33 West Read online

  Miss Frobisher said nothing but waved her stick by way of farewell. She had always declined the offer of a guide dog, knowing that dogs drew people in while sticks kept them away.

  She tapped on towards the newsagents, past the prep school where mothers stood in groups talking in anxious voices about entrance exams. ‘I heard they only took four. The school really needs to prepare them better. I heard that the ones that got in were all tutored.’

  She carried on past the tennis courts. The South African tennis coach shouted, ‘Howzit, Miss Frobisher?’ in between the thwack of tennis balls. He never forgot to say hello. She missed him in the winter months.

  She wouldn’t have been able to hide it forever, of course. The girls had guessed, and some of her colleagues had begun to suspect. But she might have scraped by until the end of the year if she hadn’t given Sophie Ward-Bishop a B minus. It had been a terrible essay, a mess of cliches and generalisations not worth more than a B, but she had added the minus because of the creamy smugness of Sophie’s delivery. The girl’s indignant snort of dismay when she heard the mark had been really quite satisfying. But this was destined not to be the end of the matter.

  The next day she had sensed the girls were excited about something. There were more giggles and squeaks than usual. She could feel barely suppressed hilarity every time she turned her head. There was a strange crackling sound as if some of the girls were wearing pvc macs, although given the summer weather that was unlikely. Whatever it was, she hoped that she would be able to ride it out until the end of the lesson, but then she heard the classroom door open and the Headmistress’s smooth tones,

  ‘And these are our Historians, we like to think of the sixth form as a smooth transition to …’ the practised flow stopped and Miss Frobisher heard a gasp, followed by some snorts of laughter from the girls.

  ‘Oh dear,’ the Head was saying, to someone who accompanied her, parents probably, ‘we seem to be interrupting something. Some kind of reenactment perhaps. Shall we go straight on to the new Science block? We are so fortunate to have a really world class physics lab.’

  As the door closed, the classroom exploded. Miss Frobisher heard a long hiss as if someone was deflating a lilo.

  Later, in her study, the Head had spoken more in sorrow than in anger. ‘I know, Celia, that sometimes the best thing to do is to ignore them, but was it wise to allow something quite so grotesque to remain in your classroom?’

  Miss Frobisher said nothing, and the Head continued,

  ‘It was so horribly lifelike. Do you think men actually use dolls like that for sex? I wonder where the culprit got it from? I hope it didn’t come from home.’ Miss Frobisher heard the Head sigh. ‘What I don’t understand is why any of our girls would do something like this. A sixth former too. Unless, of course, it was a message of some kind.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I just wish you’d told me, Celia. You didn’t have to keep me in the dark like this.’

  Miss Frobisher smiled ruefully, but the Headmistress didn’t falter.

  ‘An unfortunate choice of words, perhaps. But, honestly, Celia, we have worked alongside each other for so long. It’s a question of trust. I could have helped you to … adjust.’

  It had all been very swift. Compassionate leave. The promise of some coaching work, ‘to tide you over’. One of the governors had put in a word with the Distressed Gentlefolks’ Association and had found her the flat across the Green, ‘so you won’t be too cut off from your old life’.

  Miss Frobisher allowed herself a little pause on the fifty-third stair, before climbing the last flight to her flat. Her visitors were always surprised that she could manage the stairs, as if her failing sight had impaired all her other faculties. She turned on the radio and heard Libby Purves announcing the line-up for Midweek. It included a man who had raised two million pounds for charity in sponsored sky dives despite losing both his legs in a waterskiing accident. She pressed the off button. Miss Frobisher did not want to hear about people who met adversity with courage, who used it as an ‘opportunity’. She disliked the assumption that suffering made you a nobler person. One of the distressed gentlewomen who lived downstairs liked to tell her that when one door closes, another opens. In Miss Frobisher’s experience the door had only ever been at best half open. And now it was quite shut.

