The Ruby Slippers (10 page)

‘Daddy?’ she whispers, desperate to connect again, but he gives her not a glance – the call has claimed him, every particle. She watches, quivering as he says, ‘Yes . . . yes . . .’ all slow and dreadful. The seconds creeping by as she watches and sees the words take him over, one by one, like thieves into his ear.

Corinne calls out, crabbily, ‘Siobhan – now!’

And there he betrays her – too dazed by what he has heard to understand that by giving himself to this he took away what was hers; too staggered by the fearful news to see her eyes mist over, or even to notice when her angry mother marches across, grabs her by the arm and drags her to the car.

And that is it, they go, the teenager bundled off by the wounded mother; the old car coughing and juddering away. He didn’t even say goodbye – just stood there in the doorway, far away again and unwaving.

■ ♦ ■

As the grocer lady rolls up the shutter and the grocer man unlocks the door, Harrison takes up his hiding place in the record-store entrance. Will they hide it down in the store, or will they take it upstairs to their apartment? The shutter slams down again and a pool of light appears below – a conspirators’ light: so they are guilty about what they have done. Good: more power to him. He runs across the road, eager to see, to spy, to get closer to his prize.

Michael has started to shiver and shake, even though they are in the warm again. As Grace locks the door, he gingerly places the box on the counter, relieved to shed himself of his sinful burden. Grace, though, is less troubled by conscience. ‘So, open it,’ she says.

‘Again?’ he says. ‘But it isn’t ours.’

‘What are you, a fool?’ she splutters impatiently, and forces off the lid. She reaches her hand in and brings out a lilac letter, leaving the slippers untouched. ‘It isn’t ours,’ he repeats pathetically, as she flourishes the letter under his nose. ‘Whose writing is this?’ she snaps back, showing him the scrawl on the envelope, which says simply, ‘To Whom it Concern’. ‘Well, hers, of course.’

‘So who then is supposed to read it, if not us?’ She reaches across the counter for a knife, slits open the envelope and slides out a letter on thin expensive paper. Michael glimpses the familiar old writing, as she unfolds the letter and peers at it, holding it right up to the end of her nose. She shakes her head and bares her teeth in irritation, unable to decipher the spidery shapes: ‘My God, I think this is in Latvian.’

Michael, forced to play his part, takes the letter from her and scrutinizes the words. For some strange reason he has always been able to decipher Rosa’s difficult hand.

‘It’s not, it’s English.’

‘Well, read it then.’

Michael clears his throat and tries to capture something of Rosa’s voice in his delivery:

Here is written the truth of these shoes, which may be of import to whoever will read this, so I waste no time to explain. Many years ago, I was working in the costume department of the film The Wizard of Oz. If I may say so myself, I was young and beautiful
. . .

‘For God’s sake, cut the dramatics and just read the damn thing!’ hisses Grace. Michael coughs and continues, more matter-of-fact:

There was a boyfriend, a young actor who had high hopes but was at the time a set-painter on the film. One day, we went back to the empty lot to be together (I leave you to imagine) in the shadow of the Palace of Oz. Even though it was a stage set, this was a magical place and we were together in the make-believe meadow outside the palace gates and it was oh so romantic. But I then saw beneath a Camelia bush a pair of the ruby slippers
. . .

Michael pauses for effect. Grace nods frantically for him to continue, as he does, with growing wonder.

They must have been left there by the props people. I myself many times had placed the slippers on Miss Garland’s feet. But never did they lose for me their fascination. There were other pairs that had been made, and I knew that they would not seriously be missed
.

Grace raises an eyebrow, eliciting from Michael his own beetle-browed observation: ‘Ah, but that means she —’

‘Shush! Go on!’

‘OK, OK . . .’

And they have remained all these years since, in this box, sustaining me in a cruel and unforgiving world . . .

Michael stops mid-flow, hoping to see some sign of fellow feeling on Grace’s face, but seeing nothing of the kind, he waxes dramatic again:

The comfort I have received, just knowing that these magical shoes are with me, has given me a warmth in my heart, which has made me laugh when perhaps I should have cried. You who read this have inherited the ruby slippers. They will not mean to you what they have meant to me, but I ask you please to allow . . .

His voice cracks, as in the moment he sees it all through the eyes of a young girl with vivid dreams in a more innocent age. Grace gives him a hard squinty look to bring him back up to speed.

. . . To allow for the possibility that they may . . . bring some good into your life
.

