Core of Evil (2 page)

Making a mental note to bring a jug of water out later to moisten the soil, she pushed the shopping bag up to the front door and delved into her handbag for the key to the door. Slotting it into the lock she forced the stiff mechanism round and pushed the door open.

Darkness, and the smell of old lavender and boiled vegetables reached out to embrace her.

‘Dear – I’m back!’ she called.

No answer. She moved into the house and shut the door behind her. ‘Daisy? I said I’m back!’

The small hall was carpeted in linoleum patterned with small diamonds. Stairs to the left led up to the bathroom and the bedrooms, while the walls were papered in a floral pattern that looked almost as tired as the geraniums outside. A barometer hung opposite the stairs, massive and pendulous. According to the indicator there was a change ahead.

The house had an air of neglect, of something that was sagging into dust and decay. Violet could tell the first time she walked in that nobody visited any more. That nobody cared any more.

She pushed the shopping bag ahead of her, past the parlour and the dining room, and pushed open the door to the kitchen. Bordered by slide-door cupboards and melamine-covered work surfaces, it was more like a split-off section of the hall than a room in its own right. Tucked to one side by the cooker, just next to a china teapot, was the kitchen’s sole concession to the modern age – a cordless electric kettle. A small refrigerator wheezed asthmatically in one corner, next to the door that led out into the conservatory. It gave the impression that it was about to fall over and die at any moment, but it had been working away for the nine months that she had been visiting the house, and for many years beforehand. It would almost certainly outlast Daisy Wilson.

Placing her handbag on the corner of the kitchen counter, she folded the handle of the shopping bag down and unzipped it. She hadn’t picked up much shopping – the important items she had collected from her own flat that morning – but Daisy didn’t seem to need much to keep going. In her experience, older people could subsist perfectly well on cups of tea, slices of bread, boiled carrots and the occasional biscuit.

Slipping on a pair of thin cotton gloves that she always kept in her coat pocket, she unpacked the bag. Bread, butter, bleach, rubber gloves, tea towels and a caddy of tea leaves that rustled as she put it down on the counter.

She reached across, switched the kettle on at the mains and clicked the button down to boil the water. The initial
whoosh
settled down into a steady murmuring as the water heated up. She opened the top of the tea caddy and let the smell of the leaves drift up to her nose. She closed her eyes and mouth, and breathed in. Dry, slightly spicy, and overlaid with the delicate floral notes of the Christmas rose petals and leaves that had been mixed in with the Darjeeling. Perfect.

The fragrance was mesmerising. For a long moment, she wasn’t in the kitchen at all. She was standing in her own garden – her private, secret garden, not the one belonging to the ground-floor flat she rented – breathing in the mixed scents of the foxgloves, the delphiniums and the corn cockles.

No. That thought needed to be tucked away as well. She had a job to do. Once today was over, she could relax for a while. Go away. Move away. By the sea. A change was as good as a rest, they said.

While the kettle was talking to itself she walked back into the hall and took her coat off. Before placing it on one of the hooks just behind the door – so reminiscent, she always thought, of a row of butchers’ hooks waiting for the meat to be hung from them – she took a look around the hall, committing it to memory. The lino. The wallpaper. The stairs. The whole thing so rooted in the 1950s, when the street had been built to replace ones lost to Hitler’s bombs, that it was almost possible to hear the laughing voices of
Children’s Hour
drifting on a wave of static from the speaker of a bakelite radio set.

She shook herself. Stay in the present, Violet, she told herself. Stay focussed.

She pushed open the door of the parlour. The curtains were half-closed, and in the turquoise light of that strange sky the room could have been underwater. The fireplace dominated the room on one side: cold now, as it had been for some years, and flanked by two metal andirons. A massive bureau dominated the other side of the room: the marquetry almost invisible in the dim, aquatic light. Over in the window recess a television set stood mute.

Daisy was sitting in the armchair with the curved wings, grey hair still curled from her last visit to her hairdresser. Her eyes, nestled in puffy, criss-crossed flesh, were closed. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

‘Daisy?’ Violet reached forward to shake her parchment hand. ‘Daisy?’

Daisy jerked awake with a cry. She flinched away from Violet like a dog expecting to be struck.

‘It’s only me. I’m back from the shops.’

