Mr Toppit (16 page)

Martha looked desperate. “We wanted to be alone, didn’t we, baby? We thought it was best if it was just us.”

Just then there was a bang from the kitchen and a little cry of pain. Laurie clattered through the hall and appeared in the doorway, sucking the side of her hand. “Your ovens are so hot here, I fried my hand,” she said. “Don’t hold out too much hope for my salted almonds.”

Lila turned slowly to see who it was, then back to Martha questioningly.

“This is Laurie Clow,” Martha said.

Laurie came in front of the sofa and shook Lila’s hand.

There was a pause. Lila said, “And you are …?”

“I’m Laurie.”

“Laurie’s from America,” I said helpfully.

“You are staying here?”

“Yes. Everyone’s been so kind,” Laurie said.

“You are helping in the house? In the kitchen?”

“I’m doing Mexican for after the funeral.”

“Mexican?”

“Well, kind of Tex-Mex.”

Lila turned to Martha. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Martha cleared her throat. “Laurie was with Arthur when he had the accident.”

Lila put her hand over her mouth in shock. “You are a friend of Arthur’s?”

Martha laid a hand on Lila’s arm and said, “Laurie had just arrived in London. She was walking down the street when the accident happened.”

Lila seemed relieved. “So you’re not a friend of the family?”

“They’ve all been so kind,” Laurie said again.

“But you
are
staying here?” Lila turned to Martha. “I thought you wanted to be alone.”

Martha had had enough. “Lila, Laurie’s been good enough to help us for the last few days. We’re very grateful to her.”

Laurie’s face broke into a smile. “Oh, so you’re Lila,” she said. “I love your little drawings. They really add some fizz to Mr. Hayman’s books.” Lila’s mouth fell open, but before she could say anything, Laurie sat down next to her on the sofa. “Oh, and I love how you do your hair, too,” she said. She touched the hairnet. “Those beads are so pretty.”

Lila’s reaction was so extreme it was as if a bat had got tangled in her hair. She gave a little scream and shook her head wildly. Laurie’s hand flew back. Lila put hers up as if to erect an invisible barrier between her and Laurie. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m very sensitive.”

There was silence. The three women, Martha, Lila, and Laurie, sat staring out from the sofa as if posing for a rather formal photograph. Then Lila straightened her back and elaborately patted her hair. She turned her head away from Laurie, put her lips to Martha’s ear and said in a conspiratorial but audible whisper,
“Amerikaner sind doch so bizarr
. What would Uncle Heinrich say?” Then she gave a tinkling laugh, which might have been girlish except that something seemed to have been lost in the translation.

After Laurie had left the room it took some time to negotiate Lila’s departure.

“Oh, Lila, it’s chaos here. You must get back,” Martha said.

Lila gave a throaty chuckle. “Chaos is what I do best, Martha, you know that. Remember what I did with your bank
statements? You must rest.” She patted her bag. “I have brought my things,” she said. “I will be most happy in my usual room. Not to worry if the sheets aren’t fresh. There’s so much to do for tomorrow.”

“It’s all organized. Laurie’s doing the food,” Martha said.

“Martha,” she said, in an attempt at lightness, “I’m not sure that Mexican food is entirely appropriate at a funeral. Arthur was not a
caballero
—is that the word?” She gave a little laugh.

“I think it sounds fun,” I said.

“Fun?” Lila said doubtfully. “Well, you know me, Luke. I’m not very up-to-the-minute.” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “And how long is Miss Clow staying, Martha? It is Miss Clow, isn’t it? I can’t imagine there could be a Mr. Clow.”

“Laurie’s been wonderful, Lila,” Martha said sharply. “She came to England for a week and all she’s done is be stuck with us.”

“A week? How do people think they can see this country in a week? Americans—so restless, always moving on.”

“You’re right. I should have a sleep,” Martha said. “You were so kind to come, Lila.”

“Let me
help,”
she implored.

“No, Lila, you always do so much. You should keep off your feet.” Lila had trouble with her hip. “Anyway, we’ll need your help tomorrow.”

“I have a little surprise for tomorrow.”

Martha looked anxious. “What?”

Lila gave a shy smile. “I think you will be pleased. I know Arthur would be. My dear, let me stay. I will do supper for everyone tonight. Something simple like scrambled eggs. Unless your Miss Clow has prepared some exotic dish from one of the countries she has visited in such depth.”

