Grinny

by Nicholas Fisk

  I said yes, because of a TV affair.

  Beth then said, ‘And Bunny told us that Lisa T. slept late and Bunny gave her breakfast in bed. Breakfast in bed, which means that Lisa was asleep when Bunny came in with the tray. And then we arrived and Bunny came down the stairs frightened out of her wits and fainted all over us and all that! Now are you beginning to see the light?’

  I gaped at Beth, not understanding. She sort of poked her face at me and said, ‘Seeing the light, stupid! I’m giving you a clue, oh do wake up! That’s a clue too, when you come to think of it!’

  I still gaped at her and she stomped off, refusing to speak to me any more. Which is pretty cool from a kid sister of ten or eleven or whatever she is. She really is a pain. And typing out her conversations is a pain, you have to backspace all the time to underline every other word she speaks. Perhaps it would be quicker to use CAPITALS, LIKE THIS. But then it looks funny on the page. Len Sturgeon is always going on at me about trying to visualize (visualise?) the words as printed: using crossheads and all that. Right, we’ll have a crosshead –

  YAWN YAWN I’M TIRED

  There’s an attention-getting crosshead for you. Really, I’m not achieving anything by just sitting here banging away on the typewriter but I suppose it sounds impressive to the family. They’re below me with the TV on. Lisa Treadgold’s on the TV. Why can’t I think?

  This is riducilous (try again – ridiculous) – I still can’t work out what Beth means about Bunny and the breakfast in bed. Bunny took breakfast in to sleeping Lisa. Then something about light. So? Was it a light breakfast? Ha, ha, ha.

  Why isn’t my brain working better? Beth said I’m stupid but I’m just sleepy. If I keep typing it will all come clear. It’s hard to concentrate with the telly on. I can just hear it from downstairs but not hear it properly. Lisa T. is talking.

  Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. The quick brown fox jumps jumps over the lazy dog. The quikc brown.

  The quick brown fox jumps ovre

  Oh hell

  LISA’S LEGS

  Gazette office next day

  Len Sturgeon told Timothy, ‘You’re supposed to be in the facts business. Newspaper reporting is factual. When you come in here, you leave your imagination back in the nursery, where you belong, you horrible infant.’

  Timothy said, ‘What have I done wrong now?’

  ‘You and Fanny, I don’t know which is worse. All that malarkey you two were giving me about Mona Lisa and the boiling water.’

  ‘That was a fact! Boiling water, all down her legs! Ask Fanny, she was there, she’ll tell you just the same thing!’

  ‘Ah, there’s another one with a lively imagination. She saw it too, didn’t she? Big silver jug, all full of boiling water! Then – oops! – over it goes, all that red-hot water, scalding Lisa’s lovely legs. Oh, yes!’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, it happened! It’s a fact! And when I glimpsed her the other day, she was wearing a long skirt right down to her ankles. To hide the bandages on the burns!’

  Len Sturgeon nodded his head several times, staring hard at Timothy. Timothy stared back and began nodding his head in time with Len’s. It was one of the best ways of cheeking Len: either the man laughed or tried to up-end the boy in the wastepaper basket. You never knew.

  This time, however, Len merely stopped nodding and said, ‘Right: if you’re so hot on facts, give me a weather report. Go on, look out of the window and report what you see.’

  Timothy said, ‘If I look away, you’ll come at me!’

  Len said, ‘No I won’t. Cross my heart. Give me a weather report.’

  Timothy looked out. ‘Showery periods, visibility good. Strong wind from the south-west. What’s all this about?’

  ‘Strong wind, laddie. Gusty and blustery. Bad weather for a lady wearing a flimsy skirt.’

  ‘What lady?’

  ‘Lisa Treadgold. I saw her this morning. Getting out of a taxi at the station. Digging in her purse for change, both hands occupied. Then, whoosh!’

  ‘Whoosh?’

  ‘Whoosh. Wind blows, up it goes. Her skirt. And there’s poor Mona Lisa without a hand to spare.’

  ‘You averted your eyes, of course,’ Timothy said.

  ‘Of course,’ said Len.

  ‘Pity about the bandages,’ Timothy said. ‘That must have spoiled it for you.’

  ‘No bandages,’ Len said. He beetled his eyebrows at Timothy and repeated, ‘No bandages.’

