The Extra Large Medium

by Helen Slavin

  He was not in blue. He was dressed in chocolate brown.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. He waved a hand, dismissive.

  ‘Nothing. That’s not why I’m here. It’s not about that.’ He looked at me. He looked so sad that it made me want to look away. The silence that followed was only broken for me by Florrie arriving to hang up her coat. What did Terry want? What would I have to do? He didn’t speak, he just rubbed his face in the same tired way he had in Marcia’s side alley.

  ‘Listen. I was out at the landfill the day before…I was just the crowd control…’ He started to look around, searching. ‘I’m not CID, Annie, so they won’t listen to me. But what I saw up there…I think it matters.’

  He saw the shoebox then, the trinkets and nicknacks inside. He looked trancelike. Looked as if he had to decide something and he couldn’t look at me. Then he took a deep breath. His fingers moved into Fran Dart’s shoebox, poking around in her left-behind things. ‘Maybe…If I show you…’

  Quietly and slowly he took the shoebox items out one by one and arranged them around the central, empty cardboard rectangle of the box. The gold ribbon, the black shell button, the Dutch guilder, the lipstick, the mirror, the paper bag, the toothbrush head. He didn’t look up until he’d finished.

  ‘It was like this. With all of them. Arranged. Around them. Like gifts.’

  I didn’t move any closer. I just looked over at the table.

  ‘Is that what it is Annie?’

  I stared. It was like a puzzle and, just like a puzzle, after being foxed by what he’d done I saw it suddenly. Not gifts. It was all arranged, I saw it so plainly.

  ‘Not gifts.’ My voice splintered. ‘Grave goods.’

  Here, at last, was Evan’s goodbye message.

  Terry Adam looked at me for a long moment. I looked back and he knew his message was delivered. The last of my Evan, speckled and grainy, my memories of the lab, the white and tinny steel of the surfaces. Evan’s face intent upon the bones and fragments. His eyes squinting in the sun that day in My Mother’s garden, the knots he tied in the twine. The face I had loved and not known.

  Evan Bees was going now. We were done. Out at the landfill the bodies were all women, it was written in the set of their pelvises. But now I knew that as they dug they had unearthed what remained of Evan Bees. The careful placing of grave goods. The archaeology of it.

  I don’t look back. I keep running. Running through the streets and the stitch and spraining my ankle. Run. Run. Past the park. The allotments. Past Dollyville. My breath like knives and all I hear is white noise.

  Dig Deep with Arthur: revelation

  Evan Bees sobbed. And I mean sob. Great retching, tearing sobs that were almost silent. Sat on the edge of the bed with his hands palm down, gripping the squared-off edges of the mattress as if he was on the edge of some cliff and would tumble any second. The sobs tore out of him with only eerie gasps and wheezes. As if all the energy was concentrated into his grief, none wasted on wailing or groaning.

  Annie Colville talks to the Dead and they come, unbidden, to talk to her. The women, his ‘sacrifices’, had come back to him through her. One night, about a year after they were married. She was asleep. And they came back to him.

  In the morning Annie didn’t remember, was tired but didn’t remember. She kissed him. But she kissed him now with the mouth of the Dead.

  So he vanished. To be away from them, to be where they wouldn’t find him. And his punishment is not just the years spent sleeping in doorways and not looking back. His punishment is that he cannot be with Annie.

  He sobs. Dribble comes out of his mouth. Snot slithers from his nose. But the only thing he is sorry for is himself.

  You don’t know about the brain, you know. You don’t know about the myriad chemical reactions and the sorcery of emotion. That someone so evil, so culpable, is also capable of love. To me it is the oddities, the failings and the hatefulness that sometimes show us about God. Talk about working in mysterious ways.

  So. Annie Bees is her name. Except he kept calling her Annie Colville. He didn’t use any of those New Agey terms either for what she does, mediumship or whatever. Nothing spiritual or shamanistic. He put it simply. Concise. Like a job. As if she was customer services or a telephone helpline. She’s a blacksmith. A librarian. A baker. No. She talks to the Dead. Or worse, they talk to her without her even asking to be told. They invade her privacy, is how he put it. Annie has no privacy, he said. I think he’s wrong. Annie has too much privacy.

