Shadow Play (20 page)

Michael persuaded a nursing auxiliary to try at work. Not there, said the auxiliary, apologetic for not being able to aid the course of romance. When told there was someone to see him, his heart had leapt against his ribs, then descended.

The woman was slim, dark and smart, a professional-looking stranger with a nice face, but she was not Rose Darvey.

‘Don't worry,' said Helen, presenting a dozen white daffodils. ‘This isn't a social call.'

When she left, he felt better.

 

R
ose Darvey's mind had crawled up and down walls for thirty-six hours. Late on Saturday night when the disappointment was becoming terminal and she was sick with the cigarettes that her body loathed but her misery craved, she was stationed by her bedroom window when she heard a panda car cruising down the street. By that time the bitter hurt was belly side up and beyond logic. Oh, go on, she'd told herself earlier, he only half promised, no more than that, and was not comforted, then the sound of an engine sent her rushing to the light switch to turn her bedroom into darkness. If it was him, she would be out, teach him a lesson, make him worried; who did he think he was, that Michael? Half of her knew, even as she resumed the watching by the window, that she would never keep it up. That if he got out of the car and rang the bell, she would fling open the window and yell at him, or run down to the door, whichever movement occurred first, but she could not have let him go. The other girls, with their new friendliness, told her what a find Michael was. ‘Yeah?' she shrugged.

They went out, she stayed in, couldn't bear to step out of doors in case she missed him, waited in silence with her mounting anger and misery. Gran was forgotten, except for a furious guilt about how she had made a mess of that longed-for reunion, but then what did she expect? She always screwed up everything, every bloody thing. Rushing Gran home, so she could be back here to wait for nothing but this agonising pain, making her feel as if she were some live specimen, with a spike through her head and a chain to the wall, confined to the circuit of her room, tethered, pacing, wincing.

On Sunday she rallied, after furious dialogues with herself had somehow induced a sort of sleep. She thought briefly of all the reasons why he might not have arrived the night before. None of them bore close inspection.

‘Did he turn up? Mr Gorgeous, I mean?'

‘Naa. He phoned though,' she lied. ‘Extra duties, he said. Probably a football match.'

‘What, at the stadium? But they didn't play last night. At least I don't think—'

‘What do you know?'

She cleaned her room again, singing to pretend she hadn't been found out and that within this little, expedient household she was becoming ever more the freak. Out to an off-licence with her much abused credit card to buy beer for the girls and enough booze for herself to induce a total anaesthetic. On Sundays, they went home to see mothers: complicated journeys to Crystal Palace and Neasden which made a trip to the Gulag sound easy, the way they described it. They would come back grumbling about nagging and trains while she died of envy.

Sunday, early evening, the phone rang. She launched herself towards it.

‘Hallo, is that Rose baby? How ya doing?'

‘Who's that?'

‘Paul. Paul Williams. You remember me, surely? Police
Constable
Paul Williams. Thought you might like a drink.'

‘Who was it you said you wanted?' She put on her haughtiest mimic, trying to sound like Dinsdale Cotton. The odious voice on the other end paused, briefly.

‘Aw, come on, Rose, I know it's you.' He knew it from the diary taken from Michael's pocket as they looked for the address of his next of kin. ‘What about that drink, then? Aren't Sundays boring?'

‘Not that boring,' said Rose.

The room swam as she crashed the receiver back on the kitchen wall. Little shit. Cheap jack little shit with a cock like a thin banana. Shit on Michael too. They all did that. Passed you along. Left you wide open for your big daddy to find you, with your legs spread open on a slab. Get your knickers off, Rose.

 

S
unday night, bad coughing. Glazed over a TV film, beer, martini. Monday morning, decided she couldn't show this face to the world, wouldn't be able to keep up the façade and crack jokes all day. Lay down, got up, walked around, afflicted less by Michael than all the dirty laundry of her grubby little life and the self-disgust which went with it. Shadow play, distraction as the light fell and the condensation formed at the window, and she had nothing to do, the phone was silent and she felt dead. Shadow play, lying alone with the second tumbler of stuff, her back uncomfortable against all her teddy bears and dolls, her fingers making eagles on the far wall. Then a bunny rabbit with waggling ears. Then a house with a roof you could turn inside out by inverting your hands against the light. Here's the church, here's the steeple: open it up and you see the people.

