The Other Mrs Walker

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  Now, as they stood waiting for the entrance of the deceased, Margaret conjured a vision of her own demise, Barbara celebrating in a turquoise two-piece, one glassful of rum segueing into the next. There was no denying it, her mother looked happy. But what would Margaret wear if it were the other way around – Barbara dead on a slab, all oozing flesh and badly applied rouge? For there was nothing suitable in her current wardrobe, reduced as it was to a holdall-shaped succinctness (four pairs knickers, spare bra, toothbrush, two pairs tights, etc.). Maybe she would have to borrow the lilac hat. Though would it count as borrowing if her mother was dead? After all, once Barbara succumbed for good to whatever had taken up residence in her chest, all she possessed could be Margaret’s. That dirty china cherub in place of a shiny juice machine. Margaret laughed then, a hollow little sound.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Next to her Barbara was hunched beneath her plastic headgear, a woman who always expected the worst.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well then.’

  And it was all Margaret could do not to squeal as the rubber tip of Barbara’s grey NHS stick pressed down hard onto the surface of one of her inappropriate shoes.

  Five minutes later, just as Margaret was contemplating rebellion, a priest appeared, hands held wide as though in a gesture of praise. ‘Ah, Mrs Penny.’

  But it wasn’t Margaret he was welcoming into the flock.

  Barbara shuffled forwards, eyes shining suddenly in the pale January light. For one horrified moment Margaret thought her mother was going to embrace the holy man, kiss him right there on the chapel steps. Surely Church of Scotland hadn’t gone as far as that in all the years she had been away?

  But the priest simply bowed towards Barbara as she approached, clasping her two hands inside his own as though paying obeisance to a queen. ‘How wonderful to see you again,’ he said. ‘So kind of you to come.’

  Must not know about the Catholics, thought Margaret, folding her lapels back down to make herself presentable. Or the Episcopals. Or the Friends. Then again, perhaps he did and simply ignored the implications. That would be the Edinburgh Way.

  As she bared her throat to the chill Edinburgh winds, Margaret noticed that her mother appeared to be whispering some sort of incantation into the priest’s ear. He nodded and rose from his stoop, turning towards Margaret instead. ‘And Margaret.’ The priest was tall suddenly, staring straight into her eyes. ‘The prodigal daughter.’

  That wasn’t a question.

  ‘Yes,’ Margaret said.

  Barbara inclined her head towards the priest. ‘Reverend McKilty.’

  Margaret almost laughed. Then she remembered her mother’s instruction. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘It’s a pity about the weather.’ She saw how the priest’s eyes glinted, reflecting for a moment her own.

  Inside the chapel they didn’t sit in the front row of chairs. Instead Barbara indicated to Margaret with her stick that they should sit at the back. ‘Have to save the front row for the family,’ she wheezed.

  ‘What family?’ whispered Margaret. ‘I thought the whole point was that there weren’t any.’

  ‘You can never tell.’

  Margaret squeezed in beside Barbara, two rows of empty chapel chairs in front (all with better legroom) and wondered how many other funerals her mother had attended without knowing anything about the deceased. As usual, Barbara wasn’t giving anything away. Instead she sat immobile, staring straight ahead at the plinth, chest letting out small gasps and pants.

  The priest ignored them too, hanging around at the door, clasping and unclasping his hands as though he was waiting for someone else to arrive. Holding out for the spectre at the feast, perhaps, some sort of distant cousin. Or maybe a long-lost daughter materializing from out of the famous Edinburgh mist. Then again, it could be that they were all just waiting on the dead person. For even if the deceased was without relatives or cash (‘It’s called indigent, Margaret. Please try to remember’), their body was presumably a prerequisite for their own funeral. At least that was what Margaret surmised.

  In fact it was a small woman with no hat, carrying a bouquet of weeping snowdrops, who was the cause of the hold-up.

  ‘Mrs Maclure,’ the priest murmured as the latecomer rushed through the chapel door.

  ‘So sorry, so sorry, so sorry,’ the little woman murmured, nodding and bowing to the chapel floor as she slipped into a chair on the other side of the aisle.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Margaret whispered to her mother.

