All Bones and Lies Page 3

  Never mind, he consoled himself. At least she’s on her way out. Gone tomorrow. He sat down with relief where Dilys ordered him, and forked his way through his Tortolini Portoli with his head down, eyes darting to the clock as things got worse. To him, it was obvious Perdita was hoping to stage some last dramatic clash, larded with brilliantly wrought valedictory insults and (now the last bedroom was safely finished) crowned with a massive door slam. Presumably gratitude for things like a fortnight’s free bed and board was not really her style, and she, too, would prefer to head for the clean break that marked the end of almost all his sister’s friendships. But it was equally clear that Dilys, an experienced combatant herself, was out to thwart her. Time and again Perdita steered the conversation into dangerous waters. And time and again a look of bland distraction crossed his sister’s face as she affected not to listen, then rose to go back into the kitchen, returning with one or another of a seemingly endless parade of bottles and jars, and a more neutral topic.

  But even Dilys couldn’t pretend anyone took capers with coffee. So she sat glowering over her spinney of condiments as Perdita moved in sideways on yet another attack.

  ‘About these visits to your mother, Colin . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ he said warily.

  ‘How often do you go? Every night, is it?’

  He tried the sort of careless little laugh that means, ‘Oh, really! Nothing like that.’ But it came out as a half-witted splutter.

  ‘Every two or three days?’

  He took a deep breath. Oh, how he hated being forced to lie. ‘Nowhere near that much.’

  ‘But once a week, at least?’

  Inside his head, he heard an urbane man admit with dignity, ‘Yes, now I come to think, it probably does tend to average out at once a week or so, given the shopping.’ Over the table, his stab at this pretence was barely audible. ‘I suppose so.’

  Perdita said gaily to Dilys, ‘You told me he went practically every day!’

  Dilys ignored her, and Colin sat tight, knowing full well which side it was safer to stay on.

  ‘But Dilys never visits?’

  Silence. Dilys was watching Perdita watching her. Colin dived in. ‘That’s different.’ His stomach churned. He’d realized he’d be paying heavily for this impromptu lunch. Pasta had never agreed with him. But he hadn’t guessed it would mean playing the rabbit in the snare. ‘That’s very different. I haven’t broken off with Mother.’

  ‘But you could, easily. Dilys says she’s just as rude and horrible to you.’

  He made a face. He could have said, ‘Oh, that’s just her quaint way of remembering you’re family.’ But it was obvious where Perdita was headed. Wiser to keep quiet.

  ‘So why do you keep going?’

  She leaned over the table, waiting for an answer. Alarmed, Colin turned to Dilys, but she pretended to be absorbed in picking the price stickers off her stockade of bottles. He tried to run through his options without panicking. ‘Because she’s there’? ‘Because I don’t have much else to do’? ‘Because the neighbours would notice if I stopped’? But the sense of traps proliferating round him froze his poor brain, and, like a fool, he found himself practically offering to Perdita, handle first, the weapon with which she could move in and stab his sister. ‘I suppose, if I’m honest, I’d rather go and be insulted than not go, and feel guilty.’

  ‘Guilty?’

  How lightly she said it. And how heavily the word hung in the air.

  ‘Well, not guilty, exactly . . .’

  ‘Guilty is what you said.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Oh, I know!’ Perdita’s eyes shone. ‘You think it’s different for Dilys. That’s what you said, isn’t it? But don’t you think, Colin’ – and here she rested her thin arms on the table and leaned towards him as if the two of them were out together at some intimate candle-lit restaurant, not sitting over the dishes of a meal prepared by, and shared with, the person under discussion – ‘don’t you sometimes think Dilys might be being just that tiny bit selfish, leaving it all to you?’

