Something to Live For

by Richard Roper

  Peggy smiled sadly.

  “Because when I try and do the same thing, I can’t seem to see anything. It’s that more than anything that’s making me think I can’t see a happy ending. The truth is I’ve given Steve an ultimatum: to clean up his act or that’s it. Trouble being, I don’t really know which way I want things to go. Ah well, I’m sure whatever happens will be for the best.”

  Andrew was feeling a peculiar mixture of emotions. Anger at the big flapping daffodil, and pain at the sight of Peggy, her posture slumped slightly, her defiance undermined by her watering eyes. But there was something else there, too. It struck him that, up until now, he’d been too eager to find an excuse to get close to Peggy, that this had been far too much about him and the fear of where his life was heading. Part of him had wanted a reason to be able to step in and be there for her, which meant perhaps part of him hadn’t cared if she was upset. Well, if he was going to be that cynical and selfish, then he didn’t deserve a friend. And now, as he desperately searched for something reassuring to say to Peggy, he realized the pain he was feeling concealed a different truth. In that moment, he didn’t care about himself. All he wanted to do was make Peggy happy. The pain was there because he didn’t know how.

  — CHAPTER 14 —

  The following fortnight was dominated by death. The coroner seemed to be on the phone practically every hour, struggling to remember which cases she’d discussed with them. (“We talked about Terrence Decker, right? Newbury Road? Choked on a marshmallow? Oh, no, wait, that was someone else. Or possibly a dream I had.”)

  Such was the glut of property inspections they were having to do, at times Andrew and Peggy regretfully sacrificed respectfulness for pragmatism, sorting through the chaos and the mess or the soulless, empty rooms as quickly as possible. The houses varied from a cramped maisonette complete with a dead rat sporting a grotesque grin on its face, to a seven-bedroom house backing out onto a park, its interior overwhelmed with cobwebs, every room feeling pregnant with secrets.

  Peggy had been struggling even before the frequency of the inspections increased. Whether Steve had messed up again and she’d been forced to act on her ultimatum, Andrew wasn’t sure. The first time he’d seen her returning from the loos in the office with puffy red eyes he’d started to ask her if she was all right, but she very calmly interrupted and asked him a question about an upcoming job. From then on, every time he saw her looking upset or happened to hear her in the stairwell having an angry phone call, he made sure to make her a cup of tea, or e-mail something silly and distracting about Keith’s latest hygiene horror. He even attempted to bake some biscuits, but the end results had resembled something a child might use for snowman’s eyes, so he had abandoned them in favor of shop-bought. Somehow, it just didn’t seem enough.

  During a brief respite in the break-out area one afternoon, eating what Peggy referred to as “alternative bananas” (a Twix and a KitKat Chunky, respectively), Andrew happened to mention Ella Fitzgerald.

  “She that jazz one?” Peggy said through a mouthful of nougat.

  “‘That jazz one’?” Andrew said. He was about to admonish Peggy for her description, but then an idea struck him. People still liked getting mix tapes, didn’t they? And what could be better than Ella to cheer someone up? If she could have the same effect on Peggy as she’d had on him over the years, it could even be a revelation, a cornerstone of comfort like it had been for him since he’d first listened to her all those years ago. And so began a series of agonizing evenings spent trying to choose songs that perfectly encapsulated Ella’s essence. He wanted to capture the whole spectrum—upbeat and downbeat numbers, polished and loose—but also just how joyously, infectiously funny she could be on her live albums. The outtakes and the between-song badinage meant as much to him as the most soaring melody.

  After evening five, he began to wonder if it was actually an impossible task. There was never going to be the perfect tape. He’d just have to hope what he’d chosen would have the right sort of alchemy to make it a source of comfort to Peggy whenever she needed it. He decided to give himself one more night to finish it, eventually collapsing into bed way past midnight, his stomach rumbling angrily, at which point he realized he’d been so ensconced he’d forgotten to have any dinner.

