Play Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  ‘Mark kept dossiers on people—anything he thought we could use. He’d tell us at council meetings.’

  ‘But they knew about me being Janet’s mother-in-law, and you didn’t?’

  ‘Must have been something that came up after they’d voted me off the council. When I said I was leaving, that was.’

  ‘That makes sense. You see, I suppose someone might have been able to work out about Janet being my daughter-in-law, but I never said anything to anyone about her making me join the Labour Party, except Laura. I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t even true, really, but I was babbling a bit because … oh, how extraordinary! And that’s what Simon must have told your friends!’

  She sat motionless, staring at the back window, not seeing the winter sunlight on the mottled ivy that clothed the garden wall. Links formed, a proliferating network. The furry lover in the sea cave. Miss Poppy! Laura had assumed Poppy had an actual lover, and told Simon. He’d persuaded Mark and his friends he’d got a reason for watching the play centre. To back it up he’d started watching outside Poppy’s flat. Mark kept dossiers … And Laura needed extra money, and Simon had smoked and bought new jeans … and he’d come on the one day she wasn’t at the play centre but taking Sophie to the dentist, and … ah … ‘Why must they grow up so quickly?’ ‘That’s the pity of it, Mrs Tasker. That’s just the pity of it.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ she began, but at that moment Nelson, excited now into wilder and wilder tumbles, completely missed the big cushion Nell had put down for him, sprawled sideways and banged his head on the corner of the log-box. His yells filled the room. While Nell tried to comfort him Poppy fetched his mug of Ribena out of his changing bag. Toby meanwhile had exhausted his interest in using the shelf and log as a see-saw and had instead devised a sort of projectile system, resting the shelf on the log, aiming it in the general direction of his cuddly menagerie and then whooshing it forward to skittle the animals over. It was a lethal device, but far from accurate. Poppy, concentrating on Nelson’s plight, wasn’t aware of it until she was handing Nell the mug and the shelf cracked into the back of her ankle.

  ‘Ouch!’ she cried. ‘No, Toby, no! That hurt! Poor Poppy! No!’

  It had hurt, too. She sat down with her good foot firmly on the plank and rubbed the battered ankle. Miming angelic repentance Toby came and kissed it better, then immediately tried to prise the plank free, to begin again.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Tell you what—let’s go and see if the machine’s finished. Then we can do the wash. You can put the soap in. No. That game’s over. Finished. Good boy.’

  They were in the utility room waiting for the machine’s final chunter so that Poppy could open the door and load the clothes in when an unconsidered area of the network expanded in her mind, cancer-like, in fresh linkages. Simon had been watching outside the flat. He had tried to follow John. There had been a picture of John, instantly recognisable, on the notice-board at the commune. And then John had been angry, panicky. But later still, indifferent—it was only Simon, and not … who? Of course, John didn’t know that Mark was keeping dossiers. Why hadn’t they brought all that up last night? Tory candidate’s husband sleeping with Labour candidate’s mother-in-law. Ah, God!

  They’d be keeping it for the actual election, of course.

  I’ve got to talk to Laura.

  4

  Barnsley Square was south-east of the park, over the border into Ormiston, so Poppy took a taxi. It was probably the best address in the borough. The houses here would have cost you, at the height of the boom, £200,000 more than you’d have paid for similar space around Poppy’s area. They were detached, and pretty in an almost Mediterranean way, with wide eaves and shutters, but not grand, a half-basement and then a couple of storeys above. Sometimes camera crews would spend a morning there to film an actor emerging from a door and so give the following scene the gloss of obvious wealth. The other main intrusion on the peace of the square came from driving instructors taking beginners through the early spasms of clutch-control.

  It was now late morning, Poppy having timed her visit so that Laura should be back from collecting Sophie from school. She hadn’t been able to ring and see if she was in as the number wasn’t in the book, or if it was it was under the husband’s name, which she didn’t know. He was some kind of international banker, she seemed to remember from a colour-supplement piece about Sophie and Nick’s mother, the stage designer Mary Pitalski. She didn’t know the house number either but would recognise it from the time she’d brought Toby to tea—it would be the only one with a trompe-l’oeil grotto on the garage door at the bottom of the ramp by the steps. Number 17, it turned out. As she climbed the steps her mind was still a muddle of imagined conversations—with Laura, broaching the subject, with John, warning him what was going to happen, if it was. (‘I’ve got to see you …’ No.)

