Madame Doubtfire

by Anne Fine

  The shop-girl’s voice was thick with spite.

  ‘Can’t we go ho-ome?’

  Natalie’s pitiful wail would have melted the heart of Nero. But Daniel was made of sterner stuff.

  ‘We’ll go when I say so, Natalie. Not before.’

  They moved between the racks, with Daniel trying to pretend he wasn’t having to tug at Natalie’s arm quite as sharply as he was, nor threaten her so continuously under his breath.

  ‘Two minutes!’

  Daniel lifted a dress from the rack beside him, and shuddered. Really, some of these clothes were an embarrassment! Clearly, in this shop the order of the day was bare backs, bare midriffs and – shrinking back in horror – bare fronts. How could today’s girls dress in such scandalous garments? How come they didn’t catch their deaths of cold? And how could anyone be thin enough to get in that one?

  ‘I can’t walk any more. I’m tired.’

  ‘One minute!’

  The girls stood side by side next to the doors, hate in their eyes, keys jangling. Daniel inspected the nighties.

  Outside, the clock in the church tower embarked upon its half hour chime. Seizing Natalie more tightly by the hand, Daniel swept past the glowering shop-girls.

  ‘Thank you, my dears,’ he said, inclining his head in a most gracious fashion. ‘You’ve been so helpful.’

  Only as the door swung closed behind did he hear, wafted out on the draught:

  ‘What a cruel woman!’

  Outside, and on the spot, Natalie recovered totally.

  ‘Can we go on to Barton’s now?’ she begged. ‘Barton’s don’t close till six. They have an ice-cream stall outside.’

  ‘No, dear,’ said Daniel. ‘Madame Doubtfire’s exhausted. We’ll go home now.’

  ‘But what about my dungarees? Shall we come back and try again tomorrow?’

  ‘No!’ Daniel shuddered. ‘I don’t think so, dear. Shopping for clothes after school is altogether impossible. It’s much more sensible to leave the whole business till there’s more time at the weekend.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Natalie, slipping her hand in his as they set off for home along the street. ‘That’s just what Mum always says.’

  Chapter Nine

  The day of the storm is not a day for thatching

  The next day was, as he had feared, an awful day from start to finish. When Daniel turned up for work at Springer Avenue in his clean frock and a nice fresh turban, he was appalled to find his three children waiting excitedly for him.

  ‘Why aren’t you all in school?’ he demanded.

  ‘Strike,’ Lydia said. ‘There was a note about it yesterday.’

  ‘Nobody showed me any note about a strike.’

  ‘Natalie showed you hers. We saw it lying on the kitchen table. That’s why we didn’t bother to give you ours.’

  Daniel was adamant.

  ‘I saw no note.’

  ‘You must have,’ Lydia insisted. ‘We saw it. There was some drivel about hedgehogs written all over the back.’

  Light dawning, Daniel spun round and accused his younger daughter.

  ‘You told me that was just old scrap.’

  Natalie was tearful. Lydia’s careless remark about drivel had hurt her feelings.

  ‘I got mixed up.’

  Daniel sighed.

  ‘Never mind. It doesn’t make any difference. Here you are, anyway.’ Then a thought struck him. The blood drained from his cheeks, leaving Madame Doubtfire’s Apricot Crême foundation looking like cheap gold leaf on the face of a corpse. ‘Yes, it does make a difference! You can’t stay here! None of you! Not today!’

  ‘Why not?’

  The blood helter-skeltered back. Now Daniel’s face was positively puce.

  ‘Because the art class is on its way over here later this morning. And I’m supposed to be standing on that rug over there, stark naked!’

  ‘We don’t mind,’ all the children assured him kindly.

  ‘I mind. I mind a lot.’

  ‘We’ve often seen you with no clothes,’ Lydia comforted her father. ‘We saw you the time that London theatre phoned while you were in the bath, and when you laid insulation in the loft and Mum made you put every stitch you were wearing into a plastic bag before you climbed down.’

  ‘And when your towel fell off at Llandudno,’ Natalie said. ‘Everyone on the beach saw you that time.’

