Leather Wings (4 page)

I
DREAMED
I gave her a bird, not a sparrow but a yellow canary.

My cousin had a canary when I was a kid but I killed it. All I did was shut the door of the room where the bird cage lived and the central heating in the hall couldn’t reach and warm its little body, so it died of hypothermia. All fluffed up it was, as if a wind had ruffled its feathers. How was I to know? No one told me not to shut that door. I got up in the night to go to the toilet and I had a look in at the canary on my way back to bed. I had bit of a natter with it and then went out and closed the door. I remember how cold my bed was when I got back into it, so that I got out again and put on my dirty socks.

I dreamed I gave Jania a canary. I can’t tell you how queerly thrilling that dream was. The bird was fluttering in my hands and then I opened them for her, like a conjuror, and something rose up in my chest like another bird, beating. The look on her face — the smile that flew on to it! The yellow canary was like a light bulb, dazzling her face with colour. Then I woke up and felt as if I’d been stung all over by a giant mosquito. Not exactly pain, but a stinging feeling, so strong I didn’t know what to do with it. It washed away but I didn’t want to let it go, it was so special. When it had gone away I kept trying to get it back, to get back into the dream, and it nearly worked. I can still do it if I empty my mind and concentrate hard enough. The feeling swims in and out of me till I’m quite weak. I’ve a good mind to buy her a bird, but I can’t can I? What would they think? I’ve never heard of a Fairy Godfather, only women are allowed to be magic for little girls. It strikes me the world’s becoming a narrow place when there’s no room for a man to give a child a canary.

He doesn’t like me, her grandfather. Who’s he anyway to be so superior? What’s he done with his life? Redundant, by the look of it. I can smell a man without a job, I’ve been there. The house isn’t much either, the carpet only goes halfway across the kitchen floor and then it’s lino tiles. The TV set’s smaller even than the one in my little flat, and the table’s plain
old wood. She liked me though, the woman, that was a surprise. I could tell, the way she frowned at him when he snubbed me. Still, I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of her; I’ve always watched out for women with big thighs like that, nutcrackers I call them. I’m not thinking of myself in that regard, she’s well over the hill for me, but those thighs often go with a bossy temper and a la-di-da voice. She has the voice. She’s got the bush of hair too, like a teacher I had at primary school, a real Tartar. I quite liked that old teacher, even if I was scared of her, because she treated me right, she gave me second chances, I think she liked me. I don’t think she felt sorry for me. Jania likes me, I’m sure of that. Somehow the dream has made me more sure, as if the dream was certainly real. I can’t disbelieve in it, it’s like faith, like what they say about faith. I’ll be nervous the next time I call at number forty-one because it’s too important now.

This morning I hosed the car down as usual and gave it a bit of a rub with the chamois, and then I tidied up the flat. I don’t know why. It was as if I was being watched by someone out there. I cleared all the rubbish from inside the back door and piled it up to take to the tip. I vacuum cleaned right under the bed and dusted with a cloth soaked in polish. The sun shone and helped me see the dust lying in floury layers on the chest of drawers and on the red bed lamp. I got rid of it. Then I cleared out all the old jars of furry jam from the kitchen cupboards and washed them up in soapy water till they glittered. I was singing — well, humming. I feel happy. It can’t possibly last.

E
STHER AND
R
EX
are dining stiffly in an expensive restaurant on the fringes of the city. A sitter has been arranged for Jania.

Rex hasn’t raised any objections to going out, hasn’t even complained about the extravagance. In fact he volunteered to take his good grey trousers into the 55 Minute Cleaners and unearthed the bright tie she gave him for a birthday two years back. All of which was strangely unsatisfactory, unsettling. It might suggest she has taken for granted the fact that he doesn’t want evenings out with her. But surely if he’d thought of it he could have brought the subject up himself? It feels queer sitting here opposite the man she used to know years ago — knew him better then perhaps than she knows him now — waiting to have a conversation, as diners are expected to do; as a couple might in her secret manuscript, which isn’t going well. It is hard to think romantic thoughts with a child in the house. She is more adept at switching off Rex, at shunting him on to a siding. But tonight they will share the tracks.

