“We need to get this sorted,” said Mr. McKendrick. Byers didn’t answer but removed the petrol-tank cap and put it down on the roof of the car less than an inch from Mr. McKendrick’s crisp white shirt cuff. Mr. McKendrick pressed his fingers against the dusty paint, fighting the urge to move his hand away.
“Willie,” he said, calmly, then stopped as he finally digested what was happening. Mr. Byers was pouring petrol carefully from the first of the cans, standing here in the forecourt of a bloody filling station, a business that the good Mr. and Mrs. Swain had built up by the sweat of their honest brows, pouring petrol not even through a proper funnel but through an old coke bottle with the bottom cut off. Mr. McKendrick raised his arms in disbelief and looked around for witnesses, then slapped his hands down against his thighs and let his shoulders sag.
“Willie,” he began again. “I have already offered you a handsome price for this”—he jerked his head, just catching a glimpse of pink out of the corner of his eye— “and I’m willing to offer more, to top it up out of my own personal funds. And”—he held up a hand as Mr. Byers looked about to speak—“and I’m willing to gift you alternative workshop space, should you feel, in your wisdom, that you require it.”
“Where would this be, then?” said Mr. Byers.
“Far end of the caravan site. The old lock-ups.”
Mr. Byers snorted. “Down the back of the camp-site toilets, you mean? In beside the septic tanks and bins?”
Where you belong, thought Mr. McKendrick, where you belong. He leaned in close to the man’s face before he continued. “What are you getting out of it, Willie?” he said. “I don’t understand. It’s not even a business anymore.”
“Aye, you’d know all there is to know about doing business, James,” said Mr. Byers. “But minding your own’s a good start.”
“It is my own,” said Mr. McKendrick. “I’m the chairman of the committee in the association working to regenerate this town, that I have lived in my whole life, and you’ve been here ten minutes—”
“Five years.”
“—and just because you get some kick out of being awkward, you think—”
“So it’s the regeneration of the town, is it?” said Byers, cutting in on the rising swell of Mr. McKendrick’s tirade. “That’s what’s in your heart, eh, Jimmy? That’s what this is all about? All the meetings and the quiet wee visits and the chequebook waving in my face?”
“What else?” said Mr. McKendrick. He never blushed. His cheeks were ruddy from the golf course—and from the clubhouse afterwards too—but they were no barometer of his feelings. Still his eyes slid to one side and then the other before he could stop them. “What have you— I mean, what are you on about?”
“What have I heard?” said Byers. “Ah now, Mr. Chairman, that would be telling.”
“You’re bluffing,” said Mr. McKendrick. “You’ve heard nothing because there is nothing, and even if there was, who would be telling you?” Then, suddenly pushed beyond his patience at last, he shouted. “Christ, Willie, you ken fine we’ll never get grant money with this dump sitting in the middle like a boil on the bum.”
_____
He edited slightly for Mrs. Poole.
“So I said to him, ‘Willie,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to play games with you. Name your price for this eyesore and let’s get on with it.’ ”
“And how high would you go?” asked Mrs. Poole.
“Well, I’m not a rich man, Grace,” said Mr. McKendrick. Mrs. Poole’s mouth twitched into a quick pucker and when it released again he saw a little curl left at one side where one muscle refused to come under control. He shifted in his seat, two instincts fighting. He hated to be laughed at or even taken lightly, but how he loved to see Grace with a smirk on her lips.
Grace’s lips occupied Jimmy McKendrick’s thoughts more than he cared to admit to himself. She always wore lipstick of a good clear pink (he disliked to see a woman of their age without a bit of lipstick almost as much as he loathed the overdone lips of girls, either too bright and sticky or too thickly coated, pale as wax). Gracie was just right; her lips coloured without being masked and above and below was the perfect downy skin of a handsome woman growing older with ease, fluffy enough to be soft but without either of Mr. McKendrick’s two aversions: bristles, or what was worse, the naked, shining skin of a woman who is dealing with her bristles somehow, whom he always felt scared to look at too closely in case he caught her pathetically halfway between appointments. Mr. McKendrick, being a bachelor, had never grown out of looking at women, or rather, seeing them when he looked, unlike a married man who withdraws into memories of his wife’s young face and looks at what is before him but sees none of it, so that coming upon his wife unexpectedly in the street can be unsettling in a way he’d rather not explain. And visiting her in hospital has him walking up and down the ward looking for the face he holds in his heart and passing by the reality over and over again until a nurse takes pity and steers him and his flowers to the bedside.
