Chapter 26

ALL SATURDAY MORNING Sonovia kept her eye on the street and Mr. Kroot’s in particular, but Gertrude Pierce didn’t go home. She kept darting into her front room to look in case she missed her.

Laf came in, carrying a mug of coffee. “Why are you sitting there looking out of the window?”

“Nothing exciting ever happens in Syringa Road.”

“You should be thankful. What d’you want to happen?”

Sonovia ignored him. Mr. Kroot’s front door was opening. The old black cat came out and the door shut.

“D’you want to go out tonight?”

“Anything you like, only don’t bother me now, you’re spoiling my concentration.” Sonovia often reproached herself for not having been more vigilant when Jock Lewis was on the scene. How she regretted not ever seeing his face!

Laf looked up films in the paper. There was nothing on he and Sonovia would fancy. Besides, though he’d been a few times, he’d never enjoyed the cinema like he used to since the Jeffrey Leach murder. It was a funny thing for an officer of the Metropolitan Police to think, he ought to be hardened and indifferent, but the fact was that he always expected the flash of a knife when the person in front of him or behind got up, or thought he might trip over a body in the dark. Why not go to the theater instead? Laf had only been twice in his life, once to The Mousetrap when he was a kid and later on, for his fortieth birthday, to Miss Saigon. How about An Inspector Calls? It sounded as if it might be about the police and therefore he’d get irritated if they got the police procedure wrong. On the other hand, he’d be able to tell Sonovia afterward just how inaccurate it had been. There were little bits of description of the play for each theater. Laf read that this one was an “acclaimed psychological thriller.” It didn’t sound bad. He got on the phone and booked three seats for eight-fifteen. Sonovia would be amazed and as for Minty . . . Laf looked forward to seeing Minty’s face when he told her.

Just as Sonovia was on the watch for Gertrude Pierce, so Minty was waiting for the reappearance of Mrs. Lewis. She was ironing. The light-green-and-dark-green striped shirt was on the top of the pile. It couldn’t be more than ten days since she’d ironed it. The man it belonged to must be very fond of it, maybe it was his favorite. She spread it out on the ironing board, feeling the cotton. It was just damp enough but not so damp that steam rose from it when she applied the iron.

She’d ironed shirts for Jock, not many and not often, but when he’d stayed the night she wouldn’t let him put the same one on in the morning. Next time he’d come over she’d handed him the clean shirt and he’d said he’d never seen such good ironing as hers. That was the day he’d taken her bowling. It was the most amazing evening of her life. She slipped the cardboard collar round the neck of the green shirt and as she slid it into its cellophane bag, a tear slipped down her cheek and splashed on to the shiny transparent stuff. Minty wiped it off and washed her hands. On second thoughts, she washed her face as well. The poky little room smelled of detergent and heat, a scent she couldn’t define because it wasn’t a burning smell but something like a really hot summer’s day. She was alone, there was no one watching her and arguing about her. The ghosts had been absent all the morning. She started on the last shirt but two, a white one with a very pale pink check.

Sonovia got bored with waiting. It wasn’t as if anything else happened down the street that was worth looking at, apart from those two yobs revving up their motorbikes for an unnecessarily long time and that Iranian woman coming out in the chador that enveloped her from head to foot in black folds, leaving only her tired eyes free. Her three children looked like anyone else’s, dressed in jeans and T-shirts and sandals. Sonovia couldn’t understand it.

“When in Rome do as the Romans do,” she said when Laf came in.

“Pardon?”

“Our mothers never got themselves up like that after they came here. They adapted.”

“Your mum never dressed like a nun either,” said Laf sarcastically, “so far as I recall. In case it’s of any interest, Mrs. Pierce is sitting in the old man’s back garden in a deckchair. So you can come off watch. Want a beer? I’m going to have one.”

Sonovia accepted the beer but sat there ten minutes longer, just to prove she was relaxing, not waiting for Gertrude Pierce. She was just getting up, thinking about making lunch for her and Laf, when Minty came along. The last thing she wanted was for Minty to find out for herself Gertrude Pierce was still here, which she would do as soon as she looked out of her kitchen window, so she waved and mouthed, “She’s not gone. She’s in the back.”

