“Well, yes, but nothing personal, you understand, the same questions for everyone.” Malcolm sprayed the scales and wiped them, the numbers jumbling on the display as the weight of his hand crossed back and forth.
“What is it you’re wanting to find out, then?” asked Mrs. Poole. Murray shifted.
“I’m testing your response to various scenarios,” said Keiko, her happy mood dissolving.
“Like those inkblots,” said Malcolm.
“Nothing so intrusive,” Keiko said. “Nothing so revealing.”
“I don’t mind,” said Malcolm, looking at his mother.
“No,” said Mrs. Poole. “I’m sorry, dear, but I don’t think it would be a very good idea.”
“And besides,” said Keiko. “It’s anonymous. All the responses are logged with just a number. Complete anonymity guaranteed. No one would ever know-me included-what you’d written.”
She had never thought of Mrs. Poole as wearing cosmetics, but now she saw the lipstick and rouge jump out as the colour behind them drained away from the woman’s face.
“Mum?” said Malcolm.
Mrs. Poole attempted a smile. “You’re a city person, Keiko,” she said. “And it’s different in a big city, but in a wee place like this, there’s no such thing as anonymity.”
“Mum, you’ve got totally the wrong end of the stick here,” Malcolm said. “It’s nothing to do with… anything. It’s made-up things.”
“It’s very easy,” said Mrs. Poole, “when you live so close, to… encroach.”
“I wouldn’t dream of encroaching,” said Keiko, rising up a little. “Malcolm is right, Mrs. Poole. I have no interest in anything personal.”
“Malcolm was telling me you’d been asking Murray who lived in the flat before you,” said Mrs. Poole.
Keiko did not take her eyes away from the woman, but she got the impression that both boys had become very still.
“What’s the other favour?” Malcolm asked.
Keiko smiled her relief. “Ah yes, I wanted to ask if I may hang my washing in the yard on a rope. Is there a key to the back door?”
Malcolm crumpled up his handful of blue paper towel and turned away, scraping it over his hands. Murray glanced at his mother.
“Something wrong with the tumbler?” asked Mrs. Poole.
“Oh no, no. Most generous and very handy. But for a few things, delicate things that can’t be put in it?”
“But would you want your delicate things hanging out in the yard?” asked Mrs. Poole, flicking a look at Murray.
“Delicate fabric, I mean,” said Keiko, blushing. “Rayon dresses, and woollen, not…”
“They should have thought to give you a rack,” Malcolm said.
“Of course, these houses all had dollies,” said Mrs. Poole in a louder voice. “In the kitchens. And I could never see the sense in it. Always taking things down and putting them up again if you were cooking. Malcolm’s right, a handy wee rack over the bath is the easiest thing. I have a spare one, dear. I’ll pop it up to you.” And with this series of informative little remarks and jabs of kindness, she drove Keiko out of the shop and closed the door.
It wasn’t until she was standing outside that she remembered the smell in the kitchen. She should have asked for the plumbing work to be done. That would have got Mrs. Poole down from her high horse. But she did not go back in.
The phone was ringing when she got back upstairs.
“Right,” said Fancy over the line. “Pet wants to know whether it’s one by one up at your place or if she can just take questionnaires to the Guild with her and dish them out and if so when. And Kenny said to her to say to me to say to you that he’ll do the golf club and the bowling club, and I’ll give Vi a note to ask if the teachers will do it, which is another nine, so that’s nearly a hundred before you’ve put up a single poster. Ta-da!”
“Are you sure no one minds?” said Keiko. “Mrs. McMaster and Mr. Imperiolo?”
“They’re gagging for it,” said Fancy. “You have to make your own fun in Painchton, Keiko. Nothing ever happens here.”
fifteen
Wednesday, 30 October
It was a dark afternoon, the clouds looking as though only the chimney pots and old aerials were stopping them from settling down on top of the roofs like a shroud. Keiko stood looking out of the kitchen window at the dim outlines of the yard, her breath fogging the view even more, and her chest started to rise and fall again just from thinking about Mrs. Poole and the scene in the shop the previous day. Encroaching! Malcolm hadn’t minded. She tried to remember if Murray had said anything or if his mother had silenced him completely.
And why shouldn’t she wonder about her flat? Why shouldn’t she think it was strange that such a comfortable place lay empty? Where was the harm? A three-inch tongue can kill a six-foot man, Keko-chan, said her mother’s voice in her head. But how could a woman be so very concerned about her own privacy and then tell tales of her sons in front of a stranger? “Malcolm was telling me you asked Murray,” said Keiko under her breath in a sly, mincing voice, nothing like Mrs. Poole’s.
She picked up the bundle of slips she had printed out and put them on the shelf in the hall to remind her to take them to Fancy.
And anyway, she told herself, it couldn’t be the thought of being talked about that was worrying Mrs. Poole, because even the assurances of anonymity did nothing to help. If anything, the idea of it being anonymous was what had-
Yes! It was when Keiko talked about writing anonymously that Mrs. Poole had gone grey behind her make-up and had started babbling about city-dwellers and washing lines. No such thing as anonymity in a small town, she’d said. But no one else in this small town was worried. They were delighted to be part of the fun, and Keiko looked forward to them all trooping upstairs to help her. She hoped Mrs. Poole saw every single one.
Then, thinking about the visitors she was expecting, Keiko sniffed the air, grabbed her wallet, and trotted across the road to the ironmonger.
It was just as old-fashioned as the butchers, and had probably been there just as long. But where Pooles’ Butcher had white tiles and shining steel, McKendrick’s Ironmonger had old wood and brass. The shelves and counters glowed, polished by hands and time, and the cupboard handles and label-holders on the shelf edges gleamed in the soft light from dusty bulbs.
She did not know where to begin to look for what she needed. Every shelf and stand was packed. Boxes of nails and screws and hooks, bottles of solvent and cleaner and oil, rolls of wire, binfuls of brooms, and stacks of charcoal in paper sacks with sewn ends. And hanging from the ceiling, mobiles and wind chimes and hammocks and even a small canoe, so high Keiko could not see how it could ever be brought down if someone should want to buy it. While she was gazing upwards, a voice startled her.
“Taking up kayaking, are you?”
“Craig!” she said. “Here again.”
“It’s Wednesday,” Craig said. “Traders meeting and Uncle Jimmy needs my vote.”
“I was planning to replace my genkan-uh, the doormat,” Keiko said, but remembering the letter for you and loath to disturb it again, she hurried on, “but really what I want is a sink trap and some kind of unclogging solution.”
“Ew,” said Craig.
“Yes,” said Keiko, blushing.
“End aisle,” said Craig, coming out from behind the counter and leading the way. “Listen,” he went on, when they were standing in front of an array of plungers and rods and bottles of terrifying acid with warnings in red. “Are you okay over there? Apart from the crappy old pipes? Okay with the neighbours?”
“I’m fine,” said Keiko. “Why?”
“Oh, just, I know you’ve been round at Murray’s and been to the house and…”