by Claire Peate
Hadn’t I bought my house from a man called Eustace Fox a few years ago? A plump man with chequered trousers was all I could recall…
“Anyway,” Peter continued, “Eustace very much wants to meet the infamous Brockley skip planter and he’s throwing a party, a soirée if you like, at his Tresillian Road house, on Saturday night. He would be absolutely delighted if you were able to come along; plus guest, of course. There’ll be lots of like-minded Brockleyites there and I’m sure you’d enjoy it.” He leant close, waiting for a response.
Oh God. Amanda’s magazine-style advice was ringing in my ears: I should get out more and socialise. But, really, did this offer count as socialising? A soirée with Lewisham Council’s Moses and his middle-aged, check-trousered partner? I realised too late that my expression was answering the question for me: DEAR GOD NO! so I tried to smile politely. But Peter Shaw was already laughing.
“I can see you’re not convinced, Edda. But I really think someone with your attitude would fit right in…”
“You’ve got the wrong impression of me. I was really flipping out when I did what I did to the skip,” I explained. “It’s so out of character for me. Usually I’m a very calm and quiet person. I—”
He stopped me in my self-deprecating tracks. “Did you see the yarnstorming in Brockley this morning?”
“Pardon?”
“Yarnstorming. Knitted graffiti.”
“Oh!” I remembered the knitted street light snakes and the tree branch knitted hearts. “Yes, yes I did! That’s ‘yarnstorming’?”
“Yup. And that’s us! You see, we’re a radical bunch and someone who plants up a skip is going to fit in just perfectly. Here’s an invitation.” He placed a small card onto my desk with an address on Tresillian Road. “Come at around nine. And good work with the skip, young lady!”
I sat at my desk, unmoving, for the next ten minutes until the trembling stopped. And then I called Beth.
Four
It would have been easier to have persuaded Madonna to cover up a bit love and put a cardigan on but – finally – I convinced Beth to come with me to the soirée. There was no way I would go on my own: I was hopeless in social situations without my Beth as a prop.
“You don’t have to be so nervous, little Eds!” Beth gave me a hug as we walked down the widening roads towards the party. “Eustace seems like a really nice person.”
“What?” I said. “You know Eustace Fox? You know the bloke whose party we’re going to? Why didn’t you say before?”
“Well I forgot, darling. Of course I know him – he’s selling our flat.”
“What?” This time I stopped dead in my tracks.
Beth slapped her forehead. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry Eds. I didn’t tell you, did I? Honestly, they weren’t making it up when they say that motherhood completely messes with your head. I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Anyway, yes, sorry honey, I should have told you. Jack and I are selling the flat and moving to Surrey.”
“Oh.”
“I know. It’s a shock. I’m so sorry you found out like this.”
“Oh.”
“It makes sense, though. We’ll be near his parents, so that’ll be really helpful. His mum’s already said she’ll babysit for us, bless her, and – well – you know. It’s just nicer out there isn’t it? South London’s so, well … gritty, isn’t it? Not the sort of place you want to bring up a little life. I can’t believe I didn’t tell you we were moving! I’m so sorry, honey.”
I took a deep breath. “’s fine.”
“I knew you’d be OK about it. It’s just so exciting! Jack’s going to view this tiny cottage just outside Guildford tonight and it has a little nursery on the top floor; how perfect is that? It’s pastel yellow and—”
Instantly, I tuned out. Pastel yellow now had that effect on me: it was like a sort of hypnotic trigger, putting me into a state where I could cope with being talked to about the baby. I could go under for minutes, or even hours, as I had done at the weekend when I’d finally managed to drag her out to V-2 and she’d talked solidly about baby-stuff all morning. The hypnotic release was always Edda, Edda are you even listening to me? at which point I would come round and say something like that sounds like a great idea, which usually worked well.
The further Beth and I walked from my house the grander the properties had become, until we reached Tresillian Road where Eustace Fox, friend to Beth, lived. The street was lined with palatial white villas, set back behind perfectly planted front gardens. And Eustace’s house was the most palatial of all. It sported a turret, a balcony, gargoyles, gables and pretty much every Victorian whimsy except a drawbridge and a bronze of Bouddica in a chariot.
