Undercurrent

by Frances Fyfield

  'I've been thinking .. .' he said as he hobbled after her up the slope and out of the open door, waiting for her to fiddle with keys while he breathed in the fresher, colder air and felt the rain on his face.

  'Don't think. Henry, don't. You aren't good at it.' Maggie was conscious of an appalling headache forming like a storm cloud behind her eyes and she was unwilling to open her mouth, least of all for discussion. She pushed Henry into her car, drove by Neil's, posted the key through the letterbox, ground the gears twice in the short distance back to the seafront. Henry was still humming, not exactly at his best.

  'What do you do for an overdose of Viagra?' she asked, to concentrate his mind and deal with another, residual worry as she watched the shiny surface of the road in the dipped headlights of her very old car.

  'You wait for it to pass, I suppose. Was it raining on the day Harry got pushed into the sea?'

  'Oh for God's sake. Henry, I don't know.'

  The House of Enchantment was lit like a Christmas tree. It made Henry expect to see seasonal decorations in the hallway and he was slightly disappointed to find there were none. The sea on the far side of the road made soothing sounds and the rain fell. Peter and Timothy hugged him in turn and he hugged them back with enthusiastic affection, calmly grateful to be delivered back like a parcel into the domain of men and a bath full to overflowing. Soon it would be dawn.

  Henry lay in his own, high bed, his feet and hands stinging and throbbing, and he thought of the starling. The words of the song would not go away and what was the difference between a song and a poem? Before sleep intervened, he found himself entertaining the thought that Maggie had engineered the whole episode; or Angela and her, between them.

  A woman thing; teach the silly beggar to mind his own business; show him not to interfere.

  The thought drifted away. She would not have done that; they were poles apart, those women, and it isn't all about facts Henry, it's as much about instincts. Trust them, he admonished himself.

  Instincts. And there was a last irrelevancy . . . would he have spent so long on the trapped bird if it had been a fat, ugly seagull instead of a starling? Yes, of course, but it might have been harder. And sacking would have been better to contain a seagull beak, whereas the starling required the softness of a shawl.

  Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you . .. You look like an elephant. Go back to the zoo.

  Maggie woke to the sound of continued rain and saw through one eye the patch of grey sky which signalled another winter day. She closed the eye and tried to calculate the time. Raising her head to look at the bedside clock was effortful; about eight-thirty, at a guess. She could sleep again, if she wanted, but the headache clawed at her skull and the longer she lay, listening to the rain, the worse were the reflections which hurt more than the aftermath of the wine and the dull sense of shame attendant on it.

  She groaned. The suit of clothes she had worn in the early hours of the morning hung neatly on the wardrobe as if already inhabited and ready to march, a last act of discipline before she had got back into bed. She put on her thick dressing gown, a hairy thing in tartan, chosen for warmth rather than elegance, shoved her feet into slippers looked out of the window down at the Wendy house in the garden, groaned again and aimed herself towards the kitchen.

  Happy birthday to you ... a humming again. The kitchen of a house had always been her favourite place, along with back bedrooms and small gardens. Francesca had referred her to the House of Enchantment and she had never left. The choice had plenty to do with preoccupation and lethargy and nothing to do with the fact that she might have been able to see her second cousin in the garden, cavorting with Peter and Timothy on the three afternoons a week when they minded him.

  She had had the opportunity, she supposed, to know Harry better during the brief interval between her return and his demise, but she had not taken it, a fact which rankled now. There had been in her mind the certain thought that if she had insisted on a child, her husband would not have left her and she did not want to pay attention to other people's children. Nor had she wanted to cry on the shoulder offered by Francesca, because she had resorted to it once too often and slightly resented the fact it was being offered again. How sad it is, she thought, that we recoil from the people who have helped us.

  They know too much. Each heavy step down to the ground floor brought a fresh onslaught of misery, I should have, I should have, I should have done this, that, the other . . . I should have noticed.

