The Clothes They Stood Up In (3 page)

“What you have to watch out for is the trauma; it takes people in different ways. Hair loss is often a consequence of burglary apparently and my sister came out in terrible eczema. Mind you,” Gail went on, “it's always men.”

“Always men what?” said Mr. Ransome.

“Who burgle.”

“Well, women shoplift,” said Mr. Ransome defensively.

“Not to that extent,” said Gail. “They don't clean out the store.”

Not sure how he had ended up on the wrong side of the argument, Mr. Ransome felt both irritated and dissatisfied, so he tried Mr. Pardoe from the firm next door but with no more success. “Cleaned you out completely? Well, be grateful you weren't in. My dentist and his wife were tied up for seven hours and counted themselves lucky not to be raped. Balaclavas, walkie-talkies. It's an industry nowadays. I'd castrate them.”

That night Mr. Ransome took out a dictionary from his briefcase, both dictionary and briefcase newly acquired. The dictionary was Mr. Ransome's favorite book.

“What are you doing?” asked Mrs. Ransome.

“Looking up ‘lock, stock and barrel.' I suppose it means the same as ‘the whole shoot.' ”

Over the next week or so Mrs. Ransome assembled the rudiments—two camp beds plus bedding, towels, a card table and two folding chairs. She bought a couple of what she called beanbags, though the shop called them something else; they were quite popular apparently, even among people who had not been burgled, who used them to sit on the floor by choice. There was even (this was Mr. Ransome's contribution) a portable CD player and a recording of
The Magic Flute.

Mrs. Ransome had always enjoyed shopping so this obligatory re-equipment with the essentials of life was not without its pleasures, though the need was so pressing that choice scarcely entered into it. Hitherto anything electrical had always to be purchased by, or under the supervision of, Mr. Ransome, a sanction that applied even with an appliance like the vacuum cleaner, which he never wielded, or the dishwasher, which he seldom stacked. However, in the special circumstances obtaining after the burglary, Mrs. Ransome found herself licensed to buy whatever was deemed necessary, electrical or otherwise; not only did she get an electric kettle, she also went in for a microwave oven, an innovation Mr. Ransome had long resisted and did not see the point of.

That many of these items (the beanbags for instance) were likely to be discarded once the insurance paid out and they acquired something more permanent did not diminish Mrs. Ransome's quiet zest in shopping for them. Besides, the second stage was likely to be somewhat delayed as the insurance policy had been stolen too, together with all their other documents, so compensation, while not in doubt, might be slow in coming. In the meantime they lived a stripped-down sort of life which seemed to Mrs. Ransome, at least, not unpleasant.

“Hand to mouth,” said Mr. Ransome.

“Living out of a suitcase,” said Croucher, his insurance broker.

“No,” said Mr. Ransome. “We don't have a suitcase.”

“You don't think,” asked Croucher, “it might be some sort of joke?”

“People keep saying that,” said Mr. Ransome. “Jokes must have changed since my day. I thought they were meant to be funny.”

“What sort of CD equipment was it?” said Croucher.

“Oh, state-of-the-art,” said Mr. Ransome. “The latest and the best. I've got the receipts somewhere . . . oh no, of course. I was forgetting.”

Though this was a genuine slip it was perhaps fortunate that the receipts had been stolen along with the equipment that they were for, because Mr. Ransome was telling a little lie. His sound equipment was not quite state-of-the-art, as what equipment is? Sound reproduction is not static; perfection is on-going and scarcely a week passes without some technical advance. As an avid reader of hi-fi magazines, Mr. Ransome often saw advertised refinements he would dearly have liked to make part of his listening experience. The burglary, devastating though it had been, was his opportunity. So it was at the moment when he woke up to the potential advantages of his loss that this most unresilient of men began, if grudgingly, to bounce back.

