The Playroom

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Did you go to Katherine’s?’ Mary was so bright you could see the polish on her, clanking down the best tea-service in a manner which irritated Sophie so much she could scream. She had hidden that tea-set in a dozen cupboards in order to preserve it and as it was, there were only three cups left. Oh dearie, dearie me. She remembered how some of the bailiffs had been nicer than others. The room was full of ornaments: ornaments were easier to hide. You stick them down the sleeves of a coat or something. Or in the cistern of the loo if Daddy was about to pawn them. No wonder all David’s school cups needed a polish. Antimacassars, chintz curtains, perfect linen napkins and flowery curtains had been easier. No one wanted them. To Mary’s eye, the room was hopelessly overcrowded, full of froth, decorated with lace, which was Sophie’s favourite thing. Each was thinking that the other was really perfectly silly. The one thing Sophie could well understand about Mary was nobody wanting to marry her.

  ‘What’s the matter, sweetheart? Was lunch awful, or something?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie with an exaggerated shudder, ‘it was, rather.’

  ‘Babies acting up?’ Mary cooed.

  ‘Oh no, everything was fine.’

  She ate a biscuit with feverish haste. Something dreadful had occurred to her. David with all those locks, not again, surely not. She ate another biscuit.

  ‘When do you think I’ll get burgled here?’ she asked to change the direction of her thinking.

  ‘Never,’ said Mary flatly, thinking of the locks, the bolts, the peephole on the door and the windows so firmly braced against summer.

  ‘Oh good. David’s so worried about it.’ Sophie wanted the company and at the same time wanted Mary to go. So she could look again at the papers in the top drawer of the cheap little bureau and, again, ensure that Daddy was really dead. She had read the hidden certificate which said so hundreds of times.

  ‘. . . Well, everybody does, don’t they? Get burgled, I mean. I was only thinking about that when Katherine was flouncing about today saying all the cupboards had been changed round or locked or something, which was nonsense, of course. Quite the prima donna, such an awkward, spoiled girl a lot of the time. Oh, it was awful: she wasn’t nice to me at all. Said she was tired, did Katherine. What’ve you got to be tired about, I asked her. Well, she doesn’t do much, does she?’ Sophie was gabbling. Mary could not really follow, pretended she could and nodded.

  ‘Jeanetta had nice new clothes too, but I don’t know what they’ve done to her hair. A yellow top with pink dots, just her colours, and I said to David, she’s just like you, you know.’

  ‘Is she?’ said Mary doubtfully. There was no resemblance she had ever been able to see herself.

  ‘Oh yes. Daddy was blond, you know, but I think he went grey before David was born. He was very handsome once, you know, but he did get very fat.’

  ‘Tell me about Daddy. You never have.’

  Sophie was silent. Not likely. She did not know how much Mary knew about Daddy. Daddy was a secret shared with David and not even discussed with him. Daddy was a liar and a thief and a violent bully who had married her out of her own expensive private school in the days when she thought florid-looking pirates were glamorous. The locks reminded her of Daddy. Daddy had put locks on all the doors to keep out the bailiffs that last time. And then David had locked him in, after he came out of prison and started again. She could remember the fight and Daddy falling downstairs. Falling. Drunk, they had said, but he wasn’t. Hadn’t had anything to eat, never mind drink, in days.

  ‘Oh well, Daddy was strange. He sold all David’s things, David went spare. Twice.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We had no money. Never mind why.’ Or exactly how he died either, thank you, mind your own business. ‘Do you want some more tea?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Sophie could not quite maintain the silence which followed.

  ‘I do hope David’s not putting locks on the doors because he’s expecting the bailiffs.’

  Mary laughed out loud and the sound was balm to Sophie’s ears. ‘Silly Granny, of course not. They have such lovely things, they have to keep out burglars.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sophie. It was the explanation she had wanted to hear: she was comforted.

