Shadows on the Mirror

by Frances Fyfield

  Pen stirred the sauce. Ernest had turned on the music, a sure sign of recovery. At least this evening he was not going to dwell on the other two sources of grief: his stepson Malcolm, who so adamantly refused to join the firm or have anything to do with it, for reasons Ernest could not understand, and the client, Charles Tysall, who told poor Ernest the sort of secrets Ernest could never share, making him physically ill. Guilt, that was Ernest’s problem. Couldn’t bear to think he had failed, and when the guilt struck, thought Penelope, he ceases to judge them at all. Becomes immobile, like an animal hypnotised.

  Eight-fifteen on the Rothbury Estate, finest statement of Victorian values for the poor, despised, these days, by most of them. Built around a well with a scrub of kicked-up lawn, ancient white brick, small windows, Noise was echoing as the last of Joan’s children clattered down the steps. ‘Wait for me. Wait for meeee . . .’ Jack’s voice drifting back, forever plaintive. She sighed and wished she had not shouted. Time to go to the office of Matthewson and become secretary to Miss Fortune, rather than mother to this brat-pack. She tidied the room in a flurry of hate, pushing dirty clothes in a sack, food in the bin, dishes in the sink, leaving the beds and the washing. Mustn’t grumble: just think if Ted were here, the mess would be worse. Ted Plumb, divorced husband, lived like a tornado, could reduce a room to a dump within minutes, and somewhere in the muddle, there would be a whisky bottle. Joan sat down on the sofa, suddenly winded by the thought. No, if Ted was still with them, they wouldn’t be living here, would they? If not in a house, at least they’d have a police flat with one more room and a caretaker. The bloody Commissioner made his officers look after their families, even officers like Ted, and if they wouldn’t, he did, in a manner of speaking.

  But all of them were beyond such protection now. Ted had put it behind them. Disgraced, sacked, living in a grotty bedsit, God knows where, still with a bottle for company, and Lord alone knows what else.

  ‘You really did it proper, didn’t you, Ted?’ Joan scowled into her mirror, adding a row of beads to the rest of the colours. ‘You really blew the whole thing. Us, in a half-condemned council flat no one else wants, and you up shit creek. And now you want to kiss and make up. Well, sod you.’

  She pushed the hat on her head, twisted the stocking sideways round her ankle so the holes would not show, picked up her bright red bag and slammed out of the door. Wait till she told Sarah what the bugger had done. Sarah would laugh and, despite herself, she would be made to feel better however much she might resent it. She might just turn up and offer to take Jack on Sunday, give her a break, the way she sometimes did. Odd woman doing that for nothing; why the hell should she? But she did. At least, Joan thought, I’ve got a job. I hate bloody typing, but at least I don’t work for some bloke. At least I work for a woman, even if she is too bloody clever by half.

  Teetering on high heels, adjusting the shoulder bag, Joan was thinking hard. Get to Tescos at lunchtime, beans, spuds, underpants for John, socks for Jack, soap, and they all needed shoes. £19.99 a pair, kids’ shoes . . . They needed everything, and what had he carried in under his arm as a peace-offering for the first visit in three months? A dog, a bloody dog, not even a puppy, probably stolen. A relic of a Christmas present. The kids had loved it. Joan had exploded.

  ‘What the hell am I supposed to do with it?’ Hissing, wresting it away from Jack, shoving it back into Ted’s arms. ‘Three floors up, no money for clothes, let alone dog food.’

  ‘I thought the kids would like it,’ he said, sullen the way he always was with every misjudged gift which had distinguished the marriage. She had pushed him and the dog into the kitchen away from the howling children. ‘Get out,’ she had said, controlling her voice with difficulty. ‘You can’t bloody provide for us, OK. But you don’t have to make it worse. Just get out, and take that animal with you.’

  Clattering up to the top deck of the bus, she remembered his slower steps, descending from the flat with an armful of smallish dog which had looked so large and hungry in their cramped living room. Remembered the hour spent placating the children in quiet fury. ‘Why can’t we keep it, Mum . . . why? Dad gave it us, not you . . . You’re a pig, Mum . . . We’d look after it, Mum . . . we would really . . .’ Would you hell, she muttered, promising treats in return, while it all rumbled down into quiet, solid resentment, each for the other. But even in the remembered anger, she could hear Ted’s light steps going away mournfully. Always light-footed, Ted. Not known as the soft-shoed shuffler for nothing. To hell with him. But she wished she did not care what happened to him, wished she did not mind them being so ignorant of one another’s lives. Didn’t even know where he lived, or he where she worked. Better that way, probably. Tears threatened the bright eyeshadow and she blinked them back, staring ahead at the broad back on the seat beyond, clutching the bag on her thin knees, trying to think of food.

