The Hermit-Crab

THE HERMIT-CRAB
Abode. Dwelling. Domicile. Residence. Habitat. House. Home. n. a place
where you live, a place where you feel you belong.

The boy had tangled mousy hair, dirty baggy clothes, and no fixed
abode written all over him. Melissa watched with interest as he
approached other passengers and began his earnest story. Very few
listened until the end, most brushed him aside impatiently. She could
see the frustration welling up in him, hear the fury in his voice
across the echoing spaces of the bus station. Then he stormed up to the
bench where she was placidly stroking her worry beads.
'What are you smiling at?' he shouted.
She didn't say anything.
He sat down and began emptying his pockets, counting out the little
bits of change people had given him. His hands were grimy, except for
the fingertips which were bitten raw. His chin bristled with the fuzz
of someone who had not long been shaving. Suddenly he leapt up, ripped
off his tee-shirt and dropped it in a greyish heap on the floor.
'Look at me,' he hissed urgently.
Bony ribs, like the notes of a xylophone, were poking through his
white skin. Below them sliced a long red scar, livid as the boy
himself, with staples in it.
'They discharged me from hospital,' he said. 'They need the bed. And
there's no bleedin' way I'm going back to that hostel again.'
Melissa was travelling to the Drapers. As usual Mrs Draper had sent a
precise list of instructions, written firmly in capital letters as if
for a child who was learning to read. She had posted them directly,
with the keys, to save on the agency fee.
As the boy stood menacingly before her, Melissa wondered if a herb
poultice might soothe his wound and cool his anger. Although the
Drapers' house was immaculate, the long garden was seriously neglected.
Right at the end, where a creaking summerhouse was hidden beneath
swathes of blowsy buddleia, she knew just where to find a flourishing
patch of comfrey.
'I suppose you could come with me,' she said.
This was, of course, completely against the rules. Mrs Draper was as
neurotic about intruders as she was fanatical about cleanliness. She
kept several rooms locked, as if they might yield too much temptation,
and she stored battalions of poisons under the sink. However, she was
generally satisfied with Melissa's stewardship and pleased to find her
cats sleek and contented. She need never know about the boy.

The Drapers' was a substantial 1930s house with an imposing staircase
and a kitchen awash with shining appliances. In the sitting room were
easy chairs the size of thrones and two large gilt-framed photographs
of Mr and Mrs Draper hanging on the wall. Melissa had always presumed
they were there to remind her to be on her best behaviour, but the boy
just snorted. As he paced about, sizing things up, she began to feel
ill at ease, like an unwanted guest.
'What's an old hippy like you doing in a place like this?' he said
brutally.
He seemed to be staring straight through the protective layers she
liked to wear - brightly coloured vest and patchwork jacket, floating
skirts - at the skimpy scraggy shape beneath. She felt a shiver of
fear. He was under-nourished and he'd lost blood, but he was desperate
enough to grab whatever he wanted.
'They need someone to look after the cats. They're valuable, they
can't risk them running away.' Slinky, silvery Burmese Blue, they were
weaving between her legs, their tails quivering. They wouldn't go near
him. 'I could wash your clothes if you like,' she offered. 'I know how
to use the machine.'
Before she'd even had time to scout for a blanket he'd dropped
everything on the floor, right under the eyes of the portraits. She
didn't want to look at him, at his sharp bones and his ugly scar and
his pale naked buttocks. She bundled his bits and pieces into the rapid
wash cycle and, without turning round, sent him upstairs to the bath.
She was afraid he'd refuse, or do something unspeakable like urinate on
the Afghan rug, but he must have longed for the embrace of warm water
because he went as obediently as a little child.
When he came down again, wearing Mr Draper's white bathrobe which
didn't suit him at all, he'd got his chippiness back. He looked around
all the gleaming empty surfaces in the kitchen and said 'What's to
eat?'
Several tins of cat food were stacked up: one tin a day and a couple
to spare, but the door to the built-in larder was locked. He tugged at
the handle and swore.
'I buy my own food when I come here,' Melissa explained. 'I don't like
to be a nuisance. Anyway, I'm vegetarian.'
'Arseholes,' he said. 'They want you to keep the fucking burglars out
and they don't even leave you an egg to boil.'
'I don't mind. Just to live in a place like this is a holiday for
someone like me...'
'Someone like me!' he mocked and kicked out viciously at one of the
cats. ''Someone like me' doesn't deserve a tin of baked beans or a pack
of biscuits. Bet they've locked away all the family silver too. And her
jewellery. And his golf clubs.'
She hoped they had. She couldn't bear to be responsible for the theft
of Mrs Draper's gold bangles and coral necklace. 'He doesn't play
golf.'
'Sod that,' he said.
She'd boiled the kettle while he'd been raging and infused some
raspberry leaves that she always carried with her. In the time it took
to pour two cups, he'd broken into the larder. The shelves were full of
fancy pickles and olives and boxes of branflakes. The big white fridge
freezer was humming away, like a boastful chant:
full-of-food-full-of-food, and the veins were standing out in knots on
his forehead.
He helped himself to pizza and chips and vichyssoise - all out of the
deep freeze - and two bottles of beer, which he drank rapidly one after
the other.
'Come on, join me,' he said.
Reluctantly she agreed to a bowl of soup and they sat opposite each
other on high stools at the breakfast bar, slurping it.
'My mum kicked me out,' he said after a while. 'Shouldn't of had kids
in the first place. What about you?'
'No, no kids.'
'No bloke either?'
'I like being self-sufficient,' she said.
He smothered his chips in tomato ketchup. 'D'you think I could get a
job like this? It'd beat being homeless, what d'you reckon?'
Sometimes she looked after six different houses in a fortnight;
sometimes she had a long stretch in the same place. Clients liked her
because she left no mark; didn't even dent the surface of their lives.
She scuttled backwards and forwards between conveniently empty shells.
He would be much too abrasive.
'You need references,' she said cautiously.
He grimaced. 'Funny how you always need something you've not
got.'
He'd left a mess of torn pizza boxes and smeared ketchup on the
marble-effect surfaces, but she made him clear it up and help wash the
dishes. Then he spent a long while in the larder with a screwdriver -
she was sure he was filling his pockets with treats - but at least he
managed to lock the door again, so no-one could tell it had been
tampered with.
'That's fixed it for you,' he said, and gave a leering sort of
wink.
Later she watched him fall asleep in the back bedroom, watched the
tension in his limbs slowly dissipate, and felt finally satisfied that
he would do no more harm.
She didn't realised how exhausted she was herself - until she woke
suddenly the next morning under Mrs Draper's white lace guest room
duvet, with September light leaking round the edges of the festoon
blinds, aware only of the fact that the boy's narrow frame was poised
above hers.
'D'you want me to give you one?' he said.
She wasn't sure if she had heard him right. 'What?'
'Y'know - as a thankyou, 'cos you've been good to me.'
She struggled to wrap herself tightly in the duvet, her flesh
tingling. She didn't want to respond to any bit of him. 'Your clothes
are in the tumble dryer,' she said. 'You'd better get them on.' She'd
given up any idea of looking for a poultice; he would feel her fingers
on his skin as an invitation.
He shrugged as if he didn't care, but afterwards she wondered whether
he really just wanted to be held, to feel safe in another person's
arms.
'Can you lend us a fiver then?' he said.
And went.

