As She Left It (6 page)

Tony grinned again and then, shooting a quick look at his partner, he frowned and shushed her.

“It was a crowded room,” the man in the throne said. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

“It is
safe
, isn’t it?” Opal said. “I mean it seems like a right bargain, but if I’m going to get … I don’t know … poisoned or something as I sleep—”

“Poisoned?” said Tony.

“Or something. Squashed?”

“Yes, of course it’s safe. It’s just not something we want in the shop, is it dear?” He smiled at his partner. “Billy went to an auction all by his own little self. I usually go too.”

“I didn’t have time to have a proper look,” Billy said.

“Because you got lost,” Tony said.

“I’ll take the mattress too,” Opal said hurriedly, thinking that Tony was one of those people who didn’t get how annoying they were being, even when the person they were annoying was nearly in tears.

“Sight unseen?” said Tony. Opal nodded, thinking that no mattress could possibly have had a harder life than Nicola’s, then she took her wallet out and handed over a hundred pounds in crisp twenties. “Do you deliver?” she said. “It’s only Meanwood.”

“Go on then,” said Tony, pocketing the twenties. “Since you’re a cash buyer. I’ll bring it round for you tonight.”

Billy recovered then, snapping upright in his throne.

“You dare,” he said. “You just bloody dare deliver the damn thing tonight. Where’s your sore back now that couldn’t even sit in the passenger seat and navigate?”

“Never mind,” Opal said quickly. “One of my neighbors has got a van.”

EIGHT

S
HE WAS HOPING FOR
Mr. Kendal, of course, when she knocked at No. 1 (he was the only one of the Boys who ever drove the van), but when the door opened, Fishbo was standing there. He squinted into the low sun, and his eyes flashed an unmistakable look of pure panic. Then he put a hand up like a visor, and his faced cleared.

“Baby Girl!” he said. He stepped forward and folded Opal into an embrace, quite crushing considering the bony twigs that his arms were and the grating feel of his shoulder joints, as though all the muscle and gristle—never mind fat—had wasted away.

“Mr. Fish,” said Opal. “It’s lovely to see you. Who did you think it was then? You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

“You’re no ghost,” said Fishbo, holding her at arm’s length and beaming. Opal could see his teeth slipping, and he clamped his lips down over them and worked them back into place with his tongue. “Now come in and visit with me, girl. Tell me where in the world you’ve been. Lighting out that way! Leaving us all!” Opal followed him inside, dragging her feet a bit. She had a lot to do and when Fishbo got enthusiastic, he would start serving drinks and cooking funny food and then he’d get his trumpet out, and it would be hours before you could escape without offending him.

Except she quickly realized that those days were gone. Fishbo went into the living room—these big houses on the corners had a hall behind the front door and a room to either side—and sat down by putting his hands on his knees and letting himself fall into the chair, groaning.

“I went to live with my dad,” she said, sitting opposite him.

“Well, ain’t that nice?” said Fishbo, although his face clouded briefly. Then he grinned that enormous grin again. “What about your old granddad?”

“He’s—” Opal was going to say
dead,
but she remembered just in time how Fishbo used to joke about her being
his
grandchild, on account of how she had what he called “a touch of the tar brush”, which he said slapping his knee and wheezing with laughter. It made Opal think of being touched by a wand at her christening, but her mum had flown into a rage when she repeated it. Nic had stormed over the road and shouted things ten times worse through the window of Mr. Kendal’s other front room, where Fishbo gave his lessons.

“How come you missed your mama’s funeral?” Fishbo said, once he was settled.

“I was in hospital,” said Opal. She knew she was safe to tell this to Fishbo. Not many people in the world would hear such a thing and not ask questions, but Fishbo was in the dead centre of his own little world.

“
That
was a fine day,” he said. “‘In the Sweet Bye and Bye’ when they wheeled her in and ‘When the Saints Go Marchin’ In’ when they closed the curtains on her. I set some toes tappin’ that day.”

“You played?” said Opal. “All of you?”

“Damned crematorium,” said Fishbo. “Rules and regulations ten ways from Friday. No, I didn’t get to play, but I chose the numbers and it was a fine day. Except for you missin’ it.” He stopped and stared at the floor for a moment then he went on, skewering her with a look. “You keeping up your practising, Baby Girl?”

“I haven’t played for years,” Opal said, feeling a bit guilty in spite of herself.

“That’s a pity,” said Fishbo, shaking his head. His gaze had turned very speculative. “But you could sure pick it up again.”

