What I felt would have to come later. The later the better. I was not sure I could ever endure what my brain already said I felt.
When they found the woman's body, everything went quiet.
I never knew who said my name. A space cleared. I forced myself to stumble over there and look; they all waited and watched. Hands touched my back.
She was grey. Grey dress, grey skin, grey matted hair full of plaster dust and fragments of building material. A complete corpse, made of dust. So covered with filth that it could be anyone.
No ear-rings. The wrong curve to the lobe, and no gold there-in fact no tiny hole to take the hook.
I shook my head. 'Mine was tall.'
Besides, once I was certain it was safe to look properly, I could tell that under the grey dust this woman's hair would still be grey. The hair was thin-just a sad trail in a braid no broader than my little finger, which petered out to a few strands after a foot or so. Mine had a thick plait, hardly varying in width, down to her waist.
Someone dropped a neck scarf over the face. A voice said, 'Must be the old woman on the upper floor.' The mad old bag who had so often cursed me.
I went back to work.
It had upset me. I was beginning to imagine now what I was going to find.
I paused, wiping the sweat from my filthy brow. Someone who knew he had more will than me at that moment took the shovel from my hand. I moved aside, as he attacked the swamp of masonry where I stood. Standing idle for a moment, something caught my eye.
It was the handle of a basket. I recognised the shiny black raffia wound round it by my mother when the original canework started to unwind. I dragged it to the surface. Something of mine. It used to hang beside the doorway in our living room.
I walked aside. Bystanders were quietly handing drinks to slake the rescuers' throats. I found a beaker shoved into my hand. There was nowhere to sit. I squatted down on my heels, swallowed the liquid, put down the cup, shook the dirt off the basket and looked inside. Not much. All I had left. The pride of our household: ten bronze spoons Helena once gave me; she had refused to let me hide them in my mattress now they were needed for daily use. A dish that belonged to my mother, put aside for her. My best boots; hidden from the parrot... And a cheese grater.
I had no idea why the grater had been singled out. I would never be able to ask. So much unfinished business: the worst result of sudden death.
I replaced everything in the basket, shoving my arm through the handles right up to the shoulder. Then my bravery ended; no longer any point to it. I buried my head in my arm and tried to shut out everything.
Somebody was shaking my shoulder. Someone who must have known me, or known her, or both of us. I looked up, full of rage. Then I saw him point.
A woman had turned round a corner, just as I did half an hour ago. She had a big circular loaf in her arms. She must have been out to buy something for lunch; now she was coming home.
Home was no longer there. She had stopped, as if she thought she had turned into the wrong street in a daydream. Then the truth of the collapsed building struck.
She was going to run. I spotted her before she started moving, but her intention was clear. She thought I might have been in the apartment; now she thought I was dead underneath. There was only one way to let her know.
I whistled. My whistle. She stopped.
I was on my feet. She had heard me. At first I could see she could not find me. Then she did. There was no need any longer, but I was already shouting. At last I could say it. 'Helena?'
'My lass, my love-I'm here!' The loaf crushed to a thousand fragments between us. Then she was in my arms. Soft-warm-living - Helena. I gripped her skull between my two open palms as if I was holding treasure. 'Helena, Helena, Helena. ..' Her hair caught on my roughened fingers where I had been dragging beams aside in search of her. She was clean, and untouched, and crying her heart out helplessly because for one fraction of a second she had believed she had lost me. 'Helena, Helena! When I saw the house fall down, I thought-'
'I know what you thought.' 'I said you were to wait for me-' 'Oh Didius Falco,' Helena sobbed,'I never take any notice of what you say!'
Chapter LVIII
People were slapping us on the back; women kissed Helena. I would have returned to the digging, but the crowd voted otherwise. We were jostled into a tavern where a flask, which I needed, appeared in front of us followed by hot pies, which I could have done without. My hat and cloak were brought in to me. Then, with that gentle tact which strangers discover for one another at the scene of a catastrophe, we were left alone.
Helena and I sat close, heads together. We hardly spoke. There was nothing to say. Just one of those times of deeply shared emotion when you know that nothing can ever be the same again.
A voice I knew cut through my concentration when almost nothing else would have broken it. I turned. A sleepy-eyed gawper in a brown and green striped tunic was buying himself a drink while he stood unobtrusively in the shade of the awning and peered outside. He was surveying the extent of the damage. It was the letting agent: Cossus.
I got to him before he received his order. I must have sprung out, still covered all over with dust, like a spirit from the Underworld. He was so amazed he had no time to dodge away.
'Just the man I want to see!' I gave him the elbow treatment, and fetched him indoors. 'If you want a drink, Cossus, come and have one with us-'
Helena was sitting on the nearest bench so I made Cossus take the other. There was a table in the way of it, but I lifted him, slewed him sideways, and threw him across there anyway. I leapt the table myself with a one-handed vault, landing astride his bench. Cossus gasped. 'Helena, this is Cossus; Cossus is the wonderful chap who controlled our lease! Sit down, Cossus-' He had been trying to struggle upright but sank down immediately. 'Have a drink, Cossus-' I gripped him by the hair, screwed his head against my side, seized the flagon and poured all that was left of it over his head.
Helena did not move. She must have realised it was a pretty awful draught of wine.
'That's your drink. Next,' I said, still in the same convivial tone, 'I'm going to kill you, Cossus!'
Helena reached across the table. 'Marcus-' Cossus looked up at her sideways with what must have been (for a letting agent) gratitude. 'If this is the man who controlled our apartment,' said Helena Justina at her most refined, 'I should like to be the person who kills him myself!'
Cossus squeaked. Her measured, aristocratic tones were more chilling than any grit of mine. I let him go. He straightened up, rubbing his neck. He flashed a glance round the tavern in search of support. All he saw were turned backs. They knew his pedigree. If I killed him no one would help him; people were hoping that I would. Helena had made herself popular in the neighbourhood. If she killed him, people would probably help.
I walked back round the table and sat with my lass.
'You chose the wrong day, Cossus,' I said grimly. 'The Kalends of September is a white day in the calendar; it's tomorrow people mark with the sign of bad luck. No style, Cossus! How can your tenants plan ahead?' He started to mutter. I cut him short. I turned to Helena and asked her quietly, 'I noticed this morning the landlord's contractors had turned up to do some work on the ground floor. Were they still there when you went out?'
'They were just finishing,' Helena returned. 'They were taking away all that scaffolding that used to be in the entrance.'
'Bit of a mix-up,' Cossus mumbled, still too crass to know when to stop the bluff. 'Must have disturbed something-'