by Anne Fine
‘Now hark at Pot call Kettle black!’ cried Mrs Hooper, galvanized back into speech by sheer outrage. ‘When everyone in the street knows that Mr Fairway has carrot root fly!’
But Madame Doubtfire was picking her way delicately back through the mud to the safety of the flagstone pathway.
‘Does he, dear?’ she asked vaguely, over her shoulder. ‘I must say that I hadn’t noticed.’ She shook mud from her skirts before stepping in the porchway. ‘Though, now you come to mention it, I did hear tell he had a touch of rheumatism…’
And leaving Mrs Hooper hopping, she disappeared inside.
Where Daniel had planned to leave his note, propped up against the flower vase on the hall table, there was another waiting. It was stapled to three ten pound notes, so Daniel read it. From the quality of the handwriting, it was apparent Miranda had written it in a great hurry.
He read aloud: ‘Please find time, if you can, to buy Natalie dungarees – hardy, machine-washable, room for growth, and not white. Thank you. Miranda.’
‘Not white’ was underlined four times.
‘Seems very reasonable,’ Daniel told the spider plant. ‘One pair of dungarees. Shouldn’t cause a lot of problems.’
He took it easy until Natalie came home from school: strolled round the house watering the plants that he now considered to be more his than Miranda’s; telephoned a number of acting agencies in the hope of hearing of possible openings; took off his feather boa and turban, and, tilting back his chair, sat with his feet on the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee and chatting to Hetty, trying to coax a bit more life into her.
The quail was looking terribly unhappy, he thought. She sat hunched unresponsively in the corner of her cage, with her head at a curious and uncomfortable-looking angle. Even when he whistled at her, she barely blinked. Tiny grey moulted feathers were scattered all over the cage floor, and her plumage looked drab. This was by no means the fat and glossy Hetty of good health and spirits. She peeped only now and again, softly and mournfully. From time to time, her little body shivered.
Daniel sat trying to work out how old she was. Christopher, he recalled, had brought her home from the pet shop the summer before that last great series of rows with Miranda that led to the final separation. Daniel remembered quite clearly hurling a teapot at the kitchen wall in a fury of frustration, and seeing Hetty get showered with cold, wet tea leaves. So she was nearly four, at least. Getting on, for a quail. And no one knew quite how old she had been when Christopher bought her.
So, thought Daniel, watching the poor creature look so miserable in the corner of her cage, this was in all likelihood extreme old age. And since for that there was no cure but endurance, he simply did what little he could to make her a bit more comfortable. Switching on the oven to the temperature for gently drying out meringues, Daniel moved Hetty’s cage closer, to keep her warm. He scrubbed her water dish till it was scrupulously clean, refilled it, and pushed it nearer. He peeled a few delicacies from Miranda’s vegetable rack, diced them, and laid them beside her. She took no interest in them at all, and he was still watching her anxiously when the front door banged, taking him entirely by surprise.
Daniel dived for his turban and feather boa. Could it be three fifteen already? Surely not! But here was Natalie, pushing open the kitchen door while a flustered Daniel was still tugging the swirling golden turban over the hair above his ears.
‘Heavens! You are back early, dear!’
In his haste, he tugged too hard, snapping the bar of the poodle brooch that held the folds of lurid material in place. The turban fell apart, and layer after layer of gold flannelette tumbled down over his face and shoulders, blinding and nearly strangling him.
‘Oh, s-ugar!’ swore Daniel, desperately clawing through the tangles.
Unable even to wait until he had fully extricated himself, Natalie thrust something in his hand.
‘Read that, Dad!’ she ordered proudly.
In the circumstances, with folds of gold turban ignominiously wreathed around his neck, there seemed to Daniel little point in insisting on being Madame Doubtfire. So he read out, in his own voice:
‘It is the intention of this circular to acquaint all parents of Midkelvin Region schoolchildren with the arrangements for immediate strike action decided upon at yesterday’s meeting of the combined unions.
– oh, not again!’
