Playing Friends

by Marilyn Duckworth

  Una shook her head.

  'Goodness, you had me going for a moment.'

  'I'm not telling you,' Una agreed. 'I'm not telling you anything. Garth's my business, not yours.'

  I sighed exasperation. 'For God's sake!'

  'Oh God. Who's he? Is he a friend of yours? Lucky old you.' She bowed her head and made a laughable yelping noise that turned out to be the beginning of weeping. Her bulky shoulders shook while she gasped and howled. I put a hand on her arm and stroked sympathy, feeling the powerful muscles contort as sobs pulsed in her throat. It was faintly ridiculous that I was offering my more fragile shoulders to support this big woman's despair.

  Perhaps Una was in the habit of hiding bottles in her wardrobe and sucking on them in the middle of the night. Or perhaps it was drugs. I was fairly ignorant about drugs. It struck me how little I really knew about this woman whose face left the apartment all powdery and glistening in the morning and sometimes came home greasy with layers of orange-tinted make-up.

  She stopped sobbing, wiped her nose on her towelling sleeve and looked up at me. 'You won't want to hear what I could tell you. I'm glad Sheree's not here.'

  'I'm going to go in with Beryl to visit her this afternoon,' I said, when Una had continued to offer little that made any sense. 'Come with us. She'll be relieved to see you, I know.'

  'I can't.'

  'What do you mean, you can't?'

  'The things I've said to her . . .'

  I remembered. Sheree had been carrying killer genes in her womb. An awful thing to say to a pregnant young girl. 'But if you didn't mean what you said . . .'

  'I did mean it. But it doesn't matter, does it. There's no difference really.'

  'Between . . . ?' I prompted.

  'Killers and . . . and nice people!' She threw her head back suddenly, choking on gusts of laughter. 'Nice people!'

  I was frowning, trying to understand. How was it that I always ended up with nutty individuals, women with problems and needs so different from my own they made no sense? I might read faces badly sometimes but I'd always liked to think of myself as compassionate, helpful. Could there be something wrong with compassion, something paradoxically self-indulgent and weak?

  'Nice people like you and me. We'd never do anything outrageous, would we, not like my Lachlan, may he rot, who tried to destroy my family, who did unspeakable things to my mother and drove my Jane away from me to America and someone weird she calls Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ! I mean!'

  I restrained myself from opening my mouth to comment, in case I might interrupt the flow. Perhaps it would all come out now.

  'We wouldn't do anything like Jane's young Tyler, would we? Shoot some stupid businessman. Oh no. I thought it was the genes — Lachlan's horrible genes — but bugger that. Anyone could do it. People stink. They just stink.' She raised her muscled arm and sniffed an armpit. 'I stink. Tell me I don't.'

  I moved a chair and sat closer to Una, gazing into her eyes and looking for what might be in there, troubling her. 'Of course you don't stink. You've just had a bath — if anyone stinks it's me.'

  Una laughed at this. She sat and allowed me to look at her searchingly. She was probably well aware that, look as I might, I wouldn't be able to see what was going on in her head.

  Commanding knuckles were knocking on the door of the apartment, demanding attention. We sat up straighter and looked at each other. Neither of us was dressed for company, but that was hardly the point. The point was Una's expression of gawk-eyed horror. Who was she expecting? I'd not got around to telling her about the grumpy messages from her work associates.

  'Well?' That was Una. 'You'd better answer the door.' Her eyes widened further, expectantly, as I went off obediently in my slippers.

  It was Dale, Kevin's trim wife from downstairs, enquiring about 'the young woman'. She was dressed in a two-piece outfit, casual but smart, from Oxford Street possibly, and looked snootily startled to find the two of us in grubby dressing gowns at that hour of the morning. I noticed her earrings didn't match.

  'I told Kev I'd call and see if you needed a lift to the hospital. He said one of you would probably be at home.'

  'Una's not very well,' I told her. 'That's very nice of you, but I don't think . . . Come in.'

  Introductions were effected, but I glanced only briefly at the empty coffee pot while I was conveying scant details of the birth and the woman took the hint.

  'So you don't need a lift? I'm going to the airport in about an hour to do lunch with Kev. I could drop you on the way.'

