The Keeper of Lost Things

by Ruth Hogan

  Bomber had wanted to go to Folly’s End. Before he was too often lost in random bouts of oblivion, but knew that to be his inevitable fate, he had made his wishes clear. He had always intended to give Eunice his power of attorney when the time came, and thus salvage whatever scraps of dignity and security that could be wrung from a future as bleak as the one he faced. He could trust Eunice with his life, however worthless it might become. She would always do the right thing. But Portia got there first. Armed with ridiculous but omnipotent wealth and next-of-kin affiliation if not affection, she tricked Bomber into seeing a “specialist,” who, no doubt with her financial encouragement, legally declared him to be “no longer capable of making rational decisions” and turned his future welfare over to his sister.

  The following week Bomber was installed at Happy Haven.

  Eunice had fought his corner as hard as she could; she had argued ferociously for Folly’s End, but Portia was unmoved. Folly’s End was “too far away” for her to conveniently visit, and in any case, she claimed, with astonishing callousness, it was only a matter of time before Bomber wouldn’t have a clue where he was anyway. But for now, he did. And it was killing him.

  Surprisingly, Portia did visit him. But they were strained, uncomfortable encounters. She veered wildly between bossing him about and cowering fearfully away from him. His reaction to both approaches was the same; painful bewilderment. Having deprived him of the one thing he wanted, she showered him with expensive, often pointless gifts. He had no idea what the espresso machine was, let alone how to work it. He poured the designer aftershave down the toilet and used the fancy camera as a doorstop. In the end, Portia spent most of the time during her visits drinking tea with Sylvia, the sycophantic officer-in-charge, who was a devoted fan of the Harriet Hotter books, of which there was now, regrettably, a trilogy.

  Eunice did her best to make Bomber’s room a little piece of home. She brought things from his flat, and put photographs of Douglas and Baby Jane on every shelf and table. But it wasn’t enough. He was drifting away. Giving up.

  Eunice and Bomber were not alone in the garden. Eulalia was feeding a magpie with bits of toast she’d saved from her breakfast. She was an ancient, wizened husk of a woman with skin the color of stewed prunes, wild eyes, and an alarming cackle. Her clawed hands clutched knobbled walking sticks that she used to anchor and propel her jerky, shuffling gait. Most of the other residents avoided her, but Bomber always greeted her with a friendly wave. Round and round they walked, like prisoners in an exercise yard; mindlessly walking. Eunice, because she couldn’t bear to think, and Bomber just because, most of the time, he couldn’t. Eulalia threw her last piece of toast at the black-and-white bird, who snatched it from the ground and gobbled it down, never taking his bright, elderberry eyes off Eulalia. She shook her stick at him and squawked

  “Off with you, now! Away, before they put you in a pot for dinner! They would, you know,” she said, turning to Eunice and screwing one of her eyes into a grotesque wink. “They feeds us all kinds of shit in here.”

  Judging by the smell from the kitchen, which was wafting into the garden through an open window, Eunice had to concede that she might have a point.

  “Him nuts, that one,” said Eulalia, waggling a hooked claw at Bomber while somehow still managing to keep hold of the walking stick. “Mad as an ant with his arse on fire.” She planted her sticks onto the concrete and began her painful, awkward shuffle back to the house.

  “But him a lovely man inside,” she said to Eunice as she passed. “Lovely, but dying.”

  Back in Bomber’s room, Eunice threw back the curtains to let in what little light the pale winter sun could spare. It was a nice room on the second floor; clean and spacious with rather grand French windows and a pretty balcony. Which Bomber wasn’t allowed to use.

  “Health and safety,” the officious care assistant had spat at Eunice as she banged the windows shut and locked the key in the medicine cabinet on the wall in Bomber’s room. Eunice had opened them the first time that she had visited Bomber. It was a sultry summer day and the room was hot and stuffy. The key had been left in the lock, but after that day, Eunice never saw it again.

  “Let’s watch a film, shall we?”