  The door was opened by a beaky blonde woman in an orange silk trouser suit. She was exactly like her photographs.

  ‘Oh, thank the kind angels!’ she cried. ‘I’m at my wits’ end!’

  Poppy’s blank look must have answered.

  ‘You’re not from the agency?’

  ‘I’m afraid …’

  ‘Holy Saint Boniface, I can’t stand it! Send me a nanny or I’ll go mad! Just listen to that child!’

  She paused, and Poppy heard Nick’s characteristic whining wail coming from somewhere inside.

  ‘What’s happened to Laura?’

  ‘If only I knew. I’d told her I’d pick up Sophie …’

  A fresh wail interrupted her, but somehow different, urgent, in need.

  ‘I could come in for half an hour,’ said Poppy. ‘Just until whoever you’re expecting does turn up. He knows me from the play group. My name’s …’

  Ms Pitalski was in no mood for references or identification.

  ‘Oh, that would be divine of you!’ she said. ‘Of course they’ll come. Kids are downstairs. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m hours late already.’

  ‘One moment …’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage,’ said Ms Pitalski, as she bent in the hallway and flung magazines, papers and sandwiches out of a briefcase. ‘And if she doesn’t come the agency number’s on that pad. If anyone calls tell them I’m on my way. Not if it’s my mother, of course. And thank you, thank you. Mother of heaven’s, what has he done with the keys?’

  She had crammed a fresh lot of papers into the case and was rootling in a drawer. Now she gave up and made for the door, pausing to press a switch beside it. Poppy tried to bar her way on to the steps, saying, ‘Please listen to me …’ but she pushed past.

  ‘I really haven’t time. Later, later … Mother of God, the car’s on fire!’

  The switch must have activated the garage door, which had tilted and was now whining up out of sight. Bluish fumes poured out of the opening. The smell reeked into the clean winter air. Not fire, exhaust.

  Ms Pitalski rushed down the steps, round and into the garage. Now Poppy could hear the purr of a large engine, idling. Her heart hammered with dread and foreknowledge. She was at the bottom of the steps when Ms Pitalski emerged, having held her breath as long as she could and now gasping for air.

  ‘Go down to the kitchen and get two tea-cloths,’ she panted. ‘Wet them well and bring them back.’

  Her voice was urgent, but steady. She strode up the steps and into a room beside the hall. As Poppy scurried for the stairs she heard the bip of telephone keys. The stairway was decorated as she remembered from her previous visit, with businessmen, horned and tailed, on a down escalator, but the kitchen had changed and was now an underwater scene, with everything in it shades of greeny blue. Sophie was drawing at the blue table, absorbed, her nose close against the paper. From somewhere in the far corner, behind the blue-green laundry basket, rose Nick’s quiet sobs. A litter of toys covered that corner of the floor. Poppy found two seaweed-p
atterned cloths, soaked them under the taps and wrung them out. As she came up the stairs she heard Ms Pitalski’s voice, emphatic but controlled.

  ‘… Barnsley Square. Right. Be quick—she may be alive.’

  She came at a brisk, competent stride into the hall. Poppy followed her down the steps. A taxi was driving away and a woman coming through the garden gate.

  ‘You’re from the agency?’ said Ms Pitalski. ‘The kids are downstairs. Sophie and Nick. Do what you can. We’ve had an accident.’

  She paused at the garage door to tie one of the wet cloths across her face, speaking as she did so.

  ‘Don’t come in with me,’ she said. ‘Stand clear. I’ll get the car out if I can. As soon as it’s out, open the doors your side.’

