“He was bringing me a puppy,” said Beth savagely.
“No he wasn’t, stupid,” said Sylvie. Beth eyed Sarah in challenge.
Sarah was silent and the glance slid away as honesty prevailed.
“I wanted to see a puppy. That’s all. Grandad said on the phone, it was the dog’s last chance. He could speak all right then. Only Fiona says Sasha didn’t have nothing. No puppies. Nothing.”
“Dogs have lots of chances. So do people.”
“No, they don’t. I don’t think they do. Grandad said they don’t. You’ve got to grab chances, he said.”
“Shush, now. Everyone’s tired. Shush…”
As she tiptoed away down the corridor, full of relief, she saw a light beneath a door, prepared to creep past that too, until she heard the sound of sobbing. Grandad’s room. She scarcely knew the man; she should leave him alone, she wanted a drink. But still she pushed the door and went in, cursing herself.
The old man lay on his side, foetally curled, his hand stretched out to a bedside light and a book which seemed too far from his fingers for easy reach. He turned his face to the door as she entered, and all at once she recognised that look of pellucid sanity in his blue eyes which she had seen before, distorted by the glass in the windows.
“Do something,” he hissed. “She’ll eat him up. Do something.”
Sarah was embarrassed, arranged his blankets, smiled in the conciliatory way she imagined Fiona would smile, and put the lamp and the ever-elusive stick within reach, listening all the time to the laughter from downstairs which beckoned her to where she really belonged.
“Shall I turn off the light?”
He stuck two fingers in the air, a gesture obscenely at odds with his laundered fragility. Awkward old cuss, Sarah thought, retreating in good order.
Downstairs, there was no relief either. They were family; together they could only speak of their young and the old, and this was the season for both.
“Your dad can’t cope,” Fiona was saying gently, lying like a lioness at rest across Richard’s knees. “He’s determined he can, but he can’t.”
Richard bristled. “I could get him a mobile phone,” he said, pointlessly, to universal silence. “We could get someone in to look after poor Sasha…how could he let her get into that state and not notice it was wrong?”
“But he should never go into a home, should he, darling?” Fiona murmured reassuringly. “We could always keep lovely Sasha for a while. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Richard nodded.
“So I just think we step up the support for now,” Fiona continued. “I mean, actually, we could live here, once we’re married…”
“Yes,” said Jonathan, relieved at the mere suggestion of solutions half as tidy. “Yes.” Since the birth of his children and the even more momentous loss of his means to support them, he too had felt old. Sarah nodded and smiled: her contribution was not required. She was the only one distant enough to watch. So she did.
* * *
No snow on Christmas morning. A milky mist melted against the windows. By some miracle, it was as late as seven o’clock when the first piece of chocolate was presented by Beth; eight when Sarah rose and padded towards the Christmas tree like a pilgrim unsure of her religion. The old man was sitting there in his chair, haphazardly dressed.
“Did it all by myself. Easy, when I can reach the stick. What the hell does Richard think I normally do? I’m not mad, you know,” he announced with surprising clarity. “Only as mad as a man with sons who are deaf and blind after all I taught them. Listen to me; you didn’t listen to me, did you? They don’t either.”
“When?”
He seemed to slump, then rallied into a murmur. “I love Richard best. Is that so awful?”
“No. We all love someone best. It’s allowed.”
“Which is why it’s important for him to know that she is trying to…” the voice declined to a mumble. Grandad’s face contorted. “That woman…she’s trying to kill… No, she’s trying to…trying to…kiss me! Oh yes, she likes to kiss!” he shouted while his other hand waved in a mockery of greeting.
Sarah turned. Fiona was in the doorway. “Silly old Daddy,” she said fondly. “You do go on.” Her face was perfect, without a trace of tiredness. “Sarah, could you be an angel and help peel a few spuds before all hell starts? Then we can relax.”
Sarah followed her out, looked back once. Grandad was slightly purple in the face.
“He’s better in the morning,” Fiona confided in a whisper. “But he does talk nonsense.”
“Some of the time?”
