Play Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  The man was waiting for her by the entrance to the park.

  She was almost sure it was the same man. He sat on a bench in the rose garden just inside the gate. His head was bowed aside as he lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of an old one. He had a beard and wore jeans and a dark green, thin sweater. A pale coat, folded to show its tartan lining, lay on the bench beside him. Solitary people often used those benches, and Poppy was already past him before she realised that it might have been him.

  Waiting at the crossing it was natural that she should turn to watch for the stream of cars to stop. Seeing the push-chair they did so almost at once, but not before the man had emerged from the gate and stood on the kerb, his head turned away as he too watched the traffic. She was aware of him threading between the halted cars to her right as she crossed. She felt angry and frightened, but reasonably in control.

  The first thing was to verify that he was in fact following her. Then she must shake him off, or find a policeman, or confront him. Above all she mustn’t lead him back to Janet’s house in Abdale Grove. She walked up the wrong side of Belling Road to the chemist’s, where she bought an unneeded spare toothbrush. Waiting for change she could study the road outside. He’d gone. No, that was him in Frith’s opposite. She walked back down Belling Road, past her usual turn, and swung the push-chair round to back in through the door of Jinja’s Megastore, a perfectly natural manoeuvre apart from the suddenness of the move. The man wasn’t ready. He was still on the opposite pavement and she’d caught him sufficiently by surprise to make him turn his head away and thus collide with an elderly man in a turban who was trudging in the opposite direction bowed down by two carrier bags full of vegetables. Toby was restless by now—shopping didn’t amuse him if he couldn’t do it himself—so she bought him an illicit packet of crisps.

  ‘There’s a man following us,’ she told Mrs Jinja at the till. ‘That chap with the coat over his arm. Will you take a good look at him, just in case? I’m trying to think how to get rid of him—I don’t want him to know where Toby lives.’

  Mrs Jinja swung her bulk round to look through the window. The man was in profile now, studying the window of the Halal butcher’s on the corner as if choosing a meal. The face was pale above the beard, with a curving nose repeating the curve of the high forehead. Nothing special.

  ‘You must go down to the school crossing and speak to Jim,’ said Mrs Jinja in her gentle, toneless voice. ‘He is good. There were boys making racial remarks to Farah and her friends when they left school. Jim dealt with them.’

  ‘That’s an idea. Thanks.’

  She went back to the main road, turned right and right again into Starveling Lane. Jim was at the crossing waiting for school to end. She had never spoken to him but knew him by sight, a stolid-moving, pink-faced middle-sized man. She knew his name because according to Darlene at the play centre he’d saved some child’s life on the crossing last term, something to do with a skidding motor-bike. He was standing by the beacon with his lollipop, but seeing her turn the push-chair for the crossing he came into the road, though there wasn’t a moving car in sight, and signalled her to cross, accompanying her back to the far pavement. She slowed her pace to prolong the time for talk.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Mrs Jinja told me to come to you. There’s a man been following us—Toby he’s after. Jeans, green jersey, coat over his arm.’

  He didn’t hesitate in his stride, look back or question her.

  ‘Spotted him,’ he said. ‘Straight into the school, through the swing doors. Right, and all the way along the passage. Takes you out past the school office at the senior entrance. Have a good look round soon as you’re out. If he’s there, back into the office and tell Trixie as I sent you. She’ll call the police.’

  They had reached the far pavement and stood facing each other. His pale greyish eyes gazed confidently at her.

  ‘That’s marvellous,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, love. I’ll sort him out.’

  He upped his lollipop and turned to recross the road. She pushed into the school, opened only two years back after the fire, now bright-coloured and angular, like a bit of play apparatus for a brood of giants, but already pocked and scarred with the abrading tide of children that sluiced in and out each day. As she turned at the top of a ramp to buttock her way through the swing doors she could see Jim on the far pavement, facing her follower, the embodiment of sturdy civic decency.

