The Playroom

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘I’d love one,’ said Katherine enthusiastically. She could see its little feet and imagined a tiny animal to hold. ‘Jeanetta would love it too . . .’

  ‘No pedigree?’ murmured David, shaking his head.

  ‘Definitely not,’ Monica beamed, waving her arm to include more of the gathering around her into the conversation. ‘Anyone want a kitten? Come on, come on, lovely kittens going spare. No pedigree but sweet natures and probably a mother’s tendency to randiness. Any offers?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with a bastard after all,’ said David lightly, his mouth near Katherine’s ear. ‘Every house should have one.’

  In the erratic, expensive floodlighting of the patio, Katherine blenched and the hand holding her glass trembled. David moved away, busied himself at the buffet table, helping Monica, who was helping the help. Katherine turned to watch the kitten, hiding her eyes from David’s brown hands touching the capable fingers of his hostess as he took plates from her grasp. Colin Neill, ever champion of fair ladies, thought Katherine looked pale and went to the rescue, a pleasure, he was sure. Jenny, sitting lazily with her back to the wall, talked to the Neills’ neighbours and noticed nothing at all, until out of the corner of her eye she saw Colin pick up the kitten. He had his hands under the kitten’s chin and showed Katherine the china-blue eyes. ‘Look,’ he was saying, ‘she likes you.’ Katherine’s trembling ceased. Her face opened into a smile whilst she touched the kitten’s ears with tentative fingers. The eyes which faced Colin Neill’s were full of artless admiration, shimmering with a smile. ‘She’s so soft,’ said Katherine in wonder. ‘Yes,’ said Colin, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘Yes, he is. As it happens. I think you should have him.’

  Jenny turned back to the Neill neighbours, slightly fazed, more than a little disturbed. ‘What do they eat?’ Katherine was asking Colin. ‘Sugar and spice and all things nice. Same diet as you.’

  She stroked the kitten with growing confidence. Her loud laugh of nervous pleasure struck into the back of the dozen surrounding the food.

  David heard her, smiled at Monica, touched her bare arm.

  ‘Wonderful food, Monica. How on earth do you manage, all this, the job, I don’t know.’

  Monica liked to be admired and was frequently perturbed by the fact that her husband had the habit of admiring others. Her full bosom strained against her cerise silk shirt. Despite the large sums both she and Colin earned, she spent most of her days struggling to keep up with her own timetable, but was more than content for the impression to be the opposite.

  ‘Oh I can always find time for the things I want to do. It’s the duties are such a bore.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll find time to discuss your new conservatory then,’ David queried quietly. ‘Your husband can’t make up his mind on the details. No disrespect intended, but you’re probably better equipped to make decisions.’

  Monica’s eye wandered to the sweet tableau of Katherine, the kitten and her very own husband. She saw Jenny’s face pointing in the same direction, like a gun dog after a scent of trouble. They both knew Colin well. By contrast, David was impeccable, his loyalties beyond doubt.

  ‘Yes,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m very decisive. Perhaps we could meet one lunchtime next week?’

  Parties like these merged in Katherine’s mind, the triumphs of her calendar. They were committed to a whole high summer of them following a cold winter where the same sort of thing occurred. She moved over to the women. Basically the same women every time, and the same degree of houses, with the addition of the odd itinerants like the American couple who drifted round the edges of this circle, full of admiration before planning the best party of all. The Allendales entertained the Neills and the Fosters and their own neighbours roughly once every three months: the Fosters and the Neills did the same and by the time everyone had taken a turn, there was some sort of gathering most weeks of the year, all becoming steadily more competitive. David’s fortieth birthday party, to which he would invite some of those present, was going to beat the lot for food. This evening they foregathered here from Hampstead, St John’s Wood, Totteridge and even the duskier slopes of Surrey, all of them respectably rich and as David put it, seeking protection in one another’s company from those who weren’t. These were not remarks Katherine understood. Her own pleasure in entertaining was quite without reservation, a joy to show off, especially when visitors such as the Americans admired her home. Compliments which others took lightly, were personal tributes, granting a marvellous sense of achievement, only ever marred by David’s occasional cynicism. At the moment, she was angry with David, even as she watched him, being admired as the guru of houses, herself respected as a kind of lesser guru of taste.

