Madame Doubtfire

by Anne Fine

  Lydia paused. Madame Doubtfire reached under the chair for her handbag.

  ‘It was Dad, of course. He had deliberately stamped on the floorboards.’

  Madame Doubtfire rose, clutching her handbag to her bosom. Her face was set, her voice chilly.

  ‘I think I’d best be off now,’ she informed them. ‘I’m sure these little stories about the children’s father will keep you all amused till bedtime.’ A thin rill of sarcasm rippled beneath the frost in her voice. ‘I must say, dear, I’d simply no idea how terribly you must have suffered.’

  Miranda failed to discern the jibe.

  ‘It was awful,’ she agreed. ‘Such a great strain. I am a little straight-laced by nature, I’d be the first to admit it. But sometimes it seems to me that Daniel can act any part in the world to perfection except that of a normal, responsible human being!’ She sighed. ‘Maybe that’s what attracted me in the first place. I’m so very serious and careful myself, maybe I thought he made a nice change, maybe I even thought he would change me.’ She sighed again, even more heavily. ‘But marriage doesn’t seem to work that way. People don’t change, except a little round the edges. And so I was miserable. Living with Daniel was like living on a knife edge. I never knew what he might do next.’ She spread her hands in rather the same way Daniel did when he was speaking about her. ‘In the end, you know, it wasn’t even the irresponsibility I minded the most. It was the embarrassment. The sheer, hideous, nerve-racking embarrassment of the outrageous things he did.’

  Behind her mother’s chair, Lydia ostentatiously wrenched open a French book and stuck her fingers in her ears. She was suddenly very angry indeed with her father, and wanted him to know it. It seemed to Lydia deeply wrong and offensive that her mother should be opening her heart so frankly like this, in all good faith, and not realize that she was talking to Daniel. It was a cheap form of betrayal, Lydia thought, just like the false kiss on the bus, and she no longer wanted any part of it.

  Sensing his daughter’s revulsion, Daniel attempted to put a speedy end to the whole conversation.

  ‘Those stories all date from years back, dear. You two have been divorced for ages. It’s over now.’

  ‘Over?’ Miranda’s tea cup was swept off the chair arm as she rose. ‘Over? It never stops! If anything, it’s worse! He’s just as bad as ever, and I get no early-warning signals, no control over his actions, not even the chance to tell him what I think of him afterwards!’

  She strode across the room. For one awful moment, Daniel thought she was coming over to hit him. But she was bending over the bookcase beside his chair.

  ‘Over, indeed! Look what Mr Hooper next door brought round here only a short while ago!’

  She tugged at something stuck behind the bookcase.

  ‘Look at this! Painted by my own neighbour!’

  She pulled and pulled. But the painting had clearly been rammed down behind the bookcase with such force that it was difficult to remove.

  Recalling only too vividly some of the unfinished efforts Mrs Hooper had carried home from the art class, Madame Doubtfire asked nervously:

  ‘Are you sure this is wise, dear? In front of the children…’

  Miranda ignored her. She was rattling the bookcase furiously. And finally out it came: Mrs Hooper’s most polished artistic achievement.

  Daniel needed only the briefest of glances to feel within himself the most utter mortification. The painting was revolting. In it he stood gawky and awkward, with three out of his four limbs apparently horribly misshapen. His skin was in some places painted a rather nasty puce colour, and in others a virulent cyclamen. His feet looked vile, like two deformed knobs. Worst of all, he had been painted as he had modelled, stark naked.

  He did try not to look. He had to look. And there, nesting within the abnormally lavish clumps of carroty undergrowth with which Mrs Hooper had, in a generous if rather slapdash fashion, favoured the lower part of his body, were his most private parts, exposed – highlighted, almost – pale, shrimpy, sad protuberances.

  ‘My God!’ he croaked, shocked beyond measure.

  ‘Exactly!’ triumphed Miranda. ‘What will people think?’

  The handbag was clutched closer to the bosom in panic.

  ‘You’re not planning on exhibiting it, are you, dear?’

