Spencer's List

by Lissa Evans

  ‘No,’ said Fran, sounding unconvincing even to her own ears.

  ‘It’s like a blessing. I wonder if it will feel different now, for the next person?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Fran, wondering with a sort of reflex flippancy what Sylvie had thanked the bog for. She roused herself. ‘I think we’d better get going, you know, otherwise the piano’s going to get there first.’

  Sylvie laughed – a breathy, tinkling sound. ‘Oh Fran. You’re so practical and I’m so –’ she fluttered her hands in illustration. ‘I’m glad, though. I’m glad there are people like you to keep my feet on the ground.’

  Lugging Mr Tibbs down the stairs, Fran brooded over this last remark. What she found tiresome was the assumption that flights of fancy, however nauseating, were automatically more commendable than simply getting on with things – than shouldering the workload that enabled the Sylvies of the world to have something to get fanciful about; it was the resentment of the serf through the ages, ordered to prune the fairy bower at the dead of night so that no human agency would seem responsible.

  It took them over an hour to drive the two miles to the new flat. A car-boot sale just off Green Lanes had jammed the flow of traffic completely, and for nearly twenty minutes they sat unmoving beside a fruit stall, listening to ‘pahnd a pahnd, pahnd a pahnd, ripe and lovely, pahnd a pahnd’ until the chant merged into the background noise and became indistinguishable. Fran sat with the A to Z open on her knee and listened to Sylvie telling Peter about the imaginary big brother of her childhood. He listened with apparent concentration, watching her face throughout, but it seemed to Fran that Sylvie could have been reciting the fatstock prices and still have received the same degree of attention. She had never seen him so intent, so absorbed in one person, but then she had never really had the chance to observe him during one of his relationships. She had still been at university when he became engaged to the Welsh lesbian, and had only caught up with him during the aftermath, when his sad, moon face had reflected only the misery of rejection. She didn’t know what this raptness signified: passing lust or a more permanent and serious condition.

  ‘What I most liked to pretend,’ said Sylvie, ‘was that he was my twin and he looked just like me.’

  ‘Different-sex twins can’t be identical,’ said Fran.

  ‘It was just a pretend.’

  ‘I should have warned you, Fran’s very keen on scientific accuracy.’ Peter had turned off the engine and was leaning against the door, Sylvie beside him on the long seat. Fran, at the other end, put her feet up on the cat basket.

  ‘You know, Fran, I think I might have found you a bit scary when I was little,’ said Sylvie, resting against Peter’s chest.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re so… confident.’

  It felt an oddly double-edged comment.

  ‘I can’t ever imagine you being shy, or afraid of the sort of silly things I was afraid of.’

  ‘What were you afraid of?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Oh –’ Sylvie shook her head self-deprecatingly ‘– everything! Dogs, balloons popping, motorbikes, most of my teachers…’

  ‘I was sometimes shy,’ said Fran, defensively. ‘I was shy of Peter when he came home for the holidays.’ Sylvie frowned.

  ‘I was at boarding school till I was fifteen,’ explained Peter.

  ‘Oh. And Fran wasn’t?’

  ‘No, I was a girl,’ said Fran.

  Peter shifted his head in the little gesture that always implied irritation. ‘It was a trust fund set up by our grandfather, and because I was the oldest –’

  ‘And the malest.’

  Peter looked at her evenly and then resumed his explanation. ‘Because I was the oldest I was sent away.’

  ‘And did you hate it?’ Sylvie had half turned towards him, so for a moment Fran could see only a pale sheet of hair.

  He considered the question. ‘I didn’t hate it, no. But when I was eventually given the choice, I preferred to be at home.’

  ‘How lovely, having your big brother back at home with you,’ said Sylvie dreamily, gently rubbing the end of his chin with a fingertip. ‘How old were you, Fran?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘And were you terribly excited?’

  ‘For about five minutes,’ said Fran. ‘Until the first time he told me off.’ At which point she’d realized that there were now three grown-ups living in the house, rather than two.

