Some Kind of Fairy Tale (14 page)

I
t’s to be hoped you’ve calmed down a bit.” This was Mary, answering the door to Peter. Mary frequently prefaced her wishes with
it’s to be hoped
. It’s to be hoped the trains will run on time. It’s to be hoped there’s enough food to go round. It’s to be hoped that the sky doesn’t fall. “You’ve upset everyone.”

Peter kissed his mother and assured her that he had calmed down. Mostly he had. His visit to Richie’s place had been cathartic, and because he was alone and with no one to see him he had allowed himself a good cry in the car. After a few minutes he’d pulled himself together and found a cigarette from the contraband pack in the glove compartment.

“Have you been smoking?” his mother asked. “It’s to be hoped you haven’t started that habit up again.”

He was almost forty and yet she still sometimes spoke to him as if he was fourteen. He wondered if it was ever possible for parents
to see their offspring as independent adults. Zoe was fifteen going on twenty and he knew it was going to be difficult enough for him to release the arrow from the bow.

He chose not to reply. Dell was in the kitchen, fixing a fused plug on a lamp. Peter drew a chair from under the table and sat down, watching his father wield a screwdriver. They were making Tara’s old room comfortable. Mary had been out buying new duvet covers and pillowcases and new curtains for the room. It seemed they were enormously busy with these tasks so that they could run away from the real job of asking Tara any questions.

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs having a nice bath,” Mary said. “Don’t make her cry again, Peter. Promise me you won’t make her cry again.”

“I promise, Mum. It’s all right. I’m not going to shout or raise my voice. Okay?”

After they had walked together through the Outwoods on New Year’s Day, and after Tara had given Peter her explanation about what had happened to her, he had driven her straight back to their parents’ house and had asked her to recount the same story to Dell and Mary.

He hadn’t got the reaction he’d expected. Mary and Dell had listened patiently to the abbreviated version. Then when Tara had finished, Mary had proposed that she make a pot of tea. Dell, for his part, had heartily agreed that, yes, what they all needed was a nice cup of tea. Peter had exploded. Things were said. Mary had asked him to leave.

“You all right?” Dell asked him, while fiddling with a tiny screw.

“Yes, I’m all right.”

“Good.”

“So everyone’s all right, Dad. All right?”

“Has your mum gone upstairs?”

Peter leaned back in his chair to look. “Yes.”

“Shut the door, then.”

Peter got up, shut the door, and sat down again.

Dell laid his screwdriver and the plug on the table. “Now, listen to me, you thickheaded bugger. I’m not happy with her fucking story any more than you are. Neither is your mum. But Tara is ill.
You can see she’s ill. And very likely she might get iller, especially with you raging and snorting and charging round like a bull at a gate. Now, the last thing we want is to push her over the edge or to make her so confused that we drive her away again. So you just keep your opinions to yourself. All right?”

“You’re just going to accept everything she says? No word about what really happened?”

“At the minute, yes. Exactly that. Sometimes in this life you have to understand that we don’t
need
to know everything.”

Chastened, Peter looked away. “I’ve just come from Richie’s. Don’t you think we owe him something? We made a big mistake over that. He even served a stretch for that bit o’ dope they found at his house.”

“Whose fault was that?”

“Mine, partly.”

“We’ll come to Richie when we’re ready. In the meantime, you’ll shut it and you’ll treat her with kid gloves until she gets better.”

“Will I?”

“In this house you fucking well will. Now, I don’t want another word on the subject. How are the kids?”

T
HE TELEVISION WAS FLICKERING
in the corner without anyone paying it much attention. Tara came down swathed in a towel robe, for some reason still wearing her dark glasses, her hair wet, smelling of shampoo. She took a place on the sofa, drying the ends of her hair with a towel.

“Peter, I’m going to have to see Richie at some point,” she said. “I wondered if you could arrange it.”

“There’s no hurry for that,” Mary said.

“All in good time,” said Dell.

“No, it needs to be done. He’ll know I’m back,” she said, looking at Peter. “I owe him the same explanation I’ve given you.”

“He’ll be in no hurry,” said Dell. “It was a long time ago.”

