Alice put the rucksack sulkily down on the tiled hall floor. A large green-eyed, thick-coated black cat came out of the shadows and sniffed at it.
‘I’ve just written out the death certificate,’ the doctor said cheerfully. ‘Natural causes of course. She was eighty-eight. I think it was the Beaujolais Nouveau, I warned her not to drink it after Christmas but she was always stubborn.
‘I’ll send the undertakers around later. But they won’t be able to fit her in for at least a couple of days. She’ll be all right here as long as it doesn’t get too hot.’
Michael gulped, his face went greenish in the shadowy hall.
‘You’re the only heir, you know,’ the doctor said chattily. He came out of the sitting-room with his black bag, waving the death certificate to dry the ink. ‘I see you brought your things to move in at once. Bit precipitate of you I would have thought; but young people today have very little sense of etiquette.’
Alice’s grip on Michael’s hand tightened.
‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to unload,’ he said cheerily. ‘Don’t block up the hall with anything till they’ve got the coffin out.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We’ll be neighbours,’ he said without much pleasure. ‘It’s a quiet village this; expensive. We like it like that.’ He looked hard at Michael’s young gormless face and then glanced at Alice’s flowing bright gown and coloured scarves. ‘Nothing that brings down property prices will be tolerated in this village,’ he said abruptly. ‘No hippies here thank you. G’day!’
His confident footsteps echoed on the loose tiles of the hall. Alice and Michael stood in silence, still hand-clasped. The big black cat backed up to Alice’s bag of herbal remedies and shot a spray of yellow urine directly and accurately all over it.
There was a long silence. Not even the hissing noise of the peeing cat distracted Michael and Alice from their thoughts.
‘Should we see her?’ Michael asked in a hushed tone.
Alice nodded. She went towards the uncarpeted stairs and led the way, one hand trailing along the sticky banister, the treads of the stairs creaking beneath each step. The stairs swept around a half-landing beneath a cobwebby high window and then arrived at the main landing. To left and right were doors closed on empty bedrooms, the door to the master bedroom was straight ahead. It stood open. Alice crossed the threshold and then paused.
The old lady was dressed in a perfectly white nightgown with a nightcap tied neatly around her white head. She was propped high on clean white pillows trimmed with lace. She looked like everyone’s idea of a sweetly dead old lady. She looked like Whistler’s Mother; only supine. On her bedside table were two empty bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau, and on the coverlet of her bed were price lists from wine merchants and yesterday’s Sporting Life.
Alice started to hum, a deep rhythmic buzz of sound from the back of her throat like a massive, tuneful bee. She went over to the sash window and flung it up to welcome the sunshine into the shaded room. Michael, who dimly remembered seeing Alice hurling furniture from the spare bedroom window the night before, shot an anxious look at her as if she might be planning to toss Aunty Sarah out into the rose beds. But Alice was communing with the forces of Nature and freeing Aunty Sarah’s aura and essence and incorporeal body to mingle with the warm sunshine and be transported to a higher plane.
‘Hummm…’ she droned.
Michael dipped his head in an awkward little bow to the still figure in the bed and stepped softly out of the room. From his previous visit he thought he remembered that the kitchen was at the back of the house. He had not eaten since yesterday afternoon, and last night had been the most active of his life. He badly wanted a cup of coffee. He was also thinking that he should telephone his parents at once and tell them of Aunty Sarah’s death and his rich inheritance. Michael’s brain, under-fed and over-excited, spun with dreams and hopes.
The kitchen was as immaculate as Aunty Sarah’s bedroom. Michael filled the kettle and put it on to boil, noting that Aunty Sarah’s cleaner had let the rest of the house accumulate dust as long as the kitchen, Aunty Sarah’s room and the bathroom were as perfect as they had been in the roaring twenties when Aunty Sarah’s exacting standards had been set.
Just as the kettle was boiling, Alice came in.
She was wearing her dreamy look which sent a shiver of anticipation down Michael’s spine.
‘Tea, if there is any,’ she said with flute-like sweetness. ‘Coffee is a poison, you know, Michael.’
Michael nodded obediently, and looked for the canister of tea instead.
‘So you are the heir?’ she asked.
Michael nodded. ‘I always knew I would be,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t really think about it. She was one of those old ladies who look like they will live forever, you know.’
He warmed the pot and made the tea. There was fresh milk in the fridge. Alice frowned as he put the bottle on the table. Michael looked for a milk jug and poured it in, but that seemed to make it no better.
‘Milk is a poison, you know, Michael,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ Michael had not known this. He had drunk milk seldom after leaving primary school where he had to finish up one of those little bottles every break-time before he was allowed out to play. He had not liked the stuff much then, and he had a squeamish loathing for the skin on custard or hot chocolate; but he would not have called it poison exactly. However, he was unlikely to oppose Alice on this matter, or any other. He drank his tea black and sugarless. He did not think it was worth trying for the sugar bowl.
‘What will you do?’ Alice asked. She finished her tea and was peering into the depths of her cup. ‘What do you plan to do with this house?’
Michael gazed longingly at her. Blinkie, unseen in Michael’s baggy trousers, reared up and gazed longingly at her too.
‘I don’t know,’ Michael said weakly. ‘It depends, I suppose.’
Alice’s eyes when she looked up from her cup were so misty that he was afraid she had scalded them with the steam. ‘Depends on what?’ she asked, her voice silky.
Michael opened his mouth. All that came out was a pathetic squeak, wordless.
Alice rose to her feet; she was humming as she had done in Aunty Sarah’s bedroom but this time the noise was more insistent, like the distant purr of a lawn-mower in an enthusiast’s garden. Slowly but surely she unwound one of the scarves at her throat and held it across her face. Above the gauzy top her dark eyes stared hypnotically at Michael.
Her feet traced strange patterns on the flagstones of the kitchen floor. Michael crossed his legs in an effort to keep Blinkie aligned with at least some part of his body. She danced around in a little circle then she stood still and shivered her body in a sinuous snake-like tremble which set all the little beads and bells and discs on her scarves trembling and ringing.
This was unfortunate. The cat, mistaking the noise for the welcome clatter of the tin-opener, came running into the kitchen and seeing there was nothing in his bowl let out a contemptuous bawl of disapproval. Alice ignored him completely and took one small step towards Michael.
Michael pushed his chair back. He knew he was grinning in a