Mrs. Ransome, too, could see the cheerful side of things, but then she always did. When they had got married they had kitted themselves out with all the necessities of a well-run household; they had a dinner service, a tea service plus table linen to match; they had dessert dishes and trifle glasses and cake stands galore. There were mats for the dressing table, coasters for the coffee table, runners for the dining table; guest towels with matching flannels for the basin, lavatory mats with matching ones for the bath. They had cake slices and fish slices and other slices besides, delicate trowels in silver and bone the precise function of which Mrs. Ransome had never been able to fathom. Above all there was a massive many-tiered canteen of cutlery, stocked with sufficient knives, forks and spoons for a dinner party for twelve. Mr. and Mrs. Ransome did not have dinner parties for twelve. They did not have dinner parties. They seldom used the guest towels because they never had guests. They had transported this paraphernalia with them across thirty-two years of marriage to no purpose at all that Mrs. Ransome could see, and now at a stroke they were rid of the lot. Without quite knowing why, and while she was washing up their two cups in the sink, Mrs. Ransome suddenly burst out singing.

“It's probably best,” said Croucher, “to proceed on the assumption that it's gone and isn't going to come back. Maybe someone fancied a well-appointed middle-class home and just took a shortcut.”

He stood at the door.

“I'll get a check to you as soon as I can. Then you can start rebuilding your lives. Your good lady seems to be taking it well.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ransome, “only she keeps it under.”

“No outstanding jewelry or anything of that sort?”

“No. She's never really gone in for that sort of thing,” said Mr. Ransome. “Luckily she was wearing her pearls to the opera.”

“She had a necklace on tonight,” said Croucher. “Rather striking I thought.”

“Did she?” Mr. Ransome hadn't noticed.

When they were at the card table having their supper Mr. Ransome said, “Have I seen that necklace before?”

“No. Do you like it? I bought it at the grocer's.”

“The
grocer's
?”

“The Indian shop. It was only 75p. I can't wear my pearls all the time.”

“It looks as if it came out of a Christmas cracker.”

“I think it suits me. I bought two. The other one's green.”

“What am I eating?” said Mr. Ransome. “Swede?”

“A sweet potato. Do you like it?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Marks and Spencer.”

“It's very nice.”

A couple of weeks after the burglary (everything now dated from that) Mrs. Ransome was sitting on her beanbag in front of the electric fire, her legs stuck out in front of her, contemplating her now rather scuffed court shoes, and wondering what she ought to do next. It was the same with a death, she thought: so much to do to begin with, then afterwards nothing.

Nevertheless (and further to her thoughts at the sink) Mrs. Ransome had begun to see that to be so abruptly parted from all her worldly goods might bring with it benefits she would have hesitated to call spiritual but which might, more briskly, be put under the heading of “improving the character.” To have the carpet almost literally pulled from under her should, she felt, induce salutary thoughts about the way she had lived her life. War would once have rescued her, of course, some turn of events that gave her no choice, and while what had happened was not a catastrophe on that scale she knew it was up to her to make of it what she could. She would go to museums, she thought, art galleries, learn about the history of London; there were classes in all sorts nowadays—classes that she could perfectly well have attended before they were deprived of everything they had in the world, except that it was everything they had in the world, she felt, that had been holding her back. Now she could start. So, plumped down on the beanbag on the bare boards of her sometime lounge, Mrs. Ransome found that she was not unhappy, telling herself that this was more real and that (though one needed to be comfortable) an uncushioned life was the way they ought to live.

It was at this point that the doorbell rang.

“My name is Briscoe,” the voice said over the intercom. “Your counselor?”

“We're Conservatives,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“No,” said the voice. “The police? Your trauma? The burglary?”

Knowing the counselor had come via the police Mrs. Ransome had expected someone a bit, well, crisper. There was nothing crisp about Ms. Briscoe, except possibly her name, and she got rid of that on the doorstep.

“No, no. Call me Dusty. Everybody does.”

“Were you christened Dusty?” asked Mrs. Ransome, bringing her in. “Or is that just what you're called?”

“Oh no. My proper name is Brenda but I don't want to put people off.”

Mrs. Ransome wasn't quite sure how, though it was true she didn't look like a Brenda; whether she looked like a Dusty she wasn't sure as she'd never met one before.

She was a biggish girl who, perhaps wisely, had opted for a smock rather than a frock and with it a cardigan so long and ample it was almost a dress in itself, one pocket stuffed with her diary and notebook, the other sagging under the weight of a mobile phone. Considering she worked for the authorities Mrs. Ransome thought Dusty looked pretty slapdash.

“Now you are Mrs. Ransome? Rosemary Ransome?”

“Yes.”

“And that's what people call you, is it? Rosemary?”