  He stared at her, fearing that any moment his sister might snap out of feigned indifference and lift her end of the table, sending everything flying, just as she’d done once, out of pure temper, when she and Val—

  And there was his answer! He had a flash of memory of sitting at this very table, being alternately lauded by Val (‘I think it’s very nice of Colin to go round so often’) and scorned by his sister (‘It isn’t “nice” of him. It’s simply wet. He’s just a fool in a bad habit, and she doesn’t deserve it’).

  ‘I’m just a fool in a bad habit.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Dilys, startling both of them. ‘You won’t admit it, but you keep going to see the old bag because you love her.’

  His cheeks caught fire. Dilys gave him one of those odious I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself smiles that she’d inherited from Mother. And he sat seething, hobbled by the usual inability to come out with the words rattling in his head. If he’d been anyone else, he could have shot her such a caustic look and said, ‘Oh, smart move, Dil! Decide you’ve had enough, and never mind that she was acting no worse than usual, just flounce out on your high horse. Don’t let it bother you that I might have to do more to make up. Just tell yourself that I keep going because I love her, then everything’s fine – for you.’

  But the painfully timid will always spend their lives in two completely different parallel worlds: the invisible, missing one, in which the things they want to say tumble out easily, the world in which everything’s different; and the one that they’re stuck in, where everyone round them chooses to take their nervous nods and craven smiles for simple acquiescence. It seemed to Colin that, ever since nursery school, people had cheerfully taken it upon themselves to interpret his inability to speak up for himself as compliance with what suited them. ‘You like the green balloon, don’t you, Colin?’ ‘You don’t mind waiting, do you?’ ‘Colin, I take it that this month’s schedule raises no problems for you?’ If Dilys took even a forkful of interest in anyone around her, she would by now have realized that silence didn’t always imply consent. It could imply a whole load of other things as well. Fury. Frustration. Resentment. And contempt.

  Mercifully, his sister had stopped smirking at her own percipience, and reverted to her usual jackboot style. ‘Well, anyway, you ought to stop letting her jerk you around like this. I don’t see why you have to do her shopping. She’s more than capable of phoning an order in to Mr Stastny. He still delivers, doesn’t he? What you ought to do is tell her the council’s sending you on a course for the next few weeks, and you can’t come.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said weakly. ‘Perhaps I should.’

  ‘No perhaps about it. You’re as soft as shite. You’re an idiot, Colin.’

  He tried to defend himself. ‘Somebody has to go round every now and again to check that she hasn’t been robbed or murdered, or sold double glazing.’

  But she was unstoppable. ‘No, I honestly don’t know why you keep visiting. It isn’t as if she’s grateful. From what you say, she doesn’t even enjoy your company very much. So why bother? Why don’t you just wait till the next time she says or does something really mean – it won’t be long – then stalk out and leave her to it?’

  ‘Like you did?’

  Not even a blush. ‘Yes, like I did.’

  The answer seemed obvious. ‘Because she’s old and frail, that’s why.’ But one thing he’d learned from all the conflicts associated with his job was that, the milder the rebuke, the hotter it stoked the fire. So he took revenge by wiping his greasy fingers on the frills of his seat pad and saying pathetically, ‘Maybe next time I will.’

  She snorted. And Colin kept his head down rather than intercept the look he knew was passing between the two of them. Colin? Stick up for himself? Oh, I don’t think so! And maybe he was a bit feeble. But that was better than being a harpy like Dilys. Or coolly disdainful, like Perdita. Frankly, he was glad this new friend
of his sister’s had lasted no longer than any of the others. And at least his presence at the wake was serving some purpose. The two of them had temporarily sunk their differences, to pick on him.

  ‘I reckon Colin will still be saying, “maybe next time” this time next year.’

  ‘He’ll still be saying it outside Warburton’s Funeral Emporium.’

  ‘And in the Chapel of Rest.’

  ‘And at the graveside.’

  Unwisely, he retorted, ‘At least you won’t be there to have to hear it.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be there.’

  Instantly, he was all suspicion. ‘You’ve always said before you wouldn’t bother.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ his sister said complacently. ‘That’s allowed, isn’t it? In fact, I think it would be nice to come.’

