Shape-Shifter

by Pauline Melville

  Mrs Parrish did not appear on the Tuesday either. Lily became concerned in case she was ill again. She began to fret and snap at Gloria. Surely Mrs Parrish couldn’t have forgotten. Two pounds was too much to forget. And then, a few days later, as if the sun had come out, Lily caught sight of the familiar trim figure at the bus stop. Lily twisted the handles of her shopping bag nervously:

  ‘Oh excuse me, Mrs Parrish. I was wondering if you could give me that two pounds-back.’ She nearly added ‘I’m a bit short’ and then didn’t.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I haven’t got it on me at the moment. I’ll drop it through your letter-box.’

  Mrs Parrish’s puffy cheeks rose in an inscrutably polite smile. Relief flooded Lily.

  For the next week or so, every time the letter-box rattled Lily darted to the door. Sometimes she thought she’d heard it rattle when it hadn’t and she would find herself in the dark passageway staring disappointedly at the doormat. The whole business puzzled her. Finally, she plucked up courage to call on Dr Bartholomew.

  The doctor opened the door. Her frank smile put Lily at ease. From the back of the house came the sound of children playing.

  ‘I just called because I haven’t seen Mrs Parrish lately and I was a bit worried in case she was ill again.’

  ‘On no, she’s fine. In fact, she and her husband had dinner with us last night.’ Dr Bartholomew bent to restrain the over-friendly mongrel dog.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ said Lily and hesitated. ‘Actually she owes me a little money.’

  ‘Really?’ Dr Bartholomew laughed. ‘As a matter of fact I think she owes me some too. I’ll remind her if I see her before they go away. They go to Whitstable every year for the summer.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Lily. ‘Where the oysters come from,’ she added vaguely.

  All summer long the sky was blue and cloudless. Twice, Lily walked all the way up the hill to the Parrishes’ house. She peered down the gravel drive trying to catch any sign of life through the latticed windows. Dr Parrish’s car was not in the drive. The house seemed deserted.

  Lily brooded ceaselessly over the two pounds. She tried to finish sewing a curtain for the front of the orange-box that was to be Gloria’s bedside table but she couldn’t settle to it. George offered her the money to take Gloria to Southend for the weekend. Consumed with guilt and not able to tell him about it, she refused. Sometimes she thought she would never see the money again. The thought made her sick.

  One morning, however, she awoke filled with a sort of wild hilarity. She sat up in the high double bed that nearly filled the room and could not imagine what she had been worrying about. Soon the Parrishes would be back from their holidays and then she would undoubtedly get the money back. George had gone to work. She threw back the sheets and the thin eiderdown. Feeling elated, she dressed and dabbed some perfume the colour of medicine behind her ears. School holidays ended the next day.

  ‘Gloria,’ she called down the stairs, ‘how about going to Lyon’s for a treat?’

  In the cool gloom of Lyon’s Corner House, Lily and Gloria sat on fixed seats at a marble-topped table. Gloria drank her strawberry milk-shake slowly through a straw. Lily ate a Kunzle cake. Mrs O’Sullivan lumbered towards them, tray in hand, her bags bumping against her thighs. As she put her tray on their table she knocked over the dregs of an uncollected cup of tea.

  ‘Hello, dear. How are you?’ She started to chase her scoop of chocolate ice-cream round the shiny pewter bowl. Lily watched as her mouth worked open and shut like a large purple sea-anenome. ‘I saw that Mrs Parrish call on you a while back. I hope you didn’t lend her any money.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She looked anxiously at Mrs O’Sullivan.

  ‘You’ll never see sight nor sound of it again if you did. She’s borrowed bits and pieces from everybody in the neighbourhood. I meant to warn you.’

  Lily’s skin prickled up her arms and across the back of her neck as if she had been stung by a Portuguese Man o’ War:

  ‘Oh, it was nothing like that. It was just a social call.’

  ‘Just as well, dear. Be warned.’

  ‘But why should she do that? They must have money.’

  ‘I dunno, dear. Nobody knows anybody,’ she said darkly. ‘Not a soul in this world knows what goes on in somebody else’s head. Not a soul.’

