The Playroom

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Katherine didn’t come either, though,’ Mary snapped. ‘Shows how sweet, how kind, doesn’t it?’ She had not meant to sound so waspish. Guilt and rejection hardened her.

  ‘I wouldn’t really expect her to come over here,’ said Sophie. ‘They’ll be having a party next week, I expect, for his birthday. They usually do. She’ll be busy, and anyway, she should rest, in her condition.’

  ‘What condition?’

  ‘Why, another baby of course, David thinks. That’s why I had to go today, not really because of the burglary. But then I got lost and then this kitten and then, oh, I don’t know, I came home. I’ll go tomorrow. They don’t answer the phone. Always engaged or always out. Busy, I suppose.’

  ‘Which indicates sound health all round.’ Mary was still sharp, but the beginning of a familiar worry was nagging. She was beset with visions she could not quite understand: Katherine, pale as a ghost in a restaurant, wanting to confess. Katherine in front of the depiction of adultery, blushing and sweating. A Katherine pregnant not quite equating with the same person rolling round with a lover on hot afternoons. Not the lover she knew, every inch the pragmatic Frenchman, he was, every single inch: careful with passion, but passionately careful. She knew all about him, and also how sick pregnancy was likely to make her sister. The worry grew.

  ‘Sound health?’ Sophie repeated. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ She bent to tickle the cat, which was entirely at home. ‘Something’s wrong in that house. Something terribly wrong.’

  ‘Oh, surely not . . . too much luxury . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sophie insisted, not without relish. ‘I know there is. David may be having a bad patch.’

  ‘Rubbish, I’m sure he’s fine: they’ve got plenty of money.’

  ‘I don’t mean that kind of patch. He has turns, you see. Locks himself up and broods. Oh not violent or anything, not really. The psychiatrist said it was all something to do with anxiety.’

  ‘Which psychiatrist?’ Mary almost shouted. The thought of psychiatrists made her ill. Sophie turned pale-blue eyes on her. The dislike in them was veiled by a vagueness only half deliberate. ‘Oh, long, long time ago. When he was a teenager and finally got Daddy sent to prison. Daddy stole all his things, so he locked Daddy up and when Daddy came out he went on the rampage. David didn’t hit him first of course, he never hits anyone first. But then,’ she added with apparent irrelevancy, ‘Daddy was very untidy. He’d always taken away everything David and I had and David didn’t like that. He was a bully, Daddy. I’m glad he’s dead.’ This was said with prim precision.

  ‘A long time ago,’ Mary echoed, letting Sophie hear the disbelief in her voice. ‘Nothing to do with the present. Katherine’s causing the trouble. I know she is, not David. Katherine always causes trouble. I can’t tell you how, but she does.’

  Sophie turned eyes back to the cat, hiding the impatience, privately wishing to be left alone with the newer and less demanding friend. She should have thought of a cat long ago. ‘Katherine never meant harm to anyone in her life,’ she said with finality. ‘Would you like some tea?’ The invitation was not enthusiastic.

  ‘No thank you. I must dash. Will you go again tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Unless they phone.’ She hid from Mary an expression of fear. Of the roads and the train and the confusion, as well as the reception she might have at the other end. Resolution was waning and Mary could not follow the undertones. ‘Certainly I shall. Or perhaps the day after. I’ll have to look after this baby creature won’t I? Why don’t you go?’

  Well, why not? The rain began as Mary tap-tapped home. Her steps were even and determined. Katherine had once told her she walked with the same-sized steps all the time as if trying to avoid the cracks in the pavement. Or trouble of the kind created by superstitions, the past and every colour of emotion. The steps were systematic but agitated. Maybe she had got everything wrong, but Mary knew she was never mistaken, not ever, and most of what she thought on the subject of her sister’s family was still subsumed in anger, licking round colder thought processes like a flame. Silly Sophie wanted Katherine; so. Dear David adored Katherine to distraction, as had, and did, Claud; so. David had a muddy past; so. Weren’t they all made for each other, so what. Mary stopped at a corner shop for food, comforting carbohydrate, tea cakes, biscuits, rubbishy company for the last of the afternoon. Thinking and munching butter and sweet things to clear the mind and add to the guilt. There was nowhere on Sunday to take tea: luxury should begin at home. She added to her purchases three bunches of half-dead flowers, the kind reserved for sale on the sabbath to people with more money than sense, but enough to alleviate the white of her unmarked walls. The white reminded her of duty, and all the institutions which had ever spelt security; she wanted to blot it out. She thought of Katherine in hospital, white walls. Another baby, well, well, well. Three for you and none for me: let Sophie help you: I shan’t.

