The Red Room (2 page)

1 15

"And I said, "Yes, yes, I do believe
in God," but God can be the wind in the tree and the
lightning in the sky." He leaned forward and pointed
at me with his fork, this man who I wasn't going
to be going home with at the end of the evening, and whose
phone number I would lose. "God can be your
conscience. God can be a name for love. God can be
the Big Bang. "Yes," I said, "I
believe that even the Big Bang may be the name for
your faith." Can I top you up?"
That was the stage of the evening that we'd arrived at.
Six bottles of wine among eight of us, and we
were only on the main course. Sloppy fish pie
with peas. Poppy is one of the worst cooks I
know. She makes industrial quantities of
unsuccessful nursery food. I looked across
at her. Her face was flushed. She was arguing about
something with Cathy, waving her arms around
overemphatically, leaning forward. One of her
sleeves trailed in the plate. She was bossy,
anxious, unconfident, perhaps unhappy, always
generous--she was throwing this small dinner party in
honor of my recovery and my imminent return
to work. She felt my eyes on her and looked my
way. She smiled and looked suddenly young, like the
student she'd been when I met her ten years
ago.
Candlelight makes everybody look
beautiful. Faces around the table were luminous,
mysterious. I looked at Seb, Poppy's
husband, a doctor, a psychiatrist. Our
territories bordered. That's what he had once
said. I'd never thought of myself as having a
territory, but he sometimes seemed like a dog
patrolling his yard, barking at anyone who came
too close. His sharp, inquisitive features
were smoothed by the kind, guttering light. Cathy was
no longer brown and heavy but golden and soft. Her
husband at the other end was cast into secret
shadows. The man on my left was all planes
of light and darkness.
"I said to her, "We all need to believe in
something. God can be our dreams. We all need
to have our dreams.""
"That's true." I slid a forkful of cod
into my mouth.
"Love. "What is life without love?"
I said, I said,"--he raised his voice and
addressed the table at large--""What's 17
life without love?""
"To love," said Olive, opposite me,
lifting her empty glass and laughing like the peal
of a cracked bell. A tall, dark, aquiline
woman with her blue-black hair piled
dramatically on top of her head. I've always
thought she looks like a model rather than a
geriatric nurse. She leaned across and planted
a smacking kiss on the mouth of her new boyfriend,
who sat back in his chair looking dazed.
"More fish pie, anyone?"
"Is there someone in your life?" murmured my
neighbor. He really was quite tipsy. "Someone
to love?"
I blinked and tried not to remember. Another
party, another life away, before I'd nearly
died and come back to life as a woman with a scar
bisecting her face: Albie in a spare
bedroom in a stranger's house, with someone else.
His hands on her strawberry-pink dress, pushing
its straps off her shoulders; her creamy breasts
swelling under his hands. Her eyes closed, her
head tipped back, the bright lipstick smudged.
He said, "No, no, we mustn't" in a drunken
slur, but let her anyway, slack and passive
while her fingers unreeled him. I had stood there
on the landing, gazing in, not able to move or speak.
There are only so many things one can do in sex, I
thought then, watching this tableau; all the gestures
we think are our own belong to other people too. The
way she rubbed her thumb across his lower lip. I
do that. Then Albie saw me and I thought, There
are only so many ways you can catch your lover with
somebody else. It seemed unoriginal. His
lovely shirt hung loose. We had stared at
each other, the woman lolling between us. We stared and
I could hear my heart beat. What's life without
love?
"No," I said. "Nobody now."
Poppy rapped her knife against her glass.
Upstairs I heard a child shriek. There was a
loud thump on the ceiling above us. Seb frowned.
"I want to make a toast," she said. She
cleared her throat.
"Hang on, let me fill the glasses."
"Three months ago, Kit had her terrible
... thing. ..."
My neighbor turned and looked at my
face. I put up my hand to cover the scar, as
if his gaze was burning it. 19
"She was attacked by a madman."
"Well ..." I began to protest.