  When he presented the end result to Peggy on the stairs outside the office he affected an air of nonchalance to try to hide the nagging voice telling him this might have been a weird thing for him to have done. “By the way, I knocked up an Ella Fitzgerald mix tape for you. Just chose a few songs I thought you would like. No pressure, of course, to listen to it straightaway, or even over the next few days, or weeks, or whatever.”

  “Ah, thanks, pet,” Peggy said. “I solemnly swear to listen to it within the next few days, or weeks, or whatever.” She turned the CD over and read the back. It had taken seven attempts for Andrew to write the tracks out in acceptably neat handwriting. He realized Peggy was looking at him with a twinkle in her eyes. “How long did it take for you to ‘knock this up,’ out of interest?” she said.

  Andrew blew a dismissive and unintentionally wet raspberry. “Couple of hours, I suppose.”

  Peggy opened her bag and dropped the CD inside.

  “I’ve no doubt you’re an excellent mix-tape maker, Andrew Smith. But you’re a terrible liar.” And with that she walked calmly into the office. Andrew stood there for a moment, grinning, albeit slightly confused as to why it felt like Peggy had taken his stomach, heart and several other vital organs with her as she’d left.

  * * *

  —

  There’s nothing like a PowerPoint presentation to stamp out green shoots of happiness, especially one involving sound and visual effects. Cameron was particularly pleased at getting letters to spiral onto the screen soundtracked by typewriter clacks, jauntily revealing that there had been an increase of 28 percent of elderly people describing themselves as feeling lonely and/or isolated. His pièce de résistance was an embedded YouTube clip of a midnineties sketch-show skit that bore no relevance to the presentation but was just, he explained, “a bit of fun.” They sat there in rigid silence, apart from Cameron, who chuckled away with increasing desperation. Just as it seemed the damn thing was finally about to end, an e-mail notification appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen:

  Mark Fellowes

  Re: potential cutbacks

  Cameron immediately scrabbled to close the window. But it was too late. The rest of the sketch played on, the studio audience’s laughter horribly at odds with the new atmosphere. Andrew couldn’t work out if anyone was going to say something. Clearly also anticipating this, Cameron shut down his laptop and made a swift exit, like someone who’s just given a short statement outside court escaping the paparazzi, ignoring Meredith, who’d started to ask him the obvious question of what that e-mail had been about.

  “Shit the bed,” Keith said.

  * * *

  —

  Later that morning, Peggy and Andrew arrived for a property inspection at 122 Unsworth Road feeling shell-shocked.

  “I really can’t lose this job,” Peggy said.

  Andrew decided to try to stay calm rather than add fuel to the fire.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said.

  “And you’re basing that on . . . ?”

  “Um . . .” The calm quickly deserted him. “Blind optimism?” He laughed nervously.

  “I’m glad you’re not a doctor giving life-expectancy odds to a patient,” Peggy said.

  They got into their protective gear, and Andrew looked at the frosted glass window of number 122 and really rather wished he and Peggy were anywhere else but here.

  “Nothing like sorting through a dead bloke’s stuff as a cheery distraction, eh?” Peggy said, putting the key in the lock. “Ready?”

  She shunted the door open and gasped. Andrew braced himself for what lay beyond her.
He must have carried out more than a hundred property inspections in his time, and all these homes, no matter what their condition, left an impression on him, some little detail standing out: a gaudy ornament, a troubling stain, a heartbreaking note. Smells, too, stayed with him. And not just the horrendous ones. There had been lavender and engine oil and pine needles too. As time passed he stopped being able to match the memory to the person or the house. But once Peggy stood to one side and he saw past her, he knew for sure that he would always remember Alan Carter and 122 Unsworth Road.

  At first, it wasn’t clear what exactly he was looking at. The floors, radiators, tables, shelves—every available surface—were covered with little wooden objects. Andrew dropped down to the floor and picked one up.

