by Alex Reeve
‘You must stay close to me,’ I told her.
She wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘Mummy likes zebras. I wanted to see if she was there.’
I didn’t know what to say. I buttoned her coat, pulling it close around her neck, and held her hands in mine until they were fully warmed up.
We ate our sandwiches in silence, sitting on a bench by the reptile house. I could barely taste them. Ciara was between Aiden and me, her feet swinging and sometimes catching me, but I was glad of the pain.
Some boys had started up a game on the lawn. At first it was just throwing a ball to and fro, but now they had divided into two teams and were arguing over the rules. Without asking, Aiden hopped off the bench and went to join them. They were cocksure lads with well-to-do accents, and a couple of them gave him a look as he approached, assessing and dismissing him in a single expression. The largest of them had the ball, and Aiden plucked it out of his hands, standing facing him with it under his arm, appearing relaxed but actually, I could tell, alert and prepared for whatever came next. There was a tense silence, during which I considered intervening, but then they carried on with their debate. It seemed that Aiden would be included or, at least, that none of them would risk trying to eject him.
When I had finished my sandwiches, I tossed the crumbs and crusts on to the grass and watched the seagulls swoop down for them, flapping and fighting. Two came so close we could almost have touched them. Ciara shrank back and pulled her feet up on to the bench, wary of their sharp beaks and fierce eyes.
‘It’s all right, they won’t hurt you,’ I assured her. I had an urge to put my arm around her, but I was so used to avoiding close physical contact, I’d forgotten how. ‘What you said before, Ciara, about seeing a lion from your window. Was it the same as the ones here?’
She nodded, scrunching herself up even smaller, her eyes fixed on the gulls.
I wished I understood. I saw no sign she was being untruthful or shutting off a memory too harrowing to bear. But it couldn’t be random chance that had made her think of a lion; she must have seen something.
I was trying to think of a different way to ask the question when Constance leaned across me.
‘Perhaps, Ciara, you know a person called lion, like Mister Lion, or …’ she exchanged a look with me, certain she had found the answer ‘… or Mister Lyons, with a “y”. Do you know a Mr Lyons?’
‘No,’ answered Ciara quickly. ‘It was like those ones, except standing up.’
‘Standing up?’ I wracked my brain for a better way to put it but couldn’t think of one. ‘You mean on its four feet?’
‘No.’ She shook her head so firmly her bonnet slipped. ‘Standing up.’ She climbed on to the bench and stood up straight to show us.
‘On its hind legs?’ I pulled my folio and a pencil from my pocket and handed them to her. ‘Can you draw it for me?’
She nodded and knelt on the ground, using the bench as a table, biting her bottom lip in concentration.
Meanwhile, the ball game was livening up. A couple more lads had joined in, so there were seven or eight on each side, and they were calling to each other, making sudden dashes for the ball or pointing to the fellow they thought should receive it. Some had taken off their shirts and were glistening with sweat. I watched them with a dull, formless envy, too familiar to have any bite. In all the hours of my childhood I had spent watching boys play games, never once had I been invited to join them.
When Ciara had finished her picture, she held it up. Her lion had four legs and a mane, roughly speaking, and was rearing, rampant, like on a coat of arms.
‘Did a man have this picture on his chest?’ I asked her.
She shook her head again, her hair swinging from side to side.
In the game, two boys had started wrestling, tangling on the grass. I realised one of them was Aiden. The other emerged victorious, wrenching the ball free and leaping to his feet, but Aiden was quicker, being slighter and unencumbered by the ball. He took a swing at his opponent and the boy twisted away, the blow landing harmlessly on his shoulder. Immediately, both teams surrounded Aiden, chins jutted forwards. I assumed he would apologise, but he didn’t. He raised his fists and stared at them, daring them to take him on. I was on the brink of going to separate them, when a man, clearly the groundskeeper, came running past us, yelling and waggling his finger. I have never seen a group move so fast; one second, they were there and the next, they had scattered in all directions.
