Before and After Page 13

  “Oh hello Flora, I seem to be rather tired, and so…” her voice trailed off and she made a little motion with her hand indicating her own cocoon that she’d constructed.

  “Most wise,” I said approvingly. “I often find that a few days’ bed rest never goes amiss, especially if you are feeling quite unwell, it’s a luxury isn’t it?”

  Sylvia nodded meekly.

  “Now then, Sylvia, I think we should have a little talk, don’t you?” I tucked my feet underneath me, and pushed a cushion beneath my elbow. There really is no point in being uncomfortable when you have the means at hand to be relaxed and cosy, I always say. Sylvia obligingly moved over in her bed so that I had a tad more room.

  “Now, as you know Sylvia, part of my job whilst I am with you is to improve the quality of your lives here, so I hope that the trip to Brighton didn’t unsettle you too much?”

  Sylvia blushed and then shook her head averting her eyes from me.

  “Good. Well, the thing is Archie seems to be taking it all a bit to heart doesn’t he? Foolish of course, but that’s men for you. A little fling, a bit of romantic sapphism never goes amiss in a woman of a certain age, I believe. But we must snap him out of it, and this is what I suggest.”

  I outlined my plans to her and watched her face carefully. As I spoke her face turned a delicate shade of rosy pink and her eyes lightened. By the time I had finished her eyes were fixed on mine and practically sparkling.

  “Oh Flora what a marvellous plan, do you think –“

  “Best not think too much Sylvia, leave that to me, “ I said gathering my voluminous black skirt around me and preparing to leave her bedroom, “All you have to do is remain where you are for the next couple of days and leave Archie to me.”

  “But Friday night really is very important to him and –“

  “I know.” I interrupted.

  Indeed we all knew. Archie had done nothing but bleat endlessly about the importance of Friday night. It seems that every year his bank held a swanky soiree that required his ingenuity, his cunning, his master touch to make it go with a swing. His superior, Sir George left it all to him and frankly he was exhausted by the arrangements. I knew that Sylvia dreaded these evenings when she was meant to be the adoring yet staunchly supportive wife, hanging on his every word, laughing in the right places and wooing the clients. Of course as Sylvia did none of these things the whole evening was always doomed to failure, but it didn’t stop Archie believing that one day this would eventually happen.

  I left the room and went to dig around the rest of the house whilst I had the opportunity. To my horror I found tucked into the exposed cracks and corners even more of Maria’s signs of devotions. Small crumpled silver foil shapes, fashioned crudely as birds. I crossly gathered them all up and went into the kitchen to dispose of them. Maria watched as sullenly as she dared as I dumped them all in the bin, and I watched her cross herself again. This was happening with monotonous regularity, and I frowned at her.

  “What were they? More mice that have sprouted wings?” I asked, watching her back slightly away from me, yet try to smile at me in an ingratiating manner.

  “No, they are ravens.”

  “Oh? And do tell, what’s the charming folk lore connected with those particularly ugly birds?”

  “They belong to St Benedict of Narsia,” (rapid touching of chest, forehead and both sides of collar bone)

  “Ah, I see,” I said confidently, “He’s the one who guards against servants who have broken something of their masters, isn’t he? Well, come along Maria, own up, what is it you’ve smashed? If it’s Archie’s particularly nasty coffee mug that he uses in the morning, you know the one with I’m the boss on it, I’m sure he won’t mind. Well, what is it?” I waited impatiently for her to answer me, but I could see that none was going to be forthcoming. She had turned slightly away from me, but still keeping me in her sight she began to peel some green apples. It looked as if she didn’t want to expose her back to me and needed to keep me where she could see me. I laughed and made myself go to her. I put my arm around her unyielding shoulders, feeling the stiffness there, and told her not to be silly.

  “Whatever it is that you’ve broken, it can’t be that bad Maria. Try not to worry about it. Oh, and please, do stop with the bacofoil origami, won’t you?”

