Some Kind of Fairy Tale (16 page)

Underwood asked Peter if he would bring her to see him again the following evening, and Peter was about to say he would when
the telephone rang. Underwood walked over to his desk and picked up the phone.

“Hello, Mrs. Hargreaves. Thank you. Yes.” He listened, and he fixed Peter with his gaze as he listened. “Very good. Thank you once again, Mrs. Hargreaves.”

He put the phone down and came back to stand over Peter. “They’re all done down there. She’s ready to go. Bring her to me again tomorrow and we’ll pop her back in the oven.”

W
hy have I got to do it?” Jack was red in the face.

“You haven’t
got
to do it, but you are
going
to do it,” Peter said.

“Why?”

“Why bloody why? Why has everything got to be why?” Peter had a good relationship with Jack. The boy had hit the teenage years and Peter had let him assert himself here and there: kids weren’t like horseshoes, you didn’t shape them over an anvil. But he wasn’t about to surrender all discipline, and sometimes he felt he’d been too lax as a father. Genevieve had once said he’d been tougher on his daughters than he had on his son. He hoped that he hadn’t stored up trouble for later, and he thought he needed to stay on top of things now.

“She’s an old woman, living alone. She’s got no one around to look out for her.”

“If you’re so concerned about her, why don’t you do it?”

“Let’s think about that, shall we? Maybe my time is taken up with hammering iron to pull in a few quid so that you can have air rifles and computers and Xboxes and iPhones and what the hell else?”

“Fine!”

“It’s called being kind, Jack. Being kind. You just go over there, knock on the door, get a picture of her tabby, and run off a few leaflets. What’s the big deal?”

Jack’s face changed from red to puce. His eyes became narrow slits. “I said I’d do it!” he bellowed, and rocketed out of the front door; and he would have slammed the door theatrically but the swollen wood stuck in the frame, denying him that most satisfying of sound effects.

Genevieve appeared behind him. “Oh, you’re back. When you’re done with parenting that tantrum, Josie is also having a pretty big one in the living room. Something to do with who owns the TV. How did it go with the shrink?”

T
HE SHRINK
, P
ETER TOLD
Genevieve a short while later, had a funny way of making you feel like you were five years old. Neither Peter nor Genevieve had seen a real shrink before: not up close, anyway. But Peter was pretty certain they didn’t look much like this one, in his braided smoking jacket, puffing on a thin cigar. He was, Peter thought, like something from another era. Not twenty-first-century, anyway. Possibly not even twentieth century. He just hoped that Underwood’s techniques were more up to date.

Genevieve wanted to know if Underwood was going to blame it all on the family: things Dell and Mary did wrong. Peter shrugged and said probably, but they agreed that the fact that he hadn’t already plied Tara with medication was a good sign. Maybe.

Peter told his wife she would have a chance to meet Vivian Underwood herself the following evening. He had to get back to work, bend a few horseshoes, make some money. He had appointments to keep.

“Vivian? Isn’t that a girl’s name?” When Peter didn’t reply Genevieve said she would take Tara, and that Zoe would be under instructions to look after the children.

“Speak of the devil,” Genevieve said, as Zoe swung into the kitchen. “I need you to look after the kids tomorrow afternoon.”

Zoe looked at the ceiling. “God! Do I have to?”

“Yep,” Genevieve said with a sweet smile. “You have to.”

“W
HO IS IT
?”

“It’s Jack. Jack from across the road.”

Jack waited. He heard the whisper of a bolt drawn back, and then a second bolt. Then he heard the tinkling of a loosened chain. A tiny face peered back at him, elderly but elfin, and topped off with a short helmet of gleaming silver hair. A pair of blue cataracted eyes blinked.

“My dad said I should come about the cat. Your cat.”

“Have you found him?”

“No. My dad said get a photo. He said you had a photo. Of your cat. So we can do some … leaflets.”

“Oh, yes! He did! Come in!”

