Saving Septic Cyril: The Illegal Gardener Part II (The Greek Village Collection Book 16)

by Sara Alexi

  Saabira puts kitchen chairs either end between sofa and hearth to make a temporary pen for Jay. Her daughter’s little face is concentrating as she tries to take beans out of the jar. If she only takes a few then she can withdraw her hand, but if she grabs too many her fist becomes too big and she cannot get her hand out. She is trying to judge the maximum she can grasp and still get her hand out.

  ‘Coming,’ Saabira shouts up the stairs.

  Getting Cyril down the stairs proves to be much easier than she expected. He takes his weight on the handrails and hops with his good leg. She is in front of him ready to break his fall should he misjudge. At the bottom he takes a little rest.

  ‘Do you want to sit on the sofa or at the table?’ she asks.

  ‘Do you have any jigsaws?’ he says.

  ‘No. Shall I get one of yours from next door?’

  He heads for the table.

  ‘Can you get the one of the kitten and the one of the cottage with all the flowers?’

  ‘Of course.’ And, after a glance at Jay, who is still engrossed, she goes next door and back as quickly as she can.

  The bus to Bradford takes a while, winding its way down narrow lanes through magnificent countryside. The greens are like deep emeralds, the heather almost brown now, the sky a rich blue-grey fading to white on the horizon. It always looks like the monsoon weather. She will buy an umbrella today.

  Soon, houses flank the road, and the bus goes all the way into the centre of Bradford and drops her at the bus station. She is directed out and up a street where the path goes down a slope and under the ground. Jay’s eyes are wide and Saabira hurries her step, but the path widens at an intersection and she looks up at a perfect circle of sky above her, which lets in the sounds of cars, as if the open sky is the centre of a roundabout. She takes the first exit from this junction, up a slope and back out by the road where there are even more lanes and lights and traffic. It’s the wrong exit; she backtracks and a few minutes later she is standing outside a large modern building with the word Library in relief letters above the doors. The glass doors open automatically and she gazes up at the grand, high ceiling. ‘It’s wonderful here,’ she tells Jay, who is looking out at a group of pigeons fussing and pecking the ground around a woman eating her sandwiches on a bench.

  Saabira looks around her, unsure where to start. A girl behind a long desk looks up and catches her eye.

  ‘Hello, can I help you with anything?’ she asks. She is wearing a saree.

  Chapter 41

  The receptionist fusses over Jay and then listens to Saabira, who explains what she needs. ‘Come with me,’ the woman says with a smile, and leads Saabira to a workstation where she can get online. She leaves, but returns moments later with a book for Jay to look at, which has things to press and squash, and Jay is completely absorbed until she becomes hungry.

  By then, Saabira has amassed some information from the government portal, and from a land registry website, and has written it down on a pad of paper.

  She has discovered that Cyril’s house is owned by a trust company based, not in England, but on a small island off the west coast, halfway to Ireland, called the Isle of Man. A quick search reveals that the government of this island is independent from England, and that it is a tax haven, although it is still part of the British Isles.

  ‘It is more complicated than I expected,’ she tells Jay, who is beginning to wriggle and complain and definitely needs to eat and sleep. ‘But enough of this now, my little bumble bee. Let us go and have our lunch.’

  ‘Did you find what you needed?’ the girl in the saree asks as they pass reception.

  ‘Yes – thank you very much.’

  ‘Aww, such a sweet little thing. Don’t cry, baby.’ The girl wiggles her long, painted fingernails in Jay’s face, which makes her cry all the more.

  ‘She is hungry,’ Saabira explains.

  ‘Oh, okay, cafe down this corridor to the right. There is a baby changing unit on your left.’ She smiles widely.

  ‘Thank you.’ Saabira follows the directions. ‘You know what, Jay, if you grow up here in England, which is so organised, you might find Pakistan a bewildering place.’

  But Jay is not interested in the sounds her mother is making; she just wants food.