  Lydia giggled.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Mum should hang it over the fireplace. It’s generally agreed that, after divorce, it’s nice for the children to see as much as possible of their father.’

  Christopher fell about laughing. Natalie looked baffled.

  ‘It isn’t funny,’ Miranda scolded. ‘It isn’t funny at all. And, to cap everything, I found out this morning that I have to put up with your father playing the fool in my own home!’

  There was a horror-struck silence. Was it possible they were all rumbled? Was it possible Miranda already knew?

  Certainly, she was beside herself with fury.

  ‘That’s right! Look shocked! He’s going to stand on this very rug, stark naked, shameless!’

  ‘Am –? Is he?’

  ‘Yes, he is! And I can’t see a way to stop him. Because I was enough of a fool to promise Mrs Hooper that if she still happened to have workmen in her house when the art college closed for half-term, her life class could meet here.’

  Madame Doubtfire looked more than a little taken aback at this. She said firmly: ‘There must be somewhere else they could meet, dear.’

  Miranda scowled.

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it seems everyone in that class lives either in digs or caravans or houseboats.’ Her lips curled as she added spitefully: ‘Those that don’t live in institutions, that is.’

  Daniel was bitterly regretting his ungenerous impulse at an earlier art class when volunteers were requested to offer space in their homes. He should never have claimed that he lived on a houseboat.

  ‘So they’re all coming here?’

  ‘At ten o’clock next Tuesday morning.’

  Madame Doubtfire permitted her vast bosom to heave with a somewhat prudish relief as she made the best of what she perceived as the one and only bright spot in this whole boiling confusion.

  ‘I’m very glad I don’t come in till three o’clock on Tuesdays, dear. I won’t have to be part of any of this.’

  ‘Oh, but you will!’

  ‘But, dear. On Tuesday mornings I have another commitment.’

  ‘Madame Doubtfire, I’m banking on you,’ Miranda insisted. ‘I simply can’t have that lot in my house if there’s no one else here on whom I can depend completely.’

  ‘But, dear. I’m not at all certain –’

  Miranda interrupted the flounderings of her employee with all the firmness of the steady wage payer.

  ‘Surely, Madame Doubtfire, it was agreed between us at the start that you would be on call at other times, in case the children fell sick, or something was delivered, or the schools were on strike. There must be someone here. You can’t let me down.’

  Madame Doubtfire was still thrashing about for an adequate and acceptable excuse for not handing out tea cups at one side of the room, while standing natal bare at the other.

  ‘But, dear. I’m not sure that I hold with nakedness…’

  ‘I’m not at all surprised,’ Miranda said. Scornfully she indicated the painting propped up against the bookshelf. ‘Look at it. It’s grotesque. Grotesque!’

  She swept it up.

  ‘In fact, I can’t stand it any longer,’ she announced. ‘I’m going to put it in the dustbin, where it belongs.’

  She could distinctly be heard adding, as she walked down the hall:

  ‘And so does he!’

  Intrigued, Lydia and Christopher looked to their father for some indication of how he intended to extricate himself from this appalling new predicament. But he was paying no attention. At Miranda’s last words, his eyes had narrowed to deep slits, and drawing an imaginary catapult from one of the pockets in his voluminous t
weed skirt, he edged towards the doorway and took careful aim. Once he was sure he had his former wife fully in his sights down the length of the hall, he pulled the imaginary elastic back to its furthest extent, and let fly his imaginary pebble.

  When he turned round, all three children were watching him, grave-faced.

  It was his eldest who finally broke the strained silence.

  ‘Not here, Dad,’ Lydia chided him. Though her tone was quite even, it bore the unmistakable stamp of her mother’s firmness. ‘Not here, in her own home. Please.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he told her. ‘Sorry, Lydia.’

  Chapter Seven

  of acting, happy pigs and war

  The trip to the theatre was not, in Daniel’s opinion, the greatest success. By the time he remembered to pass by the theatre and get tickets, the only seats still available were what the man in the box office ominously referred to as ‘of restricted view’. But they were cheap; and still smarting from Miranda’s contemptuous suggestion that he would fail to get any tickets at all, Daniel bought them anyway.

