by Anne Fine
Madame Doubtfire assured her confidently: ‘If you knit your father a pink tie for his birthday, he’ll wear it, I’m quite sure.’
‘That’s what Lydia says. She says he has whole drawerfuls of horrible ties, and he wears those, so he’ll wear mine.’
‘Lydia said that, did she, dear?’
‘Yes. Yes, she did.’
Natalie folded her legs beneath her on the bed, and looked thoughtful.
‘I tried to phone him.’
‘Did you, dear? Why?’
‘To ask him if he liked pink.’
‘When, dear?’
‘Just now. While you were in the bathroom. But he was out.’ She picked absent-mindedly at the fringe of the counterpane. ‘He’s out a lot now. He always used to be in when I phoned him.’
‘Natalie –’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Never mind.’
But it did matter, and he could feel that she did mind. He minded, too – so much so that when Miranda finally returned home very late from work that evening, and dumped a huge box of sub-standard light fittings down on the kitchen table in a vile mood, he was still far, far too keyed-up to have the sense to postpone his fictitious report of a telephone message.
‘Dear, just before I take off – their father rang…’
Lydia and Christopher, he noticed, only pricked up their ears with amusement and interest; but Natalie looked absolutely delighted.
Miranda screwed her face up into an exhausted grimace.
‘Oh, God. Just what I need!’
‘Dear?’
‘Never mind. When did he ring? Don’t tell me. Lunchtime.’
Madame Doubtfire was puzzled.
‘Lunchtime? Why lunchtime, particularly?’
‘He just has this incredibly annoying habit of always seeming to ring here at meal times.’
‘Oh. Does he, dear?’
Irritated, Daniel made a mental note to ring her during breakfast the following morning.
‘Yes, he does.’ She reached out for her cup of tea. ‘Well, what did he want this time?’
‘This time?’ Madame Doubtfire looked little short of reprovingly at her. ‘You could hardly accuse him of being importunate, dear. They are his children as much as yours, and he’s only rung a couple of times since I began to work for you.’
‘Yes,’ Natalie said sorrowfully. ‘He never seems to ring now.’
Miranda had had a very hard day at work. She was in no mood to be sympathetic.
‘He shouldn’t need to ring at all. You see him quite regularly, and he must know the schedule off by heart.’
‘Really, dear!’ Madame Doubtfire was thoroughly disapproving now. ‘I thought it very nice of him to ring. Not everything in life fits in a schedule. The children can phone him whenever they want. Why shouldn’t he phone them? If fathers and children need contact with one another, it’s not the mother’s place to interfere.’
Miranda shrugged off the lecture.
‘What did he want?’
Under the stress of this near altercation, the answer Madame Doubtfire came out with was rather more lavish than anything previously planned.
‘He wants to take them to the theatre on Saturday afternoon.’
Natalie squealed with pleasure. Miranda scowled.
‘This Saturday? But it’s my weekend this week!’
‘But you’re away until six on Saturday, dear. You told me so yourself, when you asked me to come in specially. You have to go to a Home Lighting Conference in Wolverhampton. You said so.’
‘It’s still my weekend,’ sulked Miranda.
Madame Doubtfire gathered herself up.
‘Pardon me for saying so, dear, but isn’t your attitude getting to be a hint dog-in-the-mangerish?’
Miranda’s scowl deepened.
‘Oh, honestly! What a great nuisance!’
Christopher rushed forward.
‘Oh, please, Mum. Let us go with Dad on Saturday. I haven’t been to a theatre for years!’
‘I can’t remember the last time I went to a theatre,’ said Lydia.
‘I’ve never been to one at all,’ said Natalie.
‘Yes, you have,’ Madame Doubtfire corrected her firmly. Then she hastily corrected herself. ‘I’m sure you must have, dear. Quite sure. I expect that you’ve simply forgotten.’
‘We’ve all forgotten,’ Christopher said. ‘It’s been so long. Please let us go, Mum. Please, please, please.’
‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Miranda glowered. ‘It’s very bad of your father to try to upset the schedule like this. How do I know he’ll bring you back in good time? You know what he’s like. And he probably hasn’t even got the tickets yet, anyway. That would be absolutely typical of him. You three will get all excited, and then he’ll turn up here on Saturday and tell you that all the seats were sold out. I’ll come home worn out from Wolverhampton, and have to think of something to cheer you all up. It’s happened that way often enough before! Oh, what a nuisance that man can be!’
‘But Mum! If he gets tickets, can we go?’
‘Oh, honestly! How annoying!’ said Miranda in a decided manner, as if the whole matter was settled, and to her total dissatisfaction, at that.
Genuinely at a loss, Christopher asked the air around him:
‘Does Mum mean we can go?’
Miranda’s expression was black with irritation. She gnawed her fingers. ‘Oh, I don’t know! What a bother! How dare he? This is typical!’
It was clearly for Madame Doubtfire to step in, and step in she did.
‘I think this is your mother’s quaint way of saying you may, dears,’ she told them. ‘And you’re very fortunate, too, in my opinion. It must be a privilege to go to the theatre with Daniel Hilliard. He’s a very fine actor, very fine indeed.’
Annoyed beyond measure with Miranda, she sailed closer and closer to the wind. ‘Indeed, I once saw him on a stage myself…’
‘Really?’ Lydia and Christopher were grinning, but Natalie was thrilled. ‘What was he? What part did he play?’
Suddenly, Madame Doubtfire looked stricken. In Christopher’s mind there surfaced the faintest, faraway memory of going to see his very first pantomime ever. A tall man dressed in women’s clothing cavorted on the brightly lit stage. His mother had leaned over, and whispered in his ear: ‘See! There’s your father, the one doing that dance with the musical sausages. He’s Madame Doubtfire.’
‘Your bus!’ cried Christopher. ‘You mustn’t miss your bus!’
One cue was all it took. Gratefully, Madame Doubtfire lunged under the table for her handbag, and swept up her coat.
‘Bye, dears,’ she warbled. ‘Until tomorrow!’
And blowing them kisses over her shoulder, she fled.
Miranda shook her head. It was hard to fault Madame Doubtfire. Indeed, Miranda had popped upstairs for just a moment to wash her hands after carrying that dusty box of broken light fittings, and the house was a pleasure to look at, truly it was. All those things she’d left scattered round her bedroom after her evening with Sam had been discreetly tidied away, and Lydia and Christopher’s bedrooms could not have looked nicer. But, nonetheless, sometimes it seemed to Miranda that she had hired the strangest housekeeper on the earth.
She turned to her son who was looking, she thought, just a tiny bit rattled.
‘Christopher,’ she said. ‘How are you finding Madame Doubtfire?’
Nerve-wracking, Christopher thought privately, recalling with some bitterness the soggy cheroot stub he had fished out of the lavatory bowl only moments before his mother’s arrival.
‘Fine,’ he assured her. ‘Absolutely fine.’
Miranda fiddled with her teaspoon.
‘She’s very, well, strange, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ Christopher said firmly. ‘I don’t find her strange. Neither does Lydia. Nor does Natalie.’
‘But she’s so very, well, large, for one thing.’
‘She’s not that
large,’ Christopher argued. ‘She’s only a tiny bit taller than you.’
‘But I’m terribly tall. I’m only a little bit shorter than your father. And Madame Doubtfire is even taller than I am.’
‘So?’
He sounded sufficiently defensive to startle his mother. She wondered suddenly if this were the first sign of some as yet unnoticed strain of chivalry in her son.
‘Well, she is big, you must admit.’
‘No,’ Christopher was obdurate. ‘I don’t think she’s big.’
‘Oh, really, Christopher!’
Exasperated, Miranda turned to her elder daughter.
‘What do you think of her, Lydia?’
‘Well…’ Lydia grinned. ‘She is a little strange.’
Miranda was relieved. One of her children, at least, still had some sense.
‘Isn’t she? She really is strange. But don’t you think it’s worked out well? Better than it would if you spent extra time with your father?’
There was a pause before Lydia answered.
‘I wouldn’t say better. But, then again, I wouldn’t say worse, either. I think I’d have to say – different.’
Satisfied with this, Miranda turned to Natalie.
