The Trouble With Fire Page 7

  ‘I talked to her about it as a political concept,’ said Leonie of Jan’s job. ‘But she says she hasn’t got time for concepts.’ Leonie was almost spitting the words. ‘I thought you of all people would understand.’ At the time, Sabrina was struggling with political science.

  ‘Sort of,’ she said, and it was the nearest she and Leonie ever came to understanding each other. Afterwards, she wondered about Jan’s trances, and hoped she could deal with emergencies on aeroplanes.

  Jan was the first to get married, too, something she has done only once, and the first to get divorced, although this is something Elsa has never done, and Sabrina believes that she is happy with Daniel and can’t imagine she will repeat separation. Jan never had children. Not her scene, she said once.

  And now Leonie is dead, and Jan is locked up, and there is nobody to see to her mother’s funeral arrangements.

  The car park is filling up as Elsa ducks out of her car in the rain, her expression distraught. ‘Sabby,’ she says, climbing into the passenger seat. Beneath her raincoat her cashmere sweater is tight over her ample breasts; her dark pleated skirt doesn’t conceal that she is getting stout. ‘What on earth is this all about? Did you know Jan was in here? I never saw anything in the paper about Leonie dying.’

  ‘No, but remember Jan’s got a different surname to Leonie. I can’t even remember what it is. Perhaps we’ve missed it.’

  Elsa sighs heavily. ‘How did we ever get in tow with Jan?’

  ‘I think Jan got in tow with us,’ says Sabrina, half laughing at the memory of the way Jan was always at their heels when they first went to high school. By that time, she and Elsa had known each other forever. There was something adoring about the way Jan spoke to them. Sabrina thinks they were flattered. Jan was sensational — the way she looked, the way she came top in everything — and yet she chose them. ‘She was a good mate.’

  ‘I feel awful for her,’ Elsa says in a small miserable voice.

  ‘Well, we’re here now. We can do it, can’t we?’

  ‘I haven’t told Ross,’ says Elsa. Ross is her husband. ‘He wouldn’t like me coming here. Thank God he didn’t pick up the phone when she rang yesterday. I thought it was a hoax at first.’

  Jan had called them both the day before. A recorded message had come on the end of the line, a flat cold man’s voice saying: ‘You are about to receive a phone call from a prison inmate. Press one if you do not wish to receive it, otherwise hold the line. Your call will be recorded and may be used as evidence in court.’ And then there had been a click and a rustle, and Jan’s voice. She had a special dispensation to phone people because of her mother’s death, she explained. As a rule, she had to have people she rang approved of first, but this was different. Besides, she said, there weren’t all that many people she could ring. You know how it is, she had said to Sabrina, in that kind of drifting voice she sometimes used at school when she wasn’t paying attention. Her brother had been brought up by their father, and Lord knows where he is now; they don’t keep in touch. She can’t even let him know that their mother is dead.

  She had pulled herself together, hurrying on to explain that she needed to see Sabrina and Elsa urgently. It was visiting hour the next day; if they could come she’d be grateful, because her mother was a bitch most of the time, as they knew very well, but she couldn’t let her be disposed of without someone in charge. Disposed of, that was the phrase she used. ‘I’m banged up,’ she said and laughed, or that’s how it came across. Because of the circumstances they are allowed a special dispensation to visit at short notice. They will have to carry identification, but their names are already down on the visiting list.

  ‘We’d better get on with it,’ says Sabrina, turning to face the wall of wire fences. ‘Come on, Elsa, they won’t keep us in there.’

  Elsa shivers, adjusts her fine floating navy scarf. It’s decorated with tiny pale tan-coloured elephants; one of her daughters-in-law had bought it for her in London. ‘Click click,’ she says, which is what they used to say, from the times they played knucklebones together.

  It is not getting into the prison that is so hard, though that is bad enough. Somehow they had thought they would be different, that because they were two respectable women hurrying to their friend’s aid, they would be, if not exactly welcomed, at least swept through the doors in a discreet manner. Instead they must stand together in a wire enclosure and speak their names into a microphone, while they wait for what seems a very long time until a gate slides open. There is no sign of human presence until they are inside the doors. They must sign documents, show their drivers’ licences, put all their belongings in a metal cupboard and return the key to an officer behind a grille, walk through a metal detector like the one at the airport, only the guard on the other side who scans them and frisks their pockets is less friendly. Sabrina wants to protect her crotch but is reminded sharply to keep her arms extended level with her shoulders.

