by Daisy Waugh
‘It’s Miss Flynn,’ he says, staying put, noticing the effect his mother’s voice has on Fanny’s face, and sending her a gloating smile. ‘Come to take me back to school, Mum.’
‘What’s that?’ Mrs Guppy wheezes up behind him, and with a swing of one gigantic arm, cuffs him off balance and out of the way. ‘You,’ she says to Dane, ‘do as you’re told and get inside!’
He retreats, but as he does so he glances at Fanny one last time. The gloating grin has vanished and instead, behind the dull grey eyes, there is the smallest hint of an appeal; even a flicker of gratitude. Fanny sees it. She sees it, and it spurs her on.
‘Hello, Mrs Guppy.’ She bends to rest one hand on Brute’s head, as if to reassure herself she’s not alone. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Fanny says. ‘I hope it’s not an inconvenient time…’
Mrs Guppy says nothing.
‘May I come in?’
Mrs Guppy doesn’t move. She keeps the door close to her but her size is such that there are still large gaps through which Fanny can glimpse parts of the hall. Except for a dirty beige carpet, it seems still to be unfinished. The windows are bare, the plaster walls unpainted, adorned only by cracks and the odd tuft of electrical wiring. From her place beneath the dilapidated porch Fanny smells frying, body odour and stale smoke. She’s not desperate for her suggestion to be accepted.
Anyway, it’s ignored. ‘What do you want?’ Mrs Guppy demands.
‘I want – That is—Look, Mrs Guppy, I know we haven’t exactly got off to a good start, and I’m sorry, because I know I have a terrible temper…’
(But it’s too late for forgiveness; one lost child, four confiscated children, twenty-two stones of fat, one slimy, cheating, weak-willed husband – one long, cruel, lazy, hated life. Too Late.) Fanny’s apology says nothing to her. She doesn’t even hear it. ‘What do you want?’ she asks again.
Fanny sighs. ‘I want Dane back at school, Mrs Guppy. I think he should be at school.’
Mrs Guppy smiles. ‘Anything else?’
‘Unless there’s a reason he shouldn’t be in school which I am unaware of?’
‘Dane’s not at school because I’m not sending him.’
‘So he’s not ill, then?’
‘Dane’s not at school because I’m not sending him,’ she says again, and begins to shunt herself back into the house.
But Fanny’s not finished yet. The adrenalin is pumping, and she moves instinctively. ‘No, wait!’ she says. She puts a foot in the closing door. ‘It’s actually illegal for you to keep your son away from school, you do know that, don’t you?’
‘Is that right?’ Mrs Guppy mocks.
‘And did you know that he’s nearly twelve, and he still can’t read and write? Did you know that, Mrs Guppy?’
‘I’d be moving that foot if I was you.’
‘And did you know that if you refuse to allow him to be educated, simply because you have a problem with the way I choose to dress, Mrs Guppy—’ Fanny’s voice begins to rise.
‘I told you to move your foot.’
‘I’m sorry. No. The dressing thing – that was silly.’ Fanny taps impatiently at her own forehead. ‘That’s not what I meant. Please, don’t keep talking about my foot. Please, just let me finish. Let me come in. I’m just saying that you’re punishing him for something I did. And that’s just so unfair.’
Mrs Guppy gazes coldly down, pulls back the door with her mighty arm and slams it against Fanny’s foot. A gust of stale air. Fanny smells frying, smells body odour and stale cigarettes, and she winces in pain. But for some reason she does not move the foot. She doesn’t even consider it.
‘And if there’s nothing wrong with his health,’ she continues, ‘if he’s not ill – which, Mrs Guppy, I know he isn’t – you do realise, don’t you, that you can be sent to jail, you can be locked up—’
WHAM! The door hits against her foot once again. Another gust of stale air. And pain.
‘Move it, Miss Flynn.’
‘Mrs Guppy, I haven’t finished!’
WHAM! Stale air. Pain. And coughing from inside the house, and something else; a bitter, distinctive smell. They both recognise it at once. Fanny stops, sniffs. Mrs Guppy, who’s been watching her carefully – alert to possible reprisal – glances nervously back into the hall. Through the cracks of the badly fitted sitting-room door seeps a tail of black smoke.
