Come to Harm (7 page)

Craig shook his head and laughed. “But what old Vinegar”—he glanced at Viola—“Bits didn't get was how a letter in the local paper condemning Fancy's morals was gold dust. Like saying a book's full of filth. Instant bestseller! Nobody would have looked at the posters if she hadn't kicked up—no offence.”

“None taken,” Fancy said. “Like how nobody ever reads their junk mail.”

“Ha!” said Keiko. And they all turned and stared at her. Even Viola, sitting on Keiko's lap, twisted round to look. “Junk mail!” she said. “It's getting cleverer and cleverer. And then we get more and more sophisticated. So it gets cleverer still. Until it looks like a cheque or a credit card or even something sent to frighten you.”

There was a silence.

“Okay,” said Fancy slowly. Craig frowned and Murray gave that look of his with one eyebrow hooked up under his hair. Then Keiko laughed and they joined her, still not understanding.

And suddenly, sitting there with her fingers laced across Viola's warm middle, listening to them all, she felt all the daydreams go: the circle of friends sipping sherry and savouring disagreement; the like-minded others somewhere else in the department, somewhere Lynne let only favoured,
home
students go; the mentor she had dreamed of, the sage at whose feet she would sit and from whose wisdom she would grow wise. She wouldn't want to be anywhere near Dr. Bryant's feet anyway.

Painchton
, she thought. And really, how much more typical for it to be so unlikely. A better story in the end. Fancy and Murray and Craig. A living room covered with books and papers and pretty tea-cups. Wine glasses even. And a solitary scholar: Trollope in the post office, Einstein in the patent office, Nishisato above the butchers. She would
not
be like those other girls, who disappeared leaving tears and worry behind them. This one would last.

“Can I ask?” she said. “Who is Mrs. Dessing? I know Pet—your foster-parent, Fancy—and Mrs. Watson with the vegetables, of course. But Mrs. Dessing?”

“Where do you start?” said Craig, lacing his hands together and cracking his knuckles.

_____

Downstairs, Malcolm could hear them laughing even over the noise of the suet grinder. She was settling in; she would stay.

He worked until there was no more work to do and even then waited until he had heard everyone leave and Keiko begin to run bath water before he let himself out of the shop and set off home.

ten

Wednesday, 16 October

“They swallowed it whole,”
said Kenny Imperiolo. All five of them were in the room above the ironmongers, glasses of good wine at their elbows, trays of nibbles in the middle. “International outreach to get lottery funding to do up the Green and plant some petunias. I thought they'd balk at some of it for sure.”

“Well, to be fair, Ken,” said Sandra Dessing, “Jimmy did have to field some awkward questions.”

“Aye, especially when you let slip about special committee meetings,” said Iain Ballantyne.

“Me?” Mrs. Dessing began, but Mr. McKendrick shushed them.

“Children, children,” he said. “Why are you bickering? Everything's going to plan. We should be congratulating ourselves. Quietly, of course.” He grinned around them all. “Softly, softly, cooky monkey.”

“
Catchy
,” said Iain Ballantyne. ‘It's ‘
catchy
monkey.'”

Mr. McKendrick frowned then threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“Freudian slip!” he said, his eyes merry. “Oh, that's a good one.” Then he sobered, seeing that no one was laughing along. “What's wrong?” he asked. “What's the matter with you?”

Kenny, Sandra, Iain, and Etta did not look at one another and slowly they dropped their eyes until they were not looking at Mr. McKendrick either.

“Nothing wrong with me,” said Kenny at last. “I mean, except that it's a lot to take on—changing hearts and minds—and people are always looking to catch you out these days.”

“Sandra?” said Mr. McKendrick. “Iain? Tell me you're not getting cold feet too.”

“I don't like to think of my name and face splashed all over the papers if I'm honest,” said Iain Ballantyne. Mrs. Dessing nodded.

“No such thing as bad publicity,” said Mr. McKendrick. “And if Etta's all right then you should be, by Jove, for she's got more at stake here than us all.”

Etta McLuskie took a sip from her glass to steady herself before answering.

“I can't say I don't have concerns, Jim,” she said. “I mean, don't misunderstand me, I absolutely share your desire … I'm just not sure it's right. Never mind legal.”

“Oh-ho! It's not legal,” said Mr. McKendrick. “That's for sure. But Painchton is a special place—a unique place—and this is a unique opportunity. The world's too bland these days and we're standing against that. Come on, people! We need to stick together.”

“Aye, but we're not, are we?” said Mrs. McLuskie. “We're not even all here.”

“Grace has a lot on her plate,” said Mr. McKendrick.

“She surely doesn't look very happy,” said Mrs. Dessing.