  They are instructed to sit on stools attached to tables dotted around the room. The stools are different pastel colours, like toys in a playroom. Families are gathered round the tables, waiting for prisoners to appear. Guards stand in line near a counter. One of them calls Jan’s surname, and a minute or so later she emerges, wearing a baggy fluorescent-orange jumpsuit. Her hair falls in a long single plait down her back and her face is without make-up and more bloated than they remember, but then it’s a while since they met. They reach out to hug her, and for a moment it is allowed, then they must all sit down.

  ‘Bit of a shock, eh?’ says Jan. There is an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Why?’ says Elsa. ‘Why are you in here?’

  ‘Oh, a bit of fraud, or that’s what they said. It’s all right, I haven’t bottled anyone or done drugs — well, not that anyone’s nailed me for.’ She laughs again, it’s a shock to hear that it sounds just like Leonie’s laughter, deep and smoke-laden. ‘I was doing a computer job. You know, transferring money from one account to another.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ says Elsa.

  ‘Why I did it?’ Jan looks at her squarely. ‘It was easy, Elsa, that’s why.’

  ‘We’re so sorry about your mother,’ Sabrina says.

  ‘Yes, well, it wasn’t what I was expecting. The old whore. It was only last Saturday she was here.’

  ‘She’s been visiting?’

  Jan hesitates. ‘I was her cause. Finally. It pissed her off my whole life that she had to look after me. I guess I was more interesting in here.’

  ‘I’m sure she loved you,’ says Elsa in a helpful, hopeful voice.

  ‘Love. Oh, shut up, Elsa.’ And Jan’s eyes fill with tears. She leans her elbows on the table and pushes her fingers into her temples. ‘I’m not sure we see love in the same light. It’s not something we talked about in school.’

  Elsa looks puzzled, and Sabrina doesn’t know where this is going either.

  ‘We talked about it all the time,’ Elsa says hotly.

  ‘You and Sab talked about boys but it’s not the same thing.’ Jan is crying openly now, her shoulders shaking. ‘Oh shit,’ she says, ‘I didn’t mean to do this. Yes, you could say we made up, even though she left it a bit late. She saw me in here. You know, she saw me.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Sabrina says, ‘really it is.’ Her own ditsy happy mother, who had loved her father and all of them, and had given her a silly name, had died in a hospice more than a decade ago. It’s the only unforgivable thing she ever did to Sabrina’s father, and to Sabrina, too. Sabrina knows what it’s like to wake up in the mornings and feel absence in the air, the mystery of loss that is there like some tangible object, that takes minutes to recognise, that has to be quelled before the day begins. She sees the way it is, that Jan has loved the mother she could never please. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Heart. She was a bit out of breath last week. That’s all. Anyway, are you two going to do the honours for me?’

  And then Jan unfolds the plan. Leonie is in a funeral parlour. There
hasn’t been a notice in the paper, so first of all they need to see to that, and then she wants her mother to have a proper funeral. There’s a lawyer who has told her there’s money for it. Jan doesn’t know if she’ll be allowed to go or not, but she’s got her fingers crossed. Before the funeral there must be a viewing of her body. Leonie still had old friends and they’ll need to say goodbye. The viewing part is important, something Leonie was in the habit of doing when people died. She liked funerals. For the viewing she must have a nice dress.

  ‘I’m sure she’s got nice clothes in her wardrobe,’ Sabrina says. ‘She always had lots of clothes.’

  ‘You have to get past this lawyer first. Apparently the house is all locked up. Anyway, she’d let herself go, not like the old Leonie. She told me last week her latest hairdresser was so over her. That’s probably what killed her — she’d run out of new hairdressers to try.’

