The Playroom

by Frances Fyfield

  In the confidence of Monday morning, another idea occurred amid the sunshine and the everything all right with the world sensations. Mrs Harrison suffered one last stab of guilt which spurred her into action. She checked that the key to the house was in her pocket, clambered down the steps, minced up the street while throwing away the fag and went up the steps to the Allendales, all of this done with a bit of puff and a rhyme itching inside her head from Samantha’s repetition of this morning. Bugger rhymes: sometimes she wished she knew fewer, but could never resist the singing. Nothing else to say, Harrison said: you never got out of the nursery. How did it go, easy.

  Miss Polly had a dolly which was sick,

  sick, sick, She sent for the doctor to come quick, quick, quick;

  The doctor came with his bag and his hat

  And knocked on the door with a rat-a-tat-tat.

  ‘Tick, tick, tick,’ said Samantha.

  No, no, Mrs Harrison had scolded, wrong bits of words, thinking like this while she knocked at the door with a rat-a-tat-a-tat, ignoring the brilliant polish of the bell. She waited for a response, wishing she had not thrown away the cigarette half done, slightly nervous in case the master should return all of a sudden and find her there. There was a lengthy delay before the door was opened, slowly and far from wide like you would if you intended a welcome. In the small space through which Mrs Harrison peered, her own face obscured by the sun behind her but nevertheless transfixed in an artificial grin, Mrs Harrison saw Katherine. Even at 10.00 a.m. in her own home, hair brushed, pressed camel slacks in cool gabardine, a white blouse and a tiny row of pearls soothing the neck. None of these accoutrements prevented Mrs Harrison from noticing that the other was extremely pale and apparently thinner than ever, but then again, clothes were terribly deceptive. Nothing worth any kind of remark.

  ‘Hallo, Mrs Allendale. Lovely morning. How are you? Listen, I was just wondering: I was going to be taking Samantha up the park, you know, to the swings . . . Shall we take Jeanetta too? Might give you a break if you want. Lovely day,’ she repeated.

  Katherine opened the door a trifle wider, looked anxiously up the street in the direction her husband had taken, took a step back. She seemed to struggle for composure, put her hand over her mouth and coughed painfully, then straightened her narrow spine and smiled.

  ‘Excuse me, got a cough.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ clucked Mrs Harrison automatically. ‘Nasty.’

  ‘Both of us, actually,’ Katherine continued. ‘Jenny and me. Flu or something, but she can’t come to the park, Mrs Harrison. She’s gone off, you see, to stay with her granny. You’ve met Granny, I’m sure.’

  ‘Can’t say I did,’ Mrs Harrison replied.

  ‘Oh, I thought you must have done.’ Katherine thrust a strand of hair behind one ear. ‘She lives out of town, in the country. Jeanetta loves it there, she gets so spoiled, she won’t want to come back. They eat nothing but biscuits.’ Both of them stood there smiling at one another.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ said Mrs Harrison. ‘Very nice for them, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Katherine. ‘It is, actually. I miss her.’

  ‘Well, yes. I expect you do. Nice, though, the peace and all that.’

  ‘Yes, very nice. Ever so nice.’

  There were a few other words about days being lovely before Mrs Harrison, still missing the cigarette, scurried home. Oh dear, oh dear, how silly she had been, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth in one great scolding of herself; I don’t know, I really don’t.

  Embarrassing, all of it, really. ‘’S all right,’ she yelled to Harrison as she came indoors, ‘everything all right,’ as if he had even asked to know. No response, which made her crosser. Everything all right and every bugger should need to know. What a fool. She wished she had found the sense to take the number of that sister woman, whose voice had been so bossy, that one, last night, how stupid not to take down something like they always did on the Tee Vee, in offices. Then she could have called her back before the woman phoned her tomorrow like she promised, told her not to bother with whatever it was she was about to bother with. No one should worry at all, nor should they. All that stuff we watch, she said to Harrison, makes us think too much; we imagine things. What things? Things which bump in the night.