‘No, I liked the bunny rabbit,' she heard herself saying, nervously. ‘Give me the bunny rabbit. Or the kangaroo, jumping, I don't mind.'

‘You don't mind?' Daddy's voice. ‘You don't mind? Here, feel this.'

‘Don't, Daddy, please don't, don't, don't, I don't like it, please don't, Granny wouldn't like it.'

‘Granny says it's fine, it's good for little girls, to look after their daddy …'

‘Don't, Daddy, please don't. I'll scream, Daddy.'

‘You wouldn't do that, now would you? What's the matter? It's only my little lollipop.'

‘I don't want it, Daddy, I'll scream.'

‘No you won't. Who'll hear? Just put it in your mouth. No harm …'

‘I can't.'

‘Yes you can. No, put it in the other place. You want Daddy to love you, don't you? Then I'll make you a bunny rabbit.' That sound of desperate breathing he made as they lay on his bed, she sticky, weeping.

And on, and on. The shadow play for two years: pain and soreness and itching and crying and never telling, in case she should lose him. Only her and Dad against the world. Then a pause for two whole years in which she could not quite stop looking round all the time. Then again, with a different violence when she was nearly fourteen, still a child, but old enough to know and to fight. Hit him with the kitchen knife. Trying to cut at Daddy's lollipop because she could not bear it any more, didn't care if she lived or died, carving a loop in his stomach instead. Blood all over the lino on the kitchen, that look of hatred on his face, Mum coming home.

Daddy said she tempted him, she was the devil. No wonder no-one could love her. They would want to stone her, he had shouted, like they did in the Bible. Outside the city walls. Stone her to death and leave her there.

Rose came round, sweating. You could always relive being fucked by Daddy.

 

A
shower of gravel hit the bedroom window. Small stones stinging the glass. Rose had been transfixed by her hands twisting themselves into shadows against the far wall which she watched like one waiting for an omen. She swung her feet off her bed as another shower followed the first. An alarming sound, one which should have had her hiding, but so novel in its peremptory summons for attention that hope sprang, then faded as she heard someone shouting her name. It came from the great distance of the street below. The voice sounded like something from the penumbra of the same dream, Gran's voice, scolding to make her achieve.

Down in the street, Helen waited for a response. She had aimed for the only window showing light and now she leant against the front door. When it opened fast, she stumbled and both of them swore.

‘What the hell …? What the fuck do you think you're doing, chucking things at people's windows? Oh, for Christ's sake, come in. You doing welfare as well as law, now? Come in.'

Once the foundations of defence showed cracks, it was easy to let them crumble further as long as a bedrock was left. Rose took Helen indoors because they had found each other in a pregnancy clinic and they both liked shopping. Tea was made. The kitchen was immaculate; somewhere in two days' meandering, Rose's small amount of surplus energy had taken a domestic direction. Helen opened the fridge to find milk to go with tea and found four cans of lager, diet coke, jam, low-calorie margarine, all the typical foods for three girls slimming or slumming.

‘Now, Rose. What's up?'

The child shrugged, desperately relieved to see another face but trying not to let it show.

‘If you're ill … you don't look too hot, can I contact anyone for you? Or will I do?'

‘I'm not that ill. It's just this cough. No, like I told you, no-one to tell. No mum and dad, no thanks.'

‘Fine, but you might like to put your coat on and go and see your beloved if you aren't at death's door. He's champing at the bit, but leave it for half an hour, then I'll give you a lift. His mum and dad were arriving as I left, and he's a bit rocky. Are we talking about the same bloke? Michael.'

‘What? Oh, him.'

‘In hospital, you dope. Accident on duty, Saturday; something fell on his head, but part of the headache seems to be worrying about you.'

‘Worried!' Rose burst. ‘He only gives away my phone number and tells all his mates where to find me! Fat lot he cares!'

