Madame Doubtfire Page 13

  The sweet little darlings concerned sat listening in a row, whey-faced, as though caged behind the banister bars. Christopher had begun to hum very softly, his thin, tuneless humming of trapped distress. Downstairs, behind Daniel, the members of the art class were creeping silently out of the house, one by one, with their faces averted and their heads bowed.

  ‘I’m warning you, Miranda,’ Daniel said dangerously. ‘Don’t you dig that old chestnut up again! You were glad enough in the old days to have me slopping around the kitchen looking after sick babies when you went charging out to the Emporium in your smart suit and fancy shoes. Don’t try and taunt me now for my lack of a job!’

  ‘Why not?’ She was far too angry herself to be intimidated by his anger. ‘Why not? My personality seems to be on the agenda! Why shouldn’t yours? You’re lazy, poor and irresponsible. You always have been and you always will be. But I never thought you’d sink so low as to take my hard-earned money from me as wages for cheating, and lying, and nosing round my house uninvited, and making a perfect fool of me in front of my own children!’

  ‘I took your money in return for doing a job you wanted done. And I did it well. You said so often enough yourself! And I’d have been happy to do it without taking any money at all, or lying and making a fool of you, if you’d had the sense and consideration to let me look after them after school when I asked you!’

  ‘I was quite right not to trust you with them, wasn’t I? You’ve just proved that. I knew that you were irresponsible, but I did think you had some small amount of sensitivity. How sensitive is it, Daniel Hilliard, to have a job unknown to your ex-wife that involves rooting through her underwear, and deciding what needs to go into the laundry basket!’

  Daniel rammed his fist, hard, against the wall.

  ‘There you go,’ he scoffed. ‘There you go again! That’s always been your trouble, Miranda! All you can ever see is how other people have wronged you! It never occurs to you you might have wronged them first, or driven them to it!’

  ‘Oh, I drove you to this, did I?’ Her voice was venomous. ‘I drove you to this? I drove you into handing me cups of tea and encouraging me to talk freely about our marriage with all three children sitting there, listening, knowing who you were all the time.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You’ve made such a fool of me, Daniel Hilliard. And you think you have some excuse?’

  Gripping the banister, she leaned her head down and almost spat at him.

  ‘What you have done is unforgivable. Unforgivable! I won’t forgive you for it, ever! And the children will understand – won’t you?’

  She swung round to them in appeal. None of them moved. None of them spoke. Their faces were pale little masks. Even the humming had stopped now.

  Daniel appealed to them in his turn.

  ‘Tell her! Tell her, damn you! Tell her how all this only began in the first place because she was so impossible, so blind to your wishes and to mine, because she was always totally deaf to any suggestion that inconvenienced her, even for a moment, that “disrupted her routine”.’ He spat the expression out like a bad taste. ‘Tell her that you three only agreed because she was always so stubborn, so sure that whatever suited her best was good for everybody else!’

  ‘I will not have you speak to the children about me like this in my own house!’

  ‘Why not?’ He gave out a very nasty sounding laugh, and spun around dramatically. ‘Why not? You denigrate me continually in this house! Don’t forget I’ve been here, and I’ve heard you! I’ve heard the things you say about me!’ He pointed a finger at her threateningly. ‘And they have to listen. Oh, yes. But you don’t know what they’re thinking, do you, Miranda? You don’t realize that to them it only shows your rotten judgement in marrying me in the first place, your ungenerous nature, and your tiny mind! You do yourself no favours when you bad-mouth me. You simply force them to hide their affection for their father from you.’ The finger waggled warningly from side to side. ‘And you’re on very dangerous ground here, Miranda. Very dangerous indeed. Because no one can easily hide their feelings from someone they love, and if you force them to hide enough from you, they’ll simply stop loving you as much, so they can keep their little secret more easily!’

  ‘They’ll not stop loving me! I am their mother!’

  ‘And they’ll not stop loving me, either! I am their father!’

  There was so much hate between them that each was silenced.