Jack would rather have waited outside but the old woman held the door for him so that he felt compelled to step into her narrow hallway. She closed the door and beckoned for him to follow. Jack winced.

Her living room was tidy but faded. The walls were papered with a flocked design that might have been fashionable forty years ago. Heavy velour drapes and net curtains held the outside world at bay with a mesh of fabric and dust. To Jack it seemed like the house was infused with the smell of the old lady: not a bad smell but an antique smell.

“Sit down,” she said. “While I see what I can find.”

This was exactly what Jack didn’t want. He’d hoped to stand at the door, grab a photo, and make a speedy withdrawal. But here he was, perched on the very edge of an armchair with no possibility of the smart exit.

The old lady came back with a plate, on which was a slice of dubious-looking ginger cake. She offered the plate to him.

“It’s all right,” said Jack.

“What’s all right?”

“I’m okay. Thanks.”

“Oh, you go ahead. I know what boys like.” She thrust the cake at him. He had little choice but to take it. “Cake. And lemon soda. I have some lemon soda somewhere, if I can find it. I know
what boys like.” And she went back to her kitchen in search of more of what boys like.

Jack looked at the cake. He wasn’t at all sure he was prepared to risk it. He wasn’t at all confident about what was in it. What if she knew? What if she knew all along what he had done to her cat? Maybe she was just pretending to be friendly. Faking it.

Mrs. Larwood returned with a glass of lemon soda, and even before she handed it to him he could see it was flat. He guessed that the bottle had been in her cupboard untouched for three or four years. And now he was going to have to eat the suspect cake and drink the flat lemon soda.

The old lady stood over him, smiling, stroking the backs of her hands, one over the other.

He bit into the ginger cake.

“I baked that,” she said.

“Cool,” said Jack. He allowed a few crumbs to fall into his mouth. He felt stupid saying “cool.” For one thing, no one said “cool” anymore. For another thing, he knew that no one of Mrs. Larwood’s generation said “cool,” either.

“Don’t forget your lemon soda,” she said.

It occurred to Jack that maybe Mrs. Larwood was a tiny bit too interested in seeing him eat the cake and drink the lemon soda. Standing over him like that. Making certain it all went down. His younger sisters talked about her as if she were a witch. Maybe she was. He wondered again what was in the cake. There was something sharp and unsavory in that cake. It wasn’t just ginger. Maybe she did know exactly what had happened with the cat and she’d been waiting for the opportunity to get him over here. Maybe the cake was poisoned in some way. Or maybe the lemon soda was not lemon soda at all: maybe it was a potion.

He lifted the lemon soda to his lips, took a miraculously tiny sip. It tasted like lemon soda: flat, but still like lemon soda. He tried to make an exaggerated swallowing motion. His Adam’s apple felt like a stone in his throat.

Mrs. Larwood smiled at him. “I’ll get that photo,” she said, turning and leaving him sitting alone in her parlor.

After a few moments she came back with a photo. Jack stood
up rather quickly and took the photo from her outstretched hand. He didn’t look at it, didn’t want to look at it. “Right. I’ll do it,” he said, already inching toward the door.

“What will you do?” she wanted to know.

“Scan it. Print it out. Leaflets. On my computer.”

Mrs. Larwood pressed her hands to her face, as if she’d just experienced a hot flash. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

Jack blinked. He looked at the door.

“I’m ninety-two years of age and I have a secret.”

Jack nodded and felt his Adam’s apple bob again in his throat as he swallowed.

“Come with me. Come on.”

Jack didn’t want to follow, but he couldn’t see how he could resist her command. He followed her through to her back room. There, under a gate-legged table, was a large cardboard box.

“Look in there,” Mrs. Larwood said.

Jack hesitated.

“Go on!”

He reached down and lifted the lid of the cardboard box, very slowly, as if an animal—maybe a dead cat somehow resurrected, a zombie cat—might leap out of the box at him, claws extended. But there was no zombie cat. There, instead, still in its factory Styrofoam packaging, was a computer, a monitor, and a printer.