Helen considered this. There was something pathological about Rose's secrecy; Michael had hinted as much and it was obvious anyway. Takes one to know one, Helen thought. She knew about secrecy, but not quite to this degree.

‘He didn't give anything away, at least as far as he knows. Maybe he rambled in his sleep, he was knocked out, see? Men never do have control over anything important. On the other hand, the lads might well have gone through his pockets. Anyway, he told me he couldn't send anyone round with a message, because you'd think he was “throwing you back in the pond”. Does that make sense?'

It did. Rose's face was undergoing a gradual transformation, from pale to pink, from pinched old woman to glorious juvenile, until finally, she smiled. There is nothing in the whole wide world, Helen thought, quite as powerful as a beautiful girl, so powerful, it was as well so few of them understood it. As suddenly as she smiled, Rose slumped again. Not back to where she had been, but halfway up.

‘I bet he doesn't really want to see me. He thinks I'm a mess.'

She pulled out a cigarette and lit it, grimacing with the coughing. ‘And he's right, I am a mess. A right, fucking mess.'

Helen took this literally, quite deliberately.

‘If I looked as gorgeous as you on a day's sick and a broken heart, I'd be out there dancing a tango.'

‘Not that kind of mess. The other kind.'

‘Look, do you think you could give me a clue? Just a small one, no need to go mad. Such as why you're so cagey about your address?'

Rose twisted her hands together, turned her fingers inside out. Here's the church, here's the steeple … She looked at them, funny-looking mitts, and sat on them, fixing her eyes on the smoke from the abandoned cigarette.

‘It's my dad. It's all his fault, no, all mine, in a way. He keeps looking for me.' The rest emerged in so sudden a rush it was as if she had recently swallowed an emetic. ‘You see, what happened before I left home, with my mum, well I had a go at him. With a knife, as it happens. A big kitchen knife. We borrowed it from Gran …' Rose added inconsequentially, the voice trailing away, hidden in a lunge towards an uncomfortable drag on her cigarette.

‘Oh yes?' Helen said conversationally. ‘What had he done to deserve that? He must have done something.'

Rose was silent.

‘I once bit a bloke,' Helen volunteered. ‘On the arm, not the balls or anything, but it wasn't a nibble either. I was like a Rottweiler. I think it bled a lot, but then he was trying to kill me. I often wonder if he would have done it. Probably not.'

Rose's eyes widened.

‘That's how I got this,' Helen continued idly, gesturing to the thin line of scar which graced the width of her forehead. ‘So I reckon he did me more damage than I did him. I hate that boy. I wouldn't have bitten him for nothing, but it was the best thing I could have done.'

‘Why?' Rose was incredulous.

‘It made me realise afterwards that I wasn't a total victim. I wasn't exactly brave, but I wasn't helpless either. It's the sort of thing that stops you losing your mind.'

The tannin in the tea was as sour as the memory. Silence fell at the kitchen table.

‘I thought you led such sheltered lives, you lawyers,' Rose said finally, a shade mocking.

‘Sheltered? Oh yes. By and large I have, we do. Anyway, what had your father done?'

The barriers came down on Rose's confiding. Enough was enough.

‘All right, as long as you know I'm on your side.' Helen put down her mug and grinned the grin which went from ear to ear. ‘I mean, we'd better be friends, hadn't we? We're probably the only women we both know who go round knifing and biting people.'

Rose snorted with laughter and stubbed out her cigarette with an angry passion. She spoke only after she had ground it into a saucer and watched its demise with apparent fascination.

‘My dad's looking for me 'cos he wants to pay me back. He writes to me. He writes when he finds out where I am. So far he's always found where I am, someone says or whatever. I thought it was safer in a way to come back closer, London's so big. Anyway, so far, it works. Go to work for a big office. I love that place: it's safe, you can get lost in it. Only I can't stand the dark anywhere else, and my dad wants to have me back and pay me back. I can't fight him any more. I can't.'

With the last, shivery smoke from the cigarette, the confidences had now ended along with the tea. Helen sensed a mere scratching of the surface but there could be no more talking without both of them having something to hold; tea, food, anything. No acting without a cue, no speech without props, something to do with the hands.