  ‘You never criticize,’ Monica had teased. ‘You always admire, you’re great for the ego.’

  ‘There isn’t much point, criticizing,’ Katherine had said, watching them shake their heads and laugh. ‘People don’t like it.’ Standing in the kitchen and discussing with the American wife the whys and wherefores of Italian ceramics and how to buy them at a discount outside Italy, Katherine would not have dreamt of remarking, even in confidence, how ugly the kitchen really was. You could think so, but not say so: let people have what made them happy. Monica’s house, the best in a small estate of half-timbered mansionettes, resembled Monica, she thought, big, attractive, full of energy and no taste at all, while like Monica, it longed to be small and chintzy. There were obvious, if few, signs of children. David would not like that and even Monica could see Katherine’s slight wrinkle of distaste at the presence of toys on the floor. Jenny caught Katherine’s eye and laughed, putting an arm round her. Part of this was relief that Katherine was so soon detached from the adoring gaze of her best friend’s husband, part of it genuine admiration.

  ‘Isn’t Katherine’s house perfect?’ Jenny said teasingly to the American wife. ‘Is there ever any clutter?’

  ‘No,’ said Katherine, slightly puzzled as to why there should be. If there was ever clutter, it was imperative to clear it, otherwise everything slipped out of control. She wanted to say, look, nothing is ever perfect, sometimes there is a mess, but succumbed instead to the constant need for praise.

  ‘We must have lunch soon.’

  ‘Oh yes please,’ Katherine said.

  ‘Can I come to your shop, honey? So you can help me with a few things?’ asked the American wife. ‘Of course,’ Katherine replied. She was in demand, felt herself appreciated, and that was heaven.

  But the mention of lunch occurred to her when she went to the bathroom to smooth her already perfect hair, which remained long, reapply lipstick, prepare herself for the buffet which the others had already attacked. She opened her handbag to check the contents in a manner which had become second nature as an antidote to her own, chronic carelessness. The house key was the final straw and the checking of the bag became an obsession. She fingered her purse in the privacy of the bathroom, wondering in the meantime how anyone with money could have chosen such terrible wallpaper, then froze in horror. The twenty-five pounds change from the dress shop remaining after her trip to the market, was gone. She had lost it, the way she lost everything without ever knowing how. There would be nothing for a taxi, nothing for tea. Then she opened the coin wallet at the back of her bag and found five one-pound coins twinkling like chocolate pennies. She snapped the bag closed, squeezed her eyes open and shut several times to forestall a desire to cry, then pushed herself back into control. She had better go and eat. Tomorrow could be a hungry day.

  The table was groaning with food fit for twice the number present, a typically Monica overloading on which Katherine gazed with greedy pleasure. Hunger was sharpened by the night chill which had caused a gravitation towards the kitchen begun by the women in the thinnest clothes. Katherine found David at a small table, his empty plate beside him. Her own carried salad niçoise, Parma ham skewered in rolls between fat bites of melon, three large slices of delicately smoked turkey breast, salad of mange-touts and baby corn
, and on the edge of that, a slice of perfect Brie. He bent forward and took the plate from her hands.

  ‘Katherine, you are silly,’ he said softly, the voice a plea, Monica noticed in passing. He picked at the plate with a fork, showing her her folly. ‘You know very well olives make you sick. As well as anchovies and Brie, for heaven’s sake, worst of all. You know how ill you were with Jeremy. Don’t want anything like that again, do we?’

  She shuddered at the thought of morning sickness run riot, so that even water had made her vomit for fourteen weeks, ending in hospital with fluid being dripped into her arm, thin as a stick-insect with the belly growing on, regardless.

  ‘Here,’ he said, proffering the cocktail stick with the melon and ham. ‘Eat this. I’m sure it’s safe.’ His voice implied criticism of so much surplus, both on the table outside and on the bodies of the women who ate it. Katherine took the large morsel and ate obediently, no longer able to afford anger after what she had found in the bathroom. He was right of course, she thought, desperately: David was always right, she was often sick; needed his guiding hand in everything. The plate with the rest of the supper stayed on the floor. After a while, a large Persian cat crept in from the garden and swallowed the white turkey.