  I shook my head vigorously. 'No, thank you very much. We can manage. But tell Kevin Sheree said thank you for yesterday.' A white lie.

  Una hadn't spoken while the visitor was present, merely nodded, and now she was shivering as if the opened door had chilled her. She clutched her towelling robe closer, reaching out for the heater switch, then she said in a harsh voice, 'She doesn't know you're fucking her husband then?'

  'What? What are you talking about?'

  'You think I don't know? I heard you talking on the stairs. I'm not stupid. I didn't expect you to tell me, did I? You're lucky she doesn't seem the jealous type.'

  I rallied, collecting words to explain myself, but before I could speak Una interrupted.

  'You should have let her take you to the hospital.'

  'I said I'd meet Beryl by the taxi rank at two.' I glanced at the kitchen clock. 'I'm going to have a bath. Then I'll make us some lunch, okay? You look — really tired.'

  'You don't look a hundred per cent yourself.'

  I lay in the bath and soaped yesterday and this unusual morning off my freckled limbs. There seemed to be quite a lot of it clinging to me. It wasn't easy making sense of what Una had begun to tell me about Garth. Had he done something to Una or had she done something to him? What exactly had happened after the dinner she'd reported as disgusting? We'd been expecting Una home on Sunday night but it wasn't until Monday that Sheree saw the news item that might have been about Garth. It seemed so difficult to get the woman to answer simple questions in a logical sequence but perhaps this was my own fault for asking the wrong ones.

  Suddenly there was a thumping on the bathroom door and Una called something.

  'What did you say?'

  'I need to tell you — what happened! Just in case . . . in case I run out of time!'

  I dropped the soap and slid, searching for it under one buttock. 'Okay,' I called. 'So tell me.'

  'Open the fucking door!'

  'It's open.'

  It was. Una fell into the steamy room, still wearing her robe. She banged the toilet seat lid down and then flopped herself on top of it. She seemed to glower slightly at me where I lay, cowering shyly under the cooling water. 'You've got quite a good body, haven't you?' she said.

  'Thanks.' I put out a hand and pulled a towel down off the rail as I stood up and the water retreated.

  'Body,' Una repeated and gave a shudder. 'Awful word. That's what he is now. A body. I left him under the duvet. He was heavier than I expected but I got him there and then I covered his — his face.' She breathed in a shuddering mouthful of air.

  If Garth hadn't taunted her, laughing at her stories, disbelieving her . . . She'd made a career of lying, of course, had enjoyed disguise and deception and concealment: perhaps that was why she'd gone into the cosmetic business. But this time it was true. She was telling him the truth. The bitter truth, so help me God. He should have appreciated that this was a special gift, handed to him because she felt sorry for him about the zoo stuff. He might have expected her to throw up on him when he told her they'd just dined on dog flesh, not necessarily clean. She had to believe him when he was so angry, at the zoo people first, and at himself for inviting litigation. Instead she'd swallowed a retch, put her glass aside and told him about what Lachlan had done to her own mother, who had been drinking innocently with his mate, the man he'd taken exception to — some financial disagreement. Private stuff. Her mother had called her vagina her 'privates'. At
least that was what she called it before she became a merry widow.

  Una was offering something shocking to compete with Garth's pathetic little crime, wanting a reaction. Wanting, needing — dare she admit it — something like pity. She'd never asked for pity from anyone else, so why on earth mad old Garth? Perhaps because she was mad old Una now. But he didn't believe her. Taunted her. Refused to go to the library and look it up on microfilm. Why should he? He'd looked up her Olympic tennis trophies and found no evidence of them. He'd laughed at the little silver cup she'd won at school and brought over last time in her handbag.

  'So why would I make it up?'

  'I don't know really. I don't know why you make stuff up. Probably because you're boring. Whoops — sorry!'

  But he wasn't sorry, and he went on laughing with his big gob wide open so she could count the missing teeth.

  'What are you saying exactly? He's dead? What happened?'

  'I did. Me.' Una shocked me then by giggling. A moment later she was steely serious. 'Goes like this: he called me a liar. Okay, you think that's funny but I was telling the truth. And he was laughing. I had to stop him saying that — stop his mouth. So I did. It was this round ball thing — a sort of paperweight. I'm quite strong really. But he choked. I didn't mean that . . . I don't know my own strength sometimes, when I'm in a mood. He fell back off the chair.'