“Jim?” said Mrs. Poole. “You were miles away.”
“Not so far as all that,” said Mr. McKendrick. “But anyway, as I was saying, I’m far from rich, Grace, but I’ve been careful. I’ve been more than careful, I’ve been prudent, and besides that I’ve been lucky. So between you and me …” He glanced at Mrs. Poole, to reassure himself of what he knew already: Grace was no gossip. She nodded seriously, but still with a bit of a twinkle. “Between you and me I’m willing to match the bid. Double it. I’ll sell one of the holiday cottages if I have to.” Mrs. Poole looked startled. “I’m like you, Gracie, and like Duncan, God rest his soul.”
Mr. McKendrick blinked. Unexpectedly, he had landed in just the spot he had been trying to reach for weeks, and so he plunged ahead with it. “Business is business, and taking care of business is the only thing that’ll ever get you anywhere. I have no time for anybody who doesn’t understand that. They’re all swank and credit cards, anyway. You know what I’m saying? I support—no, I applaud—I applaud your decision to take rent for the flat, and anybody who says otherwise is just jealous of your good sense.” Mr. McKendrick kept talking, couldn’t stop now he had started, like a pram on a hill, but he could see Mrs. Poole’s face lose the twinkle and the little puckered muscle and turn blank again. Mr. McKendrick, back out in the cold he knew not why, thought about reaching out and taking hold of her, forcing her to talk to him, shaking her if he had to. He came near enough to doing it to make his blood pump faster at the thought, but when he moved it was only to rise from his seat, tuck it back squarely under the table, and say goodbye.
“Jim,” said Mrs. Poole before he could leave. Mr. McKendrick stopped like a dog on a choke chain and came back to her side. “What you were saying about renting the flat and good sense and all that?” She paused; he waited. “The thing is I’m having second thoughts about it. About her.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling, and Mr. McKendrick followed her gaze. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. I’m not sure I can go through with it after all.”
“What’s happened, Gracie?” said Mr. McKendrick. “What’s wrong?”
“I shouldn’t have agreed. It’s too soon after Duncan.”
“But it’s what Duncan would have wanted,” Mr. McKendrick said. “He loved Painchton just like we do.”
“And she’s … not what I was expecting,” Mrs. Poole continued. “I’m just not … I’d be happier if … Besides she’s a right noticing wee sort too. Watches, sees everything. She says nothing, but it’s all going in, you know.”
“All what?” said Mr. McKendrick.
“And young Craig’s been speaking to her too,” said Mrs. Poole.
“Craig?” said Mr. McKendrick. “Speaking about what?”
But the words, too painful to forget, were too harsh to repeat, and she just shook her head.
“She can’t have found out anything that she shouldn
’t from Craig. He doesn’t know.”
“I’m just not sure I can carry on,” said Mrs. Poole. “And I wish you’d listen when I try to tell you.”
Mr. McKendrick patted her shoulder softly and left, thinking hard. He let himself out onto the street and righted himself, plucking each shirt cuff firmly out from inside his jacket sleeves, twanging each cuff-link gently then grasping the points of his waistcoat and giving a sharp downward tug. He took great comfort in the feeling this produced, of layers of well-tailored and properly fitted clothes snapping into place on his frame. He stood for a moment or two until to stand any longer would look aimless and then, almost without conscious thought, he turned about on himself, went in the house door, and climbed the stairs.
