All Bones and Lies (7 page)

He paid her back by playing Bait the Taxpayer. ‘Oh, no. Safety's quite different. We have a special officer for that.'

‘Well, he'd better not visit this house. I won't be discouraging him from sticking his wet fingers in my plugs.' He took advantage of her settling into a state of mere baleful quiescence to wriggle past. She trailed him through to the kitchen and gazed disparagingly at his purchases. ‘I certainly hope you haven't bought any more
butter. I'm up to the gunwales in it. And what on earth is that very nasty-looking affair?'

He picked up the packaged gourmet meal he'd thrown in for a treat. ‘This is our supper.'

‘I don't feel at all like eating.'

‘You'll like this. We had it once before and you said you thought it was delicious.'

Her look gave him clearly to understand that she couldn't have meant it. Again he stamped down resentment. This was the bit he hated most about his dealings with her. Not only did she have the knack of poisoning the minutes he was trying to get through, she also somehow seemed to manage to spread the misery back over jollier occasions when he'd thought he'd done rather well. ‘No problem,' he snapped. ‘I can easily take it home with me.' But part of the trouble, of course, was that, although she acted like an ungrateful child, she had an adult's self-command. ‘Maybe that's best,' she retorted. And down, down sank his spirits. He hated being skewered this way over food. It meant either a couple of hours of sitting with his stomach audibly complaining, or sitting forlornly at the table spooning his luxury meal into his mouth while she affected to busy herself round the kitchen, somehow managing to create the impression that clattering pans about was the only way in which she could charitably disguise his greed.

‘Let's see the letter, then.'

She passed it over. He ran a practised eye down the paragraphs, taking a professional interest in the skilled way Frampton Commercial had managed to make out that each and every one of their costly and inconvenient demands was
for their clients' benefit, not their own. She'd never lend it to him, and he'd never ask; but he'd have loved a copy. At least a dozen of these weaselly worded phrases might usefully be introduced into his own department's raft of unwelcome communications. He tried to commit one or two of the most general to memory. ‘. . . responding to heightened public concerns about safety . . .' ‘. . . with our ever-increasing awareness of the responsible policyholder's commitment to the environment . . .' And why couldn't Priding Borough Council, too, ‘proudly restratify security hierarchies to empower renewed client confidence'?

She was getting impatient now. ‘This is the sort of drivel your lot write. Surely you can work out what it means.'

At least it couldn't mean another bout of workmen, he thought with relief. After the unravelling of the mystery of the exploding attic lightbulbs, she'd had the infestations of men in boots, the little heaps of plaster everywhere, the streaks of ill-matched paint spilling down to each wall light. Mess and expense and fuss. Tea breaks. Endless supplies of shortbread fingers and cries of, ‘Can I just use your phone to check something with the suppliers?' The horror of all her querulous grousing about that was so fresh in his mind that any matter of certification must be a formality.

‘You'll just have to ask that Mr Herbert of yours to come back and sign you one of these Approved Whatsit things.'

Her mouth looked like a burst slipper. Was she going to
cry
? ‘It's only paperwork,' he assured her hastily. ‘I can't for the life of me see it costing more than a tenner.'

She shot him a harsh look. ‘Try not to be sillier than you look! Do you really think I'd be fool enough to drag you round here if things were that simple?'

Now he felt close to tears himself. ‘How should
I
know?' he wanted to bellow at her. ‘How should I have the
faintest
idea any longer what you can and can't do? You've spent so long aping helplessness whenever it suits you that now I'm quite
lost
.' And it was true. He didn't know – he couldn't even
guess
– if she had truly lost her grip to the extent that Frampton Commercial's smarmy letter (which, credit where it was due, went on to explain in the plainest of words the procedures she should follow) had rattled her enough to phone him at work.

‘So what's the problem?' he asked, and was appalled to see the rheumy eyes redden and fill. Pretend it's
work
, he told himself, trying to stem panic. After all, didn't he meet this little human tragedy every day – old people overwhelmed? He put his arm round the trembling shoulders, and asked more gently, ‘What
is
it?
Tell
me.'

