The Playroom

by Frances Fyfield

  Madness beckoned slowly, but there was still, and always, her home, full of colour and comfort. Outside there was darkness, black faces, screaming hatred. Running down a street, half naked: that had shown what really lay beyond her own front door.

  But in the panic which assailed her now, the fear of David and the love for him which dominated even the greater dread of the dark outside, she could still feel a moment of triumph, force herself to the optimism which was her second nature, her survival line. She had been mad and bad, but now she was good, he said; forgiven, he said, so that after weeks of begging, she had in her possession a key to the front door, and although the concession (so unexpected after all the knocking to gain entry) had been surprising, she regarded it as a hopeful gift. Everything was going to be all right. From now on.

  All the locks worked in silence: he could not bear to have around him anything which did not work with immaculate efficiency, responsive to the first instruction. The house was built for discretion with the silence of a nunnery, thick carpets delicious on naked feet. Once inside, Katherine wanted to see him, establish her presence in case she was needed and also show her ability with the new key, hesitated. There was no sound: the kitchen bore untidy traces of luncheon which did not worry her, showed he had left her a task, and she breathed a sigh of relief that the house should smell so of absence. Then she thought of the money hidden in Jeanetta’s room, the possible pleasure of tea in a café, walked quietly upstairs.

  The door of the studio was slightly ajar as she approached in bare feet, the Italian shoes kicked to one side at the foot of the stairs in the belief she would have ample time to put them away. Katherine paused at the door, arrested by the sound and curiosity to find it unsecured, listened intently to the slight scrabblings she could hear from the landing, unobscured by the tinkle of the radio, sounds like small animals, inhuman noises. Pushing the door open two more inches, she saw a flash of bright colour at the other end of the room, a brilliant cerise cloth draped over the sofa, and on the floor, pale and glowing in the minimal light, two bodies intertwined. Her eyes focused on the cerise, Monica’s favourite colour, Monica unrecognizable on the floor, her head obscured by David’s own, the sounds emanating from her face while her hands were clutching at his buttocks which rose and fell rhythmically. Katherine could smell a suggestion of perspiration, Monica’s perfume sneaking towards her, a slight scent of brandy drawn by the draught from the window, stopped herself walking forwards. Then David raised his head, met and recognized the eyes at the door in one blank challenge, held her gaze for a second. The figure below him, large bosom shuddering, began to moan softly. He ignored the white face of his wife, bent over the rosy skin pinned by his weight, moving with renewed energy. To the sound of louder cries of pleasure, soft but deafening in the silence, Katherine fled downstairs, picked up her shoes and ran out of the house, remembering to close the door quietly behind her. There was an instinct to spit, run, fly as fast as she could. Back to Mary, to anyone; the thought checked by the blackness of the sky, the thought of treacherous Jenny, who would know of all this, the total lack of friends. How could Monica, how could she? Laughing at her, lunching with her, all of them . . . The sky was dark, thunder looming.

  Mrs Harrison was coming up the street, flanked by Jeanetta and Samantha. She was chatting to them in the same way she chatted to adults, telling them all the gossip, grumbling, asking their opinions on the state of the world regardless of whether they listened or not. ‘Well I don’t know what to make of all this,’ she was telling Jeanetta, who listened with rapt attention, quite addicted to the sound of any voice. ‘I don’t know at all. Mr Pearson Thorpe not coming home although Mrs Pearson Thorpe pretends he does, but we know better, don’t we, my pet?’ Jeanetta nodded, eyes scanning the street. ‘Are you talking ’bout Mummy?’ Samantha asked, disinterested, taking in the mention of her own surname among the chatter. ‘No, sweetheart, I’m not; I’m talking about someone entirely different, and really I should stop talking to myself, little things like you have big ears. Only,’ she continued, addressing herself to Jeanetta, favourite of all charges, ‘. . . I can’t get my old man to listen, see? He only says, mind your own business, you big fat busybody, nothing makes any difference as long as we’re paid.’

  ‘Big fat, biddybody,’ Jeanetta giggled, suddenly helpless with mirth. Jeremy was in a pushchair brandished in front of Mrs Harrison, pushed at erratic speed. ‘Never knew a child have a trolley quite as posh as this,’ Mrs Harrison remarked. ‘Quite a Little Lord Fauntleroy, aren’t you?’ He twisted round and smiled at her, his hearing acute, the smile interrupted by a spasm of sneezing. ‘Sharp little bugger as well, your brother,’ she continued under her breath. ‘And I’ll bet I know who’s favourite in your house. And it isn’t you, darling, is it? But then again, all the women round here daft as brushes if you ask me. Save myself, of course.’ She laughed. ‘Wait a minute, Jetty my girl, there’s your mum, early, isn’t she? Only four o’clock. Got to get in before it rains.’