Minty nodded and made a face, a sympathetic face that registered disgust and fellow feeling at the same time. Inserting her key in the lock, she felt the usual apprehension and braced herself. There was no one and nothing there. It was funny, she was getting to be able to tell if the house was empty of them the minute she came into the hall. Anyway, they weren’t her immediate worry. For some reason, Josephine had kissed her when she left and she could still feel her scent on her skin and the smear of her lipstick as well as her own tears. But first she went through to the kitchen and looked out of the window at the two of them next door, Gertrude Pierce and Mr. Kroot in old-fashioned striped deckchairs. They’d put a rickety table with a green baize top between them and on it they were playing cards. The black cat with its aged gray muzzle lay on the grass, looking as if it were dead. But it often looked like that and it never was dead. Minty could hardly remember a time when that cat hadn’t been there, its face like an old whiskered person’s, its walk growing stiffer. A bumble bee drifted down close to its ears. They twitched and its tail flicked. Gertrude Pierce swept up the cards into a pack and shuffled them.

Had Mr. Kroot’s cat been in the cemetery again, walking over where her grave would be? Or trailing arthritically over Auntie’s two graves? Upstairs now, Minty ran her bath. She hardly ever had a bath these days without thinking about her money and how she could have bought a shower with it. She dropped her clothes onto the floor in a heap. They’d been clean on that morning, of course, but to her they smelled of Josephine and the litter-strewn street and the diesel fumes from lorries and taxis and all the cigarettes people smoked between here and Immacue and the butts they left on the pavement. She scrubbed herself with the nailbrush, not just her hands but her arms and legs and feet as well. The skin was bright pink under the water. Then she used the back brush. She dipped her head in and shampooed her hair, digging into her scalp with her fingertips. Kneeling up, she rinsed her head under the running tap. If only she had that shower!

As she was drying herself, another towel wrapped round her head turban-wise, something told her they were back. Not in here. To do her justice, Auntie wouldn’t bring a stranger in; she had her own ideas of modesty and Minty hadn’t been seen without her clothes since she was nine. They were outside the door. Let them wait. Minty used her deodorant not just under her arms but on the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands. She dressed in white cotton trousers and a white T-shirt with pale blue stripes. Both were “left-behinds” from Immacue, among those garments that their owners for some reason failed to collect and that, after six months, Josephine sold at two pounds apiece. Minty got a discount and only paid two for both. She wouldn’t have dreamed of doing it if they’d only been dry-cleaned but these were washable, had many times been washed, and the trousers she’d boiled, which reduced their size and made them fit better. She combed her hair, wrapped up her soiled clothes in the towels, and, drawing a deep breath, flung open the door.

They were outside, a couple of yards away in the doorway of Auntie’s bedroom. Minty touched all the wood she could reach, pink wood and white wood and brown, but they didn’t go away. Mrs. Lewis was much clearer and more solid today than Auntie was. She looked like a real person, the sort of old woman you might see in the street, coming back from the shops. In spite of the warmth of the day she wore a winter coat of dark red wool, a color Minty particularly disliked, and she had a dark red felt hat jammed down over her ears. So they could change their clothes wherever it was they came from, Minty thought, marveling.

Auntie, behind Jock’s mother and much taller than she was, appeared rather shadowy, something you only thought you saw and had to look at again to make sure. But she thickened and grew sharper as Minty’s eyes fixed on her. Minty remembered once, when she was a child, some relative or friend, it might have been Kathleen’s husband or Edna’s, who took photographs and developed his own film. It was Edna’s, she remembered now, recalling him for other mysterious, never fully understood, reasons. She’d seen him develop the film and watched the blank sheet in its pool of liquid gradually turn into a picture. Auntie was like that, growing from a vague shapelessness into a picture of herself.

Her arms full of damp towels and clothes, Minty stared at them and they stared back at her. This time she was the first to speak. She addressed Auntie. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with her if you knew what she owed me. Her son borrowed all my money and yours too, what you left me, and she could have paid it back; she had the time, but she never did.”