‘Not that side,’ Natalie complained. ‘That’s just old scrap. Look on the other side!’
Daniel turned the sheet of paper over, and tried again. He started with the title, in huge, thick, laborious, pencilled letters.
‘Egogs.’
‘Hedgehogs,’ Natalie corrected him, hurt.
‘Sorry. Hedgehogs.’ He read on.
‘I followed a reallly smelly one up our path. It sneezed.’
He lowered the sheet of paper and stared at Natalie. ‘Sneezed? Really? A hedgehog?’
Natalie nodded.
‘It kept on sneezing,’ she assured him gravely. ‘Right up the path.’
Amused, Daniel swept his small daughter up into his arms. ‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘Quite the naturalist, aren’t we?’
‘Go on!’ insisted Natalie, struggling in his arms. She was getting impatient.
Daniel put her down, and read further.
‘Miss coates thinks there are no egogs in the Mrs Sippy River.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘How do you know?’
‘I asked her.’
‘But why ask about the Mississippi river, in particular?’
Natalie sighed.
‘It’s the only river I know, except for The Looking Glass River in my book. And we’re always singing songs about it at school.’
Shaking his head in wonder, Daniel read on.
‘Egogs have fleas. We do not have them in our house. But we do have aqu’
Here, the report on hedgehogs came to an abrupt end.
‘The bell rang,’ Natalie explained. ‘While I still had my hand up.’
‘Hand up?’
‘For quail.’
‘To spell it? Or to check if there are any in the Mississippi river?’
Natalie ignored this, and Daniel turned the page back over to the circular on immediate strike action. He felt a little more sympathetic, reading it through this second time.
‘Dungarees,’ he informed Natalie over the top. ‘We’re off to buy you dungarees.’
‘My socks are wet.’
‘Hop up and change them, Natalie.’
She hopped upstairs. He heard the floorboards shake all the way up, watched the ceiling quiver as she hopped across the landing, then heard, overhead, one last sickening thud that made the light fittings rattle. There was silence. He understood her to be sitting quietly in front of her chest of drawers, looking for a clean, dry pair of socks.
For no accountable reason, Daniel found himself wondering if Miranda kept any aspirin in her bathroom cabinet.
The front door banged again. It was Christopher and Lydia this time.
‘What’s for tea?’
‘I’m starving.’
Lydia threw her schoolbag on to the floor, where Daniel promptly tripped over it.
‘Pick that up, Lydia.’
Lydia made a face.
‘Sor-ree!’ she sang. ‘What happened to your turban? It looks all funny.’
Ignoring her, Daniel scoured the shelf of cookery books for something different. He was thoroughly sick of cooking, frankly. What had once been a real pleasure – preparing nice meals to delight his children on their visits – had become nothing but a daily grind and a bore. He’d reached the stage of stirring malignant thoughts into his efforts; and he reckoned if he had to make stuffed bread one more time, for anyone, he’d put arsenic in it instead of garlic.
He prised down from the overloaded shelf a book he hadn’t looked at in years, not since the earliest days of his marriage. It was called the Alphonse Lamarquier Cook Book. Perhaps there was somet
hing quick and simple in this one. It had to be quick because he and Natalie still had to go out and buy dungarees; and it had to be simple because he was close to being driven out of his mind with chop, chop, chop and scrape, scrape, scrape, with grate, grate, grate and sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.
The Alphonse Lamarquier Cook Book fell open at chapter four – Soups. To slaughter a turtle, Daniel read, lay it on its back on a table with its head hanging over the side. His eyes travelled down the page, passing more quickly over the paragraph on the correct dismemberment of the turtle, and the sections on the preparation of the carapace, the plastron and the flippers.
He shut the book.
‘Cheese on toast?’ he suggested.
‘Oh, not again!’
‘We’re always having cheese on toast.’
‘Did you get any of the cheese I like? If you didn’t, I don’t think I want any cheese on toast, thank you.’
Daniel glared at them both.
‘I wonder if Alphonse Lamarquier had to put up with this.’
‘Who?’
