A is for Angelica (12 page)

‘Dog dead is it?’ says a voice from the other side of the garden fence. It’s Annie Carnaffan, our next door neighbour.

‘Go away,’ says Don. ‘You’re not welcome here.’

‘I live here.’

‘That doesn’t mean you’re welcome.’

I remember Annie Carnaffan’s face the day Georgina arrived home from hospital in a converted minibus. They opened the back doors and lowered her wheelchair onto the road. A face at every
window. One of the hospital staff started pushing her towards the house, but I stopped them. I wanted to push her. It was my job. I grabbed the handles and took over. Halfway down the path one of
the wheels got caught on a crack in the concrete. The chair toppled over and Georgina began to fall. I couldn’t take her weight. But Don was behind me and managed to grip the arm of the
chair. He pulled it steady. I stopped, composed myself, shaking. Someone was watching me. Annie Carnaffan, grinning from behind her bedroom window, her face scrunched at the eyes, searching for
misery. And I’ll never forget it. I won’t forgive her.

‘Just get on with it,’ she says. Don opens his mouth to say something back, but stops as Gerald Winnett-Smith, my other next door neighbour, slams his front door shut. We hear his
wife, Bonnie, stamping upstairs, so Gerald knows she’s not just angry, she’s very angry. He tugs at his coat sleeves, nods in our direction and walks sheepishly down the street. I
don’t speak to the Winnett-Smiths either. Georgina overheard them talking during one of their barbecue ‘gatherings’. We were in the garden. Georgina was reading and I was asleep.
‘They’ve never had kids, you know. I hear Gordon fires blanks.’ I remember waking up, desperately needing the toilet. Georgina was at the other end of the garden, her thumb on the
end of the hosepipe, water spraying gently over the fence and onto Gerald’s barbecue. ‘Go back to sleep,’ she mouthed as Bonnie started screaming. I winked at Georgina, smiled and
gave her a double thumbs up.

Note: Winnett: a dried-up ball-like piece of excrement matted in the hairs between a person or animal’s buttocks. Often called clegnut or dingleberry. Note
end.

We’ve had two minutes of silence, which is one more than they give to important people when they die. I’m trying to think of something to say, but can’t. Don
is fidgeting next to me. I can hear him rattling. Loose change in every pocket. It’s stopping me from thinking straight. I want this over and done with. Kipling is dead. It’s hitting
me. I don’t want to be here. I want to go inside and write something down. Sit behind a curtain. Bake a cake. I can hear Annie Carnaffan. She’s still there, wheezing behind the hedge.
Horrible little woman. We should be burying her. Stop rattling. I have nothing to say. This is Jonathan’s fault. Stupid paedophile. Angelica is coming.

‘Good morning,’ she says, flicking the stub of her cigarette onto the pavement. ‘Or should that be afternoon?’

‘No, it’s still morning,’ Don replies. ‘Just.’

‘Oh well. What’re you two up to?’

She can’t see Kipling. I dug the hole next to the fence and she’s on the other side. She’s oblivious. Don’s looking at me. He wants to know what I want him to say. I
don’t care what he says. I want to know if they’ve met before.

‘Watching squirrels,’ he says.

‘Really? Where?’

‘They’ve gone now. Two of them. One had a nut in its mouth. I think the other one was trying to steal it.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘They ran away. I think they were together. Like a couple.’ Angelica stares at Don. He nods at her. Like he’s never told a lie in his life.

‘So Gordon, is Kipling any better?’

‘Not really,’ I say.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Do we know what’s wrong with him yet?’

‘He’s dead.’ She cups her mouth with her hands. I imagine the smell on her fingers. Stale smoke. She has mascara smudged across the bridge of her nose. She must’ve slept
in it.

‘That’s awful. When?’

‘This morning.’

‘He electrocuted himself,’ Don butts in.

‘Oh my god, Gordon!’

He points at the box. Angelica leans over the fence, lets out a shriek and jumps backwards. She stands there, takes her hands from her mouth. I know what she’s thinking.

‘Did he do it on purpose?’ she asks.

‘I doubt it,’ I say. ‘He’s a dog.’

‘They throw themselves into quarries all the time,’ says Don.

‘Kipling doesn’t,’ I say, even though it doesn’t make sense. This is ridiculous. The whole situation is ridiculous. I have to get this over with. What a way to go.

