by Alice Jolly
*
Welcome to Malden Mansions, or Moulding Mansions, a sixties planning disaster, like piles of egg boxes with muddy grass in between, and mostly deserted, because it’s sinking into the earth. Dark windows glitter all around us but all of them look out on concrete, not like where Nanda lives, where I used to live as a child, and where Dad lived as well. You can see for miles from there.
Dad follows me under the arch, where the light is broken. On the strip of grass outside our front door, translucent snow slides from abandoned yellow beer crates, and drips from a deck chair, which stands naked and shivering beside the path. Next door music pulses from a church which has been turned into a night club. Inside, an inflatable champagne bottle blocks the door to the sitting room. I move it and shuffle two tomato-sauce-smeared plates into the kitchen.
‘What a desirable residence,’ Dad says.
‘Dad, Dad, be careful.’ I scoop up Biggles – a honey-coloured rabbit with floppy ears which are dirty where they trail along the ground and a pair of teeth which have finished off the Internet connection and most of the hall carpet. Biggles’ nose twitches as he sniffs at the collar of my coat. Under his fur, I can feel the knobbles of his spine and I put him against my shoulder, like a burping baby.
Dad stands under the shadeless hall bulb and asks me if I live here on my own. No, I tell him, I live here with Tyger and Sam and Druggy Dougie. Dad knows them from when I was at law school and they used to come and stay at Brickley Grange for the weekend. Dad was still an MP then, and Geoffrey used to live nearby, at Hyde Cottage, just across the fields, and he used to come over to play tennis and swim, and Tiffany used to come with him.
You should wear things that emphasise your waist more, honey. That’s the kind of thing she said to me – and I used to be amused at the leisurewear ghastliness of her. Lei-sure. Pronounced like seizure. Tan-coloured tights which made her stick legs look orange. Pink would be such a good colour on you, honey, and it goes with so many things. Yes, but not as many as you seem to think. No problem was so big it couldn’t be tidied up with a cheerful little homily from a self-help book. She used to draw smiley faces on letters and produce packets of tissues from her handbag. Perhaps I judge her harshly, although you can tell a lot from these things. But how can I say that when she’s dead?
As Dad walks into my room he stops. ‘Oh, the bed.’ He jumps back with a laugh, as though he’s only just spotted it, which isn’t likely because the bed takes up most of the room, and the headboard is five foot tall and made of dark wood as thick as a tree trunk. The foot of it is scallop-shaped like a seashell, and the sides are twisted spirals of wood with knobs like urns on the top. All over it’s carved in a chaotic mass of leaves and vines and if you look carefully the heads of small animals – monkeys, or mice, or mythical beasts – peer out from between the vines. When I was little I dreamt about the animals.
‘I suppose you’re taking that to Brussels,’ Dad says.
‘I want to.’
The bed belonged to my mother and it’s the only thing she left me. I’ve never gone anywhere without my bed, although it’s a devil to dismantle, and took five of us to get it into this house, after we’d taken a door off its hinges. When I took the job in Brussels I was worried about the bed. Now Dad stands beside it, and for once he’s still, except for one hand which rests on the bed, his finger moving over the head of one of the tiny animals. There’s dust and wax now around those twisted vines. When he sees me watching him, he puts his hand in his pocket.
‘Look, Mags, I’ll have the bed sent out to Brussels if you want.’
‘Well, you don’t have to.’
‘I know, but I will. It’s not much fun driving that bed across Europe in a van.’
That’s how the bed first came here – Dad drove it all the way from Spain, with my mother. I only know that because Nanda told me. It was in Seville that Dad and my mother met. In this London winter it almost hurts to think about Seville – gold fish in green ponds, cool patterned tiles, bougainvillea and smoky wine. That’s where my mother grew up, and she refused to come to England without this bed, so Dad had to buy a van and it took days to drive, and at night they slept on the mattress in the back, and I suppose I slept there too.
