Small kindnesses, p.20
Small Kindnesses, page 20
The cat ran and the tail swung
As March becomes April and April becomes May; the plants do their usual seasonal shuffle. The daffodils die out, and the Wisteria start to drip their gorgeous, blowsy petals. The new bed Leonard planted out last autumn starts gaining bulk like a blossoming teenage girl. The visitors start arriving in a broader stream, and Leonard is pleased to see them back. He loves to hear them marvel at what he and his colleagues have helped to create. He gets particular pleasure from watching the older ones (and some of the younger ones) who’ve learnt to slow down and really look at things – the ones who aren’t more concerned about how long it’s going to take them to drive home through the traffic on the M4.
He doesn’t hear anything from Pete and Glor for a fortnight, and then a postcard drops through his front door, full of the usual meaningless postcard phrases – ‘good food’ and '‘lots of sunshine’ and ‘hope it’s not raining back at home’. It’s a few seconds before he realises it was posted from Portugal, before Glor jumped on him – it must have got lost in the post somewhere. Communication begins to get easier with Raine again – she seems to have perked up at the prospect of a new position coming up at work. She thinks it’ll be less stressful and is planning on applying for it. Ed seems happier too – when Leonard’s been round there he’s noticed little looks passing between him and Raine, and last weekend they held hands on the sofa. Leonard is hugely relieved – he isn’t sure what’s causing the change, but as long as she’s happy, then he’s happy.
He still hasn’t spoken to Raine about the investigation he’s carrying out with Lily. This has been pottering along. Lily and Leonard have started to work their way down his list of the people in Rose’s life. They’d met up with a few of them, and had phone conversations with a few more. Lily has managed to track down a couple more relatives - a niece and a second cousin. The niece was rude on the phone and said she wanted nothing more to do with ‘that family’. They met her second cousin at a service station with her bullish looking husband. She was in her mid-forties and has the first child of her own on the way, saying it was ‘better late than never’. She was so huge, Leonard was afraid she might go into labour before the end of their coffee. Although she was very keen to be helpful, she didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. She said that the Smiths were known as a ‘troubled family’. She remembers her mum referring to Rose as ‘that poor child’. Her mum had often told the second cousin that Rose’s parents didn’t deserve her. Apart from a ‘silly phase’ when she was younger, when she refused to go to school for a while, Rose had been ‘good as gold’. No-one in the family had heard anything from her after she was old enough to leave home.
One ex-colleague, Margot, told them a story about a patient Rose had developed a special relationship with. She was a young anorexic girl, and Rose had spent as much time as she could spare by her bedside. They ‘whispered into each other’s ears’ as if they were hatching a plot. Rose had brought in novels for her, and home-baked cakes to try and tempt her more successfully than the tasteless hospital food. Margot said that there was something about their relationship that ‘gave her the creeps’, before she apologised to Leonard for ‘speaking out of turn’. When this girl had finally inexorably starved herself to death, Rose had broken down in front of everyone, saying she should have tried harder to keep her alive, that it was her fault. Margot said it was ‘most unlike her’. She’d gone to the girl’s funeral, and she refused to nurse anyone in the same bed for months afterwards. Margot was surprised that Rose hadn’t spoken to Leonard about her. Another old work colleague confirmed that Rose used to take Thursday mornings off work, every week as long as they’d worked together, and another colleague from later on remembered the rough date that the Thursdays had changed to Tuesdays. The reasons Rose gave for this time off were mostly similar – to have some time for herself, to catch up on things, it was simply ‘a rule she had for herself’.
They had a long conversation with one of Rose’s good friends, Linda Scoles, over a cup of tea. Leonard enjoyed chatting her so much that they left with promises to keep in touch. Leonard had told her the truth about the situation, and as a result she’d trusted him with information the others might not have shared, for fear of being disloyal to Rose. She said that Rose sometimes did have funny moods. She was usually so kind and giving, but when she got into what they referred to in the staff-room as one of her ‘huffs’, it was best to stay away. Once she’d even made one of the new girls cry by being short with her about something or other. Lily asked Linda if she’d ever said anything about a Peter. Linda thought for a while and said ‘Peter March’. She explained how she’d been sitting watching TV with Rose one day, and they’d said the name ‘Peter March’ on the news. It was a local news item about someone who’d been mugged and beaten up in the park. She’d heard Rose catch her breath and when she’d looked over at her she’d gone ‘as pale as a sheet’. Rose had mouthed ‘Peter March’ once, and when Linda had said ‘what’s wrong?’ she’d been shushed until the end of the news report. When she’d asked Rose about it afterwards, Rose said she’d made a mistake, she’d thought it was a different name. Linda said she still seemed pretty shaken up.
Leonard and Lily had received new snippets of information like this every week or so – more facts to add to Lily’s bulging folder. Leonard knows they’ll have to put it all together soon, to see if they can come to any conclusions. He’s been putting it off.
