All Bones and Lies (13 page)

Tamina Poppy Gould.

If you stood back and squinted, it didn't look too bad, what with the Gould bit even spreading across to use up a little of the second column.

Right. Duty done. Time to flee. Prising the pen from Tam's fingers, he shoved it in the fake-ivory holder and turned to go.

Whoops! Directly in front of them in light from the mock stained-glass window the shrouded apparition stood. It was a woman in a heavy veil. Up till that moment she'd been the least of his terrors, but that was all
over now. Burning with envy for Tammy who, at first sight of the stranger, had twisted to burrow her face in his shoulder, he forced himself to nod politely and smile in what he hoped was a fitting way.

The woman murmured a greeting and reached out to pat the smooth pale hummock of Tammy's knee. ‘A pretty child.'

Colin hugged Tam and waited. But the black apparition said nothing more, clearly expecting him to turn away again, to write his own name.

He weighed the dangers. Signing the book could invite tiresome questioning. For all he knew, his mother would pop in first thing in the morning to waft the pen over the page and make use of the facilities. Or Nosy Elsie. Knowing the best place to look for secrets is always in joy or sorrow, a witch like her was probably in the habit of nipping in daily. She'd see his name there and report it back.

But with this shrouded stranger at his side, how could he not write something? Anyone else, he knew, would have been bold enough to sign a false name. Mel's, in its short form, would probably pass muster, and have the added advantage that the last name matched Tam's. But when the moment came for him to bring the pen down on that crackling paper, all of the rule-following bureaucrat in him shot to the fore, and the best he could manage was to append his own name, Colin Aloysius Riley, in a handwriting so shaky as to seem half-illiterate.

His fear that the unmatched surnames might look suspicious was instantly confirmed.

‘You don't, I hope, mind my enquiring how the two of you happened to come together?'

Mad to rattle on about Flying Babies and gas fires. So, giving Tam another secret little squeeze, he answered, more in the spirit than with the bones of truth, ‘Oh, in the park.'

‘Ah, yes. The park.'

Her doubt passed as a ripple of iridescence across the veil as she stood trembling in a shaft of simulated evening light through the mock stained glass. She waved a cadaverous hand. ‘How very good of you to—' Even through swathes of black netting the glitter of tears was discernible, and she could manage no more.

Colin shuffled uneasily. From the dark swamp of memory rose half-forgotten horrors of standing, crucified, on the school stage with Mrs Barker bellowing in front of everyone. ‘Shyness, indeed! I'll tell you another way of putting it, Colin Riley. Pure, simple, stupid self-regard!' For the first time in his life he felt a glimmer of forgiveness for those great cohorts of torturers who'd ordered him, his whole life long, to make an effort, pull his socks up, spit out the words. Brave of this frail, frail vision to try to make conversation at all. To see a widow stifling tears to try to welcome him, a perfect stranger, was deeply, deeply chastening. If she could summon the fortitude to take up the reins of civility, then so could he.

‘I am so sorry,' he told her. And then, because he couldn't think of anything else, he said it again. ‘I am so sorry.'

She distracted herself from a fresh wave of grief by peering over his arm at the Book of Condolence.

‘Tamina Poppy Gould?'

There was a squirm of terror as Tammy realized this
shrouded visitation knew her name. Taking the small convulsive movement for a sob, the woman asked, ‘Is the child very upset?' ‘Very,' he said, after working through each possibility and deciding that anything short would sound needlessly offensive. And it was scarcely an untruth. The warm, fast-breathing bundle in his arms was clutching his tie so hard he was practically strangled.

The lady in black held out her hand. ‘I mustn't keep you.' She walked them to the door as if their company might hold off, for just a few moments longer, terrors of silence and loss. ‘Do you have far to go?'

‘Only to Tanner Street.'

‘Tanner Street!' He watched the bony fingers wave away years. ‘When I was little older than Tamina here, I used to walk down Tanner Street to the factory with my father.'

Fearing a detour down that very memory lane that, by common admission, was Planning's worst failure, Colin opted for accuracy. ‘Well, more
behind
it, really.'

Can veils look startled? ‘What, near those dreadful flats?'

