The Playroom

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘I do realize,’ he was saying earnestly, already in command, ‘how short notice this is.’

  ‘How short?’

  ‘Well, Monday, actually.’ Friday today: short wasn’t the word, no notice at all. ‘. . . But I’m sure they won’t lose touch. Only this allergy of Jeremy’s has been getting worse. Not the dog’s fault; simply anything hairy. He isn’t a strong child. Difficult pregnancy, poor Katherine.’

  ‘I see, yes I see,’ not seeing at all, but asking inconsequential questions to cover the feeling, this awful sense of abandonment as if I had ever taken much notice of his children, knowing I would actually miss them. Even they found my house poisonous.

  ‘Mrs Harrison won’t like this. She’s very fond of your kids.’

  ‘I thought I’d give her a bonus, a generous bonus, for all she’s done. And pay you as normal for the next quarter since we’re being so inconsiderate, not giving any notice. Will that be acceptable?’ Perfectly acceptable, over-generous, in fact, apart from me being incredibly hurt: fiscal honour is desperately important and Mrs Harrison not immune to filthy lucre either. He was making himself look anxious, a man striving not to offend or over-personalize what was still the ending of a contract. ‘I don’t want any hard feelings,’ he was adding for good measure. ‘We’re so lucky to have you as neighbours; we both value the friendship.’

  At that moment I valued theirs, wanted to tell, confess our true circumstances, rather wanted to say, would you please ask Katherine if she would step round and see me? Both to explain and let me howl on her shoulder, forgetting all I had ever thought of her. But the words would not come out. I mouthed like a fish, pride at war with need.

  Therefore he left with no more than mutual protestations of goodwill, the manly kind with which that brave sex comfort each other and which have the same effect on me, but as soon as he had seen himself out, the anger rose, subdued by his physical presence but still in force, my mind jumping back to the questions which had prefaced his visit. Fingers, nervous for exercise, back inside the shoebox he had moved to one side, offended by his touching and his casual glance at the contents. Patsy Labrador shuffled beside me: she had growled at his back retreating downstairs, my damned dog making my comments for me, like an alter ego, but very rude all the same. ‘Naughty girl,’ I tapped her nose. Repercussions could surface later: for the time being, I could do nothing else but continue to search for the necklace. Even while wondering how to break all the news to Mrs Harrison.

  No, don’t call for Mrs Harrison; she is the real ruler of this house, so I go downstairs, carrying the gin to wed to the tonic and thus acquire a little more courage. She waddles upstairs to our kitchen as I waddle down, moving more and more like my dog but feeling a touch of hysteria.

  There is no finesse in me: let alone diplomacy, and besides, these days, words happen in gulps, rude announcements to hide the things I cannot say, brusqueness the only tone.

  ‘The Allendale children are not coming round here any more. He just told me. Their mother is going to do a hand’s turn for once because she’s lost her silly little job, going to be a full-time mum. Also Jeremy’s delicate and allergic to our dog, another factor, I believe. Did you ever notice him being delicate?’

  ‘I thought he had hay fever.’

  I’ve never before seen her nonplussed, but dear Mrs H was ashen-faced, recovering slowly. ‘What about Jeanetta?’ she was whispering, lowering large rump into kitchen chair as she spoke. ‘What about Jeanetta, oh, poor little girl . . .’

  ‘What about her? Nothing we can do, is there?’

  She was turning her grey head from side to side like a dog trying to get at a fly, ‘Oh poor little girl, shame, really, shame . . .’

  ‘Why poor? They’re bloody well off.’

  I couldn’t have Mrs Harrison out of control and any more emotion of any sort was going to shatter my nerves. ‘Shame,’ she kept repeating, ‘shame.’

  ‘Don’t go on so, really, doesn’t help.’ Me, not quite snapping. ‘Bet they’ll keep on coming round all the time. And you still get paid the same, for less work. Mr Allendale says he’s very grateful, wants to give you some kind of bonus, and it won’t be small.’

