Spencer's List

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Shtood on the cat,’ he said. ‘Ur her her her her her.’

  Fran sat back on her heels, and looked at the stairs. Halfway down, just below the step that Mr Tibbs liked to think of as home, the banisters were bowed outwards as if an elephant had casually leaned on them.

  ‘Shorry,’ said Barry. ‘I wash coming to shay shorry.’ The heady bouquet of Istanbul white filled the air.

  ‘Do you hurt anywhere?’ asked Fran, voice like a stone.

  ‘Dunno.’ He heaved himself into a sitting position. ‘No.’ He put one hand on the radiator and one hand on Fran’s shoulder and tried to stand up. He sat down again with a thump. ‘Ankle,’ he said. ‘Ow.’

  18

  At the time, the discovery of a cache of biscuit cutters at the back of her father’s pan cupboard was merely a nice little moment, a pinch of sweet serendipity; in retrospect it was the undisputed best bit of the entire day of the surprise party. It was mid-afternoon. Her father had left for his indoor bowls match, all unsuspecting and Tammy McHugh was scouring the shops of Stoke Newington for liquorice wheels; Iris, meanwhile, was meditatively mixing a batch of dough in the quiet kitchen. A fine rain pattered on the window and she could hear the regular chunking of a spade coming from Mr Hickey’s garden. His head bobbed intermittently above the Leylandii but he kept his face resolutely turned away, and ignored a couple of tentative waves that she’d aimed in his direction. In surgery, he was always stiffly polite to her, but here, on his own ground, she was obviously viewed as an enemy consort.

  After rolling out the dough, she rooted around for a baking tray. Her father used the same two pans for everything but behind them in the cupboard, amongst the casseroles and double boilers, were items unused – unthought of – since the fifties: milk strainers, measuring funnels, egg poachers with twirly wire handles, bain-mairies, Swiss Roll tins and a jingling cluster of nozzles for squeezing icing onto fancy cakes. She found the yellowed muslin bag of cutters nestling in the bottom of a jelly mould, and the touch of it was instantly familiar, the same mysterious bundle of jagged yet hollow shapes that she had pulled from her stocking when she was seven. She lifted it out and tipped the contents onto the table – a Christmas tree, a teddy bear, a crown, a hexagon and a star, now all splotched with rust and possessing the sort of lethal edges that had seemed standard in post-war children’s toys. Fingering the sharp angles of the star, she thought she could remember the last time she’d used them, another rainy day when the boys were toddlers and she had been desperate to find some activity to contain their bursting energy, to distract them even momentarily from their favourite game of clambering up the first two stairs and then jumping off them onto the hall floor, again and again and again. She had lured them into the kitchen and then hovered nervously as they’d squeezed and thumped the greying dough, envisaging at any moment a cry of pain and a severed finger rolling across the counter top.

  She ran the star-shaped cutter under the tap and gave it a rub with a brillo pad; to her surprise, bright tin showed beneath the rust and it took only a couple of minutes to restore it to a usable state. She dried it carefully, and had just resumed her search for a baking tray when the doorbell rang.

  Idling over his Weetabix that morning, Tom had predicted that half the guests would turn up much too early: ‘You know old people, they always give themselves an extra nine days to get somewhere just in case a volcano erupts and destroys the bus depot.’ And here on the doorstep, two and a half hours before the invited time, stood Leslie Peake, sporting a waterproof bush-hat, and carrying a bottle of wine with an ominously home-made label.

  ‘Not too early, am I?’ he asked, in his whistling North Welsh accent that broke the words into their constituent syllables and left clear air between each one, ‘only I took an earlier train just in case the later one was cancelled. Wouldn’t want to miss the start of the party.’ He shook the rain off his mac and followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Cup of tea, Leslie?’

  ‘Luffly.’

  She averted her eyes as he removed the hat and adjusted his hair. Leslie’s fringe ended just above his eyebrows, but it began somewhere at the nape of his neck, and several times an hour he would reposition the entire headful over the bald expanse beneath, with the action of someone settling an antimacassar.

