Selected Stories

Child’s Play

Gerard and Rebecca became brother and sister after a turmoil of distress. Each had witnessed it from a different point of view, Gerard in one house, Rebecca in another. Two years of passionate quarrelling, arguing and agreeing, of beginning again, of failure and reconciliation, of final insults and rejection, constituted the peepshow they viewed.

There were no other children of the two wrecked marriages, and when the final period of acrimonious wrangling came to an end there was an unexpected accord as to the division of the families. This, it was decided, would be more satisfactorily decreed by the principals involved than by the divorce courts. Gerard’s father, innocent in what had occurred, agreed that Gerard should live with his mother since that was convenient. Rebecca’s mother, innocent also, declared herself unfit to raise the child of a marriage she had come to loathe, and declared as well that she could not bring herself to go on living in the house of the marriage. She claimed that suicidal tendencies had developed in her, aggravated by the familiar surroundings: she would suffer the loss of her child for her child’s sake. ‘She’s trying all this on,’ the other woman insisted, but in the end it appeared she wasn’t, and so the arrangement was made.

On a warm Wednesday afternoon, the day Quest for Fame won the Derby, Gerard’s mother married Rebecca’s father. Afterwards all four of them stood, eyes tightened against strong sunlight, while someone took a photograph. The two children were of an age, Gerard ten, Rebecca nine. Gerard was dark-haired, quite noticeably thin, with glasses. Rebecca’s reddish hair curved roundly about her rounded cheeks. Her eyes were bright, a deep shade of blue. Gerard’s, brown, were solemn.

They were neutrally disposed to one another, with neither fondness nor distaste on either side: they did not know one another well. Gerard was an intruder in the house that had been Rebecca’s, but this was far less to bear than the departure from it of her mother.

‘They’ll settle,’ Rebecca’s father murmured in a teashop after the wedding.

Watching the two children, silent beside one another, his new wife said she hoped so.

They did settle. Thrown together as helpless parties in the stipulations of the peace, they became companions. They missed the past; resentment and deprivation drew them close. They talked about the two people whom they visited on Sundays, and how those two, once at the centre of things, were now defeated and displaced.

At the top of the house, attic space had been reclaimed to form a single, low-roofed room with windows to the ground and a new parquet floor that seemed to stretch for ever. The walls were a shade of washed-out primrose, and shafts of sunlight made the pale ash of the parquet seem almost white. There was no furniture. Two bare electric light-bulbs hung from the long, slanted ceiling. This no-man’s-land was where Gerard and Rebecca played their game of marriage and divorce. It became a secret game, words fading on their lips if someone entered, politeness disguising their deceit.

Rebecca recalled her mother weeping at lunch, a sudden collapse into ugly distress while she was spooning peas on to Rebecca’s plate. ‘Whatever’s up?’ Rebecca asked, watching as her mother hurried from the table. Her father did not answer, but instead left the dining-room himself, and a few moments later there were the sounds of a quarrel. ‘You’ve made me hate you,’ Rebecca’s mother kept screaming so shrilly that Rebecca thought the people in the house next door would hear. ‘How could you have made me hate you?’

Gerard entered a room and found his mother nursing the side of her face. His father stood at the window, looking out. Behind his back one hand gripped the other as if in restraint. Gerard was frightened and went away, his brief presence unnoticed.

‘Think of that child,’ Rebecca’s mother pleaded in another mood. ‘Stay with us if only for that child.’

‘You vicious bitch!’ This furious accusation stuttered out of Gerard’s father, his voice peculiar, his lips trembling in a grimace he could not control.

Such scenes, seeming like the end of everything that mattered, were later surveyed from the unemotional safety of the new companionship. Regret was exorcized, sore places healed; harshness was the saviour. From information supplied by television a world of sin and romance was put together in the empty attic room. ‘Think of that child!’ Rebecca mimicked, and Gerard adopted his father’s grimace the time he called his mother a vicious bitch. It was fun because the erring couple were so virtuous now.

‘I can’t think how it happened.’ Gerard’s version of the guilty husband’s voice was not convincing, but it passed whatever muster was required. ‘I can’t think how I could have been such a fool as to marry her in the first place.’

‘Poor thing, it’s not her fault.’

‘It’s that that makes it such an awful guilt.’ This came from an old black-and-white film and was used a lot because they liked the sound of it.

When romance was to the fore they spoke in whispers, making a murmuring sound when they didn’t know what to say. They tried out dance steps in the attic, pretending they were in a dance-hall they called the Ruby Ballroom or a night-club they called the Nitelite, a title they’d seen in neon somewhere. They called a bar the Bee’s Knees, which Rebecca said was a name suitable for a bar, although the original was a stocking shop. They called a hotel the Grand Splendide.