Tara stood up. “Mum and Dad have done up my room,” she said. “Come on, Peter, I want to show it to you.”

“I’ll come up with you,” Mary said.

But Tara gently pressed her back into her chair. “No, Mum. I want to show him. You two stay here.”

Peter rose to follow Tara upstairs, but not before Mary had shot him a warning look that seemed to carry a whiff of cordite. When they got up to the room, Tara closed the door and invited Peter to sit down on the bed.

“Do you remember what this room was like when I left?” she said.

“Pretty much.”

“No, exactly. Do you remember what it was like, exactly?”

“More or less.”

She went over to the wall adjacent to the window. “Remember what was here?”

“Poster?”

“Good try. It was a giant butterfly. Blue. There was a poster over here. What was it?”

“U2.”

“You’re guessing. I didn’t like them. It was a poster from the film
The Lost Boys
, with a pledge of undying devotion to the Kiefer Sutherland character. But I also had a poster of The Cure; and over here was a double-decker ghetto blaster, and I kept a Walkman over there; thin floaty scarves draped here, stacks of cheap bangles on a pole. Hair irons, you know, straighteners and crimpers by the wall sockets; could have burned down the house. Doc Martens over there with fluorescent laces, I loved them. The knackered hi-fi you gave me. And lots of leather belts to be worn with white granddad shirts, and there was a trilby hat hanging behind the door and another hat, a fedora with a blue felt band that I got from Richie, and over there a corkboard with dried roses pinned to it and scraps of paper with snatches of poetry, and I could tell you what was written on each scrap.”

“What’s your point? That you can remember your own things better than I could?”

“The carpet, which has now been replaced, had a spot here where I spilled some india ink; the curtains were unpicked at the hem and stuck with pins because I hadn’t finished the job of trying to make them longer. I could go on effortlessly. My point is,
all this stuff, all this stuff was my life, and to me it was here almost like yesterday.”

“So? You’ve got a good memory.”

“We’ll go into your room next. We’ll see who has the best memory of
your
stuff.”

“Thought about all this, haven’t you?”

“You betcha!”

You betcha!
was one of Tara’s favorite expressions before she disappeared. She said it early and often.

She sat down on the bed next to Peter and took his hand. “I want you to know a couple of things before you jump to conclusions. Firstly, I know that Mum and Dad think I’m mentally ill and that’s why they are being gentle with me. I also know that you think I’m either mentally ill or I’m lying my head off. That’s fine: I didn’t expect you to respond in any other way, and I’m sure I would be the same if the roles were reversed.

“My God, I thought long and hard before telling you what I told you. I knew the risks. I knew you would be angry, or that you would think I was sick. I considered developing my travel-round-the-world story, but I also knew that although it would be more acceptable I would get caught out pretty quick because I haven’t been anywhere in my life except one single other place. So I decided to tell the truth, whatever the consequences.

“Now it has also occurred to me that I might be lying to myself, for deep, dark psychological reasons. People do that, don’t they?

“I want you to consider this. What have I got to gain by telling you this story? It would be simpler to say that I ran away. I would cause myself a lot less trouble if I said that. I could work through the anger and the abuse that would follow. But by telling you this I’ve put myself at great risk. I don’t expect you to believe it, Peter. Do you understand? I neither expect you to nor do I need you to. I have told you a story that I don’t expect you or anyone else to believe for a single second.”

“Well,” Peter said. “We’re eye to eye on that.”

“Peter, I’m in deep trouble. Deep trouble. What I do need is help. What I’m telling you here is the truth. I wish it wasn’t. I’ve been away six months and I came back as soon as I could and when
I got back everything had changed. It had all changed so incredibly I didn’t even dare come home. I spied on this house and slept rough for three days. I didn’t talk to anyone. I had no money. Look at this five-pound note with the Duke of Wellington on it. I’d had it in my pocket but you can’t spend it anywhere ’cos it’s not legal tender anymore. I was starving and I almost froze to death but I couldn’t knock on the door because I was terrified. Terrified! Mum and Dad had grown old. But I quickly realized there were only three people in the world who could help me. My mum, my dad, and my brother. I have nowhere else to go. Will you help me, Peter? Will you?”