Auntie said nothing. Mrs. Lewis went on staring. Shrugging, turning away, Minty went downstairs. She put the clothes and the towels in the washing machine, started it, and washed her hands, thinking how she’d have held that stuff at arm’s length if it hadn’t been for encountering those two on the landing. Mrs. Lewis had come down behind her, but she’d come alone. Auntie was gone. Had she taken Minty’s words to heart?

Minty wasn’t going to eat her lunch with that old woman watching her. She’d rather starve. Mrs. Lewis moved about the kitchen, looking down at the cupboards and up at the shelves. If she was thinking Minty wasn’t a good enough household manager, wouldn’t have made a suitable wife for her son, she had another think coming. Everything in that kitchen was spotless.

Mrs. Lewis lifted the lid off the teapot and looked inside the bread bin. “She keeps it nice, I will say.”

“Say what you like,” said Minty. “I couldn’t care less. Why didn’t you give me back my money?”

No answer, of course. The old woman was close beside her now. Minty had a brilliant idea. She pulled open the cutlery drawer and seized the knife, the twin to the one she used in the cinema. The knife in her hand, she drew back her arm and lunged, but Mrs. Lewis had gone, faded into the wall or swallowed up by the floor.

It seemed then that just threatening got rid of them. But Minty didn’t immediately put the knife back. She washed the blade because she felt it was contaminated, though it had touched nothing. Then she carved some slices from a piece of ham and chopped some lettuce and tomato. The knife needed washing again and this time she put it right into the sink with plenty of hot water and detergent. It might be necessary, she thought as she dried it, to carry this knife with her as she had the one she’d used, find a more efficient way of carrying it, though wrapped up and laid along the side of her leg under her trousers would do. She poured herself a nice fresh glass of cold milk.

Her lunch was just finished and all the crockery in hot water when the doorbell rang. Laf, it would be, with the papers. “You want a cup of tea?” she asked, letting him in.

“Thanks, love, but I won’t stop. Where d’you think we’re going tonight, me and Sonny and you? We’re going to a show. In the West End.”

“In a cinema, d’you mean?” She wasn’t going back to that Marble Arch one, whatever he said. That was just the place Mrs. Lewis and Auntie were likely to be, haunting the spot where Jock had last appeared. “I don’t know, Laf.”

“In a theater,” he said. “It’s a thriller about the police.”

“Well, I can’t say no, can I?”

“Of course you can’t. You’ll love it.”

She wouldn’t be able to wear those clothes, that was for sure. Not after carrying those dirty towels and the trousers and top she’d taken off. Shame, because these white trousers were really nice. Anyway, she’d have to undress to put the knife down the side of her leg and once she’d got that far it was only another step to have a bath. She washed the dishes, took the papers outside, and sat in a clean cane chair she’d scrubbed, and with a cushion whose cover she’d washed and ironed. This made her feel very superior to Mr. Kroot and Gertrude Pierce, who’d stopped playing cards and eaten their lunch on the green baize table, sandwiches and Fanta by the look of it, for they’d piled up the dirty dishes on a tray and left it on the grass right by the cat’s nose, a real magnet for flies. Minty looked once but never again.

It would have been nice to go in the car, but Laf said where was he supposed to park? Down there, finding somewhere to put your vehicle was a nightmare. Taking the tube to Charing Cross meant you’d nothing to worry about. But the Bakerloo Line train was jam-packed and the streets were almost as bad.

Like many suburb dwellers, though their suburb wasn’t far out, Sonovia and Laf had only a sketchy knowledge of inner London. Laf occasionally drove through the Park to Kensington or even past Buckingham Palace. He knew roughly where the big streets led, while she had her shopping trips to the West End, and both, as inveterate picture-goers, visited the Odeon Metro and Mezzanine. But Sonovia had no idea of the way places linked up and couldn’t have told you how to get from Marble Arch to Knightsbridge or Oxford Street to Leicester Square. As for Minty, she hadn’t been down here for years, she’d had no occasion to come, and the big buildings of Trafalgar Square intimidated her with their rows of tall pillars and flights of stairs. It was as if she’d never seen them before or that she’d found herself transported to some foreign city. At the same time they reminded her of those Roman temples in the cemetery.

