The Mistletoe Bride(5)

I nod. ‘Yes.’

He meets my eye, then his gaze slips away again. Embarrassed, though here there’s no need for that. Within this room, there’s no need to worry about what people might think. Past all of that now. He licks dry lips. Another glance that slips over me and away. Easier like that. Less personal.

‘So, what with one thing and another, I was barely there. That’s the situation. Why I hadn’t got around to it.’

I nod again. ‘Yes.’

‘On the up, I was. Had big plans. So, yes, as I was saying, what with one thing and another, I hadn’t got round to moving the stuff down to the cellar. After he’d gone—’

‘Who’d gone?’ I ask, just to keep the story on the straight and narrow.

‘Man in Number Three. Turner.’ He pauses, to check that I’m following. ‘She was that put out, his things got dumped in the hall and left. He had no relatives.’

‘How do you know?’ I ask.

He’s shocked by the question, surprised at us varying from our script, and he’s right to be. It is a new question. I’ve never asked it before, but we need to make progress today. He considers, then answers.

‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? If there’d been anybody, they’d have got in touch. Come to see what was theirs by rights. He had no children, she told me that. No brothers or sisters. She put something in the paper, but not a soul turned up. No one. Stands to reason.’ He pauses, as another thought jabs at him. ‘His “effects”, the lawyer called them.’

I can think of all sorts of reasons why no one but he and the landlady knew the old man in Number Three was gone, but it’s not my place to argue. My job is to listen. Prompt, from time to time, but only as and when.

‘What sort of things, these “effects”?’ I mime the speech marks, intending to set him and me against the sort of jumped-up phrases the lawyers use. The trick doesn’t work. He doesn’t join in. He doesn’t want to be on my side. There’s no ‘us’ in his mind.

Instead, the same slippery glance.

‘Such as, such as . . .’ He stops and it’s not a pause, as if he’s working out what to say next, but more the kind of deep silence that means he’s withdrawn from the conversation. I wonder if I’ve strayed too far from our usual script, done things in the wrong order. Or triggered some new memory which is getting in the way of his story. The story that matters. But then he meets my eye and I realise he’s grateful for the chance to speak about other things first. Not what happened in the cellar.

‘An oil painting,’ he says. ‘A village in the Pyrenees, I reckon it was. Turns out Turner spent the summers back in the day bicycling around France.’

He’s talking fast now, the words tumbling over one another. ‘Mrs Nash told me. Wouldn’t have thought that to see him. Gone to seed, if you know what I mean.’

I nod, but choose not to speak. I don’t want to disturb the fragile balance. And it was the right decision because he carries on, now letting the words run away with him.

‘Worked at the same firm, man and boy. Forty years, give or take.’

‘Give or take,’ I nod. ‘I like that.’

He smiles, then clears his throat to disguise the fact he’s pleased with the compliment. ‘It’s what Mrs Nash said.’

‘What did Mr Turner do then, this job of his?’

He pauses, then shrugs. ‘Never talked to him myself more than to pass the time of day.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ he says loudly. Sharp, now. Annoyed, now. ‘The odd “how do” or “turned out nice again”, on the stairs, that’s all.’

‘You and he, you weren’t what you’d call friends. Pals.’

He shakes his head. ‘He was up on the second floor. I had the ground floor. Nice enough room, own sink and a hotplate. Had to share a toilet, but it was always clean, I’ll give her that. I look out over the esplanade. Nice in summer, day trippers coming and going.’

‘Better in the autumn,’ I offer. ‘Quiet.’

‘Quiet.’ He nods. ‘That’s it, quiet.’

He runs his hands over his hair, fingers pushing hard into his skull, then shakes them out. Flicking imaginary drops of water into the space between us. He licks his lips.

‘All right for some. The rest of us slaving away.’

He stops and stares at me and, though I’m not sure if he’s talking about the tenant in Number Three or Mrs Nash or someone else altogether, I realise he’s waiting for a response.

‘You said it.’ I pull a man-of-the-world face. ‘All right for some.’