The Playground

by Julia Kelly

  ‘Oh, and what are the swings for? Can’t she not play while you work out? Come on, Eve, you could do with some!’ She gave my backside a sudden, sharp, quite painful slap. Then she hooked her arm around my shoulder to embrace me. ‘I’m joking with you!’ I smiled, reddened, got myself free.

  ‘I just wanted to say that I might join you tonight, if that’s OK? Joy said you were having a drink to discuss the problems with the playground?’

  She clapped her hands. ‘Excellent! For our ladies’ night out! Oh, it will be fun! And not all work, eh?’ She dug her elbow into my ribs.

  ‘Sumita, you know Sumita?’ she said, counting on her fingers, ‘She will be joining us.’ I had seen Sumita before, a small, round Indian woman who came to the playground every afternoon, always dressed for the cold in woollen hats and scarves and oversized coats, and always with a blanket, a rucksack of food and flask of coffee. She’d settle on the grass till closing time, trying to exhaust her hyperactive child, smiling and chatting to everyone.

  ‘And Sophie said she’ll be there,’ she said pointing at her house, my favourite on the square, a lovely villa-style home with pillars, raked gravel and a duck egg front door. Sophie was the beautiful mum – shiny-haired, glossy-lipped, long-limbed – I’d watched with envy from the sitting room window, arriving and leaving with two blonde children and endless shopping bags. ‘And Belinda,’ this time Irenka gestured with her hands over her stomach to show that she was a large woman. ‘Billy the Bastard’s mum, you know her? Works in the library, she’s a nice lady. Don’t know how she manages with that boy.’ Then she listed off a dozen other local women I didn’t know who had all promised to be there.

  *

  I got out of the bath that evening. Joy’s dressing gown was hanging over the frosted door. Something like knickers or tights were stuffed in its pocket. Something too intimate; it made me hold my breath. God, I was silly about this stuff. She was right, I needed to relax. I did two hundred squats in front of the mirror. Joe always smiled at this, looking like a skinny sailor as he bobbed up and down, mimicking me. And my Facercise exercises, my futile battle with age. Then I changed into my Spanx, put on my face and my dress, and tottered into the sitting room.

  Joy was on the floor with Addie, both of them were leaning back against the sofa, Joy with her long, bony, high-arched feet crossed on top of the coffee table, Addie’s tiny ones crossed identically beside hers. Joy was folding white printer paper to demonstrate how to make an Origami swan. Her student was wide-eyed, riveted.

  ‘Oh, my dear! But don’t you look pretty?’ she said, admiring me as I clip-clopped self-consciously into the room, fiddling with my hair and tugging at my too-tight dress.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mama.’ Addie was up, art abandoned, and straight over. ‘I’ll hold your hand so you don’t fall off your high shoes.’

  I lifted her into my arms and carried her over to the fireplace where we looked in the mirror together. ‘When I’m a big lady and you’re small can I have that sparkly dress?’

  ‘OK, sweetie, now don’t pull at it.’

  ‘And can I stay up early to watch a cartoon?’ I nodded, touched the tip of her nose with my finger.

  ‘Thank you, Mama,’ she said, delighted with herself. ‘You can borrow one of my broken pencils if you like?’

  Seeing me pull on my leather jacket, Alfie perked up, skittered after me, scratching the wooden floor. His nails had scraped into the wood everywhere, leaving indelible crisscross patterns. Nathan wouldn’t be happy. I told him ‘No’ and he lowered his head, took a few steps backward – the poor old mutt was used to this sort of rejection. I pulled the front door behind me.

  *

  The Hibernia Inn was a large pub near the train station, at the quiet end of Bray, a five-minute walk from the flat. I’d never been inside, but from the outside it looked quite imposing and grand. I passed much livelier pubs as I walked along the seafront towards it and although it seemed pretty unexciting when I arrived, I was happy to see there was somewhere to sit and it wasn’t too noisy. I was becoming middle-aged before my very eyes.

  There were two men up on bar stools, silent, just watching a match. I ordered a gin and Slimline tonic. The barmaid wasn’t Irish and didn’t understand; I repeated what I wanted more slowly. One of the men leant over to murmur something in the other man’s ear, probably something about my accent or my get-up. This time the barmaid nodded, told me to take a seat.