Now Dad hitches up his trousers at the knee and sits down in a pink leather armchair. The elegance of his ankles always surprises me. One of his socks is grey and the other black. My bedroom has a Bedouin-tent look, with yards of Indian cotton, a light shade shaped like a star, and kelim cushions all over the floor. I switch on the electric heater which belches out burnt-dust air. Outside, snowflakes glitter white in the light from the window. Taped to the wall by the bed there are postcards – one’s from a friend on holiday in Zambia and shows a bird sitting inside a crocodile’s mouth, eating bits from between the crocodile’s teeth.
There’s a pile of letters on my dressing table. The handwriting on them is as prickly as a thorn bush and spreads all over the envelope. They’re all from Nanda – news from her cheerful Grannies’ Commune in Gloucestershire. The latest talks about Brussels – too many small dogs and lace handkerchiefs, she says, and the Common Market is a misguided project, markets are only valid as a means of social development, and on and on like that. A sniff is audible in the spiky letters.
As usual my bedroom is a mess, so I’m piling hat boxes into a corner, trying to make a bit more room. Dad gets up to help me push a box under the bed. His eyes are near to mine, indigo, deep-set and too close together.
‘So what do you think?’ he says.
The journalist, of course, we were certain to come back to that.
‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘I’ll talk to him if you want. But there’s something I want you to do for me in return.’
He leans close to me. ‘But Maggie, of course, you know I’ll do anything for you.’
‘OK, right. Then go and see Nanda.’
‘Nanda? Yes, of course. Of course, I will. I’ve been meaning to go. I’ll go as soon as the weather clears,’ he says. ‘I’d be going to see her soon anyway.’
Except he wouldn’t have been. He went to Thwaite Cottages once, just after the fire, and he hasn’t been in touch with her since.
‘It would help a lot if she would answer the telephone,’ he says.
Then suddenly he looks at his watch and groans. ‘Oh God, I must go. I’m hopelessly late. What a bore.’ He stumbles out into the hall, hopping over Biggles, who’s eating what remains of the hall carpet. This is how it’s always been and nothing has changed, even though he doesn’t have a job any more. Daughters have their slot, after a committee meeting, between two important votes, speak to my secretary and get it in the diary, and afterwards please send a letter confirming the details and put the papers away in a file.
‘Before you go away, Maggie, you should really go round and see Geoffrey.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He needs you, Maggie.’
The floor quivers as a Northern Line train worms through the ground below us. Dad’s eyes wrap themselves around me. For the first time today he’s really looking at me. He raises his hand, touches me, the tip of one finger massaging the point of my shoulder. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. Sorry.’
He hasn’t called me that since I was a child. We say goodbye and I watch him dancing away through the shadows, towards his car. He stops under a streetlight, and turns round in a complete circle as he waves a hand at me.
As I turn to go back inside, memory falls open at the night of the fire. I’m running into the flagstoned hall at Brickley Grange, breath snagging in my throat. Dad is in the sitting room, his socked foot propped on a stool. From the television there’s a sudden gale of sitcom laughter. A new cigarette burns in an ashtray, an amber glass of whisky gathers the light. A twist of pain as though I’ve pulled a muscle inside my head. The scene is as shallow and fragile as celluloid. Our eyes join, but they are too naked, and we both look away.
I slam those memories shut and go back to my room.
Sitting on my bed, I look in the mirror, arranging myself as though for a portrait, taking stock of the situation I’m in. Girl, twenty-eight, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, grey and black, convent clothes of another era, a statement of not belonging. A girl at once substantial and ethereal – nothing more than a mark on a mirror. All the things I’ve tried to make my own – my friends, my job, this flat – they’re only cardboard props. Like a moonstone, I have no colour, I only reflect the colour of those around me.
I always used to think of myself as a good person, but then I’d never had much opportunity for evil. Most people don’t, they aren’t called upon to make the choice. In my generation the Gestapo is not at the door asking if you’ve got any Jews hidden in your attic. Evil is surprisingly hard to come by and hard to imagine as well. Which is how a person can put ten bodies in their drains, or seduce dozens of children – just because nobody can think that they would.
