this?”
“Oxygen,” Karen said, reading over his shoulder. “Didn’t you do no chemistry? ‘Because of the absence of oxygen in the water-logged bog.’”
“Here, give it to me, it’s mine,” Alistair said, shrugging his sister off and hunching over the newspaper. “‘May have been a ritual sacrifice.’ We could do with something like that for us rites.”
“What rites?” Colin enquired.
“That we have at us den. Austin runs them, sometimes we have guest ministers. It’s like evensong, but bloodier. Listen to this, Kari. ‘…bashed him twice on the head with a narrow-bladed axe, and slashed his jugular vein to obtain his blood.’”
“I hope this isn’t giving you ideas,” Sylvia said disapprovingly.
“This is how he was found. ‘Face twisted and squashed into one shoulder, forehead deeply puckered, teeth clenched tightly together…’” Alistair laughed raucously. “Sounds just like you, Dad.”
Colin took the paper from his son. He ran his eyes over the description of the bog man, and noted that the historian Tacitus had opined that the barbarians drowned in bogs those who had committed “heinous crimes, such as adultery.” He felt indignant; the poor man might just have been mugged. There was a knock at the kitchen door. Lizzie Blank was arriving for work, taking off her leopard-skin jacket. “Can I have that paper when you’ve finished with it?” she asked. Colin sucked his underlip speculatively. “He is expected to go on show to the public,” he read, “freeze-dried, at the British Museum, in about two years’ time.”
These days Muriel found that she was seeing less and less of her old friends. She still called at Crisp’s to change her personality, but very often he was out, and there was no longer a note on the table to say where he was attending service. The nights began to draw in, and Sholto’s shop was burgled, cleaned out over two successive nights by people who came in through the skylight. The shop was to be closed down anyway; he had lost his job, and was sleeping rough. They were drifting apart; she doubted that there would be any day trips next summer.
Clyde, from the dating agency, had been as good as his word. He’d told her he’d track her down. It was foolish of her, she now realised, to have let Lizzie Blank use Poor Mrs. Wilmot’s address. He was neglecting his butter sculpture in favour of hanging around in the street. He scanned the upper windows of Mr. K.’s house, and paced around the block with his great hands swinging. You had to credit him with determination, and initiative too. He knocked at the door one day, with a baker’s tray and some cock-and-bull story, and gave Mr. K. a wheatmeal loaf.
Mr. K. shut the door on him before his story was over. The features seemed to have shrunk in his coarse bristling face, as if his eyes wanted to turn and look into the skull. He held the loaf at arm’s length, and carried it into the hall; there was a small table in the hall, and there he placed it. With one hand he massaged his ribs, around the heart.
When Miss Anaemia came home she stopped off to poke its crust with her starved finger. “Your bread’s come,” she called. She went into the kitchen. “What are you doing cleaning a gun?” she asked. Then she burst into tears. “They’ve stopped my giro,” she said. “They’ve accused me of cohabiting with a giant.”
“Wait,” cried Mr. K. He put down the gun. “It is the same giant who delivered the loaf, there could not be two such. I took him for some pal of Snoopers.” He wrung his rag between his hands. “I have asked Poor Mrs. Wilmot to cast light on the matter, but she cannot. She says that she does not know the giant, and the giant does not know her.” He sat down shakily in a kitchen chair, holding his head. “I am ill, my dear young lady, with the suspense. I have a message in the hall, menacing me about my letter box, signed by Olga Korbut. That is why I am cleaning my Luger. As for the bread, it is no doubt poisoned. Please to leave it where it is, and if in need take some of this Hovis.”
“Thanks very much,” Miss Anaemia said. She scrubbed away her tears with the back of her hand and picked a slice or two out of the wrappings. “Cheers,” she said. Her emotions were short-lived; it was just as well, of course. It didn’t do to get excited about the future, or too attached to any project; you never knew when some change in the benefit rules would turn your life upside down. It was companionable, here at Napier Street, but they were talking about chopping rent allowances and making young people move on. In the world outside people called her Anne-Marie, and asked her to account for yourself; have you seen a psychiatrist? they said. If she left here she’d have to go home to Burton-on-Trent and live with her mum and dad, who never spoke to each other, and who made it clear that she was a big disappointment, and asked why she hadn’t gone to work for Marks & Spencer. They only take quite wholesome people; Mum and Dad didn’t seem to realise that.
On the night of old Mrs. Sidney’s discharge, Poor Mrs. Wilmot gave in her notice. She would be sadly missed, the nurses told her, by staff and patients alike. A willing, stooped, humble body, with her heart in the right place; the cleaners were being privatised, and they would not look upon her like again.
She went down Eugene Terrace, to Crisp’s house. He and Sholto were eating sausage rolls together. “If you want a revenge for Effie,” she said, “you can get on with it now.”
Crisp said the hospital had killed Effie, that she’d got pneumonia and they’d let her die; seeing that she was old, and mad, and not worth the antibiotics. In fact she had been far gone when the ambulance brought her in, frozen and raving. But they had to amuse themselves. Crisp was trying to get into trouble by hanging around with juveniles. As for Sholto, he said he was sick to death of the soup at the night shelter. They were both scheming to be sent back to Fulmers Moor. It didn’t matter to her, because her scheme was one she had to carry out alone; she didn’t need their help, or anybody’s.
Mother had not materialised; but often, as she polished the scratched dining table at Buckingham Avenue, Muriel thought she felt her hanging in the air. She wanted her and didn’t want her, that was the trouble. She couldn’t explain that to Crisp and Sholto. She said goodbye to them and went downstairs. It was ten o’clock when she got out into the street, and the Mukerjees were closing up the shop. A plump Asian gentleman was drawing away from the kerb in his big car. He drove slowly behind Lizzie Blank as she minced along to the corner. He put down his electric window, leaned out, and made her an offer. She stopped dead, staring at him. As if he had not made his meaning clear, he held up a fat paper packet and jingled it. “Ten pounds in five pees, all yours,” he told her. He smiled encouragingly, showing a gold tooth. They were heading for the wasteland; there were no street lights now. Just his white cuffs gleamed in the darkness, and his gold ring and his gold tooth. “Name your price,” he told her. Her heart began to thud. She felt a desperate strangling rage rise up inside her. When the box breaks, the baby will fall, out comes Little Muriel, teeth bones and all. She raised her fists at the man in the car, and a great hoarse bellow rose out of her chest and echoed back down the dark caverns of the Punjab. Sweat starting out on his face, the man put his foot on the accelerator and roared away into the night.
When the ambulance drew up outside Florence’s house, all the family except Alistair were waiting in the front garden. Colin’s face was drawn with apprehension, but his wife and sister looked like women who knew exactly what to expect. The two little girls, who had been briefed about their grandmother’s misapprehensions, were giggling and practising their curtseys; Claire had insisted on wearing her Brownie uniform. Suzanne lurked in the