  If I thought that would bring a smile to her face, I was wrong. One forgets, you see, with Mrs Harrison, the lumbering humanity beneath the pinafore, the bit of her which makes her a child’s delight even as a disciplinarian. As ever with servants I was sorry for my words, awkward without being able to change tack, caught in my own breeze.

  ‘Have a drink, Mrs Harrison, please. Whatever you like.’

  ‘Do you know, I think I shall. Whisky.’

  She’s welcome: Harrison pinches it all the time but I loathe the stuff. Sloshed some in a glass and we sat for a moment, nursing different sorrows in silence. She drank the amber like a good ’un, took a little more. All conscience is soluble in . . . I remembered, watched her face pinken by the second, and my single-track mind reverted to course.

  ‘Mrs Harrison, sorry to mention this just at the moment, but I seem to be missing a necklace.’

  She finished the drink abruptly, refused more. Settled back further in her chair and became portentous, one arm resting on the kitchen table, looking like a boxer between rounds.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Pearson, what a pity, oh dear, oh dear, I wonder . . . No, nothing.’ She looked at me sideways, an uncomfortable look.

  ‘Something you want to tell me, Mrs H?’

  ‘Don’t like to, ma’am, really I don’t . . . Telling tales, and I’ve no way of knowing, not really . . .’

  ‘Oh what is it? Listen, in case it should have crossed your mind, don’t imagine I think either you or Harrison could ever be involved, don’t think that for a moment, but I know very well I left a gold necklace in a shoebox in my study and since Harrison’s known to carry a duster in there, he might have seen it. Did anyone come in, you know, non-regular? You know, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, plumber, anyone?’

  She smiled at the nursery-rhyme references, but there was palpable hesitation. ‘No one,’ she said, ‘today or yesterday.’ Another hesitation. ‘Except Mrs Allendale, of course. Came in for tea, early home she was.’

  ‘Upstairs?’ I was examining my hands.

  ‘Downstairs, with us.’ She pointed with her finger stabbing towards the floor. ‘But I was worried, ma’am, she did go up, to the loo, while I was making tea. Gone a long time, she was, ever so strange when she came back, couldn’t wait to go. And Jeanetta, she does sometimes run off with toys . . . You don’t think . . .? No, she wouldn’t, not Mrs Allendale, she wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘She wouldn’t.’ Silence surrounded the two of us.

  ‘No, of course not,’ murmured the lady. ‘Well I don’t know, Mrs Pearson, I just don’t know.’

  And after that, the evening chuntered into dark. The way these long, long evenings do, all the emotions joining force in the darkness, dancing round like fireflies. Back and forth across the kitchen floor with muted footsteps, what did I do wrong, what did I do right, the picture of life cracked, all defences half gone, another drink, please. Face staring into the garden while tongue gags on a piece of cheese: my feet going upstairs to Sebastian’s study looking for clues; back to my own lair, no longer looking for the necklace and all the childhood which went with it. Across the landings, into the rooms of sleeping children, looking and looking, coming away and going back, afraid to leave them alone or disturb such fragile peace.

  I would rather think about the necklace than think about the rest, if you see what I mean. Quite obvious, really, why dear David is making revisions to his regime, keeping her at home, obvious as a lighthouse beacon. Must be hard to have a thief for a wife as well as one for a father, so hard I must find it in my superstitious self to be generous. Besides, things matter so much less than they did, I don’t know why. She can have the bloody thing: she is not Sebastian’s mistress, that role is given to another. Words, words, words, what’s the good of them. I neve
r liked that necklace anyway: I simply wanted to know. One more for the road. I have no idea which road but it seems to be going downhill. I can only remember the jokes. Silly of me to think of confiding in Katherine, wasn’t it? Did I say I’d thought of that? But you can’t, can you? Not with someone you know is a thief.