  At ten-thirty in the morning, Sarah fled through the smoked-glass doors of the reception, noisiest person to enter and easily the latest. It was not for the golden receptionists to comment. Miss Fortune had been in a meeting since dawn, according to her secretary, and since Sarah’s grin was catching and her wave towards them unrepentant as she took the stairs two at a time, the red coat rustling, her exuberance defied criticism. The other lady solicitors had been in since eight-fifteen of course, but there was something admirable in Sarah’s defiant carelessness, so that, in mute conspiracy, they failed to notice the eccentricities or the appalling time-keeping, and smiled back.

  The stairs led to a wide corridor, carpet still thick on the first floor, with well-tended greenery in tasteful alcoves cleverly lit against restful walls. No prints, almost spartan. On the second floor, decoration was more haphazard, the corridor narrow and the ceilings lower over rooms of smaller dimensions if no less immaculate. Solid reproduction furniture to compensate for lack of size: one chair for the desk, one for a visitor and the room was almost full, would have been elegantly cramped without the mess Sarah created. Her own pictures hung on the wall to pacify her spirit and hide the feeling of being a caged bird with ruffled feathers pining for a piece of sky. Apart from these, Sarah hated it, not as much as she hated being a lawyer at all, but certainly to the same degree. This might have been prestigious Mayfair, this ghastly, pretentious, stuffy office, but on four mornings out of five, she could not raise her head from the pillow without dropping back into that sickening claustrophobia provoked by the thought of this room. A sensation of dread compounded by the certain knowledge that any other employment which used the qualifications, which felt like her own sentence for life, would be better. What a wimp she had been, what a malleable weakling, to let herself in for a lifetime of legal wrangling. Time will come, she told herself, when I shall be no one else’s creature. And when I don’t wake up looking for yet another reason why I should not go to work today.

  As Sarah sat, applying the everyday props, face crouched to a cracked mirror in the drawer, wondering why her make-up bag always looked diseased and mascara was claggy only when she tried to apply it in a hurry, the door crashed open before Joan, a six-foot wraith bearing a large mug of coffee which was still complete with traces of yesterday’s lipstick.

  ‘Bloody hell, gel, where you been? You aren’ half late.’

  ‘Sorry. Thanks, who noticed?’

  ‘No one much. Matthewson popped in, only for a chat, he said. Don’t think he was checking up on you. Just lonely.’ Matthewson was happier in these humbler regions. ‘Come on then, tell me. Out late again last night, was you? Another of your deadbeats?’

  ‘Another friend. Of the opposite sex. All right, another deadbeat, but very kind.’

  ‘So you say. All your blokes sound useless to me.’ Rich, though. Joan presupposed they were rich, Sarah’s pleasant-sounding men with their secretive requests. They had rich voices! Sarah had rich clothes, richer even than all the other lady solicitors. ‘You need a nice fella.’ She sat down, coughed, lit another cigarette. ‘Only don’t marry a policeman
. I’ll tell you the latest when you’ve caught up. Ted’s excelled himself.’ She cackled, pushed the coffee towards Sarah, folded her arms, looked down critically. ‘And do I detect just a trace of chemical poisoning?’

  ‘Just a trace.’ They had a common language. Joan considered that the chemicals in wine were solely responsible for the hangovers, and had coined a new phrase for an old condition. It looked better on a sick-note, and had confused personnel on several of hers.

  ‘Well, gel, don’t let it get to you. And in case you’ve gone deaf, that’s your phone ringing. It’s Watson and Watson. They’re caving in.’

  ‘Sarah Fortune, could you hold on a minute?’ She covered the phone with one hand. ‘What do you mean, caving in?’

  ‘What do you think I bloody mean? You offered him ten thousand to settle the action last week. He was all bluff and “no, can’t consider it”, and this morning he’s phoned three times, ‘course he’s caving in.’ Joan strode out, thin as a stick, muttering mock despair. Panic in Sarah as she tried to remember which case, when, who were Messrs Watson and Watson, and what was the name of the client?

  ‘Sorry to keep you. Who’s speaking?’

  ‘Mr Watson.’

  ‘Mr Who?’

