The Office of the Dead (6 page)

It became increasingly obvious that something would have to be done about Mr Treevor.

He and I, a pair of emotional vampires, arrived on the same February afternoon and more than three weeks later we were still at the Dark Hostelry. I flattered myself there was a difference, that at least I did some of the housework and cooking. I sold my engagement ring, too. I’d never liked the beastly thing. It turned out to be worth much less than Henry had led me to expect, which shouldn’t have surprised me.

Mr Treevor did less and less. He took it for granted that we were there to supply his needs – regular meals, clean clothes, bed-making, warm rooms and a daily copy of
The Times
, which for some reason he liked to have ironed before he would open it.

‘He never used to be like that,’ Janet said to me on Thursday morning as we were snatching a cup of coffee. ‘He hardly ever read a paper, and as for this ironing business, I’ve no idea where that came from.’

‘Isn’t it the sort of thing they used to do in the homes of the aristocracy?’

‘He can’t have picked it up there.’

‘Perhaps he saw it in a film.’

‘It’s a bit of a nuisance, actually.’

‘A bit of a nuisance? It’s a bloody imposition. I think you should go on stroke.’

‘I think his memory’s improving. That’s something, isn’t it?’

I wondered whether it would ever improve to the point where he would be able to remember who I was from one day to the next.

‘He told me all about how he won a prize at school the other day,’ Janet went on, sounding as proud as she did when describing one of Rosie’s triumphs at St Tumwulf’s. ‘For Greek verses. He could even remember the name of the boy he beat.’

‘He’s getting old,’ I said, responding to her anxiety, not what she’d said. ‘That’s all. It’ll happen to us one day.’

Janet bit her lip. ‘Yesterday he asked me when Mummy was coming. He seems to think she’d gone away for the weekend or something.’

‘When’s he going home?’

‘On Saturday,’ Janet said brightly. ‘David’s offered to drive him back.’

Early on Friday morning all of us realized that this would have to be postponed. Even on the top floor I heard the shouting. By the time I got downstairs everyone else was in the kitchen. Even Rosie was huddled in the corner between the wall and the dresser, crouching to make herself as small as possible.

Mr Treevor was standing beside the table. He was in his pyjamas, but without his teeth, his slippers and his dressing gown. He was sobbing. Janet was patting his right arm with a tea towel. David, also in pyjamas, was frowning at them both. There was a puddle of water on the table, and the front of Janet’s nightdress was soaked. The room smelled of singed hair and burning cloth.

Afterwards we reconstructed what had happened. Mr Treevor had woken early and with a rare burst of initiative decided to make himself some tea. He went downstairs, lit the gas and put the kettle on the ring. It was unfortunate that he forgot you had to put water in the kettle as well. After a while, the kettle started to make uncharacteristically agitated noises so he lifted it off the ring. At this point he forgot two other things – to turn off the gas, and to cover the metal handle of the kettle with a cloth. The first scream must have been caused when the metal of the handle burnt into his fingers and the palm of his hand.

David stared at me. ‘We must have a first-aid box somewhere, mustn’t we?’

‘Phone the doctor,’ I said to him. ‘Quickly.’

‘But surely it’s not a –’

‘Quickly. Mr Treevor’s had a bad shock.’

He blinked, nodded and left the room.

I pulled a chair towards the sink, and with Janet’s help drew Mr Treevor down on to it. I turned on the tap and ran cold water over his hand and arm.

‘Janet, why don’t you take Rosie back to bed and fetch a blanket? Have you got any lint?’

‘Yes, it’s –’

‘You’d better bring that as well. And then what about some tea?’

There’s a side of me that derives huge pleasure from telling people what to do. No one seemed to mind. Gradually, Mr Treevor’s sobs subsided to whimpers and then to silence. By the time the doctor arrived, all four adults were huddled round the kitchen boiler drinking very sweet tea.

The doctor was Flaxman. I recognized his name from Janet’s letters – he had been helpful when she was pregnant. Later I came to know him quite well. He had a long, freckled face, flaking skin and red hair. He examined Mr Treevor, told us to put him to bed and said he would call later in the day.

In the afternoon, Flaxman returned. He spent twenty minutes alone with Mr Treevor and then came down and talked to us in the sitting room. David was still at the Theological College.

‘How is he?’ Janet asked.

‘Well, the bums aren’t a problem. He’ll get over those. It could have been worse if you hadn’t acted promptly.’

‘We’ve Mrs Appleyard to thank for that.’ Janet smiled at me.

Flaxman sat down. He didn’t look at me. He began to write a prescription.

