoes in the crackers. After dinner had been cleared away, the presents were exchanged. Mrs. Wilmot and Mr. K. each gave the other mufflers and miniature bottles of whisky; they both gave bath salts to Miss Anaemia. They knew that she would never take a bath, because the rusty trickle of warm water that ran from the antiquated pipes would not bathe a flea; but she agreed with them about the air of ease and luxury the bottles would lend to her dressing table. Then the cards were taken out, and they played Happy Families, and ate chocolates. Mr. Kowalski grew excitable, and insisted on getting them to their feet for a lively traditional dance that involved clapping rhythmically and standing on one leg. Mrs. Wilmot fell over a good deal. Mr. K. threw an extra scuttle of coal on the kitchen range, and soon they were enveloped in a pleasant warm fug, doors tightly shut against the elements, the windows sealed. Mr. K. seized his young lodger’s hand. The bottled beer had gone to his head. He put his hands around her waist and whirled her off her feet, rumbling out the refrain in his rib-heaving bass and stamping his left foot. “My dear young thing,” he said, breaking off his chorus, “won’t you join me in holy matrimony?”

“Then I’d never get my giro back,” Miss Anaemia said. “You’d have to keep me. ‘He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune,’ or words to that effect.”

“No need for children,” Mr. K. said. “Rubber goods can be obtained.”

But Miss Anaemia shook her head. Two spots of scarlet flamed on her cheeks. The kettle sang merrily on the range. Mr. K. roared and stomped, and held his arms in a tree shape above his head. Poor Mrs. Wilmot staggered exhausted to the kitchen table. She hugged her belly, and swayed, and gave a mute bellow of laughter; she licked her pale lips, and the steam from the kettle misted up her glasses.

The smell of the roasting turkey woke Alistair from his lassitude. He got up, groaning, and ventured out onto the landing. “There’s sumfin growing on my wall,” he said. “Fungus or sumfin.” Next door Mrs. Sidney stirred in her sleep, and mumbled; she had caught the note of the festivities, and thought she was at Balmoral.

Evening came. Lizzie Blank had arranged to take Sholto and Emmanuel to Gino’s Club for the Christmas Nite Special. I want to be a special fantasia, she thought, with gold paint on my nails and a tinsel crown; she was buggered if she was going to do that in a WC. Miss Anaemia and Mr. K. were sleeping off the afternoon’s excitement; what did it matter if the click-click of her stilettos on the stairs entered their dreams? It was 8:30 P.M.; she gave her lipstick a final coat of gloss, patted her curls, and departed.

But as she reached the foot of the stairs, the kitchen door opened; there stood Mr. K. in his vest and braces. He rubbed his eyes, itching from the smoke of the kitchen; there was a poker in his fist. His jaw dropped. “In my own house,” he cried. She sprang for the door.

At the Ryans’ house, Isabel was asleep on the sofa. Her book lay face-down on the carpet; not the book she was reading, but the book she was writing, her loose-leaf collection of scruffy typed sheets. Jim didn’t believe in her book. He didn’t believe that she would ever finish it, or that anyone would care to publish it if she did. But she was determined, in her drunken way. She was guilty, and she must have something to be guilty of; she must be properly accused. Her body heaved in sleep, her skin grew damp, her face emptied of pleasure or hope. Her many pulses beat.

Mr. Kowalski fell back against the door frame, gagging in panic. The fire iron trembled, clutched against his chest. Ole King Cole, Muriel sang on the street. She could feel the faculties clattering inside her skull, the lines clashing and meshing like railway sidings; she could feel the words twisting together, the separate letters intertwining, the bs with the ps with the ks, all lashing and plaiting their tails. CALCULATION was twisting in her cranium, HUMAN NATURE battered at the bone, at the fissures and the sagittal suture, at the tentorium, at the parietal arch. Ole King Cole, with his frantic black soul; and he called for his fiddlers, ME.

New Year.

Miss Anaemia went down to see the DHSS. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “Rehouse me.”

“We would require confirmation of that.”

“I’ll confirm it. I’m telling you, aren’t I?”

“Medical confirmation.”

“Oh, I see. What if I had an elderly dependant?”

“Are you saying you have an elderly dependant?”

“What if, I’m saying.”

“And you are pregnant as well?”

“Look, you had a tip-off, didn’t you? You came and looked at my sheets. You said I was going with a giant. If I’ve got a man I could be pregnant. What do you have a man for?”

The woman put her pencil down. “According to our Rotherham office, you turned up there to claim benefit, giving a false address and stating that your name was Lady Margaret Hall. You do realise that we could prosecute you for attempted fraud?”

“Supposing I brought you a baby?” Miss Anaemia said. “Would you pay out then?”

Muriel leaned over Mrs. Sidney. “Yellow ones?” she enquired. She shook the bottle and held it tantalisingly out of reach. Mrs. Sidney croaked faintly. Her features were drawn already, corpse-like. Muriel unscrewed the bottle and dropped the pills into her palm. “Open wide,” she said. Mrs. Sidney’s jaw quivered, and she parted her lips. Muriel fed her the pills one by one, slipping some in from the other bottles when she felt like it. It took a long time. She held Mrs. Sidney’s jaw shut to make sure she swallowed. She had seen it done at Fulmers Moor.

Sylvia was out at a meeting of the Canal Clean-up Cooperative. Florence was out at work. Lizzie Blank was in sole charge; that was how they trusted her. She left the old lady to it and went next door to clean the bathroom. She put her feet up for an hour in Sylvia’s living room and read magazines, and ate the caramel toffees she had brought with her. When she went next door to check on Mrs. Sidney the old lady was still breathing, so she pulled a pillow from beneath her head and held it over her face until she was confident that she had expired.

It did not escape her, going downstairs, that by disposing of Mrs. Sidney she might be helping the family rather than hindering them. The break-up of their family life, the increasing dereliction of the family home, was happening around her, but perhaps not at her behest; it was not she who had arranged for Jim Ryan to impregnate Suzanne. Life just arranges itself, usually for the worst, and chance is not blind at all; it has as many eyes as a fly on the wall.

Even if the death did not incommode them in the long term, she could not resist it. She wanted to see their faces. She needed to see how they displayed strong emotion, so that she could copy them, and have something to feed on.

She had reset her features, and was making herself a cup of coffee, when Suzanne came to join her. “Want one?” Lizzie said. “How are things?”

“I’m staying till it’s born,” Suzanne said. “When it’s born I’m getting out.”

“And will you be coming to my place?” Her tone was bright; but it worried her. She could see snags. If Suzanne came to stay at Mr. K.’s house, Poor Mrs. Wilmot would have to move out. She could not trust Crisp with her personal effects; he might sell them, and give the money to the poor. “Why not stay at home?” she said coaxingly. “Just for the first week or two. Give us all a chance to get to know the baby.”

“No, I’m going to Edwina’s. Or I might go to Sean’s. Or I might go back to Manchester to that squat I told you about, only they’ve had a lot of trouble with the police coming round and they might have to move out. I don’t know where I’ll be. Can I use your address?”

“All right.”

“Then if I’m moving around, I can use it for getting my giro. And I can give it to Jim, because there isn’t a phone at the squat, and when he wants to get in touch he can write to me there and you’ll save it for me, okay?” Her eyes flickered away. “He will want to get in touch, won’t he? Don’t you think so? He’ll want to see the baby, won’t he?”

“Oh yes,” Lizzie said. “He’ll take an interest. It’ll come out in the wash, you’ll see.”