‘Some sleazy hotel?’ Gerard’s father had scornfully put it. ‘Some sleazy pay-at-the-door hotel for his sleazy one-night stands?’

‘No, actually,’ the reply had been. ‘It was rather grand.’

Downstairs they watched a television serial in which the wronged ones made the kind of fuss that both Gerard and Rebecca had witnessed. The erring ones met in car parks, or on waste land in the early morning.

‘Gosh!’ Rebecca exclaimed, softly astonished at what was occurring on the screen. ‘He took his tongue out of her mouth. Definitely.’

‘She’s chewing his lips actually.’

‘But his tongue -’

‘I know.’

‘Horrid great thing, it looked.’

‘Look, you be Mrs Edwina, Rebecca.’

They turned the television off and climbed to the top of the house, not saying anything on the way. They closed the door behind them.

‘OK,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m Mrs Edwina.’

Gerard made his bell-ringing sound.

‘Oh, go away!’ Staring intently into space, Rebecca went on doing so until the sound occurred again. She sighed, and rose from where she’d been sitting on the floor. Grumbling wordlessly, she ran on the spot, descending stairs.

‘Yes, what is it, please?’

‘Mrs Edwina?’

‘Sure I’m Mrs Edwina.’

‘I saw your card in the window of that newsagent’s. What’s it called? The Good News, is it?’

‘What d’you want, please?’

‘It says you have a room to let.’

‘What of it? I was watching Dallas.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Edwina.’

‘D’you want to rent a room?’

‘I have a use for a room, yes.’

‘You’d best come in.’

‘Cold evening, Mrs Edwina.’

‘I hope you’re not planning a love nest. I don’t want no filth in my house.’

‘Oh, what a lovely little room!’

‘If it’s for a love nest it’ll be ten pounds more per week. Another ten on top of that if you’re into call-girls.’

‘I can assure you, Mrs Edwina -’

‘You read some terrible tales in the papers these days. Beauty Queen a Call-girl! it said the other day. Are you fixing to bring in beauty queens?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. A friend and myself have been going to the Grand Splendide but it’s not the same.’

‘You’d be a married man?’

‘Yes.’

‘I get the picture.’

Rebecca’s mother had demanded to know where the sinning had taken place. Gerard’s mother, questioned similarly, had revealed that the forbidden meetings had taken place in different locations – once or twice in her lover’s office, after hours; over lunch or five-thirty drinks. A hotel was mentioned, and finally a hired room. ‘How sordid!’ Rebecca’s mother cried, then weeping overcame her and Rebecca crept away. But, elsewhere, Gerard remained. He reported that extraordinary exchanges had followed, that great importance was attached to the room that had been specially acquired, great offence taken.

‘I’m tired of this ghastly hole.’ Rebecca was good at introducing a whine into her tone, a bad-tempered, spoilt-child sound that years ago she’d once or twice tried on in reality before being sharply told to cease immediately.

‘Oh, it’s not too bad, darling!’

‘It’s most unpleasant. It’s dirty for a start. Look at the sheets, I’ve never seen sheets as soiled as that. Then Mrs Edwina is dirty. You can see it on her neck. Filthy dirty that woman is.’

‘Oh, she’s not too bad.’

‘There’s a smell of meat in the hall. She never opens a window.’

‘Darling -’

‘I want to live in a house. I want us to be divorced and married again.’

‘I know. I know. But there’re the children. And there’s the awful guilt I feel.’

‘What I feel is sick in my bowels. Every time I walk in that door I feel it. Every time I look at that filthy wallpaper I get vomit in my throat.’

‘We could paint the place out.’

‘Let’s go to the Bee’s Knees for a cocktail. Let’s never come back here.’

‘But, angel -’

‘Our love’s not like it used to be. It’s not like it was when we went dancing in the Ruby Ballroom. We haven’t been to the Nitelite for a year. Nor the Grand Splendide -’

‘You wanted a home-from-home.’

‘I don’t think you love me any more.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Then tell Mrs Edwina what she can do with her horrid old room and let’s live in a house.’

‘But, dear, the children.’

‘Drown the brats in a bucket. Make a present of them to Mrs Edwina for all I care. Cement them into a wall.’

‘We’ll just get into bed for five minutes -’

‘I don’t want to get into bed today. Not the way those sheets are.’

‘OK. We’ll go and have a Babycham.’