It isn’t an anniversary, the occasion is purely one of conscience. Esther’s conscience. She wasn’t lying to Melanie when she claimed to have no need of nights out with Rex and so she had surprised herself when she lifted the telephone to enquire about possible sitters. To phone Melanie she had first to remember her married name, which she has been told over and over but it has a way of jamming on her tongue. After all these years. And then when the phone was lifted up it was Melanie’s husband, whose name she certainly didn’t have on file in her head. By the time she got her friend on the line she was disgruntled and put her question tersely. Melanie wasn’t put out. She had come up with the name of a sitter — a schoolgirl — straightaway, a fifteen year old with blue rimmed glasses, who sits now in their living-room while they themselves sit stiffly on chintz-covered dining chairs, eating grilled sole. No danger to Rex’s teeth.

Rex glances around the restaurant, spying surreptitiously on the other diners, perhaps looking for the scriptwriter who
will produce instant freeze-dried dialogue for the two of them. Here it comes.

“I suppose you know the world might end in a hundred and twenty-three thousand years from now?” Rex says. “If the comet hits, and there’s a real possibility according to the BBC World Service. It’s true, it was on the news. All life as we know it.”

Esther is startled and misses a fish-bone, which traps itself fortunately in her teeth. “I don’t want the world to end!” she cries (fishing it out).

“It isn’t up to us. We’ll be long gone, and Jania and Jania’s kids and their kids. Actually, I think it’s probably a good thing. Human beings: we’re a failed experiment, look at the way we behave, bleating about each other, we know we’re doing it wrong, destroying the planet, destroying ourselves. We’re not rational, we’re not logical. Wipe us out, good idea if you ask me.” He dives his fork cheerfully into the ratatouille.

She is astonished at this voice he has found. “How can you say that? Is this what you’ve been thinking all the time? You want the world to end? You want all memory of human beings to end? All evidence?”

“What’s it matter? What’s memory worth? Whose memory anyway?”

“How many years did you say? I can’t bear it!”

“Oh don’t be so silly, Esther.”

“I can’t bear knowing you feel like that. You never said.” Is this Esther’s fault, has she made Rex’s life so miserable? “I thought you quite liked being alive — well, I didn’t think you wanted the world to end.”

“I don’t. But if it’s going to anyway —”

“I brought you out to cheer you up!”

“We brought each other out. Eat up, I’m perfectly cheerful.” And indeed he seems to be, scooping food on to his tongue, smiling because he might have shocked her.

“You were telling Jania about the dinosaurs.”

“So?”

“You seemed to enjoy the idea of the dinosaurs. Aren’t they a failed experiment, too? They died out. At least we’re still around.”

“So far. We’re trying hard not to be.”

“Oh dear. Don’t you say any of this to Jania.”

“Would I? Give me some credit.”

“Huh.”

At this point the waiter offers a lemon sorbet to clear the palate between courses. She looks at Rex and decides to accept. There is a taste in her mouth less pleasant than fish.

It could be that she needs something like lemon sorbet to clear the palate between husband and lover. At one time Rex and Donald were disparate breeds, but age is giving them qualities in common. One might take his mouth out at night, the other put his in, but essentially they are becoming two old men and the implication is that she will become an old woman. Surely not? Rex’s conversation plunges her below the surface of optimism, the level where she usually swims. At one time not long ago the sole they have eaten was swimming hopefully in the sea. She feels flattened out. Children are supposed to keep you young, but perhaps that doesn’t apply to grandchildren — she has certainly noticed her years in a new way since Jania was posted to them via United Airlines.

Yesterday after work in the car park, with the dark ceiling lowering above them, Donald had said something she didn’t like.

“Does it ever occur to you we might have been going on for too long?”

“What do you mean? You mean you’re sick of me?”

“No, I don’t mean that at all. But I’ll have to put you on my headstone if we carry on like this.”

“So what are you saying? You are sick of me.”

“I’m not. I’m just thinking about dying.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“It isn’t a threat. Not about me dying, just dying in the abstract. An old schoolfriend did it the other day, I saw it in the
Post.
Makes you think. Perhaps we should have lived our lives differently.”

“How different? No you and me?”

“I can’t conceive of that. No, I’d like to have done more, not less. A second career, more children perhaps.”

“More mistresses?”

“Well, of course.”

He was joking. Or was he?

“You didn’t give me a taste,” Rex complains now. “Was it nice?” He waits patiently for his wife to return to him. “The zabaglione?”

