Cuckoo

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘‘Bye,’ Bunty whispered.

  ‘‘Bye.’

  Magda crouched in the shadow of the grandfather clock and listened. She could hear voices. Why were they still awake? Charles often worked late in his study, but he never spoke. She’d come down once or twice in the middle of the night and found him hunched over his papers, grey and frowning, like a gargoyle. He hadn’t seen her, so she’d crept away again. But Frances was never with him. Frances went to bed at midnight and shut her bedroom door. Perhaps she didn’t sleep. Perhaps grown-ups never slept. She was grown-up herself now, almost, so maybe she’d lie awake for ever, and nights and mornings would be all jumbled up together in a frightening grey fog.

  She could hear Charles shouting. He never shouted. Even when he was cross, he spoke softly – it always scared her. He’d been clipping hedges with his Black and Decker whatsit last Sunday and she’d thought, that’s how he sounds: an electric voice, a hedge-trimmer voice, smug and soft and humming on one even steady note. It wasn’t humming now, it was roaring, as if his motor had over-revved and gone berserk. He was in his study, with the door open, and he was booming something at Frances who seemed to be upstairs.

  She slunk along the passage and hid behind the oak settle. Frances’ voice was muffled by the staircase and it was difficult to make it out. But she heard her name – Magda. Frances still pronounced it wrong. So they were discussing her, were they? She felt a prickle of importance. She almost didn’t care if they were angry, so long as they went on talking. No one had ever held a conference about her in the middle of the night before. She’d even stopped Charles working. That meant she must be Somebody. Maybe they’d been up for hours, or hadn’t even gone to bed at all. They’d turned her into an emergency. She liked the thought of that – being wicked enough to deserve an all-night sitting.

  They were probably sorry, now, couldn’t sleep for guilt. Perhaps they’d even change their minds about the puppy. Not that she’d accept it, not likely, after all that kerfuffle, but it would be nice for them to grovel. ‘We’re sorry, Magda, we were wrong …’ She held her breath, as Frances’ voice came nearer.

  ‘I’m sorry, Charles, I just can’t take any more. She’ll have to go away.’

  Charles had swooped to the door of his study. ‘She is going away. I’ve told you, it’s arranged. I’ve got the letter here. Term starts the eleventh of September. It’s only a matter of a month or so. Just be patient, can’t you?’

  Magda jammed her face into the cold wood of the settle. She didn’t want to hear. Nice to be made of oak, deaf and solid and unfeeling. She pressed her ear so hard against the carved frills of acanthus leaves that her own pain throbbed back at her. But Frances’ voice was mingled with the pain, a smooth, slithery voice, squeezing through solid wood, snaking into everything. She was coming down the stairs now, slowly, one step at a time, the soft snake voice very quiet, very deadly.

  ‘It’s not only her …’

  Her, her. She was an object now, a dumb household cleaner, a grotty tin of Vim.

  ‘It’s you, too. You’re as bad. You’re her father, aren’t you? Well, we shouldn’t really part you from your precious daughter, then. It wouldn’t be natural, would it? You’d better go and join her. Yes, why don’t you go away, the pair of you? Go on, go away.’

  The voice wasn’t hushed any more. It was rearing up on itself, surging down the staircase, swelling through the hall …

  Magda fled. Back along the corridor, out through the small side door, slap into the grey almost-morning. The sky had paled into the colour of a dead fish, the moon dead now, decomposing. She rolled up her jeans. The steel frame of the bike bit cold against her bare legs. She pedalled wildly, Frances’ voice jabbing round and round with the motion of the pedals, entangled with the chain. She tried to beat it off, but it was coiling down her throat, flailing through her hair, the two simple words striking at her, poisoning:

  ‘Go away, go away, GO AWAY.’

  Chapter Twelve

  He went away.

  Mercantile International phoned him from Nassau at eight o’clock the following morning and requested him to catch the next plane. One of their directors had been accused of illegal speculation with company funds, for his own personal profit. Charles was required as an expert witness.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ begged Frances, trying to rinse last night out of her mouth.

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. You know perfectly well I have to go. It’s a court case – a very nasty business by the sounds of it. God alone knows what Oppenheimer’s going to say. It’s one of his companies.’