‘And what do you think, Natty? Do you like Madame Doubtfire?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Natalie’s testimony was immediate. ‘I like her a lot.’ Since her brother and sister were smirking at her, she added rashly: ‘I think that probably Madame Doubtfire is my most favourite person.’
Mischievously, Lydia asked:
‘But what about Daddy?’
Natalie stared, paralysed with horror, at her sister. She looked, Miranda thought, positively anguished. She drew breath, let it out, then, desperate, drew breath again.
‘I think –’ she stuttered. ‘I think – I think –’ And then, as the solution mercifully struck her, she finished in a tone of triumph:
‘I think I like them both exactly the same!’
Chapter Six
Happy families
Hearing Miranda’s heels tapping up the garden path the next evening, Madame Doubtfire paused in her watering.
‘Here comes your mother, home from running the Empire.’
Miranda caught the last few words as she stepped through the front door.
‘Running the Empire?’ she queried from the hall.
‘Sorry, dear,’ called Madame Doubtfire. ‘I meant the Emporium. I often mix up those two words.’
Christopher looked nervously at Lydia as she snickered, keeping her head well down over her homework. When Miranda came in the room, she didn’t notice her daughter’s amusement. As usual, she was exhausted and her feet ached. Glancing appreciatively towards the coal fire burning in the grate, she flung herself down in the nearest armchair, and prised off her ill-fitting shoes.
‘The cup that cheers, dear?’
Gratefully, Miranda reached out and took it. The tea, like the warm fire and Madame Doubtfire herself, was perfect. All her doubts of the evening before forgotten, Miranda blessed the day she took this huge, ungainly pantomime dame into her family. Maybe Madame Doubtfire was a queer coot. But Miranda was first and foremost a business woman, and she had learned to judge by results. The results of this particular decision were little short of magical, she decided. The children were steadier and happier, the house ran like clockwork, and the woman made meatloaf as good as Daniel’s. At times like these, stretched in an armchair in front of a ready, blazing fire, tea in hand, with the elder two already settled at the table immersed in their homework and Natalie peaceably shunting little plastic creatures around her feet, Miranda could not think how the four of them had ever managed before Madame Doubtfire’s arrival.
Daily, the woman continued to astonish. No doubt at this very moment a nourishing supper was simmering in the oven, yesterday’s ironing pile had been dispersed to drawers and wardrobes round the house, the quail had been fed and watered, and the kitchen was spotless. But still Madame Doubtfire was on her feet, turban nodding, fretting about the plants on the bookshelf.
‘This tradescantia isn’t doing at all well,’ she was saying. ‘I thought it was too far gone when I came.’
‘It looks all right to me,’ said Lydia. ‘Sort of lean and wiry and interesting.’
Madame Doubtfire regarded her with barely disguised ill favour.
‘Tradescantias come from the jungle,’ she informed her. ‘They are supposed to be lush. Whereas the number of leaves on this one could be counted on the fingers of one slightly abnormal hand.’
‘But you’ve worked wonders with the rest of the plants,’ Miranda consoled her treasure. ‘They’ve gone from strength to strength since you took over.’
Indeed they had. Botanical salvation was assured. Even some of the most sickly cases had revived. ‘I don’t like the look of that Black-eyed Susan,’ Madame Doubt-fire had muttered on the first day, as she struggled to tie the bow on her brand-new pinny. ‘And that weeping fig is little more than good kindling.’ She’d set to work with plant food and mist sprays, leaf wipes and slim green support sticks. And now the pinks were all pinker, the climbers climbed higher, leaves flourished, buds burgeoned, and the tendrils of the plants in the hanging baskets had grown so long and thick and curly they tangled in Miranda’s hair as she stepped in the porch every evening.
Madame Doubtfire was complacent.
‘No, I don’t think I’ve done your plants much harm…’
‘Harm!’ Miranda feigned outrage. ‘Why, you’ve performed little miracles all over the house. You’re like my ex-husband. He has green fingers.’
Behind her, she heard a little snort, and wondered if Lydia was coming down with a spring chill. But before she could look round and inspect her for signs of an incipient cold, Madame Doubtfire leaned forward, tapping her wrist to reclaim her attention.
