Copycat

by Gillian White

  Jennie

  AND I THINK SHE never learned how to love.

  By some kind of mystic osmosis the Frazers drew their neighbours around them like the Lord drew his disciples, like bony prophets drew frenzied crowds to their deserts of biblical brown.

  Come unto me and I will refresh you.

  Not a bad thing if you’ve got the knack, but me, I grew irrationally jealous, gleaning my pleasures from pain as Martha would later put it.

  At least the Frazers’ popularity and Martha’s slatternly nature meant that the Close escaped the compulsion to compete with the proverbial Joneses. The Frazers drove an expensive Cherokee jeep which they never cleaned, inside or out; it was filthy and pranged in several places. Instead of buying a second car Martha ran Sam to work every morning – no more than a ten-minute drive – while back at home there’d be some calamity: her washing machine would be flooding the floor, she’d have let a stew boil over. Rather than a costly playhouse with a gate and pretend garden flowers, their kids used a ramshackle den built by Sam, with corrugated iron as a roof and walls made of rough bits of four-by-two nailed together. Martha refused a cleaner. The poor woman wouldn’t have known where to start. They owned a ride-on mower but it leaked petrol and rarely worked.

  Their magnetism was a mystery to me. Although they weren’t a glamorous couple, they had this charismatic, enchanted quality which I so envied but couldn’t define and which I remembered meeting before at the miniature desks of childhood. To be around these special people gave you an air of exultation. Excluded, you could feel neutralized.

  The green-door factor.

  The door was built with clever whispers.

  The door was chained by knowing eyes.

  You had to know the password.

  Ostentatious they were not, but the Frazers certainly went short of nothing. Sam was in fashionable advertising and the name of his company sometimes rolled by in the credits on ITV, but in spite of this Martha dressed like a gypsy, choosing outlandish material and running up her own flowing clothes – vivid, sloppy and tasty like burnt home-made sweets – and her kids lived in patched dungarees, baggy jumpers and multi-coloured boots.

  Natural taste, I thought to myself, knowing that I had none.

  She went to the hairdresser only once a year to have her curly black locks cut short.

  She was quickly bored.

  She blossomed in company.

  She collected cats and her homely house had a feral smell about it.

  I felt a pleasant kick of satisfaction each time I was included in Martha’s disorganized plans, but I couldn’t escape the slump of misery when the Frazers were asked to supper by my neighbouring rivals.

  Yes, it’s true and I have to admit it, I saw them as rivals right at the start of my friendship with Martha.

  I was haunted by the most ludicrous trivia.

  Unable to keep my distress to myself, I would moan to Graham with my voice mean and sharp. ‘Why the hell would they want to go round to the Wainwrights’ again when Martha swears she can’t stand him? She calls him the flasher because of his mac.’

  And:

  ‘Fancy Christine inviting Scarlett to Jody’s sixth birthday party. Scarlett’s a baby…’

  Or:

  ‘Martha says she feels sorry for Tina, that’s why she keeps going round for coffee. That’s the trouble with Martha, everyone wants her. She makes them laugh.’

  Graham protested between the silvery bones of his morning kipper. ‘Does it matter? Do you care? Why are you so bothered about what Martha Frazer is up to? You spend most of your time round there gossiping, anyway. I should think you’d be glad of a chance to catch up.’

  ‘What do you mean, catch up?’ This, as always, hit a raw nerve. I was always well ahead of myself. Like his mother, Ruth, and my own mother, Stella, I kept a neat and tidy house.

  ‘By the way you keep tabs on Martha anyone would think you were jealous.’

  This accusation came as a shock. ‘That’s absurd. Of course I’m not jealous.’

  ‘Well then, leave it alone. What does it matter to you if Martha’s garden is littered with kids? You wouldn’t want them round here. If she doesn’t mind the mess and the mud, good luck to her. She’s crazy.’

  Graham would have had a heart attack if our garden was abused the way hers was. Scarlett’s little sandpit had been spread, partly by kids and partly by cats, so it overflowed onto the patio. Pastry cutters and plastic watering cans, mostly broken, and punctured beach balls lay around rotting with little pats of mud inside them. Sam had laid turf which had not properly taken, so the surface of the Frazers’ lawn was uneven, not billiard-table smooth like ours, for which Graham had sensibly sown grass seed and used the roller on it for weeks.

