Moan, moan, moan. ‘You can’t expect a new Schreiber kitchen every couple of years on the rent you pay,’ he says, resentfully. Vesta’s sitting tenancy has been a thorn in his side since they put paid to any new ones in the 1980s. Squatting there in the bowels of the house, rendering it unsaleable while paying less than he gets for a single room upstairs. If it weren’t for Vesta he would have sold up years ago. If it weren’t for Vesta he’d be sitting pretty, running a complex of maid-service holiday lets somewhere warm instead of trudging back and forth up Northbourne High Street. Letting her drain him dry.
‘You know perfectly well I’m not asking for that sort of thing. When have I ever? It’s those drains. You’ve got to do something about those drains. Every time someone flushes the loo upstairs, stuff comes up out of the area grating. It’s disgusting. I’m going to get ill soon.’
‘Didn’t that drain cleaner I put down work?’
Collette pulls her top off and he freezes the image while her back is still turned; a muscular back with a well-defined waist that suggests that she has, at some point in her life, at least, taken care of her figure. He wants to get back into the mood before she turns to face the camera. His genitals are still sensitive with interrupted excitement, and if he can get the old bag off the phone, stop listening to her ladylike vowels and her I-know-my-rights complaints, he might still be able to get there.
‘Do you think I’d be calling if it had? I’ve been spending the best part of five pounds a week on bleach, and heaven knows how much it’s costing on the immersion, pouring gallon after gallon of hot water down there. Not to mention the environment. All that bleach going into the water system…’
Everyone’s an environmentalist, these days. Especially when they want something. He toys with a nipple and eases himself upright on the couch. Picks up his tinnie and takes a gulp.
‘You need to call the drain people,’ she says. ‘I’m going to get ill.’
Good, he thinks. Hope you bloody die. That would sort a lot of things out. He takes another gulp of beer and raises an arm to let the fan play into the matted hair in the pit. ‘I’ll come and have a look,’ he says.
‘When?’
‘When I get a minute.’
‘Well, it needs to be soon, Mr Preece. I’ll have to call the Health and Safety, otherwise. And another thing. That lock.’
‘Lock?’
‘On my back door.’
‘What about it?’
‘It needs replacing.’
The beer repeats on him, and he makes little effort to disguise the sound. Unwraps a sucky sweet and pops it in his mouth. ‘Be my guest.’
‘It didn’t stop that vandal getting in at all. Just popped straight out of the latch.’
‘Well, help yourself.’
There’s a silence. Then she tries again. ‘I think that’s up to you.’
The Landlord screws up the sweet wrapper and adds it to the pile in the ashtray. ‘No, I don’t think so. If you want to beef up your security, that’s up to you, but as far as I’m concerned there’s a door and a lock. Maybe,’ he says spitefully, ‘you should ask your insurers. They might upgrade it for you.’
He hears her suck in her breath. ‘You know perfectly well I’m on a state pension. You know I can’t afford insur -’
He hears beeps on the line. The forty pee has run out. ‘When are you -’ she begins, and her voice is cut off.
His mood is almost lost, Collette frozen with her arms above her head. Irritably, he polishes off his beer in a single chug and throws himself back against the cushions. Every time he talks to that stubborn old cow, it puts a frown on his face, reminds him of the money she’s depriving him of. That flat alone, even in its current state, with the kitchen that time forgot and the drains of doom, must be worth a hundred and fifty thousand. A big house like that, with a big garden, on a road the estate agents are calling ‘popular’, is worth half a million, easy, even without modernisation. Vesta Collins is cheating him out of his dreams.
He levers the remote out from under his left buttock, and presses play. Collette turns round, and shows him her breasts.
Chapter Seventeen
As in life, so in death: a woman needs a good moisture routine to maintain her beauty, both inside and out. Even after desiccation, the process of putrefaction continues, albeit more slowly, and a woman exposed to the open air – and the bacteria and fungus spores that float in it – deserves protection.
Once the forty days was done, the taricheutes would take the sacred corpse, now a hardened shell, and wash it in palm wine. The Lover has made do with Asda budget vodka. Even at eight quid a bottle, the alcoholic proof must be higher than anything they produced on the banks of the Nile, he guesses. The body was then massaged back to suppleness with scented oils, and the empty torso packed with resin and herbs and sewn up, for scent and verisimilitude. It was then wrapped in resin-soaked bandages before being placed in its ornately painted coffin, en route to the hereafter.
But an Egyptian mummy was only destined for the afterlife. Keeping his ladies user-friendly requires, as he has discovered, more regular attention. Once a week, the Lover gives Marianne her ritual ablutions. He only wishes he’d worked out the need before it was too late for Alice. She’s almost beyond salvage, now. The last time he oiled her, he rubbed a little too hard with his home-made strigil and took a strip almost a foot long from her thigh, so that the bone showed through. And he has to admit that, with her abdomen unsealed, the smell coming from her is hard to ignore. Now he leaves her well alone, feels the reproach beaming from her shrivelled breasts as she sits in her chair and watches Marianne receive the attention that should have been her own. The rictus on her face has turned cynical over the past few weeks, as her nose has dried out and turned up. So much for loving me for ever, it says. You’ve barely given me a year. She’s like one of those suburban wives who lets herself go, then sits about in a onesie, complaining about men.
Ah, but Marianne. Not a first wife, but certainly a trophy wife. Renewer of love, restorer of faith; the basis of his new family, harbinger of happiness to come. If anything, Marianne has improved with age. The slightly lumpy chin, the faint pot belly, the chunky thighs that used to irritate him when they were courting, have vanished in the preservation process, and she is as slim as a supermodel, her cheekbones like Audrey Hepburn’s, her nose snipped like Paris Hilton’s, the three-point jawline of Alicia Silverstone. Dressed in hipster jeans and a little broderie anglaise top, she reminds him vaguely of Kate Moss.
He lays her gently out on the plastic sheeting, lights his neroli candles and starts the ritual. He tests the temperature of the oil, warmed gently on the stove, on the tender skin of his inner elbow and, judging it right, pours a drizzle on to her beautiful shoulder. Watches it spread. Inhales the aroma and smiles: sweet almond, white soft paraffin, and essential oils – neroli, sandalwood and vanilla – from the hippy shop in Balham. It’s a ladylike scent, spicy yet clean, and it hides the smell of decay.
Palms flat, he reaches out and helps the oil on it way. Strokes his way over the shoulders, down the arms. Takes each hand and massages it all the way up to the fingertips, one by one. He is proud of his skill, of the fact that he has given her eternal life. Her fingernails, buffed and filed back to evenness, though a little short after her struggle to break free, are still perfect, still flexible and roundly pointed, painted once a month to match her toes. He talks to her as he rubs; makes circles with his fingertips and works the magic potion in. There, my darling. We’ll keep you beautiful. Her skin so cold in the muggy air, so soft, almost papery, beneath his hands. You like that, don’t you, my love? he asks. You know it’s all for you.