Sonovia was at her front gate saying good-bye to Daniel, who’d come in for a cup of tea. Minty hadn’t seen him for months, not since she got the letter saying Jock had been killed.
“How are you today, Minty?” he said in his busy doctor’s voice, all breezy and bedside manner. “Feeling a bit better?”
“I’m all right,” she said.
“Been somewhere exciting?” Sonovia asked it in the sort of tone that implies a person only does dull things, a tone with laughter somewhere underneath it. Minty didn’t answer. She was aware of the bum bag with the knife in it sliding round under her clothes. “You want a lend of my blue dress and jacket for Josephine’s wedding?”
How could she say no? She couldn’t think of a way, but stood there nodding, feeling awkward. Daniel went off to his car that he could park anywhere because it had a doctor sticker in its window. Minty wanted to go home, have a good wash, check Jock wasn’t in the house, and shut all the doors. Instead she had to go into Sonovia’s, have a look in her clothes cupboard, and choose the blue dress and jacket, whether that was what she wanted or not, because it was the only thing to fit her.
“I haven’t been able to get into it since I put on weight,” Sonovia said.
Minty tried it on. There wasn’t a choice. She hated Sonovia seeing her bare skin, so pallid and soap-smelling, and staring at the bum bag, hanging round her thin waist. The dress was a bit big but it would do. She shuddered so much as she pulled it over her head-how did she know how many times it had been worn and whether it had ever been cleaned?-that Sonovia asked that regular question of hers: was she cold?
“You look ever so nice. You really suit it. You ought to wear blue more often.”
Minty studied herself in the mirror, trying to forget about the dress being dirty. It was a full-length mirror that Sonovia called a pier glass. Behind her, opening the door and walking into the room, Jock’s ghost was reflected. He laid his hand on the back of her neck and, bending his head, pressed his face against her hair. She lashed out at the thing behind her. “Go away!”
“What, me?” asked Sonovia.
Minty didn’t answer. She shook her head.
Sonovia said, “Where were you this afternoon, Minty?”
“I went to see a film.”
“What, all on your lonesome?”
“Why not? I like being alone sometimes.” Minty pulled off the dress. Jock had disappeared. She handed it to Sonovia like a woman buying a garment in a shop.
Sonovia said, in a voice Minty didn’t care for, dry and tolerant, like someone talking to a naughty child, “I’ll put it in a bag for you.”
Downstairs again, Minty refused the proffered cup of tea and the alternative, a gin and tonic. “I’ve got to get home.”
Mr. Kroot was in his front garden and his sister was with him. She had a suitcase as if she’d just arrived. She wasn’t called Kroot but something else, she’d married someone about a hundred years ago. Minty didn’t look at them. She let herself into her house. The dress and jacket smelled of something. Stale scent mainly. There was a spot of grease on the jacket hem, a splash of fat maybe. She shuddered, glad Sonovia wasn’t there to ask if she was cold. All the pleasure she’d taken in the film had gone, driven away by what had happened since. She felt vulnerable, endangered. Going upstairs, she touched wood all the way, the banister bars that were cream-colored, the rail that was brown, the skirting board at the top that was pale pink. Auntie had liked variety in house decoration, and Minty was thankful for it. What would have become of her if all the woodwork had been white like in Sonovia’s place?
She ran a bath and got into the water holding the knife, she didn’t know why. Except that lying in the water with the knife in her hands, she felt safer than she did anywhere else. Jock’s ghost had never come into the bathroom, and it didn’t come in now. She washed her hair and lay in the water until it began to grow cool. She wrapped a towel round her body and another round her head while she dried the knife. Now there were three towels instead of two for the wash but she accepted that, all in the good cause of being spotless. Clean cotton trousers went on and a clean T-shirt. Before handling the contents of Sonovia’s bag, she put on a pair of Auntie’s black cotton gloves but she still held dress and jacket at arm’s length. She’d take them to Immacue on Monday and dry-clean them herself, put them through the luxury valet service. Leaving the dress in the spare room, well away from anywhere she might be, she took off the gloves and washed her hands.
It was the purest chance that Sonovia went into Immacue. Usually she took any clothes she and Laf needed cleaning to the place in Western Avenue, but he hadn’t been very pleased with the job they’d done on his dinner jacket, and for her part she’d not been amused by the crack the manager had made about the policeman’s ball.
Now he wanted his gray flannels and houndstooth check sports jacket cleaned. “Take them round to Minty’s place, why don’t you? Give it a go.”
At Immacue, clothes ready for collection were hung on a coat rack. The rack stood on the left-hand side of the shop and extended from behind the counter to the rear wall. When Sonovia entered there was no one about, so she waited a while, letting her gaze rove from the various aids to cleanliness on sale on the counter to the stacked shirts on the shelves on the right to the coat rack on the left. She was about to give a discreet cough when she spotted the garment hanging at the very front of the rack. It was on a hanger with a Styrofoam collar and sheathed in transparent plastic, but still she had no difficulty recognizing her own blue dress and jacket. Angrily, Sonovia slammed her hand on the bell on the counter.
Josephine came out. “Sorry to keep you,” she said. “How may I help you?”
“By fetching Miss Knox, that’s how. I’ve got a bone to pick with her.”
Josephine shrugged. She went to the door at the back and called, “Minty!”
Sonovia was growing crosser by the second. When Minty came out she was standing there fuming, with her arms folded. “I’d just like to know who you think you are, Miss Araminta Knox, to be so fastidious. Borrowing a person’s clothes and then deciding they’re not clean enough for you. I suppose you had one of your famous baths after you’d tried them on. I’m surprised you’d keep them in the house, or did you put them out in the garden over Sunday?”
Minty didn’t say anything. She hadn’t thought of that, putting Sonovia’s dress out in the garden. It would have been a good idea. She advanced toward the coat rack and peered at the clothes through their plastic sheath.
“I call it a disgrace, considering how long we’ve known each other. The times you’ve enjoyed our hospitality! That you’d think I’d keep dirty clothes in my wardrobe, that’s what I can’t get over. Laf says I spend more on dry-cleaning than I do on food.”
“You don’t spend it in here,” said Josephine.
“I’ll thank you to keep out of this, Miss O’Sullivan. As for you, Minty, Laf and me were going to treat you to American Beauty tomorrow night and drinks after, no doubt, but we’ve changed our mind; we’ll be going on our own. Him and me might not be clean enough for you to sit next to.”
Sonovia, flouncing out, forgot to take her dress and jacket with her. Josephine looked at Minty and Minty looked at her, and Josephine burst out laughing. Minty couldn’t quite do that. But she was glad she could keep the dress. Sonovia might never want it back now and that meant she’d always have something to put on in case anyone else ever asked her to a wedding. She went back to her ironing.