The Madness of Grief

by Panayotis Cacoyannis

  ‘You’ve seen my father perform?’

  ‘1963, November 23, Saturday night at the Magic Palladium in Croydon, I still have the programme.’ The Inspector loosened the knot of his tie, as though his trip to the past allowed for an additional degree of informality.

  ‘He usually only performed in the summer,’ I said. ‘If you’d been there two summers before, you’d have seen me hopping through the blades of Sweeney Todd.’ And turning to auntie Ada, ‘The blades were made of plastic, I was never in danger.’

  ‘I was there two summers before,’ said the Inspector, ‘and it never even crossed my mind that the blades might’ve been real. You were a charming little girl with your posy, Jimmy had a crush on you for weeks after your hop – he’s my youngest by the way, and as big a fan of Mr Magikoo as his dad.’

  ‘You must’ve been there on the Friday,’ I said, ‘or you’d also remember auntie Ada.’

  ‘Yes, I heard about that,’ said the Inspector. ‘And Jimmy and I have always considered ourselves particularly lucky to have been there for Little Magik Matchstick’s last performance.’

  ‘Shame on you, Inspector,’ said auntie Ada.

  ‘Oh, but he’s paying me a compliment,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Inspector, I’m glad you and Jimmy enjoyed the show.’

  ‘And we did, very much, but that Saturday in ’63, that was something really special. It was a charity do for a very worthy cause as I remember, but if your dad hadn’t been billed as the night’s main attraction, I’m sure half the people wouldn’t have turned up. It was the day after Kennedy was shot, and everyone was feeling out of sorts, like we’d all lost a loved one. It was a miserable audience, but your dad did such a blinder that after just five minutes he had every single one of us literally rolling in the aisles. The man was a one-off, no doubt about it. Honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised if Mr Magikoo’s Magik Shoppe becomes a kind of shrine. So you see, already there’s a story to be told, and all of you must brace yourselves, some very unpleasant people are likely to be falling over each other to tell it…’

  ‘As luridly as they possibly can,’ said Jack, after slugging down the last of his second glass of whisky.

  ‘I was going to say “colourfully”,’ said the Inspector, ‘but then I’ve always been prone to understatement. I will say this, though. We’re talking big amounts of money being dangled…’

  ‘Are you trying to blackmail us, Inspector?’

  ‘He’s not, Jack, I think he’s trying to warn us,’ I said.

  ‘He’s a policeman,’ said Jack.

  ‘And I’ll admit that we have more than our fair share of bad apples in the force, but believe it or not, we’re not all the same.’ The Inspector took another long puff on his cigarette before putting it out in the cup I had offered as an ashtray. ‘For some of us at least, joining the police is a vocation.’

  As they became more recognisable, the sounds from the living room, in whose direction no one in the kitchen was turning, also became more intrusive. My mind was drifting. What hadn’t I already seen tonight, that I should now prefer imagining to seeing?

  ‘We should go and say goodbye,’ I said, leaping up from the table. ‘We can’t just pretend he’s not here any more. He’ll be gone soon enough, and then we won’t need to pretend.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the Inspector, ‘I’ve already asked the sergeant to call us to the other room when it’s time.’ And when I had reluctantly sat down again, ‘We don’t have long, may I speak frankly?’

  ‘My niece is just a child,’ said auntie Ada.

  ‘My feeling is that Jane is more sensible than all the rest of us put together,’ smiled the Inspector. ‘All the same, it’s not my place to say if she ought to be present. But in my own experience knowing about the unpleasantness that’s out there does help one to guard against it.’

  ‘Jane isn’t going anywhere,’ I said.

  ‘Go on, Inspector,’ said Jack.

  ‘My poor little lamb,’ said auntie Ada.

  ‘You must all be wondering why I’m still here. Well, after an earlier conversation with Jane, and then the sergeant’s account of why he and his constable were so late arriving, I thought it best if I stayed, to have a quick look around and a word with just the three of you in private. Now, as you probably know, just two years ago there was a change in the law. Since then, and as long as they’re conducted in private, certain acts between male consenting adults are no longer criminal. And I’m sure you also know that in spite of its limited scope not everyone was pleased with this change, to put it mildly - a slippery slope and all that. Any story that panders to prejudice you can be sure would make headlines, and be plastered on many front pages.’

