They Do the Same Things Different There (30 page)

Of course, there wasn’t room for all of his collection. He had to get rid of the gossamer wire puppets from Mexico, and his coffin lacquered with bone. He might have got a good price for them at auction, but the convention had never invited him again. As it was, he was able to donate some pieces to the British Museum. A lot had to be binned.

Marklew filled all the wardrobes and cupboards with what artefacts he had left. There wasn’t much room left for clothes, but Marklew didn’t need many clothes. Two complete skeletons lay spread out in his bath, one balanced on top of the other, and sometimes it seemed to Marklew that they were making love, and sometimes that made him laugh. On good days he’d open up all the cupboards and pull open all the drawers, and he could see his collection all around him. This expression of who he was, somewhat diminished, and in borrowed circumstances.

If the weather were fine he might take the omnibus into the city. He’d walk by the Thames, by St. Paul’s, sit in Green Park. If the weather were bad, he’d stay at home.

At night he would lie in bed, and stare into the shadows, and fancy that they rippled.

Dear Mrs. Gascoyne had no choice but to raise the rent again. He wrote to the six biggest collectors of
memento mori
in Britain, men he had shared drinks with at the conventions, men who were very nearly old friends. Two of them replied. Between them they bought his shrunken heads, his canopic jars and death masks, his skulls. They paid so much that he could now pay the rent for four whole months, and he treated himself to a steak dinner too. No one wanted the cracked skull, though; they said it was damaged.

Most of all Marklew liked getting the omnibus to Waterloo Bridge. It was his favourite bridge. He liked to stand at the midpoint; he’d paced the length of it to find out precisely where the midpoint was. And he would tilt his body over the rails, as far as it would go, and stare straight down into the Thames. He could stare into the Thames for hours. Sometimes he saw shadows moving in there. He wondered whether they were the same shadows from his bedroom.

One day he took his cracked skull on an expedition into London. “You’ll enjoy this,” he told it on the bus—only a whisper, he didn’t want people thinking he was mad! He took it to the midpoint of Waterloo Bridge, and dropped it over the side. He thought it would make a bigger splash. It somewhat disappointed him. The skull went straight down, it didn’t even struggle for air. He watched for ages to see if it might float back to the surface, and then it began to rain, so he gave up, and went home.

The shadows in his bedroom reached out some nights and stroked him, and their touch was so very soft.

And one day he was on the omnibus, and it was very crowded, but nevertheless Marklew managed to get a seat, people always gave up their seats when he came near—and for the life of him he couldn’t remember whether he was going to Waterloo bridge or was coming back from it, and that was funny, but he was sure he’d work out which one when he got there!—and suddenly, by the doors, he saw him.

He had never expected he’d be able to recognize the man. There had never been anything remotely distinguished about his features, nothing that Marklew could ever recall to mind. But there was no question. He looked no older. But still cool, still stiff, his face a pose of professional blandness. Wearing a suit that was smart but not dear, not tailored but practical.

And just as soon as he’d seen him, the doors were opening, and the solicitor was getting off the bus. “Hey!” called Marklew. “Hey!” But the crowd was surging forward to fill up the little space that the solicitor’s body had taken, and the bus was starting to move. “Hey! No, stop!” He was pushing his way through the other passengers now, and they were pushing back, they were angry. And he was pulling at the door, but the door wouldn’t open, and then the driver brought the bus to an abrupt stop, and the doors freed, and Marklew hurled himself forward and tumbled out onto the street.

The crowds were no easier here than they had been on the bus, it seemed the whole world was out in London that day. “Hey! Stop! Stop!” called Marklew, but he wasn’t even sure whom he was calling at anymore. And then—and then he saw him, the solicitor was maybe twenty feet further down the pavement, and he was moving fast, how could he move so fast in all this crush? “No, please!”, and Marklew was running too. “Please!” Elbowing people away, waving his arms, breaking into little sprints on the spot when he got blocked and could advance no further. Marklew jumped off the pavement. Horns. Screams. The screech of tires. He was running down the road. He was catching the solicitor up.

And he reached him at last, and he grabbed him by the shoulder, and he didn’t know what to expect when he touched him: he half expected his fingers would go straight through, or that he’d feel cold to the touch, or burn like fire—but no, no, he felt like an ordinary man. Swinging him around so they were face to face. And that face wasn’t so bland now, it was frightened! He’d lost that cool, that stiff poise was gone for good. Now he had him. Although there was a beard, and there hadn’t been a beard before—and this man’s hair was grey, and he was old, and he was shorter than Marklew had remembered.

