The Playroom Read online

  ‘No,’ she said to David, ‘I can’t change the appointment now. She wouldn’t like it even if I could reach her, you know what she’s like, busy, busy, busy. We’ll meet in town, it’s quicker.’ As well as safer.

  He nodded. ‘OK, darling. As long as you know she’s welcome. Everyone’s welcome.’

  That is not true, Katherine thought. Then remembered not to be disloyal. Once you started being disloyal you went on. Another women’s magazine. Jeanetta stuck her fingers in the sugar bowl, withdrew them covered in white grains, transferred the sticky paw to her mouth with great smacking sounds. They both chose to ignore her.

  The house ran like a machine on the days when everything worked. Open the front door by 8.45 to spill out the mistress, Jeremy in chair, Jeanetta trailing pyjamas, wailing for the toy she had left behind, refusing to move, then following, curious for the day despite herself, keen to reach Mrs Harrison and the prospect of another breakfast. They bumped down three or four wide steps, Come on, come on, Jeremy beaming and squinting at the world, turned left, downhill four steps, up the next steeper steps, all of them slightly anxious to effect the day’s first transition. Mrs Harrison at the door, taking in the posse of them with a smile which faded slightly when she saw the pyjamas, dusty from the brief journey and clutched to Jeanetta’s chest like an offering. ‘When you’ve got a minute, Mrs A,’ she intoned, the face suddenly stern, ‘Mrs Pearson’d like a word with you,’ gesturing back into the house as if to call up a giant. This sounded ominous; so ominous, Katherine, unable to face another confrontation, muttered something along the lines of yes, yes, of course, this evening, ever so late, and with a bright grin which embraced everything in sight, fled down the street, waving back towards them. Mrs Harrison watched, shaking her head. Off to work with a spare dress in her bag: the world was mad. Jeanetta pressed inside without a backward glance, dropping the pyjamas to the floor along with the red cloak she had grabbed at the last minute from the playroom alcove, while Jeremy raised his arms to be embraced.

  ‘Look at her, she’s like someone escaping,’ Mrs Harrison remarked out loud, tutting under her breath. She remained at the doorstep, holding the boy in her arms and watching Katherine skipping out of sight. After a minute, he wriggled to be free and she put him down. He waddled into the house where Mr Harrison ushered him down the stairs at the end of the hallway into their flat. He liked the children in the morning although afternoons saw an imperceptible slackening of his patience. Already Jeanetta would have been scooped up for kiss and cuddle and hallo, my lovely, how you been then, a brief embrace because of her weight and his arthritis, but mutually enjoyed all the same, she returned affection with aggressive warmth first thing in the morning. Then transferred her adoring attention to Mark Pearson if he was home from school, her condescension to Mark’s sister when he was not. School holidays rendered Jeanetta easier to please.

  This point in the morning was bliss to Mrs Harrison. She still wore her slippers, slouched against the door frame admiring the street, feeling in her pocket for the ever present packet of fags. It enlivened her, this first interlude of the morning after Mr and Mrs had departed and the house was her own. She didn’t want the house, wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what to do with all those rooms to which Harrison administered his daily lick and promise, but she liked the occasional feeling of being the only one in control. Just for a while. The sun was shining, the birds audible in the chestnut tree opposite the house. She could always have sat in the garden, but the garden was quiet and she liked a bit of noise. Besides, this was about the only time in this road when anything happened much. Big cars passed, people walked up and down: she wasn’t going to miss the sights or the chance of gossip. Eileen sat on the second of the four steps, pleased to find her view unobscured, lit her first cigarette.

  Not a friendly neighbourhood, but not bad when the nobs had gone out to work, such of them who did. Then there were the nannies and babies and passers-by going places. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mr Mills turning into the street, strolling down the left hand of the road towards her as if he had all the time in the world. Well, it was a nice day, she thought lazily: why should he hurry; worked something called flexi hours, he’d informed her, which seemed a funny term for always being late. Talked a bit funny too, Mr Mills, told her once this was his stroll through civilization, the only bit of it he ever saw all day. Oh yes? Well he was a friendly enough chap and she’d talk to anyone, whatever rubbish they said.

  His clothes were as odd as the conversation. In summer, as now, he wore the same heavy cords as winter, only his feet finished in sandals with whitish socks, a sight irritating Mrs Harrison beyond belief. Waist to neck was covered in a creased Indian cotton shirt, identical usually to yesterday’s and the day before’s, while his face was always festooned with a bit of fuzz, which Mrs Harrison longed to attack with scissors since it looked as if he had forgotten, and on top of that, like a final decoration, a pair of granny glasses of the kind old Harrison had given up wearing long ago. Really.

  ‘Hallo, Mr Mills,’ she called as he drew level. ‘Not seen you in ages. Been on your hols, then?’

  He stopped in surprise, thoughts obviously elsewhere. Or maybe he just didn’t fancy a chat this morning, and if so, that was too bad, since she did. An awkward posture for John Mills, involving him crossing his ankles, standing on the outer side of his feet with his knees pressed tight, hands in pockets and thin torso leaning forward, looking like an anxious bird.

