“Nah, that’s the stone floors,” Fancy said.
“Upstairs?”
“Oh, yeah.” Fancy jumped up and down three times, stamping her feet as hard as she could when she landed. The petals on a vase of chrysanthemums did not even shiver. “Stone floors, stone walls. Never hear your neighbours here, girl. You might as well be bricked up in a dungeon. And Mrs. Watson from the fruit shop only uses her upstairs for storage now since that weirdo niece stopped coming, so you haven’t really got neighbours. Not at night, anyway.”
“The peace will be very welcome,” Keiko said.
“And what do you think?” Fancy asked. “Of the flat. Of the …” She waved her hand around.
“It’s very spacious,” said Keiko. “Well equipped.”
“You hate it,” Fancy said. “I don’t blame you. I said we should go to Ikea and get everything new but they were all, ‘Oh, no, my granny left me that sideboard,’ and ‘we started out our married life with this bedroom suite. There’s nothing wrong with it.’ So tough luck and brown carpets.”
“They?” Keiko asked, leading Fancy into the kitchen. She wondered if it was the same they who wouldn’t listen to Mrs. Watson.
Fancy lifted the edge of the blue oilcloth to inspect the tabletop. “The Traders,” she said. “Or—you know, the other Traders. Because I am one. I’ve got the shop and Pet proposed me and Craig seconded me, and it’s his name on the lease over there so there was nothing any of them could do about it. Ha!”
“I wanted to ask about your shop,” Keiko said. She had opened a box of biscuits and got a plate out of a cabinet.
“Yeah, see, what that was, was I had to find a niche, right? And fill it. But there wasn’t one—just loads of bits of niches, so I’m filling them all.” Fancy plucked three grapes from the bunch that Keiko had set on the table and threw them up in the air one at a time, ducking her head to catch them. “I’ve got a dry cleaning franchise and a pet food franchise and—this is a bit cheeky, but Viola’s dad was married, see, and he was a rep for Canon and I managed to get a great deal on an old photocopier and a printer and a fax and all that. Well, they were free actually, but that’s all I’ve ever seen from the bugger, so I’m not beating myself up about it.”
“Who is Viola?” said Keiko.
“Oh yeah right, my kid,” said Fancy. “My daughter, you know.”
“I see,” said Keiko, then frowned. “But all those feathers and pink fur …”
“Yeah, see no, that was the nuns. The nuns were mad keen on sewing. We kept telling them that word-processing or spreadsheets or that would be tons more handy, but basically they had loads of sewing machines and they didn’t have no computers, so there it was. Anyway, it all started from people maybe bringing in stuff for dry-cleaning with like a button off or something. Or they might be getting stuff cleaned to pack it away because it didn’t fit anymore. And I would go, ‘Well, I could alter it instead.’ And so I was slogging away one night and it hit me! Fancy dress costumes!”
“Of course!”
“Because you don’t need expensive fabrics—you don’t really want them to last, because of getting beer and that all over. You just knock them together and then chuck them when they get disgusting. So, six months and a few gorilla suits later and I’d paid back the startup loan. And then the novelty cakes thing grew out of the party costumes, really. And because Pet’s a florist so she can always steer them my way.”
“That sounds very sensible,” said Keiko. “Who is Pet?”
“Petula McMaster,” said Fancy. “My foster mum. So all I want now is a name that says cake, cleaning, and fancy dress. Everybody’s got their own printer-scanners now so I’m only keeping that going till these machines peg out. And I’ve stopped the pet food, because pet food and cakes together was never going to be big. Craig McKendrick came up with ‘Fancy That,’ which is okay, but I don’t know.”
“McKendrick!” said Keiko, latching on to a familiar name like a drowning man to a buoy. “And Fancy is a nickname?”
“No, it’s short for Frances, but yeah, kind of. And anyway I should wait till I see what ends up being the main thing, because the aromatherapy might take over completely. So long as I can …”
“What is it?” said Keiko. Fancy had taken a deep breath and was letting it go slowly. “Are you all right?”