  Toby had finished the crisps and fallen asleep. The main corridor was almost empty. The feel of a new academic year just started hung in the air. A few older children scurried past with loose-leaf folders. No one questioned her. From the classrooms came the stir and scuffle of books being stuffed into desks, equipment being cleared, chairs reordered. A boy held the far door for her. Out in the street the follower was nowhere to be seen.

  She pushed home through side-streets. Since Jim had confronted and presumably accused the man she felt there was no harm in turning suddenly at random to look behind her, until it struck her that to passers-by she might look like a batty old woman running off with someone else’s child. There was no way of not crossing Belling Road. If he’d gone back to wait for her there he’d be difficult to spot amid the shoppers. She crossed it and took a roundabout way back to Abdale Grove, pausing on corners to check behind her.

  3

  Too tired to cook but pleasantly on the edge of wooziness after the second gin, Poppy opened a can of mackerel fillets, cut up the last of the Chinese leaves, spooned on oil and vinegar and told herself it was a healthy meal. What had she done? Walked a mile or so further than usual. Why should fright and anger make her feel as though she’d crossed half a county, physically fought a troop of men, to bring Toby safe home? Radio 3 was Delius, moody-ethereal, so she’d put on a tape of Aida to buck herself up.

  A third gin? Wicked, and if she had a third there’d be only a couple more tots in the bottle and she’d be bound to have them too, even if she’d tried locking the bottle in the filing-box … Elias rubbed against her calves, purring like an outboard motor. She’d given him the can to lick with a few scraps in it, but the smell of mackerel on her plate roused him from his normal lethargic calm to gluttonous ecstasy.

  The doorbell rang. It would be those young men from that scheme, selling dusters and oven-gloves. Poppy balanced her plate on the lampshade, out of Elias’s reach, and went to the door trying to think of excuses. There’s a limit to the number of ironing-board covers a single woman in a basement flat can wear out in a year.

  It was Jim.

  ‘Just thought I’d look round, see you’re all right,’ he said. ‘Mrs Tasker, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, do come in. I’m so glad to see you. I was going to come and thank you tomorrow. You were marvellous. And I want to know what happened.’

  He didn’t hesitate but followed her into the living-room. Elias’s purr as he rubbed himself against the lamp-standard competed with Caballé. Poppy snatched the teetering plate and turned the volume down.

  ‘That’s a cat and a half,’ said Jim. ‘Shown him, ever?’

  ‘He hasn’t got a pedigree. He just turned up at a friend’s house three years ago, half starved, and they didn’t want to keep him. We thought he was full-grown then, but he wasn’t, nothing like. I’m afraid that if I showed him someone might say he was theirs.’

  ‘Not a spot on him anywhere.’

  ‘Actually he’s got an invisible black collar under the white. You can only see it when he’s moulting. He’s behaving like this because of the mackerel.’

  ‘I’m stopping you eating your tea.’

  ‘Don’t worry—it’s cold. Won’t you have something? I’ve got some gin. Or I could make some coffee.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to a spot of gin and water.’

  ‘Just water? Not tonic?’

  ‘Water—about half a
nd half.’

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘Bruises the gin, my dad used to say.’

  Now that she had the excuse Poppy gave herself a smaller tot than she might have if she’d been swigging defiantly alone.

  ‘Ta,’ said Jim.

  ‘How did you know my name? Where I lived?’

  ‘Asked Mrs Jinja. How’re you feeling, then? Nasty that was for you. But you told the kiddie’s mum about it, acourse?

  ‘Yes—she’s my daughter-in-law. I played it down a bit. I didn’t want to frighten her. But you’re right, Jim … I don’t know your other name …’

  ‘Jim Bowles. Jim’ll do fine. Nobody calls me anything else these days.’

  ‘I’m Poppy. It’s silly, but it can’t be helped. What was I saying?’

  ‘Me being right about something.’

  ‘Oh yes—it was nasty. Afterwards I felt as if I’d, well, had a rape attempt on me, myself.’

