Chapter 17

JOCK WAS GONE. A couple of days passed before Minty could really believe it. Especially when she’d been out and came back into the house, she was fearful, always afraid he’d be sitting in a chair or waiting for her in the shadows behind the stairs. She dreamed about him. But that wasn’t the same thing as a ghost, just someone who came into your dreams. Sonovia and Laf came into them, and Josephine sometimes, and Mr. Kroot’s sister, and Auntie, always Auntie. The dream Jock, not the ghost Jock, walked into a room where she was and offered her a Polo mint or said “Good-oh” and once even said those words that were halfway between a joke and a tease, about pinch, punch, first of the month. In the dreams, he always wore his black leather jacket.

Auntie’s voice she heard much more often than she once had, but she never saw her. Yesterday she, or her voice, had come in while Minty was in the bath, which was something Jock’s ghost had never done. “It’s a whole two weeks since you put flowers on my grave, Minty,” said Auntie. She kept over by the door, not looking in Minty’s direction, which wouldn’t have been nice. She was just a disembodied voice, without eyes. “It’s not very pleasant being dead but it’s worse if you’re forgotten. How d’you think I feel with my last resting place all bare but for a bunch of dead tulips?”

It was no use answering because they couldn’t hear you. Jock’s ghost had never taken a blind bit of notice of anything she said. But that afternoon she’d gone into the cemetery where the evergreen leaves seemed fresher now and the new leaves a dazzling green, where the grass was bright and glittering with raindrops from a shower, and taken out the dead flowers, replacing them with pink carnations and gypsophila. The carnations had no scent but, like Josephine said, you couldn’t expect it, not with plants forced up in hothouses. Usually, when she’d visited Auntie’s grave, Minty had knelt down on a clean piece of paper or plastic and said a little prayer to her, but she hadn’t yesterday. Auntie didn’t deserve it, not the way she was going on, she’d have to be content with the flowers.

Sunday was the day Minty did her washing. Her major wash, that is. A certain number of clothes got washed every day. But on Sundays the week’s sheets and towels were done and considering no towel was used more than once and no sheet slept on more than three times, a great quantity mounted up. While the first batch was whirling and bouncing about in the machine, gladdening her heart with the soap bubbles and the clean smell—those moments spent watching the washing were the only time Minty felt really content with life—she went out into the garden to put up the clothesline.

Some of the neighbors left their clotheslines out all the time, in all weather. Minty shuddered when she thought of the black deposits of diesel fumes that must form on them. Her own plastic-covered rope was scrubbed and rinsed and dried each time she took it down. She checked that the posts were firm and attached the clothes line to the bolt on top of the one at the end of the garden, unrolling it carefully as she walked across the paving toward the house.

Next door Mr. Kroot’s sister was pulling out weeds. His garden was overgrown with weeds for months; he never did anything out there, and it was only when his sister came that anyone got rid of the dandelions and stinging nettles and thistles. She wasn’t wearing gloves and her hands were covered with dirt, the fingernails black. Minty shuddered. She went indoors and washed her own hands, as if she’d absorbed some referred dirt from Mr. Kroot’s sister. What was she called? Auntie had known. She’d called her by her name until that day they stopped speaking forever over something to do with the fence. Minty couldn’t remember the name but she remembered the quarrel and it all came back to her, though it was a good fifteen years ago.

It was when Auntie had had a new fence put up between their gardens. Mr. Kroot never said a word about it, but his sister that must once have been a Miss Kroot accused Auntie of stealing six inches of ground from next door. If she didn’t move the fence, the sister said, she’d chop the wire down herself with wire cutters, and Auntie said not to threaten her and if there was any chopping of wire, so much as a single snip, she’d call the police. No one cut anything and the police weren’t called but Auntie and Mr. Kroot’s sister never spoke again, and Minty was told not to speak to her either. Then Sonovia stopped speaking to her out of loyalty.

