I examine the letter and its envelope for clues, while David examines me. ‘I can’t read the address she’s scrawled at the top. Sandgem House?’
‘That’s what I thought. Some seaside boarding-house? It arrived in June. Can you read the postmark?’
‘No, can’t decipher that either.’
‘Typical!’ David says. ‘Disappearing in this melodramatic way.’
‘I can assure you, her accusations about me are wildly exaggerated.’
‘Oh, she was always impossible. But we must find them.’
‘And if we do? Would you really want to adopt Abbie?’
‘But what about my wife? I can’t just foist a third child on her. What am I supposed to say? “Jenny’s been bumped off, so I thought we’d adopt Abbie. After all, she could be my daughter.” Or, “You know how keen Ben was on getting a Romanian orphan for Christmas? Well, let’s get him a British orphan instead. After all, my grandfather and her grandmother were lovers, so it’s all in the family, so to speak.”’
His sarcasm reassures me. ‘If we do find Abbie I shall bring her up as my daughter, whether she is or not. As for Jenny – she probably isn’t dead anyway. She’s pretty indestructible.’
‘Are you still living in that enormous house?’ David asks, and then blushes.
‘I’m selling it. Downscaling. I’ve moved to a small flat. Not so much a moral decision as a kind of breakdown. Without them, nothing seems to have much meaning.’
‘You do love her!’ David says with surprise.
‘And you?’
‘Oh, I did. Desperately. But I’ve been married to Muriel for twenty years now, and we have two children and – it’s just not the same thing.’
‘If Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, would he have written sonnets all his life?’
‘Exactly. You can’t eat sonnets. But if I can help you to find them I will. Keep in touch.’
I don’t want to go. I feel a pathetic urge to cling to him and talk about Jenny and Abbie. ‘Can I come again soon?’
‘Just phone my secretary. Now I’m afraid I must go. I have to visit my grandmother. Ninety-one, talking of indestructible. We’ve just had to put her in a nursing home. She wanted to stay in her own flat, but she refused to stop cooking. Food was always her passion, you see. She invited us around six months ago and made a great ceremony out of roasting a chicken for us. We kept hearing strange squeals and shrieks from the kitchen. Ben said, “Grandma, that chicken doesn’t sound right to me.” “Nonsense, darling, I’m sure it’ll be delicious. I stuffed it with sage and onion.” “You’re sure it was dead?” my wife asked. Then there was this bloodcurdling screech from the kitchen, and we all rushed in. A chicken was sitting on the cat’s plastic dish, and the face of the cat, poor old Ruddigore, wild with agony and rage, was squashed against the glass door of the oven. Muriel opened it just in time, the cat leapt out of the oven and out of the kitchen window, never to be seen again.
‘A fortnight later Grandma set fire to her kitchen and had to be rescued by firemen. So we found this nursing home. Grandma’s quite happy, seems to think she’s living in a hotel. She probably could stay in a suite at the Dorchester for what we’re paying.’
I can tell this is an anecdote David has polished at a dozen dinner parties. He tells it with affection and self-justifying complacency, assuming I share his family values. I don’t. A pater that has lost my familias, I’m not sure whether I’m expected to laugh or cry at this vignette of one-liferdom. To lose your mind at only ninety-one! Jenny is ninety-seven – if she is still alive.
We go downstairs and shake hands. David gets into his Volvo and I cycle through the rain and the Friday rush-hour traffic. I’m surprised I can still cycle, because I feel as if I’m made of stone. A statue left out in the rain. Bitten into by time, its original form unrecognizable, eye sockets blank. And, deep inside, the birth of a new creature, hot, wet, sticky and bloody. And painful. Yes, I think these pains must be feelings.
The House in Phillimore Gardens
One night I couldn’t sleep. I think I was two. I went to my bedroom window. I saw Mum and Daddy fly past. It wasn’t a dream. I wasn’t asleep. I really did see them. They didn’t look at me. They looked at each other. They were happy. Then they disappeared over the rooftops. I was frightened they wouldn’t come back and there’d be nobody to look after me. I cried. I wandered all over my house and put all the lights on, then I fell asleep on their ginormous bed. In the morning Mum and Daddy were there with me, and I was too little to explain, so I just pointed to the window and said, ‘Bird!’