‘Put up with what?’
‘Nothing. No one.’ Once again, Daniel found himself thinking about aspirins. ‘Why don’t you two just get started quietly on your homework?’
‘I can’t do mine quietly,’ triumphed Lydia. ‘It’s oboe practice!’
As Christopher unloaded the detritus of his schoolbag on to the table, looking for his geography book, Lydia sent everything cascading out of a cupboard on to the floor, searching for her oboe.
Daniel reached up to the very top shelf in the small pantry and laid his fingers on two cans of tomato soup. He felt defeated and a little guilty, remembering with some embarrassment the day he first came to work for Miranda and noticed the cans hidden away up there at the back in the corner, and disapproved of them to himself, convinced in his own mind that he himself would never be reduced to feeding his children such uninspired fare.
Christopher picked up a pen. It never occurred to him to give the homework any thought of his own. His father was standing there, and so he asked him:
‘How do we waste most energy in Britain?’
‘Heat loss,’ Daniel responded automatically. ‘British homes have deplorable insulation.’
Christopher’s pen raced. He knew when he was on to a good thing.
‘Which countries do have properly insulated homes?’
‘Norway,’ Daniel suggested. ‘Norwegian houses are thoroughly well-insulated. Light a match, and the whole house is boiling.’
‘Fart, and you’ve got a heatwave.’
‘Christopher!’
‘Sorry.’
Christopher lay low. Lydia started up.
‘I can’t work out the key signature,’ she complained.
‘Just practise it anyway,’ ordered Daniel.
Lydia was outraged.
‘How can I practise it if I don’t know what key it’s in? I don’t know which notes to play, do I? So I can’t play it.’
‘There are the notes.’ Daniel pointed irascibly to the music. ‘Just play those, can’t you?’
‘Sure!’ Lydia snapped. ‘Fine! Just so long as you tell me, as I go along, which ones are sharps and which are flats!’
Daniel retreated hastily to the stove.
‘It’s no use asking me,’ he defended himself, stirring madly. ‘All music looks like daffodils growing along a motorway verge to me. Thickly or thinly planted, it’s all daffodils to the average grade one recorder player.’
Lydia blew a ferocious blast through her oboe. Daniel jumped out of his skin. The spoon flew out of the soup pan, and spattered orange stains all down the front of Madame Doubtfire’s frock.
‘Lydia! Go off and practise somewhere else!’
Still blowing a fiendish noise through her oboe, Lydia strolled out.
Daniel was just cherishing the silence when Christopher broke it. He tipped another load of clutter on to the table, this time in search of his maths books.
‘Why do we have to learn about fractions, anyway?’ he groused.
‘Fractions are useful,’ Daniel told his son. ‘Nobody ever gets all they want out of life.’
And he was still standing, stirring the soup, reflecting on a few less than perfect wholes in his own existence, when from beside the oven came a pathetic little cheep.
Christopher looked up, startled, from his homework.
‘Was that Hetty?’
He looked round, and saw the stool on which the cage usually rested.
‘Where is she? Where have you put the cage?’
‘Down here.’
Daniel touched Hetty’s cage with his foot.
‘Why did you move it?’
‘See for yourself.’
Christopher came over. He peered through the cage bars at his pet.
‘She looks a bit funny.’
Gently, Daniel attempted to raise the subject of Hetty’s condition.
‘I don’t think she’s at all well…’
‘Poor Hetty. Maybe she needs company. Maybe she ought to have a baby.’
‘I think she’s a little too old to be having any babies…’
‘Anyhow, we’d need another quail’s help.’
‘I’m afraid she’s well past all that as well now, Christopher.’
Daniel was trying; but his son was determined to block out the message hidden beneath his father’s words.
‘If Hetty will pardon the expression,’ – Christopher grinned and tapped the cage bars – ‘the whole idea’s enough to make her quail!’
‘Christopher –’
But his son still refused to hear what he was saying.
‘You’d like some babies, wouldn’t you, Hetty?’ Christopher crooned.