Minty wished she could remember the sister’s name. Maybe Auntie would tell her next time she started talking. Not that she wanted to know that much, not enough to welcome ghost voices. She took the first batch of washing out of the machine, put the next lot in, and carried the damp towels outside in a large basket she’d lined with a snowy white sheet. Mr. Kroot’s sister was standing up now, staring at her. She was a stocky, stoutish old woman with dyed ginger hair, who wore glasses in violet-colored frames. When she put one earth-covered, black-nailed finger up to her face and scratched her cheek, Minty turned away shuddering.

The morning was bright and sunny but fresh with a sharp wind blowing. A good drying day. She pegged out the towels, using plastic pegs she’d scrubbed and dried along with the clothesline. Mr. Kroot’s sister had gone indoors, leaving weeds lying about all over the path. Minty shook her head at such fecklessness. She too went indoors and started thinking about what to have for lunch. She’d bought a nice piece of ham at Sainsbury’s and she was going to cook it herself. Buying cooked meat, in her opinion, was very risky. You never knew where it had been or the state of the pot it was boiled in. When she’d got the meat on, maybe she’d go up the road and get a Sunday paper now that Laf never brought theirs in to her.

First she went into the front room to look out of the window and see who was about. It was just as well she did, for as she lifted the half-drawn curtain she saw Laf and Sonovia come out of their house, wearing the serious expressions they always did when on their way to church. Sonovia had the blue dress and jacket on with a white hat and Laf a striped suit. Minty waited a bit to let them get out of the way, then she went off in the opposite direction to the paper shop.

It was quite a coincidence, she thought when she looked at the front page of the News of the World, a man murdered in that same cinema where she’d got rid of Jock’s ghost. The paper didn’t say when it was, only that the man was called Jeffrey Leach.

“There are more and more murders about these days,” Auntie’s voice said suddenly. “I don’t know what the world’s coming to. They’re all in gangs, them as get murdered, murdered by other gangs. You go down Harlesden High Street and it’s all gangs when it’s not yardies.”

Minty tried to ignore her. She sat down in the front room to read the paper. When she heard the machine stop she went to the kitchen and took the sheets and pillowcases out. One more sheet and a duvet cover still remained. She put them into the machine and carried the damp washing outside to the clothesline. Mr. Kroot was putting a colander full of potato peelings into his wheelie bin. All unwrapped, they were, just as they came off the potatoes. It made Minty feel quite sick, thinking of that bin having to be wheeled through the house in time for Brent Council’s waste disposal men to come and empty it. She kept her own bin in the front, padlocked to the wall—this was such a rough area, people were even capable of stealing your rubbish—and having scoured it, scattered emerald green disinfectant powder all over the inside.

“The duke of Windsor’s son was murdered,” Auntie said. “Him as should have been Edward the Ninth. Only when it’s someone famous they don’t say ‘murdered,’ they say ‘assassinated.’ It was in France. If he’d been in his rightful place it never would have happened.”

“Who cares?” said Minty, but knowing it was useless. “Go away, can’t you?”

More boiling water needed adding to the ham in the pot. She’d have boiled potatoes with it and frozen peas. Once when Jock was around, he’d got her to buy organic broccoli and when she’d washed it a pale-green caterpillar the same color as the stems had dropped out. Never again. She opened the knife drawer and there on the top was the one she’d used to get rid of Jock’s ghost. She’d boiled it and spoiled the color of the handle in so doing—it must be as clean as a knife could be, but somehow she couldn’t fancy slicing meat with it. She’d never fancy it, no matter how long she kept it. It would have to go. Shame, really, because she thought it was one of a set given to Auntie for her wedding in 1961.

“Nineteen sixty-two,” said Auntie.

John Lewis—that had been Jock’s name. Just like the Oxford Street store. How funny, she’d never thought of it like that before. If he’d lived she’d have been Mrs. Lewis and it would have been on envelopes, Mrs. J. Lewis. But she need not think of it, for he was gone. She put on her rubber gloves, washed the knife again, and dried it, wrapped it up in the sports pages of the paper, the ones she didn’t want to read, and then put it in a plastic carrier bag. Better not leave it in her wheelie bin. If no one could steal the bin they could steal what was inside it and what those gangs wanted was knives.