  Everything she is has been shoved down and muffled. Hiding. Or crowded out with everyone that bustles for her attention.

  Either way. Evan Bees couldn’t handle Love or Fear or Guilt. So, like any coward, he ran away.

  Only washing up here at last, working at uncovering those skeletons, he has learned that you can’t hide from what you know. You can hide it from others, but not from yourself. There is no running away.

  Fundamental really. Written on the back of a thousand cornflake packets I should think.

  Evan Bees is the Undead, too cowardly to die, and yet not quite alive.

  It made a circuit for him. The bodies. The grave goods. The uncovering of secrets. Hidden lives. And the lightning was the electricity he generated. God points a finger.

  There’s a phrase. I think it’s French. Un coup de foudre. A bolt of lightning. Mostly it’s used to talk about love. Love at first sight. The inevitability of a passion. It is probably one of those French sayings that the French never use and most likely didn’t invent, like c’est la vie. Whatever. It hit me. Residual charge that day, sitting in that hospital room with the bandaged Evan Bees.

  Except it burned me on the inside.

  I headed back to the hostel and I packed up my bag. When they’d all trekked out to the pub for the evening I went through Evan’s stuff, looking for clues. Looking for the map to Annie. Only the map is not written in his baggage, or in the things he has said. As I am sifting through his humming pants I don’t much glance at the newspaper hanging off Andy’s bunk. It is only when I stand up too quickly and bang my head on the support that the newspaper flutters to the floor and in picking up the pieces, I read.

  Mixed scones

  ATALANTA WOKE me. I was under the table in The Glade kitchen. Like a cat. Or Cinderella. She made me some breakfast and as I sat at a table by the window, I watched Brian and the Christmas tree team heading out. Atalanta wanted to bribe me with fresh tea before she started begging me to help out. Aileen was off on her cabinetmaking course and Atalanta wanted some help in the run-up to Christmas.

  Goatmill Country Park hosts its own moonlight walk with festive refreshments. There is also a grotto where Santa sees the children. It was very busy now and Atalanta didn’t want to have to train up some girl. She wanted a seasoned professional. I thought what she and Brian really wanted was to keep me away from the LookOut and keep me in their sight. Safe in the last lap to December the fifth. I knew I didn’t want to go back to the basement. Not ever.

  The revelation came in a box of cauliflowers that afternoon.

  Police officer killed in knifing tragedy. Constable Terry Adam assisting at a call-out for a domestic dispute saved a young newlywed, Heather Fraser, from the jealous rage of her husband, Richard Fraser. In trying to take a knife off Richard Fraser he was fatally stabbed.

  November was ending. December the fifth loomed large on the calendar. I’d had to make an appointment to see the solicitor and we’d talked about the official things that would be done. I did not hope that someone would come forward with a sighting of Evan and delay the process.

  I wanted Evan Bees to be legally dead. The fact that he was only legally dead, paper dead, meant he could not come back to tell me what I did not want to hear. If he came back now I could turn him away with a nod, because now I knew. He had not run away because he hated me, because I stifled or suffocated him, because he was a coward or an explorer or wanted to be a woman. He had needed to be gone.

  N
ow, he would be. I wanted Mrs Harper in the post office to check over the details of his passing and, with a huge and efficient hand on her shiny steel stamp, to kerchunk him into the past. Vanish him.

  Both Atalanta and Lara offered to accompany me on the day. The night before, as we packed away the last of the mince pies and put the Christmas cakes into tins ready for tomorrow, I said that I wanted to go alone. Lara had the day off, December the fifth was going to be a Wednesday. On the Tuesday night I collected my LookOut leaflets and she let me in at the back door of the library. We stacked them on the table by the door and I told her that it would be fine. It would be an ending to the story as if someone had found the missing page to a whodunnit. Put me out of my misery.

  The solicitors’ offices were in a huge old mansion once owned by Sir Charles Whitworth’s wife’s father. Thurston House. The offices don’t fit into the grand Georgian rooms. There are partitions and lowered ceilings. Bits of architraving and coving escape in odd corners and the stairs creak. Voices carry, echo and are blanked out suddenly by MDF doors.