  ‘This is quite different,’ Daniel told them. ‘I am no prude. The odd fleeting glimpse of my bare bottom? Fine by me! The flannel placed for modesty in the bath tub floating away as the attention wanders? No embarrassment! But standing stone still for three hours on the hearth rug in my birthday suit, with my own children watching? No, thank you! No, no, no!’

  The children all looked horribly disappointed. None of them spoke. After a moment’s strained silence, Daniel asked them:

  ‘Isn’t there somewhere you can go and play?’

  ‘Play?’

  ‘Play?’

  Lydia and Christopher’s voices made their contempt for this idea perfectly plain.

  ‘Read, then. Paint? Cook?’ Daniel was getting desperate. ‘If I gave you some money, you could go shopping.’

  ‘How much money?’

  Daniel fished in the pockets of Madame Doubt-fire’s frock. All of the notes Miranda had left for Natalie’s dungarees the day before had, he now realized, gone to the cleaners in the soup-stained skirt.

  Daniel despaired.

  ‘Oh, I give up!’

  With all the raw cunning of youth, each child immediately affected to interpret this as permission to stay at home and watch the show. Rather than risk any change of mind on their father’s part, they fled upstairs, pretending they didn’t hear when he called them back, determined they would be all he could wish – good as gold, silent as mice – until the glorious, promised moment.

  Daniel rushed into the kitchen. He had scarcely had time to plug in the kettle and lay out coffee cups and have a quick peep into Hetty’s cage – she was looking, if possible, even more bedraggled and dispirited than the day before – when the doorbell rang. It was Mrs Hooper.

  Wiping his hands on his pinny, Daniel attempted to block the doorway.

  ‘You’re rather early for the art class, I’m afraid, dear. Nobody else has arrived yet, and –’

  Using her easel as a battering ram, Mrs Hooper pushed past. Behind her, Daniel could see two other members of the art class already struggling off the bus with their portfolios and folding easels.

  Sighing, he left the front door ajar, and followed Mrs Hooper through to the kitchen.

  Caught in the act of helping herself to coffee, Mrs Hooper smiled ingratiatingly.

  ‘I’ll just pour ours, shall I, Madame Doubtfire?’

  ‘Make it four, dear,’ said Daniel. ‘The others are coming.’

  First four cups, then six, then seven, then eleven. Daniel suffered the endless round of polite introductions as one member of the art class after another arrived, and stood fretting in Miranda’s kitchen.

  ‘Where can Mr Hilliard be?’

  ‘It’s not like him to be late.’

  ‘I gave him the address.’

  ‘You’d think he might phone…’

  ‘I’m sure he’s on his way right now.’

  Cue for my entrance, thought Daniel. Nodding and smiling at them all as pleasantly as possible, he sidled towards the door armed with the sugar bowl, offering lumps, and planning to sneak upstairs and change quickly, then materialize at the front door as himself. But suddenly, in the doorway, the crucial flaw in this simple plan presented itself in all its hideous clarity. He had no clothes! He had forgotten to bring his trousers with him! He had no jacket, no shirt, no socks! He was right up the creek!

  ‘What on earth can have happened?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘It’s too bad, really. He should have phoned.’

  ‘It’s really quite late. We should have started twenty minutes ago.’

  With
absolutely no alternative in view, Daniel took the plunge.

  ‘Finished your coffee, everyone?’ he cooed, in Madame Doubtfire’s most motherly way. ‘Shall I take your cups, dears? You all go in the front room and set up your nice easels and lay out your pencils, and I’ll call Mr Hilliard for you.’

  ‘Call Mr Hilliard? Is he here?’

  ‘Has he been hiding all this time?’

  ‘Not hiding, dears. He just arrived a little early, and slipped up the garden for a smoke.’

  Around him, Daniel heard rebellious whispers.

  ‘Here? All this time!’

  ‘The woman might have had the sense to mention it before!’

  ‘Didn’t she hear us worrying? Is she deaf?’

  ‘I didn’t know that Mr Hilliard smoked.’

  Forgetting himself for a moment, Daniel responded to the last remark.

  ‘I do enjoy the occasional cheroot.’

  Everyone turned to stare. Madame Doubtfire wasn’t their picture of an occasional cheroot smoker; but, then again, they wouldn’t have thought, either, that she was stone deaf.

  Panicking, Daniel ushered them hastily out of the kitchen.