  Lydia rose. Her rage lent her an ashen, fierce dignity that neither parent had seen before.

  ‘I hate you both,’ she informed them in an unsteady voice, and, turning, she walked into her bedroom and shut the door.

  Christopher rose, too.

  ‘So do I,’ he told them. He was in tears. ‘You are disgusting and ugly, both of you!’

  Instead of going to his own room, he followed his sister into hers.

  Natalie was left alone at the top of the stairs. Her little face crumpled.

  After the first split second of shock, Miranda leaped towards her, to take her baby in her arms, and comfort her. But just as she came close, Christopher rushed out of Lydia’s bedroom and, pushing Miranda roughly aside, snatched Natalie up in his arms.

  ‘Go on with your filthy quarrel!’ he screamed. ‘Leave poor Natty alone!’

  He carried her, weeping, through the door, and banged it behind him with such force that the door knob spun off and rolled across the carpet.

  Miranda was deeply, deeply shaken. She sank towards the floor, like a doll without stuffing. Her knees were trembling visibly. Her hands were shaking. Even her mouth was quivering horribly. Daniel felt terrible.

  ‘Miranda –’

  ‘Get out of this house.’

  ‘Miranda, please!’

  ‘I want you to go.’

  Daniel looked down at the door knob on the carpet.

  ‘What about the children?’ he asked. ‘Should I take them with me? Today is Tuesday, after all…’

  His voice faded away. And there was no standing up against the look she turned on him.

  Hurrying past her with his own knees shaking, Daniel went into the large double bedroom to fetch the clothing he had left there. It lay in a sordid little heap on the floor. He looked, and felt sickened. But there was nothing else to wear. What he’d not taken with him when he left, Miranda had thrown out as jumble years ago.

  As he arranged himself as Madame Doubtfire one last time, he wondered whether he might not put right some of the damage done. Instead of just walking past her on his way out, he could sit down beside her on the stair, perhaps slip a comforting arm around her shoulders, offer her one of her own drinks, try and thrash things out.

  But it wouldn’t work. The day of the storm is not a day for thatching. It wouldn’t work.

  When he came out, she had not moved. She sat like a cold stone as he picked his way past her and down the stairs. He lifted his turban from where it lay, on the floor, and rammed it fiercely on his head as he went out of the front door.

  Mrs Hooper, he noticed, was leaning dangerously far over the fence, still eavesdropping in hopes of hearing more.

  He said to her spitefully, as he left:

  ‘I see your giant hogweed’s coming up nice and early.’

  Even her crushed expression failed to console him.

  Chapter Ten

  The Looking Glass River

  Daniel didn’t wait at the bus stop. Given the circumstances he hardly felt like standing, still dressed as Madame Doubtfire, in full view of Mrs Hooper watching him from her garden, and his own children staring down from Lydia’s bedroom, and possibly even Miranda glowering at him through a downstairs window. Instead, he strode off down the road, and only slowed his pace after turning the corner.

  Several streets on, he heard a bus approaching from behind and stuck out his hand as he kept walking, indifferent in his misery as to whether or not the driver bothered to stop for him. The bus did draw up, though, and Daniel stepped aboard. Only as th
e driver let out the clutch and travelled on towards the next real stop did Daniel realize that he had no bus fare.

  ‘Dear me! It seems I’ve left my handbag behind!’

  Daniel had asked for and taken his forty pence ticket gruffly enough; but now he realized that he couldn’t pay for it, out of instinctive prudence he made some effort to allay the driver’s wrath by using Madame Doubtfire as a shield.

  ‘Oh, what a silly billy I am! How irritating for you, driver. After you’ve dealt out the ticket, too. Oh, I am sorry.’

  The driver was entirely mollified. Indeed, he seemed to find Madame Doubtfire quite charming.

  ‘Never you mind, ma’am. Have this ride on me. You sit down. Rest your weary legs.’

  ‘It’s terribly good of you,’ warbled Daniel. ‘You are too kind, too kind.’