  ‘If this is about Mia-Mia’s…’ Her hand already over her mouth, auntie Ada’s whiteness went pink. She took slow sips of whisky, before suddenly declaring: ‘Everything that isn’t George’s in that wardrobe is mine.’

  ‘I see,’ the Inspector said. ‘Do you mind me asking what size shoe you take, Miss Hareman?’

  ‘4, if you must know,’ answered auntie Ada.

  ‘All the shoes in your brother’s wardrobe, all the women’s shoes I mean, are size 10. All the men’s shoes are size 7. And the clothes have the opposite problem. I don’t think any of them would fit you. Not by a long chalk. And they’re also rather… now how shall I put this… rather more glamorous than one might expect? But perhaps that’s too conservative… Ah, yes, I think I’ve got it. I believe the word in vogue at the moment is “groovy”.’

  ‘Well, certainly I can’t be accused of being that.’

  ‘What I’m most afraid the sergeant might surmise is that the women’s clothes belonged to a man. But of course it doesn’t matter what the sergeant surmises, just as long as there isn’t any evidence to back it up.’

  ‘Forgive me for still being suspicious, Inspector, but you do seem rather over-keen to help us,’ said Jack.

  ‘And you can’t imagine why.’

  ‘I can only imagine that perhaps you have another son.’

  ‘About the same age as you.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jack.

  ‘Can’t we just say that George had a big-footed girlfriend who left him?’ auntie Ada suggested.

  ‘Without taking any of her stuff?’ countered the Inspector.

  ‘But daddy took his own life, what’s it matter what there is in his wardrobe, or if he had a girlfriend or not?’

  ‘The press,’ said Jack.

  ‘And if by any chance there was a note,’ the Inspector went on, ‘are we absolutely sure it won’t be found? Obviously I mean by the sergeant.’

  ‘There was a note?’ asked a flustered auntie Ada.

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘We didn’t find a note.’

  ‘We looked everywhere,’ I said.

  ‘Did you look everywhere the sergeant might look?’ asked the Inspector.

  When I looked at Jack uncertainly, ‘I’m pretty sure we did,’ he said.

  ‘Sergeant Morris does seem quite ingenious. It might even occur to him to have a little forage through the shop.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be any point leaving a note in the shop, I never set foot in it. And daddy wouldn’t leave a note where I wouldn’t find it.’

  ‘Unless of course he wanted Jack to find it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Inspector,’ said Jack. ‘Wherever he might look, the sergeant would be wasting his time.’

  ‘I see, so we have the note covered.’

  ‘We do, we have the notes covered,’ said Jack, and I tried not to wince at his slip of the tongue.

  The Inspector pounced on it at once: ‘Now that’s the kind of thing the sergeant will be looking for, you see.’

  ‘We have the note covered,’ said Jack.

  ‘Good. And what about the girlfriend?’

  ‘What girlfriend?’ auntie Ada asked.

  ‘The one whose clothes are in the wardrobe,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Oh, you mean the one who left George one g
ood morning and never came back?’

  ‘That’s the one, Miss Hareman, well done,’ said the Inspector. ‘Any idea why she might’ve left without taking her clothes?’

  ‘Fresh start, Inspector,’ said auntie Ada. ‘It’s the only consolation when something ends badly.’

  ‘I think earlier you mentioned a name.’

  ‘Her name was Mia-Mia,’ said Jack. ‘Lots of people saw them together.’

  ‘Ah yes, Mia-Mia,’ said the Inspector. ‘And her surname?’

  ‘Farrow,’ said Jack. ‘As in Mia, the actress in Rosemary’s Baby.’

  The Inspector had arranged for everyone except the family and Jack to step outside the house just before my father was taken away, giving us a short private moment in which to say goodbye.