  ‘Oh, he’s mixed up in it, is he? I might have guessed. Whenever there’s trouble, it always seems to be our good friend Heinrich.’

  ‘He is our good friend, Frances. The work he brings me pays for all our luxuries. It’s not just trouble he’s mixed up in, but all those little extras you insist on – your foreign cars, your couturier clothes, your –’

  ‘All right, Charles, you’ve spent the last five years telling me how obliged we are to Oppenheimer. But all the same, you can’t just disappear like that – not after what happened last night. I mean, we haven’t even discussed it yet. I know I behaved badly, but …’

  ‘You were tired, darling, that’s all. Let’s forget it, shall we? I’ll only be gone a matter of days, a week at the outside.’

  A week. If one night lasted a hundred years, a week might end somewhere in the twenty-seventh century. Normally, she didn’t mind about his travelling. Charles dropped in at the Bahamas as other men took a spin to Bournemouth. She kept his suitcase permanently packed. But this time …

  ‘But what about Magda? How on earth am I going to deal with her? It’s much more awkward with you not being here.’

  ‘She’d better stay at Viv’s, then. I’ll arrange it.’ Another paltry item on his job list: clean car, trim hedge, dispose of daughter. Magda might be hysterical by now, or ill, or despairing.

  ‘But I can’t just ignore her for a week. And what am I meant to do about the walls? She shouldn’t get away with vandalism like that. On the other hand, she must be in quite a state to …’

  ‘I’ll think about it on the plane, darling, and phone you. Now could you please do me a spot of breakfast.’

  Frances cracked an egg into the frying pan. So Charles planned to deal with a delinquent daughter by long-distance phone call, with wires crackling and the pips going; fit her in among the formulae, no doubt.

  ‘How’s Magda?’

  ‘Smashing up the house.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’

  Here he was, escaping again, using his work as a manhole to drop safely into and hide from all the hubbub on the pavement outside. All right, she’d shouted at him to get out of her way, told him to go, but that was only in extremis, and she hadn’t meant a Bahamian business trip, lulled by labile secretaries and cushioned in a first-class cocoon of soothing schedules and self-importance, with a millionaire glittering on the sidelines.

  Charles cut a neat square from his fried bread and matched it with a square of egg. He was already in the Bahamas, astounding the court-room, impressing the judge. His note-pad was propped against the coffee pot and he was smiling into it, jotting down inspired rejoinders. Last night had never existed as far as he was concerned. Her panic, her outburst, had dwindled to nothing in the face of a court case. A tenth of his income came from this Nassau company, and two-thirds of it from Oppenheimer. Heinrich was gold-dust, and she only a handful of loose change, in comparison.

  ‘Got everything?’ Ridiculous, of course he had. Charles had a check-list taped inside his head. He stood at the door, trying not to look too eager to be gone. He gave her his Bahamas kiss, longer and more ardent than the London peck, but slightly shorter than the full-scale Antipodean embrace.

  ‘Try to relax, darling. Enjoy yourself. Play a bit of golf.’

  ‘Yes.’ She polished up her long-distance smile and clamped it on her face. How could he talk about relaxing when hate was cr
ouching in the house.

  ‘Take care.’

  ‘Yes, and you.’

  ‘I’ll phone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She closed the door. It was drizzling outside. Egg had congealed on the plates and the smell of bacon fat seeped into the hall.

  ‘Shocking weather!’ reported Mrs Eady, making a self-righteous hurricane with her plastic pack-a-mac.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t be disturbed this morning. I’ve got a fashion job to finish.’

  Mrs Eady pulled off a galosh and replaced it with a brown canvas beach shoe. ‘Never did understand what good fashion did to nobody.’

