Spencer's List

by Lissa Evans

  ‘I’d mind though,’ said Spencer. ‘It’s important to me.’

  ‘But why is it?’

  ‘Because…’ He reached for a reply. It was important because Mark had measured his life in lists: lists of work to do, holidays to book, presents to buy, films to see. And he had gone on making them, even when life narrowed so much that every tick was a triumph and the item ‘load washing machine’ took a whole morning to accomplish. His last list had read ‘phone Mum, drink half litre of fluids, watch Neighbours’ and he had accomplished all of them. ‘It’s about finishing things off,’ said Spencer.

  ‘Yes, but he wouldn’t want you to make yourself –’ Spencer felt his face set into a mulish rejection of any argument, and Nick gave up. ‘Never mind,’ he said.

  There was a tattoo of beeps from outside and he looked at his watch.

  ‘OK, I’d better go. Nina, are you going to be all right with Spencer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll be back before the little hand’s on the two.’ She looked at him blankly. ‘Early days on the time front,’ he said, apologetically, to Spencer. ‘Niall thinks I’m pushing it.’

  They waved him off at the window and watched till the red camper van disappeared round the corner.

  ‘Gone,’ said Nina, dispassionately, clambering backwards off her chair.

  ‘Only to the shops; they’ll be back soon.’

  ‘I know.’ She wiped her nose on the teddy’s head and smiled unexpectedly. ‘I like it here.’

  ‘Good. So what do you want to do first? Feed the animals?’ She shook her head. ‘Go to the park? Play a game?’ He groped for ideas. ‘Make a… er… cake?’

  ‘Look at the photo book,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘All right then.’ He sat her on the sofa and put the album on her lap. ‘Here you go.’

  She flipped it open and looked at the first print, which sat on a page of its own. ‘Spencer,’ she said, squashing a finger against the transparent sheet that covered it, ‘Daddy, Mark, Daddy, Dog.’

  The photo showed the four of them coming down the slide at Kingdom of Water, Ibiza’s primary aquatic theme park. Mark was in front, screaming hysterically, eyes half-closed against the spray. It had been taken long enough ago for Nick to have a fringe and Mark a small pot-belly. The dog was just visible as a dot beyond the chain-link fence.

  Nina turned the page. ‘The seaside.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s a place called Brighton and it’s got stones instead of sand on the beach. Do you like your Daddy’s beard?’

  ‘No I don’t’, said Nina firmly, covering Niall’s experimental goatee with one hand and attempting to turn the page at the same time. ‘I like this.’ She pointed at a rucksack Spencer was wearing on the next page, the smallest object in a vast panorama of the western isles.

  ‘Can you remember what country it’s in?’

  ‘London.’ She turned over again.

  The rapid progression through the pages was like watching a film on fast forward. Nick’s hair lengthened, shortened, went blond, red, blond again and finally receded so far that he shaved it off altogether. Niall started off stocky, became stockier, got to a point where he realized that the correct description was ‘fat’ and then strenuously dieted back to stocky again. Others – lovers and friends – joined the group for a while, stayed for a holiday or two, reappeared at a party and then disappeared from the album. Mark lost his pot and gained a second earring and a red blotch on his nose, and started wanting to take the photos rather than appear in them, so that Spencer saw more and more images of himself, and fewer and fewer of Mark.

  ‘Horse riding.’

  ‘Yup, that was in Wales and we were all staying in a big orange tent.’ It had been their last proper holiday and a rotten one to boot. He and Mark had had a stupid running argument about a bloke that Spencer had been seeing, it had poured for most of the week and the tent had been invaded by the most revolting, slimy –

  He stood up. ‘I’ve just remembered I’ve got to do something in the kitchen, OK? We can keep talking.’

  ’OK. Spencer, Daddy, Horsey, Horsey, Daddy, Horsey, Lady…’

  ‘The lady was the riding instructor and she was called Ann,’ said Spencer, over his shoulder. He opened the door of the kitchen and stepped on something that squashed crunchily.

  ‘What names are the horseys?’ asked Nina, from the living room.