  Jeanetta broke from the posse of the pram and ran forwards up the pavement, shrieking loudly, ‘It’s Mummy, Mummy, it’s Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.’ ‘So it bloody is,’ Mrs Harrison addressed Samantha, who had fallen behind but now drew level. ‘And look whose mummy looks like death warmed up. Bet the silly cow’s locked herself out again. Eh, isn’t she like her daughter?’ Raising her voice to a yell as they drew nearer, Jeanetta scampering ahead to jump at Mummy like a puppy, Mrs Harrison shouted in a sudden effluxion of friendliness, ‘You want to come in for a cuppa tea, Mrs Allendale? Only you’re early.’

  Katherine had been standing on the step, completely indecisive, holding on to the railings, breathing deeply. She had been planning which way to run but found she could not move, wondered if she could bear to go back into the house, grab the few pounds from Jeanetta’s rattle, maybe even find some clothes, then realized, in her haste, she had left the key on the kitchen table along with her handbag, and a sense of profound helplessness crashed like a wave around her head. She blinked, finding the sound of the road deafening. Mrs Harrison thought her neighbour a dreamer, squinting at dark cloud as if she was afraid of it: Katherine was temporarily blind, mesmerized by the vision of the key she had left behind, the knowledge of how foolish she was. Then Jeanetta cannoned into her and she knew there was more than one reason not to leave the house after all. She gripped the child by the shoulders, then tried to lift her, but the fat body squirmed, tickles, Mummy, tickles, and the weight was too much. Rare affection inspiring her, showing off, Jeanetta buried her head into Mummy’s waist, was embraced with a fierce gesture she did not understand, dragged her back towards the next house. Greeting Mummy was not quite the same prospect as going home. She liked the one but not the other. Together they moved back down the road.

  ‘You’ll never guess, Mrs Harrison,’ Katherine said with a gaiety which seemed laboured to her own ears, her words emerging with desperate slowness. ‘I’ve forgotten the key.’

  Monica was drowsy but she knew he had moved away. Not in any way she could have called perfunctory, but so soon after she felt immediately uncomfortable. She must have slept for a matter of seconds: the waking was ominous. His naked figure was framed against the window, looking down into the street. She sat up so suddenly her head swam. There was a distant sound of yelling from the road outside, very distant.

  ‘What is it? Oh God, not Katherine . . . She hasn’t come in, has she? Oh God . . .’

  He moved back beside her, cradled her in his arms, nuzzled the back of her neck which was damp with sweat. ‘Oh no, no, no. We’d better move though, I’m afraid. But she couldn’t have come in here.’ Monica looked across the room to the door. He followed the movement of her eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘The door was locked, all the time.’

  CHAPTER 12

  ‘Get off, you bastard. Why don’t you fuck off? Go, shoo. Piss off. Oh, there you are. Begging your pardon, Mrs Allendale, bugger off now, go on.’

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nbsp; Commotion, shouting, as Mrs Harrison’s posse reached the door of the Pearson Thorpe household, an explosion from the handsome entrance into the street with old man Harrison patently relieved to see them, while flapping before him a thin, dark-featured man, the street vagrant, who was stumbling down the steps, trying to run, uncoordinated by shock. Mr Harrison was framed by the stucco white of the house, the hallway a black hole behind him, in which Mark stood indecisive.

  ‘I seen you before, I seen you. I seen him going down the street.’ He was pointing at the man, who stared back wildly, beginning to mumble.

  ‘Go on, dirty bastard, get on out of it,’ Mr Harrison was shouting.

  ‘Not really dirty,’ observed Jeanetta, breaking ranks from the startled group which surrounded Mrs Harrison. ‘He isn’t really dirty. Not all over.’ She grinned at the man, who regarded the crowd before him in panic. He stepped sideways, then back, looked up and down the street and pushed past Samantha, who screamed. On the outside of the huddle, Katherine hung back with Jeremy in the pushchair. The thin man crashed towards them both, stumbled over the pushchair, thrust his hands down the sides in an attempt to correct his balance, looked round once more, fixed Katherine with a glance of wild despair and ran on. They all rushed towards the boy, then turned in unison to watch the fugitive scampering up the street on spiky legs in dirty khaki trousers, his sweater torn at the back.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Harrison. ‘Well, I never.’