  ‘Don’t blame you.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Effed and blinded a bit, and then he tried to make out as he was from the papers, following up a story. Hadn’t got a press pass, natch.’

  ‘I keep asking myself what I’m going to do if he shows up again.’

  ‘Came to see you about that. Now, first off … Hold it …’

  He was listening to the music, head cocked on one side and lips moving. Poppy rose and turned the volume up. It was the famous march, of course, but when he started to hum along he wasn’t following the main theme.

  ‘Is that the woodwind?’ said Polly. ‘Bassoon?’

  ‘Trombone,’ he said and returned to the music, absorbed as a child. Poppy joined in with the trumpets, far less expertly. Encouraged, he let himself go, bomping and baahing full throat. They were driving into the final tutti when Poppy noticed Elias staring up at her with that look of affront and disbelief which cats keep for outrages on their ideas of dignity. She collapsed into laughter. Jim closed with an unperturbed flourish and turned the volume down. Poppy could sense an inner lip-smack of self-satisfaction.

  ‘If I had a fiver for every time I’ve played that,’ he said.

  ‘Was Verdi using trombones as early as Aida?’

  ‘Brass band I’m talking about. West London Police Band. I still turn out for them if they’re short.’

  ‘What else have I got …’

  ‘First things first, Poppy. About if that fellow comes hanging around at the play centre. I’ll drop down to the station tomorrow, have a word with Terry Hicks. He’ll send someone along to talk to you, Ozzie Osborne, most like. Telephone at the play centre?’

  ‘Yes. George has probably reported it already.’

  ‘Right. Ozzie will know, then. She’ll give you a number and who to ask for. And most like she’ll drop by off and on for a couple of weeks, walk you home.’

  ‘Oh, Jim, that’s marvellous! It’s such a load off my mind! I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘Listen to a bit more music, shall we? Not this caterwauling, mind.’

  ‘It isn’t caterwauling!’

  ‘And those fellows bawling away like they’re showing their tongues to the doctor.’

  ‘1 don’t think I’ve got any proper brass band music.’

  ‘Bet you have, too. Bet you’ve got old Vivaldi.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but …’

  ‘Let’s have Spring, then, for starters. Some bloody good tunes in there. Anything left in that gin bottle?’

  Buying her Guardian next morning Poppy thanked Mrs Jinja for her advice.

  ‘He was wonderful,’ she said. ‘He didn’t just rescue us; he came round in the evening to tell me what to do if the man turned up again. Oh, you know that, of course—you gave him my address.’

  ‘I hope you did not mind.’

  ‘Of course not. Why?’

  Mrs Jinja’s mouth closed to a purple blob, like a shrinking anemone, in the large fawn face.

  ‘Jim has a certain reputation, you understand me?’ she said. ‘I was careful to ask Mr Jinja’s permission before I consulted him about Farah’s difficulty.’

  ‘I think I can look after myself.’

  ‘He has his pension from the police. He does not need the money for being a crossing warden.’

  ‘He says he likes being useful.’

  ‘He also likes to inspect the young mothers who come to collect their children, and to make friends while they are waiting by the gate, and to be asked for advice, and to call round perhaps while the husband is working, and then … who knows, Mrs Tasker, who knows?’

  Poppy laughed.

  ‘I promise you we spent the whole evening listening to music.’

  ‘You do not object to my telling you this?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m flattered.’

  OCTOBER 1989

  1

  A vast Mercedes was waiting by the far entrance to the park. The chauffeur, blue-chinned, Greek-looking, simply stood and watched while Peony and Poppy collapsed their pushchairs and stowed them in the boot. There was a baby-seat fixed for Deborah in the back, but Poppy had to sit beside her with Toby on her lap, trying to control his impulse to explore every knob and handle. Peony sat in the front with the chauffeur, separated from the rear by a glass partition, and Poppy had the amusement of being able to watch their body language. When people know you can’t hear them they tend to forget how much their subsidiary modes of communication express their meanings and emotions. Even the back of the man’s head and the way his hands rested on the wheel expressed a ruthless assumption of dominance, while Peony’s shrugs and turnings away, hoity-toity but come-hither, were just as speaking. Poppy had little doubt by the time the short trip was over that the chauffeur had been the squid-guzzling brandy-plier responsible for Peony’s sorry state a few days ago.

