All Bones and Lies

by Anne Fine

  ‘Maybe so. But it’s completely another department.’

  ‘But can’t you just ring them? To find out. If she is on their books, they could arrange some sort of unofficial “spot-check” on the property, and force her to put in this bloody cable entry.’

  ‘Colin, you’re obsessed. If I hear you say the words “cable entry” one more time, I shall come out in hives.’

  Had hers and Norah’s responses begun to spring from the same box? ‘Look, Dil. It’s all very well for you and Mother to—’

  ‘No, Colin. I’m sorry, but we at Tor Bank make it a point of principle never to interfere in the affairs of other departments. I’m very sorry if you feel this puts your own interests in any way at risk—’

  And that was it. It was that calculated little ‘your own interests’ that made it clear he might as well stop listening. She knew as well as he that no inheritance on earth could make his current torments worth their while. She’d said as much often enough. ‘Honestly, Colin. Anyone sensible would rather be pegged out and eaten alive by driver ants than step in the shadow of her front door.’ What did she care if Holly House went up in flames? Or Mother in it? He let her drone on for a moment or two, then interrupted with a fair pretence of matters arising. ‘Oh, sorry, Dil. Must go. Clarrie’s just dropped an urgent message on my desk.’

  ‘Not half,’ warned Clarrie. But he barely heard. Across his mind was sweeping grey rage. That word ‘obsession’. What a blunt instrument it was – so glibly, cruelly used by anyone who’d ever wanted an excuse to jump ship. ‘Oh, yes. I was married for seven years – for my sins! But after our youngest was born with his brain problem – well, I’m afraid my good wife did become a little bit obsessed, and, you know . . .’ ‘Yes, yes. We were good friends. But then he developed this obsession with corruption in the construction industry – something to do with the death of his son, I believe. And, if I’m honest, he became a bit of a bore.’

  A bit of a bore. That’s how his sister saw him. And that’s what he was. Worse than a bore, in fact, because at least most people were obsessed with proper issues, and he was now entirely, mind-numbingly taken up with something that (once he’d got rid of that bloody toaster) was never even likely to happen.

  He could have one last go at making his mother see sense. But it was clear, even to him, that though she’d spent almost a decade skilfully dumping one tiresome responsibility after another onto his shoulders on the grounds that they were too much for her, somehow in the last months, without his noticing, she had grown into her excuse. Slowly and stealthily, those false assertions had become the truth. She could no longer manage. The woman who had seen off determined beggars in Tangier, muggers in London, and a particularly foul-mouthed gypsy family in the park in West Priding, had reached the stage where merely the thought of glancing from a window to see those cheery, booted thugs of Mr Herbert destroying her lawn could practically drive her into the madhouse. This woman’s stuffing had spilled out of her till she had reached the stage where, astute as she was about financial matters, she’d actually prefer to gamble, and, for a week’s peace, risk the lot.

  How had it come about so fast? There’d been a bit of slippage in her capabilities. Look at the time he’d walked in the gate to find her almost in tears over an overflowing drain. The time he’d found her cowering behind the door. ‘Thank God it’s you. I thought it was that bloody man selling teatowels back again.’ And how could he not have noticed that business of the high-heeled shoes? But there’d been nothing either to justify, or to explain, a slide like this. What on earth could have happened to cause this headlong, almost deliberate, rush towards old age? Admittedly, the business couldn’t be easy to face. It must take grit to look with equanimity at not being able to make your own decisions any more, or run your own life. It was everyone’s worst nightmare. Perhaps in some strange way she had her wits about her more than most. Maybe, if you were sentient, it was the smartest tack stolidly to ignore the whole ghastly dead-end looming up at you as long as was possible, then, when you got to the stage where there was no choice but to face the unfaceable, pinch your nose, shut your eyes tight, and dive through the wave breaking mercilessly over you as she was doing right now. All her life she’d been brilliant at getting things done with the minimum outlay of effort. It was almost her speciality. Practically her trademark. If hurrying blindly into old age was as good a way of dealing with its rigours as any, then perhaps he should back off and stop trying to confront her.