"Anybody who saw her in that hospital bed,
like I did, what he'd done to her ... We were
desperate." Drink and emotion made Poppy's
voice wobble. I looked down at my plate,
hot with embarrassment. "But nobody should judge
her by appearances." She blushed with alarm and
looked at me. "I don't mean the ... you
know." I raised my hand to my face again. I was
always doing that now, the gesture of self-protection
I hadn't managed at the time. "She may look
gentle, but she's a tough, brave woman, she's
always been a fighter, and here she is, and on
Monday she returns to work, and this evening is for
her, and I wanted everyone to raise their glasses
to celebrate her recovery and ... well, that's
it, really. I never was good at making speeches
at the best of times. But anyway, here's to darling
Kit."
"To Kit," everyone chorused. Glasses,
raised high, chinked across the debris of the meal.
Faces glowing, smiling at me, breaking up and
re-forming in the candlelight. "Kit."
I managed a smile. I didn't really
want all this, and I felt bad about that.
"Come on, Kit, give us a speech." This from
Seb, grinning at me. You probably know his
face or his voice. You've heard him giving
opinions on everything from serial killers'
motivations to toddlers' nightmares to the madness of
crowds. He compliments and smiles and does his very
best to make me feel good about myself, but really,
I suppose, sees me as a hopeless beginner in
his own profession. "You can't just sit there looking
sweet and shy, Kit. Say something."
"All right, then." I thought about Michael
Doll, lunging across the room, hand upraised.
I saw his face, the glint of his eyes. "I'm
not really a fighter. In fact I'm the
opposite, I--was There was a loud howl from
upstairs, then another.
"Oh, for God's sake," said Poppy,
rising in her chair. "Other children are in bed at ten
thirty, not beating each other up. Hang on,
everybody."
"No, I'll go," I said, pushing back my
chair.
"Don't be daft."
"Really, I want to. I haven't 21
seen the children all evening. I want to say good
night to them."
I practically ran from the room. As I
climbed the stairs, I heard footsteps pounding
along the corridor, and little whimpers. By the time
I reached their bedroom, Amy and Megan were in
bed with the covers pulled up. Megan, who is
seven, was pretending to be asleep, though her
eyelids quivered with the effort of keeping them shut.
Amy, aged five, lay on her pillow with her
eyes wide open. A velvet rabbit with shabby
ears and beady eyes lay beside her.
"Hello, you two," I said, sitting on the
end of Amy's bed. In the glow from the
night-light, I could see that there was a red mark
on her cheek.
"Kitty," she said. Apart from Albie, they were
the only people I knew who called me Kitty.
"Megan hit me."
Megan sat up indignantly. "Liar!
Anyway, she scratched me, look. Look at
the mark." She held out her hand.
"She said I was a bird-brain."
"I did not!"
"I've come to say good night."
I looked at them as they sat up in their beds
with their tousled heads, bright eyes and flushed
cheeks. I put a hand on Amy's forehead. It
was hot and damp. A clean smell of soap and
child's sweat rose off her. She had freckles
across the bridge of her nose and a pointed chin.
"It's late," I said.
"Amy woke me," said Megan.
"Oh!" Amy's mouth opened in a perfect
circle of outrage.
Downstairs I could hear the hum of voices,
the scrape of cutlery on china, someone laughing.
"How shall I get you to go to sleep?"
"Does it hurt?" Amy put out one finger and
poked my cheek, making me flinch.
"Not now."
"Mummy says it's a shame," said Megan.
"Does she?"
"And she said Albie's gone." Albie had
tickled them, given them lollipops, blown through
his cupped hands to make owl noises.
"That's right."
"Won't you have babies, then?"
"Ssh, Amy, that's rude."
"Maybe one day," I said. I felt 23
a little throb of longing in my belly. "Not yet,
though. Shall I tell you a story?"
"Yeah," they said together, in triumph. They'd
got me.
"A short one." I searched around in my mind
for something usable. "Once upon a time there was a
girl who lived with her two ugly sisters and
..."
A joint groan came from the beds. "Not that
one."
"Sleeping Beauty, then? Three Little
Pigs? Goldilocks?"
"Bo-o-ring. Tell us one you made up
yourself," said Megan. "Out of your own head."
"About two girls ..." prompted Amy.
his... called Amy and Megan ..."
his... and they have an adventure in a castle."
"OK, OK. Let's see." I began
to talk without any idea of how I was going
to continue. "Once there were two little girls called
Megan and Amy. Megan was seven and Amy was
five. One day they got lost."
"How?"