‘DANE?’ thunders Mrs Guppy. ‘Get out here! You stupid sod! DANE?’ She stands there, not moving. ‘DANE! What the bloody hell have you done now? Get out here this minute, or I’ll—’
They hear choking from behind the door. He’s rattling at the handle.
‘Mrs Guppy!’ Fanny can’t get past her. ‘For God’s sake, get him out of there!’
‘DANE. Get Out Here Now!’ Quickly, again instinctively, Fanny somehow squeezes past her, reaching the sitting-room door just as it bursts open and Dane Guppy stumbles through. Mrs Guppy takes the four steps that had ever been required to rescue him, and whacks him around the head. ‘You stupid bugger! You’ve done it again, haven’t you?’ she says. ‘One of these days I’m going to lock you in there and leave you to burn. Go an’ call Emergencies.’
Fanny peers into the sitting room. Beside the door the contents of a metal wastepaper basket are on fire. ‘It’s nothing,’ she calls out. ‘Half a bucket of water’ll do it.’
‘You still here?’ asks Mrs Guppy. It sounds ominous.
‘No. I’m just going,’ says Fanny quickly, backing away. She fumbles in her back pocket, produces a folded piece of newspaper. ‘But you should read this. I brought it for you. It’s an article about a mother who was sent to jail for refusing to make her children go to school.’ Mrs Guppy does not move to take it. ‘I think you should read it,’ Fanny says again. ‘That is – if you can.’
‘’Course I bloody can.’
‘Ah,’ Fanny smiles, ‘lucky you.’
Mrs Guppy takes a step towards her, small eyes gleaming dangerously.
‘OK!…OK…I’m leaving!’ Still holding out the paper, Fanny edges round her towards the front door. ‘I’ll leave it here for you, then.’ Awkwardly, because there is nowhere else to put it, Fanny lets the paper drop, and they watch it flutter slowly to the ground. It settles on the dirty beige carpet, where Fanny assumes it will stay for many months to come. ‘The woman,’ she adds as an afterthought, ‘who kept her children at home, she was fined as well, you know. Several thousand pounds.’
And now it is definitely time to move on. With a final nervous smile, Fanny carefully withdraws. She manages to keep her voice steady as she calls for Brute, and her legs straight as she turns out of the short drive. She keeps walking until she hears the front door bang, and she knows she is out of sight, and then her knees buckle. She has to crawl the last few yards to her car.
She waits there, recovering, she doesn’t know for how long, but until well after the fire engine from Lamsbury has scuttled past, discovered it was unneeded, and lumbered away again.
20
Less than half a mile down the road, in the school forecourt, Louis is parking up his bike. He stretches – it’s been a long journey – and wonders how best to proceed. Suddenly he’s not so sure. It’s quiet, so the children must be in lessons. Should he walk straight into her classroom and surprise her there? Should he announce himself to someone, and then sit in some kind of staff room and wait for her? Neither option seems quite right, and Louis finds himself asking why, in all the days and weeks he’s had to think about this very particular moment, it has never occurred to him to come up with a plan.
He takes off his helmet and saunters round to the back of the building, clanging the playing-field gate as he goes. The windows at the front of the school are seven or eight foot off the ground. He’d been hoping the windows on the other side might be lower but they aren’t. He considers shimmying up the drainpipes. They look sturdy enough. And then maybe peering through each window until he finds her.
But he needs a smoke firs
t. He’s been five hours on the road without a break and now it comes to the moment, he discovers to his surprise that he’s nervous. Louis is hardly ever nervous. He settles himself on the log which had previously served as Oliver Adams’s throne, rests a foot on one knee and rolls a cigarette.
It’s a grey, drizzly afternoon, but it doesn’t matter, Louis thinks, as he pulls on that first drag. Nothing matters. He’s going to climb the drainpipe. He’s going to tap on the window. He smiles, allowing himself to imagine her expression, the struggle on her face between annoyance and amusement and pleasure. He imagines her, trying to keep it all together in front of the children, desperately trying not to laugh…And then maybe she’s going to run out of the classroom—And she’s going to—They’re going to—But it doesn’t matter anyway, because they have all summer. They have the rest of their lives. Nothing is going to dampen his spirits today.
‘Excuse me. Can I help you?’ He looks up with a start to see Robert, half-running across the playing field towards him. Robert’s face is rigid with the effort of appearing calm. He is trying to smile.