  She did not go out again the next morning, but waited till after lunch then the Archers repeat had finished. This was a good time, before the schools came out and the end of the working day, when the pavements were full of determined pedestrians talking on their phones and not looking out for old ladies with white sticks. As she pushed back the bolt of the front door she smelled the warm dusty scent of the plane trees. But there was something else as well – the aroma of cigarette smoke.

  ‘Is somebody there?’ she said. ‘I don’t want to trip over you coming down the steps.’ She thought it must be a girl, since they quite often came to smoke here, the house being in a side street, and not in full view of the school.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was your house.’

  Miss Frobisher had been right, it was a girl. She thought she recognised the voice. She never forgot a voice.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a spare cigarette, do you?’ she said. ‘I used to smoke, but I had to stop when I went blind. Too dangerous, kept burning my fingers. But if you were to light a cigarette for me I would be very grateful. You never really stop wanting them, or at least I haven’t.’

  The girl said, ‘Oh sure, no problem.’ Miss Frobisher heard the sound of a match being struck, and then she felt a touch on her hand. She raised the cigarette to her lips and inhaled.

  ‘Thank you. Now, did I meet you yesterday with your mother? What’s your name? No, don’t tell me, it’s Ruby, isn’t it?’

  There was a moment’s silence, and then the girl said, ‘Yes. But how do you know? Can you still see things?’

  ‘No, I’m totally blind. But I remember voices. So Ruby, how are you enjoying school?’

  She could hear Ruby scuffing the step with her shoe.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  Miss Frobisher knew all about ‘fine’.

  ‘Then why are you smoking on my front steps when you should be in your classroom learning something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just needed to get out for a bit.’ There were more sounds of shoe leather scuffing the steps.

  ‘And what would your mother say if she knew what your were doing?’

  ‘Oh, she’d be horrified. She loved being at school. Head Girl, Captain of everything. She’s always telling me how great it was. But I’m not like her.’

  Miss Frobisher waited for her to go on.

  ‘I’m amazed I got in. All the other girls are really pretty and really clever. They make me feel fat and stupid. I’m the ugly duckling.’

  Miss Frobisher felt the nicotine hit her, and then a flutter of pleasure. Was it the cigarette or the idea that Sophie Ward-Bishop’s daughter was not turning out according to plan? She decided to nudge things a little further.

  ‘It always was a competitive place. Sadly there’s not much you can do about your looks or your brains. But you don’t have to be fat.’

  Miss Frobisher thought of the girls who had wasted away, their lemur-like eyes bulging, before they were whisked off to clinics by their desperate parents. Fifteen was the age when it started, usually. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll be fifteen next month.’

  ‘Quite old enough then to take control. You’ll be a swan before you know it, Ruby. Give my regards to your mother. You can say you helped me across the road. Remember you can always be thin.’

  Miss Frobisher set off towards the roar of traffic on the Shepherd’s Bush Road. She decided she would buy some chocolate. There were some pleasures left in life after all.

  EALING

  Ealing Commondy

  Will Maxted

  It was only light rain, so he took them the long way, through the park.

  Jere
my had known what they wanted when they had first walked in. Thirty five years’ experience that was. He was hearing out a phone-whinge about arrears on the office, and, on auto-pilot, guessed their tick boxes. First time. No chain. Unrealistic hopes. The bloke, Martin, seemed relaxed enough, as interested in looking around the office as at the particulars. But Chloe was an exclamation mark. Even though it had been a Saturday, she was in business dress, and sat bolt upright. Sure enough, while Martin smiled to himself, Chloe answered the questions. Jeremy typed them in carefully as if there were a point.

  ‘Three bedrooms… Garden… One child…. Yes… Yes…’ When they got to ‘Catchment of Ealing Park Primary?’ she just said ‘yes’, but briefly she was very still. Jeremy noticed such things. When he had first started in the office they had used index cards that had to be filled in by the client. Her tick in that box would have left a dent. He toyed with inventing others: ‘Have You Suddenly Realised Your Application For Primary School Has To Be In Shortly?’ and, ‘Are You Now Freaking Out?’