  Saabira feels a little disappointed that she did not have lunch with Aaman but it was more logical for her to eat in the cafe with Jay, and by the time they finished his lunchbreak would have been over. Besides, having lunch with him would have involved finding a telephone to let him know she was coming as well as actually finding the place, which might have been a bus ride out of the centre of town. Once Jay is fed she becomes floppy, and the easiest option is to jump back on a bus to go back home anyway.

  The bus they take drops them, not at the end of the cobbled lane, but in Greater Lotherton, which pleases Saabira. She relishes the thought of the walk along the narrow roads flanked with drystone walls, with the moors beyond on every side, hearing the call of the birds and the rustle of the sheep in the bracken, and feeling the wind on her face. It is a dramatic change from the city she has just left. Back home, if someone had described this landscape she would never had imagined preferring it to the horizons that surround their village in Pakistan, but now she is here it might very well be that she does like it better.

  ‘It is passionate, like the Bronté sisters’ stories. They told stories of love and jealousy,’ she tells Jay, who is just waking up but is still slumped against her shoulder. The word ‘jealousy’ brings the thought of Juliet in Greece to mind. Saabira knows she still needs to deal with her feelings about this. She shakes her head. She still has no idea how.

  They walk down the hill, over the railway line in the valley bottom and up the hill on the other side. Just as they are coming to the end of the cobbled lane, a fat raindrop lands right on the end of her nose. She begins to judge the distance to their home but then it is as if the heavens have opened and Saabira makes a dash for the telephone box at the bottom of the lane.

  Jay is awake now, her hands reaching out to the windows of the red telephone box, and then she wriggles, she wants to get down. There is nowhere she can escape to so Saabira obliges. Soon the windows begin to steam up. They are there five minutes waiting for the rain to subside before she thinks to use the phone. She has the name and the number, and it will be the quickest way to find out more.

  ‘Hello, Haggle and Gripp, how may I help you?’ says a voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Oh!’ says Saabira, suddenly feeling unprepared. ‘I would like some information about my landlord, please.’ She frowns at her own words, and wonders whether the woman on the other end might consider her question odd, or say something that will make her feel foolish. ‘May I take your name, please?’ says the voice. There is a pause and the woman asks her to spell her surname. ‘And the address?’ Another pause, and a rustling sound. ‘Thank you, I will see if Mr Haggle is available. Please hold.’ The line goes quiet.

  She seems to wait for ages, but as Jay is happily watching a beetle that has come in under the door to take refuge from the rain, and as the downpour continues, drumming on the roof of the phone box, she is in no hurry.

  ‘Hello, Haggle speaking, how may I help, Mrs – er…’ His tone is clipped and hurried.

  ‘Saabira,’ she says, to relieve him of his struggle with her last name. She repeats her request, and tells him the address of Cyril’s house.

  ‘Ah, right, yes,’ he says, ‘Well, the house you are referring to is part of the Noiram Trust.’

  ‘If it is a trust does that mean it is a charity?’ Saabira idly writes Noiram in the condensation that has gathered on the telephone box window.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Mr Haggle replies. ‘Trusts are often used by charities because of the tax breaks they afford, but this is just one application. A trust is a legal entity in its own right,’ he purrs, evidently warming to the theme, ‘with trustees and beneficiaries. In this case I am one of the trustees and
Mr Gripp is another.’ She can hear him taking a breath.

  ‘Is there a problem with the house?’ he continues. ‘The state of repairs or something? If you have any issues with the property it’s best to speak to the management company that you pay your rent to.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Saabira. She hadn’t considered the possibility of there being a management company involved. ‘Can you tell me who the management company is, please?’ She breathes on the letters she has written on the cold glass and they come up clearer. There’s a pause on the line.

  ‘I thought you said you were the tenant.’ The voice sounds hard now. ‘Who did you say you are?’

  Saabira curses herself under her breath for not thinking more quickly, and then chastises herself for using bad language.

  ‘Thank you,’ she mumbles, and hangs up hastily.