  Mary moved behind her chair and patted the old woman’s back absently, looking round the room with distaste. The wallpaper was chintzy, large moss roses, only some of them toning with the blush of the carpet. There were three nests of side tables, spread out and each covered with a lace doily similar to the one on the tea tray which had lain ever ready in the kitchen, holding the pot with its decoration of buds. The curtains at the window sprouted multicoloured blossom, while the inner frame carried swags of lace to hide the iron security gates pulled across the double-glazed panes. There were pie frills at the collar and cuffs of Sophie’s white blouse. Everything, including Sophie’s face, was in an advanced state of preservation. Today, Mary found the room stultifying, an overblown funeral parlour, with Mrs Allendale Senior resembling a relic of a spoiled past. Stories of hard times were difficult to believe and she only took on board the suggestion that life in the Allendale household was not as easy as it seemed. That was obscurely satisfying.

  ‘Not an easy life,’ John said to the caretaker in the office. No, Mr Mills, don’t know why you do it. John was not obliged to work on Saturdays, but he had always chosen to do so and old habits died hard. His labours for the Child Action Volunteers had always been thus, never distinguishing the end of the week from the body of it, one of Matilda’s complaints until she had taken to avoiding the conflict by not minding and simply going out. But as John approached the top floor of an old mansion block awaiting council repair, puffing slightly from the stone stairs, he had the feeling he should not have worked today after all. In other years he had clambered up steps like these en route to grimy premises like these, on fire with his own anger, curiosity, energy, all qualities which gave him powers of tact, courageous cunning which he lacked in other areas of his existence. Third visit today, himself exploited for the gentle touch which allowed him behind doors and encouraged the group to send him as a kind of front runner. Another complaint from some neighbours, John: Mrs Singh, 41B, says the child screams all the time/is silent all day, never goes out and the house is a mess; Somebody ought to do Something. There were not so many variations of theme. Mobhanded raids on suspect families required such certainty of evidence supporting an alleged abuse of a child that they often came too late. John’s role was to call first, without portfolio, like one inviting himself to tea, smiling, innocuous, bearded and unofficial, carrying sweeties for the children. If the family would not allow him inside, there was no choice but to go away, although five times out of ten, he was able to put his foot in the door and persuade them to open up further. Once inside, his eyes, made cunning by long experience, registered false alarm or real trouble. All he did was talk, listen and watch, suffering in silence long diatribes of abuse, and invective, nodding throughout, histories of stupidities far more common than wickedness.

  We should never have children, he had told Matilda: so unfair to drag them into a world as rotten as this. He was sorry now she had believed him.

  John knocked at the door, composing his anxious smile. The paint was scuffed, and inside a dog began to bark. A baby began to cry in response to the barking. He knocked again while the even-pitched crying continued, until a voice sounded in his ear, so close he was startled. ‘What you want, man?’ a rumbling echo he first thought to have come from a throat immediately beyond the door on which his own hand still rested. Blows to one ear, inflicted on visits like this, had left John partially deaf to the left, never very acute to the right.

  ‘What the fuck you want, man?’ said the voice again, and an enormous hand descended on to his shoulder and wrenched him upright. He was transfixed with surprise, turned to face a large male individual, huge of chest and deep of voice, about thirty. John always found himself registering details for a future
report, because the excellence of his reports either shoved into action the rumbling of the whole quasi-legal machinery or stopped it altogether, leaving him the uncanny burden of great trust. The man was taller than himself by a foot, dressed in a boiler suit of stained blue denim, his hair grizzled red as if he had used an unsuccessful dye. More noticeable, but not for the report, was an expression of calm fury, a face kept deliberately still and a sweetish, sickly smell which reminded John of Kat as it poured from the man in waves, surrounding them both in heat. The eyes beneath the grizzled head were pink and hostile; the hands held by his sides clenched. John began in his conciliatory tone, full of a sudden sense of hopelessness and the sense of fear to which he had once been immune, but which was now his daily affliction. He stuttered as he spoke. ‘I’m not from the council, I’m not from the police and I’m not from the social . . .’ he began, a time-worn spiel which sounded unconvincing even to his own ears, but the voice interrupted. ‘What you want then, man?’