  I left her peeling the fruits of temptation and wandered through the house, parting curtains of heavy see through plastic that the builders had put up to minimise the dust. Of course, the curtains do no such thing, but they add a suitable backdrop to scenes of carnage. One builder was up a ladder hacking away at the old plaster whilst another was tackling the ceiling. They were wearing space age boiler suits and masks which gave them an air of a medical team attending a road accident. Fiachra was supervising the men replacing the rotten floorboards in what had been the music room, and he had a small radio on playing jangly music. When he saw me approach he straightened himself and turned the pop music off, ready to give me a progress report.

  “Not long now miss, before you see the colours go up, that’ll make all the difference, you’ll see.”

  I agreed, and studied him for a moment. Apart from a very unattractive spot on his chin he was, I suppose, quite good looking, if you like that sort of thing. Dark hair, blue eyes and well built. The effect was marred slightly by the appalling accent (to my ears anyway– but then you can’t have everything can you?) He also showed rather a charming air of confidence. Usually I intimidate builders, and this one showed no sign of kowtowing.

  “It’s about this time miss I pop outside for a cig. Will you be joining me now I wonder?” he smiled at me, showing a chipped broken tooth. Easily mended of course, but initially off putting.

  I thanked him for his offer but declined.

  “Another time perhaps miss?” Fiachra insisted.

  “Indeed. Perhaps later during the week you’ll do me the honour of being my guest at The Plumbers Arms and join me for a glass of stout?” I said pleasantly.

  His face brightened. “Is it Guinness you’d be speaking of? That I will and it would be my pleasure,” He said doffing an imaginary hat.

  No-one, but no-one knows or understands the lengths I go to in doing my job well and thoroughly. It’s not everyone who would be so conscientious in their work, I can assure you. I was willing to take on an evening of degradation and boredom (taking one for the team, I believe it’s called) for the sake of the Ambles and not all of my kind would do so.

  I smiled and made my way to my room and decided that it would be a good time for my weekly cleansing routine. That, and a clear cold eye in the mirror. This routine which I have been faithfully adhering to for years is part of my life now and onerous as it is, it simply cannot be skimped. Of course some people pay a fortune and go to Harley street or some other clinic or spa, but really it can be simply and cheaply done at home with a length of stout rubber hose and a steady hand. It takes time, of course and then I like to follow it with a salt scrub and facial mask. I would urge you to try it. The feeling of cleanliness afterwards is invigorating and calming at the same time. Delicious. The mirror told me the truth. I had to have a Treatment very soon.

  I went to lie on my bed for fifteen minutes, allowing time for the clay face mask to penetrate the epidermis when I spied, in the corner of my room, tucked behind the leg of a chair a silver shape. It was one of Maria’s ravens. I laughed at her foolishness and crushed it in my hand. It was well known that St Benedict was the patron saint of (amongst other things) farm workers, nettle rash and witchcraft. I laughed so much that I cracked the clay face mask and had to re-apply it.

  In the shed Maria silently handed Jack the squat brown glass bottle of cough mixture that the woman Flora had given her for him. They both regarded it in silence.

  “Do not take it, I beg of you,” Maria implored him, twisting her hands together anxiously.

  Jack unscrewed the bottle and took a cautious sniff. He reeled back, and solemnly re-corked it.

 
; All his life he had tended plants and living things with due care and attention, the sick plants he treated with a countryman’s eye for the dying. He felt his time was due soon, but he wasn’t going to hasten it by swallowing some foreign mixture.

  “She’s a right one, that Flora Tate, isn’t she?” he remarked to Maria.

  Maria burst into tears, leaving Jack to marvel at the complexity of all women and foreigners. It was something in the blood, he reckoned that made them so flighty. Flora had foreign blood, he’d bet on that.

  Rule Number Thirteen

  “A currency is a thing of value that is tradable. Money or plastic or whatever you may use to get by is not the only currency of value. And not everyone values all currencies the same. And all currencies are not of the same value.”