He knew she was tempted because she didn't spit out the usual, ‘I wouldn't walk from here to the door knob to tell you anything.' Turning her back, she only tugged at a cupboard door and hauled out a baking tray in a deafening clatter. ‘Here. Put your fancy gourmet supper on this. How do you want the oven, Mr Smart-Set? Hot or medium?'

He tried again. ‘Whatever it is, I might be able to advise you.'

‘Oh, yes? A penny for
your
thoughts, and you'd have to give change.'

He fingered the wrapping round his special supper.
This is my chance, he thought. I could just do it now. ‘Look,' I could say, as calmly as if she were just one more ratty restaurateur heaving foodstuffs over a back fence. ‘I really don't have to stay and listen to this rudeness. I've tried to be helpful. But since your only response is to insult me, you can sort it out yourself.'

Then he could go.

Go
. What a ring the word had to it.
Go!
Be finished for ever with sulks and insults. There was no point in offering advice in any case. She went her own way as a matter of principle, and, in her accounts to the neighbours, his efforts to help or explain things were always somehow transmuted into things like, ‘Colin's been frightening me to
death
about the boiler (or the old gas fire, or the new alarm).' Dilys is right, he told himself. No one should be expected, for love or duty or anything else, to have to put up with having their very sense of self being chipped away minute by minute. The trouble was, of course, that Mother's self-absorption had been permitted to grow unchecked, till there was no room left for any true awareness of others. Like everyone else, she had her ready filecard of pat phrases: ‘Teachers? They're only in it for the holidays.' ‘Vote that lot in and they'll be as bad as the others.' But, with her, even the nearest and dearest weren't exempt. ‘No, Dolly only stops by as often as she does because she likes to get away from that grisly husband of hers.' ‘Oh, Colin only visits because I'm handy for a free cup of tea on his way home from the office.'

But still, she seemed to have an instinct for how far she could push her luck. He heard a marshy sniff. Now that wasn't like her. And, as she was always saying, people
born round don't have the choice of dying square. So . . .

‘Hot oven, please,' he said, pulling the outer wrapping off his star purchase.

She stabbed a fork through the cellophane cover as if it were Priding Borough Council lurking underneath, not Fifine's Fancy Beef and Celeriac Maribou with Tomato Truffle stuffing. He pulled a chair out and collapsed on it. ‘And, while it's heating up, you can explain why the idea of getting Mr Herbert to sign a piece of paper has put you in such a tizzy.'

The nearest she ever came to remorse was capitulation. ‘Well, that's just it. Old Goody Two-Shoes Herbert won't sign.'

‘Of course he will. His men worked here for
weeks
.'

‘That's where you're wrong. He won't.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because of the cable entry.'

‘The cable entry?'

‘Don't
you
start on about it! The very words have me in hives. It seems my wiring can't just come in the front way like everyone else's. Oh, no, it has to come down the backs. So it runs under the lawn, and nobody's bothered to look at it since it was put there. Holy Joe Herbert has made it perfectly clear he can't sign my certificate until I'm upgraded.'

‘If this cabling's so ancient, why on earth didn't the fellow have the sense to get his men to replace it while they were here?'

She slapped on her innocent face, then, clearly deciding it wasn't worth the effort, told the truth. ‘I wouldn't let them.'

‘Why on earth not?'

‘Don't snap at
me
! If I'd taken every stitch of advice I was offered, I'd be in a madhouse.'

He said, in as conciliatory a fashion as he could manage, ‘Sick of the mess?'

‘Sick? Those men of his tore through this house like a bagful of cats tipped down a mousehole. I'm not going to let the clumsy tykes loose on the garden. I'd be left standing on a blasted heath.'

‘Nonsense,' he reassured her. ‘These days they can track cables underground.'

‘I don't know whose side you're on.'

‘I'm on yours.'

‘Well, it certainly doesn't sound like it. Lord knows, my life has been no crystal stair, but I hardly expected that both of my children would turn against me.'

‘Dilys didn't turn against you,' Colin rehearsed the ancient litany. ‘She's simply staying away until she gets an apology.'

