by Barrie Shore
The lift stops with a groaning jerk. The suitcase lurches forward and back, the teddy bear topples over and falls to the floor, where he lies on his back, gazing at the ceiling in a resigned sort of way, impelling Jack to postpone further analysis of Eva’s anger and the Great Man’s betrayal in favour of bear’s predicament. He sits with a grunt on the penultimate stair, bends to the rescue, straightens up, considers getting up again, abandons the thought, for the moment at least, and sits the teddy bear on his knee.
‘Heigh-ho,’ says Jack. ‘What’s it all about, eh? You tell me that.’
The teddy bear’s eyes are buttony blank, he’s lived in a suitcase for a thousand years, his fur is decrepit and eaten by moth, he could do with a bath and something to eat, a spoonful of honey would go down a treat. I’m a teddy bear, he says, don’t ask me. Just tell me where the honey jar is.
And so they sit at the bottom of the stairs, an old man and a teddy bear, pondering the imponderability of life.
T. Bear dreams of honey. An abundance of it in jars and pots, hidden in hives, oozing from complicated nests under roots of trees. He dreams of the beauty of honey, of its languorous dripping from a slippery spoon; of its gritty thickness as it slowly sets; the deliciously floral scent that tickles his nostrils. And oh, he thinks, in a fit of longing almost too great to bear, oh, say is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? And Quiet kind? Di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dee, and is there honey still for tea?
Jack dreams too. A half sort of dream in which, coincidentally (or possibly not), he’s lying on his back in a meadow of flowers with his eyes shut, listening to the slow lap of a distant river, to the confident cries and uninhibited shrieks of young men and women at play, to the drone of bees in the daisies close by. He dreams of a woman beside him, tickling a buttercup under his chin, breathing sweetness into his ear.
He loves me, he loves, not.
And the kiss that was sweeter than honey…
And the promise there was…
Oh, Jack, Jack, how happy we’ll be…
And then…
And then the grandfather clock clunks and embarks on its hiccupping strike. Two o’clock, five minutes slow. Dodie is late. Perhaps she’s changed her mind, or (he’s ashamed of the thought but thinks it anyway), perhaps she’s been involved in a pile-up on the motorway: Dodie trapped in the wreckage, bleeding slowly to death, his name on her lips with her last breath. ‘Forgive me, Jack.’ Oh, stop it! As if Dodie, of all people, would ever subject herself to so convenient but so untidy, an end. She is a woman whose death will be meticulously planned and executed – quietly, in bed, in the presence of her solicitor and an unsentimental friend, one who can be relied on not to shed embarrassing tears, a member of the WI perhaps; both ready to carry out her funeral instructions with the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of fuss. Besides which, Jack finds, unexpectedly, that he’s looking forward to her arrival now; the visit will be a positive rest cure after the unpleasantness of his last encounter with the Great Man; and whatever accusations she throws at him, she’s far too well-bred to raise inappropriate subjects such as infidelity, but can be relied on to stick to domestic matters, such as bedpans, nutrition charts and Eva’s unwashed hair. Still, no point in adding unnecessary fuel to Dodie’s fire in the shape of moth-eaten teddy bears. He must stir his stumps, dispose of ursine evidence, bury the baby, as it were, before very much longer. And that means now.
‘Right, my son, it’s the cellar for you.’
Aha, thinks Bear, with an imperceptible lift of his ears, can this be a cellar where honey is stored?
Jack grasps the arm of the stairlift and prepares to heave himself up. Simultaneously, a confident key unlocks the front door from the outside, an authoritative hand turns the handle, a stout ankle and a sensible shoe put in an appearance over the sill.
‘Forsooth,’ says Jack to Bear, ‘methinks I know that shoe.’
Whenever Jack thinks about Dodie, which is as seldom as possible between her visits, she looms very large in his mind: some sort of machine, a bulldozer perhaps, or a combine harvester, crushing everything that lies in its path; or no, an unstoppable train, thundering down the railway track where Jack lies shackled and helpless, like the hapless heroine in a silent film.
In reality, Dorothy Jones is a short woman, one against whom, bearing in mind her lack of stature, not to mention her age and the question of gender, it’s impossible to put up a decent fight. To pick up the gauntlet she casts at his feet and toss it smartly back or to bring her to her knees with a cunningly disguised verbal left hook. And as she lets herself in through the front door by means of the key he rashly assigned to her some years ago in a gesture of gratitude, regretted as soon as made, it occurs to him how curious it is that the women in his life by whom he has been variously dominated, bullied, hag-ridden even, how curious that they have all, with the glorious exception of Eva, been so remarkably short.
Unlike the spherical Margaret, however, Dodie is rectangular in shape, sharp at the corners, boxed about by the pin-stripe suits she persists in wearing as if to memorialise her glorious career in the retail trade. She stands square in the doorway now, basket in one hand walking stick in the other, looking at Jack with an expression of contempt mixed with triumph, as of someone who has anticipated the worst, hoped for the best, and found her original fears gratifyingly confirmed.