  Blushing, the driver motioned to Madame Doubtfire to be companionable and take the closest seat reserved for the infirm or elderly, so he could carry on the conversation. Daniel was far too distracted to think to refuse. He perched tensely on the very edge of his seat, plucking nervously at his skirt, and nodding automatically at anything the driver said. His mind was fully taken up with a vivid and searing inner review of his appalling quarrel with Miranda, and with seeing over again in his mind’s eye the strain and distress on his children’s faces.

  A good few bus stops had flown by before Daniel surfaced sufficiently from his wretchedness to realize the driver was no longer simply being friendly: he had moved on to unabashed flirtation.

  Daniel cursed Madame Doubtfire for a witch.

  ‘My stop!’ he trilled.

  ‘Can’t stop till after the ring road, love.’

  The driver continued his series of heavy hints about lonely weekends.

  Involuntarily, Daniel blushed.

  The driver seemed to find this most becoming. He leered at Madame Doubtfire with undisguised enthusiasm. Already overwrought, Daniel now panicked. He felt trapped, and all hot and bothered. Without a thought, he started rolling up his sleeves. But before he’d so much as turned each pretty frilled cuff back on itself a couple of times, the driver had suddenly returned his attention to the traffic, and was staring quite fixedly at the road ahead.

  Lowering his head with relief, Daniel noticed for the first time his own arms lying in his lap – huge, sturdy, muscle-knotted arms, crawling all over with thick black hairs.

  Surreptitiously, Daniel peeped up at the driver. Unfortunately their eyes fleetingly met in one of the circular mirrors. The driver looked away at once, nervous and embarrassed, recalling all the neglected friends he really should try to make time to see over the weekend. At the next roundabout on the ring road, Daniel leaped off.

  The first thing Daniel did when he reached home was rip off his turban and frock, and stuff everything that belonged to Madame Doubtfire into a huge black plastic garden refuse sack and carry it down to the communal dustbins. ‘Good riddance!’ he shouted, stuffing the bag down amongst the chicken bones and tea leaves and carrot peelings. ‘Goodbye, turbans! Farewell, lavender water! Adieu, Apricot Crême Foundation! Good riddance to you, Madame Doubtfire! Thank God we’ll never meet again!’

  Then he kicked the dustbin hard, once, for good measure.

  The next thing he did was raid the cracked teapot in which he kept his emergency money. There was fifteen pounds. With this, Daniel rushed out and bought himself a mop, a scrubbing brush, two packs of cloths and three tubs of abrasive cleaning powder. Messy and squalid, she had called his flat. He’d show Miranda! She would see!

  He swept the floor, and mopped it till it gleamed. He tried to add colour to the task by imagining that there had been some terrible household accident and he was mopping up Miranda’s blood, but for once his heart wasn’t in it, somehow. Perhaps he felt just a little too guilty. Some of the things she’d said to him had really gone home…

  As soon as the floor was spotless, he started on the oven. Miranda had been quite right to wrinkle up her nose at it, he decided. It was disgusting. He had to scrape off the top few layers of grease with a knife, wiping the blade on newspaper time and again, before he even neared the surface. Now he was actually dabbling his fingers in the squalor, as it were, he saw for the first time how very nasty it could be, and he bitterly regretted having allowed his new home to become so unsavoury and unhygienic. Certain old memories swam in his mind as he scoured and scrubbed, and he remembered in particular an occasion on which he had offered to let Lydia hold her birthday party in his flat after Miranda had put her foot down, saying that birthday parties had to stop some time, and this year was as good as any.

  Lydia hadn’t simply refused his offer. She had shuddered. He’d seen her, distinctly. It was the reason he remembered the occasion so clearly. And though, at the time, he’d taken her polite refusal at its face value, and put all other possible reasons firmly from mind, now, looking back, he realized why she had inadvertently looked so horrified at the suggestion, and he felt the same deep embarrassment at having even offered his grubby and unappealing hospitality to her school-friends as she must have felt on imagining its acceptance.