  ‘Well, marks, then,’ Timothy said. ‘Burn marks.’

  ‘No sign of them. A flawless epidermis, Mister Carpenter. Flawless.’

  Timothy leaned forward. ‘You’re joking,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t joke about Lisa’s legs,’ Len told him.

  ‘But they had to be marked, or bandaged, or some-thing –’

  ‘No, laddie. Definitely no. The lady’s not for burning. The lady’s legs are flawless.’

  Timothy said, ‘Leg make-up … There’s a sort of lotion women use … she must have had that on!’

  ‘No lotion, Mister Carpenter. It was all Mother Nature and Lisa Treadgold.’ He studied Timothy’s face and said, ‘You look perturbed, young sir. Have I said something to upset you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Timothy muttered. ‘I mean, no. Look – is this all some sort of joke that I’m supposed to be too young to understand? It is a joke, isn’t it? Did you really see her legs? This morning?’

  ‘No joke, Timothy. Sober fact.’

  ‘Above the knee? You saw them above the knee?’

  ‘Most certainly above the knee: I’m not complaining. Does mention of a lady’s legs always make your eyes pop like that, Mister Carpenter? I thought that the younger generation of today was –’

  Without knowing he did it, Timothy impatiently cut off Len’s words with a wave of his hand. He rose and stared out of the window, looking at the trees blowing in the wind. He shivered.

  Len saw his face. ‘Is there anything wrong, Tim?’

  Timothy said, ‘I’ll make coffee,’ and walked out. Len watched him go and pulled at his chin. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t tease him,’ he said to himself. ‘He’s a good lad, and bright. I keep forgetting how young he is.’

  He fed paper into his typewriter and started working.

  Timothy’s typed notes, that evening

  Looked up burns in Library. All too technical/medical, no help. Asked Dad if he had ever scalded himself, he gave me long rigmarole about boy at school who tipped a kettle over himself – ghastly scars, etc. etc. – and showed me pinkish, shiny area on inside left forearm. Strange I’d never noticed it. He did it years ago when camping. Boiling water. Asked him, how long did it take to heal? He said weeks: first blisters, then peeling skin, then hard pink scar.

  Fanny away from Gazette for two days so could not ask her to confirm what Lisa T. was wearing that day – but do I have to? It was a soft, draped dress. No protection against boiling water.

  Was the water boiling? Yes.

  Did it fall all over Lisa T.’s legs? Yes.

  Could dress protect Lisa T.? No.

  Yet Len says no scald or burn marks.

  Was Len teasing me? Yes, but only in his usual way, nothing special.

  He says Lisa’s legs showed no signs of burns and I must believe him.

  Timothy’s typed notes, next evening

  Couldn’t keep it to myself any longer so told Beth everything about Len seeing Lisa’s legs with NO injuries or bandages. Which is impossible.

  BETH: Oh, you’re so stupid, you’re so dim, etc. etc.

  ME: Look, I know all that, you’ve mentioned it once or twice before. Let’s just leave it that you’re always right and everyone else is stupid, OK? Now, what about Lisa and the boiling water?

  BETH: Oh what’s the use, how can you be so dim, etc., etc. It’s all perfectly obvious if only you think! Look, I’ll try and explain it in simple terms so that even you can understand, right? Listen closely. Suppose you told everyone y
ou’d had a fight with some enormous yobbo … you’d had to fight him to save an old lady being thumped by him … but you hadn’t really had a fight at all, you were trying to draw attention to yourself to make yourself sound brave and noble – well, suppose that happened, what would you do to make your story sound true?

  ME: I can’t imagine.

  BETH: You’d give yourself some sort of injury, wouldn’t you? You’d clonk yourself in the eye with a milk bottle to give yourself a shiner! Or you’d crunch your knuckles against a brick wall to make it look as if your poor little fists had been doing brave things –

  ME: All right, all right, I get the point. I’d make myself look as if I’d been having a scrap. What’s that got to do with Lisa T.?

  BETH: Now suppose the other thing. Suppose there was a truth about you that you didn’t want known. What would you do?

  ME: Fake some evidence in the form of a lie, I suppose. So as to hide the truth.

  BETH: Well, there you are then!

  ME (baffled): Where am I? Sorry, you’ve lost me.

