Auntie’s voice she heard much more often than she once had, but she never saw her. Yesterday she, or her voice, had come in while Minty was in the bath, which was something Jock’s ghost had never done. “It’s a whole two weeks since you put flowers on my grave, Minty,” said Auntie. She kept over by the door, not looking in Minty’s direction, which wouldn’t have been nice. She was just a disembodied voice, without eyes. “It’s not very pleasant being dead but it’s worse if you’re forgotten. How d’you think I feel with my last resting place all bare but for a bunch of dead tulips?”
It was no use answering because they couldn’t hear you. Jock’s ghost had never taken a blind bit of notice of anything she said. But that afternoon she’d gone into the cemetery where the evergreen leaves seemed fresher now and the new leaves a dazzling green, where the grass was bright and glittering with raindrops from a shower, and taken out the dead flowers, replacing them with pink carnations and gypsophila. The carnations had no scent but, like Josephine said, you couldn’t expect it, not with plants forced up in hothouses. Usually, when she’d visited Auntie’s grave, Minty had knelt down on a clean piece of paper or plastic and said a little prayer to her, but she hadn’t yesterday. Auntie didn’t deserve it, not the way she was going on, she’d have to be content with the flowers.
Sunday was the day Minty did her washing. Her major wash, that is. A certain number of clothes got washed every day. But on Sundays the week’s sheets and towels were done and considering no towel was used more than once and no sheet slept on more than three times, a great quantity mounted up. While the first batch was whirling and bouncing about in the machine, gladdening her heart with the soap bubbles and the clean smell-those moments spent watching the washing were the only time Minty felt really content with life-she went out into the garden to put up the clothesline.
Some of the neighbors left their clotheslines out all the time, in all weather. Minty shuddered when she thought of the black deposits of diesel fumes that must form on them. Her own plastic-covered rope was scrubbed and rinsed and dried each time she took it down. She checked that the posts were firm and attached the clothes line to the bolt on top of the one at the end of the garden, unrolling it carefully as she walked across the paving toward the house.
Next door Mr. Kroot’s sister was pulling out weeds. His garden was overgrown with weeds for months; he never did anything out there, and it was only when his sister came that anyone got rid of the dandelions and stinging nettles and thistles. She wasn’t wearing gloves and her hands were covered with dirt, the fingernails black. Minty shuddered. She went indoors and washed her own hands, as if she’d absorbed some referred dirt from Mr. Kroot’s sister. What was she called? Auntie had known. She’d called her by her name until that day they stopped speaking forever over something to do with the fence. Minty couldn’t remember the name but she remembered the quarrel and it all came back to her, though it was a good fifteen years ago.
It was when Auntie had had a new fence put up between their gardens. Mr. Kroot never said a word about it, but his sister that must once have been a Miss Kroot accused Auntie of stealing six inches of ground from next door. If she didn’t move the fence, the sister said, she’d chop the wire down herself with wire cutters, and Auntie said not to threaten her and if there was any chopping of wire, so much as a single snip, she’d call the police. No one cut anything and the police weren’t called but Auntie and Mr. Kroot’s sister never spoke again, and Minty was told not to speak to her either. Then Sonovia stopped speaking to her out of loyalty.
Minty wished she could remember the sister’s name. Maybe Auntie would tell her next time she started talking. Not that she wanted to know that much, not enough to welcome ghost voices. She took the first batch of washing out of the machine, put the next lot in, and carried the damp towels outside in a large basket she’d lined with a snowy white sheet. Mr. Kroot’s sister was standing up now, staring at her. She was a stocky, stoutish old woman with dyed ginger hair, who wore glasses in violet-colored frames. When she put one earth-covered, black-nailed finger up to her face and scratched her cheek, Minty turned away shuddering.
The morning was bright and sunny but fresh with a sharp wind blowing. A good drying day. She pegged out the towels, using plastic pegs she’d scrubbed and dried along with the clothesline. Mr. Kroot’s sister had gone indoors, leaving weeds lying about all over the path. Minty shook her head at such fecklessness. She too went indoors and started thinking about what to have for lunch. She’d bought a nice piece of ham at Sainsbury’s and she was going to cook it herself. Buying cooked meat, in her opinion, was very risky. You never knew where it had been or the state of the pot it was boiled in. When she’d got the meat on, maybe she’d go up the road and get a Sunday paper now that Laf never brought theirs in to her.
First she went into the front room to look out of the window and see who was about. It was just as well she did, for as she lifted the half-drawn curtain she saw Laf and Sonovia come out of their house, wearing the serious expressions they always did when on their way to church. Sonovia had the blue dress and jacket on with a white hat and Laf a striped suit. Minty waited a bit to let them get out of the way, then she went off in the opposite direction to the paper shop.
It was quite a coincidence, she thought when she looked at the front page of the News of the World, a man murdered in that same cinema where she’d got rid of Jock’s ghost. The paper didn’t say when it was, only that the man was called Jeffrey Leach.
“There are more and more murders about these days,” Auntie’s voice said suddenly. “I don’t know what the world’s coming to. They’re all in gangs, them as get murdered, murdered by other gangs. You go down Harlesden High Street and it’s all gangs when it’s not yardies.”
Minty tried to ignore her. She sat down in the front room to read the paper. When she heard the machine stop she went to the kitchen and took the sheets and pillowcases out. One more sheet and a duvet cover still remained. She put them into the machine and carried the damp washing outside to the clothesline. Mr. Kroot was putting a colander full of potato peelings into his wheelie bin. All unwrapped, they were, just as they came off the potatoes. It made Minty feel quite sick, thinking of that bin having to be wheeled through the house in time for Brent Council’s waste disposal men to come and empty it. She kept her own bin in the front, padlocked to the wall-this was such a rough area, people were even capable of stealing your rubbish-and having scoured it, scattered emerald green disinfectant powder all over the inside.
“The duke of Windsor’s son was murdered,” Auntie said. “Him as should have been Edward the Ninth. Only when it’s someone famous they don’t say ‘murdered,’ they say ‘assassinated.’ It was in France. If he’d been in his rightful place it never would have happened.”
“Who cares?” said Minty, but knowing it was useless. “Go away, can’t you?”
More boiling water needed adding to the ham in the pot. She’d have boiled potatoes with it and frozen peas. Once when Jock was around, he’d got her to buy organic broccoli and when she’d washed it a pale-green caterpillar the same color as the stems had dropped out. Never again. She opened the knife drawer and there on the top was the one she’d used to get rid of Jock’s ghost. She’d boiled it and spoiled the color of the handle in so doing-it must be as clean as a knife could be, but somehow she couldn’t fancy slicing meat with it. She’d never fancy it, no matter how long she kept it. It would have to go. Shame, really, because she thought it was one of a set given to Auntie for her wedding in 1961.