by Clare Curzon
Feeling she’d scored, Sheena drank up and pushed her glass back for a refill. Ramón glanced past her to two men in overalls who’d just come in, moved along the bar and served them. He didn’t seem in a hurry to come back. Sheena raised her glass above her head and called, ‘Pour it again, Sam.’
Of course he’d never heard of Casablanca. Instead she got more of the blank-eyed look as he repeated the drink. She glanced at her watch, frowned and downed the brown stuff in one. It seemed even stronger. She felt it hit, warm inside, and hiccuped. ‘The mixture as before,’ she excused herself jokily.
He nodded, again at sea with the quotation.
‘Like it says on medicine bottles,’ it was necessary to explain.
‘Yes,’ woodenly.
Not the sort for repartee, but perhaps that made him a man of action. ‘Well, must be off.’ She reached the door, turned, waved her brown wool gloves at him saucily. ‘Be seeing you.’
‘Indeed.’
She’d made it; won the promise of some diversion to get her through the boring hours of waiting on a near-corpse. Who could tell what impression the luxury apartment would have on Ramón? The style was a bit bare for her taste, but you couldn’t escape the whiff of big money that came off it.
For once Sheena arrived with some enthusiasm for her stint of duty at Emily’s penthouse, impatient for Alyson to be gone. The moment she heard the lift go down Sheena let herself into the nurse’s bathroom and sniffed at the bottles. There was a new moisturising bath crème with a fresh floral scent. Running the mixer tap for water, she poured in enough to give a rich foam. (If Alyson noticed the lower level in the bottle she’d explain she needed a bath after cleaning up the old crone.)
Cosy afterwards in a new fluffy bath towel, she nudged with a toe her pile of cast-off clothes. In Alyson’s bedroom she helped herself to a silky kimono and posed in it before the full-length mirrors of the wall-length wardrobe. She wished she’d let her hair grow, but it was more bother that way. She ran oiled hands through it now to make it stand up spiky, giving more height.
Still an hour and twenty minutes before she could hope to hear Ramón buzz from downstairs. The drinks he’d mixed for her were making her thirsty. Should she make herself coffee now or wait until he was there? At least get a tray ready; fill the kettle, find some biscuits or cake. Only, of course, Alyson didn’t do sweet things. There were crackers to go with cheese, but they looked like something you’d buy for a dog.
With old Emily asleep and snoring on her back, she could safely go for a spot of shut-eye herself. She checked that her makeup had survived the bath – no call to wash above the neckline – and spread herself over the freshly made bed. The goose-down duvet smelled delicately of floral laundry freshener. She snuggled her nose in it, decided she might lose heat exposed outside, and eased herself under. She closed her eyes on the memory of Ramón’s face, like polished cherry wood, smiling. Only he didn’t smile, did he? Maybe, though, she’d find a way to get him going.
The buzzer stung her awake and she started up, couldn’t grasp where she was. In her dream she’d been back home in the kitchen. Ma had been rowing with her over something and Uncle Chaz had stuck his oar in. Only Chaz had been dead a couple of years, lungs rotted away with those filthy old fags he never stopped smoking. She’d offered him a spliff once but he wasn’t for changing. One of them was worth twenty of the stenchy stuff he used to roll himself.
She turned over, put both hands to her aching head, then heard it again. Ramón, she remembered. She hadn’t meant to drop right off like that. Now she’d look a mess and …
She bundled the robe round her, retied the sash and ran to activate the door release and let the man in below. Would he remember it was the seventh floor? She didn’t want anyone to see him on the way up. God, it was nearly four o’clock: she’d been out to the wide and felt all the worse for it. She stared in the hall mirror, pinched her cheeks to bring back some colour, and tugged at her hair. She heard the lift arrive and the soft susurration of the doors opening. The doorbell shrilled.
He had brought her flowers. They weren’t much: a small bunch of those screwed-up, dark anemone buds that you could never be sure would open properly. Still, it was something, and she hadn’t expected them. He was as deadpan as ever, but she’d admit he did seem curious, wanting to see everything, Emily’s room included.
