At half past ten my daughter falls asleep in the lopsided double bed, one hand holding mine while the other clutches her koala bear. Sitting beside her in the dark, I gently loosen her fingers and wait for midnight. The thoughts I’ve been evading come flooding in as alarming noises come from the other rooms: babies crying, a woman screaming, the rhythmic thump of sex or violence, pop music, televisions, crockery smashing, voices arguing.
You said I might die. After all, I’m ninety-seven. Then Abbie will be taken into care, into what we used to call an orphanage. I don’t suppose calling it care makes it any less horrible for the children. I must write to David, who is kind and, more likely than not, her father. If I die – but I can’t, I must be here to see what happens next. I haven’t had nearly enough of life yet, and if I hang around for a few more years science will catch up with magic and we’ll all be able to cheat death. Another hour. I’ll leave the letter to David ready to be posted just in case I’m not here in the morning. How will Abbie get to school without me – but I will be here, in some form or other.
Count sheep. Count corpses: Gerry, all those unknown people during the war, George, Nat, Hari, Katrina and her children, Toby, Charles … how many others I don’t even know about? You’ve always resented Abbie; you think she’s David’s daughter. What were you doing that night, bending over her, performing some kind of operation with those other shadowy figures? You’ve been very generous to her and to me – no, mustn’t think about that.
We couldn’t have stayed in that life. Sooner or later Abbie would have defied you, irritated you, got in your way. You’re so good at making it look like an accident, you would mourn and grieve as you did over Nat. The really frightening thing about you is that you’re capable of both murder and compassion.
What is happening to that baby? I’ve never heard such horrendous noises. Half an hour to go. That time may cease, and midnight never come … you said the effect would be instantaneous. What was it Augustus said on his deathbed? ‘Have I acted well in the farce?’ I suppose I have, on the whole. How good it has been, compared with the poor, dull thing a life can be. I’m so glad I signed that crazy contract. I’ve developed as much in ninety years as some life forms do in millions; from a frightened, illiterate waif with only my body to sell to a woman who has done most things, grabbed an education, seized free will from the vaults of death. I’m thinking of myself in the past, writing my own obituary, but I must be here to watch over my child.
Ten minutes. I can feel the darkness thickening now, but if I put the light on I’ll wake Abbie. How strong the past is in here tonight, I can feel my dead pulling at me, Ma and George and Lizzie. I don’t want to die.
If I hold her hand like this I feel stronger. My fingers glide over Abbie’s soft, straight light-brown hair, from the velvet of her hairband to the bulge of her forehead. Feathery eyebrows fly over her blue eyes, and her nose is a childish button. The curve of her mouth is like the wavy line that Abbie is still young enough to use to represent the sea in her pictures. Perhaps I’ll never see Abbie’s face or drawings again.
If I’m holding her whatever attacks me will hurt Abbie, too. So I drop her hand, hug her and then settle back into my solitary darkness, the smooth feel of Abbie’s translucent skin tingling in my fingertips.
I open the curtains and the window. There, at least I’m not alone any more. I can see into the rooms opposite.
Two minutes. Abbie’s still fast asleep. I want to look at her one last time. Something’s at the window, in the room with me, at my throat. I can’t breathe …
PART 2
Abbie in the Underworld
The Sandringham
I wake up when Mum opens the curtains and lie with my eyes shut. Maybe sleep will take me home. I think myself back to my garden and my paddling pool and the flower bed I planted myself and my trampoline. Johnny and me are lying together on the tartan rug. His curly golden-brown ears are tickling me, and exciting sounds come from the kitchen ’cause it’s nearly my birthday and all my friends are coming to my party and I’ll get lots of presents ’cause everybody likes me. I rub out everything that happened today and blow away the shavings. I lie back on my pillow and hold my koala to my ear to keep out the ugly noise.
Then my eyes are shocked open, and I sit up. There’s a scream in the room, and Mum has vanished and there’s a shrivelled old witch instead. I stare at her bald head and tree-root hands. This monster has stolen my beautiful mother. I jump out of bed and run to the door. The witch says in Mum’s voice, ‘Help me, Abbie. I can’t see.’
