Dark Dance (28 page)

Emma looked crestfallen through her shine, ‘No. I haven’t had the courage. And I wanted to tell you first. She’s amazing for her age. I’m sure she’ll understand. She’s fond of me, she’ll be glad for me.’

‘She loves you,’ said Rachaela.

Emma squared her shoulders.

It’s probably the best thing, Rachaela. You and she need to spend more time together.’

‘Well, we’ll certainly have to do that.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Emma. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

For once her tone was insincere. She knew quite well.

Compared to her own flesh and blood, what was Ruth? Only a substitute. Now here was the real thing.

Swept aside.

Rachaela felt a bitter pity for her daughter, this blow about to fall like an axe.

Ruth would not be glad for Emma. Ruth also was self-centred and selfish, with all the ego-life of a child.

‘Hallo Mummy,’ said Ruth’s clear pale voice from the doorway. And then, familiarly, ‘Emma, I finished, and I put the plate in the sink like you said.’

‘Thank you, Ruth.’

‘Why are you up here?’ asked Ruth.

Here was obviously somewhere one did not go unless one must.

‘I had to see your mummy.’

‘Are you coming back down now?’

‘In a minute, darling.’

Rather than leave, Ruth crossed the threshold into the room and went inside the screen to her own area. The bells jangled and Emma jumped.

She looked at Rachaela appealingly.

‘Why not tell her now?’ said Rachaela, shrinking and cruel at once.

‘Do you think—? Oh lord, I suppose I should.’

Emma stood at a loss.

And Ruth came back from behind the screen with a white paper in her hand, brightly painted green and mauve.

‘Here’s my seahorse, Emma. I forgot to show you. Have I done the tail right?’

‘Oh yes. He’s perfect, Ruth. Shall we put him up with the others?’

‘I want to put in some shells and seaweed first.’

‘All right, you do that, and then we’ll pin him up. It’s becoming quite an art gallery. Would you like to go to a real gallery, Ruth, to look at some paintings?’

‘Will you have time?’ said Rachaela.

A hopeless anger, a kind of fear roiled in her. She wanted it to be over. She wished Emma would take the child downstairs, do it there. It would be nicer to behead her with a carving knife. Would Ruth scream? They had said at the school she had had a screaming session. Nobody knew why. Emma suspected some of the other children had harassed her, but even to Emma, Ruth had been close-mouthed.

Emma had picked the school, Rachaela only signed on the relevant line. The first day Emma had escorted Ruth to the gates and come back with a red nose.

But all that was behind them now.

‘Ruth, lovey, I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘What is it?’ Pleased, the child looked up into Emma’s shadowed glow.

Ruth was not pretty, no Queen of the May. Her skin was ice-white and flawless, her eyes large and luminously black, fringed by reed-thick lashes. Her features were well-shaped even so early, and the jaw placed finely on the white neck with its blue flush of springing hair. Ruth’s hair was straight as falling black water. Something of her father after all.

It was hard to be sure why she was such an unattractive child.

Taken piece by piece, the face was lovely, almost ethereal, but taken all in all it was far from beauty. And in a rage—when some painting eluded her, when she was frustrated or puzzled—it was an ugly, bestial little face.

Soon it would be ugly.

‘You see,’ Emma was saying gamely, ‘my own daughter Liz, you remember Liz? Liz is going to have a baby.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth, seriously, interested.

‘And Liz wants me to go and look after her. And Liz lives in Cheltenham, which is a long way away.’

Ruth nodded. She understood.

She said, business-like, ‘When are we going?’

‘Oh darling,’ cried Emma. ‘Oh darling.’ And could not manage any more.

Rachaela said, ‘You won’t be going, Ruth. Emma has to go. Her daughter needs her. You’ll have to stay here.’

‘No,’ said Ruth, reasonably, I’ll go with Emma.’

Emma said, ‘Darling, I’m afraid—you can’t. You can’t come with me. I wish you could.’

Liar
, Rachaela thought.

Ruth looked blank. She held the seahorse out and gazed at it, as if searching its curves for an answer.

‘You must stay here,’ said Emma, ‘and look after Mummy.’

‘No,’ said Ruth, quietly.

‘Yes, Ruth. That’s how it’s meant to be. I’ve just been borrowing you. It’s been so lovely. And we’ll stay good friends. I’ll write to you every week. I promise. I’ll tell you all about Cheltenham.’

