SERPENT'S TOOTH

Down down into black salt water while overhead the iceberg keels recede, hypothermic blue against a watery sun. Legs tangle among deep drifting weeds that pull to the sea bed like winding ropes on a capstan. Green fish stare goggle eyed, flapping shimmering tails against cheeks and arms. Trawl nets twine through grasping hands that clutch at the dear love's drowned bones and at Baby's slab cold body as they slither past into the yawn of the great sea serpent, as they drift for ever among row after row of pointed teeth white as war graves.

'Mum!'

Tim's voice, anxious. I'm coming, I'm coming. What was the child up to now? And how deep his voice had grown. Tug against the nets, the weeds, the weight of water. Can't breathe, struggling for air.

'Let her sleep.' Katie's harsh tones.

Reality invaded dreams. Eva's eyelids fluttered; she made out two ghost misty figures with her real eyes. Tim, Eva's second son, was a grown man now, married to that weasly old gal, Katie, and her grandson Toby was fourteen, but he wasn't here. Far too busy to visit with his parents. Preferring the clarity of dreams, she closed her eyes again.

Katie said softly, 'That picture's worth a bomb.'

Eva had bought it after her first husband drowned fishing in the distant waters long before the Icelandic cod wars. She never stared at it for long for she couldn't bear to imagine how he and his mates had suffered, but it had been a constant companion in every house she'd ever lived in. Now she saw just a blue haze, but it was clear in her memory - a towering berg and black sailed trawler with tiny figures hoisting the full bag by mizzen tackle. Dream lover, so young, so strong and handsome, sea bleached, hair wafting, coiling long green threads around her wrist like the bracelet he bought her from the market. She fumbled on her skinny wrist in vain. How stupid to forget. She buried that with Baby when he toddled into a TB death soon after the ship was lost.

Drifting in fantasies she missed Tim's reply, but she heard Katie say, 'Don't eventhink about it. It won't come our way, however much we need it. She can't see it, it's no use to her. We deserve some help; we work hard and we've got a boy to educate, but like everything else it'll go to your spendthrift sister in Ipswich.'

Squitty little bitch. Why shouldn't Eva's daughter have some help from her Mum now and then? She'd never done as well as Tim. Jumping from job to job, always starting at the bottom and then moving horizontally. She needs help to scale the ladder to something really good, late though it is, because the girl's forty six, no, that's Tim. . . Eva struggled with the arithmetic. The lass must be fifty two because it was on my twenty ninth birthday that her Dad died. A bit old to be waitressing in that cafe still.

Katie was saying, ' . . .leaves us to sort everything out. Never visits. But she'll be here like a shot soon as the old thing goes, and all we'll see is a dirty patch on the wall where it used to hang. Possession's ninetenths. . .'

Tim said, 'I'll take out a second mortgage. Things'll look up once I get another job.'

'Don't expect me to take on extra work to support you, that's all.'

'I've sent over thirty applications, haven't I?'

'Get some interview training.' Katie's voice faded and Eva heard water running into the kettle in the kitchen. She decided to wake up for the cup of tea.

* * *

The warden of the sheltered home knelt by Eva's easy chair, and put her arms round the old woman, trying to cuddle her. But Eva sat thin as a twig, rigid and upright as her mother had taught her. When you're raided you don't fold up and cry. You walk tall. If you can still walk. She flexed her wasting shanks and calf muscles.

'Tim's on his way,' said the warden. Then she turned to the policeman. 'You see some dreadful things in this job.' No one had ever invaded the sheltered housing to steal before, and she was agitated by her failure to protect her charge. She was a fairhaired plump woman, comfortable as a warm cushion in an old armchair, and she clutched Eva's hand as if the elderly woman was a moral lifeboat on the storm seas of human iniquity. Eva patted her arm kindly.

The policeman's bulk hid the light from the window. He stared at the blank space on the wall while listening to his radio. 'Yes. . .No. . .Searched the neighbourhood first, but nothing. . . Statement, yes. . . Whoever done it knew it was valuable,' he said to Eva.

Too obvious for her to reply.

'So who knew you had it?'

The question she dreaded. 'Everyone,' she said vaguely.

She heard the groan of her small chair as he sat down next to her. He spoke loudly in her ear. 'Could you give me some names please, my dear?'

She said nothing. If only they'd go away. She wanted time to plan her line of action.

The warden helped her, 'There's the frozen meals man.'

'It wasn't him. I can see enough for that'

'It's true,' the warden confirmed. 'Colours, shapes.'