“Help me!” Marklew begged him. “You know me! Do you know me?”

“Please let me go!”

“You know me! You know who I am!”

“I don’t know who you are, please!”

Marklew let go of the man, and he thought he didn’t look much like a solicitor at all, not in that cheap brown coat, Marklew thought the man was probably in trade. “Please help me,” said Marklew.

And the man hesitated. As if unsure whether to run, or whether to call the police. And then he said, “Go home. Go home, Mr. Marklew. It’s waiting for you.”

The hatbox was sitting outside on the pavement, where anyone might have stolen it. Still, no one had.

Richard Marklew picked it up, and it felt no heavier and no lighter than the boxes he had been sent before. He tucked it under his arm as he struggled with the keys to his flat, and it suddenly felt like such a disrespectful thing to do to a dead little boy, and he hoped that the front of the skull was at least pointing away from his armpit. He went indoors. He set the box down in the middle of the floor. Gently, carefully. He sat on the floor beside it. He looked at it.

He decided he wouldn’t open the box.

He opened the box.

He saw only the top of the scalp, whiter and shinier than he had ever thought a scalp could be. He prodded it, daintily, with his finger. It was warm. It was cold.

He reached into the box so he could lift the skull out; with one hand he grabbed it by the back of the head, with the other he fingered the eye sockets. The skull was free, but he wouldn’t look at the skull, not for the moment, he looked instead to see if there were another envelope to read, some special message to announce the long awaited arrival. Maybe even a receipt!—There wasn’t. There wasn’t, and all there was was the skull, and he was still holding it, it was in his hands, warm, cold, and he was looking at it at last, he was daring to look.

His heart beat so fast and he wondered if he were going to die. But he didn’t, he just sat there on the floor, and the skull sat in his hands, and they were both touching each other, and yet neither had anything to say. To be honest, it was more than a little awkward.

The skull was perfect. It had not a single blemish. No browning discolouration around the temporal bones, as was common—the mandibles were in immaculate condition. The eyes were two round holes that seemed wide open in innocent surprise, the jaw was intact and allowed the mouth a reassuring smile.

And now Richard Marklew knew why he’d spent his lifetime building up a collection of the dead. He thought he’d known before, what the urge was, why he had to satisfy it, why he had
never
satisfied it, not ’til now. But he’d been wrong, and now he knew the truth, and the truth made him cry. He was crying with happiness. Was it happiness? Yes, probably.

He didn’t want to let the skull go. He wasn’t sure if he even could have. He got to his feet and his old bones cracked with the effort, but he didn’t care. He held the skull tight, and he swayed a bit because he felt so giddy now, and it seemed to him they were dancing. He went to lie down upon his bed. He was still wearing his clothes. He couldn’t get undressed without putting the skull down, so that was all right, he wouldn’t get undressed again. It was simple.

He thought maybe he dozed a little, and when he awoke the little boy in his hands was watching over him. He felt comforted, he dozed some more. It got dark. It didn’t matter. Some little light streamed in from the window, a streetlamp maybe, or the moon.

The shadows moved around them both, but he didn’t need to look at them any longer.

And there was the crack—just the one crack, running horizontally from side to side, just above the chin. It wasn’t damage, it was a beautiful crack, wide and inviting, and it was studded with bright white teeth like smooth pebbles, not a single tooth was missing. He dared himself to touch the crack. Would he touch the crack? He would. He pulled the crack closer to his face, right against his very lips, and he pushed his tongue inside, past the pebble teeth and onwards, deeper, he pushed his tongue into the smiling crack as deep as it could go.

Mother seemed cheerful about it, but then Mother was cheerful by default. Father was wary, though. “If it seems too good to be true,” he’d say, “then it usually is.” He said he’d go over the house with a fine-toothed comb, although the little girl thought he was probably exaggerating. He didn’t find any dry rot, or damp rot, or rot of any persuasion; the plaster wasn’t crumbling, the foundations were sound. Still, Father was wary. He was a man of the world, a man of business—a
man
, at least, at any rate. He was nobody’s fool.

