Mr. Flood's Last Resort(20)

He waves the tomato at the kitchen.

Gabriel has a generic doctor-lawyer-teacher-airline pilot voice. A voice calibrated to suggest trustworthiness and serene authority when some sort of shit is going down. I don’t buy it, not least because his voice is at odds with his eyes, which dart from one door to the other.

Then I realize: he’s not supposed to be here. The old man will scour him if he catches him in the house.

Gabriel’s smile is strained. “Really, it’s incredible what you’ve done. Others have fought him for a week to throw out a milk bottle top.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have you here.”

“Thanks.”

Gabriel picks up another tomato and studies it. “May I speak plainly, Maud?”

“If you want.”

He starts to slice the tomato with a peevish kind of face on him. “How can I say this?” He glances up at me. “The agency will have told you that my father sometimes gets enamored with female staff.”

I frown.

He gives the tomato his undivided attention. “And of course you know there have been incidents.”

I know nothing of the sort.

Gabriel continues, pushing the tomato into a bowl. “In the past my father has made strenuous advances on female care workers, district nurses, meals-on-wheels volunteers, that sort of thing. Which is why the agency usually sends a male carer.” He smiles lugubriously. “I was surprised to find out that you aren’t male.”

I think of Biba Morel wedged behind her desk, cackling over her list of expendable care workers, with my name at the top of it.

Gabriel bayonets the last tomato, carves it deftly, and then puts down the knife. “I hope I’m not speaking out of turn here. The agency no doubt thinks you can handle the old man, or else they wouldn’t have sent you.”

“Of course.” I smile grimly. In my mind I am getting ready to give Biba a kick right up her extensive arse.

He wipes his hands gingerly on the edge of my clean tablecloth. “I’m sure your manager wouldn’t put your personal safety at risk.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t.” Biba is squealing as I take a run up.

“I just wanted to warn you to be careful.” He adopts an expression of concern. “My father is not normally as tractable as this, you see.”

I withhold a snort.

“I just hope, Maud, he isn’t getting—notions.”

I withhold a laugh.

Gabriel’s brow furrows. “Perhaps the threat of the residential home is making him behave? Perhaps he finally understands that he needs to comply with support to remain living independently.”

“So a residential home is in the cards?”

“Not if I can help it,” he says quietly. “The old man mustn’t leave Bridlemere.”

“Why not?”

The knife on the chopping board at Gabriel’s elbow twitches.

“It would kill him, Maud.”

The knife begins to wobble imperceptibly.

“But it’s very hard for me to help him,” says Gabriel. “He has quite a dislike of me.”

The knife turns, infinitesimally slowly, on the pivot of its handle.

“He often denies I’m his son.”

The knife stops with its blade pointing in the region of Gabriel’s important organs.

“He’s told people I’m dead before, or that I’ve come to value the house.”

“That’s bleak,” I venture.

“Sometimes I wonder if his mind is going. He’s so often on his own.” Gabriel smiles at me brightly. “But not now that you’re here with him, practically every day, going through his worldly goods.”

His smile is a long way off reaching his eyes.

We look at each other for a long moment.

While we do, I think about the spurious shade of Gabriel’s dye job, the defaced photograph of two children standing next to a fountain and whether or not I should try to pick up the sentient knife.

“Do you happen to have a sister, Gabriel?”

This happens, in this order: a cat jumps through the kitchen window and slides the length of the work surface, the knife flies off the table, and Gabriel leaps up from his chair.

“Christ Almighty,” cries Gabriel, pointing at the cat. “How do you put up with this shit?”

I head Burroughs off before he reaches the hob and shoo him to the back door. He slinks out on bony haunches, snaking his whip-thin tail.

With the knife stuck fast in the lino I try again. “Do you have a sister, Gabriel?”

“No.” He eyes the kitchen door. “I hate cats.”

“I found a photograph of Bridlemere dated 1977. In it you and a little girl hold hands next to the fountain. Only her name is crossed out on the back.” I choose my words carefully. “And it’s damaged where her face should be.”

He frowns. “You have it here, this photograph?”

I hesitate. “Not to hand. Can you tell me who she is?”

“No idea.”

“Do you remember? Yourself and this little girl, next to the fountain?”

He regards me sourly. “I don’t remember.”

“Could she be a relative? A friend of the family?”