  His face had been uncovered, and the three of us had stood over my father in silence before touching his coldness and giving his forehead a kiss. And when the ambulance had driven off and the Inspector had left with DC Prior, we had followed the sergeant on a tour of the house, and it had ended where it had begun: in my father’s bedroom. The two policemen paced about the room looking glum. The search of the rest of the house had yielded no secrets - perhaps more ingenious than the Inspector had given him credit for, very wisely the sergeant had not expressed the slightest interest in Mr Magikoo’s Magik Shoppe. If the house was a maze, he must have known the Shoppe was certain to be a walk-in nightmare. But he had not quite given up yet. I could see the carving of thinking lines snake across his face – not at all an unpleasant face in other respects, in contrast to that of his weaselly constable. Had the Inspector not put us on our guard, probably I would have trusted Sergeant Morris with my life. As it was, I was one of three “suspects” sitting next to each other in a row at the foot of the bed. ‘If only beds could talk,’ the sergeant was probably thinking, as he flitted his gaze from one pillar of guile to the next.

  Other pieces of furniture were unfortunately proving more cooperative. The wardrobe’s three doors were all open, exposing potentially lucrative secrets. Unlocked from the centre, the first two doors opened together, one to the left and the other to the right. On a rail on the left side hung all the different costumes of Mr Magikoo. Above them, on a shelf that ran the whole width of the wardrobe, were his hats for all occasions, and in a row at the bottom his shoes. My father’s everyday clothes hung on the same rail on the right side, with his jumpers on the running shelf above. At the bottom the line of shoes continued - brogues, brogues, winkle-pickers, and finally another pair of brogues.

  It was the third door that had opened to reveal Aladdin’s cave – the explosion of flowery colour that had been Mia-Mia, and the telling incongruity between the slimline batik tops and flowing see-through gowns, the bell-bottomed mini skirts and baby doll dresses, and on the other hand that ultimately unfeminine high-heeled collection of rather astronomical footwear.

  The frills and thrills of the Victorian chest of drawers had revealed only an absence of bras, but this was ’69, the tail end of the decade of sexual liberation, and if I knew that, then so did the sergeant. In any case it was an absence that the rather large collection of tight elastic slips sufficiently made up for. As I kept a steady eye on his thinking lines, I was reminded of the light bulb in cartoons: the sign of a moment of sudden revelation. I saw nothing like that in the cloud that followed the sergeant, floating just above his head, into which he occasionally seemed to peer for inspiration. His thinking lines had once or twice been flexed, but they had not been ironed out by anything he or his constable had come across so far. They both fortunately seemed to lack the Inspector’s intuition and his really quite spectacular powers of deduction.

  ‘In case there’s ever anything you need,’ Detective Inspector Cambridge had whispered in my ear, when already by a conjuring trick of his own he had squeezed my hand around his card. It was still in my pocket.

  ‘So these all belonged to a girlfriend who left him, you say.’ The sergeant had poked his nose again inside Aladdin’s cave before turning around with his question.

  ‘Mia-Mia Farrow,’ said auntie Ada. ‘George was quite relieved to see the back of her, he told me so himself.’

  ‘Mia-Mia Farrow,’ the sergeant repeated while his constable struggled to keep a straight face.

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Jack.

  ‘I don’t mean to be impertinent, sir, but how did you say you were related to the family?’

  ‘Jack’s a very good friend,’ I said.

  ‘And his surname would be…’

  ‘Spencer,’ said Jack.

  ‘Jack and I met at the theatre,’ auntie Ada jumped in. ‘At a fringe production, I think.’

  ‘Look Back in Anger,’ said Jack.

  ‘Or was it Entertaining Mr Sloane? It was years ago now.’

  ‘Nearly three,’ said Jack. ‘And very shortly afterwards I met George and Jane.’

  ‘Mine’s still Hareman, in case you were wondering,’ said auntie Ada. ‘I’m not ashamed to say I’m a spinster.’

  ‘And your address, sir, what might that be?’

  ‘Oh, here and there, mostly people’s sofas,’ said Jack.