She left him in there while she went to fill the cafetière and could hear him opening cupboards and moving things about.
Still barely emerging from a dream, Emily came half-awake, impatient, consumed with longing for something indefinable, out of reach. It was like being young again and knowing a terrible need while unable to tell what it was her heart cried out for. If only she could see it, remember. She needed, needed …wanted so much. What?
To be free.
And then, in an instant, she was. As in a trance state, suddenly nothing was impossible. With no limits, no restraints, she was running through sparse autumn woodland, her face turned up to drink in the gentle rain; yet she had no face, no limbs, no body. Despite that she could feel it all. And it was wonderful. Such energy, such passion, such an overwhelming urge towards …
There was no future, no past, now was eternal, with the need to be running, to feel the cool fingers of rain stroking and tickling; to be at one with it and the woodland which now seemed familiar. And in a clearing ahead there was the ghost of a swing that hung on long chains from a tree, still gently swaying as if a child had just jumped off. Herself perhaps.
She looked down for her winged, shimmering feet, silver in the rain but immaterial. She was totally invisible. Just spirit.
A soul? No she mustn’t believe in souls, the religious sort. It would be too awful if they were real and all that business about hellfire punishment.
Then, ‘I am Emily,’ she croaked defiantly, claiming what she suddenly knew was true. ‘I am almost ninety-four years old.’
And the magic dissolved. She was back again in barely damped-down pain, frustrated. Trapped in a diseased body. In a square room with walls she couldn’t see through.
Someone had come into the room and stood looking down on her. It was a man, a stranger, wearing a white jacket. She was suddenly afraid, closed her eyes, but could hear him moving about, opening and shutting drawers. She called for someone to come, to get her out of here. No matter who. Any of them.
She ran through their names but couldn’t recall their faces. ‘Martin, Dolly!’ And there was another, but it had vanished from her mind. She opened her eyes. And the man had gone silently away.
Ramón joined Sheena in the kitchen, where he’d shed his parka on arriving, and carried the tray through to the front window, just like a waiter in a grand hotel. He looked like it too, still in his white tunic with the coloured epaulettes.
‘So whatcha think?’ Sheena demanded, offering him the snow-scene panorama with a sweep of one arm. He leaned forward to look down on the circulating traffic, then straightened to take his bearings from the perspective of distant hills.
‘You can’t see the pub,’ she warned. ‘It’s behind that corner with the Natwest Bank on. That’s the college opposite, and the hospital. Fire station’s over there. You can’t see much of the river. It’s best at night. There’s a patch of dark where the lights aren’t.’
He nodded. ‘And right below, at this side? A low building.’
‘That’s Elston’s, a stationery and office warehouse. You wouldn’ t have seen it from the road because there’s a high wall all round, except for the side opening on Carlisle Street. The council have been trying to buy them out and build there, but they won’t have it.’
‘Wise,’ he said. ‘Worth a lot to keep.’
‘I bet somebody’ll have enough money for it some day.’ Casually she lit up a spliff, acting sophisticated, but he scarcely noticed.
‘It has a big car park,’ he said. ‘Empty, almost.’
‘That’s because they keep it clear for goods coming in. The delive
ry trucks are huge; come from all over Europe. So if other people leave their cars there they could get clamped. You often see a row going on down there with drivers who think they can sneak in and park for free. That’s just in the daytime, though.’
But Ramón appeared to have lost interest. Sheena swirled the robe’s overlong skirt off her feet and sat opposite him, offering a sight of chubby knee. She crossed one leg over the other to reveal a stretch of thigh, then discovered she couldn’t pour coffee in that position.
‘I do that,’ Ramón offered. ‘More my job.’ He twisted the tray towards him on the low coffee table. ‘You say how you like.’
‘Hot and strong,’ she told him, in time stopping herself uttering the trite old ‘just like my men.’ Something told her it would have been a mistake. ‘You don’t have to work overtime,’ she said instead.