  Jay does not want to leave the telephone box. The rain has just about stopped but she is still fascinated with the beetle and she squats, following its progress across the floor, but not brave enough to touch it. Outside, Saabira waits for her baby to stand. She looks at the child through the glass, and she can also see the letters that she wrote on the inside of the window in the condensation: Noiram. She closes her eyes to think for a moment. Jay stands suddenly and starts to cry. The beetle has crawled through a crack at the back of the box and is gone. She must ask Cyril if he pays rent to a management company. Perhaps they will be able to clarify his situation.

  At the house, Cyril is slumped on the sofa, asleep, his damaged leg awkwardly straight and the jigsaw of the kitten and the one of the house covered in flowers both completed on the kitchen table.

  Jay immediately wants her jar of beans; Saabira sets it down on the rug in front of the fire, which is not lit. The Aga is keeping the place beautifully warm.

  The kettle’s whistling does not wake Cyril, although he shifts and his half-broken glasses fall down to the very end of his nose. She must do something about those, find where they can be repaired. It’s still early and she can allow herself a moment before starting the food. She takes down Archie’s diary and sits with it between the overly fluffy kitten and the overly flowery house. The book feels more personal now that she has done some research. Why did Archie sell his mother’s houses to the trust company, and what does that mean for Cyril? Is Cyril actually paying his rent? Maybe through the bank account that Archie set up, and he is not even aware of it. Perhaps he is not a squatter at all. When he wakes up she will ask him. Looking at his bank statements might be the easiest way to sort all this out, and it might also show who the letting agency is.

  It occurs to her that she has taken a very long way around to find out some information that is, perhaps, not very useful. And why on earth has she not just asked Cyril some direct questions? She sighs because she knows the answer to this. She has presumed he knows nothing, just like she presumed he could not read, or that he could not take in and recall information like the Edmund Burke quote.

  She opens the book.

  ‘My mother might have been sharp but she never really paid much mind about how much tax the government took off her. When she died I had to let one of the houses go just to settle up the death duties. I weren’t right happy about that, I can tell you! So I’ve made it my business to find out about taxes and that sort of thing!

  ‘Anyways, the long and the short of it is that the house is no longer mine so the government cannot tax me on it when I’m gone. It belongs to a trust company now – the Noiram Trust. Ha! I can still live here for the rest of me life, but when I die them buggers will get nowt.

  ‘I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say this arrangement will save a pretty penny.’

  ‘Oh!’ Saabira says quietly to herself. ‘I should have just read on a little. But what does it mean for Cyril, Archie?’ She turns the page, but the entry ends here, and the next is written some days later, and does not mention the trust.

  ‘Noiram,’ Saabira says to herself, and an image of the word comes to mind, written on the window of the phone box. Beyond is Jay, squatting on the ground inside, but the letters come into focus again, reversed, now she is looking in from the outside. Of course! Noiram is simply Marion written backward! It seems so simple. Why didn’t she see that immediately? It seems her brain has become sluggish since she stopped studying. Not for the first time, Saabira considers that she must find a way to keep herself mentally more active.

  Jay stands, leaving her beans, and tries to climb onto the sofa.

  ‘No, Jay,’ Saabira hisses. But Jay takes no notice, and with fists grabbing at the material of the cushions she hoists herself up before Saabira can stand. Once on the seat she crawls across and curls up under Cyril’s outstretched arm. He does not wake up and Jay closes her eyes. Saabira smiles at the picture the two of them make, and at Cyril’s good fortune, and at the fact that the world can be so nice. She leaves them curled up together so she can read on.

  Chapter 43

  His arm is all stiff and something is lying on it so he is unable to move. His leg is also at a funny angle but at least it’s not throbbing as it was. Without moving, he opens one eye and sees a thousand prisms through his broken lens. He closes this eye and opens the other. The fire has been lit, but that is not where his attention is drawn. It is not alive and breathing like the small child curled in the crook of his arm. He stares at the infant, Saabira’s baby. Lashes so long they look like they have been stuck on. When closed, her eyes create a single thick black line, which curves upwards towards her temple. It is like holding a bird in his hand, the feeling of this child sleeping there in his arms, and so special. A baby bird, all feathers and no weight, wild and yet trusting. He feels honoured.

