Shadow Play (23 page)

‘You treacherous old cow. You knew when the pair of them were going, you probably helped them plan it, and you didn't tell me. How many letters has Eenie written you then? Keeping you up to date with the news, laughing behind my back, while all the time you pretend to sympathise … laughing at me.'

‘One letter, Logo, I promise. Only one. One in four years, I promise.'

‘You what? Promise! Don't make me laugh. You, knowing where she is, all this time. I bet it was her in here last Friday when you shouted at me to go away. Come on then, Granny, where does she live? Tell me, tell me, tell me,' he was wheedling, kneading her ankle in an attitude of comic begging. Margaret had a brief belief that she might get the situation back under control, then she knew she could not. Ah, the treachery of it: now she had betrayed them all, Logo, his wife, Eenie. She had kept secrets for none of them. The royal-blue wool draped over her feet.

‘I suppose I should have known. Ever since you got into the house with that child the other week. And went upstairs.' He spoke wistfully, still draping the wool round her puffy ankles.

‘Why does it matter so much? Oh dear, stopit, stopit, you idiot, that black eye's gone to your head. Get us another drink, go on. Stop messing.'

It seemed best to treat him as a child, sound like the good-natured scold which had been her second nature, but somewhere in the depth of her fast-beating heart, Margaret knew it was too late. ‘I've had one letter from Eenie, ever,' she said querulously. ‘And why should it matter if I've been inside your house? Oh, I see.'

The vision of that suitcase at the top of the stairs floated back to her with a memory of her nervousness towards him ever since she had seen it, her lack of friendliness in these last days, all that to fuel their mutual suspicions. ‘Tell me,' she said as evenly as she could, ‘did she ever come back? Eenie's mum? Did she really just disappear off the face of the earth, just like that? It isn't right, is it?'

The wool was now wound round her ankles, fashioned into a clumsy knot. He had always been clever with pieces of string, clever with his hands, but lazy, preferring games to achievements, not like his daughter. She knew that if she got up now she would fall over and she felt weak at the very thought. Logo sighed.

‘Oh yes, she came back. I brought her back, coupla days after, you were out, I know you were, but then she wouldn't tell me where Eenie had gone. I got angry, you see, very angry.'

‘Why wouldn't she tell you where Eenie was?'

‘ To save me from her. Save me from that little temptress who'd eaten up all my goodness, made me lie with her. She gave me the apple and made me eat. She made me fuck her. She made me go to the devil, all on her own. Where does she live, Margaret?'

‘No, no, poor child, poor child. Oh no, poor child.' Margaret was weeping, little corners of tears creeping round her bulging eyes.

‘Where does she live?' he insisted.

‘I don't know, I don't know,' she was shrinking from him.

‘What does she look like? Black hair, all smoothed down, with a little plait at the back!'

Margaret screamed. ‘What did you do with her, Logo? What did you do with her mother?'

He shook his head sadly. ‘Only this. No blood at all. Only this.'

A great roar of victory from the football ground reverberated down the street. He could hear and feel the stamping of feet, the beginning of that swaying singing. It drowned the beginnings of her scream. His hands were round her throat, the thumbs gouging under her chin. Margaret was already weak and panting. She struggled again, vainly, one hand holding a knitting needle jabbing at him, catching him in the stomach, so that he yelped, but held. Her skin was purple, there were strange animal noises emerging from her throat as she went on and on struggling. It seemed endless, ebbing and diminishing. She acquired more vigour to resist after each successive wave of weakness. Then she slumped. He loosened his hands slowly, sensing a trick. Then dived quickly into her knitting bag, pulled out another hank of wool, put it round her neck almost reverently, twisted it in his fist behind and turned it. His hands slipped on the wool, felt hot and greasy: he realised he was trembling violently. Logo reached for the poker in the fireplace, inserted it into the wool and continued to turn it like a tourniquet. To stop the flow of blood, he thought irrelevantly. Finally there was no sound from her at all.

