All Bones and Lies (22 page)

Did that faint tapping mean she hadn't even stopped on her keyboard? ‘I can't think why you're telling me all this, Col. I shan't be going.'

‘But she's
ill
.'

‘So?'

‘If you'd seen her—'

As he had, only an hour earlier, unrecognizably swamped in some bright, white, frilly-necked hospital gown, her wispy hair afloat round the pink scalp, her fingers picking at the coverlet as she asked him anxiously, ‘Have you been round to the house?'

She'd sounded very odd. Was she having trouble breathing? ‘Don't worry. Floss is fine.'

The pinched face had fallen back, less anguished, against the pillows. ‘How did you get in?'

He'd taken a stab in the dark – ‘Went round to Ruby's' – and waited, fearing he might have to take off rather promptly on some other tack about Ruby recommending a locksmith, or something. But, no. He'd guessed right. Ruby had a key, because, brushing the matter of the house aside with a feverish twitch of her fingers, his mother had reverted to her worries about its only other occupant. ‘So Flossie was at least smart enough not to clear the dish?'

Colin shrugged off the picture of Tam, only an hour before, sitting merrily on the kitchen table, swinging her chubby legs in and out of the mop's path as he gave the floor one last disinfecting swill after cleaning up dozens of revolting little messes. Let Mother worry only about herself. ‘No. Floss is fine.'

And now, it seemed, his sister, too, was only interested in the dog. ‘I certainly hope you aren't planning to ask me to look after that mangy old mutt of hers.'

‘No, no. The ambulance men dumped her with Ruby.'

‘I thought Ruby hated animals.'

‘Well, that's how it goes,' snapped Colin. ‘When someone old gets sick, most people put a little human kindness ahead of their own convenience.'

His sister took snapping lessons from no one. ‘Don't lecture me on how to deal with family! If you'd ever had the guts to stand up to her, maybe she would have made the effort to be nicer, and a bit more worth visiting.'

‘“Worth visiting”?'

‘Oh, sneer away, Col! But don't forget it's wimps like you who let her get away with it all her life.' He held the phone a little further from his ear, and, as Dilys hectored, leaned across the desk to draw a really rather passable upside-down Flossie under the tree with sticky-out branches that Tam was busily dotting with bright red leaves. No point in interrupting. If Dilys wanted his views on anything, she could always take the opportunity of stopping talking to ask him.

And he felt sorry for her. She was about to be the loser, after all. One of the things that had struck him so forcibly that morning was how much easier it was to feel warmth for his mother now he had seen her in this different guise. Maybe the reason old people were so tiresome was because all they generally offered was The Recipe As Before: their austere childhoods, endless fussing about teaspoons, or moans about health. That, after all, was why he had invented
Swap-a-Wrinkly
, his brilliant game show in which frustrated carers could put their old folk up for swaps, and get to take home someone whose ailments and confusions and obsessions might at least bear the stamp of novelty. Like all his other inspirations, it hadn't ended up on television; but he was getting to play it now, as
solitaire. Over the past few weeks, he had been privileged to watch a woman in whose harsh, battling nature bitter self-pity had always been uppermost soften and – oh, say it fearlessly – get nicer and
nicer
, until today, with the stuffing so comprehensively – almost literally – knocked out of her, there'd even been a touch of acceptance in her character, and, if you chose to interpret her silences charitably, a hint of gratitude. It would be good to stand at her grave's edge and think on that while Dilys had to stand, cold and unfeeling. For it was always better, surely, to miss at least some part of the departed – regret their passing in some way, however small, however fleeting. Or what had been the point of all that time spent sitting reading the papers together, or listening to their grumbles as you dumped your spurned groceries out on the table? No doubt Dilys was technically in the right. No doubt, viewed as a moral conundrum, he was being as spineless and irrational as she claimed. He could even see the force of her argument. After all, looked at in one way, it was unassailable. If, all your life, you'd had a selfless, loving parent who in their last years turned cantankerous and mean, pretty well anyone would agree that you should try to look on these startling new traits of character as nothing more than disfiguring twists to do with a steady softening of the brain, and press on as kindly and determinedly as you could, right to the end. So why shouldn't the reverse hold? Why shouldn't Dilys have the right to judge their mother by her long, willed past? And, having found her wanting, why shouldn't Dilys stick to judgements made? What he was offering her was not the person she had known. So why should she waver in her response? Unless, of course—

A nudge at his fingers forced him back to the moment. Tammy was shoving at his hand. ‘I don't want that!' Startled, he looked down. Under her brightly spotted tree, he'd drawn a grave with unkept grass, and he was halfway through the careful lettering of his mother's name.