Beth stopped her stream of consciousness baby-talk – something about cribs versus cots – and gaped at the villa. “Eustace Fox lives here? He lives here and he runs an estate agency? Urgh, my flat sale is funding his amazing lifestyle. I am paying for this.”
“Do you think we should turn back?” I said, ever the one to chicken out and seek the quiet life in these strange and disappointing times.
“Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid,” Beth grabbed my arm and frogmarched me up the mosaic-tiled pathway. “It was your skip and it’s you they want to see. Stop being such a wuss. And you look great – see, I told you to wear the blue dress with the silver shoes.”
Beth rapped on the vast glossy black front door, like a debt collector on a mission, while I cowered behind. Within a moment it was opened and a portly, jolly-faced man was ushering us in.
“Ahh, Miss Smedley,” he said, seeing only Beth – on account of me cowering behind her. “How lovely to see you again! Do you know, your perfectly lovely flat has had quite a bit of interest. Expect great things in the next few days, but I must say that I am exceedingly sorry that you will be moving out of the neighbourhood: Brockley needs people like you and your charming fiancé in order to thrive. If you change your mind I can put a couple of very exciting properties your way. And you,” he fixed his eyes on me when Beth stepped inside and left me exposed on the door step, “You must be the Lady of the Skip!”
“She is.”
“I am.” I shook the hand that was held out to me.
“Well, I’m delighted to meet you of course! Edda isn’t it? Jolly good. Come in, come in!”
“What an absolutely amazing home you have,” Beth gushed as she walked in, while I mumbled something vaguely similar but was too overawed by the place to fully commit to talking sense. It was incredible. It was, in fact, like stepping into a Victorian period drama so real that at any moment Sherlock Holmes might leap out of a doorway with an opium-addled ha ha! and toss off a tune on his violin. There were animal heads on dark-papered walls, etched lanterns, candelabra and a giant marble fireplace. And all of it in a hallway.
I turned back to the host, who now I realised looked every bit as Victorian as his house. Dressed in tweeds, he sported white whiskers and red cheeks with an air of joviality that gave him the look of a Dickens character: the jolly sort who went about saving East London orphans and handing out hot pies, as opposed to the evil sort who made hot pies out of East London orphans.
The next guests arrived almost immediately after us, so we were shown into a sitting room and the direction of an ample bar pointed out. “I’ll catch up with you soon, ladies,” Eustace Fox said. “Excuse me.”
“Well,” I collected a gin and tonic and handed Beth a mineral water, “he’s not what I was expecting.”
“No – the whole thing is quite odd isn’t it?” We took in our surroundings as we sipped our drinks. There were vast gilt-framed oil paintings, velvet wallpapers, exotic button-eyed stuffed birds in glass jars; the place was a living museum. In fact, apart from the mass of party-goers with drinks in hand, and the flat-screen TV, it could have been the National Trust-preserved house of a wealthy Victorian industrialist. All it needed was some roped-off areas and don’t you even think about sitting on this you common peasant notices on the chairs.
“Glad
you came?” Beth asked.
“I think so. Aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are. We should mingle.”
“I don’t think I really feel like mingling,” I looked at the various groups of trendy slick-haired types, dreadlocked cool sorts and serious barrister types. There weren’t many Council pen-pusher types amongst them. “I wouldn’t know what to say to anyone. Why don’t you mingle and I’ll tag along!”
“Oh come on – don’t be so shy! Look at them all looking at you – I think they know who you are! How cool is that Eds? Eds! Come out from there. I’m not having you hiding yourself away. Mingle woman! Mingle! Do you think all these people live in Brockley? I don’t recall seeing this sort of person in and around Brockley, much. Greenwich maybe…”
“This place is so weird – there’s a giant stuffed bear holding umbrellas at the end of the hallway. A real stuffed bear with teeth and claws and umbrellas.”