‘Angelica, would you like to join us? We’re about to bury him,’ I say. She puts her hands under her armpits and folds her arms.

‘No, I shouldn’t. I hardly knew him.’ She edges away, starts walking back across the road.

‘Are you sure?’ shouts Don.

‘Yes, you two carry on.’

‘Okay, see you later Angie.’

Angie? Angie? So, they do know each other. I don’t believe it. Why would she be friends with Don? He’s just a lonely old man. I’ve never seen them talking. Hold on. She’s
not shouting back. She’s still walking away from us. Maybe they’re not so familiar. Don’s just pushing his luck, calling her Angie like that. She’s opening the door. Going,
going, gone. She doesn’t remember his name. But she knows my name.

‘Nice girl,’ says Don.

‘She’s forty-two,’ I reply.

‘Really? She doesn’t look it.’

‘Dogs don’t commit suicide,’ says a voice from beyond the fence. ‘They haven’t got the sense.’

‘I wish you had the sense, Annie,’ says Don. He waits for a reply, but for the second time in the space of a minute, he doesn’t get one. Instead, we hear the sound of heels
scraping along concrete followed by the slam of a door.

‘Let’s get him buried,’ I say, bending down and lifting one side of the box. I can feel the weight transfer as Kipling slides to the other end. He’s incredibly heavy.

‘Quick, grab it.’

Don lifts his end and immediately looks like he’s about to keel over. His hands shake, the weight becomes too much and he has to let go. We drop it from a standing position. It hits the
damp earth with an almighty thump. I imagine Kipling whimpering inside.

‘Where’s the spade?’ says Don. ‘You go and put your feet up. I’ll fill him in.’

Thirty seconds later. I’m behind the curtain watching Don to see if he steals my spade. He drags the soil into the hole with the back of the blade. It takes him seven
minutes. When he’s finished, he gets on his knees and levels the soil with the palms of his hands. Then he puts them together and bows his head. It looks like he’s praying. A minute
later he arches his neck to the sky and crosses himself. He gets it wrong, does it back to front. As he stands up and walks away, a squirrel jumps over the fence and buries a nut in Kipling’s
grave. He’s not even cold. Don doesn’t notice. He’s busy crossing the road with my spade under his arm, wiping tears from his cheeks with his sleeves. I thought he might get
upset, but I knew he’d want to help. That’s why I asked him. And I couldn’t lift the box on my own.

‘Does Georgina know?’ he’d said when I knocked on his door and broke the news.

‘No not yet.’

‘Is she still at your mum and dad’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want to use the phone?’

‘No. I’ll tell her when she gets back. She’ll only get upset.’

‘You’re right. Probably for the best.’

Angelica has returned. She’s leaving her house, closing her door and walking towards Don. She shouts something to him. He stops and gives his eyes a final wipe. Then he
leans on my spade like nothing’s happened. He’s fine. Just got something in his eye. Both eyes. She reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder, tips her head to one side. She’s
feigning sympathy. She doesn’t care. They hardly know each other. Don’s shaking his head and smiling. He’s fine, absolutely fine. He holds the spade like a cane and tries to jump
and click his heels in the air. He gets three inches off the ground and twists his ankle when he lands. Angelica’s got her arm around his shoulder. There’s nothing wrong with him.
He’s nodding his head and hobbling away. They’re saying goodbye. She smiles. He waves and limps. She wanders off down the street and into the distance, her arms folded as always. Her
small steps.

I’ve been here fifteen minutes. I want a cup of tea and a piece of sponge cake. I need to check on Georgina. I can still smell Kipling’s diarrhoea. I told her it was me, that
I’d only just made the toilet. It must have been those vegetables. I told her to rest, go back to sleep and that I’d check on her later. Then I closed the door and used my coat to block
the gap at the bottom where the smell could get through. Kipling’s lead fell out of the pocket. Now it’s starting to rain and I can hear the floorboards creaking above me. Georgina must
be waking. I want to wait for Angelica. I want to see if I can work out where she’s been. But I need to be upstairs. I need to drag my wife to her commode. Help her through the process. I
need to lie and tell her that Kipling’s staying at Don’s tonight.