  ‘So are you still in Dalston then, Iris?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Still at the surgery?’

  ‘Yes, still there.’

  ‘Not married yet?’

  ‘No, not yet.’ Poised with the kettle in her hand, she realized that the same demoralizing exchange would be repeated with almost every guest at the party. Iris’s life, summed up in three questions.

  ‘Don’t mind me if you’ve got to get on.’

  She pulled herself together. ‘Thanks. I’ve still got a few things to do.’ All the sandwiches, to begin with. She decided to postpone the biscuits and get on with the egg mayonnaise.

  ‘It’s potato wine,’ said Leslie. ‘Home-made.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Very potent. I thought it would bring back a memory or two for your dad.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Catterick.’ He tapped the side of his nose and gave a wink. ‘It was supposed to be a dry barracks. Enough said.’

  If only, thought Iris. She thought she could probably write an entire book on Ian and Leslie – The War Years. She checked in the oven to see how the quiches were coming on, and then delved into the fridge for the eggs.

  ‘You know, they used to call Β Block “The Still”.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. And do you know why?’

  ‘Because it had a still in it?’

  ‘No!’ He was triumphant. ‘Because there were three brothers bunking there, and you know what their surname was?’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘Ginn. Harry, Si and Ronnie Ginn.’

  She managed a laugh. ‘Oh, I see. I get it.’ She poured his tea and put it in front of him, and then turned back to the stove.

  ‘Of course, Harry was killed in Tripoli.’

  ‘Oh dear, was he?’

  ‘You know, Iris, I’m not as sweet as you must think I am.’

  ‘Sorry?’ She was thrown by the sudden change of subject.

  ‘I said I’m not as sweet as you must think I am.’ He mimed stirring a teaspoon.

  ‘Oh of course. Sorry.’ She placed the sugar bowl on the table.

  ‘You’ve just got white, have you?’

  ‘Oh… er.’ She turned down the heat under the pan and started to hunt around in the dry goods cupboard, wary of disarranging her father’s careful storage system.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, easily, after a couple of minutes. ‘Don’t want to put you to any trouble. You get on.’ At least thirty seconds of silence ensued, during which Iris put the eggs into the pan and started to slice cucumber into a colander. She could feel Leslie’s eyes following her.

  ‘Haven’t got a biscuit, have you?’ he asked. The doorbell rang again.

  ‘Ginn,’ said Leslie. ‘Harry, Si and Ronnie Ginn.’ There was a chuckle round the table, and a relaxed post-anecdotal easing back of chairs, narrowing still further the tiny gangway that Iris had been left to work in. It was a quarter to five, and there were now half a dozen premature guests sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea and listening to Leslie Peake’s war stories. Only one, Auntie Kath, had offered to help Iris, but the vague air with which she was peeling the eggs, the wandering hand which hovered between the two bowls – one supposedly containing bits of shell, the other denuded eggs, the occasional cries of ‘Whoops-a-daisy’ and ‘Now, what’s that doing in there?’, augured badly for the texture of the sandwiches.

  ‘The Still…’ repeated the senior church warden, appreciatively.

  ‘So Iris –’ Leslie turned to her with the benign air of a successful host ‘– what time is your father expected?’

  ‘Quarter to six,’ she said, spooning mushrooms into
a vol-au-vent casing.

  ‘Oh, we’re here in good time then,’ said Auntie Kath, complacently. ‘And when’s Tammy coming?’

  ‘She’s supposed to be here. Helping.’ Mrs McHugh had gone out in search of the finishing touch for her cake, a hand-built Victoria sponge in the shape of a vintage car. It was sitting in the living room in wheel-less splendour, awaiting the liquorice tyres with jelly hubcaps that the recipe specified. ‘I’m not sure you can get those any more,’ Iris had said, doubtfully, eyeing the recipe book; the photo was greenish with age and the original list of ingredients included powdered egg.

  ‘Och, nonsense,’ Mrs McHugh had said airily, clattering her wheeled shopping basket through the hall. That had been two hours ago.

