All Bones and Lies (15 page)

No, till there were some sort of guidelines on this issue, the whole dispiriting business would be a mess of winners and losers. And, in that mess, there would always be hard-hats like Dilys.

And suckers like him.

Still, best to replace the toaster, any which way. ‘I'm slipping out for a moment,' he warned Clarrie, who appeared to be doing nothing more pressing in the way of council business herself than gazing out of the window. ‘Just along to the electrical shop. I shan't be away long.'

‘But what if he phones
again
?'

‘Who?'

She waved a hand towards the unwashed window, as if to invite the serried ranks of vehicles parked below to give witness to her patience. ‘I
told
you. That horrible Mr
Braddle
man. I keep giving you
notes
. And he's
waiting
!'

He stared at the torn scraps of paper on his desk. It had been hard enough to get her in the habit of taking down messages in the first place. He'd better not give her any excuse for not bothering in future. ‘Oh, yes. That. Well, I'll deal with it.'

He shovelled the pieces in his pocket, planning to fit them together and read them the minute she turned her attention back to her nails. But barely a moment passed before she swung round in panic from the window as the phone started blinking. ‘That's him again. No point in pretending you're not here. And I'm not answering it!'

Fearing he'd pushed his luck too far already that morning with someone he knew from experience was skilled in a whole slew of subtle office revenges, he waved her away and picked up the phone on her desk. While Clarrie took
the chance to untangle the strap of her handbag from round his ankles and slip off for coffee, Colin spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Mr Braddle, is it?'

‘Colin?'

‘Mother, is that
you
?'

‘I take it you can hear how that noisy oyster next door is torturing me now?'

Behind the voice, crabbed with irritation, he could hear a familiar jangle. ‘Is that the windchimes? They sound pretty close.'

‘That's because that black-hearted goblin is standing there thwacking them.'

He quelled the response that echoed down from childhood – ‘So what did you do to him first?' – and asked more tactfully, ‘Have you the slightest idea what might have set him off this time?'

‘How should
I
know? I'd like to take a rolled-up newspaper to him, really I would.'

‘Would you like me to come round and speak to him?' (Perfect excuse! He could slip in a quick toaster swap while he was at it.)

‘You'd be a lamb among goats. Last time I had words with the old bugger, I felt like a beanbag run over by a juggernaut.'

‘I'll make it official,' he offered. ‘Bring round one of our fancy new noise monitors and hand him a warning leaflet.'

He waited for the curt dismissal (‘Oh, I can just see you standing on his doorstep like a tin of milk').

But no. The silence gathered like water slowly rising in a cistern, till suddenly it spilled over.

‘Yes. If you would, dear.'

He sank down, hard, on Clarrie's swivel chair. His heart was thumping. Things were very bad. This was a pretty pass. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he wanted his dead father back. But not the way he'd wanted him in times long past – randomly, utterly, for something as stupid as showing him how to tie a bow tie or start up the lawnmower or choose his first car. No. More to complain. It wasn't
fair
that he'd been left to cope with this alone. What use was kindness, purely as a tender memory, to colour daydreams? Surely a bit of grit would have come in more useful. At this rate, the burnished crown he'd let his absent father wear for all these years would tarnish fast. Topping yourself was, after all, a choice. If you'd enough grip left to work your way through some sort of left-handed sheepshank for Dilys, then you could surely hang in one more day. And then another. It was a coward's trick, to drive yourself into a wall, and cop out for ever. Surely a decent father would have stayed around to give a tip or two about watching your mother go falling to pieces.

At least the office wasn't open-plan. Wiping his tears, Colin soothed himself by counting the years on his fingers. Fair's fair. In all probability the poor sod would have died quite naturally, years before now. And who was to say his parents would have been together still, in any case? These days it wasn't only sisters who waltzed away, sloughing off responsibility. It was spouses too. Look at Tubs Arnold, often heard in the canteen explaining in quite remarkably embittered detail just how he and Doreen felt each time they had to drive her crippled father past the Silver Age Dance Studio where Doreen's mother,
a.k.a. the Merry Divorcée, was continually reported to be having a grand time.