“God, I hope so,” said Fancy. “I’ve spent a fortune on it, so I’d better be.” She selected another grape, put it between pursed her lips and held it there for a second before sucking it in with a pop. “Anyway, didn’t mean to go on. Only I don’t often get the chance for a good old goss.”
“You are surely very busy with your business and your daughter,” said Keiko.
“Well yeah, there’s that, but I’m not exactly in demand for tea and cakes. But I’m not saying anything. You’ll make up your own mind.”
Keiko thought of Mr. McKendrick and wondered if that was all that lay behind it: a single parent, a fostered child. “It was lovely to listen to you,” she said. “You have a most easy to understand voice.”
“That’s cos I’m English, instead of Scottish,” said Fancy. “From Bedfordshire. Near London, you know? I came when I was nine.”
“To your foster mother,” said Keiko.
“That’s it,” said Fancy, giving Keiko a square look.
“Who must be wonderful if you stayed here, so far from home.”
“Well, I came back is more like it,” said Fancy. “Landed on her doorstep with a baby and all my stuff in black bin bags.” Fancy bit her lip. “I talk too much,” she said. “Talked your bloody ear off, haven’t I?”
“No,” Keiko said. “You are very kind.”
“Yeah, I’m some kind of angel, me,” Fancy said.
“I mean it,” said Keiko wondering what was wrong suddenly. “I need one person in this town I can understand.”
Fancy smiled again at that. “I’m here for keeps this time,” she said. “No matter what, I couldn’t take Vi away from her granny. And speaking of Vi, it’s chucking out time. Can I watch for her out the front?”
“Of course,” said Keiko. “But … no matter what?”
“Ha!” Fancy said. “I thought you understood me.”
_____
They stood side by side in the bay window and looked down at the street.
“That’s Janice Kelly. I was at school with her. I bet she looks up. Yep, there you go. Hi, Janice.” Fancy waved to the young woman. and Keiko raised her hand shyly too. Janice Kelly gave Keiko a tight smile. In the distance a shrill bell sounded and almost immediately a faint bubbling chirp began, like far-off geese.
“She’s a friend of yours?” Keiko said.
“School’s out,” said Fancy, and pressed her cheek against the glass, craning up the street. Keiko pressed her face to the other pane. “Janice? She’s all right. They all are really, I suppose. Now, that—look quick—that’s Craig McKendrick, in the ironmongers.” A boy in a grey overall came out of the shop across the road, looked into the window for a moment, shook his head, and went back in.
“Mr. McKendrick’s grandson?” said Keiko.
“His nephew!” Fancy wagged her finger, laughing.
“Just like this morning,” Keiko said. “I thought the man called Malcolm was Mrs. Poole’s husband.”
“No!” Fancy turned towards her, eyes like eggs. “You didn’t say that, did you?” she asked, but then seeing Keiko’s brow crumple, she hurried on. “It doesn’t matter really. It’s just that Mr. Poole died not long ago.”
Keiko put her head in her hands, but Fancy spoke fiercely.
“No! It’s not your fault. Somebody should have told you.”
Down on the street, gaggles of little children were beginning to tumble past, weighed down by the enormous satchels sliding down their backs.
“Poor Malcolm, though,” said Fancy
.
“He didn’t hear me,” said Keiko. “He wasn’t there.”
“Oh, so you haven’t met him? Maybe I should tell you …”
“I’ve seen him,” Keiko said. “He seems … very nice.” They glanced at one another, not smiling.
“Have you seen his brother?”
“Is he … like Malcolm?”
“God no, not hardly,” said Fancy. “Poor Malcolm.” She sighed and then pulled away from the window slightly. “Here she comes. Check the state of her hair.”
A thin girl, one of smallest ones, with hair the same bright brown as Fancy’s but springing out behind an elaborate hair band, was hopping down the street, the middle one of three, all hopping and holding hands tightly as they bunched and surged.
“They’re coming back to my place,” said Fancy. “I said they could do face-painting if they were good.” She let herself out of Keiko’s flat, bounded down the stairs to the street, and stood hopping in front of the three little girls, making them laugh.