  Unfortunately, the four seats were not all together. Two turned out to be behind the pillar supporting the right-hand side of the auditorium, and two behind the pillar supporting the left side. Daniel was peeved that he could not be near to all three children during this rare treat, and even more peeved that this seemed to bother Lydia and Christopher so little. They moved off cheerfully, and after some argument about weak and strong eyes entailing a short series of experiments with a rolled-up theatre programme, each chose a side of the pillar to peer round. Even before the safety curtain rose, Daniel noticed, both were staring raptly ahead.

  He and Natalie did not have it so easy. Their view of the stage was restricted, not just by the vast marble column, but by a brace of fluffy-headed students. Natalie could neither see round nor over them, and as light flooded the stage set she thrashed around on her plush seat, craning for a better view. Her seat creaked horribly. Sliding across to change places, Daniel discovered that his did, too. And in the end, after prolonged sour looks from the more uncharitable of her neighbours, he felt obliged to offer Natalie a quieter perch on his own knee.

  Natalie slid her arm around his neck, half throttling him. The play began. Within a minute her thumb had slid into her mouth, her eyelids were drooping, and she was twisting Daniel’s hair around her fingers. Even before the first threads of the plot were established, Natalie was fast asleep. Daniel felt half inclined to wake her again – the seats were cheap, but not that cheap – but prudence prevailed. She lay, a dead weight in his arms, and he was forced to counterbalance with an excruciating twist of his spine if he was to see anything at all.

  The play proved not at all suitable, Daniel thought, for family viewing. By the end he was glad Natalie had slept through the whole thing. Scene after scene of quarrelling, some of it raised to quite astonishing heights of unpleasantness, unfolded a tale of two couples, one happily and one miserably married, working their way through a convoluted plot of deep-seated grudges, misunderstanding and malice. Even the happily married couple became quite crusty under the strain of it all. But the unhappily married pair, who had been snapping at one another’s knee-caps before the curtain even rose, so to speak, were dabbling in grievous bodily harm by the end of the first act.

  The house lights rose. Daniel peered across the auditorium. Lydia and Christopher were sitting, absolutely riveted, still staring at the curtains. It was some time before either moved a muscle. Clearly this very vivid portrayal of marital bellicosity had claimed their attention entirely. A slightly uneasy feeling crept over Daniel. In a moment of prescience he realized that staying for the rest of the play was going to prove to be a mistake.

  But Natalie was still sleeping heavily in his arms, trapping him in his seat. Daniel thought Lydia and Christopher would come over during the interval, if only to whine about ice-creams. But he was mistaken. They sat without so much as turning in their seats to glance at him, their eyes fixed firmly on the safety curtain, as though fearing that the second act might start without their having noticed.

  The interval was short, the second act long. The crick in Daniel’s spine was excruciating. Barrage after barrage of insult spraying from the stage reminded him of years of marriage, and made him miserable. And each time he glanced across to Lydia and Christopher and saw the silhouettes of their rapt faces, he worried himself sick about what Miranda – waspish enough after a day in Wolverhampton – would make of their account of this play for which their father had upset her sacred and inviolable weekend schedule.

  At the end, Daniel’s left arm and leg had lost so much feeling that he was unable to shift Natalie’s weight, and rise to his feet. He sat, trapped, till Lydia and Christopher rejoined him.

  ‘That was magic,’ breathed Christopher. ‘Sheer magic.’

  Magic was the most lavish of Christopher’s accolades. Daniel was astonished. Turning to Lydia, he asked her:

  ‘What did you think of it, then?’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Lydia was as generous with her praise as her brother. ‘It was the best thing I have ever seen!’

  Christopher turned to stare again at the blank safety curtain.

  ‘I don’t know how the two who hated each other could even bring themselves to hold hands through that curtain call. I thought he was going to rip off her ears when she smiled at him like that, so soon after saying those terrible things!’