  I sat down, stood up again to take off my coat, changed my mind, put it on again, checked my nose in the mirror of my compact, checked my nails, my phone. The waitress arrived with my gin but no tonic. ‘Is OK?’ she asked when I looked puzzled. ‘You say slim lime right? I cut as slim as I could.’ I thanked her and giggled to myself, sucking on the remarkably slim, alcohol-filled lime while I waited for the others.

  Seconds later, Irenka stormed in, out of breath, in a Tidy Towns T-shirt, fleece jacket and jeans, a large plastic folder in one hand, a Tesco reusable bag the other.

  ‘Funky,’ she said, examining me. ‘Leather is very much in at the moment, but aren’t you a leetal bit glamorous for a meeting, no?’

  Mortified, I asked her what she was having. ‘A hot tea for me,’ she said, rubbing her hands together. ‘A bit of a coldish wind out there.’

  Gradually the other women arrived. I’d got it wrong. They all wanted tea, aside from Belinda Flynn, who, spurred on by me, ordered a vodka and Coke and a packet of crisps. She ripped the packet open and put it in the centre of the table to make it communal, leaning forward every so often to take one with a very dainty pinch, holding her hand over her mouth as she munched, then rubbing her fingers together to get rid of the crumbs, but you just knew that if she’d been by herself she’d have held the bag in her hand, shovelled them in and run her crispy fingers down the legs of her jeans or along the velveteen pile of the seat.

  Sophie cancelled at the last moment with a text because her husband was working late. Sumita was the last to arrive, with quiet apologies and explanations. ‘Rashi won’t let me leave. She wants all the time to be with me. Never with her daddy, only me.’

  Although visibly disappointed with the poor turn-out, unable to fathom the apathy of her neighbours and now with far too much paraphernalia for the motley crew assembled, Irenka began the meeting with gusto. She sat forward in her seat as she handed out the agenda, literally spitting with enthusiasm as she talked about the playground and what needed to be done. She held the floor while we sat quietly and listened. We were trying not to find the whole thing farcical and we were all a little nervous of her. Her laugh was an unpredictable, noisy cackle that went on for far too long and made the rest of us uncomfortable, forcing us to giggle along with her but without the sentiment. And she flipped from this to furious without any warning.

  ‘They are animals! Leetal pigs. Did you know a young girl told me to fuck off to my face when I asked her to sit at the picnic bench in the correct way, you know, without her shitty shoes where people have to sit.’ She continued to exclaim and complain and clearly wanted us to join in.

  An hour and a half later, she was only on point three of her agenda. Belinda and I were on our third drink and beyond bored. Even Sumita, ever the diplomat, had a vacant look in her eyes as Irenka showed her pictures she’d taken with her iPhone of graffiti and rubbish and possible perpetrators.

  ‘So how are you settling in?’ Belinda whispered. ‘I’ve seen you out with your little girl. You’re gorgeous together, the two of you, so you are.’

  I smiled and thanked her. I could see how the meeting, the evening itself, was awkward for her as a mother, wanting to help make the playground safe and clean but knowing that her own child was its biggest problem. No doubt she wanted to protect him, defend him, or both.

  ‘Listen, I just wanted to say about my son, about Billy. I know he’s given you a bit a trouble,’ she said, as if she knew just what I’d been thinking.

  I reassured her, but the last time we’d been in the par
k together, he’d been bad. He’d been running around behind Addie, holding onto the hood of her coat. And Belinda had come up to me and told me to keep a closer eye on my child. The cheek of her.

  ‘Look, I’m not saying he’s perfect. I know he has a few odd quirks, but he’s not a bad lad. His dad moved out a while back and he’s after taking it very hard.’

  I told her I understood, terrified that I might have all of this ahead of me with Addie.

  ‘At least he still sees his dad, I saw them together earlier, they look like they get along.’

  ‘He hasn’t seen his dad in months. Ah no, Jesus! That’s Frank you’re thinking of.’ Irenka looked up from her phone and scowled at us – we were supposed to be considering the next item on the agenda.