And Mel had told him of a family she knew where—

Oh, God. Mel!

Flattening his palms on the desk top, he pushed himself to his feet. Important to get on top of things before they got on top of him. First, slip out and buy a toaster. Then go round to Mel's and explain how some stupid mistake of Tor Grand's might result in their sending a bit of his mail there. (He'd get to see his Tammy. Could he, perhaps, win back her heart with one of those colourful plastic windmills he'd seen in a bucket outside Woolworths?) Then he'd go round to Mother's. What else was on his list?

Oh, Mr Braddle.

Hastily spinning the torn squares round on the desk, Colin tried to form some kind of sensible message. Was that word
warm
? This was a
Mr
, certainly. But since the next letter was an
H
, not a
B
, then maybe . . .

And this looked like
see to it
. . .

See to
what
, for heaven's sake? Colin couldn't see to anything else at the moment. Why, he hadn't even got round to starting on his report on the dead chickens yet.

No. This bloody Braddle fellow would just have to wait.

Mel gave his glorious windmill a hostile stare and, in a tone that could not have been more at odds with the sentiment, said, ‘Thanks very much.'

‘What's the matter?' he asked, startled. ‘Don't you think that she'll like it?'

Mel looked ready to shove it outside to get stolen. As though unwillingly reminding herself that, like the clothing with which he'd upset her so much last time, this windmill wasn't quite yet hers to lose, she strutted to the tiny kitchen area and ducked under the sink for one of those glossy rubbish bags his council dispersed in the haunts of the feckless.

‘Bung it in this, for God's sake, before she wakes up and sees it. And don't for a moment think that you're leaving the damn thing here.'

So Tam was napping. Typical of his luck, and a waste of a visit. Frustrated, he handed over the unwelcome gift. ‘But what's the
matter
with it?'

Mel's temper clearly hadn't improved since his last visit. ‘You really don't
think
, do you, Colin? You're so bloody wrapped up in your own affairs, it never occurs to you to consider how things affect other people. What am I supposed to do with a windmill? Let her hang out of an unbarred window, waving it? Add it to all the other sodding things I have to carry down four flights of stairs each time we go out? She's not a
baby
any more. I can't just stick the damn thing at the end of her cot and expect her to
coo
at it.'

Stupid! And the sheer horror of raising his precious Tammy – any child – in this grim place struck him again. Surely Mel must be able to move out
somehow
. Anywhere would be better. Where was she before?

Resisting the urge to apologize for fear of irritating her even more, he made a massive effort. ‘Mel, could I have a cup of coffee?'

She stared. If ever there were an inauspicious moment
to start to assert himself, this must have been it. ‘Don't you have to get back to the office?' she asked him, adding with true spite, ‘Since Tammy isn't up yet.'

This, he ignored. Trailing her over to the chipped grey cabinet that served for a kitchen, he pursued his objective. No doubt someone handier at conversation could have made a more subtle stab at raising the issue. But he at least did manage to spit it out.

‘Mel, where were you living before this?'

Scrabbling a sight too near the uncovered rubbish bin for his professional ease of mind, she came up with a second mug. ‘Nowhere. Everywhere.'

Well, fair enough. After a whole two years and more of taking no interest, he had no right to expect a sensible answer.

‘It's all right. I was just wondering. It doesn't matter.'

‘I wasn't not
answering
,' she snapped. ‘That's where I was. Nowhere and everywhere. I was with a circus.'

‘A
circus
?'

Seeing his sheer astonishment must have provoked her because, lifting her arms, she gave him a fast, faultless spin. ‘Don't you believe me?'

Even through the drab jeans and very nasty woolly, the grace was evident. Had he been
blind
? She stretched out a hand and held the door behind her open so even in the dim light he saw the poster glowing on the wall: two magical figures, one hanging sinuously from his trapeze, the other in a spin. Everything fell into place – the pointy toes as he swung Tammy in her high-chair, the way she stretched her arms along the wall – even the mad prattle about red cottons made sense to him now. Not cottons.
Costumes.
Through the half-light he peered at the faded lettering. ‘What does that say? Is it “The Lavenders”?'