  The front door closed behind him. Katherine did not ask where he had been, what constitutional he had taken with Jeremy by his side like a guardian angel, the one to the other. When he arrived in the kitchen, she was standing at the business end with her hands in the kitchen sink, and as he breezed into the room with arms full of food shopping, he did not cease to smile when he saw the direction of her gaze. Placed his packages on the table and came across to her side for one, brief hug. She did not respond.

  ‘Mrs Harrison came,’ she said dully. ‘I told her you-know-who had gone to stay with her granny. Like you told me.’ Without comment, both had ceased to mention the name which had dropped entirely from any conversation.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said cheerfully. ‘So she has. Having a great time.’

  ‘But it isn’t right. You know exactly where she is. Here. You lied, David.’ She pointed with one trembling arm in the direction of the silent playroom door. He placed his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘Katherine, my sweet, be sensible. Why don’t you change your clothes and go out for a while, hey? The gym? Shopping? Nothing too strong, darling:You’re not so well. Plenty pocket money, big treat. Lovely outfit for you to collect. For tomorrow night. My birthday present to you.’

  Katherine stared, the eyes in the middle distance, a puzzlement crease developing over her forehead.

  ‘But she isn’t staying with Granny. She’s there, you-know-who, behind that door. Not with Sophie. We should get her out. Why doesn’t Sophie ever phone any more? She never phones like she used to phone, does she, David?’

  His voice sank to a level she could perceive as dangerous. His hands were full of warning.

  ‘Katherine, listen. There’d be so much trouble if you let her out. Prison and everything, I promise you. No one would recognize her. You’d be locked up, like I told you, how many times?’ Katherine shrank back, hugging her arms to her chest and whispered,

  ‘Did you look today?’

  There was very slight hesitation. ‘Yes. No, of course not. Why would I do that? How silly you are. It’s very simple. You know very well she’s gone to stay with Sophie. Granny. Repeat that after me. Then go out and say it again, only louder. Go on, say it now. So I can hear you.’

  ‘She’s gone to stay with her granny. She’s gone to stay with her granny. She’s gone to stay with her granny.’

  ‘Good, good girl. Very good girl. Now don’t forget collecting that dress. I’m going to start with the stuff for tomorrow evening. You could always buy me something for my birthday. I shall make myself a cake, with candles.’ He beamed on her, his face containing all the innocent pleasure of a schoolboy while her face was held in the spotlight of his smile.

  ‘Will you give her some?’ The smile faded.

  ‘I can’t, Katherine, you know I can’t. Say it again, what I told you.’

  She tussled with memory and then her brow cleared. She raised her hands as if to conduct an orchestra, waved them level with her shoulders in the effort to repeat, carefully controlling the words.

  ‘I know, I know, I know. Now I know. She’s gone to stay with Granny.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Absolutely right. Now we all know. You’re a good baby and I love you to pieces. Who’s a good little girl then?’

  ‘I am. She’s gone to stay with Granny.’

  He tapped the underneath of her chin lightly and playfully. ‘Very good girl. Look, I’ve bought us sweeties . . .’

  CHAPTER 19

  Glory, glory, alleluia. Nothing ever stays the same. Because I thought this was not the case, I thought there was nowhere else to go but down and anyway, looking up hurt the head more than somewhat. I’m so sorry, though,
about that poor woman with the officious voice who phoned last night. Oh, dear, I have always been rude, abrupt and indifferent, but slopping drink and words down the phone in equal proportions excelled most other efforts in that line. Not a matter for self-congratulation. Nothing about me worthy of praise: in vino veritas, a slug, a worm, a nasty piece of goods. I was stoking up and well lit up, preparing for another onslaught on another week, another bit of my life which looked set to slip away and I wanted Sebastian so much the whole of me screamed. The thought of his returning on the Monday evening, saying his goodbyes, agreeing perhaps, for the sake of form and my fallen face, to come to the neighbours’ party with me, was all too much. So I practically took the gin through a straw. Then I fell over. When I woke up, I wanted to die.