“That’s what they use,” said Auntie’s voice. “Guns aren’t easy to get hold of, you have to pay a lot of money for a gun, but knives are another thing. They all carry knives. That’s why there are all these murders. Gangs going after gangs. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me. It was a bomb killed Edward the Ninth, but he was different.”

“Go away,” Minty said, but Auntie went on muttering.

Maybe she should take the knife up to one of the big bins in the street. The one where she’d put her stained clothes would do. She was taking the third batch of washing out of the machine when the doorbell rang. Who could that be? Now that Laf didn’t come round with the papers, no one ever called on her unless it was Jehovah’s Witnesses. Auntie had liked the Jehovah’s Witnesses, she’d bought that Watchtower from them and agreed with everything they said, but she drew the line when it came to going about with them, knocking on people’s doors. Minty washed her hands and was drying them when the bell rang again. “All right, I’m coming,” she said, though no one could hear her out there on the step.

It was Laf and Sonovia. Minty stared. She didn’t say anything.

“Don’t shut the door in our faces, Minty love,” said Laf. “We’ve come in a spirit of goodwill and loving your neighbor as yourself, haven’t we, Sonny?”

“Can we come in?”

Minty held the door open wider. Sonovia tripped as she stepped on to the mat, her heels were so high. The blue dress that had hung loose on Minty was still a bit tight across the hips. She and Laf followed Minty into the front room, where it was gloomy as usual, even on a sunny day.

“It’s like this,” Laf began in the tone he used to teenage criminals who had reoffended. It sounded more like sorrow than anger. “Neighbors mustn’t go on not speaking. It’s not right and it’s not Christian. Now Sonn and me have just listened to this sermon all about loving your enemies, especially your neighbors, and we reckoned we’d come in here on the way back in a spirit of humility, didn’t we, Sonn?”

“I’m sure I’m not anybody’s enemy,” said Minty.

“And we’re not. Sonny has got something to say and it’s not easy for her, being somewhat puffed up with pride like the pastor said some folks are, but she’s going to humble herself and say it, aren’t you, Sonn?”

Sonovia said in a low, grudging voice that she hoped things would be all right now. “We could let bygones be bygones.”

“Say it, Sonn.”

She screwed up her face in agony at the prospect of an apology passing her lips. The words came out one by one and slowly. “I’m sorry. About the dress, I mean. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.” She looked at her husband. “I—am—sorry.”

Minty didn’t know what to say. This was a situation she’d never before been in. Auntie had quarreled with a lot of people but she’d never made it up afterward. Once you stopped speaking to someone you’d stopped for good. She nodded at Sonovia. As if all the words were new to her, as if in a foreign language she learned as a child but never since then used, she said, “Sorry. I’m the same as you. I mean, about bygones.”

The two women looked at each other. Sonovia took a step forward, with a helpful push from Laf. Awkwardly, she put her arms round Minty and kissed her cheek. Minty stood there and let herself be hugged and kissed.

Laf gave a sort of cheer and held up both his thumbs. “Mates again?” he said. “Pals? That’s the stuff.”

“My deah,” said Sonovia, her normal vitality restored, “to tell you the truth, I was actually quite glad to have this outfit cleaned, I should have had it done myself. After I’d let you have it I remembered there was this nasty ketchup stain on the hem.”

“That’s all right,” said Minty. “That soon came off.”

Laf smiled broadly. “So what we want is that you come to the pictures with us tonight. Not Marble Arch, not after that poor chap getting murdered, but we thought Whiteley’s and Saving Grace. How about it?”

“I don’t mind. What sort of time?”

“We reckoned on the five-fifteen showing and then we can all have a pizza afterward. Now, how about a kiss for me?”