Unwilling to get drawn into a discussion on one of Housing's most egregious blunders, he took advantage of the policy of disguising notorious developments by rechristening them with fanciful names. ‘In Chatterton Court.'

It worked. There was a shimmer of relief. Before the fates could think of yet another way to punish him for trying to save a small child the indignity of baring her bottom over a gutter, he shifted Tam on his arm and put out his free hand. ‘I hope – I really hope—'

Words wouldn't come. The blood rushed to his face,
and in the end all he could do was take her thin hand in his and, appalled by its skeletal nature, fail even to dare to shake it successfully before hurrying down the steps with his still-cringing burden. He almost threw poor Tammy in the car. Flouting the safety precautions proclaimed in needlessly expensive council posters all over Priding, he even drove round the corner before buckling in his small charge, and sitting for a moment while he waited in vain for his hands to stop shaking.

The doorway was knee high in plastic bags. Rather than shift them, it was easier to lift Tam over. He didn't feel that he could follow without an invitation. And none came.

‘You didn't take much.'

‘I didn't take a
thing
.'

How tense she looked. Had that intimidating young man been visiting again? Or was she what his mother tended to refer to with relish as ‘in business'? At any rate, he knew enough, from being Dilys's brother, to tread with care.

‘Not even the jacket? It was supposed to be quite good.' He paused. ‘A Tavernier.'

If this meant anything to her, she hid it well. In fact, she looked even more ratty, stooping to reassert her importance with her daughter with a bit of unnecessary tucking and buttoning rather than ask about the outing and lay herself open to having to put on a smile while she listened to Tammy, or said thank you to Colin. Sensing his future visits were at risk, he longed to step over the bulging black barrier she'd laid between them, and shut the door.
‘Listen,' he'd say. ‘I'm sorry I raised your hopes unnecessarily. It doesn't matter, though. They're only clothes.' Instead, he stood helplessly watching her eyes fill as she said petulantly, ‘Nothing's right,' then let exasperation overwhelm her: ‘Nothing's
ever
right.' Furious, she pulled Tammy off the nearest bag – ‘You come away from that! It's not a toy!' – while he watched his missing world unreel in his mind's eye: how he'd step forward and put his arm round her till the tears dried. ‘There, there. Don't fret. None of it matters really. It was silly of me to bring the bags round here.' Oh, he knew exactly what he should be doing as he stood, doing nothing.

‘I'll take them away again.'

‘Yes, do! It was stupid of you to bring them round here in the first place.
Stupid!
'

He only blinked, and, as with mother and sister, found that his sheer passivity had riled her more. ‘You've got a cheek, you know! Coming round here to dump your rubbish.'

‘It isn't—'

‘It is to
me
!' More tears. ‘I know you've always been frightened even to
squinny
in my direction. But do I
look
as if I would want to give house room to clothes that could easily have been worn by your
granny
?'

He forced himself not to look away. ‘I thought, well,
shawls
, or something . . .'

‘
What
shawls? There
aren't
any!'

He hadn't known, of course, because he hadn't cared. It hadn't entered his mind. And that was the cruelty of shyness. The timid spent their hours spinning round things nearly said, steps nearly taken, till they were far too dizzy
to see the person right in front of them. No wonder Helen Letherington had walked away. He'd probably done the same to her: said something, offered something, that made it clear he'd always be so taken up with fretting over the next few moments in his own life, he'd never have the time to look at her. Mel's eyes were blazing with such contempt. What did he know about her? Almost nothing. He hadn't even had the courage to ask if that broad-shouldered young man had been Tammy's father. Indeed, he'd barely asked her anything. Now that he thought about it, he realized that, in a score of visits, he hadn't even managed to steer their conversations down enough channels to know if this life of hers was going up or down, that she and her daughter should fetch up stranded in this flimsy-walled hell.

‘I'm sorry. I really should have thought.'

‘
You? Think
?' She hooked a thumb towards Tammy. ‘As far as I can make out, all you ever think about is
her
.'

His felt his face burn. ‘Sorry.'

‘For Christ's sake, stop
saying
that!'

