Vacant Possession (26 page)

“So, we go down Fletcher’s, nick some brown paper and string, and we do up the bones in a nice parcel. Then we put her name on it, and our address, and leave it in our hall. Like it’s come through the post. Nobody’ll interfere with it.”

“But what when she comes?” Sherwood said. “She’ll take it away, open it up; oh my my!”

“She won’t collect it, dumbo, because she’s left, hasn’t she, she’ll never come back.”

“What when we move?”

“That’ll be weeks. Months.”

“But then Mum might throw it away.”

“Look, I can’t solve everything at one go, give us a chance. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“It sounds feasible,” Kari said cautiously.

“Could try it, man,” Sherwood said.

Alistair pointed to his chest. “Nobel Prize for Being a Clever Bugger.”

“Get the news this morning?” Miss Anaemia asked.

Hardly likely. Mr. K. looked up, fearful, his jaw sagging a little. Nothing came from his radio except strange blips and crackles, and police messages; even when he tuned into “Big Band Special” they were there again when he next switched on.

“There’s this man,” Miss Anaemia continued, seating herself by the kitchen range. “There’s this man knocked off his wife. He’s gone driving round the countryside, pretending to be somewhere else—”

“An alias, is an expression,” said Mr. K.

“Then he’s gone off to the Lake District and dumped her body in a deep lake, and ten years pass, and he thinks he’s got away with it. Then—guess what?”

“But I can’t guess,” Mr. K. said. “Secret murder come to light?”

“There are the police, looking for some other body completely, and what do they find? This chap’s wife, all preserved, just as good as when she went in. And if he’d rowed his boat out twenty feet further, she’d have gone into the deepest part of the lake and they’d never have found her at all.”

“For the want of a nail a shoe was lost,” Mr. K. observed.

“I don’t know about that, but now he’s in gaol. Horrible, innit? What do you think, Mrs. Wilmot?”

But Mrs. Wilmot had slipped off, melted away, as if into the wall.

Two days later, when Sylvia entered the house, she almost tripped over the large cardboard box in the hall. “Damn, what’s this?” she said, scrabbling on the floor for the letters she had dropped. “Karen, are you there? What’s this?”

Karen came out of the kitchen, eating a chocolate biscuit. “Dunno,” she said. “A man brought it.”

“What man?”

“Dunno.” She shrugged. “Postman?”

“Put the light on, will you?”

“Bulb’s gone again.”

“Damn this house.” Sylvia bent down and peered at the box. “I can’t see any postage on it. It’s addressed to Lizzie. Fancy that.”

“Maybe it was a friend of hers,” Karen said, carefully. “This man who brought it.”

“Well, I don’t know what she wants to have her post sent here for. I’d be very annoyed if I thought she’d been giving this address to people. Anyway, if she thinks I’m trailing round after her, she’s mistaken. She can just come and collect it. I’ll phone her up.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” Karen said. “It’s probably nothing.”

“It’s a big box. I wonder what it is?” Sylvia took it in both hands. “Not heavy.” She shook it. “Rattles a bit.”

“Probably something from mail order,” Karen suggested.

“Probably. Must be some cowboy outfit. Don’t even run to printed labels.”

“Well, you know how it is,” Karen said. “You send for something and it turns up weeks later when you’ve forgotten about it, right?”

“Or unsolicited goods,” Sylvia said. “She’s not obliged to return them. I’ll tell her her Rights.”

“I wouldn’t bother.”

“Of course I must. I’ve got her number somewhere.”

Karen quailed. They had not thought of this. It had been a case of out of sight, out of mind; they never expected to see Lizzie again, and they had not thought of Sylvia being able to trace her. A diversion was needed. “What’s the post?” Karen said craftily.

“It’s from the solicitor. Come in the kitchen where I can see.” Kari followed her. Sylvia turned. Her face shone. “We’ve got it,” she said. “We can move. Vacant possession.”

“When?”