Mum hugged me. She said, ‘You had a bad dream. The bird won’t come again.’ But I knew it wasn’t a dream.
After that I often heard their fights and watched their flights from my window. The fights were worser. When I was four there was a big fight about which sort of school I should go to. Finally I was allowed to choose between a big house where the children had to wear an ugly grey uniform and sit in silent rows and a glassy building where children wore their own clothes and ran and shouted. I chose that one. I knew Daddy didn’t like it. The first day at school I told the other children my mummy and daddy could fly. Then I realized that was a silly thing to say. But all mummies and daddies fight.
When I was little, about five, I used to dig in my garden. Mum used to tell me stories about another city under London, where there were dreams and monsters and treasure and marvels. I wanted to see it, so I was digging this tunnel. Suddenly I felt cold and tired. I wasn’t sure if I really did want to have adventures after all. So I looked around for Mum and I couldn’t see her, and all I could see was dark garden and empty windows. Then I looked up and saw Mum at the kitchen window smiling down at me, and it was all right again.
I liked school. I liked the way we all went there every morning like a river of children. My teacher asked me to draw my mummy and daddy and my house. I drew Mummy thin and smiley with long black hair holding hands with Daddy. He was thin and smiley, too. They stood in front of a house with a red triangle roof and five green windows under a smiley yellow sun. Mum said she loved my picture. She stuck it on the kitchen wall and I loved it, too, ’cause it looked like all the other children’s pictures. I was glad I didn’t draw the pictures that came into my head first of Mummy and Daddy flying past my window or Mummy hitting Daddy with a shopping bag or Daddy disappearing with a flash in the middle of supper or Mummy crying because Daddy didn’t come home. Nobody would want those silly pictures on their wall.
We used to have relations. Not proper ones, but they wouldn’t like it if they knew we were living at Sandringham House. Grandma Molly’s very old. She has disgusting table manners, but I love the look on her face when she sees me. Like a lump of ice when you put it in front of a fire. I’m the fire. I didn’t like it when she met me after school ’cause my friends said she smells, but now I wish she would come and meet me and take me back to her flat. She lets me eat sweets and crisps and play with Ruddigore, and she tells me stories about people in funny clothes in old photos.
Uncle David was at Molly’s sometimes. I liked him. He was my friend. I used to sit beside him on the couch and talk to him.
‘Doesn’t she ever play?’ Uncle David asked Grandma.
‘Typical only child: five going on forty,’ Grandma said.
I said, ‘Don’t talk about me as if I aren’t here.’
Uncle David laughed. He said, ‘Come to my house on Saturday. You can play with Alice and Ben.’
I was so excited. I imagined my wonderful cousins. They were bigger than me, and I thought they’d love me. Mum didn’t want me to go, but I did anyway. But they didn’t love me at all. We played in their garden. I had to be the piggy in the middle and the patient with Doctor Alice torturing me and the prisoner with Red Indians dancing and whooping around me.
I said to Auntie Muriel, ‘It’s not fair. Someone always gets left out of games like these and it’s always me.’
She said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll just h
ave to get used to other children.’
‘You’re spoilt,’ Alice said. ‘Only children are always difficult.’
Ben wouldn’t talk to me, so I ran to Uncle David. I knew he was my friend.
If Johnny was here I wouldn’t feel lonely. I got him when I was six. One day when Mum was out I went to see Daddy in his room.
‘What do you want?’ he asked. Daddy doesn’t have a special voice for children. He sounded like I was a letter he didn’t particularly want to open.
‘Can I see your lav … lav …’
‘Laboratory?’
‘Can I? Please?’
‘Where’s your mother?’
‘She’s gone to see Auntie Annette. She’ll be ages. Please, Daddy.’
‘I’m working. You must be very quiet.’
Daddy’s laboratory smelt of power and hot plastic and disinfectant. There were four computers and a fax machine and three telephones.
‘Make the ceiling and the wall fall down,’ I said.