  ‘Watson.’ Roared.

  ‘Which one? Oh yes, Mr Watson. Missed you earlier. At a meeting. Shame about that. What can I . . .’

  ‘We accept.’

  ‘Do you now?’ Struggling with words and memory, fencing for time, with facts slipping away like eels from a net. ‘Well, I’m not sure the offer stands. You refused last week. I thought again. I seem to remember my client was being generous.’

  ‘We accept.’

  ‘Nine thousand.’

  ‘You said ten.’

  ‘Then, not now. You refused then. Nine thousand, take it or leave it. I shan’t ask for costs. Saves you some.’

  ‘Wait a minute . . .’

  ‘Haven’t got a minute. Nine thousand. Just hang on a second . . .’ Stuffing the squawking phone beneath a rubble of papers, the question of which case it was tugging at bruised brain cells, wondering why she argued on automatic pilot like a compulsive bargainer when she couldn’t even remember who he was or what the hell it had been about, this offer, this acceptance. Then she couldn’t find the phone, and when she did, the receiver was still warm with Watson’s enraged acceptance. ‘Tough lady,’ he said, furious but admiring. ‘Don’t suppose you want a job?’ ‘Christ,’ muttered Sarah. ‘That’s the last thing I need.’ Must be an important client for Watson, whoever he was. At times like this, ignorance was bliss. Watson could not be expected to know the difference between a hardliner and a thirty-year-old woman with a slight hangover, defective memory and no line at all.

  Miss Fortune knew she was a misfit in the firm, not obviously, but subtly so, simply slightly out of focus. The firm, that big amorphous animal with all the dull instincts of a modern dinosaur, knew it without analysing why, and compromised by relegating Sarah’s menage to the nether regions of the second floor so that Joan’s leopard-skin tights, strident laugh and aggressive face would not alarm the clients who padded to the doors in city suits and matching briefcases. ‘Here’s another clone for you, Mr P,’ she had once said by way of announcement to a senior partner, and after that the second floor came to suit them best. Sarah accepted Joan without a qualm, knew every foible of Joan’s health, history and energetic offspring, while Joan herself would cheerfully have killed for Sarah on a good day, murdered her on the next. She held a sort of defensive, utterly suspicious affection for her employer, allowing for giggling in both their rooms with defensive sulking in-between such lassitude on Joan’s behalf. She always regretted the giggles, the confidences she gave, but always gave them, grudgingly appreciative of a good boss in the full understanding that it was still a boss. With no accountant able to understand how it was that Miss Fortune made money for the firm more by luck than strictly legal judgement, no one entirely sure what she did all day, the mystification was shared by Sarah herself who did not understand it either. For half of the hours, she worked in an energetic muddle which, miraculously, generated acceptable income by inspired and soothing guesswork, bargaining and choice of barristers. For the other half she wondered how soon it would be before she was found out, planned her passage to freedom, and tried to think up new ways of shortening her day. A talent for guarding other people’s money from litigious predators ensured survival, but nothing altered the fact that she loathed it. How could anyone in their right mind be interested in the Law? People counted, not the rules. The Law is an ass, but around Sarah, it brayed with enthusiasm.

  There was a short interval of silence in Sarah’s room while she looked at the mess of papers made worse by the scrabble for the phone. Then came a slight knock at the door, the diffident tap of someone who had evaded the eagle eye behind the outer desk.

  ‘Come in, Fred.’ It was a conspiratorial whisper. He hovered in the doorway, a down-at-heel caretaker, sloppy to the toe nails. Fred wore the same shirt most days. His braces were frayed and his eyes permanently bloodshot. The grin on his face showed pure affection and slight mental sub-normality. Fred was permanently shunned, smelt of fish and the boiler room, even though there was no boiler room.

  ‘’Ere, Miss Fortune. Brought your bacon roll.’

  ‘Thanks, Fred. I need it.’ She fumbled in her purse, exchanging cash for the paper bag he held out like a precious gift, thankful and grateful for the very sight of his lopsided, sheepish grin. She grinned back, her face split in open welcome. They were friends, possibly the only allies under this competitive roof. The bacon roll lay there, comfortably greasy on her desk, cholesterol fix for the day. Fred, who had already eaten two, sat down and pulled out his cigarettes. Fred’s fags were legendary. They smelt too. Sarah had simply never noticed, and ate the roll with the delicacy of a hungry red squirrel, talking between bites. ‘Come on then, Fred,’ she said. ‘What’s the news?’