“Okay, so you’ll save me any post that comes? I don’t trust Mum to pass my letters on.”

“Or I could mind the baby for you,” Lizzie said. “I could, you know. I wouldn’t mind, if you had business. Or if you wanted a night out. You’re bound to want a night out when you get over having it. You could get Jim to take you to a club.”

“I know you’d help me out,” Suzanne said emotionally. “That’s what I like about you, Lizzie, you’re a Real Person. You don’t fill people up with empty promises.” Sadly, Suzanne turned to leave the kitchen, her coffee mug in her hand. “I shouldn’t,” she said, “it gives me indigestion.” She was very big now. Soon she would lean backwards when she walked. She hadn’t a clue what would happen to her or the baby. Things are coming to a head, Muriel thought. Soon I’ll have my changeling back, soon I’ll be a mother, I’ll be perfectly fulfilled. Soon I’ll be leaving here. There’ll be a signal, and I’ll go. She believed in signals. They were as good as anything.

“Come down our den, our Kari,” Alistair said.

“What for?”

“Show you summat.”

“What is it?”

“Dunno. Skeleton.”

“Yah,” said Kari, incredulous.

“Honest.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Canal. Claire found it. Her and her mates. Brownies.”

“When?”

“Last Saturday.”

“Full-size one?”

“Nah. Little.”

“Murder,” Kari said. “Let’s have a look, will you?”

“Come down our den.”

“What d’you want?” Kari said with suspicion.

“Fetch us some UHU.”

“No.”

“Aw, go on. You go in Fletcher’s in your school uniform. Tell ’em you’re gluing for your project.”

“I might.”

“And I tell you what, Kari, nick us a clothespeg.”

“What for?”

“Sherwood’s a Rasta and his plaits get in the glue.”

“Nick one hisself.”

“His mum don’t do no washing.” He paused. “Honest, Kari, fetch us some glue, you can share the skeleton.”

Kari wavered. “All right,” she said. “What size tube you want?”

When Sylvia came home from her meeting she let herself into Florence’s house and went upstairs. She stuck her head around the door and saw the pillow lying on Mrs. Sidney’s chest. Her impulse was to close the door again and pretend she had not seen it, and let Colin discover for himself what had happened, since it was his mother who was apparently dead, and his sister who had apparently made her that way; she had a nice sense of delicacy, and she did not believe that an outsider, even an in-law, should interfere in such a close family matter.

But leaving her scruples aside—because she did not trust Colin to have any common sense—she crossed the room and removed the pillow to a less remarkable position. She put the back of her hand against Mrs. Sidney’s cheek. There was not much doubt about what had happened, but it was hard to tell just by looking; the features were not distorted, there had been no struggle. She opened the wardrobe and squashed the pillow onto the top shelf, above the pile of folded Witney blankets. The wardrobe door creaked; the smell of camphor crept out into the room. She had an impulse to open the window; but it was raining hard, and it might not be respectful. The original position of the pillow would be a private satisfaction to her. She would know, and Florence would know that she did. So when Flo got pious in future, she could catch her eye. The balance of terror within the family would be altered; and in her favour. She was not surprised to find out what Florence was capable of; but if I had been in her position, she thought, I would not have signalled my intentions so clearly. She touched Mother’s cheek again, wondering how long she had been dead. Florence must have slipped out and done it in her teabreak. She went downstairs to ring Dr. Rudge to come and give them a death certificate. The rain was turning to sleet.

You had to hand it to Florence, she said later to Colin (and he agreed); that clutch at the throat, the doubled fist striking the door frame, the way the blood drained from her highly coloured features. Perhaps it was natural, though, at the sight of Dr. Rudge; his sardonic expression as he looked down at the bedside cabinet, and with a forefinger separated the empty pill bottles from the rest. Sylvia hadn’t noticed that. It argued a degree of premeditation, she thought. She caught Colin’s eye, turning down the corners of her mouth in a meaningful way.

“But I didn’t give them to her!” Florence was good at the innocence outraged; the pop-eyes, the pewter complexion. “She must have taken them herself.”

“I see,” said Dr. Rudge nastily, “and all you did, eh, was to leave them close at hand and with the top off? We’re not accusing you of choking her, Miss Sidney, we’re not saying that you forced them down her throat one by one. We know she was fond of the yellow ones, don’t we?”

“But I didn’t! I’m careful with her medicines!”

“Come, come,” said the doctor, smiling. “If I wanted to take the matter further, your neighbours would no doubt remember the scene you made in the street.”

“What about Lizzie Blank?” Florence wailed. “Why wasn’t she attending to her? She was left in charge!”

“That’s a digression, Miss Sidney, if I may say so.”

“Shall I phone the undertaker?” Sylvia said. “Oh, come on, Flo, we all know you did it.”

“However,” Dr. Rudge said, “I do call myself a compassionate man, and this is not the first time that a distressed relative in my practice has—as we call it—eased an elderly person out of a life of suffering—but in your case, Miss Sidney, I’m bound to say, it is very strange of you to try and pin the blame on the daily help.”

“Strange?” Colin said. “It’s monstrous. I’m not trying to take a moral stance, Florence, but honestly, you should have told us what you were up to.”

“We always hope,” Dr. Rudge said testily, “that we don’t have to discuss the matter quite so openly.”

“Prosecute me!” Florence said. “Call the police! Put me in the dock!”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Sylvia said. “You’re embarrassing us all. Think, Colin, I’ll be able to cut down on Lizzie’s hours now. I can go out in the evening again. I can take a more active part in the canal scheme.”

“There won’t be an inquest?” Colin asked.

“Not necessary,” the doctor said.

“But of course there must be an inquest,” Florence said. “I want my name cleared.” She looked around at her brother, at her sister-in-law, at the doctor. Their faces were closed, smug, blank with careful discretion. “What will the neighbours say?” she asked. “They’ll say I did it. They’ll all be talking about me, right up Arlington Road.”

“Better Arlington Road than the News of the World,” Colin said. He left them and went downstairs. Murder now, he thought.

After the New Year, the cold weather set in. Every morning when the new term started Colin had to go out with a shovel at a quarter to eight and clear the drive of snow. Vehicles were abandoned by the side of the road, pipes froze up and burst, and sleet blew in whirlwinds and eddies across the motorway. The black branches of the trees on the Avenue bent under the weight of the winter; and then came a thaw, the gutters running with icy flood water.

Towards the end of February, Suzanne’s baby—a girl—was born in hospital. She did not hear from Jim Ryan. When her mother and father visited her that evening she turned her face away from them and looked steadfastly at the wall. The baby, Gemma, slept by her bed in a plastic bubble. She entertained fantasies of walking up the Ryans’ front path; of dropping in at the bank and laying the baby on Jim’s desk amid the statements and paper clips.

“When people say they want a child,” Colin explained, “when people say that, as Jim did to you, they may be speaking figuratively. They may be saying they want a second chance.”

“She didn’t think he was speaking figuratively,” Sylvia said. “She saw herself walking up the aisle. That was no figure.”

“I didn’t think girls dreamed of their weddings any more,” Colin said sadly. “I thought the world had changed.”

“Oh no.” Sylvia looked down at the child, the drift of dark hair, the formless undersea face. Her expression softened. “I love babies,” she said. “I always did.”

“I don’t love them,” Suzanne said. “I don’t have any feelings.” Her mother patted her wrist. Suzanne twitched her arm away. “Why shouldn’t people have second chances?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Colin said, “they just don’t, these days. In the seventies, people had second chances. Ten years ago. Now it’s all battening down the hatches, that sort of thing.”