  I should have been conciliatory to my husband instead of forcing him away; I should have been nicer to little Harry, and now to grown-up Henry, and I do not know what the fuck to do next, what the hell it is I've started or even why.

  'You should have some breakfast,' Timothy said.

  'Bacon?'

  'Ugh.'

  'Toast, then. Tea.'

  'Stop being nice, for God's sake or I might cry.

  You're so bloody kind, you're a lousy example to a woman with a conscience. Toast, please.'

  Toast and marmalade marked a point when life was tenable.

  Not necessarily pleasant, but at least ongoing.

  'Henry told us he stayed after closing time in the castle and got locked in. It might have been a mistake, he said,' Peter stated.

  'How very diplomatic of him. No one has ever been incarcerated in there by mistake. And there's something else I'll have to tell him, too. Bloody Neil got in here the other night, I don't know when, and went through Henry's room. Took the shawl on the bed. It's in his house. What nice friends I've got. They're all duplicitous.'

  'What about us? We're merely simple . . . what on earth did he want?'

  'Little blue Viagra pills, I think. He may have been convinced that Henry had a supply and that's probably my fault, too.' Timothy giggled. Senta came and laid her muzzle on Maggie's lap, a kind, sensitive animal, born to give unconditional affection wherever it was required, or maybe wanting some of the toast. Cupboard love, any kind of love, would do.

  'If Angela Hulme locked him in, what was she trying to say?' Peter asked, remarkably chipper for a few hours' sleep.

  'Get away from me and my child. Go home. Yank Something subtle like that,' Timothy ventured with a wise expression. 'And, by the way, our little Harry has no opinions whatever, at the moment. It was far to cold for him last night. He may drift in for tea.' She was silent.

  A competing kitchen smell began to overpower the toast and Tim bolted towards the oven.

  There were times, especially now, when his frenetic movements made her dizzy and wrecked the languor of the kitchen. The results of his culinary anxiety were delicious but the price was the hypermanic way he went at the preparations, swinging from sink to cooker to table, unable to go slower and gibbering en route, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, as if each manoeuvre might result in starvation and disgrace. Face flushed and spectacles misted, he produced from the oven two perfect, golden sponge cakes which he upended on to a cloth and reversed on to a rack to cool, where they looked to Maggie like a pair of yellow hillocks, stolen from another landscape. The air was fragrant with sweetness; she swallowed the last mouthful of toast.

  'What do you think? Strawberry jam, or blackberry filling? White icing, he loathes pink.

  Candles, of course.'

  'Candles?'

  'Harry's birthday,' Peter said, patiently. 'He adores a nice Victoria sponge. Will you be back for tea?'

  'Oh, bollocks,' Maggie said.

  The smell of cake seemed to permeate the whole ground floor by the time she had fled to her room and back downstairs again, pausing only to dress, wondering for an irrelevant second quite how many hours of her life she had spent choosing what to wear. Philip would hate the dressing gown. Philip would be waiting for an instant response to his letter: let him wait.

  Should she wear the suit which announced her as someone who had come to cut off the gas/electric/blood supply, or should she look benign? A pale face in her mirror told her that all clothes were ineffectu
al disguises of mood.

  The rain had stopped and all such mercies seemed small. She walked to clear her head. Her car, parked against the sea, looked lonely and salty; the pier looked like something erected without planning permission for no particular purpose and even from the depths of self-recriminatory depression, she was suddenly smitten with affection for it. Story of your life she told herself; you love useless things: high heals, husbands, redundant castles, inconvenient cousins imprisoned for life, silly little dogs and verse. She stopped to look at the sea, staring out to where a ferry smoothed its way across from left to right, going away from home or towards. The sky was breaking up into clouds and she wanted to be on that boat.

  Was it raining on the day Harry died? What did it matter? Maggie sat on a bench, the better to postpone the day, rose again swiftly when she felt the damp, moved on slowly. From the entrance to the pier, she would be able to see the castle and the window of her cousin's flat and that would be the place for pausing.