Mother and Father would ask the little girl what she thought, but they’d never wait long enough to hear her reply. But maybe this time that didn’t matter. The little girl didn’t know
what
to think. Mother said she’d make new friends at the new school, and the little girl shrugged; it wasn’t as if she’d made any at the old school, so what did she care? And Father promised there’d be more room in the new house for all of her toys and games and books. But the little girl couldn’t help but worry a bit, when her parents packed away her things for the removal men, that somehow putting them into cardboard boxes would mean that her toys and games and books would always seem
old
to her from now on, that when she took them out of the boxes at the other end she wouldn’t want them anymore. And a new house would mean new creaks on the floorboards to navigate, and new places she’d have to discover when she wanted to hide.

The removal men came a little after nine o’clock, and that was very nearly punctual. Father said the family should follow on in the car an hour later: “We don’t want to overtake them,” he said, “we don’t want to get there before all our belongings, what would that be like?” Mother was cheerful in the car, and Father pretended to be cheerful too, he even let Mother sing that song that was all about the green bottles, he even joined in a bit. They stopped off at a service station along the way, and Father let them all buy travel sweets. Pretty soon it began to rain, and Father had to turn on the windscreen wipers, and the screeching noise they made against the glass acted as background accompaniment to Mother’s bottle singing—“Could you stop that now, please?” asked Father. By the time they reached their new town, and then their new street, it was pouring down, and the little girl wondered to herself why they were moving somewhere that was so wet. And there, at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, was
their
house; the little girl had been there several times before, of course, whenever Father had made one of his toothcomb inspections, but back then it had just been a house, and now it was a home, and that felt weird. The rain fell on all the other houses, but theirs was left dry, they were lucky, overhead there wasn’t a single cloud. “It’s an omen,” said Mother. “We’re all going to be so happy here!” And it meant that they could unpack the car without getting soaked to the skin.

There were so many cardboard boxes waiting for them, it seemed far more than had been taken from their old house that morning. And the little girl wondered how they would ever find the time to open them all, and yet she still marvelled that their entire lives had been crammed into such a small space. “We’ll open them tomorrow,” said Father, “Tomorrow!” said Mother, but they nevertheless rescued from one of the bigger boxes a saucepan and some plates. Mother made them scrambled eggs on toast. By now the rain had caught up with them, it battered against the windows as if it were trying to get in, and it sounded different from the old rain the little girl was used to. “It’s a fresh start!” said Mother, with a smile. And, at Mother’s suggestion, they also retrieved from one of the boxes the little girl’s teddy bear. The little girl wasn’t sure she wanted it, not yet; but she found, to her relief, that the teddy bear hadn’t changed in transit, it was just the same bear it had been that morning. And she cuddled it in her new bed. But some time after midnight, in the pitch black, in the unusual pitch black, she realized the teddy bear now smelled a bit boxy and a bit cardboardy, and that made her feel sick. And she had to turn on the lights, and open up all the cupboards—and inside one there was an old blanket that must have been left behind by the house’s previous owners. And the little girl wrapped the teddy in the blanket, and threw it right to the back of the cupboard—she knew that she was safe from the teddy now, she’d never touch it again, because to do so would mean she’d have to touch the blanket as well, and the blanket was even
worse.
And only then could she sleep—and the rain continued to fall hard all around the house, and hard on top of it.

The little girl’s new bedroom was right at the top of the house. It was an attic, really, with a bed put in it. The very roof was her ceiling, and the walls caved in on her in an inverted V, giving the room a triangular shape. And all the shelves for her toys and games and books buckled out at her at strange angles. The little girl wasn’t sure whether she liked the shelves doing that at first, and then decided she
did
like it, she liked it very much, even if she no longer liked any of the toys and games and books that sat on them. The walls were painted a pure and gleaming white. And set into the ceiling was a small skylight, and it let the sunshine in every morning and protected her from the rain and the wind. The little girl liked this best of all, and she stared up at the skylight when she lay on her bed, she didn’t need toys to play with or books to read. She was actually very happy—even if the rest of the house disturbed her, even if she couldn’t get used to its new smells and colours and shapes, and the way it seemed so very very still in the middle of the night. If that still bothered her, if it woke her up, she’d just look straight upwards, through the skylight, and out at the sky beyond, and she’d be fine.

“It’s a fresh start,” said Mother. “Everything’s going to be different from now on.” And the little girl agreed, it was already
very
different, and Father and Mother were now not talking to each other in rooms where the furniture was facing altogether new directions.