  ‘I seen him, I seen him,’ Mark sang, enchanted with his recognition. ‘I seen him the other night. He won’t talk.’

  ‘Oh do be quiet. Don’t make such a fuss. We all seen him.’ Mrs Harrison was the first to recover. ‘What the bloody hell . . .?’ turning to Harrison, her whole body one intimidating question mark, then remembering the group behind. ‘Oh come on in, Mrs Allendale, let’s put the kettle on. What a fuss, I ask you.’ She faced her husband, full of accusation. ‘You ask someone else in for tea as well, did you, you daft git you?’

  ‘No,’ Harrison mumbled. ‘Cleaning the step, I was. Went for some water downstairs, found him in the hallway. Said he was looking for a job. My eye.’

  ‘Sod it,’ said Mrs Harrison, only slightly mollified. ‘Didn’t get further than the hallway, did he?’

  ‘Not as I know,’ Harrison said carefully. ‘I wasn’t long gone. Oh do come in, will you? Afternoon, Mrs Allendale. You’re early.’

  Katherine hesitated on the step, looking back down the road, haunted by the brown and desperate eyes of the running, stumbling man whom she, too, had seen before. As they went downstairs inside the house towards the basement quarters, respect for Katherine not requiring the china cups of the drawing room or even her mistress’s kitchen, Mrs Harrison chattered over her shoulder explanations half lost in the clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Each of them moved at a different pace. ‘It’s them beggars, see? Drunks,’ she hissed, as if the word were too rude to repeat in front of the children. ‘Down and outs. Might have had good jobs once but they take to drink, see, hard stuff. Then their families chuck them out, no wonder, and where do they go? Nowhere. You read about them in the paper and we always have one or two. Disgusting.’

  ‘Poor, poor man,’ said Katherine, utterly distracted by the fear on the face of the refugee. There was a certain hostile and pathetic face to those deemed homeless; she had seen it before, felt its expression. The institutions of her past had given her close acquaintance with that look, gummed to the teeth of child or adult, almost ferocious. Mrs Harrison did not want to see the desperation of it.

  ‘Poor nothing. They just don’t want to work.’

  ‘They can’t work. He won’t know where to go.’

  ‘Looked like a criminal to me. Probably sacked for thieving.’

  Katherine did not want to persist. On sight of the vagrant, she simply wanted to go back indoors. He was too poignant for words, but temporarily forgotten in the clutter of the basement where she had only been twice before, rare indulgences on the part of these hosts who were proud and jealous of their domain. She gazed wistfully at the cooking range, a small and battered contraption, with the shelf above it decorated with lurid jugs from holiday resorts, all announcing their origin in black letters; the windows festooned with plants, making the whole effect even darker. In the comfort of this cave, tea was produced from a simmering pot, stewed black and brackish, laced with sugar before any preference was suggested. ‘He likes it so the spoon stands up by itself,’ Mrs Harrison chuckled, mistress in her own kitchen. Mark had disappeared upstairs, Jeanetta out to the garden. Samantha stayed, clutching a furry elephant of hideous colour, gazing at the neighbour as if she was a freak. The old Labrador circled Jeremy, who sneezed continuously.

  ‘Pity he’s allergic to that dog,’ Mrs Harrison remarked cheerfully. ‘He loves it so. More tea?’

  ‘Please.’

  Silence fell on the gathering while Mr Harrison took to a chair, deciding like his wife that undue respect was not required for this particular visitor, not if she shopped in Church Street market. It was a comfortable silence but one Mrs Harrison was determined to punctuate. Her invitation indoors was purposeful since she wanted two things. First, to establish whether Katherine was better informed than herself on the subject of Mr Pearson Thorpe’s defection, and second, dependent on the first, to impart to her neighbour some concern for the defector’s wife. Harrison had pieced information together from the torn-up letter the master had left, but anyway, Mrs H had guessed the imminence of the event for some time. Mrs Pearson never took any notice of him, see? Never took any notice of anyone but herself. Crossing her mind as she spoke, inspired by Katherine’s look of vacancy, was the swifter thought that this girl neither knew nor cared, was only shaking herself into politeness with difficulty. Mrs Harrison could see she was going to have to be straightforward, a technique she loathed. Most subjects when spoken of to any person of employer status, were approached by a crablike route.