“Why is he up there?” she said to Laf, pointing to Nelson on his column. “He’s so high up you can’t see what he looks like.”

“I don’t know why, love. Maybe he wasn’t much to look at and it’s better not to see him close. I like the lions.”

Minty didn’t. Crouching there like that, they reminded her of Mr. Kroot’s cat. Maybe in the middle of the night they got up and walked about, treading on tall buildings and stamping on trees. She was glad when she and the Wilsons had pushed their way through the crowds and were seated in the Garrick Theatre. Laf bought a program for her and one for Sonovia and a box of Dairy Milk. Minty didn’t want a chocolate, it stood to reason they couldn’t come in those shapes unless someone handled them, but she took one so as not to be rude and felt funny for the next half-hour as the germs ran about inside her stomach.

An Inspector Calls wasn’t a bit like they’d imagined, though there was a policeman in it, or perhaps not a real one, perhaps a ghost or an angel. Minty didn’t want it to be a ghost, she had enough of those in reality, and sometimes she had to shut her eyes. The set was the best thing, they all agreed on that, not like something made to be the background to a play but like a real house in a real street, transported inside the stage. When it was over and Minty got up to go, the point of the knife pushed against the stuff of her trousers at the knee, but she adjusted them quickly before Laf or Sonovia saw.

It was quite late but cafés and restaurants were open everywhere; she had never seen so many all together and it made her wonder how they could make enough money to exist on. They went into a little one in a side street and ordered pizzas. Minty wouldn’t have had salad or cooked meat or anything she couldn’t see being cooked but a pizza was all right, you could watch the man take it out of an oven with a pair of tongs on to a clean plate. And he was wearing gloves. They had a couple of glasses of wine each and that reminded her of Jock.

“Adam and Eve and Pinch Me,” she said.

“You what?”

They’d never heard it before. “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved?”

“Well, Pinch Me, of course,” said Sonovia and Minty pinched her.

Laf laughed uproariously. “You had her there, Minty. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Yes, well, the joke was on me,” said Sonovia and, in a patronzing tone, “But it’s not ‘drownded,’ my deah. You’re wrong about that. ‘Drowned’ would be correct.”

“Jock said ‘drownded.’ ” Minty finished her pizza. “It was him who told me.”

She shivered. Thinking about him often had that effect.

“Not cold, are you? It’s very warm in here. I’ve been asking myself why I didn’t put a thinner jacket on.”

But by this time it was growing colder outside, whatever Sonovia said. They passed a pub and then another, and Laf asked if they wanted a drink, one for the road, a nightcap, but Sonovia said no, enough was enough and it’d be one in the morning before they were in their beds as it was. The tube train came and it was so full that Laf said, “Let’s wait for the next one, it’s due in one minute,” so they waited and it came and it was nearly empty. A lot of people got in at Piccadilly, a lot got out at Baker Street, and one old woman got in. It was Mrs. Lewis.

The empty seat nearly opposite Minty was one of those intended for the old or disabled. Not that many took much notice of that, but it happened to be empty and Mrs. Lewis sat down in it. She was still in her dark red coat and hat. Auntie was nowhere to be seen. Evidently she’d taken to heart what Minty had said about not associating with Mrs. Lewis on account of her being Jock’s mother and never paying Jock’s debts. Minty stared fixedly at Mrs. Lewis, who refused to meet her eyes. She had settled herself carefully to avoid sitting on the knife, though it was wrapped first in plastic and then in a clean white rag, but she was very aware of it now.

“What are you staring at, my deah? You’re giving me the creeps.”

“She’s not real,” Minty said. “Don’t you worry, she’s only a ghost, but she’s got a nerve coming after me here.”

Sonovia looked at her husband, shaking her head.

