Shadow Play (15 page)

‘Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm doth bind the restless wave …'

The foot on his neck and the pressure on his throat made his voice sound cracked and the same mood of bitter self-pity which had sat on his head while he waited in the cell descended on him again. He needed to talk, he needed Margaret's soft, scented bosom in which to confide; he had to make a plan in which she would assist him to find her, his missing child. His daughter, find her and bring her home before the cancer of her loss affected all the extremities of his life and limbs. Love or revenge, either would do.

Lurching down the alley, he saw first the light of Margaret's door, then his trolley, upturned in the back yard with the contents spilled. He picked up the broken chair and threw it feebly, and when he bent over to examine the rest, smelt the whisky from the broken bottle and thought his head would burst. He knocked at Margaret's door, heard a scuffle inside, followed by a suspicious silence. The second knock was a good deal more aggressive. After another long pause, he saw her silhouette through the reeded glass of her half-glazed door, standing back.

‘Who is it?' She sounded muffled, unwelcoming. In the near distance, he heard a ragged cheer from the football crowd.

‘Me,' he said impatiently. ‘Who else? Come on over, will you?'

‘I can't,' she said. ‘I've got a child here, asleep, Logo, I can't.'

‘Well, let me in then. Open the door when you're talking to me, can't you?'

‘No I can't do that either.' Her voice was firmer. ‘Not tonight, another night. Or maybe later.'

‘Let me in, you old cow!' he shouted suddenly. ‘Just let me in! I need you, I need you …' He kicked the door hard with one foot, winced as pain jarred through his ankle. Her voice rose in reply.

‘You aren't the only one who needs me. Stop it, Logo, don't be silly. I'll see you later.'

He kicked the door again, with the other foot, sulkily.

‘Go away!' she shouted. ‘Go away!'

The surprise of this unprecedented rejection made him obey. He lurched across to his own door, pushed it open and turned on the light to his dirtyish, cold kitchen. An acidic bitterness burned through his bruises. He had helped that woman rebuild her fire while he had none, he had brought home the kindling and sometimes stolen fuel even when he needed none for himself, the old cow. Logo switched on the electric fire with its two sparking bars and waited for the warmth to fill his bones with that cheerless heat. He huddled over it, tempted to weep and watch his tears sizzle themselves to death. Oh, they were all such turncoats, women, beyond redemption. Tempted a man with their bodies and their creature comforts and kind words and in the end gave nothing, took back all you had given with the talent of usurers, extracting the last drop of interest.

‘Man that is born of woman is of a few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as shadow and continueth not … Who can bring a clean thing out of unclean? Not one.' He was moaning, words came out by themselves.

Shivering still, he dipped back out into the backyard and in the light from his own doorway, found his Bible on the ground. It, too, smelt of the spilt whisky, another desecration, but the damp solidity of the paper still gave comfort. He had never really needed to read his Bible, only to hold it and quote his disjointed quotes from it which memory jumbled into meaningless mantra phrases.

He went upstairs and found his daughter's school exercise books. Saw the handwriting of old essays and spelling tests, school projects all stored with the dismembered torso of a teddy bear in a drawer in his room. She had left so little behind. The central light in the room had no shade; neither did the lamp by his bed which shone on the immovable suitcase. Logo lay down, still cold, raised his hands in front of his eyes to examine the red weals left by the handcuffs, felt his grazed and grossly bruised face, wondering at its whole new set of swollen contours. God help me, even with these afflictions, Margaret would not let me in. A deep and dark suspicion began to haunt him. Then he looked at his hands again, more carefully, balled them into fists and punched them. Then hooked them together by the thumbs and began against the far wall, his game of shadow play.

 

W
hat should she do next? What did a person ever do when they were waiting, especially if they were not used to waiting? Helen had found it thus when waiting for a jury to come back with a verdict, waiting for a case to come on for trial, the waiting time was useless, captive to expectation, a vacuum where logic and concentration were displaced by rage or anxiety. Waiting time was the only time in which she could ever acknowledge boredom. People waiting together grew close; people waiting for one another grew distant with every passing minute.

