Then the FedEx man said there was another couple of items. William was too stunned to reply and one way or another he dragged two, less heavy material-coated wardrobe bags upstairs as well. They seemed to fill the room. By this time, William was angry and breathless. He slammed the front door behind the man and listened as the van roared off up the street towards the sea, in the general direction of where his wife would be sitting in a bus shelter instead of being at the door and telling them where to put it. William was trembling with rage.
Delivery for Ms Joyce, meaning the one left alive. Hen, no doubt, interfering again, getting rid of the last of Angel’s things, sending stuff back, blocking up Angel’s room trying to shock them, was that it? He put on his anorak emblazoned with his own logo, ‘WJ Storage’, and went out to fetch his wife, as angry as he had ever been. She would be in that bus shelter at the other end, the one where he and she had their best conversations, ever since their first courtship there, forty years ago. There was nowhere else to go then, except the back seat of his Dad’s borrowed car. Hen didn’t know that.
Right, who am I? He asked himself on the way. Will Joyce, likely lad, married young, soon after that looking for a business opportunity and a family. What did he get? A business, a marriage that wouldn’t produce babies, and a wife he would love for ever and ever. And there was Hen, making a point, blocking up Angel’s room. She must have meant it; she wanted to take over that room as if Angel had never been there, remind them of her own existence, show her resentment about not being needed, teach them something. He stood on the seafront, with the wind howling around him, and phoned her number on the mobile phone he hated. Heard her whispering and saying, Dad? Is that you, and him shouting back, come down and get all that crap out of here, and her saying, Can I call you back, as if it was nothing important and she hadn’t done that to them, had all that shit delivered to take up Angel’s room, how could she?
I’ll call you back, she said. I’m in a museum.
Busy.
He walked onwards, and oh, hell, why hadn’t he done the obvious, and redirected FedEx to his own storage store, said take it there, whatever it is, and leave it, that’s what it’s for. And why did he take it in? Because it had her name on it? He was in shock. Mother was going to be very, very upset, just when she was getting better. Thank God she hadn’t been indoors.
William sat in the shelter with his wife, taking her cold hand and letting her enfold his colder wrist, and then the phone went again. Cold though it was, it was less cold than it had been. She had brought her tapestry with her, and fingered it, gently, as if the stitches would work all on their own and the sight of her, just doing that, made him feel angrier. She would not like what she was going to find at home, Hen using the place as a dump; it would disturb the fragile equilibrium. He was furious with Henrietta for not understanding anything, being busy, for God’s sake, and then that damn phone went again. He had to detach his hand to shout into it. He shouted for a long time.
A quiet male voice, asking him not to shout the way he was shouting already, which made him shout even louder. Can we talk, the voice said, calm as cold custard, whoever it was, but at least it wasn’t Hen, saying she was busy.
I’m a friend, the voice said. Can I help? Only Hen’s a bit upset, so perhaps you can tell me.
She’s UPSET? What do you think we are? How do I tell my wife that the house is full of her junk?
There must be some mistake…
MISTAKE? Hen never makes mistakes, not her. Never. She sent it on purpose.
Can you leave it where it is for the moment? Just close the door? I could come tomorrow, and perhaps help you sort it out.
YOU can come, whoever the hell you are. I just don’t want Hen here. What’s your bloody name?
Peter.
William did not know why the voice made him feel better. He had always wanted a son, but it had been the daughters who had been available.
‘Do you think,’ Peter later said to Hen, ‘that I’ve got the gist of this? Your father thinks that you’ve chosen this moment in time to dump the remnants of Angel’s things on them? Or that you’ve had stuff delivered to them to taunt them out of their misery, or make your presence felt, knowing they would hate it?’
‘I don’t know what he thinks. Only that he’s very angry. That he thinks that I’m being spiteful, using them in some way. Getting my own back for being rejected.’
You’re a user, aren’t you, Henrietta. You used your own sister to bolster up your own importance didn’t you? You have to be indispensable.
Oh Lord, sitting in Hen’s pretty, if dilapidated, kitchen, the last thing he wanted to think of was Marianne Shearer’s cross-examination of a primary witness of reported fact, and of how, between them, they had made the jury suspicious.
‘This isn’t what I imagined,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the way I thought you lived.’
She shrugged, more than slightly restored on the way home on the bus, with all that talking in the meantime. Saying thank you all the time, for speaking to her father when she couldn’t.
‘You’ve only seen the basement,’ she said. ‘I live on this level, work on the other two. I used to share this flat with Jake.’
‘Jake?’
‘The man who got me into this business. He lives with his son in Watford now. I moved in three years ago when he was finding it difficult to manage the stairs, and became his assistant. Then his eyesight got worse. It’s his house. I pay him rent, which covers everything. He should sell it, really, but he wants to keep it for his son. And he wants his business to go on.’
Peter was remembering another bit of Marianne Shearer’s cross-examination of Henrietta Joyce, found himself paraphrasing it out loud.
‘She said, “Miss Joyce, you live with a seventy-year-old man, don’t you? You wormed your way in to his affections for free accommodation, didn’t you? Basically you’re a squatter, and that’s what you took your sister to.”’
Hen nodded, still upset, and then amused. ‘Yes, she did say that, didn’t she? She was flinging in anything to undermine my credibility. I don’t even know where she got all that from. Angel stayed here a couple of times before, so I’m guessing it must have been garbled, second-hand information gleaned from something Angel had told Rick Boyd. Angel liked to do me down, it seems. I didn’t live with Jake. I camped in the dressing room downstairs until he went, which was when Angel was away with Rick. I didn’t want him to go. I wanted to look after him and learn as much as I could, but I suppose it meant there was space for Angel. Angel liked it here when she visited before… ’ She hesitated, leaving something out. ‘She didn’t like it so much when I brought her back here.’
MS. If she wanted to go anywhere, Miss Joyce, she wanted to go home, didn’t she?
HJ. No, she didn’t want to go home. There would be nothing for her to do, and she was too ashamed.
MS. She was or you were?
Peter wished he could get the cross-examination echoes out of his head.
You needed her, rather than her needing you. Otherwise read as Miss H. Joyce is a sponger, a feeder on the frailties of others. He was looking round the room and not quite getting it. He was in an old-fashioned attic under the eaves of a house where he had only seen the cellar. It was one of the warmest rooms he had ever sat in, with yellow-washed walls, an old table, painted blue, a minimum of fittings and equipment, three mismatched chairs with cushions, crockery that looked as if it had come from a boot fair, and good coffee. A boiler hummed in a crooked cupboard. It’s a sort of patchwork kitchen, Hen explained. You can see why Jake couldn’t rent out this house commercially. Something old, nothing new, plenty borrowed and much of it blue. Probably needs rewiring, for starters. The bathroom’s ancient. All Peter could think of was how comfortable it was. She was suddenly a little formal, like a person who was aware of having revealed too much and wanting to retreat, confused by gratitude for having been helped. Are you sure? she kept saying. Are you sure?