Daisy was still twisted in her chair. She gazed suspiciously up at Violet. Slowly the suspicion receded, and she smiled. ‘I was only resting my eyes,’ she muttered.

‘You dropped off,’ Violet said, moving across to the window, beside the television, and pushing the curtains open.

‘I was thinking. Remembering.’

‘I’m making a cup of tea.’ Violet turned and smiled at Daisy. ‘I was remembering too, walking up the road. Duck eggs. Do you remember duck eggs?’

Daisy laughed. ‘I haven’t had a duck egg in an age. Not since the War. Used to have them all the time, then. Blue, they were. Tasty as well.’

‘They’re coming back in the shops now,’ Violet said. ‘Speciality items, they’re called. Did you want a cup of tea?’

‘Speciality items,’ Daisy said scornfully. ‘That’s supermarkets for you. Make you pay more for food that tastes the way food is meant to taste anyway. I
remember when ordinary eggs weren’t just eggs, they were Norfolk Greys, or German Longshanks, or Dorkings. All different sizes and colours. Some of them with freckles and some plain, some rough and some smooth. Not like now. They’re all plain and brown and the same size now.’ She suddenly caught up with what Violet had been saying. ‘Tea would be nice, ta.’

Violet went out into the kitchen. The kettle had just boiled, and the air was tropical. She poured a little water into the teapot and sloshed it around, warming the china, then she poured it out in the sink and scooped two spoonfuls of tea from the caddy into the pot. She poured water from the kettle carefully, watching it froth as it hit the leaves. The smell wafted up to her nose again: that wonderful aroma of age and spice and roses. She closed her eyes and luxuriated in it, feeling the steam turning to moisture on her cheeks and forehead.

‘I’ll tell you another thing I remember,’ Daisy called from the parlour. ‘The coal man, making deliveries, wearing that cap with the leather back on it, reaching down his neck. Black with the coal dust, he was. Three sacks of anthracite every Tuesday fortnight, poured right down into the cellar.’ She paused. ‘He always had a smile for me, he did. Called me his little flower.’

Violet slid open one of the cupboards and retrieved two cups and two saucers. Placing them on
the counter, she turned to the wheezing fridge and got the milk from the shelf in the door. A splash in each cup, and she returned the bottle to its place.

‘Did you ever get the scissor-man coming around?’ she called.

‘The scissor-man? With his bicycle and his grindstone attached to the back?’ She chuckled. ‘Haven’t thought about him in a while. Whatever happened to the scissor-men? Don’t scissors or knives need sharpening any more?’

‘I think people just buy new ones nowadays,’ Violet said absently as she poured the tea into the cups, one after the other.

‘Wasteful,’ muttered Daisy. ‘That’s why there’s so much clutter. Too much stuff being made, not enough stuff being kept.’

Violet reached down to where a tray was resting on its edge against the side of the fridge. She carefully lifted the cups and saucers onto the tray and carried it into the parlour.

‘Here’s your tea,’ she said as she placed the tray carefully on the side table beside Daisy. The elderly woman glanced down at it, then up at Violet.

‘Thank you, dear,’ she said with sudden hesitation.

Violet crossed to the window again and gazed out. The skin on her cheeks and forehead was prickling from the steam, and she could feel a slight pressure in her throat. No matter. Every road had its potholes. Hadn’t someone told her that once?

The street outside was peaceful. Most of the houses were unoccupied during the day. Husbands worked and wives worked too: Violet still found that a little disturbing, but she supposed the world changed and people changed with it. Wives so rarely stayed at home, these days. It was term-time, as well, and the children were still safely at school. The best thing about the street as far as Violet was concerned was that it didn’t lead anywhere. People or cars never cut through on their way to somewhere else. If you were in the street then you were visiting one of the houses, and during weekdays that was rare.

From behind she heard a slurp as Daisy drank her tea. She smiled.

‘I picked up your pension from the bank,’ she said, the thought just popping randomly into her head. When Daisy failed to reply, she turned around. Daisy was staring at her, eyes defensive, teacup poised in her hand.

