Cuckoo (20 page)

She made such a fuss about her house. No one was allowed even to breathe in it. There were so many bloody things, you could hardly move. In their own flat, back in Streatham, they'd only had sensible stuff, beds and chairs and things, but Charles and Frances had freezers and dishwashers and microwave ovens and electronic tumble-driers and rôtisseries and charcoal grills. And they didn't have just one of everything, but two. Two cars, two pianos, two tellies, two stereos, two bathrooms, and three toilets, four radios, and fifteen bloody clocks. She'd counted the clocks. They all belonged to Charles – he collected them. Fifteen clocks, and he wouldn't agree to one piddling puppy.

Charles' study was so crammed with gear, it was like a shop. He had three pocket calculators and a mini computer, and a quartz digital watch with an alarm and a calendar, and a video tape recorder and a … The whole house was one sodding great machine, cold and shiny, and full of faceless factory inspectors, like that dump her mother worked in, where you had to wear a sterile uniform and even your hair was shoved into a net. Charles and Frances were Chief Inspectors, poking their noses into everything and pouncing on it – hands, nails, hair, underwear. ‘We don't cut our toenails in the drawing-room, Magda.' ‘Nice girls change their pants every day, Magda.' OK, so they'd given her a racing bike with five gears and cantilever brakes, but what was one lousy bike, when they had all that cash? You had to be so bloody careful all the time. They'd jump on you for nothing, or nag you into some fucking stupid chore like cleaning silver. Why buy grot that needed cleaning in the first place? Viv never did. And Viv didn't make you wash the bath out, or use a butter-knife, or turn puppies into dangerous monsters.

Charles had lied about the dog. Yeah, even he lied, her own saintly father who ponced about like God's elder brother. ‘The puppy probably won't survive in any case,' he'd frowned. ‘Not after a drowning.'

It hadn't bloody drowned. She'd saved it, hadn't she? He'd like to see it drown, that was obvious.

‘Fuck you, Charles!' she'd shouted and he'd gone all white and tight and goldfishy again. Other kids didn't call their fathers Charles. She'd called him Dad once, and Frances had gone spare. Dad, dad, dad. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He wasn't a dad, anyway. Dads grew up with you and brought the coal in and mended things. He'd lock her up, if he found the lipstick. Or send her packing. She didn't want to go away. Well, back to her ma would be smashing, but that was impossible, and she'd rather stay in Richmond than be stuck in some hostel, or a prison. At least she had her bike and her tape recorder in Richmond, and Bunty was close by. She poked Bunty in the ribs and her breathing changed key. They couldn't send you to prison for writing on walls. ‘Bunty?' she whispered.

‘Mmmmmm …'

‘Do you know what gets lipstick off?'

‘Oh, cold cream or cleansing milk or something. Shut up. What's the time?'

‘No, not off lips, off walls.'

‘Magda, go to sleep, it's the middle of the night.'

‘I can't go to sleep. I've put lipstick all over Frances' walls.'

‘What?' Bunty grabbed at the blankets and pulled herself up. ‘She'll kill you.'

‘Yeah, I know.' Magda stared out of the window. There was only one curtain. The other one had been taken down three months ago for patching, and never been replaced. The moon was a mean little sliver, sneaking behind the trees. ‘There's just a chance they haven't seen it yet. Your mum phoned Frances to tell her I was staying here, so they may not have bothered going to my room.'

Bunty yawned. ‘Oh, you mean, it's only your room. I thought you meant the whole house.'

‘Don't be stupid, Bunty. My room's bad enough, isn't it?'

‘Yeah.'

‘It's ‘‘yes'', Bunty, not ‘‘yeah''.' They both giggled, clutched each other.

‘Mum's got a book downstairs. Sort of household hints and stuff. Mrs Parry Jones gave it to her last Christmas. It might tell you how to get lipstick off.'

‘Bunty, quick, where is it?'

‘Ssshh, don't wake the whole house. Can't we leave it till the morning?'

‘No, we can't.'

They crept downstairs to the kitchen and Bunty dug out the book from the bottom of the cupboard, where it had been abandoned with half a dozen gumboots. She propped it open on her knee.