“You could put the baby up for adoption,” Sylvia said. “That is, we could adopt it. I’d be willing.”

“Is there no stopping you?” Colin said. He eyed her sideways. She was planning to stay around then.

“You have your life to make,” Sylvia told her daughter. “You’ve made a mistake, but you don’t have to go on paying for it.”

“Of course she does,” Colin said. “Go on paying is what people do. Ask Jim.”

Sylvia regarded him, unblinking. “I know why you are so bitter,” she said. “I don’t know the details, but I know the gist of it. I really think it’s time you grew up.” She turned to Suzanne. “Don’t listen to your father. I’d be more than willing. You could finish your course.” She was coaxing, trying to cajole the baby out of her daughter. “It’s the least we can do.”

Suzanne turned her face away again. “I’ll never give her to you,” she said. “God knows what you’d do to her. I shan’t be coming home.”

“I see.” Sylvia walked over to the window, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her jacket. She looked down into the hospital car park, sucking her lip. “Leave us your address then. Edwina’s, or wherever.”

“Get it from Lizzie Blank,” Suzanne said.

When Colin arrived home, there was a parcel waiting for him. It was wrapped up in brown paper and inscribed “TO GRANDAD, FROM ALISTAIR AND OSTIN.”

“Goodness,” Colin said, “a pressie.” He picked it up, applied his ear to it, and rattled it.

“You are childish,” Sylvia said. He sat down with it on the sofa and began to pick at the string. “We’ve had the bill from the undertaker,” she said.

“I saw it. It’s too much.”

“It’s not the sort of thing you can haggle over.”

“I don’t see why not. They wouldn’t dig her up, would they?”

“Give it to Florence,” Sylvia suggested. “We wouldn’t be faced with it if it weren’t for her.”

“If I tell her that she’ll have an apoplexy.”

“Let her.”

“Then we’ll have to pay for her funeral.”

“Well, don’t tell her then. Don’t mention it. Just leave it discreetly on the telephone table.”

“Like a visiting card.”

“She’ll know what it is. Do you want the scissors?”

“Yes, please.”

“Why don’t you go and get them then?”

“I can’t find them.”

“You haven’t looked.”

“No point. I can never find the scissors. It’s one of the eternal verities. Something to cling to amid the vicissitudes of daily life.”

“It wears me out,” Sylvia said, “when you are so unrelentingly fatuous.”

With a conspicuous grunt of effort she got to her feet, and went into the kitchen. She was pleased with “fatuous” or did she mean facetious? That was possible. She rummaged in a drawer, thinking about Suzanne; thinking about Colin and his ten-year-old love affair, thinking about the undertaker’s bill. It had been distasteful, having Colin make jokes about gun carriages and lying in state. She knew he was doing it to cover his shock; his shock at finding out what people were capable of. Looking sideways at Florence, snivelling in her pew, she had thought: how can she? It was touching how Francis, who had no particular belief in an afterlife, had subdued his natural militancy and tried to come up with comforting and appropriate texts. She had felt a sharp impulse to lay the matter at his feet, but stifled it. She was sure he would approve of mercy killing; but Mother didn’t want to die. She was quite happy with her round of royal duties. She did not see how Florence could be so heartless, just for the sake of her career at the DHSS, but then she knew what her own first thought had been; no more trailing up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs. It took weight off—six calories a minute—but it wearied her.

But what would Francis say? He would like to agonise over it, if they had Hermione’s mother become incontinent in their spare room. He would like to wrestle with his conscience. That was the proper way. She had not wrestled with hers. She was not sure if she had a conscience. It was the kind of thing Colin talked about. Who knew if, over the years, Francis’s talk of it might become as tedious as Colin’s? That was men: scant regard for practicalities. Probably she was not good enough for Francis; he would find her wanting. She had dusted her hands off—mentally—and gone downstairs to ring the Elliot Bros., Funeral Directors, 24-Hour Service, Chapel of Rest. All she had thought of was what, since she was so large, Suzanne could possibly wear to the funeral. She took the scissors out of the drawer; I haven’t much imagination, she thought. Thank God.

“There you go,” she said, coming back into the living room and handing the scissors to her husband. He had succeeded in getting his parcel half-undone. Now he opened the cardboard box inside the wrapping paper.

“Good Lord,” he said. “It’s a phrenologist’s head. I’ve always wanted one of these.”

He took it out and put it on the coffee table. He knelt before it and traced its lines with his forefinger: Faculty of Conjugality, Faculty of Self-esteem. “I wonder where they got it. Stole it, probably. Still, it’s not the sort of thing you nick from Woolworth’s, they must have gone to trouble.”

“It’s no laughing matter.”

“Oh, there are worse crimes in the family.”

“I don’t like it, it’s sinister.”

“Faculty of Progenitiveness,” Colin said. “Come here, Sylvia, let me feel your head.” He fitted his fingers around her forehead and squeezed.

“Get off,” she bellowed angrily. “My God, Colin, you’re easily diverted. Your own daughter lying in a hospital bed, threatening to leave home, your son’s a delinquent, and all you can do is mess about with toys.”

“It’s not a toy. Suzanne’s just given birth, so where else would she be? And I understand she’s left home already.” He turned the head about. “Faculty of Combativeness.”

“It’s rubbish anyway,” Sylvia said. “It’s discredited.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Colin felt his skull above his left ear. “Opportunities for self-knowledge are so limited. It doesn’t do to be dogmatic. I wonder what I’d find if I read Florence’s bumps?”

“I think I’d rather not know. I’d rather not know more than I do.”

“‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’”

“Another quotation,” Sylvia said. “It’s like Christmas every day, living with you. Out come the mottoes and the silly jokes, and the coloured plastic distractions, all the penny whistles and cheap novelties. And when the day’s over, what happens? All the trash is left under the table, for me to clear up.”

He didn’t answer. Surprised by the fluency of her outburst, he sat on the sofa, his eyes indignantly wide, staring at the phrenological head. Sylvia went into the kitchen. He heard the fridge door open and shut, and the clink of glasses. She whipped back into the room, ignoring him, and began to rummage around in the drinks cupboard.

“Oh, are we drinking again?” he asked.

“I am. I need one, after that episode with Suzanne. Have you ever known anybody so ungrateful? What more does she think I can offer her?”

“Pour me one.” He sounded forlorn.

“I’m having vodka.”

“That’ll do. Don’t put anything silly in it.”

Her voice floated through from the kitchen: “What do you call silly?” The telephone rang. Sylvia nipped back, dumped the glasses, picked it up; she thought it was Suzanne, changing her mind about things. He saw her back stiffen. “Yes,” she said carefully. “Yes, it is. Yes, he is.” She lowered the receiver, muffling it against her left breast. “It’s Mrs. Ryan. She wants to know if she can speak to you. If it’s convenient.”

Colin leaned forward and took up his head. The pottery bones were cool and firm beneath his palms. “She being sarcastic?” he asked.

“Just hold on,” Sylvia said into the receiver. To him, “What?”

“When she said ‘If it’s convenient?’ I mean, does convenience enter into it?”

“Hold on, Mrs. Ryan.” Sylvia put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Are you going to speak to her or not?”

“I mean, it’s a pretty hollow concept, convenience,” he said. “After ten years. She’s known where I was, this past decade.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve been here, haven’t I, at Buckingham Avenue? Where’s she been? God only knows.”

