by Rosie Thomas
‘Come in,’ Harriet invited, making an ironic sweep of her arm.
Even to her own accustomed eyes, the flat made an unhappy contrast with Robin’s house. The chairs were heaped with books and unread newspapers, and on the table in the window was a thicket of cups and plates and papers and letters. It occurred to Harriet that Robin was standing looking about him in rather the same way as she had done in Simon Archer’s kitchen. She noticed that the air in her room was cold and yet stuffy, and there was a distinct smell of cat.
‘They belong to the girl who owns the place,’ Harriet explained, surprised to find that she was embarrassed by the squalor. ‘They came as part of the rental package. Would you like some whisky?’ Like Simon, she thought she must have part of a bottle somewhere. Involuntarily, her eyes went to the original game, propped up against the mantelpiece.
‘Just some coffee,’ Robin said. He had been looking at it too.
Harriet went through to the kitchen. Robin followed her and leant against the door-frame to survey the further chaos. Harriet had had little time lately for cooking; there had been no time at all for clearing up afterwards. There was a smell of sour milk, probably the cats’, that reminded Harriet of the kitchen in Leo’s old flat. God damn Leo. She snatched up the cats’ bowls and washed them, then doled out food from the half-tin in the fridge. The cats yelped and subsided into noisy chewing. Harriet put the kettle on.
‘Do you choose to live like this?’ Robin asked from the doorway.
‘I don’t choose anything just now, beyond what I do for Peacocks,’ Harriet said angrily.
‘What happened to the rest of your life?’
Harriet knew what he meant, but she misunderstood deliberately.’
‘I have a perfectly satisfactory life.’ Her stiffness fended off any more of his questions.
They took their coffee into the living room. Harriet cleared a chair for Robin, but he went over to the boarded-up fireplace and stood looking at the piece of packing case. He touched the faded lettering, and then stood back again.
After a long moment he said, very quietly, ‘That makes me shiver.’
‘Yes.’
That was it, of course. They both knew it, neither of them spoke of it.
Robin sat down on the chair that Harriet cleared for him. He drank his coffee and one of the cats jumped on his lap and kneaded with its paws. It was a cheap picture of domesticity. They talked a little about the game, and Simon. Robin knew the story, of course. Landwiths had been careful to establish it at the beginning. Unwillingly, Harriet spoke of Shamshuipo and Simon’s survival.
Robin nodded, as if his opinion had been confirmed. Then, when he had drunk his coffee, he stood up. He let the cat go without regret, came to Harriet and put his hands on her shoulders.
‘And so what are you going to do?’
Harriet didn’t know if he was threatening or cajoling. She closed her eyes before she answered. ‘I’m going to change it. Give the game a new title. Repackage and relaunch.’ The scale of the job threatened to crush her. She opened her eyes again and looked towards the mantelpiece.
‘Good girl,’ Robin whispered.
‘What about the money?’
‘Readily forthcoming, as I told you. We’d have to take a further piece of the equity, say fourteen per cent. And, just as a formality, a floating chargé on the assets of the company.’
He glanced up, once more, at the piece of packing case.
‘Including the game itself.’
Harriet nodded slowly. She hadn’t expected that they would give her more funding for nothing. If that was what it would cost, then that was what she must pay. Robin leant towards her and kissed her hard. His mouth jarred against hers. It was a bite almost as much as it was a kiss. When his hands dropped from her shoulders Harriet put her fingers to her mouth as if to rub his imprint away. She was attracted to him, disturbingly so, but she was also faintly repelled. There was another side, then, to the golden boy.
‘Good-night,’ Robin said, as if nothing had happened. ‘I’ll see myself out.’
She listened to his footsteps as they clanged up the iron steps.
When she was sure that he had gone, she crossed the room and lifted Simon’s game down from its resting place. She studied the familiar lettering, trying to see it again for the first time.
It makes me shiver, Robin had said.