  ‘We’ll be with you in two minutes, ladies – we’re just getting some drinks in,’ Belinda said, nudging me out of my seat and urging me up to the bar.

  ‘He’s a youth worker – Mimi’s boyfriend, Dylan’s dad,’ she said, scrambling onto a bar stool. ‘Me and Frank, can you imagine! For Christ’s sake, he’s only a child.’

  He did look quite young, now that I considered him, with his side-parted hair, bomber jacket, always moving around Bray on his bike.

  ‘God, you must hate being shadowed around the place by someone like that?’ I asked, signalling to the barmaid for another round.

  ‘Sure it was me who asked Mimi to ask him, but he already knew all about Billy from the kids at the community centre. I spent five hours with that lad in A&E the other week, after one of his stunts, and it was really quite enjoyable, things were that bad at home. I was able to read a magazine without worrying about what he was up to or where he was. Frank seems to be getting him back on track, he’s got him back at school for one thing. So, how are you settling in, then?’ she asked me again, seeming keen to move on now that she’d got Billy out of the way.

  ‘It’s taking a while to get used to and we don’t really know anyone, but we’ll be OK. And the sea is magical for Addie,’ I said, hearing my mother’s voice in my head.

  ‘I don’t know if you’re looking for work but there’s a job going at the library – part-time maternity leave cover, if that’s of any interest to you?’ Joy must have put her up to this. Is this why she had encouraged me to join them in the first place?

  As I paid for our drinks, I tried to visualise myself working in a library; it was quite a comforting prospect. Of all the half-careers I’d had before Addie, my years of freelance proofreading and editing, even though I was pretty hopeless at both, had been quite lucrative and would look relevant on my CV. Addie would be starting school in September so I’d have a few hours free every morning. She’d got a place in a lovely little Church of Ireland school after a year of sending cards to the principal and a shotgun baptism. She had been so outrageously rude to the reverend the first time he met her, I was worried he might refuse to welcome her into his church. She kept shouting two words – ‘ice cream!’ – over and over, while he tried to talk to her in a very gentle voice about God and I gripped her ever tighter around the waist. Afterwards Joe said he’d felt like shouting ‘ice cream’ too.

  ‘Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll put in a word for you,’ Belinda said, sliding off the bar stool.

  Back in our seats, Irenka asked Belinda to look at the photos she’d taken of the graffiti – watching her reaction to see if she recognised the handwriting. ‘Pure poison,’ she said as Belinda poured Coke into her glass. ‘I hope you don’t let Billy drink that crap.’

  Sumita shoved herself and her belongings up the bench beside me.

  ‘I’m sorry, I forget your name? And your child. What is it?’

  ‘Eve and Addie, Adelaide.’

  ‘I’ve seen you in the playground. I live at Frank’s.’

  ‘Now I’m confused. You’re Mimi?’

  ‘No, not like that! I’m Sumita,’ she said, getting giddy. ‘We only rent rooms from Frank and Mimi – my husband, daughter and me.’

  She told me she and her child shared a bed and that her husband slept in the other room because he liked to watch football and needed sleep because of his job.

  ‘My child very bad sleeping. She is all the time kicking, kicking and sometimes wetting too. Does she sleep, your little girl?’

  ‘Yes. She’s pretty good, though she likes to get up around five.’

  ‘And now, no sleep for me anyway because I have a very big problem. A very big decision to make.’

  Sumita explained that she’d been offered a childminding job for ten Euro an hour but that she would have to take two buses to reach it as she didn’t drive. If she took this job for a year she might have enough, along with her husband’s savings from his job at Aldi, to put a deposit on a house.

  ‘My big problem is my employer won’t let me have Rashi with me. If I send her back to India for a year to my family, I could take the job. But now the lady says she will pay only nine Euro an hour as I would need no more if I don’t have my child to feed.’

  I wasn’t sure why she was telling me all of this but I wanted to try and help.

  ‘Why don’t I ask some of my friends if they need a childminder? You can’t work for a woman like that.’

  ‘And what do you think of these, Eve?’ Irenka interrupted, putting her phone away. She handed me some bright-yellow stencils inscribed with the words ‘Pick it up!’ above a little illustration of a dog. She’d made them herself and intended to put them along the path in the playground. I felt they had been designed and printed just for Alfie.