  CHAPTER 14

  When she had set out that morning, her resolution had been firm. She would explain everything to Mary, who would tell her if her life was normal, but all resolution faded in the face of food. Almost two weeks at home with Jeanetta made everything hinge on food. Katherine sat at a prominent table in the restaurant next to the Academy, waiting for Mary. There were times when she saw the whole of her life as a series of sitting at tables, waiting, landmarks to existence the culinary details of which she could always remember. Every last bit of food, but not always the company: recalling three-dimensional details and even the taste of whatever she had consumed on dozens of occasions, but the faces opposite or alongside were blurred. Facing her now was a woman eating a piece of cold chicken, picking at the bones with her knife and fork, her face rapt with concentration as she removed the flaccid flesh from the bones and placed small morsels into her mouth. Katherine shuddered, began to forget the words she was going to use to explain.

  Mary was late, a bizarre condition for Mary, who would sooner be caught naked than delayed. At least that was as Katherine remembered, but Mary might have changed over the last years or the last week; you never knew. People did, she noticed: they changed colour all the time. Katherine looked at a book she was carrying. She always carried a book for camouflage, but her reading was minimal unless of magazines printed on shiny paper, full of coveted things as well as platitudes, advice columns and illustrations, especially pictures alongside articles which offered some reassurance. She copied ideas from periodicals, read articles on child care which she forgot when faced with Jeanetta, shamefully reflecting how she had never applied any of them to Jeremy. She seemed to have done an awful lot of living to learn so little.

  Pausing in her nervous handling, she pinned back a centre page with a column title of ‘How to deal with the two-year-old tantrums’, smiling for a moment at the ambiguity of the heading – how could a tantrum last for two years? – then scanning the writing with one eye, the other still looking out for Mary. There was a picture of a bawling infant, mouth wide open in toothless protest. ‘These tantrums do not last,’ the article stated. But they did: in Jeanetta’s case they had persevered longer than that. Which was surely why Jeanetta was at home at the moment, locked in the playroom. ‘Best to ignore the outbursts of tempestuous tots,’ said the article. Katherine squinted at the page and turned on. Perhaps they were right. Children are very hardy. It was nice to know.

  Jeanetta had been relatively undisturbed by one night in the playroom, or so it had seemed. When David, with Katherine hovering, opened the door in the morning, they had found her truculent, sitting amid a pile of clothes. She had peed in her pants and on to one of Katherine’s old evening skirts: there was the sharp smell of ammonia. The small face was blotched red and white and her hair was flopping over a pale forehead. There were obvious traces of tears but a quiet defiance: she had always been a stubborn child. ‘Go and get washed,’ David had said to her. Mother and daughter had walked upstairs, Jeanetta crying then over the business of cleaning teeth, snuffling slightly and without words, stiffening at first when Katherine tried to hug her with all the usual awkwardness, trying to include in that embrace some apology without expressing approval. Then child had relented and hugged back, still speechless as they descended again to breakfast. Bread and butter had been placed on Jeanetta’s plate: she ate like a small and quiet wolf, never querying the absence of the cornflakes which were locked away out of sight. By contrast, and to Katherine’s intense relief, Jeremy banged his tray, threw himself hither and thither and would not eat at all. Under cover of this distraction, Katherine tried to supply a little more of the bread to her daughter. ‘No,’ David had said, without even turning his head. ‘She’s so fat.’ Jeanetta did not insist. Nor did her mama, breathing an outward sigh of relief. Everything would be all right after all: everything was under control. There was just the little question of how they would spend their days.

  But of course such tranquillity could not last, broke into a rash of the opposite many days before this meeting with childless Mary, who would regard the whole débâcle as part of Katherine’s incompetence and renew the accusations about never doing anything useful. Katherine hoped Mary would make the usual suggestion of charitable works: she needed work other than housework and she could bring Jeanetta with her. Giving extra attention to her daughter did not make her biddable: it rendered both of them irritated. Jeanetta’s temper had not survived the gradual realization that she was not going back to the Harrisons. One day after the first spell in the playroom, dressed with hope, trailing downstairs with Donald Duck, the red cloak and all the impedimenta she was used to drag next door with her, Jeanetta had sat at table and asked, loudly, when were they going across to Mrs Harry. ‘And Sammy, and Mark,’ she added for good measure. The question was addressed to the ceiling, Jeanetta’s body pointed in David’s direction, but keeping her distance.

