Playing Friends

by Marilyn Duckworth

  And I did hear Una. I wished she hadn't warned me that I might be disturbed — it seemed to keep me awake, listening. There were other things I needed to think about. Kevin was one of them but I tried to postpone that: my turn would come when Dale had departed — but what if she decided to stay? The end so soon? There were too many endings in my life already and all leading inevitably towards the final ending. The last of the series. Sheree's baby was probably a good idea, the best possible idea: she would give the apartment a new light, a new cast. And dammit, I'd promised to ring Beryl, who had completely slipped out of my mind.

  Una was still busy, cupboard doors closing — pock, pock — a kitchen stool scraping, curtain hooks — or perhaps coat hangers — sliding noisily on a metal rail.

  Because I'd had such a disturbed night I slept unusually late on Saturday morning. I'd woken up in fright, remembering a worrying dream that leaked away even while I was sieving for details; some of the dream residue I recognised as true and belonging to yesterday. Fragile with lack of sleep, I noticed that the kitchen wastemaster ponged a bit — it must have been weeks since we poured sanitising bleach into the torn rubber mouth. There was a magnet on the fridge — 'Mr Muscle — The only man I need in my kitchen'. It was Una's magnet, Mrs Muscle's.

  Una was gone. Missing again. But this time it seemed more serious. The mottled suitcase on wheels was no longer in the bedroom and the toilet bag she had been packing was doubtless inside it now, wherever it was, bulging with the contents of Una's bathroom shelves and her battery electric toothbrush. In Sheree's room nothing had been disturbed; her poky wardrobe had always been half empty — the girl owned so little. Several items of Una's clothing remained hanging in her wider bedroom wardrobe, but they'd been shoved to one side, hems sagging, zips ruptured, buttons dangling, unloved and unwanted. There was something horridly final about the stripped wardrobe and vacant drawers, half closed. She had left in a hurry, a burglar who had burgled only her own belongings, so far as I could tell. Una's heavy arms hugging me — 'I owe you' — spoke to me with a new force in the morning sunlight.

  I was grateful for the autumn sunshine at least. Una's ornamental giraffe watched me with red-eyed indifference, abandoned like her dog-eared clothing. I wondered whether Garth had known of the creature's existence in the apartment. I'd hated it when it moved in, occupying too much space beside the sideboard. It was the same kind of hostility I'd felt toward Sheree in the early weeks, but I didn't really mind the giraffe now. I noticed the rain jacket that Sheree liked to borrow had been left behind, perhaps thoughtfully. In fact there were plenty of Una's possessions still decorating the living room — a medium-sized suitcase can only carry so much — and Una might well reappear. The double bed with posturepedic mattress was hers, two shelves of glossy books, mostly celebrity biographies, and a whole lot of junk in the sideboard. Perhaps she hadn't gone too far away, just far enough to feel hidden. What I needed most of all was someone to talk to about this sudden desertion, but the only person I really wanted to tell was Una herself.

  When I located Roy's telephone number he sounded unsurprised to hear from me.

  'Has Una been in touch with you?'

  'I upset her, did I? Well, I warned you she'd let you down one day — run out on you, or worse.'

  'Where's she gone?' I asked tersely, unprepared to listen to his monotonous voice go on and on.

  'What?'

  'You said she'd run out on me . . .'

  'Well, sounds like that's what she's doing, isn't she? She wanted the name of my lawyer to set up some new arrangement about the flat — sorry, apartment — wasn't that it? She said it had been your idea to phone me.'

  'So did you give her his name? Her name?'

  A negative puffing noise sounded down the line. 'I've got a good relationship with Terence — I don't need Una mucking that up. What's wrong with the Yellow Pages if she doesn't like her own man, whoever he is? She got a bit ropey. I only got off lightly because she didn't want to wake you. It was the middle of the night, for goodness' sake! Tell her not to phone me again.'

  I sat in a café over the road from the hospital and told Beryl some of this. She had bought a bunch of freesias that lay on the table between us, exuding a pungent smell that reminded me of David's funeral. Beryl was looking more like a wedding than a funeral guest, dressed in the smartest outfit I'd ever seen her wearing. I interrupted her flow of words to remark on this.