“Well, yes.” (Insofar as they call me anything, thought Mrs. Ransome.)

“Just wondered if it was Rose or Rosie?”

“Oh no.”

“Hubby calls you Rosemary, does he?”

“Well, yes,” said Mrs. Ransome, “I suppose he does,” and went to put the kettle on, thus enabling Dusty to make her first note: “Query: Is burglary the real problem here?”

When Dusty had started out counseling, victims were referred to as “cases.” That had long since gone; they were now “clients” or even “customers,” terms Dusty to begin with found unsympathetic and had resisted. Nowadays she never gave either designation a second thought—what her clients were called seemed as immaterial as the disasters that befell them. Victims singled themselves out; be it burglary, mugging or road accidents, these mishaps were simply the means by which inadequate people came to her notice. And everybody given the chance had the potential to be inadequate. Experience, she felt, had turned her into a professional.

They took their tea into the sitting room and each sank onto a beanbag, a maneuver Mrs. Ransome was now quite good at, though with Dusty it was more like a tumble. “Are these new?” said Dusty, wiping some tea from her smock. “I was with another client yesterday, the sister of someone who's in a coma, and she had something similar. Now, Rosemary, I want us to try and talk this through together.”

Mrs. Ransome wasn't sure whether “talking this through” was the same as “talking it over.” One seemed a more rigorous, less meandering version of the other, the difference in Dusty's choice of preposition not boding well for fruitful discourse. “More structured,” Dusty would have said, had Mrs. Ransome ventured to raise the point, but she didn't.

Mrs. Ransome now described the circumstances of the burglary and the extent of their loss, though this made less of an impression on Dusty than it might have done as the diminished state in which the Ransomes were now living—the beanbags, the card table, etc.—seemed not so much a deprivation to Dusty as it did a style.

Though this was more tidy it was the minimalist look she had opted for in her own flat.

“How near is this to what it was before?” said Dusty.

“Oh, we had a lot more than this,” said Mrs. Ransome. “We had everything. It was a normal home.”

“I know you must be hurting,” said Dusty.

“Hurting what?” asked Mrs. Ransome.

“You. You are hurting.”

Mrs. Ransome considered this, her stoicism simply a question of grammar. “Oh. You mean I'm hurt? Well, yes and no. I'm getting used to it, I suppose.”

“Don't get used to it too soon,” said Dusty. “Give yourself time to grieve. You did weep at the time, I hope?”

“To begin with,” said Mrs. Ransome. “But I soon got over it.”

“Did Maurice?”

“Maurice?”

“Mr. Ransome.”

“Oh . . . no. No. I don't think he did. Well,” and it was as if she were sharing a secret, “he's a man, you see.”

“No, Rosemary. He's a person. It's a pity that he didn't let himself go at the time. The experts are all more or less agreed that if you don't grieve, keep it all bottled up, you're quite likely at some time in the future to go down with cancer.”

“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“Of course,” said Dusty. “Men do find grieving harder than women. Would it help if I had a word?”

“With Mr. Ransome? No, no,” said Mrs. Ransome hastily. “I don't think so. He's very . . . shy.”

“Still,” said Dusty, “I think I can help you . . . or we can help each other.” She leaned over to take Mrs. Ransome's hand but found she couldn't reach it so stroked the beanbag instead.

“They say you feel violated,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“Yes. Let it come, Rosemary. Let it come.”

“Only I don't particularly. Just mystified.”

“Client in denial,” Dusty wrote as Mrs. Ransome took away the teacups. Then she added a question mark.

As she was going Dusty suggested that Mrs. Ransome might try to see the whole experience as a learning curve and that one way the curve might go (it could go several ways apparently) was to view the loss of their possessions as a kind of liberation—”the lilies of the field syndrome,” as Dusty called it. “Lay-not-up-for-yourself-treasures-on-earth-type thing.” This notion having already occurred to Mrs. Ransome she nevertheless didn't immediately take the point because Dusty referred to their belongings as their “gear,” a word, which, if it meant anything to Mrs. Ransome, denoted the contents of her handbag—lipstick, compact, etc., none of which she had in fact lost. Though thinking about it afterwards she acknowledged that to lump everything, carpets, curtains, furniture and fittings, all under the term “gear” did make it easier to handle. Still it wasn't a word she contemplated risking on her husband.