Across the street, behind the net curtain in the flat above the hardware shop, Mr. McKendrick stood looking over towards the Pooles, watching.
five
Keiko, walking back through to the kitchen to wash the cups, threw a grape up in the air and ducked with her mouth open. It bounced off the bridge of her nose and fell back onto the table. She put it in between her lips and sucked it in, then coughed it back out of her windpipe and bit it in two before it could damage her any more.
“Chucking out time,” she said out loud. “Check the state of her hair. Since that weirdo niece stopped coming.” That was what she had been pining for: good, natural, idiomatic English that would stop her sounding like a schoolgirl.
“I wouldn’t stir my tea with your comb,” she said and shuddering again decided her: she would indeed ask guests to remove their shoes. Which meant she needed a genkan.
In her bedroom, she tipped clothes out of the big case onto the floor, pulled out the thick plastic sheet that her mother had insisted she use to line it—I’m going on a plane, Mother, not a sailing ship—and carried it back to the front door. She would go to the hardware store later, the ironmongers as Fancy had called it, and see if there was something more sturdy, but for now she shook out the plastic and laid it flat, tucking it under the edge of the doorframe, trying to thread it along under the bottom of the radiator. But no matter how she worked away at it, pulling and coaxing, something was stopping it from going all the way.
Holding her hair back, Keiko bent her face down close to the carpet and peered under the radiator. What she saw there made her smile: the Pooles, the Traders, whoever it was who had painted the flat, had done it the easy way, just reaching in around the radiator with a brush. Here, right underneath it, the top half of the base-board was a dark glossy green, and Keiko could see the faded stripes of old wallpaper too.
Now if she could just work the edge of the plastic past that little valve … But that was not what was blocking the way. Something else was in there. She stood up, but there was a shelf above the radiator and she couldn’t see down behind it. She knelt again. She didn’t want to put her hand under there without knowing what she was touching. But it couldn’t be anything too bad, surely not anything organic because, trapped behind the hot coils of the radiator like that, it would have smelled and someone would have noticed. Keiko wondered for the first time who had lived here before and how long the place had been empty.
She was beginning to get a crick in her neck from crouching. And anyway, there were no snakes in Scotland, and there surely could not be mice in a flat with a stone floor. Very tentatively, she curled her fingers up between the pipe work and the wall, then she let her breath go in a rush. It was only a piece of paper. She gripped it between two fingers and drew it out. An envelope. It must have fallen down the back of the shelf above and been forgotten there. Then she looked at the direction on the front and frowned.
for you, it said.
For me? thought Keiko.
She sat back on her heels and stared at the thing. It was yellowed and brittle, dusty from its time in there. So, not me, Keiko told herself. But who then? And what was it? Was it a love letter? for you seemed very intimate, somehow.
She knew all about invitations and thank you notes and letters of application and complaint, but her English teacher had never covered love letters.
Whatever it was, she decided, it was the business of the flat’s owner not its tenant. Slipping on her shoes, she trotted downstairs to hand it over to the Pooles.
She hesitated in the shop doorway for a moment, expecting smells to match the exuberant sights in the window, but it was mostly cold and soap with just the faintest metallic base note.
“Hello?” she said. The shop was empty—her voice rang back at her off the tiled walls and the glass counter—but there was a light on in a cubicle at the back, behind a frosted window. She craned around the counter to where a tiled passage with a red painted floor disappeared into darkness. “Mrs. Poole?” she called out. She stepped behind the counter and tapped on the door of the cubicle. There was a slow, shifting noise inside and the door opened. Malcolm Poole was standing there.
“Sorry,” said Keiko and stepped lightly back so that she was standing on the customer side of the counter again. Malcolm, turning sideways through the door, came towards her.
“I’m sorry I frightened you. Before, I mean,” he said. His voice was low and muffled, and Keiko had to lean in to catch his words.
