Drowned Sprat and Other Stories (13 page)

‘I’ve got one coming tomorrow,’ Rhonda was saying, ‘for an
interview. Alistair came round and helped me move furniture. We’ve put you in the dining room downstairs. It looks very nice, a sort of bedsitting room.’

Rhonda prattled on about new drapes and rugs, and the Stanley Palmer she’d hung in there for him to look at. Kitchener tweaked up the mobile side of his face to show he was pleased. Poor Rhonda. The sun slanting across his bed was soporific, enervating.

When he woke Rhonda was gone, and a nurse was rousing him for the evening meal. Purée, thickened with something from a large tin marked Karitane. With one hand she would spoon it in, with the other gently massage his throat to assist swallowing.

Kitchener wasn’t hungry. He turned his face away, tried to clench his useless jaws. The nurse got a spoonful in, which fell out again. It had been placed too far forward in his mouth. He took a sneaky look at the nurse, who was placidly reloading the spoon. A shadow moved behind her and a familiar voice said, ‘Excuse me, Nurse. I’ll do that if you like.’

‘Oh …’ The nurse was uncertain. ‘Are you sure? Doctor …’

The shadow’s hand tapped something plastic on its chest, a name badge.

‘Vittachi.’

‘Right. All right, then. You know how …?’

Vittachi nodded.

Slowly Kitchener turned his head to look at his supplanter. The nurse stood, handed over the bowl and left to feed someone else. Vittachi put the bowl down on the bedside cabinet.

‘You don’t want it, do you?’ he said, sitting on the bed.

Kitchener couldn’t reply. He looked steadily into Vittachi’s eyes, which were warm, brown, clever. He could see, suddenly, why the man was so liked. There was a compassionate intelligence about him, something unshockable.

Vittachi waited until the older man looked away, then he said, ‘You know, Mr Kitchener, if things were different I’d ask your opinion on something. A case I have. Spondylolisthetic pelvis in an elderly woman. Associated arthritis and osteoporosis. I don’t know whether to help her or not. She’s seventy-nine.’

Leave her alone, you chump, thought Kitchener.

Vittachi was looking at him earnestly. ‘Can you wink?’ he asked.

In reply Kitchener shuttered his left eye and reopened it.

‘Good,’ said Vittachi. ‘One wink says I do, two says I shouldn’t.’

Kitchener concentrated and gave him two.

‘Hmmm.’ Vittachi reached for the bowl. ‘Hungry now?’ he asked.

The interview with Vittachi had made him feel better, Kitchener realised, as Alistair helped him out of the car and into a wheelchair. It had at least made the rest of his stay in hospital bearable. He’d done some good. He’d saved an old lady a lot of needless pain. Alistair looked again towards the house for the nurse to come, while Rhonda fussed over him with a tartan travelling rug.

‘Give her a toot,’ she said.

Alistair stood up, flicking a gleaming strand of hair out of his blue eyes. A loud horn shattered the air seconds after he passed out of the perimeters of Kitchener’s gaze. Kitchener could hear him breathing, hear him shaking the keys softly in a cupped hand. There was no sound from the house.

‘She must be stone deaf,’ said the son-in-law.

‘Maybe — she’s certainly no spring chicken!’ said Rhonda, with a giggle.

‘Will you be all right? I’ve got to get back.’ Was he looking at his watch?

‘Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.’

Oh, that velvet voice. He hadn’t heard it for a long time. It seemed Rhonda had well and truly risen to the occasion of his illness. When he died she would rise to the occasion again by sitting rigidly in the church, admired by women of her generation for her old-fashioned tearlessness.

‘Okay,’ said Alistair. ‘Bye, then.’

Behind him Kitchener heard a kiss, lips to cheek. Or was it? Rhonda was scenting Alistair’s cheek, taking in a deep breath of air, something she did only when she was kissed on the lips. It was something Kitchener did. She’d discovered the delight of it early in their courtship, and now she did it herself.

‘I’ll ring you later,’ from Alistair.

‘Thanks, Alistair,’ said Rhonda. She began to push Kitchener up the drive.

Behind them Alistair’s Alfa Romeo roared backwards into the street.

‘Hel-lo!’ yodelled Rhonda, but there was still no response from the house.

‘See the terracotta tiles on the ramp?’ Rhonda was puffing at its gentle incline, ‘Alistair designed it to keep in with the style of the house. The railing is custom made.’

Under the tartan rug Kitchener clenched a fist and released it, clenched it again. It was part of his exercise programme.

‘Alistair has been marvellous. I can’t tell you,’ Rhonda went on, ‘just how marvellous he’s been. Don’t be surprised by Susan. I think she’s a tiny bit jealous.’

The door stood ajar. It was a new door, Kitchener noted — wide enough to fit his chair through, with no step.