“You could have found out,” Sylvia said. “I daresay it wouldn’t have been beyond you. You could have made enquiries.”

“Oh, I could.” He upended the head and peered inside it. “But they might have led somewhere. Then I’d have had to take action. Then where would I be?”

“Mrs. Ryan,” Sylvia said, “I don’t think he wants to talk to you.” There was a pause. “She says she must know from you.” She held the receiver towards him. “I’ll go out of the room if you like.”

He shook his head.

“He shakes his head,” Sylvia said.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Colin banged the head down on the table. “There’s nothing to say. There’s nothing left. It was a delusion.”

Sylvia bowed her head over the receiver, and like a confidential secretary repeated the message. She listened. “I’ll tell him.” She put the phone down gently, and watched it for a moment, as if she thought it might ring again. “She says to tell you, that’s exactly as she supposed.”

He knew, by the careful repetition of the phrase, that the words were Isabel’s, exact; he knew, too, that they’d be the last she’d speak to him, directly or indirectly, the last ever. “Drink your drink,” Sylvia said. “I don’t mind if you have a cigarette. I know you’ve got some in your jacket pocket.”

“I’m overwhelmed,” he said.

He straightened up from the awkward posture he had assumed, crouching over the low table, and sat down at one end of the long sofa. Sylvia sat down at the other. She crossed her legs carefully, as if she expected to sit for some time. Both looked straight before them, like people in an airport lounge who fear that the journey ahead will be time enough for them to become acquainted.

Presently Sylvia shivered. “The central heating’s gone off again,” she said.

“There’s something wrong with the time clock. I expect Alistair’s been moving the tappets.”

“He must be doing it by remote control then, he hasn’t been in for days.”

“No, I’ve not seen him either.”

Their voices were carefully neutral and flat; polite people, feeling their way into conversation, thrown together in cramped accommodation by mere chance and the necessity of having to travel at all.

“Sometimes I think I’d like to run away,” Sylvia said. “If kids can do it, why not parents? I can’t cope with this place.”

“Everything seems to be falling apart, doesn’t it?”

“Did you know the washer’s packed up altogether? The only thing to do is to go and leave it all behind. It’s like, what do you call it? The House of Usher.”

“It’s like the house of Atreus,” Colin said. “Now there’s a coincidence for you. You eat this pie, and it just happens to contain your children.”

Sylvia turned on him. “You’re doing it again.”

“You started it, with the House of Usher, I’m only putting a word in.”

Sylvia jumped to her feet. Her face contorted with anger. She ran out of the room. Alarmed, he sped after her. He caught up with her at the foot of the stairs and threw his arms around her waist, swinging her round. The small effort put him out of breath; he would be no good these days on the squash court. Sylvia struggled; he lifted her almost off her feet and dumped her down on the third stair. “Don’t move,” he said. “Let’s have this out. If we don’t straighten it out now then we never will.” He took her left wrist in a secure grip and sat down beside her. It was a tight fit. Sylvia had been expanding lately. They were red in the face; emotion and the moment’s struggle had knocked the breath out of them both.

“You know the House of Usher?” Sylvia said, when she recovered herself. “I saw it on TV. It’s better than TV, living here.”

“No licence fee, only the mortgage. No adverts to interrupt you.”

“I’d be glad of interruption at times.”

“Did you throw out my photograph?” Colin said.

“Yes.”

“I suppose you think you did it for my own good.”

“No. I did it for my own.”

“Thanks a million.”

“That was her, wasn’t it? It’s all the same woman.”

“Yes, I’ve often thought that.”

“I’m not stupid,” Sylvia said. “I can put two and two together.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I have my sources of information.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“What would have been the point?”

“That’s that,” he said. “Ten years of mental agony.”

“It can’t have been. Not ten years solid. There must have been bright spots.”

“She’s an alcoholic. Her husband told me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“C’est la vie,” Colin said. “I saw her coming out of the bank. I thought she was a figment of my imagination, some sort of mirage. So I let it go. There’s a moment for everything and when that moment’s passed you might as well strike camp and stamp out the bonfire—and get back to daily life. You’ve been away too long.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking…I’ve something to tell you.”

“Oh yes?”

“If you really want to run away…do you remember Frank O’Dwyer?”

“Could I forget him?” Alarm and dislike crossed Sylvia’s face: it was an old colleague, whose dipsomaniac company she had never relished. “What about him? I thought you never saw him since he went to County Hall.”

“Only occasionally. I mean, the Educational Advisors don’t come by that often. They might be contaminated by contact with the kids.”

“And?”

“He’s had an accident. He was over at the Forty Martyrs Comprehensive last week, and he’d been drinking whisky in the office—you know what the Brothers are like, very hospitable. Anyway, they couldn’t find him. Thought he’d gone—then Brother Ambrose turned him up in the gym. He’d been on the equipment, you know, swinging from the trapeze and putting his feet through those rings that come down from the ceiling. Broken both legs.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t.” Sylvia covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, it’s awful, laughing at people’s misfortunes.”

“Anyway, that’s the last straw. He’s had warnings. Early retirement. The point is, if you were willing to move, I could have his job.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s unofficial. It’ll have to be advertised, but I think I can swing it. Everybody says so. They’ll want to appoint soon, for September.”

“Do I want to move? Oh Colin, I can’t tell you how I want to move.”

“Two hours ago you wanted to adopt a baby.”

“I want to move.”

“We could look for a house.”

“But September? That’s months away. I can’t see myself in September. I can’t imagine it. Gemma will be seven months old. It’ll be a different world. I can’t imagine lasting out till then. Something awful will happen.”

“Such as?”

“You’ll change your mind about that woman. You’ll be ringing her up. I expect you’re planning right now to ring her up. You’re only telling me all this to throw me off the scent.”

He squeezed her wrist. “That hurts,” she said.

“Get the book. The telephone book.”

“What?”

“Look up some estate agents and ring them up first thing tomorrow morning. Let’s do it, Sylvia, quick. Ask them for details of a nice house—three bed, Claire and Karen can share—modern, big windows, plenty light, nothing with a past; a nice jerry-built house like the one we used to have, with all the flaws built in.”

“The houses are all right, Colin. It’s us the flaws are built into.”

“Not any more. I’m being positive, I’m laying plans.” He paused, momentarily amazed. It’s easy once you start. The momentum carries you forward. “As soon as we find the house, we must move. I’ll have to stay at school till the end of the summer term, but I can commute. I can come on the new link road. It’ll only take me thirty minutes. If that.”

“Do you really think we could? Just get away? Why didn’t you say so before?”

“I was waiting for Frank to break his legs. A deus ex machina,” he said. “Every home should have one.”

“So that’s it then?” She spoke with finality and with hope, and a look of exhaustion crossed her face, from the strain of keeping up such complex and contradictory emotions. Colin looked up at the ceiling of the hall, still stained dark from the kitchen fire.

“Do you think we’ll sell this scrap heap?”

“I don’t see why not. After all, it’s not structurally defective, is it, except for that growth in Alistair’s room? We’ll have to scrape the walls and paint it with something. And in the hall, what you’ve got to do is keep the light off when people come. You wouldn’t notice. You’d just think it was a nice beige shade. You wouldn’t notice till you came to wash the walls down. Then it’d go all streaky.”

“That’s unscrupulous.”

“They get what they see. What they don’t see, that’s their problem.”

“That’s settled then. Get somebody round to give us a valuation.” He took her hand. “And what about Francis? What will he say?”

