Come to Harm

by Catriona McPherson

  “You’re not doing the same tonight anyway,” he said. “Tonight you’re just going to stretch your muscles to loosen them off.”

  “But that’s exactly what you said last night,” said Keiko. “You said I was going to stretch out my muscles because I had been sitting all day.”

  Murray ignored her, folding covers and stowing them away in a space on one of the metal shelves. “Come here,” he said when he had finished. They stood side by side in front of the mirrored wall and Murray told her to watch while he rolled his head and shoulders, flexed his arms, rolled his back up and down, and squatted deeply on one leg and then the other.

  “Now copy me,” he said, and Keiko began, letting her head loll backwards.

  “Oh,” she said, looking up. “What happened to the mobiles?” The hanging shapes above the roof beams were gone, just an empty dim space above the lights now.

  “I took them down,” said Murray. “Chucked them out.”

  “No!” said Keiko. “You threw them away? But you must have worked so hard on them.”

  “They were falling to bits,” Murray said, “when I got them down and had a good look.”

  Keiko shook her head and smiled at him. “If I could make anything so beautiful, I would keep them forever,” she said.

  Murray smiled back at her. “Speaking of making something beautiful,” he said and rolled his shoulders again.

  Keiko flushed and his eyes flashed wide.

  “Sorry!” he said. “Christ, I didn’t mean you’re not. I didn’t mean …”

  She felt her flush deepen even further. “I’m not offended, “ she said. “I’m flattered. I’m …”

  “Right,” he said. “Good, then. Let’s crack on.”

  In the mirror, as he moved, it looked more like ink falling in water than a person’s body. Keiko wanted to gaze but kept being distracted by her own little figure beside him as it jerked and wobbled, her hair falling forward in hanks and then back again to reveal the grimace of concentration on her face.

  “Should I hear things crunching?” she panted, but Murray only frowned and kept his eyes shut, the flick of lashes on his cheek mirroring the arcs of his black brows. He dropped his head and started to roll down again, until the backs of his fingers rested against the mat. Keiko dropped forward too, catching her breath as her knuckles banged on the floor. He turned and squinted at her then, his head hard against his braced knees, smiling; a strange smile since his face was upside down, with an unfamiliar line underscoring each eye as some slight swell of flesh, usually invisible, moved out of place.

  “You should be rolling forward trying to feel each vertebra moving separately,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any clunking.” Keiko giggled. “Feel me,” he said, and taking her hand as he straightened, he reached up and placed her fingertips against the nape of his neck. “Press harder,” he said. “Feel the bones.” He closed his eyes and bent his head forward again. Keiko rubbed her fingers over the bones in his neck. When his chin was completely tucked into his chest, he let his shoulders sag and more knots sprang up between his shoulder blades. She traced down each one as it rose out of the muscles around it, feeling the curve of his back rising and the bones of his spine pass one by one under her fingers until finally he was drooped right over and she stood with her palm on the highest point of his body, digging the heel of her hand in gently between pads of muscle to find the last one.

  She hoped it didn’t feel too different when he did the same with his hand on her, but she couldn’t ignore her sudden lurches forward, and she knew when she stopped that she wouldn’t look drooped like a lily on a broken stem; she was straining to keep the position, with juddering legs and a line of sweat forming between her buttocks. Murray pinched each vertebra hard between thumb and forefinger knuckle and tutted softly.

  “Okay,” he said and caught her under her arms as her legs gave way. “That’s as good as it’s going to get tonight. Let’s get started.”

  _____

  Throughout the rest of the week, Keiko came to feel as though she were living two lives side by side.

  Her silent life was all day up in her room, in the bay window. She read, wrote, checked and rechecked her writing, and might have been alone in a capsule on the moon. From time to time she would turn and look across the street at the clouded windows, showing her nothing. And every night when it was dark she stood beside Murray in even deeper silence, and his face—his dark eyes—showed even less.

  Then there was her other life.

  Wednesday evening tea at the Sangsters, slices of the noted roast glazed ham and a basin of potato salad as big as a washing-up bowl, the potatoes floury and still warm when they were dressed so that the mayonnaise clung to every fragment as they crumbled.

