Household Gods and other narrative offences Read online

  ‘What job?’

  ‘I’m going to work with the Salt Sisters.’

  ‘What? Kole, have you ever even kissed a boy? Or a girl?’ Maddy stood up so fast that Kole took a step backwards.

  ‘They are not really required to be celibate. That’s just a rumour. And there’s more to life than sex, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.’

  ‘Interesting perspective, but ignorant. You haven’t experienced sex. You have nothing to compare against.’

  ‘Fine. You know best. I’m still leaving.’ Kole turned to the staircase.

  ‘Why are you angry? You’re the one leaving. Do you hate me for staying or yourself for going?’

  ‘I’m the good one,’ said Kole. Her cheeks were moist.

  ‘I love you. It’s okay, Kole, really. I understand. You should go. I love you.’

  They hugged for a long time, then Kole broke free. She climbed the stairs and disappeared, then shrieked.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I adopted a ghost. He’s in your room.’

  Outside, a car idled with a couple of Salt Sisters inside. Maddy waved. They did not wave back.

  *

  The sun was just about coming up when the doorbell rang. Maddy was expecting it, although she had fallen asleep and woke from a dream where her skin was sequinned.

  The boy stood at the foot of her bed.

  ‘You’re going to have to stay in Kole’s old room,’ said Maddy.

  ‘1960 is outside,’ he said.

  ‘Of course he is,’ said Maddy. She wiped spittle from the side of her face and went to the door.

  He was still wearing the same clothes. The spirit flare formed a perfect cone, but hundreds of eyes fixed on Maddy.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t have the boy,’ said Maddy.

  ‘What did you think I was going to do to him?’

  Maddy kept silent.

  ‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’

  Before she could say anything the spirits descended, spun in a kind of whirlwind and lifted Maddy off her feet. Both she and 1960 flew within the ectoplasmic mass above Portsmouth for some minutes, then came down gently in Hilsea, in front of a block of flats. 1960 did not go to the door, but around the side, where a small structure held massive rubbish bins.

  ‘Why are we—‘

  ‘Look,’ said 1960.

  There, in a black wheelie bin, was the body of a young boy, neck at an abnormal angle, eyes wide open. His foot had pierced a black bin liner and left-over chips spilled out over him. The area smelled of rotting vegetables and stale beer.

  Maddy gasped.

  ‘His name is Steven Taylor. His father killed him tonight’

  *

  They watched from across the street as the police took Steven’s father away. Scores of neighbours stared at the flashing lights, the ambulance and the spectacle of it all. 1960’s flare was high above street-level so nobody recognised him.

  ‘I’m still not giving him to you,’ said Maddy.

  ‘I don’t want him. I was going to find his body. Now you know where it is. It’s up to you to decide what to do,’ said 1960. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s been a long night and I just lost my sister and best friend. A whiny bitch of a sister, but best friend all the same. I’m late for work. I bid you farewell, 1960.’

  ‘I can give you a lift—‘

  ‘Whoa, there, horsie. No, thank you. My daddy said not to mess with magic men. I’m taking a taxi.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You asked what happened to the incubus who unleashed this age of magic on the world.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Your father killed him, but paid a great price to achieve this.’

  ‘How? Why?’

  ‘That’s all I know, I swear.’ He pointed to the patch of sky where the spirits spiralled and shrugged as if to say he had no control over what they told him. They were an unruly bunch, Maddy had noticed.

  ‘Thanks for telling me that,’ she said. She found herself welling up, what with the new knowledge about her father.

  She called a mini-cab and walked away from him. She could feel his gaze on her, but she did not look back. Later, in the taxi, she heard the beep of a text message, and knew it was him.

  She smiled and replied.

  *

  Months later, Steven looked up from his studies and said, ‘Someone’s here.’

  ‘Stop trying to get out of studying,’ said Maddy.

  ‘I’m not. Someone is here, at the door. And why do I need to read? I’m dead.’