  “It’s a duck,” he said, suddenly feeling a bit stupid for saying that out loud.

  “I think they all are,” Peggy said, crouching down next to him. If this was a dream, Andrew wasn’t quite sure what his subconscious was going for here.

  “Are they little toys—was he a collector or something?” he said.

  “I don’t . . . blimey, you know what, I reckon he’s carved all of these himself, you know. There’s got to be thousands of them.”

  There was a path through the middle of the carvings, presumably made by those first on the scene.

  “Remind me who this guy is?” Peggy said.

  Andrew found the document in his bag.

  “Alan Carter. No obvious next of kin, according to the coroner. God, I know it’s been busy but you’d have thought she’d have mentioned this.”

  Peggy picked up one of the ducks from a dressing table and ran a finger across the top of its head, then down the curve of its neck.

  “So the question currently running through my mind, other than ‘What the fuck?,’ of course, is . . . why ducks?”

  “Maybe he just loved . . . ducks,” Andrew said.

  Peggy laughed. “I love ducks. My daughter Suze actually painted me a mallard for a Mother’s Day present a few years ago. But I’m not so much of a fan that I’d want to go and whittle a million of them.”

  Before Andrew had a chance to speculate further there was a knock at the door. He went to answer it, for some reason briefly imagining a human-sized duck on the other side, there to offer its condolences in a series of solemn quacks. Instead, it was a man with beady blue eyes and Friar Tuck hair.

  “Knock knock,” the man said. “You from the council? They said you’d be around today. I’m Martin, from next door? It was me who called the police about Alan, the poor chap. I thought I might . . .” He trailed off as he saw the carvings.

  “Didn’t you know?” Peggy said. The man shook his head, looking bewildered.

  “No. I mean, the thing is, I’d knock on Alan’s door every now and then, say hello, but that was it. Come to think of it, he never opened the door more than to show his face. He kept himself to himself, as the saying goes.” He gestured to the carvings. “Is it okay if I have a closer look?”

  “By all means,” Andrew said. He exchanged a glance with Peggy. He wondered if she’d been starting to think the same as him, that despite all the intricacy and craftsmanship, at some point they would likely have to work out if the ducks had any discernible value that could be used to cover Alan Carter’s funeral.

  * * *

  —

  When Martin the neighbor left, Andrew and Peggy reluctantly got on with the job they were there to do. An hour later they were packing up and getting ready to leave, a thorough search of the place for documents revealing only a folder with neatly filed utility bills, and a Radio Times that looked like it had been rolled up for the purposes of killing flies, but nothing that gave any clues to a next of kin.

  Peggy stopped by the front door so suddenly that Andrew nearly walked straight into her, just about managing to keep his balance, like a javelin thrower post-throw.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “I just don’t want to leave this one without trying absolutely everything to find out if he’s got family, you know?”

  Andrew checked the time. “I suppose one more sweep couldn’t hurt.”

  Peggy beamed, as if Andrew were sanctioning one more go on a bouncy castle rather than an additional search through a dead man’s belongings.

  “Take a room each?” he said.

  Peggy saluted. “Sir yes sir!”

  Andrew thought he might have something when he found a piece of paper that had fallen behind the drawers in a kitchen cupboard, but it was just an old shopping list, yellowed with age. It looked like they were all out of options, but then Peggy had a breakthrough. Andrew found her kneeling on the floor, reaching around the side of the fridge.

  “I can see a bit of paper or something trapped there,” she said.

  “Hang on,” Andrew said. He took hold of the fridge and rocked it back and forth in little jerks to move it to one side.

  Whatever it was, it was covered in a thin layer of grime.