  Friday was supper with Mr. McLuskie while Etta was at a meeting. A proper fry-up, he told her, a good old mixed grill. Bacon and chops and liver and sausage squares with eggs and bread fried off in the grease. She tried her best, even though Mr. McLuskie entertained her by telling her all the recipes he knew by heart: hot water lard crust, rough puff, flaky, short and choux until her head as well as her stomach was rolling.

  He talked almost as much as Fancy. Fancy, endlessly inventive, tirelessly imaginative, popping round, emailing, texting, phoning, filling Keiko’s head with characters, places, puzzles, jokes and punchlines until, as well as twenty-five careful, probing stimuli there were twenty-five decoys straight from Planet Fancy. The study would be what it was, as thorough as she could make it, and perhaps she would graduate, but the filler questions—those would go down in history.

  By Saturday the work was finished, and when she stood beside Murray she could see a difference, feel it too. She smiled at him, wondering if he was pleased with her.

  “Rest tomorrow,” he said.

  “Are you sure you won’t join us?” Murray said nothing. “Fancy and Craig are.” Craig had not hesitated for a second when she had asked him. Creep across the road or no.

  “News to me that there is a ‘Fancy and Craig’,” he said. Already he had withdrawn his gaze from her shoulder angles and the set of her knees and begun to look at his own body in the mirror instead.

  “Well, Fancy’s coming and Craig’s coming—I asked them separately—but who knows what might happen.”

  “Over a suet pudding,” he said. “If I can’t talk you out of it, at least I’ll stop in later on, check that you’re okay.”

  nineteen

  Sunday, 10 November

  She was sitting at the window with her legs tucked under, watching for Fancy but checking every few minutes that Malcolm’s van (or even the slightly smaller bulk of Malcolm himself) wasn’t approaching from the other end of the street.

  They came together as it turned out, laughing at the door when Keiko opened it to them. Fancy hefted two plastic bags and waved them, and Malcolm looked at the box he was carrying with a sheepish, down-turning smile.

  “Where’s Vi?” asked Keiko as they negotiated passing bags and boxes, taking off coats and shoes, Malcolm turning slowly as the two girls darted around him.

  “She’s at Pet’s,” said Fancy, with the smallest flick of a glance towards Malcolm’s back. Keiko nodded and followed him to the kitchen.

  “That drain still bothering you?” he said.

  Keiko blushed. It was not her fault, but still she blushed.

  Malcolm wiped down the countertop nearest the cooker and began lifting things from his box: two cellophane bags, one lolling and dark with blood, one a pale block. Beside these he set out a bag of flour, a small dark bottle with an orange label, and an onion.

  “And that’s it,” he said. “That’s all that’s in it. It’s that simple. The best ingredients carefully chosen and combined.”

  “You don’t agree with Mr. McLuskie, then?” Keiko said. “He told me about bridies and about how the meat doesn’t matter as long
as the pastry’s right and you use enough pepper.”

  “What a bloody cheek,” said Fancy. “Doesn’t he get his meat from you?”

  Malcolm nodded, looking unperturbed. “He didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “He means it doesn’t matter what kind of meat it is—mutton, beef, pork, you name it—he didn’t mean the quality. Besides, he’s a baker: of course he’s going to care most about the pastry. Each to his own.”

  “You’re nicer than me, Malcolm,” Fancy said.

  “Suet,” said Malcolm, tearing at the pale bag and lifting it, letting a white loaf of fat fall with a thud onto the plate. He moved a hand towards the dark bag but stopped before he picked it up, plunged one arm into the box, and shook out a clean apron. He pushed his head through the neck strap and poked the strings around his sides.

  “Let me,” said Keiko. She picked up the end of one apron string and held it while she walked around Malcolm for the other. Each string had an extra ten or twelve inches neatly stitched on to the end.

  Malcolm made a single huge movement, brushing Keiko off him. She took a step backwards, but he was smiling down at her.