In his left ear, the hectoring voice took on an even sharper edge. ‘Who's that?'

‘Who?'

‘Talking.'

He laid his fingers on his lips and grinned at Tam. ‘Just someone in the office.'

‘Sounds like a
child
.'

He drew a huge smile on his drawing of Flossie, to make Tam giggle.

His sister sounded even tenser now. Had Marjorie's talk of secret lives sprung back to mind? ‘It
is
a child. Col, how come you have a child there?'

He drew a little pile of dog poo next to Floss, to remind Tam of the mop game. ‘Oh, you know council offices. Short-staffed in the crèche? Clarrie doing someone a favour? Who's to say?' He winked at Tam. ‘But I can tell you this. The little lady concerned is not only very charming and an excellent artist, but I just happen to know that she's wearing a brand-new pair of knickers with spotty yellow cats on.'

And for reasons he would have been hard pressed to explain, it gave him the most enormous satisfaction to hear Tam snigger loudly inches from his own phone just seconds before his sister, exasperated, slammed down her own.

Colin watched anxiously as Perdita's ancient little handyman let drop the last of the boxes and wrinkled his nose. ‘Bit of a rabbit hutch, isn't it?'

Was he referring to the dimensions? Or the smell from Chaffer's Bonemeal? Attempting to ride both horses, Colin pulled shut the window while admitting apologetically, ‘Well, yes. It is compact. But all the woodwork could be brightened up as well. And it will need to be back to rights by the time the tenant gets home tomorrow.'

Mr Walter tugged open a cupboard, then closed it fast, to stem the avalanche. ‘Won't take that long.' Perhaps at the thought of having asked Colin to carry so much gear up so many flights of stairs for such a small area of paintwork, he suddenly felt the need to offer his own version of an energy-sensitive suggestion. ‘Unless we take the opportunity to go for the works, in which case this window frame is going to need a proper—'

‘No, no,' said Colin, taking fright at the thought of how much he'd committed himself to already that morning. ‘A lick and a promise. Just bright and cheery by tomorrow night. If you could do the woodwork more or less the same white as before.' He twisted the larger of his paint cans round in its box to peer at the label and refresh his memory. ‘And the walls in this Warm Spanish Ivory.'

‘That's just pink.'

From a host of conversations overheard at the water cooler, Colin knew this to be nonsense. ‘Well, I'm not exactly sure—'

But Mr Walter was clearly climbing into his professional
stride along with his overalls. ‘
Pink
, You can call it whatever fancy name you like. But if you'd only had the sense to come to me, I could have tipped some red into a can of cheap white, and Bob's your uncle. You and the young lady would have walked away a whole lot better off.' He sounded so like Tubs Arnold that Colin suddenly felt at ease, willingly picking his way between buckets and boxes to give a hand shifting Mel's table into the middle of the room, and stacking clutter beneath it. Mr Walter pushed open the door to Tam's sleeping space. ‘This bit as well? Not much of it, is there? Shame about the kid having no window. Still, makes you grateful.' Without stopping to explain quite for what, he tugged the tiny bed away from the wall and started hurling Tam's toys onto the coverlet. Hastily, Colin reached over to snatch up the snowstorm which had presumably been set on the shelf by the bed in the hope of enticing her into it quicker. Then he slid past to rescue the precious Las Venturas poster, before Mr Walter mistook its value from the crumbling corners.