Laf raised his eyebrows. “Must be the wine,” he said. “She’s not used to it. They gave you really big glasses in that pizza place.”

Mrs. Lewis got up to go at Paddington. For the first time Minty noticed she had a holdall with her. She must be catching a train to Gloucester, back to the old home she’d had when she was alive. “Can you get a train to Gloucester at this time of night?” she asked Laf.

“I shouldn’t think so. It’s gone half past midnight. What d’you want to know for?”

Minty didn’t reply. She was watching Mrs. Lewis leave the train and make her way along the platform. A bad walker, shuffling more than walking. Then she remembered some of the money Jock had borrowed had been to pay for his mother’s hip operation. “She never had it,” she said aloud. “I don’t reckon she lived long enough to have it.”

Again the Wilsons exchanged glances. As Laf said to his wife later, all the people in the train were looking uneasily at Minty. You got used to seeing some funny sights in the underground—he’d once seen a chap racing maggots across the floor—but Minty looked crazy, her face as white as chalk and her wispy hair standing on end. Besides, anyone could tell she’d been talking to the empty air. They got out at Kensal Green and walked home; it wasn’t far. The only people in the streets were groups of young men, black and white and Asian, all around twenty years old, all looking somehow like a threat.

Sonovia put her arm through Laf’s. “I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable if you weren’t with us, love.”

“Well, I am,” said Laf, gratified. “They won’t mess with me.”

On the corner of their street was a seat with a sort of flower bed behind it. The flowers had to compete with empty beer cans, fish and chip paper, and cigarette ends, and the rubbish was winning. Mrs. Lewis hadn’t gone home to Gloucester. She was sitting on the seat, the holdall open beside her. Laf and Sonovia probably thought she was the old bag lady who sometimes sat there at night, but Minty knew better. In the ten minutes since Mrs. Lewis had left the tube at Paddington she’d changed her clothes again for a black coat and headscarf, and somehow got up here. But ghosts could do anything, get through walls and floors, travel long distances at the speed of light. She was here now but before Minty could get there she’d be in her house, waiting for her.

Down here there was no one else about. The boys in gangs stuck to Harrow Road. Sonovia and Laf said goodnight and see her soon. Minty was so preoccupied with Mrs. Lewis that she forgot her manners and all the things Auntie had taught her, and didn’t say Thanks for taking me to the theater or anything. She didn’t even say goodnight.

The Wilsons went indoors and Sonovia said, “I’ve never known her so peculiar. Talking to herself and seeing things that aren’t there. D’you reckon we ought to do something?”

“What can we do? Send for the men in the white coats?”

“Don’t you be silly, Laf. It’s not funny.”

“She just had too much wine, Sonn. People can have hallucinations when they’ve had too many. If you don’t believe me you can ask Dan.”

Mrs. Lewis wasn’t waiting for her. Minty searched the house. She wasn’t anywhere and neither was Auntie. She’d still be on that seat, fumbling about in that holdall, planning something, laughing maybe because she’d managed to die before she had to pay that money.

Minty knew what she had to do. She patted the knife, opened the front door and closed it quietly behind her. The street was deserted, silent. The lamps were out. Only in the flat opposite was there a light, a gleam in one of the windows like a candle flame. It looked as if the Wilsons had gone straight to bed, for their bedroom light went out as Minty looked upward. She walked up to the corner, suddenly sure Mrs. Lewis would have gone and the seat be empty.

But she was still there. She’d decided to sleep there, Minty couldn’t think why. She’d put the battered holdall under her head for a pillow. What did a ghost want with a holdall? The flowers behind her had closed up for the night, their leaves faintly gleaming from among the crumpled cartons and polythene bags and cigarette packets. Mrs. Lewis would never give her back her money now, it was gone forever. Minty, drawing out the knife from its strapping, was suddenly consumed with righteous anger. This would show Auntie that she meant business, teach her to be more careful in future.

It was quite silent in the street now. Mrs. Lewis didn’t make a sound. If she’d been real Minty would have thought her heart had stopped the minute the point of the knife touched her.