Strange Thing Beyond the Veil

Good afternoon, everyone! Here we are again. Bit late posting today's episode because I have been thoroughly engaged in my new City and Guilds Embroidery Course. And then I realised it was Sunday and thought, 'There will be ructions if I don't devote some time to 'Clive and Min.' Here we go then, if you are sitting comfortably...?

              The two women stared at each other in growing embarrassment as silence pooled around them. Min was embarrassed by the bizarre contents of the room on whose threshold she stood, and Connie by deciding to make this sudden visit to a relative stranger’s home even though the compulsion to do so had been overwhelming.

            Min broke the silence. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Can I help you?'

            Connie's eyes were beginning to drift around the room again, but she snapped them back to focus on Min. Best not to ask, the house whispered, sagely. Crack on with the business in hand.

            'The room,' said Connie. 'I've come about the room. Is it still available?'

            The previous week, Min had placed a few discreet adverts about the town offering a room to rent. One had been pinned on the notice board in the staff room at the hospital where Connie worked. Min hadn't intended to become a landlady, not with plans for the business gathering pace, but the house had become unbearably quiet, even with the constant presence of Halliwell. Min had always cherished moments spent in her own company, especially when Clive was still alive and she wished they did not have to share a house. And she thought, in the beginning, that she would be happy to go about her life on her own, now Clive was gone. But after a few weeks, it seemed she was not. For all his irritations, Min found herself missing the domestic sounds Clive brought to the house. The smoker’s cough, the whistling of songs from the musicals. The banging of cupboards, the drone of the vacuum on the rare occasion Min managed to persuade him it was only right and fair he should do his share of the housework.

 And she caught herself thinking that maybe, sometimes, a house can be too quiet, especially one whose walls are saturated with decades of family memories. She thought about getting a dog. A dog would bring sound and movement to the rooms, wouldn’t it? And mud and fur and dander and fleas if she wasn’t meticulous about insect control. What would Halliwell think, too? She instinctively knew that Halliwell was not a cat who tolerated the company of the canine species. 

And then she thought about buying a television set.  After the old Rediffusion broke down following Mother's death, neither she nor Clive had got around to replacing it, a fact the television licencing people found difficult to grasp if their constant communications regarding overdue payments were anything to go by. Once, Clive had brought home an Argos catalogue and they’d spent an evening arguing over screen resolutions, widths and general aesthetics. Min had declared that watching television was a waste of life’s precious time and, eventually, Clive had agreed, either through weariness or sudden loss of interest. The Argos catalogue was consigned to the recycle bin and  the subject was put to bed. Clive engaged himself with hobbies instead.         

And then the house had told her to get a lodger.

            'Get a lodger?' said Min, which was proof if any that the house WAS too quiet if it was talking to her and she was talking back.

            'Yes,' said the house. 'A lodger. Someone respectable and professional. You've got the space, the money would come in handy to help with the renovations and a sitting tenant would make life a little more difficult for the C.O.P.S to force a sale.'

            ‘Good point,’ said Min. ‘Crafty point. Would I have to get up at the crack of dawn to provide a full English breakfast?'

            The house, who was starting to sound suspiciously like her dear departed Pa, suggested the continental option. 'Selection of cereals and fancy pastries, bit of fruit and cheese, tea and coffee. Pop a toaster on the sideboard with a loaf of bread and some of those dinky pots of jam and marmalade and Arthur's your uncle.'

            Which was true, because he was.

            So Min took the presence of Uncle Arthur in the conversation as some kind of psychic proof that a lodger was, indeed, the way to go. She had wasted no time setting about the task of placing half a dozen advertisements here and thereabouts just to see what would happen.

            'Ah yes,' she said, at once back in the moment of the conversation. 'The room.'

            Connie's eyes were wandering again. 'With all due respect, Miss Thing, I hope the room on offer isn't this room...'

            Min followed Connie's gaze. 'The company not to your taste, then?' she said, deciding a spot of black humour was the best way to explain this oddity of a scene.

            'I'm just not sure where I'd put my collection of eighty seven life-like dolls, that's all,' said Connie, without missing a beat. Min smiled. Connie would be the perfect lodger for Satis House.

            Downstairs, over a cheese and chilli jam on toast supper, Min and Connie discussed the practicalities - £450 a  month, all bills included – and a deposit was taken along with a promise made that Min would have a set of keys cut immediately, ready for Connie to move in at her earliest and best convenience.

            'By rights,' said Connie, 'it should be my ex-husband toting around looking for lodgings whilst we finalise this divorce. But his exact words were, and I quote, 'If you want an effing divorce, you can move out of the effing house yourself.'

            'How charming,' said Min. 'Are there children involved?'

