Perfectly Pure and Good (24 page)

Òh Lord.' It was not the tone of prayer, only a curse, but mixed with wonder as whoever it was bumped against the kitchen table. There was a scrabbling sound: paper, a chair scraped back, a sudden silence, a gulping noise, a burp of satisfaction, all seconds apart. Sarah knelt and moved towards the pantry door. It was not a door which could ever quite shut, warped by decades and no-one ever noticing it should be able to shut, a door which banged but never quite closed.

Through the aperture, at the wrong angle to see more than she tried to look, in desperation moved the door a fraction to see the man at the table. A long tall hobo. Whitish hair scraped back into a small rat's tail, not the friendly rat of a cartoon character, seizing the last of the monumental sandwich, gulping at the open pint of milk, eyeing the scones, not for taste or shape, merely for size .. .

Mouse Pardoe clattered downstairs, cramming her hat to her head. She seemed to have lost a feather, picked it up on the bottom step, stuck it into her bosom, made her walk the one of dignified senility and entered the kitchen. There was a man sitting at the kitchen table with his finger making imprints on a single scone, digging at it once and then putting his fist in his mouth.

He was wearing a jacket, something she had seen before; something which may have been collected out of a wardrobe upstairs where all things worn by the late Mr Pardoe still remained, unlooked at and forgotten, she recalled, later. For the moment, she remembered only her lines.

Adjusted her hat to a daft angle, twirled the feather picked up (mile stairs between her fingers, flipped the skirt of her evening dress over her knee and stepped lightly into the room.

`Hallo . .. oo,' she cooed. 'Hallo, haloo . . . ooo!' It was a salutation fit for a pigeon, soft and dulcet, but commanding.

Àre you making tea?' she demanded, moving in the direction of the sink. 'Oh, do be a darling. I want some too, but I don't know how. Nothing like a man to help.'

Dumbly he rose, lifted the kettle from the edge of the Rayburn, shook it. She took it from him with a manic beam, and banged it down again, her ample hips swinging to some unheard beat, humming throughout, the humming emerging into operatic singing, accompanied by operatic gestures.

`Say, gentle ladies,'
she trilled,
'eef love you know .. . Is love this fever, troubling me so .. .

Ees love this fe . . . ever, troubling meahh, so?'

Then she beamed at him again, leant forward as the kettle, still warm, began to simmer, pulled the lobe of his left ear playfully and whispered into the right.

`Got a friend upstairs, if you see what I mean,' she said with a lascivious wink. The act was going well. Sarah could see from her vantage point, good to the point of ludicrous. Mouse Pardoe deserved an Oscar, but the man did not like a flirt.

`Do you come here often?' she trilled. 'Oh yes, of course you do. I've seen you before. You're a friend of my son Edward and I think you're wearing my husband's coat. Oh dear, oh dear, you've eaten those sandwiches. Silly boy!'

She was on the other side of the table from him now, leaning across, scooping the scones towards her with frantic movements, her back to the Rayburn.

That was too much for the intruder. He had winced when she pinched his ear; the touch was overdone, broke the trance in which her performance had held him, as if Mrs Pardoe had suddenly stepped out of the spotlight, become human, threatening. Her scooping up available food before his hunger was sated confirmed his irritation. He moved swiftly and clumsily, the stick beneath the coat knocking against the chairs as he lurched round the table towards her.

He picked her up roughly by the straps of her dress, hoisted her upright so that she stood with her body pressed close against his. Then he whisked her round and in one swift movement, grabbed hold of both her hands, clamped the palms firmly to the sides of the kettle and held them there.

There was a delayed reaction, both of them breathing deeply.

From her viewpoint, Sarah did not immediately comprehend. Actions of sheer malice were difficult to fathom, created paralysis rather than instant response. A high-pitched shriek of fear and pain burst forth from Mouse Pardoe's lips; she began to struggle, but Charles braced her sagging frame upright, his knees pressed into the back of her thighs, held her hands in the vice of his own, pressed them firmly as the kettle began to boil, and then Sarah understood.