“Not at all,” she said. “You were very kind.” And she held out her hand to shake his. Malcolm’s hand did not reach far beyond his body and he leaned forward, apparently from the ankles, his white rubber boots squeaking. His hand was hot, as if he had just washed it in scalding water.
“And what can I do for you now?” he asked her.
“It’s about … mail,” Keiko said. “What to do with mail that’s not for me. If any arrives.” For some reason, she didn’t want to give this man what might be a love letter. She had, without thinking, put the envelope behind her back.
“It shouldn’t,” Malcolm said. “Wee place like this. The postie knows where everyone is and when they move and where they move to. It’s not like Tokyo.” Then he moved forward again, just a pace. “You’re … you’re okay up there, are you? Finding everything? Don’t need anything? Groceries or what have you?”
“Need?” said Keiko, stopping at the door. “I’ll never use up what’s there. I’d end up like an elephant.”
Then feeling her face change colour, she bobbed a little bow and left him.
_____
Mrs. Watson was in the window of her shop and rapped on the glass as she caught sight of Keiko. She held up a cauliflower and mouthed something.
“What?” said Keiko, putting just her head round the door.
“Just in,” said Mrs. Watson. “Do you know how to make cheese sauce?”
“I’m going out tonight,” said Keiko. “To a banquet.”
Mrs. Watson hit herself gently on the head with the cauliflower, leaving a few sprinkles of its curds among her sandy hair.
“Of course you are,” she said. “So am I too. Cheerio just now and I’ll see you th—”
Keiko was halfway out the door and couldn’t be sure, but she thought Mrs. Watson’s voice had dried suddenly. She looked back in through the window. The little woman was standing quite still, staring at Keiko, at her hand, at the envelope she was holding, and her face had fallen out of its crinkled smile. She swallowed and, as if her strength had suddenly been sapped, the cauliflower dropped out of her hand and rolled away.
“What is wrong?” Keiko said, coming right inside. “Are you ill, Mrs. Watson? Do you need to sit down?”
“You’ve only just got here,” Mrs. Watson whispered. She shook her head. “You’ve only been here a day.” Then she hoisted a smile back onto her face and wi
ped her hands together. “Never mind me,” she said. “I’ve not got the sense God gave geese.”
“Geese?” asked Keiko.
Mrs. Watson laughed. “See? That’s what I’m saying. Never mind me.”
_____
Keiko went slowly up to her flat again. She had put her hand against the glass door when she leaned in. How had she been holding the letter? Could Mrs. Watson have seen what it said on the front? Could she see for you?
Inside again, standing on the makeshift genkan, Keiko turned the envelope over and over in her hands. It was so dry from the heat the glue would give way if she flexed it, more than likely, and then … Stop it, she told herself. She was here for one reason and one reason alone. Of course, she was very grateful to the people of Painchton, for the flat, and she would thank them tonight and acknowledge them in her thesis when it was done, but their feelings and their expressions—their leftover mail, for heaven’s sake!—were nothing to her.
She laid the envelope down on the shelf and walked away.
six
The dining room upstairs in the Covenanters’ Arms was filled with what looked to Keiko like people in uniform. Or at least the men were in uniform—dark blazers with gold buttons and badges on their lapels. The ladies were costumed like a chorus—pleats and ruffles in just three colours: a muted pale purple, a soft turquoise, and a very faint peach. They smelled sweet when they wrapped their arms around her, their necks powdery and floral, their faces creamy and rich as they transferred lipstick and foundation to hers. The men did not kiss her but tucked her shoulders under one armpit and shook her back and forward. Until Mr. McKendrick broke in.
“Now here’s someone you need to meet,” he said, taking her hand in one of his and stroking it with his other. Keiko followed his eyes and saw the young man from the ironmongers standing in the doorway, a glass of beer in one hand. He caught her eye and walked over.
“Craig McKendrick,” Keiko said. “Fancy Clarke told me who you were.”
“That’s the idea,” said Craig McKendrick. “Get into the Painchton spirit from the off.” He took a deep drink from his beer glass and looked around the room at the rest of the company.
Come to Harm Page 3