  Barbara looked ahead, gaze rigid, lungs giving out a small accordion-like moan. ‘She’s the other one on the rota.’

  ‘Obviously, but what’s her . . .’

  ‘Shhhh!’

  Everyone in the chapel (all three of them) turned their heads towards Margaret, waiting with silent frowns for her to shut up. Margaret subsided into silence. Trouble. That was what her mother always used to call her. Nothing but trouble right from the start.

  A priest. A dead person. And three official mourners who just happened to top the rota when the day for the burning came. It wasn’t an excessive event. In fact the whole thing only took around fifteen minutes, including the coming in and the going out. Reverend McKilty intoned. Mrs Maclure sniffed. Barbara sat like a totem propped up throughout by her grey NHS stick. There were no flowers. No hymns. No order of service. Just a few words, a reading from the Bible and a dead man called John. It wasn’t exactly an elaborate send-off for what was once a life.

  Margaret sat through it all trying not to fiddle with the coronation penny safe in the pocket of her stolen coat. Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck. That was what her mother used to say. And like everyone else Margaret Penny had always assumed luck would be on her side, until it turned out she had no luck at all. The coin had been the first sign that something might change. Heads to the north. Tails to somewhere much further than that. But was that luck, she wondered now, so much as random chance? Heads or tails. Could have gone either way. She turned the coin in her pocket, once, then twice, as the priest declared the dead man dead. Margaret knew that she was missing something in her life. Perhaps if she flipped the penny again, she might find out what.

  As the priest announced ashes to ashes and the coffin began its final shuddery descent into fiery oblivion (or at least the crematorium holding bay), Margaret tried to picture someone she knew lying inside so as to call up the requisite emotion. Somebody ought to cry, or look like they might, for it to be a proper funeral.

  There was her mother, of course, the only one of Margaret’s relatives to get anywhere near the grave. In fact, the only relative Margaret had ever known, full stop. That lilac hat. Those lips wet with rum. And all that junk just waiting to be passed on. But despite the whistles rising from Barbara’s chest now, Margaret was certain that her mother would be around for some time yet. So she thought instead of a man with hair the colour of wet slate, the person who had made the middle of Margaret’s life seem like a new dawn, until it turned out to be the beginning of the end instead. Margaret knew she could cry an ocean for him, twice over. But she was determined that she would not.

  There was her own future self, of course, thirty years hence, lying stranded in the box room of a flat where the carpets matched the walls. Found frozen to the mattress like a bad dream, three months too late, no friends, no savings, no prospects. Ex-Directory just like her mother. Nothing but the faintest hint of rum to sweeten her goodbye.

  But in the end it was the photograph that did it. Lost now. Vanished. Just like Margaret’s previous life: nothing but a memory pulled from the depths of a chest of drawers one evening when Margaret was still a child herself. Two anonymous twins in black and white, sleeping behind a cold rectangle of glass.

  ‘Who are they?’ she had asked her mother, though she’d known even then that she had been digging where she ought not.

  ‘None of your business.’ Barbara had leaned across from her ironing and snatched the photograph away. ‘P
ut it back and don’t touch.’ Barbara never had been big on family history, either her own or other people’s.

  ‘But what are they doing?’ Margaret had persisted.

  ‘They’re dead, of course.’

  Afterwards, gathered outside for what passed for a wake, Mrs Maclure enquired as to Barbara’s general and spiritual health. ‘We didn’t hear from you on your birthday.’ (That small celebration misfortunate enough to fall just before Christmas.) Margaret realized she had forgotten. She hadn’t celebrated Barbara’s birthday for years, and nor, as far as Margaret knew, had her mother.

  ‘And we missed you at the Christmas service.’

  Barbara whistled and panted, leaning heavily on her stick. ‘I haven’t been out much this year,’ she said, voice tuned to full mourning mode. ‘Death follows me around.’ And Margaret saw it again – that look behind her mother’s eyes when she’d first peered out through a crack in the door. Fear. That was what Margaret had seen. As though whoever might be waiting could only mean one thing.