‘Shocking state they were in when I arrived, dear. Simply shocking! I barely managed to save the African violets. A couple more months, and your Busy Lizzies would have gone, too. I have to say it: you’d been very neglectful.’
‘I did try,’ Miranda sighed. ‘It’s just that I’m no good with plants. I tried so hard to take care of them, but, after Daniel left, they just became more and more miserable.’
‘Poor plants,’ Natalie sympathized softly at her feet.
Miranda rattled on.
‘Last spring, seeing the way the pinks were going, I even tried to take a few cuttings. I stuffed them in a jam jar of water, and shoved them out of the way on that box beside the boiler down in the basement.’
‘No point in letting your plants get uppity,’ observed Madame Doubtfire in what struck Miranda as an uncharacteristically sardonic manner.
‘They did all right,’ she defended herself. ‘After a few weeks I even noticed that out of the bottom they’d started to sprout those little white things.’
‘Roots,’ said Madame Doubtfire. ‘Those little white things at the bottom are called roots.’
‘So then I bunged them in a few rusty paint pots I’d filled with that thick brown stuff – what’s it called?’
‘Soil,’ Madame Doubtfire said. ‘We of a horticultural bent call it soil.’
‘No!’ Miranda remembered. ‘It was Mrs Nimble Green Thumbs Number Two Compost!’
She sat back happily.
‘Yes?’ enquired Madame Doubtfire, after it became apparent that Miranda considered her tale fully told. ‘And what happened then?’
‘Oh. Then they died.’
Madame Doubtfire did make the effort to look just a tiny bit astonished. But she couldn’t resist a botanical post-mortem.
‘You probably starved them. Or parched them. Or drowned them.’
‘Or blighted them,’ suggested Lydia.
‘Or left them in a draught,’ said Christopher, pushing his nervousness to one side in the effort not to be outdone in all these flourishes of horticultural expertise.
‘I bet they were really unhappy,’ said Natalie. ‘Pinks sim
ply hate to get their feet wet.’
‘They do resent wet compost, yes,’ Madame Doubt-fire agreed.
Miranda stared. She hadn’t realized Natalie knew anything about plants. But more and more frequently now, her younger daughter was astonishing her, coming out with outlandish snippets of information she was unlikely to have picked up at school. Clearly, when she reached home each afternoon, she trailed round the house behind Madame Doubtfire as she watered and misted and fertilized and pruned, and they chatted, exchanging botanical confidences. Miranda was pleased. All too frequently in the last few years, she had been forced to regard herself as an unresponsive and distant parent, too frazzled by the day’s events at the Emporium, too often simply too bloody tired, to sit and listen with any pleasure to her children’s conversation. It was a great and growing relief to Miranda that Madame Doubtfire had turned out to be such a great marvel. Everything was easier, and, as a result, everything was somehow becoming more pleasant. Even the hours spent at work were less of a strain, since, for the first time since she could remember, Miranda was able to stop worrying entirely about whether she might return home to confusion or upset.
The woman was totally capable. Even more admirable, she was totally decisive. There wasn’t a shred of ‘Wait-and-See’ about her. And unlike every other link in the seemingly endless chain of women and girls Miranda had employed over the years to tide her over working hours, Madame Doubtfire had never once, to Miranda’s knowledge, fallen back on the tired old babysitting formula: ‘I’m not sure about that. You’d better wait and ask your mother.’
Quite the reverse. She actually seemed immune to the notion that the children belonged, first and foremost, to Miranda. She seemed sincerely to believe she held invested within her all the authority of a real parent. Even now, with Miranda right there sipping her second cup of tea and stretching her toes towards the fire’s warmth, Madame Doubtfire suddenly told Christopher quite sharply to drop his chair back on four legs, and suggested to little Natalie that she might please everyone in the room if she were to refrain from exploring up her nose with her finger.
At first, Miranda had found this easy assumption of equally shared authority a little disconcerting. But she relaxed into it with simple relief once the benefits of the arrangement became evident, once she realized how oiled and easy it made whole areas of daily life which had for so long now been tiresome and scratchy.