Even when rolled, it looked vulnerable. ‘Safe in there, maybe?' suggested Mr Walter, pointing to the box in which Colin had carried up the paint cans. Colin glanced round. If things went badly with the proud Alexi, Mel would come home so tetchy that, notwithstanding any nice new gleaming woodwork, she'd still give him a roasting if anything was damaged. So, lifting off the arm of the sofa some floppy red garment he'd often seen on Tam when she was playing ‘Lavenders', he wrapped it carefully around the snowstorm and jammed the bundle between the padded paws of Tam's teddy. He wedged the whole lot in the box. The rolled-up poster fitted snugly between the bear's
sturdy upright legs. That should be safe. Colin looked round again. There were a few tatty photos. Prudently he added those. And all the bits and pieces of paperwork behind the clock. Some of those might be to do with Mel's benefits. Best not let any of that get mislaid, even for a day or two, or she might starve. While Mr Walter unsystematically shunted his paint pails and boxes around in the search for his sanding brick, Colin strolled round the flat on one last trawl, shocked, after a lifetime of watching his sister lay up little treasures, to find scarcely enough of value to fill up one carton.

Saved by the bell. (Except that, being broken, it was a rapping on the door.)

‘Sign for this, please.'

Still on his knees, he leaned across the boxes to take the proffered envelope and scribble his name on the courier's worksheet. It formed a perfect layer of padding for the top.

And he was done.

Mr Walter was eyeing him hopefully. ‘So you'll fetch up those dust sheets for me, will you, on your way down again?'

He had no choice. The fellow looked as frail as Mother. Making a mental note to send yet another memorandum to Hetherley about finding some way to fix vandal-proof grilles in front of the lift control panels, he accepted the car keys and picked his way once again through the jumble of paint stuff. This would make four trips, once he had lugged the floor sheets up again. At least he could clear some space, taking down that box with his mother's old toaster. Oh, God! His mother! Should he phone the
hospital again? Or visit after work? Oh, Christ! Work! Only an hour earlier Clarrie had warned him of yet another message from that awful Braddle man; after a quiet week, Mrs Moloney had sprung out of the woodwork; and Arif was still acting little short of half-witted about that cheque for the gas fire. Not only that, but in the canteen yesterday he'd overheard a rumour that someone called Lee had upset Shirley mightily by precipitately giving to her, rather than to the voicemail she was offering, an all too graphic description of what he was hoping to do to some Haksar. So clearly Colin couldn't even chalk the Battle of Sperivale Road up as a victory. Partly from prudence, partly from despair, he gazed around before unlocking Mr Walter's vehicle. What sort of world was this for Tammy to grow up in? Grim enough for her now as a child, stuck in this place of the damned, ringed by cars with flat tyres and smashed windows, and menacing-looking vans like that one he kept seeing by the gates, behind whose blacked-out windows God knows what ghastly urban hell-hole practices were taking place.

And, when she was older, ready to face her share of obligations, just like him?

Just worse. Yes, that described it. Worse, worse, worse.

At least his mother had picked up a bit.

‘Who's this, then?'

‘Tammy.' (Brazen it out.) ‘I was supposed to drop her off at nursery for a friend.' He lifted Tam onto the only available chair – a high-backed, somewhat thinly cushioned commode – and watched her stare at his mother as though at a witch in a pantomime. ‘But
somehow we never quite seemed to get round to going, and then it wasn't worth bothering.'

His mother laid a hand proprietorially on the magazines he'd dropped on her bed. ‘Don't think I'm letting her loose on my Shinies.'

‘No, no. She's fine.' And indeed Tam sat riveted, till her attention shifted to a stray hairgrip floating strangely from an invisible strand of his mother's hair. She tugged at him, wanting to share this mystery. His mother peered back with a wicked squint. ‘Bit of a fidget, isn't she? She had better behave or they'll shove her in the broth pot.'

Tam's rapt face froze. Colin dropped a hand onto her shoulder. He might have been hoping his mother would intimidate her just enough to keep her on her best behaviour around all these sick ladies. He hadn't wanted her to be traumatized for life.

‘She's all right. And we won't be stopping long.'

‘Good thing. I've already been savaged half to death by one surprise visitor.'

A feeling of the most enormous relief swept over Colin. So Dilys had come! He was no longer solely responsible for every decision. He could phone Dil tonight, and they could put their heads together. Between the two of them, brother and sister, they could—