  Monday morning, dawn, was thus the very end of the world. There was rain in the air, better than all the heat which created the wet, but dark rain, an unspoken storm making the sky bleak and I could not believe it was seven in the morning and cold as ice. There is a tautness to the face which comes from drink. In a way, it flatters my looks, smooths out the skin suffused from all that fluid, the same plumping out of a baby in tears, soft, flushed skin and the true state of health only showing in the pink whites of the eyes, as if one had swum in chlorine for half the night. All I had to do was reconstruct the visage with all those expensive cosmetics bought in one optimistic day, stagger to work via the well-known route, blind as a bat. Despite the investment of my life in the whole business of work, My career, My office, My everything, bolstered by the loyalty of clients as abrasive as me, I am well aware that my sacking is on the agenda. I should have been aware far sooner than this, having sacked others for lesser crimes than indifference and pink, babyish, early morning faces. I have sacked them for devotion to their families, God help me: work and selfishness came first, emotional impoverishment or the quality of life not my concern. It is now. We old soaks, you see, need to have an element of insight forced upon us and we resist to the last ditch. I do not think I have noticed a single thing about the life of anyone around me for months, possibly years, but, as I said, God is good when he is not a bastard: things change.

  Sitting in the office, doing nothing but nursing the head, I could hear noises off, like a whispering behind scenes in a play which is going wrong. Regular whispering: just like home: Mrs Harrison, Mr Harrison, Samantha, Mark, chuntering behind the door, saying, ‘Shall we go in?’ Sebastian, too, saying out of earshot, Shall I go home: will she talk to me this evening, no, better to stay: there will be no food, no comfort, no nothing at home, and could I ever make love to her any other time but early morning when she does not even notice . . .? I am so used to whispers behind my back, whisperings reminiscent of some hated head prefect at school, talked about from a good distance in case the bully should hear. I should have listened to the whispers, not merely shouted back, but I’ve started now. Perhaps I can learn a little sensitivity after all.

  Mark did it, seven-year-old Mark, that child of charm brought up mainly by others. They went off to the sea, my husband, whom everybody loves and I had ceased to notice, and Mark, joyous son, to look at waves and do manly things like play pin-ball machines in arcades and have fun. Consume fish and chips like starving creatures and make entertainments together, I don’t know what, I didn’t ask. But Mark fell over some spike in the sand, and cut open the soft calf of his leg, first thing Monday morning, I gather. That was what the whisperings in the office were about, should we tell her he phoned before she got in here? With a garbled story about a little boy, oh so small (all those little things in a suitcase), hurt badly, Mrs Pearson Thorpe, don’t know how bad. Your husband phoned from hospital. They think they’ll be coming home in the afternoon. Don’t worry.

  Worry? Not for a minute. All these defences going into overdrive, me being brisk and saying, Well what about that, silly little sod, what’d he do that for, and where did you say they were? Don’t rightly know, to be precise, they said: somewhere on some coast, coming back later. How badly hurt? Don’t know either: can’t be so bad or they’d keep him in hospital, wouldn’t they? But he’s broke his leg, as well as cut it, your husband said don’t fret, kids is strong and doctors know what to do. Knowing as I do the level of sheer incompetence in all worlds including my own, I doubted all the time who would know what, but I never doubted Sebastian acting for the best. Apart from being such an incompetent ass, such a fool, to let this happen in the first place, I at least understood complete relief about the company my son kept while hurting himself. Sebastian is built to ensure survival. I made my excuses, went home, making myself slow down.

  I was only going home to wait, it was better not to hurry. Coming down the street as I was coming up, I ran into Katherine Allendale. Running was not quite the word, since I was running, she, I seem to recall, jerking from one paving stone to the next, carrying a carrier bag, don’t know why I could bear to stop. Memories of her sister on the phone the night before, whatever that was about, memories of a number of things, including my lost qualities of politeness, made me hesitate enough to speak. How’s things, Katherine? I remembered children, I thought of nothing but children, and how were hers, not wanting to know, but for once, wanting to ask. She said it three times if she said it once; everything fine, do you know, Jeanetta has gone to stay with her granny. Yes, I heard you, I said, how nice for them both. Yes it is, actually, she answered. And where are you going? Me, driven by the same politeness, trying to postpone the news from home. I’m going to the gym, she said. I looked at her, forgetting she was a thief, my rival, my glamorous and pathetic neighbour with the husband I once fancied and the house Sebastian coveted and it crossed my mind she might be a bit mad. Taking that insect figure to that dreadful gymnasium for further refinement. See you tomorrow, she said. What, I said. David’s birthday, she said. Dinner. I did not say, Oh no; I simply wanted to say it.