  ‘Who’s Tammy?’ asked Leslie.

  Aunty Kath, dreaming over the eggs, seemed to click into focus. ‘Ooh, hasn’t he told you about Tammy?’

  ‘He’s found himself a lady friend, has he?’ Leslie sat up keenly, and smoothed his fringe in anticipation.

  ‘Well, she’s –’ The doorbell rang again and Iris put down the spoon and went to answer it.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ The boys clumped in, dripping, their arms laden with bags. ‘Pissing down out there.’

  ‘We’ve brought the glasses, Mum,’ said Robin.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, distractedly, looking along the road. There was no sign of Mrs McHugh, but to her dismay she could see the Woodentop gait of Dov Steiner jerking into view, and behind him what looked like the entire indoor bowls team, clustered beneath a couple of gigantic golf umbrellas. They were dreadfully early – the match wasn’t supposed to finish for at least another three-quarters of an hour; furthermore, she realized, they must have her father with them, unless they’d run away and left him. A grumble of thunder rattled the glass in the fanlight above the door.

  ‘What do you want us to do?’

  ‘Oh, er…’ She tried to marshall her thoughts. ‘You could open out the dining-room table, and arrange all the plates and cutlery and glasses on it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And get the drink out of the fridge.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And you could ask people to move out of the kitchen. Politely.’

  ‘Are you a bit harassed, Mum?’ asked Robin, curiously.

  ‘Yes, a bit.’

  ‘They all turned up early, didn’t they?’ said Tom, pleased with his prescience.

  ‘Tom –’ she said, warningly.

  ‘Ooh, something serious.’ He looked at her, his expression a facsimile of sombre attention.

  ‘No, it’s just… there’s a man in the kitchen with a funny hairstyle. I wanted to prepare you. So you wouldn’t stare.’ He looked at her for a moment longer, then glanced at Robin.

  ‘We wouldn’t do that, would we, Rob?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well, good,’ she said, unconvinced. She heard a rattling noise and turned to see Dov closing the gate.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ hissed Tom behind her, ‘there’s a man with a funny head coming up the path.’

  The front hall of her father’s house was fairly narrow – a corridor rather than an atrium – and certainly far too small to accommodate seven members of the bowls team with Dov standing in their midst like a sentient hatstand. Her father was not amongst them and as Iris tried to disentangle the story of the afternoon there was an influx from the kitchen.

  ‘We’ve been given our marching orders,’ said Leslie, heading the contingent and holding a chair in front of him like a cowcatcher. ‘Where do you want us?’

  Iris raised her voice. ‘Could everyone please move into the front room.’

  ‘Left, right, left, right,’ said Leslie, amidst laughter. There was a surge of bodies, a sudden bottleneck during which Iris was pinned against the banisters by a wall of flesh redolent of Old Spice and damp tweed and then the crush subsided into an orderly queue. From the kitchen, a number of yelping noises became audible.

  Robin was actually lying on the floor, face scarlet, knees drawn up to his chest, while Tom sat with his back against a table leg. Two slices of bacon were draped over his head. ‘Hey, Mum, I’m… I’m…’ His mouth wobbled out of control again and he emitted a series of cheeps.

  ‘Well, thanks for your help,’ said Iris. She opened the fridge and began to take out bottles of squash and wine. ‘Grandad’s disappeared,’ she added.

  It took a while for the words to register. ‘Wha?’ said Robin.

  ‘There was a power cut at the leisure centre and when the rest of the bowls team got out they couldn’t find him.’

  ‘Uh.’

  ‘So let’s keep our fingers crossed that he hasn’t decided to go to the cinema for the afternoon.’ She pawed through the cutlery drawer for the corkscrew and then closed it with a satisfying smash.

  ‘So, uh…’ Robin heaved himself up and leaned against the sink. ‘Do you want us to… to…’

  ‘Hey, Rob.’

  ‘Wha?’

