Emma Sparrow

by Marie Joseph

  Simon suddenly knew he did not want to look at her, so instead he stared down at his plate, and it seemed as if all the shiny, crisp little fishes were watching him. He wanted to sweep them down on to the red carpeted floor, followed by everything else on the table. He ran a finger round his collar as if it were strangling the breath out of him. He was so angry that he wanted to lift Chloe bodily from her chair and shake her until her teeth rattled. For a moment he sat there without moving, bewildered by the discovery that he possessed a rage of such passion.

  Crumpling the scarlet linen table napkin, he threw it down on the table.

  ‘We can’t talk here. Come on!’

  Chloe opened her mouth to remonstrate with him, saw his face and obeyed.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ he muttered, so she saw nothing of the way he made placatory noises to the head waiter, ignoring the stares of the fascinated diners. She did as she was told and waited for him on the pavement outside the restaurant, pulling the long knitted scarf closer round her throat and shivering a little in the evening’s sudden chill.

  Chloe was a little afraid of the scene she knew must surely follow. A little, but not much. She had realized many years ago that her mother had kept her parents’ marriage alive by being the boss and never once admitting it, maybe not even to herself. ‘Women are cleverer than men. Men are so obvious, honey,’ she had often said, and now Chloe was very much her mother’s daughter. She stepped back into the doorway. What she had had done, she had had done to her own body. That was true, wasn’t it?

  ‘Now you can perhaps try to tell me why?’

  Simon had almost frog-marched her back to the flat. Stood beside her in the lift, walked beside her down the silent, beige-carpeted corridor flanked at intervals by storage heaters. Like a corridor in Doctor Who he had often thought, but now all he wanted was to get Chloe into the privacy of the flat, to drag the truth from her, to make her tell him why she had done this monstrous thing to him. Because that was exactly how he felt, as if his own body had been violated.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Why, in God’s name, why? Without even telling me, or giving us a chance to talk it through.’ He flung his jacket on to a chair and faced her, his eyes narrowed.

  Chloe switched on the electric fire and rubbed her arms. She was almost as tall as he, and at that moment her dignity and the way she seemed to be in full control of her feelings made her seem even taller.

  ‘I did it because I knew we were not ready.’ She sighed. ‘And your first reaction back there in the restaurant told me I had been right.’

  ‘I said nothing. Absolutely nothing you could have objected to.’ Simon held his hands out palms upwards. ‘If you had given me a chance I might have told you how pleased I was. How happy.’ He walked over to the window, staring out over the lights of London, with the Post Office Tower standing like an illuminated phallic symbol in the distance. ‘Just because we’d decided no babies for a while didn’t mean I would have wanted you to do a thing like that.’ He turned round. ‘Do you realize what damage you could have caused to yourself? Women who do that sometimes become sterile. Didn’t you know that?’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘And what about the psychological damage? That was our baby, Chloe. Didn’t I have a say in whether you murdered it?’

  ‘Honey….’ She came towards him, but he knocked her hand away with a downward motion. ‘Honey…’ she said again. ‘I have not been to some dirty crone in a back street. I went to a private clinic. First I saw this man in Harley Street, then I took the letter to a nursing home, then I was booked in, then I stayed one night. For Pete’s sake, Simon, it’s only like having a D and C, a scrape. I wasn’t even sore.’

  Simon looked as if he was going to be sick. ‘How much?’ he asked coldly, reaching into his pocket for his cheque book. ‘At least let me pay for my own mistakes. That’s common justice, isn’t it? A man must always pay for his own mistakes.’

  It was hard to keep calm after that, but Chloe managed. She was a little white round the mouth, but outwardly she managed to hang on to her usual serenity.

  ‘Listen to me. Simon, honey … you know as well as I do that this box of a place isn’t right for a baby. And, no, listen. Since you became group accountant and keep moving around it isn’t even a practical idea to put a down payment on a house. Do you realize how much we would have to find as first-time buyers? And we decided we weren’t going to let your father or my parents help. Simon! We’re not children. I’m twenty-five and you’re seven years older. We’re not teenagers having to get married and moving in with Mum and Dad. We are intelligent beings, able in this day and age to extricate ourselves from whatever mess we get into. And besides,’ her head drooped forward, ‘since your divorce you’ve told me over and over that the next time has to be right. That there must be no doubt, not the slightest doubt. “The next time has to be for ever.” You’ve said that. Over and over.’