  ‘Off you go, dears. You settle yourselves down nicely in the front room, and in less time than it takes for you to unpack all your lovely cadmium yellows and cobalt blues, Mr Hilliard will be standing in front of you, I promise.’

  Still grumbling a little ungraciously amongst themselves about the foolish and unnecessary delay, the members of the art class began to shuffle through the hall, carrying their folders and equipment.

  Daniel fled up the stairs. Christopher was waiting on the landing.

  ‘Can we come down now?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  Daniel pushed his son before him into Miranda’s bedroom.

  ‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Root through your mother’s wardrobe while I get undressed, and find something I can wrap around me.’

  ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Daniel tore off his frock. ‘Something to distract them. Something colourful – a challenge to paint.’

  ‘How about this?’

  Christopher held up a rainbow-coloured sweater stamped with the anti-nuclear symbol.

  ‘God, no! I couldn’t stand the arguing. Find something else.’

  As Daniel wiped off Madame Doubtfire’s Apricot Crême foundation, Christopher held up a pair of frilly French knickers spangled with sweet little heart shapes.

  ‘How about these?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You’ll have to wear this wrap, then. It’s all I can find.’

  Daniel stepped away from Madame Doubtfire’s clothing, which lay in a heap on Miranda’s carpet, reeking gently of lavender. Christopher handed him a richly patterned paisley shawl with scarlet tassels.

  ‘Oh, all right!’

  Daniel wrapped the shawl round his torso, and knotted it.

  ‘Careful,’ warned Christopher. ‘That’s one of Mum’s favourite things. You’ll be in trouble if you spoil it.’

  ‘The woman’s out for my blood already.’

  ‘She certainly is,’ grinned Christopher. ‘You should have heard what she was saying last night about you modelling for the art class in this house. “Thank heaven you three will all be safely away in school,” she kept saying. We didn’t dare let on there was a strike. We all left for school as usual this morning, and hid in the garden until she’d gone.’

  Daniel was horrified.

  ‘Suppose she comes back! She could easily. She’ll have received my resignation this morning. She might rush back home to try to persuade me to stay after all.’

  ‘If she comes back, you’ll be a dead man.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ cried Daniel.

  And, tassels flying, he ran downstairs.

  Downstairs was little better, for his entrance provoked a storm of argument. One body of aesthetic opinion was that he should stand in natural daylight from the window with his colourful paisley loincloth hanging free. Another school of thought held he should sit in lamplight, with the paisley showing to advantage in soft folds. (‘See how the red speaks to the mauve!’ cried Dr Hamid quite excitedly.) Mrs Hooper’s suggestion that he remove the paisley shawl entirely was courteously ignored by everyone present.

  Daniel stepped on the hearthrug, and perched rather delicately on a stool. The wood was cold on his bare bottom. For a minute or two he did try to accommodate their various requests and suggestions.

  ‘Could you turn your face just the tiniest smidgen to the left? Thank you. Quite perfect!’

  ‘Is it possible for you to extend your foot – so?’

  ‘Are we agreed that the left arm should hang in that fashion?’

  But gradually he stopped responding to their remarks altogether, making it plain he considered himself settled. Like it or lump it, this was today’s pose.

  And most of them liked it. Cramped though they were in these far from ideal surroundings, they rooted contentedly in their little boxes for crayons and charcoal, for pencils and pastels. After the first few waves of soft apologies – ‘So sorry.’ ‘Can you still see now I’ve shifted a little?’ ‘Whoops!’ ‘Did I knock that? I do apologise!’ – companionable silence reigned, broken only by the occasional restrained grunt of happy accomplishment or, more often, frustration, and Miss Purkett’s short bursts of classical humming.

  Daniel relaxed. The stool warmed up. Perhaps it wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Indeed, he could almost begin to envisage picking his way through the morning without a disaster. If only the children had the sense and restraint to stay quietly upstairs, out of the way… If only no one drifted off prematurely in search of that nice Madame Doubtfire and a spot more hot coffee… If only Miranda had a series of recalcitrant problems to keep her safely installed at the Emporium…

  A whole hour passed. Scratch, scrape, rub, hum. It was all rather soothing, really. Such were the heights of Daniel’s restored optimism that he was actually enjoying himself, sitting quite happily and complacently, and relishing the fact, as it struck him, that he was earning double wages. He even began to wonder if he might not dare suggest a short break – rush upstairs, thrust himself back in his frock and his turban, plaster a little Apricot Crême foundation over his cheeks, and sail down the stairs to preside over coffee whilst ‘Mr Hilliard’ perhaps tactfully disappeared along the road in search of more cheroots and another quiet smoke?