Helen was waiting for Bailey. The tersest of messages on her answerphone announced his presence which was more than half expected this Friday evening anyway. He could get away with a week, not with a fortnight. She had been turning somersaults in the last eight days and she had been shopping.

Shopping was always that mixture of excitement and guilt, but better than yoga in terms of total distraction. She and Rose had parted with genuine regret. Rose's boy would not keep her waiting, he would be straining at the leash. If ever Helen had flung a leash round Bailey's neck, now would be the time to pull it. Instead she was doing housework because he was very late indeed and she was storing up trouble like gas in a balloon.

The sound of his steps fell into her basement, with the loud tread of uncertainty. A car roared off into the distance with a joyous burst of power, not his car, Helen knew the sound, and not a taxi. Someone had given him a lift home. Maybe that little troublemaker, Ryan, who always found her lacking in female duties and judged her accordingly, Helen knew, although their mutual liking was as strong as the disapproval. Bailey hit the French windows at the front of her flat with a stern and well-controlled rap of his knuckles, which she ignored. Sober persons came in through the front door, having rung the bell. To hell with his short cuts. He rapped again. This time she relented and let him in.

‘Sorry I'm late,' he beamed. ‘Or did you get the message? Only we finished mid-afternoon, then we stopped off, you know how it is.'

She did know how it was, she had done it herself all too often. It was a hazard of both their lives, but she still remained stiff and unyielding in his large embrace. Bailey, who was normally so immaculate without the fastidiousness of perfume smells or perfect creases to his trousers, now smelt a little stale and beery. His hair was messy, his tie crooked from being loosened and hurriedly straightened, then loosened again and she did not want to investigate the source of the other scents he carried about himself, like nicotine, perfume, dog. He looked like a man who had spent a week camping and returned via a brothel, still pleased to see her.

‘Did you forget your key?' she asked by way of a purely neutral greeting.

‘Yup. Forgot everything. Shouldn't have let Ryan drive home either. Back to college! Must go on more courses! Lessons in irresponsibility! I can't tell you how nice it is, on one level anyway. Everything structured, even get woken up in the morning, good food. No decisions about where to go next, even after lessons, then Ryan makes them. How are you? Oh good, you've been shopping, something new. Lovely, I like it.'

Helen was washed and changed, two glasses of wine away from total sobriety. Part of the spoils of shopping were the tiny earrings which sparkled in her ears, very understated, she resented him noticing. Rose had not approved. ‘You want great big earrings, Aunty, not them mingy little things,' but Rose had approved the steak and packeted salad, bought on the run with extravagant ease for the West-Bailey supper. ‘More time for real shopping,' she had added, a distinction which Helen heartily approved.

Helen returned the pressure of Bailey's embrace without much of the feeling, deciding he was not really drunk, merely a little under the influence, which was the most he ever got since the stuff seemed to lodge in his bones rather than his brain. It explained the geniality.

‘A drink?' she asked, over brightly. ‘There's food too, of course.'

‘Oh yes, oh yes. A drink first. Then let's go out to eat. I don't take you out enough. Oh my God.' He sat down suddenly, still in his winter coat, laughing.

‘What?'

‘I've left my car in Bramshill. Well, that limits any movements, doesn't it?'

‘I'm not driving,' she added, flourishing the wine bottle and pouring him a glass, thinking of drunk drivers.

‘Oh,' he said without rancour or comprehension. ‘Never mind. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not very hungry.'

Helen thought of the mountain of food standing by and suppressed the desire to shout at him. ‘I'll do something anyway,' she said, keeping her voice level.

‘Great,' he grinned.

She couldn't bear to be in the same room so she made herself busy, action being the antidote to irritation, but when she came back to where he was, only minutes later, still ready to shout, Bailey's wine was drunk and he was fast asleep.