‘Wait a mo – it's alphabetical. Lampshades, lentils, here we are – lipstick. ‘‘How to make your own lipstick. Melt 3 oz Peruvian basalm …'''

Magda grabbed the book from her. ‘Let's look under ‘‘stains''. Beer, biro, bird droppings – ugh! OK, I've found it now. ‘‘To remove lipstick stains from fabric, dab with carbon tetra-something, then wash in soap and warm water.'''

‘You can't do that with walls. The paper'll come off.'

‘Fuck! All right, let's look under ‘‘wallpaper''. Hold on – here it is. ‘‘To remove greasy marks from wallpaper, rub stain with fresh white bread or with a soft India rubber.'' Christ! They must be joking.'

Bunty stretched out in a chair and shut her eyes. She was still yawning. ‘Lipstick isn't greasy, anyway.'

‘‘Course it is, fathead. It's made of shark's oil or something. Look, get me some bread.'

‘Oh Magda, you can't start eating now. It's the middle of the night.'

‘I'm not eating. I'm going back to Richmond.'

Bunty wrapped her nightdress round her knees and tucked her toes under. ‘But you told me you'd never go back – told Mum the same as well.'

‘I've got to remove the lipstick, Bunty, before they find it. I'm going now and I'm taking every cleaner I can find – bread, India rubber, soap … everything.'

‘You can't go out in the pitch dark.'

‘Why not? I've got lights on my bike, haven't I? It's only five minutes' ride, in any case.'

‘But the house will be all locked up.'

‘I've got keys.'

‘But what about the bolts? And burglar alarms and things?'

‘They don't bolt the little side door. It's only locked, and I've got a key to it. And the burglar alarm isn't on at night. I'll just creep in – they won't even hear me. My room's at the back.'

Bunty unwrapped her toes again and lumbered to her feet. ‘All right. I'll get the bread.' She hacked a chunk from a large farmhouse loaf and wrapped it in a dish-cloth. Magda was collecting tins, jars and cartons of every household cleaner.

‘I daren't use ours. Mrs Eady would notice – she measures everything. Half of these haven't been used for years. They've gone all hard and crumbly.'

Bunty found her a headscarf and a duffel coat from an anonymous collection in the cloakroom, then helped her wheel her cycle round the front. The sky was already lightening, greyish round the edges now like a mouldy plum. The slice of moon had been cut so thin, it looked as if it would break.

‘‘Bye,' Bunty whispered.

‘‘Bye.'

Magda crouched in the shadow of the grandfather clock and listened. She could hear voices. Why were they still awake? Charles often worked late in his study, but he never spoke. She'd come down once or twice in the middle of the night and found him hunched over his papers, grey and frowning, like a gargoyle. He hadn't seen her, so she'd crept away again. But Frances was never with him. Frances went to bed at midnight and shut her bedroom door. Perhaps she didn't sleep. Perhaps grown-ups never slept. She was grown-up herself now, almost, so maybe she'd lie awake for ever, and nights and mornings would be all jumbled up together in a frightening grey fog.

She could hear Charles shouting. He never shouted. Even when he was cross, he spoke softly – it always scared her. He'd been clipping hedges with his Black and Decker whatsit last Sunday and she'd thought, that's how he sounds: an electric voice, a hedge-trimmer voice, smug and soft and humming on one even steady note. It wasn't humming now, it was roaring, as if his motor had over-revved and gone berserk. He was in his study, with the door open, and he was booming something at Frances who seemed to be upstairs.

She slunk along the passage and hid behind the oak settle. Frances' voice was muffled by the staircase and it was difficult to make it out. But she heard her name – Magda. Frances still pronounced it wrong. So they were discussing her, were they? She felt a prickle of importance. She almost didn't care if they were angry, so long as they went on talking. No one had ever held a conference about her in the middle of the night before. She'd even stopped Charles working. That meant she must be Somebody. Maybe they'd been up for hours, or hadn't even gone to bed at all. They'd turned her into an emergency. She liked the thought of that – being wicked enough to deserve an all-night sitting.

They were probably sorry, now, couldn't sleep for guilt. Perhaps they'd even change their minds about the puppy. Not that she'd accept it, not likely, after all that kerfuffle, but it would be nice for them to grovel. ‘We're sorry, Magda, we were wrong …' She held her breath, as Frances' voice came nearer.