Logo stood up and drank some more of the whisky. Gradually the trembling ceased. He picked up the letters from the floor, read them again and threw them on the fire. He sized up the body of Margaret in his mind's eye, chuckled briefly and tapped his nose. When you were weak and ill with stitches in your stomach, it was so much harder, but he wouldn't make the same mistakes as last time, waiting until the limbs were stiff. He might have to wait to travel, surely the match was almost ended, half an hour to clear the ground, they were so good at it these days, then he could travel with his burden.

He pulled her from the chair by the ankles, then dragged her by the armpits to the kitchen door. She was the size of a bird, her blouse riding up to show smooth, white skin grazing on the floor. Outside was her chariot, lying on one side. First he took the blunt end of his axe and hit her elbows and knees scientifically: he had thought long and hard about this. Then he pushed her into the trolley, still warm, still malleable, but it was difficult. Finally, with a great heave, he managed to turn the trolley upright on the third attempt. All this took a while. In the meantime, crowds passed the bottom of the alleyway, whooping and yelling. He regarded that as encouragement.

Logo covered her head with a piece of black polythene, stuck a shovel down among her ribs. He trundled the trolley down into the street and out, past the little shops on the corner, on to the main road. It was not the route he normally took to work, but he had always found before that the more obvious he was, the less he was noticed. One whole hundred yards of the main road, before he detoured, left then right, into the graveyard, whistling. The ability to whistle always came back after a trauma long before the ability to sing.

Logo found the grave they were digging for the woman in Legard Street this morning. He took the shovel from the trolley, leaving Margaret as dead as she was, and leapt down into the trench. The gravediggers' footsteps were all over. He had brought a torch but did not need it: they were so close to the edge, the street lights would do, and anyway, he did not need to be particular. He had watched enough funerals to know the carelessness of city incarcerations on grey days like tomorrow; no-one would notice the faintest signs of his presence tonight. They were buried here without a sense of place: Margaret would like it here. Inside the trench he dug like a demon. Soft, north-London clay, cold but free of frost, turning easily. No-one looked at the sight or the sound in a graveyard late at night. Even the vagrants and the human residue from pubs, the teenage lovers went home at the merest signal of other life in here, drunk or drugged, they were easily spooked. Digging in a cemetery was only a sign of death, consistently ignored. I do not want to die, Logo thought, but the thought was not unappealing after he had dug down a foot, neat but frantic, sweating in his black clothes. He smelt of powder, not earth, a sickly scent of talc clung to him like a mist; his lapels were white with the sheer moving of her. More powder billowed out of her in a thin mist to complement the fog as he hauled her, all lumpy and bumpy and huge, out of the trolley and into the hole, where she landed with a sound like thunder.

Then she moved: she moaned and moved and lay still. Logo had carried the whisky, took a swig, looked again. Margaret was so obliging. Freed from her polythene, she lay spread-eagled. He jumped on to her spine and with his hands, filled in the shallow covering of earth over her. She was still warm: not even the soil was cold; her presence rendered it tepid. So it was not without regret he covered her and tidied up. There was a certain economy in burying two at a time; they should try it more often. For himself there would be no family vault. They would all lie outside the city walls.

He packed up the trolley with his shovel and wheeled it towards the far gate. On his way, he saluted the same grave he had acknowledged earlier that day. After all, it was not the first time he had made this journey with a similar burden. First his wife, then Margaret, both treacherous. The wife had been heavier, he seemed to remember. Or maybe she was just stiffer and clumsier and he weaker with his stitches and fury. Logo touched his nose. He stank of talcum powder; he would never get it off; it was not fitting for a grave.

 

T
here was something about a hospital ward. Perhaps it was the casualness, as if those who lay in bed had nothing to worry about at all. It reminded Rose of the foyer of the magistrates' court where people sat around as though nothing was going to happen and nothing ever would again. Hospital was all pervading: on Wednesday night Rose suddenly wished she belonged to this small community of souls who knew the manners of the place and revelled in its comparative security. Patients had to work for their visitors, please them in a way which would not have been mandatory at home, but Michael was delighted to see Rose. She looked at him anew, feeling a little jealous. He was like a man holding court in the kingdom of his safety, surrounded by gifts. These tributes to a man much loved by friends and family made her feel small and inconspicuous, a person who did not count.