His coat was on the floor, lying at his feet like a dog. His suit was rumpled. Helen undid the loosened tie, tucked a blanket round him, neatly under his chin so he looked like a baby with an extra-large bib. With that image in mind she finished the bottle of wine and went to bed alone.

 

R
ose Darvey's hand inside Michael's was warm. He was silent which she did not mind, since it was a warm silence and her hand was being held inside his pocket and she was more than glad to chatter. They were walking away from her flat. For the first time ever she was being collected from home by a man she adored to go for a meal out in formal fashion. The relief from the morning's anxiety and the day which had followed, had both been times of unholy joy, but this was the cream. They were late because they had lingered on this the first time she had ever allowed a friend across the portals of the upstairs rooms. The two other girls had been agog, they had preened before him, and in return he had been his usual, easy, friendly self, crowding in the kitchen with his big male presence, while behind his back they had made exaggerated signs of approval to Rose, thumbs-up gestures accompanied by great rolling of the eyes.

‘Did you go for that test?' one of them hissed as she crossed with Rose coming out of the bathroom door.

‘Yeah,' Rose whispered back. ‘Don't say nothing. It was negative, false alarm. What d'you think of him, then?'

The other put her finger on her lips, to promise silence. There was no envy in the gesture, only a gleeful solidarity. ‘He's OK,' said Rose's friend, diffidently.

That had been the understatement of the year, Rose thought as she walked along with Michael. She was acting like a chattering celebrity, regal and voluble.

‘Well,' she was saying. ‘You'd never guess what happened to me today …' It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him how the day had started, but then caution prevailed. ‘Well, I had to go up Oxford Street, on a message, and guess what? While I was there, I met that Miss W., you know Helen West, the lawyer in our office I told you about, the one I said was a stuck-up cow, but she isn't really, not at all. So she buys me a coffee, well six coffees and a sandwich to tell the truth, and the two of us go shopping, just like that! Six hours' shopping, I ask you! It was easy.'

‘Six hours!' was all he could echo. ‘Six hours! Don't ask me to go up the West End with you, will you? Six hours! You must be barmy, but then I always knew you were a bit cracked.' It was said with light teasing and increased pressure on her warm hand, as they reached the car.

In fact there was little he could say or wanted to say; he felt like someone in an extract from
My Fair Lady
or
Singin' in the Rain.
There should have been a big band playing at the end of the street while he danced down it, singing and swinging on the lamp-posts, throwing his helmet in the air, that kind of thing. A copper in love. The thought was laughable. He felt more disposed to laugh than to sing, and although he had never had difficulty expressing himself to Rose, he was short of words now. Michael was silent because he was entranced by her. She had greeted him at the door (the address, God knows, had taken a fortnight to prise from her), blushing through her make-up, dressed in black leggings and a longline jacket of red wool with a black collar. Her hair was slicked back against her head, and apart from that absurd plait the whole effect was just amazing. He had said so immediately and she had blushed further. There was about her a certain joy, a rich chuckling and the proud embarrassment with which she introduced him to her flat-mates. To know that he was responsible for that gaiety, that swift but steady metamorphosis from the sad and spiky waif he had picked from the damp garden of a damp street, made him giddy. All day he'd been counting the minutes, couldn't stop thinking of her any more than he could stop looking at her now.

There was one thing which niggled him, though only for a minute, as he ushered her into his car like a princess. Her bedroom, spring-cleaned, shown with shy pride, was full of traditional chintz, dolls, teddy bears, lace, toys, in so much contrast to the stark provocation of her usual clothes. Michael had seen and noticed the room of a child.

‘I'm starving,' she said with enthusiasm. ‘Where are we going?'

‘Oh, not far, round about Finsbury Park. I should think you are starved, six hours' shopping—'

‘Not too close to the stadium?' she asked sharply.

‘Well no, pretty close, but supporters never go there, if that's what you mean. They only eat hamburgers. Why?'

‘Oh I hate football, that's all. And there's a match, I know there is. I always read in the papers to see when there's a match. Anywhere. So I know to stay miles away.'