“Sorry.” She is back. Sighs. “We can’t afford to do this too often, but I think we should do something. Tuesday films are cut price I think. I do miss a good screen. Before the world ends,” she adds.

She has made him laugh.

At home Jania is conducting the babysitter around her bedroom city. The main street, with shops and bank and post office, the church, the hospital (new), the houses. Some of the inhabitants are only paper and not very thick paper at that — they won’t stand up but have to lounge around on their beds. The babysitter suggests she transfer the paper dolls to the hospital as permanent inmates and fill their places with the more substantial, healthy plastic dolls.

Jania looks worried at this and shakes her head.

“Why not?”

“They’re not sick. I’d have to make them sick. Or crash them in a bus. I don’t have a bus.”

“Couldn’t you just swop their names over?”

Jania is shocked. “They’re people! That’s Dawnis and he’s Dennis. You can’t change people over!”

“Oh. Well I think you should get into bed. It’s awfully late, you’ll get me into trouble.”

“I don’t want to.” Jania sits. “I’m busy. Mrs Debenham’s coming to the hospital to visit her husband, he’ll be sad if she doesn’t come.”

“It’s only a game, it’ll still be there in the morning. Get into bed.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Yes you do.”

“Why?” Jania sits. They are still sitting here on the bedroom floor when Esther and Rex return from the restaurant.

I
SAW THE
girl leave, the babysitter; a schoolgirl, not my type. I was sitting in the car on the corner of the road, backed up slightly in a driveway where I happen to know the inhabitants are away on holiday, in Queenstown. I know a lot about the people round here, more than you might think. People talk about each other and they talk to me, the Rawleigh’s man. Or else they’re rude to me and send me packing, either way I learn things. I’d make a good burglar with my inside knowledge, except I have a healthy respect for the law and thieving isn’t one of my vices. How did I happen to be there to watch the babysitter leave? I wasn’t actually spying, I didn’t even know they were going out, the grandparents. It’s just that I’ve taken to cruising around these streets at night, with the radio on FM, it’s a kind of company. It’s my territory, it belongs to me, these streets. The flat’s so boring in the evenings, I can’t keep my mind on the telly, I need to keep moving. I jig my knees in time to the music and lift my hands on and off the wheel.

I’ve been parking here in this driveway where I can see the bedroom windows of their house. I don’t know which one belongs to who, but I can guess. The big window must be theirs, which leaves two smaller windows to choose from for Jania. I like to think of her in a big bed, cuddling that shiny cushion she carries about with her. I bet she doesn’t get a story at bed-time. The grandmother looks too full of herself for stories and he’s a sour old bugger. I’d read her a story if it was me. I’m good at stories, I’ve told a few. No one sat on my bed and read to me when I was a kid, like you see it on TV; I’d have liked that. I watch the kids’ programmes sometimes. I can do that, not being stuck in a nine to five job. I liked the hymns we used to sing in Sunday School: “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, “Jesus Bids Us Shine”. For a wicked kid I sang an awful lot of good boy hymns, there’s something about a hymn. “Like a Little Candle Burning In the Night.”

She had glasses, the babysitter. They flashed at me in the
street light as they drove past, she and the woman, Esther. She’d be taking her home. That left him alone in the house with the kid. I’m surprised she trusts him, the things you hear these days about sinning fathers. She’ll be at school during the day, little Jania. I know the school, I walk by that way sometimes. At lunch time it’s really noisy with all these kids yelling and running around, then the bell goes and the whole playground empties like a bath plug pulled out, all draining away inside the big doors. I don’t hang around, it isn’t wise; you hear about these men who hang around school gates. There’s other places, I use my imagination.

Sometimes I wish there was someone else I could talk to — like this mate of mine at school, he’d be good to talk to. He’s probably in prison — no, that’s a joke. He’ll be around somewhere, disguised as a grown up, somebody’s father, who knows? He’d know what I was talking about, he knows Claude. The wickedness. It isn’t real wickedness unless you take it too far and I never do that. It doesn’t matter what you do in your head, unless you’re a Catholic and then you go to confession. I remember her dressing up to go to confession, putting on her gloves. Gloves! She was the only person I knew wore gloves, probably still wears gloves, truth be known. I suppose she thought that made her good, church, but I don’t think so. Why did she have to go to confession if she was good? I knew she wasn’t good, I’d heard her. He didn’t go to church, he didn’t need religion, he was a wizard, a genius. I think they sent me to Sunday School to have the house empty. He needed silence to work, to have his ideas. There were times when he went through my schoolcase and sneered because they weren’t the right books or my ballpoint had leaked, but most of the time he didn’t care, didn’t bother. He told the man next door I was in Standard Three when I’d moved up months before; he couldn’t keep me straight in his head. Not a wizard at everything — right? Right.