Ladders

Don helped me and Georgina decorate. We worked every weekend for six months and sometimes in the evenings after work. We finished the final room the week before we went on our
honeymoon. My father came to join us for the last push. He arrived in a blue van with three ladders attached to its roof, each one a different size. He’d borrowed it from someone at work. A
mate of his who owed him one. I was painting the windowsill in the bedroom when he pulled up outside our house. Georgina heard it from the bathroom. She came in to find out what the noise was. She
stood behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. We watched him reverse up and onto the pavement. He turned the engine off, looked in the rear view mirror and ran his hands through his hair. I
smiled as he stepped out of the van and looked up at the window. The three of us waved together. My father was wearing the clothes he wore for work. A pair of jeans and a plain white, long-sleeved
shirt rolled up to the elbows. That’s what he always wore. If either garment developed a hole my mother would sew it up. When the hole came back she would do it again. If it became unsewable,
she would buy him near-identical replacements. Jeans and rolled up shirt sleeves. My father’s work clothes. Soaked in coal dust and cigarette smoke. Grimy to touch and forever familiar.

‘Here I am,’ he shouted as he entered the house. ‘How are the workers?’ I placed my paintbrush on the rim of the tin and met him at the foot of the stairs. Georgina went
back to work.

‘We’ve nearly finished.’

‘Fantastic. I’ve brought some ladders.’

‘Yes, we saw.’

‘They came with the van.’

‘Morning Arthur,’ Georgina shouted from the bathroom. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘Morning love. Not a problem. Come and get the kettle on. Tell me what’s what.’

‘Get the kettle on yourself. No sugar for me. Gordon can bring it back up.’

My father looked at me, smiled and shook his head. ‘Is she always like this?’ he said.

‘More or less,’ I replied.

‘Well you’d better get used to it. There’s no turning back now. Go and put the kettle on. Two sugars.’

I walked to the kitchen and knocked on the window. Don was outside in the garden. I held an imaginary mug to my mouth and mimed. He gave me thumbs up and got back to work. He was making a
rockery out of stones he’d found at Gutterton Half. They’d been piled up by the worker’s entrance. A crowd had started to gather. People were helping themselves. Don raced back to
Cressington Vale and told me what he’d seen. We went back with two pillowcases and a wheelbarrow. By the time we arrived the stones were almost gone, but we took what we could.

‘Who’s that in the garden?’ said my father.

‘It’s Don Donald. He lives across the road.’

‘The one whose wife went?’

‘That’s him.’

‘How’s he bearing up?’

‘Not well. He’s keeping busy.’

‘By doing your garden?’

‘He’s been a great help.’

‘I’ll bet he has. Every cloud, eh?’

‘I suppose so.’

My father paused, sighed and scratched his chin. ‘I don’t know what he’s worried about. How old is he? Twenty-five? He’ll find someone else.’

I switched the kettle on at the wall and arranged four mugs on the worktop. My father watched Don in the garden. He tapped the floor with his toecaps. Drummed the sink with fingers.
‘I’ll have a word with him,’ he said.

We sat outside and drank our tea together. My father and me on the doorstep and Don perched on the upturned wheelbarrow. Georgina came to join us, her overalls covered in
paint-coloured finger marks. She sipped her tea and surveyed the half-finished rockery. Don watched her and waited anxiously. He looked at us and raised his eyebrows. Georgina turned and nodded at
him. ‘Looks great,’ she said. ‘You’re doing a grand job.’ Don smiled and nodded back. Georgina sat behind him on the wheelbarrow, so they were back-to-back. Our break
lasted forty minutes. We listened to my father tell stories between cigarettes. All from work and all second hand apart from the last, which was about my mother’s hysterectomy. He had Don in
stitches.

After our second round of tea we went back to work. Georgina in the bathroom and me at my windowsill. We left my father outside with Don and the rockery. They worked all afternoon and into the
evening. My father used one of his ladders and an old skirting board to make a ramp for the wheelbarrow. He carried the stones from one side of the garden to the other and Don placed them carefully
into position. Both of them bare-chested. One with a broken heart, the other pushing fifty. I could hear them laughing from the bedroom. It reminded me of when Georgina and me were younger,
listening to our parents after dinner. Getting drunk and having fun without us.

My father came in when the light started to fade. He put his shirt back on, made himself another cup of tea and joined us upstairs. Georgina was with me in the bedroom. I’d spent the
previous hour trying to attach a shelf to the wall. She thought that it was straight, but I knew it wasn’t.

‘Right, I’m off when I’ve had this drink. Don’s still outside. I told him to leave it for the night, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s nearly finished.’