  ‘Now, ladies, a little bit of fun,’ she said, having tossed some stencils to each of us, as though she were dealing cards. ‘I cannot claim this idea as my own – the wonderful Frank suggested it, but I can’t wait to know what you think.’ She sat forward to hold our attention and explained Wednesday evening games.

  ‘So this is how it will work. Each Wednesday evening from five to eight o’clock we will organise games for the kids – rounders, red rover, chasing – and we will provide refreshments for them afterwards such as sausages, orange squash, those sorts of things.’

  We listened and nodded, made encouraging sounds.

  ‘Each week we would take turns to supervise,’ she said through narrowed eyes as if she could already see a few of us skulking off and her being left to run the damn thing on her own.

  And then, with all the formal business over, all the items ticked off her agenda, Irenka rummaged in her reusable bag.

  ‘Listen, ladies, I have gone earrings mad! This pair is very delicate and dainty.’ She passed several samples of her homemade jewellery around the table and we all murmured encouragingly. She was the ultimate multi-tasker – the sort of woman who would do her pelvic floor exercises while peeling potatoes and talking on the phone. Clench. Release. Clench. Release. She was making all of us weary.

  ‘Since spikes are very much in fashion I used them in this pair of earrings, one must fall in love with them, or not,’ she said, eyeing each of us in turn, as if we dared not to. ‘And look at these. Red is in. Every shop I look into is displaying red dresses.’ Belinda purchased a pair of glass pearls and dangled them from her ears playfully. I pretended to be searching for money in my jacket and bag, Sumita said maybe next time.

  At the end of the evening I left Irenka and the other women – they headed down to the promenade to stick Tidy Towns posters to lampposts. I was all ready to make excuses as to why I couldn’t come with them when I realised that I hadn’t been invited to that part of the evening.

  I took off my high heels and thumped along Station Road in my tights, walking in the centre so that no one could leap out of the bushes and grab me, not that anyone was inclined to. It was really quite freeing. I was humming ‘Hakuna Matata’ from The Lion King. A black cat passed me, but he was going the wrong way. What did that mean, if anything? I saluted him, then blessed myself. I was definitely tipsy.

  There were lights on in my landlord’s new house and a pile of timber stacke
d up in the front garden. It made me think of Joe. He’d carry great hulks of wood home after his walks with Alfie. He’d dry them out on the radiators and around the Aga and they’d smoulder in our fire in Sandycove for months after.

  Just as I looked in the window, Nathan happened to be looking out, his face lit up by a bar of fluorescent light above him. I waved and walked on a few feet, feeling horribly self-conscious, then I stopped, put my high heels back on – excruciating – turned around and hobbled to the front door. There was no bell yet so I knocked.

  ‘Off out or coming home?’ he asked, resting his elbow against the door frame, airing a large sweat patch around his armpit.

  ‘I was just at some boring old residents meeting down on the beach, I’m heading home now.’

  ‘You’re looking good,’ he said to my cleavage. I’d folded my arms in awkwardness but also to accentuate what was left of it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ears burning, giving it the quickest of glances too. ‘So how come you’re still here? It seems a bit late for a builder?’ That was none of my business. I needed to calm down.

  ‘Ah, I’m on my way now, was just checking that no water’s getting in and that my subbie did what he was meant to.’ He explained what a subbie was when I looked confused.

  ‘I often call in late at night when they’re all gone to check everything, then I’ll ring them first thing to give out.’ I’d never seen him this close up. He had ridges, like parenthesis, on either side of his mouth; they made me think of a ventriloquist’s dummy. His face was broad, but not too broad, and craggy with deep furrows and lines. He was also ridiculously tall and broad, like a real life Action Man. I only came about as far as his belly button. And he smelt delicious.

  ‘So, what can I do for you?’ he asked, taking a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his shirt pocket. He pulled one out, cupped his hands to light it, squinted up at me.

  ‘Well, two things really. Did my last rent cheque bounce by any chance? I mean there’s no problem paying or anything. It’s more of a cash flow thing.’