            Connie shook her head. 'Well, not 'children' children. My daughter, Niamh, is at university now. Final year.'

            'Not likely to come home then?' said Min. 'Not one of these 'boomerang' children.'

            Connie laughed, 'Unlikely,' she said. 'She's got grand plans, none of which involve coming  home to have parents cramp her lifestyle. Not that she'll have a home to come back to once the divorce is through.' For a second, the brightness left Connie’s voice and the sparkle faded from her eyes. But she forced a smile and her face lit up again. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to be maudlin.’

            'Sometimes I think it is best to make a clean break, don't you? When it's obvious that things have come to a natural end?' said Min.

            'Like those stuffed animals, you mean?' said Connie.

            'Quite,' said Min. 'They're nothing to do with me, I hasten to add. All Clive's. I don't know – you live with someone for years and never really know them. Taxidermy of all things.'

            'Amateur taxidermy at that,' said Connie. She shuddered. 'You'd think in my line of work I'd have developed an immunity to stuffed dead things, but the way their eyes track you around the room...that wild boar’s eyes could follow you both ways at the same time!’

            Min laughed. 'They'll all be gone soon,' she said reassuringly, remembering that Clive had bequeathed not only his estate to the C.O.P.S but all his worldly goods, too. What would they do with fifty three specimens of stuffed animals and birds and assorted jars of dubious bits and bobs? Only Clive could manage to be more of a nuisance dead than he had been alive.

            The next morning, feeling buoyant that she had her first lodger installed which would go some way to cover the salary she would lose having resigned from her housing officer job, Min set about moving the stuffed menagerie from the box room and into the garage. Following her week’s annual leave, which was rather spoiled by Clive’s untimely death, she returned to work for a few brief days before her G.P obligingly signed her off with P.T.S.D, an effect, he explained, of having witnessed first-hand the violent death of a close family member. At first, Min had felt guilty appropriating the diagnosis when really she felt perfectly fine, if a little drained. However, coupled with her bereavement entitlement, it meant she’d barely been in her work’s office these last few weeks, and she found she didn’t miss it at all. This time is yours, the house told her. Take it. She accepted the words as approval that she was doing the absolute right thing by staying away from what would be her last ever job working for someone else.

And now, here she was in the last week of her sick leave so she wanted to make the most of the time. After this she would have only three weeks of notice to work, then she would be unemployed. Or should she say, newly self-employed? The thought made her smile. Also, now that Connie had seen the taxidermy horrors, Min wasn’t bothered who else saw them either, so Willow helped her to move them and, to her credit, didn't flinch once, even when a stoat's head disintegrated in her hands.

            'Have you thought of finding a collector?' said Willow, when the final piece – a particularly sombre looking baby rabbit – took its place with the others against the back wall of the garage. 'I mean, these things are coming back into fashion as far as interior design goes.’

            'Really?' said Min. 'People actually want these things in their homes?'

            Willow nodded. 'And pubs, country clubs...I see a lot of these used as art pieces in my line of work.'

            Min considered the matter. She certainly wasn't about to hang onto them for sentimental reasons, and yet she couldn't quite steel herself to pass them onto the C.O.P.S either, especially if there was money to be made. As far as she was aware, no-one from the C.O.P.S knew of their existence and what the eye doesn’t see, the heart won’t grieve for.

            'If they could be sold, that’d be great,' she said.

            ‘I'll keep my eyes and ears open,' said Willow. 'See if anyone is in the market for…er, unique pieces of taxidermy.

            With Clive's hobby room now free from the inspection of a hundred glassy eyes, Min set about clearing the cupboards and removing the old, smoke-tainted furnishings. The box room, once empty, wasn’t as small as she remembered. Willow measured the room and made some notes.

            'Of course,' she said, ‘this would be the perfect space for a second bathroom. It's too small  for a decent double bedroom, and with the other bathroom next door, the plumbing is easily accessible.’

            Min nodded. Another good idea. Really, Willow was being incredibly helpful.

‘A bathroom?!’ said Clive Thing. ‘She’s going to turn MY hobby room into a BATHROOM? The house has a bathroom. Why does she need another bathroom?’

            Halliwell regarded Clive with nonchalance. They were both sitting up a tree in the back garden of Satis House, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon. At least Halliwell was. Clive had been watching with increasing agitation as his sister, Minerva, and some other young woman, carried his beloved collection of taxidermy into the garage and dumped it, yes dumped, at the back. Three years it had taken him to build that collection and it was being displaced to a cold and damp space which would cause a huge amount of damage to his work. He said as much to Halliwell. Halliwell was beginning to think that Clive Thing was having difficulties accepting his new status as ‘dead’ and maybe he needed some form of counselling in order to get on with, well, his new non-living status.

