Mr Freezer by Sarah Wallis

The first I heard of Mr Freezer I was in a dress shop in Tewkesbury. I was running an errand for Aunt Mirabelle in the small Cotswold town more famous for battles than for dress shops but there it was, conveniently located just off the High Street, a vast Emporium of dresses for the older lady of which, it seemed, there were bountiful numbers in Tewkesbury. The doorbell chimed as I entered and several heads swivelled in my direction for a moment.

‘Mr Freezer, he’ll sort things out,’ said the lady holding court. The others nodded and one spoke in a breathy hush.

‘Mr Freezer gave my trouble wood rot.’

‘And my neighbour, the one with the...well, they moved away.’

‘And my husband dropped dead,’ said another. They all laughed. The lady behind the counter beckoned me forward.

‘Can I help you, my dear?’ I thrust out the note I was holding and she took it from me, putting on a pair of tiny half-moon granny glasses and looking over the tops of them at me, not at the note at all. ‘Dear Mirabelle’s niece?’ I nodded and they all began drifting back to the counter with warm smiles. ‘Come through, my dear, give her some air now ladies,’ she said, as they variously patted my shoulder and breathed minty sighs over me.

‘Patrick, now, wasn’t it...your trouble?’ said one, plucking at my sleeve.

‘Would you like some tea?’ I nodded and was waved into a softly giving lavender sofa. ‘I’m Margery,’ she said, as she handed me a blue and gold china cup and saucer.

‘Audrey,’ I said, ‘but of course you know that.’

‘It was Patrick, wasn’t it?’ she said. I nodded and sipped my tea. ‘And how are things now?’ she asked. I shrugged, what was there to say? Patrick had been my husband and now he wasn’t. He had been alive and now he wasn’t. He had controlled my whole life and now, he didn’t.

‘Mr Freezer,’ she murmured, ‘he gets it done.’

‘Who is Mr Freezer?’ I asked.

‘It’s what we call the process. You take the name of someone who has been giving you trouble and write it on a piece of paper and simply place that name in the freezer. That’s all. And it always works. Don’t ask me how!’

‘And the person always...dies?’

‘It’s not for us to question Mr Freezer’s methods now, is it? And your trouble is taken care of.’

‘But...but I loved my husband.’

‘We don’t always love what is best for us though, do we?’

Margery opened the doors and in poured all the ladies on cue, all the customers of the Emporium; wanting to touch my sleeve or stretch lavender-scented arms around my shoulders and give a little squeeze. It was as if a whole party of Aunts had descended, all made from the same mould, wearing similar clothes, in their own block colours of emerald or pastel pink, pale blue or lilac, like a well tended and abundant, mobile garden they bustled into the room. They helped themselves to tea from a little trolley and then settled on sofas and armchairs and it seemed a meeting was convened, with me at the centre of things. I tried to make an excuse; Mirabelle would be expecting me back by now, surely? I had other errands to run...I wanted to escape but they pressed around me, another cup of tea, a biscuit, feed her up a bit, the usual kindly Auntie sayings but somehow, en masse like this, it was quite terrifying.

‘Now, if we’re all settled? What is our first order of business?’ There was a silence as everyone stared into their teacups for a moment and then a little cough drew our attention to the back of the room to a rather large lady in an emerald green hat, with her hand slightly raised.

‘Yes, Violet?’ said Margery.

‘I may have a little problem,’ a collective sigh went around the room and everyone relaxed a little, a couple of giggles were stifled. ‘Maxwell seems to have discovered Mr Freezer.’ A gasp went round and everyone sat forward again, aghast. I discovered myself also sitting forward, wondering what would happen to poor Maxwell and if it would equate to what had happened to poor Patrick. ‘He’d been at the defrosting, very unlike Maxwell, if I do say so myself and emerged from the kitchen,’ Violet went on, ‘sheaf of papers in his hand, all crystallised and stuck together but you could see where the ink had run into tiny blue stars.’ Violet took a gulp of tea to calm herself.

‘“What’s all this, Violet?” he asks me...’

‘And what did you say?’ asked Margery.

‘I tried laughing it off but then a paper came unstuck as it was defrosting, where the large blue lettering had run but you could still make out...Maxwell...’

‘What, exactly, did you say?’

‘Well,’ said Violet, ‘I had to tell him. I can’t lie to him, it doesn’t work, he always knows.’ Margery rolled her eyes.

‘And how long before he goes spilling what he thinks he knows in the pub? How long before the menfolk are putting two and two together?’ said Margery. A collective whisper went round and they all got up, bundling out of their chairs, cups clattering and away.

‘Perhaps you’d better go as well, dear,’ said Margery.

‘Thank you for the tea,’ I said.

‘You are pleased to be rid of your trouble now, aren’t you?’ she said.

I knew I was supposed to be pleased and I suppose in a way, I was. Patrick had been a brute at times but he never meant to be, didn’t know his own strength and I never could tell what would set him off. ‘You’ve never been very strong, have you? Perhaps you could be a little bit grateful to the group and, of course, your wonderful Aunt Mirabelle? Go on home to her and tell her to come to me tomorrow.’

At home I told her about Margery advising me to be grateful to be rid of Patrick.

‘Oh yes, well, that was a group effort you see, it had taken you so long to see that he was a bad apple and that he never was going to change, you always thought he would but you see, the thing is Audrey, people don’t change. Not ever, all they do is get more like themselves as they get older. More selfish, or greedy, or violent, self-involved, or handy with their fists...only, they don’t change.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘And we tend to repeat our mistakes, that’s why I’m a little worried for you, this chap at work you’ve been seeing...’

‘Tony?’ I asked. She nodded and I went straight to the freezer chest and started delving amongst the mountain of peas and pies stored in the cold. At the bottom I found a thick sheaf of papers frozen together, the ice crackling and sliding off, the blue ink running melt-water into tiny blue stars. I considered putting the lot in the microwave but who knew if you would simply be exchanging one set of troublesome kitchen gods for another? I set them on top of the Aga and waited.

‘Oh really Audrey, who knows what you’ll set in motion now?’

‘This can’t be the way the world works,’ I said.

‘It’s the way it’s always worked here, in Tewkesbury,’ she said and fetched her hat. I knew she wanted to consult Margery, which made me wonder how long it would be before my name found its way to Mr Freezer. My phone rang.

‘Babe! Been trying to get hold of you for three days!’

‘Are you all right?’

‘In the hospital, there was a nasty accident, it would be good if you could come and pick me up from The General.’

‘You’re in Bristol?’

‘I was coming to rescue you from Mad Aunt Mirabelle.’

‘Tony...the connection’s not good...you’re breaking up...’ I hung up. I wouldn’t repeat the past. I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Tony. But I wouldn’t go back to him either. Because Mad Aunt Mirabelle was right, I could see I was where I had once been with Patrick, now Tony was starting to control who I saw, when I saw them and for how long, it couldn’t get to where it had with Patrick, a group of old ladies conspiring to murder, to rid me of a problem I couldn’t deal with alone. It was time to step up. I grabbed the sheaf of melting papers off the Aga and put them back into the freezer.

‘Good girl,’ said Mirabelle from the doorway, where she’d been stood watching me. ‘Good girl, let Mr Freezer take care of all of them.’

Sarah Wallis

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