‘Would you like a cup of tea? Or some sherry? It’s not too early for sherry, is it?’

‘No, thanks.’ He tore off the prescription and handed it to Janet. These will help Mr Treevor sleep, Mrs Byfield. Give him one at bedtime. If he complains of pain, give him a couple of aspirin. Tell me, where does he live?’

‘He has a flat in Cambridge.’

‘Does he live alone?’

‘There’s a landlady downstairs. She cooks for him.’

‘How long will he be staying with you?’

Janet wriggled slightly in her chair. ‘I don’t really know. My husband was going to take him back tomorrow but in the circumstances, I suppose –’

‘I’d advise you to keep him here a little longer. I’d like to see him again over the next few days. I think his condition needs assessment. Perhaps you’d let me have the address of his GP.’

‘He wasn’t properly awake this morning,’ Janet said, clutching at straws. ‘He’s not been sleeping well.’

‘The sleeping tablets will help that. But the point is, he needs looking after. I don’t mean he needs to be hospitalized, but he needs other people around to keep an eye on him.’

‘Is – is this going to get worse?’

‘It may well do. That’s one reason why we need to keep an eye on him, Mrs Byfield–to see if he is getting worse.’

‘And if he is?’

‘There are several residential homes in the area. Some private, some National Health.’

‘He’d hate that. He’d hate the loss of privacy.’

‘Yes, but his physical safety has to be the main concern. Could he live with you or some other relative?’

‘Permanently?’

‘If you don’t want him to go into a residential home, that would probably be the best solution, Mrs Byfield. At least until his condition deteriorates a good deal more.’

‘But – but what exactly’s wrong with him?’

‘At this stage it’s hard to be categorical.’ He glanced quickly at us both. ‘But I think he’s in the early stages of a form of dementia.’

There was a long silence. I wanted to say to Janet,
You’ve got enough on your plate
, but for once I kept my mouth shut.

Then she sighed. ‘I shall have to talk to my husband.’

Janet and I went to Mr Treevor’s flat on Saturday. We drove over to Cambridge, another small victory for me hard on the heels of my display of Girl Guide first aid. In a sense I was beginning to shed my burdens just as Janet was shouldering more.

David had assumed that Janet would go by bus. It was after all cheaper than going by train.

‘Why not the car?’ I said on Friday evening, emboldened by my Girl Guide expertise and by a substantial slug from the gin bottle in my bedside cupboard.

‘Janet doesn’t drive.’ David hardly bothered to glance at me. ‘I’d take you myself, of course, but unfortunately I’ve got my classes in the morning and then there’s a meeting first thing in the afternoon. The Finance Committee.’

‘I’ll take her,’ I said.

This time David looked properly at me. ‘I didn’t realize you drove.’

‘Well, I do. But what about insurance?’

‘It’s insured for any driver I give permission to.’

‘There you are. Problem solved.’

‘But have you driven recently, Wendy? It’s not an easy car to drive, either. It’s –’

‘It’s a second series Ford Anglia,’ I interrupted. ‘We had one for a time in Durban, except ours was more modern and had the 1200 cc engine.’

‘I see.’ Suddenly he smiled. ‘You’re a woman of hidden talents.’

I smiled back and asked Janet when she would like to go. I felt warm and a little breathless, which wasn’t just the gin. That’s biology for you. David upset a lot of men in his time but I never knew a woman who didn’t have a sneaking regard for him, who didn’t enjoy his approval.

Janet and I had six hours of freedom. The charwoman agreed to come in for the day and keep an eye on Mr Treevor and Rosie. Rosie liked the charwoman, who gave her large quantities of cheap sweets which Janet disapproved of but dared not object to.

The road from Rosington to Cambridge is the sort of road made with a ruler. The Fens could never look pretty, but the day was unseasonably warm for early March and the sun was shining. It was possible to believe that spring was round the corner, that you’d no longer be cold all the time, and that problems might have solutions.

Mr Treevor’s flat was the upper part of a little mid-Victorian terraced house in a cul-de-sac off Mill Road, near the station. I hadn’t known what to expect but it wasn’t this. The landlady, the widow of a college porter, kept the ground floor for herself. Mr Treevor and the widow and the widow’s son shared the kitchen, which was at the back of the house, and the bathroom which was beyond the kitchen, tacked on as an afterthought.

The landlady was out. Janet let herself in with her father’s key and we went upstairs. I must have shown what I was feeling on my face.

‘It’s a bit seedy, I’m afraid,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘You didn’t think he’d live somewhere like this, I suppose? He wanted to stay in Cambridge, you see, and it was all he could afford when Mummy died.’