“It can’t be soon enough for me. Your father’s taking out a bridging loan. It’ll probably bankrupt us, but I can’t wait.” She sat down abruptly on a kitchen chair, suddenly deflated, the smile wiped from her face. “Only what about Suzanne? I don’t want to go off and leave her like this. She’s my daughter, I love her. And the baby, I haven’t seen Gemma since the hospital. It’s cruel of Suzanne to break off contact like this, not even to ring up and let us know she’s all right.”

“Never mind, Mum. You’ve got me.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said without enthusiasm. She opened her bag and took out her address book. There was a loose sheet of paper inside.

“I’ve got Lizzie’s number here,” she said. “I can ask if she’s heard from Suzanne. It comes to something, when you have to go to a scrubber like that for news of your only grandchild. Number 56, Napier Street. That’s funny. I should have noticed before. I thought she lived at Eugene Terrace, at an Indian shop.”

“Perhaps they evicted her.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Karen, do you have to eat your way through every packet of biscuits that comes into this house? Is it any wonder you’ve got spots?”

It would soon be Easter. The telephone rang often in Mr. Kowalski’s hall. Sometimes he ignored it, sometimes he shook his fist at it and threatened to rip it out of the wall; what was it but a tool for criminals and a source of disease? Sometimes he lifted the receiver, and bellowed down it in one or other of his many languages.

Muriel intercepted the postman. There was another letter for Miss Blank. She opened it. Mrs. Sidney cast aspersions on my writing, she thought; but I can read perfectly well.

Enclosed was a scrap of paper with Edwina’s address and telephone number. “It falls into your lap,” Mrs. Wilmot observed to her landlord.

“What?” Mr. K. dropped back. He was edgy these days.

“No, I mean, opportunity knocks. It’s an expression, Mr. K.”

“You poor old Wilmot,” Mr. K. said sorrowfully. “When the ship sinks, we will be like drowned rats. You, I, Miss Anaemia, all shall go down in the shipwreck of my fortunes, unless our Blessed Lady smiles on us. Those,” he added with some satisfaction, “are expressions too.”

“Well, I hope you’ve been saying your litany,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Course, I don’t know any litanies, I’m a Metho.”

“We need more than prayers, we need revolvers,” Mr. K. said. “Mantraps, Molotov cocktails. You see new woman in the street, watching out of a car? Always watching, watching, seeing who comes and goes. Always silent, silent, silent like the grave.”

“Don’t get carried away,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “You make me shudder with your prognostications.”

“Soon I will lay about me,” Mr. K. promised. “I cannot longer endure the agony of mind. My nerve is twisted to such a pitch—” He picked up a fork from the kitchen table, one of only two he had, and taking it in both hands, bent it until the handle was twisted and the tines drooped. “Like that,” he said. The sweat started out on his forehead. “Like that.”

It seemed to Colin, light-headed in the severe spring weather, that for once things were going his way. His appointment was confirmed, and he was counting off the weeks till the end of the summer term. He had sent Frank a get-well card and a basket of fruit. His colleagues said he was just the man for Frank’s job, and he knew it was true. He hugged himself, mentally, when he went into his office every morning. No more shillings, no more pence, no more sitting on the old school fence, No more geography, no more sums, no more beating on us bums. He had made a resolve that on the last day of term he would go home and turn out every one of his pockets, and blow out the chalk dust for ever, and never never let it back. He would never touch a stick of chalk again, or even engage with the school computer; he would never walk into a classroom again, except as a strict noncombatant. He would be a serious professional man, not a registered child minder, and he would impress his colleagues old and new with his suave, considered, and practical advice. He would be the History Advisor; he would be given the best chair in staff rooms throughout the county, and he would enjoy single malts—though not too many—with an obsequious Brother Ambrose.

Of course, there were many weeks to get through first; but they would be moving in a few days, and then, in part, he would be free. Free of Florence, with her wearisome protestations of innocence, for she never let the subject drop; free of ten years at Buckingham Avenue. At a stroke, he would sever his wife from the canal scheme, his son from his gang, and his youngest daughter from the Brownies; and who knew whether the change of air would not improve Karen’s spots? Whether Suzanne came back or not, no doubt the family survivors could begin to put together some sort of life.