‘Is no hard work here for you,’ he observed, gazing around. ‘The old lady call for other people. Not you.’
‘Well, I’m all she’s got here right now. Was she awake then?’
‘No. I think she dream.’
‘About dead people. All her lot are dead but her. She’s as old as the hills.’
‘She has no family?’
‘Miss Withers. She never married. There are some great-nephews and nieces, I think. But nobody’s bothered about her. None of them ever come to visit. Still, she’s not that interesting. Tell me about you.’
That’ll get him, she thought. There’s nothing puffs any man up like talking about himself.
If anything, his face became more closed.
Chapter Five
Ramón drank up his coffee.
‘That was good.’ Which was true. Even this unappetizing woman couldn’t ruin the superior Italian blend. He drew its aroma in through narrowed nostrils, to drown out the stench of her reefer.
She grinned smugly back at him. ‘Nice place, innit?’
‘That is good too.’
He was no conversationalist but she still had hopes of him. She’d leave him to make the first move. Maybe he was shy, strictly brought up. They were Catholics out in the Philippines, weren’t they? And except for the blagging Irish sort, she’d always thought RCs a bit tied down by their images and rule books. Actually he was staring at her legs now. She swished the skirts of the silk kimono coyly back over her ankles.
And at that point the apartment doorbell shrilled. Not the buzzer from downstairs, so it had to be the doctor. He was the only one told the code for the electronic entry. But he’d never called out of the blue before. Always phoned ahead.
‘Oh my God,’ she blurted, ‘it’s the doc. ‘He can’t find us like this. You’ll hafta hide somewhere.’
The Filipino gave her his deadpan stare. ‘I talk to him. You go dress.’
‘You can’t …’ But then why not? His uniform jacket was quite like one of the male care assistants at Alyson’s hospital. Maybe he’d pass as one moonlighting.
The bell sounded again, with shrill persistence. Ramón reached up to slide open a panel in the glass wall and the wind rushed in. Sheena grabbed the tray and fled to the kitchen. With the door open a crack she could hear talking as Ramón let the visitor in.
It was a woman.
The voices were low, words indistinguishable. The woman was introducing herself, excusing her unexpected visit. ‘On a sudden whim,’ she said more loudly as they passed from the hall towards Emily’s room.
Alyson hadn’t mentioned any Health Visitor calling. She saw to all that herself. And why let the woman know the street-door code? It was out of order. Sheena stood tense, gripping the edge of the door. They were in Emily’s bedroom now and their voices no more than a murmur.
A few minutes passed and then there were footsteps coming towards the kitchen. Sheena shrank back in the space behind the door. But it was only Ramón.
‘She smell the coffee. I make her some.’ He started rinsing the used cafetière and resetting the tray.
‘But who is she? What does she want?’
‘To see Emily. Her grandmother, she say.’
‘It can’t be. Emily hasn’t any family.’ But hadn’t she? There were great-nieces and great-nephews who never bothered to visit. Ramón could have got it wrong, no good at English, mixed up the relations. But not a granddaughter; couldn’t be. Miss Withers after all. With a bastard child her generation, so namby-pamby, would have covered up with calling herself Mrs.
‘That is what the lady say. Out the way, please. I need cup and saucer.’
She let him complete his preparations, smooth and professional. Waiter, barman or stand-in nurse. The woman, whoever she was, had accepted him without question.
Rachel Howard stared down at the old, old woman and felt nothing. It hadn’t been like that as she’d entered the hall. Then so much emotion had flooded her that afterwards there was a void left. It was because of the carving, still around after so many years; still able to transport her instantly back into childhood, to all its lost glories and agonies.
She went back and picked it up, felt its weight and the hard, irregular outlines. The intricate carving, in dark, polished wood, was thought to be Chinese. As long as Rachel remembered, it had lived in the hall on the occasional table where Grandmother used to sort the post: three wizened little monkeys squatting in a row. One had its paws over its eyes, the second over its ears and the third over its mouth.