It was Simon’s story itself that would sell the game for Peacocks. Cindy and all the others like her would fasten on to the British officer who had fought to survive, through his game, in the particular hell of Shamshuipo. Harriet could already imagine what the Cindys would say and write.
The bright, bland Conundrum packaging would have to go. Instead, the box would be a sombre replica of what Harriet held in her hands. Even the clever, tricksy name would have to be changed. The game must have a Japanese name. Perhaps the unintelligible symbols she had so often stared at would themselves yield the name.
A thread of excitement twisted in Harriet. Now that the decision was made, now that she had committed it to Robin, she felt the power of what she could do with it. She wished now that he hadn’t gone, so that she could share the thrill of the planning with him. Before she put it back in its place, she studied the wooden rectangle for another moment.
Then, to the inanimate wood, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’
Nine
Simon had been ill. It had been his chest, as it usually was, and for several days he had felt unable to leave his bed except for brief expeditions to the kitchen, where he made messy meals that he didn’t want and often couldn’t eat. But when he woke up this morning he felt better and stronger, and so he got up and dressed in a collarless shirt and his warm trousers, and put his dressing gown on over the top of them. It was the end of June; although from the bedroom window Simon could see sunshine and flowers in his neighbours’ gardens, his own house still seemed to contain the chill of winter.
Or more probably, he thought, the cold was just in his bones. It was not particularly significant.
He went downstairs and made himself a cup of tea, and then he sat in the kitchen chair and listened absently to the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway. He lived so much with the silence of the house that it had become a companion, with different moods. Today’s was benign, and so the knocking at the front door, when it started, was doubly unwelcome.
Simon sat still and waited for it to stop. Sometimes people did come to the door, people he thought of as busybodies or do-gooders, and usually they gave up quite quickly and went away again. But this knocking was more than usually persistent, as well as loud and heavy. At last, with the half-hope that it might be the girl Harriet, Simon hauled himself out of his chair and shuffled down the passageway to the front door.
Standing on the step was a young man he had never seen before. He had a flat, bristly haircut that made him look aggressive, and he was wearing jeans and an anorak with some kind of logo or slogan on the sleeves and breast. Incongruously, it seemed to Simon, he was carrying a briefcase in his left hand. His right hand shot out to Simon and, when Simon didn’t take it, vibrated accusingly between them.
‘Hello there.’ The young man had a big, friendly smile. Perhaps he was an estate agent or a property developer, Simon guessed. He must get rid of him as quickly as possible.
‘Barry Buchan.’ Only when the young man saw that his name meant nothing to Simon did he elaborate, ‘From the Mail.’
The Midlands Mail was the popular local paper that served the whole urban area. Simon had at least heard of it, although he never read it.
‘I’m afraid you’re at the wrong house.’ He began to close the door, but Barry Buchan’s hip and shoulder were in the way.
‘I don’t think so.’ The intruder was still smiling. ‘You are Mr Simon Archer, aren’t you? Lieutenant Archer, as was, Royal Artillery?’
Surprise undermined Simon’s defences. He stood back from the door and a second later Barry was inside the house with hi
m. He rubbed the flat of his hand over the flat top of his head and then brushed invisible dust off the sleeves of his anorak to give the unshaken hand something useful to do before he put it back, where it clearly belonged, in the pocket of the jeans.
‘Great. Thanks very much. Sorry to turn up on spec like this, but you’re not in the phone book, are you?’
‘What do you want?’ Simon managed to say.
‘Just a chat, a bit of background, that kind of thing. It’s a great story, you know. It’ll make a wonderful feature, with the local angle. Shall we go through there, Simon?’ Barry nodded down the passage to the slightly brighter light in the kitchen.
Simon pulled his dressing gown closer around him, over his thundering chest, afraid of this ferret in his burrow. He knew that there were men like this outside, of course there were, but not here behind his defences.
‘A chat about what? There must be a mistake, there isn’t a story here.’ He felt, and sounded, weak and stupid.