  When he had got to the end of the questions, he hit the return key with a flourish. That showed he was now running an enormous computer programme, analysing vast databanks of potentially suitable properties. His nod at the screen’s ‘Nothing Suitable’ suggested that this was only to be expected, that his properties were so desirable that, unless you paid cash as he was first mentioning them to you, they would be gone. Rather than the fact that all he had to sell at the moment was two bijou flats, in need of some reconstruction. Everyone seemed to want to go to the big boys these days, with their hungry young ‘teams’ and free coffee, and 360 degrees web video interactive…things. His confidence was a sham. Business was not booming.

  But Chloe had worked him on the phone anyway. Trying to be charming, asking how he was, laughing but coming back to the point. Jeremy found it more impressive than flattering. The weeks passed and he felt the tone of her voice steadily going up.

  And then…Someone handed him a briefcase full of banknotes saying, ‘It’s yours. Enjoy.’

  Not literally, you understand. Literally what happened is that Mrs Isobel Turner, of Creighton Road, finally decided that her adult children were no longer going to visit her often enough to stop her moving to Devon. Not of the generation to shop around, she had just phoned up the agency she’d bought from thirty years earlier. Would he mind selling it again? Three bedrooms? South-facing garden? Jeremy almost had to wipe his chin before saying that wouldn’t be a problem. He’d called Chloe for a ‘heads up’ before the particulars were prepared. That was this morning.

  ‘This is Walpole Park,’ he said, off-handedly, trying not to walk fast.

  He talked about other things as they walked past Pitshanger Manor, and the SS Windrush memorial flowerbed. He led them past the teahut, and down the path alongside the water feature, and on past the bark-based play area. Now they were on the long tree-lined path, flanked by the open grassy spaces. He pointed out the back of Ealing Studios. He watched as Chloe’s eyes flicked between the groups of people, usually including at least one mother and one small child. He thought of the Terminator scanning the biker bar.

  It was Martin that eventually spoke up. ‘Is this place sponsored by Maclaren Buggies?’

  ‘Oh…’ Jeremy smugged, ‘… yes, it’s obviously a popular area for young families.’

  Past the tennis courts opposite Lammas Park with a casual nod to that, round the corner, turning right when St Mary’s came into view. Chloe scanned in the tiny front yards as well as the cosy front rooms, while Martin wandered along more vaguely. And then they were there. Jeremy paused on the front step.

  ‘Obviously, South Ealing tube is just a couple of minutes walk that way,’ he gestured. ‘And as you probably know Ealing Park School is five minutes walk down there.’ Chloe glanced, but returned her scan to the front door. Jeremy, briefly distracted by the fact that the front room’s curtains were drawn at this time of the afternoon, felt that if he took too long with the keys, she might actually elbow him out of the way.

  They waited as Jeremy fiddled, picking up some bits of post and putting them on the narrow shelf above the radiator. The floor tiles were the black and white tiles of an old cleaning advert. The wallpaper was muted, faded, stripes. A small faux chandelier lit photographs of people in haircuts and clothes no longer fashionable. Chloe had finished staring down the hall and was now bending sideways to glimpse the upstairs.

  Jeremy opened his mouth to speak, but then a puzzle passed across his face. He closed his mouth, listening. They all heard it. He opened his mouth again, and looked at his watch. ‘I thought she said she wouldn’t be back until four.’

  There was certainly a voice on the other side of the door to the front room. But, muffled though it was, Martin felt sure it was not the voice of an old lady. And it was strangely fluent, lively, if artificial. Martin realised what was strange: there was no interrupting second voice, and no changes in volume. Martin and Chloe looked at Jeremy. He looked at the door. ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘I’d better just…’ He stepped forward and knocked.

  The voice kept going regardless.

  Chloe brushed some imaginary dust of her skirt then put her shoulders back. Looking at Martin, she saucered her eyes at a point below his chin. Martin gazed back steadily, but he did straighten the tie she had made him wear. The voice paused, then kept coming again.

