The Mistletoe Bride(6)

‘All right for some, you can say that again. Never a truer word spoken.’

Now he’s smiling, but the smile never reaches his eyes. There’s something off about his expression, calculating, as if he’s tricked me. Got me on the run. But it’s hard to be sure and I don’t want to judge. Not my job to judge. My job is to listen. Let him do the talking.

‘You’re telling me, you’re telling me,’ he says, ‘never a truer word spoken. I like that.’ He stops. Takes a breath. Lets his shoulders drop. ‘I like that.’

He starts picking at a thread on the sleeve of his jacket, a heavy twill much too warm for the overheated room we’re sitting in. The picking turns to scratching. Now he’s rubbing at the material as if trying to rub away the weave, faster and faster.

‘Lucky sod,’ he says, ‘lucky lucky lucky—’

I can’t let him drift away from me, so I jump in. ‘As well as the painting, what else?’

My voice is loud and he’s startled, of course he is. It’s not like me to raise my voice. His head jerks up and he stares, blind eyes seeing something else. Not me. I can feel him slipping out of my company again.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m sorry.’

He doesn’t acknowledge the apology. He’s still staring, looking right through me, but then the moment passes and he swallows. His Adam’s apple bobs. His skin there is sore and red, raw. I raise my hand to my throat in sympathy, imagining the cold water in the bowl and how the old razor, blunt through lack of use, stings and, for a moment, we are the same, him and me.

‘I was wondering what else was in the box,’ I say.

Now his eyes focus and he is laughing, embarrassed again now, and we are both returned to this hot and claustrophobic room, with the fixed table and everything painted that same green. The bed and the radiator that knocks and the clock that ticks and the words that rattle between us, turning the air black.

‘The painting, I told you about the painting? I don’t know much about art, but it didn’t look up to much. No more than average. What else? A pair of cufflinks. Silver plate, nice if you like that sort of thing. A carriage clock. Engraved. Retirement, that sort of thing. But it . . .’

He’s seeing the box in his mind’s eye, the size and the shape of it. The way it blocked the hall in the drab boarding house. Then he’s remembering the smell. Cupping his hands over his nose, breathing in stale air. And he does not want to go further, though that’s the reason we are here.

‘. . . the smell,’ he says. ‘There was no reason for it.’ His hands are fluttering again. ‘Outspan oranges.’

‘Written on the side, yes you told me,’ I say. I know all of this. It’s what comes after that’s the mystery.

He closes his eyes. ‘If it hadn’t been for the smell . . .’ And he says it again and again, as he presses his hands between his knees, palm to palm, as if praying, though there is no peace here. ‘My fault.’

Now he is rocking backwards and forwards. This too is a new development and I don’t like it. Even so, I notice the plucked threads on his sleeve, caught in the pale November sun coming in through the small locked window, set high up in the wall. A sickly yellow light. I rub the sleeve of my jacket in sympathy and pull the snagged thread.

‘So you moved the box, as soon as you had the time,’ I said. ‘Like you promised, moved it from the hall.’

He shakes his head. ‘Couldn’t leave it there.’

This part of our duet is familiar too. We’ve had this part of our conversation before. The damp hall, the stale October air, the raincoats on the hooks by the door and the lino peeling, the table with its layer of dust and bills mounting up, the front doormat grown bald with years of boots and wiped soles and sand. But we haven’t gone further. We’ve got no further than the top of the cellar stairs.

‘Her legs are bad. Can’t get up and down the stairs, too steep. Never went down there.’

I swallow.

‘Too much for her,’ he says again. ‘Mrs Nash. Not been down there for years.’

‘So why that day?’ I say. This, when all’s said and done, is what I want to know. ‘What was special about that day in particular?’

‘I told you.’ Stubborn, this time. Resentful. ‘The smell. Getting worse.’ He looks up at me, then away. ‘Every time I went past, couldn’t ignore it.’

For a moment, there’s silence. I wonder if he’s going to stop here. Sometimes, he wants to talk. Other times, he clams up.

‘It was a Thursday,’ I say.