  She drew a deep breath and walked into the hazed cave. Poppy heard the thunk of a car door and the blast of a horn, and then the car shot backwards up the ramp and stopped in the open. Its interior was full of fog. Poppy ran forward and pulled the doors wide. Ms Pitalski was out of the driver’s seat, gasping, holding the top of the door to steady herself. Poppy ran round behind and opened the far passenger door. A vacuum cleaner hose was wedged into the window, its length running down to the exhaust pipe. Now she could see Laura, in her day clothes, lying on the broad back seat with her knees drawn up. Her cheeks were blotched with the same unnatural scarlet as Simon’s had been.

  Ms Pitalski came and looked too.

  ‘I know how to do mouth to mouth,’ said Poppy.

  Ms Pitalski reached in and laid her twenty-ringed fingers against Laura’s cheek.

  ‘No good,’ she said. ‘The ambulance will be here in a minute. Holy St Agatha!’

  The invocation was like a spell to reinvest her with her wilder personality, laid aside in the urgency of serious need. She flung her arms to heaven and rushed into the house. Poppy moved clear of the car and waited on the steps. From inside she could hear Ms Pitalski on the telephone, a virtuoso aria of self-dramatisation which lasted until the ambulance came heeling into the square, followed almost at once by a police car, which set down a single uniformed constable and whisked away. Ms Pitalski flung herself on the men, posturing and cackling like some great, gaudy forest bird flopping around in a fig-tree. Laura was dead. If there had been any chance of saving her Ms Pitalski would have been steady, quick and brave—as indeed she had been. She was like the Parkinsonian patients in a book Poppy had been reading, who, confronted with certain urgencies, completely lost their flailings and shudderings but with those needs gone reverted into the grip of their ailment. Poppy took the chance to go into the house and telephone Nell.

  ‘Sure you’re all right?’ she finished. ‘He’ll be wanting his rest any moment now. The apple juice is in the fridge and he has it out of the yellow mug. Put him on your lap and read him a story while he’s drinking it and he’ll zonk out … Yes, absolutely dreadful … I don’t know—I’ll be back as soon as they’ll let me … You’re marvellous.’

  Ms Pitalski was still in full torrent so she found the number in the telephone book, rang the police station and asked to speak to Inspector Firth. His line was busy, so she asked for Sergeant Caesar. While she waited to be connected she looked round the room. She’d seen photographs of it in magazines, but hadn’t believed them. They were true. It was a room in a Pall Mall club, gone infinite. On all four walls diners and waiters and bishops dozing in leather armchairs and uniformed pages and card-players receded down pillared perspectives, and the real furniture in the room was in keeping …

  ‘Sergeant Caesar.’

  ‘Oh, this is Poppy Tasker. I’m at 17 Barnsley Square. The police are here, but I thought Inspector Firth ought to know as soon as possible that one of the play-centre nannies has gassed herself with car exhaust. I’m almost certain from things she said that she knew the young man who was found at the play centre.’

  ‘Barnsley Square? Which of the lassies would that be … ?’

  ‘Laura. I don’t know her surname. Older than the others.’

  ‘Oh, her … Right, I’ll tell the boss. Thanks for calling in.’

  He made no attempt to disguise the shift from definite interest to routine tedium. As Poppy put the phone down, frowning, a renewed burst of wailing, urgent, painful, came from below. Thinking she might be able to reassure Nick with a known face she made her way downstairs and found the agency nanny crouched by the laundry basket, talking into the dark slot between that and a dresser whose shelves, festooned with imitation corals, held brightly lit plates and dishes patterned with exotic fish. Sophie was still drawing, oblivious, shutting the world out.

  ‘He won’t let me touch him,’ said the nanny. ‘It’s like there’s something in the room.’

  ‘He knows me. I’ll see what I can do. Perhaps if you went outside for a moment.’

  Poppy sat on the floor. The moment she began to shift the laundry-­basket so that Nick could see her his screams redoubled, so she moved it only a few inches until she could see him cowering in the corner. She could smell that he’d filled his nappy. Not looking at him she started to tidy the toys into their Davy Jones sea-chest, waiting­ for the frenzy to fade to whining sobs.

  ‘Hello, Nick. What’s the matter? Come and tell Poppy.’

  At once the wail rose, but faltered. She could feel his need to declare his terror fighting with his yearning for comfort. Any move towards him and he’d scream again.

  ‘Poor Nick. But it’s all right. It’s all right now.’

