The Beautiful Dead Page 8

  She turned around, but Duncan wasn’t on the sofa.

  ‘Dad?’

  No answer.

  ‘Shit!’ Eve’s mind reached the kitchen before she did, trying to remember whether she’d turned the stove off at the mains. She had, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t frying shoe polish in a pan, or taking the toaster apart.

  This time.

  ‘Shit.’ She hurried to the downstairs loo. Duncan was OK if all he needed was a pee, but if it was anything more, he had to be distracted from the results. He would stare into the bowl for ages, and sometimes reach into the murky water …

  She rapped on the door.

  ‘Dad?’

  No answer.

  She cracked it open.

  Empty.

  She took the stairs two at a time, hoping to head him off in the bathroom.

  But he wasn’t there either.

  ‘Dad!’

  Eve rushed from room to room. She looked in cupboards and under beds. He had never hidden before, but there could easily be a first time.

  It was only when she found his wellington boots missing from beside the back door that she knew Duncan Singer had left the building.

  Deep footprints in the snow disappeared around the side of the house.

  ‘Shit, shit, SHIT!’

  Eve toed off her slippers and shoved her bare feet into her own cold boots, then – without even grabbing a coat – hurried out into the night to find her father.

  15

  ABEL ELIAS HAD lived on College Road for so long that even when he wasn’t at home, he stopped talking every thirty seconds to let a plane pass overhead.

  It had gained him a reputation for gravitas that had stood him in good stead in the always sombre world of marine insurance. His firm insured big ships for big money. Losses were not only financial, but almost always accompanied by human tragedy.

  In such situations, nobody wanted to deal with a gabbler. What they wanted was somebody who took them and their ships and their cargoes and their crews seriously, goddammit!

  And Mr Elias, who stopped – apparently to think deeply – every few sentences was what they wanted, and business had been good.

  At his wife’s funeral, Mr Elias had delivered a eulogy so full of heartfelt spaces that it had brought a congregation of death-hardened pensioners almost to their knees with grief.

  So he was used to being listened to and being obeyed, and whenever he did the rounds of his neighbours for the purpose of collecting money to maintain the red phone box outside their homes, they were far too intimidated by his silences to refuse.

  Of course, Mr Elias didn’t need the money. He was rolling in it, truth be told. He could have maintained a thousand red phone boxes all by himself. But he thought it was good for community spirit to give everybody a sense of ownership of the phone box. It ensured that the locals respected it, and the work he put into keeping it nice.

  Mr Elias was sixty-six, and missed the office, but keeping on top of things around College Road was his job now, and he put on a collar and tie every morning, even if he was only mowing the lawn, to show he took his work seriously.

  That work extended beyond the red phone box to calling the council whenever a street light went out, a pavement cracked or a speed-bump was required – and the police if anyone double-parked or played music that was too loud. Or simply not to his taste.

  Things got done in College Road, and Mr Elias did most of them.

  And his neighbours appreciated it. He knew that, because since his wife had died, several of them – all widows – had started to send him cards, thanking him for his efforts.

  Mrs Jamira in number 56 had even baked him flapjacks. They were incompatible with his dentures, but he appreciated the sentiment.

  Mr Elias had lived next door to the Singer family for twenty-five years. They had been reasonable enough neighbours, although Duncan was a little robust for Mr Elias’s liking. A little too fond of beer, and his children too fond of ball games and loud parties. They didn’t really socialize – although Duncan had once fixed his lawn mower – but they exchanged Christmas cards, and Duncan had given him a fiver for the phone box whenever he’d asked.

  Then one day three years ago, Eve had opened the door instead of Duncan and dug in her bag for a contribution.

  Mr Elias had known Eve since she was five years old. Mostly he knew her from throwing balls and boomerangs and aeroplanes back over the hedge that separated their gardens. But he hadn’t seen her for a long while, and when she’d opened the door he’d been a little flustered by the attractive young woman she’d become. She’d told him she was on television now, but Mr Elias only watched the BBC and hadn’t seen her. She’d told him that she’d come home because Duncan needed help, and he’d offered any assistance she might require. She’d thanked him, but had never called on him.

