Shadows on the Mirror

by Frances Fyfield

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Don’t know why you do this, Sarah, I really don’t.’

  Joan was truculent, grateful in an embarrassed, furious fashion which did not allow her to sound grateful at all. ‘You don’t bloody have to, you know.’

  ‘I know I don’t.’ Sarah spoke with mild nonchalance as if she did not care either way. ‘Can’t have you dying for lack of sleep though, can I? Besides, I like him. Wouldn’t have you for the day if I didn’t, would I, Jack?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, beaming at her.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Joan, cuffing him lightly, speaking grumpily. ‘Mind you behave. Bring him back if you’re fed up. See you.’

  The door had closed behind them with a hollow crash which echoed down the stone stairs, Joan both angry and relieved. So long as you don’t think you’re doing me any favours. Don’t think I’m grateful, but God, I needed the peace. Why does she know when I’m at my wits’ end, knows to arrive out of the blue and take one of them off me? How does she know? I don’t bloody tell her. I could kill her for knowing, I really could, letting her do it . . . Little sod’ll have a better day than he would cooped up with me, shame on me. Just don’t let her think I can’t cope . . .

  The wind was blowing, stiff and hot. Sunday, Sarah’s favourite day, improved by Jack, aged seven years and three precious months, relinquished into her care for a whole day through an offer of hers made with deliberate diffidence, accepted in the same vein. Free of the mother’s watching eye, they were almost happy.

  ‘Come on, Jacko! Race you!’

  ‘Not yet. Sarah, what’s Mummy doing?’

  ‘She’s at home, Jack. You know she is, you big softy.’

  ‘Yes, but what will she be doing?’

  ‘Sitting down, I think, with her feet up. Where we left her, probably asleep by now.’

  ‘Will she be there when we get back?’

  ‘When is she ever not? What’s the matter, Jack?’

  ‘If she goes to sleep she won’t go in and tidy up my bedroom, will she? Then she can’t find her birthday present, can she?’

  ‘Is that all? Look at me, Jack.’

  He paused, scuffed the new shoes she had bought him on the path, sighed and quivered. Jack suffered terribly for his sins, then he burst.

  ‘Oh, Sarah, I ate the sweets you bought me last time to go with the present. Only some of them, then they were all gone. She’ll find the paper.’ Tears were gathering in his big pale eyes. No wonder he wouldn’t eat. Sarah bent to his seven-year-old level and put her arms round him. He was a prickly little boy, but he put his arms behind her neck and wept into her collar. Spindly boy, over-anxious, protective of his single parent, and as far as sweets were concerned, the same as any child who saw them rarely and wanted them all the time. Sarah was angry with herself. Her own kindness was both brusque and cunning towards this household, but it should not have been insensitive enough to cause any distress. She should have known better. The devastation of tears was rare in Jack’s life; normally he was far too well controlled.

  ‘Jack, listen to me, you dope. It’s not so bad. Sweeties are meant to be eaten, and I shouldn’t have left them with you. Mummy won’t know and I bet she wouldn’t mind if she did. Anyway, you’ve still got the talcum powder and stuff to give her. You haven’t eaten them as well, have you?’

  A watery smile emerged with some reluctance. ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘Well then, we’ll soon make it better.’ She wiped his eyes, handed him the handkerchief to blow his nose. ‘Tell you what we do. We go to the lake, then the other lake, and on the way back, we buy some more sweets. The ones she likes. We’ll get them wrapped up, just the same as the others. Only lots of Sellotape.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to take other people’s money. Mummy told me.’

  Sarah sighed. Mummy would. ‘Look, when you’re as big as me, you can pay it back.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Sure can. I’ll bop you on the head if you don’t.’

  ‘I will, I will, I will.’ Drat the child, brought up with so much pride. She would like to make him naughty, rebellious and proud of himself.

