Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“That’s too deep for me, Laf. You’d better ask the pastor. D’you want another coffee?”

But Laf didn’t. He sat in the sun, thinking that if what he’d outlined to Sonovia was wrong for the person who got killed and all their friends and family, it would be just as wrong if the killer had meant it. But it wouldn’t be wrong for the person who did the killing, they wouldn’t have committed murder like the Commandment said thou shalt not, they’d be innocent as a lamb; they’d have nothing on their conscience and perhaps they’d be proud to have been Hitler’s or the devil’s assassin.

Laf, who was a deeply religious man and an Evangelical, asked himself if they’d go to heaven. He would ask the pastor. And he was pretty sure he’d say that since it was God who had made them mad He ought to let them inside the gates of paradise. He looked back at the garden. Those pale pink geraniums were a lovely color. It was a great thing to be a happy man, to sit under his vine and his fig tree, as the Bible said, under his may tree and his lilac really, with a good wife and his quiverful of children.

Sonovia had gone into the house to phone Corinne. In the afternoon they were going to the Dome, taking their granddaughter with them. He’d wait until a quarter past one, by that time they’d have had their lunch, and then he’d take the papers in to Minty. Maybe she’d like to come with them. Mending the rift between Minty and Sonovia had been the most worthwhile thing he’d done for a long time, Laf thought. His wife was a good woman, if a shade quick-tempered. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Minty wasn’t surprised to be haunted by old Mrs. Lewis, she’d expected it. She couldn’t see her and she hoped she never would, but her voice came as often as the other voices. At any rate it proved she was dead and Jock’s words she’d heard whispered in the night were true. The living didn’t come back and speak to you, they were here already.

She knew the new voice was Mrs. Lewis’s because Auntie told her. Auntie didn’t introduce her, she didn’t bother to, which Minty thought rather rude. She just called her Mrs. Lewis. It was quite a shock. Minty had been ironing at the time, not at Immacue like now, but at home in her own kitchen, when Auntie had started talking to her. She didn’t say a word about the flowers Minty had put on her grave the day before-and they’d cost a lot, over ten pounds-but started criticizing her ironing, saying the washing was too dry, the creases would never come out. And then she’d asked Mrs. Lewis for her opinion. “What do you think, Mrs. Lewis?” she’d said.

The new voice was gruff and deeper than Auntie’s, and it had a funny accent. Must be West Country. “She wants one of them sprays,” it said. “They’ve got a lot of it at the dry cleaners where she works. She could borrow one of them.”

They knew everything, the dead. They could see into everything, which made it funnier, really, that they couldn’t hear what you said to them. Mrs. Lewis had lived in Gloucester, which was hundreds of miles away, while she was alive and she’d never have known about Immacue and Minty working there, but she knew now because she was dead and secrets were revealed to her. The two of them were talking to each other while she went on ironing, chattering away about washing powders and stain removers. Minty tried to ignore them. She couldn’t understand why Mrs. Lewis had come to haunt her. Maybe the old woman had died when she’d heard her son Jock was dead, given way under the shock. She needn’t suppose Minty was going to tend her grave, wherever it was. It was bad enough with Auntie’s, not to mention the expense.

The ironing was done, everything folded and laid in the laundry basket on a clean sheet. Minty picked it up.

“You don’t need to use that basket,” Auntie said. “That’s not a very big pile. You could carry it, it’d be easier.”

“Go away,” said Minty. “It’s nothing to do with you and I’m not putting any more flowers on your grave. I can’t afford it.”

“You can understand her feelings,” said old Mrs. Lewis. “That son of mine got all her money off her. Mind you, he’d have given it back if he hadn’t met his end in that train crash. Every penny he’d have restored to her.”

“If you want to tell me things,” Minty shouted, “you can tell me to my face, not tell her. And it’s down to you to give me my money back.”

