Now You See Me

by Lesley Glaister

  My home is in a big tumbledown house with a room like a tower coming out of the roof. It’s got a slippery cobbled drive with moss growing up between the cobbles. There’s a lamp post, one of those old gas ones. It doesn’t work of course. You go down the drive, beside the house. You go round the back and because the house is on a slope you come to the cellar door, under some stairs that come down from the kitchen door. Well I live in the cellar which is not as bad as it sounds because there is at least a little window. With net curtains. Cobwebs actually but they work the same.

  There’s a sink with a tap and a toilet outside. What more could a girl want? And it’s got electric light. It’s damp but I heat it with Calor gas. The house belongs to Mr Dickens. I clean for him two afternoons a week and soon after I started I discovered the cellar. The good thing about Mr Dickens – well not good for him but good for me – is that he can hardly walk. He has to use a Zimmer frame so he’ll never be able to get down to the cellar again. He’s half deaf too, so he doesn’t hear me and I can even listen to the radio. I’ve been here months. It’s here I got myself together, and really got my balance back.

  Mr Dickens has got a whole lifetime’s worth of stuff stowed away, all sorts of things. Some of them very useful to me. A canvas bed, a couple of deck chairs, a kettle. It’s OK.

  I like Mr Dickens. He’s ancient and a wreck to look at but interesting. He’s full of stories. He hasn’t gone soft in the head or anything like that. He does ask me about myself but I’m evasive. Not rude, I answer his questions but I don’t give anything away. You can say anything, you know. Who really cares if it’s the truth?

  I felt furious with the Doggo person when I thought about it. He really dumped me in it. There I was minding my own business, living my own life, maintaining my balance, when he barges in and puts me in a position where I end up having to steal a bag I don’t even want. And that slow smile, that eyeful. The more I thought about it the more mad I got. Why was I so easy on him? Letting him go off like that leaving the table scorched and not giving a shit about me or my job. I got so angry I could hardly sit still. You cannot keep your balance if you feel like that.

  I think myself up to the wire but I can’t put out my foot. It is too deep below me and too dangerous. I am not steady enough to balance. I have to sort this out. I can’t have people breaking into my life and spoiling my balance like that. I just can’t have it.

  Four

  When I arrived at Mrs Banks’ on Friday a figure lurched out of the bushes. It was Doggo and he nearly stopped my heart. I had been OK. Getting on OK. Though the day before Mr Dickens had told me a really horrible story. You can be safe and steady for weeks, then suddenly everything starts to go awry. Things happen, people turn up, people tell you things you really don’t want to know.

  Thursday afternoons is Mr Dickens. The obvious way would be to go up the cellar stairs and emerge in his hall, but those steep stairs – there’s no light and – and anyway I have to give the illusion of having just arrived.

  So I creep out, up the cobbled drive on to the street, then back up his front path, which is broken and lumped up with roots from the trees that stretch across as if they’re trying to join hands. I press the doorbell – which is quite something. Mr Dickens had a school kid round doing a GCSE technology project on a doorbell for the hard of hearing. He must have got an A. When you press the button, which is ivory and crazed like an old tooth, you get an ear-splitting blast of what Mr Dickens says is the Trumpet Voluntary which you could probably hear on the moon. Followed by half an hour of dog battering itself to death on the door before Mr Dickens gets there – what with getting up out of his chair and his Zimmer and all. Nowadays I just ring and go straight in, he knows me that well.

  I hurry past the boarded-up room. It’s one of the big front rooms and it’s nailed shut. Literally nailed shut with a plank of wood across the door frame. The curtains of the room are drawn so you can’t see in from the outside either. Why would anyone want to board up a room like that? That’s the kind of thing I have to keep my mind off.

  Doughnut nearly knocked me over in the hall. He always goes berserk when anybody comes into the house. He’s a fat spaniel with blind white eyes and matted lumps all round his ears. As soon as he knew it was me he staggered straight back to his place by the fire and keeled over.