There was no thought in her reaction. As the shriek descended to a whimper, she crashed through the pantry door holding the newspaper, flung the contents at the same moment as the scream descended into a pleading moan. Something brown, damp and inert suddenly moved on the neck of the white head; squirming animal life landed on the Rayburn with a hiss. Lugworms met the heat of the kettle and the stove, more landed on the man's arms and round his feet. He sprang back, slipped on the flesh, steadied himself, staring at the floor, seeing a serpent.

He raised his eyes slowly until he met those of Sarah, standing three feet away with the newspaper still in her hand. Their gaze locked in confused recognition. She should have known, she thought later, should have known from the first glimpse who he was, the style of his embrace, the clutching to himself of the thing he was about to torture. She should have known, from what she remembered.

Mouse Pardoe's whimpering rose again to a crescendo, descending into a sobbing. Then there was the sound of heavy footsteps overhead. The man backed away from the two women and the worms writhing on the stove and floor, without taking his eyes away from Sarah's face, his hands reaching for the scones and the milk on the table, grasping them blindly but accurately, as if he had rehearsed and memorized their position, shoving them in his pockets. The stick, banging again on the legs of a chair, made a loud sound.

Against her own judgement, Sarah found herself advancing towards him, possessed by an anger which knew no fear, acknowledged no risk, desired nothing but violent retribution, a growl in her throat. Her hands had formed into claws; her voice emerged like a spitting cat.

`Charles . . . you shit.'

The door from the hall crashed inwards, the verger cannoning through and into Sarah with her hands poised to strike and her face white with fury. He grabbed her, holding her wrists shouting,

`Here! what's this?', blustering with breathless energy while she twisted. Charles melted away through the door, into the rain. Sarah felt the rotund, miniature shape holding her own, shrieked in turn, 'Let go, you stupid shit, fucking let go!'

`No,' Mouse Pardoe shouted, shaking but suddenly firm. 'No, don't, not yet. That's the last thing you should do.'

Sarah came back to earth and knew the Mouse was right. No-one should pursue a ghost.

The thunder rolled away, but the rain persisted, tumbling out of the sky in sheer impatience. Miss Gloomer liked it. After a particularly satisfactory tea, she had risen from her chair to look for her stick, an automatic reaction for which she chided herself, reaching instead for the substitute, a lesser favourite, then decided not to move at all and drew a rug round her knees instead. The nice doctor, who did not know he was a good man, would call at six.

There was no need for him to do that and he might not stay long because he never intruded, he was brisk and respected her privacy. The burglary had shaken her, left her weaker, but not so weak she could not think. What one needs in life, she was telling an imaginary audience, as she would tell the doctor when he called, is an infinite capacity for forgiveness. People are only little, busy things, babies and animals, you see, they do what they can; they are thoughtless and selfish, they love nothing better than their own flesh and blood and that is the way they are. If you want to be on the inside track, Doctor, get yourself a family.

On that thought, of what she would say when he came in for a small glass of sherry, Miss Gloomer's small and obdurate frame gave up the task of living. She died in her upright chair, wearing her winter and summer shoes, thinking of children and how little in life she really regretted including her inability to make a cake, why bother when you could buy better from the baker? This was one of life's greater mysteries. Julian found her. He sat and held her cooling hand, called for the ambulance, which would take some time. Composed her eyes and her mouth, watched the instant, facelifting effect of death.

Rick took Joanna home, with the kind of absent kiss she understood without trying, then took the van back and parked it outside the arcade. Course he'd live, daft little sod, he had to live, made of metal, the doctor said, hit that head one more time and a stick would bounce. A weary sickness made him slow getting out, drawn to the row and the smell and the noise and the temporary end of thinking. He did not walk straight inside; he saw sense and went further down the quay where he bought fish and chips and ate them without tasting anything, standing in the wet without noticing that either. Getting food down and keeping it there was vital. He belched but did not spit and went in to work.

`You're late, boy, we've been taking serious money here, where the fuck you been?' his father said. Rick seized him by the lapels of his jacket, shook him until he rattled and then sat him on the floor. There were no words with this brief exchange of views, only the breathy sounds of a precedent being established. It was enough.

`Listen, Dad,' said Rick, picking him up with absent-minded strength, 'you got to do something useful tomorrow.'

Òh yes, what's that, son?' his father asked, almost respectfully.