‘Mum and Dad,' he explained sheepishly. ‘They keep sending things. I wish they wouldn't. I'm out of here tomorrow and I couldn't have eaten this lot in a month.'

‘You'll have to leave them here, then. For the others.' Rose could hear her granny saying that.

She was holding his hand, loosely. With the other arm immobilised in a sling, she merely touched his fingers in a way which would leave him free should he want to scratch, gesture or simply abandon contact. They were both a little awkward; she was tense, full of her own anxiety, but determined not to undermine his optimistic mood. There was so much she wanted to tell him, but none of it was for the ears of a hospital case, the most handsome man in the ward, who looked so solidly secure that she wanted to crawl into his lap and stay with him there for ever, even though no-one would believe that he was hers.

‘How's the office, then? Still standing?' He was determined not to talk entirely about himself.

‘Well, I've scarcely been in there. I expect so. You know what it's like. Another bit falls off every day. They've got notices up about IRA bombs.'

‘Not again? I don't know why they bother with the notices. Any old tramp could get into your building.'

‘Oh, I don't think so,' Rose said, shocked. She was defensive about the mausoleum she had always considered as solid as a rock. It was one of many reasons that she liked it, regarding it as the only impenetrable place she knew, because no-one would ever try to get inside. Besides, Michael did not really want to talk about her work, let alone the place where she did it.

‘Sergeant Jones came in today. And Smithy and that bastard Williams, getting in from the cold. I told him to fuck off.'

She didn't want to pursue this line either.

‘They only come for the chocolates,' she said.

‘Do you know, that's what I thought.' He shrugged it off, but she could tell he was flattered by the number of his visitors, slightly regretful that this period of being spoiled was coming to an end. Rose could see his point. His position in this bed made him quite invulnerable.

‘What time tomorrow?'

‘Oh, the morning, I think.' Now he was less comfortable, conscious of deserting her. ‘Mum and Dad want me back for a day or two. It's probably as well. I won't be much use with the scrambled eggs just now. Gives Mum a chance to fuss.'

He was very proud of having loving parents, but also vaguely ashamed of them, with their chorus of soup-making and well-wishing relatives singing love from the sidelines. But Rose would have none of his guilt.

‘Just what you need. Save me coming round to you with dishes of cold spaghetti bolognese so I can cut it into pieces for you.' They both giggled.

‘Only for a day or so, and only in Catford. You could come and see me, meet them all. Saturday? I've written the address and phone number for you. Come on, Rose, say you will.' She shook her head, secretly delighted but terrified by the prospect.

‘Yeah you will. And after that,' he was holding her hand very firmly with no sign of wanting to escape, gazing at her with eyes which felt capable of melting her bones, ‘after that, you are coming round to my place. With your suitcase if you want. I love you, Rose. I want to bloody shout it.'

‘Shhh,' she said. ‘Shush, someone will hear you.'

‘I bloody won't shush,' he said. ‘I won't.'

On her way out via three sets of antiseptic, polythene doors, she was weak with a transient happiness, before the dark world beyond flapping exits intervened. Inside the ward next to him, she could see a future twinkling away, somewhere beyond the ever-persistent fog, but the trouble was how to survive the time before the future could begin. Somehow, inside that greenhouse warmth, Rose had managed to suppress the cough which now returned for revenge. With the sound of her hacking went the pleasure of illusion. Michael could not help. She would have to find a safe place all on her own. Logo was everywhere: no-one could lock him up. Rose looked left and right before crossing the road. There was a taxi rank on the other side. Taxis were a luxury she could not afford, but there was no question of going home alone. Both girls would be in, Wednesday night was for complaining and hair washing. She would be fine until the morning, unless the doorbell rang.

Daddy looked round every corner. He had seen her.