  Unless, of course, this was the old game, played a little harder. What was that Val had said when he was standing up for Mother once against one of Dilys’s scornful tirades? All that he’d done was point out how often Norah had said to them over the years, ‘Don’t either of you let me become a burden. As soon as I become a nuisance, just shove me in a home and don’t ruin your own lives.’ And Val had rocked with laughter. ‘They all say that! It’s brilliant, when you come to think. It sounds so generous and understanding – self-sacrificial, even. But peel back the layers and what do you have? Another message entirely: “Don’t expect me to make an effort to eat sensibly, stay active, or keep my wits about me. I’m going to run to seed in whatever way suits me. And if you end up pushing my bloody wheelchair ten years longer or ten years sooner, you won’t even be able to blame me. After all, haven’t I always said, “Don’t let me be a nuisance. Just bung me in a home”?’

  On Clarrie’s phone, another light began to flash.

  ‘Better get at least one of those, don’t you think?’ he tried suggesting mildly.

  She looked quite anxious. ‘If it’s that horrid Mr Braddle, then I’m transferring him straight to you.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, thinking it a small price to pay for distraction from family matters. But it was only Gloria from Accounts, on the trawl for some nail bond. So no reprieve there. Sighing, he dug in his wallet for the details he’d copied from Mother’s policy. The two of them had gone through life yoked together for so long – his weakness to her strength. When the strong weaken, do the weak get strong? He’d come a long way since the days when even to hear her saying ‘Sit!’ sharply to Flossie would set him wincing. He might not yet, like his sister, be strong enough to pack in bothering at all. But he could summon up the grit to make a short phone call to check what sort of risk she was taking with her assets.

  Oh yes. He could, and would.

  The voice was the usual sing-song of indifference. ‘Tor Grand. How may I help you?’

  ‘Building insurance, please.’

  ‘Commercial or Domestic?’

  ‘Domestic.’

  ‘Bear with me.’

  He waited, unthinkingly shredding the note that Clarrie had thrust at him, first into quarters, then into eighths. Back came the cool, bored warble. ‘Putting you through.’ And he was on to yet another of those inattentive voices, so featureless in tone it took a moment to decode the bit for which he was waiting: ‘How may I help you?’

  He launched out, thinking if he had only had the sense to put Clarrie on the job, she could have offered just that peculiar mix of confusion and indifference that spoke of pure disinterest. But out it all came passably enough. ‘. . . bit of a mix-up . . . rather a frail old lady, no longer quite on top of things . . . not quite sure if the application form was ever posted . . . know it’s a bit irregular, but thought it best to check . . .’

  Out came the ubiquitous chirrup. ‘Bear with me.’

  It seemed an inordinately long wait before she came back with the query he, personally, would have thought crucial from the start: ‘And the name and address, please?’

  He was tempted to say, ‘Bear with me,’ but didn’t. Meekly he spooned it out. There was the slightest pause, then back came the voice. ‘Is that R-i-l-e-y, or R-e-i-l-l-y?’

  Was it his guilt that made him sense a little tightening in the sing-song? Guardedly larding his voice with a faint touch of Clarrie’s singularly unfavoured inner-city comprehensive, he dutifully spelled out ‘R-i-l-e-
y’.

  He heard the faintest tapping. Then: ‘So this would be a query on behalf of a Mrs Norah Constance Riley?’

  Aha! What better proof of posting could you get?

  And time to hang up. But once again, under that lilting veneer of indifference, he thought he’d caught that hint of quickened interest. Well disguised, but there. It didn’t sound like anyone he knew. But then again, Shirley from Switchboard had a featureless drone for her phone lines that bore no relationship whatsoever to the firm Brummie tones he heard daily across the canteen. So was it possible this seemingly anonymous voice belonged to his old enemy? Could this be bloody Perdita, black-balled already from Home Loans or Arrears, and off once again on her Flying Dutchman travels around the Mighty House of Tor?

  Whoever it was had embarked on a matching interest in his own identity. ‘And in order to record your inquiry, I’ll just need one or two details. You are . . .?’