  Jeremy knocked once more, and, coughing loudly, eased the door open slowly, leading into the gap with his head. He paused, said ‘Ah,’ and then pushed the door fully open. Opposite the doorway was a television, the sole source of light in the room. A confident voice was explaining how something, presumably the object on the screen that was being fondled by a stupid looking blonde woman with a mouth-only smile, also had modern and stylish looks. Jeremy moved on into the darkened room.

  Martin followed Chloe after him. There was a smell that Martin couldn’t place, but wasn’t fresh bread or coffee. It was more like … oranges?

  ‘Throw a little light onto the subject…’ Jeremy had located a curtain rope and was tugging to pull the last few inches open as they came in. ‘I think I’ll turn that off for her’, he said, now turning back from the window, ‘if I can just find the … oh.’

  They followed his gaze. The wallpaper here was light brown. Going round the room from the television opposite the door, there was a chimney breast with gas effect coal fire, then bookshelves bearing hardback books. Next to Jeremy and backed up against the window was the first of two sofas forming an L shape. The second one was against the wall next to the hall. That sofa was where the dead man was sitting.

  Everything stopped. Maybe there was a joint intake of breath first, but for a moment there seemed to be just nothing apart from the body. It was the sort of pause you get when dragging a trolley suitcase along a bumpy pavement at speed, and it takes off. You know the noise is going to start again very soon, but for a beat the whole world seems weightless.

  The dead guy’s left hand lay on the cushion beside him, palm upwards. The fingers curled lightly. It could have been the start of a conversational gesture, or he could have been ready to grip something. The way the possible movement was now made stone was the deadest thing Martin had ever seen.

  The eyes were open, dry but unblinking in the new daylight. Unfocussed now, they were still pointed towards the television or, rather, Martin standing in front of it. Martin looked back at the man’s wrinkled face. He tried to picture it moving to see what he had been like. There was nothing stern in the lines around the eyes. And the mouth, hanging open, was slight. Kindly, thought Martin. A kindly old man, sitting there in his striped pyjamas. Backless slippers. Their leather was cracked, but well loved, and with an oiled gleam.

  The rest of the world was coming back into being. The voice on the television was saying that the object folded flat for ease of storage.

  Martin glanced at Chloe, who was transfixed. Jeremy was now staring at the remote control in the body’s right hand, resting on the ar
m of the sofa. Realising he was being assessed, Jeremy shuddered.

  ‘Well…Ha. This is very…’ He made a small gesture with his hands, unsure how best to recover the positive mood. ‘I…Well. You do sometimes…’

  Martin squatted down opposite the man, level with his face but still a respectful distance away. At least, thought Martin, this man looked relaxed now.

  The voice on the television started listing prices.

  The more Martin looked, the more he felt that the man would not have worn his age with bitterness. Perhaps it was just the relaxation of the muscles before rigor mortis set in, but Martin found it easy to imagine him content. He could picture him uncompetitively kicking a football around with grandchildren in the park before securing a break by offering to buy them ice-cream. Then, later, a well-earned pint with the son-in-law. Martin almost smiled. He felt it would have been nice to buy him one.

  Jeremy spoke up again, ‘I … er… was once going round a house and the dog was sick on the shoes of the woman I was showing round.’

  Martin looked away from the old man’s face for a moment. Then, slowly, he stood up and turned on Jeremy. He made a show of looking at Jeremy from head to toe in slow motion. He took in the sheen on the light grey suit, and worn silk tie, as if for the first time. He paused on the frayed shirt cuffs, and then went down the crease on the trousers that had largely disappeared. He looked back at the old guy to make his point.

  ‘I expect,’ he said coldly, ‘that in your job, you’ve been in a lot of funny situations.’ Jeremy started to say that well, no, it wasn’t that, but Martin carried on. ‘I think we should let you get hold of the owner and break the news to her before she arrives.’ It’s ok, he wanted to tell him.