  ‘Listen, Mrs A, we’re a bit worried, Harrison and me. Oh, go and play, Samantha, take Heffalump in the garden . . . Well, as I said, worried, we are. About Mrs Pearson. We think her hubby’s left her for some reason or other, and well . . . well not to put too fine a point on it, she’s been taking to the bottle.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Katherine. ‘You can’t be right, she can’t have done. She came to my gym last week, she was absolutely fine . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Harrison patiently. ‘That might be so, but that was last week, not this.’

  Katherine’s brilliant smile flashed radiant. ‘But he’s such a nice man. I’m sure he hasn’t really gone anywhere, she would have said. What would she do?’

  ‘Drink,’ said Harrison darkly from the depths of his chair. ‘Drink and be lonely. Nothing different.’

  ‘Shut up, Eric, just shut up.’

  ‘He’ll come back, you’ll see,’ said Katherine firmly. ‘He’s only away for a few days: he’ll be back and everything’ll be all right again, you’ll see.’ She suddenly could not bear the tenor of the conversation.

  ‘And we must go. Thanks for the tea.’ Embarrassment showed in a frown of disapproval, her leave-taking a rude dismissal. She watched herself from a great distance, repeating the lessons learned at lunchtime, operating a verbal barrier against any intimacy or unwelcome knowledge, none of which she could face. Reflected back from the old range she could see the challenge in David’s eyes, and shutting out that vision, she could see the darker eyes of the desperate little vagrant crashing into the pushchair. Saw more closely than anything else, Susan Pearson Thorpe, whom she had always tried to befriend, stumbling round the gym like a giant bluebottle. There was a trio of them dancing, beggar-man, deserted wife, herself in danger of the same, all of it so wretched it seemed better to blank her mind against any further information. Jeanetta’s face appeared from the door to the garden, hopeful of reprieve, the forehead creasing into a cry when she saw the shufflings of departure with all the vibrations of awkwardness. Mrs Harrison was deeply
hurt and offended. Katherine had refused her trust and was ticking her off. She knocked around teacups with a deafening noise.

  ‘Thanks for that, it was really lovely.’ Repeated echoes from Katherine of a polite child, very chilly.

  ‘’S all right,’ answered Mrs Harrison, stiff with resentment. ‘Perfectly all right, y’re welcome.’ They watched her leave.

  ‘Snob,’ muttered Mrs Harrison, ‘stuck-up tart.’

  ‘No, love, no,’ he protested.

  ‘Yes she is. Stuck-up tart.’

  Better to pretend she had imagined everything, put all this in the same bag as childhood memories: scenes of abandonment, two illustrations in twenty minutes, dogging her steps with nightmares as she dragged up the street to her own door, ringing the bell, nothing worse than being left, go home, cling to it: there is nothing outside. Jeremy back in the pushchair, Jeanetta walking behind: David at the door, urbane in glorious welcome. ‘Hallo, darling, you look wonderful. Did you forget the key?’

  He kissed her lightly, plucked Jeremy out of the pushchair and turned indoors, holding out the other hand to Jeanetta. When she ignored it, he placed his arm round the shoulders of his wife and drew her in. He smelt sharply of the shower, expensive soap, conspicuous cleanliness: there was about him the aura of physical power which had drawn her always, pleasure to see her so obvious, along with concern. ‘What’s the matter, darling? You look tired.’

  ‘Nothing,’ she answered, smiling back, swallowing hard. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Monica found the sanctuary of home, the grey nanny and the hyperactive children in the middle of a row, everything the same as usual. All the way back in the tube, she had been conscious of the smell of sex, that pungent odour of sweat mixed with gluey scent of the male, clinging to her, the sweet taste of brandy still in her mouth. Drew herself to herself in the crush, aware of dampness showing beneath the armpits of the cerise blouse, a stickiness between the thighs, imagining that the guilt of her assignation was stamped on her forehead, visible to all who could see the corner of an eye. But no one pointed a finger and the children did not react: the nanny’s sullen resentment was consistent; nothing had altered save the pace of her own heartbeat. Monica breathed in and out the same way as ever; adultery was easy after all. She pushed all her clothes in the laundry box and stood beneath the shower, glowing with triumph, bursting to tell. She would have to tell: she would absolutely have to tell: there was no discretion about her. Besides the little matter of the invitation in today’s post. David’s fortieth birthday party. Distant yes, but what was distant now would soon be soon. Throughout the fury of thoughts, she kept catching herself smiling.