‘I'm sorry, Charles, I just can't take any more. She'll have to go away.'

Charles had swooped to the door of his study. ‘She
is
going away. I've told you, it's arranged. I've got the letter here. Term starts the eleventh of September. It's only a matter of a month or so. Just be patient, can't you?'

Magda jammed her face into the cold wood of the settle. She didn't want to hear. Nice to be made of oak, deaf and solid and unfeeling. She pressed her ear so hard against the carved frills of acanthus leaves that her own pain throbbed back at her. But Frances' voice was mingled with the pain, a smooth, slithery voice, squeezing through solid wood, snaking into everything. She was coming down the stairs now, slowly, one step at a time, the soft snake voice very quiet, very deadly.

‘It's not only her …'

Her, her. She was an object now, a dumb household cleaner, a grotty tin of Vim.

‘It's you, too. You're as bad. You're her father, aren't you? Well, we shouldn't really part you from your precious daughter, then. It wouldn't be natural, would it? You'd better go and join her. Yes, why don't you go away, the pair of you? Go on, go
away
.'

The voice wasn't hushed any more. It was rearing up on itself, surging down the staircase, swelling through the hall …

Magda fled. Back along the corridor, out through the small side door, slap into the grey almost-morning. The sky had paled into the colour of a dead fish, the moon dead now, decomposing. She rolled up her jeans. The steel frame of the bike bit cold against her bare legs. She pedalled wildly, Frances' voice jabbing round and round with the motion of the pedals, entangled with the chain. She tried to beat it off, but it was coiling down her throat, flailing through her hair, the two simple words striking at her, poisoning:

‘Go away, go away, GO AWAY.'

He went away.

Mercantile International phoned him from Nassau at eight o'clock the following morning and requested him to catch the next plane. One of their directors had been accused of illegal speculation with company funds, for his own personal profit. Charles was required as an expert witness.

‘Please don't go,' begged Frances, trying to rinse last night out of her mouth.

‘Don't be silly, darling. You know perfectly well I have to go. It's a court case – a very nasty business by the sounds of it. God alone knows what Oppenheimer's going to say. It's one of his companies.'

‘Oh, he's mixed up in it, is he? I might have guessed. Whenever there's trouble, it always seems to be our good friend Heinrich.'

‘He
is
our good friend, Frances. The work he brings me pays for all our luxuries. It's not just trouble he's mixed up in, but all those little extras you insist on – your foreign cars, your couturier clothes, your –'

‘All right, Charles, you've spent the last five years telling me how obliged we are to Oppenheimer. But all the same, you can't just disappear like that – not after what happened last night. I mean, we haven't even discussed it yet. I know I behaved badly, but …'

‘You were tired, darling, that's all. Let's forget it, shall we? I'll only be gone a matter of days, a week at the outside.'

A week. If one night lasted a hundred years, a week might end somewhere in the twenty-seventh century. Normally, she didn't mind about his travelling. Charles dropped in at the Bahamas as other men took a spin to Bournemouth. She kept his suitcase permanently packed. But this time …

‘But what about Magda? How on earth am I going to deal with her? It's much more awkward with you not being here.'

‘She'd better stay at Viv's, then. I'll arrange it.' Another paltry item on his job list: clean car, trim hedge, dispose of daughter. Magda might be hysterical by now, or ill, or despairing.

‘But I can't just ignore her for a week. And what am I meant to do about the walls? She shouldn't get away with vandalism like that. On the other hand, she must be in quite a state to …'

‘I'll think about it on the plane, darling, and phone you. Now could you please do me a spot of breakfast.'

Frances cracked an egg into the frying pan. So Charles planned to deal with a delinquent daughter by long-distance phone call, with wires crackling and the pips going; fit her in among the formulae, no doubt.

‘How's Magda?'

‘Smashing up the house.'

‘Fine, fine.'

Here he was, escaping again, using his work as a manhole to drop safely into and hide from all the hubbub on the pavement outside. All right, she'd shouted at him to get out of her way, told him to go, but that was only
in extremis
, and she hadn't meant a Bahamian business trip, lulled by labile secretaries and cushioned in a first-class cocoon of soothing schedules and self-importance, with a millionaire glittering on the sidelines.