  They were everywhere. In shock, he took half a step backwards and there was another viscid crunch. From the bucket on the draining board, a web of shining trails showed their escape routes: up the wall, across the window, over the fridge, along the floor; every surface was studded with snails. There were snails on the toaster, snails lodged in the folds of the tea towel and so many snails on the chopping board that it looked like a solitaire set.

  ‘What names are the horseys?’

  ‘Oh, er, the white one was called Snowball and the brown one was called Star because he had a little white mark on his head. Like a star.’ He fumbled to open a drawer and a snail came off in his hand.

  ‘On his head?’

  ‘Yes, right in the middle of his forehead.’ He tried again, and this time located a bin liner. ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘No. Can I have a biscuit?’

  ‘In a minute.’

  He shook open the bag and reached for the Marigolds, his mouth continuing to operate with a normality that amazed him.

  ‘The two black horses were called Castor and Pollux.’ Bastard and Bollocks, Mark had called them. He had been too thin by then to find riding comfortable. ‘They were a bit frisky. One of them bit me.’ For the hundred and thirty-eighth time that day, he picked up a snail.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just some washing-up. Very boring.’ With none of his earlier care, Spencer started grabbing handfuls of escapees and shoving them into the bin liner. ‘What’s on the next page?’

  ‘It’s a party.’

  Mark’s thirtieth, held in hospital. ‘How many candles does the cake have?’

  ‘One, two, seven, five….’

  He threw the tea towel and its clustered occupants straight into the bag and followed it up with the cutting board.

  ‘Fifty!’ announced Nina.

  ‘Very good. And who’s that I’m holding in the picture?’

  ‘Me!’

  ‘And what’s your Daddy Niall wearing?’ He crouched down and used his special omelette spatula to scrape up the two snails he’d trodden on.

  ‘A hat.’

  ‘A pirate’s hat, isn’t it?’

  ‘No it’s not, it’s a stupid hat.’

  Ruthlessly, he dumped the spatula in the bag and then straightened up and started to pull the snails off the ceiling. There were only four pages of the book left, and during the scant couple of minutes that Nina allocated them, stretched by as many questions as he could think of, Spencer became a snail-disposal machine, grimly closing his mind to the noise and texture of the task, and to the near-clinical disinfection that the kitchen would require afterwards.

  ‘Spencer, Mark, Daddy, Daddy, Lady,’ said Nina.

  ‘The lady’s a nurse called Cheryl,’ said Spencer, picking what seemed to be the last snail out of the soap drawer of the washing machine, and then spotting another one in the softener compartment. He heard the book snap shut.

  A moment later Nina and the bear appeared at the kitchen door. ‘What you doing?’

  ‘Just tidying up a few things.’ He nonchalantly knotted the bag, and then dropped it into a second bag and knotted that. Then he shook open a third bag and encased the first two. The bin men didn’t come till Tuesday and he wanted to prevent a mass breakout; Fran might read about it in the local press and then there’d be hell to pay. Just to be on the safe side he put the bundle into a fourth bag.

  ‘Do you want some juice?’ he asked casually.

  ‘No,’ said Nina. ‘Look.’ She pointed towards the gap between the top of the washing machine and the work surfac
e.

  ‘What?’ He peered into it, expecting to see a couple of strays, but it was empty.

  ‘Greeny thing. There.’ This time she pointed at the toaster. It was patterned with a sort of slime version of noughts and crosses.

  ‘Oh that’s just –’

  ‘There.’ Now she was indicating the blank stretch of wall beneath the window.

  Spencer scanned the area and then looked at her, puzzled. ‘I don’t –’

  Her finger was lifting again, pointing over his shoulder. ‘There!!’

  He spun round and this time he saw it – a flash of green, whipping past the corner of the doorframe.

  He swallowed a proscribed word and hurried into the living room. The lizard had already disappeared again. The lid which had fallen and been hastily replaced by Nick seemed to cover the top of the tank completely, but when Spencer looked closely he saw a minute slit at one end, through which the narrow body must have eased itself. He took the lid off altogether and laid it on the floor, just in case the lizard possessed some kind of homing instinct.

  ‘What you doing?’ Nina was hovering by the open door of the kitchen.

