The Other Mrs Walker Page 2

  Her mother had been right. The room did need clearing. It was entirely filled with junk. A whole life laid out in front of Margaret, not on a small, stained coffee table this time, but piled up wall to wall. A heater with a broken dial that gave off a burning smell when Margaret tried to turn it on. A clothes horse stripped of all its plastic coating. An iron with a frayed flex. An ancient wardrobe full of ancient clothes. A small brown painting, dirty in more ways than one. And a grubby china cherub, chipped and fractured, one arm severed long before.

  So here it lay. All the junk Margaret had spent thirty years trying to escape. Yet here she was again, too. Forty-seven, soon to be fifty. No children she could point to as an achievement. No grandparents or siblings. Not even any pets. And now she was back in Edinburgh. Land of grey buildings. Land of tall chimneys. Land of secrets that everyone knew but pretended they did not. It wasn’t what she’d planned, aged forty-seven, to be coming home empty-handed apart from a stolen coat and a bottle of rum. But then Margaret wasn’t really sure what she had planned exactly. When she tried to imagine, nothing came to mind.

  Except . . .

  In the clutter of the box room, deep in the dark of an Edinburgh night, Margaret Penny felt something trapped beneath her hip. Squashed. Misshapen. Rather like her. The last of her Christmas clementines, borrowed from a market stall in London as a final reminder of the south.

  Margaret shifted, grasping hold of the small fruit as it rolled free from the pocket of her coat. She raised it towards her mouth in the blackness. Somewhere out in the frozen wastelands of the city a drunk man was dancing, lager sparkling like a constellation in his hair. But here, in the cold and inky pitch of her mother’s box room, Margaret Penny was tasting the sun.

  1929

  He came home and it rolled from his jacket sleeve – a small orange sun appearing like magic out of the dirty tweed.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’ The small girl waiting for him in the corridor of their cold London home jumped up from the bottom stair, clapping her hands together over and over. ‘Give it to me. Give it to me.’

  ‘What’s it worth, lass?’ Alfred Walker held the treasure out of the little girl’s reach, high in the sky of the hall. He was laughing, like he always did, in a way that made everyone want to join in.

  The girl pouted, her tumbling, twirling hair all stuck to her rosy little cheeks. ‘Daddy,’ she said, as though she were forty, not four, hands held flat against her clean Christmas frock. She was looking at him with those startling eyes: first one thing, then another. Difficult to resist.

  ‘Oh, you’re killin’ me.’ Alfred groaned and made as though to stab his chest, a clenched fist hard against his waistcoat buttons.

  ‘Give it to me then,’ the little girl replied.

  From upstairs the beginning of a long moan stretched out to meet them, rising and rising, then falling and falling, then rising again; taking everything in the house with it, from the lids on the pantry jars to the cherub with the missing thumb that decorated the parlour mantelpiece. The child and her father looked at each other, his fist still clenched against his chest, her small hands pressed together now as though in urgent prayer.

  Then Alfred lowered his hand. ‘It won’t be long now,’ he said, sliding the orange back into his jacket pocket, treasure swallowed by the dark.

  In the scullery through the back, Alfred splashed water from the cold tap straight onto his forearms and his wrists. ‘Have you thought of names yet?’ he asked.

  The little girl shook her head.

  He splashed water straight onto his face and his hair. ‘What, can you not think of any?’

  The little girl turned her startling eyes to the floor.

  Alfred pulled back from the thick earthenware sink and shook his head – a wild dog-like shake that sent tiny droplets raining down on every surface. When he looked up the girl was standing in front of him, her dress all speckled, holding out a towel that was all speckled too.

  ‘Thanks, darling.’ Alfred wiped all around his face, his ears, his neck. When he tossed the towel down there was dirt all across its weave. He pulled out a chair and sat. ‘We got your name from the song.’

  The little girl wriggled onto a chair next to him.

  ‘Oh my darling.’ He put out a hand to touch her slippery hair. ‘But if you can’t think of anything we’ll just have to call them after me and your ma.’ Alfred laughed then. That laugh which made everyone want to join in. The girl covered her mouth with her hand. But she was frowning this time.

