by Daisy Waugh
Another creak. Makes her heart thud. Makes Brute give a menacing growl. She reaches instinctively for her cigarettes.
Suddenly the telephone on her desk bursts shrilly through the silence. She stares at it. Who calls a primary school at this time? It rings four times and then it stops.
A wrong number. Of course.
She looks down at her desk, tries to remember what she was doing before, and it starts ringing a second time. Again, it rings only four or five times, and stops. Slowly, carefully, trying to breathe through the rising panic, she stands up to leave, and as she does so, knocks against a pile of papers at the edge of her desk. They scatter all over her chair and floor, taking the telephone and her car keys with them.
‘Shit!’
She kneels down to pick them up and through the throbbing silence feels an unmistakable burst of cold night air, and then bang! The slam of a door. Silence.
A footstep.
She bites her lip.
Another footstep. It’s coming closer, coming up the stairs…
One step…two step…
She should call the police.
…three step…four.
Fanny’s-heard-a-maniac.
He’s-just-behind-the-door!
The bloody telephone receiver’s all tangled up with the back of her chair. She yanks at it—
Behind her, the office door bursts open. She hears a little thud and something square and purple skidding across the floor towards her. A box of Milk Tray chocolates.
‘TE-DAH!’ cries Robert. ‘And all because…the lady loves!’ He laughs merrily. ‘D’you remember that ad, Fanny? The guy climbs into the lady’s bedroom and—’
‘No,’ she snaps, clambering up. ‘No, I bloody don’t.’ And then all at once the relief, the anger, the fear, the irritation overcome her. Robert’s standing there with his shiny bob and his woolly jersey all rubbing up against his chin. He’s twisting his fingers together uncertainly, shivering and grinning. Fanny bursts into tears.
‘Hey, Fanny!’ His face crumples. ‘Don’t cry! It was only a little joke. I saw the lights were on, I was just—I just happened to be passing. So I thought—Why didn’t you answer the phone?’ He puts an arm round her shoulders. ‘Come on, Fanny. It’s Friday night, what say you we go for a drink together, hmm?’ He holds up his free hand in mock surrender, and beneath the blond facial hair, his pink lips stretch into another smile. ‘And no hanky-panky, I promise!’
Fanny can’t even bring herself to look at him. ‘Robert,’ she says, gazing down at the floor, ‘I never want to have to say this again. The answer is no. It will always be no. OK? I’m sorry. I’m sorry if that’s disappointing for you. So take your arm off my shoulder, please. Thank you. And—And have a good weekend. I really have a lot of work to do. I’ll see you on Monday morning.’
He clicks his tongue. ‘You work too hard, Fanny. You’ve got to learn to have fun.’
‘Thanks, Robert. I know how to have fun.’
Robert takes a step away, puts his hands in his pockets, and gazes down at her. He chuckles, shakes his head admiringly. ‘I’ll bet…You’re one feisty lady, aren’t you, Fanny Flynn?’
‘I’m your boss, Robert,’ she snaps suddenly. ‘Now fuck off. Oh, God—’ He looks hurt. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.’ She tries to smile. ‘And thanks for the chocolates. OK? I’ve just got a lot of work on.’
‘It’s OK,’ he murmurs, then he bends down and kisses her softly on the cheek. ‘I can take the knocks. I can do that.’ And because she sees that he’s leaving, and she can see that he’s pathetic and obviously lonely, she forces herself not to recoil, forces herself to stick with the smile. She waits until he has strolled out of the room before she wipes his wet lips away.
‘Have a good weekend,’ he calls out to her from the bottom of the stairs. ‘You take care, now! And enjoy the chocs!’ He sounds almost happy, she thinks.
17
She can’t work after that. She can’t concentrate. There is a single-screen cinema in the centre of Lamsbury, musty and almost always empty, but still just about open for business. The moment she’s got rid of Robert, Fanny takes herself there, buys a ticket without bothering to ask what is showing, scans the cinema to be sure that he hasn’t followed her, settles down to lose herself in another world and immediately falls asleep.