“Well, not when you had a go at her in front of the whole board,” said Iain.

“I did no such thing,” said Mrs. Dessing, hotly, suddenly upright in her armchair.

“Oh, leave it,” said Iain. “Your tongue's that sharp sometimes, Sandra, you could floss your teeth from inside.”

She turned and gaped at him, her eyes filling with tears. “I thought I could count on a bit of—” she said, then bit her lip and turned to Mr. McKendrick. “
Is
Grace okay, though, Jimmy? Speaking of counting on people.”

Mr. McKendrick's face fell into sombre lines and all other questions, all the squabbles, faded away.
Was
Grace okay?

In the months after Duncan's death, of course, no one looked for her to be cheery. Grace had lost her man and it could be years before she was back on her feet and over it again. But she was surrounded by friends. He'd told her so and she'd laughed and said didn't she know it. Mrs. McLuskie always invited her, in a silky voice, to join in with whatever she and Mr. McLuskie had planned for the weekend. Mrs. Watson told Grace she knew how it felt and how, when she had lost Robert, talking was the only thing that did any good. Mrs. McMaster remembered as clear as this morning how, all those years ago when she was widowed, the last thing she wanted to hear about was how somebody else had fared and how they were now.
She
talked about Duncan the first time they met after the funeral, laughed about something he'd said—that was what
she
had wanted—but Grace bowed her head at the sound of his name, and Pet could have kicked herself. She made up a posy and brought it round, saying it was a cancelled order and just the colours of Grace's dining room.

Oh, Grace knew very well there was a net beneath her. She was the grieving widow of a well-loved man, a card that often turned up as small-town life shuffled itself, so she stood on her mark and played her part without faltering. And slowly the town forgot that the sadness had started before the dying.

Mr. McKendrick wasn't content to be a net in case she fell. A man of action, was Jimmy McKendrick. He wanted something to do. His fingers twitched whenever he looked at Grace, itching to make it better, which made her smile.
If he was a Labrador
, she would think,
I'd have every tea-towel in the house on my lap whenever I sat down
. She laughed.

“What? What is it?” he would ask, truffling after the laugh to plump it up and have done with the sadness.

“Oh, James,” she'd say, her face resettling. “You're a good man. You've always been a good friend to me.”

“Gracie,” he said, plunging in as he knew he would no matter what he told himself sternly in the mirror each morning. “Gracie, I still am. I'm right here. You just say the word. I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere any time soon.” She smiled and nodded—to stop him talking, though, not to agree with him. How could she
say the word
? If she said any of the words, how would she ever lift her head again?

Friday, 18 October

Why does that woman hang her head so?
, Keiko wondered, standing at the kitchen window with her bowl of rice on Friday morning. She had stopped moving away when Mrs. Poole came out of the small building with her two buckets of water every day, never looking up, just walking to the drain in the middle of the yard with her gaze trained on the ground.

And what is she cleaning?
Then sniffing and wrinkling her nose, she wondered if perhaps Mrs. Poole was right and she was wrong. The faint odour she had noticed when she first arrived was still there, no stronger but never going away completely.

Mrs. Poole tipped each pail carefully so that the grey water poured into the centre of the drain without touching the sides, then she swept the few splashes inwards with four or five swipes of her brush and stood for a second, facing away from the house, before turning and disappearing from Keiko's view, her opening and closing of the back door causing hardly a sound before the building settled back into complete silence.

Five hours of work, Keiko had told herself. Five solid hours, with some time off for lunch maybe, before the trip to town on the bus with Viola Clarke. But already the errand was distracting her; she imagined what the little girl and she would talk about on the journey, whether she should take a storybook to read, where she could get one, whether Viola was still young enough to be read to …
Babysitting later
, she told herself.
Work first
. She nodded firmly. With a short walk in the fresh air to break it up in the middle.

When her coffee was brewed she padded through to the living room, to the big table in the bay window she was beginning to think of as her desk.

Find subjects. Undergraduates? Pay them? Continuity.

What she needed was a cohort of fifty individuals who would return at intervals over the next three years to be retested after the initial profiling. She thought of the herds of pierced and shambling students she had seen in the halls of the department and the task of catching them between hangovers and holidays and … details, details.

Psych profile of subjects. What scale? What test?

Published source? Expense? Make up own? Time?

Details, details.

Run first questionnaire

Report to subjects and run second questionnaire

Repeat steps 2 and 3 twice more. Three times? Five in all for luck?

Write up.

Graduate.

Apply for, be offered and accept job, find beautiful house in vibrant city.