  Upstairs another moan started on its long journey. Alfred raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘No time to waste,’ he said, getting up from his chair.

  The girl slid off her chair too.

  Alfred went to the doorway and looked out into the hall: nothing but a thin slit of yellow at the top of the stairs. ‘Onwards and upwards,’ he murmured, lacing his fingers together and cracking all the bones.

  ‘Daddy.’

  Four small fingers and a thumb touched the edge of his tweed jacket.

  ‘What is it?’ Alfred’s hand was already on the wooden banister.

  ‘Happy Christmas.’

  ‘Oh aye!’ Alfred stepped back into the hall patting at both his pockets. ‘How could I forget?’ For a moment his eyes danced, then one of his hands vanished into the tweed, appearing again a moment later with a small orange resting in the centre of his palm. ‘Happy Christmas.’

  The girl reached out to touch.

  But Alfred held something else out with his other hand this time. ‘To celebrate the babies when they come,’ he said. ‘Heads for one of each. Tails for neither.’ He laughed as the penny flipped in the air, a slow turn at the apex, both of them watching, before its sudden drop.

  The coin fell with a clink and a clatter, then rolled away, teetering into the darkness. The little girl didn’t scrabble to follow, down on her bare knees amongst the dust. Instead she reached out once more to curl four small fingers and a thumb around the orange, holding on tight this time until Alfred took his hand away.

  The little girl watched as Alfred took the stairs two at a time, right to the top, waiting for him to disappear into the shadows. Then she ate the whole thing before he could come back down. Didn’t wait for it to be peeled or segmented. Or to sit at a table. Instead she tore through the orange flesh with her sharp little teeth, squatting on the bare floorboards, biting and gnawing and sucking until there was sticky juice running all down her chin.

  Clementine. That was what they called her.

  Upstairs it was a boy and a girl. Named for their parents, all smiles now. Mrs Sprat, the midwife (though she wasn’t married now and never would be) moved around the room from one baby to the next, sorting a washbasin here, tidying a bundle of cloths there. ‘What a racket,’ she muttered. But she didn’t mean the newborns, who were as sunny in their first moments as they would be in their last. She wiped her way around the stump of a severed umbilical cord, frowning at the slew of garments strewn about the floor. A good sweep out, that was what this house needed. And some sense drummed into them all. She swabbed around a small penis and two tiny testicles pressed high in their sac. And that husband, choosing to watch! Well, where would it end?

  The first baby wriggled and squirmed in the midwife’s arms, twisting his head as though to find something he had lost. Mrs Sprat held him in hands like two sides of a vice as she wrapped his jerking limbs inside a cotton square. And all that banshee screaming from the wife. Really, it was enough to make you want plugs for your ears. The midwife placed the boy into a waiting basket, tucking a blanket with a bright satin trim all around. She’d have to have a word with the matron about coming to this part of town again.

  In the wide double bed Alfred’s wife, Dorothea, lay back, hair scattered all this way and that. Alfred perched by her side stroking the top of Dorothea’s head over and over. ‘Oh my darling,’ he murmured.

  ‘Pass me my hairbrush, will you.’ Dorothea’s hair was her favourite feature. She brushed it
every morning and every night. And sometimes in between too.

  Alfred reached to the bedside cabinet and handed Dorothea a brush with a handle made of bone. Dorothea began to stroke, slowly, from the very crown of her head right down to the very tips. ‘Are they chirruping?’ she asked.

  Alfred got up from the bed and went to lean over the basket. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘One of them at least.’

  ‘Have they all their necessary digits?’

  ‘Ten fingers. Ten toes. Twice.’ And he laughed.

  ‘Hair?’

  ‘Well, the boy has, that’s for certain.’ Alfred reached down into the basket and held up a tiny bundle for Dorothea to see. The blanket fell. The cotton square came untucked. A miniature pink heel dangled. Alfred scooped it back up, rolling his eyes at where the midwife stood in the corner, her square back turned. Dorothea giggled. Mrs Sprat hunched lower over her task.