            ‘And another thing,’ Clive chuntered on. ‘Why can’t I get into the house? I’ve been trying and trying and all I am met with is some sort of annoying resistance. It’s not on. A man ought to be able to haunt his own home.’

            Pa appeared on the next branch. ‘Clive, my boy, we’ve been through this. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a man to enter his previous home that he shared with a sister whose life he made a drudgery. It’s of your own making. Minerva has built up so much resentment towards you she’s created a psychic cloak of imperviousness around her. At least, I think that’s what she’s done…’

            ‘Well, she needs to uncloak herself,’ said Clive, folding his arms crossly across his chest.

            ‘She can’t,’ said Pa, ‘because she doesn’t know the cloak exists. It’s up to you to make amends. It is up to you to restore peace to Satis House.’

            Clive stuck out a petulant lip. ‘And how am I supposed to do that when I can’t make myself heard? I’ve tried everything. Allowing her access to my taxidermy collection, getting C.O.P.S involved in making my funeral arrangements to take the strain off her, even sending that bloody cat…’ he pointed at Halliwell, who glared back at him with equal disdain, ‘and still I can’t get into the house.’

            Pa coughed in the way he used to cough when preparing to tell Mother some news she would not want to hear, like no, she may not have another new hat or did she not think that three bottles of sherry a week erred on the excessive side? ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘The C.O.P.S. I have to say, old chap, that changing your Will wasn’t the best idea you’ve ever had.’ And even though Clive was his son, Pa was prepared to admit that the fruit of his loins was champion of the league when it came to dire ideas.

            ‘Okay,’ said Clive, not even prepared to argue on this one, ‘yes, I admit, that didn’t go completely according to plan. I did it with the best of intentions, you know.’

            Pa nodded. ‘I know, son. I know.’

            ‘And how was I to know that that Sylvia woman would turn into a complete and merciless harridan about the whole thing…’

            ‘You can’t expect to read people accurately, Clive,’ said Pa, who knew all too well the persuasive and misleading nature of Sylvia Path. ‘You can’t expect them to follow your script. Lord knows, if they did I might not have had all the trouble  with your Mother…’

            ‘I heard that!’ came a voice from afar. Father and son looked awkwardly at each other and thanked the universal energies that be that Mother had remained uninterested in anything beyond the ethereal plane. Didn’t stop her earwigging though, but why change the habits of a life (and death) time?

            Pa continued. ‘The one constant about people is that they are unreliable. Even your Uncle Arthur, who was as reliable as the rising and setting of the sun, even he had his moment. All those years, not a word to anyone and then he turns up for the Boxing Day buffet dressed in hot pants and sequinned halter neck top and insists everyone calls him Evelyn.’

            Clive nodded. ‘I know,’ he sighed. He didn’t even want to think how his Pa was so conversant with the notion of sequinned halter neck tops, but suspected it was something to do with that Sylvia Path woman. ‘What am I going to do, Pa? I only wanted the best for Min. And for Cecelia.’

            ‘You’ll find a way, son,’ said Pa, starting to fade like the rays of sun from the day. ‘And be nice to that cat. You need to keep him on side.’ Halliwell nodded in agreement, jumped from the branch of the tree and sauntered towards the house, the house he had no trouble at all in accessing.

            Clive waved his hand vaguely in the air as a loose farewell because once you are in the world of the spirit the idea of farewell becomes redundant. Unless you subscribed to the idea of reincarnation, of course, because then birth became the new death and you said goodbye to all the people you’d said hello to again once you’d died. That had been a bit of a shock, meeting Mother again. She’d given him what for, for allowing Min to carry the burden of caring for her during her final and protracted illness when Clive could quite easily have given her a hand, even with basic things like taking out the bins and cooking the odd meal.

            ‘I did cook an odd meal,’ Clive had protested, remembering his experimental efforts to fuse Moroccan with Asian and giving everyone the terrible runs for three days after.

            ‘Yes,’ said his Mother. ‘It was odd. And vile. I don’t know what possessed you. But that is not what I meant. Even you could have made beans on toast without turning it into calamity and you know Min enjoys plain food so it would have done her very well.’

            Clive sighed. He could never win. So why bother trying?

 At least his head wasn’t hurting so much now, although he’d been reassured when he’d arrived on the other side that what he was feeling was a residue of the physical and as soon as he accepted his new status, all pain would vanish.

            But what to do about this whole mess, which apparently was partly his fault? He had rather thought that Audley would have managed Sylvia with more firmness and determination. He had rather thought that Sylvia would have reigned in her inner diva and ambition and been more, well, grateful that he had changed his bequest to benefit the C.O.P.S. He had rather hoped that the whole plan would succeed in bringing his two sisters closer together. Much use hope had turned out to be when not everyone, it seemed, knew the rules.