  Maddy stopped cleaning the cooker and went to the door. ‘Because we’re going to be together for a long time and you’re not going to bore me with baby talk.’

  She opened the door as the doorbell went off. Kole stood there, dressed in white, lean, focused.

  ‘Wow,’ said Maddy. ‘You look…am I allowed to hug you?’

  Kole shook her head. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Come in,’ said Maddy.

  ‘I can’t. I don’t have long. I came to tell you about daddy.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s a hero, Maddy. The Bishop sent him to find and bind the incubus who…well, an important evil spirit. That’s where he went that night. The incubus took part of him, and that’s why he’s the way he is.’

  Fucking 1960 and his fucking mutism spell. Maddy wanted to shove the knowledge in Kole’s face, to say, I know and I knew before you! but the spell stopped her. Her lips just would not part.

  A horn went off, and Kole looked behind her. Maddy saw the other Sisters in a bus. Kole shoved a book into Maddy’s hand.

  ‘They wrote about him,’ said Kole.

  She spun and walked down the footpath, to her new sisters.

  ‘Hey,’ said Maddy. ‘Did you ever see Yemaja again? To thank her for your job?’

  Kole shook her head without turning back.

  ‘Dinny bitch,’ said Maddy under her breath. She flipped through a few pages of the book. They made her father sound like a dragon slayer. She yelled, ‘Steve, I have something new for you…’

  BONE

  I used her brand new kitchen set, except it was not new. More like unopened.

  It was new forty years ago, a wedding present that Clare and I decided not to open until we moved out of our one-bed flat into a “proper” house, one with a “proper” kitchen. The knives were stainless steel, high gauge, powerful grips, shiny. They came with an electric sharpener and magnetic rack. You’d think for the work at hand the meat cleaver would be best. It was not.

  There was only one bone left. It was twenty-two centimetres long, which, from my studies, was just below the average length for a right humerus. I had finished with the left humerus a hundred and fifty-three days prior. I kept track. I could now comfortably say that the murderer’s carcass took four hundred and two days to dispose of. I suppose if I were in a hurry and had accomplices it would be easier and faster, but I didn’t want easy and I didn’t want fast.

  It was tiring, frustrating work when I started. At first I tried the meat cleaver, but it wrecked my shoulders and elbow joints, me not being young or a professional butcher. Then I tried one of those electric blades with two serrated edges and a vibration that rivals the highest setting on the spin drier. Good for soft tissue, but useless on bone.

  We were Clare and Jake. I never remarried because who do you marry after Clare? She was light and darkness in equal measure, the embodiment of that Yin-yang symbol you see everywhere. I lived with her for three weeks, and that was…well, that was enough. Not long enough for jealousy, senseless arguments or those unsexy but comfortable large panties that women reveal. Not long enough for me to develop a beer gut or a roving eye.

  I cut along the head of the humerus and opened the cavity where the bone marrow used to be. It was now home to the foulest of odours, swiftly yanked upwards by the extr
actor fan in my kitchen.

  Somewhere in the ether this man’s soul wafted back and forth, or he was in hell or purgatory or wherever putrid lives went in his chosen religion. I often wished he would come back as a ghost so that I could torment him.

  I had assurances about that; the living can torment the dead. I tormented him, then I tormented his body, and when his heart stopped I was surprised to find myself satisfied.

  It took years to find him, to capture him, to build up the nerve to do what had to be done. In the end, remembering Clare was what powered me, even though those memories were broken into flashes of imagery.

  We did many things, Clare and I. We enjoyed kissing, not as foreplay, but as an activity on its own, getting dizzy and lost in each others lips. We both liked slam poetry sessions and farmer’s markets. Her culinary skills extended to making coffee and boiling an egg, so she appreciated my love of cooking. What I missed the most was her nuzzling my neck from behind while I cooked a meal.

  I imagined her doing that, watching me break her murderer into the final fragments with her knives in a proper kitchen in a proper house. I could feel her cold breath stroking the hairs on the back of my neck.

