Shadow Play

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Why didn’t you come back?’ Helen asked again, far less icily. ‘Did you by any chance spot a friend on the premises?’ She and Rose had been getting on well; a little teasing was allowed.

  ‘I was sick,’ Rose murmured, still whiter than paper. ‘Very sick.’ Helen was immediately full of concern.

  ‘Oh, Rose, you idiot, what am I to do with you? Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Rose, shrugging, but without the more familiar insolence. She looked small, weak and defeated, a persona Helen neither liked nor approved. Her own anger was finally converted into puzzlement.

  ‘Why sick? It can’t be … You never did look after that cough, you’ve still got it, you make yourself sick trying to keep it down and you don’t eat. For Christ’s sake, do you want to go home?’

  It was brisk enough to help. Rose shook herself. No, it did not do to hide in the lavatory, any more than it would have done now to go home, or anywhere else alone; better stay with the pack.

  ‘I’m much better now. Sorry. Next time I’ll send you in a message by fucking pigeon.’ That was more like the usual Rose. Helen grinned.

  Rose continued. ‘What happened then with, with …’ She waved a languid hand as if unable to remember the name, ‘Him? Logo?’

  ‘My bête noire? Oh, I don’t know. Think I did the wrong thing as usual, offered no evidence. After all this time. But there’s something so fishy about a statement of facts which doesn’t mention injuries, not with a bloke who isn’t violent.’ Rose began to cough, violently.

  ‘Are you all right?’ There was a nod and the colour had turned from white to pink, a spreading blush of relief. Helen regarded that as a sign of health and a licence to continue in a self-indulgent vein.

  ‘I mean, what do you think? Do you know, I’ve hated that little hymn-singing man every time I’ve come across him, but today? Well today, I just knew it was all wrong. He didn’t assault anyone, he wouldn’t, couldn’t. He’s just pathetic. And do you know what? He wanted to know where you worked. Another fan. I don’t know how you cope.’

  Rose looked up, between coughs, the pink complexion verging on a sickly purple. ‘And you told him, I suppose?’

  Helen had no reason for the lie, but it came forth unaided anyway.

  ‘Course I didn’t. You could have been the usher’s cousin for all he knew.’ Rose relaxed and Helen felt a sense of shame as acute as it was undiagnosed.

  ‘What you need,’ she said, leading the way, ‘is some food.’

  Bailey’s palliative, she thought. He may know something I don’t.

  Margaret fussed. First she bothered and after that she fussed, a process which meant everything took longer, slowing down into a crawl of non-achievement. She would walk into a room, in search of something such as a pen or a piece of knitting, forget on the threshold what it was she had come for, see something in need of a dust, go back to fetch the duster and forget halfway back why it was she was aiming for the cupboard. Concentration on anything was limited to thirty seconds: she would end up with something in her hands, looking at it, puzzled, her sense of priorities shot to pieces. The condition repeated itself into a hundred meaningless errands, and endless dithering from room to room until the whole place became an ice rink of silly exhaustion. Should she seek out Logo? Her ally, friend, adopted son, whom she was betraying? Should she, on the other hand, deliver the flowers she had bought for Sylvie’s grandmother, or do that later? Should she press her clothes for meeting Eenie tomorrow? Would that help? All day she dawdled, until the tiredness finally made for clarity. Take flowers to Sylvie’s house. Then press clothes. On the way out or back, put a note on Logo’s door, saying would he please come in for tea or something. Confine her shopping to the expensive corner shop today, simply because it was the nearest, even though each time she bought whisky in there, she blushed for shame. And oh yes, stoke the fire. Make the man welcome, mend fences. Hadn’t seen him for days.

  Once established in their right order, the tasks became simpler. One hour all told. The flowers were accepted on the doorstep with murmered thanks but without, thank God, an invitation indoors, even though Sylvie was screaming. Margaret was served her half-bottle of whisky by a woman who smiled as if she was dispensing lemonade, and at home, the fire burned briskly against the fog which had followed the rain outside. The note still pinned on Logo’s door looked friendly. Five in the evening and the day still hers. Margaret felt suddenly at ease. What would be would be, with Eenie, with Logo, with all the world, now smoothed by the fog which took her back to a safer childhood. Fog and yellow smog in London, that sense of safety when you reached your own front door and banged it shut and waited for tea and argument. Far worse fog than this gentle mist which deterred no-one from movement, but gave a gentle glow to the street lights and made her imagine that each lit window hid a happy, laughing family behind itself. She was suddenly at peace, a great, grand peace.

  I am resigned, Margaret thought, to the occasional sweetness of life. I love this room, but how I managed to clean it today, I shall never know. What a fuss, what a fret to be in, because of what? Because of telling lies to Logo, as if that mattered, lies are as necessary as breathing: they exist to keep us sane. Because of a funny kind of grief about Sylvie’s grandmother, although I never knew her, because she is mourned and I shall not be. Margaret sat by her fire and chuckled. No, but I’m not dead yet. Give me my new hip and I shall move, and no, don’t be fooling yourself now, that isn’t what has stopped you, Margaret, it’s your own silly willpower and being a coward and not wanting to look a fool as you sway along, but if you smell nice and look clean as well as cheerful, nothing else matters.