  His gnarled hands scrabbling. A child who'd misjudged distance climbing a tree. Absorbed in the contortions of his Adam's apple. The shiny round thing lodged below his moustache jolted as if it were a small clever animal attacking him.

  'But I didn't mean him to — well —' She gulped.

  'My God, Una!' I was scrubbing myself dry now, blotting myself between the legs, all modesty irrelevant. 'Couldn't you have done something? Called an ambulance?'

  'Could I? Apparently I couldn't. Because I didn't, did I? I'm not sure I wanted to, or not right away.'

  'So what did you do?' I asked when Una had followed me into the bedroom and was watching me pull on knickers, jeans.

  'I told you. Dragged — and then covered his face — his mouth.'

  'But after that?'

  'I'm not sure exactly.'

  'You must know what you did!'

  'Piss off! I knew you wouldn't want to hear this. I can't tell you what I don't bloody remember. Of course you'd have remembered every last little detail, smarty Clarice. You'd have taken notes.'

  'I'm sorry. I'm just puzzled.' I pushed my head inside a green jumper and shook it down over my cotton shirt.

  'Is that all? Puzzled? And what do you think I am? Anyway, I've told you so now you can tell Sheree when you go in to see her. I wonder what she'll make of it. She won't be as surprised as you. I wouldn't tell Beryl, but I suppose she has to find out.'

  We were sitting at the dining table crunching peanut butter on toast when I said, 'Please come with me to the hospital.'

  'Why? I'll embarrass you. You don't want me to come.'

  'I do. I can't leave you here on your own in this sort of state.'

  'Waiting for the cops to come and get me,' Una nodded. 'I'll be all right. I just have to wait.'

  'But they don't have to come. Why should they? How many people know you were there? You weren't exactly a couple. They might never trace you back here. I won't tell. We're friends, aren't we? And I'll tell Sheree to keep it quiet.'

  Una shook her head and put her face down into hands that were greasy with butter. It daubed her hair and she seemed not to care. Then she held out her open palms. 'My fingerprints are all over the flat. No, someone will have seen us together at the pub — they'll come. You don't have to lie for me — you're the worst liar I know. Anyway I want them to come. I want it over with. No, you go and meet Beryl like you said. Don't worry, I won't sneak downstairs and tell Kevin's missus you've been fucking him. I was going to, don't think I wasn't — as soon as she got here, since you were being so up yourself, not bothering to tell me. Your closest friend.' She gave a quick amused smile at this description of herself. 'But I won't now. Okay?'

  'And you won't do anything silly?'

  'Anything silly?' Una snorted. 'Me? As if! But no, I won't do myself in, don't worry. I have to know what happens next.'

  I cleared the table while Una remained seated, still in her towelling robe. I took a deep breath and went to fetch my coat. Una called after me.

  'Tell her I'm sorry. She can do what she likes about the baby — she would anyway. Why would she listen to me? Although she did seem to listen some of the time, usually when I didn't want her to. Trouble is I wasn't that sure myself, was I, and I might have mixed her up a bit. You know I'm a selfish bitch . . .'

  'How do you mean — do what she likes? Are you talking about the adoption?'

  'There's nothing set in concrete. I might have lied to you — did I? She can't sign anything till twelve days after the birth. Hang on. I've got something . . .' She trundled into her bedroom on fat bare feet and came out brandishing a booklet. I knew at once what it was. The Mothercare catalogue. 'Tell her I might have been wrong about genes. Look what I did to Garth with my perfect bloody genes! So tell her. I expect it's too late but it might not be. You haven't got any hidden grog in your room, have you? I drank everything I could find last night. Never mind, go. Just bugger off.'

  I walked, narrowly avoiding being run over at the Basin Reserve. I was preoccupied and not in any mood to notice a speeding BMW. I rehearsed what I might say to Beryl, carefully couching what I now knew of Una's few days' absence in a gentler light. Or should I say anything at all? There was still a chance it might all go away. Or that it was lies — imaginary like Beryl's Greg. Una could have been hallucinating: she did have a psychiatric problem, by her own admission. Unless that was fantasy too. When had the world transformed itself into such a slippery muddle of uncertainty? Was this old age gripping me round the throat? I was aware how old people got stuff wrong all the time as if they'd fallen asleep at a movie version of their own life and were getting ready to leave the cinema.

