The Playground (12 page)

‘They always give her a bad time. It's the same at school; she's not happy there,' Sumita said.

‘You should hear what the older ones call me sometimes!' It was Lars, the German, up off his bench, helping Rashi to her feet. ‘Nazi, Kraut, Adolf.'

I breathed in his whiskey breath. He was more buoyant than usual today, he'd just been offered some extra work up in Ardmore Studios.

Frank and Joy wound up the games with clapping and shouting and orders to clean up. It was dark and starting to rain and the kids were sweaty and exhausted. Addie bit me because I wouldn't do roly-poly down the hill beyond the gardener's shed. ‘Joy said it's a good thing to keep crying and crying,' she said when I told her to quit her crocodile tears. ‘That's why because you have to get it all out.'

As we waited to cross the road for home, I noticed Arthur outside our front gate. He was sitting in his motorised wheelchair, his neck leant over to one side. One cloudy eye was watching us from under his woollen hat, too high on his head, exposing a bald bit above his ears. He looked like he needed our help.

‘Could you give me a push, missus?' he asked, talking into his chest.

I'd met him before though I wasn't sure he recognised me. My favourite part of my job in the library was travelling in a van, driven
by Pete, the head librarian, once a week to deliver books to nursing homes around the area. The residents of the Cherry Glade liked large-print romance and audio books best, but Arthur loved Westerns – ‘better than the telly,' he said. ‘John Wayne,
Laramie
, the
Lone Ranger
.'

Pete said he smoked one hundred cigarettes a day. ‘He must get up early for that. One hundred a day, sure that would kill you dead. Bang-bang.'

‘The battery's gone on my cart. Could you get them to open the door?' Arthur said, gesturing with his head. His hands were purplish around the knuckles and looked very cold. A large translucent droplet was hanging from his left nostril. I didn't know many elderly people, aside from the one my mother had become, but Joy had told me all about Arthur, about how he'd been born into a broken family and had been in care homes ever since.

I pushed him across the Tarmac as far as the ramp, talking a little louder and slower than usual. Addie trotted along beside us. I left them there, walked ahead and pressed the bell. A nurse from the north opened the door; I'd seen her before, a pink cardigan over her shoulders and a warm smile.

‘Ach, Art, it's yourself. Hold on a wee minute and we'll get you sorted.'

We stepped into the warmth of the hall. ‘Ach the wee dote,' she said about Addie.

Tired souls were slumped in a variety of chairs in the large room beyond where we stood, just hanging on, attentive nurses around them. It was bacon and cabbage for tea. ‘What happened to your wee cart?' I heard the nurse say, as she pushed Arthur up and over the ramp and back into the solace of the home.

‘Maybe we could come and visit Arthur again some day? Bring him some buns? What do you think, sweetie?'

‘That's a good idea. He's my best friend.'

‘What's it like to be a big lady?' Addie asked me once. ‘What does it feel like in your head?' A bunch of keys, that's what I remember as a child. It was the most grown-up thing. And now I had keys to the playground in my hand.

I was a helpful, trustworthy member of the local community. I gave my jeans a quick tug as we passed Nathan's house, in case he happened to be looking out the window. He was. He waved at me and smiled. I smiled back, made Addie wave too. We finally belonged in Bray.

I undid the chain to the park, with some difficulty, and we pushed open the gates in unison, Addie and me, as if we owned the place. Alfie bounded in ahead of us, did the circuit, sniffing and peeing, then stood still in the centre of the grass, ears and tail erect, waiting for a non-existent ball to be thrown.

I looked around me in the stark winter light at the blackness of the branches, felt the cold coming up from the sea. Overnight the clocks had gone back and winter had arrived. I folded my arms, tucked my icy hands under my armpits. We'd make this expedition quick.

Little Miss Muffet pushed her buggy straight up the muddy hillock to the playground. Alfie charged after her, over his disappointment and back to his happy default setting, scattering crows as he ran.

It took the two of us twenty minutes to get him on his lead, the day we adopted him from the animal refuge. He was too excited to see us, leaping vertically behind his cage, desperate for human contact, desperate to be free. He'd been abandoned twice in his short life already, once as a puppy and again as a young dog. We'd gone to bed at nine o'clock that first evening, leaving him lurching from sofa to chair in the sitting room, unable to calm him, wondering if we'd done the wrong thing. We bought him a bed, which he humped for two days before eating, we took him to obedience classes where he was always top dog – walking beautifully, sitting, fetching, rolling
over – until the class had ended and he pulled us the whole way home like two idiots at the end of a chain. He's the image of Robert De Niro, Joe used to say, the very same beauty spot on his cheek. He liked to sleep on his back in the armchair, his legs pointing up in the air, like cartoon roadkill. He was such a perfect caricature of a dog, he was like a dog in a dog outfit. I used to wish that he could have spoken to us, even once, to let us know that he was happy in his new home. We imagined his accent. Deep and American, Joe thought.

