(Later)
A conversation with Mab:
‘Why are you sulking?’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘Don’t do that, Dan. Bad for your health. What are you scribbling there?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘More dirty little notes? I hope you’re being sensible.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that.’
‘Have you said goodnight to Dad?’
‘Is it really worth it? He’s hardly going to notice. I’ve seen him all right. That’s enough for now.’
‘You’ve not said two words to him since you got here.’
‘Well, he doesn’t seem to be in a chatty mood. I do my part, Daniel. That’s all any of us can do, isn’t it? Play our parts.’
‘And the weekend? What happens then?’
‘Oh, Michael will be fine for that. I’ve got a friend with a wheelchair we can use. We’ll sit him in the corner with a drink and he can shake people’s hands and they’ll say what a good listener he is and tell him all about his own work. That’s how these things go. You just make sure you keep your head down. I don’t want any trouble, Dan.’
‘Trouble? Jesus, Mab! Who do you think it was who organised all this? Who do you think made all this happen?’
‘Oh, do stop shouting. We all know who’s in charge. Just quieten down or you’ll wake the house.’
‘Has Freya gone up to bed already? I wanted to say goodnight.’
‘My daughter is off limits, Dan. Let’s make that understood right now. Freya is to be left alone. It’s enough that you convinced her she needed to be here. It’s enough that I’ve brought her here; that I passed on your notes. God, look who I’m talking to. No trouble, Danny, just remember that.’
I think Mab is more worried about the mask performance than she wants to admit. I did offer to take over the organisation for her, but she just snapped at me. She seems so distracted and preoccupied. Maybe all these years as a single parent have worn her down. She certainly seems confused, I mean, who tells a person to stop shouting and then yells at them?
Love me better, Alice.
Your Daniel
31st March
The Workhouse
Dear Alice –
We sit in front of a lit stage, watching the occasional figure in black trousers and black polo-neck cross the floor with frowning intent but no apparent purpose. Mab has taken her place on the front row. I can see her brushing her wild hair out of her eyes. She’s knelt over the back of her chair talking to a similarly wrapped and draped woman, who was introduced to me earlier as an up-and-coming sculptor from Croydon. Mab sees me watching her and winks. At least she seems to have cheered up. Then I realise Freya is sitting a couple of rows behind me. Perhaps the wink was for her?
The drinks were served early and the audience is loud and informal. They all twist round in their chairs, glass stems between loose fingers, and talk and laugh and complain. Reassuring themselves, with furtive glances around the room, that every other guest is as recognisable and as important as they consider themselves to be.
This is quite a novelty for them. For once they don’t have to worry about the possibility of a better party across town. They are stranded here. There is nowhere else to be. They are ready to be entertained by whatever comes their way.
The one silent spot in this busy hall is settled over Aubrey and me. Even Freya is busy with a crowd of admirers – all shopping for a new muse, no doubt. I’d like to be able to intervene and protect her, but the flow of people through the room seems to conspire against my interference. I sit writing to you with Aubrey beside me. He keeps trying to enter the conversations around us with his standard smile and bluster, but nothing sticks. It’s really quite funny to watch. He even turns to me in the hope of starting something of his own, but I absorb myself in writing. I won’t play. He’s looking at the stage now. The only one in the room to do so. He’s forgotten to stop smiling.
One of the polo-shirts is making his way to the light switch by the door. There’s some coughing and scraping of chairs. Prosecco is being tipped down throats all around me, as they ready themselves for the show. They’re more attentive than I thought.
(Later)
So, as you’re not here, I must bring the show to you. To be honest I’m grateful for a chance to escape the party. They’ve cleared the chairs away now and the drinking has begun again in earnest. Someone’s thought to set up a CD player and there’s some soothing classical mix playing, but the atmosphere is more like that of a house party or a wedding reception disco. I’ve found a quiet corner, behind one of the improvised wings, where I can watch and record without being disturbed.
