The Other Mrs Walker

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  A Christmas clementine, collapsed and decaying just as Mrs Walker had collapsed and decayed too. ‘So how did you find out about the cigarettes?’ Margaret queried.

  ‘We checked the CCTV after that, caught her in the act. In black and white, like.’ The man laughed again, taking Margaret’s money and dropping it into his till. ‘What a chancer.’

  ‘Why didn’t you prosecute?’ If they’d prosecuted there might have been some paperwork.

  The man leaned his elbows on the counter and scratched at his beard. ‘Never saw her after that. Must have been around the time that she died. Have you tried next door?’

  Next door was the baker’s, a window full of heart attacks just waiting to happen. And the reflection of a black car trundling slowly down the icy road towards where Margaret stood. Beneath her red, stolen coat, Margaret’s heart set up a little pitter-patter. She bent her head further towards the bakery window, pretending an inordinate interest in hot Scotch pies. Hot macaroni pies. Hot sausage rolls. Margaret hadn’t eaten a hot sausage roll for years. Now was her chance.

  She opened the door of the baker’s with a swift ding and a clatter, to a blast of hot air and warm, fatty pastry. Salvation. Of a sort. The black car outside continued on its way as though it had nothing to report, pulling over on the opposite side of the road to collect a girl waiting on the corner. Margaret ran a hand through her hair as though everything was normal. She knew it was probably time to put paranoia to one side and get on with the rest of her life. Why else had she come north?

  ‘Oh aye,’ said the girl behind the counter when Margaret enquired. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘Did you know her?’ Margaret fiddled with a small purse she had found tucked inside a handbag in the box-room wardrobe, so old now it was practically back in fashion, with its triangular sides and chunky gilt lip. The purse was empty except for one pound fifty-three pence in small change borrowed from her mother’s pension, and a tiny tin pig, all battered and scratched. Margaret wondered how many sausage rolls she could get for a pound.

  ‘Aye,’ said the girl. ‘Came in two or three times.’ The girl was young, well under twenty. Two or three times probably seemed like all her life.

  Margaret studied a row of Empire biscuits with jelly sweets on top. She wondered how many she could get for fifty pence.

  ‘Kind o’ creepy though, isn’t it? Lyin’ there all that time and no one knowin’.’ The girl shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her own youthful flesh.

  ‘What kind of things did she buy?’ Margaret was certain her client had to be more than tinned peas and a single orange all gone to rot.

  ‘Mornin’ rolls.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Aye. Never anythin’ else.’

  ‘Not Paris buns?’

  ‘Paris what?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Margaret was disappointed. Nothing more than plain white bread. Mrs Walker remained elusive.

  ‘But it’s not me you’ll be needing to speak to.’ The girl wrapped a single sausage roll inside a greasy paper bag and held it out to Margaret. ‘It’s Pati.’

  ‘Pati?’

  ‘Yes?’

  And there, behind Margaret, was a woman curved in all sorts of places, hair peeping out from beneath a woollen tammy, tips dyed a vibrant auburn shade. ‘You’ll have come about Mrs Walker,’ she said, two shopping bags hanging from each of her hands as though she were some sort of modern-day milkmaid. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to arrive.’

  In the sharp cold of an Edinburgh morning Margaret Penny discovered that Flat One, 47 Nilstrum Street was as different from Flat Two as it was possible to be. No ice on the inside of the windows. No dust rolling up against the skirting boards. No naked light bulbs dangling from the centre of every room.

  Instead it was muted lampshades, soft furnishings and rugs on all of the floors. There were candles on the mantelpiece, each decorated with the imprint of a flamboyant, beseeching saint. On a coffee table was an ashtray with Welcome to Bratislava written around the rim. There were several collections of Russian matryoshka dolls clustered on the sideboard in small family groups. And flocks and flocks of tiny wooden animals, all polished and smooth.

  On the dining table in the alcove a bowl of oranges studded with cloves jostled up against another full of incense. Jasmine and frankincense. Sandalwood and musk. It was like falling down a rabbit hole and ending up in a whole new continent, the entire flat smelling of cumin and paprika, the heady scent of cardamom seeds and garlic, chopped, sliced and fried with onion, or perhaps just eaten whole. It couldn’t have been more different from Mrs Walker’s flat across the cold stone close. Or the maisonette at The Court, all scented with Fairy Liquid. In fact, it was rather like the place Margaret had always imagined she might live before she ended up in a rented London apartment with hard tiles on the kitchen floor and walls like fields of virgin snow.