‘No,’ said Ruth. She had not screamed.

‘And I expect I’ll come and see you,’ said Emma. ‘I’ll bring you wonderful presents.’

‘No,’ said Ruth.

‘And maybe one day you can visit me. Rachaela can bring you on the train.’

‘No,’ said Ruth.

‘Oh dear,’ said Emma, ‘darling you must try to understand. It’s very hard I know. I’ll miss you dreadfully. But poor Liz, I have to go. She’s my daughter.’

Ruth said nothing.

She took her picture back with her behind the screen. The bells did not ring.

Emma looked at Rachaela.

‘I’d better leave,’ said Emma. She rubbed her forehead. Plainly she had a headache. ‘If she wants any of her things...’

‘When will you go?’ asked Rachaela.

Ruth must be listening behind the screen.

‘She did say as quickly as possible—Brian will pick me up at the station. Then he said he’d arrange to get my stuff moved out. Liz is pretty desperate.’

Desperate.

‘A month?’

‘More—more like a fortnight,’ Emma faltered. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said again, and went out.

She had not cried. Naturally. What had she to cry about? Ruth had not cried either. Perhaps the outburst would come.

Rachaela looked out at the dusk on the snow street, and the snow piled up against the walls, the pedestrians slipping and sidling along the ice.

The silence in the room was deafening.

The child no longer came home at lunch-time. She took sandwiches and ate them at the school. This was an extra task for Rachaela, the making of sandwiches for the child. Sometimes Emma had given Ruth breakfast too, but breakfast was fairly easy, cornflakes or toast. The evening tea was more irksome. The child required and was used to cooked food. She would let herself into the flat and be waiting for Rachaela behind her screen. She would never speak first.

‘Hallo, Ruth.’

‘Hallo, Mummy.’

Rachaela hated cooking Ruth’s teas. Usually they were not things she herself wanted and so two meals had to be arranged. Rachaela tried to give Ruth what she had had with Emma, things she liked or which would be good for her: sausages and chips, chicken and broccoli, real carrots, grilled fish with cheese and baked beans.

Ruth was used to a dessert too, and Rachaela bought her fruit pies and ice cream, but Emma had made plum tarts and custards, crumbles and baked apples.

Rachaela stocked a large blue bowl with apples, oranges, pears and bananas for the child to eat, as Emma had done.

There had to be orange juice, Lucozade and Pepsi in the fridge.

The fridge was crowded. It was costly, feeding the child.

Luckily the washing machine coped as adequately with Ruth’s clothes as it had been doing for the past six years. Emma had ironed Ruth’s blouses. Rachaela bought new ones which did not need ironing.

After the evening meal, Ruth would retire to her area. She would do her slight homework if she had been given any, or paint wild garish pictures, forests of lions and castles on fire, duels in deserts, ships in tempests. Her imagination was obviously being fed by the school and by the books. Twice a week she went to the library, usually on her own.

She caused, apart from the expensive, awkward food and the constant renewal of clothing, very little trouble.

She slept noiselessly. In the night it was difficult to know that she was there, but for the wall of the screen.

Emma’s flat stood empty for six months before anyone else moved in.

They were unfortunate arrivals: two young men who played loud pop music during the evening and sometimes had noisy rows—including the landing in their sphere of operations.

Ruth did not react to this alien influx. She had never cried over Emma.

At first, Emma’s notes, on brightly coloured paper, had come on every ninth or tenth day. Ruth would retire behind her screen to read them and stored them in one of her drawers. She never made any comment on the notes, seemed neither upset nor glad to receive them. After a couple of months, the notes dwindled. Neither had Ruth ever answered them.

‘If you want to write to Emma,’ said Rachaela, ‘just take some paper and an envelope from the cabinet.’ She had got them in specially. ‘There are plenty of stamps.’ Ruth said yes, she knew about the paper and the stamps. She did not use any.

After four months, Rachaela herself got a letter from Emma. Emma was in heaven, full of news of Liz, but she asked after Ruth. ‘Children are so bad at let ter-writing. I remember I used to be a horror.’ Rachaela answered the letter after a week. Ruth and she were well, nothing had happened, Ruth had a lot of homework just now. Ruth sent her love. Rachaela had not asked Ruth if she wished to send Emma her love. Probably Ruth did not. Emma was over.

This trite communication put an end to Emma’s overtures and she began to fade from their lives.

