Tarnished (34 page)

A white van turned up to take the bin bags away from the back garden. Peg saw it driving away as she returned from a long, dazed walk along the seafront; she supposed Loz must have made that phone call to the women and their van, James and Daughter, for whom no job was too small.

At least, she hoped that was where the white van came from.

Raymond’s solicitor Mr Archer called. In a voice that sounded like he was in an authentically detailed BBC Dickens adaptation, he told her that yes, he had indeed taken instruction from Mrs Thwaites, having drawn up her will for her ‘some time ago, I have to add’. He had a copy lodged in his office if she cared to come up ‘at your earliest convenience’ to view it.

The next phone call was from a local reporter, a woman with a high-pitched nasal voice and mud-thick Kentish accent, who clearly thought she was on to some big scandal about Doll having been released from hospital early.

‘I’m not into blame,’ Peg said simply. ‘It could have happened any time, and anywhere. Please leave us in peace now.’

She put the phone down and looked at her reflection in the salty drizzle-crusted window.

Peace. It felt like anything but that.

The bungalow seemed far emptier than it had when Doll was merely away in hospital. It now felt evacuated, sucked of its soul. Like it had nothing to do with anyone any more.

When she told the journalist that she wasn’t into blame, Peg hadn’t been telling the whole truth. She could stand in front of a mirror and point the finger in exactly the right direction. If she hadn’t been so bent on finding out about Mary Perkins, if she hadn’t asked all those questions, if she hadn’t cleared out all the things that were important to Doll and piled them up in stinking bin bags in the back garden, if she hadn’t stayed out far longer than she had intended, putting together some sort of spurious case against her father just to keep her girlfriend happy, if she hadn’t left that damn photo with Keith in it out for Doll to find . . .

If she hadn’t done all that, her grandmother would still be alive.

She called Marianne, who begrudgingly granted her two weeks’ compassionate leave, as was council policy.

‘It’s not normally extended to grandparents,’ she said, and Peg could hear her beads clatter as she made some exasperated, expansive gesture. ‘But in your case, since your grandmother brought you up, I suppose I haven’t got a leg to stand on.’

‘Thank you,’ was all Peg could say.

In between covering herself in guilt and carrying out the set of tasks dictated to her by Doll’s death – including a very different, final sorting of her belongings which involved a deal of regret at what she had discarded during the first clear-out – Peg spent a good deal of time with Jean, who had descended into a near-catatonic state. All of her former vigour seemed to have solidified into her flesh and they sat together, watching TV, snacking on high-fat, low-nutrition comfort foods and drinking beer. Peg even once joined Jean as she smoked, but, unused to the smell and taste from a user’s point of view – as opposed to that of a passive recipient – the cigarettes brought her scant comfort. All they did was make her feel as ill as she thought she deserved.

‘You won’t desert me, will you Meggy? Mummy was all I had,’ Jean said one evening.

‘Of course not, Aunty Jean. Of course I won’t,’ Peg said. Then, feeling the need to change the subject, she got up. ‘Can I get you another slice of cake?’ she asked as she moved to the bedroom door.

‘You’re a good girl, Meggy,’ Jean said.

She finally read
What to Do When Someone Dies
and realised that she had to appoint an undertaker. So, on the third day after Doll’s death, she visited the first funeral parlour she came across in the main Tankerton shopping street – she later discovered there were five, a fact she had failed to notice all those years she had passed them on her way to the beach, or the sweet shop, or to the station to return to London. The proprietor Mr Watkins said he would be happy to take Doll as soon as the coroner released the body, and did her grandmother have any preferences as to service, or to cremation or burial?

Peg had no idea. She knew Frank had been cremated and his ashes scattered on the sea. She supposed, therefore, that this was what Doll would have wanted for herself.

‘Does it say anything in her will?’ Mr Watkins asked. He was a small, round, glossy man without a crease on his body or his lustrous suit. He had, she noticed, obscenely clean fingernails tipping his fat fingers, as if he were constantly scrubbing them after delving around in the entrails of corpses.

She couldn’t imagine it was actually like that. Not really. But he did have a set of staff-only stairs leading down from his deeply carpeted ‘Bereavement Consultation Room’ into some sort of basement, and it did make her think that she didn’t want Doll’s little body to end up down there on some slab, touched by those hands.