  Waking a little more, he becomes aware of voices. One is Saabira’s, and after a moment or two he recognises that the other is Aaman’s.

  ‘We cannot tell him, Saabira,’ Aaman says quietly. Saabira answers; it is too quiet to hear the words, but it is something about a bank account. Aaman murmurs something in return. Their voices are low, as if to hide something, conceal a secret.

  ‘I haven’t seen any bank account statements. If there had been any we would have seen them when we were clearing things out, wouldn’t we? I think the lawyers might be the best choice, let’s see if we can talk to them and find out the truth,’ Saabira says, and then something else that he doesn’t hear fully but which ends with ‘...we have no proof that he is not just a sick, insane man.’

  He doesn’t move. It sounds like they are talking about him, and the words are not kind. He has been called sick, and insane, before, in the children’s home, and at work in the abattoir, but Aaman and Saabira seemed different. With them he is sane and well, and they make him feel balanced.

  The tightness in his head, which has been gone for weeks, returns, and a familiar confusing mess of emotions and thoughts that are too scrambled to deal with twist through the grooves worn inside his brain. If he moves, Saabira and Aaman will know he is awake and then they will probably hide what they have just said with insincere chatter. Best to wait, frozen, his hurt leg outstretched and their baby in his arms. Their precious child, unspoilt and loved. So very perfect. How happy he was just a few seconds ago, waking to find they trusted him with Jay. If they think he is insane and sick then what sort of parents are they, letting their only child so close to him?

  He tentatively strokes Jay’s hair from her face, using small, slow movements so as not to attract Saabira’s and Aaman’s attention. He will let them continue what they are saying, prove that they are like all the rest. People are often pleasant to his face, only to whisper about him the moment his back is turned, as if he is deaf or stupid, or both. He knows people call him Septic Cyril, and some do not even hide the fact and they expect him not to mind. Do they expect him to laugh with them at himself? What do they expect?

  His stomach turns over and he swallows his bile. Saabira and Aaman really did seem different.

  ‘We could ask the lawyers to write to him, co
uldn’t we?’ Aaman says. If they are talking about lawyers it can only mean one thing – that they too are trying to get him evicted. Saabira has been to the library, and she said she was going to try to help, him but it seems she has just been helping Mr Brocklethwaite instead. Maybe that was why they were so keen to clean his house out, to make it ready for someone else to move straight in.

  He screws up his eyes and tries not to make a sound as the tears fall. Saabira and Aaman, after Matron Jan and Archie, have been his first real friends, and he has really considered them as such. But now they are proving to be like all the rest. The hollow feeling that engulfs him takes him back to the wardrobe, curling up in the dark when his mum was out.

  He would like to rock now, to bang his head, but with Jay in one arm he cannot move without waking her.

  ‘So one of us must go to the telephone box and call the lawyers.’ Saabira says. Aaman mutters something in return and they move apart. Saabira’s voice whispers back to Aaman from near the front door.

  ‘Don’t mention it if he wakes, let us get it all sorted out first.’

  He can hold himself back no longer. The tears pulse free and stream down his cheeks, and he slides his arm from under the warm body of the perfect child and awkwardly squirms until he is standing.

  ‘That’s right, get it all sorted first so the simple man cannot do anything!’ he shouts at them before he has even turned to face them. ‘Treat him like he has no feelings. That’s what they all do, even the ones that pretend to be nice.’

  ‘Sorry? What?’ Aaman says, but his eyes are on Jay.

  ‘I really thought you were different.’ Cyril addresses Saabira. ‘You pretended to be my friend, you acted like you liked me. What did you do that for unless you just wanted to be unkind?’

  ‘Cyril?’ Saabira’s hand reaches towards him.

  ‘To hell with you!’ Cyril shocks himself with his language. Jay, who is awake now, starts to yowl. Saabira’s eyes flicker from him to her.