Martha got up. “Lila, you must go. Baby, will you call a taxi?”

“A taxi? I could not possibly afford a taxi. I shall take the bus. There’s a seat at the stop. I have my hat.”

Martha was by the door. She made a last preemptive strike : “Baby, call a taxi now. On our account. This minute.” She blew Lila a kiss, and fled. I could hear her feet rattling up the stairs.

Outside it was drizzling. Lila and I waited in the porch for the taxi to come. She was leaning on her stick. Her hat was back on, and she was clutching her bag.

“Your mother is a saint. I worry sometimes. She has so much on her plate now. You must take some of her burdens, Luke. You are the man of the family now. She will need a lot of help. Thank God she has friends. Good friends. We will rally round, all of us.”

The taxi was coming up the drive. There was a strange expression on Lila’s face. She grasped my arm. “Luke, you must be careful.” She was surprisingly strong. Her fingers were digging into me. “That woman is a swashbuckler.”

“A what?”

“You know nothing about her, where she comes from, what she is.”

“Lila, she was with Arthur when he was run over.”

“That’s what she says. That’s her story. You must not leave her alone. You have so many beautiful things in the house.”

“I don’t think she’s going to steal anything.”

“Luke, you have no idea what people are like. One thing I know is danger. I have lived with it.”

That I didn’t doubt. Her parents, her brother Thomas, who was studying to be a doctor, and her grandparents had died in a
concentration camp. Her brother had looked just like her. I had seen their pictures in her other Big Book—the BBL, The Big Book of Löwenstein.

Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “You won’t let me help you. You have that woman now. I expect she is sleeping in my bed. Oh, Luke, you know how much I love you all.” She gazed up at the sky. “Arthur was everything to me. Everything. I don’t know what I shall do. The next book was going to reveal so much. Mr. Toppit? We’ll never know. So sad.”

I didn’t sleep well. As soon as I got up I had a bath. I shaved, which wasn’t really necessary, then rubbed Rachel’s deodorant under my arms and also put a bit round my crotch, which probably wasn’t necessary either. It just didn’t seem to be a day to take chances.

Downstairs, the hall was being rearranged so there would be room for people to come back to the house after the funeral. Doreen had come in early to help with the flowers. She had been with us forever and Martha spent a great deal of time complaining about her.

Jack, her son, who was a year older than me, was moving chairs against the wall so there would be more space in the center of the hall. He glanced at me when I came in, then looked awkwardly away. As a little boy he had had a thin, feral face. He had filled out and put on some weight. He used to remind me of a rat; now he resembled a hamster storing food in his cheeks. When we were small, Doreen had always brought him with her to the house and we had to play together. The truth was that we had never liked each other much.

“Hello, Jack,” I said.

He mumbled something. It might have been “Sorry about your dad.” His eyes were on the floor.

“Do you want a hand with the chairs?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Got your dad’s book out last night, the one he wrote in,” he said, and nodded a couple of times to confirm it.

I nodded back. “Good,” I said, for want of anything better. He had a little walk-on part in the first book as Luke’s friend Jack—another of the many inaccuracies in
The Hayseed Chronicles
—from whom Luke steals a bicycle to chase Mr. Toppit. Arthur had signed a copy for him.

Martha was in the sitting room. She seemed smaller than usual, or maybe the room appeared bigger, and rather forlorn. She was smoking a cigarette in the corner by the window and her hand was trembling. She wasn’t in black: she wore a gray dress that might have been silk—it had a sort of sheen. She adjusted my tie, and got the collar of my shirt to turn down properly. In the harsh sunlight, her skin was dry and papery.

She looked me up and down. “Everybody looks better in a suit.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She sniffed. “Are you wearing scent?”

I blushed. “Of course not.”

“Tell Doreen you like her flowers. They’re hideous.”

In the kitchen, Doreen was helping Laurie organize the food. Laurie had already made the connection between sparky little Jack from the first book and the lumpy adolescent carting furniture in the hall. “You must be proud of him being in the books,” she said.

“He’s a good lad,” Doreen said. “No trouble. Mr. Hayman was always kind to him. Gave him a signed copy.”

“He should look after it,” Laurie said.

Doreen gave a grim laugh. “Worth a bit now, I should think, with Mr. Hayman having passed away.”

