The Playroom

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘I hate it when you put her in there. Does she have to learn like this?’

  ‘Yes. Like this.’

  ‘I’ll put her to bed now,’ said Katherine, making for the playroom door.

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. She can stay in there. She won’t even be cold.’

  ‘No, David; no, please.’

  He shoved a brimming glass of wine in her direction across the table. ‘Drink this, darling, go on, you look pale.’ Katherine grasped the stem of the glass and drank it in one long draught the way she had seen men drink beer. The noises behind the playroom door diminished as if Jeanetta were drawing breath. ‘There, she’s fine,’ he said cheerfully, kneading Katherine’s tense shoulders. He put his arms round her neck and spoke into her ear. ‘Come to bed, darling, come on . . .’ She followed him upstairs.

  Mr and Mrs Harrison were watching television. Above the row, since Harrison in particular preferred the volume on maximum, Eileen Harrison could hear the faint sounds of perambulating footsteps above her head in the Pearsons’ kitchen. She looked knowingly towards Eric, but he was fixed on the sports programme which followed the news. Since there was a good piece of drama to follow, a nice, hospital soap, Mrs Harrison was willing to tolerate the sport and continue knitting a purple cardigan, a clever gift for her daughter-in-law, who would not be seen dead in any such colour but would have to wear it all the same, every time they visited. Good. Harrison got so excited about the cricket: she could never see why.

  ‘That blighter never could play. Will you look at that score, will you? Daft sod was in the pub instead of out training, should have seen him this afternoon, got wooden legs, he has. You can say what you like, but the only good cricketers we’ve got left are all darkies, every single one of ’em. Bloody cripples, the rest.’

  A shining light was working on Mrs Harrison’s brain, illuminating a series of ideas. She had been slightly worried by something about him ever since she had seen him so active on the step when they all came home. Being bored by the cardigan and bored by the news made her more than usually astute. She put down her knitting, turned on him. He quailed.

  ‘Eric, you were lying, you were bloody well lying, weren’t you? Oh don’t bother to deny it, I know you were. When you said this afternoon about how you only went downstairs for some water for the step, so that drunk, that beggar, couldn’t have done more than admire the paintwork on the door frame before you found him . . . No time to have got in, you said. Oh I should have known. Where was the bucket of water, then? I know what you were doing, you were down here while I was out with all the others. Leaving the front door open, watching telly, you were, this bloody cricket, that’s exactly what you were doing, tell me, tell me. Or I’ll ask young Mark in the morning. You’ll have told him what he missed.’

  He shrank further back on the worn moquette of the sofa. ‘Wasn’t long,’ he said, ‘not long at all. Just a few minutes, only a couple, not long. Three balls . . .’

  ‘You what? Don’t you be rude,’ she shrieked.

  ‘I mean, like I said, just a few minutes. Not much good at that,’ he added.

  She settled back, knowing truth when she saw it.

  ‘Right. Just a few minutes? Long enough for him to go upstairs and downstairs, he could have murdered you. Or put a bomb in the lavatory.’

  ‘Why would he want to do that?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know, I really don’t. But he could have pinched something.’

  Harrison was angry now, as angry as he knew how, which was not particularly furious. He had always found something to distract himself before anything as disturbing had a chance to set in. ‘Well so what if he has? Taken something? Didn’t look like it. I did check.’

  ‘If he’s stole anything, my man, this job’s on the line. And I don’t know about you, but I like it here, I even like her, really. But she won’t let past anything as sloppy as you, nor anyone getting into her bloody house while you’re cleaning the step. She,’ gesturing her head to the footsteps upstairs, ‘couldn’t give a tinker’s curse about the step. But she will bloody care about something valuable. Even in her state.’

  Harrison settled further back. The dramatic music of the hospital drama began to play and Mrs Harrison’s eyes went to the screen, began to glaze over, no longer looking at him in accusation.

  ‘Well,’ she said comfortably, ‘if he did take anything, I dare say we’ll be able to find another reason. About how it went, whatever it is. Or was. You talk to Mark in the morning. No reason for him to bother his mother with anything about a little old beggar. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ Harrison said. His eyes began to close.