  He’d been a little disappointed, even as he’d been relieved.

  He was rather lonely, and had hoped that Eve’s arrival might spark more neighbourly relations.

  Oh well.

  In the past three years, he had barely seen Duncan, and instead had watched Eve Singer’s comings and goings.

  Never with a boyfriend, he noted.

  Just her – shutting the front door and walking down the lavender path with her dark hair shining like a shampoo ad, and her breasts … being breasts.

  Abel Elias was not a lech, but he was still a man. Eve Singer had turned from a gawky teenager into a televisual temptress right under his nose, and that would have been as hard to overlook as his own top lip.

  Since Jennifer had died four years ago, he had almost forgotten what she had looked like. Even when he was reminded by the picture of his wife on the mantelpiece, he was often surprised by the discrepancy between memory and photographic evidence. Had her eyes really been that close together? Were her teeth a bit buck, and her hair so unflatteringly mumsy?

  He’d never noticed before.

  Before Eve—

  There was a knock on the door and Mr Elias flinched as if the Pervert Police had finally tracked him down.

  It was Eve Singer, in just jeans and a thin cardigan, with her arms crossed for warmth across her … chest … and with two bright circles of red on her pale cheeks from hurrying through the snow.

  ‘Hi, Mr Elias,’ she said. ‘Dad’s wandered off. It looks as if he’s come round here.’

  She pointed to the snow and he saw large boot prints leading from his gate, up his garden path and around the side of the house. Duncan must have passed his front window, but the curtains were drawn.

  ‘Do you mind if I have a quick look round the back?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Elias. ‘Come in for a moment. I’ll put my boobs on and help you.’

  Eve blushed and said she didn’t want to be a bother, but it wasn’t any bother – he was keen to help his neighbour look for a missing person, even if it were only in his own back garden. It would make him feel useful, and would be the most exciting thing that had happened to him since the flapjacks – and they were in June!

  What if Duncan Singer were hiding? What if he’d climbed over the fence at the end of the garden and gone into Mr Speight’s garden? That would be dangerous; Mr Speight’s garden was an obstacle course of old flower pots and broken cold frames. What if he’d fallen over in the snow and couldn’t get up? Mr Elias made a mental note of where his shovel and spare blanket were. Whatever the situation, Mr Elias was ready to leap into action – once his over-socks were on, and his boots were on, and his gloves and scarf and hat and coat were on …

  He held the door open for Eve, and then she waited for him and followed him around the house and into the back garden by the light of the Maglite torch he rarely got a chance to use.

  Mr Elias liked the way she let him lead the way. It was good to be in charge of something again, even if it was only an expedition to the bottom of the garden. It made him feel thirty years younger.

  The back gardens here were long and boringly
straight, and so Mr Elias had planted evergreen shrubbery in waves down either side, which formed a charming, winding pathway to the invisible shed at the bottom. Duncan Singer’s boot prints were clear to see, wending their way between the greenery in the silver snow; all they had to do was follow them.

  After the first stand of Red Robin, the house disappeared behind them and it was as if they were completely alone in the heavy, snow-damped air.

  ‘Deep snow,’ said Mr Elias, and was immediately embarrassed by the dullness of his conversational gambit.

  ‘Yes,’ said Eve.

  He couldn’t blame her for the monosyllable. He’d given her nothing to work with. Discussing the weather! It didn’t get a lot duller than that.

  ‘They say it’ll last till New Year,’ he said, before he could stop himself.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Eve, but Mr Elias could tell she wasn’t amazed.

  By the snow or by him – and deservedly so.

  He felt his modest hopes of better neighbourly relations starting to crumble.