  ‘Oh no, no no,’ he said. ‘Holidays? What are they when they’re at home? We workers, Mrs Harrison, we workers . . .’

  She chuckled. ‘Speak for yourself. Thought you’d gone for ever.’

  ‘Alas, no, on a course . . . Went away for a few days, but now I’m back. On the treadmill.’

  ‘Poor old you. Still looking after them kiddies, are you?’ She had the half-idea he did something of the kind, he’d said so and she saw him, with his slight effeminacy, as some breed of teacher, all of whom she imagined to be pansies if they were male. Or something on the local council, for all that stuff he said. Talking politics as soon as they’d said hallo. Fancy; so unexpected he must be paid for talking like that; it wasn’t natural. No one else had ever spouted that kind of stuff to Mrs Harrison: she found it faintly gratifying, but slightly indecent.

  ‘You housekeep,’ he had said, ten minutes into the initial conversation six months ago, when it was winter and she had more time, ‘and they own all this,’ waving his arms about. ‘. . . And another house too, I expect. It’s disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful. No one should be allowed to own so much.’

  ‘Why not, then?’

  ‘Because it’s wicked, that’s why. It should all be shared. Look, there’s room for four families in here. Places where I work, they come from four to a cupboard.’

  ‘Well,’ she had said, slightly offended by a view of her employers which seemed to include her as a conspirator, ‘don’t bring any spares up here then, will you?’

  ‘I might,’ he had said darkly, ‘bring half of them up to squat in this street.’ ‘Now, now,’ Mrs Harrison had answered, laughing. ‘Cruel world, Mr Mills, but don’t you go thinking you can change it. Think that, you’ll go mad.’

  These days, and particularly when passing through these delicious extremes of Bayswater, he privately wondered if going mad was not a preferable option to pretending to remain sane, doing as he supposed Mrs Harrison did, and simply making shift with a bad lot. John Mills had been hippy, poet and preacher, teaching the gospel of revolution to which he still clung like a dying man to a raft which all others had abandoned. He had stopped and spoken to Mrs Harrison in the way he did with anyone so clearly a member of the proletariat, which she did not even have the wisdom to resent. Most people didn’t. They were mad too. He looked up at the window, saw a cat sitting in state. Those up there paid part of his wages he supposed, by putting their bloody loose change in some charity box, but it did not endear them to him. Lovely houses, very nice
: he could not resist this street while wanting to bomb it out of the water. Submerged in these houses would be everything wrong with the world, wrongs he felt like acne on the skin.

  ‘Lovely day,’ Mrs Harrison said.

  He was full of it this morning, up to the gunwales. The morning before, his first back at work, he had been in a filthy room in a street two miles and several light years from where he stood now and the contrast was no balm to a shattered conscience and uneasy nerves. He said nothing of course, and Mrs Harrison simply thought him odd. She saw his present vacancy, sensed in him a vague desire to be off, but not to move. He looked paler than ever, still talked with his whole body rocking to and fro as if he could not trust any part of him to stay still, telling her how the roof had fallen in on his office, domestic details she relished with Ohs and Ahs, and It Never Dids. From behind her, Patsy the dog ambled down the steps, shuffled for position on the warm stone and flopped her large Labrador body down with a grunt. Behind her, Jeanetta appeared, silent for once.

  ‘She looks like the dog,’ Mills observed out loud, pointing at both of them. Mrs Harrison laughed. She did too, didn’t she, blonde and fat, with the same kind of eyes only surrounded by pink. My, my wasn’t Mr Mills twitchy this morning, the dog so placid in elderly contrast. She was suddenly bored and ready for the great indoors, the cigarette at an end. She flicked the stub on to the pavement, her deliberate contribution to a litter-free street.

  ‘Mustn’t keep you, Mr M. Nice to see you again. Sure you don’t want a cuppa?’ She hadn’t offered one at the outset but found his usefulness as a five-minute distraction over. He untangled his feet, bent to pat the dog and walked away. There was a peculiar lack of dignity in his walk, almost comic.

  ‘Isn’t he a bloody fool, then?’ said Mrs Harrison to Patsy. ‘Always so bloody miserable and nervous. Isn’t he just that, sweetheart?’ turning to Jeanetta, commencing the hours of endless chatter which so mollified the child. ‘Don’t know,’ muttered Jeanetta, stroking Patsy with rapt concentration, her chest and stomach balanced on her fat knees, the smooth flesh of her back exposed. ‘And when’s your mummy going to get you some new things then?’ asked Mrs Harrison, pulling down the T-shirt. Jeanetta giggled at the tickle of the touch. ‘Pyjamas,’ she said. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ sighed Mrs Harrison, ‘I really don’t. What shall we do today, pet?’

  Jeanetta beamed and clapped her hands. ‘Pat-a-cake?’ she asked.

  ‘This one?’ Eileen said. ‘Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, Bake me a cake as fast as you can . . .’ The child joined in and the sound of her tentative singing followed John on his way to work.