Aiden came trotting back to our bench, out of breath and red-faced, his jacket and trousers covered in grass stalks and stains.
‘Where shall we go next?’ he said.
I searched his face for bruises, but he seemed unhurt. ‘Are you all right? I thought they were going to beat you to death.’
He wiped his brow with his sleeve. ‘Rich boys. They don’t have the stomach for it.’
Ciara showed him her picture, and he rolled his eyes.
‘Is this your made-up lion?’ he asked.
She looked crestfallen and tossed it aside on the bench.
‘Well, I think it’s delightful,’ I said to her. ‘May I keep it?’
Aiden picked it up, took my pencil and wrote at the bottom in large, well-formed letters: Ciaras mayd up liyon.
His mother may have taught him to write, I thought, but not to spell. I was about to correct him when I was addressed by a familiar voice. I looked up, and was astonished to see Rosie Flowers standing there, warmly wrapped against the chill. Her children were behind her, two of them eating pies and the third, the smallest, with food around his mouth.
‘Rosie!’ I exclaimed. ‘What on earth brings you here?’
I was amazed to discover I was pleased to see her.
I hadn’t spoken to her for a year and had come to believe I never would again. She was part of a history I didn’t want to think about. And yet, here and now, she wasn’t a memory but a person, her face tipped slightly to one side and her green eyes considering me through her spectacles.
She folded her arms and nodded towards Constance. ‘Your young friend here asked me, though we agreed to meet at two o’clock and it must be almost three now.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Flowers,’ said Constance, going pink. ‘They wouldn’t walk fast enough.’
I could scarcely believe it.
‘You arranged this, Constance?’
I felt as if I’d been staring at one of those optical illusions one sees in magazines, and the true picture had only just become apparent.
‘Yes.’ She stood up and emptied the last of her crumbs on to the grass, inciting the seagulls to a frenzy. ‘You must admit you’re despondent, Mr Stanhope. All you do is go to work and come home, or play chess and drink beer with Mr Kleiner, who’s even more miserable than you are. You need to go out to places and have nice friends, proper friends, who make you happy.’
Rosie raised her eyebrows, and neatly caught the half of a pie her eldest had dropped. The boy was about Ciara’s age, but taller and considerably plumper, no doubt indulging in too much of his mother’s cooking. Hers were the finest pies in all of London, and her little shop enjoyed a brisk trade. I had walked past it a couple of times in the last few months, and there had been queues outside and along the pavement. I hadn’t been tempted to go in; I was sure I had nothing to say to Rosie Flowers. She had caused me greater and more grievous harm than any person alive.
But she didn’t know that. I was glad she was free of the guilt, but I found it hard to be in her company. It was too painful not to be able to tell her what I couldn’t forgive her for.
‘Rosie, I’m sorry. Constance shouldn’t have interfered. It was a silly thing to have done.’
Constance went even pinker. She had meant well, but what else could I say?
Rosie pursed her lips. ‘Then I suppose I’ll bid you good day.’
‘No, please,’ wheedled Constance. ‘Stay for a short while. There’s so much more to see. We can all go together.’
Ros
ie adjusted her spectacles and squinted up at the sunshine. ‘We haven’t visited the monkeys yet,’ she said drily. ‘I hear they’re riotous.’
I was exhausted and ready to leave, but the children were looking so excited I could hardly deny them. Constance walked quickly off down the path, though she couldn’t possibly know where the monkeys were housed. Her confidence was such that Aiden followed her and Ciara followed him, so I had no choice but to go as well.
‘Who are they?’ asked Rosie as we walked after them. I’d forgotten how short she was, barely reaching my chin.
‘They’re orphans. Their mother was murdered.’
‘Oh.’ Her expression hardened. ‘Poor little mites. Has the bastard been caught?’
‘Not yet. I’m just taking them out for the day.’