  On that reflection, Margaret went for a wash and change of clothes. She could never change her clothes without washing first. She used Eenie’s expensive powder, all over. Life was for living. The speed of her knitting was electric as she sat back in front of her fire; calm carried energy into her fingers which knitted with ineffective speed the sort of sweaters she realised she would hate to wear. The thought made her judder with laughter, but she still went on knitting. Still a fool, Margaret, after all these years. Tomorrow, Eenie and she would really talk, or perhaps they would. Everything took time. She would cope with Logo if he deigned to arrive, oh, for heaven’s sake, she still loved them both and love conquered all provided you didn’t look for reward. When he did knock at the door, she wasn’t even surprised, let alone alarmed, and that was before the whisky.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ was all she said, opening the door and turning back to her chair. The one opposite, old and worn with a brash new cushion, welcomed him as if he had not been absent from her company for more days than had ever passed between them before for many a year. He looked terrible: the sight of him shocked her, but she wasn’t going to remark on that, not yet anyway.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she said, in her familiar tone of scolding and grumbling. ‘Thought you were dead.’

  He looked at the whisky bottle and the two shining glasses all standing to attention on a lace cloth.

  ‘Dead?’ he queried. ‘I may as well have been dead, for all you cared.’

  ‘Now, now,’ she said placatingly. ‘Don’t go on. You know you don’t really want me banging at your door all hours of the day and night any more than I want you banging at mine when I’ve got company. But if you needed help, you only had to ask. Get us a drink of that, will you? Stop standing about looking like a lemon.’

  He grinned. Like herself, she noticed, he had made a bit of an effort. The shirt was cleaner, the shoes had been rubbed up and down the back of his trousers where streaks of dust showed disarmingly. His face looked frightening, like a hand put through a mangle, but he still had eyes and he still had teeth. Living with the dying as she had done, Margaret had seen worse and she knew Logo’s reaction to any kind of pity he had not personally solicited.

  ‘Walk under a bus, did you?’ she asked as they sat, facing the fire, each with a huge glass in hand.r />
  ‘No, it was a train. What do you think?’

  They both chuckled silently. ‘Hope the other fella looks worse,’ said Margaret nonchalantly.

  ‘Oh, she does, she does,’ said Logo, lingering on the ‘she’ with deliberate crudeness, then gulping, while Margaret failed to flinch. Instead, she took the proffered cigarette. She thought about lotion for bruises, wondered what she had and calculated at what point she would produce it. They were worrying, those bruises, but not fatal. She could tell the doctors about those bruises and then they might listen. She could tell them he beat his head against walls. They understood real injuries like that, nothing else.

  ‘Has that horrible little girl been round again?’

  ‘She’s not horrible. She’s just got parents who are trying to do too much. Anyway, you should feel sorry for her. Her granny came on a visit, but she was sick and she died. Awful for them, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, not really. People have to die. No work for the gravediggers, else, is there?’ He laughed uproariously. Margaret felt uncomfortable, continued with her knitting, sipped the whisky which he gulped. Half a bottle was not going to go far with him in this mood, but at least he was laughing.

  ‘Guess who I saw today?’ Logo’s voice was oddly croaky, she noticed, but still loud. ‘Just you guess who I saw!’

  ‘God,’ she said, knitting faster.

  ‘Oh better than God, much better. More of a goddess. Maybe it was the devil. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell. Sometimes the things which look innocent are the opposite, you know? Sometimes something very beautiful has to be wiped out for all the damage it can do. Killed, burned in the fire. Stoned outside the city walls, then burned.’ He was murmuring, Margaret growing more and more uncomfortable, but keeping her veneer of placidity with admirable calm, gazing at her knitting for inspiration.

  ‘What are you talking about? Who did you see?’

  ‘Eenie.’ He looked at her cunningly. ‘You know, Eenie.’

  This time she reached for her whisky tumbler and took a gulp as large as his. ‘You never did,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I never really did. I just thought I did. I just felt her close to me, that’s all. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to eat, have you?’

  Margaret relaxed. ‘You and your dreaming,’ she said equably. ‘There’s some bread and cheese hanging around. Get it yourself. I’m knitting this sweater for you, you know. When you’ve got your snack, you can help me make this wool into a ball.’

  A wave of noise hit the house, the roar of the football crowd she had seen foregathering as she came home. Not even an irritation any more, nothing to remark upon after all these years, less of an event than thunder and less frightening than a storm. Eenie used to complain, but then Eenie had been a difficult child. Margaret remembered Eenie holding a skein of wool between her hands while she wound it into a ball until the child was bored and then they swapped. She could have bought wool in neat, ready-wound packets now, but the cheaper wool on the market still came like this, pieces which had to be joined. Her bag was full of wool from decades ago, unpicked jumpers washed and saved: she remembered old economies. All those tasks were soothing, imposing continuity. Maybe the winding of wool would soothe Logo as well. She sighed, foraged in her deep bag for the next, comforting lump of royal blue, while Logo foraged quietly for cheese. There was a rattle of sound as he looked for a knife. Oh let him be: she was tired, so tired, she closed her eyes for a minute and let another roar from the crowd wash over them. If you listened, the fire made more sound than the rest of the world: it could speak to you, it was company. Maybe all she needed was a cat.

