Madame Doubtfire

by Anne Fine

  ‘I’ve warned Lydia there’ll be no trip to the theatre with her father for her tomorrow unless she’s made some real progress with that history project,’ Madame Doubtfire was saying even now. ‘Isn’t it a pity you weren’t back sooner! I made Christopher polish all the shoes, and those look as though they could do with a brush-up.’

  She rose, and shook out her heavy tweed skirt.

  ‘I’ll miss another bus at this rate. Shall I just bank up the fire for you before I go?’

  Lifting the scuttle with one enormous hand, she swung it back as if it were as light as air, and shot a shower of coal into the grate.

  ‘By the way, I have arranged with Natalie that, from now on, it’s her job to unload the dishwasher.’

  ‘You are a treasure, Madame Doubtfire,’ Miranda murmured. ‘Better by far than a husband.’

  ‘Surely that would depend on whose, dear?’

  Miranda giggled.

  ‘Well, better than mine for a start.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Madame Doubtfire hesitated in the action of reaching for her crocodile handbag.

  Behind their mother’s chair, Lydia and Christopher caught one another’s eye. Christopher bit his lip. He always became terribly anxious when his father postponed his departure for too many minutes after Miranda’s arrival. To Christopher’s way of thinking, once Miranda was in the house, each word, each gesture from Madame Doubtfire was a risk. Hazards lay everywhere. At any moment some terrible accident might occur. Madame Doubtfire might drop something heavy on her foot, and let rip with one of Daniel’s unmistakeable curses. Her turban might roll off her head. She might forget to bolt the lavatory door, and, surprised in privacy, surprise in turn. Even now, who was to say that in the room’s stealing, seductive warmth, Madame Doubtfire might not, without thinking, roll up the sleeves of her frilled blouse, exposing two muscle-bound, hairy forearms?

  But Lydia was grinning with amusement. She quite enjoyed these moments when her father, precariously concealed in this, his daily masquerade, enticed Miranda into gems of disclosure and reminiscence about the bad old married days. It was dangerous, yes; but it was fascinating, too, to listen to Madame Doubt-fire winkling out of Miranda indiscretions that gave Lydia her first glimpse of understanding into the reasons why the marriage had failed. She had, over the last few weeks, been disabused of more than one mistaken notion about one or other of her parents. More than one little gap in her knowledge had been filled. It was worth tiptoeing through this minefield to hear intriguing little details about the past.

  And she wasn’t alone. Daniel, too, seemed prepared to risk discovery – indeed, seemed almost as though he were even getting to enjoy the brief daily flirtation with danger, the perilous games of verbal blind man’s buff, with his former wife trapped for ever in the rôle of the blind man.

  ‘He was no treasure, then, your ex-husband?’

  ‘God, no!’ Miranda reached up to pull the pins out of her glorious hair. ‘I’ll tell you what was wrong with him.’

  ‘Yes. Do, dear.’

  Christopher squirmed uneasily over his homework. Lydia pricked up her ears. Natalie, too, looked up from her plastic menagerie.

  ‘My husband was –’ Miranda took the deepest breath as the sheer enormity of what Daniel was struck her again, in all its fullness and richness, after the years of partial release – ‘the most irresponsible man that I have ever had the misfortune to meet, let alone marry.’

  ‘Oh, surely not!’

  ‘Oh, yes! He was so irresponsible, he shouldn’t have been trusted with a log in a field, let alone with a wife and a house and some children.’

  ‘What did he do, dear?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what he did.’ Angry at the mere memory, Miranda tossed her head. The dazzling red hair tumbled down. She shook it fiercely and it fanned out around her face, making her look like an avenging angel.

  ‘Fiery, mud-slinging baggage!’ thought Daniel. ‘Pathological exaggerator. Judas! False witness!’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ he prompted sweetly.

  ‘Listen,’ said Miranda.

  Everyone listened.