  From the far end of the sofa, feet stretched out before a set of rotating coals, Mrs Walker’s next-door neighbour gestured with an expansive arm. ‘Welcome,’ she said, ‘to my home.’

  She was wearing some sort of uniform, dark blue with a pale stripe across the bottom of each short sleeve. She looked a bit like a cleaner, though Margaret suspected she probably had a PhD in astrophysics. Biochemistry, at the very least. On her feet were a pair of mauve slippers and for a moment Margaret was envious. She hadn’t found slippers in the box-room wardrobe yet, not even a fawn-coloured pair.

  Pati grinned at Margaret now, a great flash of white. ‘My name is Patrycja. Patrycja Nabialek. But you can call me Pati if you like.’

  So names were where Margaret began. First name. Surname. Other names that Mrs Walker might once have claimed. ‘Does Moyra mean anything. Or Mary? What about Ann?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Pati shook her head. ‘The police asked me too, but I don’t know. She was just Mrs Walker. Anyway . . .’ She ran a hand across her auburn crown. ‘Names don’t mean anything, do they? So easy to change.’

  Margaret knew this was true. You called something one thing and five minutes later it got to be known as something else. A good investment, for example, secured by champagne in the bath, only for him to turn out to be someone else’s husband.

  For a moment in the warmth of Pati’s living room Margaret wondered if perhaps it might be better for her to return south and start over after all, build her own room full of spices and matryoshka dolls, one where her head and her feet didn’t touch the walls at quite the same time. Her mother wasn’t exactly begging her to stay.

  ‘You’ll be leaving soon, no doubt.’ Barbara’s current mantra.

  Nor was she forthcoming about the past they shared.

  ‘Nothing worth telling.’

  Or about the possibilities of a united future.

  ‘No chance of grandchildren now, I suppose.’

  (Although for a moment then, Margaret had been tempted to get out a photograph of her own. Two silver-haired children in crumpled Technicolor. How easy it would be to deceive.)

  But Margaret knew that one thing would only lead to another and she wasn’t sure she had the strength any more to keep up such a pretence. Besides, if she stayed much longer in the cold north she felt certain she would have to tell the truth eventually. About everything she had ever lost. And what it was she had been hoping to find.

  Alongside the candles decorated with saints, Pati’s mantelpiece was covered in all sorts of photographs. Snapshots and portraits, family groupings in frames. Coloured ones and black-and-white ones, high gloss and sepia-tinted. A hundred faces from some other world watching Margaret’s every move. Unlike her, Pati seemed to be surrounded by a million relatives. So that was what Margaret tried next.

  But Pati shook her head again when Margaret enquired. ‘I have no idea. I just helped with her shopping once or twice.’ She leaned forward to pick up one of the chocolate fingers. ‘I asked, of course. But . . .’ Pati bit the finger clean in half. ‘Do you have a family?’ she said.

  ‘
Yes,’ Margaret lied and took out the crumpled Technicolor photo.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Pati returning it after only a cursory glance. For a moment Margaret was offended on behalf of the ashen-haired woman. But then Pati offered her gift in return. ‘She reminded me of my grandmother,’ she said. ‘Mrs Walker. Trouble, you know. Stubborn. Kept herself to herself.’ Pati talked with her mouth full. Something Barbara would never have allowed. She gestured towards the mantelpiece. ‘Of course, my grandmother is dead now too.’

  Margaret looked over again at all the people staring at her from above the fireplace and wondered which of them was Pati’s troublesome grandmother. ‘Did Mrs Walker ever show you any photos, or invite you into her flat?’ she asked, more in hope than any sort of expectation.

  Pati licked chocolate from the side of her mouth. ‘Oh no. Not even when I brought up the shopping.’

  ‘But you were the one who raised the alarm?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pati said. ‘I’d gone home for Christmas. I came back for New Year. I knocked on her door, but there was no answer.’ Pati shrugged. ‘I thought she was just, you know, a bit the worse for wear. Is that how you say it?’