_____
She was working, the computer whirring and a desk lamp lighting up piles of papers, the rest of the flat beginning to sink into darkness.
“I think you just keep that thing on in case somebody comes to the door,” he said as he settled himself into an armchair. “I bet if I go through into the bedroom, I’ll find magazines and chocolates and the radio playing, eh?” Keiko laughed back at him. “Now you know I’m only joking, hen, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Keiko. “And anyway, I’m used to it. If my mother went out when I was supposed to be doing my schoolwork, she always put her hand on the television when she came back to see if it was warm. But it never was, because I was always working. I’m always working.”
“Well, that’s a good girl,” said Mr. McKendrick. “So long as you don’t work too hard.” He waited for inspiration about how to begin. To fill the lengthening silence, he went on: “At least that’s one worry I don’t have with young Craig.” He laughed. “He’s full of nonsense, always was. I hope you’d take anything he says with a grain of salt.”
“A grain of salt?” said Keiko. “Is that a proverb? I hear so many things and if I don’t understand, I just ignore them.”
It wasn’t quite the assurance he was looking for, but it would have to do.
“So … how’s it all going?” he said. He laced his fingers together across his stomach in a comfortable gesture and felt his cuffs begin their upward creep.
“The pilot study is complete.”
“This was the smoke and fire questions?”
“It was.”
“And the food will come up next time, you assured me. Because it was food you said you were studying, and it was that that convinced us you were right for Painchton. Someone interested in traditions and beliefs and willing to learn our ways.”
“I’m not an anthropologist, Mr. McKendrick,” she said. “But yes, the food will be there in the end. I’m working on it. The pilot study smooths out the wrinkles in the format and then the profiling questionnaire … smooths out the wrinkles in the subjects—or shows me where they are so I know to allow for them—and then the study itself can begin.”
“You must have patience of a saint,” said Mr. McKendrick. “Not that doesn’t sound very—I mean to say, I’m sure it’s—” He cleared his throat.
“When eating poison, lick the plate,” Keiko said. “That’s a proverb my mother often says. In for a penny, you would say. And also, each to their own,” she said, echoing Malcolm.
“Exactly,” Mr. McKendrick said. “And how’s everything else? The house … et cetera.” And then, his nerve failing him, he changed the subject, almost. “I hope everybody’s treating you well. I drew up a schedule. I hope it’s being adhered to.”
“You mean for entertaining me?” said Keiko. “I can assure you, Mr. McKendrick—”
“It wasn’t supposed to be just tea and a bun for entertainment now and then,” said Mr. McKendrick, frowning. “We agreed we would help you out day to day.”
“Oh!” said Keiko. “You mean the groceries. If it’s the groceries, I don’t know where to begin. I can’t keep up with it all. I’m drowning. In soup.”
Mr. McKendrick chuckled at her and sat back in his chair. “Drowning in soup!” he said. “What a turn of phrase you have on you.”
“I’m not joking,” Keiko said, gesturing towards the kitchen as though Mr. McKendrick could see what was in there; the tubs of soup she made as a last resort when all hope of finishing up the food was slipping away, tubs stacked three deep in the freezer and more than once already defrosted and poured away when new consignments of frozen foods arrived and there wasn’t an inch to spare. Kilo bags of chip shop chips, thin French fries, Cajun skins, extra-thick wedges, crumbed croquettes, and Granny Sarah’s roasties (oven or microwave). And towers of cinnamon bagels, blueberry waffles, croissants (cook from frozen), and brioche (defrost at room temperature for twenty-fours and check that product is thoroughly thawed throughout before serving). And Mrs. Watson’s cauliflower cheese in Pyrex, Mrs. Dessing’s shepherd’s pie in Le Creuset, Mrs. McMaster’s cottage pie in a tinfoil tray like the tinfoil trays from the Imperiolos with the cardboard lids and the sauce seeping out along the seal. And then the knock at the door and it was Mr. Glendinning straight from the cash and carry and he couldn’t resist the Boston cream pies at two-for-one, and she could have a slice now and just put the rest in the freezer.