  Everything changes. We had all enjoyed health, my family, never thought of health as something one actually enjoyed, simply a condition of life which nothing ever seemed to affect, along with money, property and all that, an automatic assumption of continuance. Our children, like my parents’ children, never suffered any accident bar scratches and all this had kept me in a state of innocence, helped me to take it all for granted. So when I sat in the study, waiting the return of the wounded, I admired the insouciance of my soldier father, wished I had seen blood and been able to say, rubbish, only a cut and a boy’s a boy. I phoned every hospital on the east coast roughly in the area where I knew they had gone before I drew blanks on five and stopped. No one had said where they were, or I had not listened. I remembered how no one ever tells me the truth. Perhaps they had been trying to avoid telling me the boy was dead.

  ‘Dead: I do hope he isn’t dead,’ such a politely expressed thought crashing into the light like a train out of a tunnel, huge and incapable of being shoved back. So all of a sudden I was winded, had to sit down, fighting back nausea even though I couldn’t sit, made little running forays into all corners of the room, a headless chicken skittering backwards. Not the ague of drink but the blow to the solar plexus, that sudden vision of his never again being there, nothing more terrible to contemplate than his absence and I cannot begin to describe the horror of this. I may have learned words for feelings while learning a whole new range of the feelings themselves in the few weeks before this, but never enough words to describe these sensations. No Mark: never to see him again, hear him, no child in that seat, no small man espied for ever in the corner of my eye, no backdrop to existence. But you scarcely saw him, I told myself: you gave birth crossly and put him to bed, but it does not follow that mothers as indifferent as I could fail to panic at the prospect of such loss. Late realization of love, call it what you will, but how any woman, even a monster, suffers such a death and survives I do not know. I thought of TV news, children lost in fires or kidnapped, all of this stuff dismissed by me as parental carelessness, and I wanted to weep.

  To forestall weeping, I ca
lled Mrs Harrison, gabbled the news. Gabble was right, a turkey rather than a chicken. ‘Hush,’ she said, ‘hush now, don’t fret. Nothing to worry . . .’ calmer than I but still unable to finish words and twisting her hands in an effort to keep them still. I want to scream, I told her: I just want to scream. Why doesn’t Sebastian phone? ‘I know, I know,’ she murmured, then brightened. ‘I know why he doesn’t phone,’ she said. ‘It’s ’cos they’re driving home.’

  This vision worked, I don’t know why, simply the thought that you can’t drive and telephone at the same time without one of those bloody machines in the car. ‘They went all the way to Norfolk,’ Mrs Harrison said. ‘I remember, it’s a long way, Norfolk. I went there once when I was younger.’ She laughed nervously at the memory of the distance and probably something else. ‘Oh, yes, a very long drive.’ Then she consoled herself cunningly with action, squared her jaw and offered me the same panacea, clever by instinct.

  ‘Listen, Mrs Pearson, there’s things to do. Being as they are on their way home . . .’ she stressed the certainty of this, ‘. . . I’ve got to do the rooms. Harrison left it all to the last minute, didn’t he? All spick and span, we want to be, don’t we now?’ Her nose wrinkled in distaste as her eyes travelled round my study. ‘I left Mark’s as was, better clear it since he’s not so well’ (another, clever dismissal of the seriousness). ‘. . . But you could do in here, if you liked.’ The old diffidence returning, ’. . . Oh, and you could keep Samantha with you, leaves my hands free.’ In quiet acceptance of her hands being more effective and therefore more important, I took my orders, obeyed without question.