“Well, the people look pretty normal. Trendy. But normal.”
“I still wouldn’t know what to say to them.” I said.
“You could tell them you’re here because of the skip?”
“I suppose so … oh my God … Beth, look at that man!”
“I am!” As one we had focused on the spot where the partygoers had parted and there, newly revealed, was the most gorgeous dark-haired arty type leaning louchely against the far wall. A Milk Tray man. A man with jet black ringlets, stubble, an open-necked shirt and an utterly, fantastically, beautiful bod.
“I am carrying my fiancé’s baby and I am lusting after that man,” Beth mused. “Is that bad? Does that make me a bad person?”
“Yes it does.”
“Ah ha, I find you again at last!” The cheerful voice of Eustace Fox boomed behind us.
“We were just – ah – admiring your place,” Beth peeled her eyes away from the very particular place she’d been admiring. “It must have taken you years to get it like this.”
“Oh you’d be surprised,” he said. “When I bought the villa it was almost entirely unmodernised: there was very little work needed to renovate it. I’m glad you like it. What say you, Edda? Is it to your taste?”
“Oh,” I said, focusing for no good reason on the wall of stuffed animal heads opposite, “absolutely.”
Eustace laughed and to my surprise he lent down to me and said in a low voice, “I don’t like the animal trophies either but some bugger shot them a century ago and it seems sacrilegious to throw them away. Makes their shooting seem all the more pointless, don’t you think? Might as well have ’em up. So,” he stood up, “Edda. That is an unusual name.”
“It’s Old Norse.” I replied, taking a liking to him. There was something fun about him, in a jolly-uncle sort of a way. “It means poem.”
“Does it? Does it really? Well, how unique. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with an Old Norse name before. You’re of Scandinavian origin I take it? Although your beautiful red hair and those hazel eyes are quite Celtic…”
“Her parents were Viking fanatics. Totally mad for it all weren’t they, Eds?” Beth spoke up for me.
“Well, there’s a lot to be said for the Vikings,” Eustace contemplated his vast tumbler of whisky. “Lot of bad press in the last decades but everyone’s so damn touchy-feely these days. You see, I admire them: they did a lot of good. Yes they might have been a bit eager with the broad sword and a touch boisterous with the women, but in doing so they gave England its backbone. Wouldn’t you say so, eh? Otherwise where would we be? Overly Norman with a fondness for heavily stylised tapestries… No – we owe our fighting British spirit to those men from across the sea! So, do your parents take part in re-enactments Edda? Hog roasts and sword fights? Eh?”
“I…”
What I wanted to say was a breezy Oh they’re no longer with us, sadly, but experience told me that no matter how breezy I tried to be I would actually end up saying something along the lines of They’re dead. Dead and gone. I’m an orphan! because I’d never mastered the art of unemotively telling people my parents had died. So, I tried to compose myself before I responded. In the composing-silence that followed Beth, love her, stepped in to save me.
“Edda’s parents died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Eustace put a hand on my shoulder and patted it, which was surprisingly comforting.
“It’s fine. Fine.” I waved the tragedy away with the breezy tone I’d been composing myself for. “It was a long time ago.”
“It was quite bizarre, actually. How they died. Wasn’t it, Eds?” Beth laughed. “Plain freaky, really. It made the national papers at the time didn’t it, Eds?”
“I—”
“Well, this is no place for maudlin talk,” Eustace cut in, “Although I mean no disrespect to your late parents, of course, my dear Edda, however they passed into the next life. Now then, I wanted to talk to you, Edda, about your planting of the skip – if you don’t mind my talking openly about your little secret.”
“Oh no. Not at all,” I said, suddenly wondering whether I should actually worry about talking about it. After all wasn’t it illegal, or at the least unauthorised?
“Well, then, I think it shows enormous spunk to do what you did.”
I could feel Beth stiffen beside me, stifling a giggle.