  Tom lifted a hand and smoothed the bacon fringe over his eyebrows. His brother jackknifed silently to the floor and Iris picked up the bottles and left the kitchen. The phone and the doorbell rang simultaneously just as she’d squeezed between the bodies and deposited the drinks on the table and she waved the corkscrew at Leslie.

  ‘Rely on me,’ he said, taking it with a gallant bow.

  Ayesha was at the door, her swirl of stiffened hair pearly with raindrops, a silver helium balloon with ‘70’ written on it floating above her. ‘You’re the only person on time so far,’ said Iris, over her shoulder as she hurried back to the kitchen. Tom was just reaching for the phone and she snatched it from the cradle before he could get there.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Iris?’

  ‘Tammy? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m back at my house. Listen, dear, there’s been a wee bit of a problem – I’ve got your dad with me.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Oh yes, he’s fine – it’s not a physical problem. It’s more psychological.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well it was just bad luck really. You see I’d popped into Woolworths for the liquorice sweeties and you know it’s just opposite the leisure centre? I thought there’d be no chance of bumping into him but would you believe there was a power cut and –’

  ‘I heard. The rest of the team’s just got here.’

  ‘Well. Your dad spotted me coming out of the shop and he was a bit puzzled because you know I’d only just rung him to say I had a bad tummy and I was going to miss bowls and have a bit of a lie-down instead and the next thing he knows, there I am dashing along the high street with my face on and all dressed up for a party. So anyway, he wanted to know what was going on.’

  ‘Oh. You told him, did you?’

  ‘I had to, dear,’ said Mrs McHugh gravely. ‘He thought there must be someone else.’

  ‘So what did he say?’

  ‘He’s not keen. Not keen at all. He says it’s all too much fuss and bother and he’s sitting in the front room with his arms folded.’

  Iris felt a sour surge of triumph. ‘I knew he’d hate the idea,’ she said, and her voice was fat with satisfaction; she saw Robin shoot her a startled look. From the front room there was a burst of laughter and the doorbell rang again. The feeling of triumph dissipated and she felt suddenly wretched.

  ‘You know there are nearly twenty people here already,’ she said, ‘practically everyone’s turned up early and I haven’t even finished the food yet.’

  There was a rattle from the door knocker and a further ring on the bell, and Robin unfolded himself from the floor. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Well I can’t seem to budge him,’ said Tammy, ‘you know what he can be like. And between you and me I think he might be a bit –’ she lowered her voice ‘– embarrassed about introducing me to his old friends. You know, the thought simply hadn’t occurred to me but of course he’s a bit old-fashioned about all that sort of thing. Anyway I thought tha
t maybe if you –’

  ‘Hang on.’ Leslie had popped his head round the door of the kitchen and, seeing her on the phone, started to mime something – something circular, about five inches high, hollow, a container of some kind…

  ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ said Tom in a muffled voice.

  ‘Glasses?’ hazarded Iris.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘In the bags by the stairs. They’re on hire.’ He disappeared again. The front door slammed and she could hear the shuffle of footsteps in the hall.

  ‘Mum,’ shouted Robin, ‘someone wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Tell them I won’t be a minute.’ The doorbell rang yet again and continued ringing, as if someone were leaning on the bell push. Tammy said something inaudible and Iris stuffed a finger in her free ear.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said maybe you should have a word with him.’

  She hesitated, the noise drilling through her head; she could hardly remember the last time she’d had a proper conversation with her father, one that wasn’t bulging with unvoiced topics. ‘All right then,’ she said, reluctantly.

  ‘I’ll go and get him.’

  As Iris waited, the doorbell stopped at last and then restarted immediately, stopped again, started and was finally replaced by the sound of knuckles on wood.

  ‘Will somebody get that?’ she called. ‘Robin?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to,’ he shouted back.

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Sorry, Iris.’ Spencer, looking damp and harassed, came into the kitchen. ‘I asked him not to.’

  ‘What?’ The doorbell started ringing again. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s Callum Strang. He followed me from the surgery.’

  ‘But –’ She heard the snap of the letter box and the unintelligible roar of Callum’s voice.

  ‘What does he want?’