  I think of all the unfinished business in the corridors here. I think of the divorces and the fights and feuds. I think of all the wills. Messages from the Dead. I want you to do this. I want the Crown Derby to go here. To sit on this sideboard.

  No one ever makes a will and says I don’t want you to grieve. I want you to wake up tomorrow and be happy. To head out and get on with it. Whatever it is. It’s all money and property. No one writes that they loved you. I bequeath you all my love to keep forever. All this, is yours.

  I find that my hand is shaking. My hearing seems to be intensified. I can hear a car grinding around as it backs out of the poky carpark at the back of the building. Most disconcerting of all is the chocolate-brown-clad gentleman with mutton-chop whiskers who plummets past the draughty sash window as I hear someone alive laughing at a sudden office joke. A phone is ringing and a muffled voice answers it. The stairs creak.

  The solicitor accompanied me downstairs later. She shook my hand and offered some official sympathy. It reminded me of Terry Adam’s police smile. Practised. She opened the door. Outside it was raining. I stepped into the rain and started to walk back to The Glade. By the time I got there I was utterly drenched. Atalanta gave me some dry clothes to put on.

  I burn the clothes I was wearing. Even the raincoat. Cross over it.

  We had a very busy day at The Glade. We sold enough wedges of Victoria sponge to build a dam. Enough scones to cobble the main street. A bath of cream. An ocean of tea. A small boating lake of coffee. That is what I thought about. I thought about the food. About smiling at people and the crispness of the gingham tablecloths. I could smell the fresh flowers in a vase on every table.

  That day, I remembered My Mother and I was happy to think about her. On that day it did not make me sad to think about her in her white chef’s pinny, her hands floury, her smile never failing no matter how rude the customer. The ruder they were the nicer she was, more smiley, calling them ‘love’, more small talk. Battering them with her genuine charm. They never won.

  There was Mr Hoyle in his greasy homburg hat. Mr Hoyle with his reputation for beating a bear with a sore head in a grumpy competition. Mr Hoyle was a bear with horrendous piles. He rolled into The Glade one afternoon. He had been taking his elderly and equally sour dog, Maxie, for a walk in the woods. He was complaining about the thickness of the milk, the wateriness of the tea, the doughiness of the scones, the stickiness of the jam, the stink of the flowers.

  My Mother used a charm offensive to bat back at him. That first day the killer shot was a wink as she brought him a fresh scone, hot from the oven. Why was this woman winking at him? What was going on? Did she have a nervous tic? Was she completely barking mad?

  ‘I don’t know, what do you think, Cheeky?’ came My Mother’s reply before she turned back towards the counter. She enjoyed the reaction. The blustering. But he finished the tea. Scowling. Grumpling.

  Next day he was back for more. Back for a fight. How far could he push her before she’d bare her teeth? He was shocking to other people. The bad temper. The ill manners. The girls all got used to it in time, although once or twice there were tears. My Mother told them straight: you cry in the kitchen. Don’t give him the satisfaction. She’d leave them mopping their tears with a teatowel as she faced him off.

  ‘Anything to follow, Mr Hoyle? We’ve got some of that farmhouse fruit cake you hated three times last week,’ she’d offer with a smile. The tea was never right. ‘Tastes like cat’s piss,’ he’d say.

  ‘You a connoisseur? Drink a lot of cat’s piss do you Mr Hoyle?’ replied My Mother.

  ‘I do here,’ he’d grumble.

  The hot water wasn’t hot enough. The milk not milky enough. My Mother had a reply for everything. Snap and crackle. He never won. She was never rude to him. And he tried very hard.

  When she died Mr Hoyle sat at his usual table for eight hours straight and didn’t say a single word other than to bark his order at the waitress. Zoë. Who had corkscrew-curled red hair. He opened the paper but didn’t read it. At the end of the day he put his cash on the counter and walked out.

  Mr Hoyle is still alive. He is in his eighties now and his daughter has tried to stop him coming. He isn’t supposed to eat cream teas. As he has said, the thought of his cream tea twice a week is all that keeps him alive. He walks up here from town.