  Frances knew what she meant. Who cared whether skirts were longer, or bosoms back? But she had decided to get down to work. It wasn’t an important job, only a paltry piece of advertising she had taken on as a favour to an old client, whose normal copywriter was coping with divorce and influenza, both at once. But at least it would return her to the iron rock of discipline and professionalism, at a time when things were crumbling like sand. She tried to sweep her problems off the desk. Magda must stay at Viv’s, not keep creeping back into the in-tray, making ugly blots all over her clean page. She had locked the studio door, so that Mrs Eady wouldn’t turn the lipstick into a National Disaster. Reggie had agreed to strip the wallpaper, and emulsion the walls in plain blue. That only left the hate …

  She opened her folder with its collection of spring suits. It was summer outside, winter in her head, and spring in the advertising business. She read over the jaunty phrases she had written so glibly just a week ago. ‘Trap your big-game hunter in these jungly camouflage colours’, ‘Ambitious little hat with a going-places feather’, ‘Bosoms blossom out’. Nonsense. Whipped-cream, rose-tinted, chocolate-coated nonsense. Reality was harsher. Reality was flowery walls blighted by red lipstick. Red for hate and danger, passion and Piroska. It was almost as if Piroska herself had written on the walls, etching her love for Charles into the very fabric of the house. Love and hate, both four-letter words, which socked you in the jaw and broke families apart.

  Maybe it had broken Magda, too. How did it feel smashing precious pictures, and ripping the petals off roses? Only last week Magda had picked a bunch of McGredys Yellow for Viv, wrapping them in tissue paper from the laundry box and cradling them like glass. For Viv, though – not for her. She had only the hate.

  She picked up her pen again and tried to write a headline for a wedding suit. ‘Mother of the bride steals the show …’ ‘Bells are ringing for this …’ ‘I hate you.’ She stared at the three black words polluting the pad. They had blotted out every word in the whole vocabulary of fashion. She couldn’t work, had to talk to someone, to help to drown them out. But who? Magda had fled to Viv’s, so she could hardly use Viv as an ally. And even if she did, Viv would be on Magda’s side. Viv always took the ‘crime is a broken home’ line, and Magda would fit it to perfection. She and Charles would be the criminals, in Viv’s eyes. Charles was phoning Viv, in any case. He’d promised to fit it in, between his duty-free brandy and passport control.

  Her other friends were useless. How could she confide in them, when she’d fobbed them off so far, with convenient fictions. She couldn’t turn a vague foreign cousin into an instant delinquent. They’d never understand, in any case. Someone else’s pretty daughter sounded a delight, not a disaster – until you were actually in the ring with her, parrying every blow, or knocked senseless in a corner. Even if she told them, it would be all a charade. ‘Little spot of bother with our guest … messed her room about a bit … yes, difficult age, isn’t it?’ The obligatory light touch and forced little laugh, feelings bandaged up, tourniquet on the tears.

  There was no one she could turn to. Only stainless-steel acquaintances, neck-deep in their own problems, or their careers, or their children. Only empty formulae for standard situations.

  She had been doodling on her pad, the blank page a tangle of flowers, feathers, numbers, squares, fighting and overlapping with each other. Only the numbers had arranged themselves neatly – into a group of three and then a group of four. A phone number. And she had no one to phone.

  No one? She picked up the receiver and held it in her hand. She grimaced – no wonder Magda never learned, when even teachers couldn’t speak the Queen’s English. ‘It’s Frances Parry Jones here. So sorry to bother you, but I wondered if …’

  ‘Franny! Fantastic! Let’s go down to Brighton.’

  ‘Please, Ned, I …’

  ‘Say it again. Your Neds absolutely ravish me! It’s a magnificent day. Let’s …’

  ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘Ah, here it is, yes. But I’ve heard the weather forecast. They’re already in bikinis in Brighton, collapsing from sunstroke from Dartmouth to Dover. If you want to dodge the clouds, my love, there’s nothing for it – we’ll have to head south.’

  ‘Ned, do be sensible. I’ve got work to do and I only rang to …’

  ‘How’s Magda?’ The doodles were submerging the spring suits – umbrellas, sunshades, starfish, waves.

  ‘Fine.’ Puppies, cornflowers, lipstick, hate. ‘In fact I wanted to ask you about …’

  ‘Ask me in person. You’ll get much better answers. Meet you at Victoria Station as soon as you can get there. You bring the bikinis and I’ll bring the jam butties.’

