Playing Grace (30 page)

She pushed open the door to Far & Away.

‘Still no Esther?’ she asked.

‘Been in for a bit and gone again. Off to the dentist’s. Says she’s having her teeth whitened.’ Bernice’s expression showed what she thought of that.

‘Right, well … couldn’t do me a favour, could you? Tate and Gilbert are still upstairs and Alistair isn’t coming back.
Would you lock up for me when they’ve gone? I’ll get the key back from you in the morning.’

Bernice held her hand out for the key and as Grace passed it over she saw there was a brochure about China on her desk. The hurt she felt at Gilbert’s words, the way Tate was making her feel, the frustration with her family, suddenly a great messy plume of it escaped from under the lid she had forced on it. ‘China,’ she heard herself say, ‘there’s a coincidence. Gilbert’s suddenly become quite interested in China and he’d love if you’d have a chat with him about it, but he’s too shy to ask. Perhaps if you’re not too busy … before he leaves this evening?’

Bernice was delighted. ‘Course I can. Daft old devil, he only needed to ask. Let’s see,’ she was moving to the racks of brochures, gathering new ones into her arms. ‘Yeah, here we go. And Sol’s coming by in a minute – he’s actually been to China. We’ll both go and see him, we can lock up after.’

Grace left Bernice amassing more brochures and chattering away to herself, and outside in the street saw Sol heading her way. He had a long fencepost under his arm.

‘Going jousting?’ she said and Sol said gravely, ‘No, it’s a fencepost.’ That was Sol: quiet, kind and completely humourless.

‘See you,’ she said and moved hurriedly along the street.
Another bit of rebellion, but this time for a good cause. And the lid was back on all that stuff with Tate, firmly back on, just like the lid on that biscuit tin.

*

Alistair stood on the other side of the street in a spot he was sure was out of sight if anyone looked out of the window of Far & Away or Picture London. It might still be possible to see him from the top floor, but his ex-father-in-law was away, would be away for two weeks. Something to do with an operation. Alistair hadn’t asked any more details.

But something was wrong. The lights on the first floor should be off by now. Why was anyone still there? He’d told Grace to go home early. Bloody conscientious Grace.

This wasn’t fair. He’d banked on this gap between Grace going home and him having to catch the train. Just an hour or two at tops, just long enough to see her again. He felt shivery and didn’t know if it was from standing in the cold or sheer, bloody frustration. He glanced at his watch. If that light didn’t go out in the next twenty minutes, it would be too late. Not enough time. She couldn’t get herself there and then away again in that time. It would all be rushed. Tawdry.

He walked around the block for a while so people wouldn’t see him loitering, but when he returned to his spot he
knew it was no good. All he could do was go in, make some excuse about having to come back for some papers and stow his latest present for her in the cabinet. He took the box out of its carrier bag and placed it in his coat pocket. The carrier bag he scrunched up and put in the rubbish bin between the dry cleaner’s and the bookie’s. Just don’t let Grace try to talk to him or he couldn’t promise to be kind.

Crossing the street, he took his boiling frustration in through the main door.

CHAPTER
26

Grace was dreaming of phone calls. So many, all lined up behind each other – Mark, Aurillia, her mum, her dad. All wanting an answer.

She jolted awake. A phone
was
ringing. She reached out her hand for the bedside table but it wasn’t there. More fully awake, she remembered she did not have a bedside table because she didn’t have a bed. She got out from under her duvet on the sofa and fumbled around in the sitting room. Light on, eyes screwed up, she located her mobile.

‘Gracie!’ It was Tate’s voice and she felt spooked enough hearing his voice so close when she was only wearing a large T-shirt and no knickers that she crossed her legs and held the phone away from her ear. She could still hear him. Maybe if she just cut him off …

Had he rung her up to shout at her about dropping Gilbert in it with Bernice? Gilbert. She saw the time on the phone. Half past one.

She put the phone back to her mouth. ‘What’s wrong? Is Gilbert all right?’

‘Kind of. Got a bit of a situation here.’ There was a cough and she could tell this was killing him. ‘Gilb went for it big time. He’s drunk quite a bit … I mean, even by British standards he’s pretty full.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He’s lying on his side in his front yard … not unconscious,’ he added quickly, ‘just not able to get up. See, the thing is, his sister, Violet, she won’t open the door and I’ve rung a couple of cabs, thought I could take him back to mine, but when they see him, man, they’re not happy.’ There was a pause. ‘He’s a bit of a mess.’