‘Hi there!’ says Louis pleasantly. ‘I was just smoking a cigarette here, hope you don’t mind. It’s a heck of a journey from London, isn’t it? I’d forgotten how damn far it was. I’m Louis, by the way. Old friend of Fanny’s. You must be…’ Louis’s eyes flicker over the shiny blond bob, the beard, the roll-neck jersey, and settle briefly on the open-toed sandals. He grins. ‘You must be…Robin Grey, am I right? Fanny’s told me a lot about you!’
Robert White isn’t sure how to deal with this. He is torn between relief that Louis probably isn’t, after all, a suicide bomber; jealousy that Louis probably is Fanny’s lover; offence that Louis has confused his name; and delirium that Fanny has ever mentioned him at all. He struggles for a moment to come up with a response.
Silence. Louis waits, confused. ‘You are Robin, aren’t you? I’m not wrong. You teach the other class. The little ones.’
‘Actually, I’m Robert,’ says Robert, still trying to smile.
‘Robert. I am sorry. Of course. Robert Grey.’
‘Robert White.’
‘Robert White!’ Louis knocks the palm of his cigarette hand against his forehead, sprinkling ash on to his blond fringe in the process, and leaving it there. ‘Stupid of me. Of course. Sorry. And I’m Louis, old friend of Fanny’s,’ he says again.
A mini stand-off. Louis waits for Robert to say, ‘Ah! Louis! Not the Louis!?!’ And when Robert doesn’t, when Robert’s lips purse and his head tilts in affected curiosity, as if the name means nothing to him, Louis feels a little thud of disappointment. ‘Fanny and I,’ Louis says, to cover the unkind silence, ‘we go back a long way. We’re very old friends.’
‘Yes, you said.’
‘I’m here to surprise her. She doesn’t know I’m coming.’
Robert knows exactly who Louis is. Of course. He’s heard all the gossip; heard in graphic detail from Linda Tardy about the moment Louis appeared in the village hall. He was burrowing his lips into Fanny’s hair when she was calling his name into her mobile. ‘Louis isn’t here,’ Robert had said. ‘I’m here. Robert’s here…’
More silence. Now they are both here, and Robert feels shrivelled and provincial beside him. And angry. Linda Tardy, Robert remembers, had described Louis as ‘ever such a good-looking chap. Gorgeous, really. American.’ But Robert, half-winded by his opponent’s god-like grace and sensuality, notes bitterly that the woman did not even begin to do him justice.
Louis, with amiability dripping from every perfect limb, smiles expectantly. It occurs to him vaguely that Robert might be a little backward.
Finally Robert says, ‘You shouldn’t be smoking, you know. Not here. It’s not permitted. Apart from anything, it’s a bad example for the kids.’
‘For the kids!’ Louis laughs aloud. ‘You think they haven’t seen a man smoking before?’ But he takes only one more drag before flicking the end on to the damp grass.
‘Where did it land?’ Robert scours the ground, pounces on it. ‘It’s a bad example for kids,’ he repeats, churning up the mud, ‘it’s bad for your health, and it’s a serious fire hazard. If I had my way it would be illegal.’
Louis doesn’t seem to be listening. ‘I was actually planning to climb up the drainpipe there, and tap on her classroom window,’ he says with a laugh, ‘but something tells me you wouldn’t think that was such a cool idea.’
Robert, not amused, looks up from what’s left of the butt end and shakes his head.
‘So, er, perhaps you can just point me in her direction. Then I could—’
‘No.’
‘No?’
Robert casts around for a reason; can’t believe his luck when he falls upon it. ‘Fanny’s not here! She’s gone out!’ he says triumphantly. ‘She’s not on the premises.’
‘Oh. Where is she, then?’
‘She rushed out at lunch-time because…Because…’ Robert remembers that he doesn’t know quite why she rushed out. ‘She rushed out at lunch-time,’ he repeats slowly, and finally he smiles. ‘Well, you know Fanny, Louis. Rushing here. Rushing there. You know what she’s like.’
Louis waits. ‘She’s gone?’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
‘So, where’s she gone?’
Robert smiles mistily. ‘Never stops, does she? I suppose we both know what she’s like.’