  BETH: Or take her dogs. They bark whenever she passes their room. Didn’t you hear Bunny say that?

  ME: Yes, but … Dogs can be like that, they bark because they hear their owner and get excited. They think of food or walkies or something.

  BETH: Who do you suppose feeds the dogs? And walks them? Do you honestly think it’s Lisa? Do you?

  ME: No. I suppose it’s Bunny most of the time.

  BETH: All of the time. Yet they bark when your precious Lisa goes near them. Right, now think about Prince Igor and that rolled-up newspaper. (I’d told Beth about this earlier.) What exactly happened then? Go on, tell me!

  ME: I don’t know. You don’t know. I mean, we didn’t see anything, we weren’t there.

  BETH: And you don’t want to guess? Go on, have a guess. Have three guesses if you like, I’m feeling generous. Dog barks, Lisa smiles. She smiles, she’s always smiling! – and goes upstairs with the paper –

  ME: Paper … And there were those choc wrappings …

  DISCIPLINE

  Beth didn’t know about the Lisa trick of making choc wrappings disappear and she got unduly excited about it – eyes wild, clutching fingers, the lot. Then I say, ‘Perhaps it’s just an idea of mine, perhaps I wasn’t watching properly, let’s talk about her miraculous now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t burns!’ But Beth won’t play. She just stares at me, shaking her head accusingly. Then she bursts out, ‘You know, don’t you? You do know, you just won’t admit it! But I know you know! It’s all beginning to happen again, only this time it’s Lisa!’ And I try to calm her down, I even put my arm round her, but she’s genuinely shaking and shivering, it’s not an act.

  We end up sitting on the edge of my bed, she hunched up and sobbing into my handkerchief and me beside her, stiff and awkward, stroking her head and back, being nice. We don’t talk properly, she’s too upset, but she does say one thing I remember:

  ‘I’m the only one with sense enough to be frightened!’

  Before I can make her explain herself, she tears herself away and blunders to the door making a sort of choking noise. At the door, she recovers herself. She turns and gives me the full glare and says, ‘You know! But you won’t admit it, perhaps you can’t! Perhaps she does something to get you all stupid and confused, rays or something, thought waves, I don’t know – but she’s not going to do it to me!’

  I say (and I mean it), ‘Please explain! Please stop making me into some sort of enemy!’ But she just sobs, ‘Oh, what’s the use, you’ve got it all down in plain words in front of you, you type it all out night after night and still you won’t understand! Why don’t you read what you’ve written?’

  I say, ‘Why don’t you just tell me what you mean, in plain words?’

  She replies, ‘It won’t work that way, you’ve got to see it for yourself!’

  Then she leaves me. Clueless.

  All right, I’ll read what I’ve written. Read and re-read it. Yet even before I begin, I know I’ll soon get tired and confused and the words will blur and run into each other. There’s something in my mind, it’s there all the time, something simple yet too difficult for me. Something about Lisa T., of course. No, that’s not right, it’s not her, there’s someone else too. Someone in the past. Beth said, ‘This time it’s Lisa!’ But who was it last time?

  Wait! I think I remember! Concentrate! Sit back and think!

  What’s the use … When I stop typing and look at the things I’ve written, my eyes go funny. Or my mind. Fog. Yet as soon as I start typing again I’m fine, I can see everything perfectly well. I can even see the slight furriness you get on typed characters and the way the full stop bites into the paper.

  Beth could tell me. Why doesn’t she?

  I’m fed up with this. They’re watching TV downstairs, I can hear it booming away. Think I’ll join them.

  THE TV PROGRAMME

  ‘ … So we can expect the showers to die out, I think, and warmer, brighter weather to spread from the south and west …’

  ‘About time,’ Mr Carpenter growled, staring accusingly at the girl weather forecaster. She smiled back uneasily from the screen and was faded out. Mrs Carpenter said, ‘There’s a play, it sounds rather interesting. Or perhaps it doesn’t. All about deprived children in urban environments …’

  ‘Or there’s Opinion,’ Mr Carpenter said, in a neutral voice. ‘With that blasted woman of yours, Timothy –’

  ‘If you mean Lisa Treadgold,’ Timothy said, ‘she’s not my blasted woman. I couldn’t care less about her. Can’t we watch that American cops and robbers film?’