  ‘But he’s so lovely and tall, he’d always be able to take things off the top shelf for you.’ Peter’s face was soppy and slack, his eyes fixed on Sylvie’s, only inches from his own. ‘And he’d bring lots of friends home for you to fancy when you were a teenager.’

  ‘What, like Norman Livesey?’ said Fran, derisively, remembering Peter’s best friend at school, a stork-like maths freak who wore a suit at weekends.

  ‘And he’d lend you his lovely big jumpers,’ continued Sylvie. ‘And he’d help you with your homework.’

  Peter roused himself. ‘It’s never worth trying to help Fran with anything.’

  ‘I am here you know,’ said Fran. ‘Only a couple of feet away. You can address me directly.’

  ‘All right,’ said Peter, mildly. ‘It’s never been worth trying to help you with anything.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Sylvie.

  ‘Because she – you, Fran – don’t like taking advice.’

  Fran opened her mouth to speak, and was interrupted by a loud hooting. Ahead of them a gap had opened in the traffic, and the cars behind were getting impatient; Peter calmly restarted the engine.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t take advice,’ said Fran. ‘I just don’t like people… interfering.’

  Peter’s face was unreadable. Sylvie, bemused, looked from one to the other.

  ‘When Fran was twelve –’ began Peter.

  ‘Oh not the shed,’ said Fran, but half-heartedly; she actually rather liked the story.

  ‘– she volunteered to put up a garden shed that our stepfather had bought as a kit.’

  ‘For money,’ said Fran, ‘he offered to pay me.’

  ‘It took her a month.’

  ‘I’d never seen a plan before.’

  ‘She refused to let me, or our stepfather, or Mum anywhere near, even when it was obvious that she was trying to force the window frames in upside down.’ Fran bit back a smile. ‘Eventually she had to take the whole thing to pieces and start again.’

  Sylvie shook her head in apparent wonderment. ‘And did you finish it?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘Apart from the roofing.’

  ‘Well you can’t argue with genetics,’ said Fran, irritably. ‘I am only five foot two.’ She remembered how infuriating it had been, to stand aside while Peter and Richard, their stepfather, completed the job.

  ‘And is it still there?’ asked Sylvie.

  ‘Just about,’ said Peter.

  ‘The roof leaks,’ added Fran.

  The piano lorry was already parked just outside Sylvie’s new address, under a plane tree whose spiky fruits dangled from the branches like drab Christmas decorations. The older mover, looking considerably less avuncular than before, clambered out of the cab to meet them.

  ‘We’ve been here nearly forty minutes,’ he said, sharply, as Peter opened the door of the van. ‘We’ve got another job after this one, you know.’

  Peter got out to open the front door, and Fran lifted the basket out of the footwell. For the last ten minutes of the journey she had become aware of a low grumbling sound, like that of a food mixer on low speed. The cat had awoken and was staring at her through the mesh door, growling continuously and shifting from foot to foot. His discomfort was obvious.

  ‘I think he wants a crap, Sylvie.’

  Sylvie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh gosh, there’s no litter. I used the last of the bag yesterday.’

  Gosh? thought Fran. ‘Well, are there any shops near here?’

  Sylvie shook her head, eyes huge in disprop
ortionate worry. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know the area yet.’

  ‘Can he go in the gutter?’

  ‘No, he’ll only go in his litter tray, or on fresh earth.’ She made his pickiness sound like a virtue.

  ‘What, even if he’s desperate?’

  ‘I think he might run away if we let him out in the road. He’s quite nervous sometimes.’

  Fran looked around; the street was devoid of earth, fresh or otherwise, the trees forcing their way through collars of concrete. The houses were four storeys high, the front doors reached by a broad flight of steps, and the basements by a narrow spiral staircase, approached through a metal gate at pavement level. There were no front gardens.

  ‘Hang on.’ Fran climbed out of the van and went over to the railing by Sylvie’s house. Fifteen feet below was a dank strip of concrete, patched with the etiolated leaves of a bindweed that had grown along the ground and halfway up the facing wall, the main stem snaking up from an area of deep shadow behind the dustbin. The adjacent window was heavily curtained and covered by a metal grille, and the door was set back in an alcove under the steps. Fran returned to the van where Sylvie sat, hunched and guilty.