‘Ah, Dodie, good morning, good morning. Have you had a good journey?’
‘No, I have not. I was stuck on the motorway for over an hour.’ Dodie pushes the door shut by means of her redoubtable rump. ‘And for your knowledge and information, it isn’t the morning, it’s the afternoon. Eleven minutes past two, to be precise.’
‘Is that a fact?’ And eleventy twos are tooty-two.
She advances, unstoppable train, steaming dragon’s breath. ‘What the devil are you doing?’
Getting caught red-handed, that’s what he’s doing. No chance of disposing of teddy bears now, or battered blue suitcases, no chance at all of redeeming himself as responsible carer. He is doomed whatever he does, so he might as well walk the plank, mount the scaffold, face his end, like Captain Daring, with courage and humour.
‘My friend and I were having a short conversation about the meaning of life. It’s been most enlightening.’
‘Has it.’ She jabs at the bear with the end of her stick. ‘Jack?’
‘Yes?’
‘This is a teddy bear.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ He studies Bear with a puzzled frown. ‘The question is, is it a teddy bear or is it a baby? Damned if I know.’
‘Don’t be so silly.’
Dodie gestures him aside with her stick. Jack struggles to his feet and shuffles round out of her way. She dumps her basket at the bottom of the stairs, hangs her stick on the banister rail, prepares to mount, and stops as she spots the suitcase upended on the stairlift.
‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘Yes, I am, as it happens, I’m thinking of taking a short holiday in the south of France.’
‘I see. And are you taking your teddy bear with you?’
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. He doesn’t speak French.’
‘Doesn’t he.’ She turns her back.
‘Mind you, he has fluent Japanese.’
‘Does he.’ She grasps the newel post.
‘Yes, he was taught by my old friend, Dr Kashimuro. Which reminds me, we’re long overdue for a visit to Tokyo, I must book some tickets at once. Can you recommend a trustworthy airline? Not too inscrutable, if you know what I mean.’
Dodie doesn’t deign to reply. He watches her slow ascent, one step at a time, right foot leading, resting the left, disguising pain with fortitude; notices the surgical bandage that supports her left ankle, the hunch of her stoical back, and remembers with a pang of remorse, that Dodie is older than he is, she must be ninety now, nearly ninet
y-one. And yet, she has driven all the way from London out of the goodness of her heart, for the sake of her oldest friend. On the other hand, and much more likely, because she’s determined to catch him out in dereliction of duty. Whatever her motives, it’s an impressive achievement, and he resolves to be kind, however aggressive she is.
The grandfather clock strikes the quarter, tired, tetchy, but determined to keep going.
She stops to rest on the landing. ‘That clock’s slow.’
Jack’s brief sympathy evaporates. ‘I know. I’ve told that clock again and again to get a grip on the whole matter of time; but it has a mind of its own, persists in losing five minutes at the end of the week.’
‘Six, actually.’ She turns about on the landing and looks down on him with disfavour. ‘Has she had lunch?’
‘Has who had lunch?’
She glares. Rightly, she glares.
‘Oh, Eva, you mean.’ He persists with his comedy routine despite the marked lack of audience response. ‘Yes, indeed, topside of beef, roast potatoes and all the trimmings. I cooked it myself, the Yorkshire pudding rose like a dream and Eva ate every last mouthful, except for the sprouts that is, she’s never liked sprouts; whereas I, speaking for myself, and after all who else might one speak for, one asks oneself, apart from oneself? With the exception of Eva, of course, who as you know is not readily given to speech these days, thus obliging me to translate her every whim, in this case, as I was saying, in the matter of sprouts…’
‘Jack?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Yes. Yes, I will. Not another word shall pass my lips unless specifically invited to give an opinion, which event is so unlikely as to be entirely risible.’
Dodie favours the grandfather clock with a last sigh of exasperation and disappears into the living room where she greets Eva with apparent relief as on finding sanity at last. ‘Evie, darling…’
He waits anxiously for Eva’s response, fearful that she’s still in murderous mood and that he’ll be blamed, reassured when he hears her shout of joy, coupled with a swift sting of jealousy that she never greets him with such enthusiasm.
‘Mother,’ she cries.
‘No, darling, it’s Dodie.’
A short silence.
‘Buddy Bodie,’ shouts Eva.
‘Tee-hee,’ says Jack.
He hasn’t been down to the cellar for years, but he remembers the smell. Damp and earthy, sour with mice, heavy with memory. And the heart-stopping noises, a rustle, a squeak, the scuttle of feet. And the whispering voices, little boy voices feeding on terror… a hunchbacked goblin lives in the cellar, eyes made of glittering glass with hooks for hands.
‘Boo,’ he goes, to banish the goblin, his voice bouncing against the walls and back. A sudden draught sets the light bulb swinging, as if set in motion by an inimical hand, and the cellar door slams shut behind him.