  When I went in Mr Dickens’ face broke into about a million crinkles. He said, ‘Ah, there you are, Lamb,’ which he always says, then hauled himself out of his chair to make the tea. It takes him so long it sends you round the bend or breaks your heart depending on your mood. His hands are silvery as driftwood and they shake like mad so you’re lucky to get half a cup by the time you get it. I once offered to do it and he did let me but it wasn’t right. He seemed to crumble and age before my very eyes – though he is actually ninety. Imagine being ninety. He’s proud of it, tells me every time. Ninety I am. And he likes to make the tea himself.

  While he was making it, I carpet-swept round the dog in front of the electric fire where the rug is thick with hairs and crumbs. Then I picked the sweet wrappers and pipe dottle off the plastic coals. He chucks things on there as if it’s a real fire and I take them off again.

  That room stinks of dog like no other place I’ve ever known. It gets you in the back of the throat like a snarl. It makes you sneeze. Thick, fusty, ancient dog and pipe-smoke. You have to breathe through your mouth at first to give your nose time to acclimatise. Mr Dickens smokes a giant pipe with a runkly black bowl and when he puts it down, brown juice runs out on to his Yorkshire Post or the arm of his chair.

  He let me carry the tray in for him and we shut the door. Me, him, Doughnut in the unspeakable electric fug. He’d cut a jam Swiss roll into raggedy chunks and when I took one I realised that he must have cut it with a dirty knife so it was smeared with something like sardine or, I hate to think it, but dog meat. I doubt I’d have eaten it anyway but I had to watch him and sometimes when other people eat I get this empathy thing, like I can taste whatever it is they have in their mouths. I sneaked the slice into my pocket and said no when he tried to get me to take another.

  He said, ‘You want to get a bit of flesh on them bones,’ staring perkily at me for a minute. ‘When I was a youngster I liked something to get hold of in a lass, can’t see the fun in these twiglets nowadays.’

  I sneezed and said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ and he didn’t answer. I sat there and waited. Sometimes he just nods off mid-sentence. He had a bit of Swiss roll sticking out of his mouth and I itched to flick it off but I didn’t. I started to wonder if he’d actually died this time, but then he spluttered and carried on.

  I listen while he talks and drink the tea which is never hot and has big weedy leaves floating about in it that cling to your tongue. To tell the truth I do more talking, or listening rather, with Mr Dickens than actual cleaning. I like it. Sometimes I think I ought to be a social worker. I mean I can see he needs someone to listen to him more than he needs his floor mopped or his draining board scrubbed. Although admittedly they do need doing too.

  He got on to the subject of his wife and I was so fascinated I almost forgot myself. I almost forgot Doggo. Mr Dickens is a good talker. If I closed my eyes I could see it all like some old film. His wife was called Zita which is the best name I’ve ever heard.

  He asked me to get his photo albums out of the sideboard. The photos looked like something out of history books. There was Mr Dickens with a sharp young chin, wearing a cricket sweater and pads and leaning on his bat, looking like something off a knitting pattern. It makes you want to weep when you see someone young and handsome like that and then see the wreck of their old face beside you. Does that really have to happen?

  Then he showed me some pictures of Zita. When they were engaged, sitting in a vintage car, and when they got married and later. What can I say about Zita except that she was beautiful? I mean beautiful. These big sad eyes and a movie-star mouth and a long neck. You know those women from silent movies wi
th hair like petals round their heads and eyes practically bleeding stars. I could see what Mr Dickens saw in her, I could nearly have gone for her myself.

  Mr Dickens lit his pipe and told me the story of how they met. Her father was the captain of Mr Dickens’ works’ cricket team and she used to watch Mr Dickens play and once he scored a century, which apparently is good, just because her starry eyes were watching him. They got married in 1930.

  In my favourite wedding picture she is alone. She’s standing under a wintry tree looking like a snow queen, very tall and slim in her white dress and white fur cape. Her face is serious, no smile, all the spark is in her eyes and around her the world is a snowstorm of confetti. Or maybe real snow. It was midwinter when they married but Mr Dickens can’t remember if it was actually snowing or not.