  ‘Mrs Harrison is away,’ he said shortly, spooning food into Jeremy’s willing mouth.

  ‘No she’s not, she’s not, she’s not. I seen her from the window, outside, I did, saw her, saw her . . .’ The voice was rising to a scream, swelled with her knowledge of being told a lie.

  ‘Be quiet, Jeanetta: eat your bread.’

  ‘Hate bread. Want cornflakes.’

  ‘No. You make a mess. Tuck your shirt in.’ His voice was cold.

  ‘Please, can we go to Mrs Harry, please?’ A change in tactic, a wheedling tone.

  ‘No.’

  Jeanetta took a slice of sticky granary bread, spread thinly with butter, and placed it face down on the table beyond the limits of the plastic cover which protected her place. Then she struck the slice repeatedly, first with the heel of her hand and then with her fist. The table was polished and solid, beyond damaging, but the cutlery and glass of orange juice next to her plate rattled. ‘Want to go, want to go, want to go,’ Jeanetta chanted, grinding the bread into the surface of the wood, ‘. . . want to go now.’ Jeremy gaped, wide-eyed with interest, then blew the food off the spoon held near his face. A muscle in David’s neck had begun to twitch. Katherine said nothing and removed the bread fragments quickly. Jeanetta reached for more.

  Sitting in the vaulted room with the paintings on the walls, waiting for Mary, looking at the others either talking or eating, Katherine pictured David’s hand instead of any one of theirs, reaching out and removing the bread, his voice ordering silence. Jeanetta, sitting, pulling faces while the rest of them ate, denied food herself, determined to choke on silence rather than complain. Then when Katherine was sent out, Jeanetta being placed in the playroom with the door locked and herself just beginning to understand the makings of the regime. ‘You cannot spend all day in the house, darling,’ pleasantly said by David. ‘The less people know about your job the better. Go out, meet the girls, meet Mary, go and do something cultural. Here, take the phone and do something, go to the gym. I like you here, but you don’t need to stay all the time. People will think it odd.’ So her days would be thus: spent with Jeanetta in front of the television, or if not, Jeanetta to be in the playroom out of harm’s way while the boy stayed glued to his father, passive in any event and further pacified by constant music and conversation, happy in company. Whether the sojourns in the playroom were imprisonment or safekeeping made no difference: he would see to her needs, he said, do go, Katherine, you’re getting on my nerves. Her own silence on the subject, her agreement with the new order, was assumed. ‘Look, it does her good,’ he said. After days without Harrison titbits, Jeanetta was noticeably thinner. Katherine understood that in David’s eyes, this proved some kind of point. A child being streamlined and subdued to go with the rest of the hous
e.

  Let it go for now: life would improve, life always did. She turned back to the magazine. ‘This is only a phase,’ said the article. ‘Things are bound to get better.’ If only he did not put her there at night. He never struck her, did he, never abused her, never slapped her face. She had read of those things, they were serious. Cruel fathers did that. Jeanetta was in the playroom now. She had been in and out of the playroom for days. Katherine began to count on her fingers the number of days, and stopped.

  David was not cruel: he was kind. She closed her eyes, and in the absence of sight, the voices around her were suddenly enlarged while she remembered her Italian honeymoon with darling David, trying in the memory to call up the foolproof mantra of happy reminiscence. But all she could remember was the coupling before breakfast, lunch, dinner, post-midnight, the incessant fucking like a cat marking territory. Imprints all over herself as if he had never been there before: Mine, mine, mine; and her, glad to be owned. She wished she could go back to that point without the morning sickness: the disbelief of his which had grown in the few years since that apparently premature birth. Grown at the same time as the house was becoming so perfect around them, the end of him treating her like gold dust. The end of being allowed her own childishness. Panic rose again. Whatever defeat was involved, she must tell Mary.

  ‘For God’s sake, Katherine, wake up. You do look silly with your eyes shut. Sorry I’m late.’