  ‘I would never have agreed to it. Never!’ Simon left her and walked through into the bedroom, and Chloe followed him.

  He was sitting on the edge of the double bed, his hands held loosely between his knees – like a little boy determined to sulk, she thought, with a sudden pang of tenderness so acute that she had to sit beside him and risk being pushed away.

  ‘If I had discussed it with you, honey, I would have put you on the spot.’ She took one of his listless hands in her own and caressed it gently. ‘I won’t need to go to a shrink, honey, to sort out any possible hang-ups. I am more practically minded than you.. women are in the main.’

  ‘Well, if I’m not practically minded, then I’m in the wrong job, love.’ There was almost a chuckle in his voice, and Chloe knew that the worst was over. Then she recoiled from the look in his dark eyes as he turned to face her. It was a look she had never seen before, a look that weighed her up and found her wanting.

  ‘I did it for you,’ she whispered later when they went exhausted and hungry to bed. ‘I did not want to force you into marrying me.’ She buried her face in his bare chest. ‘I guess I’m not a very maternal person either. I felt no surge of joy when I realized what had happened. My momma wasn’t maternal either. She told me once she hated me till I grew old enough to hold a decent conversation. “Shitty nappies were never my thing, honey,” she told me.’

  Simon smiled into her hair. ‘I like your momma. She is maybe the only really honest person I know.’

  ‘And I’m not honest?’

  Gently Simon stroked her hair. ‘You deceived me, Chloe. You took something that was half mine and destroyed it. And it’s going to take some getting used to….’

  From the living-room the telephone rang, and Simon groaned. ‘That will be my father. I expect he’ll have been waiting in all evening for me to ring, and I forgot. I never gave the business a bloody thought.’

  Chloe lay there on her back, half listening to the conversation, a one-sided conversation telling of profit margins, loss leaders, depleted stock, staff problems, missing invoices and promising new lines. She noticed that the defeated tone in Simon’s voice had vanished as he slid easily into his man’s world and became brisk and professional once again.

  ‘“Love is of men’s life a thing apart…”’ she murmured sleepily, then jerked half awake as Simon got into bed beside her and settled her into their sleeping position with her bottom snuggled comfortably into his lap. ‘I never got to hear how it went up north. Did you meet anyone interesting up there, honey?’ She was unconscious almost before the words had left her lips, worn out with the emotion of the week and the violence of Simon’s reaction. Now all she wanted was to forget… to get on, to get back to the way things had been and forget. Her leg jerked against his as she dropped into sleep, leaving Simon staring up into the darkness.

  There was a weight in his chest like an undigested meal, and even as he tightened his hold on Chloe’s soft warm body he felt a sudden urge to push her away from him. She was wearing panties beneath her nightdress and somehow that little thing, that little fem
inine necessity, brought the thing she had done sharply into focus again.

  ‘Did I meet anyone interesting?’ Simon addressed her unresponsive back. ‘Well, I don’t know. They’re a warm nice lot, the Lancastrians. No side to them, no side at all. And yes. Actually there was a girl, a strange tormented girl called Emma Sparrow….’

  Three

  ‘THERE’S NOWT HERE, I’m telling you. You can search the place, but you’ll be wasting your time, because you’ll find nowt!’

  Emma had gone straight from work to the supermarket, arriving home laden like a pack-horse. She was putting the groceries away when she heard her father’s voice, but she had been listening ever since the knock at the door, followed by John Sparrow’s shuffling steps as he answered it.

  ‘Right then, Mr Sparrow. We’ll do that. Thanks.’

  ‘Detective Constable Stewart.’ The tallest of the two policemen showed his identification card and nodded at Emma. ‘Sorry to trouble you, love, but this won’t take long.’ He turned to the shorter man. ‘Upstairs first, Ray? Right. Let’s get on with it.’

  A cowboy with an orange complexion and a purple neck-tie galloped across the television screen in a thunder of hooves, firing into a lurid shaded middle distance. Alan and Joe, their faces deathly pale, but their features restored to normality, watched with fierce concentration.

