A light wind stirs the grass around him and tickles his face. He feels very warm from exercising. He remembers a children’s TV programme he watched many afternoons ago during a tea break at the kennels. The presenter held two heavy weights in his hands for a full minute, then showed how his arms raised involuntarily when the weights were removed. Roy imagines every one of his aching muscles reaching upwards, lifting his body a few inches off the sand dune, high enough for the wind to reach underneath him and touch the flattened grass there. He breathes in slowly and deeply, pushing his stomach out to make room for the air in his lungs. As he breathes out he feels that his body presses less heavily on the grass and sand. He feels that he is becoming light.
Sylvia watches out of the window for him. She looks down the path towards the vegetable patch where he tends and modifies his model of her house. She searches farther, towards the end of her range of vision, and sees him lying on the sand dune. He looks abandoned, as if some other woman has finished playing with him and left him there to be picked up and brought home. He is so still that she wonders, just for a moment, whether he is still alive. He is too far away for Sylvia to be able to detect the slow, deliberate rise and fall of his belly under his hands. Then she reminds herself that this is a place of safety, so far removed from the real world that nothing bad ever happens. She watches him get to his feet, dust himself off and make his way back towards the house.
That night, asleep on the white cotton sheets, Roy’s arm around her, Sylvia dreams of her days in the circus. This dream starts, as it nearly always does, with her friend Pamela in an orange leotard, spinning plates.
Pamela, looking exactly as she did fifteen years ago, stands in the middle of the Big Top and stares directly at Sylvia. Plates spin on her foot, on her hands, on her forehead. Then the bendy acrobats in lemon bodysuits roll over and over in hoop shapes around her, their backs arched, heels touching their ears. Men in green sequins swing from trapezes. Children in red suits bounce above trampolines, then tumble back down again. Then the clowns come, big noses and big feet, pushing and shoving the others. Still Pamela stands in the middle, spinning plates, looking at Sylvia.
From the very top of the Big Top, from much higher up than the point where Sylvia is looking in her dream, the daredevil acrobat starts to fall. His feet are tucked under his body, his hands grip his ankles. He turns over once in the air. He turns again. He will not be able to make another turn without smashing the plates, scattering the people. Sylvia wakes up before it happens. ‘Jeremy,’ she says. Two years ago, as soon as she learned it was wrong to put animals in the circus, she went to Jeremy and told him to leave, cutting him adrift from his life there. Now he falls from the roof of the Big Top in her dreams.
Chapter Thirty ~ Frozen Yoghurt
Jane and Harvey have almost finished their lunch in Old Compton Street. Jane is on the dessert course, which Harvey has skipped. He stirs his double espresso languidly with a sugar-crystal stirrer while he wait for the coffee to cool.
‘What is it that you see in Jeremy?’ Harvey asks Jane. ‘It can’t just be the sex. You must know there will always be another man along if it doesn’t work out.’
‘It isn’t just sex. It’s his passion for the environment.’
‘Oh please.’
‘It’s true. Most people can’t seem to get excited about anything but Jeremy cares about birdsong. I’d like to siphon off some of that passion for myself. And by the way great sex isn’t so easy to come by when you reach our age, Harvs, so even if it was only the sex I’d stick with it for a while.’
‘I dreamed last night that I was trying to give birth to a baby but it wouldn’t come out.’ Harvey tells Jane. ‘What does that mean? And don’t say it means I want to be a woman.’
‘Obviously you don’t want to be a woman, Harvs. It’s terrible being a woman. I think it means you are trying to give birth to some creative project but it’s blocked.’
‘Maybe. Yes, that’s very good. There is something.’
‘What is it? Tell me what it is? I can try to midwife it.’
‘I’ve been compiling my list identifying unnamed feelings. I’ve spent ages on it. It’s a long list and it’s starting to look quite comprehensive.’