“Eustace! Darling!” A thin, blonde forty-something flew at him with a kiss. While he obliged I looked over at Beth who was pointing to me and mouthing the word spunky. “So sorry to interrupt,” the blonde woman was saying, “but I just wanted to say hello!” she beamed at him. “By the way, Eust – there’s another one of those signs right outside your house. Timing couldn’t be more off could it, darling? Ciao!” and she headed off to the drinks table.
Eustace, frowning, turned to us. “Excuse me, ladies,” and without another word he marched to the front door.
Beth and I stared after him.
“What was all that about?” Beth said.
“I have no idea.”
“What was she talking about? Did you see a sign right outside his house?”
“No. Did you?” I said.
“No—”
“Shall we follow him?” I surprised myself.
“Of course!”
Together, like the contingent of the Famous Five we had always been BB (before baby), Beth and I speed-walked through the house in the direction that Eustace had taken. Taking up a position screened behind the bear with the umbrellas we watched as, a moment later, the man himself crashed back in through the front doorway, purple-faced, staggering heavily and with an enormous yellow metal rectangle on legs wedged under his arm.
“Is that a police sign?” Beth hissed in my ear.
“I think so. Can you read what it says?”
“No, darling. There’s a giant stuffed bear in the way.”
Eustace had now rested the sign on the floor and was busy jabbing a key into the lock of an understairs cupboard door.
The sign was facing us and I could see the words quite clearly.
Woman fatally stabbed here between 1 and 2am, Friday 6th. Witnesses in the vicinity at the time should contact Lewisham Police on the numbers below.
A woman had died outside Eustace Fox’s house in the early hours of this morning. And Eustace had just removed the police sign.
Beth clamped a hand on my arm.
We watched in a troubled silence as he opened the cupboard and disappeared into it.
“Go on,” Beth was pushing me out past the bear. “See what’s inside the cupboard.”
“Bethan! Bloody hell!” Feeling horribly exposed in the bear-free open space of the hallway, I dithered.
“Oh, for God’s sake I thought you were supposed to have spunk? Isn’t that what Eustace Fox said?” Beth came out from behind the bear and took a step towards the cupboard. Empowered, now I had my friend beside me, I stood beside her and we looked into the darkness.
I could see shelves, pegs, coats and hats and…
I gasped. It was an Aladdin
’s cave of crime signs! There were yellow and black metal signs leaning up against the walls, piled on top of one another, hanging from the walls, shouting doom and gloom like a week’s worth of Daily Mail headlines: man attacked here, spate of bags snatched here, woman fatally shot here, man stabbed here, five cars set alight here…
Several men knifed
Man shot
Youth assaulted
Here
Here
Here…
There was a noise from the cupboard. Eustace was coming out.
Beth and I shot back into the sitting room and threw ourselves onto a vacant Chesterfield: she staring dumbfounded at me and me opening the hatch and sinking the rest of my gin and tonic in a single gulp.
“So… That was normal, then,” I said, pulling the slice of lemon out of my throat and hoping that by saying things were normal they suddenly would be.
“No.” Beth said. “That was quite far from normal, I’d say.” She was frowning and stroking her slight bump of a stomach.
“Are you OK?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Just a twinge.” She waved my concern away and fixed a smile on her face. “I probably shouldn’t run that fast.”
“Do you think he’s hiding those police signs because he’s the one that did all that stuff?” I said, after a moment’s reflection.
“Edda!”
“Well – the sign said someone was stabbed right outside his house.”
“Eds, don’t be so melodramatic!” Beth was laughing at me, “Eustace is a portly estate agent. He’s probably worried that all the bad publicity will affect house prices, that’s all. He’s not built to be a bag-snatching, gang-raping arsonist and besides, it wouldn’t be good for business.”
I considered it for a moment. “Yes. You’re probably right—”
Beth yawned and sank back onto the sofa.
“You’re tired.” I said.
“I am.”
“Do you want to go? I don’t mind. I mean – Mr Sign-hoarder doesn’t really do it for me and it’s not like we’ve mingled or anything. This is all pretty weird…” My focus went back to the wall of glassy-eyed animal heads.
