Blue Skies by Helen Hodgman Page B

clattered to the floor. I walked over to pick it up. Bright orange dried lentils scrunched noisily underfoot. I noticed that the red-and-gold lacquer on the tea canister was badly scratched. I found the lid and put it back on the shelf. Shredded cigarettes clogged the sink. Every container in the kitchen had been emptied. The contents of a box of soap powder lay over everything, an unseasonal snow. There wasn’t a sound. I was too scared to call out, thinking of death. I saw his body lying tangled in a heap of bright old clothes, his tall lizard-skin boots standing empty nearby. A blaze of distorted sound flared through the serving hatch. It adjusted itself, the volume settling down to an electronic roar. Not sunny. Not nice.
    Do you, Mr Jones?
    The cracked voice crept and threatened round the walls, sliming them with menace. I went into the room. Records and books were thrown everywhere. Beautiful cushions had been cut to pieces; their creamy stuffing made earthbound clouds on the floor. He was sitting on the rug in front of the large empty fireplace, curled over, his arms cuddling his knees. I sat beside him. He lifted his face. A purpling knuckle graze spread from the corner of his mouth up over his left cheekbone. Tiny horseshoe-shaped tooth marks welled with scarlet along his lower lip. His nose ran, and he wiped it on the back of his hand. He sniffed and spoke. He said they had taken some dried basil away in a plastic bag. It was going to the laboratory to be analysed. They were sure when they found it that they’d got him this time. He started to laugh, making his lip bleed. Bright blood clung in thick strands across his teeth as his lips drew back in laughter. I said I was sorry this had happened. He asked what it had to do with me. He was worried about the effect it would have on his wife. As he spoke, the old blue station wagon pulled up outside.

    I stood at the window as Gloria walked round, neat in her school-teacher clothes, to the child’s side of the car. She opened the door, and the boy climbed out clutching a spilling armful of his bright school paintings. They turned hand in hand towards the house. Seeing me through the window, they smiled and waved. I ran to the back door to try to tell them what had happened before they walked in and found it. I met her. The boy was dawdling behind, searching under the bushes for the chickens, calling to them to come to him, his paintings falling forgotten in the dust.
    â€˜The police have been here,’ I said. ‘They were searching for drugs. They found nothing, but they made a mess looking. We’ll clear it up quickly. It won’t take long.’
    I ushered her in like a guest. She walked across to the table and stood trickling handfuls of spilt tea through her fingers as she looked round the kitchen. The boy came in. He said nothing, but started a kind of flat-footed shuffle over the crunchy mess on the floor, enjoying the noise it made under his shoes, swaying to the music from the next room.
    â€˜Is he here?’
    â€˜He’s next door.’
    She went out. The boy and I stood staring at each other. The record stopped. The needle scratched loudly across its surface.
    â€˜Ouch,’ said the boy. ‘Daddy gets cross if I do that.’
    Angry voices were coming through the hatch. I shut it. The boy sat, head bent, at the table, tracing patterns in the tea leaves with his finger. He said he was hungry. I got him a glass of milk and picked some untrampled biscuits up from the floor for him. When he had finished I asked him where the broom was kept. We fetched it together. I swept everything on the floor into a heap while he cleared the table, carefully adding his small hands of tea-leaves to the debris on the floor—he frowned with concentration, as if constructing a house of cards. We swept everything into a cardboard box and carried it out to the incinerator.
    We came back inside—someone was crying in the next room. I