  She said, ‘Thank you.’

  Then she was gone.

  HONOURABLE MENTION

  The fourth one was called Tito. He was keen to point out that the second syllable of his name was a high note, unlike the famous member of the Jackson Family. Iona said she would bear it in mind but in truth she did not care. To her Tito represented twelve hundred pounds for half an hour’s work.

  Tito sat on the couch clad in Betty Boop boxers. She mused that he may not have grasped the cultural significance of the old cartoon.

  ‘Cough,’ she said, and felt the transmitted impulse as she palpated his hernia orifices. He had the good manners to turn his head away. No hernias, but a grape cluster of lymph nodes on both sides. Not unusual in West African males.

  He was like the others: early twenties, in good physical condition, recent arrival from West Africa. Nigeria mostly, but often Ghana or Benin. Sometimes she found round worms in their faeces and dewormed them, but most of the time she certified them healthy. They were all desperate to demonstrate that. They ran faster on the treadmill or breathed especially deep when she listened to their chests. They didn’t always make it through. Once Iona had picked up a heart murmur from childhood Rheumatic Fever and turned a candidate back. She had on occasion found drugs or over-the-counter stimulants and diet pills in or on a candidate. This had become a nightmare of rage, recriminations and tears and she’d had to call security. Now there was a panic button within reach and an attack alarm on her key ring, since the time a few years back when a player had tried to rape her.

  Tito had no heart murmur or illegal substance on his person. He also had no deodorant and the acrid masculinity of his sweat filled the examination room.

  ‘Everything is new here,’ said Tito.

  ‘Not everything,’ said Iona, peering into his ear, trying to get the light to bounce off the eardrum. ‘My equipment is good, but not new.’

  ‘I meant the rooms, Dr Clarke. The paint, plaster and curtains.’

  He was right. The entire venue was always given a fresh coat of paint, but Iona had ceased to notice. Tito wanted to chat. Why would he want to chat with a stranger who had stripped him nigh naked and prodded his groin looking for lumps?

  She gave him a sample bottle. ‘Fill this to the line.’

  Tito glanced at the men’s room and seemed nervous. ‘Can’t I do it here? I’ll turn my back.’

  Iona shrugged. Some of these immigrants had no modesty or sense of propriety. One came into her examining room once and just stripped naked without being asked. It had ceased to bother her. Maybe Tito wasn’t used to a water closet system. She resolved to never again shake the hand of a candidate. She wrote her notes while he pissed into the universal container. She already knew there would be no anomaly.

  *

  Tito emerged from the doctor’s office into the atrium of Independence Hall where a smiling, suited usher stood like a manikin. Straight ahead the toilets lay in wait and to his right was the way out, guarded and locked, although one could see through the screen door to the entrance and car park. Girls hung around the glass, peering in. They were not allowed in the venue per se but that did not stop them from trying to enter. They wore the most revealing outfits or walked and preened in a way that you could not ignore. They dressed to catch the eyes of the contestants, of course, in glitter and piled hair and a scarcity of fabric coupled with abundance of skin. They had to divine who would be successful and entice that one. Never mind that this had never worked, that no winner had ever gone with any of these hopeful young ladies.

  Tito looked at them with lust, but tore his eyes and mind away and turned left to enter the short corridor that took him to the gaming hall.

  It was like walking into a wall of hot air. There were four rectangular gaming tables. Spectators were already seated on two curved and tiered rows of benches. The room had that hum of constant low level conversation, the auditory equivalent of that snowy static between television channels. Beneath that funky jazz music smoothed the edges, and Tito wondered why they didn’t play something more traditionally Nigerian. They had obviously lost authenticity. Only three gamers were present when the usher led Tito to the table that held his name tag. There were two bottles of water and two plastic cups on each table. Beside the water a packet of digestive biscuits stood on end.