So there he stands at the top of the steps with the teddy bear tucked under his arm and the past rearing up on every side. The cellar stretches the length of the shop from the street at the front to the yard at the back. How many times has he decided to clear it? The resolve so firm in its contemplation, its execution more daunting with each year, each decade that passes, until old age and inertia set in and contemplation itself is beyond him.
Bob’s heavy furniture fills the whole of the far end: table upended on table, chest on chest, his bedstead sagging under the weight of mismatching chairs stacked one on the other in an incestuous pile. His mother’s few sticks cower to one side, as if in apology for taking up too much space: her puritan bed, the thin little wardrobe, her straight-backed chair; the Ewbank sulking in a dusty corner. And her sewing machine, still with a half-made collar stabbed under the needle, waiting in vain to be finished, and the basket of bobbins and threads on the treadle beneath, woven together by ancient spiders. He had lain in bed as a boy, listening to the sewing machine, fearful when it stopped, thanking God when it started again, lulled to sleep by its comforting whir, and…
And the body lying on the cellar floor…
Stop. Enough. Enough of the past.
‘What am I doing?’ says Jack to Bear.
‘Looking for honey?’ says Bear to Jack.
No, not honey, something much sweeter. Baby sweet. Sweet and sour with a sting in the tail.
He ventures down the steps, one at a time, picks his way through a maze of boxes, stacked one on the other in teetering piles: cardboard boxes, soft with damp, bulging with books that never were sold, files, ledgers, papers, accounts, all of it forgotten, done with, dead. He peers about in the dim light and comes on it suddenly: a bookcase, a baby chest, a nursing chair and a cobwebbed cot.
Oh memory…
It’s not what he expects: dusty remains hiding away in a forgotten corner, out of sight, out of mind. No, not out of mind, only disremembered. This is a shrine, waiting to welcome the boy who never came back. Why had she done it? Dismantled the nursery, struggled downstairs, refusing all help, while Jack listened in the shop with his public smile and private despair, to the clunks and thuds up and down stairs, to the last slam of the cellar door. And the afterwards silence. Was it hope that she felt? That Will would really come back one day like one of the Lost Boys, looking for his mother? And if that was her logic, why bring everything down here? Why not leave the nursery as it was so that Will could come home and find the place that he knew? Except that he never did. The hospital was his home for a few brief hours, followed by a cold grave in the churchyard.
The cot stands with its head to the wall, made up with sheets, a flat little pillow and a blue satin quilt, although not blue any more, blackened with dirt, scattered with droppings, burrowed by mice. The chair is on one side of the cot, bookcase on the other, filled with stories never to be read; the chest at the end with an array of plastic figures on top: ringmaster, strong man, lady acrobat, pretty in pink once on a day, ravaged now by time and decay; a cuddlesome lion, elephant rampant, fallen chimp with crooked limbs grasping at nothing, and a couple of clowns, blotch-eyed, rictus-grinned. They seem to be watching the cot, leaning over it, eager for the leading player to arrive, waiting their cue, the whip, the crack, the blasting roar… and oh, then, let the circus begin! Let the audience laugh till they split their sides, let little girls shriek and shiver and shake, let little boys squiggle and squirm and clutch their chests, and then…
And then, oh memory that never should have begun, be gone.
He lifts a corner of the quilt, fearful of finding a child asleep, half expecting a flurried exit of mice; but all he disturbs is a cloud of dust that catches the back of his throat and sets him coughing He plants the teddy bear on the pillow and addresses him sternly.
‘There you are. You’ll be happy here.’
Oh, will I? says Bear. Says who, says he.
‘Says I,’ says Jack.
He tucks the eiderdown under the teddy bear’s chin and reveals… what is it? Something stuck down the side of the mattress, a corner of something, a hard something that turns out to be a musical box that he doesn’t remember at first and suddenly does. A present from… who was it? One of his mother’s old friends, Mrs Moxon? Miss Maidment? No, someone more unexpected than that, someone called… something or other, what does it matter. On a whim, and with no expectation of it by any means working, he turns the little key in the rusty lock till, with a protesting whir, the musical box begins to play. And at once he’s back in the shop with Mrs Baines. Poor Mrs Baines. Who had arrived with a smile on her face and a parcel in her hand on a day that a baby was born, and who left on a day that a baby died, leaving her smile and her parcel behind.
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes…
Oh, no, not that…
Smiles await you when you rise…
No, stop it…
Sleep pretty dear one…
Stop
the box…
Do not cry…
Hurl it to the floor…
And I will sing a…
Stamp on it…
Lulla…
Bye-bye box. Thank God.
He turns a resolute back, trips as he turns, clutches at a packing case for support, knocks it askew, a spill of papers falling to the floor at his feet. He gets down on his knees to gather them up, stuffs them any old how back in the box, is stopped by a photograph that he peers at but can hardly see. A black and white photograph, edges eaten away by snails. Two people, two women, standing in front of a shop. Whose shop? His shop? If so, the two women must be… he fishes for his glasses and peers again, and there it is, right enough, Bob’s Books. And not two women at all, a man who looks like a woman but isn’t a woman…