Sylvia was behaving herself, he thought. She seemed content, wrapping newspaper round such crockery as remained, making inventories of their possessions. She was too busy to rake up the past. The telephone stayed silent. Or it rang; but not for him.

Wednesday came. Muriel had set the alarm early, but she woke up without it and turned it off. Just like the old days; as if Mother were standing over her and shaking her.

She pulled the covers up to her chin and lay there, thinking. Emmanuel had explained it to her, or tried to, before they took him back to Fulmers Moor. The unbaptised child is the lodge of the devil; and wasn’t it the Devil in person whom Mother had feared, taking a turn on the landing, peering at them down the stairs? Baptism drives the Devil out; the child gets contented and grows fat. The bad child you put in the canal and the good child you get out are the same one, but the Devil is out, and God is in. That can make a lot of difference. It’s only baptism; a bit more drastic and risky than what you get at the parish church, but there are some babies that are hard cases.

Of course, that was only his theory. He was on the bottle at the time. “Where’s this resurrection you promised?” she asked him. He looked pious. “Easter, of course.” And here it was. Give or take a few days.

Now the house was very quiet; before Jim got up, Isabel was wrapping her parcel. The exposé had turned quite bulky. She couldn’t get it in an envelope. Strange that failure should take up so much space; that foolishness and ineptitude should need so many stamps. Finishing the narrative had not brought her the release she had expected. The more she wrote, the less clear it had become. What were those writing tips she had been given, at the evening class where she had met Colin? But that was as unclear as all the rest, all the events of her life up to now muddied and confused by her fear and sickness in the Axons’ spare room. The strange bulk under her clothes sighed softly, shuffled, and disposed itself.

She sat at the kitchen table, fumbling with her string. She was glad in one way that she had written it. Whatever happened, it would be a sort of testimony. That day, she was going to find Suzanne, for sure; she would give up the futile observation, and go and knock on the door. She would find her, and talk. Suzanne could not harm her, she could not murder her, could she? Why was she so afraid? She would have a little drink, just a small tumbler of whisky to steady her. She addressed her parcel; she would post it on the way.

Would they be able to follow it, at the
Sunday Enquirer
? They wouldn’t mind, they would print anything. Would they want proof, some sort of circumstantial evidence? There was the file, of course; the file on Muriel Axon. She had kept that. It had been easier to account for its disappearance, than to account for its contents. But the file did not tell the end of the story. The old woman was dead. The baby was dead too. The baby’s mother was locked away somewhere, a person or persons unknown. Was that the phrase? It didn’t seem quite right. Her hand shook as she poured her drink. “
MANY YEARS LATER
,” she said to herself, “
THE FACTS OF THE CASE CAME TO LIGHT
.”

Perhaps it would not make sense to the reader. But sense was not her requirement.

She pictured her parcel, travelling in a van along Fleet Street. She imagined the people in the offices of the
Enquirer
, opening her parcel. Now when people pointed at her in the town, they would have something to point about. Now when they talked, they would have something to say. When she poured her drink, she noticed, she had poured far more than she meant to. She was not going to put it back.

Seven o’clock struck. Jim was running the bath taps. The day had begun. She caught sight of her white face in the dark kitchen window; peaked, blurred, with formless swimming eyes.

And now Muriel was out of bed. She was on her feet, regarding herself in the spotted mirror of the dressing table; the carefully shuttered expression, the drooping lids. She reached out and picked up Lizzie’s wig from its stand. Her high-heeled boots were under the bed, her leopard-skin coat was in the wardrobe. It was the last time she would need them.

Miss Anaemia came in from the street, her teeth chattering. “That woman,” she complained, standing in the kitchen. “It’s her, you know, Mr. K., the one with the hollow face. These DHSS get worse and worse. I know she watches me, but she’s never
done
anything before. I was just going to the post box, trying to catch the first post with my appeal form, and there she was, squashing a great big parcel into the slot. It gave me a shock, I can tell you. I’ve never seen her out of the car before.”