Peter stared at Tara. She was still the teenage girl. But he could see care lines in her, too. She was holding the withdrawn bank note out for him to take, as if it might purchase his belief. It was almost possible to believe in what she was saying, and to see there a sixteen-year-old girl, with her slender half-starved frame; but then a blink would bring him back to his senses.

“I will help you. But you would have to do what I say.”

She nodded.

“Would you be prepared to see someone?”

She nodded again. “I saw this coming. But yes.”

He took her hand. “Okay. We’ll go downstairs and we’ll keep the peace. It’s been very hard for those two.”

“I know.” Tara started to cry.

Peter hugged her tight. “Welcome home, Tara. Welcome home.”

T
HEY WENT DOWNSTAIRS, AND
Mary in particular was happy to see them appear to be on good terms, though Dell raised his eyebrows at him. Mary asked Peter if he wanted something to eat.

“Not hungry, thanks, Mum.”

“Have just a sandwich.”

“No, thanks.”

“I can make you a nice ham sandwich. Ham and mustard.”

“No, really.”

“Cheese? There’s some nice cheddar.”

“Honestly, no.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake! Okay! I give in! I’ll have a bloody sandwich!”

“You don’t have to have one,” Mary said, “if you don’t want one.”

“Some people feed you with love,” Tara said, “and some people love you with food.”

When Dell followed Mary out to the kitchen Peter told Tara all about Richie, about what transpired with the police after her disappearance, about what had happened between them. She was distressed to hear that Peter and Richie had never spoken again after the incident with the smashed guitar, and that Richie had spent a short time in prison after being sentenced for dealing in cannabis. She told Peter that she desperately wanted to meet with Richie if it was going to be possible and he agreed to try to set up a meeting.

Tara also agreed that Peter could arrange for her to see a doctor. They decided, for the time being, not to tell Mary and Dell about this.

Peter left the house, but not before kissing Tara and his mother. He also kissed Dell, something that would not have been done twenty years earlier.

W
HEN HE GOT HOME
, Peter saw an elderly neighbor out on the street and looking somewhat forlorn. It was Mrs. Larwood, a frail and gray-haired figure who lived across the road. Peter had helped her once when she had slipped on some ice. She was a sweet lady who had baked him a cake in gratitude for the small things he had done to help her; though the girls were unkind and said she was a witch. Because she looked distressed, he stopped his truck.

“Mrs. Larwood. Everything okay?”

Mrs. Larwood took a moment to focus on him. She had cloudy cataracts on her eyes and her sight was poor. She’d lost her cat. She hadn’t seen it in a couple of days. It was a ginger, she reminded him, with a pretty red collar. She wondered if it had got trapped in someone’s outbuildings. Peter promised to check his workshop and the attached buildings. She was grateful and turned back to her home.

Peter drove on and then had a second thought. He carefully reversed his truck and wound down his window a second time.

“Have you got a photo, Mrs. Larwood? Of your cat?”

“Yes.”

“Let me have it and I’ll get one of the kids to run off some leaflets from the computer. We can stick ’em on the lampposts in the neighborhood; then people will all check their buildings.”

“That would be so good! You’re so kind to me!”

“It’s nothing. Dig out the photo and I’ll send one of the kids over to get it.”

“Thank you, Peter! Thank you so much!”

“Good night, Mrs. Larwood.”

B
eing a farrier was hard trade, but it was a very good business for making social contacts. Peter shod the horses of the local justice of the peace, the wife of the constituency member of Parliament, the daughter of the CEO of the local council, and a lot more people connected with the great and the good. What’s more, he found that when these people discovered that he had a university degree, their attitude toward him changed. Their tone of voice softened; they relaxed; they didn’t grin quite so much.

Unknown to them, Peter charged wildly different prices, depending on whether he liked his customer, or if they were members of the hunt, or according to what he thought they could afford. If anyone ever questioned his fees, which they rarely did, he happily referred them to another farrier who charged much lower rates. Then, if they asked why those rates were lower, which they inevitably did, he simply raised his eyebrows and made no comment, allowing the questioning party to conclude that low rates meant shoddy work. This technique lost him no customers at all in a dozen years.