How could he? It was all he was: just sorry, sorry, sorry! Sorry for his offensive lack of interest in someone whose tea he drank and daughter he adored. And sorry for the half-life a man like him was forced to lead, incapable of breaking through walls of self-consciousness to snatch back the other half of himself that must be out there somewhere – another Flying Baby, another crucial catch missed, so he could never be the Colin who could have dumped four giant bags in front of her and said with confidence, ‘Now look, Mel. Unless you strike gold with some fancy wrap or something, then nothing in this lot's
going to interest you. They're all Old Lady clothes. But you might find the odd nice bit of material you could cut down or shove in Tammy's dress-ups. And if there's anything you want for friends, or to sell . . .' There was a Colin who could have cheered her up. Not one who'd raise her hopes so high she'd pack him off with her daughter, and then haul one expensive tailored garment after another out of the bags, only to hold them against herself and find her own great-aunt staring back from the mirror.

To be so horribly upset, though? Admittedly, he'd been a halfwit. But—

‘Oh,
please
don't cry.' And then he could have bitten off his tongue because, alerted, Tammy froze. From astride her fat glossy black mount she gazed up at her mother, and Colin stood, equally paralysed, waiting for the child's perfect porcelain cheeks to turn pinker, her huge eyes to fill, until, after what seemed a lifetime, she was suddenly, deafeningly, bawling her eyes out.

He kept his head down as he dragged the bags out in the corridor, fully aware that if some residual sense that they weren't hers to lose had not stopped Mel shoving them out earlier, they would conveniently have been nicked by now, and he could have gone straight home. He dragged them all into the lift, and then, remembering it wasn't working, dragged them all out again and bumped them down five flights of stairs as far as the basement. There, in a hidden corner, he ripped them open, rooting through until he found the Tavernier jacket, and one or two other things he suspected that Dilys might slay him if he didn't salvage. And then, abandoning the rest to drunks and glue-sniffers whose evidence of nightly
gathering lay all around, drove home through each virulent traffic light, depressed beyond measure at the thought that the only female he'd failed to reduce to tears in a once hopeful day was the one who deserved it: his own bloody mother.

HE CAME INTO
the office to find the usual silt of messages. Mrs Moloney still banging on about her invoice, though he had pointed out a dozen times that, even if the card mouldering in her Coronation teapot did happen to bear his particulars, the whole sorry business was a matter for Accounts now. There was a note from Hetherley, deploring the slack way in which some of the orders for last year's gas fires had failed to go through proper channels. He pushed aside till he felt stronger piles of demands from several members of the Lee family that he ring back at once, and, as a penance, forced himself to pick up the letter from Flatts Harries' lawyers reminding him this was the third time in a row his department had flouted their very own procedures. ‘You really must try to get it right,' he told Clarrie as sternly as he dared. ‘First, warning letter. Then, “Ask you to accept a caution”. “Have to decide to prosecute” always comes last.'

She wasn't in the best mood herself. ‘I
meant
to send a yellow one. I must have got all mixed up, what with that horrible man going on at me on the phone.'

‘What horrible man?'

‘You weren't here. It was when you told us you were out on those fire extinguisher inspections.'

It was the dangerous little ‘told us' that made him drop the matter, and turn instead to Mr Leonard Turvey's renewed insistence that the specks in his poppadoms had been mouse turds, not cumin.

‘Send him a 45/B, and tell him—'

But Clarrie had vanished. As ever in the mornings, she had a host of things to do. Repairs on her nails, and then the full-bodied hair tease. And God knows what else these young women got up to in flocks in the Ladies'. If only she'd thought to leave at least one of the filing cabinets unlocked before making her getaway. Left to shift for himself, he got crosser and crosser, stumbling from one heap of papers to another, shaking pens, scouring the floor for the glint of a paperclip, and finding the coffee jar as empty as last week. Not for the first time he found irritation with one of the women in his life spilling out on the others. How dare Mel put him through the wringer like that, just for failing to pass muster on a matter of dress style? How had his mother got the nerve to treat good advice like a grease spot? And as for that insolent Perdita! Where did she get the idea he was so bloody half-witted she could sell off his inheritance while he was actually standing in it?