The Keeper of Lost Things(29)
“Further apart from ‘normal’ people, you mean?”
It was Laura’s turn to shrug. She didn’t really know what she meant. She knew that Sunshine had made few friends at school, and had been mercilessly taunted by the feral teenagers who hung around in the local park drinking cheap cider, vandalizing the swings, and having sex. Were they normal? And if they were, why should Sunshine want to be like them? Freddy balanced the neck of the teaspoon on the tip of his index finger. Laura went back to the sandwiches and began cutting them viciously into triangles. Now he would think she was a . . . A what? Bigot? Idiot? Maybe she was. The more she saw of Freddy, the more it mattered what he thought of her. Laura’s idea of inviting Freddy to take his breaks in the kitchen in order to facilitate a more relaxed relationship between them could not yet be deemed a success, but the time they spent together was the part of the day she looked forward to most.
Freddy placed the teaspoon carefully down in front of him and leaned back in his chair, rocking the two front legs off the floor. She fought the urge to tell him to sit properly at the table.
“I think it’s a sort of camouflage”—he rocked back onto four legs—“the way she speaks. It’s like a Jackson Pollock. There’s so many specks and splashes of paint that if one of them happens to be a mistake, no one can tell. If Sunshine does get a word wrong, we’ll never know.” He shook his head, smiling to himself. “It’s genius.”
At that moment the genius came into the kitchen looking for her lunch. Laura was still thinking about what Freddy had said. A gardener using the art of Jackson Pollock as a linguistic metaphor was a little unexpected, and another intriguing insight into the kind of man he really was. It made Laura both eager and determined to find out more.
“By the way,” said Freddy to Laura, “the film. It’s Four Weddings and a Funeral.”
Sunshine grinned and sat down next to her newest friend.
After lunch, they all went through to the study. Sunshine was desperate to show Freddy Anthony’s museum of missing things, and Laura was toying with the idea of asking if he had any bright ideas about returning them to their rightful owners. Each time she came into the study it seemed to Laura that the room was filling up; less space, more things. And she felt smaller; shrinking, sinking. The shelves seemed to groan, threatening collapse, and the drawers creak, dovetails about to fly open and burst. She feared she would be buried under an avalanche of lost property. For Sunshine it was a treasure trove. She stroked and held and hugged the things, talking softly to herself—or perhaps the things themselves—and reading their labels with obvious enchantment. Freddy was appropriately astonished.
“Who’d have thought it?” he whispered, peering at his surroundings. “So that’s why he always carried his bag.”
The frail October sunlight struggled to permeate the trellis of flowers and leaves on the lace panels and the room was dark and stained with shadows. He drew back the lace, shooting a meteorite shower of shimmering dust motes spinning across the room.
“Let’s throw a bit of light over things, shall we?”
Sunshine showed him round, like a curator proudly sharing a collection of fine art. She showed him buttons and rings, gloves, teddy bears, a glass eye, items of jewelry, a jigsaw puzzle piece, keys, coins, plastic toys, tweezers, four sets of dentures, and a doll’s head. And these were the contents of only one drawer. The cream cup and saucer painted with violets was still on the table. Sunshine picked it up and handed it to Freddy.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it? The lady doesn’t want it back to her, so Laura’s going to keep it for the lovely cup of tea.”
Laura was about to contradict her, but Sunshine’s face was set with such absolute certainty that the words died in Laura’s mouth.
“That’ll be yours, then.”
As Laura took the cup and saucer from him, his fingers brushed against her hand, and he held her gaze for just a moment before turning away and sitting down in Anthony’s chair.
“And you’re to try and get all the rest of this,” he said, sweeping his arms around the room, “back to wherever it is that it belongs?” His equable tone gave no quarter to the enormity of the task.
“That’s the idea,” Laura replied.
Sunshine was distracted by an object that had fallen out of the drawer she had opened. She picked it up from the floor, but immediately dropped it again howling, in pain.
LADY’S GLOVE, NAVY-BLUE LEATHER, LEFT HAND—
Found, grass verge at the foot of Cow Bridge 23rd December . . .
It was bitter. Too cold for snow. Rose looked up at the black sky pierced with a tracery of stars and a sharp sickle moon. She had been walking briskly for twenty minutes but her feet were numb and her fingers frozen. Too sad for tears. She was almost there now. Thankfully, there had been no passing cars; no one to distract or intervene. Too late to think. Here now. This was the place. Over the bridge and then just a shallow, grassy bank. She took off one glove and pulled the photograph from her pocket. She kissed the face of the little girl who smiled back at her. Too dark to see, but she knew she was there. “Mummy loves you.” Down the grassy slope her gloveless hand clutched at razor-frozen grass. At the bottom, shale underfoot. “Mummy loves you,” she whispered as the distant lights pricked the darkness and the rails began to hum. Too hard to live.