  ‘We had enough people in the house today without mentioning vagrants, right?’ she persisted.

  ‘Right.’ His eyes began to close.

  CHAPTER 13

  A standing prick has no conscience . . . Who said that, I don’t know and don’t care; some chap in the Navy with Daddy, but I do think it’s frightfully funny, ha ha ha. Daddy had another one too, meaning a fellow who’s really made a hash. What was it he’d say? ‘That fellow’s really put his cock in the custard this time.’ I like that, I really do; Daddy’s vulgar phrasebook surfacing on the lips of deserted daughter like some gunk coming up with the tide. Well, the two phrases certainly apply to dear Sebastian, who has clearly put his great guilty organ in the porridge. He can go flashing on the beach; I doubt they’ll all fall back in amazement. Mother always said I should never have married him. Oh, I’ve just thought of another. ‘All conscience is soluble in alcohol.’ So, a standing prick has none – it is soluble in alcohol. What is it? How about that for a question in a family quiz show? Speaking of which, of alcohol, do you know what, I think I’ll have another drink. Just a large one, steady on the rocks.

  Harrison looked at me oddly the other day when I came home from work and said, Do be a darling and go to the off-licence for me. Silly old bugger can keep his opinions to himself: what does he think I wanted it for, bathing? Only needed a snort or two and there’s nothing more natural than that, especially now. Not that I’m unduly upset, of course: for God’s sake, this isn’t the end of the world and everything’s thoroughly under control. I’m not a Pearson for nothing, you know. Tough stuff, us lot. Once you’ve bullied your way through a couple of wars with a bit of rape and pillage in between, getting left in the domestic lurch is nothing more than a little local difficulty. After you get used to the idea.

  I’ve been to see him of course. We met for a drink after work, his suggestion. I’d phoned him once and said, You blithering idiot, what the hell’s this about, don’t be such a silly arse, which met with a pained response his end. Pained, who does he think he is to be pained, sneaking off like a thief with a note of apology, sorry I took the family silver but I might be back for the rest? Not the only thief around here either, but I’ll come on to that. ‘Listen, Susan,’ he said in his most pompous voice, ‘I’m not meaning to leave the children . . .’ ‘Only me,’ I snap back. Oh no, no: in his language, leaving home is not the same thing as abandonment, must have read his dictionary upside down or maybe has illogical thoughts when he’s jumping up and down on top of whatever floozie he’s run off with. There is one of course: I have her taped in my mind, small, slim, blonde and . . . Another drink, thank you.

  I mustn’t bang on about him; he’s only a man and they’ve always struck me as congenitally stupid, what little brain normally resident in their trousers. Anyway, we met in a City wine bar, somewhere near Bank where all the wine bars look the same to me, subterranean, authentic sawdust on the floor, must be hell to sweep, old-fashioned, freshly faded lettering on the barrels to make it look as if they still serve port by the pint; the whole place deliberately gloomy to hide all the ghastly assignations between secretaries and middle-aged men: that phrase about conscience being soluble ought to be in lights over the door. Of course I have no conscience at all: why should I? Sebastian’s to blame for everything, but all I can say is when I saw him sitting
at a table by himself it was I who felt guilty, which made me crosser than ever. Men look so pathetic sitting alone: I remembered him, sorry, not him, someone else, sitting on that park bench like the end of a sad play. Then I remembered what the silly bugger was up to, mid-life crisis, imagined his thing practically sticking out of his pocket all points north, south or east. (Reminds me of another joke, you know the one. Man goes to cinema with pet duck down trousers since they won’t let him in with the thing on a lead. Duck gets restless, which severely disturbs girl in next seat, who complains to blasé boyfriend on other side about how the gent on her left is exposing himself to her. Don’t worry, says blasé boyfriend. They’re all the same. No they’re not, she says: this one’s eating my crisps . . . I knew you’d like it, ha, ha, ha.)

  But he did look sad, Sebastian, all contrived of course. He asked about Mark, wanted to come and see them. Well you either live with us or not, I said: you want to come back as a visitor, not likely: you should have thought of that before you left.

  I did, he said: I thought very carefully; I almost went mad, thinking.