Afterwards, she’s heading out through the foyer, feeling blurry eyed and incredibly hungry, when she bumps into Jo and her husband Charlie Maxwell McDonald, who is patiently re-explaining the film’s plot to his father, the General. ‘But they were different characters, Dad,’ he is saying (again). ‘There were three men, and they were all—’
The General catches sight of Fanny and immediately shouts out to her. ‘Hello, hello,’ he bellows. ‘Thought that was you, nodding off in the front row! Kept your shirt on this evening, have you, Miss Flynn?’
Fanny smiles patiently, turns towards him. Since that evening the General has said the same thing every time they’ve met. ‘I didn’t see you all in there,’ she says, and grins. ‘Didn’t see much of anything, actually. Was it any good?’
‘Drivel,’ the General answers, peering behind her. ‘As per usual. Made no sense at all. Didn’t miss a thing. Have you got your chap with you this evening, then? I can’t see him. Is he here?’
‘What chap?’ she mutters. ‘A chap? I don’t have a chap. Thank you. No. I’m on my own.’
‘On your own?’ echoes the General indignantly. ‘Attractive young lady like you!’
‘She’s been working so hard,’ interrupts Jo, tactfully, ‘she probably longs to spend an evening on her own for once. I know I do.’
‘Mmm?’ The General looks unconvinced. ‘Well, well, I dare say. Nice to see you, Fanny.’ He hesitates, on the point of marching onwards, but then in spite of what Jo says, he thinks she looks a little sad, a little lonely. ‘I say, Fanny,’ he adds, ‘if you’re not doing anything on Sunday, why don’t you come to lunch?’
‘Thanks—’ She looks ready to accept.
‘Oh, blast. Not this Sunday,’ he corrects himself. Turns to Jo. ‘We’ll still have that paranoid bugger staying, won’t we? D’you suppose he’ll ever leave?’
‘He says he wants to stay on at least another week,’ Charlie says.
Jo and the General let out simultaneous groans.
‘Well, next Sunday then,’ the General says. ‘Make it next Sunday.’
Fanny laughs. ‘That would be lovely. Thank you.’
‘And Grey McShane’ll be cooking,’ the General brightens a little. ‘Meat. He always cooks on Sundays. Which means of course that we’ll have the Ghastly Guestlies in loco. No way round it, I’m afraid. Wherever McShane cooks, the Guestlies tend to follow. But I’m sure you can cope. And God knows, they need diluting.’
‘Right then. Well, I shall see you then.’ Fanny hesitates, tries hard not to ask but can’t resist, ‘So, er – who d’you suppose you’ll have staying with you?’
‘Mmm? Oh, no one much,’ the General says airily. ‘We’ve got a couple of bores from the television just arrived, who seem to think I keep a mental file on every aspect of their fatuous “careers”. But they might have left by then. Fingers crossed. And a cold-fish adviser from Downing Street. Well, ex-adviser now. Ha, ha. Another raving ego maniac. As per usual. However. Mustn’t complain…You’ll have to sign a thing. Won’t she, Jo? Sorry. It’s ghastly, but we’ve come a cropper in the past. Things have turned up in the news.’
‘You don’t mean a “confidentiality agreement”?’ Fanny giggles. ‘General, I can’t think of anything more glamorous!’
‘Excellent. Jolly good.’ He looks at her thoughtfully. ‘Enjoying yourself down here, are you? Not too lonely?’
Fanny frowns. Enjoying herself? It’s the question she and Louis always ask each other; it’s their justification for always moving on. Enjoying her life in Fiddleford? She’s been too involved in it to wonder. Suddenly it seems a ridiculous question. She’s not even cer
tain how to answer it. ‘Funnily enough,’ she says at last, ‘and in spite of many things – yes. I suppose I am.’ And the frown lifts, as if she realises the truth of what she’s saying for the first time. She looks up at the General and laughs. ‘Funnily enough, I love it here,’ she says again.
‘Good, good.’ He nods. ‘Well, maybe we should get Solomon Creasey over. Don’t you think, Charlie? He’ll have some Silent Beauty trailing along, of course. But not to worry. They come and they go. Have you met him, Fanny?’
‘Not yet. I’ve heard a lot about him.’