Barry looked amazed. ‘Of course there is. This Meizu. It’s not the usual publicity guff. This is a real human story, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know anything about Meizu. I’ve never heard of it. It’s a mistake.’ But even as he said the word, faint memory and sharp apprehension stirred together. This ferret-boy was right and he was wrong. There might be a story. And he was afraid that part of it was some unseen connection between this visitor and Kath Peacock’s hungry daughter.
The newspaperman hustled Simon into his own kitchen, settled him into his chair, and took a notebook and papers out of his briefcase. From the sheaf of papers he selected some thick, creamy pages and passed them over to Simon. ‘There you go. Meizu. Craze of the year, if the PR’s to be believed. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but you are that PoW, are you not?’
Simon read. His premonition was fully founded.
The press release told him about Shamshuipo and the Japanese torturers, and the British officer who had clung to sanity by way of a numbers game. It also described the game’s forty-year hibernation, and rediscovery by ‘Peacocks’. This last was mentioned only lightly. Now, the piece concluded, the game had been rescued and launched so that everyone could enjoy its intricacy and simplicity. The board was a close replica of the prison-camp original, as a tribute to the bravery and ingenuity of that British officer. There were photographs of the game. The resemblance to the packing case end that Simon had given away was close enough.
Harriet Peacock had done a good job. Only not quite good enough. She had changed the officer’s name, but either through innocent oversight or a more likely wish to keep as enticingly close as possible to the real truth, she had given his actual rank and regiment. Only a handful of Simon’s fellow officers had survived Shamshuipo and the years that came after it. Harriet could hardly have known how very few they were.
It would have been worth the gamble of a few hours spent with regimental records to follow those men up. For an eager journalist, just such a keen young man, it would not have been a difficult task to find the right one. It didn’t matter whether it was Barry Buchan himself who had done it, or one of his contacts who had then traded the information to the local man.
It didn’t matter. He was here now, inside Simon’s redoubt. Simon studied the last words on the thick cream paper.
‘This is a true story. Meizu is the Japanese word for maze or labyrinth.’
Simon folded the paper neatly into its creases and tossed it back across the table to Barry Buchan.
‘True?’
What did ferrets do to their prey, Simon wondered, once it was caught?
There was no need, in any case, for him to answer. Barry was nodding in satisfaction. ‘Pulled a fast one on you, have they?’ He spoke with evident knowledge of a world of fast ones. He had opened his notebook.
Simon’s lips and tongue were dry, but he made himself say stiffly, ‘It’s quite legal. There’s nothing to tell beyond what you’ve already got there.’
Barry Buchan wouldn’t care. It was all story to him, the dirtier the better. It occurred to Simon that perhaps Harriet had done only too good a job. Perhaps she had made the veil deliberately thin so that young men like this could find him, search him out, just to sell more Meizu …
Simon stood up. ‘I’d like you to go now. I didn’t invite you here, nor did I give you permission to come into my house. If you won’t go, I shall have to call the police.’
‘Steady on.’ Barry was still grinning. ‘I can see it’s been a shock, and I’m sorry about that. Shall I put the kettle on for you, or something?’
Simon gripped the back of his chair. ‘Just go.’ Barry began to gather up his papers.
Simon pointed at Harriet’s press release. ‘Take that with you.’
To his great relief, the reporter really was going. His bulk went away down the hall, and then his voice called with cheery imperviousness from the front door, ‘Anything I can do, Simon. You know where I am.’
There was a rattle, and a decisive bang.
Barry walked down the path in the June sunshine, relieved to be out in the light and fresh air again. Some place, he thought. He felt sorry for the poor old bugger in there, in his dirty dressing gown. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t said much. He was the right man and Barry was the one who had found him, that was enough. He could write a good story about him sitting alone in that kitchen while Meizu rolled into the shops and out again, and made some fat cat fatter still. A touch of pathos, a touch of concern for our old folk, and a good war story. It would make a good Friday centre spread. Barry didn’t care either way about ‘Maizu’ – or whatever the bloody game was called. He just liked the story. He was sure the Express would like it too, he’d give them a call. He whistled as he climbed into his Golf, forgetting about his moment of sympathy for the poor old bugger. It had been worth the effort of tracking him down.