  The baby. Think about the baby. Una was certainly mad to believe Sheree herself had plans for the poor little thing, Sheree hadn't thought ahead beyond a flatter stomach and didn't want to. I did recall the night when she'd prodded me awake, panicking that the baby had died, but that was because 'I don't want something dead inside me!'

  If anyone had wanted Sheree's child it was Beryl. Poor sad Beryl, who was waiting for me near the entrance to the hospital drive, looking far from sad.

  Going up in the lift I said, 'Una's back. That's the good news.'

  'So what's the bad news?' Beryl thought she was making a joke, one of those props in the game of modern life and laughed happily at her ability to play.

  'She was at home when I got there. Last night.

  Drunk.' I added, 'You don't have to tell Sheree.' I was carrying the small koala bear that I'd retrieved from the wardrobe and stuffed into my shoulder bag without showing it to Una.

  'She'll have been in to see the baby?'

  'Not yet. Still a bit hungover.' I seemed incapable of releasing more than a few words at a time.

  A door in the passage ahead of us swung open and a cheap pink dressing gown stepped out, humming unselfconsciously, swinging a drawstring sponge bag on her wrist. The head of the dressing gown turned and became Sheree.

  'You're out of bed,' Beryl stated. 'Well! Where's the little one?'

  'Hi!' The girl sounded happy. 'Follow me. I fed her this morning. It didn't hurt!'

  'I'm glad to hear it.' There was sarcasm in my tone. And was it usual to breastfeed a baby you were planning to give up? I shut my eyes in momentary pain, remembering the message Una had asked me to deliver, knowing this was impossible, at least for the time being and certainly not while Beryl was listening. And what was I to say? Your de facto relative Una killed somebody and she'll probably go to jail, but why not keep the baby because nurture's more important than nature after all? It was ludicrous. And it wasn't the plan, had never been the
plan when Una and I signed the property papers. Except now the plan was all shot to pieces, our peaceful, shared future life choked out of existence.

  Sheree was leaning proudly into the plastic cot beside the hospital bed. When I last saw her she'd shown little interest in the baby: Good. That's it, then. You can go now. I'd heard of postnatal depression but this was the other way around.

  'You got plenty of sleep after I left?'

  'Yup. Some anyway.'

  'Oh, she's beautiful!' Beryl was nearly in tears, touching the curled fingers and gazing, transfigured.

  Sheree looked across, inviting me to share a glance of amusement. 'She's in love!'

  'Well, I am! Aren't you? You must be pleased with yourself. Have you given her a name?'

  I interrupted, becoming businesslike. 'Una sends her love. She's off colour — she can't get in to work today.

  But she said . . .'

  Sheree pursed her lips. 'I'm not doing it!'

  I was puzzled for a second but Beryl understood instantly. 'You're not? Of course you're not. She's your baby!'

  'I couldn't give her to somebody else. Una will just have to swallow it. I'm allowed to change my mind. I had this talk with the social worker . . .'

  I opened my mouth, then stopped. 'So what did the social worker say?'

  'There's some sort of emergency allowance. I'm too young for the DPB but I can get that when I'm eighteen. I told her you wouldn't mind helping me, even if Una wouldn't. I said you'd probably be quite pleased.'

  'Would I? Did I say that?' I felt my eyebrows shoot up under my fringe.

  'Well . . . wouldn't you?'

  Beryl coughed and nearly choked in her impatience to speak. 'You don't have to go to them. You could come to me!'

  I shook my head. My nose felt pinched. I could almost hear the metallic tangle of thoughts rattling behind it. 'It's not a problem. Una said something like that actually — she's been thinking. If you want to keep the baby . . . she was sorry she said stuff to frighten you, she said to tell you that particularly. Okay? I don't know how — but we can work something out. Yes. I'll talk to the social worker. Is she still about?' I was so relieved to have delivered this much of the message from Una that the full significance of a baby in the apartment took a few minutes to filter through to my brain. 'Oh bloody hell, I need a drink. Coffee, I mean. There's probably a machine.'