  ‘And what about Clemmie?’ Dorothea twirled the hairbrush once in her hand then began from the crown again.

  ‘She’s sucking away on that orange.’

  ‘Did she choose a name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I knew she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Alfred lifted his head away from his new son and looked at his wife.

  ‘Because . . .’ Dorothea was concentrating on the pale ends of her hair now. ‘She doesn’t want them.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Alfred turned back to the basket. ‘She’ll love them.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Dorothea. ‘She told me.’

  ‘Well, she’s stuck with them now, either way.’ Alfred and Dorothea both looked up, startled.

  ‘She speaks,’ said Alfred.

  The midwife’s cheeks reddened as she thrust a second bundle towards him. ‘Here’s the other one.’

  Dorothea put the hairbrush to her lips so the midwife would not see her smile. Then she held out a tiny pair of silver scissors to Alfred. ‘Cut me a piece of them, will you, so that I don’t forget.’

  An hour later Alfred stood in the centre of the bedroom, a small baby balanced on either arm. ‘We shall call them Little Alfie and Little Dottie.’ He looked like a man who had eaten a very satisfactory dinner.

  ‘Dotty, like me,’ said Dorothea, hair spread out across her shoulders like a shawl. Then she laughed. The kind of laugh that made people turn to look, then look away. The midwife, who had returned to the bedroom to pack her bag, did just that.

  Alfred laughed too. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Like two wee chips off two big blocks.’

  ‘Like two peas in a pod, more like.’ They both looked at the midwife again. She was dressed in her cap and her cape now, ready to exit.

  ‘She speaks again.’

  ‘Alfred . . .’ Dorothea gave a little shake of her gleaming head.

  ‘Madam,’ said Alfred to the midwife. ‘Allow me to assist you from the premises.’ He placed the two bundles into the basket, top to tail, and tucked the blanket with the bright satin trim all around them once again. Then he advanced towards the bedroom door holding out his hand. The midwife clutched her bag tighter to her chest. She was reluctant to pass it over, but good manners prevailed.

  Downstairs there was no sign of Clementine. Just six orange pips sucked dry and left in a little pile on the bare floorboards of the hall. Alfred stepped over the pips as though they did not exist. ‘Well, goodbye,’ he said, one hand holding open the front door. ‘And Happy Christmas.’

  The midwife was already out on the step. ‘Oh, yes.’ She put a hand to her cap. She’d forgotten all about that.

  ‘Your bag.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Sprat turned back. She’d forgotten about that too. Whatever was it with this family that got her all mixed up? ‘And a Happy Christmas to you too.’

  But the door was closing already. Midwife outside in the cold December air. All five of the Walker family together in the warm.

  ‘Oh,’ Mrs Sprat said again, though there was no one to hear her. Then she set off down the frosty London street, a little skid here, a little skitter there, almost a tumble. They’re mad, she thought as she clutched at her bag, fingers already numb from the slow creep of snow. She fumbled inside the pockets of her cape for her thick blue gloves. But they had vanished, replaced by several pieces of sticky orange peel.

  2011

  There were five of them altogether. A priest. Three mourners. And a dead person folded into a wooden box.

  Praise Be.

  RIP.

  And anything else appropriate for a funeral where nobody knew the deceased. Margaret Penny had only been in Edinburgh for a few days and already she was consorting with the dead. It seemed a fitting epitaph for the failure of her life to rise to much beyond the cradle or the grave.

  The call had come the day before and it was Margaret who answered. Barbara seemed strangely reluctant to pick up her own phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello.’ A light voice. Male. Unexpected. ‘Is Mrs Penny in?’

  ‘Can I ask who’s calling?’

  ‘It’s Mr Wingrove. The assistant from West Leith Parish.’

  ‘West Leith?’ Episcopal. Catholic. Evangelical. Friends. Barbara hadn’t mentioned that particular congregation in her litany of churchgoing to date.