  Dust is dust. Grime is grime. But filth is filth. Daniel threw himself with renewed fervour into the battle, and this battle was against King Filth himself. The sink was glistening in the sunlight that poured through the freshly polished window panes when the door bell rang.

  Daniel’s hands were impacted with cleaning powder. He walked down the hall and lifted the latch with his elbow.

  His elder daughter stood outside. She was, he realized in astonishment, wearing a heavy winter coat – the one he bought her last year, and hadn’t seen since.

  ‘Lydia! You’ve come!’

  ‘Yes. Here I am.’

  (She didn’t sound at all pleased about it.)

  Daniel stepped back to let her pass.

  ‘Can I make you some tea?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Her tone was chilly, and her manner unfriendly. She walked straight past the kitchen without so much as a glance inside to see all his lovely, sparkling surfaces. She plonked herself unceremoniously down in front of the television, and scowled at the blank screen.

  After a moment, Daniel ventured:

  ‘That was a barney and a half between me and your mother…’

  ‘It was horrible. Horrible.’

  ‘Not the occasion for the committed pacifist, it must be admitted.’

  ‘You were both very nasty indeed.’

  Daniel disguised his embarrassment by moving around the room picking up old newspapers. He thrust them into the waste-paper basket. Every now and again, he came upon an odd sock, and slipped it gratefully in his pocket. The straying socks of children of divorce, he thought, were very possibly the twentieth-century equivalent of all those olive branches of biblical times.

  Lydia still sat scowling at the empty screen. Daniel was finding it most unnerving. He tried again.

  ‘Oh, it was nasty. Constructive criticism, now, I can accept; but as for simple abuse –’

  ‘Listen,’ Lydia interrupted him very coldly indeed. ‘I don’t really want to talk, if you don’t mind. Or listen, either. And I certainly don’t want to talk about that.’

  ‘Why are you here, then?’ Daniel asked, astonished.

  Two tiny spots of red appeared on the ridge of Lydia’s cheekbones.

  ‘Because it’s Tuesday teatime,’ she said.

  ‘And Tuesday teatime is my time?’

  The scowl was deepening.

  ‘It’s just the principle of the thing,’ she said.

  ‘You’re simply asserting what you see as your rights?’

  ‘You could say that. I’m certainly not expecting to have a good time!’

  ‘I’ll make tea anyway,’ Daniel said hastily, and backed away into the kitchen. He put the kettle on, and while he waited for the water to boil, he scrubbed out the small space between the fridge and the vegetable rack from which he’d taken his wooden tea tray. In there, to his d
eep mortification, Daniel discovered two more socks.

  When he returned a few minutes later, carrying the tray, Lydia was feeling a bit more forthcoming. And as the tea and biscuits filled her, her voice warmed up.

  ‘It isn’t just the principle of the thing,’ she confided after a while. ‘There’s something else as well.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Something I thought about before a little, when Mum was telling us about your wedding. I thought then that, if either of you two had backed out, none of us children would ever have been born.’

  ‘But you were born.’

  ‘Yes. And that’s the point. We were born. And we’re the only things that lasted, aren’t we? I mean, the marriage was a failure. A total failure. And you two aren’t really even friends any more.’ She shook her head impatiently, looking, Daniel thought, more like her mother than he’d ever seen her. ‘Oh, I know you make a pretty good show of getting along well when you bump into one another at other people’s parties, or at school evenings, and things like that. But you’re not really good friends any more, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Daniel admitted. ‘We’re not really good friends.’

  ‘So, I was thinking, Natty and Christopher and me, we are the only three things to come out of that marriage. We’re all that’s left. We’re the whole point, now.’

  ‘The whole point?’

  His voice was gentle, if a little mystified.

  ‘Yes. The whole point. The only reason you two have any real contact. So that gives us a sort of Extra Right. Don’t you see? Don’t you see? If we three are not happy with the way things are, then what was the point of all those years? None! None at all! If you can’t work things out to suit us, then all it was was total waste and total failure. In fact –’ She hesitated. ‘Worse than just total waste and failure.’