The Keeper of Lost Things(19)

“I’ll soon have that fixed,” he said, taking the picture from her and placing it carefully in an envelope. He disappeared downstairs without another word. Eunice finished rescuing her things from the floor and swept up the cigarette ash. Just as the kettle boiled, Bomber returned both in body and spirit; soaking wet again, but his broad smile and good humor restored.

“The watchmaker on Great Russell Street has assured me that the glass will be replaced by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”

They sat down to their very belated tea and donuts, and Douglas, finally assured of Portia’s departure, wheeled himself back into the room hoping for seconds.

“She wasn’t always like this, you know,” said Bomber thoughtfully, stirring his tea.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but as a little girl she was really quite sweet; and for a little sister, tremendous fun.”

“Really?” Eunice was understandably skeptical. “What happened?”

“Great-Aunt Gertrude’s trust fund.”

Elevated eyebrows registered Eunice’s curiosity.

“She was my mother’s aunt; rich, pampered, and cantankerous as hell. She never married but always longed for a daughter. Unfortunately, Ma wasn’t her idea of a girl at all; couldn’t be bought with expensive dolls and pretty dresses. Might have had more luck with a pony or a train set . . . but anyway . . .” Bomber bit into his donut and squirted jam onto his chin.

“Portia was a different matter. Ma tried to intervene; withheld some of the more lavish gifts; remonstrated with the termagant Gertrude, face to gargoyle face. But as Portia grew up Ma’s influence inevitably diminished. Furious at what she called Ma’s jealous meddling, when the Great Gertie died she took her revenge. She left the lot to Portia. And it was a lot. Of course Portia couldn’t touch it until she was twenty-one, but it didn’t matter. She knew it was there. She stopped bothering to make a life for herself and started waiting for one to happen to her. You see Great Gertie’s legacy was a tainted tiara; the worst gift of all. It made Portia rich, but robbed her of any sense of purpose.”

“Thank goodness I’m not filthy rich if that’s what it does to a girl,” Eunice joked. “Just how filthy, exactly?”

“Feculent.”

Eunice cleared away the tea things and went back to work.

Bomber was clearly still fretting over the effect of Portia’s tantrum.

“I hope you’re not sorry that you came to work here.”

Eunice grinned manically.

“I must be nuts to be in a loony bin like this,” she quoted in her best Jack Nicholson voice.

Bomber laughed his relief as he picked up a loose sheet of paper from the floor by his desk and screwed it into a ball. Eunice leaped to her feet, arms in the air.

“Hit me, Bomber, I got the moves!”

They had been to see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that week for the third time. They spent so much time together now both in and out of work that Bomber couldn’t imagine life without her. The film had made an indelible mark and the ending had them both in tears. Eunice knew the script almost by heart.

“So you’re not about to hand in your notice and leave me to the mercy of my sister?”

Bomber’s eyes almost filled with tears again as she replied with a line from the end of the film.

“I’m not goin’ without you, Bomber. I wouldn’t leave you this way . . . You’re coming with me.”

And then she winked.

“Now, about my pay rise …”





CHAPTER 14


The girl watched as the tiny scarlet dome on black legs crawled across the back of her hand toward the curl of her little finger.

“Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,

Your house is on fire, your children have gone.

“All except one, and she is called Anne,

And sorry but she died.”

The ladybird opened her wings.

“It’s not truth.” The girl spoke slowly as though she were reciting a poem that she was struggling to remember. “It’s only a made-up singsong.”

The ladybird flew off anyway. It was hot; September. The girl sat swinging her legs on the wooden bench that faced Padua from the small green. She had watched as the shiny black cars had arrived outside the house. The first one had big windows in the side and she could see a box for dead people inside with flowers growing out of its lid. A sad lady and an old man but not the man who lived there came out of the house. The girl didn’t know who the old man was, but she had seen the lady lots of times before she was sad. The man in the black chimney-pot hat put them in the second car. Then he went to the front of the car with the box in and started walking. He had a stick, but not a limp. But he was walking slowly, so perhaps he had a bad leg after all. She wondered who was in the box. Thinking was something she did slowly. She was quicker at feeling. She could feel happy or sad, or angry or excited in a wrinkling of the eye. And she could feel other things too, which were more difficult to explain. But thinking took longer. Thoughts had to be put in the right order in your head and looked at properly so that your brain could do the thinking. Eventually she decided that it must be the man who lived in the house who was in the box, and she was sad. He had always been nice to her. And not everyone was. After a long time (she had a nice watch, but she hadn’t quite worked out the time please Mr. Wolf yet) the sad lady came back on her own. The girl scratched the back of her hand where the ladybird’s feet had tickled. Now that the man was dead, the lady would need a new friend.