  Bomber smiled. For him, now, his own life story was like an unbound manuscript, badly edited. Some of the pages were in the wrong order, some torn, some rewritten or missing altogether. The original version was lost to him forever. But he still found pleasure in the familiar stories told in the old films that they had watched so many times together. There were more days now when he didn’t know his own name or what he’d just eaten for breakfast. But he could still quote, word for word, from The Great Escape, Brief Encounter, Top Gun, and scores of others.

  “What about this one?” said Eunice, holding up a copy of The Birdcage.

  He looked up and smiled and for a precious, fleeting moment, the mists cleared.

  “My birthday present,” he said, and Eunice knew that her Bomber was still in there.

  CHAPTER 43

  “He’s still in there,” said Sunshine in a worried voice.

  Carrot had taken up a sentinel post in the shed, having caught a whiff of a resident rodent, and Sunshine was growing increasingly anxious that the dog’s lunch might have mouse on the menu. Laura was in the study retrieving an item someone had contacted the website about and was coming to collect that afternoon.

  “Don’t worry, Sunshine. I’m sure the mouse will have the good sense not to show a single whisker while Carrot’s in there.”

  Sunshine was unconvinced.

  “But he might. And then Carrot would kill him and be a murderinger.”

  Laura smiled. She knew Sunshine well enough by now to know that she wouldn’t give up until something was done. Two minutes later, Laura was back, towing a recalcitrant Carrot on his lead. In the kitchen she gave him a sausage from the fridge and unclipped his lead. Before Sunshine could raise an objection, Laura pacified her.

  “Mickey or Minnie will be quite safe now. I’ve shut the shed door, and now he’s had a sausage, Carrot won’t be hungry anyway.”

  “He’s always hungry,” muttered Sunshine as she watched Carrot slope out of the room with mischief still clearly on his mind.

  “When’s the lady coming?” she asked Laura.

  Laura checked her watch.

  “Anytime now. She’s called Alice and I thought you might like to make the lovely cup of tea when she gets here.”

  As if on cue, the bell rang and Sunshine was at the front door before Laura was out of the starting block.

  “Good afternoon, Lady Alice,” Sunshine greeted the rather taken-aback teenager at the door. “I’m Sunshine. Please do come in.”

  “What a great name.”

  The girl who followed Sunshine into the hall was tall and slim, with long, fair hair and a splatter of freckles across her nose. Laura held out her hand.

  “Hi, I’m Laura. Lovely to meet you.”

  Sunshine deftly commandeered Alice and took her through to the garden while Laura was left to make the tea. When she came out with the tray of tea things, she found Alice and Sunshine swapping musical heroes.

  “We both love David Bowie,” Sunshine announced proudly to Laura as she began to pour the tea.

  “I’m sure he’ll be delighted,” said Laura, smiling. “How do you take it?” she asked Alice.

  “Builder’s for me, please.”

  Sunshine looked worried.

  “I don’t know if we’ve got any of that, have we?” she asked Laura.

  “Don’t worry, Sunshine,” said Alice, quick to spot her discomfort. “It’s just me being silly. I meant nice and strong with milk and two sugars.”

  Alice had come to collect an umbrella; a child’s umbrella, white with red hearts.

  “I didn’t actually lose it,” she explained, “and I can’t be absolutely certain that it was meant for me . . .”

  Sunshine picked up the umbrella that was already on the ta
ble and handed it to her.

  “It was,” she said simply. Although, judging by the look of undisguised adoration on Sunshine’s face, Laura reckoned she would have given Alice the family silver without a second thought and thrown in the deeds to Padua for good measure.

  Alice took the umbrella from her and stroked its folded ruffles.

  “It was my first time in America,” she told them. “Mum took me to New York. It was more of a working holiday for her. She was an editor of a fashion magazine and she’d bagged an interview with a hotshot new designer who was tipped to be the next big thing on the New York fashion scene. He was, as it turned out. But all I remember about him then was that he looked at me like I’d escaped from a leper colony or something. Apparently he didn’t ‘do’ children.”

  “What’s a leopard colony?” Sunshine asked.

  Alice looked over to Laura, but then decided to wing it.