  Margaret nodded. Nineteen empty bottles came to mind. New Year in Scotland. Something else that hadn’t changed much since she had been away.

  Pati sighed and wiped her hand on her dark navy trousers. ‘I waited a couple of days, knocked again. But it was too late . . .’ She shrugged once more, a mute, regretful gesture, as though if only she’d tried harder everything might have been different.

  ‘Where is home?’ It wasn’t Margaret’s job to make the next-door neighbour feel responsible for a troublesome old lady who’d gone and drunk herself into the grave.

  ‘Poland. Well, I suppose it is Edinburgh now, too.’ Pati leaned back into the sofa, curling her feet up beneath her, slippers and all. Something else Barbara would never have countenanced. ‘I came a few years ago. I work for Nightingales Care Service.’ She laughed. ‘Old people are so funny, don’t you think? All those stories. It’s hard not to get involved.’

  So here was Barbara’s bum-wiper. A member of an Edinburgh Margaret had never known. Cosmopolitan, multilingual, prepared to work hard for a whole new existence and a handful of cash. ‘Do you know why Mrs Walker was in Edinburgh?’ she asked.

  Pati shrugged. ‘This city’s like that, isn’t it? Attracts all sorts.’ And she laughed and pointed at herself. ‘I was a student back in Poland. But here I’m something different.’

  Me too, thought Margaret. Receptionist. Personal Assistant. Manager of Administration. Now a refugee from the south. Nothing left but a job finding families for people who were already dead. It was one way to start over. Though Margaret was beginning to think that perhaps it might prove more useful as a quick exit if only she could get the case closed. ‘Was Mrs Walker expecting you to call round when you got back?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Though I said I could do her hair if she wanted.’

  ‘Her hair?’

  ‘She dyed it. Red, like mine. Well, more like orange.’ Pati ran a hand along a thick strand of her own bright hair, lustrous and glowing in the gauzy light of the rotating coals. ‘She had a recipe. At least that was what she told me. Involving coffee granules.’ Pati held up her cup. ‘I bought her some specially, but of course it was too late. You’re drinking them now.’

  Margaret coughed, swallowing hard. ‘I didn’t know she had red hair.’

  ‘Have you not seen her?

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘At the mortuary. I thought you would have visited.’

  Dead flesh all white and frozen. A corpse vanished from a fridge. There was a story there, but Margaret wasn’t sure Janie would approve of her telling it.

  Pati looked sad for a moment. ‘They appear then they disappear. That’s life, isn’t it? I see it at work often.’ She glanced at Margaret across the top of her coffee cup. ‘We all get lost somewhere along the way, don’t you think?’

  The soft whirr of the electric heater filled the room, the scent of cloves intermingling with a brief trace of melancholy that Margaret recognized before it drifted off. Pati got up to touch a photograph on the mantelpiece. A family grouping – mother, father, two daughters and a son smiling as the shutter was pressed down. ‘These are some of mine, but I never even met them.’ Pati gave a small wave of her hand. ‘All gone, just like that.’

  Margaret shifted. She didn’t want to ask how that had happened. Anybody could disappear from their lives if they really wanted to. But she had the feeling that disappearances in Pati’s family were likely to be eradication of a whole different kind.

  Pati smiled again. ‘I don’t know where Mrs Walker came from and I don’t know where she went. But she did give me something.’

  Margaret sat up straighter. Here it was. A birth certificate, perhaps. Some sort of letter.

  ‘They often do that, old people, when they get near the end.’ Pati was searching for something on the mantelpiece. ‘Start to distribute all their possessions.’

  Margaret nodded, though she couldn’t say that she knew what Pati meant. The only old person she had ever known for more than a passing acquaintance was her mother. And Barbara Penny wasn’t the sort of person to give away anything when she could hold on to it for herself.

  ‘Little ornaments and things.’ Pati picked up a photo in a frame and put it down again. ‘How do you say it. Knick-knacks.’

  A Gift from Bratislava. A whole flock of camels polished to a shine.

  ‘We have to be careful at work though. Don’t want to be accused of stealing.’

  A photograph of two silver-haired children safe inside the pocket of Margaret’s coat.