  ‘I’m looking for the lizard. The greeny thing. Can you see it anywhere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Keep looking.’

  The room might have been designed for hiding lizards, the tall shelves of books with as many crevices as a dry-stone wall, the litter of papers and cushions providing enticing ground cover. Perhaps if he could approach it on a blank stretch of wall… he removed a couple of withered apples from the fruit bowl and picked it up in readiness. As he did so, a pale brown speck whizzed across his field of vision and then another, and he realized that a mass cricket escape was taking place from the open tank.

  ‘There!’ said Nina, pointing at the window. The lizard was hiding behind the pelmet, visible only as a vivid sliver.

  ‘Well spotted, Hawkeye.’

  ‘I’m Nina.’

  As he approached the curtain it moved again, streaking up and across the ceiling and pausing by the light fitting, a good eighteen inches out of Spencer’s reach.

  ‘What’s it called?’ asked Nina.

  ‘Lizzy,’ said Spencer, off the top of his head. The escaped crickets had already started singing, now in quadrophenia.

  ‘I want some juice,’ said Nina.

  ‘In a minute. I won’t be a moment.’ Slowly, carefully, he picked up one of the dining chairs and placed it under the light fitting. Fruit bowl in hand, he climbed onto it.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘I’m just…’ Seen from so close the lizard was a piece of perfection, an emerald mosaic that breathed. It seemed completely unmoved by his giant proximity and he inched the bowl towards it.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘I’m trying to…’ It suddenly occurred to him that trapping a lizard on the ceiling would be completely pointless unless he could seal off the mouth of the bowl. He paused to think and in that instant it was off again.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘I’m trying to catch Lizzy.’

  It arrowed across the ceiling and changed direction at the wall, heading once again towards the kitchen.

  ‘Nina…’

  ‘What?’

  The lizard flickered through the impossibly small gap between the door and the frame and into the uncluttered, manageable space of the kitchen.

  ‘Shut the door. Really shove it.’

  She used the bear, holding it in front of her like a battering ram and applying all her three-year-old weight to the head end. The door started to swing shut, and as it did so the lizard appeared again. It had doubled back on itself, re-emerging through the same tiny gap – that suddenly wasn’t a gap at all but a slit too small for even the thinnest lizard to negotiate.

  Half of Lizzy managed the journey; the other half stayed in the kitchen. Both fell to the ground with a tiny slither.

  ‘Done it!’ shouted Nina, triumphantly.

  10

  Fran had never seen professional piano movers in action before. There were none of the heaving crashes of the average removal team, the random shouts, the furrows of paint gouged from doorways, the pock-marked walls left in their wake. Instead, all was order and calm. With the aid of one little trolley, the occasional ‘left a bit’ and a few gently articulated ‘hups’, the piano was down the stairs and into the lorry with not a sign of its passage remaining. Slamming the tailgate shut, the two movers looked as unruffled as if they’d just lifted a cheese straw from one plate to another.

  In contrast, Sylvie was sitting on the front steps of the house, one hand pressed to her chest, the other clutching a glass of water.

  ‘You all right, love?’ asked the older and more avuncular of the two movers, approaching her with a clipboard.

  She nodded and gave him a tremulous smile. ‘I love that piano so much. I know that you’re experts but I could hardly bear to watch.’ Her voice was breathy with anxiety.

  ‘Don’t you worry, little lady, we’ll treat it like the Crown Jewels. Now I just need your signature.’ He knelt solicitously beside her. Fran, returning from the hired van on her twelfth trip upstairs, had to turn sideways to squeeze by. The man glanced at her in passing. ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’

  ‘Kettle’s packed,’ she snapped, disappearing into the gloom of the hall.

  In the empty flat, Peter was taking down the lampshades.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked.

  ‘Just these and the cat.’

  Mr Tibbs was asleep behind the mesh door of a wicker travelling basket, his orange bulk almost filling the interior. ‘God, he’s fat, isn’t he?’ said Fran, peering in.

  ‘The vet thinks he may have a hormonal imbalance,’ said Sylvie, apologetically, from the doorway.

  ‘Oh right, sorry.’ Fran straightened up, embarrassed.