  She made silk wigs. Not for money – her father was rolling in that and Mr Dickens says he’s still living off it now – but just for the fun of it. There’s a picture of her in one of the wigs, thick and fringey and so white it makes her skin look black. Like the negative of a photograph. Or maybe some sexy alien. I asked if he still had any of her wigs but he just shrugged, well not shrugged, I don’t think he can shrug with his shoulders all seized up, but put on a shrugging expression.

  He went on and on and I was riveted. The couple of hours he pays me for were up but I didn’t even notice, just sat there listening to him and when he dropped off, I looked at the photos and waited quietly. I love the way he starts and carries on where he’s left off as if nothing’s happened. Sometimes he drools a bit but I pretend not to see. The afternoon rolled cosily by, the dog snoring and farting, the clock ticking, Mr Dickens occasionally filling his pipe and puffing out so much smoke I could hardly see him.

  But then he told me the horrible thing. It was about what happened to Zita in the end. He said that since she’d died he’d hardly been out of the house and that was sixteen years ago. Sixteen years. I said, ‘God. How did she die?’ There was a long silence and I thought he’d dropped off again but then he said, ‘Haven’t talked about it since inquest.’

  ‘Inquest?’ I said, getting a jittery feeling, like maybe I didn’t want to know any more. I said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  But he said, ‘No, no … it’s natural to ask, since I’ve bored you all afternoon. Ought to pay you double-time.’

  ‘Not bored,’ I said. ‘And anyway all I’ve done is sit here.’

  He watched my lips, like he does, then he laughed and said, ‘You are good,’ which no one’s said to me since I was about ten. He puffed away till he was lost in a cloud of smoke then he said, ‘Look in sideboard, there’s another album.’

  I got it out. It had a black leather cover. I gave it to him and he flipped through till he found the right page and passed it over. It was full of newspaper clippings and photographs. I looked at the page he’d opened it at and just stared at the headline CHARRED REMAINS OFFER NO CLUE stuck next to a. picture taken by forensic scientists.

  In the picture there’s a room: wallpaper; a lamp with a beaded shade; a table and on the table a cup and saucer with half a biscuit balanced on the saucer; a book with a bookmark sticking out all as normal – and then just this black space and on the edge of the black space two legs, not whole legs, just the shins, like two silly fallen skittles.

  ‘Spontaneous combustion,’ he said.

  I didn’t know what to say. In the end I just said, ‘How awful,’ and put the album down. It felt as if ash was coming off on my hands.

  Doughnut staggered up then and Mr Dickens said he needs to go out so I jumped straight up and said I’d take him. I dragged him off down the road. I was glad to be outside where it was starting to get dark and smelled of wet leaves, fresh and cold. There was no one about, no one I know, anyway. I breathed in that air to try and get rid of the smoky taste in my mouth which is only from Mr Dickens’ pipe but still.

  On the way back through the hall I paused and stared at the plank nailed across the door frame and the perfectly ordinary door behind it. Which I suppose is where it happened.

  When I got back in Mr Dickens said, ‘You look pale.’ I shook my head and said I was fine. He said, ‘It were shocking. Zita going so suddenly were bad enough but … but such a horrible … there were police and forensic scientist fellas here and questions, questions, questions. Nowt I could tell them. I’d been out for day – and got back to find …’

  He swallowed. ‘In coffin there were nothing but her shins.’ His voice cracked then and I thought, please don’t cry, but he didn’t. He struggled with his face for a minute and looked past me with his watery old eyes. He said, ‘Well, nearly TV time. You’d best be off home, duck. Someone must be missing you.’

  Well that nearly started me off so I went. A big show of going out the front and walking up the path then back down the drive at the side.

  I got in and lay on my bed for a minute and listened to the bump-shuzz, bump-shuzz of Mr Dickens and his Zimmer frame. Zimmer sounds like something quick, doesn’t it? Somewhere between zip and shimmer. I could hear him coughing and spitting in the sink which he never does when I’m there, too much of a gent. Then I saw something I have never seen before. One part of the ceiling is dark. Not above my bed, further away, a big oily-looking stain. Maybe that’s the place it happened, the smoke and ash sinking down right through the floorboards. I pulled the covers round me and lay there shivering. Very alone.

