The Trouble-Makers

by Celia Fremlin

“Of course, kid. Don’t bother to ask. Just grab ’em,” replied Stella, tossing a pair across with a generous disregard for aim that made Esmé start like a frightened bird, and actually roused the adjacent Mrs Plumber to a spontaneous expression of opinion. “Ooo!” she said; and then looked round anxiously, as if afraid someone might disagree.

  Stella laughed reassuringly. “Rotten shot, aren’t I?” she apologised cheerfully. “Might have killed someone. By the way, that reminds me——”

  She was turning towards Katharine as she spoke, but stopped, very suddenly, in mid-sentence. “I’ll tell you later,” she murmured hastily, and changed the subject by dropping on her knees by Esmé’s stool.

  “What is it? What are you making?” she asked the girl; and Esmé, proudly and a little shyly, spread out her canvas, displaying a half-worked clump of pansies, a glorious medley of blues and purples seeming to melt into each other so cunning was the lie of the stitches.

  “Isn’t it lovely!” exclaimed Katharine sincerely; and “But what is it?” persisted Stella; and Esmé’s eager face, which had grown rosy and shining under Katharine’s praise, now looked a little deflated.

  “It’s a—well—it’s just a picture, actually,” she said. “A needlework picture.”

  Stella stared. “Do you mean to say it isn’t for anything?” she asked accusingly, and Esmé nodded guiltily, like a schoolgirl caught out at last in some habitual breach of rules.

  “It’s just to look at,” she confessed. “We thought it would be nice in our bedroom.”

  “Fancy! All that work—and it’s not even Art, either, is it?” declared Stella judically. She stared at the gay scrap of cloth as if it was quite painful to her—the waste of so much precious time. It was painful to Katharine, too, but not because of the waste of time. How happily married you must have to be, she was thinking, to spend all those hours embroidering something just to hang in your bedroom to look at. Suddenly her eyes were stinging with tears, the pansies blurred and dazzled into an amorphous purple glory, and she was thankful that Stella chose that very moment to beg her to come into the kitchen and see how well the washing-up stacked into the new washing-up machine.

  Stella was a great one for machines. That is, she was a great believer in the time-saving properties of the ones she had got, and in the nuisance value of the ones she hadn’t. She could prove conclusively that a washing-up machine saved hours of work and never broke anything, whereas a clothes-washing machine demanded endless attention and all the clothes came out grey. Up to a year ago she had been able to prove that you could get to absolutely anywhere more easily by public transport than by car; but that argument was over now, silenced for ever by the Ford Popular now standing in the road outside.

  Katharine watched with interest as Stella groomed her crockery for its venture, scraping, emptying, arranging it this way and that in what looked to Katharine like her own private idea of a space-ship. Indeed, Stella’s portentous manner, her air of pride and excitement as she made her preparations, so added to the illusion that when the machine was finally switched on, Katharine found herself quite surprised that the whole thing didn’t thereupon rise off the kitchen floor, plough its way through the upstairs rooms, and disappear into the rainy November sky.

  “What was it you were going to tell me just now?” asked Katharine suddenly, through the murmur of the machine. “You know—when you threw the scissors across to Esmé.”

  “Oh yes. Yes.” Stella leaned her full weight against the throbbing monster, crossing one foot over the other as she stood, and staring at Katharine appraisingly. “I didn’t want to talk about it in front of the others, because it’s about Mary,” she explained virtuously. “Something that she told me in absolute confidence.”

  Some women, reflected Katharine guiltily, would have stoically answered: “Well, don’t tell me, then, either,” and would have meant it. And they would have been right, these excellent women. That would have been the right, the honourable thing to have done. But surely there must be millions of others, just like Katharine, who would have stood there expectant, unprotesting, waiting for the intriguing revelations! You didn’t need to be very wicked, did you, just to refrain from self-righteous protest? So Katharine salved her conscience and also heard the story, which Stella was only too willing to divulge.