  Each year since Eve Singer had come home, Mr Elias had bought a ridiculously big turkey and all the trimmings, in the vague hope that he might muster the courage to ask her and Duncan to eat Christmas dinner with him. Each year he had not – and his freezer was always so stuffed with old turkey that by August he had to throw some away to make space for fresh festive failure.

  Mr Elias knew what the problem was. He wasn’t used to talking to people any more. Not since Jennifer had died. Even before that – not since he’d stopped working. He had nobody to talk to any more. These days he was lucky if the postman stopped to chat one morning a week, and then it was always about cars, in which Mr Elias had no interest that wasn’t faked. He needed more practice in chit-chat. Then he’d have been prepared. But how was he to know that Eve Singer would suddenly knock on his door and ask him to join her on an important quest down the garden? It was too late now. He would just have to do the best he could in the time remaining.

  Which was short, because they were already at the conifer stand.

  ‘Still, we had a good summer.’

  Mr Elias realized he had totally lost it. While he had been sitting watching TV and defrosting meals for one over the past four years, he’d had no idea that he was losing it. His trademark gaps still came easily, but the talking between the gaps was apparently beyond him now. There was only one more curve in the shrubbery – one more turn before they would reach the shed and find Duncan Singer and then they wouldn’t be alone any more, and might never be again, and Mr Elias was seized with a sudden panic. He had to say something interesting. Had to engage her. Not because of the crush or the dinner, but because of the humanity. Had to show her that he was a person – not just a boring old fart of a neighbour. Had to make some kind of connection. The feeling was overwhelming. Almost physical—

  It burst out of him.

  ‘Would you and your father like to join me for Christmas dinner?’

  An Air India 767 yanked the words from Mr Elias, tore them into atoms in the sky, and sprinkled them soundlessly on to the powdery snow.

  Mr Elias had said something.

  Eve stopped and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry?’

  Mr Elias stared at the jet lumbering away behind the houses.

  ‘Oh nothing,’ he said with a flap of his hand. ‘No matter.’

  Eve gave him an uncertain smile and they set off again, round the rhododendrons – and there was Duncan, trying the door of the garden shed in his trousers and shirtsleeves, his rubber boots his only concession to the weather.

  Mission accomplished.

  ‘Dad?’ Eve stepped forward and touched her father’s arm gently.

  And he swung around and punched her straight in the face.

  ‘PHOEBE!’

  16

  ABEL ELIAS AND his wife had not had children.

  Not after Phoebe, anyway.

  Because Phoebe had been an impossible act to follow. She was as bright as a button, with dark-brown whorls of hair and a ready smile almost from the day she was born. Jennifer’s mother – a pessimistic old cow – had insisted it was wind, but Jennifer and Abel had known better. Phoebe was a smiler from the off, and then a laugher, until finally even Granny Bartlett had grudgingly conceded the point.

  Phoebe had done everything early. Sat up. Rolled over. Crawled.

  She had her own way of crawling. She’d rock along on her belly and elbows, more like a dolphin than a baby, propelled by great scissor kicks of her white towelling legs. By the time she was six months old, she was caterpillaring her way up and down the living room so efficiently that Abel and Jennifer called her The Worm.

  Mr Elias hadn’t been in marine insurance back then. He’d been doing his teacher training. Geography was his subject. His father had been in the Foreign Service and the family had spent time in the Far East and Africa. Abel Elias was enthused by the world, and enthusiastic about showing it to the next generation. Teaching geography seemed like a perfect combination.

  And it also seemed that The Worm had inherited his curiosity about the world, because she couldn’t wait to go travelling!

  Abel and Jennifer would spend the evenings with the television off, proudly watching their daughter wriggle and giggle triumphantly across the carpet, gripping the white hyacinths that Abel grew every year, squealing at her own reflection in the copper firedogs, peek-a-booing behind the furniture. Now and then she would stop – but only to brace herself on her chubby arms, as if coming up for air – and stare up at the wall or the ceiling as if she would conquer them later. Then she would laugh and turn around and head off in another direction, filled with the joy of motion.