  Mrs O’Sullivan made her way out, squeezing between tables, holding her bags up in the air to prevent them knocking over people’s cups and saucers and biffing people on the head with them as a result:

  ‘Sorry, dear. Excuse me, dear. Sorry, dear.’

  Lily sat motionless. The huge restaurant seemed to have grown darker. Dimly she heard the steely clatter and clash of cutlery being collected. It sounded like the distant din of a great battlefield. Two women pushing trolleys of dirty cups and plates appeared to be moving with urgency as if they were nurses in a field hospital. Lily felt faint.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Gloria.

  Autumn came fiercely and with it a biting east wind. The days grew shorter. There was no sign of Mrs Parrish. Lily no longer saw her at bus stops or at the shops. She’s changed her haunts to avoid me, thought Lily grimly. And indeed she had. Once Lily spotted her and trailed her all the way to Herne Hill, but just as she called out to her, Mrs Parrish hailed a taxi and sailed off in it leaving Lily to walk home. She began to feel dragging pains in her stomach. Another time, Lily saw the oldest Parrish boy in the street, wearing a pale blue cap that did not belong to any of the schools in the neighbourhood:

  ‘Excuse me, I’m Mrs Johnson. I wonder if you would be so kind as to tell your mother I’m still waiting for her to call on me.’

  ‘Certainly,’ replied the mystified youth with overlapping front teeth.

  Lily made up her mind to go to the Parrishes’ house and confront the woman. She told George she was going to post a letter. The lights were on in the front of the house. Lily could see a standard lamp behind a chintz-covered sofa. Then it occurred to her that Dr Parrish might answer the door and she would not know what to say. Defeated, she turned and went home. Over the next few weeks she began to dust the window-sill in the front room again and again although it was perfectly clean. Sometimes she just sat all afternoon and watched the rain measling the window panes. And then, one night, George found Lily struggling up the stairs with a full coal scuttle.

  ‘Where the ‘ell are you goin’ with that?’ He was half-laughing at the bottom of the stairs. Lily stared at the scuttle in disbelief. She had mistaken it for her handbag. She tried to laugh it off but she was shocked.

  The incident with the coal scuttle decided her. She must put the two pounds out of her mind. No point in going barmy.

  She made herself a cup of tea, lit the boiler and nearly dozed off in the back parlour. It was getting dark. Drum-rolls of rain beat against the window lashing the few grape hyacinths left upstanding in the window-box. An artist, seeing Lily just then, would have wanted to paint her. She sat in the low chair, head slightly on one side, a strand of brown hair coiled around her neck. The milky skin of her arms showed up in the darkened room. Her eyes, under half-closed lids expressed a gentle self-mockery. It was late. She jerked herself awake. There was just time to go and buy supper before the shops shut. These days she waited until it grew dark before going shopping. She put newspaper under her thin coat to keep out the wind and after dark there was less likelihood of somebody catching sight of it. She wrapped several sheets of old newspaper round her body and tied them firmly round the waist with strands of strong wool. Like a flipping Christmas cracker, she laughed to herself. She put on a cardigan and slid her arms in the sleeves of her raincoat.

  Gusts of icy rain made her catch her breath as she hurried up the street. She turned the corner and lowered her head against the full blast of the wind. Her shoes began to let water. On the main street she kept to the inside of the pavement so as not to be further drenched with spray by passing cars. Glancing behind her she was thankful to see the lights of an a
pproaching bus. She looked ahead to see if she would reach the bus stop in time. Standing there under a black umbrella was Mrs Parrish. Lily began to run:

  ‘Mrs Parrish. Mrs Parrish.’

  Cars hissed by on the wet road. Mrs Parrish was lowering her umbrella in readiness to board the bus. She seemed to be staring curiously at Lily. Lily looked down. Sheets of sodden newspaper had slipped from under her coat and were falling to the ground. She tried to kick one away from round her ankle as she ran. ‘Sod the bloody newspaper,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I want my money back.’

