Jade Monkey

I caught a taxi from the town centre out to Faraday.  Faraday perhaps isn’t the greatest place on earth, but some days it comes close. Warm afternoon sunshine shines down, kids play on large well-kept lawns in front of large well-kept houses at the edges of wide quiet roads. My house here had always been the exception, the lawn a little unkempt and the house a little worn. Over the years I had a few people complain at me for lowering the tone of the neighbourhood and that I should be a little more house-proud. But in the end it wasn’t any of them who burnt the house down.

The taxi slowed and stopped a few streets away from my final destination and I walked the rest of the way, keeping an eye out for anyone watching the house.

After about ten minutes I was knocking loudly on a door, and waiting. The house was a pale cream colour almost white, pretty tidy, and large like all the others here. The first house in a small cul-de-sac, that itself backed on to a large playing field. I stepped back and looked for a telltale movement at a window that would let me know someone was here. The large windows were set in white frames but the windowsills and the wall next to the windows were painted black. I ducked under a hanging basket and peered through a window into the house. The curtains were half drawn so even as large as the windows were the roomed seemed dark. I could make out a heavily stacked bookshelf and what were possibly souvenirs from archaeological digs, one in particular on the mantelpiece caught my eye, a small statue of a Chinese dragon that seemed to look back at me and grin with dragonish mirth. I resisted the urge to poke my tongue out at it.

I checked ‘round the side of the house, I relaxed a little when there was no car. But the house didn’t have an empty feel to it. Every time I peered through a window I felt that round the corners, just out of sight, someone was hiding there. I checked in all the usual places but no clumsily hidden backdoor key came to light, and I didn’t think that anything other than a really angry archaeologist would be accomplished by breaking in.

I left slowly, turning to walk down the drive to the road. The last of the afternoon was fading into evening and dark clouds gathered at the horizon. I pulled my jacket close against the wind and I noticed the old lady watching me suspiciously from across the road under the pretext of trimming her hedges. She hadn’t been there when I’d got here. I crossed over the road and she stopped the pretence of moving her shears every few seconds.

‘Is that yours?’ She said as I came into range gesturing with her shears at a car parked outside her house. The car was black and silver and reasonably new.

‘No.’

The old lady sniffed at my reply. ‘I thought it might be one of her friends. It’s been here a few days now. Burglars will want to break in to steal the keys. They do that you know.’ She nodded sagely.

I tried to match this to the activities of a few of my less than legally inclined acquaintances and failed. I tuned out her thin reedy voice as she continued on what was obviously a well-rehearsed tirade about the thoughtlessness of others and memorised the registration of the car. Even as I quietly took my leave, the old lady was still going, declaiming to empty space.