He looked back at the old woman, confused.

“Yes. I’m ninety-two. And I’m going to go on to the Internet. Yes, I am. I’m told it’s like another world.”

Her “secret” having been revealed, Jack relaxed slightly. “How long has it been in its box?”

“Six months. I’m a little bit afraid to take it out. I bought it and I don’t really know what to do with it.”

“Oh.”

“I’m waiting for someone who knows what they’re doing with these things. Is that an exciting secret?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “I’d better take this photo and scan it before I’ll do it. I’ll go now.”

Jack turned and headed for the door. Mrs. Larwood followed, smiling and making clucking noises of gratitude. She told Jack what a sweet, kind boy he was for helping her in the business of
finding her cat. Her cat, she assured him, was her best friend in the world.

She opened the door for him. He crossed the threshold, and against all his instincts, he heard himself say, “The computer. I can set it up for you. One day. I can set it up. If you want.”

“Oh, I’d love that! I’d love you to set it up! There was a man coming to do it for me but he didn’t come. He wanted fifty pounds to set it up. If you do it you can have the fifty pounds.”

“No,” Jack said. “No. I’ll just do it.”

Mrs. Larwood’s hands flew to her face again. “Oh, you’re so kind—you and your father, both the same! So kind!”

Jack looked at her cataracted eyes. They were swimming with gratitude and it made him feel queasy. “I have to go now.”

He turned and walked slowly down her driveway, holding the photo almost at arm’s length. He was afraid to look back. He reached her gate, lifted the stiff latch, opened it, and felt it swing behind him on its spring. He exhaled a huge sigh to be clear of the house.

Then he heard her calling him back.

He turned and she was advancing toward him down the driveway. She had something wrapped in a tissue. “Your cake,” she said. “You forgot your cake!”

“D
O
I
COME IN
with you?”

Genevieve had driven Tara to her second appointment with Underwood. They’d talked about Peter’s work, how he’d become a farrier after—or in spite of—going to university; they talked about Josie’s temper tantrums, and Amber’s creativity, and Jack’s recent moodiness, and Zoe’s boyfriend. All this they discussed while Genevieve just wanted to say,
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tara, where have you really been for twenty years?”

“You can come in if you want,” Tara said. “There is a sort of waiting room. You could even sit in on my session as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know whether he’d allow it.”

“But it’s private,” Genevieve said.

“I don’t want it to be private. I want everyone to hear it all. You all think I’m crazy, so what difference does it make?”

“No, Tara, we don’t think—”

“You’re lying to be kind. Don’t. I don’t want that. Come on, let’s go in. I’m going to demand that you be allowed to sit in.”

They got out of the car. Genevieve filed behind Tara up the stone steps thinking that she’d rather not be allowed to sit in, thank you. But she felt certain it wouldn’t be permitted, so she said no more.

Tara introduced Genevieve to Underwood, who wore the same smoking jacket and leather slippers. “I’d like her here.”

“Not how it works,” said Underwood.

“It’s what I want.”

“No.”

“I insist.”

Underwood bit his lip and smiled. He folded his arms. “How well do you know each other?”

“Not at all,” said Tara. “We met for the first time a couple of days ago. We’ve spent about an hour or two in each other’s company. She’s my sister-in-law but we’re strangers.”

“So why would you want her in our session?”

“Because I feel like I’ve known Genevieve for twenty years. Somehow. Even though I don’t know her at all I trust her implicitly and would tell her everything that was said here anyway.”

Underwood knitted his eyebrows and seemed to regard Genevieve in a new light.

“I really don’t think I should,” Genevieve said.

“Hush!” Underwood snapped at her. “I’m thinking.” He stroked his chin and regarded Genevieve steadily, squinting at her as he did so. Genevieve shuffled under his gaze. Tara smiled. “It’s unethical, unorthodox and un-English,” Underwood said. “All right, you sit over there in that chair and you fade into the background and observe.”