  Jan wants them to go to a particular boutique and pick up a dress that Leonie had told her about on that last visit. It was, as she described it, the most gorgeous dress she’d ever seen: a label dress, black with a puffed skirt and a peacock at the waist, with feathers trailing down the front. The kind of dress she would have loved to wear when she was young, and now never would, or not in this life. Leonie in her true colours, an exhibitionist at heart. All that gear she got togged up in. The fems never really took to her — she was too much of a girl. And a boys’ girl at that. But she will wear it, Jan says fiercely, just this once. She has got one of the guards to phone the shop and ask them to hold the dress. It’s waiting for them to pick up. She is so relieved the dress is still there, but at the price, this is perhaps not surprising.

  ‘How much?’ says Sabrina.

  ‘Two thousand three hundred,’ says Jan without a flicker. ‘Will your credit cards stand it? You can go halves. It’s only for a couple of days.’

  ‘Hullo,’ says Elsa, on a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘You lay her out in it, and then you take it back after the viewing. They can pop her in something else when they close the coffin. Be sure to leave the label on when you take it back to the shop.’

  ‘Oh no,’ says Elsa, ‘no, you can’t do that.’ Elsa’s mother had been a corsetiere in a department store. She’d told Elsa about the way customers did dreadful things and tried to return clothes that were grubby and you could see they’d been worn. Undergarments at that. Filth, her mother used to say. We wore rubber gloves to deal with some of that stuff.

  ‘I’m not asking you to pay for it,’ Jan says. ‘Just treat it like a loan. Somebody in here told me how it’s done.’

  ‘But it’s not right,’ says Sabrina.

  So Jan reminds her then, reminds both of them. How they always said they’d stick together. About the night they stayed over with those boys, and she’d told their mothers they’d been at her place, and the way Elsa’s mother had rung to check, because she didn’t really trust Jan, and besides they weren’t in the habit of staying at Jan’s place, and her daughter was such a good girl, and Jan had sweet-talked her into believing they were all asleep already, and told her what they had watched on television, only it was Jan who had sat by herself and watched that programme, not knowing where they were, or even that they had gone out with the boys, and lain awake all night worrying that she should really have told Elsa’s mother in case they’d been raped and murdered. She says all of this in a flat relentless tone, not really looking at them, just going on and on. She raises her eyes to Sabrina. ‘She liked you, you know.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yep, she wished I was like you.’

  In the end, Sabrina says that, yes, it’s true they weren’t angels and they can do this thing she’s asking. ‘We could actually pay for the dress,’ she says, ‘so then Leonie can go up the chimney in it. Couldn’t we, Elsa?’

  But no, Jan tells them, that’s not the plan, and haven’t they listened to a word she’s said? She wouldn’t ask them to part out with big bucks like this — that’s not her style, not with friends. It’s just a simple favour. ‘For God’s sake, Elsa,’ she says, looking at her stricken face, ‘you never used to return those lipsticks you flogged at the chemist’s.’

  Elsa says, with a sudden spurt of resolution, ‘All right then. Okay, we’ll do it.’

  ‘They said I could see her. A couple of the guards will take me down tomorrow evening. They’ve promised me that, at least.’

  Visiting hour is over, time for them to leave.

  ‘Over to you now,’ Jan says, standing up ‘Remember, get it in the paper. If I don’t make it to the funeral, say one for me. No hymns. She liked Julie Felix — choose something of hers. The one about going to the zoo tomorrow, she’d get a laugh out of that. Eddie might do the eulogy. He was her favourite boyfriend.’

  Sabrina reaches over and gives her another quick embrace. ‘Take care, Jan,’ she whispers.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Jan says. ‘If you keep your head down, it’s not so bad. The food could be worse.’ She turns and leans her cheek into Elsa’s. ‘You’ll be pleased to know I’ve got a friend who works in the laundry. She makes sure I always get my own knickers back from the wash.’ She walks to the far side of the visiting room, a guard moves towards her, she waves and disappears.

  The rain has cleared, and they stand in a patch of weak late morning sunlight, although the whipping wind is like pain slicing through them. Elsa begins to cry. ‘We must be crazy.’

  ‘She drives a hard bargain. I guess you learn that if you’re inside.’