  Across the room, from the depths of her armchair, her mother made furious gesticulations with her stick, as though outraged that Margaret would even contemplate lifting the receiver, let alone getting into a conversation with whoever was on the line. Barbara’s hair had not been brushed all day. Little flecks of spittle were gathering on her chin. And just for a moment there was that expression. The one Margaret had seen when Barbara first opened her front door.

  Margaret turned slightly to avoid her mother’s insistent glare. ‘I’m afraid she’s indisposed at the moment. Can I take a message?’

  ‘Yes, could you tell her she’s next up on the rota. For tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘The rota?’

  The way her mother explained it later, being an official mourner to the ‘indigent’ was almost a full-time job.

  The crematorium chapel was small and empty, three rows of chairs diagonally placed, a big curtain drawn across one wall. There was a plinth at the front covered in a blue velvet cloth and a lectern for whoever might preside, but there was no sign of human activity. Not even from the dead. From the doorway, Margaret peered in towards the gloom. The only light came from a few narrow windows positioned very high up in the bare concrete wall. It was rather like her mother’s box room. No chance of gazing out over green pastures while the last rites were relayed.

  ‘Shall we go in?’ she said, breath blooming in the frigid air. Sleet was falling (again) as it had ever since Margaret had returned to Edinburgh, casual stinging drops that clung to her red, stolen coat in little icy clumps. It was official now. Edinburgh was in the grip of the second coldest winter on record. All the city’s surfaces turned into a deadly rink. Still, Margaret didn’t see why they had to stand outside getting chilblains. The guest of honour was dead, after all. He wouldn’t know if someone else got to his party first.

  Barbara stubbed at the frozen ground with the rubber tip of her grey NHS stick. ‘No,’ she wheezed. ‘That would never do.’

  ‘Why not?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Because.’

  And there really wasn’t an answer to that. Barbara always had been a person who knew when right was right and wrong was (always) wrong. Only that morning over breakfast, small strands of mini Shredded Wheat clinging unnoticed to the front of her quilted gown, she had apprised Margaret as to all the day’s rules.

  Don’t smile.

  Don’t mention the deceased.

  Don’t talk about anything other than the weather.

  Funerals, Margaret had realized then, were just like being a child again. The Edinburgh of her girlhood returned to feed on her bones. She had resisted leaning over to pluck the wheaty strands from her mother’s chest. It wasn’t her responsibility to make Barbara look good. Besides, she h
adn’t touched her mother for years. And certainly never like that.

  Instead, now, Margaret just turned up the collar of her coat and folded in the lapels to cover the bare triangle of her throat. She still hadn’t found a scarf to wear, despite a quick rummage in the box-room wardrobe to see what she could see. Nothing of any use but a pair of ancient wool gloves in navy, holes at the fingertips, and a blouse in a distressing shade of fawn. When she’d first opened the wardrobe Margaret had wondered what might happen if she stepped inside rather than pulling something out, disappearing forever into a crush of starch and mildew, a forest of oversized coats and dresses flattened between thin plastic sheets. But needless to say, her mother had got there first.

  ‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ Barbara’s great bulk appeared in the box-room doorway, blocking out what little light there was.

  ‘Yes,’ Margaret replied. ‘Just coming.’ And pulled out the first few items that came to hand. A calf-length corduroy skirt to match the navy gloves and that terrible blouse in fawn.

  Barbara turned out to be wearing a woollen coat the colour of wet sand and a lilac hat more suited to a summer wedding than a funeral on a dark January day. As they’d clambered into the waiting taxi, the driver levering Barbara from behind, Margaret had glimpsed something else too. A flap of summer jacket the colour of a Hebridean sea. ‘Shouldn’t we be wearing black?’ she had asked as they settled themselves onto the back seat.

  ‘I am,’ said Barbara gesturing with her stick to a flower made of black net wilting above her lilac brim. Then, as the taxi engine whined and revved, she’d rummaged in a stiff-sided handbag and taken out a plastic Rainmate with which to top the lot. ‘Be prepared,’ she said.