The Office of the Dead. Andrew Taylor
a landlady downstairs. She cooks for him.’
‘How long will he be staying with you?’
Janet wriggled slightly in her chair. ‘I don’t really know. My husband was going to take him back tomorrow but in the circumstances, I suppose –’
‘I’d advise you to keep him here a little longer. I’d like to see him again over the next few days. I think his condition needs assessment. Perhaps you’d let me have the address of his GP.’
‘He wasn’t properly awake this morning,’ Janet said, clutching at straws. ‘He’s not been sleeping well.’
‘The sleeping tablets will help that. But the point is, he needs looking after. I don’t mean he needs to be hospitalized, but he needs other people around to keep an eye on him.’
‘Is – is this going to get worse?’
‘It may well do. That’s one reason why we need to keep an eye on him, Mrs Byfield–to see if he is getting worse.’
‘And if he is?’
‘There are several residential homes in the area. Some private, some National Health.’
‘He’d hate that. He’d hate the loss of privacy.’
‘Yes, but his physical safety has to be the main concern. Could he live with you or some other relative?’
‘Permanently?’
‘If you don’t want him to go into a residential home, that would probably be the best solution, Mrs Byfield. At least until his condition deteriorates a good deal more.’
‘But – but what exactly’s wrong with him?’
‘At this stage it’s hard to be categorical.’ He glanced quickly at us both. ‘But I think he’s in the early stages of a form of dementia.’
There was a long silence. I wanted to say to Janet, You’ve got enough on your plate, but for once I kept my mouth shut.
Then she sighed. ‘I shall have to talk to my husband.’
Janet and I went to Mr Treevor’s flat on Saturday. We drove over to Cambridge, another small victory for me hard on the heels of my display of Girl Guide first aid. In a sense I was beginning to shed my burdens just as Janet was shouldering more.
David had assumed that Janet would go by bus. It was after all cheaper than going by train.
‘Why not the car?’ I said on Friday evening, emboldened by my Girl Guide expertise and by a substantial slug from the gin bottle in my bedside cupboard.
‘Janet doesn’t drive.’ David hardly bothered to glance at me. ‘I’d take you myself, of course, but unfortunately I’ve got my classes in the morning and then there’s a meeting first thing in the afternoon. The Finance Committee.’
‘I’ll take her,’ I said.
This time David looked properly at me. ‘I didn’t realize you drove.’
‘Well, I do. But what about insurance?’
‘It’s insured for any driver I give permission to.’
‘There you are. Problem solved.’
‘But have you driven recently, Wendy? It’s not an easy car to drive, either. It’s –’
‘It’s a second series Ford Anglia,’ I interrupted. ‘We had one for a time in Durban, except ours was more modern and had the 1200 cc engine.’
‘I see.’ Suddenly he smiled. ‘You’re a woman of hidden talents.’
I smiled back and asked Janet when she would like to go. I felt warm and a little breathless, which wasn’t just the gin. That’s biology for you. David upset a lot of men in his time but I never knew a woman who didn’t have a sneaking regard for him, who didn’t enjoy his approval.
Janet and I had six hours of freedom. The charwoman agreed to come in for the day and keep an eye on Mr Treevor and Rosie. Rosie liked the charwoman, who gave her large quantities of cheap sweets which Janet disapproved of but dared not object to.
The road from Rosington to Cambridge is the sort of road made with a ruler. The Fens could never look pretty, but the day was unseasonably warm for early March and the sun was shining. It was possible to believe that spring was round the corner, that you’d no longer be cold all the time, and that problems might have solutions.
Mr Treevor’s flat was the upper part of a little mid-Victorian terraced house in a cul-de-sac off Mill Road, near the station. I hadn’t known what to expect but it wasn’t this. The landlady, the widow of a college porter, kept the ground floor for herself. Mr Treevor and the widow and the widow’s son shared the kitchen, which was at the back of the house, and the bathroom which was beyond the kitchen, tacked on as an afterthought.
The landlady was out. Janet let herself in with her father’s key and we went upstairs. I must have shown what I was feeling on my face.
‘It’s a bit seedy, I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You didn’t think he’d live somewhere like this, I suppose? He wanted to stay in Cambridge, you see, and it was all he could afford when Mummy died.’
Janet took me along the landing to the room at the front, which was furnished as a sitting room. It smelled of tobacco, stale food and unwashed bodies.
‘She gives him his breakfast and an evening meal,’ Janet said, meaning the landlady, ‘and she’s meant to dean for him as well and send his washing to the laundry.’ She threw up one of the sash windows and cold, fresh air flooded into the room. ‘I don’t think she does very much. That’s one reason why I didn’t warn her we were coming.’
‘I’m sorry. I – I suppose there was nowhere better available.’
‘Beggars couldn’t be choosers.’ She turned round to face me. ‘There was enough money when I was growing up. My mother was always working and she was good at her job. They were queuing up for her. And Daddy had a little money of his own. Not much, about a hundred a year, I think. They didn’t have pensions or anything like that. I think they more or less lived up to their income.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said awkwardly, because I was English and in those days the English hated talking about money, especially with friends. ‘I quite understand.’
Janet was braver than me, always was. ‘When Mummy was ill, the translation work dried up and they had to live on Daddy’s capital. So what with one thing and another there wasn’t much left when Mummy died.’ She waved her arm. ‘But he had this. He could be independent and he loves Cambridge.’
I said, suddenly understanding, ‘You and David are helping to pay for this, aren’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Only a little.’
‘That’s something,’ I said. ‘You won’t have to any more.’
But I knew as well as she did that they would have to pay for other things now, and in other ways.
John Treevor was still alive and less than twenty miles away in Rosington. Yet as we moved around his flat, sorting his possessions, it was as if he were already dead. His absence had an air of permanence about it.
His possessions dwindled in significance because of this. People lend importance to their possessions and when they’re dead or even absent the importance evaporates. I remember there was a thin layer of grime on the windowsills, dust on the books, holes in most of the socks.
‘It would be much simpler if we could just throw it all away,’ Janet said as she closed the third of