Clearing Up
by Elizabeth Guilt
George checked his notebook as he pulled up outside the house, reading
the details while he raked the handbrake on. No police hints on this
one, just a straight house clearance: an elderly man, taken into
hospital after a fall and died a week or two later.
He flipped through the rings of keys and let himself in, running a
jaded eye over the living room furniture. Cheap tat, mostly. The settee
and chairs were good only for the dump, and the telly looked like it'd
been bought ex-rental decades ago. Nice '50s dresser, and a vintage
dealer might want the plates off it. The clock was worth a second look.
He didn't even notice the piles of newspapers, the clogged comb, the
dentures. He cleared the jetsam of people's lives, binning the grot
along with the sentimental clutter that relatives found so hard to
handle.
He barely glanced at the kitchen, experience correctly predicting what
he would find: filth, worn-out utensils and a greasy microwave beneath
the drooping and dusty Venetian blind. Up the steep staircase, he
shoved open the bedroom door. The horror propelled him out so fast that
he almost went straight backwards down the stairs again. He slammed the
door, slumping onto the harsh, corded carpet of the landing.
Getting old, getting careless. Breezing through rooms like that,
assuming he could rely on the mundanity of a suburban geriatric. The
room had been bad – though he’d seen much worse – but he should have
been better prepared.
He stood up carefully, took a deep breath, and opened the door again.
Over the bed hung a thick, sticky cloud of jealousy and malice. Rage
shot through it as shards of memory reached out for George. A bruised,
tear-streaked face, a raised fist, a pillow firmly held down.
"And you got away with it, too, you bastard," muttered the
house-clearer as he surveyed the mess.
The murder was old, years old, but the rage was still urgent and
biting. The elderly man had gone on hating his wife long after he
buried her.
The wife had been frail and ill when he finally moved that pillow. Had
a care worker, somewhere, suspected – but let the details slide? A
devoted husband, easing his wife's misery, who could blame him? But
George read the trails of red in the sticky tangle emotions; George saw
the glee as the wife fought for breath. This had not been a merciful
gesture.
Steeling himself, he plunged his hands into the roiling cloud of angers
and jealousies. With the choking strands around his fingers he wrenched
the images apart, feeling hatreds and dreams tear and fray. The wife's
despair; forty dragging years of suspicion; the husband's paranoia; his
delight in his wife's unhappiness; his final, vicious triumph.
George withdrew his mind as his hands methodically shredded the threads
of ideas that held this nightmare together. He let each insult, each
broken promise and every threat float off and dissipate harmlessly.
While he worked, he drifted back to a long-ago memory of his father's
voice. It had been nearly fifty years ago, in a tiny terraced house
where a woman had been found with her head in the gas oven.
"The family won't thank you," his father had said. "They won't even
know you've done it. And the new people who move in, they won't thank
you either. But they'll be a lot happier and fare a lot better in this
house if you clear that up."
Both George and his younger brother had worked for their father's firm,
and Dombridge & Sons prospered. They gained a good reputation for
fair prices and honest work, stripping and selling furniture, unwanted
possessions and the detritus of spent life. And as they went, they
always "cleared that up". They never mentioned it.
George had read about mediums, about people who tried to suggest
something persisted after "loved ones" had departed. He had no time for
them and despised the false hopes they held out to grieving families.
He saw the tattered, leftover emotions he cleared from houses in much
the same way he saw the stacks of old newspapers and yellowing family
photos that they bundled into black sacks.
A few - a very few - people did thank them. Often vaguely, as if they
recognised that something had been done, but couldn't quite say what.
And the detective inspector who recommended Dombridge & Sons to
grieving relatives after violent crimes, he knew all right. More than
one of the undertakers in the area had dropped the occasional hint.
A couple of months previously a customer had requested a house
clearance but stipulated "don't take Grandma away". They'd been quite
insistent that the furniture and remaining effects could be sold or
disposed of, but "not Grandma". George had emptied the house, smiling
to himself as he left the pink-beige, lavender-scented column of
motherly kindness in the corner of the kitchen.
Of course, in most houses, George and his brother Ralph simply shifted
furniture, boxed up books and crockery as they were paid to do, and
made a lot of trips to the local tip. But whenever it was necessary
they also "cleared that up" quietly and without fuss.
Back in his van, George rang the customer. Yes, yes, no problems,
standard price for a house of the size. Next Monday? No worries.
He returned a call he'd missed. "Hello, George Dombridge of Dombridge
& Sons..." He felt the familiar tiny needle of guilt as he said
that. His father barely worked at all now, but they kept the name. With
Alex working all hours and taking almost all the long-distance driving,
it really should be "... & Sons & Grandson" these days. He and
Ralph studiously never mentioned it. Alex hadn't asked, but if he'd
never wondered then he was even dafter than they thought.
Poor Alex, it wasn't his fault. He was a good lad. He just couldn't...
couldn't clear up like the rest of the family. And it was only chance
that meant George had come and done the estimate on the house today.