Fiona responded sadly. “No, I daren’t tell Richard. All of the time.”
No one listens to the old, Sarah was thinking as they all opened their presents.
While Mary and Jonathan meekly exchanged books and records with a peck on the cheek before turning full attention to the pleasure of their children, Sarah lingered over the unwrapping of her token gifts to make them last, said thank you politely, delivered hers, then helped a listless Grandad open up a sweater, a shirt, and a tie, while the children tore into parcels like wild beasts. Even they had finished with the smallest and greatest of these long before Richard and Fiona ceased presenting to each other gift after perfectly wrapped gift.
“Oh, darling you shouldn’t! A silk shirt! Sweetheart!”
There was a hunky suede jacket, a nightdress, jewellery for both, shoes, then more and more until the whole room was ablaze with their luxury.
Mary had begun to look a little stiff to remind Richard he seemed to have forgotten his nieces. From a forest of pretty paper, it took some time for him to remember where he was.
“Oh, I got this for the kids…”
Beth perked up, then her face assumed a stony expression of no expectation as Fiona handed her the parcel. Inside was a mobile phone.
“Oh,” said Jonathan, doubtfully.
“There’s another one for Sylvie,” said Richard happily.
“I get a discount. They can try them in the garden.”
“Crap,” said Grandad suddenly and distinctly. “Crap.”
“Lunch in an hour,” Fiona announced brightly, gathering up paper. “Is it worth going out?”
“We’ll go,” said Sarah, desperate for air, feeling frantic with heat from the fire. “Won’t we? Come on Sylvie, we’ll take a phone and phone Grandad. He’ll like that.”
“Crap,” said Grandad.
“If you must,” said Fiona. “Do be careful with it, they’re expensive, the very best. I should stay in the garden if I were you. No, don’t take the dog. She’s been out already.”
Outside the mist and the mood cleared. Beth shrieked her way down the long, unkempt garden, holding the mobile phone as a kind of balance, yelling “Yuck” as she skirted the tentacles of the dripping bush, bellowing out of sight.
Sarah’s arms clutched her bosom as she ran through a gap in the hedge, yelling after them, “Wait for me, wait for me!” There was no real cause for concern. The children were in awe of the lake they approached. Gingerly testing the steep, friable edges with the insensitive toes of wellington boots, both quieter than before, sulking with their feet because they could go no farther and dare not try the ice.
Sarah desperately wanted to revive for them the simple excitement which seemed to die indoors: felt the same desire in herself as the last evening, to make them noisily, joyously responsive.
“Let’s break the ice,” she yelled. “Come on, get stones. We can crack it!”
Sylvie threw a branch she had lugged to the edge; Beth threw lumps of earth. Then Sarah found a large stone, which was an effort even to lift. Beth helped. Between them, they dropped it rather than threw, watched it roll heavily down the side, bounce the last yard and make a hole in the edge of the ice. The water heaved and burped. Bubbles rose.
“Yeah, yeah
!” Beth howled.
“I hate Fiona!” Sylvie shrieked. “She slaps me with her rings on! She steals stuff! She takes everything!”
She picked up the abandoned phone and threw it towards the hole.
“Stop it,” Sarah shouted, but too late. Sylvie’s aim was bad. The phone slid two, three feet distant from the hole. She began to cry.
Oh no, please don’t, Sarah thought, I wanted to see you both happy: we were doing so well.
“Silly,” she said sternly. “Don’t be silly. We’ll get it back.”
It was unstated, but by some common instinct, they all knew that the wrath of Fiona would be terrible. Sarah scrambled down the bank and stood at the edge of the water, making an act of it, pretending it was fun. On the very edge, she was safe, until she looked at her feet.
A piece of sacking was protruding above the surface and with it the pink snout of a corpse. A pink and yellow body, bloated, pathetic, followed by another. Dead puppies. A whole litter of drowned puppies, the almost labrador’s last chance.
Squatting over her freezing feet, Sarah shielded the sacking and talked brightly to the children over her shoulder to disguise the waves of fury which made her tremble.