That was weeks ago. You’d think we’d be dead by now, but we’re still here. Mum used to tell me stories about this weird underworld, and now we’re lost there. When I get up the bed slides off the books and I kick it. I hate this room, I hate the cockroaches and the heating that’s always turned on although it’s July and the floor that creaks and the taps that drip and the toilet that doesn’t flush and the curtains that don’t meet and the cracked mirror on the cupboard door that won’t shut. Our suitcases and toys and books and clothes are piled all over the floor.
This old crone used to be my beautiful mother. I never knew that in just a few seconds skin could shrivel and hair could drop out and teeth go black. When it speaks I hear Mum’s soft voice. She says, ‘You must go to the shops, darling, to buy our supper. Then you can play in the park.’
‘Come with me.’
‘I can’t. I’m too slow. I’m afraid of falling again. Soon I’ll get used to walking by myself, and then I’ll take you to school.’
I stare over her shoulder at the damp patch on the wall and try to see that morning in September when the two of us will walk across the park to my school and my old life and friends. Mum seems to believe in that picture, but I can’t.
‘Shall we just have a salad and bread and cheese and fruit again for supper?’ she asks. I don’t care. I look out of the dirty window. You can see all the other dirty windows and at the bottom there’s a dirty glass shelf. When I was seven we stayed in a hotel near Florence in a white vaulted room. From the window you could see a cloister with a fountain and feathery trees. A proper hotel. I shut my eyes and want it to come back, but when I open them again I still see the same view. A window opens two floors down, and a black woman in a red dress climbs out over the glass shelf. She crawls to an empty cigarette packet, shakes it and climbs back through her window.
‘Mum,’ I ask, ‘are cigarettes very expensive?’
‘No, my darling. Anyway I don’t smoke. Why?’
‘Just wondered. The bed’s on books, breakfast’s in a bag, there’s nowhere to cook and they’ll do anything for a fag.’
‘I like your little songs.’ Her voice sounds all wrong.
‘Better go to the shops, then,’ I say. I take five pounds from Mum’s wallet and put it in the pocket of my dungarees. But I don’t kiss her like I used to. She smells.
‘Have a nice time, darling,’ Mum says.
No more nice times. Never. In the hot corridor the black-and-orange carpet wriggles with insects. Silver-fish they’re called, like they’re precious instead of disgusting. All the doors are closed. I was desperate to get out of our room, but now I’m alone I’m scared. I turn and run back to 325 and hammer on the door.
‘Mum!’
‘Did you forget something?’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, darling.’ That weird voice again. A bit mad, like a tea party in a jungle. I go back to the stairs, covered with rotting brown linoleum like mouldy chocolate. They stop suddenly like they don’t have enough energy to go anywhere and turn into another stuffy corridor. Then a grand staircase sweeps down to the lobby, the kind Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers might come dancing down. Every time I go down these stairs I want to bounce and skip; they have wonderfully slidy banisters, and Finn always seems to be polishing them.
He’s here now, his piggy fingers holding a duster. His hand reaches through the black railings to touch my bum. Slug. I’d like to
squish him under a stone and scrape him into the dustbin with a spoon. But Finn’s the only person in the hotel ’cept Mum who talks to me. Finn’s white and flabby with wavy brown hair dripping with gel and an oozy voice.
‘And where are you going, young lady?’
‘To the shops.’
‘Want a drink?’
‘I’ve no money.’
‘Tea, coffee, hot chocolate, tomato soup or Coke?’ His Irish voice makes them all sound delicious, and I’m parched so I follow him to the drinks machine. It chugs and shines like something in a fairground. Then Finn’s fat hands switch it off so it goes dark.
‘I’ve to fill it up in any case. Will we get you a drink now while nobody’s looking?’ He gives me a Coke, and the red can cools me when I rub it against my cheek and it tastes wonderful.
‘Come on, I’ll show you around. Have you seen the ballroom yet?’
‘The what?’