‘A long list? I wouldn’t have thought you’d find that many. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got and we can try to double-check if they really are unnamed. I’ll tell you if I can think of any word that matches the feeling.’
‘Really, do you mind?’
‘That’s how scientists work. They test their theories before they publish them. We have to apply the same rigour to your wordless feelings. So what have you got?’
‘Well, in the morning, the moment between dreams and sleep.’
‘Waking up.’
‘What?’
‘That is called waking up. Next!’
‘Jane.’ Harvey folds his piece of paper. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘Next!’
‘You are the most irritating person I know.’
Jane is laughing so hard that the scoop of low-fat frozen raspberry yoghurt she has just put into her mouth starts to melt and she seems incapable of swallowing it without choking. Slow pink dribbles stream from between her lips and run down her chin. A semi-solid dollop of yoghurt falls backwards off her spoon and makes a splash on her black trousers as she puts her hand to her mouth to wipe the yoghurt away. She tilts her face upwards and half opens her mouth, still laughing. Harvey sees a boiling cauldron of pink liquid in there, mixed by her tongue.
‘Jane’ he hisses but this encourages her more. She makes a honking noise and sprays a fine pink mist over a wide area. As Harvey watches, a small spurt of yoghurt forces its way from each of Jane’s nostrils and she wipes at her nose with the back of her hand.
Harvey walks away leaving Jane bent over, elbows on the table, eyes shut against the tears, trying to catch her breath, still laughing helplessly. The maitre d’ raises his eyebrows very slightly at Harvey as an attractive waiter sashays to the table with a linen napkin to dab at his dishevelled lunch partner.
Chapter Thirty-One ~ Laundry
In Paradise, Roy turns out his toes at a 45° angle, twisting his feet into the sand beneath the wiry grass near the sand dunes, like a ballroom dancer with a tray of talcum powder preparing a non-slip grip for the soles of his shoes. He remains where he is, leaning forward slightly into the wind. He brings up his arms, gracefully, until his elbows are level with his shoulders, relaxing his wrists so that his fingers hang downwards from his hands, casting feather-shaped shadows on the beach.
Roy is wearing Sylvia’s shoes, which are size eight, and her clothes. In addition to her range of white and pink T-shirts and jeans, she has a selection of loose unisex and men’s clothes; work shirts and sweat pants or combat trousers. He turns up the sleeves and belts the trousers in tight, the material hanging off his skinny bones. Once or twice he has wondered why she has a whole wardrobe full of men’s clothes. Has she ever had another man here? He once asked her where she got the clothes and she shrugged and said, ‘I’ve always had them.’
Leaning comfortably on the windowsill above the radiator in the kitchen, enjoying a mid-morning break, Sylvia watches him. Unaware, facing out towards the sea, he remains motionless for fifteen minutes until the weight of his own arms is uncomfortable and he drops them to his side, shaking his hands so that his fingers clack together. Seeing that he has finished, Sylvia draws herself up, wipes a heart in the mist where her breath has condensed on the window, and goes to switch on the kettle.
Sylvia, with her collection of elephant, dog, cow, ducks, chickens and Roy, who has fallen from the skies, thinks of herself as their protector. They have the freedom to wander anywhere on her property. They have food and water and somewhere comfortable out of the wind and rain and the sun. So long as she does not earn money from them, as a zoo-keeper would, she feels she is doing the right thing by them. Any one of them is free to leave, although where would they go?
>
Too much attention suffocates Sylvia, she finds it intrusive. Living at Mrs Latimer’s was comfortable at first but after a while she felt she couldn’t breathe, as if she had her head in a feather pillow. Sylvia is scrupulous in attending to the needs of all her charges – she would never neglect them. But she likes to let them be, because that’s how she likes to live.
Sheila is in her flat in Brixton, hemmed in by all the accumulated metal objects that she hopes will bring her news of Roy, her tinfoil receivers in place on her ears. She remembers the time, once before, when she thought she had lost him. He was nearly forty and he had been quieter than usual for a couple of weeks, taking stock of his life.
