The Keeper of Stories, page 4
The second sin is that she calls Janice, “Mrs P”. Janice cannot recall ever allowing this – but she also knows she would never have found the words to object. And now it is far too late. Janice may think what she likes of Mrs YeahYeahYeah in her head, but she knows she is far too timid to say anything even approaching these things to her face.
Because of all this, Mrs YeahYeahYeah does not have a story. On a point of principle, Janice will take no more interest in her than is strictly necessary and she certainly will not allow her into the precious library in her head. She does allow her one “incident”, which falls far short of a story, but for her, sums up Mrs YeahYeahYeah.
A group of fundraisers from a children’s charity were at the house where Mrs YeahYeahYeah had organised a team-building session. The exercise involved imagining they were all in a rowing boat cast adrift on the sea. On various bits of paper were descriptions of imaginary people who were in the boat with them. These varied from philanthropists, campaigners for children’s rights, a number of different children, and some less savoury characters, such as politicians and journalists. The aim of the session was to decide – since the boat was sinking – who, including the staff and Mrs YeahYeahYeah, should stay and who should be thrown out.
No one seemed to want to start, until a small, dark-haired girl from the children’s charity tentatively suggested that to make the discussion easier shouldn’t they at least rule the children out and just think about which adults might have to be sacrificed. Mrs YeahYeahYeah immediately objected and leapt in with, “Why? Do you think my life is worth less than a child’s life?” And so it went on. By the end of the session, Mrs YeahYeahYeah had thrown a number of people overboard including an imaginary child with cystic fibrosis. “Well they probably weren’t going to live long anyway.”
Janice was pleased to hear the small, dark-haired girl throw herself in after the child. But Mrs YeahYeahYeah was not amused. “You can’t do that. You can’t jump out of the boat. No one would really do that in real life.” The girl was adamant and refused to get back in the boat. Janice was not sure whether this was because she would have jumped out of any boat that had Mrs YeahYeahYeah in it or because she genuinely believed a person would sacrifice themselves for a child. She liked to think it was the latter and gave her extra chocolate biscuits when she was called in to circulate with more coffee.
Today, Mrs YeahYeahYeah is hanging around as Janice cleans, which is unusual – in fact, it’s more than unusual; it’s unnerving. It is making her very uneasy. Mrs YeahYeahYeah is chatting generally about her week and about a play she went to see. She is talking to Janice like she might go to a play herself and even be a woman who could drink a cappuccino made from a coffee machine. This is far from normal and as she talks Janice becomes acutely self-conscious, aware of each circle she makes on the wooden floor with the specially designed, long-handled floor duster (with cashmere filaments). She thinks if, like Mike, Mrs YeahYeahYeah actually asks her how her day is, she will pick up her coat and leave.
Instead, eventually Mrs YeahYeahYeah says, “Mrs P, I have a proposition for you.”
For one ridiculous moment she wonders if Mrs YeahYeahYeah and Mr NoNoNotNow are swingers. She sweeps the floor in an exaggerated arc to turn her back on her employer and hide her laughter. Apart from that she says nothing. There is nothing she can think of to say.
Even with her back to her, Janice can tell Mrs YeahYeahYeah is unusually nervous (which, when Janice looks back, should have warned her).
“Mrs P, I know it’s always nice to have a bit more money so I immediately thought about you.”
Janice’s mind is a complete blank. What on earth is she going to ask her to do? What could make her this anxious?
“It’s not going to take much of your time, and we will make sure the pay is good. Arrange the hours to suit you – five or six hours a week should do it. The thing is, my mother-in-law really needs some help. She’s in her nineties and, well, her house…”
Mrs YeahYeahYeah flinches and can’t seem to finish, but then, realising her mistake, quickly recovers. “It’s not really that bad. It is quite full of her things, but I am sure you’ve seen worse and once you get on top of it, of course, it would be much more manageable.”
After a pause, she adds, “It’s attached to one of the colleges and in many ways is very beautiful.”