  Matilda Mills wobbled off the bus at half past nine and found her way to the bottom door of the flat with difficulty. Despite the warmth of the evening, the takeaway, selling its own version of heat (two onion bhajis and chips, please), was doing a roaring trade. Matilda knew this by the smell and the ragged-looking queue, as well as the fact that someone was being ill outside. Right. They would leave, move. They had to go: John was going to have to listen to her this time. She’d command his attention once and for all, kick that damned cat downstairs and pack her own bag if he would not pack his. In the throes of one and a half bottles of wine with a few friends from work, she felt she could do anything. Tackled the door at the top of the stairs, mistakenly fumbling with all three locks before she remembered he was indoors and would let her in if she knocked, rapped on the woodwork instead. Light showed below the door but there was no response. Furious, she turned the key in the Yale lock and stormed inside.

  He was at the far end of the kitchen, reached by crossing the hall and living room. There was a stench, something which reminded her of her own menstrual blood, a fecund, rotten, but still sweet smell. John was bent over a cardboard box and she could see that one hand holding the side was sticky with blood. For a moment, she panicked. This time he must have gone entirely mad.

  ‘Who’s a clever girl then, what a clever, clever, cat . . .’ He reached down and picked out one damp, pink object from the box, a sight so disgusting Matilda blenched. He held the moving thing in his hand as he looked closely at a tiny mouth moving next to his own, impervious to the remnant of umbilical cord still trailing from the belly of the kitten. ‘Oh,’ he crooned. ‘You little darlings, you marvellous little darlings. Daddy’ll look after you, promise, you wonderful, wonderful, little darlings.’

  His pale face was transfixed with love as he turned to greet her, presenting the pink skinned thing in his hand, as triumphant as a midwife.

  Matilda thought she was going to be sick.

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘Sod you, Claud.’

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Yes you did.’

  ‘I wasn’t making comparisons, for God’s sake, it’s years since . . .’

  ‘But you do see her?’

  He hesitated before the lie. Not in the way she meant he didn’t. ‘No,’ he said.

  What a fool to relax with Mary. He could not imagine how any man could relax with Mary, even when she was as naked as the day she was born. Mary with whom he coupled on Saturday afternoons, commitments of marriage allowing, who was like the memory of her sister, slender, strong, passionate in her own undemonstrative way without any of Katherine’s raw sensitivity or touching desire to please. Claud admired her. They had simply inherited one another, a pragmatic arrangement, occurring rather to his surprise. Mary took what she needed from men, like eating a meal. The only difference was that, within the limits of an extremely selfish arrangement, he had liked Katherine, even loved her sometimes. Hence the wistful inquiry after her health and his habit of gazing, unseen, into the window of Mr Isaacs’ shop. No, don’t make comparisons, say nothing out of turn. Mary had curled away from him, gripping the pillow on her own side of the bed until he began to stroke her neck, the only erogenous zone apart from the very obvious. Then she turned towards him, threw off the sheet which covered them both, wound herself round him and bit his neck lightly. He hoped she had left no mark. ‘Come on then,’ she taunted, holding his shoulders and looking down without smiling. He took her while she crouched astride him and the Saturday afternoon sun filtered through the cotton curtains behind the bed to warm her buttocks. The window was open, curtains fluttering slightly in the breeze. He was touching her as she rode him, bossy even now, always in control, she making peculiar little animal sounds which contained no endearments, gripping him in the vice of her thighs, thinking at the same time, Christ, even those bloody curtains are Katherine’s left-overs. Then she came over him with violence, collapsed almost immediately into a five-minute slumber. Afterwards, with their mutual and predictable sleep almost pre-timed, he would be fretting to dress and leave. Mary never resented these abrupt departures since quite apart from her understanding that he had reached the natural end of his alibi time, there was so little to say.

  ‘You off then?’

  ‘Yes, I thought I would . . .’

  ‘OK, love, see you next week.’ Only the briskness betrayed her. He tiptoed out, as if she was asleep.