‘Mess?’

Another cough. ‘Vomit.’

‘His own?’

‘Course it’s his own. What, you think I got him drunk and then vomited on him? Jeez, you’re priceless, and you know what, he might not have started off at such a lick and kept right on throwing it down his throat if he hadn’t had to put up with Bernice and Sol beforehand. They had him trapped in the corner. Only thing would have made it worse was if Esther had shown up. This a party trick of yours? Dropping me in it with Esther and now doing it with Gilbert and …’ Grace could almost hear Tate’s mind
putting the brakes on as it pointed out to his mouth that Grace was their best hope of sorting this out. ‘Look, scrub that. He got drunk on my watch, I’ll put my hand up to it … But Gracie, it’s freezing out here. I’m worried about him getting hypothermia.’

‘Have you tried ringing Violet? She’ll be too scared to open the door.’

‘Tried it. Won’t pick up. I was wondering … Gilb says she talks to you and listens to you. We need your help to get her to open up this door.’

‘But you said I didn’t have to look after everyone like some freakin’ mother hen.’

There was a sigh. ‘I did, didn’t I?’

‘And that the world wouldn’t stop spinning if I took my eye off it.’

‘Yeah, I said that too.’

Grace went for the triple. ‘You assured me that things wouldn’t descend into chaos just because I wasn’t there to keep everything under control.’

‘Remembered it word for word, huh? OK, OK. I was wrong, big time. We do need you.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can get a taxi. Make sure he’s lying on his side. Tell Violet quietly through the letterbox that Grace is coming. Oh, and she’ll need to put some paper down. Probably a lot of it. And try to keep Gilbert warm.’

‘Thanks, Gracie. Appreciate it.’

‘I’m doing this for Gilbert and Violet.’

‘Kind of figured that,’ he said morosely before Grace ended the call.

*

Violet had come to the bottom of the stairs once or twice but retreated again to the upstairs box room where she could look down on Gilbert lying in the flower bed. That lavender would never recover. The blond-haired man was on the telephone and it made the phone in the hall ring, which really wasn’t nice. He kept looking up at the window and Violet kept ducking out of sight.

She needed to sit quietly and have a think about this. Her heart felt as if it would break a rib.

She wanted to let Gilbert in, but she didn’t want that other one in. That Tate. She was sure that was who it was. Gilbert said he had blond hair and this man had blond hair. She scurried to her own bedroom before drifting back to the box room and peering out of the window again. Tate didn’t have his coat on any more – it was draped over Gilbert – and Tate was blowing on his hands and then wrapping his arms around himself. Why did he have so many zips on his trousers?

She saw him kneel down and heard the letterbox clunk. Was he putting something through? She ran to the top of
the stairs and bent down until she could see. No, nothing on the mat. He was saying something, but she couldn’t make out what. Not speaking English. He was going on and on and it was getting inside her head, not making any sense. She put her hands over her ears. It was worse than the mice.

*

As the taxi drew up outside Gilbert and Violet’s house, Grace caught a glimpse of Gilbert lying on his side in a bed of lavender. He was under Tate’s coat and doing a strange bicycling action with his legs.

Tate was kneeling down talking into the letterbox and, as she paid the taxi, making a note to get the money back later, she saw him jerk his head back sharply from the letterbox.

‘Holy crap,’ he shouted as his hand came up to his mouth and he flung something down on the path. He staggered to his feet and stood, hand to his mouth again, looking at the letterbox.

As she walked up the path, she saw there was a stick with a claw-type mechanism lying near the door.

‘Owwww,’ Tate was saying, squeezing his eyes shut and then opening them. He moved his hand and she saw there was a red mark on his lip. The silver ring on his thumb shone in the light from the upstairs window and he touched his
lip again tentatively. He looked frozen. ‘Just attacked me with that,’ he said, aiming his boot at the stick, and she found that idea so funny that she started to laugh and couldn’t stop, even when she went over to Gilbert and put her hands on his legs to prevent him from cycling any further.

‘Ohhhh, Grace,’ Gilbert moaned and hid his face in the lavender.

‘Soon have you in the warm, Gilbert,’ she said, tucking Tate’s coat round him more securely.

She left Gilbert and returned to the front door, but started laughing again when she saw the stick thing. She didn’t even care that she might be giving too much of herself away with that laugh. She was tipping her head back, her hand over her mouth. When she’d got herself back under control, she picked up the stick and pictured Violet creeping up to the letterbox and managing to catch Tate’s lip with it.

