Some Kind of Fairy Tale (38 page)

“Is everything all right, Mr. Underwood?”

He stroked his chin and without offering a reply, turned on his heels and hurried back up the stairs to his office. When he got there, Tara was still in her seat by the window. Though she’d picked up the hourglass, and now she held it steady, provocatively, between her thighs.

Underwood stood over her, his hands on his hips, breathing hard. She met his gaze evenly. Then he found his cigarettes and lit one, inhaling deeply, scrutinizing her. “You counter-hypnotized me,” he said at last.

“You fool, Mr. Underwood.”

“Yes. I know you did it.”

Tara got to her feet. “It’s time for me to go.” She placed the hourglass back on his desk with a delicate click and turned to the
psychiatrist, offering a handshake. Underwood looked at her hand as if it might contain a razor, or some device of evil conjuring. At last he took his cigarette from his mouth, stubbed it out in an ashtray, and shook her hand, all the time watching her carefully.

“Not easy, is it?” said Tara.

Underwood didn’t let go of her hand. “I would like to conduct some further sessions. Without charge.”

Tara shook her head. “I don’t have the time. But thanks for the offer.”

He released her hand. She was changed somehow. When he’d first been introduced to her he thought he was meeting a child. But now he saw in her a mature woman, wise in ways at which he could only guess.

“Really, Mr. Underwood.
Histrionic personality disorder
. They don’t like being called
fairies
in the same way that I don’t like being called
histrionic
. Or other similar words. Which reminds me,” Tara said. “Mrs. Larwood sends her regards.”

Underwood shook his head. The name meant nothing.

“Never mind. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Tara.”

He watched her walk across the study and slip out the door. He remained in the middle of his study, lighting another cigarette, smoking it down to its butt. After he’d stubbed it out in the ashtray he picked up the hourglass and looked at the handwritten notes spread across his desk. He scanned the room again, as if still suspecting someone of hiding there somewhere, behind a chair, behind the drape curtains, under his desk.

He set the hourglass back on his desk and returned downstairs in search of Mrs. Hargreaves.

“I take it that was the last session with Miss Martin,” said Mrs. Hargreaves.

“That’s right. Mrs. Hargreaves. Tell me, did we ever have a client called Mrs. Larwood?”

“That’s going back a bit, Mr. Underwood, but I do think we did. Yes.”

“Do you think you could dig her file out of the archives for me?”

“I can do that. Are we finished for the day, Mr. Underwood?”

Underwood sighed. “You know something, Mrs. Hargreaves? I do believe I might be ready to finish for good. I actually fell asleep on my client this afternoon.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Hargreaves, “if you do finish, it will not be before your time. Let me see if I can find that file for you.”

G
enevieve had made lunch for the family. It was a mild chili with salad and a huge loaf of bread still warm from the oven. Josie was helping her to lay the table, when she dropped a knife on the tiled floor.

“Sowwy,” Josie said.

“That’s all right,” Genevieve said, stooping to pick it up. “It means a visitor is coming.”

“Who says?” Josie wanted to know.

“That’s what they say. If you drop a knife a man is coming; and if you drop a fork a lady visitor is coming.”

“Who says? ”

“It’s just what people say.”

“Which people? ”

“Lots of people.”

“Is it true?”

Genevieve pushed her bottom lip out. “Come on, slowpoke. Finish laying the table.”

Jack came into the kitchen. “I’m starving.” He twisted a hunk of bread off the loaf.

“Stop it!” Josie shouted. “We’re having a visitor.”

“What visitor?” Jack asked his mother.

“Wash your hands, will you?” Genevieve answered. “How many times do I have to tell you that? Wash your hands before dinner.”

“I have washed my hands.”

“Liar! You’ve probably been poking rats’ innards.” Jack was about to answer when the doorbell rang. “Oh, God, who the hell is that?” Genevieve said.

“It’s the visitor!” Josie shouted.

“What visitor?” Jack wanted to know.

“It’s a man!” Josie shouted, charging out of the kitchen.

“Don’t let her answer the door,” Genevieve said to Jack.