  Daniel-the-out-of-work-actor felt the sour pang of envy. Clearly the pair on the stage had taken this part of their audience by storm.

  ‘It’s only acting,’ he muttered.

  ‘It was easy for the other couple, though.’ Christopher barely registered his father’s remark. ‘They really liked one another, you could tell.’

  Daniel felt irritable enough to argue.

  ‘Of course you couldn’t tell! Acting is acting. It’s a job. For all anyone this side of the footlights knows, both couples could be married in real life. The nice pair could hate one another’s guts and carry on at home like the other couple, and the quarrelling pair could be bosom pals.’

  ‘Come off it, Dad!’

  Even Lydia expressed scepticism.

  ‘I’d be surprised.’

  The auditorium was empty now. Ushers strolled between the rows of seats, eyes peeled for abandoned umbrellas and mislaid handbags. Daniel tipped Natalie on to her feet, and held her steady while she woke.

  ‘It’s only acting,’ he repeated. ‘If you’re an actor, you act. It’s what you’re taught to do. It’s what you’re paid for. You don’t have to have the right feelings behind you. You simply act the part. That’s what it’s all about.’

  Neither Lydia nor Christopher responded. Both realized they had touched a raw nerve in their father. Lydia busied herself with taking Natalie’s hand and leading her, still sleepy and unsteady on her feet, along the row of seats into the aisle.

  Still feeling sour, Daniel followed his children out of the theatre into the bright afternoon sunlight.

  ‘That was so good,’ said Christopher again, blinking to see it was still day. ‘Is it time to go home now?’

  Daniel had always deeply resented the implication that only Miranda’s house was ‘home’ to the children. Now he felt sufficiently irritable to push the issue.

  ‘Home,’ he said. ‘Right. Home it is.’

  The children gathered to cross the road and take a bus to Springer Avenue. As though simply moving them further along the pavement to a safer place to cross, Daniel shepherded them neatly towards the stop for his own bus. As one pulled in to the curb, he leaped aboard.

  ‘Come on!’ he encouraged them innocently from the platform. ‘This bus goes home.’

  All buses looked the same to Natalie. She climbed aboard. There was only a moment’s hesitation before, not wanting to hurt his father’s feelings after the treat, Christopher followed her. Lydia smothered her grimace of annoyance, and got on as well.

  The bus ride was not a merry occasion.
Natalie was still grumpy after her nap. The other two were getting anxious. Lydia was trying to remember exactly where Wolverhampton was, so she could work out how long her mother might have been home, waiting. Christopher was imagining the scene that would take place when Daniel finally delivered them home. It would, he decided ruefully, be rather like a third act of the play.

  And it was with this still fresh in his mind that, after Daniel had unlocked the door of his flat, and let Natalie rush between his legs to get to the television and watch the last few minutes of her favourite cartoon, Christopher turned in the hall, and said to his father:

  ‘If it’s just acting, like you said, and if you’re an actor, surely you could just have acted happy and stayed in the family.’

  Lydia paused on her way into the living room, then dropped back to listen, pulling the door closed between the three of them and Natalie.

  ‘Couldn’t you?’ Christopher challenged his father.

  ‘Yes, I probably could,’ Daniel responded coldly.

  He made as though to walk through to the kitchen, but Christopher didn’t budge.

  ‘If you had, there wouldn’t have been all those terrible quarrels. You might not have had to pack up and leave.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Daniel admitted.

  ‘Even back then you didn’t have a regular acting job, did you?’

  ‘No.’ Daniel was getting upset now.

  But it seemed as if Christopher were deliberately ignoring all warning signals, for he persisted:

  ‘So it’s not as if you were busy acting all day…’

  ‘All evening,’ Lydia corrected her brother. ‘Real actors act in the evening, usually.’

  She was just trying to lead the conversation away from the danger spot, but this unfortunate reference to ‘real actors’ had, she suddenly realized with a sinking feeling, rubbed raw the sore of envy engendered earlier in the theatre.