  She blushed. 'I bought it for the school reunion and I haven't worn it since. But I felt like celebrating Sheree's new little life. Why not? Babies are born every minute, but this is ours, isn't it? Feels like ours anyway.' Her hand moved to finger the plastic carrier bag soft with a cuddly brown toy.

  'I guess . . . I'm more concerned with breaking the news about Una emptying her stuff out of the wardrobe.'

  'But that's good, isn't it? So that she can have the bigger room you said.'

  'She's gone!' I exploded.

  'I know, but — gone where?'

  'I don't know where she's gone. That's the point.

  You haven't been listening to me!'

  'I'm sorry. I just want to get to the hospital. I'm a bit taken up with this idea of being a godmother; it's really cheered me up. Oh, I know I'm not officially. But we can't call her our granddaughter can we? God-daughter sounds better.'

  I plonked my cup down and propped my face in my hands to stop it sinking to the table. The freesias assailed my nostrils.

  'I'm sorry,' Beryl repeated. 'Tell me again. I'm listening.'

  'Where would she go? I mean, you can't hide, can you, not in Wellington or not for long. Her daughter's in America but she wouldn't go there.'

  'Why not?'

  'Apart from anything else she'd need a visa.'

  'That's the baby's grandmother, isn't it? The real one.

  I'd forgotten her — she won't come over, will she? Does Sheree want her to?'

  'I doubt it. She's religious, Sheree won't want that.'

  Beryl looked clearly relieved.

  I fell silent. I was mulling over how Jane, the daughter, might react to Una's news, supposing she was ever given access to it. 'She can be quite bossy, my Jane, even long distance,' Una had said.

  Walking up through the car park Beryl said, 'I can't help thinking it's good that she's gone. You're out of it, you can stop worrying about police and stuff.'

  'I wanted to help her.'

  'She has to help herself.'

  'She can't. She's hopeless.'

  'That's up to her. She'll do whatever she's going to do anyway. It's not your job, Clarice. She's not your responsibility or you'd have reported her to the police days ago.'

  'I know. I know you're right. I'm going to miss her!' I heard my voice crooning despair as we entered the lift and a fat old man stared at us, careful not to let his face flicker with interest while we went on talking as if the lift were empty.

  'You didn't even like her.'

  'I did. Quite a lot — in bits. Anyway I'm a creature of habit.'

  'We all are,' Beryl nodded and the old man looked as if he might nod with her. The lift was stationary at the wrong floor while a wheelchair was being trundled towards it.

  'That's why I took so long getting out of my marriage to Lester, which was pretty hopeless from the start. I was glad to be free but even then it took me ages to get over the divorce. It was like I went into mourning for at least a year. Mad, eh?' I met Beryl's eyes and remembered her grief, which seemed to have gone on for decades. 'I mean since it was me who up and left,' I added. But Beryl was waiting for the lift doors to part with only the anticipation of pleasure on her face.

  'Look what Una brought me.' These were nearly Sheree's first words as we entered the ward. She was standing beside the bed, unpacking soft blue folded wool from a drawstring bag.

  'When? Has she been in?'

  'This morning. You can wear the baby round your middle like a kangaroo. Isn't it neat?'

  'I thought you wanted to get rid of your
bum in front,' I teased her. 'So how was she?'

  'Brenda? I haven't tried her in it yet.'

  Beryl was busy murmuring over the sleeping infant.

  'How was Una?' I needed to know.

  'You know how she is. She was okay. No, she was rapt, I suppose. Not as daft as Beryl — sorry, Beryl — but she didn't say anything rude. She didn't stay long — had to get somewhere in a hurry. Why?' She focused on my expression. 'Has something happened?'

  I was overtaken with the hopeful conviction that when I returned home Una would be there again, comfortably installed as she'd suggested in the little back bedroom, as small as a prison cell. Anything could happen — we were still waiting for the fat lady to sing. 'Not much. Nothing for you to worry about.'