Whoops, Eva thought, better amend that. 'Not enough to identify anyone,' she lied.

'Told people in the shops?'

She tried to move away from his booming voice but the warden's arms were in the way. 'I don't go around telling everyone I meet, if that's what you mean.'

'Her hearing's good,' the warden said.

The policeman continued more softly, 'Names and addresses of family and friends who visited recently, please.'

She remained silent. How easily she might say the wrong thing.

'She's still in shock,' said the warden. 'So brave. Jumped up from her chair, you know. Tackled him.'

'Amazing what people can do in a crisis,' replied the policeman knowingly.

Eva's legs started shaking again. It wasn't quite like the warden told it. Oh yes, she'd jumped up and rushed at the retreating shadow, but her jumping and rushing didn't amount to much these days. She said quickly, 'Him? How d'you know it was a him? Didn't speak and there's women just as rotten as men.'

'I'll give you the names you want,' the warden said to the policeman.

Of course she would. There was no point in Eva keeping silent so she picked up her bag from beside her chair and fumbled in it. She handed her address book to the policeman. 'Most of um are dead.'

'She's eighty two,' said the warden.

'I wouldn't have guessed it.'

Huh. When Eva was his age she wouldn't have been able to guess an old woman's age either. After sixty you're just an old bag.

The warden put her cushiony arm round Eva's shoulders and pillowed her cheek on her bosom. 'Don't you worry, Eva. The police'll catch him. Thieves never prosper.'

Eva pulled herself away from the scent of herb fresh deodorant and snorted. 'You on another planet?'

After another cup of too-sweet tea the warden left with the policeman saying, 'Opportunist. Can't ever catch them.'

'You'd be surprised how many we get. Not straight away mind. But a valuable picture like that...'

Tim was coming, and she must be ready by then. You always protect your own, what ever. But still she moaned like a lost child, 'I can't get my act together, Mum. What would you do in my place?' and the door opened with a burst of light and warmth and the outdoor scents of roses and lavender, and there he was. He put an arm round her, but she sat cold and hard as a sea rotted skeleton. How could she relax? Or cry? There was a stabbing pain in her chest like a bite from a fierce sea creature, and she couldn't breathe.

Events blurred into one another. The warden again. Some woman she didn't know clapped a mask on her face and the pain in her chest eased. Tim and Katie's voices, unsympathetic under the pretended concern.

She was put to bed with a useless sleeping pill. Something was chasing her, black, fearsome, overshadowing the sky. 'Mama!' she whimpered, and her mother in sombre coarse serge dress appeared beside her, tall as a gas lamp post, saying 'Fiercer than serpent's tooth. . .' And Eva's life unfolded before that bitter female judge. 'Mama, I didn't mean to be so uncaring. Of you, of them all. I've lived too long.' Dark fear descended and, like blackout curtain, extinguished her. She should have understood. Given her picture. What are mere things compared with love?

She forced herself to get up next morning, oh so slowly. People came and talked to her, but she ignored them. Time must be passing because it got dark and someone turned on the lights, asking whether she'd eaten.

'Yes, yes,' she said, but she'd dropped her meals on wheels into the waste. Even the thought of eating made her gag.

Eventually her daughter came from Ipswich, as casual and careless as ever, trying to jolt her out of apathy. Tim brought Toby and the three of them talked over her head.

Her daughter's voice was angry. 'Look what that bugger's done to her. She's thin as a pin.'

'We can't force her to eat,' Tim replied nervously.

Toby interrupted, 'I've got a new computer. And we're going to Florida after the funeral.'

'Shush,' his elders exclaimed.

Eva thought, 'I always taught them right from wrong. Didn't they understand? I must explain more clearly. It's my duty.' But she lacked the strength to make the effort.

'I'll have to get back soon. You'll give me lift to the station in your new BMW, will you, Timmy?' her daughter called from the kitchen.

'Sure.'

'I'll come next weekend.'

Suddenly the rest of her mother's saying came to Eva. ' . . .is the ingratitude of a child.' A soupçon of energy roused her to throw off the blanket of guilt. She hadn't been thoughtless or uncaring. Adults must take responsibility for their own actions.

She opened her mouth to shout, 'I know, Tim. I couldn't see you but mothers don't forget their children's walk, their smell, their way of breathing.' But the wisp of anger died as she thought, 'No, let it pass. It's no longer my concern. Let them enjoy their new car and their holiday and Toby's computer.'

Through the darkening mists she heard her daughter explode, 'He's finished her. I hope the bugger rots.'