‘Good shot,’ she said. ‘She’s sixty and she gave you a thick lip.’

Tate rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, and thanks for suggesting that talking through the letterbox idea. Really worked out for me.’

‘Big target to aim for, your mouth.’

‘Yup, good one. Got any more? ’Cos I’m dying of laughter here. Think it might get me before the hypothermia.’

‘Oh, come on, don’t look so down in the mouth.’ She started to laugh again and he shook his head and went to check on Gilbert.

Grace was getting cold herself now so did the special knock Violet had asked her to do when she visited and waited a few seconds. She put her mouth to the wood of the door.

‘Violet, it’s Grace. I know you’re probably very upset by all this … commotion, but Gilbert needs to come in the warm or he’s going to get ill. I promise you that I will keep an eye on Tate, but we will need him to help carry Gilbert into the house, so I can’t send him away.’ She waited and listened. ‘Violet, I’m not going to say anything else. Just leave you to have a think about that. I’m going to post your stick back through the letterbox. I have my gloves on.’

She posted the stick back and heard noises on the other side of the door. A few minutes later and it opened a crack, then a little more.

‘Would you like me to push the door open all the way now, Violet? Do it for you so you can just go away?’

There was a faint ‘yes’ and then, ‘Make sure everyone stays on the paper.’

‘I will.’ Grace pushed the door open and saw the sheets of paper along the hall and up the stairs.

Tate managed to manoeuvre Gilbert into a sitting position
and then the two of them got him to his feet. He smelt hideous. Tate draped one of Gilbert’s arms over his shoulder and Grace took the other one. Gilbert’s head mainly lolled downwards except when he lifted it to go ‘oomph’ or ‘ohhhh’. They shuffled him over the doorstep and into the hall and Tate kicked the door shut behind them.

Grace didn’t much care for her head being in such close proximity to that blond one, but the smell of vomit and the strain of Gilbert’s weight on her shoulder was more pressing.

‘We’ll take him up to the bathroom first. Is that all right, Violet?’ she called and got a wobbly ‘yes’ back. The plan was going well; they’d even managed to turn so that, while Tate paid attention to Gilbert’s legs, Grace went up a step and then another before Tate followed. But on the third step the jarring must have got to Gilbert because he threw up, heaving over and over again. And almost none of it went on the paper.

‘What’s happening?’ Violet called.

Grace didn’t want to answer because that meant breathing in the awful smell.

‘Gilbert’s hiccupping,’ Tate said, ‘but Gracie has got it all under control. You know Gracie,’ and then they carried on hauling Gilbert up the stairs.

*

Violet sat in the kitchen holding on to the edge of the table and listening to people moving around upstairs. They were talking, running the water and flushing the toilet.

‘Can I come into the kitchen?’ she heard Grace ask from the doorway and when she said, ‘Yes,’ there Grace was. She didn’t look very neat tonight. Her hair was all messed up and her face was shiny as if she’d been exercising.

‘Would you mind if I got some hot water, Violet? I need to … wash my face. And freshen up a bit of the stairs.’

‘Freshen up?’ Violet felt as if she might need to get the paper bag out of the drawer and breathe into it.

‘Just a few spots of mud that went from Gilbert’s shoes on to the carpet. Soon lifted,’ Grace said brightly and Violet considered that. Mud was a good dirt – smeary, but plants grew in it and it might be all right if there wasn’t much. Grace seemed confident it would be easy to clean.

She put the kettle on and the immersion heater for later.

‘You gave Tate quite a nip with your stick thing,’ Grace said, nodding at it on the table.

Violet had forgotten that. ‘Well, he wouldn’t stop talking.’ A sudden spike of fear shimmied up between her lungs. ‘It wasn’t a bad thing to do, was it, Grace?’

‘No,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve often felt like doing it to him myself. I may have to buy something similar.’

*

Grace had sponged Gilbert down as well as she could and washed his hands and face, and she left the room while Tate undressed him as far as his underpants and got him into bed. Grace found a bowl in the bathroom and they put Gilbert on his side and the bowl on the floor by the bed. Working together like this made her think of Monday again – that companionship – so she went to clear up the mess on the stairs, quietly opening the front door and chucking the dirty water into the garden. She didn’t give much for the chance of that lavender surviving now. She tried to smooth out the scuffed and grubby paper too, but the stuff up the stairs was as sorry-looking as the lavender.