‘Hel — lo!’ Rhonda yodelled again. The house was hushed, but Kitchener detected something in the air. Five different brands
of perfume, the smell of antiseptic, and something else. Baby shampoo. Rhonda flung open the door to what used to be the dining room.

For a moment the changes in the decor were lost on him: popping up from behind the bed, the chest of drawers, the table, the commode, were myriad cheering faces. There were all the daughters and their children, and sailing towards him came the broad white bust of a nurse. Susan’s eyes were swollen with tears; the nurse’s eyes were hidden behind glasses as thick as bottle bottoms.

‘Hello, Mr Kitchener,’ said Sims, coming forward. Or was it Roberts? ‘Welcome home!’

You could have sworn that as you woke, you heard the front door open gently and close, a soft click of the snib and my bare foot on the boards; you woke with the sure knowledge that someone had come into the house — but remembered, in the same instant, that the family had gone out, that you were alone, that it was early Sunday evening and that you had fallen asleep, as you never do, in the middle of the day. Here you were, returned to yourself in an armchair, the late sun boisterous at the window, swirling the dust motes into a column that terminated in a bright disc the size of a dinner plate on the carpet, chaotic with abandoned playing cards, just beside your left foot.

You got up and went to the kitchen, turned on the radio and after a moment thought nothing more of me, believing instead that you had been dreaming of a visitor, and entertaining yourself with the notion that the visitor was female. You wondered, while
you chopped and peeled, if it was someone you knew — your mother, your sister, a friend — and you wished for a moment that the dream had continued so that you could have found out …

And then you gave your attention to your children, who came in from the park with your husband. They ate, ran riot, were bathed, read to and put to bed — a summer Sunday evening like any other. Early on I got sick of watching you, unacknowledged. In a sulk I leaned into a corner of the dining room, only momentarily encouraged by the fact that you laid the table for one more than your family —
she knows, she knows
— but halfway to the table you realised, and took the empty plate back to the cupboard. That’s when I gave up, went down to the bedroom and unpacked my vanity case, put on some perfume and waited. By the time you went to bed, yawning and staggering, leaving the husband cast on the couch in full snore, you had forgotten all about me.

Which is why I had to let you see me. Just for an instant. I heard you come in, sniff the scented air, flick on the light. In the mirror above the dressing table you saw a flash of something flesh-coloured, a soft peach-pink, turning away from the onslaught of the bulb: a narrow, girl’s body, a smudged whip of dark hair swinging around it.

I watched your tired, sluggish thoughts progress from the mirror to the wardrobe opposite — was there something hanging over the door, a shirt, a scarf? But you possess nothing peach-coloured, the colour does nothing for you: it took you a moment to remember that. You shook your head like a B-grade Hollywood actor, peeled off your clothes and fell under the duvet.

Far too prosaic and pragmatic a case for me, I thought.

In the morning you got the kids off to school, the husband off to work — who thanked you for the back-rub you’d administered
to him when he’d finally come to bed, around one in the morning.

‘You dreamed it,’ you said, because you hadn’t massaged him at all. ‘When you came in I was fast asleep’ — and as he went out the door he laughed as if you were joking.

Then you went to work yourself, moved paper, solved problems, dealt with this and that and him and her, collected the kids from after-school care, came home. So stultifyingly boring was it that after only half an hour I flitted off, only momentarily returning during the day to see if there was anything I could do to help you, but I’m no good at that sort of thing: commerce or business — whatever it is you do at your desk. I was much better employed here, baking the cake that gave you such a surprise when you came in. It was a Dolly Varden, in three coloured layers, all decorated with pink icing and sugared flowers, set out on the dining-room table. I’d had time to do a good deal more — asparagus rolls, sausage rolls, sweetcorn in bread cases, smoked mussels on crackers — but hadn’t because I thought you wouldn’t want the children to spoil their dinners. But I thought you’d enjoy the cake.

You did not, and neither did I enjoy your response. Nor did the younger children. You freaked out and it frightened them. You rang your mother, who has a key to the house. You rang your husband, who was stuck in traffic on his way home.

‘Where’d you learn to do that thing with your tongue?’ he asked, immediately he knew it was you — and you had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Look,’ you almost shouted, ‘there’s a cake just suddenly materialised on the dining-room table. And there’s the smell of baking, though nothing’s changed in the kitchen. And last night there was this perfume in our bedroom and I thought I saw —’

But your husband wasn’t listening.

‘Fantastic — nearly blew the top of my head off — can’t figure out how you did it, what exactly you were —’

‘No! Stop! We don’t know where it’s come from!’ you interrupted, shouting at the children, who had fetched a knife and were cutting large slices — ‘I’ve got to go.’ Meanwhile the oldest child was holding the cake to his nose, sniffing — ‘There’s nothing wrong with it’ — and biting, chewing, swallowing.

You stopped the other two children from ingesting any of the dangerous cake and watched the older one for adverse affects. There were none. You oversaw homework, piano practice. Your husband came home and was unusually demonstrative. You cleared away, and got ready to go out.

