Free Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield Page A

the Underground, wondering when her husband would be home, looking forward to that, and then halfway home, at the back of her head, she heard the child screaming in the way only her own child could scream. She felt it in her bloodstream: the pain in her chest like swallowed razor blades as she began to run, stumbling with shopping. She ran and she fell down in the dark alleyway between Margaret Mellors’ and the house alongside. She was sure, from the distance, she had heard the child scream: she could feel it. Crashing through the broom handles which struck out from a rubbish cart in the alley, knocking her hip and all the shopping against the brickwork, she pushed into Margaret’s house without ceremony, still hearing screams.
Where are you? Where are you, my love?
She was panting with the effort, but there she was, Sylvie the tyrant, in Margaret’s arms, in front of the television.
    She was lying there, the next best thing to unconscious, with her arms around Margaret’s neck and one of her feet twitching. There was ravelled knitting at their feet, a jumper sleeve poking from a bag, the child clutching rather than resting, and the mother was jealous. Then she saw the merest suggestion of tears at the corner of the old dear’s eyes. Oh, she must be tired, the inevitable price of rendering Sylvie so quiet. But for all the reassurance of the scene, despite the comforting smell of powder, oranges, cocoa and the bright light, the mother could still feel something pulsing in her veins. She threw a couple of pound coins on the sink, made effusive thanks and removed her child with speed. Sylvie was sullen, almost catatonic, her little feet making leaden sounds on the lino of the kitchen floor and the passage outside.
    Only when she was inside her own door, did the mother recall that the trolley against which she had collided on her way in had not been any sort of obstruction on the way out. It had been a bit like a pram. The memory flitted through her mind in a brief and inconsequential passage.
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    â€˜C ome in, Margaret, why don’t you? Every other bugger does. All your friends.’
    There was his whisky on the table, dusty from passage in the trolley, now out of sight in the yard behind. Logo’s skin was as ashen as the dust on his shoes. He had taken off his jacket, revealing the drab, worn, black clothes he bought from second-hand shops, and Margaret had time to wonder how it was he always managed to keep up the appearance of being clean when his clothes were so ingrained with dirt.
    â€˜Listen, Logo, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. Oh, she’s a trial that child, she really is, but I thought she was tired out, and then I gave her something to eat, and then, I sat down, dropped off, I suppose, and she was gone. I was calling to her, thought she was upstairs in my place, and soon as I knew, she was upstairs in yours. Come on, you know you only have to push the door. So I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have done that. Wasn’t her fault.’
    He turned his big eyes on her.
    â€˜Done what?’ he questioned. ‘Done what, exactly? She done nothing.
You
did plenty.’
    She sat heavily, exuding her clean dust, making a whoomphing sound, which was part chair, part a sigh of exhaustion. She settled herself into the chair and curled her fingers over the ends of the greasy, cloth-covered arms. She showed no signs of tension, but looked as an old woman might look after a doze, adjusting herself into the realms of dignity as if she hadn’t been caught napping. Or been frightened.
    â€˜Oh don’t be silly,’ she said comfortably. ‘All the poor thing did was wander out of my place when I dozed off and wander into yours, she can push the door as well as anyone. She turns on the lights, ’cos she’s just about high enough, and has a look around. Then I came and found her, but by that time, you’d frightened her to death, you daft bastard. Why