‘Noisy chap. Tremendous chums with McShane. In fact, I rather suspect they have some sort of a history together…Well. Excellent. We shall see you next Sunday!’ He turns away without waiting for her reply. ‘Charlie? Jo?’ They are arm in arm, and nobody can fail to notice what an outrageously handsome couple they are, how happy they look together, and how incongruous in the foyer of the musty old Lamsbury Classic. ‘Shall we get going?’ he says briskly, and he charges out into the darkness, awkwardly tactful, leaving the lovebirds to amble slowly behind.
18
Among many other small improvements, Fanny has introduced a simple system at the school, involving letters and telephones etc., which makes it virtually impossible for the children to play truant without their parents finding out. Before she arrived some of the older children used to catch the bus into Lamsbury and roam around making a great nuisance of themselves, or, worse still, they used to roam around Fiddleford, stealing crisps and drinks from tables at the Fiddleford Arms, or standing outside the post office and imitating Mrs Hooper’s laugh – which they could do sometimes, without any signs of boredom, for hours on end. Poor Mrs Hooper used to wake up in the night with their noises echoing inside her head.
But the truancy has stopped now, more or less. And Fanny, although still a long way from being forgiven for the shirt-stripping episode, has gained a handful of allies as a result.
The obese Mrs Guppy, of course, is not among them. Mrs Guppy, in spite of two letters and even a telephone call from Fanny (which ended before it ever began –
‘Hello, Mrs Guppy. I’m sorry to disturb you at home. It’s Fanny Flynn here. From the school…’
‘And you can fuck off.’ Clunk.)
– still keeps her son Dane at home.
And for Fanny the temptation to let him stay there is strong. Because she could just leave him to rot; make a nominal report to someone at the LEA who would of course make a nominal report to someone else, and nothing would be done. Dane Guppy is only one pupil. One stupid, troublesome, charmless, aggressive, thoroughly disruptive pupil, with a mother Fanny would be happy never to have to see again.
Fanny is brooding over this one lunch-hour. And feeling guilty, as she always does. She’s on the verge – as she often is – of grabbing her keys and driving up to Mrs Guppy’s house to confront her. And she’s finding – as she often does – that being on the verge and actually doing, are two quite different things.
She gazes unhappily out of her open office window, away from the bungalows and the village hall, on to the view which she has already grown to love: the playing field, the winding lane, the church, the Manor’s cedar tree. It’s grey out there, she notices; it must be raining. Why are all the children in such a neat row? Kneeling in such a neat—
‘Oliver Adams!’ she yells through the open window. He jumps. The entire school jumps. ‘Bring whatever that thing is you have in your hand and come and see me. Right now, please. And everybody else, stand up! Hurry up! You all look completely pathetic!’
They had been kneeling before Ollie, who was sitting cross-legged on a log with a boy-guard on either side of him, and a mobile with Internet connection on his lap. Fanny knows what it is because she’s already caught him with it once before. He’s been making the children grovel in front of him, in exchange for a glimpse of porn.
It is the sight of Ollie, in all his Boden finery, meandering his remorse-free path across the playground, which finally spurs her to action. Because she knows exactly how the scene will play out. Ollie will stand in front of her desk and mumble resentful excuses, and wait until she allows him to leave. She will probably confiscate the stupid machine until the end of term. And then Oliver Adams will go home and return with some other toy. And the children will form another line. And nothing will change.
Meanwhile the illiterate, eleven-year-old Dane Guppy will continue to fester at home while what future he might ever have had slowly decomposes in front of him.
It occurs to her she’s like a police officer, fining a driver for not wearing his safety belt while there’s a rape going on in the passenger seat beside him. She grabs her bag, her keys and her dog and heads for the door, passing Ollie on his way up her office stairs as she rushes down them. She skids to a halt.
‘Hand it over!’ she says.
‘What?’ says Ollie innocently. ‘I haven’t got it.’
Fanny points a finger between his eyes and prods him on the forehead. His head bounces slightly; recentres itself. He scowls at her. ‘In case you didn’t know,’ he says, with lots of sarcasm, ‘Poking and prodding pupils tends to be against the law.’
‘And if I see that object again,’ she says, ignoring him, ‘I’m telling your mum. OK? And I’ll tell everyone in the village you’re a pervert.’
‘You wouldn’t!’
‘Oh, I would.’ She hurries on, taking the last three steps in a single leap, and colliding straight into Robert.