  John continued on a rising note of desperation. ‘Oh, nothing really – it was just, well someone told me your baby was a bit sick, not well, I mean, so I thought I’d come by and see if there was anything I could do to help . . .’

  ‘Our baby. Not your fucking business.’ The fingers on the hands curled and uncurled like a pianist stretching knuckles and wrist before beginning to play. John looked into the man’s face, faltering before the gaze of the bulbous eyes. The sky beyond them, seen over the balustrade of the sixth floor, was beginning to grow dark. Please believe me, I am here to help, not to condemn; useless entreaties left unspoken. Instead he said, ‘Could I step inside, do you think, say hallo to your wife? I’ve brought . . .’ patting the pocket of his loose jacket to show the presence of the sweeties and the absence of either warrant, summons or anything smacking of officialdom, but he knew as he did, there was no use in the gesture.

  ‘You the tenth one today, man,’ said the voice wearily.

  ‘Really?’ John answered, his voice high and clipped, showing the well-disguised signs of an educated background he had despised as long as he could remember. ‘If I could just come inside for a minute . . .’ Sweeties for juvenile mothers and hapless children, himself as welcome as a salesman or a debt collector, thinking on that theme when the man hit him straight in the jaw with one clenched fist. A blow landing with the force of surprise, John staggering while dimly aware of the breaking tooth and the sudden spurt of blood into his mouth, tasting like iron filings. ‘The tenth today, man, the fucking tenth . . . interfering cunt . . .’ ‘No need,’ John mumbled as he fell against the wall, ‘. . . Really no need for this, ’s all right really, no need . . .’ ‘Tenth today,’ the man repeated. ‘Thu social and thu neighbours and thu rent man and thu priest and her mother and thu polis. Coupla others. Fucking leave us alone.’ With each syllable, he struck; accurate blows delivered in a way which was both tired and systematic, one to each eye with the right fist as he held John’s inconspicuous, unofficial jacket with the left, then changing hands to haul him up and slap him again, harder. When silence fell apart from the hum of distant traffic, even the dog behind the door silent, the man hauled John to the balustrade, took the seat of his trousers and the back of his shirt and hoisted him halfway across. John lay, his eyes half closed, still for a minute, looking down from a dizzy height at his own blood dripping on to the balcony below, chest compressed by the iron rail, himself, hanging there, held only by his assailant, thinking of nothing at all, but full of deathly calm, pain and a clarity which reminded him to slump, act dead weight, far too unimportant now to kill in one last gesture of such easy, drunken strength. He felt himself slide off the balcony, his left cheek grazing the concrete on the inside as he slid clumsily to the ground, free of grasping claws, his chest heaving. ‘Fuck off,’ said a disembodied voice. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ In a parody of humility, he felt rather than saw himself wave one hand in surrender, began to crawl towards the stairwell, a bag of sweets in the pocket of his jacket bumping against his hip. After a minute of watching John’s slow progress, the man turned back and knocked on the door of the flat. Light flooded out on to the terrace. John stayed gasping in the darkness of the stairwell. Then he began to go down.

  The sweets in the pocket were crunching against his hip bone. Kittens, hungry kittens. All he could see were their eyes. Must get home.

  Mary spent her evening usefully, annotated another report, ‘Incentives for Unqualified Charity Workers’, thinking as she did so, how cynical it was, even the title. ‘At a time when self-help for the community is vital and the role of the low-paid or unpaid volunteer becomes essential, this Report suggests a system of rewards, in the form of public recognition by this Body for those who have made conspicuous contributions . . .’ Answer to that, Mary thought, simple; pay them more. ‘. . . It is proposed to confine these rewards to the unqualified who do so much, since the qualified receive awards under a different system . . . A list is appended below of those to whom a preliminary letter of encouragement/congratulation could be sent . . .’ BALLS, Mary wrote in the margin.

  ‘What’s the matter? Why aren’t you asleep? You were making a noise.’

  ‘Singing, Mummy, Mummy. Tell me a story.’

