Second Fiddle

by Siobhán Parkinson

  “You lost?” asked the Chinese person pleasantly.

  “No,” I said uncertainly. “I’m just looking.”

  The Chinese person smiled again. “Very good dry cleaner’s,” she said. “Very good.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was the owner of the dry cleaner’s, advertising her wares, or just a particularly contented customer. I nodded in a way I hoped would do for either situation. I tried to think of some way of keeping this smiling person with me. I felt safe in her company. I didn’t like the eerie emptiness of the street.

  “Do you know Mr. Regan?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” said the Chinese person. “He lives upstairs.” She pointed to a narrow door to the side of the dry cleaner’s that I hadn’t spotted before. It was open to catch whatever draft might come in from the street. “You his daughter?”

  “No!” I said, horrified at being mistaken for Gillian.

  “Hmm,” said the Chinese person, and off she drifted across the street, without another word, leaving me feeling strangely abandoned. I considered calling her back, but I couldn’t think what to say.

  I stood and looked up at the windows over the dry cleaner’s. They had aluminum frames and the net curtains seemed too big and were all bunched up at the corners. No geraniums here. The little boys with the football watched me from the other side of the street. They were grubby children. One of them had a runny nose. As I looked at them, the one with the runny nose stuck his tongue out and slurped the stream of snot into his mouth. I shuddered and looked away.

  * * *

  I pushed the open door a bit wider and looked inside. The hall was dark and mostly full of staircase. The stairs were carpeted in something gray or brown or maybe green or dark blue. I stepped into the hall and started up the stairs. I didn’t know what I was going to say when I got to the flat, but now that I was here, I might as well press on and see if I could find this famous missing father.

  I could see him as I came to the top of the stairs. The door to the flat was open and he sat at a desk under the window, with his back to me. He looked very ordinary, not a bit famous or missing. He had brown hair and he was wearing a grubby white shirt with a soft collar. He was hunched over a computer. I could hear the uneven rattle of the keys as he typed a bit, stopped to think, typed a bit more. He was certainly very tall. I could tell, even though he was sitting down, because of the way he had to fold himself up over the desk, like a penknife.

  “Hello!” I called. “Mr. Regan?”

  He spun around on his office swivel chair. “Who’s that?” His face was porridgy. Just like someone I knew.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Macla.”

  I didn’t know what made me say that. It was the computer, probably, that reminded me of my e-mail name.

  “You!” he said. “I thought your name was Margaret Rose.”

  I gasped. How could he possibly know that? Even my friends don’t know my full name. I felt like turning around and flying down the stairs and out onto the blessedly ordinary street. But I stood my ground.

  “Come in,” he said then. “Mind if I smoke?”

  I stepped into the room. It was chaotic. The desk was teetering with books and papers, the floor strewn with clothes and sticky, unwashed dishes and mugs. It stank of body and stale cigarette smoke and last week’s dinner.

  “It’s your house,” I said with a shrug, in answer to the question about smoking.

  “Yeah, but it’s probably a crime to smoke in front of a child these days,” he said. “You could sue me if you get cancer when you’re seventy.”

  “You’ll be dead when I’m seventy,” I said. “Smokers die younger. It says so on the packet.”

  He grinned, and I watched as he lit a match and applied it to the end of his cigarette. He sucked and the cigarette end glowed bright red. A thin stream of blue smoke rose from it and scented the air with tobacco. I normally hate the smell of cigarettes, but it was better than the smell of the room. At least it was fresh smoke.

  “How do you live like this?” I asked, looking disdainfully around me.

  “Women!” he answered. “They’re all the same. Wanting to tidy you to death.”

  Nobody had ever called me a woman before.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not like that. I like a bit of a lived-in look. But this! This place is a health hazard.”

  A bluebottle buzzed in angrily from the landing and settled on the rim of a plate on the floor.

  “See!” I said. “It’ll lay eggs, and then you’ll have maggots. See if you like that!”

  “You are a charming child,” said Mr. Regan, leaning back in his chair. He was wearing tracksuit bottoms and his feet were bare. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “No,” I said, “because it’s not true. You’re being sarcastic.”

  “You’re perceptive too,” he added, dragging on his cigarette again. “Now, what can I do for you, O Charming One?”

  “You know why I’m here,” I said, just like they do in the films.

  “Do I? Maybe you’re a health inspector? Yes, I think that must be it. Did you bring some disinfectant? Rat poison, maybe?”

  “If you know my name, that means you read my e-mail,” I said evenly. I was careful to keep my cool. I could see I had a slippery customer here.

  “Ah yes, your e-mail. Very dramatic, I must say.”

  “Why didn’t you reply?”

  “I don’t reply to every e-mail I get from a stranger. Why should I?”

  “It wasn’t from a stranger,” I said illogically. “It was from me.” I nearly lost my cool there for a sec.

  “And you, my dear, are a stranger—to me.”

  “Yes, I know that, but I mean, it was really from Mir—Gillian. She couldn’t send one herself as she hasn’t got a computer, which I am sure you know.”