‘I can’t go on’ he said one day, coming in to the kitchen. Sheila was crouched in front of the washing machine he had installed for her, sorting the clothes for a dark wash, pairing his vinegary socks before putting them in to the washing drum so they would not get separated. Her hand rested on a thin pair of his boxer shorts, the cotton softened by too much wear. She had been thinking she would need to replace them for him soon.
‘What do you mean?’ She had been terrified. She had heard of women flying into a rage when a man threatened to end a relationship, throwing back all the things the man had ever given them. What had Roy given her? She’d be hard pressed to think of anything that wasn’t bolted down except for a set of kitchen knives and a lampshade. His gifts to her were things that he constructed and nailed into place as if he thought, as she did, that there was no possibility of ever dismantling their home. There were the bookcases set into the recesses of the front room, shelves, cupboards, the fitted kitchen that he worked on all week while she holidayed in north Cornwall with her sister.
‘I want to leave my job. I hate commuting in to the West End, taking orders from that lightweight who couldn’t use a tape measure let alone a power drill but who has been given a managerial job because he can write reports. If I protect my pension I can retire early and we can live somewhere like Spain, where the cost of living is cheap and the climate is good. Until I retire I want something quieter, Sheila, where I am my own boss.’ That was how he came to find the job at Mrs Latimer’s.
Sheila had forgotten that unfounded fear of losing him, in the planning and the excitement surrounding his new job. When she has an intense memory of him, or some flash of an idea about where he might be, Sheila thinks of it as a message. What does this one mean? There is the remembered fear that he was going to leave her willingly; his wish for a quieter life; his love of building things around their home; the vivid picture of crouching in front of the washing machine and thinking that her life was going to change forever. It could be a message about his laundry. He only has the clothes he disappeared in. Would the aliens have a washing machine? Have they perfected a kind of dry cleaning that allows Roy to remain fully clothed while they restore him to a pristine condition? Is he filthy and in rags? Is he naked, lying on a table with probes and scanners attached to his body while the aliens investigate his inner workings? The messages Sheila receives are becoming more intense but they are bewildering and upsetting. She finds that she is crying. It is unbearable to think that Roy is alone, without her there to help him. Sheila thought that she had no more tears to cry, but she does.
Chapter Thirty-Two ~ The Albert Memorial
It is Thursday night. Sheila has come alone to the Close Encounters meeting, where a discussion is underway about plans to visit the recently renovated Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens to try to reach out to extraterrestrials.
‘Why the Albert Memorial?’ Sheila asks.
The members of the group are delighted with the question. They smile big, genuine smiles. ‘You’ll see, Sheila.’
‘Is there any evidence that metal improves the reception of messages from aliens?’ asks Sheila. The group is staring. ‘I know metal is a conductor,’ she continues hurriedly. ‘I wondered if that had anything to do with it.’
‘Have you had a message, Sheila?’ Rosy asks her gently. She bends her head forward into the start of an encouraging nod and extends one hand towards Sheila, as if she is trying to entice a skittish animal to come closer. Everyone is still staring. Sheila is aware that they think she’s weird. Weird, among a group of people who meet to discuss the best way of contacting aliens.
‘Yes.’
Everyone is suddenly friendly. There are smiles all round. Friend catches the eye of friend. Enemy is reconciled to enemy. They all take one step forward, nearer to Sheila.
‘My greatest success,’ begins Sheila shyly, like a housewife describing her baking technique to a group of Michelin-starred chefs, ‘has been with tinfoil.’
Roy has his hands in the sink, doing the washing up. It is late in the evening. He has the comfortable feeling that comes when it is nearly time for bed and he has been fed, and he has been out in the fresh air all day. There is a gentle ‘tik, tik’ sound of knitting needles as Sylvia scrapes them together, winding the wool around the needle in her right hand to form a neat stitch, flicking at the stitch with the needle in her left hand. Over and over, rhythmically. Sylvia has the yarn wound around the fingers of her right hand, her littlest finger extended as if she is a labourer drinking for the first time from a bone china cup in an audience with the Queen.