‘I’d love a Babycham.’

When the house was empty except for themselves it was best. It often was empty in the early afternoon, after the woman who came to clean had gone, when Gerard’s mother was out, doing the voluntary work she had recently taken up. They wandered from room to room then, poking into everything. Among other items of interest they found letters, some written by Gerard’s mother to Rebecca’s father, some by him to her. They were in a dressing-table drawer, in a slim cardboard box, with a rubber band around them. Twice the love affair had broken up. Twice there were farewells, twice the admission that one could not live without the other. They could not help themselves. They had to meet again.

‘My, my,’ Rebecca enthused. ‘Hot stuff, this.’

After their weekend visits to the two who had been wronged Gerard and Rebecca exchanged reports on Sunday evenings. Gerard’s father cooked and used the washing-machine, vacuum-cleaned the house, ironed his own shirts, made his bed and weeded the flowerbeds. Rebecca’s mother was in a bedsitting-room, a sorry sight. She ate nuts and chocolate while watching the television, saying it wasn’t worth cooking for one, not that she minded in the least. She was keeping her end up, Rebecca’s mother insisted. ‘You can see,’ she confided, ‘why I didn’t think I should look after you, dear? It wasn’t because I didn’t want you. You’re all that’s left to me. You’re what I live for, darling.’

Rebecca saw perfectly. The bedsitting-room was uncomfortable.

In one corner the bedclothes of a divan, pulled roughly up in daytime, were lumpy beneath a stained pink bedspread. Possessions Rebecca remembered, though had not known were particularly her mother’s – ornaments and a tea set, two pictures of medieval people on horses, a table-lamp, chairs and floor rugs and, inappropriately, a gong – cluttered the limited space. Her mother’s lipstick was carelessly applied. The same clothes she’d worn in the past, smart then, seemed like cast-offs now. She refused to take a penny of alimony, insisting that part of keeping her end up was to stand on her own two feet. She’d found a job in a theatre café and talked a lot about the actors and actresses who bought cups of coffee or tea from her. All this theatrical talk was boring, Rebecca reported on Sunday evenings: her mother had never been boring before.

Gerard’s father, hurrying through his household chores so that he could devote himself to entertaining Gerard, was not the same either. He was more serious. He didn’t spread himself about in the sitting-room the way he used to, his legs stretched awkwardly out so that people fell over them. Another boy had once shown Gerard how to untie his father’s shoe-laces and tie them together while his attention was diverted. His father had never minded being laughed at; Gerard wasn’t so sure about that now.

‘She said she had three miscarriages,’ Rebecca reported. ‘I never knew that.’

Gerard wasn’t certain what a miscarriage was, and Rebecca, who had been uncertain also, explained that the baby came out too soon, a lot of mush apparently.

‘I wonder if I’m adopted,’ Gerard mused.

The next weekend he asked his father, and was assured he wasn’t. His father said his mother hadn’t wanted more than a single child, but from his tone Gerard decided that she hadn’t wanted any children at all. ‘I’m a mistake,’ he said when he and Rebecca were again alone.

Rebecca agreed that this was probably so. She supposed she should be glad she wasn’t just a lot of mush. ‘You be the detective,’ she said.

Gerard rapped with his knuckles on the parquet floor and Rebecca opened and closed the door.

‘What do you want?’

‘Hotel detective, lady.’

‘So what?’

‘I’ll tell you so what. So what is I have grounds for believing you and your companion are not Mr and Mrs Smith, as per the entry in the register.’

‘Of course we’re Mr and Mrs Smith.’

‘I would appreciate a word with Mr Smith, ma’am.’

‘Mr Smith’s in the lavatory.’

‘Do you categorically state that you are named Mrs Smith, ma’am? Do you categorically state that you and the party in the lavatory are man and wife?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Do you categorically state you are not in the prostitution business?’

‘The very idea!’

‘Then what we have here is a case of mistaken identity. Accept my apologies, ma’am. We get all sorts in the Grand Splendide these days.’

‘No offence taken, officer. The public has a right to be protected.’

‘Time was when only royalty stayed at the Grand Splendide. I knew the King of Greece, you know.’

‘Fancy that.’

‘Generous to a fault he was. Oh, thank you very much, lady.’

‘Fancy a cocktail, officer? Babycham on the rocks OK?’

‘Certainly is. Oh, and, ma’am?’

‘How can I help you, officer?’

‘Feel free to ply your trade, ma’am.’

‘A little brother,’ Gerard’s mother informed them. ‘Or perhaps a sister.’