“Listen,” she said. “Listen, I’ve got an idea. Aunty Fiona can’t get mad at me, right? I’m a guest and a grown up and I don’t care anyway. Right?” They nodded, like two wise owls. “So you go back to the house, now, tell her I was carrying the phone and I dropped it on the ice.
“Say we don’t want to tell Uncle Jonathan, in case he gets upset. Get Aunty Fiona in the kitchen, make it sound secret, right? And ask her to come here with a broom or something, so I can get the phone back. Then stay inside. It’s too cold out here.”
Beth grabbed Sylvie by the arm and they both fled, rehearsing lines. Sarah waited. She fished one of the dead puppies out of the water, repelled by the touch, but compelled to wipe the water away from its blind eyes and feel the softness under the chin. Then she dragged out the sack containing the rest.
The other six were still curled together. There was a pain in her abdomen and a fluttering in her chest. The stone had been too heavy, she felt sick, but she knew she would not wait long. Soon, down the slope, she heard the breathless panting of Fiona, booted, spurred, carrying a yard brush.
“The phone,” Fiona said. “How could you? Richard lives for phones. We’ll have a lousy Christmas if you upset him, how could you?”
She’ll eat him up, was all Sarah thought, seeing in her mind’s eye the sanity of the old man which they all ignored, concentrating on his weakness. She’ll eat them all up; she likes to kiss. Possessions, other people’s inheritance, other people’s chances, she likes to kiss.
* * *
Sarah was halfway up the bank, scrambling with one hand, the other holding the sodden sack behind her back. Fiona saw it and stopped.
“How many did the poor bitch have? What a nuisance for you.” Sarah tried to sound patient and understanding. Fiona pretended she had not heard, then relented, seduced into a sense of conspiracy by the concern in the other’s voice, ignoring the prospect of the blinding, ice-cold rage beneath.
“Well, yes it was, a bit. The day I arrived. Can you imagine! He can’t cope, you know. Richard would have wanted to keep them, take them home. Can you imagine how awful…mess on our carpets, the smell, everything…I mean you’ve got a nice flat, you see what I mean?”
“Yes, I do understand. Anyway, the phone’s the most important thing at the moment, isn’t it? I mean, it’s valuable.”
“Of course it is.”
“Why don’t you try to get it?” Sarah said, oozing sympathy. “I’m afraid my feet have gone numb.”
“Fine, fine.”
Oh, she was such a coper. Sarah squatted, winded with a pain far worse than the sickness outside the station the night before, clutching her chest where the gripe was sharpest, the sackful of sodden babies by her side. She was half-weeping, praying madly for the invisible foetus inside her.
Oh no, oh no; whatever the punishment to me, please do not die. I want you to live. That is what I want; whatever the purgatory, don’t die on me. Every dog deserves its day, every bitch deserves a baby. Heaven help me.
Dazed, she watched Fiona stand up to her knees in icy water and fish for the phone, which lay like some ghastly talisman on the frozen surface. The slim body of the fiancée leant forward to sweep the brush over the ice, grunting. Then Sarah watched as Fiona slipped on the smooth clay surface; then Fiona was sliding under the ice up to the waist, her feet flailing for a hold.
Half the bank caved in behind her with a plop. The incline down was now very steep. The ice broke against her back. She slid further, bawling for help and for more than a moment, Sarah was tempted.
But it was a passing temptation. She hurt too much; she had too much to protect to fling herself down a slippery incline towards deep, cold water; she could not run for help anyway.
So she simply wondered about how to harness her small store of energy to bury the puppies in case the children should see them. Stayed where she was, full of the overpowering desire to preserve her own child and aware of the dimmest possible notion that it was better for a woman like Fiona to go like this.
Better in the long run for everyone. Knowing while she thought it, how a woman like herself was the slightest bit mad, but also knowing she couldn’t, wouldn’t, ever quite regret it.
It was not as if she even wanted to move; she wanted her own child to lie peaceful, but never as still as the cold puppies. Would it be better, she asked herself, if Richard saw these little corpses? She wondered briefly, dizzily, decided emphatically not, neither he nor his nieces.