  After closing we ate together. Atalanta and the other girl, Min, and myself. It wasn’t a celebration or a wake. It was tea. Then Atalanta ran me to the LookOut in her car. We were clearing out my things. The sweater on the back of the chair was mouldy with damp and full of chewed holes. Everything I possessed didn’t fill the empty shoebox. I had lived there like a rat.

  Just as I was leaving, Florrie came through the wall. She took her coat and this time we headed out together. Only I wouldn’t be back.

  *

  I lie down in the old lodge that Brian used to share with My Mother, and Evan Bees is blurred in a dream. The woman is my nightmare. She wakes me up. It seems very dark here. The bulb has gone on the bedside lamp while I have been asleep. I am afraid. Afraid of the sudden dark. Afraid of where I might be. Maybe at last I’m in that Waiting Room.

  No. She was shaking me, shaking me awake.

  ‘Listen. The middle one. The middle one was his. Tell him. Tell him.’ And as I finally found my torch and flicked the switch I only had a moment to see her face before she was gone. I didn’t know her. And let’s face it, how was I ever going to know who ‘him’ was? I called out but it was useless. And I found myself laughing at the prospect of Him Night.

  In the morning I woke up at six. The old lady was so quiet sitting there that I didn’t see her until I was moving out towards the bathroom. I stood in the doorway, turned. She smiled at me. I noticed she was knitting.

  ‘The trouble with being dead…your knitting never grows.’

  I had never seen her before although her voice seemed familiar. I hear so many voices. Ha. And I still think I’m sane. She smoothed the knitting and put it in a bag made from old curtain materials with clacky wooden handles.

  ‘I’ve a message for you…’ Uh-oh, another Him, I thought.

  ‘Does it involve…’

  ‘Crown Derby tableware? No. It’s about Arthur.’

  I had a vague memory of an evening at Hackett Lane Spiritualist Church when someone I couldn’t see kept saying the name. When for once we were all searching for an Arthur instead of a Jim.

  ‘You’ll know him when you see him. He has one eye. Wears a patch. When he gets here you go up to him and you say, “I’m her, I’m the one.” That’s all. Tell him Gran sent you. He’ll know.’

  ‘Where will I see him? Do you know where I can find him? Or would you like me to place a small ad?’

  ‘No. You’ll tell him to his face. He’ll come. It’s been a long time coming love, but he’s on his way now. Then you tell him. I know I can rely on you.’

  She smile
d, picked up the knitting and turned to go.

  ‘You didn’t wake me.’

  She looked up at me, raised her eyebrows, questioning.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ I asked her outright.

  ‘You were sleeping, love.’

  She said it as if it was the simplest thing in the universe. Then she was gone. I headed to work. I did not want to keep them waiting.

  We had a Christmas lunch booked in, not your usual turkey. This was a simpler affair with sandwiches and quiches, mince pies and Christmas cake. It was the old folks’ club from the park. They arrived in two coaches, swathed in scarves and wearing galoshes. Galoshes that could probably be classified as antiques, all sorts of boots and footwear that in some cases had lasted through a world war and the Suez Crisis. Handbags from the days when crocodiles were a fashion accessory.

  They didn’t adulterate the tea and coffee with alcohol, they just asked for clean glasses. There was music from four chaps who had been quite a famous folk group. The Turnip Towns-hends. It was busy. There was laughter. The kitchen was hot and damp and filled with vanilla and brandy aromas. Atalanta asked me to open the window and the frosted December day cut in. Outside it was sunny, that cold golden sun. Outside Goatmill Country Park smelt of leaf mould and open air.

  Arthur was outside. Just standing there waiting as I came out with the bin bags. Lifting them up high, because the bins were too tall for me really. I’d kept telling Atalanta that we needed a step up. I felt my muscles working. Satisfying. Fleshy. One of those odd moments when you feel that however idiotic it seems, this is a life skill. The knack of swinging the big black bin bag into the tall black bin. Flicking the lid back over and just catching it with your free hand so that it doesn’t bang shut. The engineering of it. The physics.