‘I’m seeing the solicitor tomorrow,’ Peg said, sitting on her hands to stop them from touching the glass ornaments that bedecked his vast, reproduction mahogany desk. They were too shiny, and she would leave her greasy fingerprints all over them and ruin them.

‘Well, there’s no hurry,’ Mr Watkins said, resting his poached-egg chin in his frankfurter fingers. ‘We embalm our clients, and have full refrigeration facilities.’

‘Embalm?’

‘We always embalm – unless you have any religious objections?’ He smiled and raised a greasy eyebrow at her.

Peg shook her head.

‘Now then,’ he said, rummaging under his desk near his groin and producing a glossy brochure, ‘Perhaps you’d like to view our range of caskets? Please take this, with our compliments.’

On her way home, Peg took a long detour along the seafront, clutching the leaflets to her chest in freezing, mittenless hands.

As she walked, she searched the shifting slate of water for absolution. Or, at any rate, for some sort of guidance. But it just sat there, unyielding.

As she approached the bungalow, a photographer surprised her, pushing his camera up into her face. Behind him, a woman with a fur hat pulled down over her ears readied a voice recorder exactly the same as the one Peg had her hand on in her pocket.

‘What?’ Peg said, as the flash fired in her face, leaving her with nothing but blackness for a few seconds.

‘How does it feel to lose your grandmother to health service cuts?’ The woman demanded, practically thrusting her digital recorder into Peg’s mouth. Peg recognised the voice immediately: it was the reporter who had called her the day before.

‘How does it feel to be an obtrusive, insensitive cow?’ Peg said, feeling a slick of disgust ooze through her, as she swept past and slammed the door in her face.

‘You would’ve been proud of me,’ she said to Loz.

Safely inside the bungalow, she had shut herself in the kitchen with the radio on, in case Jean was listening in on the phone call.

‘You’ve stolen my chutzpah,’ Loz said. ‘And I’ve gone all weedy.’ She sounded weary.

‘What’s up?’

‘Well, I want to support you through all this, so I went to Cara and told her that I needed to take time off, and do you know what that tight bitch said to me? She said “I’m terribly sorry, Loz”,’ Loz imitated her boss’s flat and wide Australian accent, ‘“But I have a business to run, it’s the busiest time of my year, and I have to draw the line somewhere or I’ll be letting people off because their kid sister’s gerbil passed away.”’

‘That’s awful,’ Peg said.

‘Too bloody right it’s awful. I’m going to see if it’s also discriminatory. I mean, she probably wouldn’t be so outright objectionable if you were my fucking
husband
.’

‘God’s sake, Loz. Cara’s the biggest dyke out there. She just needs you in the kitchen. And, anyway, there’s nothing you can be doing here, not really. I’m fine.’

‘You don’t want me there.’

‘I
do
.’

But Peg realised that Loz was right. She would far rather just get on and do things quietly on her own. It was her duty, after all. Her atonement.

‘
But I don’t want you to feel bad because you can’t be here. Save up Cara’s goodwill for the funeral.
That’s
when I’ll need you.’

‘I hate to leave you on your own, though.’

‘Shhh.’

Peg made herself a cup of tea and settled down on the lounge settee with the casket brochure.

There were a few ‘green’ models that she would have liked to have chosen for herself – a willow basket with a Yorkshire wool shroud looked particularly appealing. But she knew that Doll would have thought such a thing odd. So, bearing Ray’s instructions in mind, she chose a top-of-the-range model, called The Imperial, ‘crafted from’ solid poplar with brass fittings and white satin padded interior. It was two thousand pounds, but Doll deserved it.

Her decision made, she closed her eyes and imagined herself lying in her willow casket, wrapped up in her woollen shroud. The image was strangely comforting.

Thirty-Five

The next morning, Peg washed her hair for the first time since Doll died, put on her clean jeans – which she noticed were tighter since she last wore them at work, what with keeping up with Jean’s comfort eating – and set off up to London for her meeting with Mr Archer.

She felt odd, after a couple of days spent absorbed by the silence of the bungalow and the vastness of the grass, shingle and mud of the estuary, to be part of the pale and weary commuter crowd disgorging onto the platform at Victoria Station.