Alex would have walked into that bedroom without blinking, taken all
the furniture away, and some poor young couple would have been at each
other's throats without ever knowing why. George hated trusting Alex to
do jobs by himself, even as he conceded that Alex offered as good a
service as any other house clearer. But he couldn’t offer the Dombridge
service.
*****
George was just about to drive off when the phone rang again. Ralph's
voice trembled on the other end, sounding faint and panicky.
"Help... George..."
There was a thud and the call dropped out. He didn't waste time calling
back, he rang straight through to the shop.
"Alex, where's our Ralph at the moment?" He tried to sound calm.
"Doing a clearance in the West End, probably. He said it'd likely take
all day. I'm not sure..."
The address, dammit, give me the address. George gripped the steering
wheel as he tried to keep his voice steady and casual. "I think his
phone's bust, I'll pop in on him on my way back. What's the address?"
His teeth ground as Alex fussed and fumbled with bits of paper. He had
his foot down as soon as he knew the road and was nearly up to thirty
before Alex finished saying the house number. Driving, seatbeltless,
with one hand holding his phone he headed into a maze of backstreets.
Ralph had called for help exactly once before in all the time they'd
been clearing houses. In the same time George himself had nearly lost
it twice - once before they had mobiles. His dad had come looking when
it got late and rescued him. He could still remember the red-hot,
trapped feeling of someone else's pent rage; it had filled his mind
until he'd had no thoughts left of his own.
What was Ralph doing? Alex hadn't known, of course, it was "just a
normal house clearance". All house-clearances were normal to Alex, with
his donkey brain and stolid walk. Such a disapp...
George scraped a kerb and his attention snapped back to the road.
Nearly there, nearly there.
He parked awkwardly across a dropped kerb, leaving the van door
swinging as he slammed through the neat, white-painted front door.
"Ralph? Ralph!" He was running, wheezing, up the stairs as he shouted.
"Ralph!"
A door stood ajar and he crashed into a pretty, pink room with flowered
walls and ruffled furniture. Ralph was slumped against a wooden cot,
his phone on the floor beside a giant fluffy teddy. A slimy, grey
stream wound about his head, in and out of his mouth as he breathed.
George reached for the grey threads, confused. Such a tiny strand of a
story, easily broken apart - surely not enough to trouble his brother.
Was Ralph ill? Was this a mundane emergency which even Alex could have
handled?
Ralph was breathing, albeit with an ashen white face. George brushed
the greys aside, and found himself looking down into the cot at a
still, lifeless baby. The baby! After so many, so very many, secret
griefs and all the guilt, the baby she had finally carried was dead and
cold. A swelling, ripping sensation burnt up from her lungs as she
tried to breathe, tried to scream, tried to...
George gripped the edges of the cot, the wood digging into his palms as
he pushed and pushed, frantic to get these freezing despairs out of his
head. Momentarily he found himself and he swung blindly at the
clutching threads, beating them away from his brother's face. Gritting
his teeth, he snagged individual thoughts that snapped like rotted silk
until the twisting coil became loose, disconnected patches. Ralph
flopped sideways onto the floor, his head on the teddy's legs. He drew
a massive breath, and opened his eyes. George dropped next to him.
Ralph's expression was still bleak and distant, but he nodded slowly.
"Cheers, mate."
George remembered himself coming round, sprawled on the floor in a
badly burned kitchen a decade ago. He'd had the same feeling that words
were inadequate, and had thanked Ralph in a similarly banal way. He
gripped his brother's hand.
"Cot death," said Ralph. "Husband left, wife killed herself."
George nodded. Seven words, and people would say oh, how sad.
The gap between the words and the hideous, tearing pain of the young
mother yawned greedily, eager for others to fall in.
"Dad... Uncle Ralph?" Alex came through the door, confused to find
the two men, pale and shaky, sitting on the floor and holding hands.
George struggled to his feet.
"Dad, are you ok? You sounded weird on the phone, I thought I'd just
come over."
"Thanks, son. It's fine. Ralph just took a bit of a turn. His angina, I
think. Scared us both."
He reached down to help Ralph up, realising as he did so what old men
they had become. Behind Alex, a thin screaming started.
"Sorry, sorry!" Alex scooped the toddler into his arms. "Sally's ill, I
had to bring the bairn with me." He stroked the little boy's face.
"Ssh, now, it's fine. Uncle Ralph just felt ill for a while. Ssh,
ssh..."
George looked at his grandson's face, contorted, red and screaming in
terror. A chubby little arm pointed directly at the patchy greys above
the cot.
He turned to look at Ralph who was now grinning broadly. Dombridge
& Sons suddenly had a future.
THE END
© 2019 Elizabeth Guilt
Bio: Elizabeth Guilt reads and writes stories to make her
daily commute on the London Underground more enjoyable. She has
recently had her first pieces of fiction accepted for publication by
Straylight literary magazine and Luna Station Quarterly.
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