  ‘The first time I knew that I’d married a madman,’ began Miranda, ‘was my wedding day. I was nineteen. I wore a long, white frock and orange flowers in my hair. It was a glorious spring afternoon, with fluffy mountains of cloud moving across the bluest sky. Everyone we invited had come, except for two miserable uncles I never really wanted anyway. It might have been a perfect day…’

  ‘I’ve heard about this, I think,’ said Christopher, doing his utmost to check her in the hope that his father would pick up his handbag and go home.

  ‘Shh!’ Natalie scolded. ‘We’re listening to the story!’

  ‘The Registry Office was in the Town Hall. When I arrived, your father was already standing on the steps, watching a woman in the entrance to the supermarket next door.’

  ‘I know I’ve heard this one,’ said Christopher, still hoping to forestall her.

  ‘Be quiet!’ Natalie hushed him fiercely.

  ‘The woman was trying to give away kittens. Beside her was a cardboard box, and sweet little kitten ears and pink noses kept peeping over the top, and falling back. She had a home-made sign saying the kittens needed homes desperately, and any that hadn’t been adopted by the time the supermarket closed that night would have to be put down.’

  Natalie was sitting spell-bound. Her mother went on:

  ‘I knew why Daniel was taking such an interest. His own cat had given birth to an enormous litter of kittens only eight weeks before, and he still hadn’t managed to find homes for any of them, even though we were about to go off on our honeymoon.’

  ‘Where?’ Lydia asked.

  ‘The north of Scotland,’ Madame Doubtfire told her.

  Miranda was astonished.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  There was a slightly uncomfortable pause before Madame Doubtfire explained.

  ‘You remember those framed photographs stuffed away out of sight at the back of your wardrobe, dear? I tidied them last week, and couldn’t help noticing one showed a fine looking figure of a man stealing a kiss from you over a beach café table.’

  ‘But how did you guess that was my honeymoon?’

  ‘Well!’ Madame Doubtfire looked a little startled. ‘Kissing in public, dear?’

  ‘And how did you guess it was Scotland?’

  ‘Recognized the cliffs, dear. And then the weather looked so very unpleasant…’

  ‘Please!’ Natalie begged. ‘What about the poor kittens? Please tell about the kittens. Please!’

  Distracted, Miranda took up the story as Christopher breathed again and Madame Doubtfire unobtrusively wiped sweat from her palms.

  ‘As soon as he saw me, your father bounded down the steps. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve just been talking to that woman. She had six kittens when she started. Apparently she stood there all day yesterday in the pouring rain, and all this morning through those nasty hail showers, and all this afternoon. Now she has only two kittens left, and a girl in the shop has promised to take one of those.” ’

  It was clear from the expression on Natalie’s face that this was a great load off her mind.

  Miranda carried on.

  ‘We were already late. I took his arm and we walked into the Town Hall. Everyone was waiting, and we were married straight away. Your father was in such a state, he dropped the ring twice.’

  ‘You shouldn’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing,’ Madame Doubtfire scolded her gently. ‘You should have known to back out then, before it was all far, far too late.’

  ‘So should he!’ Miranda responded tartly.

  ‘Oh, yes, dear. So should he. No doubt about that!’

  It struck Lydia suddenly that, if either her father or her mother had backed out at that moment, she and her brother and sister would never have been born. It was the most disturbing notion. As she forced it to the back of her mind, planning to give it som
e more thought later, Miranda was saying:

  ‘Anyhow, it would never have occurred to me to back out. I was so happy. I loved him, and I wanted him, and there we were, married at last. We stepped away from the Registrar’s desk, and all our friends surged forward to hug us and kiss us and –’

  She stopped short.

  ‘And –?’

  ‘And –?’

  ‘And –?’

  Daniel forbore from joining the chorus. He knew, only too well, what was coming.

  ‘And your father was gone!’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Gone! Disappeared. Nowhere to be seen. Slipped away. Vanished.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘There wasn’t much I could do, was there? After a while I sent my brother along to the Gents to see if he was in there. My brother came out shaking his head. So everyone just milled around in the foyer, burning with curiosity, huddled in little groups and whispering, wondering if the bridegroom had done a classic bunk after less than one full minute of marriage. My mother was in tears. My father looked murderous.’