  ‘You might as well do things properly if you’re going to bother to do them at all,’ he used to say, fairly often.

  On the few days it was warm enough for Poppy to toddle outdoors I struggled to keep her on the patio, for Graham’s hard-working sake.

  We made an earnest pair, Graham and I, so proud of our house; but Martha’s attitude was undermining, she was so unconcerned about hers. It made us look so uptight and conventional, so materially obsessed, forever fiddling with curtains and mats, and I suspected that Martha found my loo-seat cover amusing. We weren’t like that – not really.

  But we were certainly going wrong somewhere because the atmosphere in her house was so much easier, while ours still smelled of new paint no matter how often I opened the windows.

  In the evenings, later, when the kids were safely in bed and we went round for a slapdash supper at Martha’s warped and crayoned table, her hysterical kitchen of half-burned candles and battered pine – with its baggy cushions, chipped china, bright yellow walls and cats on the Aga – managed to give out an ambience of sophisticated French cafe life which we could never achieve with our matching candles in our beige dining room.

  My little triumph.

  Against all the odds my children were bigger and heavier than hers. Probably because they were used to regular meals and not fed scrapings out of the fridge at whatever time was convenient for Martha. And, in my opinion, the bottle gave them a better start.

  ‘I thought mine would be giants like me,’ said Martha rather ruefully. ‘Not scruffy street urchins with lanky loins, like a Dickens illustration.’

  ‘Martha can be far too casual,’ I gloated to Graham self-righteously that day. ‘It’s all very well her telling me to relax, saying I do too much or I worry too much, but you can see how it pays off in the end.’

  ‘Martha’s a slut,’ said Graham.

  ‘But nice with it,’ I had to say.

  ‘Yes, a very nice slut,’ he agreed.

  ‘Do you sometimes wish I was more like Martha?’

  ‘Christ, no, why would I? She is melodramatic, loud and lazy. She would drive me demented. I couldn’t live with her for a second, and you couldn’t live with Sam.’

  Would he like to screw Martha? I wondered.

  Men looked at Martha, men were enamoured in spite of the hair under her arms.

  I was too stiff. It was hard to bend. Compared to the voluptuous Martha who admitted she preferred sex in the kitchen I felt like a frump, although I was not yet thirty. People have called me aloof, mistaking my shyness for haughty disdain, and the way that my nose turns up doesn’t help.

  ‘But as we’re going on holiday together,’ said Graham with a sigh of gloom, ‘we’d better just hope that we all get on.’

  As the months sped by, we proud mothers watched as our little girls smiled their first smiles, grew their first teeth, gurgled their first words and crawled their first few yards. Those were the days. The best of times.

  But eight years on and the tables were turning.

  The bullying had been going on for weeks before I found out about it.

  Thinking back, yes, Poppy had been quieter, but then she’d had more homework to do as she came to the end of her last year at junior school a
nd I knew she was dreading the move to the comp.

  I was frantic and frightened when I discovered her skiving off school. Thank God I did find her and managed to stop it happening again before it became a dangerous habit. I came across her in the mall, sitting among a gaggle of wrinklies on a bench outside Marks & Spencer.

  At first I couldn’t believe it. I assumed she was on some project. I even smiled to see her there. ‘Poppy! What’s going on? I didn’t know you did this on a Wednesday.’

  But where were all the others? Why did she look so pale?

  She hung her head, empty of answers, and then her blue eyes filled up and she began to cry.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ I fished for a tissue. ‘Poppy, look at me now! What’s going on? What are you doing?’

  She stared at me in utter misery, sucking the end of her hair.

  ‘Are you on your own? Where’s Scarlett?’

  The horror of this, of her vulnerability, of what could have happened to a child her age, made me suddenly furious.

  I raised my voice. ‘And nobody knows? No-one at school knows you’re here?’

  Poppy shook her head forlornly. She twisted one thin, scabby leg round the other.