  She watched the thin legs kicking in front of her as she raced him up the hill to the Heath, relieved that the small distress was so easily cured. Not all Jack’s problems had such easy remedies: there was little she could do about his father’s defection, his mother’s uphill struggle to survive. Joan was stiff-necked with pride, would take nothing smelling of charity, and ruled her offspring with a rod of iron. Unpaid bills and a rotten council estate were not going to turn them into delinquents, not as far as Joan was concerned. They would get an education if it killed her. Sarah knew them all, knew they deserved better, and did what surreptitious little she was allowed to do. The odd pair of shoes, the odd day out, anything she could sidle past the barrier of Joan’s suspicion. She had endless patience; small children enchanted her. Charity did not, and unbeknown to Joan, she knew all about it.

  They had climbed Parliament Hill to see the kites, run and rolled down towards the lakes, both of them breathless. This was a regular pilgrimage to see the fancy boats, chugging round the edges of the shallow pond, controlled by their owners from the shore. Serious recreation, power boats, remotely controlled, charged by Hampstead fathers and healthy-looking children. Looking like tramps by comparison, and without a boat of their own, both stood and watched, Jack with his usual innocent curiosity, untinged by envy, full of wonder.

  ‘Look at that one,’ he whispered.

  Sarah looked, and saw a man and a boy, tall, well-dressed father ordering a sturdy blond son to behave. Yards from the edge, their battery boat was idling and they could not get it back. Like a pretty, disobedient animal, it floated in splendour, refusing all instructions. Papa’s irritation was all too clear. The child was sulky. The boat inched further away. Jack looked at Sarah and Sarah looked at Jack, and they both began to giggle. There was nothing funnier than impotent fury.

  Then, as the man turned to gesture, Sarah recognised the face of Belinda Smythe’s husband, one-time host of more than two years since, a souvenir of lately married days and married friends. The recognition was mutual: both paused until Martin Smythe’s face cleared, lost its irritation and took on the glow of remembered manners. The widow Fortune, always fancied her. Didn’t remember them having a son. Confusion needing enlightenment, must tell Belinda.

  ‘Sarah, isn’t it? Not seen you for ages. This one yours?’

  ‘Hallo, Martin. No, not mine. Wish he was.’ There never had been much to say.

  ‘Trouble with the boat then? This is Jack . . .’

  ‘And this is Benjamin. He’s cocked it up.’

  The two seven-year-olds looked at one another with mutual suspicion. Jack grinned: if in doubt he always grinned. Benjamin grinned with less certainty: he was more at home with adults.

  ‘I didn’t cock it up,’ he protested to Sarah. ‘We need Uncle Malcolm.’

  ‘If you say that one more time, Ben, I’ll scream,’ his father warned through gritted teeth. ‘He means Malcolm Cook,’ he added to Sarah in explanation. ‘Remember Malckie? You both came to dinner once, I seem to remember. Fat Malckie. He always used to relieve us of our children on Sunday afternoons. Perhaps we took him too much for granted, but he seems to have disappeared. Bloody nuisance really. Malckie was a natural with kids.’

  Benjamin was restless, growing truculent. ‘The boat. Daddy, it’s going further . . .’ Sarah felt Jack’s hand creep into her own, gently pulling her on. They were all suddenly uncomfortable. Martin gazed distractedly at the expensive toy, moving further and further out of reach.

  ‘You must come and see us again, Sarah. Soon.’

  They moved away, turned to wave, and saw father and son devoted to argument, the chortle of laughter from Jack hiding Sarah’s lightning blush. Of course she remembered Malcolm Cook, never quite forgot him. Malcolm with the big gentle hands, his clear, understanding mind, his instinctive way with childr
en. She would not think of Malcolm Cook, mere memory of other days, one last sharing begun with a kind of compassionate experiment of her own, ending in the last real conversation before she had slipped away wilfully into her own self-sufficient world, unfit to help him then. She had run before he could touch her or make her vulnerable, determined he should not. She could not afford it. She had not wanted to know ever again what that was like. Or even what it was like to be with a man who seemed to understand so much, despite the earlier clowning. Another outsider, surprised by nothing. Don’t think of it now. Both of them licking wounds, and he too gone into hiding from the conventional world. A couple of freaks, giving freakish comfort.

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Jack, relinquishing her hand to brandish his own in the air, ‘that I haven’t got things like that boat. Costing plenty, and then getting lost. I’d be very worried, all the time. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes I do, pet. Very well. Is it time to find a sweet shop?’

