“Oh,” she said, looking up. “What happened to the mobiles?” The hanging shapes above the roof beams were gone, just an empty dim space above the lights now.
“I took them down,” said Murray. “Chucked them out.”
“No!” said Keiko. “You threw them away? But you must have worked so hard on them.”
“They were falling to bits,” Murray said, “when I got them down and had a good look.”
Keiko shook her head and smiled at him. “If I could make anything so beautiful, I would keep them forever,” she said.
Murray smiled back at her. “Speaking of making something beautiful,” he said and rolled his shoulders again.
Keiko flushed and his eyes flashed wide.
“Sorry!” he said. “Christ, I didn’t mean you’re not. I didn’t mean…”
She felt her flush deepen even further. “I’m not offended, “ she said. “I’m flattered. I’m…”
“Right,” he said. “Good, then. Let’s crack on.”
In the mirror, as he moved, it looked more like ink falling in water than a person’s body. Keiko wanted to gaze but kept being distracted by her own little figure beside him as it jerked and wobbled, her hair falling forward in hanks and then back again to reveal the grimace of concentration on her face.
“Should I hear things crunching?” she panted, but Murray only frowned and kept his eyes shut, the flick of lashes on his cheek mirroring the arcs of his black brows. He dropped his head and started to roll down again, until the backs of his fingers rested against the mat. Keiko dropped forward too, catching her breath as her knuckles banged on the floor. He turned and squinted at her then, his head hard against his braced knees, smiling; a strange smile since his face was upside down, with an unfamiliar line underscoring each eye as some slight swell of flesh, usually invisible, moved out of place.
“You should be rolling forward trying to feel each vertebra moving separately,” he said. “There shouldn’t be any clunking.” Keiko giggled. “Feel me,” he said, and taking her hand as he straightened, he reached up and placed her fingertips against the nape of his neck. “Press harder,” he said. “Feel the bones.” He closed his eyes and bent his head forward again. Keiko rubbed her fingers over the bones in his neck. When his chin was completely tucked into his chest, he let his shoulders sag and more knots sprang up between his shoulder blades. She traced down each one as it rose out of the muscles around it, feeling the curve of his back rising and the bones of his spine pass one by one under her fingers until finally he was drooped right over and she stood with her palm on the highest point of his body, digging the heel of her hand in gently between pads of muscle to find the last one.
She hoped it didn’t feel too different when he did the same with his hand on her, but she couldn’t ignore her sudden lurches forward, and she knew when she stopped that she wouldn’t look drooped like a lily on a broken stem; she was straining to keep the position, with juddering legs and a line of sweat forming between her buttocks. Murray pinched each vertebra hard between thumb and forefinger knuckle and tutted softly.
“Okay,” he said and caught her under her arms as her legs gave way. “That’s as good as it’s going to get tonight. Let’s get started.”
Throughout the rest of the week, Keiko came to feel as though she were living two lives side by side.
Her silent life was all day up in her room, in the bay window. She read, wrote, checked and rechecked her writing, and might have been alone in a capsule on the moon. From time to time she would turn and look across the street at the clouded windows, showing her nothing. And every night when it was dark she stood beside Murray in even deeper silence, and his face-his dark eyes-showed even less.
Then there was her other life.
Wednesday evening tea at the Sangsters, slices of the noted roast glazed ham and a basin of potato salad as big as a washing-up bowl, the potatoes floury and still warm when they were dressed so that the mayonnaise clung to every fragment as they crumbled.
Friday was supper with Mr. McLuskie while Etta was at a meeting. A proper fry-up, he told her, a good old mixed grill. Bacon and chops and liver and sausage squares with eggs and bread fried off in the grease. She tried her best, even though Mr. McLuskie entertained her by telling her all the recipes he knew by heart: hot water lard crust, rough puff, flaky, short and choux until her head as well as her stomach was rolling.
He talked almost as much as Fancy. Fancy, endlessly inventive, tirelessly imaginative, popping round, emailing, texting, phoning, filling Keiko’s head with characters, places, puzzles, jokes and punchlines until, as well as twenty-five careful, probing stimuli there were twenty-five decoys straight from Planet Fancy. The study would be what it was, as thorough as she could make it, and perhaps she would graduate, but the filler questions-those would go down in history.
By Saturday the work was finished, and when she stood beside Murray she could see a difference, feel it too. She smiled at him, wondering if he was pleased with her.
“Rest tomorrow,” he said.
“Are you sure you won’t join us?” Murray said nothing. “Fancy and Craig are.” Craig had not hesitated for a second when she had asked him. Creep across the road or no.
“News to me that there is a ‘Fancy and Craig’,” he said. Already he had withdrawn his gaze from her shoulder angles and the set of her knees and begun to look at his own body in the mirror instead.
“Well, Fancy’s coming and Craig’s coming-I asked them separately-but who knows what might happen.”
“Over a suet pudding,” he said. “If I can’t talk you out of it, at least I’ll stop in later on, check that you’re okay.”
nineteen
Sunday, 10 November
She was sitting at the window with her legs tucked under, watching for Fancy but checking every few minutes that Malcolm’s van (or even the slightly smaller bulk of Malcolm himself) wasn’t approaching from the other end of the street.
They came together as it turned out, laughing at the door when Keiko opened it to them. Fancy hefted two plastic bags and waved them, and Malcolm looked at the box he was carrying with a sheepish, down-turning smile.
“Where’s Vi?” asked Keiko as they negotiated passing bags and boxes, taking off coats and shoes, Malcolm turning slowly as the two girls darted around him.
“She’s at Pet’s,” said Fancy, with the smallest flick of a glance towards Malcolm’s back. Keiko nodded and followed him to the kitchen.
“That drain still bothering you?” he said.
Keiko blushed. It was not her fault, but still she blushed.
Malcolm wiped down the countertop nearest the cooker and began lifting things from his box: two cellophane bags, one lolling and dark with blood, one a pale block. Beside these he set out a bag of flour, a small dark bottle with an orange label, and an onion.
“And that’s it,” he said. “That’s all that’s in it. It’s that simple. The best ingredients carefully chosen and combined.”
“You don’t agree with Mr. McLuskie, then?” Keiko said. “He told me about bridies and about how the meat doesn’t matter as long as the pastry’s right and you use enough pepper.”
“What a bloody cheek,” said Fancy. “Doesn’t he get his meat from you?”
Malcolm nodded, looking unperturbed. “He didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “He means it doesn’t matter what kind of meat it is-mutton, beef, pork, you name it-he didn’t mean the quality. Besides, he’s a baker: of course he’s going to care most about the pastry. Each to his own.”
“You’re nicer than me, Malcolm,” Fancy said.
“Suet,” said Malcolm, tearing at the pale bag and lifting it, letting a white loaf of fat fall with a thud onto the plate. He moved a hand towards the dark bag but stopped before he picked it up, plunged one arm into the box, and shook out a clean apron. He pushed his head through the neck strap and poked the strings around his sides.