She looked down at her knees. “I don’t know, what will he say?”

“I thought you had something going.”

“Not really.”

“I thought at one time he was going to leave Hermione.”

“Leave Hermione?” she said scornfully. “She’s a bishop’s daughter. Anyway, do you know, I saw another side of him. When we were down at the night shelter—I didn’t tell you, did I? These two poor old men came in, wanting soup. Well, I didn’t recognise them, they were wearing balaclavas. They were having leek and potato. When Francis saw them he ran up and said, ‘These are the bastards who’ve been causing me all the trouble.’ He said he’d caught them laying a fire in the vestry. He kicked one of them quite hard—you know what big boots he wears. I was ashamed, I said, they were probably feeling the cold, you know what February is. He said, ‘You don’t set fire to cassocks, do you?’ He said it was arson. He phoned the police.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were taken into custody. They’ve been sent to a home.”

“They’ll probably be better off.”

“Oh, no, Colin. They’ll get institutionalised.”

“Still, I can see why you were disillusioned. Does he know you’ve gone off him?”

“Probably.” Sylvia dipped her head. A tear ran down her cheek, slow and singular, and quivered at the corner of her mouth. “He doesn’t care. He’s got other involvements.”

“Oh yes?”

“There’s this deaconess. Julie.”

“The man’s a philanderer! Well, never mind,” Colin said cheerfully. “Never mind, you’ve done some good to the community between you, which I may say is more than Isabel Ryan and I ever did. We were great theorists, but I don’t think we left anybody better off. How’s the canal clean-up going?”

“Oh, it’s going to be lovely.” She sniffed, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “We’re going to have a nature trail. Anyway, I’ll tell you another thing about Francis. He has this fat crease in his ear.”

“What?”

“It means he’s going to have a coronary. Men with paunches and creases in their ears, they’re At Risk. I read it somewhere.”

“The Beano?”

“No, it’s true.”

“Have I got one?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure if I’m looking in the right place.”

“At least I know now why you keep staring at the side of my head.”

“There’s this new diet I’ve heard of. For the first two days you just eat apples. Any kind, but you mustn’t mix them; if you have Golden Delicious for breakfast you can’t have Cox’s for lunch. Then for two days you eat only cheese—if you have Edam for breakfast you must—”

“No,” Colin said. He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“No, somehow I don’t think so either. I’ll just get fat.”

“That would be restful.”

“Mrs. Ryan wasn’t fat, was she?”

“Skin and bone.”

“Colin?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think three beds will be enough?”

“I’m counting on Alistair going to Borstal before long. I think it’s a fair bet.”

“What if Suzanne decides to come home? Oh, you know, I can’t forgive myself now for trying to talk her into an abortion. When I saw Gemma I thought—well, she’s a lovely little thing, who would be without her? And if Suzanne wants—”

“She won’t come home. She told you, she’s got her own life now. So has Alistair, he’ll be off soon, somewhere or other. They’re nearly grown up, Sylvia. That part of our life is over. The other two will be off before you know it. It’s they who have the future.”

“And we have none?”

“There are worse things than no future.” He put his arm across her shoulder, held her tight by the upper arm. “Cheer up. The excitement’s over. Nothing will happen to us now.”

Next day, when Lizzie Blank came in to clean, she found Colin’s present sitting on the coffee table. She looked at it for a long time, without touching. Then she knelt before it, as Colin had done, and traced the faculties with her finger. I have got these now, she thought. All of them. I have got everything, except offspring. Carefully she lifted the head and dusted it, although it did not need dusting, and set it down in the dead centre of the table. She was perfectly sure that it was what she had waited for. She had last seen it in Sholto’s shop; its arrival here could not help but tell her something. It was a mysterious transportation; there would be others.

Sylvia came downstairs. She was still in her dressing gown, and she smiled secretly to herself, and hummed as she went into the kitchen. Lizzie followed her.

“Mr. Sidney get his leg over, then?” she enquired.

“Lizzie!” Sylvia glared at her. “You can stop it, you know, or I’ll have to give you notice. I can’t have the children hearing you talk like that.”

“The little lambkins,” Lizzie said sarcastically. “‘Hearing you talk like that.’ We’ve got very snooty, haven’t we?”

Sylvia looked at her daily woman with barely concealed dislike. Since the incident with the photograph she had become increasingly familiar and cutting, and she was definitely skimping on her work, claiming that the breakdown of most of the electrical appliances was making cleaning impossible, that she was tired out and worn to the bone. She looked far from bone, Sylvia thought, her white unhealthy-looking flesh oozing out of her clothes. She had flesh, and to spare.

“I’ll be straight with you, Lizzie,” she said. “I believe in straight talking.”

“Oh yes?”

“I don’t like you, Lizzie. There’s something about you I never have liked, and I resent you poking your nose into my daughter’s business. I kept you on because when we had Colin’s mother here you were a godsend, and I don’t deny that, and I’ll give you a reference, and you can read it.”

“And now you’re discharging me?” the woman said sullenly.

“We don’t need you. We’ll be moving soon.”

“I can travel.”

“Not that far.”

Lizzie looked up. “And this house will be empty?”

“It will be on the market. As soon as I find somewhere, we’ll be off.”

“Well, I’ll save you the trouble of firing me, Mrs. Sidney, madam. I was going to give in my notice anyway. I think you stink.”

“That’s as maybe,” Sylvia said levelly.

“And you needn’t worry I’ll tell on Florence. I wouldn’t soil my lips, I might tell on her if they still had capital punishment. If I thought she’d be hanged by the neck till she was dead.”

“You monster,” Sylvia burst out. “Get out of my house.”

“Your house? Not for long.”

“And give me my daughter’s address before you go. Your address, I mean, it’s the only one I’ve got for her. I’ll send your wages on.”

“I’d sooner have cash.”

“I’m sure you would, but I haven’t got it on me. You’ll have to wait. I’ll pay you for the week.”

“Don’t bankrupt yourself, will you?”

“If you don’t go,” Sylvia said, “I shall hit you. Here, write it down on this.” She thrust at Lizzie the notepad she used for her shopping lists, and the stub of a pencil. “She’s not with you, is she, Suzanne?”

“No, I’ve not seen her.” Lizzie bent over the counter top, grasping the pencil awkwardly.

“If you do see her, tell her to come home. I can’t bear to lose my children.”

“You’re very emotional, aren’t you?” Lizzie looked up, and puckered her face. “Like this, you go.”

“How dare you imitate me?”

“I’ve seen your old photographs. How dare you imitate me?”

“What? You’ve been through my drawers?”

“A lot of water’s gone under the bridges since those days, Mrs. S.”

“It’s the last straw. Hurry up with that and go.”

Laboriously, Lizzie set down Mr. Kowalski’s address; wavering block capitals traced with much effort. She pushed it at Sylvia. “There you are.”

“You can barely write.” Sylvia took it from her and looked at it in astonishment. “Who wrote your application for you? I had a letter.”

“My landlord wrote it. You didn’t ask me if I could write.”

“You’re here under false pretences.”

“If you like,” Lizzie said grimly. She took her coat from the hook by the door and put it on.

“You can go out by the back door,” said Sylvia, pointing. “You always do.”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Sidney. I can go out the front.”

On the way through the hall she paused and looked up the stairs. All the bedroom doors were closed; the stairhead was in darkness. The final straw, she thought. Four and twenty Sidneys, baked in a pie.