“Maybe,” said Opal. “But anyway, how have
you
been?”

Fishbo sucked his teeth and hung his head, the picture of sudden sorrow. “Not good, Baby Girl,” he said. “Nothin’ but bad news here these days. I’ve been a-wandering in the wilderness for more years than I can tell you,” he said. “But I always thought I’d find my way home.” Opal waited, not sure what to say. Fishbo glanced at her. “Norlins,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“That damned hurricane! Ain’t nothin’ left to go home to now. Ain’t nowhere to lay down and rest my sorry head now. I’ll die here, and that’s the end of the story.”

“I didn’t know you were from New Orleans,” said Opal.

Fishbo twitched as if she had pinched him. “What the hell you talking?” he said. “Where did you think I come from? I’ve always come from Norlins. Everybody knows I do. Why, where would you throw me off to, huh?”

“Sorry!” said Opal. “Blimey, Mr. Fish, I was only twelve the last time I saw you, remember. You don’t think about where people are
from
when you’re twelve. I thought you were from Mote Street, from Leeds.”

“I
sound
like I’m from Leeds?” said Fishbo, scowling.

“No, fair enough, but neither does Margaret and neither does Zula Joshi. I didn’t know everybody was supposed to sound the same and look the same till I went to Whitby. God knows I found out quick enough there.” At least he was laughing again.

“Yes indeedy, it’s a melting pot and no mistake. Meltin’ in Mote Street—sounds like a number.” And he started snapping his fingers and shaking his shoulders up and down, one at a time, turning his head to watch the shoulder that was rising as if he was surprised.

“So did you lose family?” Opal said.

Fishbo stopped dancing and sat back in the chair, tired out by it already. “Not in the hurricane,” he said. “Long, long ago. Lost touch, lost heart, lost everyone.”

“Maybe not,” Opal said. “I bet you’d have a better chance of getting in touch with them now than before, even. I bet they’ve got all sorts of agencies, or whatever, trying to sort people out who’ve got displaced. Hm? Mr. Fish?”

“Long, long ago,” said Fishbo. His eyes were closed and his voice was gravelly.

She waited until she was sure he was sleeping and then rose quietly and left the room. She stopped in the hall and wrote a note for Mr. Kendal on the pad of paper by the phone—Mr. Kendal still had a telephone table; who still had a telephone table?—asking if he would mind fetching something heavy in his van if she promised to help lift it.

The head and foot of the bed only just went up the stairs, with a lot of creaking from the banisters and a lot of swearing from the three men, while Opal and Fishbo hopped about at the bottom, Opal telling them to mind their backs and Fishbo telling them to be cool and quit the cussing.

When all the bits were upstairs in the front bedroom, the three of them stood panting and looking at it, Jimmy D giving it his gunslinger stare, Big Al squinting and kicking it as if it was a second-hand car, and Pep Kendal grinning.

“Guess how much it was?” said Opal. It looked even better here in the bedroom, twice the size and three times as fancy. She would either have to get rid of the wardrobe or put it where it would stick out over the window, but she didn’t care.

“Sorry about all the effin and jeffin, Opal love,” said Big Al.

“Go on, guess,” she said.

“Pretty penny,” said Jimmy D. “You’ve come up in the world if you’ve bought the likes of this.”

“More to life than dough,” said Fishbo. “Lucky for me, cos dough I ain’t got, but an idea I surely do.”

“Somebody guess,” Opal said.

“A grand,” said Jimmy D.

“A hundred!” said Opal. “I got it for a hundred quid. Because there’s some kind of secret thing wrong with it that only an antiques expert would know, but I’ve been all over it with a whajcallit, and I can’t find any problems.”

“Hundred quid?” said Big Al.

“The guys in the shop couldn’t get rid of it quick enough,” Opal said. “It’s like they were embarrassed or something.”

Pep Kendal turned right round to stare at her, giving her a screwball look, one eyebrow up and one down. “Are you kidding?” he said. “You really can’t see what’s wrong with this?” Opal half-smiled, thinking he was joking. The bed looked perfect to her, enormous and extravagant and the kind of bed that lives go right in, where mysteries are solved and lost children found, where tangled threads are spun out into straight strong lines of gold.

“Nope,” she said.

“Don’t you wanna hear my idea, Baby Girl?” said Fishbo.

“It’s not a bed,” Pep said.

“What do you mean?” Opal asked, staring at it.

“I’m not gettin’ any younger,” Fishbo said. “And man-oh-man I do not have the lungs I useta!”