“Why not?”

“Go and answer the bloody door, will you!” Genevieve shouted. Too often it was a salesman in a suit or a hawker in a hoodie or the Jehovah’s Witnesses in black serge. She finished the job of laying out the cutlery with half an ear to the exchange at the door. After a moment she looked up and saw Richie standing in the kitchen doorway in a T-shirt and jeans.

“Richie! We’re just about to eat,” she said, swinging her pot of chili onto the table. “Shall I set another place?”

Richie didn’t answer. Genevieve took a second look at him. He was shivering and his face was ashen. He looked ill. His eyes were red-rimmed and his pupils had shrunk to tiny bullets of dismay.

“You all right, Richie?”

He shook his head.

Josie came into the kitchen, squeezed past him, and took Richie’s hand. “We knew you were coming,” Josie said.

P
ETER WAS IN HIS
workshop, sorting horseshoes and nails into sizes and lengths. The fluorescent tube of his overhead light was flickering because of a failed starter unit. Whenever he was
reminded that life was a losing battle to entropy, what with light-bulbs flickering and horseshoes and nails shuffling out of neat order the moment he turned his back, he was also reminded that humor and a cheerful disposition were the only known antidotes. It was just that he had neither humor nor cheer in good store.

Genevieve appeared in the doorway. “You’d better come in.”

“What now? ”

“It’s not the kids. It’s Richie.”

With the malfunctioning lamp illuminating, then shadowing, his face, he blinked at her. “What about him?”

“He’s here right now. You’d better come.”

Genevieve turned and walked back to the house and Peter followed her indoors, with a steel one-seventy shoe in his hand.

There in the kitchen, pale-faced, shivering and seated at the kitchen table, he found Richie. Peter closed the door behind him.

Richie didn’t look up. “She’s gone,” he said.

“What?” Peter said.

“She’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

“Tara. Who do you think? She’s just gone.”

“What do you mean she’s just gone?”

“What I say.”

“Where’s she gone?”

“No idea.”

“Fuck,” Peter said.

“Daddy swore,” Josie said. Genevieve turned and shepherded her away and into the living room. Josie protested all the way. She wanted to stay with the visitor; she’d dropped the knife, so it was
her
visitor. Voices were raised. Then the living room door slammed shut and Genevieve slipped back into the kitchen, silent as a shadow.

Peter sat down next to Richie. “Did she say anything?”

“No. She left a note.” Richie stuck a hand into his back pocket and brought out a scrap of paper. He slung it across the table. Peter read it carefully and put it back on the table. Genevieve snatched it up, read it quickly, and also put it back on the table.

“I don’t believe it,” Peter said.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” Genevieve said.

“Somebody once tell you you can mend everything with tea, Gen?” Richie said.

“Give him a bloody brandy,” Peter said.

“You give him a bloody brandy,” said Gen.

“I don’t want a bloody brandy. I want Tara. All I ever wanted was Tara.”

“Has she taken her things?” Genevieve wanted to know.

“She didn’t have much. But what she had is gone.”

Peter picked up the note again and studied it closely, as if a more revealing message might have magically appeared on the paper in the intervening moments. It offered no more than it had before:

Richie, I’m saving you. For once in my life I’m not being selfish, though you will think I am. I’m saving you from myself. Tara
.

Peter put the note down again and laid his horseshoe across it, as if to stop it from blowing away in a wind. He picked up the phone and called his parents. He spoke with Mary and quickly established that Tara had only just been there to see them and had said her good-byes. After a brief conversation he rang off. He reported to the others that she’d been collected by a taxicab.

“Not a fuckin’ white horse this time, then,” Richie said.

“Apparently not.”

“Why did she have to come back in the first place?” Richie protested. “I was perfectly all right as I was.” No one said anything. Then Richie said quietly, “No, I wasn’t.”

“Let me at least give you something to eat,” Genevieve said, her maternal instincts working overtime. “I have to say you look awful.”

“I’m not hungry, Gen. I couldn’t eat a thing. Honest.”