Isabel Ryan was blundering about in her kitchen, still in her dressing gown, though it was nearly midday. That’s nothing, she thought. I can still be in it at four in the afternoon, I can still be in it at eight o’clock, and then it is time to get back into it and go to bed. Have I been to bed? she wondered. The house was very cold, though it barely registered with her. She did not think about what her body needed; it had its own life. She could not remember how much time had passed since she had rung up Sylvia Sidney; one night, or two, or many more. In a mist of grief and nausea, she clung to the edge of the kitchen sink, swaying gently.

Perhaps she should have been more persistent. The woman had sounded stiff and dangerous, as if she were going to snake down the wires and do her some damage. What had she thought, that she had rung up to claim Colin back? After all these years? It must have sounded like it. All she had wanted was information. What was the child like?

Is it some natural kind of child, she wondered, that looks like Jim, or like its mother? Or is it a mystery baby; and does it get solved? She ran her hand down over her body. If this was the solution, would she know it soon enough to put it in her exposé? It must come along quickly, because she had almost run out of typing paper; she couldn’t get more unless she was sober, and if she was ever sober there was no saying what she might find out, and the task would be endless. She might even find out if she was pregnant or not. Would Jim stay with her, now she had contracted this mysterious swelling? He hadn’t said.

She could feel resolution spreading inside her; another strange organic growth, beyond her control. I will get together some clothes, she thought, even if it takes me an hour to do it. I will go out and drive my car, even if I crash it. I will go upstairs and find that letter that Miss Suzanne Sidney has written to my husband. Then I will take the address and look at my street map, and taking the letter, I will shred it up finely and flush it down the lavatory. Then I will go round and see her. I will wait outside her house and watch her come and go. I will just look on. I shall just show myself, walk down the street. Then she will see what it is like to be Jim’s wife. She will profit by my example; and I will profit by hers.

Or else I have lost everything, she thought. Jim Ryan, Colin Sidney; and my whisky glass as well.

Less than a mile away from Buckingham Avenue, lying to either side of a narrow and little-used road called Turner’s Lane, there was a tract of open ground. It was surprising that houses had not been built there, but the residents of Lauderdale Road, whose gardens backed onto it, regarded it as an amenity, and had fought with vigour the various schemes for its use which had been put forward over the years. And so it had been unchanged for as long as they remembered; a few desolate acres of tussocky grass, stagnant marshy pools, and little thickets of prickly bushes. The residents never went there; there were houses on three sides of it, and on the fourth side only the old canal. They left it to stray dogs and cats, to the odd exhibitionist, to the passing rabbit and urban fox; and to their children.

It was in one of these prickly thickets that Alistair Sidney and his friends had set up their den. When they had reached school-leaving age, and the winter came on, they had thought they would leave dens behind. But their homes were not congenial to them, and they found that they needed it more than ever. They had a clean dirt floor, swept and compacted; branches curved densely above them, making their shelter almost as wind- and weather-proof as a conventional tent. It was not quite high enough for standing, but you could manage a crouch. The thorns left long pink scratches and puncture marks, which sometimes went septic; but Sherwood had stolen a first-aid kit recently, so that was all right. A dense undergrowth protected them from observation; in spring, as Austin said, they’d be practically invisible. If it had only had video games it would have been perfect.

The children had passed many happy hours here, playing with the skeleton that the Brownies had found by the canal.

“They want to do their karate badge, them Brownies,” Austin said. “Then they could of protected it from us.”

“Kari reckons it’s a rabbit anyway,” Alistair said. “She does biology. Don’t you, pimpleface?”

“Nar,” Austin said. “It’s human, that.”

“It could be a mix.”

“A chimera,” said Karen.

“A wot?”

“A chimera. A mix-up. A bit of this and a bit of that. A monster. A thing of hybrid character.”

“Yer,” said Austin judiciously. “Could be.”

Since Christmas, they had occupied themselves in trying to arrange the bones in an intelligent order, and they were immersed in this, one sunless afternoon at half-term, when the sound of crunching wood and vegetation alerted them to an imminent invasion.

“Christ, it’s my dad,” Austin said. “Nobody else has boots like that. Quick, boil-head, get the bones back in the box.”

Karen leaped up and began to shovel the skeleton into the Tesco box in which they kept it between jigsaw sessions. The sound of crashing and scrunching came closer, punctuated by damning and blasting in a powerful male voice. “It is my dad!” Austin hissed. “Quick, get it out of the way. I’m off. He’s bloody violent. He can cripple you with one kick.”

Heavy breathing warned them that the intruder was almost upon them. Austin fled, bent double, through the back exit. Karen shoved the box after him and, grasping the springy twigs and branches, attempted to cover the signs of his retreat. Her hands bled; she fell to her knees and shovelled dead leaves into a mound, banking them against the entrance to the bolt hole. Before she had time to scramble to her feet the intruder was upon them; not the Reverend Teller, but a wild youth, brawny and stubble-headed, wearing boots the equal of the vicar’s, and with leather thongs binding each wrist.

“Jesus,” Alistair breathed. He sized up the lad and knew he was no match. They were at his mercy. Do something, Scab, he thought, distract him, offer him your body. “We weren’t doing no harm, mister,” he said in a whining voice. “Don’t beat us up, we’ll leave peaceable, honest.” Karen, still crouching, stared up at the youth, holding up hands finely beaded with blood.

The youth’s beefy chest heaved. He reached forward; Alistair was taken up by the front of his zipper jacket and held, skull to hairless skull.

“Where’s that friggin’ Austin?” the youth demanded.

“Never saw ’im,” Alistair said gamely. “Who are you? Aw, gerrof, don’t torture me.”

“Me?” said the youth. He breathed into Alistair’s putty face. “I’m his friggin’ probation officer.”

A month later, after Austin had been sent down—burglary, retail premises—the remnants of the gang had met to discuss their problem. They had to face the fact that their den was no longer secure; if they wanted to keep their skeleton, they would have to find a safer place for it.

“Can’t keep it at our house,” Karen said. “We’re moving. Anyway, if you had a box, my mum would look in it.”

Alistair thought. “She would if it was yours,” he said, after some effort.

“She would if it was yours too.”

“You can’t keep it at my house,” Sherwood said. “My mammy would pawn it.”

“Nar, you couldn’t pawn a skeleton.”

“She pawn anything. Or, come Friday night, start stewing, curry bones, mm-mm, delicious, old family recipe from Montego Bay.”

“You Rastafarian git,” Alistair murmured. “Your mammy goes down the chip shop, I’ve seen her.”

Karen giggled. “I bet Lizzie Blank would eat stewed bones. She used to eat everything Claire gave her when she was doing her cookery badge, and some of it was absolutely disgusting.”

“I wish you’d shut it,” Alistair grumbled. “And give me some peace while I’m trying to think.” He squatted, cradling his head between his hands. Suddenly he looked up, his features clearing. “Got it in one,” he said. “What a piece of fucking brilliance.”

“What? What is it?”

“Look, you know our lot. You know what they do. Sleep around, knock off old ladies, receiving stolen goods. But what’s the one thing they don’t do? Mess about with other people’s post.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, all right, suppose a letter come addressed to Dad. Mum would want to open it, she’d be tempted, she’d feel it around to see if there was anything inside it, but she wouldn’t actually open it, oh no, she’d be ashamed. After he’d come home and opened it, she’d sneak it away and read it, but that’s different, according to her.” He tapped his head. “That’s psychology, Sherwood.”

“So?”

“So, Lizzie Blank.”

“We had this daily,” Kari explained. “But she’s left.”