  ‘And most frequently mine,’ said auntie Ada. ‘12F Cyprus Street in Tufnell Park.’

  ‘Lovely part of London,’ said Jack.

  ‘So of no fixed abode,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Until I get myself settled.’

  ‘While he’s trying to decide what to do with his degree,’ I said.

  ‘Mia-Mia Farrow, hmm...’ Holding it aloft, Sergeant Morris had picked out of the wardrobe one of Mia-Mia’s most extravagant shoes and was examining it from all angles in the manner of a curious archaeologist. Clearly the shoes and the clothes must have belonged to the same woman – why else would they have all been in the wardrobe? But would the sergeant have made the mental leap that as a matter of fact they might just as likely have belonged to the same man? Women with enormous feet did exist, but so did men who liked to dress up as women. I scrutinised the sergeant’s expression. No light bulb had discerningly lit up in the cloud above his head. Nor was there any sign yet that one mental leap had led to another, and that any moment now he would be asking Jack to play Cinderella.

  ‘I’m trying to imagine myself in Mr Magikoo’s shoes,’ said the sergeant pregnantly, handing over the shoe to the constable as though it were a priceless and very fragile artefact.

  ‘George’s feet were too small for that shoe you were holding,’ said auntie Ada.

  ‘I was speaking metaphorically, miss,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘And you saw him. Those clothes,’ auntie Ada went on, pointing at Mia-Mia’s side of the wardrobe, ‘they obviously wouldn’t have fitted him either, he was far too big for them.’

  I felt the warmth of blood racing in my veins while at the same time the coldness of sweat oozed through every pore on my face. Auntie Ada had just handed the sergeant the first mental leap on a plate. Would he see it?

  ‘Oh,’ he said. And then, ‘Oh,’ he said again. ‘Yes, yes I see now what you’re getting at. That perhaps this mysterious Miss Mia-Mia…’ The carvings on his face had deepened, and the cloud was lighting up.

  In the middle of the row at the foot of the bed I was suspect No 2, with my hands in my lap. Discreetly I gave auntie Ada a nudge with my elbow, while at the same time I felt Jack using his to nudge me. I had always been prone to nervous laughter in tense situations where silence was called for. But since offending Karl on two separate occasions by exploding into giggles at the way his fingers moved as he gave himself over to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, I had managed to develop a technique that snapped me out of my propensity and nipped the slightest titter in the bud. It was simple enough but it worked: all I had to do was conjure up death, specifically the death of my mother, far more grisly in my mind than I knew it to have been in real life, and instead of dissolving into laughter I would be choking back my tears. Certainly Karl had found it very affecting. And tonight I didn’t ev
en need to imagine. I had looked at death squarely in the face.

  ‘Let me recapitulate,’ the sergeant went on. ‘You’re saying that because of the size of the shoes you think that these clothes may have belonged not to a woman but to a man, and that this man couldn’t possibly have been your brother because neither the shoes nor the clothes were his size. But even if they had been his size, personally I would find it very hard to believe that Mr Magikoo led a secret double life as a transvestite, it’s a preposterous idea…’

  ‘Ah, sergeant,’ said Jack, ‘if the world conformed to everything you didn’t find preposterous, what a dull place I imagine it would be.’

  ‘And I was saying no such thing,’ said auntie Ada. ‘I’m pretty sure I’d have known if my own brother’s girlfriend was a man, if that’s honestly what you’re suggesting. Sergeant, it’s late. And we’re bantering about the clothes in my dead brother’s wardrobe when his body’s barely arrived at the morgue. Can’t we have some time alone with our grief? Surely we can have this absurd conversation tomorrow.’

  ‘But there’s no need to speculate, I saw all of Mia-Mia in the bathroom,’ I said, and my positive corroboration appeared to have clinched it.

  ‘Hmm, very well then,’ mumbled the sergeant. ‘And what about the note?’ he then asked us abruptly, as though to catch us out.

  ‘There wasn’t a note,’ I said.

  ‘We’re sadly all as mystified as you are about my brother’s suicide,’ said auntie Ada.