  He grinned again and began to run, whooping and jumping. She followed faster, the red hair streaming out behind her, shouting with him, circling round him, letting him win.

  Far behind, a large shambly figure stubbed out his cigarette, coughed, swore and followed. Ted Plumb could not understand it. In the distant but far from dim days of Drugs Squad observations, Ted had learned to control surprise. There he would be, stamping his feet on a cold afternoon, wondering if he could slope off for a drink and cover it carefully in his notes, when suddenly the least likely suspect, supposed to be miles away, would pop out of a back door like a genie, and force him to move. Surprise would have been confined to a curse on the breath, his body immobile against shock, as it was now.

  He had left the bloody dog at home, and now he was grateful. Jack might have recognised it, just as Ted so clearly recognised Jack, his own son, romping over the grass with the pretty woman he had been ordered to follow. Well, well. The same woman who had such a preference for adult company, dressed for her men, smiled at them, playing here with a penniless boy. She certainly was versatile. He shrugged. No point being curious about it. He’d find the connection in time, but the sight of his own child was hardly a comfort, even to a man as bereft of paternal instinct. He had better not mention any personal interest in his report to Charles Tysall; besides, he was sure he was not supposed to report activities of such studied innocence as these. What the girl did with males of Jack’s age was of no interest to Charles. Perhaps this woman lived near his own wife, perhaps that explained it, but he felt acute annoyance. He had supposed she was simply another of Tysall’s targets, but what the hell was she doing with a child not her own, making Ted so impatient an observer, and even making him begin to like her?

  He watched the boy, sighed and turned away. Let them be, but he wanted them back, some of the time. Not all of the time; not when he was in bed with Maria, but when he was out in the streets with that damn dog, going home to the bare room in Hackney, then he did. At least he had Maria. This woman, richer, peculiarly beset by gentlemen friends, had no one to call her own. Go home now. Nearly closing time. With surprising speed and neat steps, soft-shoed Ted ducked away, turned his feet towards the houses and the first drink of the day.

  Sarah watched the flying figure of skinny Jack. Look at him compared with the elegance of little Benjamin Smythe. Fatherless, not quite rudderless Jack, just like me. Well, you little monster, don’t grow up obeying all the rules, will you? Not worth it. Be yourself. Whatever else you do. Hope someone, maybe me if I get the chance, makes sure you shout when it hurts rather than lie down and cry so easy. See yourself in a mirror and punch the rest in the eye if they don’t like it. She shrugged, and ran after him. ‘Wait for me, Jack . . . Wait for me . . .’ Sunday children, better by far than none.

  When Malcolm Cook had next been invited to dine with Belinda and Martin three weeks after the time he had with Sarah Fortune, he had demurred. He had almost been rude, and deliberately obtuse.

  ‘Have you invited that girl, you know who I mean, Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah who? Oh, widow Sarah. No. Should we?’

  ‘You invite whoever you like. Only, she gave me a lift home.’

  ‘Nice girl, Sarah, but we do try to vary the list. Apart from you, of course. She’s very quiet, Sarah.’

  Malcolm paused. Not as he remembered, with his whole size quivering slightly at the memory. He must not ask after her, he must not pursue her. She had been quite clear.

  ‘Well, my dears.’ The old heartiness took over. ‘Afraid I can’t oblige your kindness. On a diet. Besides, very busy. May be absent for a while.’

  ‘For how long, Malckie?’ She sounded annoyed. ‘The children will be impossible.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said formally. It sounded as if he was going away for a long time. Visions of Captain Oates, as he walked out of Scott of the Antarctic’s tent, floated into his mind. ‘I may be gone for some time . . .’ With his present stones of weight, and smaller stores of bravery, Malcolm felt he would have lasted longer than Oates. Easier to be brave when you knew you had no choice. Oates had meant them to use his supplies. Malcolm wished his surplus fat could be distributed with so much fairness, and felt the old familiar longing for company, any kind.

  He felt he might give at the seams of himself with the sheer grief of his own rage, and in this deficient life of his, something would have to go. The bloody bulk of it. He smiled the first smile of the day at his own pun. Inside the reflection of his own size, normality had beckoned like a mirage not dignified yet by any real belief in it.