  Katherine always knew when she was cutting it fine and the urgency of the errand made it exhausting. She arrived, slightly breathless, looking at her watch, which was always fast in a vain attempt to kid herself into being early. Fifteen minutes to spare, not quite enough after the queue for the showers and hair-driers at the gym. She was back to base, three doors down from Mr Isaacs’ emporium in fashionable Marble Street, outside David’s favourite dress shop. She had explained this place to Mary once, pointing it out since they tended to meet at the other end. ‘What! Does he wear dresses, then?’ Mary had asked, deliberately obtuse. ‘No, for me, silly. He likes the things in there for me.’ ‘You mean a bit like dressing a racehorse in your own colours,’ said Mary tartly. ‘He has you wearing his.’ ‘Well, no,’ said Katherine, flustered, deciding not to expand on the subject. Mary always did this, cut her down to size, but then Mary was at her tartest when envious. This was, in a way, a very satisfying equation for the time being.

  Katherine never knew whether to dress down for meetings with her sister in order to avoid the ‘That’s nice, must have cost a packet’ remark, or dress up in order to feel confident and enjoy the slight frisson of jealousy and underline her own emancipation. There was usually little enough choice. She dressed immaculately, knew no other way of taking pride in her appearance, and if David’s choices, as well as Mr Isaacs’ preferences for his shopfront, were the shapes of West End designer fabrics, then so be it. Today, Katherine was wearing the same tailored beige as the day before, offset with different earrings, brooch and shoes, very sleek indeed. The rope of the bag she carried bit into the palm of one hot hand as she slowed her steps to a dignified walk, entered the shop with a nonchalance she did not feel. Today was complicated: no time for the lingering and dreaming she preferred.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Allendale, what a shame, but never mind; Mr Allendale was so sure it would suit you. What would you like to try instead? That one. Really? Not entirely silk, you understand, and not the very top of the range’ (this accompanied by a small curling of the lip). ‘A slight difference in the price. Yes, I’m sure we could give you the difference on the dress. Cash? Madam would like cash?’ eyebrows arched towards the sky as if articulating a very dirty word.

  Crunching of tissue paper, bad-tempered. Be nice to the customers, cooperation at all times. Especially if they were notable for extravagance like young Mrs Allendale. How strange of her to prefer a cheaper suit in that colour. Her husband buys them all for her, you know. Why? Well between you and me, she can’t be trusted with a charge card. So I was given to understand, in confidence, of course. Katherine worked in a shop herself, dealt with the same kind of customers, knew how to flirt with them or pander to them and she could hear what this manageress was thinking. Never knows the value of money, no idea. So one hears. Well, bother her, the stuck-up cow. Katherine emerged, flushed and triumphant. The suit didn’t matter: what counted was the fifty pounds change which made her feel rich, free and generous.

  She was now more than two minutes late for the coffee shop at the other end, cantering up the pavement in tiny Italian shoes, relief apparent in the step. Sitting at a table, looking at her huge manly wristwatch, Mary saw Katherine’s smiling approach, and considered smugly that her younger sister was actually pleased to see her. The thought put her into a mood of great sweetness. She straightened her spine, patted her very short haircut, pulled down her plain black sweater. Less attractive than her sibling, but by no means lacking in the same raw material, her own slim neatness deliberately unadorned and her face only blemished by a hungry look. Mary was always prompt, early in fact for every appointment, and only the shimmering glance of her younger sister could excuse a lapse of two minutes in the timetable, although earliness was far more normal. ‘I taught her that: she never used to be like that,’ she had once explained to David, who approved of such punctuality. Amazing how Katherine was slipping these days. What had happened to the time when she would always be fifteen minutes early, quite content to circle the block in pouring rain, looking at shop windows or standing in doorways to pass the time, anything rather than be late? In all those respects, Katherine was not entirely beyond hope, but in the pursuit of long-term redemption, sister Mary did not really rate her chances. Not if being a consumer sent you to Hell.

  Their meetings roughly once a week were entirely at Mary’s instigation, a state of affairs and a duty she never resented any more than she noticed the monosyllables which were Katherine’s more frequent responses. Well, she had to make allowances. Little sister was several years younger and she had been pushed from pillar to post through a series of foster homes, never mind about that, better to gloss over the cruelty of parting them in the first place; social workers did not do that now. Mary had been luckier, adopted by parents now conveniently deceased, donors of some kind of education. Katherine had always preferred colours and pictures. Juvenile, thought Mary: Frozen in adolescence when she still liked comics; give her those and a paint-box and she’s happy. Rather apt when she came to think of it, and she did think of it rather cattily, since Katherine’s life was a bit like a kit for painting by numbers. All those little blank areas with a number on each; fill in with the paint of the corresponding colour, and presto, a woman. No, no, this would not do: this was her sister, her only kin, whom after a fashion, she loved, even though the responsibility was one she had been
grateful to shed. It might have been a liberal regime she imposed, but Katherine had been, well, wilful. And still, charmingly and irritatingly, was.

  ‘Well, well, well . . . What have we here, Kate’s late.’