The actors circulate with their masks slung over their hands, like waiters with unusual platters. Their effect on the crowd seems greater than that of the alcohol. I just saw a man in a three-piece suit conduct a long, animated conversation with one leering half-mask, while the actor holding it kept up the mask’s end with shifts of his hand to mimic nods and querying tilts. There is too much laughter and it’s all too loud. Something has been shaken loose. This night will last till dawn.
The performance started with one Mask on the stage. This one was a talker. It surprised me, because Mab had warned me that Masks usually have to be taught to speak. This one babbled on, moving across the stage swiftly and with great confidence, but still with the air of something otherworldly in the rigid features frozen above his wet and mobile mouth. He played with the audience, fondling one man’s tie and then stealing a woman’s scarf and knotting it carefully around his own wrist. He laughed at their faces and mocked them roundly. But it was all very good-natured. The victims seemed delighted by his attentions and I saw others shifting forward in their seats, hoping to be among the chosen. The mask itself was a good one, half-face, heavy-nosed and heavy-lidded. The actor had taken on a foreign accent of some description and he couldn’t seem to stand still. It was all strangely captivating. Like watching a man go mad and being allowed to laugh at him.
Before our interest could wane, the Mask introduced a friend. A new actor – a middle-aged woman who rivalled Maggie and myself for girth – was helped into her mask and then given a flash of her reflection in a hand mirror. It was a full-face mask, the mouth a tiny pout and painted wide dark eyes. She made no sound, but pulled her body up and minced around, her hands fluttering before her. The audience cooed and she gifted them a curtsey. One of the black polo-necks trailed her to the edge of the stage, occasionally flashing her a glimpse in the mirror, which she fed off like Narcissus at his pool until it was cut away. The male Mask tried to engage her, but she had found a plastic flower on the prop table and was busy trying to plant it, bloom first, in between the feet of the first row. She sat cross-legged, making a loop out of a lock of her hair, and thrusting the plastic stem of her flower between patent shoes. She was so innocent and so beautiful. And also, strangely, familiar.
Laughter told me that a third Mask had arrived and I was aware of a new barked voice on the stage, but I couldn’t stop watching the woman. She was still at play on the edge of the stage and seemed completely self-absorbed. She had found a cloth doll knocked off the prop table and was dancing it around. It was possible to forget that her face was made of clay and shaped by my sister’s fingers. As it tilted and shifted in the light, it seemed to live and breathe and move. I was sure that expressions were made and lost. It was an extraordinary piece of work.
I couldn’t tell you how long the performance went on for, or how long I sat there mesmerised by her and her doll. She was complete in her own performance. She didn’t do much, but what she did was so uninhibited and natural I could have watched all evening. In her purity, she had a kind of magnetism. Oh, it’s so hard to describe! I wanted to be near her; to feel her; to feel what she was feeling.
It wasn’t until the third Mask approached and snatched her toy that I realised I recognised him. It was my mask. The mask Mab sent me. She must have taken i
t from my bedroom wall. The mask himself was really quite an aggressive and brutal creature. The audience chased him back with the noise of their collective displeasure. He sat and sulked on his haunches at the back of the stage, until the main Mask tried to draw him into another game with a reviving flash of a mirror. This involved some crude business with the female Mask’s doll. Cue much leering and unseemly gestures from the third Mask and then, I think, the talker beat him with a rubber stick. I’m sure there was some sort of story going on, but I didn’t really follow it.
It was such a shock to see someone else wearing my mask. I almost stood up from my seat to reclaim it. The actor was obviously some stooge. He had none of the honesty of the other Masks. He was just going through the motions. Playing a part. Turning the whole event into a pantomime. Of course the rest of the crowd ate it up.
Still, I must admit, watching my mask move without me behind it was absorbing. I kept twisting in my seat to try and catch Mab’s attention, but the vacancy of his face drew me back to the stage. The other masks were luridly painted and stylised; mine was blank clay from brow to chin. He offered the eyes nothing to catch hold of and remember.