  ‘I want my money back.’ She screamed out loud, the wind snatching the words away and twisting them out of recognition behind her back. The bus overtook Lily. Inside it looked warm and bright and cheerful. Mrs Parrish mounted the bus. Lily’s left foot skidded on leaves and wet paper. The glistening pavement rose sharply at an angle and cracked her on the forehead. Something seemed to snap and unravel in her stomach. She lay dazed, unable to tell whether it was rain or blood that wetted her forehead. Her coat had burst open revealing the remains of the newspaper underneath but she was too weak to try and hide it. Rain swept over her like a yard brush. The solid block of pain in her abdomen paralysed her legs. The conductor had stopped the bus ten yards further on. He ran back to her:

  ‘All right, missis?’ He helped her to her feet. Lily could barely speak:

  ‘I’ll be all right. I’m only round the corner.’ As the bus drew away she could see the silhouette of Mrs Parrish’s crow black hat. She dragged herself home.

  When Gloria arrived home from her tap-dancing class the house was in darkness. She heard a noise upstairs and found Lily kneeling on the floor of the toilet, resting her head against the china bowl between bouts of vomiting. Gloria helped her to bed, then fetched the pail, ran some water into it and added a few drops of Dettol until the water went cloudy. She put it by the bed and wiped Lily’s face with a damp flannel. Lily patted her hand. At seven o’clock George came home. Gloria tried to make him some baked beans on toast. At intervals during the evening, Gloria would go up and empty the bucket, putting fresh Dettol and water in it. One time she came downstairs and said:

  ‘There’s blood in the bucket.’

  George stood in the doorway of the bedroom:

  ‘Dr Parrish is here to see you.’

  Lily was dimly aware of a heavy, well-built man who breathed heavily as he bent to examine her, his stiff white collar biting into his red neck. She nodded or shook her head exhaustedly in response to his questions. George looked humbly attentive from the doorway. Gloria had been sent to find Dr Bartholomew who arrived and stood on the cramped landing. Gloria listened to both her and Dr Parrish in turn as they spoke. ‘Twisted intestine. Adhesions? Serious. Foecal vomit.’

  Gloria stood at the top of the stairs holding on to the banisters feeling solemn and important as the ambulance men tried to manoeuvre the stretcher down the narrow stairs. One of the men bent to hear what Lily was trying to say. She whispered:

  ‘Don’t ring the ambulance bell. I hate that Mrs O’Sullivan. She’s so nosy.’

  McGregor’s Journey

  ‘I’M JACKING,’ SAID MCGREGOR.

  It was ten o’clock in the morning. The other scaffolder hadn’t turned up. It had taken him half an hour to unload the freezing scaffolding tubes from the lorry, the ringing clang of tube against tube increasingly setting his teeth on edge. That done, he set about emptying the lorry of piles of metal fittings so that the driver could get away. He banged on the side of the cab. The driver raised his thumb and backed the vehicle off the site. McGregor looked up at a sky laden with snow. Then he examined the palms of his hands. They were a shiny, raw pink where the frozen metal had taken off the first layer of skin. They burned him. Flexing his hands, he walked over to the foot of the unfinished, eight-storey building and began to base out the scaffold. On his own, he erected the first level, using the heavy, twenty-one foot tubes as uprights. With deft, experienced twists of the podger on the metal nuts, he fastened the four foot tubes to the uprights, some slantwise and some horizontally so that they reached the wall. One by one, he heaved the wooden planks from the pile at the foot of the wall and laid them out along the structure. Then he decided to quit the job and go drinking.

  ‘I said I’m jacking,’ shouted McGregor to the site foreman, trying to make himself heard over the grinding roar of the cement-mixer. The foreman motioned to the hod-carrier, showing him where the bricks were to go. Then he turned to McGregor with drooping shoulders:

  ‘What’s up, Jock?’ Steam issued from his mouth.

  ‘You can stick your fucking job up your fucking arse.’ McGregor grinned. ‘I’m jacking.’ The foreman looked pained for a minute and then shrugged:

  ‘Go and tell them at the site office. Tell them to phone head office and send me down two more scaffolders.’

  McGregor went over and unhitched his jacket from where it hung on the end of a piece of scaffolding. He undid his belt with a mounting sense of freedom and took off the leather frogs which held his half-inch Whitworth spanner and the seven-sixteenth A.F. He chucked the podger and the spanners into his canvas tool-bag and walked over the icy, rutted ground to the portocabin by the gates. He began to whistle.

