Mr. Flood's Last Resort(5)
“Why not?”
Mr. Flood hesitates. “Mary had this fiery hair like the sun setting on autumn. Born to a farmer but built for the drawing room. You’d never imagine she wasn’t a lady, a queen, Helen of Troy, any day.”
“You must have loved her very much.”
His body stiffens. “Must I?”
“You must miss her.”
Brows lower over a blue glare. “Must I?”
“You’ve been on your own for a while now, haven’t you?”
“Have you even read the fucking care plan?” He affects a singsong snarl. “Mr. Cathal Flood, retired artist, mechanical engineer, and dealer in curiosities, lives alone in his substantial Victorian Grade II listed villa.”
“But you have a son. He must be some comfort to you?”
“What do you know about my son?”
“What I read in the care plan.”
He pauses, his face a picture of disgust. “Spill.”
“Dr. Gabriel Flood is a Drama and Theatre Arts lecturer and an active member of West Ealing Choral Society.”
“Dr. Gabriel Flood is a gobshite.”
I frown. “Who wishes very strongly for his father to continue to reside at Bridlemere, with the best possible care, pending Mr. Flood’s admission to a suitable residential home.”
Mr. Flood smiles sourly. “Which will prove a challenging placement because the old bastard has threatened trouble on a biblical scale—dirty protest, arson, and ruin—if he is moved to a residential home.”
“It doesn’t say that in the care plan. So you’re not planning on moving to a residential home, Mr. Flood?”
“Not while there’s a hole in my arse,” he says.
He throws me a look of loathing as he unfurls his limbs in a series of spasms. Hauling himself to his feet, restacking bone and joint. Setting his great head wobbling at the top, all hinged jaw and glowering brows.
He’s halfway down the corridor when I say it.
“I’m sure your son only wants the best for you, Mr. Flood.”
With remarkable speed, in one blurred bound he’s back in through the door and across the floor.
Bolt upright his height is stunning.
He is a gigantic longbow: body held taught, every sinew trembling with tension. He points down at me, the arrow of his index finger aimed between my eyes.
“Fucker,” he hisses.
He backs out of the room, still pointing, drops his arm, and casts off down the hallway. Piles of rubbish slump and tumble in his wake.
*
I WONDER if I should make a run for it. I sit down on the toilet while I think about this, my legs not being quite trustworthy yet. Above me water races through the pipes, a sudden deluge into the cistern, as if it has been waiting with its breath held.
Then this happens, in this order: the cloakroom door slams shut, a low moan sounds deep in the cistern, a toilet roll unspools itself across the floor.
I glance over at limbless Barbie. She looks alarmed, despite the winning smile.
I cross the room at a half run, try the door handle, and find it locked.
The wall lights flare with a sudden tungsten glow. Burning bright, then dipping low.
I wait, still holding the handle with my heart flapping, counting down and then up again in little panicky scales of numbers.
On high, the top of the old tin cistern begins to hop like the lid of a pan on the boil, dribbles of water bubbling over. This is followed by a concentrated hiss like the pressurized song of a coal-fired train. Streams of water spurt from the joints of the pipework in a series of gushes. I press myself against the door. Airborne arcs of water whip and fall from the cistern. Dashing and collapsing, twisting and falling, like dropped skipping ropes.
The water in the toilet bowl starts to rock.
The handbasin taps join in, opening with a metallic grind, vomiting water. In moments the sink is full, overspill pouring onto the floor.
I watch as a milk bottle, of all things, bobs up from the depths of the handbasin. The milk bottle treads water in a slow revolve, as if, fully aware of its inexplicable entry into the scene, it is waiting for the audience to catch up. Then it launches, decisively, over the side of the basin in a cascade of water to skim across the wet linoleum and knock gently against the side of my trainer.
The torrent halts as suddenly as it started. The last jet from the cistern arrested in mid-air falls, scattering droplets on the linoleum. The handbasin drains.
The room is silent but for the odd coy drip and contrite burble and sheepish plash. As if the plumbing is embarrassed about its outburst.
Behind me the cloakroom door opens.
*
THE MILK bottle is old-fashioned, shoddily stoppered with a taped-on foil top. It is empty but for a photograph. I dry my hands and the bottle and poke the picture out.
Two children stand, hand in hand, beside an ornate fountain. The stone nymph at the center of the fountain watches them with languorous curiosity whilst pretending to listen to her conch shell. The water in her pond looks solid, dark. Icicles hang from the tiered rims. The branches on the bushes in the background are frostbitten and bare.
The boy scowls up at the camera. No more than four, his face translucently pale and his hair a vivid auburn.
The girl is taller, no less than seven, and has no face. Instead there is a burn that goes right through the photograph. Edges melted, a raised welt, as if from a cigarette.