He drops his head, musing over Rosa’s wasted years. He is just about to pronounce on the awesomeness of it all when Grace pipes up breathily: ‘Listen, Michael, five or six years ago, I think it was, a pair of these – I’m sure of it – they sold. It was on the TV; they went for a fortune. I mean a very,
very
large sum of money. A seriously large amount!’ This seems to Michael absurd, but she is adamant: ‘It was, it was, I tell you! Listen, these are the real thing!’ But this only makes Michael all the more slow and stubborn in response.

‘Hmm. According to this, these shoes were stolen.’

‘Oh yeah? Were they now?’ And now it’s her turn to milk the moment. Michael watches aghast as Grace proceeds to rip up Rosa’s letter and throw the pieces in the bin. She turns on him, strong and forceful, setting out the party line: ‘The slippers came from our eccentric relative – given into our safe-keeping many years ago . . .’

‘But we can’t. She —’

‘She came by them honestly. Judy Garland herself gave them to her, in thanks for her services and her kindness. And who can say otherwise? You said it yourself, Michael; everything is gone from us. Look at us.’ He knows without having to look the weary desperation that is in her spirit – and in his – so long have they laboured under it. ‘We need this. We deserve it,’ she pleads, and he can see in her eyes a passion that has been missing for so long. But there is accusation in them, too, which makes him bow his head in submission. She shuts the lid and bundles the box into his arms.

‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

‘Take it downstairs and hide it. It won’t fit in the safe.’

Outside, Harrison is pressed up against the window – now pressing his ear to it, now squinting between the gaps in the shutters. He has caught some of the fervent conversation – enough to know that his hunch was right and the shoes are precious. And now he hears Michael’s footsteps clacking over the wood towards the cellar door. He comes alert again and scoots round to the side alley. The wall here is forbidding and lightless, but the knife is in his hand again as he creeps along: he saw them take the dog down there, and he will finish it off if he has to. In the dense dark he stumbles against the kennel, wondering what the hell it is, until he smells the animal inside and hears it snuffle. Amazing – the thing has neither bark nor bite. But then, looking for the side window he knows to be there, he realizes the kennel is covering it and, bending to put his back into it, he shunts and slides the kennel – dog and all – off its spot.

Now he can see the narrow slit of the cellar window down at foot level, and yes, a tiny light is there. Harrison throws himself down and sprawls, his eye at the edge of the frame – so what if there be shit on the ground. He peers through the grime, his neck twisted round. He can make out stuff . . . just – the tops of shelves in a murky sprawl and the door frame over in the corner – but he cannot see to the ground, where the grocer must be. But then, bizarrely, something appears above the shelves: the top of a ladder. And then something new looms up, light and airy: a golden capsule, the hatbox, floating in space. Like a UFO, it seems to hover in mid-air, before shifting sideways and landing on the shelf-top with a puff of dust. Then, comically, the top of the grocer’s head pops up, cut off below the nose, eyes goggling like something in a kiddie’s cut-out book. Harrison can actually hear him, wheezing and spluttering as he pushes the hatbox further onto the shelf-top. It is beyond belief. Would they really be so dumb as to hide the ruby slippers in such a stupid way? Then the grocer man is gone, the ladder is gone and, with sudden nothing the light is gone. Harrison hauls himself up and dusts himself down. The smell of his own piss hits him and in a second he is cold to the core.

■ ♦ ■

He goes straight to the hospital. Siobhan, Corinne, everything that has passed this day is wiped out the moment he puts the cell phone back in his pocket.

He takes the elevator straight up to level eight, as he has done for the past two weeks. What do I do? he wonders. What do I say? He has mentally rehearsed this rendezvous with death many times over, but never properly got to grips with the savage detail of it. He pushes open the door to Intensive Care. The duty sister is at the desk. With a sad tilt of his head, he catches her eye and she leans across and squeezes his hand, a decent woman, his instincts tell him: ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

‘When?’

‘Uh, around three. We tried to ring you, but . . .’

‘Oh, God, I was switched off.’

‘So, would you like – I suppose you were hoping to see him?’

‘Uh . . . Yes . . . Yes, I, I suppose I should.’ Of course, he must see Paolo. He owes it to him to make the final . . . witnessing. He braces himself for what is to come, expecting her to lead him through to Paolo’s room, there to turn back the sheet and reveal him laid out. But all she does is go back behind the counter to consult her records. ‘Well, it’s up to you: you can wait and talk to the doctor, or you could go down there now.’