“Oh, yeah!” said Big Al, suddenly striking one of the bedposts with the flat of his hand. “I see it now.”

“And jest when I was gettin’ to frettin’,” said Fishbo.

“Mr. Fish, hang on,” Opal said. She turned to Pep. “What do you mean it’s not a bed? What is it?”

“It’s half of one bed,” said Pep, poking the pennants and feathers on the headboard, “and half of another.” He pressed the chrysanthemums and roses on the footboard as if they were lift buttons. Opal blinked, then laughed.

“God, yeah!” she said. “That’s why it looks so completely mad. It’s got twice as many different things as it should have. Fantastic!”

“The more the merrier,” Fishbo said. “That’s what I’m saying. Two for the price of one.”

“Is that what Billy in the shop was so embarrassed about?” Opal said. “I think it’s even better.”

“Oh, but for a
dealer
,” said Jimmy D. “What a red face it would be.”

“Well, lucky me,” said Opal. “Except—do you think it’ll fit to-
gether?”

While Jimmy D, Al, and Pep started manhandling the side bars, grunting and softly swearing, Fishbo perched on Nicola’s Ali-Baba basket and put a cigarette between his lips, starting to pat his pockets, looking for his lighter.

“No,” said Opal. “No smoking.”

“Oh, sweet baby,” said Fishbo. “You said a whole lot there. If I had never got the taste for these damn things … but I practically growed up in a tabacca fiel’, you know.” Opal thought the swearing got louder then. “Which brings me back to my idea. I’m a song and dance man, much as a trumpet man, always was. All my life I did all three—singin’, dancin’, blowin’ my horn. That’s my life. That’s Fishbo. Now, I gotta choose. I don’t got the puff no more.”

Pep Kendal was sitting back on his heels inside the bed frame—it had gone up without a hitch, iron balls dropping into sockets like putting nuts back into their shells; nothing from Ikea would have slotted together that way—and he stared at Fishbo as if his eyes were taking X-rays of the old man’s thoughts before he could turn them into words and speak them.

“And suddenly, here
you
are!” Fishbo said. He put his unlit cigarette behind his ear and gestured broadly, beaming at Opal. “A girl who can blow a horn just the same style as I blow mine and who ain’t gonna go takin’ over my band on me. I’ll be the band leader, the song and dance man, and you be the trumpet. You got the puff for it, Baby Girl. Whaddaya say?”

“Are you getting this?” said Pep to Big Al, who was moving the spring, walking it, bouncing and jangling, over the floor towards the frame.

“Me be in the band?” said Opal. “I haven’t even practised for—”

“It’s a job,” Fishbo said. “I’m offering you a gig.”

“Eh, hang on now,” said Pep. “You can’t just add another member into the band. We’re splitting our take five ways already. No offense, love.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Kendal,” Opal said. “I couldn’t anyway. I’ve
got
a job. They phoned me yesterday. Thirty contracted hours and as much overtime as I want.” Of course, as well as her job she had her mission; she couldn’t take on trumpet practise and travelling to gigs.

“It’s Saturdays and Sundays, mostly,” Fishbo said.

“If we’re looking for a trumpeter, we should hold auditions,” said Jimmy D. “No offense, Opal.”

Al finished squaring up the spring to the frame and let it go. It fell slowly at first, and then, with a rushing, tinkling sound, it crashed onto the base like a dropped piano and sent up a puff of rust and dust that filled the air and set them all off coughing.

“Jesus, Al!” said Pep. “JD, get Fishbo out of here.”

Right enough, Fishbo’s eyes were watering and his coughs grew deeper and richer, rattling and gurgling from far inside him. He stood up and put out a shaky hand to take Jimmy’s arm and together they shuffled out of the bedroom and closed the door.

“Sounds like you might need those auditions,” Opal said. “Is he really still playing the trumpet with that chest?”

“Barely,” said Big Al. “Sorry about the dust.”

“You’re all right,” Opal said.

When they were gone, she fetched a duster—she wished she had one of those proper yellow dusters that were edged with red stitches, but she made do with an old tee-shirt—and ran it lovingly all around the swooping lines of the head and footboards, smoothing it over the dips and swells of the four corner posts, and winkling it into all the dark places between the carving. Once, a corner of it snagged and got stuck on a foot post and, pulling on it, she felt something grate. She held her breath, suddenly certain that the bed was going to collapse and she would have to haul it outside and phone the council to take it away, but the duster came free and the bed stood just as before.