“So, we go down Fletcher’s, nick some brown paper and string, and we do up the bones in a nice parcel. Then we put her name on it, and our address, and leave it in our hall. Like it’s come through the post. Nobody’ll interfere with it.”

“But what when she comes?” Sherwood said. “She’ll take it away, open it up; oh my my!”

“She won’t collect it, dumbo, because she’s left, hasn’t she, she’ll never come back.”

“What when we move?”

“That’ll be weeks. Months.”

“But then Mum might throw it away.”

“Look, I can’t solve everything at one go, give us a chance. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“It sounds feasible,” Kari said cautiously.

“Could try it, man,” Sherwood said.

Alistair pointed to his chest. “Nobel Prize for Being a Clever Bugger.”

“Get the news this morning?” Miss Anaemia asked.

Hardly likely. Mr. K. looked up, fearful, his jaw sagging a little. Nothing came from his radio except strange blips and crackles, and police messages; even when he tuned into “Big Band Special” they were there again when he next switched on.

“There’s this man,” Miss Anaemia continued, seating herself by the kitchen range. “There’s this man knocked off his wife. He’s gone driving round the countryside, pretending to be somewhere else—”

“An alias, is an expression,” said Mr. K.

“Then he’s gone off to the Lake District and dumped her body in a deep lake, and ten years pass, and he thinks he’s got away with it. Then—guess what?”

“But I can’t guess,” Mr. K. said. “Secret murder come to light?”

“There are the police, looking for some other body completely, and what do they find? This chap’s wife, all preserved, just as good as when she went in. And if he’d rowed his boat out twenty feet further, she’d have gone into the deepest part of the lake and they’d never have found her at all.”

“For the want of a nail a shoe was lost,” Mr. K. observed.

“I don’t know about that, but now he’s in gaol. Horrible, innit? What do you think, Mrs. Wilmot?”

But Mrs. Wilmot had slipped off, melted away, as if into the wall.

Two days later, when Sylvia entered the house, she almost tripped over the large cardboard box in the hall. “Damn, what’s this?” she said, scrabbling on the floor for the letters she had dropped. “Karen, are you there? What’s this?”

Karen came out of the kitchen, eating a chocolate biscuit. “Dunno,” she said. “A man brought it.”

“What man?”

“Dunno.” She shrugged. “Postman?”

“Put the light on, will you?”

“Bulb’s gone again.”

“Damn this house.” Sylvia bent down and peered at the box. “I can’t see any postage on it. It’s addressed to Lizzie. Fancy that.”

“Maybe it was a friend of hers,” Karen said, carefully. “This man who brought it.”

“Well, I don’t know what she wants to have her post sent here for. I’d be very annoyed if I thought she’d been giving this address to people. Anyway, if she thinks I’m trailing round after her, she’s mistaken. She can just come and collect it. I’ll phone her up.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” Karen said. “It’s probably nothing.”

“It’s a big box. I wonder what it is?” Sylvia took it in both hands. “Not heavy.” She shook it. “Rattles a bit.”

“Probably something from mail order,” Karen suggested.

“Probably. Must be some cowboy outfit. Don’t even run to printed labels.”

“Well, you know how it is,” Karen said. “You send for something and it turns up weeks later when you’ve forgotten about it, right?”

“Or unsolicited goods,” Sylvia said. “She’s not obliged to return them. I’ll tell her her Rights.”

“I wouldn’t bother.”

“Of course I must. I’ve got her number somewhere.”

Karen quailed. They had not thought of this. It had been a case of out of sight, out of mind; they never expected to see Lizzie again, and they had not thought of Sylvia being able to trace her. A diversion was needed. “What’s the post?” Karen said craftily.

“It’s from the solicitor. Come in the kitchen where I can see.” Kari followed her. Sylvia turned. Her face shone. “We’ve got it,” she said. “We can move. Vacant possession.”

“When?”

“It can’t be soon enough for me. Your father’s taking out a bridging loan. It’ll probably bankrupt us, but I can’t wait.” She sat down abruptly on a kitchen chair, suddenly deflated, the smile wiped from her face. “Only what about Suzanne? I don’t want to go off and leave her like this. She’s my daughter, I love her. And the baby, I haven’t seen Gemma since the hospital. It’s cruel of Suzanne to break off contact like this, not even to ring up and let us know she’s all right.”

“Never mind, Mum. You’ve got me.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said without enthusiasm. She opened her bag and took out her address book. There was a loose sheet of paper inside.

“I’ve got Lizzie’s number here,” she said. “I can ask if she’s heard from Suzanne. It comes to something, when you have to go to a scrubber like that for news of your only grandchild. Number 56, Napier Street. That’s funny. I should have noticed before. I thought she lived at Eugene Terrace, at an Indian shop.”

“Perhaps they evicted her.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Karen, do you have to eat your way through every packet of biscuits that comes into this house? Is it any wonder you’ve got spots?”

It would soon be Easter. The telephone rang often in Mr. Kowalski’s hall. Sometimes he ignored it, sometimes he shook his fist at it and threatened to rip it out of the wall; what was it but a tool for criminals and a source of disease? Sometimes he lifted the receiver, and bellowed down it in one or other of his many languages.

Muriel intercepted the postman. There was another letter for Miss Blank. She opened it. Mrs. Sidney cast aspersions on my writing, she thought; but I can read perfectly well.

Dear Lizzie,

When I phoned up the number you gave me I got this man with an accent. I could not get any sense out of him so I am writing. I am at my friend Edwina’s and this is the address, but do not give it to my mother. Can you baby-sit Gemma next Wednesday? Ring me up and tell me if you can. She is no trouble, she sleeps a lot. We are all going up to Manchester to see about the squat, because it looks as if it might be on again. Sean has reconnected the electricity, and we have met this geophysicist who does a lot of plumbing, it is known as the black economy. I don’t want to take Gemma with me because of the cold, you know what April is, the cruellest month, so please I hope you can. I will be back for teatime and I can pay you.

Love, Suzanne.

Enclosed was a scrap of paper with Edwina’s address and telephone number. “It falls into your lap,” Mrs. Wilmot observed to her landlord.

“What?” Mr. K. dropped back. He was edgy these days.

“No, I mean, opportunity knocks. It’s an expression, Mr. K.”

“You poor old Wilmot,” Mr. K. said sorrowfully. “When the ship sinks, we will be like drowned rats. You, I, Miss Anaemia, all shall go down in the shipwreck of my fortunes, unless our Blessed Lady smiles on us. Those,” he added with some satisfaction, “are expressions too.”

“Well, I hope you’ve been saying your litany,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Course, I don’t know any litanies, I’m a Metho.”

“We need more than prayers, we need revolvers,” Mr. K. said. “Mantraps, Molotov cocktails. You see new woman in the street, watching out of a car? Always watching, watching, seeing who comes and goes. Always silent, silent, silent like the grave.”

“Don’t get carried away,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “You make me shudder with your prognostications.”

“Soon I will lay about me,” Mr. K. promised. “I cannot longer endure the agony of mind. My nerve is twisted to such a pitch—” He picked up a fork from the kitchen table, one of only two he had, and taking it in both hands, bent it until the handle was twisted and the tines drooped. “Like that,” he said. The sweat started out on his forehead. “Like that.”