Finn stares at me again, his green eyes like hungry gooseberries. I think he wants my money. I put my hand in the pocket of my dungarees and squeeze my five pounds. I want to run off to the shops, but I also want to see what a ballroom looks like. It’s a word from our old life, like chandelier and Gucci. Finn’s hand grips the top of my arm, and we go back up the Hollywood stairs. He isn’t Fred Astaire, he isn’t even my friend, but at least he’s somebody to talk to. People who pass us on the stairs give me mean looks like it’s prison and I’m sucking up to one of the warders.
At the top of the stairs there’s a locked door with a sign: PRIVATE. Finn takes out a huge bunch of keys – so he is a warder. The ballroom’s ginormous, with a high ceiling and french windows. The orange curtains are drawn, and the carpet’s gross yellow and green. I imagine all the insects dancing on it. On the ceiling naked fatties like the ones I saw in Italy lie around upside down. This used to be a house people wanted to live in and dance in. Finn shuts the door, then he lights a cigarette and offers me one.
‘No, thank you. I don’t want to die of cancer.’
‘Cheerful little bugger, aren’t you?’
‘I’m only ten. You shouldn’t offer me cigarettes.’
‘Ten, is it? Thought you was older. Thought you’d be glad of a ciggy – most of you hotel kids are.’
I switch the light on. The horrible carpet stretches for miles. The ballroom’s empty, ’cept at the far end where there’s a row of little gold chairs and an electric kettle. Finn looks greedy, and the naked fatties look sad and old.
‘See, didn’t I tell you there was a ballroom? I bet they had some parties here!’
‘But what’s it used for now?’
‘Well, I do some entertaining in here sometimes.’ I don’t like the way he says this, so I reach behind me for the doorknob. ‘No, don’t run away. What’s your name again?’
‘Abigail Mankowitz. I have to go to the shops now.’ Finn lets me open the door. I want to go, only I remember I’ve got nowhere to go to and I sort of stay.
‘That’s a lot of name for a little girl. Can I call you Abbie?’
‘All right. But I don’t understand why this room’s empty. What about us? What about all the children in the hotel with nowhere to play?’
‘Oh, but we couldn’t allow them in here. They’d wreck the place. Mr Taggart, the owner, would like to hire it out for conferences and that. Such a fine big room slap-bang in the middle of London. Trouble is, once you get the homeless in a hotel the businessmen and the tourists don’t want to know.’
‘We’re not rats, you know, to be kept cooped up in cages till we go bonkers.’
‘I’m not talking about you, now, Abbie with the long name. You’re different. I saw that right away.’
‘No I’m not!’ I shout, although inside I’m pleased he’s noticed. ‘It’s not fair! There ought to be a playroom! I’m going to complain. I’ll write a petition and make everybody in the hotel sign it! I know all about petitions from Auntie Annette.’
Finn laughs. ‘You just go ahead and do that, darling. You and your granny’ll be thrown out of here the next day and put in a real slum. There’s far worse hotels than this one, I can tell you.’
I cry. Finn’s arms are around me, and one of his piggy hands strokes my hair while the other slips inside my dungarees and into my knickers. His thick lips clamp down on mine, and his tongue invades my mouth. He smells of old biscuits and cigarettes and sweat. I push him away. I feel power like a lift rising inside me, and I throw him across to the other side of the ballroom. He lies on the floor swearing at me.
I turn and run. At the top of the stairs I wipe my eyes and nose on the sleeve of my T-shirt. There’s about twenty people in the lobby staring at me. You don’t often see people talking at Sandringham House. Everyone’s sad and silent, but Mum said to be careful, that gossip spreads like the fungus on the wallpaper and the insects on the carpets. I want to shout at them, ‘I beat Finn up!’ Then I think maybe I killed him. I could be sent to prison.
I just want to get out, but first I have to get past Eileen’s sentry-box at the door. Eileen looks like Mrs Thatcher. She’s hard as nails. She wears sugary-pink-and-apricot jumpers. She’s always knitting them. I try to get to the front door without being told off. I stand on tiptoe to sign the register. It’s kept chained on a high shelf, and the biro’s on a chain, too, in case it escapes.