She missed him, which was odd, because she was used to being on her
own. Suddenly the house felt very chilly and impersonal. The portraits
seemed to be glaring at her and she became nervous and clumsy. The cats
were affected too, they scratched at doors and twitched their noses and
wouldn't settle on her lap. She spent long hours in the garden and
brought armfuls of flowers inside to try to brighten the
atmosphere.
After a few days a rather sweet, cheesy smell began to pervade the
ground floor. She'd once lived downwind from an abattoir - it was one
of the reasons she gave up meat - so she knew how to recognise the
aroma of rotting guts. At first she thought the cause was a dead bird
or a rat but, as the pungency increased and the cats became more
agitated, she started to imagine a body decomposing beneath the
floorboards.
There was no evidence of anyone except herself ever entering the front
door. She had taken care to remove all trace of the boy, every hair and
fingerprint. She had hoovered and dusted and bleached and polished.
There was not a dent in the cushions or a smear in the bathroom. Even
so, she couldn't feel comfortable - or shake off the idea that he had
committed some dreadful crime while she slept.
She gathered her things together and moved into the summerhouse. It
was dim but cosy and smelled of nothing worse than warm wood. She
nested on an old eiderdown in the corner, and at night she'd switch on
the Drapers' burglar alarm and retire to her new den with a candle,
which she always blew out very carefully. She was far less disturbed by
the bats and the spiders and the scuttling of beetles than by the sense
of evil spiralling through the house.

The sharp edge in Mrs Draper's voice, when she arrived back from
holiday, carried across the garden. Melissa had been outside, watching
wasps and red admirals drift amongst rotting pears. The smell of decay
was everywhere, signalling the end of the summer. She smoothed herself
down and followed the voice into the kitchen, pausing on the threshold
in shock.
The larder door stood open; Mrs Draper's body wriggled beside it, but
her head was lost in a cloud of buzzing flies. More than a cloud, more
like a thunderstorm, they gathered around her in a threatening black
mass. Her face was completely obscured. She choked and spluttered on
their dusty wings, while her husband shot noxious sprays into the
air.
Even after they'd undone all the locks and opened all the windows it
took a while to disperse the flies. Mrs Draper was still coughing and
trying to brace herself with a glass of duty free brandy. The stench
from the larder was truly overpowering.
'The freezer,' she gasped. 'The fuse must have blown. Couldn't you
have done something?'
'I didn't have the key,' Melissa said innocently.
She imagined the boy, with his handy screwdriver, cunningly
dismantling the plug, leaving the freezer open a crack for the flies to
enter. Luckily its contents were now such a putrid mess the missing
pizza and vichyssoise would never be identified.
She didn't suppose the Drapers would ever employ her again but, to her
surprise, things improved. The next time she went all the doors stood
invitingly open and a pile of very expensive gourmet dinners towered
beside the cat food. She couldn't eat them of course, because they
didn't conform to her strict diet - which involved preparing everything
herself - but she appreciated the kind thought.