Janice keeps sweeping very slowly, trying to buy herself time. “I am pretty full at the moment, I’m afraid,” is as much as she can manage.
“But not completely full.” Mrs YeahYeahYeah sees the opportunity and wedges the toe of her alligator pump into the gap.
“Well, I mean, I’m busy every day,” Janice tries.
“You could make it any day you liked, and the money would be good.”
This does give her pause. It looks like Mike is out of work again and she can’t imagine he’s going to stop his trips to the pub.
Mrs YeahYeahYeah hasn’t finished. “The thing is, Mrs P, either she gets some help where she is or we will have to consider a home for her. We don’t want that, but, at ninety-two…”
Great. Now the prospect of being the cause of an old woman being thrown out of her own home into a nursing home smelling of wee and cabbages is to be added to her list of worries.
“Well, I suppose I could visit her. I’m not promising anything though.”
Mrs YeahYeahYeah is no longer listening. “That’s fantastic, Mrs P. I knew I could rely on you. I’ll get you all the details.” She rubs her fingertips over the edge of the counter a couple of times before adding, “You have to remember, she’s a very old lady, and I’m sure you understand what they can be like. But I know nothing will faze you. You are always so calm and steady.”
Janice barely takes this last part in, as suddenly, there, sitting at her feet, is the reason she keeps coming to clean for Mrs YeahYeahYeah. The source of her happy anticipation. A small, untidy fox terrier is sitting there looking up at her. He has an expressive face and sometimes (well, if she’s honest, quite a lot of the time) it is as if he is speaking directly to her. His expression simply says it all. And now she could almost believe he is taking his mistress to task for presuming to know what Janice is like. He glances in Mrs YeahYeahYeah’s direction and in that look Janice hears the unspoken words. “And how the fuck would you know what Janice is like? You never even talk to her!”
Seven
A shaggy dog story
“This is Decius, he’s a fox terrier.”
This was one of the first things that Mrs YeahYeahYeah had said to her. Quickly followed by, “I hope you like dogs we’d like you to walk him.”
Not, “We hope you like dogs.” Pause, “We’d like you to walk him.” Or even, “Would you possibly mind walking him?” Like her yeahyeahyeahs, she ran it all in together in her eagerness to get the words out and the mutt off her hands.
All Janice had been able to say was, “Decius?”
“Yes, he’s named after a Roman emperor.”
And that’s when she first noticed it. She looked at Decius. He looked at her and his expression said, as surely as if he had barked it out loud, “Don’t say a word. Not a fucking word.” She didn’t blame him, but after all this time it still amazes her how much he swears. For a fox terrier.
She has known Decius now for four years and she is not afraid to admit (to herself at least) that she loves him. She loves the feel of his fuzzy, wiry face between her hands; she likes the way he walks like a ballerina about to go on pointe. She adores the way he bounces like there is a string somewhere around his middle and she knows she is happiest when walking Decius across the fields and meadows around Cambridge. She is thinking of starting a section within her library for animal stories, just so she can include Decius.
She did once try out “Decy” on him, as Decius seemed such a formal name. And it is she, not Mrs YeahYeahYeah or Mr NoNoNotNow, who has to stand in the fields shouting his name out loud. However he gave her a look from under his shaggy brows that silently but eloquently said, “Please. Just don’t.” As he walked away, kicking up mud furiously with his back paws, she could almost believe he muttered, “For fuck’s sake.”
To start with, Janice walked Decius when she went over for the cleaning or to help with the refreshments for some charitable event – roughly twice a week. But it wasn’t enough, for either of them. So Janice had volunteered to come more often as a dog walker, and Mrs YeahYeahYeah had jumped at it. So on other days she fits in his walks around her cleaning jobs and at the weekend often drives over in the car. When Mrs YeahYeahYeah first saw her pull into the drive she had exclaimed, “Oh you drive!” As if (as Janice told Decius later) she had found a performing monkey behind the wheel. They had been sitting on a bench in the woods sharing some cooked chicken bits. Decius is meant to be vegan (even though neither Mrs YeahYeahYeah nor Mr NoNoNotNow embraces this food choice for themselves) and she thinks one of the reasons he loves her (and this is a two-way thing) is that she brings him food he actually wants to eat. She recalls he had looked up at her enquiringly and she had felt the need to explain to Decius, why, if she can drive, she doesn’t come over in the car on other days – especially when it is weather you wouldn’t send, well, a dog out in. She admitted to him that it was complicated.