  Angela was likely to be at home. The seafront deserted. The right approach was to get Angela out of doors and into a quiet caff where she might be inhibited about raising her voice and, in the eyes of a few unconcerned but gossipy members of the public, pretend she had nothing to hide.

  The new sculpture which stood on the pavement at the entrance of the pier was only called new on account of not having reached a certain majority. It was, by all agreed standards, modern; therefore tolerated after the original and inevitable protest died down and the shiny metal of its construction (designed to dazzle the eye in the sun) had dulled down with verdigris and the salt that stained it. The first protest had been forced into submission by the surprising fact that children loved it and concluded that the base of the thing, composed of metallic waves and fishes, was ideal for running round in circles, hitting the edge of the small boat in which the solid fisherman sat with his overlarge head, clutching his giant, fat fish and gazing at it with huge, sad eyes, locked in a tussle of love.

  The whole of it was too rounded for climbing, but little hands somehow desired to strike and stroke. It made a satisfying sound and was warm to the touch when the sun shone. Small children hid behind it, playing tag in defiance of the no running, no jumping restrictions which applied on the pier.

  As Maggie approached the statue, admiring it for its durable surface and squat power, a head with recognizable hair poked out from behind and ducked away again. Aha. This was irritatingly unexpected and more than a little shocking. She stopped and walked forward casually, circling the statue's base until she found Tanya, leaning into the curved spine of a fish as if trying to rub her own back against it.

  There was a deliberate nonchalance in her pose as if, dressed in pristine clothes suitable for school and clearly during school hours, she was simply a detached part of an outdoor study group instead of a truant concealing herself. There was a dearth of ten-year-olds out on streets at this hour of a term time morning. To Maggie's eyes, Tanya was trying to make her presence appear official, which meant having the wit not to run away; she was anxious rather than defiant, which in Maggie's slight but regular acquaintance with her, was rare. Neither knew quite what to say until Maggie thought of something suitably innocuous.

  'You waiting for a bus, Tanya?'

  'Sort of. Only I'm early.' A swift, relieved response. '

  I'll wait with you.' The child shrugged, not a confident, fuck-you, shrug, more one of resignation from a small person who was privately close to tears. They leaned in uncomfortable silence, Maggie reaching into her bag to retrieve Philip's letter, not because she seriously intended to re-read it, but simply to look as if she was attending to something else. There was nothing else to read apart from a list. The world blurred slightly, filled her with momentary fury, we all make awful mistakes, me more than most . . . such pathetic, self-serving ruefulness; so bloody coy. She glanced forward and back over the edge of the crumpled sheets towards the gravel of the beach for a full minute, then stuffed the letter back in the bag.

  By her side, she heard Tanya let out a long, tremulous sigh of relief; Maggie followed the child's gaze to where the flag rose above the central turret of the castle. It was raised slowly, the flag of St George, red cross on white background, fluttering without enthusiasm, then lying flatly against the pole. Unseen hands tied a rope. 'That's good,' Tanya muttered.

  'It doesn't look very happy,' Maggie said, chattily.

  'But I don't suppose that's the point of it. I never quite know what flags are supposed to do.'

  How silly she sounded to her own ears, gabbling for the sake of filling a void and keeping her there.

  Tanya was nodding, wiping the damp sleeve of her jacket across her nose and leaving a trail, noticing it, rubbing at it with the other sleeve and looking so much happier now that she was ready to be condescending to a pig-ignorant friend of her mother's. 'It doesn't do anything. It only means that somebody's come in, Neil prob'ly, an' got inside, 'cos you have to to get at the flag. So if some silly bugger was still stuck inside, he'll be all right now, won't he?'

  ‘He might be a bit cross,' Maggie remarked, innocuously. 'But I expect he'll get over that, people do, don't they? It was his own silly fault, really. I suppose.'