Rick paused. 'We've got to have this place for our own so we don't owe anyone. But first we got to get our act together and find this ghost. He might have done for Stonewall. We got to find him.'

Malcolm Cook looked round Sarah Fortune's London flat, standing disconsolately and a little defiantly, facing the elegant mirror which dominated the narrow hall, giving a view of anyone who entered and also the rooms either side. He never expected it to be quite the same as the last time he had seen it, since Sarah, who loved and acquired beautiful things, also gave them away with the same ease and moved them round, restlessly.

Malcolm was the opposite, preferred the spartan and the durable objects he would preserve for ever.

Next to his flank and keeping close, the red-haired dog, ever immune to the reverberations of the place, could not resist the introspective mood.

Start again. Open this door and think about it. Look at it from her point of view. Would the new paint on the walls have changed anything in her mind? Would she miss the place at all in view of its history? If he was ever going to understand her, he would have to make himself go over every step of her ordeal. At first, he could only see himself in here, using his enormous energy to clean up all the stains, so much blood he could only marvel, forced himself not to remember, but to feel, shivered.

So this was what he had done for her first, swept through the flat while she recovered, covering all traces with gloss and emulsion, three coats each. Maybe that had been wrong, just as encouraging her to forget the finer points, put the whole episode to one side like a useless gift, had also been mistaken. Perhaps she should have been forced to relive it again and again, exorcise the helpless pain of it, come to terms. Instead of which he had been saying, Look at me.

Look at me, please, take me instead of looking back; I'm here for you, all yours.

The apartment had the stuffy heat of a place enclosed in summer. He wanted to fling open the windows but desisted, imagining instead the place in darkness. Forced himself to think. What would have been the worst thing about that one night last July, the importance of which, as far as he was concerned, was to thrust Sarah, bloody and bowed and needing, into his arms?

He walked back to the front door, turned, as if coming inside for the first time, as she had done in the near dark, careless, lovely, amoral Sarah. Entering her own domain with a slight feeling of trepidation. Seeing through the mirror in the hall, Charles Tysall lurking in the room to the right, waiting. Turning to flee, too late. Charles behind her then, embracing her, making her watch herself in a mirror like this mirror, making her strip in front of her own reflection, teasing, taunting, announcing his litany of hate and disappointment, calling her filth. Then flinging down the mirror which had rolled and broken into a thousand shapes, large shards, sharp-edged pieces and smaller slivers, twinkling.

Charles, pressing Sarah's naked body into that bed of bloody pain, holding her there, while she writhed against the glass and he waited to end it, to cut her face, her throat, whatever he would reach as she twisted away and he slashed, not caring if he cut his own, long fingers.

Malcolm shuddered again, his mouth hanging open, his eyes seeing again what he had discovered then. Led by the dog and her merciful passion for open doors, strange places, raw meat smells, they had come upstairs. Charles had penetrated the dog's russet-coated neck with the biggest piece of glass, almost killed her. Canine blood, mixed with the human; the same smell.

So much blood, so much glass, he had not known how to move her. There was all the gore of an abattoir, none of the convenience. He had wrapped her in the white towels she had soaked, all contact with her skin giving rise to small, breathless screams, which she bit back so hard her mouth bled too. She could not stand, sit, faint or recline, a creature flayed by the glass, the place reverberating with her whimpering.

What would Sarah remember most, when she touched those little scars which marked where the myriad shards of glass had pierced so deep, leaving her arms, part of her abdomen, her back, her shoulders, littered with souvenirs? She touched them often: they itched, she said, excusing herself as someone would with the hiccoughs. He tried to analyse the pain, in a way he had never quite tried before, because he had been busy offering (instead of imagination) comfort, warmth, forgetfulness and the panacea of love.

Humiliation, that was what Sarah would remember. She would be most crippled by the inability to fight back, by her cowardice, by loss of control, by the obscene pleas she would have spoken to make the taunting stop. There would be the shame at crying in his presence, begging for life and a scintilla of dignity. It would be the poison of the shame, for doing nothing to prevent him, for letting it happen without seeing it was coming, for never fighting back until too late, misjudging, becoming helpless. That would kill the soul and leave the vacuum full of hatred.