‘Down there?’

‘To the morgue.’

Such a brutal word, so blunt and unkind.

‘Ah. Oh. Yes,’ he stammers aimlessly.

He takes the elevator. Down, down it takes him, descending through the layers. Darkening. When he exits, two floors below ground, he finds himself in a godforsaken space lined overhead with a sprawl of ducts and littered with broken gurneys and cages stuffed with dirty laundry. The clutter clears as he walks the corridor towards the morgue itself, the colour draining away with each stride – ceilings, walls and floor merging to a grey emptiness. He arrives outside locked, faceless double doors, the word ‘Morgue’ printed stark on a sign. He pictures the cadavers, sheet-shrouded, labelled and neatly stowed away in cold drawers – death wrapped in banality. There is a grubby bell push on the wall. He presses it, hearing no sound, and hovers there a full minute, debating with himself whether to risk outrage and ring again or even bash on the doors. But then they open and a tired little man in a crumpled suit appears, asks his name and demands, ‘Name of deceased?’ James provides the terrible information and the man flits back inside, without comment and without any hint of human kindness on his face.

No one is in a hurry here, plainly. Ten more minutes pass; he tires of standing and drops into a battered canvas chair against the wall. He had entered the hospital clean and dignified, intending to manage everything calmly, but now here he is, slumped and done-for in a grubby seat in a vile corridor. He forces himself to sit up straight, his own humanness contracted to a hard shrunken knot. Five dying minutes follow before the door opens again and the little man pops out and dispenses words as if James has called by to collect an unclaimed parcel:

‘Sorry, but access is denied.’

He can’t quite take it in: ‘I beg your pardon . . .?’

‘You can’t come in here. Access denied. Next of kin only.’

‘But I’m his partner.’

‘Do you have a certificate of civil partnership?’

‘No, no. We . . .’

‘And you are not the next of kin?’

‘Not in name, but—’

‘Then I’m sorry, sir. Next of kin only.’

And with that the man steps back inside and ends it with the shutting of the door.

James crashes inside, sick to the core, sweat creeping under his shirt. Technically, he is not Paolo’s next of kin, they never made such an arrangement, even in the last days. Pieces of paper, what need did he and Paolo have of them? All dignity deserted, James shuffles back to the elevator and up, chaos raging in his head as it halts for people to enter and leave at every floor. Somehow he makes it to the eighth floor again and stumbles to the counter where the ward sister is arranging satin flowers.

‘They won’t let me in there!’ he blurts out, desperate for her sympathy, but her priorities have shifted. The bed linen has been changed and the record sheet with it – there is a new patient in Paolo’s place, a new care package to be delivered.

‘Oh dear,’ she pronounces vaguely.

‘Do I have no say at all?’ He flops into a seat, his question answered by her silence. The sister is wary, her quota of kindness spent; he cannot sit there all day, taking up space.

‘Maybe you should go home and rest a little. It would be for the best.
Really.’

This solitary word laid down so flat and final that he jumps up, practically to attention, saying, ‘Sorry. Sorry. I—’

‘No problem,’ she says with a professional smile, and he stumbles away, hands to his head and hunched over in confusion. But then he turns back to her: ‘Oh, please, I wasn’t thinking. I should take away his things . . .’ She manufactures a pause, for the sake of decency at least. ‘Oh, didn’t you know? They already did that.’

The shock of it. He can barely look at her to ask: ‘But who . . .?’

‘The family. His family. About five o’clock, it was. They came and took it all away. Everything.’

■ ♦ ■

Michael lies awake. At his side, Grace lies on her back, snoring lightly. He prods her gently in the ribs, and she rolls over and away into silky sleep. He is ablaze inside. How extraordinary this night has been, how totally weird and wonderful! He closes his eyes, seeing a shifting of shapes, vast and luminous, like clouds passing across the moon. The ruby slippers! No one could possibly know how much they mean – have meant – to him, long before this day. Michael’s mind wanders now to a place that has lain unvisited in decades. A medieval city so quaint in the recall he can’t quite believe it was ever real: the domes, the turrets and the cobbled squares, so dazzling in summer, so hushed in winter’s snows. The war changed all that. Aunt Rosa had somehow gotten out of Riga and away to the States before the Nazis came. He was only three years old at the time. Along with the rest of his family, he suffered and saw his city turned over, leeched of any goodness. And, after, he joined his father, stumbling over broken buildings in search of anything that had stayed in one piece and could be sold that they might eat.