Then Genevieve remembered Richie’s hospital appointment. “Don’t you have to have another scan? Before the biopsy? Isn’t it today?”

“Tomorrow. To hell with that.”

“Not a chance,” Genevieve said. “Whatever has happened with Tara, you’re going down to that hospital if I have to drag you there. Peter will take you.”

“Yes, I’ll take you down there,” Peter said. “I’ll wait with you.”

Richie was about to argue when the kitchen door opened. It was Zoe, pretty and vivacious and bright-eyed, streaming the perfume
of shampoo from the shower, utterly oblivious to the conversation that had taken place in the kitchen. “Hey, Richie!” she said, with a huge smile for him. “I didn’t know you were here!”

“Hi, darlin’,” Richie croaked.

“Know those chords you taught me? I’ve been practicing them. Over and over. I’ve got it down really good. Well, not bad. And I love that guitar!”

“That’s great, darlin’.”

“Can I show you? Can I get the guitar and show you?”

“It’s not the time, Zoe,” said Genevieve.

“It’s okay,” Riche said. “I want to hear.”

“Now is really not the time,” Peter said firmly, looking hard at Zoe.

Richie stood up. “Never mind that. Get your guitar, Zoe. I wanna hear what you’ve got.”

Zoe looked at Peter and then at her mother, now realizing she’d gate-crashed a crisis. But Richie insisted and at last Genevieve nodded briefly at her. Zoe went upstairs to get her guitar, and Richie, without invitation, made his way through to the living room. The children were all in there: Amber, Jack, and Josie. Richie slumped on the sofa and told the kids to turn off the TV because Zoe was going to play. Sensing an unfamiliar mood, Jack complied and snapped off the TV with the remote control.

Zoe returned with her instrument, took a seat, and self-consciously twiddled with the tuning on the guitar. Peter and Genevieve stood near the door. Zoe blushed. Then she started to strum a sequence of chords.

What she played wasn’t complicated, but it was exactly as Richie had taught her, accurate and in good time. She repeated the sequence, becoming more confident, and Richie let out a little laugh of pleasure. Zoe felt encouraged to strum louder. Then Richie’s shoulders were shaking and he was sobbing quietly. Zoe, engrossed in her performance, continued to play. Then, in the middle of her strumming, she glanced up to see all the children’s eyes not on her but on Richie. Richie had collapsed forward, one hand squeezing his eyes shut, his shoulders quivering until at last he sobbed aloud.

Zoe stopped playing.

Genevieve stepped forward and put her hand on Richie’s shoulder.

“God,” Zoe said. “Was it really that bad?”

P
ETER SAT GLUMLY IN
the waiting room of the X-ray department of the Leicester Royal Infirmary. There were a few other people in the waiting room, either patients waiting for scans or the relatives of patients who were waiting for scans. Everyone seemed to be dazed, half asleep. Richie had been in with the radiologist for a long time—too much time, Peter thought. In that period an elderly person had come and gone on a trolley pushed by a tattooed porter, and two policemen had turned up escorting a shirtless man with his arm in a sling. Both the elderly patient and the police prisoner had been processed through the system in the time that Richie had been with the radiologist. Peter hoped this didn’t mean something very bad.

Peter had also used his waiting time to phone his parents again. He’d stepped outside to call them. Mary was philosophical; he recognized that she had slowly been hardening against Tara, and he wasn’t surprised. He detected something in her voice akin to relief. Peter also spoke to his father; Dell, on the other hand, was distraught all over again but was putting on a cheery manner. Dell suggested that Tara would be back again when she was ready.

Somehow, deep down, Peter knew otherwise.

He also called Genevieve. They hadn’t had much time to discuss Tara’s departure out of Richie’s earshot. Peter said what a bitch she was. Genevieve told him not to be too hard because there might have been things about Richie and Tara’s relationship about which they knew nothing, and about which Tara might have been reminded all too keenly.

Peter returned to the waiting room. Richie still hadn’t been released. He closed his eyes. More time passed. He wasn’t sure whether he’d drifted asleep when he became aware of someone standing over him.

It was Richie. “There’s a problem,” he said.