  “It’s a place where, in olden times, they used to put people who had a terrible illness that made their fingers and toes drop off.”

  Laura would have bet money that Sunshine spent the next five minutes surreptitiously counting Alice’s digits. Thank goodness she was wearing sandals.

  “There wasn’t much time for sightseeing,” Alice continued, “but she promised to take me to see the sculpture of Alice in Wonderland in Central Park. I remember being utterly thrilled. I thought that the statue was named after me.”

  She slipped off her sandals and wriggled her toes in the cool grass. Sunshine studiously followed suit.

  “It was raining that afternoon and Mum was already running late for her next appointment, so she wasn’t in the best of tempers, but I was beyond excited. I ran off ahead of her, and when I got to the sculpture, there was this huge strange-looking black guy with dreadlocks and big boots giving away umbrellas. He bent down and shook hands with me and I can still remember his face. It was a mixture of kind and sad, and he was called Marvin.”

  Alice drained her cup and helped herself to another from the pot with confident teenage ease.

  “My favorite story at the time was ‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde, and to me Marvin looked like a giant. But he wasn’t selfish. He was giving things away. Free umbrellas. Anyway, when Mum caught up with me she dragged me away. But it wasn’t just that. She was rude to him. Really horrible. He tried to give her an umbrella and she was an absolute bitch.”

  Sunshine’s eyebrows hiccuped in astonishment at the casual use of an expletive, but her expression was one of admiration.

  “I only met him for a moment, but I’ve never been able to forget the look on his face as she dragged me away.”

  She sighed heavily, but then smiled as another memory eclipsed the last.

  “I blew him a kiss,” she said, “and he caught it.”

  The date on the umbrella’s label matched the exact day of Alice’s visit to Central Park and the umbrella was found on the sculpture. Laura was delighted.

  “I think it must have been meant for you.”

  “I really hope so,” said Alice.

  For the rest of the day Carrot lay guarding the door of the shed, and Sunshine talked about her new friend Alice. Alice was at university studying English Litter Tour and Drama. Alice liked David Bowie, Marc Bolan, and Jon Bon Hovis. And “the lovely cup of tea” had been summarily supplanted by the Builder’s variety.

  That evening over a late supper of spaghetti Bolognese, Laura told Freddy all about their visitor.

  “It’s working, then,” said Freddy. “The website. It’s doing what Anthony wanted you to do.”

  Laura shook her head.

  “No. Not really. Not yet, anyway. Remember what the letter said: ‘If you can make just one person happy, mend one broken heart by returning to them what they have lost . . .’ And I haven’t done that yet. Of course Alice was pleased to find the umbrella, but we can’t be absolutely sure that it was meant for her. And the girl with the hair bobbles; her heart wasn’t exactly broken when she lost them.”

  “Well, at least it’s a start,” said Freddy, pushing back his chair and getting up to take Carrot for a final stroll around the garden before bed. “We’ll get there in the end.”

  But it wasn’t just about the lost things. There was the clue; the one that was so obvious once Sunshine had pointed it out. The thing that had started all this. Anthony had called it “the last remaining thread” that had bound him to Therese, and when he lost it on the day she died, that final thread was broken. If her Communion medal really was the key to reuniting Therese with Anthony, how on earth were they supposed to find it? Freddy had suggested that they post it on the website as a lost item needing to be found, but as they had no idea what it looked like or where Anthony had lost it, there was very little useful information that they could share.

  Laura cleared the plates from the table. It had been a long day and she was tired. The satisfaction that she had felt after Alice’s visit had gradually dissipated only to be replaced by a familiar feeling of unease.

  And in the garden room the music began again.

  CHAPTER 44

  Eunice

  2013

  In the residents’ lounge at Happy Haven the music began again. Mantovani’s “Charmaine.” Quietly at first, and then louder and louder. Too loud. Edie turned the volume up as high as it would go. Soon she would be gliding round the ballroom to the strings’ glissandos in a froth of net and sparkles. Her feet would spin and sweep in her best gold dancing sandals and the glittering lights would swirl around her like a snowstorm of rainbows.