  ‘Old people. A species all to themselves.’ Pati picked up a photograph in a black frame and handed it to Margaret. ‘Here’s my grandmother.’

  And Margaret found herself staring into the eyes of a woman gazing back through a thick spiral of cigarette smoke, languid yet defiant, her lips coloured dark. For a moment, Margaret wanted more than anything to see a photograph of her own grandmother – real or adopted. She missed her, all of a sudden, even though they had never even met. She handed the picture back to Pati. ‘What was it Mrs Walker gave you?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Pati replaced her grandmother on the mantelpiece along with all the rest and drifted over to the table. ‘Though it’s all gone now.’

  ‘Gone?’

  What was it with this search; it gave with one hand and took away with the other.

  ‘I had to eat it.’ Pati reached towards the clove-studded oranges. ‘Otherwise it would have gone off.’

  Two Christmas clementines. The remains of Mrs Walker’s festive theft.

  Pati returned to the sofa and helped herself to another chocolate finger. ‘It came wrapped in this, though.’ She stretched out a hand to Margaret.

  Crumpled and curled at the corners, stained with age and scented with cloves, it was another piece of paper folded into four. Margaret took the little note from Pati’s fingers, before folding it out. The top of the paper was marked with an imprint – Rose & Sons, jewellers of distinction — while on the bottom was a name scrawled in pen. Next to that was a phone number. London calling. Margaret knew at once what this was. More of Mrs Walker’s paperwork. And her ticket back to the south.

  1944

  Down in the depths of London at 14 Elm Row there was a war on. The one outside. And the one indoors too. Neither was pretty, but the one indoors was the most lethal for all concerned.

  Two little girls, their hair tied up with fraying bows, one dumpy like a pig, the other startling, hid in the scullery away from all the rules.

  ‘Ruby! Ruby! Where are you?’

  Along the passageway in the kitchen, Mrs Penny called, while in the scullery, eight-year-old Ruby watched as her sister Barbara tried over and over to force a heavy sheet through the mangle. Down there, through the back, it was all dark stone floors and unwashed clothes, surfaces scrubbed bare. Nothing to loo
k at but a huge, empty copper. Still, despite the cold, Ruby liked the scullery. It was the one place she could escape from Mrs Penny’s cries.

  Ruby watched as Barbara struggled against the weight of saturated cotton, the sheet slithering back into the sink. Barbara wiped at her forehead, then put an arm down into the grey suds and started again, face pink with effort. Ruby sat on the damp shelf opposite and swung her legs, not doing anything to help. After all, she woke every morning in their shared bed into the cold embrace of urine. Mrs Penny’s rule number 109 – whoever makes the mess cleans the mess. Along with all the rest.

  No cheek.

  No answering back.

  No swearing.

  Mrs Penny always looked at Tony when she said that, sitting by the stove in the kitchen with his feet up. ‘Bloody . . .’ Tony choking on his rum, face flooding, while Ruby and Barbara stood silent by the kitchen dresser. Rule number 43 – don’t speak unless you’ve got something important to say.

  Five years on from Alfred’s disappearance and Dorothea’s sudden demise, and the house was the same, the furniture was the same, the rooms were the same. But everything else was different.

  In the garden an Anderson shelter huddled in a muddy dip, dug into what used to be a perfect patch of manicured lawn. A tangle of scrawny spinach grew over the top, but not much else. Dig for Victory. Or in Mrs Penny’s case, dig for nothing much at all.

  In the kitchen, a tea caddy sat on top of the dresser filled with stiff little photographs of a woman holding a baby and a few old letters from America, read once before being put away for good. Also, all the relevant paperwork Mrs Penny had required to set everything straight – adoption certificates, an admissions form, the deeds to a house. All the little Walkers turned to little Pennys now.

  In the pantry, a few precious eggs soaked in a bucket of preservative. Next to them a box of shrivelled potatoes sprouted with abandon, each one covered in a rash of purple eyes. Along the shelf were packets of dried milk and a bottle of cod liver oil for dosing on a Sunday with a small silver spoon. In the cupboard with the wire-mesh front lay tiny cubes of pale cheese, a sliver of butter in its white china dish and a couple of rashers of bacon laid out like two pieces of flesh sliced from the thigh of a child.