As the new set of bubbles stopped rising to the surface, Sarah got up. She went round to the front of the house to the enormous planter on which she had stumbled the night before, lifted the tinkling shrub carefully, placed the sack with respect then went back to the bottom of the lawn behind and walked to the kitchen door.
“Where’s Fiona?” Richard demanded.
“What? Isn’t she here? I left her trying to fish a phone out of the lake. Went for a walk down the avenue. Isn’t it remarkable how every house looks the same but manages to be so different? Are they 1930s or sooner? I never know. What’s wrong? She said she’d give it five minutes. Isn’t she back? Does she like the cold or something?”
He flung himself out of the house. Sarah washed her hands, went into the living room, where Grandad sat with the dog’s head on his knee. Jonathan was on the floor, next to his suddenly animated, affectionate wife, with her arm round his shoulder as they laid out a game for the children, all four heads together. The baby was grinning in a carry cot, also studiously ignoring Sarah’s glance. The atmosphere was suddenly lighter and brighter as though a stone had been removed and daylight introduced into a cave.
Sarah knelt by the old man’s knee and watched while the dog lay down and transferred a trusting head into her own lap. Grandad watched too, with his crêpey hand trembling, Sarah’s fingers interlaced with his.
“Trust me,” she murmured.
“You’ll have a nice pup,” he said, loudly and clearly. “One day.”
Sarah did not know if he spoke to her or the dog. Or even if it mattered.
Moving On
Susan Moody
i. Martin:
I see we’re moving on. All three of us. Gerry and Susanna, who live in the big house opposite mine. And, as inevitably as Ivory follows Merchant, or Lybrand follows Coopers, me.
They put the For Sale sign up yesterday. I wonder where we’ll go this time. I wouldn’t mind being nearer London, I must say. Or even in London. Kensington, maybe, or Notting Hill Gate. Holland Park. Somewhere in there. It’s not as if the bastard can’t afford it, not with the amount he must be making from those crappy books of his. Perhaps I should suggest it to him. Walk right up the path and
knock on the door. Say: “Look here, Gerry, old man. How about the metropolis this time, hm? How about bloody London this time?”
And I know what he’d answer. He’d raise those trademark eyebrows of his. He’d curl that famous well-shaped lip. He’d say: “Have you taken a look at yourself recently, Marty? Do you know what a pathetic figure you’ve become?”
If he did, I could say yes, I do. I could say that I’m every bit as disgusted with the way I am these days as he is. With the crumpled look which seems to have settled over me. With the stink of fags and stale booze and unwashed armpits that I carry about with me.
I could add that I blame him for it, that it’s all his fault. But what point would there be? I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. Anyway, he knows.
You could argue that I should have got over it by now. That my behaviour is immature and I’m only using Anna’s death as an excuse to waste my own life. Maybe you’d be right. So many years ago, and I still haven’t come to terms with it. Still haven’t moved on from where I was then. Loving not wisely but too well is always a mistake. It blinkers you. Holds you back.
You may be wondering what I meant by that opening sentence: We’re moving on… It’s quite simple, really. When they sell up, I sell up. When they move on, I move on. Like Rachel and Naomi, in the Bible. Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. If you didn’t know the reason for it, you might find it quite touching. Boyhood chums and all that. Still friends after all these years.
Still enemies after all these years, would be nearer the mark.
We didn’t start out like that. Not at all. When we first met at university, we fell into a friendship of the warmest kind. I’m not talking sex here, of course. I’m not talking gays or poofters or queers or whatever you want to call it, though I’ve got absolutely nothing against homosexuality, male or female. I’m talking friendship. Maybe even love. Agape, though, not eros. We were both freshers, both on the same staircase, both reading Eng. Lit. Both grammar school oiks. We fizzed with enthusiasm for poetry, for cultural thought and, yes, for the idea of literature at its highest level. We spent hours together talking, discussing, arguing about the merits of words over music or painting, about the difficulty of manipulating language into the expression of emotion. We both wanted to be writers in those days. Authors. Whatever the difference is.
Vintage Crime Page 20