‘Truly? A single … person like yourself?’
‘A single man, yes.’
She knew about my deformity: my female body. She had been there when … no, I wouldn’t remember it. I could not. I had excavated those thoughts and put them into another place, outside of me, and would never seek them again. After it had happened, she had flogged him with a metal chain, breaking open his skull. She had saved me.
Wasn’t it curious that I could be profoundly grateful to her and yet never forgive her, both at the same time? Wasn’t it curious, too, that we could walk side by side, in a zoo of all places, surrounded by people who knew nothing of what we’d done together?
How wonderful it was to appear no different from anyone else.
‘You don’t know much about children, though, do you?’ she said, looking ahead at Ciara.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because that girl needs the WC quite badly, I would say, and you haven’t noticed.’
Once all of us had visited the privy, Rosie produced three more apple and cassia pies from her bag, insisting that Constance and the two orphans should have them ahead of her own children. She also spent a few minutes explaining to Constance how the pastry was made, using cold water and lard, though she might as well have been explaining music to a fish.
We found the monkey house, which wasn’t hard, given the volume of the screams and hoots of hilarity within it.
Rosie said something to me as we entered, but I couldn’t hear her over the cacophony of screeching and cackling from the monkeys on either side.
‘I said, how have you been?’ she shouted again.
‘What did Constance tell you?’
‘That she’s worried about you.’ Rosie glanced up at my face, a hint of concern in her eyes, and then looked away. ‘Though you seem well enough to me.’
Aiden was keeping close to Ciara, who was quite transformed, plucking at her brother’s sleeve to move to the next cage, laughing and pointing at the animals as they leapt from branch to branch, clutching fruit in their tiny hands. I found myself strangely resentful that I was still shaking with anxiety while she seemed to have forgotten her ordeal altogether.
‘Where did you find them?’ Rosie asked, as we reached an ape sitting disconsolately in a puddle of its own piss.
‘They were living at a club for people with radical politics. Revolutionaries and the like. They listen to speeches and send letters to Parliament, that sort of thing. Their mother was one of them.’
‘Why are you involved with something like that?’
I couldn’t see her expression, but I thought I caught an amused tone, which irritated me. What gave her the right? Come to think of it, I could barely remember a single sentence she’d ever uttered to me that wasn’t scornful or damning. Nevertheless, I answered her honestly. I may have omitted some truths in the past, but I couldn’t outright lie to Rosie.
‘I’m not. I didn’t know the place existed until recently.’
She pulled a face. ‘Well, I daresay the world could do with a bit of revolution, what with one thing and another, but speeches and letters don’t put food on the table, in my experience.’
Her youngest tugged on her skirt. She lifted him on to her hip, and he buried his damp face in her neck. Even while she was talking to me, her eyes were constantly tracing the movements of the other two, who were skipping from one cage to the next, imitating the animals’ calls and their odd gaits.
We stopped at a cage containing creatures no bigger than kittens, with earnest faces and wise eyes. Such agility they had! They swung with ease between the branches like circus acrobats, or better, because they were able to use their tails as extra arms and could quite happily hang from them while they chattered and grinned.
A man was walking up and down the aisle with bags of food we could give to the monkeys, if we dared risk those needle-sharp teeth. He showed the children what to do.
‘Hold your hand flat, like this,’ he said. ‘Then they won’t bite, see?’
I watched Ciara as she approached, her tiny hand held out, looking back at me in wonder as a monkey picked the grain from her palm with its fingers. Aiden wasn’t so brave and hurled his supply towards the animals from several feet away.
‘Are they in danger?’ Rosie asked, raising her voice to be heard over the racket.
‘I don’t know. Ciara may have seen the murderer. I’m honestly not sure.’
Neither of us spoke for a while, going from cage to cage, hardly looking at the animals inside. They took even less notice of us.
And then I had an idea. In retrospect, it was not among my best.