The knife she’d wrapped up she put into a carrier bag, one of the anonymous plain blue ones the corner shops gave you, and walked the hundred yards to the bin in Harrow Road where she’d put her stained clothes. But the bin was full to overflowing, as it often was on a Sunday, bags of rubbish all round it, spilling out their contents on to the pavement. Minty wasn’t going to contribute to that, it was disgusting. She went home again and had her lunch, washing her hands before and after she ate it.

She seemed to remember a group of bins somewhere down Kilburn Lane and she walked a long way up there looking for them. In the end she had to make her way quite a distance down Ladbroke Grove, past the tube station, before she found what she was looking for: clean bins and no mess spilling from them. She opened the lid of a bin. It smelled nasty owing to people like Mr. Kroot not wrapping their rubbish up properly. On the top was a bright green Marks and Spencer’s carrier with nothing dirtier in it than something wrapped up in tissue paper, a couple of cereal packets, and an unused loaf of bread still in its cellophane packing. She didn’t too much mind being associated with any of that, so she thrust the knife in its blue bag in between the loaf and the cornflakes, and closed the lid.

On the way back she stopped for a while and looked down over the bridge to the railway track. The tube wasn’t really a tube at all here but underground trains doing this bit of the track above ground, and it was also the main line to places in the west of England. Here, she knew, just down there below her, the local train and the Gloucester express had collided. Many people had died in that crash, including her Jock. One of the trains caught fire and that was the one, she supposed, he’d been in.

He’d been visiting his mother. Minty thought of her as very old and bent, with wispy gray hair, walking with a stick, or maybe someone like Mr. Kroot’s sister. She ought to have been in touch with Jock’s fiancée, ought really to have come to see her. Minty imagined a nice letter from old Mrs. Lewis, saying how sad it was and inviting her to come and stay. She wouldn’t have gone, of course she wouldn’t. The house was very likely dirty and without much hot water. But she should have been asked. Of course, it was plain why she hadn’t been asked. Once she was in that house or even once she’d answered a letter, Mrs. Lewis would have had to give back the money.

It had begun to rain. Minty shook her head at it, though she knew it would take no notice. As soon as she got home she ran a bath. She scrubbed her fingernails and her toenails and Auntie’s voice said, suddenly coming out of nowhere, “Rain’s filthy stuff. It comes down through miles of dirty air.”

Minty said, “When I’m in here I’m private. Leave me alone,” but Auntie took no notice.

“Getting rid of that knife was wise,” she continued. “It was harboring untold millions of germs.” Was Auntie actually addressing her at last? She seemed to be. “I’ve just seen Jock’s mother. You didn’t know Mrs. Lewis was here with me, did you?”

“Go away.” Minty thought she’d die if Mrs. Lewis manifested herself.

The rain was coming down in sheets when she went downstairs. The house seemed empty. It felt cold, the air gray like twilight. Laf came round at four under a big umbrella with palm trees on it and said he’d be taking the car, it was pouring so. God knew where he’d park but he’d do his best. Auntie’s words had upset Minty. Auntie and Mrs. Lewis might come into the cinema. She started feeling nervous. And there was no wood to touch in a cinema, it was all plastic and cloth and metal.

Kind and gracious, proud of her newfound humility, Sonovia went ahead into their row, smiling over her shoulder. “There you are, my deah, you sit between us. You got the popcorn, Laf?”

He had and it was clean and dry, quite fit for Minty to eat. The cinema was filling up, all the seats in front of them occupied. There was no room for Auntie and Jock’s mother. The lights dimmed and suddenly the screen was filled with the bright flashing colors and ear-splitting noises she associated with her banishing of Jock. Minty delicately picked out the smaller pellets of popcorn and relaxed.

When she did get to see Mrs. Lewis she’d ask what had happened to her money and make the old woman answer. Maybe she’d write it down. They never answered when you spoke to them but they might if it was all down on paper. As the big picture started she was planning what she’d write, how she’d push the paper in front of Mrs. Lewis’s face, and it was quite a long time before she lifted her eyes to the screen.