‘I'd sooner be blown to flinders than say I'm sorry that I spoke the truth.'

‘It wasn't the truth. Dilys didn't get her job by wearing skirts as short as life. She doesn't keep it by wearing blouses so thin you can spit through them onto her bosom. And she didn't get that promotion by acting the sassy slut on that course in Wolverhampton.'

She larded her face with the usual outrage. ‘I never said any of that!'

‘Oh yes, you did.' In desperation, he turned the oven up from hot to fierce. ‘Don't forget that I
heard
you. I was
there
.'

‘Well, you can get boils on your bottom!' She took to a virulent clattering of pots and dishes that lasted well past the time his supper was scorched on the top, if not heated through the middle. Forlornly, he picked at the warm clag round the edges. It was horrible. The filling tasted peculiarly metallic, and the topping could have been carpet underlay after a boiler leak. He took advantage of the fact her back was turned to twist Frampton Commercial's letter round on the table.
How
had they managed to make that business of annual fire extinguisher inspections sound like a favour? ‘Nice?' she asked over her shoulder, moving on from clashing pots to trimming a fresh metal scouring pad to ram down the mouse hole at the back of the larder. ‘Very tasty,' he told her, pushing his plate as far away as possible. But obviously the mantle of conviction was not round his shoulders, for, swivelling round from the sink, she reached to pick up, not just his abandoned plate, but also the carton in which a huge slab of Fifine's Celeriac and Truffle Whatsit still lay, congealing.

Scraping the hideously expensive leftovers straight into Flossie's bowl, her only real revenge on him for his statutory and practised defence of his sister was to announce with satisfaction: ‘I suppose I shall have to let her have it – though it will almost certainly make her sick.'

COLIN SHOWED UP
at Tor house dead on time. It was Dilys who sent a series of busy-busy messages down through Security, and finally stepped out of the lift into Reception still acting as if, without her last twenty minutes of full attention, the entire glassy edifice might well have crumbled.

‘Sorry,' she said, dropping a last few envelopes into the tray on the front desk.

‘I don't mind at all if we're late.'

Still puffed with office importance, she missed his mild tease. Otherwise, he might have thought that it was in retaliation that she said, glancing at her watch, ‘It's very nearly half past. We'll have to go the quick way, down Bridge Row.'

‘No!'

But she'd already started off. He had to follow. Fine till they reached the corner, but the minute the wide expanse of street swung into view, he broke out in the usual sweat and his heart started thudding. He hated Bridge Row. He hadn't once walked down on either side since – since that morning – without feeling faint. How could it possibly
matter if the two of them were five minutes late for some stupid gallery opening? Just because Dilys's bank had sponsored the exhibition didn't mean that the doors couldn't open without her. It was typical of his sister's cast-iron self-importance that she would ride over his known susceptibility, his absolute distress, to get there on time.

And odd that she felt nothing. Not a pang. It was, after all, she who had saved the baby. The way she walked down the street now, you would have thought all she had reached up to catch that eerie, steel-blue morning was a ball. You'd never think that while he was standing like a dummy pointing at the rainbow, and wondering slightly at that strange, isolated
thwack!,
she'd been the one to turn towards the ashen-faced driver stopping on a sixpence, the crumpled pram, and seen that little mound of snow-white tracery hurtling towards them out of the sky, trailing ribbons and blanket. Shouldering him aside so forcibly that he'd stumbled, she'd raised her arms as if in supplication, and, with the most flawless precision and even a little twirl on her toes to lessen the impact, accepted a pink and perfect flying baby into her hands.

‘Blimey!' That's what she'd said. ‘Blimey!' Traffic had stopped, shoppers had frozen in their tracks, and everyone had stared at her as if she were Christ in the middle of a miracle. And she had said nothing but, ‘Blimey!'

And that's when it came to him first, this sickening vision of the tiny fuzzed head splatted like yolk on the pavement, the blood-streaked shawl, the chubby legs twisted like something dragged from a toy cupboard and chewed by a dog: what he'd have been looking at if this
impossible sister of his hadn't been there. What would quite definitely have happened if that extraordinary, precious moment had been left to him.