things would pick the flesh off your bones. Where did it go to, that flesh? It isn’t dead. It must be somewhere.”
“You murdered that poor old bugger at the hospital.”
“It wasn’t murder. It was an execution. He didn’t do well by me, Sholto. I could have been a married wife by now. He did it all without a by-your-leave. He never gave me a bouquet. Single red roses, that’s what you give a girl.”
“Now you’re driving that Polack mad; or whatever he is.”
“I don’t drive. They go by themselves. He says there are men on the streets with poisoned umbrellas. He says there are countries where women walk round with black curtains over their heads. And that there’s a man called Castro, and they sent him exploding cigars. He says they have factories where they make diseases.” She blinked. “I never told him any of that.”
Sholto glowered at her, out of his little rat’s face. “When I met you, Muriel, I asked you if you was mad, or stupid. You said you was both. It took us in.”
“I’m all gone to nothing.” She hit her fist against her ribs, bending over as if to muffle the hollow sound. “Those ghosties have sucked the life out of me. Mother set them on. I’ve stopped expecting her. I think they’ve sucked her up too. Now there’s only the changeling left.”
“What you are is wicked,” Sholto said.
Behind her thick glasses, Muriel blinked again.
“Do you know,” said Sylvia, as she poured her muesli, “that in the past two years, according to a recent opinion poll, one in four of the population visited a canal?”
“Really?” Colin yawned. “Any particular population? It can’t be Venice, I suppose.”
“You know what I mean. In England and Wales. In fact, twenty-seven per cent. That’s more than one in four.”
“Stranger than fiction,” Colin said.
“Now of these people, seventy-one per cent went for a walk. Eight per cent went fishing. Seven per cent hired a boat.”
“That still leaves a number unaccounted for. What were they doing?”
“One per cent went swimming,” Sylvia offered.
“I wouldn’t fancy that in our canal.”
“Exactly the point,” Sylvia said. “We’re going to have a community canal clean-up.”
Colin looked at her warily over the top of the newspaper, and sank down a little in his chair. He thought that his mother had tired her out, but she seemed to be getting a second wind. He heard her speak of sponsorship and job creation and government schemes, and how the probation service would bring along strong young recidivists, and the Sea Scouts and the Brownies would pick up the litter from the banks. He ducked his head well below the holidays page. Exclusive villa parties, he read, wind-surfing, houseparties on the water’s edge. Barbados, Crete, the Algarve. Love Nest for Two by Sardinia’s Sandy Beaches. Cheap flights. Cheap flights, free escapes. Cheap flights without leaving Coketown.
“Of course they are,” Sylvia agreed. “But this stretch should have been done two years ago. It was scheduled. I’ve got to get on to the Inland Waterways Board. Of course, it’s Francis’s idea really, but he’s got a lot on at the moment. There’s this man picketing the church.”
“Good God,” Colin said. “Is he violent?”
“No, not so far, he’s just a nuisance, but he does make threatening motions with his banner. He tries to stop people going in to Francis’s services. You know when we had that Christians Against Rate-Capping meeting? He stood outside howling abuse. If it goes on Francis will have to get the police in, and that’s against his principles.”
“Yes, I see the problem.” A November morning pressed its cold grey face against the kitchen window. No wonder he often felt that someone was looking over his shoulder. “Oh, well. It’s not as bad as any of ours.”
But Sylvia did not want to talk about the family. She did not mean to be deflected. Sylvia made progress; it was only his mind that went round and round endlessly, revolving the same problems. Isabel: my God, how miserable she must be. How frustrated, how agonised inside. Had he not some responsibility there? Supposing he had left his family all those years ago, would Isabel be different now? What if? And what if?
I could do with being two people really, he thought; people who could live quite alternative lives, and meet up from time to time to compare notes. I am incapable of a decision, and always have been; I wait for circumstances to make my decisions for me, and just as I pray for resolution, so I dread it. Act, and you might as well be dead. Action is the great abortionist. It wipes out freedom. It terminates desire.
“And then there was the chromium-plating plant,” Sylvia was saying, “pumping out acids year after year. And the dye works. I can remember a time when there were weeds on the canal, but now there’s just an inch of scum on the surface and that awful smell of rotten eggs. Francis says that there’s no oxygen in it at all. The water doesn’t move, and there’s a couple of feet of poisonous mud at the bottom. The walls are collapsing in. It could be damaging our health. He says there could be literally anything at the bottom of that canal.”
Since Dr. Rudge’s visit, Mrs. Sidney had sunk into a twilit world, sleeping for twenty hours of the twenty-four, surfacing only occasionally to ask for the Lord Chamberlain. It was much more peaceful, but unfortunately—and perhaps because of her new sedatives—she had become doubly incontinent. Florence had rung the hospital, but they said that, with Christmas coming up, and the long-range weather forecast being what it was, they could hardly think of taking her in before next May. Since then, disaster had struck.
It had made the national news: FIRE HAS BROKEN OUT AT A GERI ATRIC HOSPITAL IN THE MIDLANDS, TRAPPING STAFF AND PATIENTS IN A FIRST-FLOOR WARD. FIREMEN WHO EVACUATED VICTIMS FROM THE FORMER WORKHOUSE SAID THAT ESCAPE ROUTES WERE GROSSLY INADEQUATE. A PUBLIC INQUIRY HAS BEEN CALLED FOR.
When Florence heard, she went upstairs to her mother’s room. She stood by the bed with her arms folded, watching the withered eyelids flutter in drugged sleep. “That could have been you,” she whispered.
