Mr. Flood's Last Resort(28)

I sit quietly on the bar stool next to him, turning my face up to the sun, relaxed now that I know where he is. After a while I glance at him. He’s kept hold of the coat, I notice; the pockets are full already.

“How’s the clean shirt? It’s a pity Gabriel didn’t see his old fella looking so fine.”

“I’ve told you. That fat arsewipe is not my son. Capiche?”

There’s a wild gleam in his eyes, so I just nod.

“He’s a lawyer, you know, that pestilent fucker.”

“Is he? I thought he was a university lecturer?”

Mr. Flood looks at me witheringly. “Jesus, do you people ever listen? Or do you just prefer the sound of your own fecking mouths flapping?”

Another fight is breaking out on the roof of the toolshed. A ginger tom scales down the side, his tale snaking.

“He told you to leave?” he asks.

“He didn’t.”

“But he said that I was a pervert?” There is a dangerous hint of a smile on his face.

I say nothing.

“He told you I’d tried it on with one of the carers? Molested her? Tried to finger her?” He bares his dentures in a bitter sneer.

“Any more of that and I’ll be out of here. Straight up.”

“You will in your arse,” he says, but he stops sneering. “So what did he say?”

“Look, I don’t want to get involved in any dispute here.”

“Of course you don’t—and you earwigging with binoculars when I was talking to that bollix in the garden.”

I look at him. “Now, why would I do that? On your private business?”

“Because you have a beak you like to stick into other people’s private business. Fecking snipe.”

“I don’t at all. I keep my head down and get on with my work. Which is what I should be doing now, so if you’ve finished your drink?”

He nods. “Good girl yourself, off you go. I wouldn’t dream of distracting you from your important work. Thieving away my few things and selling them, right under the old caubogue’s nose. Spending my bit of shopping money on yourself and feeding me the cat’s leftovers.”

“You really are a nasty old bastard.” I’ve said it before I realize it.

As I walk down the path I hear him chuckling with delight.

*

I TAKE his glass into the kitchen to wash it. When I look out again he has put down the back of the sunlounger and is lying dead to the world, his twiggy old arms stretched out above him. Larkin has crawled underneath the chair and is curled up like a dog.

It’s a nice day for it. The sun shines down on a garden that looks like Armageddon has come to a municipal dump. But the sun doesn’t mind. She burnishes rusty paint tins full of rainwater and warms abandoned mattresses for sleeping cats. Her rays are indiscriminate: they fall on wooden pallets and stacked roof tiles as well as the late daisies and crocosmia that bring pockets of color to this blighted land. I stand at the sink watching Mr. Flood’s old checked shirts flutter on the line I’ve strung between the house and the toolshed. It’s good drying weather for autumn; if I knew where Mr. Flood’s bed was I could tackle his sheets. God only knows the condition of them.

Somewhere in the house above me a door slams, hard. Then it does it again, and again.

Then there is silence.

I grab a pair of salad tongs and run into the hall.

Nothing is moving; even the clutter is waiting, holding its breath.

On a box of tangled electrical leads a black handbag purses its leathery mouth and a knitted spider frowns. In a laundry basket a troupe of china ladies grip their parasols and hats.

Dame Cartland peers out from behind a tea chest, big-eyed. We listen hard, the shabby-arsed cat and myself. We listen to the silence.

There is definitely silence. But what class of silence is it?

The rubbish is still and the mice are dead in the teacups. Mr. Flood is asleep on the lounger and Larkin is curled up in his shade.

Holding the salad tongs, I edge along the hallway and stare in astonishment at the Great Wall of National Geographics.

Backlit with afternoon sun, there is a crack of radiant light right down the middle.

*

DAME CARTLAND sits back on her haunches and shakes out a paw. She starts cleaning it nonchalantly, biting between the pink pads.

“Will I go through? I could just about fit.”

She throws me a look of majestic indifference, then turns to lick her flank.

I grip the salad tongs and take a deep breath.

*

EVERYTHING IS different on the other side. On the other side there are no cobwebs, cat hairs, or drifts of newspapers. There are no piles of pizza menus or heaps of sardine cans. Instead there are objects that glisten as if they are newly minted, like pristine treasures on a beach when the tide goes out. But these objects are not new or remotely lovely; I have stepped through the Great Wall into a museum of terrible wonders.

Glass cases of differing sizes are stacked all along the hallway. In one, a pale Botticelli Venus reclines, spooling out her gastric organs with a smile. In the case above her is a severed foot with bubbling skin and wizened toes. I peer at the label: gangrenous necrosis. Next door is a female pudendum with an advanced case of syphilis. I hum a little song and remind myself that I am not squeamish: I have entry-level training in bedsores.