Daniel’s patience gave way in the face of this stubborn insistence that here was a broody, not a dying, quail.
‘Pity it’s not the right time of year,’ he snapped sarcastically. ‘I could have taken some cuttings for you!’
And switching off the gas beneath the soup, he stormed upstairs to root out Natalie.
She was still sitting beside her chest of drawers, looking forlorn. A sea of socks surrounded her.
‘For God’s sake, Natalie! How long does it take you to put on one dry pair of socks?’
Natalie scowled.
‘I haven’t got a pair.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘You look,’ she challenged him. ‘I can’t find two the same anywhere.’
Furious, Daniel rooted through the mess on the floor. To his annoyance, Natalie was right. Socks there were in profusion; but not one pair.
‘Well, where are all the others?’ he demanded.
‘Over at your house,’ Natalie said.
‘Oh, God!’
Gritting his teeth, he dived down and picked out two socks – one knee length blue, and one short and green.
‘Here! Put on these! We have to go, Natalie. It’s half past four already.’
‘We could buy them tomorrow.’
Daniel considered. But tomorrow, he knew today, would be an awful day from start to finish.
‘We’re going now. We have two whole hours.’
Thinking about it afterwards, Daniel could not for the life of him work out where those two whole hours went. Admittedly, they went to several shops. The first had no dungarees at all, and the second only white ones. The third had dungarees in red and blue and apple green, but they were labelled Caution: wash separately, so Daniel, remembering Miranda’s firm specifications, was forced to prise a wistful and somewhat resentful Natalie away. The fourth shop had machine-washable dungarees in grey, but not in Natalie’s size. The fifth had four pairs of dungarees in Natalie’s size, but none of them fitted. Nor did those labelled with the size above, nor the size above that.
‘They pinch,’ Natalie grumbled, pulling irritably at the crotch. ‘They’re too tight here. They hurt.’
‘Have you tried Notweeds?’ asked the saleslady, coldly.
So
they tried Notweeds. As they approached its wide glass frontage, two shop-girls standing on the other side broke off their avid gossiping to stare in wonder at the sight of this extraordinary Amazon, with dappled make-up and tufts of hair shooting from her most peculiar headgear, her bosom richly splashed with tomato soup stains, her skirt mud-rimmed, leading by the hand the most fetching child imaginable, wearing odd socks.
As the glass doors swung open, the shop-girls sprang to life.
‘We’re closing now,’ they chanted in unison.
The braver of the two laid her hand on the sleeve of Madame Doubtfire’s cardigan, to shoo her out.
Daniel was irritated. Drawing himself up to full height, he towered over the girl, and thundered:
‘Young lady, the notice affixed to that door says plainly that you close at half past five.’
‘It’s practically that now,’ the girl argued.
‘There are still seven minutes left.’
‘That isn’t really long enough to try anything for size.’
‘Then we shall look.’
‘There isn’t much point,’ persisted the girl. The expression on her face said clearly that nothing for sale in this shop would ever fit someone Madame Doubt-fire’s size.
‘Come, Natalie,’ said Daniel. ‘You’d like to look at all these lovely clothes, wouldn’t you?’
‘No,’ Natalie said. ‘I want to go home.’
The shop-girl made the mistake of smirking.
‘Tough!’ Daniel told Natalie. ‘For we are looking anyway, for seven whole minutes.’
‘Six, now,’ the shop-girl corrected insolently.
Natalie practically had to be dragged between the racks of clothes. She trailed her feet along the floor so stubbornly, she left tracks even on the hardy shop carpet. She was horribly fractious, complaining loudly and bitterly: her feet were hurting; her legs ached; she wanted to go home; she was missing Blue Peter; she didn’t even like dungarees.
‘We don’t stock them anyway,’ crowed the shop-girl.
She was quite right. The entire children’s section comprised no more than two short racks of clothes, and one of these was almost bare. Neither contained dungarees of any description, and even sorting through as slowly as possible, Daniel only managed to exhaust a further minute and a half.
‘Four minutes.’