  ‘You’re coming straight home with me right now and we’ll talk about this until I know what’s going on. The thought of it, Poppy, Jesus Christ, the thought of you being here on your own…’

  ‘I’m quite safe here, Mum.’

  I went cold in the pit of my stomach. ‘What? What are you telling me? That you’ve done this before, this isn’t the first time?’ I was staggered. We were close. I truly believed that we had no secrets and now this – my God.

  ‘This is the first time. I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t stay there any longer. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I daresay you are. And so am I. Daddy will be sorry. Mrs Forest will be sorry…’

  ‘Please don’t tell them,’ she pleaded with me. ‘Don’t tell Mrs Forest.’ And she broke into floods of tears again.

  This was impossible. I bent down to her level and held both her arms. ‘Listen, Poppy,’ I began, determined to be gentle and soothing. ‘Nobody’s going to shout or be cross. All we need to do is talk this through till we understand what is happening here.’

  ‘But I can’t tell you!’ she stormed.

  I looked at her hard. She was as stubborn as Graham.

  ‘But what can’t you tell me, darling?’

  ‘I can’t tell you what’s been happening, I can’t tell you what you want.’

  I made my voice extra cajoling. ‘Why not, Poppy? Nothing’s so dreadful that you can’t tell me, or Daddy if you’d rather. Or Martha? D’you think you could talk to Martha?’

  ‘It would only make things worse,’ she hiccuped.

  I looked across the busy arcade with panic-stricken eyes, at all the ugly, misshapen people, and brought both hands to my head. ‘Worse? Worse than you hanging around, seeking refuge in this God-awful place? Surely not worse than this, Poppy? When I think of what could have happened to you. And what about the work you’re missing? I can’t imagine how they didn’t miss you.’

  ‘I’m never going back there, Mum,’ she said, rubbing her eyes which were swollen and red. My heart broke to see my child so unbearably unhappy, drooping, head down and swaying slightly like a small corpse on a gibbet. ‘Whatever you do and whoever you speak to, I refuse to go back to school.’

  The first thing I did was go round to Martha’s, although she denies this now.

  ‘It’s Scarlett,’ I said desperately, ‘Scarlett and that Harriet Birch.’

  Heavy with complaint, I had to make her know how she’d wronged me.

  She moved the Brie and the plasticine. She pushed me a cup of coffee. She lit up one of her foul cigarettes: Samson Shag. She used to roll up with an angry urgency, believing these were better for her health, but her cough was worse if anything.

  She turned irritated eyes on to me and said, ‘I haven’t liked to say anything but it seems that Poppy resents Scarlett’s friendship with Harriet and it’s been quite difficult for all three of them.’

  Oh no, this wouldn’t do. This was denial. A twisted truth. ‘They have been deliberately unkind to Poppy,’ I said, ‘and it’s been going on for a long time. She says they watch every move she makes and my God, Martha, she’s been suffering in silence…’

  ‘Jennie, I don’t want to sound unreasonable, but that’s not the way I heard it.’

  ‘I can’t believe this. You knew? You’re saying you knew and you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘Jennie…’ She sighed, sitting back and allowing her ash to fall sloppily off the end of her bent-up rollie. ‘I don’t want to sound as if I think that Poppy has a problem.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I put down my cup, gaping at this unfairness. ‘A problem? Poppy?’

  ‘And I don’t want to suggest you are over-protective.’

  Then she had the nerve to smile.

  What a gross simplification! ‘Even if I am over-protective, you have to admit this is hard for Poppy. She and Scarlett have been best friends ever since they could walk. And now here comes Harriet Birch and all of a sudden Poppy is treated with less sensitivity than you’d use on an old handbag.’

  Martha leaned forward and said gently, ‘Hang on, Jennie, you mustn’t evade the real issue here.’

  ‘If you know what the real issue is, maybe you could enlighten me.’

  ‘The real issue is that Scarlett has been carrying Poppy for years and she’s just got tired of it.’

