The Little Red Chairs (20 page)

‘What’s your name?’

‘It is forbidden to tell,’ and at that a stopwatch, hidden somewhere in the vastness of her pockets, gives a muffled alarm and she runs up steps and into her own flat, slamming the door decisively.

Not too long after came the first of many communications. They were top secret. Letters left on a little bird table on Jasmeen’s balcony. The writing, sometimes zany, was in different coloured crayon, but with a decided penchant for purple:

I like butterflies. I also like pandas. They are very nice creatures, they are vegetarian. They only eat bamboo. They have no claws.

I can name the three parts of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A long time ago, in a land far away, the most terrible beast that ever lived roameyed the countryside. In the morning it would gobble up men as they went to work in the fields. In the afternoon it would break into lonely farmhouses and eat up mothers and children as they sat down to their lunch.

If
I lived in Oxford I would go bonkers.

On Monday our eggs arrived. On Tuesday they started to chip. On Wednesday the eggs were cracking. On Thursday eleven chicks hatched. On Friday we had young chicks.

To improve my English, my auntie has told me to write a story. It concerns a princess in a cellar. The cellar is small and grey and there are rats and mice. The poor princess has to stand on a stool all day. It is very scary.

*

It was Friday, the evening when they all went to the pub, but it also happened to be Maria’s birthday. Everyone had dressed up for it, different scarves, bright lipsticks, evening purses and whatever bits of jewellery they had. Maria, in her black dress, with the scalloped neckline and sprays of embroidered roses, was Queen. How young she looked and how ravishing, her hair loose, falling over her shoulders and with a beautiful sheen to it. At first they were quite constrained, not really knowing each other and it was left to Bluey, the only man among them, to put them at their ease.

Fidelma had scarcely seen him, because almost as soon as she began work he was promoted and had to look after staff in sister branches all over. He was wearing a paisley waistcoat that he had got at the market and, as he said, must have belonged to some admiral. He knew all their names, the countries they had come from and remembered the names of children and one who was about to make her Holy Communion.

Amaretto was served in coloured liqueur glasses, along with tapas and almond-flavoured biscuits in thin tissue paper. The idea was that the paper, when twirled into a particular shape, could be lit, where it soared up of its own accord, then became invisible and one with the stratosphere. They enjoyed this, making wishes, competing with each other as to whose paper rose highest and they had grown talkative, emboldened from the liqueur, which they gulped, pronouncing it far nicer than the beers or the shandies they were accustomed to.

Maria had done the seating and they were already told that after the first fifteen minutes, the person on one’s right had to move up two places and so eventually, Fidelma found herself next to Medusa. Maria had planned it that way, so as to get the snakes out of Medusa’s hair. Medusa was so affable, stroked Fidelma’s arm, said she had wanted to socialise and now it was happening. At once she explained the reason for her plaits, saying her hair was very strong, like horsehair, and wishing she had soft hair, the same as Fidelma. Then, on her phone, she showed the photographs of her children, a boy and a girl, at a barbecue, along with several other children. The barbecue had been held on her patio, that her boyfriend Kcool had laid. Kcool owned several nightclubs and they were building a place in Majorca, way up in the mountains, a finca. Her kids came first in their classes at everything and had medals in singing and piano playing. She had many questions. Was Fidelma missing her own country. Did she have grown-up kids. Had her husband passed away. Did she go regularly to church. Then a visit was planned. One Sunday in the summer, Fidelma would come, she would take the three changes of train, arriving at Hounslow Station, where they would meet her and take a short cut across an estate to her house.
They would eat on the patio. It would be Cajun chicken with various salads and afterwards, while she and Fidelma lolled and got to know each other better, the children would be riding their ponies in the large paddock that led off their garden.

‘Time, ladies, please … time, ladies.’ It was Bluey with his harsh whistle that had to remind them the little celebration had come to an end and two bottles of Amaretto had been consumed.

Maria and Fidelma stayed on, for a nightcap.

‘I suppose you heard about the boyfriend and the clubs.’

‘I did …’

‘And the finca in Majorca …’

‘I did …’

‘But thank God and the Virgin that you are friends … no more wrangling, no more Mrs Paddy.’

*

The little girl was lugging a branch that was far too heavy for her. The council had lopped the trees and there were a lot of stray branches strewn around, many of which she was attempting to carry across. Several times she stopped and was winded, as the burden was too much. But she persevered and eventually there were enough branches to make a secret hidey-hole under the tree. That done, she lay down on the grass and threw her arms out in abandon.

‘I like your haircut,’ Fidelma said.

‘A friend of my auntie’s cut it, he came to her house … told me not to blink, but I blinked like mad,’ and now she scrunched her eyes and laughed sillily and gaily at the surprise of their being out of doors, breaking rules and about to set up
home, where nobody could spy on them.

Over the weeks, they met each morning, unless it was raining, or her auntie had come to do the laundry. Lots and lots of laundry. One day her auntie had brought the wrong washing powder and her father had got a rash and was furious. The other time he was furious was when their letterbox was crammed with circulars. She wore a different dress each time, she had a range of them, all with identical pintucking on the chest, matching leggings. Some days she wore a long wooden necklace, painted with white flowers. Her hair always smelt so clean. Each time she would bring something from the house, a sieve, a broken wooden spoon, a bit of an old mat, cups from a doll’s house, from which they would drink imaginary tea, plastic iced buns and serviettes with the name of the Indian takeaway from where her daddy bought their suppers most evenings.

‘Are you by yourself in there all day, every day?’ Fidelma asked.

