chapter eleven
Oliver put down the phone from Erika and blew his nose hard. He picked up his umbrella. It was not the best for his health to be traipsing about in the pouring rain checking on elderly neighbours but there was no way he could delay it a moment longer.
He had a terrible feeling about this. The last time he could remember seeing Harry was the day before the barbeque, before there was any plan of a barbeque, before Erika’s curve ball, when it was still just afternoon tea with Clementine and Sam and the girls, as per the plan.
That Saturday afternoon Harry had ambled over for a chat and given Oliver some tips about the correct way to hold the whipper-snipper. Some people didn’t like being given unsolicited advice but Oliver was always happy to learn from other people’s experiences. Harry had complained about Vid and Tiffany’s dog. Its barking kept him up at night, apparently. Oliver had found that hard to believe. Barney was such a little dog. Harry had said he was calling the police, or it might have been the local council, but frankly Oliver hadn’t taken that much notice. Harry was always making official complaints through whatever official channels he could find. Making complaints was like a hobby for him. Everyone needed an interest when they retired.
That was two months ago now and Oliver couldn’t remember seeing Harry since then.
He opened his front door and jumped back when he saw Tiffany there, her umbrella tipped back on her shoulders as she stood on the shelter of their front veranda, her hand up as if she’d been just about to knock.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you’re sick, but it’s just that I’ve been thinking about Harry. I really think we should try to break in. Or call the police. Vid can’t remember seeing him for weeks either.’
‘Neither can Erika,’ said Oliver. ‘I was just about to go over.’ He was suddenly frantic. It was as if every minute counted now. ‘Let’s go.’ The wind picked up. ‘My God, this rain.’
They held their umbrellas up like riot shields and ducked behind them as they hurried over the lawns and back onto the front veranda of Harry’s house.
Tiffany dropped her umbrella in a soggy heap and began banging on the door with a closed fist. ‘Harry!’ she called over the noise of the rain. There was a panicky note in her voice. ‘Harry! It’s just us! Just the neighbours!’
Oliver lifted up a heavy sandstone pot. No key underneath. There was a set of crappy old green plastic pots with very dead plants and dry crumbling soil. Surely Harry wouldn’t keep a key under one of them? But he lifted the first pot and there it was. A small gold key. Harry, old mate, thought Oliver. That’s not great security.
‘Tiffany.’ Oliver held up the key to show her.
‘Ah,’ said Tiffany. She stood back as Oliver went to the front door and put the key in the lock.
‘He might have gone away,’ she said tremulously. ‘To see family.’ But they both knew he hadn’t gone away.
‘Harry!’ called out Oliver as he opened the door.
‘Oh God, no, no, no,’ said Tiffany immediately. The smell took a fraction longer to get past Oliver’s blocked nostrils and then it was like he’d walked smack-bang into a wall of it. A wall of smell. Sweet, rotten smell. It was like someone had sprinkled cheap perfume over meat that had gone off. His stomach heaved. He looked back at Tiffany and he was reminded of the day of the barbeque, how in times of crisis a person’s face is somehow stripped back to something essential and universally human: all those labels like ‘beautiful’, ‘sexy’, ‘plain’ became irrelevant.
‘Fuck,’ she said sadly.
Oliver pushed the door all the way open and took a step forward into the dim light. He’d never been inside before. All his interactions with Harry had taken place in front yards. Harry’s front yard. His front yard.
A single light burned overhead. He could see a long hallway with a surprisingly beautiful red runner leading off into darkness. A staircase with a curved wooden banister.
At the bottom of the staircase lay a large unfamiliar object, and of course he knew already it had to be Harry’s body, that exactly what he’d feared had happened, but still for a few seconds he stared, trying to puzzle it out, as if it were one of those tricky optical illusion pictures. It just didn’t seem possible that cranky, stomping, spitting Harry was now that bloated, blackened, silent thing of horror.
Oliver registered certain things: Harry’s socks weren’t matching. One black. One grey. His glasses had sunk into his face as if they’d been pressed firmly by an unseen hand into soft, yielding flesh. His white hair was still as neatly combed as ever. A tiny swarm of busily buzzing flies.
Oliver’s stomach recoiled. He stepped back on trembling legs and pulled the door shut while Tiffany vomited into the sandstone pot and the rain continued to fall and fall.