She and Mike own one car – an old VW estate. He has always claimed this for his journeys to work. It occurs to her now that maybe that might change since he is going to be unemployed but somehow she doubts it.
“You don’t want to take the car in, Jan, it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth. Parking’s a nightmare in the city.”
This is true, although it is also true that most of her employers have parking for visitors or drives. She has pointed this out in the past.
“Whatever you say, but I think you’ll find I’m right.” He had beamed good-naturedly at her. “I tell you what, I can give you a lift in and out when I’m going.”
She had been foolish enough to think this might indeed work. He had parking through the college where he was working as a porter and sharing a car could help her with her worry about her carbon footprint. But it never seemed he was going in when she was. And when she turned up at the college knowing his shift had nearly ended, hoping for a lift home, he was often inexplicably missing. It became too much to face the looks from the other staff who were clearly getting increasingly annoyed with her husband and his erratic timekeeping.
She thinks back to that day in the woods, Decius sitting on the bench beside her, his head in her lap. She had put her face close to his fur for comfort, because she’d realised that the car problem just led her to think about another problem: she has very few friends. Cambridge, it turns out, is quite a small city when you go through as many jobs as Mike has done. It amazes Janice that he doesn’t turn away when he meets old colleagues and business acquaintances. She genuinely believes the man has no shame and in his mind he has emerged somehow the victor from these associations. So she carries the shame for both of them, and she finds the weight of it pulls her whole body down so she can no longer look people in the eye – some of whom she would have liked to know better. She recalls the relief she felt on meeting a friend of Geordie Bowman’s, who was there to deliver some silver wine coolers. She knew he knew Mike but he had no idea she was married to him. When his name came up in passing he had laughed out loud (which Janice thought was very forgiving when she recalled the run-around Mike had given him). He had snorted and exclaimed, “The man’s delusional! Completely and utterly delusional.” He had then gone back to arranging the coolers in the old bread oven that Geordie stored his wine in and she had gone back to removing the rust from the oven door with her sander. However it was with a lighter heart. It was good to know that other people got it and that it could be said out loud. It made her feel less alone.
For now, she is alone with Decius in the kitchen (which is never really alone) and her work is nearly done. After their “chat”, Mrs YeahYeahYeah had scribbled her mother-in-law’s details down as fast as her Mont Blanc could manage and left to go shopping. Janice unclips Decius’s lead from the hook in the boot room and unlocks the back door. She has decided she is going to take Decius for a walk across the fields over to where Fiona lives. She has been worrying about her. She is not due to clean for her until next Monday but she hopes she won’t mind her calling in a few days early as she has a present for her.
The house is dark and there is no sign of life when she rings the doorbell. She debates trying to post her present through the letterbox, but it is very small and might easily get trampled underfoot. So, after knocking and ringing a further time, she uses her key to let herself in. She is sure Fiona will not mind and she thinks her gift will make her smile when she next looks into her doll’s house. She wipes Decius’s feet carefully with the cloth she keeps in her coat pocket and holds him on a tight lead close to her side as she heads up to the attic. It is one thing her popping in for two minutes to drop off a gift, another thing to let a stranger’s dog explore Fiona’s house.
When she opens the doll’s house door she sees that Fiona has been busy. A whole range of electrics has been added and in a few of the rooms tiny standard and table lamps have been carefully positioned. She spots the switch unit on the table to the right of the doll’s house and cannot resist turning it on. The spark and “crack” from somewhere in the house make her jump, and in dismay she pulls the door open wider to see what has happened. It doesn’t take her long to find the issue: two wires have crossed and the ensuing spark has split them apart and broken the circuit. One wire she thinks she can twist together, the other wire she thinks may need soldering. She knows Fiona’s son, Adam, keeps a soldering iron in his bedroom, which he uses to work on his mini robotic figures, but going into a twelve-year-old boy’s bedroom and rummaging about is very definitely breaking her rules of cleaning.