‘Maybe you could take the children,’ I said. ‘Just for a short while?’ I was relieved at the mere thought of it. She was a mother and would know how to look after them. It was the perfect solution. ‘No one will know where they are, and it won’t be for long, I promise.’
Rosie glanced up at me, her green eyes glinting in the sunshine that was seeping in through the skylights. ‘You’d prefer for me to keep them in my home, is that your plan?’
‘Yes, exactly.’
‘Just for a short while? Barely any effort required?’
It is possible at this point I should have detected a note of sarcasm in her voice. But I was very tired, and not thinking as clearly as usual.
‘Yes, thank you. I can’t tell you how helpful that would be.’
‘This, because I’m a mother and naturally disposed to the task, while you’re free to pursue whatever adventures you choose?’ She stood in front of me, still holding her youngest child, whose name I couldn’t remember. ‘Do you think it’s that easy? Do you think you can pass on all your problems to the nearest woman to solve?’
‘No, of course not!’
‘Must be tempting, I suppose, when you’ve decided not to be one of us any more, to think yourself better. That’s the question, isn’t it, Leo? Did you really want to be a man, or just want not to be a woman?’
‘Damn it, Rosie!’
I spun round on the spot, too angry and frustrated to stay still. She didn’t understand how it was for me, how exhausted I was, all the time. It would be so much easier to put on a dress. That was what the world wanted, what God had made me, what my body insisted it was, with its breasts and hips and blood. But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t me.
‘You don’t understand. I’m not fit for this. I lost Ciara today.’
‘Oh Leo! We’ve all done it. And you found her again, didn’t you?’ She studied my face for several seconds. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
‘I can pay you, if that helps,’ I said. ‘I have access to some capital.’
She opened and shut her mouth, and put her son down. ‘Sam, go and find your brother and sister.’ She turned to me, and I could tell she was properly angry. ‘Do you think money will change my answer? Mother of God. You had a wealthy upbringing, I daresay. Dinner on the table every night, and a maid to do your washing, is that how it was? Everything can be bought, can’t it, Leo? Everything’s for sale.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I begged.
‘I’ll do as I please,’ she said firmly. ‘And it pleases me to go home and leave you to solve
your own problems. I’ve enough of my own, not that you’ve asked after any of them. Goodbye, Mr Stanhope.’
She gathered up her children and was gone.
I bit my top lip so hard I could feel the indents with my tongue. I couldn’t understand why I could speak to Rosie more easily than to anyone else alive, and yet we couldn’t remain civil for more than a few minutes at a time.
Constance found me sitting in a corner with my head in my hands. She was bouncing with excitement.
‘There’s an elephant called Jumbo, and we can ride on his back for twopence. Can we do it, Mr Stanhope? Can we please?’ She looked around. ‘Where’s Mrs Flowers?’
‘She went home.’
‘Oh.’ She waited one heartbeat, perhaps two. ‘Please can we ride on the elephant?’
I nodded wearily and followed her outside.
The elephant was vast, twice my height or more, ambling towards us and waving its trunk pendulously as if conducting a mournful song in its head. On its back was a contraption that allowed three or four people to be carried on either side of its huge bulk as comfortably as if they were sitting on park benches.
A fellow took my money, and the children climbed the ladder and got on board.
For some reason, I had the feeling someone was watching me. I whirled round, and there, not ten yards away, was the man in the brown felt hat. He dipped the brim again and hurried swiftly towards the exit.
10
When the four of us arrived back at the pharmacy, I could smell Alfie’s cod soup from halfway down the passageway.
He raised his eyebrows as we came in.
‘You still have them,’ he said, more an observation than a complaint.
‘I’m sorry. It seemed easier than taking them all the way back to Mrs Downes’s house in the dark.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘It’s just for tonight, I promise. They won’t get in the way.’
Constance poured all the soup that was left into a bowl, and we sat around it, dipping pieces of bread and sucking fishy juices into our mouths. It was a feast.