  Inside the portacabin, the air was fuggy from the calor gas heater. Mr Oates, the site manager, was on the telephone at a desk littered with papers. Pinned to a noticeboard near the door was a letter from a Mrs Kathleen Doherty, written in a loopy scrawl, thanking the men for the collection after her husband’s accident. McGregor read it idly as he waited. Mr Oates put down the telephone. A cigarette with long ash burned between his fingers. White hair with nicotine yellow streaks lay stiffly on either side of his head like bird wings. He looked at McGregor enquiringly.

  ‘I’m away,’ said McGregor. ‘Just phone the office and tell them to make up me cards and me wage packet. I’m on me way over to get them now.’

  ‘It’s only ten o’clock. Can’t you finish the morning?’

  ‘No. I’m away now. Sammy says to tell you to ask for two more scaffolders.’ McGregor turned to leave.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Mr Oates, wearily.

  ‘Jock the Jacker.’ McGregor gave a wry smile. ‘Mac. McGregor,’ he said as he left. He walked through the site gates. On the street, he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. Rows of mean, secretive, terraced houses stretched down the road in front of him. McGregor paused to inspect the contents of his pocket. Forty pence. He set off at a brisk pace to walk the two miles to the main office. Unexpectedly, the day felt full of promise.

  ‘Mr McGregor, is it?’ The dumpy girl in a brown sweater greeted him from the cashier’s desk in the construction company’s main office.

  ‘Ay. That’s it.’

  She reached in the drawer and pulled out a buff wage packet and his cards:

  ‘We’ve deducted the twenty pound sub. There’s five weeks’ holiday stamps on your holiday card and you can pick up the week in hand next Thursday. OK?’

  The wage register was pushed across the desk and he signed it.

  ‘Don’t forget I done three hours this morning,’ McGregor reminded her.

  ‘Well that won’t be due until the Thursday after next. You see today’s Thursday and the work up until today, that’s your week in hand, gets paid next Thursday, but any work you do today doesn’t get paid till the Thursday after that. OK?’

  McGregor felt a tightening in the muscles of his neck.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. He took the wage packet and went.

  At eleven o’clock precisely, the publican unlocked the doors of his Fulham pub and McGregor stepped over the threshold into the quiet, gloomy interior. The low moan of a hoover came from somewhere over his head. Sleepily, the publican made his way behind the bar.

  ‘Gi’us a double scotch there, please,’ said McGregor.

  McGregor’s drinking habit ran to a formula; two whiskies in quick succession while he stood at the bar and then straight ou
t and onto the next pub. By the time he reached the fourth one it was snowing. He was somewhere in the back streets of Chelsea. The whisky had begun to do its work, cutting a warm channel through the centre of his body. For the first time, he relaxed enough to take stock of his surroundings. The pub appeared to be empty. Then he caught sight of an old man seated round the corner, his figure half-eaten up by shadows:

  ‘Can I get you something there?’ he called across to the old man. The man’s head moved a little:

  ‘Half a pint, thank you.’ The voice was cracked and thin. McGregor ordered a scotch for himself and a beer for the man. They sat in silence for a while. The pensioner spilled his beer as he sipped it. He had eyes that watered permanently, the colour of faded bluebells:

  ‘You a soldier?’ he asked.

  ‘I was once,’ replied McGregor. ‘I was slung out. Retention Undesirable in the Interest of Her Majesty’s Services.’ He delivered the words with a flourish as if they were poetry. And laughed.

  ‘I was in Spain,’ said the man.

  ‘Oh yes?’ McGregor seemed interested.

  ‘I fought with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ McGregor waited. The old man leaned forward into a shaft of dull light from the window. McGregor saw motes of dust dancing down the light onto the amber liquid in the glass.

  ‘I was with them in Madrid in 1936. I saw such things. Such terrible things.’ He wiped his chin with his checked scarf. ‘When I came back to England I had to tell everybody what I had seen. For thirty years, every Sunday, I took, a soap-box in Hyde Park Corner and I told what I had seen to anybody who would listen. I never missed a Sunday for thirty years. And then I stopped.’ He leaned back into the shadows. McGregor finished his drink. The old man’s glass was still nearly full.