One day Rachaela found all the coloured letters from Emma to Ruth in the waste-bin under the sink.

In the very beginning she had sat down with Ruth at the small table.

‘I’m sorry about Emma having to go. It’s hard for you. But we’ll just have to do the best we can.’ Ruth had not replied, nor looked at her. She was making a drawing of a tall woman in flowing sleeves. ‘You know I can’t give you as much time as Emma. I’m at work. But if there are any problems, you’ll have to tell me, because Emma won’t be here. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth after a gap.

Rachaela did not say she would leave the child alone as much as possible and that she in turn would expect to be left alone. It was tacitly agreed between them from long experience.

Rachaela thought that the mistake her own mother had made was in her brainwashed attempts to care for and become involved with a child she did not want.

Ruth and she had instead a disarmed neutrality.

They would never be friends, but by keeping a great distance, they might not become enemies.

Rachaela no longer hated Ruth. Ruth was now a sentient being, that could visit the lavatory alone, wash, feed and clothe itself, amuse itself without recourse to her.

Since Ruth had not cried, there had been no onus on Rachaela to extend a prosthesis of sympathy and warmth she could not feel.

For her part, Rachaela tried not to curb the child, but let her go her own wild, silent way.

Ruth never showed Rachaela anything—her art work, her homework or a book—but Rachaela gave her the use of the bookcase, overloaded now, and once or twice when money had been freer had bought Ruth books of fantastic art, Kay Nielsen, Vali Myers. Ruth took these gifts politely, but she pored over them in her burrow.

Emma had left her two glass paperweights and a blue glass cat. For her eighth birthday Rachaela bought Ruth something from the local Sunday market, with misgiving and a knowledge of unassailable rightness. It was a mirror inset with purple iris flowers, peacocks’ feathers, shells of pink opaque glass. ‘Oh,’ said Ruth when she saw it. She thanked Rachaela coolly and bore the glass into her cubby.

The plant, David, had died although Rachaela had put it in a window. Now Ruth began to collect, with saved-up pocket money, false flowers of enamel, and finally a birdcage with a painted wooden linnet.

Glimpsing into her daughter’s area—the strip of wall now hung with strange prints in clip frames and Ruth’s own latest exotic work, the mirror, the bells and shawls, flowers and cage and even, just above the chest, the white face of a clock which did not go—Rachaela saw Scarabae. Perhaps she had encouraged it, or not. Ruth was a living plant which put out stained-glass flowers. You could not snap them off, as perhaps Rachaela’s own mother had tried to do. For how much of the shadowy Scarabae had she seen in her daughter, and tried to poison with her haircuts and crosses on the sprouts?

Beyond the windows, out in the streets, the coloured glass of the seasons came and went. The distant park was like a calendar. Green, yellow and brown the pages fell from its trees, black spider-web bareness and another ice age of pure snow.

Emma was never mentioned.

The school took Ruth to museums, art galleries and gardens; the seaside.

At night and the weekends, they sat in silence but for the music centre and the thump-thump from the flat below.

It was easy yet impossible to forget the child was there.

Jonquil was in the shop when the young woman came in. She was about twenty-two or three, with glasses and a washed young face. She walked up to Rachaela.

‘Mrs Day?’

‘Yes,’ said Rachaela.

‘Ms,’ said Jonquil, ‘Mzzz Day.’

‘Oh, well,’ said the young woman. ‘I’m Miss Barrett, from Ruth’s school.’

‘What’s happened?’ asked Jonquil.

‘Oh, nothing—well, something. But I mean Ruth’s quite all right. I’m sorry to bother you at work, Mrs Day. But I wanted a word with you when the child wasn’t there.’

Jonquil swung her boots off the counter.

‘Go through to the back, Rachaela. Take Mzzz Barrett with you. I’ll see to those magazines.’

They went into the back room. It was crammed with boxes and piled by books. Letters overspilled a tray and the old typewriter squatted among the coffee things. Over a radiator hung three pairs of Denise’s tights, long dry, ‘As I say, I’m sorry about seeking you out, Mrs Day, but I felt it would be best to talk to you without Ruth. If you prefer I can come to your flat at a convenient time.’

‘When I’m there, Ruth is always there. What’s the matter?’

‘Well, I don’t want to alarm you. It’s probably nothing, children get these strange little fancies. One shouldn’t make too much of them, but then again, they need watching. I wonder if you’ve noticed anything like it.’