Margaret was two days dead when the mouse mat arrived. It came by UPS delivery, one of those brown-clad men standing at the door wanting my signature. I don’t live here, I wanted to tell him, but I gave him it nonetheless. Even the dead have the right to post.
A mouse mat. An anachronism, like top-up cards and Pop Tarts. Pristine edges, unfrayed, unstained. A top crisp enough to take a bite right out of, but too sterile, like silica gel: THROW AWAY – DO NOT EAT! Oval but for an ergonomic tumour. It was green – jade, you might say – with a botanical border: palms and orchids and eucalyptus leaves, and a white cross in the centre of this jungle of Eden. Pretty. The centrepiece:
THE JABEZ PRAYER
Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my territory!
Let Your hand be with me, and keep me from harm
so that I will be free from pain.
1 Chronicles 4: 9-10
I could feel Veronica looking over my shoulder, piping up with God, what was she like with that cheque book? Still, it was her money. Nobody else’s. Trotting back into the kitchen, thinking I’d mistaken the self-righteous stench for big sisterly wisdom. Only Veronica was, at that moment, on board flight BA2158 to London Gatwick, having found in her hour of ‘grief’ that even regional marketing executives can’t magic themselves from Saint Lucia to their mother’s bedside as she passes from this world to the next.
What was in her power was to telephone her younger brother and tell him to get to the hospital immediately. Fortunately, I suppose. No one deserves to die alone. And still I couldn’t help but wonder whether Margaret Reenie was trying to tell me with those milky eyes, her flaccid hand in my own, that everyone has the right to.
I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Reenie, the doctor told me. She was a young Michelle Pfeiffer, but a darker blonde. I thanked her for her concern and asked what would happen next. She was very kind, the way she talked me through the paper work. Very kind. She must have been so busy.
There was bumf with the mouse mat. A receipt for £25 + p&p! Power of the grey pound, eh? And The New Evangelical Voice to add to the enigma. She’d had a penchant for Catholicism in my teenage years – the statues, the incense, the passion of Christ. A fad, I always reckoned. Dad had lost faith in her, and disappeared with Ester Vickers in her Ford Sierra, never to return. Jesus would do the same. I was right. By the time I left home, she was misquoting Dawkins and Marx in a bid to out-atheist herself. And now she was praying that He may enlarge her territory. Trying her luck with the evangelicals, wagering on an indulgence, that she might fare better on judgement day.
A street lamp flickered on beyond the pebbled glass of the front door. Imogen would pick the lads up from karate. She’d understand how an afternoon can become an evening. You’ll need more than a day to work through all her shite, she’d told me.
I started to load the pick-up, give myself some space to carry on sorting. Charity shop bags went in the cabin. Boxes for the tip on the back. Hopefully the lard arse would be on the gate tomorrow. He always turned a blind eye to the James Reenie Construction Ltd branding.
Veronica would go ape shit at the hours I’d spent – in my eyes, selflessly – scraping the first layer of grime off the three-bed terrace. But pissed off V was preferable to her condescending default. Fuck me, she’d have insisted on giving clearance before I could dispose of cottage cheese (BBE: 07/2018), Asda coupons, final reminders from TalkTalk, British Gas, Yorkshire Water, sodden bedsheets, and an evangelical mouse mat for a long-since dead desktop. What good did hanging onto these things do?
The mouse mat was slightly different, of course. I took care with it, sealed it back in its jiffy bag with a note. I explained the tragic circumstances and requested a refund to Mr J. Reenie. If they were real Christians, they’d understand.