‘Yeah. I suppose so. So where’s she gone?’ he asks again.
‘Pardon?’
‘She’s not ill?’
‘Ill? Of course not. She’s fine. I mean…’ He glances at Louis slyly. ‘I mean, it’s not that she’s ill. It’s just – a thing.’
‘What “thing”?’
‘Look, if she hasn’t already told you—’
‘Of course she’s told me.’ But Louis’s beginning to grow worried. ‘What are you talking about?’
Robert has no idea. Not an idea in his head of what he’s talking about, not an idea of anything except that he wants Louis to go away, quickly, before Fanny sees him here, looking so flamboyantly, disgustingly handsome. And yet…one way or another he can’t help noticing that this nonsensical exchange is having an excellent effect on his opponent. Robert feels, from the depths of his despair, a small flicker of hope. Louis is a little jealous of him.
‘I’m very sorry,’ says Robert with a burst of new confidence. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. But I thought you said you were friends.’
‘We are. Bloody well friends. And you haven’t said anything. Tell me. Is there something wrong with her?’
Robert looks squarely at Louis’s left shoulder. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her,’ he says. ‘She’s as healthy as any other thirty-something lady, I should imagine. But she’s not coming back to school this afternoon, OK? And I should be getting back to my class. And for security reasons, which I’m sure you can appreciate, I’m going to have to request that you leave.’
‘But where is she?’
Robert hesitates. ‘Look. What I can tell you,’ he says, as if he’s doing Louis an enormous favour – and then stops. What can he tell Louis? Nothing. That he desperately needs time to think. That he desperately wants Louis to go away and preferably die and certainly never come back. Nothing else. ‘I can tell you that Fanny will be at home at four. She will be back home by four,’ he says at last. ‘You know where she lives, I suppose?’
Louis nods, slightly irritably.
‘Why don’t you come round about fourish, then?’
‘Come round?’ repeats Louis.
Had he really said that? Oops. Stroke of luck! Robert sniggers. ‘And I promise, I shan’t breathe a word. OK? Top Secret. It’ll be a surprise.’
Louis is certain of very little after his meeting with Robert – where Fanny is or why or, more to the point, what the relationship is with her weird, lanky, anti-smoking deputy. But he’s still keen, if he can help it, to surprise her with his arrival, because he loves it when her face lights up.
He decides to hide his bike in the car park behind the Fiddleford Arms, which he needs to drop in at anyway, to pick up his cottage keys.
What, exactly, Louis wonders, as he pulls off his crash helmet, had the lanky deputy guy Robert – or Robin (Louis’s already forgotten which) – what in hell had he meant when he said ‘come around’ at four o’clock? Were they living together? Louis tries to dismiss it. Fanny may have hooked up with some geeks over the years. But Robin Green? Robert. Grey. Green? Fuck. Whatever he was called. Even at her most lonesome, at her most torridly, outrageously bloody lickerish…It wasn’t impossible.
He tugs distractedly at the pub’s side door, deep in troubled thought, and heads towards the bar.
Inside is warm and welcoming, imbued with a sort of low-key liveliness. A fire burns in a giant grate in the middle of the room, and everywhere smells of old wood and smoke and fresh draught beer. As he leans, waiting to be served, Louis very much intends to resist the temptation of ordering himself a pint. He needs to stick to his original plan. Or what’s left of it. And on this occasion he’s only come to the pub to pick up his new keys. He needs to buy some food at the post office, if it’s open, check out the cottage, maybe open a few windows, unpack, make up a bed, and find a map because he’s actually got a job tomorrow: he’s meant to be miles away in somewhere called Crediton, photographing a mystics’ herbal festival. By which time it will be—
‘No, David. Darling. Don’t be flip.’ A husky female voice, brisk with irritation, rises above the general hubbub, interrupting Louis’s train of thought. He turns idly towards it: the woman looks a little bohemian, in her mid-forties, dressed in diaphanous white, with long white-blonde hair and big panda eyes enhanced with heavy, smoky make-up. Her face is slightly puffy but Louis, who (being an artist) studies faces more closely than most, notices immediately how appealing she almost still is, and how stunning she must have been once. ‘It’s easy for you,’ she’s saying. ‘You can swish off back to London in your marvellous car and forget all about it. But you’re my bloody agent! So where does that leave me?’