  ‘You see, he was starving when I found him, and that might have affected his ability to break down fats. Also, he’s half blind which means he can’t run around much.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Sylvie came over and crouched by the cage. ‘And I think he’s a bit deaf. He’s a sad old thing really, I know, but I do love him.’ She extended a finger through the mesh and gently stroked one of his paws. ‘He sort of chose me. He arrived on my doorstep in the middle of a rainstorm and never left.’

  ‘Like the princess and the pea,’ said Fran fatuously.

  Sylvie’s face lit up. ‘Oh I loved that story. Did you ever try it?’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘Putting a pea under your mattress to see if you were a real princess?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Fran.

  ‘Fran spent most of her childhood up a tree,’ said Peter, carefully sealing the top of a cardboard box with sellotape.

  ‘Really?’ Sylvie stayed kneeling, gazing up at him like a supplicant.

  ‘Yes, a two-hundred-foot horse chestnut at the end of our road.’

  ‘It was a sweet chestnut,’ said Fran.

  ‘So what did you do up there?’ asked Sylvie.

  ‘Just hung around, really.’ She had loved the whoosh of the wind through the leaves and the heaving green canopy that had concealed her from view, but the best bit had been the climb up, and the knowledge that only the fearless and the brave were capable of joining her. ‘Ate sweets.’

  ‘Shouted rude things at people passing underneath,’ added Peter.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Well you shouted rude things at me.’

  ‘What did she shout?’ asked Sylvie.

  ‘Yes, what did I shout?’

  Peter hesitated for a moment. ‘You used to say I was boring.’

  ‘You’re not boring,’ said Sylvie. Peter had flushed slightly.

  ‘That’s not what I call rude,’ said Fran.

  ‘Hurtful, then,’ he amended. ‘It was hurtful.’

  She looked at him in bafflement. ‘I must have been about nine. I’m not going to take responsibility for something
I shouted fifteen years ago.’

  ‘All right.’ He hefted the box of lampshades and carried it out into the passage.

  ‘I mean, if I had to apologize for all the things I did when I was nine…’

  She could hear his feet starting down the stairs. ‘I think we’re ready to go, Mr Tibbs,’ said Sylvie, whispering into the basket.

  Fran raised her voice. ‘Calling you boring would pale into insignificance beside breaking the wing mirror off the neighbour’s car.’

  ‘Oh that was you, was it?’ His voice boomed in the empty stairwell.

  ‘It was a dare.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  Sylvie got to her feet. ‘Fran, could I ask you to carry Mr Tibbs? He’s a little bit heavy for me.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Fran. It was like lifting a bowling ball. She was halfway down the stairs before she realized there was no one following her.

  ‘Sylvie?’ There was no reply, but she could just distinguish a soft murmur floating down the stairwell, like one side of a conversation. She retraced her steps and cautiously re-entered the flat. The living room was empty.

  ‘Sylvie?’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Her voice came from the bedroom. After a pause during which the cat sneezed, apparently in its sleep, Sylvie reappeared with a beatific expression. ‘I only have one more room to do,’ she said, and disappeared into the tiny kitchen, leaving the door open. Fran crept nearer, straining her ears to filter the flow of soft speech that ensued. Sylvie seemed to be thanking someone.

  ‘…the day I looked out and saw a rainbow over the roofs. And for the smell of fresh basil.’ There was a pause, and then she emerged, smiling. ‘All done.’

  ‘What’s all done?’

  ‘Oh…’ she shrugged. ‘It’s just something I do when I move house.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  Sylvie looked at her, bashfully. ‘I’m sure you’ll think it’s silly, Fran.’

  ‘No, go on, I won’t.’ She had to know now.

  ‘Well…’ Sylvie hesitated, and then explained in a rush. ‘I thank every room in the house for a happy memory. I read about it once and it seemed such a lovely idea. Sometimes it’s for something that actually happened in the room, and sometimes it’s just because you had a wonderful thought when you were standing in there. I thanked the living room because it was on the living-room extension that Peter first phoned me.’ She looked at Fran as if to gauge her expression. ‘Do you think that’s silly?’