  Emma clutched the back of a chair and stared disbelieving at their impassive expressions. Did they understand what was happening? There, in their living-room? Or was the television drama more real to them as they sat there, side by side on the settee, chewing gum with rhythmic attention?

  ‘Switch that thing off!’

  As if they were Siamese twins, joined down the middle, both heads swivelled round to regard her with amazement. Emma started to tremble. She could feel her heart thudding, and as she turned to her father, her young face was the face of a woman of forty, lined with a terrible despair.

  ‘Oh, leave it then.’ Her shoulders sagged as the two heads resumed their viewing positions. John Sparrow’s fingers shook as he groped for, then lit the inevitable cigarette.

  ‘Come through into the kitchen, Dad.’ Emma winced at the sound of drawers opening and shutting upstairs, then she closed the kitchen door.

  Her father sat down in a chair and buried his face in his hands, still holding the cigarette between his fingers. His voice came muffled.

  ‘Our Sharon’s in the bathroom, having a bath. They’ll scare the living daylights out of her if they go barging in.’ He raised his head. ‘There’s nowt in the bathroom, anyroad.’

  ‘And in your room, Dad?’ Emma stared up at the ceiling. ‘Because that is where they are. They’ve gone straight in there by the sound of things.’

  She stared at the boys’ duffle coats hanging behind the door. They were hanging there limp, like her hopes, it seemed; like prayers of the past days. Prayers she knew now that were not going to be answered.

  Her father drew deeply on the cigarette, then coughed as the smoke caught his throat. The cough deepened, and he began to thump his chest as if he would force oxygen through to his lungs. Tears filled his eyes and his face flushed to a fiery red.

  ‘And in your room, Dad?’

  He refused to look at her. ‘A few odds and bobs, mebbe. Nowt much. Nowt amounting to much.’

  ‘Where?’ Emma picked up a large packet of cornflakes, cradling it to her as if she needed the comfort of something to cling to. ‘Where have you hidden it? Where, Dad?’

  ‘On top of the wardobe. In boxes. Just some stuff I couldn’t pass on.’ He studied the vinyl flooring, tracing the pattern with his foot. ‘I was going to dump it, but what with me chest being bad, and the weather being bad, I never got the chance. Nay, you could buy what I’ve got up there in a car accessory shop, that’s why I got meself stuck with it. Not worth the nicking, that lot weren’t.’

  Emma steeled herself against the grey look of his face. Now that he had stopped coughing he looked desperately ill, with mottled patches on his cheek bones, and eyes sunk into hollow sockets. She tightened her hold on the cornflake packet.

  ‘Oh, Dad….’ She spoke in a whisper. ‘This time they won’t listen to excuses. You know they’ve clamped down on stealing.’

  ‘Pilfering, lass. Pilfering.’ He flicked ash on to the floor. ‘I thought we might have a holiday this year. Just a week at Blackpool or Morecambe – with all the meals made and everything – I was going to try to put a bit by….’

  He was getting maudlin, and as Emma went to put a hand on his shoulder she smelt the whisky on him and stepped back in despair.

  ‘So we would like you to accompany us down to the station …. We think you may be able to assist us…. A few questions….’

  The policeman’s words were drowned in the sudden and terrifying fit of gasping and wheezing as John Sparrow clutched his throat, rolled his eyes back and tore at his collar. Fighting for every breath, and escaping temporarily, as he had done so often before when life got too difficult and circumstances were more than he could cope with.

  ‘Get his coat, love.’

  It was said quietly, but Emma nodded at once. Behind the policeman standing in the doorway, the second one hovered, carrying four square cardboard boxes in his arms.

  ‘Now, love.’

  She took a worn leather jacket down from behind the door, replacing the boys’ duffle coats before handing it over.

  ‘It’s cold out. He’d best have his scarf.’ She handed that over too, and wound it slowly and gently round her father’s neck. ‘And his cigarettes.’ She patted his pocket to make sure they were there.

  Then she stood back and watched them take him away.

  Through the living-room, past the settee with two tousled heads just showing above the back, then down the path to where the car waited at the kerb.

  How little he was, she thought, as dwarfed between the two detectives her father bent his head and climbed into the back of the car. It was funny how she had never noticed particularly just how small he was before.