I don’t like to think of Jania and wickedness at the same time. It isn’t right, not for someone like her. I don’t want to think about that. Have I described her? It’s like her skin has water running underneath it, it’s so clear, so thin it could tear; those freckles look like lace across her nose and they crinkle
up when she worries. She has this worry frown comes and goes, on and off, as if she knows something’s crook with the world, and she’s not wrong there. That little scar on her neck, it’s like another frown on her skin, not ugly but sad looking, you want to run your finger in it. Her hair’s very fine, it’s candy floss, and her little arms and legs are like china, so white and breakable. Handle With Care written all over her. I don’t know if her grandparents care enough, if they understand what she is, how breakable. I understand and it makes me shiver, it frightens me. It really does.

E
STHER HAS BEEN
falling behind at work. Since she has cut down her hours she finds she has to work harder; theoretically it shouldn’t be this way, but since staff are being put off rather than taken on, she is left with more or less the same work load: the paperwork diverted to another desk eventually ends up back on her own, and she might as well have done it herself in the first place. She can’t fall behind and she can’t complain. She needs this job or where would she and Rex be? The mortgage didn’t arrest conveniently when he had his heart attack; it is still there thumping away as regularly as ever in their joint account. Lately she has taken to bringing work home with her. She shouldn’t. Confidential papers must not leave the building, but what else can she do? Donald knows she does this so it isn’t a secret she has to carry all alone. He warns her about letting the stuff out of her hands — he would be in trouble himself if trouble arose. “Don’t let that child get into it whatever you do.” As if she would. She keeps the papers in two box files in the sideboard cupboard along with her Mills and Boon manuscript. Bringing office papers home is not her only transgression.

At work she finds paragraphs of her romance typing themselves on to her computer and prints these out guiltily before erasing them. She would hate her lover to read her love story.

“
He drew her softly against him, so that she could feel the sinewy tautness of his body burning through her silk gown. She was helpless, powerless in his arms and yet she felt vibrant, deliciously alive.
” Donald might think it was another joke — it isn’t a joke.

At home she works in the front room with the door shut. “I don’t know why you bother coming home to be with Jania if you shut yourself up in here,” Rex grumbles.

“Not every day. Just while I’m catching up. I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.”

The room is dark in the afternoon, not a pleasant place for working. An outsider might think she has a nice life, a solid job, a husband who does the dishes, and a lover besides. She
has a pretty grandchild whose father trusts Esther to care for her. Riches. Who could want more? So why is she here in this glum room, immersed in figures that argue with each other inexplicably, terrified of fouling things up and losing her job, of fouling things up and losing Donald, of incurring Rex’s wrath and, worse, his misery. She can’t stand his misery. His hand on her shoulder sometimes feels like a wet rag, a wet sponge; the sponge he has thrown in. He doesn’t care if the world ends. And Jania. Why can’t she feel for Jania what she felt for Prue? She can only think of her grandchild as an interruption, a series of interruptions. The wavelength between them is wrong, she can’t tune in to this curious child who talks but doesn’t really talk to her, who stares at her as if she is a thing from outer space, not a grandmother at all. Which is she anyway? Grandmother? Romantic heroine? Wife? Thing from outer space?

She catches sight of an entry on the paper in her hand. Yes! Why had she missed that? This explains — thank God — she settles to her work with a gasp of relief. There is a chance she can sort out this mess of figures.

The door opens. Jania hangs there, holding on to the handle, staring and silent. It would be easier if she spoke.

“What is it?”

“We’ve got two TVs back home.”

“And?”

“Grandad’s watching the wrong programme.”

“Oh dear. Well, it is his TV set. I don’t suppose he’ll be long. Why don’t you go and play with your houses?”

“I’ve done that. It’s night time and they’re all asleep.” She twiddles the doorhandle. “I need some cars and things for my street. I’ve only got a motor bike.”