‘You don’t have to do that for me,’ Daisy said. ‘I used to be able to pop down to the post office myself, when I still had a pension book. The bank’s not that much further.’ She paused, judging Violet’s reaction. ‘In fact, I was thinking a walk wouldn’t do me any harm. Might be nice to get out into the fresh air …’

Violet let Daisy’s words hang for a moment. She deliberately kept her face impassive. They’d had this discussion about once a week for the past two
months, and there was no point getting angry. The decision was made and the river that was life was already flowing on, except that Daisy hadn’t quite realised yet. Or still had some hope of reversing the current and taking back some small measure of independence.

‘Not with your leg,’ Violet said. She knew Daisy couldn’t see her expression, with the light from the window behind her, but she kept her expression neutral. ‘Those ulcers still need dressing every day. You don’t want to make them any worse.’

‘Maybe I should make an appointment down the doctor’s,’ Daisy wheedled. ‘The ulcers don’t seem to be clearing up, and Doctor Ganz was always so good about looking after me.’ She sighed. ‘I used to be a dancer, you know? Now look at me. Can’t even walk down the shops.’

‘I told you,’ Violet said, ‘I talked to the chemist. The cream will clear up the ulcers if we keep using it. What you need is rest. I can get all your shopping and your prescriptions, and now you’ve written to the bank I can make sure your pension is drawn out on time as well. Now, don’t let your tea get cold.’

‘I’m very grateful to you, m’dear.’ Daisy took a noisy sip of tea, spilling some into her saucer. ‘You look after me properly. Don’t know what I’d do without you.’

‘Everyone should look after their friends and neighbours.’ Violet grimaced. The skin on her
forehead was feeling tight and warm. ‘There’s not enough of that around, these days.’

‘You know what I really miss?’

Violet wasn’t sure whether Daisy was going to keep on about her lost independence or go back to duck eggs and anthracite, so she just said: ‘What’s that, then?’

‘Whist drives down at the church hall. Once a week, Friday mornings. Used to see all me friends, have a chat and a cup of tea and some biscuits. Used to look forward to it, I did.’

‘I’m not sure they do whist drives any more.’

‘They do – I’m sure I saw it in the local paper.’

‘Well, you don’t want to strain your eyes. You’ve got to be careful at your age.’

‘I can read the paper all right.’

‘Daisy!’ Violet let a tart edge slide into her voice. She was getting tired of this bickering. ‘I’m only trying to help out. If you don’t want me to do things for you – if you don’t want me to get your shopping, and your prescriptions, and whatever else – then just say so and I’ll leave you to it. I’m sure there are lots of other ladies your age who’d be grateful for the help.’

‘I’m sorry, Violet, I didn’t mean—’

‘That’s okay.’ Soothing. ‘Least said, soonest mended. Now did you want a refill?’

Daisy looked down into the dregs of her cup. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ she said. ‘That was a nice cup of
tea.’ She swilled the cup around in her hand, staring intently at the tea leaves as if she was trying to see the shape of her future in them. ‘What’s these white bits?’

Violet took the cup from her hand and walked back into the kitchen. ‘I took some Christmas rose petals from my garden and sprinkled them in with the tea,’ she replied as she sloshed the remaining tea into the sink. ‘I always think it gives it a nice, flowery taste. And it’s meant to be good for you.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Who knows – if you drink enough of it, maybe you’ll be able to
run
down to the shops and the bank!’

Daisy laughed, and Violet felt herself relax slightly. Crisis over.

She poured another cup for Daisy, and brought it back into the parlour, placing it carefully down on the tray next to her own cup. Daisy had drifted off again, and Violet sat quietly watching her breathe and thinking about her garden. Her beautiful, bountiful garden, filled with the most marvellous flowers. She didn’t visit it as often as she should, but she knew she would be making another trip very soon.

After a while, Daisy stirred. She blinked a few times, then smiled hesitantly at Violet.

‘Your tea’s still warm,’ Violet prompted.

Daisy smiled her appreciation, and reached for the cup. As she glanced down to see where it was, she
noticed Violet’s still full cup beside her own. ‘Don’t you want your tea, dear?’

‘I’ll wait for a while. I’m still out of breath from going to the shops. The pot’s still hot: I can get another cup if that one goes cold.’

Daisy nodded, and sipped at her tea.

‘Can you play whist?’ she asked eventually. ‘I really fancy a game, right now. Make a change from the telly, and the local paper.’