“Oh, no—he mustn’t let it go! It’s like a little nugget of history.” Laurie sounded horrified.

“You want cling-film over the green stuff?”

“Guacamole. It’s avocados.”

“Not too partial to them myself. It’s the texture,” said Doreen, grumpily.

I went into the garden. It had rained in the night, but now the sun was out. It was probably the kind of day you wanted for a funeral. I could see Rachel sitting on the swing. That was a surprise: she never got up early.

“I feel so much better,” she said unexpectedly. “I feel Arthur’s like a bird and I’ve been able to release him.” She made a flying gesture with her hands. Her eyes were shining. “Laurie told me everything he said to her after the accident.”

“Do you remember when we first met her?” I asked. “Did she say anything about having talked to Arthur?”

“I think I’ve blotted everything out about that day.”

I tried to keep my tone neutral. “So, what exactly did she say?”

“Did you know she worked in a hospital? Oh, he wasn’t in any pain, that’s the main thing. She said how proud he was of us.” She sniffed, but she didn’t look unhappy. “She told me that’s how she got interested in the books, because he was telling her about Mr. Toppit. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that so like Arthur? Run over by a truck and still talking about
Hayseed.”
She was laughing through her tears. At least she had stopped calling him “Daddy.”

“But he never talked about the books,” I said.

“She said he kept saying our names. Over and over, she said. Isn’t that nice?”

“Nothing else?”

She sighed. “I’m sorry I’ve been so stroppy. I’ve just felt so awful about Arthur. I mean, I still do, but I feel different.” She gave a hiccupy laugh. “Some of it’s even quite funny. Like the hospital mixing up his stuff with some other dead person’s.”

“What did Laurie say about that?”

“She said, ‘Shit happens,’ and that I shouldn’t blame the hospital. She’s right.”

At the bottom of the drive, two big old-fashioned, black cars were turning in slowly from the road and came up to park in front of the house. Both drivers got out, grown-up versions of me: dark suits, white shirts, and black ties, but just so it didn’t get too confusing they were wearing black peaked caps as well. Rachel and I caught each other’s eye: everything was a bit unreal.

It was something of a mystery why there were two cars to drive us to the church in the first place. Even Martha seemed uncertain, and she had been the one who had made the arrangements. I offered to go in one with Laurie, but Rachel thought I should be with her and Martha. Laurie seemed quite happy for us to be in one car and for her to be on her own in the other, but Martha didn’t like the sound of that. I suggested that Martha, as the widow and principal mourner, should go on her own in the first car and the rest of us should follow behind, but nobody went for that either. It was like one of those brainteasers you find on the back of matchboxes: how to utilize both cars without dividing the family unit. In the end, we opted for the simplest solution: we all went in one car, and the other followed empty behind. The car was immaculate. It
was old, but it had been polished to within an inch of its life and it smelled of air freshener inside—there was a dangly deodorant thing hanging off the driver’s mirror. Martha ignored the no-smoking sticker in the corner of the window and lit up as soon as she got in.

The hearse with the coffin inside was already waiting at the church. I thought I was going to be sick when I saw it. Everything was becoming very real. Of course I knew what pallbearers were, I just hadn’t connected them to Arthur’s funeral. I didn’t realize that Martha had had something so formal in mind. There were six to carry Arthur; with a lot of grunting and heaving they eased the coffin out, and then, at a prearranged signal, straightened up and raised it onto their shoulders.

I read somewhere that during a total eclipse of the sun, all the birds and insects and animals stop making any noise. That was what it felt like as we slowly trailed after the coffin up the path: it was as if the whole world had vanished. When the doors opened it was a shock to see the church filled with people—like an unwelcome surprise party.

There was a lot of subdued chattering as we came in, but as soon as the coffin was in view of the congregation, a hush came over the place and all you could hear was our echoing footsteps as we followed it up the aisle, preceded by the vicar. Although she had seemed fine during the walk up to the church, Martha turned and pulled me towards her, taking my arm so that I was walking alongside her. Lila was seated about halfway up the aisle beside Graham Carter. As we passed, she reached out to touch Martha’s arm. Her face wore one of those all-purpose solemn-but-intensely-moved expressions—which transformed itself quite quickly into something else when she saw that Laurie was part of our procession.