Mr Archer had suggested a nine o’clock meeting and now that money wasn’t such a pressing issue and the early train no longer unaffordable, Peg readily agreed. She had never been in the station at morning rush hour though, and found it unbelievable that people were willing to put up with such daily discomfort. She had been forced to stand for the entire journey and, at the other end, sweating in her winter padding, she had to cram into a stoical English crowd of commuters reading papers and checking smart phones as they waited for London Transport staff to allow them in batches into a packed Tube station.

She felt like a lumpy, confused child, lost in a world of grown-ups who knew what they were doing.

Eventually she emerged from the underground at Leicester Square. Using Frank’s old
A to Z
, she located the ancient court that housed Mr Archer’s offices.

She arrived, out of breath, at his door, which was at the top of five flights of stairs.

‘Mr Archer will be with you presently,’ his over-groomed middle-aged secretary said, motioning for Peg to take an armchair. ‘Could I fetch you a cup of tea, Miss Thwaites?’

Peg nodded. She had never visited a solicitor’s office before and she wondered if jeans, even if they were clean, had been the right choice of outfit. But she had nothing else to wear – her only skirt, last worn at her interview at the library, was screwed up at the bottom of the wardrobe in her and Loz’s bedroom. She perched on the edge of the uncomfortable chair and flicked through a financial journal on the coffee table in front of her.

The secretary bustled across the room in her sensible shoes and put a cup of tea down in front of Peg. Then she returned to her desk, put on some earphones and immediately began typing, clacking her long red nails on the keyboard.

Peg sat and waited, gnawing her cuticles. Apart from the secretary’s typing, the only other sound was that of a large grandfather clock set against the wall opposite her, flanked by a couple of ancient oil paintings of country scenes. She felt about as out of place as she could possibly be.

Eventually, an intercom not unlike the one Jean used back in the bungalow buzzed on the secretary’s desk. ‘You can show Miss Thwaites in now, Miss Lunt,’ a dufferish voice crackled from it.

‘Certainly Mr Archer.’ Miss Lunt rose – she was not the kind of woman who would merely get up – placed her feet in third position and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Would you care to follow me, please?’ she said, eyeing Peg up and down as if she were somehow amusing.

She led Peg ten or so feet across the room and opened a creaking door. The tall stooped man inside stood, taking care not to bang his head on the slanted attic ceiling, and extended his hand towards her.

‘Ah, Margaret. So good to see you again.’ He smiled, showing weasel teeth below his hooked nose. Despite his wizened appearance, there was an avuncular kindness about him.

‘Again?’ Peg said.

‘Ah. You wouldn’t remember, but I met you when you were younger, at a party at your parents’ house. You must have been about five, I think. It was before your mother – your father – ah.’

Unable to find the appropriate form of words to describe to a daughter her father’s killing of her mother, he closed his eyes and tapped his fingertips together a couple of times, as if rewinding. Then, refocusing on her, he smiled and gestured to a chair in front of his beaten old desk. ‘Anyway, my condolences on the passing of your grandmother. Do take a seat, my dear.’

‘So how long have you been my father’s solicitor?’ Peg said, sitting down as directed.

‘Oh, since the Flamingos days,’ Mr Archer said. ‘I assisted your father with the legal side of the business, and I suppose you could say that since then we’ve been, if you like, meshed. Inescapably so.’ His eyes drifted to the casement window, where a pigeon stood completely immobile on a parapet, its pink eyes on them.

‘You see,’ he went on. ‘There was quite a lot to take care of when he was absent. And now I look after the discreet interest he retains on the UK side of things.’ Mr Archer swiftly picked up the file he had laid out on the desk and tapped it so that the papers inside it were straightened.

‘Now,’ he said, again stretching his lips into a smile, ‘I believe you’re here to hear the late Mrs Thwaites’s will. So, time is money and so on and so forth. May I suggest we proceed forthwith?’

It appeared that Doll had made a joint will with Frank when Peg was a baby and had not touched it since. If Frank Senior predeceased her, then everything was left to Franklin Raymond Thwaites, who was instructed to provide for the care of her daughter, Jeanette Thwaites, and the welfare of her granddaughter, Margaret Thwaites.