  “Hmm,” he said, and drew on his cigarette again. “So tell me about the ‘honorable purpose’ for which my daughter needs ‘an urgent cash advance.’ Where did you learn language like that, by the way?”

  “I can read,” I said.

  He said nothing.

  “Well, she needs to go to England,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Indeed?”

  “For an audition.”

  “My God! She wants to go on the stage! Her mother’s daughter. Whatever makes you think that’s an honorable purpose, you poor, misled child?”

  “I’m not! Not that kind of audition. For a school.”

  “Ah!” said Gillian’s dad. “So they’re auditioning for schools these days, are they? In my day, you had to do an entrance exam. Reading, writing, sums. What’s changed?”

  “It’s a music school,” I said. Dork, I added silently. “The Yahooey-Manooey school. Something like that. It’s world-famous. You should be proud of her.”

  “The Yehudi Menuhin school. My! I’m impressed. She was always pretty good on that fiddle all right. Costs me a fortune in lessons, though. And now she’s looking for more cash. How much were you thinking of?”

  My heart did a little leap of joy. He was coming around.

  “I thought, maybe … a hundred?”

  Mr. Regan leaned back in his swivel chair and laughed and laughed. He swiveled and laughed and laughed and swiveled. He bent his knees and pushed his toes against the edge of his desk to stop himself swiveling, but he still laughed. I stared at him, uncomprehendingly. A hundred euro wasn’t that vast a sum, surely. He could manage that. Any adult could, if it came to it. I remembered Gillian’s word: any solvent adult.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Do you know what it costs to go to that school?” he asked eventually.

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s a fee-paying school. It’s very expensive. Go on, guess.”

  “Five hundred euro?” I asked. “A thousand? I don’t know. How would I know?”

  “About twenty-five thousand pounds a year,” he said. “Sterling. That’s more than thirty-five thousand euro. T
hat’s more than I earn in a year. And over five, six years, that’s what? Two hundred thousand. You could buy a house for that. You could spend thirty years paying off a mortgage on it.”

  “Oh my!” I said. “Gosh!” I felt deflated, as if someone had let all the air out of me. I felt as if my ribs were collapsible. I didn’t feel like I was in a film anymore.

  “And then on top of that, you have to pay airfares, you have to buy an instrument, you need pocket money.…”

  “Yes,” I said, “I get it.”

  “So you see why I am amused?” He took a last drag on the cigarette and squashed it out on a plate that already had butter on it and blackened toast crumbs. “I mean, look around you, child. Do these look like the quarters of a rich man?”

  Grandpa thought he was doing well, but I suppose his idea of “well” might be different from Mr. Regan’s idea.

  “But there has to be a way!” I said. “There must be. She’s a genius.”

  “No, there mustn’t,” said Brendan Regan flatly. “Life is not like a story. You’re not in Girls’ Own territory here. No amount of valiant effort and clever plotting and having a smart and feisty heroine is going to make it possible, I’m afraid. Even for a genius, which, by the way, I doubt she is. You can’t bob-a-job your way to two hundred thousand euro, Margaret Rose. And even if you could, you should probably give it to the children’s hospital or cancer research or something. It wouldn’t be right to pour it all into the education of one single child.”

  I couldn’t follow the half of this. A smart and feisty heroine! Is that me? I thought. It doesn’t sound like me.

  “What’s ‘Girls’ Own territory’?” I asked, thinking of my woodland den. I wished I was there now, on my own, in the cool green shade with the stream wittering on distractedly.

  “A place where things work out just because you’re gutsy enough to make them,” he said.

  “Oh!”

  “I have no intention of shelling out a hundred euro to ensure that my daughter can imprison me in debt for the rest of my life.”

  “No. I suppose you wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Right. Well then, I think that’s all we have to say to one another. Could I ask you to close the front door on your way out? Thank you. I don’t want any more uninvited guests. I’m busy. I have a deadline to meet.” He jerked his head in the direction of the computer screen.

  “Well,” I said. “Good-bye.” I stuck out my hand. I might as well be civil, even if he wasn’t very mannerly.

  He grinned and shook my small (and, I am ashamed to say, rather grubby from the bus) hand in his large, pudgy one.

  “I like you, Margaret Rose,” he said.

  “Oh!” I could feel myself starting to blush. Smart and feisty. I didn’t want to be that. I didn’t want to be anything this man thought I was.

  “But I’ll tell you something. You need a new frock.”

  Who does he think he is, making personal remarks! Poor Gillian—a loopy mother and a nasty father. No wonder she’s a bit odd herself!

  I turned on my heel and ran down the stairs and out the front door. I had slammed it before I realized I should have left it open, just to spite him.

  Gillian

  It’s all my own stupid fat fault. I shouldn’t have mentioned it, I suppose, but I was hoping that she might just have something positive to say, my mum, and anyway, I knew I would have to tell her sometime. I do live with her; she was going to notice if I disappeared from the family for a day and a half.

  “Remember I was thinking about the Yehudi Menuhin school?” I said, all casual, as if adopting a light tone was going to make any difference to how she received the news. “Well, they’ve invited me to an audition. Next week, actually. Isn’t that good, Mum? Isn’t it?”