  ‘Sabrina, I want us to do it in cash. No credit cards, all right?’

  ‘Ross?’

  ‘He pays my card.’

  ‘Well, I pay my own.’

  ‘All the same, it would be better if we did it all in cash. It’s like leaving a calling card otherwise.’

  Sabrina pulls her coat around her more closely. ‘I’ll bring it this afternoon when we go to the funeral director’s. You can get the money all right?’

  ‘Of course.’ Elsa is impatient. ‘I’ve got money of my own. But you do see my point about the card?’

  ‘Double click,’ Sabrina says. She does see. Elsa is showing common sense. Already Sabrina has decided that this is something Daniel might be better not knowing either, although they pride themselves on the honesty of their relationship. Sabrina was a practised liar in the dying days of her first marriage, and she has sworn never to lie again. Truth is so easy when you have nothing to hide.

  As she drives home she wonders if there is some crime involved. On the face of it, she can’t see that there is. It’s a lot of money to blow on a dress. Besides, they’ve made a promise. Not that Jan need know if they broke it and just paid. Like saying Le-Oh-nie in that mean schoolgirl way. Only she probably did know. And then, she thinks, why not? It’s not such a big deal, a simple enough transaction. People return things to shops all the time. As Jan pointed out, it’s the things she and Elsa haven’t returned in the past that she ought to feel bad about. She had stored away that part of her life: small wickednesses and betrayals of her friend who stayed at home and watched out for them like an anxious young mother, the kind Jan would have liked to have had for herself.

  ‘All right,’ she says to herself again. ‘Okay, Jan.’

  THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR IS A natty young man. He wears a brown suit with a brown button-down collared shirt and a black tie decorated with orange poppies. He knows the circumstances, he tells them, and coughs discreetly. Their friend has told him that a suitable dress is being brought in. When they hand it to him, he enthuses — the prettiest lying-in dress he has ever seen. Sabrina explains that it is not to be burnt with Leonie; they will hold it for her daughter, who wants to keep it for sentimental reasons. It’s too beautiful to be destroyed, and he says, oh yes, yes, he does understand that, entirely agrees, and it’s not unusual for people to be slipped out of their clothes once the curtain comes down. No trouble at all. Sabrina has the price tag in her wallet, still on its cord.

  They ret
ire for a short decent interval to the waiting room while he dresses Leonie. They sit in deep armchairs and read magazines about royalty and English country homes. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ Elsa says. ‘You can’t imagine Leonie being one of those old ladies with talcum powder hair and clip-ons.’ Her own mother is going that way, her memory not so sharp. ‘Goodness knows what I’ll do with her. I’ve been looking after kids all my life and now it’ll be her I suppose. Not what Ross and I were planning.’ Her face softens. ‘Sorry, Sabby,’ she says. ‘I know you miss your mother. I can’t believe it’s ten years.’

  ‘That was the last time we were all together, do you know that?’ Sabrina says. ‘The three of us, you and me and Jan at Mum’s funeral. I’d forgotten how long it was.’

  The undertaker calls them in. There is Leonie, in a satin-lined casket, her face younger than they remember it, her hair fluffed around her face. The black dress, with its silk ruffles, is settled around her, the peacock’s head made from knotted leather nestled between her breasts, the tail feathers which, except for two or three real ones, are actually little appliqués of felt sewn with sequins, fanned across her knees. Sabrina remembers a moment when a peacock illuminated her life. She and Daniel were on their honeymoon. He had elected to stay in a bush cabin, although she would have preferred something more glamorous. Daniel liked the outdoors, which sounded charming, but the camp kitchen was basic, the bed hard and the duvet had been used by others. She had woken on their second morning, and crept out of bed while her new husband still slept. But then she had lifted the curtain to see what the day was like outside. On the branch of a tree near the window she saw a peacock. He sat picking at a berry, his splendid shining tail sweeping before her, filling the window frame with colour. In this moment of radiance, Sabrina saw a sign, a promise of happiness, and she hasn’t been disappointed.

  ‘You’ll be here when your friend comes to view her mother?’ the undertaker asks. ‘I understand she’ll be here about five.’