  ‘I don’t know any stories.’ Katherine tucked the duvet round Jeanetta’s fat legs.

  ‘Mrs Harrison knows lots of stories. And singings.’

  ‘Songs,’ Katherine corrected. ‘Sing me this one, then,’ Jeanetta requested. ‘It goes, Three blind mice, three blind mice . . . Cut off their tails with a carving knife . . . And see how they run . . .’

  She was crooning softly, words without a tune, the same droning sound which had drawn Katherine to her room. ‘I don’t know that one,’ Katherine said, moving to the door, fingering the new lock which was so flush with the wood to be scarcely obvious. Then she looked round the door into the corridor to see if David was still downstairs. Looked back at Jeanetta, finding herself sad and entranced, still irritated and made guilty at the sight of the child. She had let Jeanetta be rude to Sophie, put the child into a temper by lying to Sophie herself about the haircut. Jeanetta never behaved when told to shut up. She, Katherine, had allowed the lie to prevent David taking it out on her by brooding silence afterwards. Which meant she had caused the upset when Jeanetta, made rebellious by a sharp command to silence, spattered mayonnaise-covered salmon all down her clean clothes. Then smashed raspberries and cream into highly coloured pap and smeared it on her bare legs. Uproar: the same legs stinging where Katherine slapped her. Oh God, she had let all that happen, why did the silly child forgive her: just as she had let Sophie leave the house without ceremony before they had a chance to talk.

  Katherine sat on the bed, guilt rising like indigestion, making her edgy and uncomfortable. I cannot even sit with my own child: I’m embarrassed to be with her looking at me, trusting me: I can’t even sing to her. I’m such a failure as a mother, never wanted them in the first place, it just happened. Things have never been the same and now everything seems to shift around me. Motherhood is supposed to be instinctive, but I don’t even know how it’s done: I can’t learn, no one told me how. She was a little frightened of Jeanetta, not now, but sometimes. When Jeanetta seemed to need her, she shrank. The child had such willpower. In a way, Katherine was grateful for that. It absolved her from worrying too much. A child like Jeanetta could survive anything, including earthquake. She felt more fragile herself, still wanted to say she was sorry for being so useless.

  ‘Poor Mummy doesn’t know any singing, do you, Mummy?’

  ‘No,’ said Katherine, ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘What did your mummy sing?’

  ‘She didn’t sing, darling.’ Katherine touched Jeanetta’s cropped head. That hair had been her only saving grace. She examined the face beneath her hand. Was there a hint of Claud in those soft features? Surely, no certainly not.

  ‘Never singing?’ Jeanetta insisted.

  ‘What? Oh no, never.’ This te
lling to herself how she did not know what to do with either of them because she had no memory, no first-hand knowledge of cherishing, worked as an excuse. She could always say, I have no memory of being that age other than dark rooms, being hungry and trying to be good: why can’t this little monster be more like me and learn that being good and quiet is the answer? And since nobody showed me what to do as a child, how should I know what to do now? But Katherine knew as excuses went, these were thinner than the paper of all those magazines she read for unintelligible instructions. Guilt grew, along with annoyance, wanting to stay with the child, but also wanting to be away.

  ‘Mummy’s not very good at singing. Never knew any nursery rhymes either, silly Mummy,’ she murmured, her heart contracting with pity and self-pity combined. Jeanetta’s store of these strange fragmented lines puzzled her, such refinements in the child, all missing from her own experience, which included no one singing or telling stories outside the television which had been an intermittent, heavily rationed companion. Patting the soft hair, she smiled, looked back to the door. David was waiting somewhere downstairs, seeing to Jeremy, good as gold, pious-faced little Jeremy who never needed her at all. Jeanetta’s crooning was calming, made her feel sleepy.

  ‘I can’t sing proply.’

  ‘Yes you can. Sing it again for Mummy. I like it. Please,’ Katherine said, watching Jeanetta shrugging further down the bed, warm, absolved from everything, blissfully irresponsible.

  How wonderful it would be to be a child again. She would like to be a child again.