And that’s how I am with Dad. Is he a victim or a villain, a man of principle or a murderer, a fallen angel or a fraud? Whatever anyone says, I’m not able to think that he might have done wrong. He’s a fraud, a fraud. I must believe it – but I don’t. I can never quite give up on him. I’ve made a bad investment and now the only hope of getting any return is to invest still more. Good love after bad. For twenty-eight years I’ve tried to believe in him as a good man. But if I’m wrong about him, then I’m wrong about me as well. The mark on the mirror will disappear.
Max
Bugger. No cabs. Pissing with rain, and cold enough to freeze the blood. Foot giving me gyp and bowels in an uncertain state. Ghastly meeting, of course. Pedestrianisation. I mean, really. What do you expect? I was only asked to go because Angus couldn’t, and I know the form. That’s all I do these days. Make myself useful, be seen around the place, keep my nose clean. Bide my time.
And now no cabs. A bad end to a bad day. I light a cigarette, raise my hand to shield the flame. Nothing to look forward to this evening either. Just Gus coming around, clearing the last of our stuff out of the flat. I abandon the search for a cab and walk back along the river, where Maggie and I walked earlier today. Tiresome little madam. Her eyes boring through to the marrow of my bone. Awful place she lives in. But what can I do? She’ll never take a penny from me.
What did I do to deserve a daughter like that? I blame it on Nanda. I should never have left Maggie with her and her cranky friends. But there wasn’t much choice. Eighty-five, Nanda is now, yet still she never ploughs a straight furrow, never does anything the easy way. And then Maggie, poor girl, was cut up by all that stuff about the fire. Didn’t do me much good either, come to that, but there’s no point in dwelling on it. For me, the problem is that I don’t convince her, never have. Difficult when even your own family doubt you.
Back at the flat, I climb the stairs, turn the key, open the door, then flick the hall light. Dead. I flick the switch again. I don’t believe it. Those buggers have cut me off. Small-minded, penny-pinching bureaucrats. You’d have thought privatisation would have put a stop to that. In the sitting room the glow of a streetlamp slants in through the window. There’s the usual smell of gravy wafting up from below. Pictures have been taken down, and the bookcases are empty. The atmosphere is gloomy and expectant, like prep school end of term.
Until recently I lived in a world of too much light. The constant click of cameras. My face staring from a page of print. My voice catching me unawares from the radio or TV. Journalists trying to trap me in a net of words. Looking at everyone, suspecting everyone. Measuring every syllable. You’d think I might be glad to have a break from that. And perhaps for a week or two I was. But now I want the show to go on. Because what’s the point of life if no one is watching?
On the wall there’s still a pin board stuck with press cuttings and photographs. I can’t see it clearly but I know anyway. A photograph of me with the Duke of Edinburgh. A newspaper article about some Disability Award I received. A picture of me chatting with some drooling pensioner during an election campaign. A letter addressed to me, signed by Bill Clinton, with a spelling mistake in it.
The phone rings, shrill and insistent. I look into the darkness. That sound makes me twitchy. Who would it be? Tiffany. I always think of Tiffany. Still if I pick up the phone I think it’ll be her. Then every time I feel the shock of her death again. She came to this flat – once, or was it twice? During that fateful Christmas two years ago when snow brought everything to a halt. Often she tried to come here again but I never let her. This is my lair and I guard it jealously. I stand by the phone, let it ring on and on, hear her voice. You lied. You lied. You lied. An evil corner of my mind is glad that she’s gone.
Oddly, it’s her kneecaps I remember. They were perfect, shaped like tear drops or petals. I saw them as she sat down beside me at dinner, the shape of them emphasised by her thin black stockings. And she had earrings like gold leaves, which hung down below the line of her jaw, resting at the point where her neck and jaw bones joined, where there were soft blonde hairs, and a small scar of puckered skin.
From below I hear the front door open, the shuffle of heavy feet. I peer over the stair rail. A slick of hair bobs up the stairs towards me, asthmatic breath coming in puffs. Gus. ‘No bloody electricity,’ I tell him. ‘And they’ve never even sent us a bill.’