  The child shook her head.

  'No, it wasn't. Mummy locked the door. I screamed and screamed and she wouldn't listen, I couldn't sleep for thinking and . . .'

  'You bunked out of school to let him out? Do you want a cuppa before you go back? Coke or something, on the pier? She could not say, stay with me talk to me, she had no right. Tanya looked longingly back down the length of the Titanic and rubbed her hand against the nose of a sculpted fish.

  'Can't,' she said finally. 'I don't like it. It's so fucking boring. I don't like the pier. I like this, though,' She continued to stroke the nose of the fish. 'Harry talks to it,' she added, inconsequentially. 'He tries to get into the boat, but he falls out, always falling. Gotta go.' But she was not entirely certain about whether she wanted to go, stood with her feet crossed, staring first at the flag and then, longingly, back down the length of the pier to where the caff promised warmth and something sweet. The longing glance was tinged with indecision.

  Don't ever mention Harry to that child, do you hear? Don't ever do anything so cruel. The words of a command came into Maggie's mind and she could not remember from where, or who had spoken them when: Angela, or Francesca, something in a fax, written words, spoken words, blurred into a stern command so earnest it stopped her now. All those promises she had made.

  'Shall I come with you?' she asked. 'In case they've missed you at school? What'll they say?'

  'I'll tell them Mummy was poorly, made me late, only I never went in, you see, only looked like I did an' I shouldn't tell fibs, should I?' Maggie bent towards her, suddenly longing to push the hair out of her blinking eyes and wipe the pert nose which twitched on the brink of a sneeze. Such a child was not suitable for keeping as a pet although she had all the soft, self-willed neediness of a kitten.

  'Fibs are generally bad,' she said gravely, producing a coin. 'But you have to tell them sometimes in a good cause. You've got a rumbly tummy. Get some chocolate on the way.'

  As she watched Tanya sprint across the road, it crossed her mind to wonder whether children only began to trust other adults when they began to see the fallibility of their own parents.

  She felt a dull thudding in the region of her heart, wished she had taken a chance and grilled the child and wished again she was on the boat, which had now disappeared. No one had asked the child about Harry, not at the time. The child was too fragile, too damaged, and on a practical level, no information she gave could be reliable; the best thing to do was to encourage her to forget.

  There was no answer from Angela's flat. She went back to the comfort of the statue and watched her cousin's neighbours come and go. Harry talks to the statue meant Harry had talked to the statue; children confused tenses as well as identities, or at least she remembered having done exactly
that. Maybe Tanya meant that she liked to talk to the statue and maybe it only meant that it was the mute companionship of the solid man in the boat which had drawn Harry out of doors on a cold day when it might have been raining.

  She looked at the length of the pier and saw what Henry had meant. No little boy would cross a road and run so far, unless he was running away.

  There were always excuses for not working. The state of the room, the height of the chair, the need for a cigarette, food, company and a preference for fishing 'Dear Mrs Dodder,' Edward wrote, crossed that out and wrote 'Hodder': 'I am only writing this letter because I am disinclined to do anything else. I do not care about the proposed changes to your will necessitated by your nephew failing to send a Christmas card. Regrettable of course, but hardly worth cancelling his bequest.

  Your last will and testament has sixteen codicils already . . . suggest you wait and see if he acknowledges your birthday . . .' He might also drop a line to the nephew, but such an approach would be interventionist. Mrs Hodder had marked every item of her considerable porcelain collection with a piece of Elastoplast on the base bearing the name of a legatee; on good days, she dusted it and on bad days, changed the labels. When he himself was old and decrepit, he would do nothing but fish, topple into a river if he found himself counting the spoons. So difficult to prioritize the affairs of others. Lawyers were theoretically objective, treating clients equally from the distance of their own, mysterious qualifications, but that only meant pretending that he did not dislike the majority apart from the few of whom he was fond.