  ‘Ooh!’ breathed Natalie. She tried to imagine her plump and amiable grandfather as a murdering man, and couldn’t do it.

  ‘And you?’ Lydia was fascinated. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’ Miranda picked at a loose thread in her dress. ‘I felt as if the skies had tumbled. I was embarrassed, miserable, humiliated and confused. My wedding had become a mockery. For all I knew, everything else was ruined as well.’

  ‘It must have been terrible for you,’ said Lydia. She eyed Madame Doubtfire thoughtfully as she spoke.

  Madame Doubtfire scowled, and taking this dark look for one of sympathy, Miranda carried on.

  ‘I forced myself to pretend that nothing had happened. I sailed from guest to guest, laughing and chatting and tossing my hair. Whenever anyone slyly asked what had become of Daniel, I insisted he was bound to be back any moment, and was probably planning some wonderful surprise.’

  ‘And was he?’

  Lydia kept her cool, inscrutable eyes on Madame Doubtfire.

  ‘Well…’ Miranda answered drily, ‘it was a surprise…’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Be patient. After about twenty minutes, when I was ready to die of embarrassment, the usher sidled up to my father and told him we would have to leave. There were other weddings, and we were clogging the foyer. So we all drifted out through the front door, on to the steps. And there was your father.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the bottom of the steps, right in front of us. Just leaping off a number 27 bus. And in his arms there was a cardboard box.’

  ‘The surprise!’ shouted Natalie, glad that her father’s honour was going to be restored at last.

  Miranda glanced at her pityingly, before saying: ‘Then, in front of everyone, with everyone staring, your father tucked the box under his arm, rushed up and grabbed me by the wrist. “Quick!” he hissed. “She’ll be gone any minute!” He practically shovelled me down those steps. He bruised my arm. He tore my dress. In full view of everyone, he dragged me over to that poor woman who was still standing, forlorn and exhausted, outside the supermarket, desperate to find a home for her very last kitten. “Here!” he said to her. “These are for you!” And do you know what he did?’

  Natalie writhed with impatience, desperate to be told.

  ‘He lifted the flap of his cardboard box, and tipped a swirling, furry flurry into her box. The entire litter! Eight more sweet, adorable, vulnerable little kittens! The woman was appalled. Simply appalled! I thought that she was going to faint from the shock. She was so horrified she couldn’t speak. And before I could say or do anything, Daniel had hauled me away, dragging me across the busy pavement and thrusting me up on the deck of some passing bus. I struggled to leap off and get back to the woman, but Daniel stopped me. He pinned me up against the No Spitting sign, and kissed me till the traffic lights had gone green, and the bus was moving too fast for me to risk it.’

  All the children were staring now, and Madame Doubtfire looked most uncomfortable.

  ‘Then everyone on the bus started clapping. They were applauding Daniel for kissing his brand-new bride with such passion. I was so angry I slapped his face. Everyone frowned, and turned to face the front, whispering between themselves about my bad temper, and how that nice young man had obviously just come from making the worst mistake of his life.’

  She heaved the most enormous sigh.

  ‘Well, maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I look at things in the wrong way. All I can tell you is, I stood on the deck of that bus in my grubby and bedraggled wedding dress, travelling at a steady twenty-five miles an hour away from my own wedding party, and I cried my poor eyes out. I realized that I had just made the terrible, terrible mistake of marrying the most irresponsible man in the world.’

  There was a long silence. Natalie was thinking about the poor woman with aching legs, forced to stand by the chilly brick wall of the supermarket for two more whole days, or even longer, getting rid of another box of kittens. Like an endless school break-time, Natalie thought, with no friends to talk to you, and no good games to keep you warm…

  Christopher was intrigued that he’d never before been told this particular story. You’d think, even if his mother wanted to forget it, and his father was ashamed, his grandparents might have brought it up at least once or twice over the years. After all, they must have forked out quite a bit of money for the wedding and the ruined reception party. They must have been upset and angry. Strange that they never mentioned it, even…

  Lydia wondered whether a traditional wedding inside a proper church might have made any difference – curbed her father’s wild behaviour, as it were. In the end, she decided it probably wouldn’t. The issue was, she thought, one of lack of respect; but not for the wedding ceremony itself, more a lack of respect for her mother’s feelings and wishes. Look at the story in one way, and it was funny. Lydia could see that. But only looked at from outside, or down the years. When it happened, it couldn’t have seemed either funny or forgivable. And particularly not that kiss on the bus. That was their first married kiss, and he had made of it a sham and a farce. If she’d been in her mother’s shoes…

  ‘If I’d been you, Mum, I’d have killed him!’