‘Oh, you saw that, did you? I thought you were asleep.’
‘Are you cross with me?’
‘I don’t think you ought to be in here.’
‘I love you, Daddy.’ He looked surprised and pleased. I kissed his long thin hand. Daddy’s skin is cool.
He looked down at me. ‘Who do you look like, Abbie?’
‘Nobody. Like me. What’s your job?’
‘Why?’
‘My friends are always asking me.’
‘I work for a bank.’
‘Are we rich?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think we’re poor.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not allowed to have sweets or a puppy or a baby brother, and Susie’s got two brothers and three cats and she has sweets every day and her mummy hasn’t even got a job and Susie hasn’t got a daddy.’
‘Would you like a puppy very much?’
‘Yes. Can I really? And a brother?’
‘Just a puppy. The trouble with babies is you never know where they come from.’
Then I climbed up and hugged him and covered his nose in kisses, and he smiled very slowly.
Next day me and Mum went to a flat in West Kensington. Five golden-brown puppies were with their mummy in a basket. They smelt lovely. I rubbed my face against them.
‘Which one do you like best?’ Mum asked.
I said, ‘I love all of them. Stroke them, Mummy.’
‘Choose one, darling. Don’t let them lick you. You’ll get spots.’
I rolled on the floor laughing. The puppies were so lovely; their soft bodies wriggled all over me. ‘I want to get spots,’ I said.
‘Do you want a boy or a girl?’ Mum asked.
‘I want them all.’
‘Don’t be silly. Now, make up your mind. We have to go.’
‘Won’t the mummy dog be sad?’
‘Animals don’t have the same feelings as us. Now, hurry up. I have to meet a friend for lunch.’
‘But you’d be sad?’ I asked just to check.
‘Now choose one, and let’s go. That little shy one that keeps falling over is rather sweet.’
I wanted to take all of them so much I could feel screaming hiccuppy sobs rise from my heart to my throat. But tantrums don’t work with Mum, so I chose a boy, the littlest, weakest one, and held him in my hands so my mouth touched his curly velvet ears.
‘Why are you crying?’
‘I want all of them.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Come on. Let’s get a taxi. What are you going to call him?’ ‘Johnny.’
‘Johnny’s a name for people, not dogs. Why don’t you call him Golden Syrup?’
Mum’s really dumb sometimes. Johnny was the name of the brother I wanted and also a boy at school I used to stare at in assembly, only he just ignored me. Johnny’s little warm body felt lovely in my arms. His heart was beating and his soft head was tucked under my chin. Mum never understood about Johnny. I think about him all the time.
Grandma Molly’s flat smells of Ruddigore and pee and mouldy food, but I got used to it. Grandma never told me off for making a mess. There was already lots of mess. Johnny wasn’t allowed to go with me to Molly’s ’cause he annoyed Ruddigore. I liked it when Auntie Annette and Auntie Muriel and Uncle David came to see Grandma. It was like we were all a proper family.
When I was eight I was there one day, and I pretended to be asleep so the grown-ups would forget about me and say things children aren’t supposed to know.
Auntie Muriel said, ‘She always seems to be here.’
Grandma whispered, ‘Poor little thing. Are you awake, Abbie, darling?’
I kept my eyes and mouth shut, but my ears were open.
‘Who did you say the father is?’ Muriel said.
‘Some chap called Leo. Rich as Croesus. I’ve never met him. They’re not married.’
‘Marriage is an atavistic ritual,’ Auntie Annette said.
‘We can’t all be man-haters like you. Some of us rather like men. Don’t we, Muriel?’
‘Jenny certainly does.’
‘And how is Jenny?’ Uncle David asked.
Grandma whispered, ‘That woman is absolutely incredible. She must be well into her forties, yet she could still pass for nineteen. If you ask me, it’s uncanny.’ The other grown-ups laughed, and Grandma said, ‘You think I’m going gaga, don’t you? Well, I’m not. There really is something mysterious and sinister about her, like a witch.’
Auntie Annette said, ‘Grandma, I’m a socialist. You can’t expect me to believe in witches and fairies and all that nonsense. I expect she spends a fortune on cosmetics and plastic surgery.’