That weekend, Leonard has agreed to have the twins for the day again. He wants to take them out somewhere, but he doesn’t have the confidence to cope with both of them on his own. So he ropes in Lily – she responded to his request with fake fear by rolling her eyes and fanning herself with a magazine. They decide on swimming. The twins don’t get to do much of this, as Ed is a bit of a wimp around water (he has a horror of ‘getting it in his ears’) and Raine is unnecessarily paranoid about how she looks in a swimsuit. Lily suggests a pool she’s been to a couple of times with her own grandchildren. They set off with a car-full of air bands and rubber rings and goggles and towels and various bits of kit that Raine had left them with ‘just in case’ – the twins favourite plastic beakers, some story books, potties… It’s all very exciting for a day-trip, thinks Leonard, but thank goodness he only has himself to be responsible for, these days.
During the journey, Lily teaches the twins to sing a Swedish nursery rhyme, ‘the cat and its tail’. The three of them sing it together - the twins mouthing most of it at first, being sure of only the last word on each line. They build up their confidence and get faster and louder and by what feels like the hundredth time they’re word perfect.
I'll sing a little song
about the little cat:
he was to chase his own tail,
but wouldn't catch it.
The cat ran and the tail swung,
the cat ran and the tail swung.
This story isn't long,
we can sing it once again.
By the time they reach the car-park they’ve reached an excruciating pitch of excitement and Leonard has to ask them to sit quietly for a minute before they get out of the car. Lily recommends that before they get changed into their things, they go through to the restaurant on the second floor, to look down at the pool from the viewing panels. The twins press their button noses up against the glass and are quieter than they’ve been all day. There’s a large pirate ship in the middle of the pool, which is surrounded by smaller pools, waves, fake rain, plastic boats… it’s a Technicolor, plastic-and-chlorine heaven for children. Lily offers to take the children with her into the changing room, and Leonard gives her a large fake kiss on her forehead and calls her a marvellous woman.
Leonard chooses the least soggy-looking changing room and struggles into his old navy trunks. He spends some time examining his body in the full-length mirror, looking at himself from different angles and trying to work out what kind of shape he’s in for his age. He’s not very tanned yet – it’s not the right time of year – in a few months time he’ll be the colour of a hazelnut. Flesh always looks a little more attractive when it’s been baked like that, even if they are saying now that it’s bad for you. His muscles are still visible under his skin, although they don’t quite bulge as they used to. They’ve become more sinewy as he’s got older, like tight elastic bands. There’s a little reservoir of fat at his stomach which is almost folding over the band of his swimming trunks. He can blame that on Lily, he reckons, and the perfect roast potatoes recipe he can’t stop cooking for himself. He turns from side to side and flexes his arms… it’s a long time since he’s looked this closely at his body. He feels a little guilty about neglecting it for so long – there could have been a lump growing somewhere, or a mole changing colour.
‘Sorry, old chap,’ he says to his body. ‘I’ll try and keep a better eye on you.’
He waves goodbye to his reflection and braces himself to tackle the lockers. He spends some time fiddling with the coin slot and key before he gives in and asks a small boy to help him.
He splashes through the shallow water troughs and steps into the warm chemical-laden atmosphere of the pool. It’s like exiting a plane into tropical heat. Lily is already at the edge of the water with the twins, who are dipping in one toe at a time and squealing with excitement and pretend cold. Lily looks around and he puts up a hand, feeling a little self-conscious with so much of his flesh on show. Her costume in Himalayan Poppy blue - it covers her top like a T-shirt and ends in a kind of frilly skirt thing. It’s not fair that women are allowed to be so covered up, and it’s an unfair advantage to have that elastic material to keep all her bits in place. His next thought is that he’s overstepped a mark by thinking about her bits. He flushes a little and starts to do a little hopping dance to distract himself. The twins are happy to see him and start shouting ‘Gran-da! Gran-da!’ and he feels a wave of pride pass through him. These children wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. They’re packed with his fine genetic material - a Smith Wishford hybrid, Smithsonia x Wishfordia.
All four of them have a great time horsing around in the water. There’s a lot of mild splashing, and the boys only have to be reigned in a couple of times when they get water into a little girl’s eye, and when they start running on the side of the pool and Leonard can see a nasty accident unfolding in his mind. The boys invent a game involving the rain jets, and as far as he can gather, it involves seeing how long you can stand underneath the fine drops of water without making a sound, and then swapping over. They call it the ‘umbrella game’. Leonard loves how children become so utterly absorbed in their play, in fantasy. We forget how to do it as adults, he thinks. As he expects, the grown-ups get tired of the water before the twins do, and Lily gives them two ten-minute warnings before they drag them out. They head off a crying fit with the promise of something nice to eat upstairs where they can look at the people swimming from ‘up in the sky’. Lily volunteers to get them dry and dressed as well. Leonard’s amazed when once again he finds them waiting for him in the corridor when he emerges. Lily and Leonard happily sit and drink their tea while the twins munch on their various chemically-coloured, flavoured and scented foods. Leonard enjoys watching a baby and her mother in the pool. She’s got the baby in her arms and is dipping her into the water and then scooping her out again, looking directly into her face and sharing everything. The baby’s eyes are wide and she’s beaming and chuckling.