  'What does that mean?' She was looking at me too closely.

  'I brought Brenda a cocker spaniel. It's plush — very soft,' Beryl said quickly.

  Sunday evening. I was sitting alone in the burgundy armchair, listening to the wind in the kitchen extractor fan. Words came flurrying out of the sound of the wind, settling on me like tickertape before flying off again, leaving a new thought that did nothing to fill the emptiness. Soft, I remembered. The squashy brown dog the size of a newborn baby, the look on Beryl's face at the hospital. Victim, I remembered, one of Una's words describing her mother. 'Victims get raped, they get their throats cut.' A reference to her jailbird husband? 'That's not me,' she had said. But that wasn't exactly true. Una was a victim, just as Garth had been a victim, just as Beryl was soft, just as I could be hard, according to Una. I felt anything but hard now. It seemed people were condemned to try on many words in the dictionary, just not all at once. One after the other. I recalled Beryl's comment about names and words queuing up to be remembered. I didn't know which word was waiting to settle on me next and burrow into my brain so that I would have to take it to bed with me. Alone.

  Such a scary word, alone. It belonged to everyone at some time in their life, unless they had tricked themselves with TV or booze or God. Alone we are born and die alone — someone clever said that a long time ago. Greta Garbo wanted to be alone, but she probably lied. People lie.

  That was when a knock came at the door. I stood up slowly. I wasn't going to hurry and open up to the police, supposing this was the scene Una had been running from. A memory flash of Kevin's first time at the door, which had woken me from a dream of a television programme. It seemed a long time ago, that bathroom flood — I was younger then, although only months had passed. But it could be Kevin at the door again, I told myself. Think positively.

  It was another lonely woman standing in the passage. Old Marge from upstairs — 'I'm made of the best butter actually'. Aloneness started out of her eyes and glinted from her white false teeth. She was holding a big white envelope like a ticket of admission. White for danger? I stood back and allowed her to come inside.

  'What is it?'

  'I was told to hold onto this until tonight, then to make sure you got it. Una. She gave it to me yesterday morning. I think it's something for the baby, is it?'

  I took it. It was addressed to Clarice and Sheree. I knew I should offer this woman a cup of tea; the old Clarice would have, but apparently not this one. I shook my head, putting the envelope on the bench. 'I'm sorry — I've got a bit of a head. Do you mind?'

  It was a card, an outsize postcard with an unlikely koala bear clutching a wine bottle. On the back a brief message shouted in cheerful black letters: 'Guess where I'll be next week? I'll be having a lovely time and wishing you were here, like they say.' There were two keys in the envelope, one of them a car key. Una's Mazda. In much smaller letters in the bottom left-hand corner of the card one word spoke out: 'Sorry'.

  I sat in the burgundy chair feeling the familiar clutch of the damaged spring against my left buttock. So. Australia. As good a place as any, I supposed, to wait for the authorities to come and find Una. And then? The chair held on to me. After tomorrow Sheree would claim this spot, the best chair she'd say to feed her baby in, but this wasn't what kept me attached to the corded velvet as if I'd been stitched there. There seemed so little reason to move. Was the show really over? What did I mean — over? Perhaps it was beginning again, like continuous pictures when I was a child.

  In my head I consulted my diary. In the morning I would have to get up and go to work early. Monday would be a busy day because of last week's advertising mail drop about a free consultation. And after work I would look for the Mazda, probably parked around the corner in Ellice Street, and collect Sheree and the baby — with Beryl. It was good that Beryl would be there to help cushion the news of Una's farewell postcard just in case Sheree cared. Sheree had been Una's lame duck, not mine, although she claimed I was the duck collector and certainly I seemed to have collected Sheree. Una had said Beryl was a lame duck but perhaps she was confusing lame with elderly. The word fitted Beryl although she was only sixty-four. But Beryl was okay. Not everyone was untrustworthy. Not everyone told lies.

  Beryl was talking to Greg Preston in the bedroom mirror. 'Well, you said I'd lie when I had to and I'd make a fair job of it. Everyone does it, you said.'