‘Oh, no. Shit. Sorry.’ He’s wearing a mackintosh, the belt stretched round his spherical shape. Drops of rain glisten on his glasses. That skin condition of his is worse than ever. Scaly and scabby, blotches all over him.
‘How can they possibly cut off our electricity when they haven’t even sent us a bill?’ I ask.
Gus fumbles towards the kitchen. A match is struck and his moon face appears above the flame of a candle. ‘I think there was a bill, actually. Several.’
‘Then why in God’s name didn’t you tell me?’
Gus flaps his arms, steps backwards, stumbles on a box. Taking the candle, I go into the kitchen, reach for the Talisker. I pour myself a glass, and drink it, then pour myself another. In the hall the candlelight touches on flock wallpaper and beige plastic wood. I take the bottle back to the sitting room, pour a glass for Gus. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Sorry, to be so bloody.’
Gus takes the matches from me, lights the gas fire.
‘Perhaps we should get the last of this stuff into boxes, and then go for a drink, what do you reckon?’ he says.
‘Good idea.’
‘So did you see Maggie?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘So how is she?’ Gus asks.
‘Oh, fine, fine. Moving to Brussels.’
‘Brussels? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Some pointless do-gooding, I suspect.’
‘I thought she liked being a barrister.’
‘So did I. But there’s no explaining her. She needs a man, that’s what I think.’
Gus disconnects the computer on the desk where he’s always worked, snuffling and puffing in the dark. Then he drops piles of paper into the wastepaper bin. I drink and feel defeated. I should be packing but I don’t know where to start. If only I could ask Fiona to come and do it for me.
Gus passes me a pile of post. I throw it in the bin. ‘If it’s important they’ll write again, and if it isn’t they shouldn’t have written in the first place.’
I sit down on the lid of a metal trunk. The end of an era. It’ll be strange to go. Farewell to brown lino, brown skirting boards, and a carpet with a pattern that looks as though someone has vomited on it. I rented this flat when I was first elected, because it was cheap and within the Division Bell area. Then Gus came to work for me, and we moved our office over here. All the important work anyway. So much better than the Commons, full of snoops and gossips. Only my secretary – the dreaded Mrs Mimbers – was left in the Commons as a decoy.
I think of this journalist who comes to see me. Adam … Adam … Anyway, the book journalist. Of course, I don’t find it difficult to tell him what he needs to know. The Official Version. Anyone
can read it in Who’s Who. Father a senior army officer, killed in the war. Mother still very much alive. Winchester, Cambridge, the Citadel Club. Called to the bar in 1964, elected to Parliament in 1979. Junior Minister for Health. A short spell at Transport. Minister for the Arts. Maverick, controversial. Those were the words they always used. Resignation on a point of principle, coinciding neatly with the leadership crisis. A switch of loyalties just in time. And so I go on. But of course, that isn’t the information he wants. Truth is, there’s a lot of my past I just can’t remember. Drink, I suppose.
I cross the room and stare down into the empty blackness of a filing cabinet drawer. ‘So you’ve taken your files?’
Gus squeezes his hands together and the dry skin of them rasps. ‘Yes, but you needn’t worry. They’ve been stored for future use.’ Gus is all very cloak-and-dagger. Keeps files on everything and everyone, and I’m at least as bad. Mainly it’s just a game, and most of the information Gus has collected is pretty harmless. Only a few small snippets of really saucy scandal, kept in reserve, in case of dire need.
Gus has a great talent for information, presentation, finding the right angle. Appearance is reality, that’s his creed. It’s important in politics, as in life. For ten long years he and I worked together. His talent for information was the making of me, I admit that. He’s clever, much cleverer than I am. There’s very few people I’d say that about. He has an incredible head for detail. But he’s wasted on that. Public relations are his real talent. For me, having him around is like having a brain outside my head, not always a comfortable sensation. The Magician and the Magician’s Assistant. Together we could make anything possible. Coins out of the air, doves from the sleeve of a coat, a woman sawn in half and put back together.