  I try to see the high wire but all I can see is the mess below. I pinch my skin between my nails but I catch myself and stop it. There are no sharps here so it’s OK. I don’t keep them around. I don’t even like to look at sharp points or edges, a knife left lying around, a razor blade.

  But it can be beautiful when the blood comes out. You open the skin and it is such a pretty eager red and you feel fine then. Fine for a while. But I don’t do that any more. I do not. The scars are old. It is a sick and stupid thing to do. I don’t do it any more and I won’t. But I keep away from sharp things when I can.

  Five

  When Doggo appeared the street lurched and I grabbed hold of a fence. It was a bright morning, had been. I had left an awful night behind me and was trying hard to smile. If you pretend to smile it can cheer you up. Some chemical message goes from your smile muscles to your brain which thinks, hey she’s happy and you are. So I was walking along smiling all over my stupid face and trying to notice happy things like scarlet berries on a bush and a slinky black cat with lantern eyes – when there he was. I saw him a second before he saw me.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. He was wearing the mirror shades and I could see myself twinned in the lenses, cheesy pale with my hair sticking up everywhere.

  ‘Did you say?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’d better not have fucking said.’

  I looked round. It wasn’t like he could murder me in broad daylight in the street. We stood there for a minute. ‘What you doing later?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He kept shuffling about and looking over his shoulder, shifty as hell. ‘Duke’s Head, dinnertime?’

  ‘Do you mean lunch?’ I said.

  ‘Oh I do beg your pardon, lunch.’

  ‘No way,’ I said. I let go of the fence and tried to push past him but he stepped in front of me. We did a kind of shuffling dance.

  ‘Let me go in.’

  ‘Duke’s Head. Later on then? Fiveish.’

  I couldn’t look in his face for fear of seeing my own. I thought about screaming, But what about the police?

  ‘K, then,’ I said.

  He let me pass. ‘Don’t fucking say,’ he warned and stalked off, his shoulders up to his ears.

  I watched him go. The light fizzling on the wet path stung like lime. My smile had fled a million miles away. I kept both footsoles on the ground. Mrs Banks opened the door to bring in her milk.

  ‘Morning, Lamb,’ she said. ‘Coming in?’

  I went inside remembering certain things like her handbag and the scorches on th
e table. I half expected her to sack me on the spot but she only smiled and said, ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah ta.’ I tried to look normal, whatever normal is these days. It was warm and steamy in her kitchen and smelled of washing-powder and coffee. Roy was in the sitting room watching a Pingu video.

  ‘He’s got a bit of a snuffle,’ Mrs Banks said, ‘so I kept him off nursery.’ The cruet set was still on the mat on the table. She didn’t mention it. She obviously wasn’t planning to sack me because she’d had some new keys cut and gave me one, which is ridiculously trusting. I asked what she wanted me to do. She said, ‘Upstairs could all do with a good clean round and other than that just a bit of ironing.’ She stared at me for a minute as if there was something else she wanted to say. I stared back till she looked away.

  ‘I’ll get on then,’ I said but before I could get the hoover out she said, ‘Look, Lamb, why not sit down and have a coffee first. I want to have a word.’ I thought, uh-ho, here it comes. A vision of the handbag flashed past my eyes so vividly she could probably see it too.

  She had a pot all ready, a cafetière, not instant, and she said, ‘Hot milk?’ putting a little jug into the microwave.

  ‘Black,’ I said and sat down.

  She gave me my coffee and offered me something to eat. ‘Nice piece of toast? Fruit cake?’ I told her I’d had breakfast, thanks very much. I get so fed up with people trying to get me to eat. They probably think I’m anorexic. Well I’m not. Maybe I was verging on it once but not now. I just like to be light. I’ve got small bones and I like to see them and anyway you can’t think clearly all clogged up with food.

  The microwave pinged and she poured a froth of milk into her coffee and sat down. She blew across her cup before she sipped. ‘You look a bit peaky,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about you, Lamb. I’ve been wondering. Do you … do you live alone?’