  ‘Ned, if you can’t be serious, I’d better phone you later.’ She removed the telephone from the desk to a side table, and spread out her work sheets again. She stared at a picture of a pink suit with suede trimmings and frilled shirt. ‘Frills and thrills, think pink, suede upgrades …’ Why shouldn’t she escape? Charles had. She couldn’t work properly, in any case. The day stretched ahead like an endless piece of tangled string. The words had returned again. Every time she shut her eyes, she saw them bleeding down the walls … ‘I hate you.’ Terrifying words, fraught with fury and danger, hot with Magda’s misery. Part of her wanted almost to beat the brat, for ruining her room and rejecting all her attempts at a relationship, and part of her felt guilty and petty and despicable for not being able to love even a puppy, let alone a child. She couldn’t endure the battle raging inside her own head. She needed an ally or an arbitrator, someone to step inside the lines and win her peace with honour. And why shouldn ‘t that somebody be Ned? The very fact that she hardly knew him was a distinct advantage. If she confided in any member of their own sacred circle, it would compromise Charles and embarrass Magda. But Ned was outside that circle. He’d also had more experience. Working in that enormous comprehensive, he was bound to have had to deal with other Magdas. They needn’t go to Brighton – that was quite unnecessary. But she could meet him in Richmond, or even at Victoria – somewhere safe and neutral – and merely ask his advice. Magda was clearly in need of some professional help, and Ned would know the procedures for teenage counselling or child guidance. Teachers always did.

  She picked up the phone again. ‘Look, Ned, I’m sorry I was sharp. I would like to talk to you, if it’s no bother – just for half an hour or so. I’ve got a problem.’

  Ned sounded so close, it was as if he had squeezed down the phone and catapulted into the room. ‘Right, Brighton it is! We’ll talk on the train and then collapse on the beach. I’ll get the tickets, shall I? Meet you on Platform 16 about an hour from now.’

  Frances frowned. ‘I’d really rather not …’

  Mrs Eady popped her head round the door. ‘Will you be wanting coffee, same as usual?’ She made the simplest question sound like her own funeral service. Even the hoover turned tragic when she used it, droning in mingled pain and protest. Frances gestured her away – she’d missed all that Ned was saying. She moved the phone to the other hand and started again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ned, but it seems a bit pointless for us to rush off to the sea. I mean, we haven’t planned it, and I still don’t even know you well …’

  The phone almost rocketed out of her hand. ‘Christ, Frances! You really are the most joyless, rule-ridden female I�
�ve ever met. Don’t you allow yourself the slightest grain of pleasure, unless it’s been weighed out and allotted to you on your ration book? Can’t we just go to Brighton because it’s there? I’m not planning to rape you or murder you, or wall you up in the Pavilion. You phoned me in the first place, for heaven’s sake! It’s a wonder you’ve got any friends at all, if you can’t even catch a train without written permission from your husband or guardian. One day you’ll be dead, my love, and you still won’t have ventured a toe outside your impregnable fortress on Richmond Green. OK, I’m sorry, I’ve gone too far. Bugger Brighton! I’m sorry I even suggested it. I’ll meet you in the Wimpy Bar in Richmond.’

  A squall of rain spattered at the windows, nagging her like Ned. The room was always sombre, with its mahogany furniture and leather-bound books, but today it was even darker, grey clouds weighing down the morning. Now she’d offended all of them – Charles, Magda, Viv, Bunty – even Ned. He was right. She was a fossil and a curio, nailed down under glass with a label and a price tag.

  Yet it did seem risky and ridiculous to jaunt off to the seaside with one man, when she was married to another. Just because Charles had behaved outrageously, was that any reason why she should change her own standards? Other women might plan sordid escapades, just to get their own back, but it wasn’t easy to get even with a man like Charles. They had revenge and rebellion enough with Magda. On the other hand, Ned could be a genuine help with the child. She had only planned to see him, to help talk out the problems, and surely it was no more wicked to do it in Brighton over lunch, than in Richmond over coffee? If some solution resulted from their meeting, then it was Charles who would benefit.

  ‘Ned?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What do you mean ‘‘all right’’?’

  ‘I will come to Brighton. You’re right – it’s not the end of the world, either geographically or in any other sense.’