“That’s nice.” Esther has lost her place; she follows her finger down, then riffles through papers. Looks up.

“What? I’ll come and see later — okay?” When Jania doesn’t move she lays down the computer printout in her hand and says, “Don’t you have any friends at school you’d like to bring home to play with your village?”

“It’s a city.”

“Well do you?”

Shrug. “I like Mrs Flett, she’s nice to me.”

“You can’t bring your teacher home to play. How about that Trish?”

“No thank you.”

“Well off you go now. While I finish this — all right?”

When she does go the little girl leaves the door ajar. Esther gets up and closes it — quietly, because she feels a measure of guilt. There is a battery clock with a loud tick above the mantelpiece. It had lived once in the bedroom until Rex complained it argued with his heart beat, he couldn’t help trying to slow his pulse to match it and failing. Now the clock has turned its attention on Esther. Time to throw it out. She turns back to the problem files and minutes later has forgotten Jania and guilt.

Jania goes out the side door slowly, leaving this open as well, and sits on the path just inside the iron gate, leaning her ear on the stained red cushion and putting her thumb in her mouth.

The Rawleigh’s man is coming from the house next door. He swings his basket and shows his wonky teeth in a smile. Jania hesitates, then she remembers the sparrow and gets to her feet.

“I know who you are, you’re Mr Rawleigh.”

“That’s right. Well, not — not — I’m Wallace. Actually you can call me Wallace.”

“Are you coming in?”

Something ungracious in the invitation nearly stops him perhaps, because he looks reluctant for a moment.

Jania says, “You’ve got my grandma’s ointment, haven’t you?”

“And her plant food, yes.” He appears to make up his mind, one hand swings the gate, the other is occupied with his basket.

“She’s busy just now. Well, she’s busy for me, I don’t expect she’s busy for you. Rex is busy too, he’s getting our dinner. Grandad!”

Wallace steps on the threshold of the front door, waiting for Rex, who doesn’t appear at once.

“Never mind, you give these to Mummy — Grandma — all right? They’re paid for.”

“I’ve still got that ball. It’s a bomb now, but I haven’t dropped it yet. On my city. You can come and see my city if my grandma says it’s all right. She won’t mind.”

Wallace’s face distorts in an expression of puzzlement and wonder. Rex has heard voices and pokes an enquiring face out from the kitchen doorway.

“Jania?”

Wallace ducks his bristly head behind his basket and waves a hand at the parcel of goods clutched now to the little girl’s chest.

“Afternoon, Mr — er — just delivering the rest of your wife’s order. If you’d like to check it.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Well —”

“I want to show Wallace my doll city. Can I?”

“No. I don’t think so, Jania.”

“Oh! But Esther said I should go and play!”

“Go and play then. Mr — Wallace has his job to do.”

Wallace looks apologetic. He looks in fact, embarrassed and suddenly very tired.

“Perhaps — well, perhaps another time. I have to get home to my tea. They’ll be — yes, they’ll be wondering where I…”

Esther arrives in the passageway, her thick hair rumpled as if she has just woken from a deep sleep. She has a habit of combing it through with her fingers while she works — massaging the brain, she has explained to Donald when he commented on this.

“Oh. My stuff. Thanks.”

“Did you think of anything more you need?”

“What? Oh, no thanks. Are you all right? You look —”

Wallace straightens his back. “Been a long day. I was just saying, I have to get home to my, to my tea. My tea’ll be waiting.” He trips against the raised door step and nearly falls on his way out.

They laugh about him when he has gone. He is turning into a clown. Jania is in bed when they talk about him again. Rex tells Esther how Jania had invited the man to see her doll’s city.

“What did you say to that?”

“I said no, of course. It’s in her
bedroom.
What sort of man would invite himself into a little girl’s bedroom?”

“I thought she invited
him.
Did he know where this toy town was?”

“Maybe not. It just shows you, though — how much she took in of your little lecture.”

“Last week you thought he was interested in
me.
What makes you so suspicious of people? I’m sure the poor bloke’s harmless. I don’t want Jania growing up suspicious; we just have to look out for her, that’s our job.”

“Whose job? You weren’t looking out when he came —”

“I was working. I do have to earn a living.”

“Yes.” Rex gives her a look something like hate. She remembers being told a bad heart makes a man unreasonable, and tries to warm herself on this bleak piece of information.