  “You know Alan and Mary went to the theatre together last night?” she began. “Well, of course you do, because you were looking after Angela, weren’t you? Well, just about half-past twelve, just when I was thinking about going to bed, there was a knock on the front door, and there was Mary, all pale and shaken, and carrying a suitcase, and asking if she could spend the night here, with us. Well, of course, I asked her why on earth, and what was the matter, and so forth, and at last I got it out of her that she was absolutely terrified of staying at home alone. I suppose Alan hadn’t come back with her, or something—I couldn’t make head or tail of that part of it. Anyway, I kept asking her what she was afraid of—though of course I knew really, I just wanted to make her put it into words because I thought it would be best if she made herself face it. That’s what she needs, you know, really; to face up to her own fears and aggressions. So in the end I got it out of her—she’s absolutely terrified of this dark man with the raincoat. She hates to admit it, because of course in a sense it’s an irrational fear—unless, of course, she really does know who it is…. But I couldn’t get her to admit that, though I did try…. Still it did her good even to talk about it as much as she did. She represses too much, you know, Katharine. She frightens herself. Did you guess why it was that she wouldn’t use that raincoat you gave her for the guy? It was because, to her, the burning of an efigy in a raincoat would have symbolised the burning of this man she is so afraid of! And of course the thought of such an act of aggression towards him made her feel even more afraid. Naturally. This sort of thing is well known. But she should have burnt it. I told her so, and I think in the end she saw my point. She saw that such a release of aggression would have enabled her to face her fears squarely. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Katharine blankly: and Stella seemed satisfied with this senseless tribute to her psychological acumen. Senseless, because what Katharine was understanding was something quite different from what Stella had been telling her. Katharine was understanding—or trying to understand—how Mary must have felt about this onslaught of amateur psychology on a situation which didn’t exist at all: when all the time she was faced by another situation, much more frightening, much more intractable, and which actually did exist.

  And here another point struck Katharine—struck her with a sudden strange chill:

  “Did you say all this was last night?” she asked—stupidly, because she knew quite well that Stella had said so.

  “Yes. Last night. After they’d been to the theatre,” recapitulated Stella. “Why?”

  But Katharine did not answer. She remembered how she had left Mary at nearly midnight last night, apparently quite comfortable, reassured by Alan’s telephone call, and ready to go to bed. Within less than half an hour from then, Mary must have gone upstairs, packed her suitcase, and rushed in terror round to Stella’s house for protection—from what? What could possibly have happened in that brief time? And besides——

  “But what about Angela?” The words burst from Katharine in her bewilderment. “How could Mary run away and leave her alone all night if there was something frightening going on?”

  Stella’s blank, astonished stare interrupted her.

  “But Angela was staying with you last night,” she protested. “That’s what Mary told me….”

  “Oh yes. Of course. How silly of me.” What else could Katharine do on the spur of the moment but back up this bewildering lie of Mary’s? Baffled, uncomprehending, she followed Stella back to the sitting-room; and it was not till she was settled there, surrounded by the others, and with all possibility of further confidences at an end, that another curious point struck her. Throughout her narrative, S
tella had nowhere explained how it was that the throwing of a pair of scissors across the room should have reminded her of it all.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  IT WAS THE week-end again, and Katharine surveyed the chaos in Jane’s and Flora’s room with that satisfaction so familiar to mothers and yet so bewildering to outside observers. For, to the mother, most kinds of mess and pandemonium simply mean that her children are happily occupied and aren’t going to be trailing about after her saying, “What shall I do?” The gulf between this point of view and that of the neighbours—or even the husband—is so unbridgeable that few women ever attempt it—certainly not Katharine, and certainly not on a Saturday evening, when Stephen was likely to be at his most edgy, and most likely to start a great thing about why don’t the girls help more in the house instead of causing all this work? Which would simply end in Clare’s breaking the best teapot while she sobbed into the washing-up, with Flora’s arguing her father into a fury, and probably with Katharine and Stephen not speaking to each other for the rest of the week-end. Much simpler just to clear up the mess straight away now, while Jane and Flora were still out at their party, and before Stephen came back from his afternoon conference. A little extra tidying was a small price to pay for such a joyful, fully-occupied Saturday as the children had just spent, not bothering Katharine at all.