She is so immersed in working out if she can mend the wires without a soldering iron it is a while before she hears the voice from below. She looks down at the side of her chair and Decius is missing and the attic door is standing slightly ajar. She springs out of the chair, her face already burning at the thought of the forthcoming explanation. She finds Decius one floor down, sitting beside Adam who has knelt down to talk to him. Decius has his paws on the boy’s thighs and is nuzzling his nose into Adam’s hand.
“Adam, I’m so sorry. I had no idea anyone was in. I just wanted to drop something off for your mum.”
Adam is completely unfazed by her sudden appearance (she presumes he is used to a stream of people coming and going through this house with little reference to him). It seems she falls into this category. He is much more interested in Decius.
“This your dog?”
She is tempted to say, “Yes.” In fact, “Hell, yes!” comes to mind, but instead she tells the truth. “I’m just his dog walker.”
At this, Decius turns to look at her, and she thinks he appears rather hurt. Before she can think what to add, Adam continues. “He’s kind of weird-looking and he seems to walk on tip-toes. Is that normal?”
She sends a silent prayer to Decius to stop him swearing but it seems he likes Adam and climbs up higher on his lap. She knows what comes next: he will soon be lounging on Adam. This is exactly what happens and the boy laughs and, in that moment, Janice thinks her heart is going to break. She steadies herself by sitting beside them on the floor. “He’s a fox terrier and I believe that is a sign of good breeding.”
“Blimey, looks a bit dorkish to me.”
Janice daren’t catch Decius’s eye.
But Adam saves the moment by adding, “He’s kinda cool though, isn’t he.” It’s a statement not a question and Decius looks at her as if to say, “Told you.” Then it occurs to her that Decius would never swear in front of a child, and for all his long limbs and large feet Adam is still very much a boy. The neck emerging from his hoody is long and skinny, and though his hair is big and floppy, his face is small and still spot-free. In fact, he has a beautiful peaches-and-cream complexion. He has also given himself away by the use of “blimey” and “cool”. Adam is still happy to use the mild exclamations that his mother (who looks like a vicar) would use.
“Did they get your braces sorted?” she asks.
“Oh, them,” he says, flicking his tongue unconsciously over his teeth, but offering nothing else.
This reminds her of previous conversations with Adam, responses that lead nowhere until they move around each other in an awkward silence. Then she thinks of the laugh and tells herself to just try harder.
“Do you have a soldering iron?”
He looks up from Decius in surprise. “Yep?”
“Can I borrow it?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
He gets up reluctantly, holding on to Decius’s warm body until the last moment when he has to tip him on the floor. “I’ll get it.” He half turns and then looks a little anxiously at her. “Will he stay there? He won’t go away?”
Oh, such a boy. And again her heart aches. This time for Adam and she thinks a little for Simon and for herself too. She keeps her tone cheerful. “I think he wants to come with you.”
Adam flashes her a grin and Decius glances back as if to say, “A smelly boy’s bedroom? Are you kidding? Of course I’m going in.”
She leaves them together in Adam’s room and goes up to mend the wiring in the doll’s house. It doesn’t take her long. Once she has returned everything to its rightful place she reaches in her bag for the tiny present she has brought Fiona. It is a miniature, pretend birthday cake. Of course, she couldn’t fit forty-five candles on it, but she thinks Fiona will get the idea when she opens up the house – as she hopes she will do tomorrow – and finds it on the kitchen table. Before she closes the doll’s house door she catches sight of the new miniature coffin propped up in Jebediah Jury’s workroom. A familiar feeling of disquiet creeps over her. She knows (better than anyone) she is only the cleaner. This has nothing to do with her. She can’t pretend to know how the family are really coping without John: Adam’s father and Fiona’s husband. But unease settles in her like mist in a hollow.