  But there’s no armour against fate. While he was comfortably sitting there, consciously having to restrain himself from swinging his legs, and idly trying to invent some feasible explanation for how a grown man in a loincloth could disappear from view in seconds flat on a suburban street on his way to the tobacconist round the corner, Daniel’s line of vision drifted momentarily towards the garden. And there he saw for the first time, dotted like little planted heads in pots between the geraniums on the window sill, his own three children staring in at him, and, right behind them, rushing up the path like one of the Furies, his former wife.

  ‘Dear gods!’ Daniel cried inwardly. ‘Save, save me now!’

  He couldn’t bear to look. There was no need. Even as he sat outwardly so composed on his stool, looking the other way, he could see easily in his mind’s eye her glare of withering disapproval through the glass, feel the swatting hands, imagine without difficulty the furious, whispered admonition: ‘Get down! Away from that window this minute, all three of you! Why aren’t you in school? What? A strike? Nobody said a word to me! And where is Madame Doubtfire? Why has she left you without supervision, today of all days?’

  His eyes cautiously swivelled right, just for a moment. The garden was empty. He thought he heard the back door bang, and, seconds afterwards, a series of scuffles up the staircase. Miranda must be herding them upstairs, poor little mites, for one of her thorough tongue-lashings, in private.

  He couldn’t bear it. He leaped off his stool.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he cried. ‘Back in a momen
t!’

  And leaving them staring, he ran out of the room.

  They met on the stairs. He stopped and looked up. She was coming down. Her expression was puzzled, and in her hand was his flowery turban, looking for all the world as innocent as some bright tea cosy, as inoffensive as any little household object carried downstairs.

  ‘Where’s Madame Doubtfire?’

  ‘Miranda –’

  The look of bewilderment intensified. She stared at him with narrowed eyes. She sniffed the air. Was it the careless streak of Apricot Crême below his hairline that gave him away? Or his faint, trailing smell of lavender?

  Whichever it was, the game was up. Miranda knew.

  ‘You’re Madame Doubtfire!’

  ‘Miranda. Listen –’

  ‘You’re Madame Doubtfire! All the time!’

  ‘Miranda. Please! I can explain.’

  The turban caught him hard, full in the face. And, just like all the others, the row began.

  ‘How dare you?’ Miranda shook with rage. ‘How dare you deceive me like this, and arrange for my own children to deceive me? How dare you encourage them to collude with you in lying to me and humiliating me?’

  Faced with this barrage of self-righteousness, Daniel’s apprehension promptly turned into anger.

  ‘You get straight off your high horse, Miranda, before it throws you! Before you start criticizing me, try asking yourself who reduced all of us to deceiving you this way. Ask yourself how a father can end up forced to disguise himself to get to see his own bloody children! Ask yourself why those same children agreed to fall in with the plan in the first place! If you don’t care for what we’ve done, you try remembering it’s only your selfishness and thoughtlessness and lack of consideration for everyone else’s wishes and feelings that started this whole thing off in the first place!’

  ‘You saw them regularly. I never stopped you!’

  ‘You never helped me, either. Ever since the divorce, you’ve treated me like some inconvenient leftover! If I saw them, it was in spite of you!’

  ‘What do you mean, “in spite of” me? Even if I was exhausted after work, even if I was dropping, I drove them over to you every week.’

  ‘Hours late.’

  ‘So sometimes I’m late! Well, I do have a job, you know. Unlike you. For fourteen years I’ve been the only steady breadwinner in this family. I work bloody hard. You don’t know what that means. Perhaps you should. You don’t like me turning up at that squalid, messy flat of yours a few minutes later than expected, but I notice you don’t actually make the effort to get a job so you can run a car and pick them up yourself! If the alternative’s work, boring hard work – work like mine that means half the time coming home too tired to speak to them anyway – maybe you’re not as keen as you make out to see all you can of your sweet little darlings!’