I hated the end. One of the polo-necks, an older grey-haired one, who I suppose was the director, ordered the masks removed. The actors simply slipped them off and into the waiting hands of other assistants. There was a short moment of adjustment and then they stood together to receive applause. It was awful. Reality was back, the illusion of the sweet child and the monster lost forever. I mourned it.
No one else seemed affected. They all clapped and shouted praise, their flushed faces open to the stage now full of nothing but predictably preening actors. I blame the booze.
After the show, I tried to find Mab. I wanted to know what she was up to with the masks. Instead, I found myself speaking to the middle-aged woman who had affected me in her Mask incarnation. She’d changed out of her plain black clothes and was now dressed in some kind of large purple smock with lines of glitter running through it. She had also made up her face, perhaps to compensate for its banality.
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember much of the performance. You’ll know better than I what I did. It’s always that way when the Mask takes hold. I’d not worked with Her before, but I shall again. That’s if your sister will let me.’
She laughed. She had lipstick on her teeth. She was already looking around for someone else to talk to. The woman was an idiot. I wish I’d never spoken to her.
I thought I saw Freya and her flicking hair in the crowd, but she was lost behind a row of black-suited backs. I don’t know what trouble Mab thinks I could cause, but with her daughter throwing her charms at every man in the room she needs someone to look after her interests. She’s the real troublemaker, if only Mab could see it.
There was one other strange thing in this strangest of evenings. As I was looking for Freya, I realised the fat lady Mask was watching me again, and with none of the indifference she had displayed during our short conversation. She was looking from me to my Mask. My Mask was carried by one of the actors, just like the others. But, unlike the others, the crowd seemed to avoid rather than gather around it, and its support was looking bored and as though he had drunk too much prosecco. Still, the fat lady looked from me to the blank face in his hand. Stupid, I know, but I could have been sure she knew we were connected. And for some reason she looked terrified.
I’ll write again tomorrow for the big event,
Daniel
1st April
The Studio
Dear Alice –
It’s the morning of the exhibition. I thought I’d write and post this off before we get to the workhouse. That way you can have my day in instalments and I won’t forget to write anything down.
Heads were pretty heavy after the Mask show last night. I don’t know what time Freya and Mab got back, but Aubrey and I didn’t leave until the early hours and the party was still going strong. Maggie is in a bad mood about missing it all, so turned up early and started banging about until I got up and quietened her. Dad, of course, was oblivious, seated on the edge of his bed in his long johns and T-shirt watching Maggie move things. And Sarah was sitting next to him, stroking the side of his face with her hand. She must have come in with Maggie.
‘I missed you at the show last night,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t make it. Thought I’d spend the time with your dad instead.’ She wouldn’t look at me. Her hand trembled.
‘If you’re going to mess with his face like that, you should try the other side. The stroke ruined the feeling on his right.’
For no real reason, I was angry with her. I went through to the kitchen to make tea. By the time I got back the rest of the house was up: Aubrey already buttoned into his three-piece suit, looking in want of a pipe; Mab chain-smoking in an extraordinary pair of pyjamas; and Freya picking her way through it all like a ballerina, her hair tied into a knot on the top of her head. She smiled at me and took my hand briefly as she wished me good morning. Obviously nothing has been said about her behaviour last night. Still, I’m not her parent. I smiled back.
We managed to get through the business of breakfast. Mab took numerous calls on her mobile, which appeared to consist mostly of hectic laughter and complaints about the phone reception. I’d taken it that the crowd who turned up last night were all of the invitees to today’s exhibition, but it seemed that people were still arriving. London was flowing into Upchurch without any sense of direction. I fielded calls on the landline and persuaded people not to visit us at home.