Fresh air
first
perhaps and then four and a half hours of solid work with her lunch at her desk? Keiko shook her head as she stood. This had never happened before. From the days when she was learning to read and add simple figures together, she had always been able to focus. She looked around the living room. And this was the quietest, largest, most comfortable study she had ever worked in. She stamped her feet, as she had taken to doing since Fancy had showed her the trick that first day. Solid. Freshly painted and comfortably furnished and, never forget,
free
. She picked up her new phone and clicked through the contacts, smiling at how many there were already. The friendliest place she had ever been, with the most time she had ever had—no classes to attend, no mother to placate—and the longest line of well-wishers ready to entertain her when she needed a break from it. So what was wrong?

“
You think too much, Keko-chan,” her mother would say. “And you drink too much coffee.”

“I'm a psychology student, mother,” Keiko would reply. “What do you recommend, instead of thinking?” At least, in her head she would reply that way. Under her breath, she would. Out loud she would say perhaps she needed some tea to clear her mind and would her mother like some?

“
That's right. Forget your brain for once and listen to your tummy
.”

And actually,
Keiko thought to herself closing her phone again,
that might be the trouble after all
. It had been years since she had made herself rice and miso for breakfast instead of toast and jam, but this morning, after last night, there had been no question.

Because last night she had been the guest of the Imperiolos. Or Rosa at least; Kenny had been at a meeting.

_____

“He says he's asking after you,” Mrs. Imperiolo had told her. “He's sorry he couldn't be here, but he's a busy man. Got a lot on his mind. Stressed to his oxters, actually.” A frown passed over her face but only fleetingly, then she smiled again. “Now, Keiko,” she said, “you're in for a treat today. I'll order for you this time, seeing you're new to it all. I hope you're hungry.”

She was, but the air in here—hot, thick, and heavy in her mouth and spiked with vinegar scent in her nose—was filling her up quite nicely without the need actually to eat anything.

They were sitting in the window seat of Imperiolo's Fish Restaurant, looking out over the main road towards the river railings. “Two fish suppers with peas, bread and butter, and tea,” said Rosa to the waitress. She turned back to Keiko. “I know how much Japanese people like fish,” she said. “And Joe, our fish fryer, took us to the national finals last year.”

She pointed to a man in a white hat behind the service counter. Keiko watched him through the shimmer for a moment. He was Italian, like Rosa and Kenny, and she could not drag her eyes from his black hair. When he was turned away she could almost believe he was someone from home with that hair, she thought, surprised that she cared, surprised how odd it was to be where no one looked like her. Even Rosa with her olive skin had springy black curls, and Kenny was bald.

“Of course, we're lucky in a way,” Rosa was saying. “Cod was never a favourite here. It's more of a southern taste, really. And the haddock is fine, touch wood. So that's lucky.”

“
Touch wood
?”

“Anyway,” Rosa went on, quite loud, “it really doesn't matter. It could be anything. As long as it's fresh and handled properly. It's the batter that counts. And the fat. What's inside is neither here nor there.”

At the next table, Mrs. Sangster—who had been unable to help overhearing—turned round and cleared her throat at Rosa.

“Anne,” said Rosa. “I didn't see you there.”

“Is this on the schedule?” said Mrs. Sangster quietly, and then in a louder voice, “Hello, Keiko pet.”

Keiko nodded, smiled and tried not to listen.

“The schedule's the baseline,” said Rosa. “The schedule's to make sure Keiko doesn't starve to death all on her own up there. It wasn't supposed to set a limit.”

“I don't want to cause any—” Keiko said. “I've been taking care of myself for—”

“And don't you listen to Mrs. Imperiolo, getting carried away!” said Mrs. Sangster in the same bright, loud voice. “Batter and fat and who cares what's in it! What must you think of us, eh?” She dropped her voice again. “The Japanese are a very fastidious people. Very precise people. Easy scunnered, I'll wager.”

“Not at all,” said Keiko. “I know what
scunnered
means and I'm not. Extremely robust appetite, I assure you.”

The waitress returned with two plates and put them down. Mrs. Sangster, after a hard look at Rosa, turned back to her own party.

“
Haddock
and chips and peas,” Rosa said. “How good does that look, Keiko?”

Keiko stared at her plate. It was oval, like a serving platter, and almost half of it was taken up by a glistening golden object, sinuous and slightly twisted, still fizzing and popping with heat, both of its tapered ends flexed up in the air. A stack of thick yellow chips was heaped up against one of its sides and a mound of greenish sludge sat in a small dish balanced on the far edge of the plate along with a slice of lemon.

“How lovely,” she said. She broke open the golden package with her knife and sat back as a wave of steam rolled up into her face. Rosa chuckled and blew on a forkful of chips.