  With Sylvia safely tucked up in bed administered by Maria with trays of highly indigestible looking snacks and pot after pot of tea, I was free for the next day. Archie was starting to look dishevelled almost becoming unravelled, by his home circumstances. Nothing was where it had been, nothing was normal for him any more. His wife was in another room, seemingly ill, his house was in disorder, even his clothes had suffered from the usual cycle of laundry to wardrobe. His shirts had lost their snowy white starchiness, his dry cleaning wasn’t picked up, his meal times were disrupted, and the hole in his bank balance was being gently eroded by the ever growing demands of John Taylor who – I must say - was doing sterling work. Archie dragged himself around his home with the air of a man living in borrowed clothes. He had taken to following me from room to room, pathetically grateful for any attention that I gave him, and trying to engage me in conversations that started nowhere and ended even further from a point that was never made.

  Bella was angelic in all of this. She picked up on any hints that I gave with the quickness of a ferret. I had, naturellement, been correct about the tattoo parlour, and she proudly showed me the hideous wound of black markings across the dimpled cheeks of her buttocks. Imaginatively, for Bella, it was of a large feathered quill, that stretched across the not inconsiderable width of her torso.

  “What do you think Flora?” She asked proudly, twisting around in her effort to see herself in my bedroom mirror. Her t-shirt was rucked up, and her jeans were pulled around her thighs giving me ample time to see the gory mess.

  “Hmm, well, it’s a little sore right now, but I’m sure that once it’s healed it will look divine. Tell me Bella, what’s the significance of the quill? I mean, it is a quill, isn’t it?” I had a sudden misgiving, perhaps it was indeed just a feather after all.

  “Oh yes, I mean, well, Lord Byron and all of that, though I don’t actually know that he wrote with a quill, but then he must have, mustn’t he?” She said anxiously, straining to see the full effect of the marking on her body.

  “Yes darling, biros weren’t invented then I promise.”

  “How long do you think before I can – “

  “Show it to anyone? Oh, a week or so, I would think.” I answered, making a gloomy mental note in my diary to take on the evening with Fiachra before then.

  Bella blushed and asked if she could help me with anything. She was a girl only really happy in the employ of others – a trait that would have to be curbed in later life or she would be swamped by the demands of the wildly unscrupulous.

  “I suppose a foot rub would be rather nice,” I said stretching out on the bed. “And then perhaps you’d be an angel and count my collection of marbles for me? I do like to keep an accurate tally. So soothing in the middle of the night to know exactly how many one has.” I motioned to a large glass jar of the darling things. Of course, I knew precisely the amount I had, but a pair of young eyes and a second opinion never goes amiss.

  “What are the marbles for Flora?”

  “Oh, you know, games and the like. One can never have too many of them,” I said lightly, thankful that Bella was sweetly possessed of an uncurious nature.

  They were no such thing of course, but a tally of my life. As I have said before, they represented the passions of my past and the consolations of my future, the days I had dedicated working on behalf of others, mainly. I needed them to barter with. They were my accounts too, every glass or stone sphere represented a sum of money. I shan’t tell you how many there were in the jar or how much each one represented. You may become envious of my perceived wealth, and that would never do. You’re on my side, after all, remember?

  The most enchanting thing about them was that they were all unique, so that I could remember every event that had trapped them within my jar. The cloudy green one that held a small chip of jade within it was the first one that I had ever earned. It was given to me by my grandmother, for services that may shock you, but were at the time necessary. I know that fire can be dangerous but this one was glorious. I had been the only one small enough to crawl into the cranny of the church and adjacent school to set the fire with petrol drenched-rags, and I remember very well the feeling of exaltation as we watched the dry tinder of the soaring gilt and wooden roof rise to the heavens. Of course, my grandmother most prudently kept me within a safe distance, well away from the danger. But we watched all the same, squeezing our hands together in excitement as the fire brigade faffed ineffectually around. The casualties were minimal, the only fatality being a much loathed maths teacher who made the pupil’s life a torment. The apple orchard that she re-planted over the land (that rightly belonged to our family centuries before the church had got their greedy grubby claws on it) gives a delicious crop of James Grieve, Foxwhelp, Court Royal and Gloria Mundi every year. Not to mention our favourite harvest of all, the magnificent and ancient plant that we all used to venerate in this country, the creamy berried, oval leafed mistletoe.

