Moyra reappeared carrying a tray. She set it down on the coffee table in front of Larry. The teapot, cups, saucers, and a plate of chocolate biscuits were arranged on a crisp linen cloth.
“There we are then...”
She poured the tea, put a cup in front of Larry, and sat on the sofa beside him. She placed a plastic-covered photograph album on his knees. He waited for an explanation; when none came he opened the album. On the first page was an eight-by-ten color print of a man and woman standing arm in arm, smiling frozenly at the camera. At first the faces didn’t register.
“That’s me and Eddie on our wedding day.”
She had been an attractive girl, Larry noticed. The man beside her was practically unrecognizable. He hadn’t exactly aged since the picture was taken. It was more dramatic than that. Time had worked a transformation. Or something had.
“How long were you together?”
“Five years.”
Larry turned the page, trying to grasp the notion of Von Joel getting into bed with this woman every night for five years. Imagination wouldn’t stretch to it.
Moyra inched closer and pointed to a picture.
“That was Rex, Eddie’s dog. He died years ago, in fact just after he... Poor thing used to wait at the door, wouldn’t go out, or eat. He missed him, you see. Eventually he forgot him, but he didn’t live long after. The vet put him down in the end. Eddie broke his heart. He broke mine too.”
Larry continued turning the pages. The pictures were commonplace, no more than off-center and occasionally off-focus slices of dead times, a mundane record of a relationship that had ceased to exist outside the covers of the album.
Moyra clasped and unclasped her hands. The flick-flick of the thick album pages turning brought back memories, but she wasn’t really looking. It was the picture of Rex that stayed in her mind. Rex sitting outside the gate, his head strained forward as if listening, waiting to hear Eddie’s familiar whistle. The whistle never came, and Rex never gave up. Day after day he sat there. When she had taken out his bowl of food and water, he had refused it, and wouldn’t come back indoors. Then, after a few days, he had started walking up to the end of the road, standing there, waiting. At night she would slip the curtain aside and see him, back at the gates, lying with his head resting on his paws, and her pity turned to anger. It had been Moyra’s decision to have him put down. The vet had suggested he would in time come back into the house, but by then Moyra didn’t want him, couldn’t stand the sight of the dog. She had insisted the vet put him down. She hadn’t wanted another home to be found for him. She wanted him gone, as if all her anger and feeling of betrayal were directed to the mute animal who pined for Eddie.
“Eddie was different.” Moyra sounded wistful. “He said everything around here felt predetermined. He’d say the worst thing was knowing how you’re going to be and what you’ll be doing years before it happens.” She drank her tea with a soft slurp. “I think he got into robbery out of frustration, like he wanted something to happen. I tried to talk to him, but he’d say what’s the alternative? He was a car salesman with Kenrick’s, not bad money, and they liked him, said he would make manager. But he left.”
Quite suddenly Moyra began to cry. Larry wasn’t sure what to do. He decided to sit tight, go on staring at the album and wait for her to gather herself.
“He had his breakfast,” she said, wiping her eyes with a tissue, “kissed me, like every day. I was making the bed when I saw this black rubbish bag, you know the garbage can liners, and it had an elastic band tied around the top. When I opened it, it was full of his clothes, the ones he didn’t want. I never saw him again. No letter, no reason.”
“Did you ever meet his brother? Mickey?”
Moyra frowned, looking puzzled.
“He didn’t have a brother,” she said. “When I met him, all he had in the world was what he stood up in! I don’t even know where he came from. Not from around here. I used to ask him about his past, but he’d just go silent.” She sniffed. “I hated it when he did that.”
“Are you sure he didn’t have a brother?”
“He never had so much as a letter from anyone, Mr. Jackson. I know he’d traveled a lot, mind you. I saw his passport once — Canada, America even...”
Larry began to find the sofa restricting for his legs, the seating angle put leverage on a few of the bruises he had picked up in the crash. He stood, stretched for a moment, and went to the window. He peered out at houses identical to this one.
“Tell me about Italy,” he said, turning to face Moyra. “It’s very important, Mrs. Sheffield. What happened in Italy?”
A muffled bump in the hallway heralded the opening of the living room door. Phil Sheffield came in. He was wearing overalls. “What’s this?” He glared at Larry, then at his wife. “You all right, Moyra?”
“This is Detective Sergeant Jackson,” she said, striving for polite formality. “Phil, my husband...”
Larry nodded, noticing the man was fully on his guard, his big hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Hasn’t she been put through enough?” he demanded. “Ah, I’m just trying to establish a few facts, actually.” Larry came forward to the center of the room, coughing diffidently into a furled hand. “There’s no need for anyone to get upset. Were you with your wife when she identified the body of Eddie Myers, Phil? Okay if I call you Phil?”
“Suit yourself. But your crowd should leave us alone.” Phil turned sharply to his wife. “Moyra, take the tray out. Go on, love.” She did as she was told. Larry believed she looked frightened.
When she had gone he stood staring at Phil Sheffield, hoping his rank would make up for any lack of authority the man found in his appearance. “What happened in Italy?” he said, making it serious but not too stern. “It’s important.” Phil shrugged. He walked a slow oval between the door and the window, coming back to stand near Larry. “She was in such a state, she couldn’t have ID’d her own mother. The body was all bloated and it stunk to high heaven. She was hysterical.”
“So you identified him?”
“I got a photograph...” Phil gestured vaguely with his hands. “They showed us his watch, it looked like him, yeah.”
“And you gave permission for the body to be cremated?”
“I couldn’t. She had to do that.” Phil lowered his head, looking up at Larry from under his eyebrows. “You going to get him for murder, are you?” Larry said nothing. “If it wasn’t Eddie Myers’s own body in Italy, then he must have killed the bloke.” Phil shook his head. “He’s a dirty grass.” He leaned closer to Larry, raising a finger. “I hope you lock him up for life and let the ones inside punish him. Nobody likes a squealer. Nobody.” Larry nodded. It hadn’t occurred to him, until now, that Phil Sheffield might have done time. Moyra watched Jackson leaving, hidden behind the draped curtain in the front bedroom. The room had been redecorated since Eddie had left, the whole house had, but it was as if his presence had suddenly returned, as if Rex was still waiting at the gates, as if... Phil knocked on the door, an irritating light tap she didn’t answer.
“You want a cup of something, love?”
Moyra stared at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror, not answering, not caring, and when he knocked again she pursed her lips.
“Leave me alone, Phil!”
“What?”
Moyra clenched her hands. “I said just leave me alone for a bit.”
She heard him banging down the stairs, then heard his footsteps coming back. This time there was no light tap on the door, and he kicked it open.