  He absolutely in a million years was not going to offer anyone who might even possibly be Perdita the satisfaction of thinking she’d rattled him enough to make him hang up. So, thickening the East Priding accent till it could have startled a downtown landlord, he pressed on as boldly as he dared. ‘Me? I’m the family solicitor.’

  ‘I’ll need your address, of course.’

  ‘Mine?’

  My, she was cool. ‘To send on the written confirmation—’

  That he hadn’t even requested! But wouldn’t it look suspicious if someone claiming to be within even spitting distance of the legal profession appeared to balk at accepting a little something on paper?

  If this was Perdita, then she had him on a hook.

  Unless—

  Willing onto his cool interrogator a total lack of acquaintance with that bleak part of town to which, in less frayed times, he’d happily banish Perdita out of spite, he doctored the only address he dared proffer. ‘Send it to Suite 578, Chatterton Court, please,’ and waited, sweating, through another pause. Was he, perhaps, being paranoid? This could, after all, be one of any number of bored women laboriously tapping onto a screen information in which they took absolutely no interest. That stone-bored lilting chirrup was practically universal these days.

  ‘And that would be Priding? Thank you. Bear with me.’

  But it could be Perdita, cunningly stepping up the ubiquitous rhythms to set the next trap.

  ‘And a name, of course. Just for the paperwork . . .’

  Well, now that he had to face Mel anyway, to explain some strange letter falling on her doormat, he might as well take advantage of her name. ‘It’s Gould.’ And, come to think of it, he could appropriate her first name too. ‘Mel Gould.’

  If he’d been nurturing one last pathetic hope that, even if this were Perdita asking the questions, he might be able to convince her he wasn’t Colin, he’d failed outright. The last query came in a tone of contempt he was sure that he recognized.

  ‘Oh, yes? And that would be Melvyn, would it?’

  He’d had enough. Even a worm could turn.

  ‘No!’ he snapped. ‘No, it wouldn’t. It’s Melchior.’

  And he slammed down the receiver so hard that he cracked it.

  So that was it. Mother had posted the bloody thing. That was quite certain. But what to do now? He could whip round there, of course, straight after work, and give her a rocket. Or he could simply confiscate the toaster, buy her a fire extinguisher and live in fear. And that was the trouble with trying to cope with old people. There were no handbooks, nothing in the way of standardized practices – not even any real consistency to offer guidelines. If you had dealings with them, you spent your whole time in a centrifugal whirl of indecision about what it was reasonable to expect. All over Britain people his age were watching clocks in stuffy rooms, nodding along in unfeigned sympathy with their own grizzled back numbers about what tough luck it was they could no longer get to the shops, what with their shocking bunions. Then they’d go home, pick up the newspaper and find themselves reading about some even more ancient geezer who’d lost both legs in the war and had just done his first parachute jump. The world was full of dutiful sons and daughters who had revamped their whole Saturday to cheer some seventy-year-old through a drab birthday only to find that the reason the Social Club was closed in the first place was because all the Over-Eighties had gone off on safari. Why, children were a doddle by comparison – expected by general agreement to be fully on their feet by two, reading by eight, and mardy from twelve to twenty. Old folk were different, and, as with so many other things, one’s attitude towards them was a matter of temperament. The world was, after all, split down the middle on pretty well every other issue to do with people. With the weepy, there were those who thought even more time spent whingeing to professionals was just the ticket, and those who would snarl, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, snap out of it!’ With the unemployed, those who would shower them with consolatory hand-outs were roughly matched in number with those who would cheerfully starve them of comforts till they took the trouble to work up some sort of a saleable skill. With this old people business, who was to say whether the hard or the soft line was better? You needed some television programme: You Be the Judge. The parent could sit on the podium – maybe, for sensitivity, safe in a soundproof box – and their offspring could set the scene. Doctors and physiotherapists could be called in as expert witnesses. (‘I have examined Mrs Oakway here, and in my professional view, even with this impressive catalogue of ailments, she’s more than capable of catching a train to her daughter-in-law’s house in Preston. Why, I’ve seen patients far older and weaker than her who still manage to . . . bleh, bleh, bleh.’) It would be most enlightening. And every week, Top of the Bill, they could have families in which the sons and daughters felt that even a bit of real neglect was in many ways reasonable. Again there would be a tearful, bitter prosecution, ranging (depending on the family concerned) from grumbles as trivial as, ‘She never let me have a bike,’ through commonplaces like, ‘He never once, the whole time I was growing up, said something nice,’ through horrors that would make the social workers in the wings reach for their notepads: ‘And every time I stammered out of terror, he’d whip off his belt and thrash me till my freckles sang.’ Clearly, the parent would be entitled to any defence they believed they could muster. ‘If I seemed harsh, remember I had a mother who hanged herself with my own dressing-gown cord when I was three, I raised six crippled sisters all alone, and we lived on a flood plain.’ That sort of thing. The studio audience would weigh up the evidence. Then, ‘Take your old father home,’ some pack of middle-aged whingers might be told. ‘And be more kind to him, for, by his lights, he did try hard.’ Or some iniquitous parent might be shipped instantly back to the Sunset Home from which he’d confidently smuggled out his You Be the Judge application, and his offspring would stride from the studio clutching their much-prized Y.B.T.J. Certificate of Moral Exemption, secure in the knowledge that, during the nationwide phone-in, the vast majority of viewers had agreed they were guilty of nothing except, if you were being harsh, perhaps an oversized conscience.