  But after he had gone, dammit, dammit, up and about and knocking over the furniture, clearing up like a dervish, changing the towels, the sheet and even the bathroom rug, all done, all traces of him gone in ten minutes flat. Because she really did need him, knew he still hankered after Katherine and she could not help feeling resentful. Not for the wife: bugger the wife; that betrayal was Claud’s own concern, but obscurely about her only relative, a little emotional worry buzzing in the ears she was not disposed to analyse. All this emotional baggage was not for Mary, none of it. She would step around such messes the way she sidestepped traces of dog on the pavement. Ugh. And practically ran round her flat, looking for some task to fill the vacuum of late Saturday afternoon with no one to see, or failing a task in this pristine place, a good deed. It was all Katherine’s fault. She had become so self-sufficient after she had left, hurtful, rarely asking Mary round to see her, but leaving a mess in her wake. Mary had tidied up a lover as well as all the rest, even now, longed for more useful tasks, grateful for Katherine’s success, but still seeing it as a kind of defection, wanting someone who would rely on her and needing to be needed. Post-coital sadness, a feeling of loss, made her desperate for some activity, some sort of contact, a perverse wish to talk. Inspiration followed resentment. She would go and see Sophie Allendale. Not exactly a substitute mother: but Mary managing to grab for herself a do-gooding share in the welfare of Mrs Allendale Senior, which gave her, at one remove, a small part in Katherine’s life. David Allendale did not know of this: Katherine scarcely knew, but the regular visit gave Mary some obscure role, and importance, in the Allendales’ lives.

  This was not quite an arrangement to suit Sophie Allendale’s taste, but this did not mean she was ungrateful for any kind of company at all, especially as she pottered up the road to the Hampstead mews house which David had provided and for which she was also grateful, most of the time. Honestly, she was prepared to say to the one neighbour who seemed to acknowledge her existence, I didn’t expect to be home so soon today. What a horrible afternoon: I would have been better going to the shops. Lunch with her son, daughter-in-law and the children had turned out to be the opposite of a treat. Katherine all over the place, muttering about not being able to find things, such as a new suit or even the stuff in the huge wooden cupboards in the kitchen: David,
preoccupied by making the playroom alcove at the end into a proper room with a door. Not even a new door, but one of the old panelled doors from the basement, monstrous. Only plasterboard, whatever that was, he said, to keep in the mess. Well there was a mess; with Jeanetta dragging out things to play, what did they expect? Katherine saying he had put locks on all the doors in the house and she didn’t know why. Obvious, wasn’t it? He was trying to keep people out, but even so, putting them on kitchen cupboards was a bit extreme. There, there, David knows best. Only there were times when Sophie, muddled as she was, wondered. And lunch, terrible, terrible. She had looked at them both, bewildered, happy to be with them, miserable at the same time. Never darling David’s fault, of course, this prickly atmosphere, but difficult to believe what he said as he saw her down the road. About Katherine not wanting her there and only pretending she did.

  By the time Mary arrived, Sophie was feeling a little better, softened out of anxiety by the prospect of tea and chocolate biscuits, but still relieved to see through the peephole in her door the sight of a human face. Even if that meant unbolting all the bolts and unlocking all the locks, placed there by a loving son in pursuit of a familiar Allendale neurosis. Mother and son knew what they were keeping out, even if no one else did. Burglars and bailiffs and Daddy. Sophie had refined the fears down to burglars, who loomed extra large in her imagination. Daddy was dead.

  Very dead. Sophie looked every day through all her papers, all her documentary mementoes of married life, all the court documents, to check if Daddy was really dead. And he was.

  Mary breezed through the door as if there had been no delay, ostensibly ignoring the sheen of tears in Sophie’s eyes, but noting them all the same. ‘Hallo, Granny,’ she said in that condescending voice which other of her old folks, unbeknown to her, detested but Granny Allendale seemed to appreciate. ‘Howzabout a nice cup of tea?’ Mary was aware of having a full two hours to kill. Sophie brightened visibly. The perfect hairdressing of her scalp twitched in artificially brown curls with grey peeping through as she shook her head and made for her seat in the living room. This was an afternoon for being eighty. Mary could make the tea. Uncomfortable suspicions were distracting Sophie from her indifferent role of hostess and even from the biscuits.