It seemed to Colin, light-headed in the severe spring weather, that for once things were going his way. His appointment was confirmed, and he was counting off the weeks till the end of the summer term. He had sent Frank a get-well card and a basket of fruit. His colleagues said he was just the man for Frank’s job, and he knew it was true. He hugged himself, mentally, when he went into his office every morning. No more shillings, no more pence, no more sitting on the old school fence, No more geography, no more sums, no more beating on us bums. He had made a resolve that on the last day of term he would go home and turn out every one of his pockets, and blow out the chalk dust for ever, and never never let it back. He would never touch a stick of chalk again, or even engage with the school computer; he would never walk into a classroom again, except as a strict noncombatant. He would be a serious professional man, not a registered child minder, and he would impress his colleagues old and new with his suave, considered, and practical advice. He would be the History Advisor; he would be given the best chair in staff rooms throughout the county, and he would enjoy single malts—though not too many—with an obsequious Brother Ambrose.

Of course, there were many weeks to get through first; but they would be moving in a few days, and then, in part, he would be free. Free of Florence, with her wearisome protestations of innocence, for she never let the subject drop; free of ten years at Buckingham Avenue. At a stroke, he would sever his wife from the canal scheme, his son from his gang, and his youngest daughter from the Brownies; and who knew whether the change of air would not improve Karen’s spots? Whether Suzanne came back or not, no doubt the family survivors could begin to put together some sort of life.

Sylvia was behaving herself, he thought. She seemed content, wrapping newspaper round such crockery as remained, making inventories of their possessions. She was too busy to rake up the past. The telephone stayed silent. Or it rang; but not for him.

Wednesday came. Muriel had set the alarm early, but she woke up without it and turned it off. Just like the old days; as if Mother were standing over her and shaking her.

She pulled the covers up to her chin and lay there, thinking. Emmanuel had explained it to her, or tried to, before they took him back to Fulmers Moor. The unbaptised child is the lodge of the devil; and wasn’t it the Devil in person whom Mother had feared, taking a turn on the landing, peering at them down the stairs? Baptism drives the Devil out; the child gets contented and grows fat. The bad child you put in the canal and the good child you get out are the same one, but the Devil is out, and God is in. That can make a lot of difference. It’s only baptism; a bit more drastic and risky than what you get at the parish church, but there are some babies that are hard cases.

Of course, that was only his theory. He was on the bottle at the time. “Where’s this resurrection you promised?” she asked him. He looked pious. “Easter, of course.” And here it was. Give or take a few days.

Now the house was very quiet; before Jim got up, Isabel was wrapping her parcel. The exposé had turned quite bulky. She couldn’t get it in an envelope. Strange that failure should take up so much space; that foolishness and ineptitude should need so many stamps. Finishing the narrative had not brought her the release she had expected. The more she wrote, the less clear it had become. What were those writing tips she had been given, at the evening class where she had met Colin? But that was as unclear as all the rest, all the events of her life up to now muddied and confused by her fear and sickness in the Axons’ spare room. The strange bulk under her clothes sighed softly, shuffled, and disposed itself.

She sat at the kitchen table, fumbling with her string. She was glad in one way that she had written it. Whatever happened, it would be a sort of testimony. That day, she was going to find Suzanne, for sure; she would give up the futile observation, and go and knock on the door. She would find her, and talk. Suzanne could not harm her, she could not murder her, could she? Why was she so afraid? She would have a little drink, just a small tumbler of whisky to steady her. She addressed her parcel; she would post it on the way.

Would they be able to follow it, at the Sunday Enquirer? They wouldn’t mind, they would print anything. Would they want proof, some sort of circumstantial evidence? There was the file, of course; the file on Muriel Axon. She had kept that. It had been easier to account for its disappearance, than to account for its contents. But the file did not tell the end of the story. The old woman was dead. The baby was dead too. The baby’s mother was locked away somewhere, a person or persons unknown. Was that the phrase? It didn’t seem quite right. Her hand shook as she poured her drink. “MANY YEARS LATER,” she said to herself, “THE FACTS OF THE CASE CAME TO LIGHT.”

Perhaps it would not make sense to the reader. But sense was not her requirement.

She pictured her parcel, travelling in a van along Fleet Street. She imagined the people in the offices of the Enquirer, opening her parcel. Now when people pointed at her in the town, they would have something to point about. Now when they talked, they would have something to say. When she poured her drink, she noticed, she had poured far more than she meant to. She was not going to put it back.

Seven o’clock struck. Jim was running the bath taps. The day had begun. She caught sight of her white face in the dark kitchen window; peaked, blurred, with formless swimming eyes.

And now Muriel was out of bed. She was on her feet, regarding herself in the spotted mirror of the dressing table; the carefully shuttered expression, the drooping lids. She reached out and picked up Lizzie’s wig from its stand. Her high-heeled boots were under the bed, her leopard-skin coat was in the wardrobe. It was the last time she would need them.

Miss Anaemia came in from the street, her teeth chattering. “That woman,” she complained, standing in the kitchen. “It’s her, you know, Mr. K., the one with the hollow face. These DHSS get worse and worse. I know she watches me, but she’s never done anything before. I was just going to the post box, trying to catch the first post with my appeal form, and there she was, squashing a great big parcel into the slot. It gave me a shock, I can tell you. I’ve never seen her out of the car before.”

“And so? What did she do?” Mr. K. asked fearfully. So early in the morning, alarms before his oat flakes.

“So she caught hold of me and pinched my arm. She says, where’s the baby? I say, what baby? I said, I wish I had one, I could get rehoused. She says, don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Suzanne. Suzanne? Who’s she?”

“Related to this Blank, no doubt,” Mr. Kowalski said with a sneer. “Related to Snoopers, related to the giant who brought the bread that day. A woman phones up constantly, asking for Blank. I try everything, sing down the receiver, rude noises.”

“Have you tried leaving it off the hook?”

“But my precious, how shall I follow their tricks? No, we must face it, Anaemia, our number is up. This woman who accosts you, she is the one who looks—so—with the staring eyes, the ghoul?”

“That’s her. The pale one.”

Mr. K. shuddered. “Have you seen Wilmot?” he asked.

“Not come out this morning.”

“She must be given her orders. It is a siege. Please to stay on the upper storey till further notice.”

“You won’t catch me going out there again. That woman’s bonkers. They can insult you, but they’re not allowed to pinch your arm. It’s mistaken identity. I’ll sue them.” She hurried off, rubbing her sore arm. “There’s tribunals.”

Left to himself, Mr. Kowalski lumbered into the hall and drew the big bolts on the front door. He went back to the kitchen and locked himself in. Five minutes later Lizzie Blank came downstairs, carrying her boots. For once, she wasn’t bothered about giving him any frights. He was getting a bit unpredictable, she sensed. By leaning hard on the inside of the door, you could get sufficient play to draw back the bolts without making a noise. This she did; and, in her finery, stepped into the street.

Mr. K. tipped half a scuttle of coal into the range. He might as well be comfortable now. I could have a hearty breakfast, he reflected; except that he had neglected to procure the essentials for one. But truly, he had no stomach for it. He was sick when he thought of dying; sick and cold. But I will defend it to the last, he thought: hearth and home.

From between the worn cushions of his fireside chair he extracted his book of idioms. He picked up his pen, and was overwhelmed by a rush of feeling so violent that his hand shook and he was forced to put it down again and recover himself. All the horrors of the last months flooded back; the voices of strange women, the heavy footsteps overhead. The beating in the street, the blonde impostor on his own stairs; the giant, limping off round the corner. Presently he calmed himself; but his hand still shook when he picked up his pen and wrote: Curtains, Swansong, Terminus: THE FINAL CHAPTER.