Gerard didn’t ask if this was another mistake because he could tell from the delight in his mother’s eyes that it wasn’t. There might even be further babies, Rebecca speculated when they were alone. She didn’t care for the idea of other children in the house. ‘They’ll be the real thing,’ she said.

Something else happened: Gerard returned after a weekend to say there had been a black-haired Frenchwoman in his father’s house. She strolled about the kitchen in stockinged feet, and did the cooking. One result of this person’s advent was to cause Gerard to feel less sympathetically disposed towards his father. He felt his father would be all right now, as his mother and Rebecca’s father were all right.

‘That’ll be nice for you,’ Rebecca’s mother remarked sourly when Rebecca passed on the information about the expected baby. ‘Nice for you and Gerard.’

When Rebecca told her about the Frenchwoman she said that that was nice too. These were the only comments she made, Rebecca told Gerard afterwards. Keeping her end up, her mother engaged in a tedious rigmarole about some famous actor or other, whom Rebecca had never heard of. She also kept saying the rigmarole was funny, a view Rebecca didn’t share.

‘Let’s do the time she caught them,’ Rebecca suggested when she’d gone through the rigmarole for Gerard.

‘OK.’

Gerard lay down on the parquet and Rebecca went out of the room. Gerard worked his lips in an imaginary embrace. His tongue lolled out.

‘This is disgusting!’ Rebecca cried, bursting into the room again.

Gerard sat up. He asked her what she was doing here.

‘A cleaner let me in. She said I’d find you on the office floor.’

‘You’d better go,’ Gerard muttered quietly to his pretend companion, pushing himself to his feet.

‘I’ve known for ages.’ Real tears spread on Rebecca’s rounded cheeks. Quite a gush she managed. She’d always been good at real tears.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry, my God!’

‘I know.’

‘She forgot her panties. She left her panties by the wastepaper basket when she scurried out.’

‘Look -’

‘She’s on the street without her panties. Some man on the tube -’

‘Look, don’t be bitter.’

‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I be whatever I want to be? Isn’t anything my due? You were down there on the floor with a second-class tart and you expect me to be like the Virgin Mary.’

‘I do not expect you to be like anyone.’

‘You want me to share you with her, is that it? What a jolliness!’

‘Look -’

‘Oh, don’t keep saying look.’

Rebecca’s real tears came in a torrent now, dribbling on to a grey cardigan, reddening her eyes.

‘I’d better go after her,’ Gerard said, picking up, in pantomime, a garment from the floor.

The baby was born, a girl. The black-haired Frenchwoman moved in with Gerard’s father. One Sunday evening Rebecca said:

‘She wants me back.’

That day had been spent trailing round flats that were to rent. Each time they entered one Rebecca’s mother told whoever was showing them around that she worked in the theatre, and mentioned actresses and actors by name. Afterwards, in the bedsitting-room, she said her new life in the theatre had helped her to pull herself together. She said she felt a strength returning. She intended to take the alimony. She saw it differently now: the alimony was her due.

‘So are you, dear,’ she said. If there was difficulty, a court of law would put the matter right, no doubt about that: a child goes to the mother if the mother’s fit and well.

‘What did you say?’ Gerard asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Not that you’d rather be here?’

‘No.’

‘Would you rather be here, Rebecca?’

‘Yes.’

Gerard was silent. He looked away.

‘I couldn’t say it,’ Rebecca said.

‘I see you couldn’t.’

‘She’s my mother,’ Rebecca said.

‘Yes, I know.’

A week ago they had been angry together because unhappiness had made her mother foolish. A week ago Gerard said his father had reverted to something like his old self, his legs stuck out while he read the newspaper. But it was far from being the same as it had been. His father reading the newspaper like that was only a reminder.

Rebecca’s real tears began, and when the sound of sobbing ceased there was silence in the room they had made their own. Gerard wanted to comfort her, as once his father had comforted his mother, saying he forgave her, saying they would try again. But their game wouldn’t stretch to that.

They sat on the virgin floor, some distance away from one another, while the white shafts of sunlight faded and the washed-out yellow of the walls dimmed to nothing. Their thoughts were similar and they knew they were. The house that had been Rebecca’s would be Gerard’s because that was laid down now. Rebecca would come to it at weekends because her father was there, but she would not bring with her her mother’s sad tales of the theatre, nor would Gerard relate the latest from his father’s new relationship. The easy companionship that had allowed them to sip cocktails and sign the register of the Hotel Grand Splendide had been theirs by chance, a gift thrown out from other people’s circumstances. Helplessness was their natural state.