Father was still wary. The house had been too cheap, it had all been too easy, they had been taken for a ride. He wouldn’t rest until he found out what was wrong with it. Mother asked, really very gently, why he’d agreed to buy the house in the first place if he wasn’t satisfied—and Father just flared up, and said he’d been left little bloody choice, had he? But he was nobody’s fool. He’d get to the bottom of it. He’d get to the bottom of everything. And it took him a few weeks, but at last, he succeeded. He called out his family into the front garden so he could show them.

“Look,” he said. “It’s obvious once you know.” He pointed straight upwards.

“I don’t see anything,” said Mother, and Father clucked his tongue in irritation.

And it seemed ridiculous, but the little girl then thought she understood. “It’s the sky,” she said. The patch of sky above their house was unlike the patches of sky above the other houses. The skies were all blue, but theirs was a more muted blue, as if it had faded in the wash. And there was white creeping into the blue, and grey. The sun was shining down on them, but not very forcefully, really rather limply, as if it couldn’t quite make the effort, as if it weren’t quite up to the multitasking of producing both light
and
warmth.

“We’ve bought ourselves a defective sky,” said Father.

It all made sense to him now. Why the house had been on the market at all. That sometimes the rain, or the wind, or the sunshine, seemed to be lagging as much as half an hour behind those of his neighbours’. That, sometimes, when he left for work, dawn had broken over the rest of the street, but not over
their
house, it made it difficult for him to find his car keys in the dark.

“What do you think is wrong with it?” asked Mother.

“Just old age,” said Father. “It’s wearing down. It’s dying.”

“What are those up there?” asked the little girl. She’d seen the specks before, peeking out behind the clouds, just little brown smears in the air. She hadn’t thought they were anything unusual before. Now it was clear only their sky had them, no one else’s did.

“Liver spots, I expect,” said Father. “I don’t know.”

“What can we do?” said Mother.

“We’ll probably have to replace it altogether,” said Father. “We’ll have to rip it out, and start all over. God knows how much that’ll cost. God. This sky’s had it. It’s probably years old. Probably hundreds.”

“Just think,” said Mother, cheerfully, and it was mostly addressed to the little girl, “just think of all the things it must have seen!”

“It hasn’t
seen
anything,” snapped Father. “It doesn’t have eyes. It’s a sky. It breathes wind, and eats sunlight, and, and shits clouds, that’s what skies do.” He glowered up at it. “But not this one. Not well enough for my liking.”

He went indoors, got straight on to the estate agent. He shouted at him down the telephone. Father was triumphant; he’d been right all this while. And although that first conversation with the estate agent proved inconclusive, each day he’d call the estate agent back, it became like a little hobby, and he’d threaten him with lawyers and courts and things. Father seemed so much happier now. He’d smile at Mother and the little girl over breakfast and over dinner—it was a bitter sort of smile, but a smile all the same. The little girl hoped he’d stay happy for a long time.

“It’s a fresh start,” Mother would say to the little girl. The little girl would nod, but nodding didn’t always seem to be enough; Mother would add, so earnestly, “I need you to believe that, I need you to believe all of this is going to work.” And then she’d cry, well, usually; but even if she cried she’d be laughing, even then she’d stay cheerful through the tears, and the little girl just didn’t know what to make of that at all.

The little girl went to her new school. And pretty soon she was invited to the birthday party of another little girl; she hadn’t been around long enough for any of her classmates to realize they didn’t like her yet. The other little girl had a big house, with a big garden and swimming pool; most of the children played in the pool, but our little girl didn’t like water, and stayed on the side, and on her own. And looked up at the sky. It was brighter and bluer than her sky, and had been especially polished for the occasion. There were balloons and fairy lights attached to the sky, some hanging off white puffy clouds in the shapes of elephants and sweets, and someone had rearranged the stars so that they twinkled in the daylight and spelled out “Happy Birthday Trudy,” which just happened to be the other little girl’s name. Our little girl knew this sky was nicer than her sky, but preferred her sky nonetheless. When it was time to go home, she was given a goodie bag; the other little girls had got inside it, and torn up the slice of birthday cake, and broken the toy, and had written on the napkin, “Turdmuncher.” There was an apple, and the little girl didn’t dare eat it, she thought it might have been licked, or spat on, or worse; but there was also a bar of Milky Way, and the wrapping didn’t seem to have been interfered with, it had been squashed a little but the chocolate inside was untouched. So she ate that.