  Two years forward and tidying his new flat, a different man moved easily from room to room, drastically altered despite the fact that he still expected the sight of his own flesh to crowd his mirror. It was strange to recall how much he had hated his new determination when he first began. How he had crawled up the steps to the front door of the old place at the end of that first, short run with his stomach trembling, his thighs quivering, calves on fire, a throbbing in his head and a hazy dizziness blinding his eyes along with the sweat which ran down from his hair. The two flights which led to the old flat seemed the last, impossible obstacle, and he had imagined the whole world must be aware of the deafening sound of his own breathing. All that for a stumbling run of two hundred yards, and the sight of the neighbour behind the first-floor net curtain, giggling at the sight of his comical distress, wondering between times whether she ought to call an ambulance. Poor fat sod, what did he think he was trying to do? Being fat was like being old, he had discovered whilst soaking in the bath, a dying whale, and waiting for the sickness to pass. All attempts to change it are regarded as inherently stupid and undignified. They were both of those, but no more than the condition.

  ‘You must be mad, Mr Cook,’ said the doctor, faced across the surgery table next evening as Malcolm eased himself off the chair like an invalid, paralysed by stiffness. ‘Man of your age and weight suddenly trying to sprint. You’ll give yourself a heart attack. Try diet first. A little gentle movement, perhaps.’

  ‘I’m not a geriatric,’ Malcolm had said mildly. ‘No,’ snapped the small thin medical man. ‘Nor a child. Most people begin by touching their toes.’

  But he could not start so slowly. Malcolm could not do the thing in stages. He would have to charge at it painfully, stocky bull at five-bar gate, ignoring slow and sensible progress. Whatever he did must hurt, show results, require courage. Gradual progression would be like watching the clock for the second-hand of failure. Malcolm ran again, then again, forcing himself further by one more street, hating the process as he had never hated anything, loathing the disabling stiffness which followed. He ran in the dark, spending the hours of light inventing excuses for not persisting, until he moved himself to the mirror to taunt his own fat cowardice, and, suitably disgusted, fled the house in running-shoes, into rain, sleet, warmth or thunder, not noticing or caring which.

  Cruel laughter in the office. ‘Have you heard? Cook’s dieting . . . Lost an ounce so far.’ He h
eard, and tried to smile.

  The second reaction, after the sheer horror at the pain of it, was a wonder in the discovery of the ability to move on the day when he woke without groaning, suddenly able to put one foot on the ground out of his bed without the rest following in a slow and clumsy roll. Wonder, mixed with curiosity about the next stage. Could he move better, stand taller, stride out with more economy? How fast would he be able to go, and how far? In retrospect, he realised it was this burning curiosity which made him persist far more than the simple desire to be thin. Then there was another stage, one of intoxication after he had shuffled, run, jogged one whole mile. The stage when he knew with absolute conviction he would crack it even if it took forever, and one day he would be free of all this bulk. That marked the beginning of an obsession, a voyage of exploration across boundaries of pain, stiffness and teasing, through mindless mornings, hungry afternoons and breathless evenings, to see how far he could take himself and what lay on the other side. No time for dinner party clowning. But when Malcolm Cook emerged after several months looking an approximation of a normal plump human being there was no time for him either. He found the lightness of his frame had allowed him to move from half-way up the pinnacle of loneliness, occupied in bearable isolation, to a point at the summit where the air was very thin indeed, and no one pretended to know him at all.

  Belinda and Martin were the first casualties. He knew too much, had been told too much, fat father confessor, and who could now confide in a thinner man, or weep on his shoulder? ‘It isn’t the same bloke,’ said Belinda. ‘Not the same at all.’ Such an ordinary man could not tell jokes with the same wonderful pomposity as a fat man. Their parties could not cope with a clown passé. Other friends thought long and hard. They decided to avoid him, and finally decreed: Falstaff, be thou not thin. Your role was made for a fat man, you are a disappointment to us all. He was the same generous man, but they did not like him. He made them uncomfortable, and he found he did not like them much either, although there was nothing else to replace them. So Malcolm simply retreated into himself. Not comfortable, but not despised. Shrouded in work, saturated with all the antisocial knowledge of the criminal world, he lived alone.