  The place was beginning to get noisier: echoed yaw-yaws from City types, cockney accents and bellowed intimacies, whoever would imagine a romantic tryst down here without the world knowing the colour of your underwear. So dear Sebastian was explaining himself in either stage whispers or shouts, leaning across the table towards me while I leant back to make it more difficult. Things hadn’t been right between us for ages, he was saying. The house was bare, we never spent time together; no affection, no comfort, you don’t even notice my presence provided you get driven down to the country every weekend to count cattle or play on a calculator: I thought you’d hardly notice if I left, no difference. There’s one difference, like less laundry, I snapped. You never do laundry, he said: you never do anything as if you don’t really belong, even with the kids: the whole domestic scene bores you rigid. We’ve all the money we need and as you well know, you far more of the stuff than me, but all you do is work all the time, and snap, and drink and push me away. Only thing has animated you in weeks, months even, was all that gossip about David Allendale. The house is cold: I’m superfluous with you. I worked longer and longer because there was nothing for me at home.

  Well if that didn’t beat everything. All true, all that stuff we debated long ago in school before I cut domestic science out of the curriculum in deference to economics on a wider scale: all true about how all man wants of woman is creature comforts, slippers before the fire and a wee wifie wearing transparent pinny when he comes home after hunting, loving hands to press his loincloth: I wouldn’t have believed it. Why didn’t you marry a bimbo? I never married you to be a housekeeper, we pay one of those, I yelled at Sebastian above the wine-bar din. I know, I know, he said, looking round, a trifle embarrassed, but I did want a woman on the other side of a brain, old girl. And I do need to be noticed. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes.

  All right then, I said: Less of this rubbish. Who is she?

  There has to be someone, doesn’t there? Always is, men as self-sufficient as babies. Always someone, some frightful little cow aged about twelve, who understands. I once told Seb (I bet she calls him Sebby) another joke. The one about the Italian in the surgery, saying Doctor, Doctor, there’s something wrong with my wife. What’s wrong with your wife, she’s a nuclear physicist? Yes, but she don’t cook my pasta . . . Sebastian hadn’t laughed then: he wasn’t laughing now. What did I mean, She, he asked, there isn’t a She; I just needed time to think . . .

  ‘Oh, fuck off!’ My voice fell into one of those sudden silences, a sort of universal lull which falls on a crowd of drinkers as if they’d all raised their glasses at the same time. ‘Who is she?’ I hissed at him, taking his glass and draining it back. He looked at my hand, hopelessly, then at my mouth, didn’t speak. Then went for another bottle of wine.

  Oh God. Of course there’s a bloody she. OK, down the hatch, must get another bottle, sneak it in in the briefcase. The Harrisons are all eyes and ears, but I decided from the beginning to say absolutely nothing, not to my parents, his father, the children, or the bloody housekeepers. Having my husband cheat on me is no one else’s business: fob-off stories such as Daddy’s had to rush off on business will have to do for now: he can explain his own dilemma to whoever he wants, including his son, I’m not going to do it. There is a fiction abroad that he has some crisis at work, may be true for all I know, but that will do very well. Everything’s perfectly fine; just a little local difficulty. Meantime I shall quell the already quiet libido with a little more gin and address a few more pressing problems.

  Such as, I seem to be losing things. Don’t know why, this evening, for lack of anything better to do (so much daylight: I do wish it would get dark sooner and then I could just go to bed), I started to resume going through things, something I began last night, a sort of inventory if you like. When I started yesterday, back from the sodding wine bar, I was somehow moved to take a rain-check on all those things about me which are durable. Such as jewellery, for instance, diamonds being a girl’s best friend and all that. Yesterday I fished out the shoebox in which various items have always resided, got fed up with the whole idea and shoved it in the study on the desk on my way downstairs to greet Harrison en route back with the booze. Either yesterday or the day before, can’t recall, doesn’t matter. Funny how I used to use all the earrings, such a palaver, turning them all out and never finding one to match the other, and when I could never find a damn thing to match the nicest necklace, I gave up trying. My father, good old Daddy, gave me the necklace when I married, a little thing to weigh down my neck with impending responsibilities. Remember, darling, he said:You can always come home if it doesn’t work out, but he must have lied since he and Mummy would be perfectly appalled if I did that now. I suppose all promises have a shelf-life, like about two minutes; odd how we keep on making them all the same. But anyway, about the necklace which graced my throat to quite a few dances until I discovered quite how much it had cost, at which point I kept it in the bank for a bit, then after one more outing, couldn’t be bothered, and gravitation to the shoebox occurred along with everything else. There it has lain for about a decade, and now lies there no longer.