“Good,” said Mr. McKendrick. “As long as you’re not going hungry. I’d hate to send you home to your mammy like some wee waif and stray and have her thinking we didn’t take care of you.”
“There’s no chance of that,” Keiko said.
“Not that I’m assuming we’ll be sending you home at all, mind,” he added. “Maybe you’ll stay.”
“Maybe I will,” said Keiko. “I have never met with such kindness before. Mrs. Watson and Mrs. McMaster and Fancy. Rosa and the McLuskies—well, Mr. McLuskie, since his wife is so busy with her political life.”
“And Mrs. Poole,” said Mr. McKendrick, resisting the temptation to pass comment on Etta McLuskie’s political life. As if he couldn’t have been the new provost if he hadn’t thought it would be too hard on Grace to see him in Duncan’s chain of office. In a roundabout way, annoyance at Etta helped him. He finally dived in and said what he had come for.
“Do you think Mrs. Poole is all right?”
Keiko could not help her eyebrows rising.
“I just thought,” continued Mr. McKendrick, “with you trained up in it, you know.”
“Trained up? In?”
“All of this,” said Mr. McKendrick, waving his hand at the papers on her desk. “People’s … How people cope with things like … like what Grace is going through.”
“Ah,” said Keiko.
“And what with you being right here.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. McKendrick, but I would never use my training to encroach on my neighbour’s privacy. And even if I couldn’t help forming a view, I wouldn’t share it with anyone. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
Mr. McKendrick drew himself up and back a little in his chair. “Very proper,” he said. “Very commendable.” Then he paused. This was the second time in one day he had found himself bested, but this wee lass was no Willie Byers, surely. “Up to a point, mind you,” he said. “But you’re only human—ethics or no—and seeing her every day you must have some—”
“I’m not trained in clinical psychology, Mr. McKendrick,” she said. “I have no specialism in grief and mourning. And I don’t see her every day, actually. I really can’t help you.”
“Grief and mourning,” Mr. McKendrick said. “So you think that’s all it is, then? Good. I’m glad to hear it. Good to know.” He gave her a sharp look. “Are you all right? You’ve gone a wee bit peelie-wally all of a sudden.”
Keiko nodded. “Just tired,” she said, and he got to his feet.
She could barely hear his goodbyes as she saw him out, struggling to find her feet in a flood of ideas that had surged up too fast for her to get astride them. She had just lied to Mr. McKendrick. She did see Mrs. Poole every day. Because ever
y day Mrs. Poole scrubbed the building in the back yard, even though Malcolm said no one ever used it. Why would anyone do that? Her own words came back to her. “I am not a clinical psychologist; I have no specialism in grief and mourning.” I don’t need one though, she thought. You don’t need training to know that a woman doesn’t clean an unused room because her husband died. You only need to have seen a bit of Shakespeare to know why someone keeps on endlessly cleaning.
There was something rotten here. Wrong play, but true nevertheless. Murray knew and wanted to escape. When he thought she was teasing him about moving his business in there, he had looked ready to kill her. And Janette Campbell knew too. What Keiko had said to Janette Campbell was that Murray had workout machines in the back of the shop, and Mrs. Campbell had thought she meant the little place in the Pooles’ back yard.
The slaughterhouse. Never used but cleaned every day, disgusting to Murray, frightening to Mrs. Campbell.
And what about Tash and Dina and Nicole? Did they know too? Did what they knew make them leave Painchton forever?
She couldn’t explain what Mrs. Watson’s fear might have to do with it. Except that as soon as she had the thought, she realised she could. Mrs. Watson owned the upstairs flat next door; she used it for storage. If she looked out of one of the back windows, she would be able to …
Keiko raced along the hall to the genkan, felt under the pipe, and drew the envelope out. If Mrs. Watson had been looking, she would have seen you. And she would know what you did. And certainly she would have been horrified to see Keiko clutching the letter that threatened to tell them all.
Come to Harm Page 18