‘Las Venturas.'

It was the flatness of her voice that so astonished him. What was it painted on the entrance to that little circus he'd had to cite for illegally drained Portaloos? He'd used it recently in a spell.
E pulvere, lux et vis
. Could Mel be proof of the reverse? Could that detached manner of hers, that strange, indifferent way of acting as if nothing ever really touched her, simply be evidence that, torn from light and life, even a spinning, shimmering aerial wonder can turn to dust?

Could she be simply
bored
?

‘What does it mean?'

‘
Ventura?
' She shrugged. ‘Lots of things. Happiness. Chance. Luck. Risk. It can even mean danger.'

‘Is that why you stopped when Tam was born? In case you fe—'

‘Please!'

And he was glad to stifle it, not just because the child might have been half awake, listening; more in the hope of not stirring up further grim visions of the sort that had brought him to her flat in the first place. She spooned the coffee in the dingy mugs while he braved another question. ‘So does he have another partner now?'

‘Not like me.' Spreading her arms as if applause were swelling round her, she dropped in a curtsy. It was, he realized, the first real flash of theatricality he'd ever seen in her. Instantly, another thought struck. ‘Why didn't you
tell
them? All those journalists who kept trailing you round asking questions? I read all of those papers.
You never said anything – anything at all – about being from a circus.'

‘No,' she said sourly. ‘Well, it's nobody's business but mine, really, is it?'

And he could understand that. If he had had to shelve a life of spangle and excitement to raise a child in this grim place, he wouldn't feed his glittering memories to any callow reporter, trawling for one more ingenious headline about a flying baby.

Still, she'd said, ‘nobody's business'. Best to take the hint.

‘I really dropped in to warn you a letter's coming.' On the way, he'd rehearsed a score of approaches, and all of them sounded stupid. ‘By mistake.'

‘Mistake?'

‘Yes,' he ploughed on. ‘It'll have your name on it, but it's actually for me. I was in a bit of a spot, you see, and had to think of something quickly.'

‘What's
in
the letter?'

At least he could reassure her there. ‘Nothing. Only a bit of rubbish from Tor Grand Insurance Company. You can just shove the whole thing straight in the bin.'

‘Anything from Tor Whatsit? Straight in the bin?'

‘That's right.'

‘And it'll have my name on it?'

‘Well, yes,' he admitted. ‘It'll be addressed to Mel. Or Melchior.'

‘Melchior?'

Her hoot of disbelief broke straight through Tammy's dreams. And even as he was leaving, he still assumed it was the child's fractious wake-up wail that had distracted
Mel from the lambasting he expected to follow. (‘How
dare
you use my name?' ‘Whatever makes you think—?') He drove on to his sister's, to get the clothes he'd salvaged safely off the back seat before driving on to Mother's. And only as he was pulling to a halt outside her door did it occur to him that Mel was more than capable of soothing Tammy while scolding him.

No, strange girl that she was, the hoot had been one of simple amusement. And she had not been the slightest bothered that he'd taken advantage of her name and home for a private, and possibly nefarious, purpose.

Truly, she did come from a different world.

THE FRIENDSHIP WITH
Marjorie clearly wasn't blossoming. His sister's relief at seeing him on her doorstep appeared for a moment even to outweigh her pleasure at spotting the sleeve of the Tavernier jacket trailing out of his bundle. And Marjorie, too, gave the impression of having a glint of interest in his arrival, going so far as to take her hand off the top of her tumbler. ‘Well, perhaps a tiny top-up, just to be sociable. But then I really must be pushing off.'

‘Not for me, Dil. I'm driving.'

But either his sister wasn't listening or the sheer joy of deliverance had made her skittish. ‘No, Col. You must at least let me fetch you a ginger ale, if only to thank you.' She turned back to the heap he'd tipped onto the armchair. ‘The Barolo shoes! And that grey Formani top! I'd forgotten all about them! Colin, you're a
gem
.'