‘No … we are a tribe. A girl tribe. We fight the dinosaurs … then we have our lunch and a rest and we fight more … Punch punch punch until we are very tired and they leave and go to their own quarters over by Battersea. Then I lie down with Greenie … he’s my dinosaur … he came over to our side when he was injured … he plays with Mr Clown.’

‘So you spend your day punching.’

‘And romping … I also have a bronze from my judo class … We’re graded on knowledge and on courage,’ and at that she crawls out from their enclave to demonstrate: one hand raised and the other lowered, as she tackles the imaginary opponent, the blood rushing to her cheeks, gripping him by the lapels, pulling and pushing in order to trap him and get him down. She
does it a few times with impassioned effort, finally succeeding in holding him down for the count of ten, by which time he has lost that round. Her judo class is the big adventure in her life, going on the bus with her auntie every Thursday, writing her initial many times on the window when it is steamy. Then in the changing room a big scramble to get into her uniform, white as white and called a
judogi
. Then into the ring for the big fight. She went down the week before, but was up fast, up under the ten-second deadline and fought for a long time and finally won and the teacher praised her stamina. The boy she fought was very thin and was from Sweden. She was very happy to have won. Afterwards, as was the rule, she shook hands with her opponent and both bowed and went back to their seats and her auntie had a fruity drink for her as a reward. It was raspberry-flavoured, because she would go bonkers if she had any more orange juice.

‘You have to be very tough to win,’ she said, explaining that her belt was red with two yellow stripes, but that she was working up to get a yellow belt, then an orange and one day, a black belt, the highest grade of all.

She took a folded sheet of paper from her copybook and slowly, ceremoniously, opened it, spread it on both their laps, for the revelation. It was a drawing of herself and Fidelma, their arms outstretched, their ears sticking out like a donkey’s, gawky legs in high-heeled red shoes and underneath, in bold capitals, the letters of her name, each letter separate from the neighbouring one, with thick purple shading in between –

My name – M I S T L E T O E.

‘Mistletoe … that’s a lovely name …’

‘I had a different name when I was born. I was called Mary. I was in the hospital in Fulham. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t
know who all the people were, but I knew that I was with my mummy, she was in a bed near me and I was in a cot. Then they brought me home, here, and we all sat on the sofa together, all of us, me in my cot and my mummy and daddy on either side. My mummy is wearing a big floppy jumper and I’m pulling it and she lifts me up and swaddles me, swaddles me tight, because that calms a baby down. My mummy is in America now, so my auntie swaddles me instead.’

‘So you miss your mummy …?’

‘I am forbidden to say.’

These encounters, often in the freezing cold, were what Fidelma lived for. It softened the stone in her heart. In there, squeezed together, Mistletoe feeling her hair, twirling it, making ringlets, then running her finger over face and neck, supposedly for imperfections, but really in fondness. This now was the fulcrum of her life, gave purpose to it and cancelled out the grinding monotony of the job, Medusa’s tempers and the oceans of dust that rose to meet her each evening when she clocked in.

*

She received constant reprimands, some by letter and some spoken. The superintendent, who was English and whom Fidelma had not seen before, told her that there had been complaints from members of the staff. She talked too much at the breaks. She did not do her work properly, there was limescale on a lavatory bowl and the glass door of the chairman’s private shower had the pink smear of Windolene. Worst of all, there was a puddle next to his desk. Then things began to go missing, J-cloths, sponges, her rubber gloves. She knew it was foul play, but she
endured everything, so as to cling onto this job. She forgot to eat, she forgot to pray, she forgot the seasons, although once, snowdrops appeared in her mind and she reckoned that she must have sighted clumps of them, under trees in the park, milk-white, with their mantles of drooping green.

In her sleep, she ran dusters around lintels, door jambs, mouldings, she knelt by the legs of chairs to make sure there were no foul-smelling puddles and she wakened choking from dust.

Each morning before leaving work, she would shake the dusters into the belly of the vacuum and then wash them and hang them to dry in her corner of the store room, hoping they would not go missing, except that they did. First one. Then more. The same with the products in her basket. Her Mr Muscle, her Toilet Duck, her bleach, her Vim. She knew it was Medusa.

It was Maria’s idea to write a candid letter to the supervisor and request an appointment. His name was Herman and he was from Ivory Coast. He sat very erect, behind a large desk in his tiny office, his lips open to show a good set of teeth and his tongue the bright pink of trifle. His desk was strewn with motorcycle manuals and newsletters and there were two photographs of him astride two different motorcycles, one in a street in London and the other in a street in Paris.

At once, she detected the bristle. He did not like what she had to say. Why hadn’t she sorted these thefts out with Medusa?

‘But she is the one –’ she said.

‘Are you implying …’ he cut in sharply.

‘I saw my yellow rubber gloves in her locker.’

‘So you broke into her locker.’

‘No … she opened it to fetch something out.’

‘This is a very serious accusation. Have you proof? Please answer yes or no.’

‘No … I just sense it …’

‘You just sense it … in here shooting your mouth off … Let me tell you, Medusa is a good person, a churchgoing person and we value her contribution on the team … Why would she want your dusters, since she has plenty of her own?’

‘Human nature … malice,’ she said and no sooner had she said the word than she realised her mistake.

‘You have made the whole thing up,’ he said with scorn.

‘Why would I make the whole thing up?’

‘Perhaps you are a racist.’ And at that he ran his forefinger down the letter Maria had helped her to write, muttering the odd word,
Mr Muscle, Duck, Vim
and when he had read to his satisfaction, he tore it lengthwise, the sound so shearing, and dropped the pieces into the waste basket.