  ‘Which flat are you in?’

  ‘Second floor,’ said Sylvie.

  ‘Who’s in the basement?’

  ‘I think it’s the woman who owns the house. Mrs Hackett. An agent showed us round, though, so we didn’t meet her.’ She looked mistily into the basket. ‘Poor Mr Tibbs.’

  ‘Is there a back garden?’

  ‘Yes. It’s very overgrown. Why, what are you going to do?’

  The steep walls swallowed the noise from the street, and by the time Fran was halfway down the spiral staircase, she felt as though she were wearing ear plugs. Only the clear pinking of the sparrows still cut through, the sound dropping into the well like chips of stone. The cement floor at the bottom was green with moss and the black paint of the stairway was flaking, revealing vivid splashes of rust. Fran rested the cat basket on the bottom rung and tiptoed over to the dustbin. It was lidless and empty, save for an inch or two of water and an empty plastic bag, and she shifted it noiselessly to one side. Behind lay a tiny strip of soil, the remnant of years of leaf mould that had accumulated in a gap in the concrete. The sweetish, rotting smell permeated the whole area.

  Fran hesitated. The right thing to do at this point would be to knock at the door, and explain the situation to the inhabitant of the basement flat in the hope that she’d allow access to her back garden. On the other hand, only a complete lunatic would let a stranger into their flat for the purposes of letting their cat defecate.

  The querulous yowl increased in volume, and Fran decided to do the wrong thing. The door was shrouded in shadow, the window crammed with curtains and cushions; it seemed certain that no one could be watching. She loosened the straps on the basket and tipped Mr Tibbs out onto the concrete, where he spread like a unbaked loaf. He looked around vaguely as if he’d forgotten what he wanted to do. Fran moved him nearer to the patch of earth and he seemed to get the idea, sniffing it delicately and then turning around with the grace of a backing caravan.

  ‘Is he all right?’ called Sylvie, leaning over the railing.

  ‘Shhhhhhh.’ Fran flapped her hand in frantic warning.

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ Sylvie opened the gate and pattered down the stairs. ‘The woman’s not here.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Fran, still keeping her voice low.

  ‘The couple from the third-floor flat just stopped to talk to me. They said they haven’t seen her since they moved in, and that was three weeks ago.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she hasn’t come back,’ hissed Fran, exasperated.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sylvie, more softly. ‘Though it doesn’t really feel like she’s here, does it?’ They both turned to look at the choked window, the curtains arranged in heavy, permanent folds, the cushions flattened against the glass.

  ‘It’s horrible down here,’ whispered Sylvie. ‘Like a dungeon.’

  A sudden, indefinable noise made them jump. It was the cat, kicking earth against the wall with great sweeps of its back feet.

  ‘Oh Mr Tibbs!’ said Sylvie, delighted. ‘You’ve done your business, you clever boy.’

  Dimly seeming to register their presence, he looked up at them and mewed, a half-formed sound, like a death rattle.

  ‘There’s something wrong with his vocal cords,’ explained Sylvie, noticing Fran’s expression. ‘The vet thinks they might have been damaged by early malnutrition.’

  ‘Let’s get him back in the basket,’ said Fran.

  Ten minutes later, as she was leaving the first-floor flat with half a bottle of milk and a saucer, she bumped into Peter.

  ‘What’s happening,’ he said, ‘why aren’t you helping me unload?’

  ‘Because we can’t get the bloody cat back in the basket. He’s hiding and I’ve just cadged this to try and make him come out.’ She edged round the piano, temporarily parked on the landing while the movers inspected the next flight. ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  ‘Is Sylvie all right?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I was just –’ he shrugged helplessly ‘– just checking she wasn’t upset.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Fran, mystified. ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’

  Peter rested the box on the banister. ‘Because moving’s a disruptive event, especially an enforced move. And Sylvie’s very sensitive.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Fran again, slightly irritated. ‘She’s getting lots of help, isn’t she?’

  Peter opened his mouth as if to speak, and then closed it. Instead, he lifted the box and started up the stairs.

