When the silence had gone on beyond all normalcy, when Keiko thought that Malcolm must be able to hear her thinking about him, she looked up at him with a bright smile on her face, giving a little preparatory cough. His hair was as dark as Murray’s but longer and swept to the side in wet-looking straps, like seaweed out of water. His face was still except that, although he breathed through his nose with his teeth shut, his bottom lip hung open under its weight and trembled at every bump in the road.
“Are you busy at the uni today or just killing time waiting for the wee one?” he asked suddenly, as they joined a main road and the van sped up.
“I have one or two little things I need to do. I…”
“I just wondered if you wanted to come with me?” He paused, but Keiko said nothing. “To the meat wholesalers. It’s really interesting.” He hefted himself round and looked at Keiko, who could feel her face draining and had to make herself blink her eyes before they dried.
“The slaughterhouse?”
“Just to the market, not to the processing end.”
“I really have to get a few things done,” she said. “And I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble, thanks all the same.” This, she realised, was the phrase she had needed at the bus stop. Too late now.
“I hear you were out at Kenny’s last night,” Malcolm said, smiling as he checked in his rearview mirror and waved his thanks to the driver behind who had held back and let him in.
“I like their pickled onions,” said Viola. “They’re great big mambo ones, not like those wee white ones Granny gets that you couldn’t choke on.”
“You would make a good little Japanese girl, Viola,” said Keiko. “Sour flavours are very dear to us.”
“I do their dripping,” Malcolm said.
“Eh?” said Viola.
“The Imperiolos. I render their dripping for them. My father used to do it and I took over. It’s nice to be nice.”
“What’s ‘render their dripping’, Malcolm?” said Viola.
“You roast up all fatty scraps, in a hot oven and the pure fat drips out and then you can use it for frying in,” Malcolm said.
“For frying fish?” Keiko asked him.
“Oh yes, best there is. It’s clarified ghee in the curries so I can’t help them with that, and they use veg oil in the Chinese, but it’s best pure dripping in the chippy. Gorgeous stuff. My father taught me.”
“Yuk, yuk, double yuk,” said Viola. Keiko knew that she should scold the little girl for rudeness but could not bring herself to.
“And I tell you what else,” said Malcolm. “The dried scraps at the end are absolutely braw. Bit of salt and pepper.”
“Yuk, yuk, double yuk, and blergh,” said Viola, making a very convincing vomiting noise.
“Yum, yum, double yum, and save me some for later,” returned Malcolm. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of fat.”
Viola’s eyes lit up with devilment, but Keiko broke in before she could answer. “I went for a walk to the glen this morning,” she said. “Murray told me you used to swim in the scuddy there.”
The van lurched and Viola let out her held laughter with a fizzing sound, like a bottle opening.
“Right,” said Malcolm. “Did he?”
“Yes, under the waterfall? In the pool? The scuddy pool, is it?”
“Ah, right,” said Malcolm.
They dropped Viola off first, double-parked on a narrow, bustling street. Keiko fumbled the door open for her to jump down and they watched her slip into the surge of little girls going into the building. Malcolm waited until her bright ponytail had disappeared through the doors before he moved, ignoring the horn blasts and revving behind him, then he turned the van and set off through a warren of back roads.
“I should probably tell you,” he said, without looking at her, “before you say it again to someone who matters. Scuddy isn’t a kind of pool. Swimming in the scuddy means… no trunks.”
“Oh,” said Keiko, feeling the familiar wave of warmth flooding into her cheeks; she had never changed colour so much in her life as in the last week, between the gaffes and the Gaelic coffee.
“Don’t worry,” said Malcolm. “My father used to say, if you can’t keep your foot out your mouth, you could always get work in a circus.”
Keiko couldn’t help laughing. “It’s nice to hear you speak of him,” she said.
“It’s nice to get the chance to,” said Malcolm. “Murray and my mother…”
“I know,” said Keiko. “I made Murray sad this morning. No-not sad, but upset. Not thinking, I said how nice it was in Painchton, how close and settled everyone is!”
“That wasn’t about Dad,” said Malcolm after a long pause.
“I think it was,” said Keiko. The next pause was even longer.
“No, see Murray broke up with his girlfriend. And he’s not really got over it. He’s been sick to the back teeth of Painchton ever since then.”
Keiko groaned. “That would make more sense, actually.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, he talked about a puzzle he had to solve and maybe I could help him-doing the kind of thing I do.”
Malcolm, suddenly, was as still as a stone and the van slowed as though even his pedal foot had frozen. Keiko turned and looked up at him, at the Easter Island set of his face and the dark emptiness of his eyes. The van stopped completely.
“We’re here,” Malcolm said, his voice softer than ever. Keiko looked around and recognised the ornate lump of a building they were parked beside, just across the square from the psychology department. She must have imagined the freezing-she didn’t know how to drive and couldn’t tell what sudden bursts of concentration it might take to stop in the middle of a busy city. Thanking him, she jumped out and slammed the door, then stood and waved as he pulled away. She must surely be imagining what she was seeing now, the effort it was taking Malcolm to heave a smile onto his face and raise his arm to wave back to her.
She heard her mother’s voice. The great expert on the human mind, Keko-chan? You could be Sigmund Freud himself-but even monkeys fall out of trees.
twelve
It was in their slot in Glendinning’s one day, tucked inside the Radio Times. But the layout of the shop-paper rack out of sight of the counter, in between the dairy cabinet and the bakery trays, so that people could pick up their milk, rolls, and newspaper in a oney and not make a crowd by the till while they were at it-that meant anyone could have put it there safe and unseen.
When it was opened, the message was clear. I see what you are. I know what you do. I will tell them all.
They didn’t have a fireplace in the new house, and even a match in a wastepaper basket was taking a risk, with all the smoke alarms ready to shriek out they way they did at the toaster set on frozen, the griddle pan on its fourth chop, the steam from the shower if the bathroom door was open onto the landing. So it was shredded, in the little hand-wound shredder they’d got for their statements and bills. And then went into the compost, mixed with the lawn clippings, potato peel on top and the last of the faded marigolds as well, until it was gone.
Monday, 21 October
Fancy was busy with the photocopier, so grimly bent on it that she could do no more than nod at Keiko and jerk her head towards a chair. She lifted a pile of red sheets from the out-tray, backed around to the in-tray and flipped them over.
“Same way up, turn them short side over short side, try one to start with…” She punched a button on the copier and stepped round to the out-tray to wait. “Bugger it! Upside down again.” Finally, she turned. “Hiya. Sorry, but I really thought I had it that time. So what, yeah? But this coloured paper’s dead expensive and you have to use like ten times as much toner to make it show up. Check the state of it.” She held out the printed page to Keiko, turning it this way and that.