  For some minutes he took no notice, but she continued to coax him, murmuring the old, worn spells of home and love, edging occasionally closer and closer until she was right against the basket, and at last, still shuddering with sobs, he rose and tumbled into her embrace. The pose was awkward, but as soon as she tried to move his body went rigid, so she stayed where she was, rocking him gently to and fro, making gradual adjustments to her posture and discovering as she did so that what she had to do was use her body to shield him from the rest of the room. Now he seemed to grasp that she had understood his need and allowed her slowly to rise on to her knees and then her feet and then, still shielding him with her body from the unseen terror, to edge round the kitchen towards the door. Over her shoulder she tried to see what might have so alarmed him, but there was nothing obvious—in fact that side of the room was much more everyday than the rest, as there is not a lot a designer can do to make work surfaces, hobs and outsize electric ovens look anything except what they are.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Sophie in a bell-like voice behind her. ‘Now I can really draw.’

  The nanny was sitting at the foot of the stairs. Nick refused to look, hiding his head in Poppy’s shoulder as the adults introduced themselves. The nanny was called Tessa.

  ‘I’ll take him up and change him, if he’ll let me,’ said Poppy. ‘He’s soaked himself through. Why don’t you make a pot of tea, and see if Sophie’s ready for lunch?’

  The front door was open, with sounds of activity outside. From the living-room came the murmur of a man’s questions and the swoops and crescendi of Ms Pitalski’s replies. Nick must have heard, but he gave no sign of believing his mother could supply the comfort he needed. He had stopped crying as they climbed the stairs and now began to look cautiously around through his tear-blubbered eyes, as if checking that his known and daylight world was still in place, gazing with a sense of acceptance and relief at the frieze on the stairway wall where whimsically erotic angels beckoned a variety of citizens—portraits of friends, Poppy had read, and indeed she recognised a couple of actors—up the heavenward escalator. Doors opened around a central landing, lit by a large skylight. Poppy headed towards the rear of the house, chose a door at random and found herself in what must be the nursery bathroom, a tropical lake scene with crazy-coloured animals along the shore. The bath was a yellow hippo with purple spots, the loo a green baboon. Next door was Sophie’s room. Here bird-headed human fig
ures took apes for walks across a pink, fantastic landscape, Bosch without the horrors … Then Nick’s room, with a cot and ordinary Early Learning Centre toys in a cool forest where weird but friendly-looking beasts dozed in the glades.

  Poppy found dry clothes and a nappy, but as soon as she tried to lay him down to change Nick’s whimpers rose into sobs and his limbs went tense for fresh struggles. To calm him with his own known world she carried him out and explored the rest of the rooms. In the master bedroom masked but otherwise naked men, more than life size, pranced along a flame-coloured wall. A silver bathroom, its light fittings crystal stalactites, its bath a swan. A man’s dressing-room, done as an old-fashioned ironmonger’s shop, but with real chisels and saws on the painted racks. A night-blue spare room, its ceiling filled with a flying owl whose pitiless yellow eyes stared down on the bed. Then a perfectly ordinary bathroom, white and cream, untouched by any fantasy, and completing the circuit a plain bed-sitting-room with TV and electric kettle, fawn carpet, cream walls, chintz chair and curtains—Laura’s room, presumably, but so impersonal it might have been a hotel bedroom.

  Here at last Nick pushed himself up on to Poppy’s arm and gazed around. He stared for a while at the mantelpiece, and then at the table beside the easy chair, and then at the chest of drawers. He drew his breath for what Poppy thought was going to be another burst of sobbing, but instead loosed it into a thin and fading wail. With a final shudder he plunged into sleep. Poppy carried him back next door to his own room, gently undressed him, cleaned and changed him and eased him down into his cot, surrounding him with soft toys. The baby alarm was the same model as Janet’s; she switched it on and went downstairs.

  Voices came from outside but the house was silent. Hoping to ring Nell again, Poppy put her head into the living-room and saw Ms Pitalski standing stock still in the middle of her subfusc masculine elysium, with her ringed hands covering her face.

  ‘I’ve got him to sleep,’ she whispered.