  The depth of feeling in her daughter’s voice astonished Miranda. And Daniel, too. Perturbed, he made an effort to defend himself, pour oil over troubled water.

  ‘All a terribly long time ago, dear. Water under bridges, and well away. I’m quite sure he got better after you were married.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Miranda. ‘If anything, he got worse’

  ‘How?’ Lydia asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Miranda. ‘At the very start of our honeymoon, he whispered to a rabbi sharing our train compartment all the way from London up to Inverness that every morsel of British Rail food was cooked in pork fat. The poor man would have starved to death if I’d not cottoned on when we reached York.’

  ‘I’ve definitely heard that one before,’ said Christopher. And throwing his former policy of protecting his father to the winds, he added provocatively: ‘And the one about Mrs Hooper’s tomcat getting stuck up the elm tree.’

  ‘I don’t remember that one,’ said Lydia.

  Madame Doubtfire tried coughing, but nobody heard. They were all listening to Christopher.

  ‘Kittykins got stuck up there all day. When it got so dark he couldn’t even see the titbits spread on the tree roots to tempt him down, Mrs Hooper panicked. She started borrowing ladders and clattering them about. She kept the whole street awake for hours, calling to the cat and banging garden-shed doors and crashing ladders into branches. At two in the morning, Dad lost his temper. He flung the window open, leaned out in his pyjamas and yelled: “Stop all that racket and go to bed!” Mrs Hooper called back: “But what about poor Kittykins?” And Dad bellowed at her at the top
of his voice: “For God’s sake, woman! You’re forty-nine years old! How many cats’ skeletons have you seen up trees?”’

  ‘I didn’t know that one,’ said Lydia over Madame Doubtfire’s persistent throat-clearing. ‘I only knew the one where everyone was standing weeping at Uncle Jack’s funeral.’ She smiled at Madame Doubtfire strangely. ‘And Dad pretended the hearse drove over his foot.’

  ‘What happened?’ Christopher asked.

  ‘The hearse driver nearly had a heart attack. Dad jumped about on one leg, clutching the other, until he lost his balance suddenly and fell into a freshly dug grave.’

  ‘I didn’t realize you’d been told that one,’ said Miranda.

  ‘I heard it from Aunt Ruth,’ said Lydia. ‘She told me one day when Dad did something even worse.’

  ‘Even worse?’ Christopher’s ears were practically flapping. ‘What? Tell us quick!’

  Madame Doubtfire’s face darkened as Lydia told them.

  ‘It happened a few years ago.’ There was an unfamiliar shade of menace in her voice that Daniel didn’t care for at all. ‘Aunt Ruth had come to see the baby.’

  ‘What baby?’ Natalie demanded.

  ‘You,’ Lydia told her. ‘You were the baby, Natty. You were so young you couldn’t even sit up alone. You could roll over, though, and you rolled over quite a lot.’

  Natalie giggled, not really believing her sister.

  ‘You were asleep. Aunt Ruth had just changed your nappy on the sofa, and you had fallen asleep right there, between the cushions. She didn’t want to risk waking you by picking you up and putting you safely in your cot, but she needed to go to the lavatory. She was desperate, she said. She hadn’t had a moment since she arrived. Dad just happened to come in the room, so Aunt Ruth asked him to watch you. “Don’t let the baby roll off the sofa,” she warned, and then she hurried out of the room. She shut the lavatory door and slid the bolt across. She’d just taken down her knickers and sat on the seat when she heard the most awful thud from the living room. She said: “Just like a baby falling on its head on the floor!” She flew out of the lavatory with her knickers all tangled round her ankles.’