‘I’ve never liked her,’ Auntie Muriel said.
Then I felt sorry for Mum ’cause they were being mean about her like they thought she was beautiful just to spite them. It wasn’t Mum’s fault they were all getting old and ugly. I didn’t want them to say any more, so I pretended to wake up and looked around the room, and Uncle David was red. He was looking at me, and the other grown-ups all looked cross.
That year we went to Uncle David’s house for Christmas. Daddy didn’t come. Molly couldn’t manage any more. Mum said she was losing her marbles. I saw my cousins again. Alice still didn’t like me, but Ben did. He was twelve. He had floppy black hair and green eyes. We sat on the floor and talked about books. He’d read more than me. We talked and talked about everything, and then we went sliding in his garden and I got wet and cold, but I didn’t cry. I knew Ben would go off me if I cried. I really liked him. I don’t know where he is now.
Last Christmas I was nine. We went to New York. We stayed in a hotel with Daddy. We had a suite with a roof garden at the top of a glittering tower. I loved New York. It’s brilliant. I wouldn’t let Daddy’s hand go. I was afraid he’d disappear again. He asked me what I wanted for Christmas.
‘I want to fly, like you and Mum.’
‘In a jet or a helicopter?’
‘You know what I mean. Just fly at night like you two do. I’ve seen you often flying past my window.’
‘You must have been dreaming.’
‘I want to fly here over New York like Superman.’
‘Superman can do anything he wants.’
‘So can you.’
Later, when Mum was asleep, Daddy made me put on my coat, and we opened the doors to the roof garden. He asked me if I was frightened.
‘I’ll never be frightened if you’re here.’
‘Hold on to me very tight then.’ Suddenly the hotel was a needle of light and we were flying through the frozen air. Daddy’s arms were around me so I could lie back and see the black-and-yellow city. I could feel the power I always knew Daddy had and something inside me, too. I wanted all those people in the shining towers to look out and admire the marvellous Abbie-Leo bird as we flew into the future together.
Daddy asked if I was tired.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to fly like this for ever.’
‘They’ll think we’re terrorists.’
We swooped down to a cube of light. It was our roof garden. I tried to make Daddy stay up in the air, but I couldn’t. Then I saw Mum on the other side of the glass doors yelling at us, banging on the glass, angry and frightened.
That was seven months ago – seems like centuries. All this remembering makes me sad, makes me miss Daddy and Johnny even more. I don’t like asking people for money in the park. Most of them have dogs, and that reminds me of Johnny, too.
I have to see my house again. I run away from Rosa and the other kids. I pass the fairy tree. I used to believe that stuff. It’s cold and raining, and I run past Kensington Palace where Princess Di lives with her two lucky little boys and no worries ’cept choosing a new dress. When the hotel children hear a helicopter fly past they say that’s Princess Di going shopping.
On the Broad Walk cool kids with proper families are skateboarding and rollerblading. I run around the back of the Palace, cross Millionaires’ Row and then Kensington Church Street. I know every shop, and I feel at home again. I imagine how happy Daddy and Johnny will be, how we’ll get a taxi to Mum and then we’ll all go back home together.
Then I stand outside my house and the windows look funny. There aren’t any blinds or curtains. Then I see the sign: FOR SALE. I run up the steps and ring the bell. I imagine Daddy in his laboratory. Johnny will know it’s me. He’ll smell me and come to the door. Only he doesn’t. So I knock on the door three times like a policeman. Then I yell through the letterbox, ‘Daddy! It’s me!’
I wait a long time, but my house looks, smells, feels empty. Then I cry. I can’t help it. I stumble down the steps and nearly get run over ’cause I can’t see. A car brakes screechily, and I think that’s Uncle David at the wheel. But if it is I don’t want him to see me cry. He’ll think I’m a wimp and tell Ben and Alice. So I run back to the park, all the way to the fountain garden where us hotel children meet. Most of them haven’t got daddies either. Rosa is there with her baby. He’s called Kevin. Rosa was fourteen when he was born.
‘Got any dosh for me, then?’ Rosa holds out her hand.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 25