  The sponsors sat on the front row. They were wealthy Nigerians, nouveau rich but not the brain-drained middle class professional. They were the underworlders, the interstitial types. Fraud? Perhaps. Drugs? Almost certainly. These were the ones who decided to give back to the community that spawned them. They were all male, and about half wore dark glasses. Tito didn’t look too closely at them-staring was rude and these were not the kind of people you wanted to offend.

  The overhead lights were bright, lighting up the ceiling like the noon sun. Tito supposed that would help keep them awake.

  The table held a wooden ayo board. It was a hinged diptych of carved oak with two rows of six wells which each contained four seeds.

  Tito was itching to start but had to remind himself this was not a test of skill, but endurance. He flexed and extended his fingers. There wasn’t much of a crowd as the event was by invitation only, although the uninvited collected outside like water in a cistern. No information is airtight in the Nigerian community.

  The music died and the MC tapped the microphone four times. His name was Peter Akeke and he was well-known in Thamesmead, fancied himself a local leader. He attended weddings and naming ceremonies. He was wearing a suit-ill-fitting, brown, new. He had a round head with an uncertain scattering of hair, and a bulging belly. His complexion was uneven, blotchy yellow and light brown with darker areas around the lips and ears. He was a bleacher, lightening his skin with dodgy products. He was ridiculous but ubiquitous, the community living in tacit agreement that he was funny and necessary while also knowing that he was a naked emperor.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!’ He breathed into the microphone between words, making it sound like the prelude to a tropical storm. ‘We are gathered here today because of one small village west of the Niger River. Centuries ago it was harried by larger city states. Having very few young men to form an army and no fortifications its survival depended on early warning systems. Sentries. When the night watch sounded the alarm the villagers knew to run and hide in predetermined places. The selection of appropriate sentries was of the utmost importance. Aside from physical fitness, candidates had to be able to stay awake for long periods during the night. What started as a life-or-death selection process for them has persisted down the centuries as a game for us.’ He wiped his face with a purple handkerchief. Who carried those anymore?

  ‘Ayo is a game played worldwide. The Igbo call it ncho. Some call it oware, but this is semantics. We are here to play Sent
ry. Eight players, four tables. Each contestant plays ayo until there is only one left awake. The last man standing is Sentry and gets the grand prize donated by our wonderful benefactors who shall remain unnamed. Round of applause for them, please.’

  There was a lacklustre response and the front row shifted positions with embarrassment. Tito was not surprised. People in their lines of work did not usually wish to draw attention to themselves. Akeke stopped looking at them and took in the rest of the crowd with a sweeping gesture.

  ‘The grand prize this year…’

  Tito held his breath. He focused on the moist tongue and the open lips of the Akeke. He hated the man for the delay, the artificial suspense, but he would kiss those lips if only they would spew the right thing out.

  ‘…One hundred and fifty thousand pounds!’

  *

  A year earlier Tito stood on an overpass watching traffic flow into and out of Thamesmead. His loose necktie flapped in the wind. He didn’t understand Thamesmead. It had no monuments, no history, no psychic imprint of ancestors. It was early evening in the summer. Tito’s friend Kola passed him a lit cigarette which he dragged on and returned. The wind snatched the smoke right out of his lungs. He’d known Kola since childhood, back in Lagos where they’d spent alternate Tuesday afternoons watching Fantastic Four cartoons at each other’s houses. Kola had been in London for close to a decade, Tito just under a year.

  ‘Remember when we used to steal cigarettes from Mama Tosin?’ asked Tito.

  ‘I never stole anything. You’d steal them and we’d smoke them in the garage,’ said Kola. They both laughed, but there was the taint of the unsaid between them. ‘What did they say?’

  Tito shrugged. ‘The usual. You’re overqualified for this job, why did you leave Nigeria, how are you going to cope, we don’t think customers will understand your accent.’

  ‘I told you you should have thrown some “innit” in there.’

  ‘I’m not going to get the job,’ said Tito. He removed the tie all together and wanted to throw it into the stream of cars that he would never own, but the truth is he needed it for the next round of interviews. ‘This country is shit.’