It gives me heartburn, she says. He doesn’t hear. Isn’t supposed to hear. She is speaking to the raw inside of the cupboard door. Crouched in the dark, she’s unhinged unzipped undone. Bare toes in mouse droppings and gunged Baby Bio and up hard against her spine the mop that dips, crestfallen from the missing remains of dear Aunt Hilda.
He locks her in the cupboard after breakfast. Just for an hour or so. After his buttering out to each edge, neat larded nurses’ corners, spooning on her homemade marmalade (made every autumn with Mrs Frank’s copper-bottomed pan). He eats, she watches. She chews, he stands behind her, heavy hands on rearing angular shoulders, dull fingers ready for any crumb.
Janet doesn’t do crumbs. Crumbs come with stockings knotted around her ankles or a sharp open-handed slap across her left ear.
Of course the cupboard was her idea. A provocative pout as she’d eaten her slab of square Spam at his feet. In those days he’d let her use a knife and fork, even her hands. From down there, crouched around the slut of his black boots, trailing laces, socks trenchant in their oily scent, she’d met eyes with the cupboard door under the stairs. The door’s eyes rolled, winked, offered a slipper of pity as the wind buckled through the kitchen, through her thinning fringe, slamming the cupboard door shut, toppling dear Aunt Hilda’s empty scouring bucket, tinkling the sea-glass chimes still hanging above the oyster catcher skull in the hall window.
She mouthed to the cupboard something indistinct, a thank you maybe, her lips a soft shell of surprise, her knees numb from the hunkering. Lock me up, she said to Graham. It’s the least I deserve.
So here she is, Janet S Franklin, squatting fetid, a ball of white Scottish roll stuck tepid half way down her gullet, Graham in the kitchen whistling along to a Bach concerto on Radio 3.
It gives me heartburn, she says. Out loud this time. Emphasising the burn. The heart. Rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. She doesn’t scream when the soft scuttle tracks over her right toes, doesn’t even flinch. Scooters and scampers are her friends. Even with the acid reflux. Even with the fetid stench of putrid dear Aunt Hilda still hung about her calves.
Dear Aunt Hilda, bless her. He didn’t meant to kill her, Graham says at least three times a week. Janet doesn’t argue. Not over that. You pick your battles with a brother built like a concrete mixer with LOVE HATE tattooed across the sclerotic skin of his knuckles giving the words an odd marine-like italic effect.
It happened so fast, he said, and I was only trying to help. Janet had come in from work, pouring herself a glass of chocolate milk and lighting a cigarette. She was coming at me with a spade, he said, out by the chicken coup. My hands went to defend myself, he said, and I dunno, she just kind of collapsed.
They skirmished over the flowers. Sibling bickering over a spray of mixed lupins or a bunch of Gerbera daisies. They squabbled as he dug the hole behind the greenhouse, shovelling the soft clay soil into a perfect coffin shaped mound. They’d blame me, he said, smearing his LOVE HATE across his brown corduroys, what with my record and all. And anyway, she was nearly seventy. She’d had her life.
Janet leans back in the cupboard under the stairs and rests her head on the damp wall. Feels around in her pocket for the last chunk of buttered Scottish white roll. Pops it into her mouth and rolls the soft bread around her gums until its a soothing gummy glop.
It gives me heart burn, she says.
SANDERLINGS 