  While they watched, they would joke about getting her a little spotted hanky knotted on a stick and sending her out into the world to make it on her own. ‘I don’t know though,’ Abel would always conclude with faux caution, ‘let’s give her a month or two.’ And then they would laugh, and kiss each other, and crawl around the floor to head off The Worm at the armchair.

  It was forty years since Abel Elias had crawled on a lounge carpet.

  Almost to the day.

  One evening, just before she reached nine months old, Phoebe had stopped near the fireplace and looked up at them, raising herself on her arms.

  ‘Hello, Worm!’ they’d smiled and clapped.

  But The Worm hadn’t smiled. She’d frowned with effort and strained to lift her upper body.

  ‘She’s trying to get up!’ Jennifer had giggled.

  ‘She is!’ he’d agreed.

  ‘Shall we help her?’

  ‘She’ll make it,’ he’d said. ‘Just watch her!’

  And she did. Phoebe did make it. She went a bit red in the face, and her little arms shook with effort, but suddenly she was on her hands and her feet instead of her belly and elbows, with her bum in the air, and was going to stand up!

  They were transfixed. Breathless with anticipation!

  Slow to the danger …

  Phoebe didn’t make it.

  There was no shame in that. Even a foal, a kid, a fawn, stumbles and falls the first few times it tries out its new legs. And that was what Phoebe did. She didn’t have her legs quite underneath her when her dimpled little hands let go of the planet.

  She wasn’t far off, mind. Another few goes and she’d have been standing, they were sure. And soon after that, walking, then running, then they’d have had to buy reins …

  But instead she’d tilted sideways and toppled over—

  ‘Oh!’

  Abel Elias had moved fast, but not as fast as Death.

  Phoebe banged her head on the corner of the cold stone hearth. And by the time he’d picked her up – already shushing urgently in anticipation of her tears – their Phoebe, their baby, the light of their lives, was gone.

  And everything had changed.

  So much for the worse that Mr Elias tried never to think of it. Never to think of the years that followed, and the years that followed them,
and the years that followed them. Years of sorrow and blame and self-blame and a dull, aching, burgeoning emptiness. Years when photos were put away and when shared heartbreak and recrimination were separated by a membrane so stretched and patched that all of life was just waiting for the next breach.

  Abel and Jennifer didn’t talk. Not only about Phoebe. Not only about what they had lost. But about everything that might ever have bound them together.

  Abel had moved out of the house with the hearth, and Jennifer had come with him, but only because neither of them knew what else to do or where else to go.

  Jennifer had got a job in a shop. She never talked about it.

  Abel had got a job in marine insurance. He’d known nothing about it and had to start at the bottom, but no longer wanted to be close to children every day. Or any day. Marine insurance made death a numbers game, and distanced him from its horror.

  So when the Singers had moved in next door with a young family, it had been hard.

  Every toddler cry, every paddling-pool shriek was a gut-punching reminder of what they had lost.

  The only solution was to close the doors and shut the windows; to tend the garden during school hours, and to go away for the summer holidays. Abel and Jennifer Elias hadn’t spoken to each other in the Lake District for twenty solid summers. Nothing more than Where’s the map? and It’s raining again.

  And when Jennifer’s memory had started to fail, Mr Elias had envied her. He had wished it were he who could forget what they’d lost, and absorb himself for hours with the frayed edge of the tablecloth.

  After she’d died, it had become a lot easier not to remember. Easier to forget the people they had been for so long – and why – and to think of himself as another kind of person entirely. A person who got things done in College Road. A person who had a purpose. A person with a future instead of a past.

  But he moved so fast that he broke Eve Singer’s fall before she hit the snow – thinking of Phoebe with such raw clarity that he shouted her name, then burst into tears.

  A plane roared overhead and Eve opened her eyes to see its lights disappear behind Mr Elias’s shadowy form.