I let Maggie and Sarah sort Dad out. Thankfully, the wheelchair idea of Mab’s appears to have been forgotten and Dad looks quite respectable in one of his old suits, despite the weight he has lost. Sarah has bought him a pale blue shirt for the occasion. Freya said how well it brought out his eyes, when Maggie and Sarah brought him through from the bathroom and turned him round in the centre of the crowded living room.
I think dressing him this early a mistake, but it looks as though Maggie and Sarah are willing to take on babysitting him. I’m certainly glad of the freedom. If I can just shake loose from Aubrey, it could be a good evening.
(Later)
Despite my best efforts, we have had visitors. Claggy, the agent, brought them round. Two men in expensive coats and a glossy-lipped, grey-haired woman of indeterminate age. I was foolish to have doubted Sarah and Maggie’s preparations, because of course Dad is the major exhibit for this show.
Claggy led them round like a tour guide, pointing out possible areas of interest. When they got to Dad, for one strange moment I thought they might actually kneel and kiss his hand. Actually Dad did rather well: he looked up at them and didn’t screech or holler the way he did last time Claggy was here. I think I saw her cross her fingers behind her back as they approached him.
Sarah sat at Dad’s elbow like a courtesan, her hand on his shoulder. She seemed to calm him. In fact, she always seems to calm him. I’ve been trying to make sense of their relationship for most of my life. I’m still no closer to an answer. I just know enough to realise that any affection Sarah once had for me has disappeared. Gone and never to be recovered.
After their audience with Dad, the visitors trooped out into the garden to look at the choked and muddy pond, Aubrey and Freya on hand with the full charm offensive. I went into the kitchen with Maggie to fetch tea and ‘best biscuits’, which she’d picked up from a shop in town especially in case of guests. It was then that I noticed Maggie had made rather an effort. She was dressed in a smart blue wool dress with a hideous brooch on her left breast which I had never seen before. I suspected it was a treasure. There was even the suggestion of lipstick around her mouth.
‘You look lovely,’ I said, wrapping an arm around her middle as best I could.
‘Nonsense.’ She blushed and patted at her hair. Pleased. ‘Now get your hands off me. I’ll upset the biscuits. Make yourself useful and go and fetch your sister. Don’t think I didn’t see her scurry
off, just when she’s needed. And leave off those, they’re for that lot outside.’
I went through to the living room, passing Dad still sitting in state. I fed the last bite of my best biscuit to Tatty and climbed the stairs.
So, I forgot to knock. So, I caught Mab just as she was stepping out of her pyjamas and into her underwear. So, I saw my sister naked. I don’t know why it needed to be made such a fuss over. It’s not as though it was the first time I’d ever seen her without her clothes on.
I will write again when we arrive.
Daniel
1st April
The exhibition
Dear Alice –
A man and woman are standing in front of the largest of Dad’s portraits. They tilt their heads and take small steps back and forth. The woman has a sweep of pale blonde hair that she fusses with, reaching up a hand to flip it over her shoulder and away from her face. I suspect her of meeting Freya on her way in. The couple exchange a few words, but it is not entirely clear whether they are together for any other time than these few moments in front of the painting. They both hold wine glasses and the dregs of their champagne. The man has a soiled napkin crushed in his fist.
A louder group approaches – jostling suits and a woman in a scarlet dress. The couple move away. The man towards a cluster of smaller frames, and the blonde woman – head raised – into the centre of the room, looking to catch the arm of a circulating waiter.
There was music when we arrived, some kind of jazz piped so softly it was impossible to identify. Our party arrived ten minutes late as Mab had instructed. She said the artist should always be the last to arrive. We got Dad through the crowd and over to a group of chairs in a far corner. Sarah sat down beside him to do the talking and the smiling. I leant over to whisper a warning about letting people get too close to him and she flinched away from me. I wonder what lies she’s been fed in my absence. Mab seemed as sick of her as I was and went off to talk to the catering staff. It was only then that I turned and saw the room.
How You See Me Page 12