  It was only later, after that strange phone call, that she thought of the best trick of all. No good keeping quiet and pretending she was not worried: worry about Katherine was an ingrained habit and telling herself she had no responsibility at all to prevent the silly little creature from mucking up her life and not contacting her mother-in-law, was a repetition which palled and was fading fast. There was a compromise in there somewhere, which would fulfil the duty and avoid all contact with a sister she could not bring herself to see. More than one compromise, but first things first. So she telephoned Susan Pearson Thorpe.

  Mary’s black telephone book was not quite comprehensive enough to contain the numbers of her sister’s neighbours, although it did include on the well-thumbed pages, so many of Katherine’s friends and every kind of professional contact under the sun, all the charities, plumbers and doctors active in central London. The name of Pearson Thorpe rang a bell, large person, mentioned by Katherine as the next-door neighbour where the children resorted every day, and there could not be so many Pearson Thorpes in the book. Mary rehearsed her inquiries, ‘I’m so sorry to bother you on a Sunday evening but I can’t raise my sister, would you happen to know if they’ve gone away?’ No, not raise my sister, sounded like something coming up out of a tomb. That thought was suddenly frightening, equally soon dismissed as nonsense, if only she could control the images in her mind instead of thinking like a child, thinking in colours and pictures as Katherine always had, crippled by imagination. There, she had found and dialled the number. She had even got halfway through the spiel in her authoritative voice before she sensed the hostility. Or the fact that the woman on the other end of the line was not quite following anything which was said.

  ‘K’thrine A’dale? Sister, who she? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Got you. Whatchyou phoning me for?’

  ‘Being a bit of nuisance, I’m afraid . . .’

  ‘Not a bit of it. Nobody ever calls me. Pity. Whatcha want, again? No, I don’t think they’re away. Who was it? Oh dear, sorry.’

  There was a muffled thump, as if someone, or something heavy had fallen to the ground. Mary held the phone away from her ear. There was a very loud clearing of the throat. ‘Whoopsy daisy,’ said the voice, slipping into a short giggle, curtailed by a hand across the mouth.

  ‘Perhaps Mr Pearson Thorpe could help,’ said Mary in her best voice of endless patience. The smothered giggle turned into a snort.

  ‘You betcha he could. He could help a lot. He’s gone off, though.’

  ‘Well anybody who might have seen my sister, really. I’m sorry to ask, but their phone doesn’t seem to work . . .’

  ‘Ah.’ There was the heavy breathing of laboured thinking. This woman is drunk, Mary thought: God help Katherine with her neighbours and what the hell is going on with the kids. ‘Tell you what,’ said the voice, gathering speed and clarity. ‘You wan’ Mrs Harr-is-on, not me. She always knows allll about nex’ door. All about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Nothing. She thinks a lot. I’ll get her. Now. Wait a minute. I couldn’t g
ive a toss about nex’ door. Nor a fart. Wait a minute . . .’

  By this means, with patience worn thinner than a thread, Mary came to speak on a Sunday evening to Mrs Harrison, total stranger, and they came to reassure one another. It was all very simple. Mrs Harrison poured forth into the ear of Mary Fox all the worries she had never succeeded in imparting to her employer, who would not listen. The worries had been incubated into a state of incoherence, and the television boomed in the background. She talked long and excitedly about not seeing the eldest child, Katherine’s first-born, in as many weeks as the child had years. She gabbled about the little boy, fine, oh yes perfectly fine, out with Daddy. Then she accelerated into children’s tales about a thinner version of little Jeanetta sitting in the garden, singing to herself, thereby giving, quite inadvertently, the impression, that this had been yesterday. Then there was news of a party the Allendales were having on Tuesday or was it Wednesday, all information spewed forth in a rush and an irritating accent. Mrs Pearson Thorpe would see everyone then, said Mrs Harrison. She would be able to check. Mary doubted Mrs Thorpe’s powers of observation in any context, and was aware that she had not been invited to any party. Lastly, there was something incomprehensible about a man coming to the door with a cloak which this Mrs Harrison had seen before.