  Emma closed the door, still with the strange calmness on her, and walked back into the kitchen. There were still some of the groceries to put away, and the fish fingers to set in rows beneath the grill. It was a Friday after all, and even though they weren’t Catholics – heaven forbid, as John Sparrow always said – they always had fish on a Friday. She tore at the packet. She supposed that fish fingers counted as proper fish, in a religious way, that was?

  ‘Has our dad got nicked, our Emma?’

  Joe stood behind her, slightly worried, but not apparently overmuch. He scratched his head, and as he took his hand away Emma saw the dirt down his nails. There was yellow sleep in his eyes as if he had stayed unwashed all day.

  ‘Have you had a wash today?’ She laid the fish fingers in a row like bread-crumbed dominoes, lining them up carefully. ‘As soon as you’ve finished your teas you can have a bath. Both of you. Okay?’

  ‘Will he be coming back soon?’

  ‘Oh, yes, quite soon.’ There was a light feeling in her head as if part of her floated away, leaving the rest of her to talk normally and even smile. ‘Don’t say you’ve left the television, Joe. You might be missing something.’

  ‘It’s only the adverts,’ he explained kindly. ‘Our Alan likes them, but I think they’re rubbish.’ He turned away, undersized like his father, socks falling over the tops of his scuffed shoes, shirt hanging out of his trousers. But not before Emma had seen the uncertainty in his eyes.

  ‘Joe!’ She called his name so fiercely that he whipped round, his whole stance a question mark, a needing to know. ‘Oh, Joe….’ The cry came from Emma’s heart, not from her lips. In one more moment she knew she would have to run to him, kneel down on the floor and sob into his unbrushed hair.

  But he was eight years old, that was all.

  ‘I’ll soon have your tea ready.’ She indicated the fish fingers. ‘And there’s a new bottle of tomato sauce. Okay?’

  Joe’s bottom li
p quivered. ‘Our Alan says our dad’s gone to be grilled. He’s not, has he?’

  Hysteria bubbled in Emma’s throat. ‘Like the fish fingers? Oh, love, I’ve told you. He’ll be back soon.’ Then she did get down on her knees and put her arms round him, smelling the little boy smell of him, and feeling him grow stiff as a plank in her embrace.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Sharon stood behind her, every hair on her head wound into pink rollers, a small transistor radio belting out pop music clutched to her, as much a part of her as if it were a second skin.

  ‘You mean you haven’t heard anything?’

  Emma pushed Sharon into the kitchen and closed the door, but not before she had seen Joe take his place on the settee once again.

  ‘You mean you didn’t hear them upstairs? You mean you sat in the bath with all that going on right upstairs?’

  ‘All what going on upstairs?’

  ‘Two bloody policemen searching the bedrooms, that’s all. And switch that bloody thing off! This house is so bloody noisy you can’t hear yourself think!’

  ‘Stop swearing, our Emma. You don’t swear!’ Sharon, forgetting she had turned off the radio, shouted at the top of her voice. ‘And where’s our dad?’ She looked feverishly round the kitchen as if expecting to see him hidden behind the cooker. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve arrested him! Oh, my God! Not tonight! Not with Ricky coming for me, and me asking him in and everything!’

  ‘You selfish little bugger!’

  Emma heard her voice shout the words, but there was no holding back now. The calmness had evaporated, and all she was conscious of was this yelling, shouting, raucous voice saying things she hardly meant, even though the fact she was saying them at all meant they must have been festering inside her for a long time.

  ‘God knows what he’ll be going through down there at the station, and all you can think about is your flamin’ precious Ricky coming! You’ve known I’ve been worried sick, and you’ve slept all night. I’ve felt you sleeping right beside me. You’ve seen him sitting there in the chair, going to pieces, bit by-bit, because he knew what was coming to him, and you’ve never said as much as a single word.’ She suddenly snatched the grill pan from the cooker and stared in horror at the blackened row of burnt fish fingers. ‘An’ now the flamin’ tea’s ruined, an’ I’ll have to find something else.’ She glanced wildly round the kitchen. ‘An’ if your flamin’ Ricky pokes his head round that door this minute I’ll chuck this lot at him. So you know.’