‘Hey-hey-hey!’ he says, grabbing the chance to touch her, holding her back with a vicelike bony hand on each shoulder. ‘Steady! Where are you going in such a hurry?’
‘I might be a bit late back,’ Fanny says distractedly. ‘Can you keep an eye on my class?’
‘Will do,’ he says. ‘And you take it easy, young lady, hmm? OK? You’ll be no use to any of us, lying in a hospital bed!’
19
Lazy days all roll into one around Mrs Guppy’s dirty kitchen table. She sits at it, brooding, like an angry, asthmatic Buddha. She has an ashtray, a lighter and a pack and a half of Embassy Filter on one side of her, a cup of cool tea, thick with sugar, on the other. She has the Guppy sister-in-law sitting opposite her and a copy of the Daily Star, open at the horoscopes. She and the other Mrs Guppy live just outside the village, next door to each other, in large semidetached houses which their husbands built in the late eighties and which are already falling apart. The Mrs Guppys are always together. They wait, while the time passes, mostly in silence, marking their presence with occasional wheezes and monosyllables, interspersed with isolated snippets of news. An example (from a couple of days ago):
INT. GUPPY KITCHEN. DAY.
MRS GUPPY, on the telephone, is wedged beside the
kitchen counter, dwarfing it, her back to MRS GUPPY
OTHER, who sits at the table, smoking.
MRS GUPPY
And you can fuck off.
MRS GUPPY slaps down the receiver.
MRS GUPPY
Miss Flynn, that were. From the school. (Shuffles back to seat.) Told her to fuck off.
MRS GUPPY OTHER (Slurp.) That’s right.
Silence.
Dane Guppy, meanwhile, reclines in his tracksuit in the sitting room next door, with the curtains drawn, because Mrs Guppy believes the neighbours are all spying, and with the plasma-screen television’s volume turned down, because Mrs Guppy hates the sound of recorded laughter. He has a pack of Top Trumps, which he shuffles, and a lighter, which he flicks, and he is bored. Every day for weeks now, it has been the same. Every day is the same.
Fanny has to go home to pick up her car and a newspaper article she cut out weeks ago, which she’d been meaning to send on to Mrs Guppy. It would only take ten minutes to walk there, but she knows enough about Mrs Guppy to be confident she’ll be wanting to make a quick getaway.
As she starts the car and accelerates, back past the school and out of the village, she’s remembering the story about Mrs Guppy
and the landlord’s bleeding wife. She’s wondering which ditch, exactly, the landlord’s wife was found in, and she has to swerve to avoid a motorbike coming very fast in the opposite direction. They’re lucky; they don’t hit each other, and since neither is hurt, and both parties feel vaguely to blame, they hurry shamefacedly onwards, waving apologies at one another without really looking back. It’s only a few seconds later that Fanny realises – the silver bike, the black helmet, the old suede jacket, the lean, jeaned thighs…They all belonged to Louis.
Little fucker! she thinks. Hasn’t bothered to call me for almost a month, and thinks he’s going to get a hero’s welcome. Certainly bloody well not. But she can’t wipe the grin off her face.
It is Dane Guppy who comes to open the front door when Fanny at last summons the courage to bang on its lopsided knocker. Dane is desperate for any kind of distraction. He was up from in front of that silent telly like a shot. And when he first sees who it is, there’s no doubt about it, an expression of pure, unguarded happiness flashes across his face.
‘Oh,’ he says, quickly recovering, pulling the door half-closed again so that only his sickly grey face pokes out, ‘it’s you, is it? What do you want?’
‘What do you think I want, Dane? Go and fetch your mother.’
He laughs uncertainly. ‘She don’t like you very much.’
‘I know that. She’s already made that pretty clear. Why aren’t you at school, Dane?’
He smiles. ‘I’m sick,’ he says.
‘You don’t look sick to me. Go and fetch your mother. I want to speak to her. Is she in?’
‘No.’
‘Dane?’ comes a suspicious voice from behind him. Fanny’s stomach lurches. ‘Who’s that?’ calls Mrs Guppy, panting slightly as she makes her slow and heavy journey through the hall to the front door. ‘Who’re you talking to, Dane? Get back inside!’