  He shuffled happily. ‘Well, not much, see? But our Ernest has got the grumps. Going round like a bear with a sore head. Reckon the missus feeds him too much. Bad tempered as hell, couldn’t cheer him up.’

  ‘What, not even with a bacon roll from the corner?’

  ‘Nope. Nothing doing. Go away, Fred, he said to me, bugger off. So I thought I’d give you today’s tip instead. Couldn’t get Ernest to listen. Usually does, though.’

  ‘What tip’s this then, Fred?’

  He leant forward. ‘Horse called Pink Jade in the two-thirty at Epsom. Bloke in the café really rates it. Says it’ll go like a bomb, nothing to stop it. Knows a bookie. Got something on it himself. What do you reckon?’

  ‘Two pounds each way?’

  ‘Fiver to win? Be a devil.’

  ‘Go on then. I’ll have your guts for garters if it doesn’t.’

  The grin grew wider, dividing his face into two triangles as he shuffled to his feet.

  ‘Sure as eggs is eggs. Tell you what, Miss F, how about putting something on for Mr Matthewson? Might change his mood if he wins.’

  ‘OK. Two pounds each way for him. How’s my account? Do I owe you any?’

  ‘Naa. We’re looking pretty good. You’re always in credit, never let me down. See you then, better get to work.’

  ‘Watch out for Joan. She’s got the hump too.’

  ‘What’s different?’ They shared the look of plotters and a mutual shrug without malice before the door closed behind him.

  The morning was filled with little incentive schemes. Lunch was booked, and that could be stretched to two hours. Nevertheless, Sarah sat idly. Outside in the street, tyres squealed; there was a sound of impact. She shut her eyes, stung by the sudden memory, and did not move to look.

  When Sarah Fortune’s handsome husband had relinquished his uninsured life nearly three years before in a car crash of resounding stupidity, he had not been entirely sober, and was talking as fast as usual. Crossing a red light in fourth gear whilst engrossed in the business of disc
ussing a better hotel room for the next assignation, resulted in the tidy compression of his chest, a bloodless crushing; no evidence on his face, so that his companion, protected by the seat-belt he had ignored, tried to shake him awake before the police arrived. It had complicated life for Sarah to discover that the companion in question was her own sister, who spilled the beans of this incestuous attachment at the same time as her stricken face imparted the news of death. Sarah’s family had never been supportive – she knew them already for the tribe of treacherous bullies they were – but all the same she agreed to Jeannie’s immediate request to keep this liaison with Sarah’s husband secret from Jeannie’s own. She remembered asking repeatedly, what about the people in the other car? Were they hurt, tell me, were they hurt? No revenge adding to the wreckage, but in retrospect, remembering herself agreeing with Jeannie a story for public consumption, Sarah wondered at herself. Extraordinary what one person will ask of another, and what the other will agree to do.

  No one had known, except a fat man called Malcolm (who had a way with children and other bodies), met at a party two years before. In the middle of the night she had told him and he had seemed to know what she meant. All sorts of other things she had told him too, even about the baby. Funny what she had done then, in a passion of liking. Funnier what she had done since. She had even told Malcolm about school, making him laugh in the early hours. ‘Brains,’ said her teacher, ‘bring res-pons-ib-ility . . . do-you-understand?’ Adding one more thwack with each syllable for the rude message on the blackboard. ‘And the word cop-ul-ation is spelt with one P, don’t you know?’ Sarah knew, but it was someone else who had written. Her own childish behaviour was then as good as her childish spelling, but life had the effect of shedding one moral principle a year and leaving a greater desire for fun than there had ever been for obedience. She had never told anyone else, apart from the same fat man, about the baby. Dead child of faithless spouse who had impregnated a sister as well as a wife, and left his debts instead of the result. Three months’ life oozing away six weeks after his, drenching another car seat, while somehow, in that red, embarrassing flow, there had slid from her the whole code by which she had thought to have lived. I loved you once. You blocked my view of the universe once, both of you, but I cannot lie down and die. Nothing as insubstantial as fidelity, duty, honour or the dignity of hard work seemed faintly significant after that, nor had these old inhibitions recovered ever since. There was no place for them. Kindness, yes. Honesty of her own peculiar kind, but not the rest. Sarah stretched in her seat, one limb at a time, smiled into the distance, then chuckled out loud. On the whole, apart from the work and the grief, it had been a bloody good two years.