‘Where’s your granny today then?’
‘I told you. She isn’t my granny, she’s my mum.’
‘Correction.’ (Eileen’s so bossy when she says good morning she makes you feel like it’s too good for you. Anyway, mornings here aren’t good they’re horrible. At eight o’clock Eileen hands out breakfast, that’s paper bags full of starvation rations like they’re Fortnum’s hampers. You get a teabag, a slice of bread and miniature rations of margarine and jam. Mum gives me hers, but my tummy still rumbles all the time.) ‘That old thing upstairs is not your mother. You arrived with your mother and smuggled in your granny a few days later. I’ll have to speak to Mr Taggart. It’s against the regulations, or would be if anyone had ever thought to do such a thing before. Your granny should be in a home, and you should be in care.’
I hate Eileen. She has fluffy orange hair that clashes with the soppy colours she wears like candy floss on arsenic. She makes me so nervous I can’t speak. I just open the front door and run.
I stop at the corner and put my hand in my pocket to check my money’s still there. It is, but nothing else seems to be in the right place. Big pale houses wobble on the dirty pavement and the trees gasp with pollution. The sun’s hot. I look up at it, surprised it’s still there. Mum can’t see the sun. Can’t see anything. I try to imagine how that feels. I was going to ask Eileen to help me find a doctor, but I’m afraid they’ll take Mum away. She’s still got all those bruises all over her face. Every time I think about them I feel sick. I think Daddy must have put them there. They must have had a big fight.
I want to cry again, but I’m too old. I walk to Queensway, but I can feel the hotel pulling me back. People on the pavements – mums with buggies and tourists and veiled Arab ladies – they all look like ghosts.
In Queensway there’s a toyshop. On my tenth birthday I led Mum here. First and last time she’s been out. She stumbled and swayed, clinging to me. It was a miserable birthday – no home, no Daddy, no dog, no friends, no party – so this walk with a blind witch just about finished it off. Everybody stared at us. Mum insisted on buying me a birthday present, so I chose a monkey with a silly grin wearing a tennis dress. It cost twenty pounds, same as our food allowance for four days, and on the way back to the hotel Mum fell over and hurt her legs. They’re like knotted twigs. Now she just stays in Room 325 all the time and talks in that weird cheerful voice.
I used to like toyshops. I’m the only customer, and the sales lady watches me like she knows I’m a hotel child. I keep my hands in my pockets. If I don’t touch anything she can’t say I’m shoplifting.
I stop in front of an old-fashioned doll’s house. There’s a
four-poster bed and a hip bath and a black stove. I press my nose against the glass. I love the teeny books and cutlery and knitting-needles. There’s even a tiny ball of wool being chased by a one-inch kitten. The people in the doll’s house are lovely, too. There’s a maid in a black dress and frilly white apron and a lady in a long blue velvet dress and a man in a checked jacket with a watch chain and a boy and a girl wearing sailor suits. I used to have a doll’s house, only it got left behind in my old bedroom. I never used to play with it, but now I would. I wish I lived in it.
There’s music in the toyshop: ‘It’s a Small World’. No it isn’t, it’s a ginormous world, and me and my ancient blind mum don’t belong in it. My breath steams a circle on the glass, and I spread out my hands on the cabinet. I want to break through to that wonderful house. Then the sales lady marches over with a cloth and a can of glass cleaner. I’ve left smeary marks all over the glass. I’m dirty now. Everyone can see it.
I go to a supermarket to buy bread and cheese and fruit. The basement kitchen at the hotel only opens a few hours each day. I went down there one day at lunchtime. Desperate mums were fighting to use the stoves and accusing each other of stealing food from the fridges. Women were cooking with babies on their hips. It was all smoky as they chopped and fried and stirred and shouted. Most of the little kids in the hotel have burns all over their arms and legs. I only know how to make chocolate brownies. I was too scared even to light the oven. So now we have picnics on the bed. In the summer in our tropical room cold food’s nice. Mum says by the time winter comes we’ll be out of the Sandringham.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 23