  ‘Why?’

  Out slid the grin he remembered so well from childhood. ‘Can’t you guess, Col? So I can dance on her grave.’

  That really got him. What right had Dilys even to come to Mother’s funeral, let alone dance on the grave? It wasn’t as if it was she who had spent hour after brain-rotting hour in the last years fixing taps, filling the larder, or sitting in that bleak, bum-numbing chair, listening to gripes about family and neighbours. No, that had all been his job. If anybody in the world was going to dance on Norah’s grave, it ought to be him. But he wasn’t going to bother to say so. For one thing, it sounded too childish for words, and he’d already spent half of yesterday listening to the Lees and the Haksars hurling infantile insults at one another over their mutual wall, just as they had apparently been heaving rotten food into one another’s back yard. ‘I can have both your restaurants closed down,’ he’d warned them when he’d had enough. Pity he couldn’t shut his sister up as easily.

  But she had bored herself now. She was on her feet. ‘Come along, Perdita, or we’ll be late.’

  This was a trick he’d seen her use so often on others, he took it as a slap in the face that she was trying it on him. He felt like trumping her. Instead of answering, ‘Oh, are you going out?’ he could miss out all the middle stages and come straight out with, ‘Well, since it turns out that you’re going the other way, I won’t bother to wait for you.’ That should embarrass her.

  But instead, picking up his jacket, he simply muttered, ‘Thanks for the lunch.’

  ‘De nada,’ chirruped Perdita, irritating him even more with her pretension than her indifference. He closed the door behind him and stood on the front stoop, wondering where to go. Back to his flat? No, far too boring. And nothing on telly till later. To Mel’s, to borrow Tammy? How could he? He’d been round there twice this week already, and though Mel might not exactly narrow her eyes at him and say, ‘Oh, Col, do get a life,’ she’d definitely think it.

  A walk round the park on his own? Sad. Very sad.

  Leaving him only one option. But at the bottom of the steps he made a point of turning left, not right, so if the two of them were at the window, arm in arm again, placing bets, they’d never guess that, not only was he going to spend half of Saturday at Mother’s as usual, but his life was so empty he was going there early.

  Colin scowled at the hydrangea as he walked up the path. (‘It’s glorious, isn’t it?’ his mother was warbling down from the upstairs window. ‘It was lovely before, but since your last visit it’s come on wonderfully.’) His irritation at the failure of his spell turned to suspicion. She was too cheerful by far. And since her principal pleasure always stemmed from the discomfiture of others, it made him nervous.

  He edged through the door to meet her hobbling down the stairs. ‘Don’t leave the shopping there. Someone might trip over it.’

  Who? Who? He was about to start the counter-attack (‘Sorry. I hadn’t realized you had other guests’) when his eye fell on the brown envelope propped in the letter rack to attract his attention. Frampton Commercial. Well, there was at least one non-confrontational subject for the afternoon: her undimmed consumer skills. And credit, to be fair, where it was due. Anything she could still do for herself was one more thing he didn’t have to do for her. And Dilys had given them the thumbs-up. So he made the effort to reward her for her competence with a touch of civility. ‘They came up trumps, then, your Frampton Commercial?’

  ‘Tickety-boo! I’m as happy as two babies in a bath. Do you realize I’ve saved more than a third of the annual premium?’

  ‘Over a third?’

  ‘It’s a lot, isn’t it? I’d no idea that I’d been overpaying all these years. I’m quite delighted with myself. I’m not quite the stupid old woman everyone thinks I am.’

  ‘Nobody thinks you’re stupid.’

  ‘Oh yes, you do. Don’t try to hide it.’

  He pushed the shopping under the hall table, making an effort not to kick it. Let it defrost there. Let it rot. Where did old people learn this knack of making it impossible to keep a conversation pleasant? And why was it so difficult not to fight back? ‘I expect there’ll be some problem with the amount of your coverage . . .’