  Someone once told me that alcohol makes the memory go: I have to concede an element of accuracy in this, but I never forget things, or the price of them, or whether, on some super-efficient day, I took them back to the bank or not. The shoebox was overturned on the desk where I had left it and that bloody necklace was gone, nothing else, just the necklace. Takes a little gin to make me focus, but I’m focused now. What time is it? I couldn’t give a damn about the loss, but I want to know who. Who is screwing my Sebby husband and who has got my necklace? If they are one and the same I shall sever her head: she can have the one, but not the other.

  ‘Harrison!’ A little yell down the stairwell. Whoops. Silly me, the man’s at the door, acting butler with ill grace, forgetting he doesn’t have working hours as such, supposed to be on guard, here, twenty-four hours a day or he’s out on his bloody ear. ‘Harrison!’ What’s he doing at the front door, dammit, I want him here. Materializing like a genie, the sort of servant you’d have in a Hammer horror film, murmuring, Mr Allendale to see you, Mrs Pearson: Shall I bring him up or will you come down? As if he was going to yank the body upstairs on a pulley.

  Up, not down: let the others use their legs. I pushed a cushion over the shoebox with insufficient time to wonder what all this was in aid of, callers in this eccentric house to enliven my endless evenings. Especially some visitor flown hence from the planet of Happy Marriage to look at me through a periscope.

  But I still liked David Allendale, as I said, at least he’s a decent volume of man, and when he called on this errand, I might well have told him all about the state of affairs in our house because the ache to tell had grown and grown, along with the shameful knowledge that the act of telling could make me collapse. Oddly, with a lack of women friends, I did thin
k of Katherine as the one to tell; I remembered her kindness: she would not have criticized. But David’s visit was not social. He was full of his own purposes, nothing to do with me, eyes went straight through me again to the messages he wanted to bring.

  ‘How are you, Susan? You look well.’ The liar.

  ‘Sebastian in?’ The question was loaded.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Ah well, doesn’t matter; you I wanted to see, but I’m sorry, this is all a bit difficult . . . Don’t quite know how to put . . .’

  Really, David, not like you to beat about the bush, not even for the thirty seconds’ beating taken so far. I asked if there was a problem, aware of the highness of my voice, more falsetto as a foil to the mess of my appearance, my pale face in a room which is horribly stuffy. David has a permanent tan, which is a mystery to me; one of those faces turned to the sun and immediately kissed.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop the arrangements with the Harrisons and the children. Katherine’s job has come to a rather sudden end, you see, the shop where she works closing down, but she’ll still do some work from home, importing things, she thinks. Which means she can spend more time with the children and we can’t have them coming here on a part-time basis, one day here, one day with us, far too disruptive. So we thought it best to call it off completely. There’s also the sad fact that my boy is allergic to your dog.’

  Patsy Labrador was in the room, her great heavy head raised briefly from floor level at the mention of herself, an uncanny habit revealed before anyone even mentions her name. She did not get up in greeting for David Allendale, a strange fact suddenly apparent to me in one of the few reactions sharpened by the evening’s gin consumption, me realizing idly at the same time how she never goes near him in the street, an indifference quite at odds with her character. Anyway, he smiled at dog to show no offence and she shuffled closer to me, one ear cocked. ‘So you want to take the children back home,’ said I, never fast on the uptake. Wanting to offer him a drink since I needed one myself but knowing the tonic was downstairs, gin itself on the desk, very obvious to all. He was sitting uncomfortably on the shoebox, which he moved to one side without examination, his eye flicking over the mess of the room, flicking back to me with his warm smile, the one which unhinges me somewhat, far too well mannered to comment on the manners of my dog. He is so desperately charming when he tries; I could feel in myself the dying of resentment.