  ‘Oh, I know just how you feel, dear.’ Mrs Maclure still clasped the weeping snowdrops even though the coffin had been dispatched. ‘This is the third time I’ve been up here already this year.’

  Christ, thought Margaret. It’s only the second week of January.

  Barbara stood a little straighter now. ‘Are the others not available?’

  ‘Oh no, dear,’ said Mrs Maclure. ‘It’s just . . . there’s been a rush on. Cold weather. Backed up at the mortuary.’

  ‘Why haven’t I been informed?’

  ‘You didn’t seem to be answering your phone, dear. I’ve tried you several times.’ Mrs Maclure bobbed and bowed as though she was the one who ought to be apologizing.

  The crescendo of wheezes that had been rising in protest from Barbara’s chest subsided somewhat. ‘Been busy,’ she muttered, stumping with her stick at the ground. Though Margaret couldn’t imagine with what.

  Mrs Maclure turned to Margaret instead. ‘And what about you, dear? Will you be joining the rota?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not . . .’ Coming to Edinburgh was one thing. Being required to consort with the actual dead on a regular basis, quite something else.

  ‘We always need a helping hand.’ Mrs Maclure’s eyes shone black in the shadow cast by the chapel door. ‘To help with the abandoned.’

  ‘Well, maybe . . .’ Head frozen to the mattress. The sweet kiss of rum.

  ‘Good.’ Mrs Maclure smiled, revealing surprisingly long canines for a woman who was so slight in other ways. ‘Never do know when it might be your turn.’

  Margaret instantly regretted what she might have put herself in the way of. A life amongst the indigent of Edinburgh wasn’t exactly her idea of a future. ‘I may not have much time, though,’ she said, just to leave her options open. ‘I’ll have to get a job.’

  ‘What?’ Barbara’s eyes boggled all of a sudden. ‘I thought you weren’t staying.’

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘Really?’ Mrs Maclure hesitated for a moment, head cocked as though she saw yet another opportunity coming her way. ‘I may be able to help with that.’ And she brushed up against Margaret’s red coat for a moment, as though some agreement had passed between them.

  Margaret sucked in a lungful of chilly January air and wondered what exactly she might have signed up for. She had forgotten all about this in her years down in London. The Edinburgh Way of getting things done.

  Margaret left her mother and Mrs Maclure to chat over the finer details of the official mourners to the indigent rota and went in search of the taxi she had ordered for their return trip. Up behind the crematorium chapel she watched as a black car peeled away from a row of hearses and disappeared down the long driveway towards the road. The car looked just like the one that had revved and skidded its way out of the residents’ parking bay at The Court only a few days before. She searched for any distinguishing features.

  Except . . .

  She was at a crematorium. All the cars were black.

  In the taxi on the way home, slithering and bumping across the brooding town, Margaret asked her mother, ‘If you don’t want death following you around, why are you on the rota?’

  ‘Somebody’s got to do it.’ Barbara touched her lilac hat, the black flower a little crushed now from all the excitement.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit like being an ambulance chaser?’

  ‘At least we’re doing something useful.’

  Margaret didn’t respond to that. Neither of them had been inclined to confession since she had returned, despite her mother’s conversion to the religious way of things. Still, Barbara seemed to have read Margaret from the inside to the out.

  ‘But you don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’ Margaret persisted.

  ‘Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.’

  Yet there it was again – that tiny, brief unmasking – just as when Barbara first opened the front door to Margaret’s insistent ring. Margaret turned to look out at the frozen city through a swirl of condensation. The black monoliths of Edinburgh were passing: castle (ancient); volcano (dead); finance quarter (wounded). A whole world stilled beneath a globe of ice. Dead parents. Dead grandparents. Two dead children pressed behind cold glass. No wonder her mother was morbid if that was the only legacy she had to bequeath. The taxi turned into the grey streets of the New Town, bouncing across the frozen setts as it picked up speed.

  ‘By the way – ’ Barbara poked with her stick at Margaret’s calf this time – ‘she’s not married. Never has been.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mrs Maclure, of course.’

  ‘Why is she “Mrs” then?’

  ‘It’s an Edinburgh thing.’

  Say one thing, mean another.

