Deborah Crombie - Mourn Not Your Dead

A plastic bag wrapped itself around Gemma’s legs as she emerged from the station. Disentangling herself, she saw rubbish blowing all along Islington High Street. A sheet of newspaper clung tenaciously to a nearby lamppost, and a plastic bottle rattled discordantly along the pavement. The rubbish collection had failed again, Gemma thought, frowning in irritation, and she certainly didn’t have time to complain to the council about it.

The sight of the black man sitting on the bench beside the flower stall snapped her out of her bad temper. Dwarfed by the towering glass office building behind him, he cradled a paper-wrapped whiskey bottle against his thin chest and sang to himself as he smiled up at her. His ragged clothes looked as though they had once been of good quality, but they offered little protection from the wind that made his red-rimmed eyes water.

She stopped and bought a bunch of yellow carnations, then handed her change to the drunk before sprinting across the zebra crossing. Looking back, she had a glimpse of his head bobbing like a mechanical toy as he gabbled something incomprehensible after her. When she’d started in the force, a rookie constable, she’d almost unconsciously shared her parents’ disdain for those who could “better themselves if they made the effort,” but experience had quickly taught her that the equation was almost never that simple. For some the most you could do was try to make their lives a little more comfortable, and if possible leave them a bit of dignity.

To her right as she entered Liverpool Street lay the Chapel Market. It was closing time, and with an occasional cheerful curse the vendors were tearing down stalls and packing up boxes. Too late to pick up anything there for supper, she’d have to stop in Cullen’s or brave the crush in the enormous new Sainsbury’s across the street.

One thing drew her to Sainsbury’s, much as she disliked its sterile, gleaming interior. The busker stood on his usual patch outside the doors, his dog watchful beside him. She always had a few coins for him, sometimes a pound if she could manage it, but this ritual was not motivated by pity. Tonight she stopped as she usually did and listened to the liquid notes spilling from his clarinet. She didn’t recognize the piece, but it made her feel sweetly sad, leaving a gentle melancholy as the sound died away. The heavy coin clinked satisfyingly as she tossed it into the open case, but the young man merely nodded his thanks. He never smiled, and his eyes were as aloof as those of the mongrel lying quietly at his feet.

Laden carrier bags bumped her leg as she emerged from the supermarket and hurried up the Liverpool Road with her collar pinched together against the wind. Her anticipation built as she thought of catching Toby up in her arms, hearing him squeal with delight as she nuzzled his neck, breathing in the warm smell of his skin. Turning into Richmond Avenue, she passed the grammar school, gates shut against the darkening day, play yard still except for the movement of an empty swing. Before she knew it Toby would be old enough to join the children there. Already his plump softness was melting away, little boy sturdiness emerging in its place, and Gemma felt a pang of loss for his babyhood. Thrusting back the guilt that always hovered near the surface of her mind, she assured herself that she did the best she could.

At least the move to the Islington flat had brought with it an unexpected benefit-her landlady, Hazel Cavendish, had offered to keep Toby while Gemma worked, and Gemma no longer had to depend on her mum or indifferent child minders.

Thornhill Gardens came into view and Gemma slowed, catching her breath so as not to arrive on the doorstep panting. Almost home, and lights were coming on in the houses along the gardens now, offering a tantalizing vision of comfort and warmth behind closed doors. The Cavendishes’ house backed up to the gardens, and Gemma’s adjoining flat faced Albion Street, almost directly across from the pub.

She let herself into the back garden by the gate at the side of the garage, not stopping to leave the groceries in the flat. She’d called ahead so that Hazel would be expecting her, and as she reached the back door she squinted at the small sticky-note fluttering in the dimness. IN BATH, H., it read, and Gemma smiled as she looked at her watch. Hazel ran an orderly house, and by this time the children would have had their tea and been bustled upstairs to the tub.

A wave of warmth and spicy smells greeted her as she opened the door, a sure sign that Hazel was cooking one of her “vegetable messes,” as her husband affectionately called them. Hazel and Tim Cavendish were both psychologists, but Hazel had taken an indefinite leave from her lucrative practice to stay at home with their three-year-old daughter, Holly. They had absorbed Toby into their household effortlessly, and although Hazel accepted the going rate for child minding, Gemma suspected it was more balm for her pride than a financial necessity for the Cavendishes. Following the distant sound of voices, she deposited her purchases on the kitchen table and dodged the toys littering the floor as she made her way upstairs.

She tapped on the bathroom door, and hearing Hazel’s cheerful, “Come on in,” she slipped inside. Hazel knelt by the old-fashioned claw-footed tub, the sleeves of her sweater pushed up over her elbows, her chin-length brown hair forming curly tendrils from the steam.

Both children were in the tub, and when Toby saw her he shrieked, “Mummy!” and smacked his hands palm-down against the water.

Laughing, Hazel jumped back from the spray. “I think you little munchkins are clean enough. Welcome home, Gemma,” she added, wiping the sudsy droplets from her cheek.

Gemma felt a sudden spasm of jealousy, but it faded as Hazel called out, “How about giving a hand with the towels?” and she soon had her arms full of wet and giggling children.

When the children had been dried and dressed in their footed pajamas, Hazel settled them with some toys on the kitchen rug and insisted on making Gemma some tea. “You look knackered, to put it tactfully,” she said with a smile as she waved away Gemma’s offer to help and busied herself with kettle and cups.

Gemma sank into a chair at the kitchen table and watched the children as they cranked toy cars up and down in the lift of a plastic garage with complete absorption. They played well together, she thought. Dark-haired Holly had inherited her mother’s sweet disposition as well as her dimples. A few months older than Toby, she ruled him with a bossy kindness that he tolerated good-naturedly. Just now, though, with his still-damp fair hair sticking up in spikes, he looked a proper little imp.

“Stay to dinner,” said Hazel as she set a steaming mug before Gemma and slid into the chair opposite. “Tim’s got a therapy group tonight, so it will just be us and the kids. And as a further enticement, I’m making Moroccan vegetable stew with couscous. And besides,” she added with a pleading note, “I have selfish reasons-I could use some adult conversation.”

“But I picked up some things at the supermarket…” Gemma made a halfhearted gesture in the direction of her carrier bags.

Wrinkling her snub nose, Hazel expressed her opinion of that. “Macaroni and cheese out of a box, I’ll bet, or something equally ghastly. You need something that hasn’t been thrown together at the last minute. Food is comfort for the soul as well as the body” The last she intoned with great weight, then laughed. “So says the philosopher of the kitchen.”

With a shamefaced smile, Gemma confessed, “It was the first thing I saw on the shelf.” She stretched, relaxed now from the warmth of the room and the tea, and looked around the pleasant kitchen. The old glass-fronted cabinets had been rubbed with a soft green stain, the walls were covered with peach paper, and any spare spaces on counters and table held Hazel’s baskets of jumbled knitting yarns. Suddenly finding herself loath to leave, she said, “It does sound lovely. Are you sure we wouldn’t be imposing? I’m always afraid we’ll wear out our welcome.” Seeing Hazel’s emphatic reassurance, she added, “And I’ll admit it’s been a hellish week.”