  ‘I think I’ll get one,’ she said out loud.

  ‘So,’ he said, sitting in the chair opposite, picking up the new skein of wool which had fallen into her lap, holding it in one hand while the other held a lump of cheese, cut into a neat square.

  ‘I think I’ll get a cat.’

  He looked at her with an expression of sad disgust, the look she might have given to a damaged city pigeon, some poor earth-bound piece of vermin.

  ‘Help me wind the wool, will you?’

  ‘I can’t. It’ll stick to me, my wrists, they’re all sore. Look.’ He held them up.

  ‘What’s wrong with them? I can only see dirty tidemarks.’

  With a lightning movement, he sprang towards her and stuffed the square of cheese into the mouth which was opening to speak. Two ounces of solid, sticky, soap-like cheddar lodged with violence between her gums. Margaret spluttered, tried to spit it out, but he held her hair and put his palm over her mouth. She tried to chew and swallow, thrashed with her arms, dug her nails into his wrist, her eyes bulging and her face changing colour, until he relented and stood back. Margaret coughed, disgorged the cheese, continued coughing, supporting herself on the arms of the chair, staring wildly, trying to rise. Logo patted her on the back, firmly but kindly. Then he squatted at her feet, picked up the skein of wool he had dropped, fingered it.

  ‘A pullover for me, Granny? Now whoever asked you to do that? I didn’t. I wouldn’t ask you for anything, not now. You knew where she was all the time, didn’t you? All the time.’

  ‘Who?’ she whispered, massaging her throat, trying to sound calm, croaking as he croaked. ‘Logo, stop messing about. Get out of here. I’m too old for horrible games, don’t.’ Her eyes travelled beyond him to the back of the kitchen and the knife drawer, standing open. Two pieces of paper were on the floor. The remainder of the cheese stood on top of the unit, the piece she had disgorged was on the floor at her feet. Oh dear God, why had she invited him to feed himself and look in the knife drawer? Letters for her eyes only and he had seen them. Logo stood up and ground the cheese into the carpet with his heel.

  ‘You treacherous old cow. You knew when the pair of them were going, you probably helped them plan it, and you didn’t tell me. How many letters has Eenie written you then? Keeping you up to date with the news, laughing behind my back, while all the time you pretend to sympathise … laughing at me.’

  ‘One letter, Logo, I promise. Only one. One in four years, I promise.’

  ‘You what? Promise! Don’t make me laugh. You, knowing where she is, all this time. I bet it was her in here last Friday when you shouted at me to go away. Come on then, Granny, where does she live? Tell me, tell me, tell me,’ he was wheedling, kneading her ankle in an attitude of comic begging. Margaret had a brief belief that she might get the situation back under control, then she knew she could not. Ah, the treachery of it: now she had betrayed them all, Logo, his wife, Eenie. She had kept secrets for none of them. The royal-blue wool draped over her feet.

  ‘I suppose I should have known. Ever since you got into the house with that child the other week. And went upstairs.’ He spoke wistfully, still draping the wool round her puffy ankles.

  ‘Why does it matter so much? Oh dear, stopit, stopit, you idiot, that black eye’s gone to your head. Get us another drink, go on. Stop messing.’

  It seemed best to treat him as a child, sound like the good-natured scold which had been her second nature, but somewhere in the depth of her fast-beating heart, Margaret knew it was too late. ‘I’ve had one letter from Eenie, ever,’ she said querulously. ‘And why should it matter if I’ve been inside your house? Oh, I see.’

  The vision of that suitcase at the top of the stairs floated back to her with a memory of her nervousness towards him ever since she had seen it, her lack of friendliness in these last days, all that to fuel their mutual suspicions. ‘Tell me,’ she said as evenly as she could, ‘did she ever come back? Eenie’s mum? Did she really just disappear off the face of the earth, just like that? It isn’t right, is it?’

  The wool was now wound round her ankles, fashioned into a clumsy knot. He had always been clever with pieces of string, clever with his hands, but lazy, preferring games to achievements, not like his daughter. She knew that if she got up now she would fall over and she felt weak at the very thought. Logo sighed.r />
  ‘Oh yes, she came back. I brought her back, coupla days after, you were out, I know you were, but then she wouldn’t tell me where Eenie had gone. I got angry, you see, very angry.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she tell you where Eenie was?’

  ‘ To save me from her. Save me from that little temptress who’d eaten up all my goodness, made me lie with her. She gave me the apple and made me eat. She made me fuck her. She made me go to the devil, all on her own. Where does she live, Margaret?’

  ‘No, no, poor child, poor child. Oh no, poor child.’ Margaret was weeping, little corners of tears creeping round her bulging eyes.

  ‘Where does she live?’ he insisted.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she was shrinking from him.

  ‘What does she look like? Black hair, all smoothed down, with a little plait at the back!’