  ‘Jeanetta loved to dress up,’ she explained.

  ‘Just like her mama,’ Mary added into a split-second silence.

  She was beginning to think the whole household was mad, regretting the phone call in earnest. Nothing she had heard was raising alarm bells too loud to ignore, but the woman would not stop, even when Mary started to pity her sister for living adjacent to a pair of harridans. The very word came to mind, and with it something which was expedient as well as a practical joke. She remembered Sophie’s dreadful new pet, was reminded of cats and charity workers, oh what a joke. In another frame of mind, less sharpened by rejection and less irritated, Mary would never have thought of what she considered now. She would never wilfully waste anyone’s time.

  ‘Listen, Mrs Harrison, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You say you’ve been round and they don’t let you take the child out, never mind. But if you’re seriously worried about the children, have you considered phoning the authorities?’

  ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t do that, really I couldn’t. What would people say? I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, I could. Better than any of us, wouldn’t it? Someone to check? Then we’d certainly know if there was anything up. I know just the chap to ask.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s not that bad . . .’ Mrs Harrison was backtracking, embarrassment oozing from every pore. ‘. . . I’m sure everything’s all right really. I’ve tried to get Mrs Pearson Thorpe to go but . . .’

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Mary smoothly. ‘Well, we’ll send the chap, shall we? Then we’ll know for certain sure and you won’t need to worry ever again.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Harrison, after a long pause to weigh up all the pros and cons. ‘Yes, that would be for the best. Oh, thank you.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Mary. ‘Today’s Sunday.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mrs Harrison. ‘I don’t like it, but I’ll sleep easy now.’

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ said Mary. The official, reassuring voice was all Mrs Harrison heard.

  The reassuring voice gave itself a little more to eat, marvelling that food was such a good, if temporary panacea. Laughing to itself for such a coup of an idea. Good old Child Action Volunteers, the perfect people, with John Mills the very perfect sort of pest to inflict on that perfect household. He would lean on a nest of tables and splinter the wood: he would mar the perfection: he would offend Katherine with his shambling presence and he would infuriate David with his persistence. And Mary would have done her duty, just in case there was anything really wrong. He was certainly best for the task; if there was anything wrong, he would find it. Had a reputation after all, as well as perfect, utterly reliable reports. A sweet combination for maximum effectiveness, and a very large element of revenge. Tomorrow would do. Sunday was a day of rest. It wasn’t as if, on the basis of all these flapping old women, there was any panic at all. Like Mrs Harrison, Mary slept easy.

  John Mills had almost forgotten what it was like to sleep by the time he recognized the presence of Monday morning. When he had returned home from a mild day’s work on the Saturday evening, to find his flat bereft of animal life, he had panicked before he went back out to look for them, pacing the streets, stopping people and asking questions. Many of those interrogated en route for Saturday night pleasures resented the interruption while bowing to his insistence since he was clever at making an ‘excuse me’ feel like a blow. ‘Excuse me, but have you seen a stray cat? Or one, or two, or three?’ his face illuminated with urgency and the twitch below the eye working overtime. Responses varied between, Yes, seventeen cats, Don’t think so, Pardon? and No, I fucking haven’t, piss off. The irritation would have been less if he had not always repeated his question, were they quite sure they had not seen stray cats, I mean, absolutely sure. He asked similar questions in shops and pubs like a man repeating a litany of prayers and in between said little else but oh dear, oh dear, or made strange noises towards the alleys between houses and even towards drains. With rare logic, he did not take his questions to the takeaway downstairs from the flat. They were busy and, besides, friendly enough to have returned his properties had they found them. ‘I don’t understand,’ he kept repeating on his return; ‘I just don’t understand. Why would anyone come in just for kittens? No stereo this time, no telly, just cats, I can’t work it out.’ Matilda had been silent and restless, jumping each time he spoke although he did not notice. ‘Other people might love them as much as you,’ was the last she had snapped, turning away. Because of his tossing, turning and mumbling, or so he presumed, she went to sleep on the sofa reserved for their rare guests, and early the following morning, went out. For the day, her note stated, not unkindly. Will be back. In the normal event, such a missive would have distressed him. As it was, he did not care for company.

