The Keeper of Lost Things(49)
It was New Year’s Eve and still very early. The guest room also had a view of the rose garden, but this morning it was barely visible through the driving rain. Freddy would be here later. They were going out this evening to join the celebrations at the local pub. But in the meantime, Laura was drawn inexorably to the study. Armed with enough toast for both of them and a pot of tea, she went into the study followed by Carrot, and lit the fire. She took a small box down from its shelf and laid the contents on the table. Outside, it was raining harder than ever, and the sound of running water played counterpoint to the spit and crackle of the fire. For the first time, Laura held in her hand an object she could not name, and even after reading its label, she was no wiser as to its purpose or origin.
WOODEN HOUSE, PAINTED DOOR AND WINDOWS, NO. 32—
Found, skip outside no. 32 Marley Street, 23rd October . . .
Edna peered at the young man’s identity card. He said he was from the Water Board; come to check all the plumbing and the pipes. It was just a courtesy call. They were doing it for all their customers over seventy before the winter set in, he said. Edna was seventy-eight and she needed her reading glasses to see what was on the card. Her son, David, was always telling her to be extra careful about opening the door to strangers. “Always keep the chain on until you know who they are,” he warned. The trouble was that with the chain on she could only open the door a crack, and then she was too far away from it to read the card. Even with her reading glasses on. The young man smiled patiently. He looked right. He was wearing a smart pair of overalls with a badge on the right-hand chest pocket, and was carrying a black plastic toolbox. The identity card had a photo that looked like him, and she thought that she could just about make out the words “Thames” and “Water.” She let him in. She didn’t want him thinking that she was a foolish, helpless old woman.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.
He smiled gratefully.
“You’re a diamond and no mistake. I’m proper parched. The last brew I had was at seven o’clock this morning. Milk and two sugars and I’m a happy man.”
She directed him to the downstairs lavatory and then upstairs to the bathroom and airing cupboard on the landing which housed the water tank. In the kitchen, she put the kettle on, and as she waited for it to boil she looked out at the long strip of back garden. Edna had lived in her East London terrace for nearly sixty years. She and Ted had moved in when they got married. They had brought up their kids here, and by the time David and his sister, Diane, had grown up and left home, it was bought and paid for. Of course, they could never have afforded it now. Edna was the only one left from the old days. One by one, the houses had been bought up, tarted up, and their prices hiked up as high as a tom’s skirt, as her Ted would have said. These days, the street was full of young professionals with flash cars, fondue sets, and more money than they knew what to waste it on. Not like the old days, when kids played in the street and you knew all your neighbors and their business.
The young man found his way back into the kitchen just as Edna was pouring the tea.
“Just how I like it,” he said, gulping it down. He seemed to be in a hurry.
“Everything’s shipshape upstairs.”
He took a quick look under the sink in the kitchen and then rinsed his mug under the tap. Edna was impressed. He was a good boy like her David. His mum had obviously brought him up well.
Early that afternoon, the doorbell rang again. Two visitors in one day was almost unheard of. The crack revealed a small, smartly dressed black woman who appeared to be somewhere in her sixties. She was wearing a navy-blue suit with a blouse so white it dazzled. Perched on her concrete-set coiffure of brandy snap curls sat a navy-blue hat with a wisp of spotted net that just covered the top half of her face. Before either of them could speak, the woman appeared to buckle at the knees and clutched at the doorframe to prevent herself from falling. Moments later, she was sitting in Edna’s kitchen, fanning her face with her hand and apologizing profusely in a rich Jamaican accent.
“I’m so sorry, my dear. It’s just one of my funny turns. The doctor says it’s to do with my sugars.” She lurched forward in her chair and almost fell off it before recovering herself.
“I feel so bad imposing myself on you like this.”
Edna flapped away her apologies.
“What you need is a hot, sweet cup of tea,” she said, filling the kettle once again. To be honest, she was glad of the company. The woman introduced herself as Sister Ruby. She was knocking on doors offering her skills as a spiritual healer, reader, and adviser. She told Edna that she could read palms, cards, and crystals, and was a practitioner of Obeah, Jadoo, and Juju. Edna had no idea about Obidiah, Jedi, or Judy, but she had always been fascinated by fortune-tellers and the like, and was deeply superstitious. Hers was a house where new shoes were never put on the table, umbrellas were never opened indoors, and nobody crossed on the stairs. Her Irish grandmother had read tea leaves for all the neighbors, and one of her aunts made her living as Madame Petulengra, giving crystal-ball readings on Brighton Pier. When Sister Ruby, revived by her tea, offered to read Edna’s palm, she was only too willing. Sister Ruby took Edna’s hand, palm upward, in her own, and passed her other hand over it several times. She then spent a full minute studying the crinkled topography of Edna’s palm.
“You have two children,” she said, at last. “A boy and a girl.”