  I almost become sentimental when I think about my grandmother. She was a very great lady indeed. Some still remember her in certain parts of the country and her name is whispered now and again in the oak-lined corridors of power.

  I watched Bella as she tipped the marbles onto the bed and they obligingly swirled and tumbled around like a constellation brought down to earth for a mortal whim.

  “Flora, they’re beautiful,” Bella exclaimed picking up a pretty rose quartz orb.

  “Aren’t they?”

  They invited you to touch and hold them. But you could cradle them in the palm of your hand for a long time and they would never warm, they always stayed cool to the touch.

  I picked up a small tiger striped agate globe and rolled it between my hands. This one I had earned by helping a woman in the depths of Shropshire many years ago. I had helped rid herself of a bullying husband and a spiteful mother in law. I could clearly recall the look on her face as I had left her, it was one of disbelief that I was going. She, poor soul, had truly believed that I would stay forever. They all do.

  I left Bella laboriously counting out the multi-coloured magical globes and went to see if Marmaduke was outside my door. He was devotedly guarding me as usual, but I fancied that the poodle next door must have seduced him recently because he was looking exhausted, he could barely be bothered to thump his tail on the floor as a greeting. I stroked his head and went back to my room. Bella was laboriously counting out the marbles, the pink tip of her tongue pushed between her teeth.

  She was particularly taken with a small marble of black onyx, and kept it in her left hand whilst she sorted the others with her right. It was one of my favourites, too. A shiny black glossy ball, with tiny criss crossing veins of silver malachite. I had earned it recently on the ill-fated Italian job. Ill fated for me, I hasten to add, not for my clients. Oh no, they came out of it very well indeed but it had cost me my health for some time afterwards. I hadn’t realised that I was so susceptible to foreign influences. Those dank alley ways of Venice held much more potency then I had ever imagined, and were not only full of raw sewage, rats and starving cats but riddled with the ghosts of the past as well. They had called to me nightly and ravaged my sleep and dreams. Even the gondoliers had woken me, moving
as they do with a spectral ease through the canals. I had found an air of malevolence over the place and wasn’t fooled for one minute by the ever constant tide of tourists that swept through St Marks square every day. The mosquitoes were amongst the most vicious in the world, and they all drank their fill of me every night. It had taken me weeks to remove the smell of citronella oil from my clothes and hair, my cat, Percy had delicately sniffed me when I returned and then sneezed in a very pointed way and turned his back on me. Beastly place. The whole city had reminded me of a decaying Victorian wedding cake, but then, I am very sensitive to such things.

  Bella told me the final tally and I smiled with pleasure.

  “Thank you darling, most kind of you.”

  “Can I get you anything Flora? Before I do your foot massage?” Bella asked, standing on one awkward leg, holding the seat of her jeans away from the discomfort of her new, raw tattoo.

  “Do you know, I am rather peckish. I think I’d like something eggy on a tray. What about two coddled eggs and one slice of your most delicious bread?”

  Bella bounced happily out of the room, intent on a mission.

  When she had gone, I pulled out a photograph I had borrowed of Sylvia twenty odd years ago. It was when she and Archie were on their honeymoon. I studied it carefully as I was going to have to reproduce what she was wearing to accompany Archie on his soiree on Friday. Ossie Clark, I think. Luckily for me the dead designer was very much back in vogue at the moment and fashion journalists were always wittering on about his genius for cutting and styling. There were several museums with collections in, and I was sure that I could pull in a few favours and borrow one for the night. In the photograph Sylvia looked still and calm. Her hair was shoulder length and softly waving, her neck was encompassed by pearls and she had a passive quality that said she was a woman who was loved.