  No, till there were some sort of guidelines on this issue, the whole dispiriting business would be a mess of winners and losers. And, in that mess, there would always be hard-hats like Dilys.

  And suckers like him.

  Still, best to replace the toaster, any which way. ‘I’m slipping out for a moment,’ he warned Clarrie, who appeared to be doing nothing more pressing in the way of council business herself than gazing out of the window. ‘Just along to the electrical shop. I shan’t be away long.’

  ‘But what if he phones again?’

  ‘Who?’

  She waved a hand towards the unwashed window, as if to invite the serried ranks of vehicles parked below to give witness to her patience. ‘I told you. That horrible Mr Braddle man. I keep giving you notes. And he’s waiting!’

  He stared at the torn scraps of paper on his desk. It had been hard enough to get her in the habit of taking down messages in th
e first place. He’d better not give her any excuse for not bothering in future. ‘Oh, yes. That. Well, I’ll deal with it.’

  He shovelled the pieces in his pocket, planning to fit them together and read them the minute she turned her attention back to her nails. But barely a moment passed before she swung round in panic from the window as the phone started blinking. ‘That’s him again. No point in pretending you’re not here. And I’m not answering it!’

  Fearing he’d pushed his luck too far already that morning with someone he knew from experience was skilled in a whole slew of subtle office revenges, he waved her away and picked up the phone on her desk. While Clarrie took the chance to untangle the strap of her handbag from round his ankles and slip off for coffee, Colin spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Mr Braddle, is it?’

  ‘Colin?’

  ‘Mother, is that you?’

  ‘I take it you can hear how that noisy oyster next door is torturing me now?’

  Behind the voice, crabbed with irritation, he could hear a familiar jangle. ‘Is that the windchimes? They sound pretty close.’

  ‘That’s because that black-hearted goblin is standing there thwacking them.’

  He quelled the response that echoed down from childhood – ‘So what did you do to him first?’ – and asked more tactfully, ‘Have you the slightest idea what might have set him off this time?’

  ‘How should I know? I’d like to take a rolled-up newspaper to him, really I would.’

  ‘Would you like me to come round and speak to him?’ (Perfect excuse! He could slip in a quick toaster swap while he was at it.)

  ‘You’d be a lamb among goats. Last time I had words with the old bugger, I felt like a beanbag run over by a juggernaut.’

  ‘I’ll make it official,’ he offered. ‘Bring round one of our fancy new noise monitors and hand him a warning leaflet.’

  He waited for the curt dismissal (‘Oh, I can just see you standing on his doorstep like a tin of milk’).

  But no. The silence gathered like water slowly rising in a cistern, till suddenly it spilled over.