  The thought gradually occurred that no one deliberate enough to steal a crate of kittens would be likely to leave them around in the locality for the owners to find at leisure. Whatever had been the purpose of so odd and tidy a piece of burglary, via roof or door, he knew not, he hoped the motives were benign. Visits to terrible estates had once forced him to witness cats being stoned: cats being coated with paraffin and . . . But by evening, he had persuaded such images out of his mind and made himself imagine the whole furry collection assembled elsewhere, in front of a fire, perhaps, a better home than this. Matilda’s silence on any subject was a matter of indifference. On Sunday, he slept better, still fitful; waking at dawn to curse himself for his failures and his own stupidity.

  For God’s sake, going round the houses and never looking at his own. The nether regions other than the roof formed areas he had never explored, go to it. At this bright suggestion, Matilda shot out of the flat two hours early for work, muttering something about errands, and he went downstairs. He was still heavy with grief, not optimistic for anything at all when he found the back door to the yard, not locked, resigned himself to nothing, whistling as he went out in pursuit of one, last chance. Oh, dear God, what God, there never was a God. Only a devil with an army.

  Such a pathetic amount of blood in that confined space amongst the weeds, plenty enough to indicate death as well as agony. Scratched on to the remains of two cardboard boxes moist from the rain which had fallen overnight, gore in spots dark against the broken concrete of the ground. In one corner, Kat, her long body described in one ugly arc defined by her dead fur, each limb reduced to bone by the wet. The legs were stretched, the teeth bared and her back broken in a sharp angle. By the bowl still full of water for an absent dog, John found one of the kittens, neck snapped and distended, the little abdomen punctured in one massive wound, and against one wall, amid drifting balls of fur, another corpse, curled peacefully but without the f
luffy tail he had often stroked. Half of a head; so little blood. He closed his eyes against the screaming, yowling, shrieking episode, the tornado of sight and sound which had made this carnage, heard and saw it all the same, driving his face against a cold brick wall to graze his skin. He moved slowly, edged dead Kat gently with the toe of his shoe before lifting her off the ground, imagined as he did so the sound of cracking bones. Then he was sick into the bowl belonging to the dog, and stood there, holding the wet bundle of fur, not crying, but howling like a beast, the blood on his own face not yet congealed.

  ‘Sorry, very sorry: he’s out at the moment . . .’ Oh shit where is he? When the indispensable man arrived for work, he was a whole hour later than expected. His steps up the stairs were audible, the same pace as an old man. When he opened the door and showed them his scratched face, grey but washed, no one noticed the difference and the phone began to ring.

  There was something Mrs Harrison loved about Mondays, any Mondays, but especially this Monday. Madam upstairs went to work for a start, didn’t she, so the world started going round again as per normal, thank you. The air was fresh, these silly rainfalls the signal for autumn and the winter she preferred with all those snug evenings with the Tee Vee and no need to pretend to be busy because the light was still there. And yes, Mr Pearson Thorpe was bringing Mark home today and no need to worry about anything else, not perfect, this status quo, but perfectly workable. She sat on the step with her cigarette and surveyed the street. Nice, until him next door came out with all the reminders of other anxieties and daft things said. Looking carefully, but keeping her pose studiedly casual, Mrs Harrison watched David Allendale coming down the steps, carrying Jeremy like the Crown Jewels in one arm, a pushchair in the other. Because she found it so difficult to forgive him for his response to her own visits to the same front door from which he emerged, Mrs Harrison did not emit any large hallos, or expect him to either talk or notice her presence, simply looked the other way while watching out of the corner of her eye. That boy was too big for a pushchair, make him walk, toughen him up a bit, could see dad’s point if they were going to a supermarket, all walking kids a bloody liability. Where were they going, never mind, probably shops, nowhere else on Monday. They trundled away uphill, the child chirping like a sparrow, pointing and twisting in his father’s arms. Oh for Christ’s sake look at them, why had she ever worried about the whole damned family? Your eyes, said husband Harrison, are bigger than your brain.