But Mrs. Lewis never did talk to her. She talked to Auntie. By a miracle Auntie had got her hearing back and Mrs. Lewis had been talking to her this morning while Minty was ironing for Immacue customers. They could get anywhere, these ghosts. Auntie said she was looking pale, been picking at her food no doubt, but Mrs. Lewis intervened then and said her Jock had made Minty eat, he was a trencherman himself and he liked a girl to be a hearty eater.

“Go away, go away,” Minty whispered, but not quietly enough, for Josephine came out, wanting to know if she’d been talking to her.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, I thought you did. Have you seen the papers this morning? There’s a woman was the wife of that murdered bloke who’s gone and married someone else.”

“I never see the papers till I get home. Why shouldn’t she if he’s dead?”

“He wasn’t dead when she did it,” said Josephine. “And what d’you think, her and this MP got married on the same day as me and Ken. Look, I’ve got the Mirror here. D’you like her outfit? Jeans can be too tight, I don’t care what anyone says. And her hair’s all over the place. That’s some guy she was with, it doesn’t say who he is, not the husband, and that’s her little boy, sobbing his heart out, poor mite.”

“It’s wicked to murder people,” Minty said. “Look at the trouble it causes.” She finished the last shirt and went home.

She’d only been in five minutes when Laf came round with the papers. He wanted her to go to the Dome with him and Sonovia and Daniel’s little girl, but Minty said no, thanks, not this time, she’d got too much to do at home. She’d have to have a bath, she couldn’t go out again dirty, and they were off in ten minutes. Besides, there were the papers to read and the dusting to do and the floors to vacuum.

“Not in the afternoon,” said Auntie the moment Laf was gone. “A good housewife gets her work done first thing in the morning. The afternoon’s for sitting down and catching up on the sewing.”

Mrs. Lewis had to put her oar in. “She’ll say she’s got her job. You wouldn’t want her cleaning the place on a Sunday, I’m sure. Sundays are a day of rest or should be. There was some in my day as would get up at the crack of dawn and get the dusting and hoovering done before they went to work, but not anymore.”

“Go away,” said Minty. “I hate you.”

For some reason she thought they wouldn’t follow her out of doors and she was right. Maybe it was too bright for them or too hot or something. Ghosts faded away in sunshine, she’d heard that somewhere. She got out the mower and cut the little lawn, then the long-handled shears to do the edges. Mr. Kroot’s sister came out into the garden next door, dropping lumps of bread with green mold on it to feed the birds. Minty wanted to say it wouldn’t be birds that would come but rats, only she didn’t because she and Auntie had sworn never to speak to Mr. Kroot or the sister or anyone to do with them again.

Auntie spoke to her at last, the minute she came into the kitchen. “I’d have had a bone to pick with you if you’d said a word to Gertrude Pierce.”

That was her name. The dead knew everything. Minty remembered it now, though she hadn’t heard it for a good ten years. She didn’t answer Auntie. The two of them went on muttering somewhere in the background. She’d just have to put up with it until they got tired and went back to wherever they came from. They wouldn’t like her vacuuming, the noise would drown out their voices. Let them grumble all they liked. At least she couldn’t see them.

She always did the dusting first. While Auntie was alive she’d had a lot of opposition from her over that. Auntie vacuumed first, but Minty maintained that if you dusted afterward all the dust went on to the clean carpet and if you were thorough you’d have to vacuum it all over again.

Sure enough, Auntie started as soon as Minty took the clean yellow duster out of the kitchen drawer. “I hope you’re not going to use that before you’ve done the floor. I don’t know how many times I’ve told her, Mrs. Lewis. It goes in one ear and out the other.”

“Might as well talk to a brick wall,” said Mrs. Lewis, for by this time Minty had begun moving all the ornaments on the little table and spraying the surface with liquid wax. “That stuff she’s using just swallows up the dirt and leaves a nasty deposit.”

“My very words. I’d like a five-pound note for every time I’ve said that.”

“It’s not true,” Minty shouted, moving on to the sideboard. “Not if you keep the place clean like I do. And it’s