Janet took me along the landing to the room at the front, which was furnished as a sitting room. It smelled of tobacco, stale food and unwashed bodies.

‘She gives him his breakfast and an evening meal,’ Janet said, meaning the landlady, ‘and she’s meant to dean for him as well and send his washing to the laundry.’ She threw up one of the sash windows and cold, fresh air flooded into the room. ‘I don’t think she does very much. That’s one reason why I didn’t warn her we were coming.’

‘I’m sorry. I – I suppose there was nowhere better available.’

‘Beggars couldn’t be choosers.’ She turned round to face me. ‘There was enough money when I was growing up. My mother was always working and she was good at her job. They were queuing up for her. And Daddy had a little money of his own. Not much, about a hundred a year, I think. They didn’t have pensions or anything like that. I think they more or less lived up to their income.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said awkwardly, because I was English and in those days the English hated talking about money, especially with friends. ‘I quite understand.’

Janet was braver than me, always was. ‘When Mummy was ill, the translation work dried up and they had to live on Daddy’s capital. So what with one thing and another there wasn’t much left when Mummy died.’ She waved her arm. ‘But he had this. He could be independent and he loves Cambridge.’

I said, suddenly understanding, ‘You and David are helping to pay for this, aren’t you?’

She nodded. ‘Only a little.’

‘That’s something,’ I said. ‘You won’t have to any more.’

But I knew as well as she did that they would have to pay for other things now, and in other ways.

John Treevor was still alive and less than twenty miles away in Rosington. Yet as we moved around his flat, sorting his possessions, it was as if he were already dead. His absence had an air of permanence about it.

His possessions dwindled in significance because of this. People lend importance to their possessions and when they’re dead or even absent the importance evaporates. I remember there was a thin layer of grime on the windowsills, dust on the books, holes in most of the socks.

‘It would be much simpler if we could just throw it all away,’ Janet said as she closed the third of the three suitcases we’d brought with us. ‘And what are we going to do about his post? He’s not going to want to write letters.’

While I took the suitcases down to the car, Janet went through the drawers of the desk. When I came back there was a pile of papers on top and she was looking at a photograph, tilting it this way and that in front of the window.

‘Look.’

I took it from her. The photograph was of her when she was not much older than Rosie, a little snapshot taken on the beach. She was in a bathing costume, hugging her knees and staring up at the camera. I handed it back to her.

‘It was before the war. Somewhere like Bexhill or Hastings. We used to go down to Sussex to stay with my grandparents. I thought it was heaven. Daddy taught me to swim one summer, and he used to read me to sleep.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘There was a collection of fairy stories by Andrew Lang,
The Yellow Fairy Book.
I’d forgotten all about it.’

She foraged for her handkerchief in her handbag and blew her nose.

‘Why did it have to happen to him?’ she said angrily, as though it were my fault. ‘Why couldn’t he just have grown old normally, or even died? This is nothing. It’s neither one thing nor the other.’

I said nothing because there was nothing to say.

Janet left a note for the landlady. I took her out to lunch and afterwards we walked in the pale sunshine through St John’s College and on to the Backs. It wasn’t much of an attempt at consolation but it was the only one I could think of.

Now the decision had been made, David felt there was no point in delay. Over the next few weeks we sold or gave away or threw away two-thirds of the contents of the flat.

Mr Gotobed, the assistant verger, helped David bring the rest of Mr Treevor’s belongings back to the Dark Hostelry. Puffing and grunting, the two men carried some of the furniture – the desk, the chair, the glass-fronted bookcase – up to Mr Treevor’s bedroom to make it seem homely. Janet arranged photographs on the desk, herself and her mother, both in newly cleaned silver frames. She brought her father’s pipe rack and tobacco jar, not that he smoked any more, and put them where they used to stand on his desk.

I’m not sure this was a good idea. One morning, shortly after we’d finished the move, Mr Treevor emerged from the bathroom as I was coming down the stairs from my room. He laid his hand on my arm and looked around as if checking for eavesdroppers.

‘There’s funny things happening in this house,’ he confided. ‘They’ve got the builders in. They’ve been changing my room. It must be at night because I’ve never actually seen them at work. I’ve seen one of them in the hall, though. Furitve-looking chap.’ He padded across the landing towards his room. At the door he glanced back at me.

‘Better keep your eyes skinned, Rosie,’ he hissed. ‘Or there’s no knowing what they’ll get up to. Can’t be too careful. Especially with a pretty girl like you.’

Rosie?