  Jesus! I couldn’t believe it. Martha, renowned for her bluntness, had cracked my heart so hard it took all I had to draw breath. I lowered my face as if I’d been slapped. I was pink with indignation because deep inside I knew what she meant, but couldn’t bear the way she had said it. This was my child we were discussing, my vulnerable, frightened, unhappy daughter, and I expected more from Martha than this. I thought guiltily back to the times we had said:

  ‘Go with Scarlett, Poppy, she’ll take you…’

  ‘Keep your eye on Poppy, she’s frightened of dogs…’

  ‘Tell Scarlett if those kids start on you. She’ll sort them out, she’ll see them off…’

  Both of us had understood that Scarlett, as Martha’s child, was more confident than mine and might enjoy the role of keeper.

  But Scarlett had never complained.

  Not until now.

  In fact she seemed to enjoy the part of defender of the weak. She took it upon herself naturally. Nobody forced her, or put her under pressure.

  Then Martha said, ‘I think we have been expecting too much from Scarlett lately. There’s exams coming up and a change of school. She’s only ten after all.’

  This was outrageous. I blinked hard and fast. ‘So is Poppy. And I notice you don’t seem interested to hear the details of what’s been happening. They have been very cruel, you know.’

  My best friend sighed again. ‘Children are, I’m afraid. Shit, you of all people know that, Jennie.’ This was disloyalty in the extreme.

  I was going to tell her anyway, whether she wanted to hear or not. ‘They’ve been ganging up on her, picking on her. Hiding her books and throwing apples, making sure she’s chosen last when teams are being selected, whispering in the playground, and I heard there was some money missing…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Martha. ‘I know about that. Poppy accused Scarlett of stealing. She sneaked off and told Mrs Forest that she’d seen Scarlett and Harriet take the money from a gym bag in the cloakroom. It turned out to be lies – just a pack of lies.’

  By now I was shaking with rage and shock. I had never liked Harriet Birch, a sly and cunning child. I felt so hurt. So betrayed. ‘Poppy did see them take that money.’ What I hated most was that Martha seemed pleased that all this had come out in the open.

  Martha said briskly, ‘And you are so unconditionally uncritical that you honestly believe her?’

  It struck me then that Poppy, holed up like an animal in her room, had
no circle of friends, unlike Scarlett. Friends who might back her story. Friends to walk round with during break. Take Scarlett away and Poppy was all on her own. Is this why I felt so protective towards her, is this why I had to fight so hard? Remembering how it was with me when I was Poppy’s age?

  And frightened.

  And alone.

  And then Martha said, ‘Look, calm down, Jennie. You’ve come here to talk, so let’s do that. We can’t get anywhere while you’re behaving as though Scarlett has committed mass murder.’

  Huh. The flippancy I so admired before disgusted me then. I didn’t need Martha. I didn’t need anyone. I got up and stiffly left her house, drained and exhausted.

  Oh yes, ours was an uneasy friendship.

  FOUR

  Martha

  OH YES, OURS WAS an uneasy friendship.

  Our babies had started to walk and talk. Sam and I had argued for weeks over whether to ask the Gordons to come on holiday with us that year. Sam liked them well enough, although he and Graham had little in common. ‘He’ll never rise above middle management,’ said Sam at his most pompous. ‘He hasn’t got the thrust to succeed.’

  ‘You mean’, I told him, ‘that he’s just too decent.’

  Today was not a good time to broach it. The TV was on and Scarlett was crying.

  ‘One more worry we don’t need,’ Sam complained. I had made him peel the apples and he was being deliberately clumsy, cutting most of the apple away along with the core. ‘It’ll spoil everything,’ he went on. ‘They won’t get on with Emma and Mark, and you’re up the duff again. Poppy is such a whinger they won’t make the dining room in the evenings, and we won’t feel free to leave the hotel no matter how good the babysitting is.’

  ‘But Jennie needs a break and a laugh. Look at the shadows under her eyes and that old twitch is coming back. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t suggest it, but she’d be so lonely left here for two weeks…’

  ‘Jesus, Martha,’ and another mutilated apple was flung into the pan. ‘That woman’s got a drag behind her like she’s held down by an anchor. Damn damn damn. So who else are you inviting? Anyone in the Close with a problem? Why don’t you put up a sign? You are not responsible for Jennie so why do you allow yourself to be so put upon by your neighbour?’