‘What movie are you seeing?’ asked your husband. ‘Will Tania meet you there?’

You gave the prepared answers and we drove away, not far. You climbed a dry, wooden fire escape hung with ivy, and made love with a particular man, for the fifth time, which was no surprise to me. That’s why I’m here — because of him.

I waited outside, pleased that I’d dabbed a little of my distracting perfume on your throat and wrists before you’d turned off the ignition. As you’d got out you sniffed at the air a little, less than you had in the bedroom, because your mind was full of anticipation. I fell asleep — or at least suspended the peculiar molecules of my being in the closed atmosphere of your car — until you returned, every cell thrumming, and drove us home.

The next evening you returned home to a beef and red wine casserole bubbling on the stove and all the washing done and folded. Your husband said it was the best thing you’d ever cooked and made another puzzling reference to your anatomy — not your tongue this time but your derrière which, until last night — he whispered in your ear on returning his plate to the kitchen —
he’d never known could be so accommodating.

‘What are you talking about?’ you asked, but your husband only gave you a licentious wink before he went to his study to put in a couple of hours of paperwork. After the children were in bed you longed to ring your lover. You hadn’t mentioned the cake to him. Or the perfume. Now there was the casserole and the laundry. It was all too much.

And you did ring him, after ten o’clock, from the gloom of the garden, sitting on the swing, hoping your husband wouldn’t pick up the phone inside the house. You could see him illuminated in the study window at his desk — you could perhaps watch him and make sure he didn’t make a sudden lunge to make a call — but it was hard to concentrate on dialling your lover while watching your husband. I managed to effect three wrong numbers, and you did one of your own, but you were determined and finally got through, to discover he was with someone and couldn’t talk.

If only you had let me spare you the agony.

That night you woke in the dark to a leaden exhaustion and chilled through to the marrow, as if you hadn’t been asleep at all but climbing hand-over-hand the icy south face of a mountain. You opened your eyes to my shadow astride your husband, my ghostly tush in congress with his fleshly rod, the wraith of me thrashing in spectral ecstasy.

‘Who are you?’ you asked aloud, sitting up.

‘I’m the Spirit of Absolution,’ I told you, but I don’t think you heard me because you were shouting —

‘Get away from our bed!’ And your husband, groping for the switch, flooded the room with light.

‘Wha — wha — what?’ went your husband, sleepy dirt in his eyes and saliva strung from top lip to lower in silvery strands.

‘There was a woman here,’ you started. ‘A young woman in our bed … she was on top of you, she was —’

‘You’re working too hard. Or missing some vitamins. Go back to sleep,’ he said, and turned off the light again with a heavy sigh.

The third night I made porterhouse steak for your husband, curry of fish for you and roast chicken for the children: everybody’s favourites. When you tried to tell your husband that the meals were not prepared by your own hands, you were so alarmed you could hardly shape your words. You stuttered, which is most unlike you, who are usually so emphatic and precise.

‘What’s wrong with you,’ said your husband, without an upward inflection, as if he didn’t expect an answer. ‘All this false modesty.’

The fourth day I carved a giant ice swan as a centrepiece for the table; the fifth I wove a tapestry, full of concupiscent satyrs and obliging nymphs, to cover the bedroom wall. On the sixth I prepared for your next visit to your lover, but your husband was already suspicious the night of the swan.

‘How’d you get time to do that?’ he asked, and when he saw the tapestry he said, ‘That’s tacky — but I quite like it. How much was it? Your tastes have changed …’ And he looked at you with a little more curiosity than usual.

On the sixth night he wondered only at your bloodshot eyes and what was for dinner. It was as if you’d already got so used to me, in the space of a week, that you took me for granted. I hadn’t been near the kitchen, of course. I’d spent the day beside your lover, listening to his phone calls, watching him work. Sells real estate, doesn’t he? A real terrier, isn’t he? Though in essence he’s not a bad man, your lover, even taking into account his string of married women.

You sobbed in the bathroom while your husband went up the road for takeaways and the children watched television. It was inevitable, you told yourself. Pull yourself together; don’t ever do it again.

And I don’t believe you will.

The tapestry was gone from the wall by the time you came out, and all my misty perfumes were back in the vanity case. I slipped away out the door as your husband came in, flew across town and zipped up a wooden fire escape, dry as tinder, hung with ivy. His flat is disgraceful, his fridge empty, his ashtrays overflowing, his conscience burdened and soiled.

He doesn’t know I’m here yet. He ignores me, much as he negated you. But I’m not worried, not yet. I wash his sheets, pick hair out of the plug, never let the Scotch bottle fall below half full, make sure there’s milk for his tea. There are no other demands on my time; I’m a free agent.

I can absolve all the guilt in the world. Tonight in the mirror I will let him see me: my young boy’s narrow body, newly manifested, and the blue flash of my innocent eyes.