  This, mused Katharine, as she began stuffing the ragged witch’s cloak back into the dressing-up box, this was her main preoccupation at week-ends—keeping everyone, including Stephen, happily occupied at something which wouldn’t encroach too much on her own precious, carefully budgeted time. This problem of leisure that they talked about nowadays: it was other people’s leisure that was the problem, not one’s own. Did everyone find this, she wondered: that most of their own leisure was used up in defending themselves against other people’s, against the demands that other people’s leisure made on one’s attention, inventiveness, and conversational powers? Because if so, then the more leisure you give to one person, the more you are automatically taking away from someone else; it all cancels out somewhere, and that’s why life never gets any easier, no matter what is invented. This, mused Katharine, is a problem that the politicians never got around to—just as they had never had to decide what should be done with eight battered picture hats bought for a halfpenny each at the Guide jumble sale. You couldn’t possibly stuff them in the dressing-up box, and there was no room in the wardrobe…. Really, you’d think a reputable organisation like the Girl Guides would have more sense. Oh, well, they’d just have to go on lying about on the chest of drawers, just as they had done ever since Flora brought them so gleefully home that broiling August afternoon (“Just look what I got for only 4d., Mummy!”).

  Undeterred by these accustomed obstacles, Katharine proceeded systematically with her task, and soon tracts of bare floor began to appear. Seats of chairs were reclaimed, and even a sizeable stretch of table. Books went back into the shelves; hundreds of coloured pencils without points went back into their dozens of boxes without lids, and old Teddy went back on to Jane’s pillow, where he lay staring rather sadly up at the pink-shaded electric bulb. Jane still liked to find Teddy on her bed at night, but the days of his glory were over, and he knew it; and Katharine knew it; and probably even Jane knew it. He no longer toured the house under her arm, up and down and up and down, as he had once done. He no longer got left under the kitchen table, or gave tea parties, or had chicken-pox. Was it two years ago—or more like three?—when he had had chicken-pox so badly, and Jane had made Katharine promise not to wake him when she tidied the room. “You must tiptoe, Mummy, and be ever so quiet!” had been Jane’s parting instructions as she went off to school; and Katharine, all alone in the empty house, had, ridiculously, obeyed. Like a lunatic she had crept softly about the curtained room as she made the beds, had closed the door softly as she went out…. Gently, Katharine arranged Teddy’s balding, upstretched arms more comfortably, and for a moment she felt that he and she were the sole survivors from a golden age. Had it been golden, though? And anyway, wasn’t it still going on, for all practical purposes? The same sort of muddle of cut-out paper, paint, and dressing-up clothes; the same squashed tubes of glue, half-used notebooks, and tangles of coloured wool; the same plastic things out of past crackers, which no one wanted either to keep or to throw away. Even the same need to watch the time for going to fetch them from a party. The only definite difference here was that nowadays no one would be found crying about her balloon having burst; but it seemed perverse to count crying over balloons as the defining property of a Golden Age.

  Katharine looked at her watch. It was time to go for them, of course, but if she hung on a bit longer perhaps Mary would come and offer to do it instead. Angela was at the same party, and there was no point in both mothers going. On the other hand, perhaps Mary was cherishing the same hope about Katharine, and if it was to be a question of whose nerve broke first as it got later and later, Katharine felt pretty sure it would be her own. She might just as well go straight away, and get it over.

  Besides, it wasn’t really fair to expect much of Mary these days, when she was so distraught and unhappy. Katharine told herself this, and tried to feel only sympathy, but she could not help being aware of a stab of annoyance. Unhappy and distraught was all very well, but was Mary proposing to carry on like this for ever? Admittedly her experience had been distressing, but it was days ago now. Surely the time had come to forget the whole episode, and return to normal existence? What good could Mary think she was doing by allowing her feelings of guilt to cloud her whole life like this? A tender conscience was all very well, but when it came to a conscience so tender as to ensure that its owner should never again have to take her turn at fetching the children from parties….