  Beth, hunched by her mother’s armchair, said, ‘Let’s watch Opinion.’ Her voice sounded foggy. Timothy was not surprised: Beth was always in a tizz recently. So was his mother. She looked anxiously at her daughter, prepared to ask her what was wrong, changed her mind and said, ‘Oh, all right. We’ll watch Opinion. Who’s got the thing?’

  Timothy found the thing, pointed it at the set, pressed its little buttons and watched the word ‘Opinion’ form itself from a series of moving coloured patterns. Under his breath, he chanted, ‘Boring, boring,’ to show that he did not want to watch the programme.

  In fact, he wanted to watch it very much. Because of Lisa Treadgold. His father, he knew, felt the same way.

  It was a dull programme that even Lisa Treadgold’s beauty could not enliven. The speakers would not stick to the point. They were supposed to be discussing new industries for Britain; instead they kept harking back to old, out-of-date grievances. The union man said this, the industrialist said that and the presenter’s face became a smiling, frustrated mask as he tried to drag his panel out of the past and into the future. Lisa Treadgold took no part in the dreary talk. She sat looking composed, intelligent and lovely.

  The industrialist said, ‘But surely you must agree that many of our troubles stem from the unions – their refusal to accept the facts of commercial life, their refusal to stick to agreements –’

  The presenter succeeded in cueing a camera to himself and interrupted.

  ‘Yes, well, of course there is a great deal to be said for that point of view,’ he said, talking too fast. ‘But perhaps we should bring in Miss Treadgold at this point.’ He stopped speaking, having lost himself.

  ‘To say what?’ Lisa Treadgold asked, coolly and unhelpfully.

  ‘Well, this point about industrial discipline –’

  ‘Oh, discipline,’ Lisa replied. She seemed to be enjoying the confusion and the knowledge that she alone could calmly and elegantly put the programme back on its tracks. She stared at the glass of water in front of her; touched the glass with a fingertip; then, very lightly, said, ‘I’m not sure I have much to offer. After all, you remember me on discipline!’ She smiled, sat back and toyed with her glass.

  She had said nothing: she had said everything. A silence fell on the theatre. It was as if everything and everyone was stilled and frozen.

  The presen
ter forced himself to move and speak. ‘What?’ he said – and managed to stumble on. ‘What did you say, Miss Treadgold? You said – I thought you said –’

  With a jerk, another camera cut in to show the man’s face. His mouth gaped. His eyes showed their whites. He seemed to be choking.

  He said, ‘I think you said … You were going to say …’

  Another untidy cut brought in another camera. The screen showed the union speaker with a finger in his collar. He too seemed shocked, gasping. The industrialist poured himself water with a hand that shook.

  The programme’s director switched shot yet again. Now Lisa Treadgold’s face filled the screen. ‘I think,’ she began, serenely and beautifully in control of each syllable she spoke, ‘that we should be talking of the future, not the past. Of what we can do instead of what we’ve failed to do. Don’t you agree?’

  And suddenly everything was all right again. The presenter smiled his practised smile, the industrialist and union man settled cosily into their familiar arguments, the studio audience nodded or shook heads as the words poured out. Cameras were smoothly cued in and out, sound levels were gently balanced –

  Beth rose to her feet, her eyes wide. ‘Now don’t you see?’ she stormed, raking her wild eyes from face to face. The faces looked back at her mildly.

  ‘But you must see!’ she almost screamed. Mrs Carpenter said, ‘See what, dear?’ and looked anxious. Mr Carpenter asked, without much interest, ‘What’s up with you, Beth?’ and before she could reply, looked back at the TV screen.

  ‘Tim, Tim!’ Beth cried, reaching out her hands to her brother. ‘There’s only you! Please say you understand! Please! Please!’

  And just for a moment, Timothy thought he did understand. For a second, he thought he saw and remembered things from the past, a face, a feeling –

  But then Beth ran from the room, sobbing. And Tim’s pictures blurred.

  Mrs Carpenter did not even turn her head when the weeping Beth ran out. She said, ‘Oh dear, poor Beth,’ in the same tone of voice she would have used to say, ‘Oh dear, I forgot to bring in the jam.’ Timothy stared at his mother. His mother stared at the TV screen.