  As Eunice and Bomber passed through the lounge on the way to Bomber’s room, they saw a ragged bundle of nightclothes barely inhabited by a thin, whiskery old woman with a greasy straggle of gray hair and tartan slippers. She was stumbling round the room with her eyes closed and her arms lovingly wrapped around some invisible partner. Suddenly there was an explosion of sticks and expletives from one of the armchairs.

  “Not again! Jesus fucking Christ and Jehovah! Not again! Not again! Not again!”

  Eulalia had burst out of her chair cursing and thrashing.

  “Not a-fucking-gain, you stupid, crazy, dirty bitch! Me just want a bit of peace!” she roared, flinging one of her sticks at the dancer, who had stopped in her tracks. The stick missed Edie by a mile, but she let out an anguished yowl as tears began to course down her cheeks and urine down her legs and into her slippers. Eulalia had struggled to her feet and was pointing with one of her claws.

  “Now she piss herself! Piss her pants. Piss the floor,” she cackled furiously through spittle flecked lips. Eunice tried to move Bomber on, but he was frozen to the spot. Some of the other residents had begun shouting or crying, and others stared into the distance, oblivious. Or pretending to be. It took two members of staff to restrain Eulalia as Sylvia led poor Edie away. She was trembling and sniveling and dripping piss from the hem of her nightgown as she shuffled out miserably, clinging to Sylvia’s arm and wondering where on earth the ballroom had gone.

  Back in the safety of Bomber’s room, Eunice made him a cup of tea. As she drank her own, she took in the new additions to Bomber’s growing collection of swag. He had begun stealing things; random items that he didn’t need. A vase, a tea cozy, cutlery, rolls of plastic bin bags, umbrellas. He never stole from the rooms of other residents, just from the communal areas. It was a symptom of his disease apparently. Petty theft. But he was losing things too. Thick and fast now he was losing words like a tree loses leaves in the autumn. A bed might be “a soft sleep square” and a pencil “a stick with gray middle writing coming out.” Instead of words, he spoke in clues, or more often now, not at all. Eunice suggested that they watch a film. It was all that was left of them now. Eunice and Bomber, who for so long had been colleagues and best friends. Bomber’s occasional boyfriends had come and gone, but Eunice was his constant. They were husband and wife without sex or certificate and these were the last paltry scraps of their once rich relationship; walking and watching films.r />
  Bomber chose the film. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  “Are you sure?” Eunice asked. She had been hoping for something a little more jolly, for her own sake and for his, after what they had just witnessed. Bomber was adamant. As they watched the patients at the state mental hospital walking in the chain-link-fenced exercise yard, Bomber pointed at the screen and winked at her.

  “That’s us,” he said.

  Eunice looked into his eyes and was shocked to see the clarity reflected back at her. This was the Bomber of old speaking; sharp, funny, bright, and back for a rare visit. But for how long? Even the briefest visit was precious, but heartbreaking. Heartbreaking because he must know that he would have to go back. And to what?

  It was a film that they had watched many times before, but this time it was very different.

  As the Chief placed the pillow over Mac’s pitifully vacant face and tenderly suffocated him, Bomber gripped Eunice’s hand and spoke his final three words.

  “Get. Me. Out.”

  He was calling in her promise. Eunice stared at the screen and held on tight to Bomber’s hand as the giant Chief wrenched the marble water cooler from the tub room floor, hurled it through the massive windows, and then loped off toward the breaking dawn and freedom. As the credits rolled, Eunice couldn’t move. Bomber took her other hand in his. His eyes were full of tears, but he was smiling as he nodded and mouthed silently at her:

  “Please.”

  Before Eunice could say anything, one of the nurses burst in without knocking.

  “Time for your medication.” She bustled, rattling the keys to the medicine cabinet on the wall. She unlocked it and was just reaching for the tablets when there was a terrified scream from the corridor outside followed by Eulalia’s unmistakable cackle.

  “That damn woman!” cursed the nurse, rushing to the door to investigate and leaving the cabinet unlocked.