Since long before she learned that the three represented See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil, Rachel had seen the carving as a lucky mascot and never missed touching it as she went out of the house. At sixteen she had still done it, still smiled recalling Martin’s corny reaction to the description ‘occasional’ for the piece of furniture it stood on: ‘What’s it do when it isn’t a table, then?’ he’d demanded.
That first time, a Saturday, it had amused them all the long walk to the library, making up stories of wild adventures that the thing got up to when it wasn’t on duty in her grandmother’s Victorian hall.
That last, awful morning she had missed touching it, passing at speed because she was late and it wouldn’t be Bert that day on the school bus. When Bert drove he understood how she was held back by Dolly at the breakfast-room window until the tea cup was drained, even as she watched the bus turn in at Dimarco’s corner stop. Then he’d pull away and dawdle while she raced out and ahead, scarf and school bag flying, to the bit where Kilmarnie Lane narrowed with trade vans parked, and she could swing on board as he footled through at five miles an hour.
Once seated, though, she was different, sophisticated, wordly-wise, casual about the admiration of the giggling little third-formers. She never finished homework on the journey, while they swapped answers to Algebra or cribbed others’ Latin translations. Hers was all done properly at home, and most of it, she knew, would be correct.
She felt bile rise in her throat, thrust the wretched object back between a small brass gong and the framed photograph of Arthur’s Seat. The thing’s power had run out that day when both parents were killed in the light aircraft crashing on the Pentlands. And Emily had taken over her life.
Ramón carried out the reset tray and found the woman in the vast livingroom admiring the paintings. Sheena slipped out of the kitchen, back to retrieve her clothes and sit waiting impatiently on the side of the rumpled bed for sounds of the visitor’s departure.
She had given Ramón her card, as a sort of justification for barging in: Rachel Howard, with an address at some gallery in Edinburgh.
‘Scottish?’ Sheena insisted when he showed it to her later. But Ramón knew nothing of British geography or accents. The only snatch of conversation Sheena had caught just sounded snooty Anything else was left for Alyson to work out.
‘What did she look like?’ Sheena demanded. She’d need to describe the woman, as if she’d been there herself to let her in.
He said simply, ‘Tall lady, very fine.’
‘You mean well-dressed?’
‘That, yes, too. Thin, very straight.�
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‘How old would you say?’
‘Forty or more. Forty-five, but well …’
‘Well preserved? Good-looking?’
‘Like Emily, but black hair, younger.’
Surely that would be enough to satisfy Alyson, unless unluckily she was ever to meet the woman and be told who’d let her in.
‘Did she say she’d call again?’ For godsake, she was having to drag every stinking word out of the man.
‘She telephone your boss.’
‘Alyson Orme? Did she mention her by name?’
‘She call her that, yes. I go now.’
She had overdone the inquisition and he was turning resentful. Well, let him. She’d wasted enough time on him already and she had to set the place straight again and get the old girl seen to. Just one more question, though, to be on the safe side. ‘Did she say anything special?’
He paused, pulling on his parka, and thought. ‘She is pleased with open window. Better than air condition. Good for invalid.’
‘She actually said that? There was half a blizzard blowing in!’
‘But it clean the air. I open it to kill smell of marijuana.’ He treated her again to his blank stare and then took his leave.
‘Kill old Emily, more like,’ Sheena said aloud. Maybe that was what the family wanted. Rich old doll. She was making them wait too long for reading her will.
Alyson had lumbered herself with an umbrella. As she halted to open it outside the supermarket, a spike caught in the loop of the carrier over her arm and the handle tore, spilling out some groceries. She bit back on ‘Sh —’ and turned it to ‘Sugar!’. Crouching to pick up the strays she heard a chuckle of sympathy.
‘Let me help you,’ said the man, bending to swoop on a packet of frozen duck portions and a box of eggs. His face loomed close to hers, handsome enough; good teeth; dark hair with a streak of silver at the temples. Standing up, he was tall too. All the ingredients for a fairground fortune-teller’s extravagant promises.