Leonard volunteers to drive home and before long not just the twins, but Lily are totally out for the count. The car smells of chlorine and clean bodies. The tune of ‘The Cat and His Tail’ goes round and round in his mind, just like the poor dizzy cat. He listens to the three of them breathing and another of Lily’s expressions comes to his mind. He’s ‘floating on small clouds’.
When they get home, he rouses Lily, and between them they carry the dead weight of the sleeping twins onto the sofa. Buddy wakes up asking for ‘doggie’, but when Leonard deposits Pickles onto his lap, he looks most disappointed and says ‘no, DOGgie’. Leonard says ‘this IS the doggie’, but before things deteriorate further Lily interrupts by bringing in the video they’d brought with them about a plasticine dog called, imaginatively, ‘Doggie’. They put on the video, and Leonard gives Pickles some extra fussing to compensate for his hurt feelings. Leonard asks Lily to wait until Raine has collected the twins before she gets out her blue folder, feeling a little guilty about involving her in his deception. He meets Raine from the car and warns her that Lily is inside, to give her a chance to compose her face. She brings noise and fast jerky movement into the house with her - the children spin around her like tiny dervishes. She shakes Lily’s hand curtly and looks into her broadly smiling face for only a fraction of a second before apologising and turning away to tend to the twins. Then she busies herself with gathering the twins’ things up and putting them into bags, answering Lily’s polite questions about the twin’s beautiful jumpers with small clots of words – forced, short. She shakes off Leonard’s offer of coffee, and when Leonard presses her, she refuses with something approaching annoyance. There’s a horrible moment of silence after all the bustle, when the twins are safely strapped in and Raine is sat with the engine running and her window wound down. Leonard breaks it by bending down to kiss her on the forehead, tenderly. Raine nods curtly at Lily once more before almost screeching away from the kerb.
They both stand there on the pavement, as if she’s left a cloud of dust behind and they’re watching it settle. They fold up their arms against the cold. Leonard makes a growling noise in his throat, and turns to apologise to Lily for his daughter’s behaviour. Lily puts up her hand towards him, palm forward, and he stops – he doesn’t need to explain. They unfold their arms and head back inside.
Leonard feels a bit flummoxed as to how they might draw some conclusions from what they’ve got so far. He can’t decide if some of the little things they’ve got written down are even relevant. Rose had refused to ever wear a watch – was it just because she didn’t like the feel of metal against her wrist? Or is it the crucial bit of information that everything else hinges from? Lily says she’s been giving it some thought. She reminds him of the thousands of detective novels she’s read in her time. She suggests that they make a simple list of all the things they’ve found out about Rose that are ‘new’ to Leonard. A way of ‘pulling the pearls out of the pile of straw’, she says. He isn’t sure if this is another Swedish proverb or one of Lily’s own. So that’s what they do – starting with two fresh pieces of paper – one for the things they can think of no logical explanations for, and one with the facts that are potentially irrelevant to their investigation. There’s a lot of debate about what should go on the second sheet rather than the first. They end up with a short list of the unexplainable facts:
Taking Tuesday afternoons (or Thursdays) off every week
Her mother is still alive after all
She could have grown her hair if she’d wanted to
The second page is almost full, and much less neat. Lily writes it almost as a flow of consciousness, with little questions and lines and arrows to join various facts together. It looks like Leonard’s brain feels. It starts:
Violent father, alcoholic mother
Always wanted to sit on the front carriage in trains, didn’t say why
The blue handbag – train ticket to Didcot
Friends with anorexic girl
Peter March?
Summer window, Peter etc (from Rose’s mum)
Had a funny phobia about earwigs
As Leonard reads the second list he realises just how much he’s shared with Lily. She probably knows more about Rose than anyone else, except for him of course. They spread the lists on the kitchen table between them and Lily announces a need for caffeine. She pushes her chair back and busies herself brewing them a fresh pot. She uses the plunger she bought him for Christmas; she’d told him she couldn’t bear his ‘instant cat’s piss’ any more. She rummages around in his cupboard and makes an ‘aha!’ noise when she falls upon some jammy dodgers, waving them in front of him and tearing them open. She sits back down and they both let their eyes rest on the pieces of paper - thinking, munching and sipping. Eventually Leonard thinks he may as well say it out loud. He takes a deep breath.
‘There’s still only one explanation I can think of, Lily. It’s what you said before, when I shot you down. That she was having an affair all those years.’
They sit absorbing the impact of this, and Leonard notices how much of a relief it’s been to shape his worst fears into this sentence. He breathes a long slow stream of air in and then out of his lungs. It’s not really a sigh of sadness, more a letting go of the tension. He continues.
‘I don’t want to believe it of her. It doesn’t fit with the Rose I knew. But at least if we found out… Maybe she had her reasons. With a past like that – maybe it helped her to keep it back, a way of – looking after – of making sure she didn’t damage our life together. I’m not sure how to say it. Do you know what I mean?’