  “Don’t crowd me,” he said. He tipped out a thick slice of beef and a cluster of dark kidney then wiped his bloody hands down his clean apron. Keiko squeaked.

  “You use up paper, I use up aprons,” Malcolm said, looking away and missing Keiko’s quick smile, then he took out a flat wad of kitchen paper and unravelled it carefully to reveal a knife, ten inches long and four inches high, the blade glittering and the handle gleaming almost as much through use and care. “Which reminds me,” he added, “how did the pilot pan out?”

  “Are you going to do it, Malcolm?” asked Fancy. “Because if you are, we can’t talk about it.”

  Malcolm shook his head. He had his eyes fixed on their faces as his hands worked away at the beef, the blade in his right thunking over and over again down into the meat and his left scraping the cubes away from it and flicking fatty scraps aside.

  “Be careful,” Keiko said.

  “Good idea,” said Malcolm, solemnly. “I’ll do that.” Keiko and Fancy laughed and he turned back to his work, nicking at the kidneys with the point of his knife now, stripping nameless strings away from them.

  Fancy turned back to Keiko. “I’ve had a couple more ideas.”

  “Too late,” said Keiko. “The new questionnaires are printed.”

  Malcolm was mixing the flour and suet, stirring his knife round in the bowl, adding water drop by patient drop.

  “Listen,” he said, and they both leaned forward. He added another drop and from the bowl came a sticky sound as though a small creature was chewing on something wet.

  “Nearly there,” he said and smacked his lips. Another drop and the sound changed again, slower and more muffled, then he put down the water jug and knife, lifted the tangle of dough out of the bowl in both hands, and began to work it around on the board, the blood between his fingers streaking and spreading through the ball as he kneaded.

  “You never warned me you were printing them already,” said Fancy, grimacing as she watched Malcolm working.

  “Already?” Keiko cried. “It starts tomorrow. I’ve almost finished the stimuli for the first full run of the actual study—the questionnaire after next.”

  “The food ones?” said Fancy. “Get lost, you have not.”

  “Kale juice to lower blood pressure,” Keiko said, “chocolate worse than cheese for cholesterol, toxins concentrated in the skin of apples but solved by peeling them, and fecal contamination in ready-to-use organic salad leaves.”

  “And you’ll check back later to see if some idiot thinks there’s shit in kale?” Fancy said.

  “Uh, to see if the message stays attached to the context so … yes, roughly.”

  “What do you think, Malcolm?” said Fancy.

  Malcolm shrugged, the movement making the cloth of his shirt creak. He had rolled the pastry out and now he took a bowl from the box and started to press the sheet of dough into it, working with deep concentration, his hair falling heavily over his face. Then he lifted the chopping board and Keiko was astonished to see the pile of meat and sliced onion disappear comfortably into the bowl that had seemed so small under his hands, hardly room for him to move his fingers around. He carried the filled bowl to the sink and held it under the cold tap.

  “No!” said Fancy. “What are you doing?”

  “Making gravy,” he said, grinning.

  “You can’t pour water into pastry, Malcolm,” insisted Fancy. “Even I know that.”

  “But suet pastry,” said Keiko, “it is like dumpling dough, isn’t it?”

  “Hmm,” said Fancy, “I’ve never really believed in dumplings. How can you boil flour?”

  “How can you not believe in dumplings?” asked Keiko, laughing and trying to catch Malcolm’s eye.

  He waited until their attention was back on him and then walked carefully back and set the brimming bowl down again. He laid a blanket of dough over the top and tucked it in fussily, nipping at the edges with dampened fingers. When it was tamped down to his satisfaction, he took a piece of folded foil out of the box and fitted it over the top, then tied it tightly to the rim of the bowl with a length of string and fashioned a handle, his thick fingers working quickly over the knots.

  “Now,” he said, dangling the trussed bowl from one fingertip, “you steam it gently for five hours and it’s ready.” His smile widened as Keiko and Fancy’s faces fell.

  “Malcolm, this was meant to be lunch,” Fancy began, but he held his free hand up towards her and inclined his head patiently with his eyes closed.