  ‘Look,’ said Fran to his retreating back, ‘I’m being nice to her, I’m getting her sodding cat back in its box, aren’t I? It’s Saturday, you know, I could still be lying in a bath listening to the radio…’ Her voice trailed off as the movers reappeared round the hairpin bend in the second-floor staircase.

  The older one gave Peter a glum stare. ‘I’m going to have to phone the next job,’ he said, ‘tell them we’re gonna be late.’

  Sylvie was still crouched on the cement floor, making beseeching noises to the invisible Mr Tibbs. Energized after his crap, he had evaded Fran’s initial grab and skittered away around the basement perimeter before inserting himself, presumably by a process of deflation, into the tiny space under the bottom step of the spiral. From there, immovable by any physical means short of a crowbar, he peered out through half-closed eyes.

  ‘Oh, you found some,’ said Sylvie, gazing at the milk as if she had just sighted the Holy Grail. She poured a little into the saucer, and placed it temptingly just out of the cat’s reach. ‘Here we go, Tibbsy.’ A minute passed, and then another. ‘I think,’ said Sylvie, in a whisper, ‘we should move further away, where he can’t see us.’

  They retreated to the shadowy alcove that hid the doorway. ‘When he gets out,’ said Fran, ‘I want you to block that gap under the step. Stick your foot in it so he can’t get back in.’

  Sylvie giggled nervously and then sniffed a couple of times. ‘There’s a funny smell here,’ she said.

  ‘I think it’s the leaf mould,’ said Fran.

  ‘But it seems stronger by the door.’ She sniffed again. ‘It’s horrible. It’s not gas, is it?’

  Fran did some sniffing herself. ‘No, it’s definitely not gas. It’s sweeter than that.’ And more foetid, she thought, and quickly scanned the dark corners of the little porch for a mouse corpse, or disembowelled sparrow.

  ‘I wonder…’ said Sylvie. ‘If she’s away then maybe she forgot about something in the fridge. I remember once when I got back from holiday…’ As she spoke she lifted the flap of the letter box and cautiously looked through. ‘There was a really awful –’

  The letter box snapped back so suddenly that the cat, who had just started to inch forward, shuddered back into hiding.

  ‘Oh God, what’s t
he matter?’ asked Fran, half dreading the answer.

  Sylvie turned slowly, her face white, her mouth an almost perfect O.

  ‘There’s a hand,’ she said.

  The next hours were a patchwork of sounds – the police siren, the booming footsteps down the spiral staircase, the crunch and tinkle as the door was broken open, the retching coughs of the officers’ retreat, the miserable wail of the approaching ambulance, pointless in its haste, and finally, summarily, the thump as Sylvie’s piano was set down in Fran and Peter’s living room, rattling the pictures on the walls and plucking a great thrumming note from the strings.

  ‘It’s only insured for the journey as agreed in the original contract,’ said the older mover, seeing Fran about to speak. All traces of avuncularity seemed to have been scrubbed from his features, despite the fistful of tenners recently transferred from her wallet into his.

  Wordlessly, Fran signed the form and then winced as the little trolley ricocheted off the skirting board on the way out.

  There were boxes in the hall, and up the stairs, and on the landing. In the quiet that descended when the front door closed, Fran could hear from Peter’s room the soft hiccup of Sylvie crying. In the kitchen, Mr Tibbs lay beneath the table like the last rug in the shop. Fran poured herself a large glass of wine, drank half of it at a gulp and picked up the phone. She really had to talk to Spencer.

  11

  Iris’s father was out. Again. His answerphone message, over-enunciated at dictation speed, was becoming grindingly familiar. ‘I am unable to come to the phone at the moment, but you may leave a message stating the time, the date and the reason for your call, as well as your name and telephone number, and any details about when you can be reached most conveniently, and I will return your call as soon as possible. Please leave your message after the long tone which you will hear after a number of short ones.’ Just before the first tone a perky voice with an identifiable Scottish accent could just be heard in the background. ‘Ian, it says here you’ve got to press the red button and then rewind.’ Mrs McHugh.