  Katharine checked herself, shoved the last partnerless glove into Flora’s top drawer, and went downstairs to put on her coat. Fair or not, the children must be fetched. She would just call in next-door and tell them that she was going and that they needn’t bother—just in case they were bothering, and not absorbed in quarrelling, or not speaking to each other, or some similarly time-consuming occupation.

  But there was no answer to Katharine’s knock, nor to her two sharp rings; and looking up at the windows, she saw that the whole house was in darkness.

  Bother! One or both of them were probably on the way to the party right now. Really, they might have told her, and saved her the journey! As things were, she must still go, just in case they hadn’t. How selfish unhappiness makes people, thought Katharine crossly, and was instantly ashamed of the thought, yet could not quite withdraw it.

  It was a dull, drizzling night, clammy and windless. The low sky hung black and heavy above the houses, dimly reddening towards the horizon, where it dully, grudgingly reflected the vast lighted sprawl of the city. Katharine shivered, wondered whether to go back indoors for an umbrella, but decided against it. The wetness of such a night as this was too vague, too directionless, to be warded off by so naïve a device as an umbrella, which assumes that water, being heavier than air, will fall. Not in November it doesn’t, thought Katharine, as she set off down the street, huddled into her coat. In November the water creeps, and drifts, and glides, from here, from there, as unpredictable as thought. The only thing to do was to walk as quickly as possible by the shortest route she could take. Yes, she would take the short-cut across the Building Site.

  Nobody knew what Building it had been the Site for during all these years. It simply was the Building Site, and always had been—a desert stretch of elder bushes, old bedsteads, tin cans, and tufts of dry, battered grass—dry and battered even in springtime. Legends had grown up about the Building Site as the years went by; about the dreadful things that happened to little girls who played there on their way back from school; about the damage done by teenage boys (though one never actually saw any teenage boys there; most of them, understandably, seemed to prefer the bright streets and the coffee-bars). And, above all, legends had grown up
about Allbright and Frost, the cryptic and evocative names that could still be deciphered on a decaying board. Some people fancied that the owners of these names really existed; that the pair of them were actually sitting, alive and well, in some dark office somewhere, working through their Pending trays as the decades passed till they should reach the documents relative to the Building Site. Others thought that they were long dead, and that the ownership of the Building Site was therefore in dispute. Others again thought it was all something to do with the Council.

  Be that as it may, the Building Site afforded a convenient short-cut between the High Street and Chatsworth Avenue; and as Katharine set foot on the muddy, officially forbidden path that had been worn into reluctant legality by countless unprosecuted trespassers over the years, she felt that the worst of the expedition was over. Why, there might be someone with a car who would give them all a lift back, she reflected cheerfully as the sparse, shadowy bushes of the Building Site engulfed her.

  It was dark in here, and growing darker. Every step was taking her further away from the busy, lighted street, deeper and deeper into the waste land. For the first time, Katharine began to feel a little frightened.

  But it was silly. Naturally, one wouldn’t let the children come through here after dark, but it was all right for a grown woman. The whole area couldn’t be much more than a couple of hundred yards across—as soon as you were out of shouting distance of one road, you were within shouting distance of the other.

  But it was queer how lonely a place could be, so near to busy roads: lonely, and deeply, mysteriously alive in its own right. Even though there was no wind, the bare twigs of the elder bushes were for ever moving; twitching, stirring, shuddering against the heavy reddish clouds. Even the ground itself was not quite still. All round her, far into the darkness on every side, there was a something less than rustling, less than pattering or dripping—the vast, indefinable stir of autumn wetness soaking its way into the earth: rotting its way through old newspaper; rusting its way through old cans; somehow, by some route, reaching its victorious end in the deep ground.