  “This one goes home with me tonight,” he said. “And this one”— he lifted an identical pudding basin out of the box—“which I prepared earlier and cooked for four hours this morning, goes back in for an hour and will be ready at one o’clock sharp.” He began to tidy away his things, lodging his scissors safely in the middle of the ball of string and stacking the used plates.

  “So that was all for show?” Fancy said.

  “Keiko wanted to watch,” Malcolm said.

  “Right, my turn,” said Fancy. “And if you think that was impressive …”

  Craig arrived as she was sorting through a heap of packets tipped out on the table. He rapped on the door, shouted hello, and strolled along the corridor towards them, his shoes making the same metallic clunk as his uncle’s on Keiko’s thin strip of carpet.

  “Where’s Murray?” he asked as he entered the kitchen. Fancy rolled her eyes and Malcolm turned away towards the sink and started to run hot water.

  “Would you like a drink?” said Keiko.

  “Wait two minutes,” said Fancy. “Watch this, Malc. Sherry, cream, choc chip cookies.” She poured a pool of sherry onto a plate, took a biscuit daintily by its edge, dipped it briefly and laid it down. When there was a soaked biscuit on each of four plates, she plopped dollops of cream down on top of them. Then more biscuits, soaked and pressed down on top of the cream, and she carried on until there were four squat towers of biscuits, spreading slightly at the base as the sherry softened the bottom one. She spread the rest of the cream on top and shook a packet of chocolate buttons over them. Most of the buttons stuck, a few landed on the plates, and one rolled away under the fridge.

  “Ta-dah! And the really neat part is …” Fancy poured sherry into four glasses, filling each one perfectly to the brim and ending with the bottle upside down and empty. Keiko clapped and Malcolm followed her, clumping his hands together three times then letting them drop to his sides again.

  “Nothing like good home packet opening,” said Craig. “Isn’t Murray coming? Where is he?”

  _____

  Murray was in the workshop. He sat on his heels by the Harley, at his side a blue four-bottle wine carrier holding chrome polish, wax, and leather food, the last compartment
stuffed with a soft roll of chamois leathers and yellow dusters around a dry paintbrush that he used for the awkward corners. Beside the Vincent was a red wine carrier; there was a green one by the Squariel, and two yellow ones lay between the two BSAs, the finished Golden Flash and the poor deformed Bantam, which sat cocked onto their rests at just the same angle, their front wheels turned in to face each other, looking like two dancers frozen in the middle of their minuet.

  Murray’s small window looked out at the lane and the yard wall, taking in just a corner of the Pooles’ slaughterhouse, and he knew that even if he moved right up and put his face against the glass, he couldn’t see into Keiko’s kitchen. Instead he had to content himself with looking out at the sliver of view they shared and straining his ear to catch some sound of the four of them, perhaps sitting there in the steamy warmth with the window thrown open, laughing and drinking.

  In fact, Malcolm was in the kitchen alone. Keiko and Fancy were setting the big table in the bay window. Craig picked up a completed questionnaire and started leafing through before Keiko could stop him.

  “Okay, okay,” he said when he saw her face turn pale. “But what a temptation. Who all did it?”

  Keiko ignored him.

  “If you want a gossip,” said Fancy, “how about why Janette Campbell would be so pissed off that Murray’s showing Keiko how to lift weights.”

  Keiko stared at her. That had been a confidence shared between friends: two confidences, in fact. Fancy must know that.

  “Search me,” said Craig, throwing himself into an armchair and turning to face the doorway as they all heard the sound of Malcolm coming out of the kitchen. “You got any clue?”

  Malcolm surveyed the narrow armchairs before moving towards the sofa and settling himself. Fancy took the other chair and Keiko perched up at the far end of the sofa from Malcolm, both heels hard on the carpet, bracing herself against the gradient that threatened to throw her down against him.

  “Mrs. Campbell?” said Malcolm. “I can’t think. Unless … Did you mention Byers’s place? This is going back years, mind, but she can be bit funny about Willie Byers.”