"They were going for a walk with their parents, and it was
early evening, and a great storm blew up, with thunder
and lightning and winds howling round them. They hid in
a hollow tree, but when the rain stopped they
realized they were all alone in a dark forest, with no
idea of where they were."
"Good," said Megan.
"So Megan said they should walk until they
came to a house."
"And what did I say?"
"Amy said they should eat the blackberries on
the bushes around them to stop themselves from starving. They
walked and walked. They fell over and scraped
their knees. It got darker and darker and lightning
flashed and big black birds kept flapping
past them, making horrible screeching sounds. They
could see eyes peering at them from the bushes ...
animal eyes."
"Panthers."
"I don't think there were panthers in that--was
"Panthers," said Megan firmly.
"All right, panthers. Suddenly, Megan
saw a light shining through the trees."
"What about--was
"Amy saw it at the same time. They walked
towards it. When they reached it, they found it came
from an oil lamp hanging above an arched 25
wooden door. It was the door to a great ruined
house. It looked scary, a spooky place, but
by now they were so tired and cold and frightened that they
decided to take a chance. They rapped on the
door, and they could hear the sound echoing inside, like
the beat of a drum." I paused. They were silent
now, their mouths open. "But nobody came, and more
and more big black birds screeched around them,
until there was a dark cloud of birds in the sky.
Black birds and flashes of lightning, and
rumbles of thunder, and the branches of trees swaying
in the wind. So Megan pushed hard on the door
and it swung open, with a squeaky creak. Amy
took the oil lamp from the entrance, and together the two
little girls went into the ruined house. They held
hands and stared around.
"There was a passageway, with water running
down the walls. They followed it until they
came to a room. It was painted all blue, with a
cold blue fountain bubbling in the middle and a high
blue ceiling, and they could hear the sound of waves
crashing on the shore. It was a room of water, of
oceans and faraway places, and it made them
feel that they were further from home than they had ever
been before. So they walked a bit further and came
to another room. It was a green room, with ferns
and trees in pots, and it reminded them of the parks
they liked playing in and made them feel more
homesick than they had ever felt before. So they
walked a bit further and came to a third room.
The door was shut. It was painted red. For some
reason they felt very scared of this room, before they
even opened the door."
"Why?" asked Megan. She reached out a hand
and I clasped it in my own.
"Behind the red door lay the red room. They
knew that inside this room was everything they were most
afraid of. Different things for Megan than for
Amy. What are you most scared of, Megan?"
"Dunno."
"What about being high up?"
"Yeah. And falling off a boat and dying. And
being dark. And tigers. And crocodiles."
"That's what was inside the red room for
Megan. And Amy?"
"Amy hates spiders," said Megan
gleefully. "She screams."
"Yeah, and poison snakes. Fireworks
exploding in my hair."
"OK. So what did Megan and 27
Amy do now?"
"Run away."
"No, they didn't. They wanted to see
inside. They wanted to see those tigers and boats
and crocodiles--was
"And poison snakes--was
"And poison snakes. So they pushed open the
door and they went into the red room, and they looked
around and it was red everywhere. It was red on the ceiling
and red on the walls and red on the floor."
"But what was in it?" asked Megan. "Where was
the crocodiles?"
I paused, nonplussed. What actually was in
the room? I hadn't thought of this bit of the story.
I toyed with the idea of a real live tiger that would
eat them both.
"There was a little stuffed tiger," I said. "And a
stuffed crocodile."
"And a stuffed snake."
"Yes, and a little toy boat and there was lovely
food to eat and a big lovely soft bed. And
Megan and Amy's parents. And they tucked them
up in the bed and gave them a big kiss and they
fell asleep."
"With a night-light."
"With a night-light."
"I want another story," Megan said.
I leaned down and kissed two grumpy
foreheads. "Next time," I said, backing out of the
room.
"Tailed off a bit at the end, I thought."
I started and looked round. Seb was smiling at
me. "Where did you get it from? The Bruno
Bettelheim collection of bedtime stories?"
He said it with a grin, but I answered him
seriously. "It was a dream I had in
hospital."
"But I don't suppose there were toys and a
warm bed in your red room."
"No."
"What was there?"
"I don't know," I said. I was lying. I
felt my stomach lurch at the memory of it.