  And look! He’d lost! ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Mr Smartypants! With this company, my coverage is exactly the same. Better, in fact, because . . .’ And all the way up the stairs she tormented him with the new policy’s advantages in the matters of Coastal Erosion (‘You’re eighty miles from the sea here!’), Damage from Riots (‘In West Priding?’), and Escapes of Oil (‘I think you’ll find, Mother, you’re on gas’). Hoping this persecution of him was not to be the theme of the whole afternoon, he trailed her up to her bedroom, where she limped noisily to her armchair by the window. ‘So, all in all, I’m quite a chump for not changing years ago.’

  She sank in the cushions. And with the light full on her face, she looked horribly old. It suddenly seemed so unsuitable to him, so very wrong, that she should have to think about things like insurance at all.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he offered generously. ‘The good terms might be quite recent. Or a loss leader, or something.’

  The turtle eye opened and glared. ‘Oh, that’s right. Tell me the premiums are going to shoot up again, now that poor Muggins has signed on.’

  ‘That isn’t what I said.’

  But his concession had won him a truce. Instead of pursuing her malevolent interpretation of his remark, she gazed at the house opposite. ‘See that new porch? They were fools enough to buy it from Manderley’s. Piece of old tat. It’s been leaking from the first day – just like those cut-price welly boots he sold me.’

  A trace of a memory surfaced from his last visit. ‘Did I tell you that Mrs Deary got a lovely crop of thistles out of that grass seed he sold her?’

  ‘Did she?’ Now he had given her a gift indeed. She was delighted with him. He didn’t dare break the spell by offering to go down and get the tea for which he was gasping, now Dil’s leaden-brand pasta had started its long, distending run through his poor gut. He simply anchored his feet more comfortably against the comatose Floss and let the soothing flow of his mother’s words wash over him. ‘I suppose you know your pack of villains are threatening to have our drains up again? That’ll be the third time in eighteen months. Scandalous! Everyone at that end of the backs is writing, silly buggers. I’ve told them it’s a waste of time, what with one half of you being simple and the other half crooked. Look how unhelpful you all were when that devil next door started persecuting me with his windchimes. Oh, and I don’t expect Mr Carter up the other end will come out of hospital again, unless it’s feet first. I can’t say I hold out much hope for Mrs Al-Khatib, either, given the size of that lump of hers.’

  Colin was shocked into speech. ‘You’ve never seen it!’

  ‘No, but Elsie has.’ A tremor ran down her cheek. ‘Elsie sees everything. I must say, I’m very careful to put on my winter stockings when I go past the Emporium. Nosy witch.’

  ‘You’re getting about all right, then?’

  ‘I manage.’

  And certainly, thought Colin, you had to hand it to her. Somehow she manage
d. Maybe he was too quick to get impatient. If making a simple pot of tea took him a good half-hour, and carrying it anywhere became too awkward, and having to empty his bladder afterwards became some great fumbling effort in itself and not just something he did unthinkingly on the way to his next task, then maybe he too . . .

  ‘Let’s see how that leg’s doing,’ he said, dropping to his knees in front of her on the carpet. She slapped him away. ‘No, thanks! It’s only just getting better. I don’t want your grubby fingers poking at it.’ And clambering, embarrassed, to his feet, he had another of his blinding visions about his father’s famous ‘accident’. Dazzled by oncoming headlights, indeed! Sick of having his hands slapped away, more like. Sick of being humiliated. Sick of her viperish tongue. It was obvious even the police officer bringing the bad news didn’t for one moment believe the tale he was telling. But people were kind, and what was the point in stirring things up unnecessarily? Her horror had been unfeigned, her sense of outrage at her loss deep and real. She must have spoken about their father practically every day (as often as not in scathing terms, but that was the way of her). And it couldn’t have been easy raising a daughter as awkward as Dilys. Or even a son as unforthcoming as himself.