  “It’s a photo,” Peggy said, wiping it clean with her sleeve to reveal two people looking back at them. They wore slightly sheepish smiles, as if they’d been waiting a long time to be exposed by someone clearing the dirt away. The man was dressed in a wax jacket with a flat cap tucked under his arm. His silver hair was fighting a losing battle against the wind to stay in place. There were pronounced crow’s-feet around his eyes and wavy wrinkles on his forehead like ridges on a sand dune. The woman had frizzy brown hair tinged with gray, and was wearing a mauve cardigan and matching hoop earrings, an element of fortune-teller about her. She looked to be in her fifties, the man perhaps in his sixties. The photographer had cut them off at the waist, making enough space for a sign above their heads that read: “And a few lilies blow.” There were more signs behind that but the writing was out of focus.

  “Is that Alan, do we think?” Andrew said.

  “I guess so,” Peggy said. “What about the woman?”

  “They’re obviously together in the photograph. His wife? Or ex-wife? Hang on, is that a name badge on her cardigan?”

  “It just says ‘staff,’ I think,” Peggy said. She pointed to the sign. “‘And a few lilies blow.’ I feel like I should know that.”

  Andrew decided that this was enough of a reason to break his usual rule and use his phone.

  “It’s from a poem,” he said, scrolling down the screen. “Gerard Manley Hopkins:

  I have desired to go

  Where springs not fail

  To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail

  And a few lilies blow.”

  Peggy ran her fingertips slowly over the photo, as if hoping to glean information simply by touch.

  “Oh my god,” she said suddenly. “I think I know where this is. There’s this big secondhand bookshop near where my sister lives—oh, what the hell’s it called?” She flicked the photo back and forth impatiently as she tried to remember, and that’s when they both caught a glimpse of something written on the back, in slanting blue pen:

  “B’s birthday, April 4th, 1992. We met after lunch at Barter Books and strolled down to the river. Then we had sandwiches on our favorite bench and fed the ducks.”

  — CHAPTER 15 —

  Andrew watched the funeral director lay the simple wreath at the unmarked grave and wondered how long it would be before it wilted away to nothing. The council usually paid for the wreaths, but recently when he’d asked for funds to do so it had led to increasingly tedious and depressing exchanges of e-mails that got him nowhere. At least he was still able to pay for obituaries in the local paper, as long as the wording was kept to a minimum. In this particular case he’d only been able to achieve an acceptable length by omitting the deceased’s middle name, the sparsity of the notice barely leaving room for sentiment: “Derek Albrighton, died peacefully on July 14th, aged eighty-four.” He supposed one smal
l advantage of the restricted word limit was that he couldn’t act on the temptation to add, “post-cake, mid-wank.”

  He met Peggy in a café that overlooked some railway tracks.

  “You know cranes, right?” she said, looking out of the window as Andrew sat down.

  “The construction machine or the long-necked bird?” Andrew said.

  “The former, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “When you see one of those massive ones by a skyscraper, do you ever wonder if they had to use another crane to build that crane? Or did it just get up there by itself? I suppose it’s all a metaphor for how the universe was created. Or something.”

  A commuter train rattled past.

  “I’m glad I’m sitting down,” Andrew said. “That’s quite a lot to take in.” Peggy stuck her tongue out at him.

  “So how was it today—did anybody show up at the church?” she said.

  “Sadly not.”

  “You see, this is what I’m worried about,” Peggy said, taking a swig of ginger beer.

  “What do you mean?” Andrew said, wondering if maybe he should start drinking ginger beer.

  Peggy looked sheepish and reached into her bag, bringing out the photo of Alan Carter and “B.”

  “I just can’t stop thinking about this,” she said.

  It had been a week since they’d visited Alan’s house and Andrew had tried to convince Peggy that they’d done all they could, that she’d go mad if she kept thinking about it, but she clearly hadn’t let it go. Reluctantly, he took the photo from her. “And you’re sure it’s . . . where was it again?”

  “Barter Books. It’s a secondhand bookshop in Northumberland. I Googled it just to make sure, and it’s definitely the right place. My sister moved to a village nearby a few years ago and we usually pop in on the way to visiting her.”