  The house was nothing like as imposing as Poppy had expected, nor as large, until she realised that the establishment included the house next door. The two stood in a twisting, cobbled side-street, one of those sudden oddnesses you find in London’s inner suburbs, where the rush of patterned development over what until a hundred years ago had been fields and gardens was intruded on by an older shape, some track or lane which had been there for centuries as a thoroughfare when Acton and Kensington were still villages and Kensal still was green. Poppy, in lonely evening walks after her separation from Derek, had passed through it several times and had told herself that she must try and look up old maps and see what its purpose had been but had never got round to doing so.

  Deborah had what was effectively her own suite, with day nursery and kitchen on the ground floor and bedrooms for herself and Peony on the floor above. Mrs Capstone had her office on the top floor, Peony said, but she and Mr Capstone lived and entertained next door. There was a little garden behind, paved, with a few shrubs, and beyond that the back of a mews, where the cars were kept, with a flat for the chauffeur above. Deborah instantly assumed the role of chatelaine and insisted on showing Toby her realm, so Poppy kept an eye on them while Peony got tea ready. Interestingly, though the place reeked of wealth, it did so as much by restraint as by ostentation. Even Deborah’s bedroom, for instance, didn’t have the hoard of toys Toby owned, and there were only a couple of soft animals in the cot, and no dolls.

  The bathroom contained a bidet. Toby was entranced. Real taps at his level, with real water gushing out, and a fancy waste-plug operated by a lever. The situation remained under control for about thirty seconds, with Poppy closing the taps and opening the plug as fast as he opened and closed them. Deborah at first hung back. It had apparently never crossed her mind to treat the bidet as a plaything, people rather than objects being her sphere, but as soon as she joined in Poppy had four hands against her two, one for each tap, one to keep the plug closed and the fourth to flail at the rapidly rising water, drenching all three of them and a fair-sized area
round the bidet.

  ‘No!’ cried Poppy. ‘Stop it, Toby! Stop it, Deborah! No!’

  But their joint excitement had reached critical mass, feeding each other’s, whipping them towards hysteria, a two-tot rioting mob, out of control of the state apparatus. Poppy seized both taps, forced them shut and held them All four fists welted the water. The splash shot into her face. Her spectacles fell. She was soaked, blind. The children whooped with the joy of freedom.

  ‘And what is going on here?’ said a woman’s voice at the door.

  ‘Help!’ said Poppy.

  Deborah was snatched away and immediately started to scream. Poppy groped, grabbed Toby and held him to her while she tried to rub the water from her eyes with the back of her wrist and then peered for her spectacles. Their tortoiseshell frames made them invisible on the brown carpet. She patted desperately around. Toby wriggled like a trapped animal.

  ‘More,’ he shouted. ‘More baa!’

  (‘Baa’ was a new word, corrupted from the adult ‘bath’ and describing all things wet, other than drinks.)

  ‘Not now, darling. Please, where are my specs—I’m blind without them.’

  ‘By your left knee,’ said the voice, both brisk and patient.

  Poppy shoved them on and rose. The lenses were wet, so all was still blur. Toby threshed in her grasp.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she began, but the rest was drowned by Toby’s yell. Why, after days of angelhood, must he choose this moment for a tantrum?

  ‘If you go on like that, Deborah, you will be shut in your room,’ said the woman, dim-seen through wet lenses but obviously Mrs Capstone, though somehow not what Poppy had expected from the public image. Of course the scene in the bathroom was different from the average photo opportunity. Mrs Capstone seemed not to need to raise her voice to penetrate the yells but Poppy had to mouth her answers.