“There were birds, rats, one or two rabbits, all mixed in with the bike parts. Separated, you know, like… like Mr. Byers. He was bleaching the bones, putting them together with hinges and screws. He told me it didn’t have to be like it was with the pig. His exact words were that people didn’t have to be like pigs, they could be like him and the bikes, that he could always fix it no matter what was wrong. And as soon as he got a free hand with something bigger than rabbits, he would prove it.” Malcolm’s eyes filled with bright crescents that balanced, trembling, on his lower lids before two drops detached themselves, ran to the points of his lashes and splashed onto his cheeks.
“The mobiles,” Keiko said. “I thought they were models. I thought he had carved them out of wood.”
“What mobiles?” said Malcolm.
“In the workshop. Birds. Skeletons, I suppose. I admired them and he took them away.” She blinked. “Sorry, Malcolm, go on.”
“It feels good to be telling someone,” Malcolm said. “Can you believe, I still didn’t tell Mum and Dad when I went to them. Can you believe that?”
Keiko tried to put herself in Malcolm’s place, imagining coming at all at this from the other end and how long she herself might have tried to hold things together. She nodded firmly.
“Of course,” she said. “You do what you think is best. Tonight we’re doing what we think is best, and we’ll only find out whether it’s crazy or not depending on what we don’t know yet.” They both sat for a moment, letting in the realisation of what must be happening out there right now with their consent and collusion, then they each retreated to Malcolm’s story again.
“I told them Murray didn’t want to be a butcher. I tried to make them see that we didn’t need another person, but Dad was full of the notion to expand, open another branch, maybe one each. So then I tried to say that I didn’t want Murray there, it was too much working with him all day long when we had never been that close. They just laughed. What did I mean not all that close? Being Murray’s big brother was like my idea of what I was put on this earth for. If anything, they said, I should back off a bit and let him go. I nearly told them then. Nearly told them why I spent my whole damn life being Murray’s big brother and it still wasn’t enough.” He smiled and slapped his hands against his chest. “You don’t often hear me saying I’m not big enough, eh?”
Keiko smiled awkwardly. She had never heard Malcolm mention his size before.
“So he started in the shop, started at college, and just for a while I thought maybe I had been wrong. Then out of nowhere Dad came to me and said Murray was giving up his apprenticeship and they were setting him up with the workshop at Byers’s place instead. Dad was trying to be discreet, but I told him I knew, had known longer than him. And it turned out, you see, that Murray had been caught in the meat preparation suite at the college after hours. It was a lamb this time, and I don’t know what he said to whoever it was that caught him, about what he had worked out or what he was trying to do, but it was enough to put the willies up them.”
He paused. There were footsteps coming up the stairs, and then the front door opened and shut softly. Malcolm tried for a smile as the kitchen door opened.
“Mum,” he said. “Fancy all right?”
“God love her,” said Mrs. Poole.
Keiko dragged herself to her feet, meaning to lead Mrs. Poole to a chair and get her something to drink, but she was shocked by the ache in her calves and knees, the sourness in her stomach, and the shivering that started again as soon as she moved. Two kinds of shivering-one on the surface of her skin like insects scuttling around under her clothes and another deep juddering as though she had just clanged the whole length of her body into a wall and was still reverberating from the blow. Mrs. Poole scraped her chair nearer to Keiko’s and put an arm around her shoulder trying to stop the shaking, but she had no comfort to give. Her hands were cold, her body rigid, and it made Keiko want to pull away; instead both sat still, clashed together at the shoulders in a semblance of an embrace, waiting for some shared warmth to stop one of them from shuddering.
thirty-four
“How far have you got?” said Mrs. Poole after long minutes of silence.
“As far as I can take it nearly,” said Malcolm. He kneaded one hand across his brow, snarling the hairs of his eyebrows out of line. He started to speak again, but the first words were sucked out of his mouth in a sob.
Keiko stretched towards him with her free hand, so the three of them were joined together.
“I was surprised when Murray took up with Natasha,” Mrs. Poole said, picking up the story. “He’d never had any time for girls before that, but all of a sudden there she was, round at the workshop every night in her leotard and every time the doorbell went, it was her looking for Murray. And then she stopped doing the workouts. She still came round to the house asking if Murray was in, but as often as not he would get us to say he wasn’t.
“I knew what was up, of course. She started walking different. She always wore a ponytail high up on one side of her head and it used to bob up and down like a pom-pom whenever she moved. She washed her hair every day like all you youngsters. Well, around about the time Murray seemed to go off her, that ponytail wasn’t bouncing any more. It was swaying from side to side instead. And I knew exactly what that meant-when you start rocking sideways as you walk and even your nose and fingers are looking bloated. She was pregnant, and it was Murray’s and he was having nothing to do with it. So I got his father to talk to him. Duncan went to him and told him that if it was too late to fix it, then Murray would have to face up to his responsibilities and make the best of things.”
“Fix it?” Malcolm echoed.
“I know,” said Mrs. Poole. “We’ve gone over and over it until we were ready to scream. Your father trying to remember exactly what he said and if it could have been taken the wrong way.”
“But that’s crazy. Dad couldn’t have blamed himself. It’s mad.”
Mrs. Poole choked him off. “Don’t you think I tried to tell him that? I know only a madman would think he was telling his son to do away with the girl. And your father’s answer to that was that he should have faced the fact that it was a madman he was talking to, and he should have had the sense to watch what he was saying.”
“But,” said Keiko, trying to bring them back to the story and lay out another fold of it for her, “why did Mrs. McMaster not do something? She must have known Tash was pregnant too.”
“Pet McMaster broke her heart when Fancy took off,” said Mrs. Poole. “And she blamed herself for being heavy-handed. She had tried to get Fancy to stay on at school, stay on with Pet even once her birthday was past. Then it was only months after Fancy left that Tash came. She was fifteen, and I think Pet would have walked on eggshells for the rest of her life to keep her. She would never have confronted her. She was waiting for Tash to turn to her. Didn’t think she could bear it if another one ran away. Well, she was right. She couldn’t. When Tash disappeared, I thought Pet was going to fall to pieces. She had tablets in the morning to wake her up and tablets at night to put her to sleep again. I don’t know what would have happened if Fancy hadn’t landed back here with her wee one, looking like a dog that was overdue for a kick. Of course, Fancy was that taken up with her own problems I don’t think she even noticed how things were with Pet. And anyway as soon as Pet had got the pair of them installed, she started to pick up again too. She eventually gave up the idea of looking for Tash and, my God it shames us all to say it, but I don’t think any one of us would have given the wee soul another thought.