Simon was still at the kitchen table. His hands were shaking and his legs, and his neck felt too brittle to bear the weight of his head. He kept looking at the place where the cream pages had been lying. There was a piece of buttery paper there, there would be a semi-transparent grease stain on the last sheet folded in Barry Buchan’s briefcase. Those were not the only pages, of course. Simon could imagine just how publicity worked. The words would have been duplicated, Harriet’s cleverly unhyperbolic filleting of his life, and sent out to all kinds of people. Thousands of them. Simon could imagine the crisp piles of creamy pages, and the trim envelopes to be torn open …
He stood up, bumping against the chair. He swept the butter paper off the table and screwed it into a ball, then pushed out of sight anything else that Harriet’s pages might have touched. But then the space in the middle of the cluttered table stared up at him like a knowing eye. Panicked by the stare, Simon ran out into the passage. The face of the grandfather clock was another eye watching him. Now, when he turned, there seemed to be knowing eyes everywhere, in the dim corners, behind the door, even in the walls themselves.
Simon slid the bolts at the top and bottom of the front door, even though he knew it was too late. He went upstairs, the focus of all the eyes. In his bedroom he closed the curtains against the sunlight. He lay down on his bed and drew the blankets over himself, gritting his teeth as he did so.
‘Graham,’ Harriet said. ‘I think we’re going to do it.’
Graham Chandler was at his desk in his cubbyhole office. He had just finished talking to Jepson at Midland Plastics. Jepson could deliver a Meizu shipment in time to follow the first wave out of the shops. He was standing ready to put another into production as soon as it was needed. It had been hard work, remaking the whole package in a matter of weeks to meet Harriet’s deadlines, but it had been done. There was new artwork, new film, new boxes, and a game board that looked as much like splintered packing case wood as modern technology could make it. ‘Conundrum’ had become ‘Meizu’, and the market loved it.
Graham looked up at Harriet. Her eyes were shiny. Graham felt himself blushi
ng a little, as he always did when Harriet confronted him too directly.
‘I hope so. After all the work,’ he added, in his diffident manner.
Harriet came and perched on the edge of his desk. She was wearing leather trousers, and some kind of top that seemed to be all zips. Graham sat very still, and stared at the sheaf of papers that spilled out of Harriet’s hands. There were order print-outs, sales sheets, and photocopies of newspaper and magazine articles.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘look at all the editorial we’re getting. Daily Mail, Cosmo, Woman’s Own, Weekend, Good Housekeeping, just in this week. Listen to this one.’ She read to him. ‘“Enter the Labyrinth.” That’s what Meizu means, and once you’ve played this fascinating game you’ll know what it means too. But Meizu isn’t just another game for the Christmas market. There’s a touching story behind it. It was dreamt up by a British officer in a Japanese prisoner of war camp … mmm, mmm … playing his game literally kept him alive through his terrible ordeal. Forty years later the game was spotted by businesswoman Harriet Peacock, who snapped up the rights. Now Meizu is hotter than hot cakes, but the real identity of the officer is still a close-kept secret. I wonder what my old grandad invented when he was with the ARP?”’
Harriet laughed. ‘Awful, isn’t it? But it’s just what we want. “The game goes into the shops in August. And if you can’t wait until then, enter our fun family competition and you could win your own Meizu. We’ve got twenty games to give away.”
‘Graham, I tried so hard to get this kind of buzz going before, and no one was interested. Now we can’t keep up with it all.’
Karen put her head around the door. ‘Telephone. Radio Brighton.’ Karen had been unhappy at Stepping after Harriet had sold up. She had come to Peacocks to beg for a job, and Harriet had gladly taken her on in place of the clock-watching receptionist. Karen had taught herself word-processing in two and a half days.
‘Coming.’ Harriet stood up. She touched Graham’s shoulder. ‘Thanks for all you’ve done,’ she said seriously.