  They both clutched at their seats as the taxi swerved around a corner, back end swinging out in a big, sliding curve.

  ‘Has she always been on the rota?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘She knows where all the bodies are buried.’ Barbara’s chest gave off a small whistle at the joke. ‘Used to work for the council. Amongst other things.’ Then she said, ‘Did you read the note she gave you?’

  ‘What note?’

  Yet there it was. In the pocket of Margaret’s coat, nestled up against a lucky coronation penny and a stiff piece of orange peel. Paper ripped from a small pad and folded into four. Margaret unfolded the note as the taxi jerked to a halt. The message was scribbled alongside a phone number.

  LOST, it said. CAN YOU HELP?

  1935

  Six years gone, and the house was the same, the hall was the same, the tweed jacket was the same, but with patches now and tears and frays, all sorts of bits gone shiny and worn. No small orange sun rolling from the sleeve.

  Alfred Walker came stamping in the front door on a cloud of frosty air, bare boards squeaking beneath his heavy boots. ‘Has it happened yet?’

  Clementine was in her usual place, crouched knees to chin on the bottom step of the long, narrow stair. She was ten now, her Christmas frock long gone. She didn’t bother to get up, just shook her head to let her father know the state of things.

  Alfred sighed, rubbing a dirty thumb across his forehead. ‘I’d better go up then.’ He skirted his daughter, making no attempt to touch her, and took the steps one by one, still in his dirty coat with his dirty neck and his dirty hands.

  Clementine watched Alfred go, her hands no longer rosy, her hair no longer twirled, her dress grey with so much washing, covered by a cardigan held together with darns. Alfred’s tread was leaden on the rough wooden floorboards as he made his way up, anything he might have had in his pocket going with him into the dark. Clementine waited until her father’s big, hunched shape merged with the shadows at the top. Then she got up and went along the passageway into the kitchen to sit at the table all on her own. If there was any magic left, it had disappeared years ago. Besides, ten-year-old Clementine didn’t believe in such things. Not any more.

  Upstairs Alfred stood at the bottom of t
he wide double bed, cracking his dirty knuckles and picking at his dirty fingernails with his teeth.

  ‘Do you mind,’ said Mrs Sprat, pushing past with a cloth and a bowl.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Alfred, shifting slightly, black lines of grime embedded in his thumbs.

  ‘Excuse me.’ The midwife pushed past him again, the water in her bowl lurching like a drunk man, thin pink stain rolling around the rim. Mrs Sprat could smell the whisky oozing from Alfred. She thought the neighbours could probably smell it too.

  Dorothea lay in the bed, flesh all mottled and damp. Her hair was tangled and matted. Her breathing harsh. The smell of meat left out too long oozed from her insides. Alfred stared at his wife’s swollen belly, large above a sea of stained sheets. Her feet were straining at the ankles, pressing against the wooden bars. There was blood smeared on the inside of her thighs. And she was making that sound again. A low, urgent grunting.

  Between Dorothea’s legs a small slick of black appeared for a moment, then subsided. She groaned, the long deep groan of a woman two days in labour. The midwife pushed Alfred aside with a sharp prod of her elbow. He stepped back. Let it be a boy, he thought. Everything would be all right if only it were a son.

  Downstairs Clementine shifted amongst the packets and jars in the pantry. She liked the cool feel of the long, narrow space. Flagstones. Painted wooden shelves. A meat safe with a wire mesh front. She lifted the covers from some of the large jars. Took a broken biscuit from the bottom of the barrel. Stuck the tip of one finger into a jug of cream.

  On the shelf was a pie, its edges fluted. Also a bowl of floury cooked potatoes and a bottle of stout. Clementine pushed one or two of the potatoes around, their skins already split and peeling. Then she pulled the stout towards her, removing the stopper and breathing in its thick, musty scent. The smell made Clementine’s head swirl. She sniffed again. Then she leaned forward and placed both lips over the thick glass rim. Her saliva slid down the inside of the bottle’s neck, pooling for a moment on the top of the dark liquid before sinking. Stout, Clementine knew, was Alfred’s favourite. Not including whisky, of course. The water of life.