  But no, that is not good, apparently. And I know the reason why. The reason is money. We haven’t got any, and Dad doesn’t pay up what he is supposed to. There’s hardly enough money for the ordinary bills, and there is definitely none left over for airfares.

  She completely ignored me. Not as much as an “Oh?” That was hard to take. I knew there’d be an issue with money, which is why I hadn’t told her the whole story in the first place, but I kind of hoped she’d put that aside even just for a moment, that she’d at least stop to congratulate me before dashing on to tell me I couldn’t go.

  I waited for her to react, but all she said, after a silence, was, “And how do you plan to get to this audition?”

  I had just told her about the greatest achievement so far in my life, and that’s all she had to say. She’s not a bad person, my mother. Maddening, loopy, selfish, but not actually bad. I wouldn’t want you to think that. But just at that moment, I hated her as if she was the baddest, meanest woman in the world.

  “Oh,” I said, as airily as I could manage, “I was hoping maybe Dad would—”

  I should have known not to mention Dad.

  “No,” she said immediately, icily. That’s all, no argument, no explanation, just a firm, nonnegotiable no. Then she added, “Under no circumstances are you to contact your father.”

  That was it. Again, no discussion, no argument—no audition, under no circumstances. I wanted to cry. I did cry.

  My dad is selfish and my mum is selfish. Two selfish people should not get married, and they definitely shouldn’t have children. People are always saying not having children is selfish. It’s not true. It’s the other way around. You shouldn’t be allowed to have children if you are too selfish to be good at it. There should be a test for selfishness, like for blood sugar, and if your level is beyond a certain amount, you shouldn’t be allowed to marry a person who also has a high level or to have children with that person. It should be against the law, and you should have to go to jail.

  Mags

  I wandered along the hot, deserted street, trying to decide what to do. The boys with the football had disappeared, and no one had come out to take their place. The tar was melting on the road, and little chips of quartzite in the concrete of the pavement glittered hard and sharp under the afternoon sun. The sky was so high it was hardly blue anymore, but a sort of distant white with a blazing sun like the evil eye glinting down from it. I wondered if I had enough money for an ice-cream cone. They had those instant ones with the blue paper in the newsagent’s. I counted my money. If I took away my bus fare, I’d have.…

  Then I remembered. I wouldn’t be needing my bus fare, since there was no bus back to Ballybeg. I was going to have to walk all the way. I looked at my stupid sandals. They had pink straps. Not that the color matters, but pink does not suggest robustness, does it? When did you last see a hobnail boot in pink, for example?

  I thought it was about seven miles. Maybe eight. I checked my watch. It was just after four. If I walked at a rate of two miles an hour, I would be home by … eight o’clock in the evening! My mother would have the police out long before that. I’d have to do better than two miles an hour. I started to trot along the pavement, still doing sums in my head. If I ran, maybe I could do four miles an hour and then I’d be home just after six. Slap, slap went my soft, light sandals as I jogged along. Six wasn’t really all that very late.

  I stopped to consider. I’d better get something to drink instead of the ice cream, in case I got dehydrated running in this heat. I went into a shop behind a set of gasoline pumps. There was a step down into a cool, shadowy interior and a smell of oranges and newspapers and motor oil. A thin collie dog raised its pointed muzzle an inch or two from the floor and flapped its matted tail lethargically at me. He looked bad-tempered but too bored to be bothered with me, so I walked carefully around him and bought a half-liter bottle of an energy drink from the fridge. I took a quick slug while the man was counting out my change.

  “Hot,” said the man behind the counter.

  People aren’t very imaginative in the things they say, are they?

  When I went back out of the shop, the sun was so bright I could hardly see my watch face. I had to turn
it away from the glare and bend over it to create some shade. Ten past four. I’d really better make a start.

  I jogged back up to the square where the bus had come in and started out on the road it had traveled in on. I hoped there would be signposts all the way home. Slap, slap went my silly sandals on the hard, hot road. The soles of my feet felt hot and sore already and I’d barely started.

  After about a mile, or what I thought was about a mile, I came to a signpost. I was sweaty by now, and my tight dress—it was tight mainly at the armholes—was starting to dig into my flesh. I had red marks where it chafed, and I was imagining that my feet must be beaten to a red pulp by now.

  The signpost said ten miles to Ballybeg. Was I going backward! How could I have done such a stupid thing? I could feel tears building up behind my eyes, tears of frustration. But the signpost was pointing this way, so I’d best keep going. I took another slug of my drink. It had gotten warm and tasted bitter now, but I drank anyway. Oh, woe is me! I thought. (I didn’t actually think that, but I like that phrase, so I put it in for effect.)

  I looked disconsolately in the direction the signpost pointed. The road stretched, gray and endless, toward the horizon, but luckily there were lots of trees, forming a sort of cool green tunnel. It wouldn’t be too hot. I started off, hardly daring to think how long it was going to take to run a whole ten miles.

  After only a yard or two something struck me. Signposts are in kilometers. It was ten kilometers home, not ten miles. “You oaf,” I said to myself, but I was laughing. “That’ll be six miles,” I announced to myself out loud in my woodland voice, “or thereabouts.”