Roy dries his hands on a tea towel and turns to watch Sylvia. She is knitting a delicate pink garment on fine gauge needles. The color she has chosen would be suitable for a newborn baby girl but as the knitting grows too large for anything other than a giant’s child, Roy sees that it must be something for Sylvia herself. She has a very faraway look in her eyes as she works carefully up and down the rows. If she makes a mistake, she painstakingly traces and reworks each dropped stitch as if it represents a mistake in the fabric of time.
Sylvia is thinking about Jeremy.
Chapter Thirty-Three ~ The Postman’s Dog
The psychic postman has been sacked for over-sensitivity. If it was the post office’s intention to improve the efficiency of the delivery service by doing this, their intention has back-fired. Now Alison’s post comes every two or three days, at some time between 1.00 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. The post is delivered in a bundle held together by an elastic band, some of it addressed to Alison but much of it addressed to other houses in the surrounding area. The bundling may be part of an unheralded post office initiative to promote neighbourliness. When the post arrives, Alison puts Phoebe in the stroller and spends the afternoon delivering it. She never sees any of her neighbours putting misdelivered post through her letterbox. Perhaps they open it up and keep it, their kitchen notice boards plastered with poems from Jeff that were meant for her eyes.
‘I got a note through my door from the post office this morning saying they tried to deliver a parcel,’ Alison tells Harvey at the door to their house as she returns from one of her postal rounds. ‘They didn’t even ring the door bell, so they didn’t try very hard. It’s so annoying. Why do they do that?’
‘Most people round here are at work when the postman comes. Parcels are heavy and if they can’t deliver them they have to carry them all the way back to the sorting office. They probably write the ‘can’t deliver’ notes before they set off and leave the parcels behind.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘It’s what I’d do if I were a postman. If I get my camera will you come and take a photo of me in front of the new double billboard car advert that’s gone up at Clapham Common? I wrote the copy for it.’
‘What does it say?’
‘Three little words. You’ll have to wait and see. It’s supposed to appeal to hetero men.’
‘I hope they don’t pay you by the word. No wonder you’re so poor all the time.’
‘It isn’t the number of words. They pay me to deliver a concept. As you say, no wonder I’m so poor.’
As Harvey goes inside to retrieve his camera, the psychic postman arrives on Alison’s doorstep with a crossbreed dog on a lead. The postman looks sheepish. The dog looks trusting and
hungry. But then all dogs look hungry, in order to gain the sympathy of people with spare food. The postman hands over the lead to Alison. ‘Will you take care of him for me? I’m going away to look for a job. I would take him to my parents’ house in the West Country but a lot of the mink that were released by animal protesters are still on the loose. I’m worried that he would get attacked.’
The dog has fine, very fluffy fur on his paws that makes them look out of proportion to the rest of him, like a puppy who has yet to grow into his body.
‘He looks like a teddy bear. What’s his name?’
‘Boy.’
The dog lies on the door mat and Alison strokes his ribs and belly.
‘That’s sweet. How old is he?’
‘He’s sixteen. He’s an old man. He’s completely deaf. In human years he’s 102’
Alison withdraws her hand, suddenly uncomfortable about stroking an old man’s tender parts. The dog stands again with difficulty and Alison sees his age. A recent stroke has hitched the dog’s face into a permanent Roger Moore impression. The smell of smoky bacon that emanates from him, far from being off-putting, is making Alison rather hungry.
‘Come on Boy. Boy. BOY,’ shouts Alison. As she takes him inside to get used to his temporary home, Boy leaves a trail of silky fur. Phoebe follows unsteadily behind him, swiping at his tail.
Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Page 75