Once a substitute for all that we didn't have, when the baby arrived Alfie dropped right to the bottom of the pecking order. He got shouted at more often, more often ignored. ‘Don't shake!' Joe used to say. ‘He can't help it, it's what dogs do,' I'd say in his defence. ‘Get down!' we'd both roar when he jumped up on us, arriving home from somewhere, because he was just so happy to see us.

‘Keep your dog under control!'

There was a man and a child standing beside the swings – how did they get in? His hands were resting on his girl's shoulders. Both of them were very still.

‘Come again?' I said, trying to sound casual and cool.

‘Keep your dog under control.' The man, early-thirties, long-haired, handsome, leather-clad, was a grown-up version of exactly the sort of guy I would have snogged as a teenager in town. He jabbed his finger in the air and backed away from us towards the cherry tree, the one behind which all the kids peed.

‘He is under control. He's allowed to be here without a lead.'

‘Just keep him away from my kid.'

‘He has no interest in your kid, he's nowhere near her! We come here every day, I live just over there.' I said, indicating with my finger, which he didn't follow. ‘We have every right to be here. I open the gate in the mornings,' I said with some pride. Adrenalin was
shooting through me; as I spoke I could feel it affecting me physically. I felt a weight on my bladder, on my womb.

‘Just keep him away from my kid.'

‘How dare you speak to me like that? Our dog is entitled to be here. Why are you being so ignorant? He's friendly. What sort of life lesson are you teaching your child, to be afraid of a friendly dog? I mean look at him, for Christ's sake.'

I forced him to follow my shaking finger as I pointed at Alfie who was reclining beneath a tree, attending to his testicles.

‘Keep him away from my kid,' he said again and again.

‘Come on, Addie. Let's go home. We don't have to listen to this nonsense.'

I was trembling with the injustice of it, with the shock of the fight, shaken by the sound of my own raised voice, stunned at how I'd shouted at him, at this complete stranger, who was just afraid of dogs or had had a bad experience with one at some time. The anger poured out of me. It must have been there, below the surface, biding its time, waiting for such a juicy moment.

‘Look what special thing I can do,' Addie said, showing off to his little girl who had climbed to the top of the monkey bars and was peering down at her.

Addie grabbed hold of the bars and with quite a bit of effort lifted her feet a few inches off the ground.

‘That's so easy,' the girl said, unimpressed.

‘Maybe not when you're only three,' I said. ‘Come on, Addie, let's go.'

‘She's three?' she called after us, her eyes cartoon wide. ‘She looks like she's two and a half.'

‘Really,' I said, returning, standing taller, hating her. ‘So, what age are you exactly?'

‘Seven,' she said with some pride, getting to her feet as if to prove it.

‘Well, you look six.' Ha! Put that in your pipe, you little cow.

‘Why was that man talking so crossly?' Addie asked, on our furious march back around the square, unsure of what to do next. ‘And why does she have up hair if she's a girl?'

‘I don't know, darling,' I snapped. ‘Girls can have up hair or down hair, can't they? We've been through this before.'

‘What's after happening there?' Nathan was standing by the small boundary wall of his house, worrying a bit of wood with a crowbar. I wasn't going to go over to him; I was feeling too upset and too shy.

‘There's a total d-i-c-k-h-e-a-d in the playground,' I shouted across, wondering if I'd spelt it right.

He hauled himself onto the wall to see for himself and walked along it for a while, his arms outstretched for balance, like a little boy. He stumbled when he jumped down and landed on our side. I pretended not to notice and tried to dissuade tears of injustice as I told him what had happened.

‘I just don't want Addie to see that sort of aggression. Her dad used to lose his temper like that – shouting the same thing over and over. She's going to grow up hating all men.'

‘You don't hate me, do you?' he said, leaning down and squeezing her round the waist and then, looking back up at me: ‘Want me to have a word with him?'

Did I? Probably not. I found myself nodding all the same.

‘OK, come here, boy,' he said, holding out his hand to take Alfie's lead. He crossed the road to the playground, the crowbar still in his free hand. Poor Alf didn't understand why we weren't coming too and stopped every so often to look back at us, head bowed.

I watched Nathan from across the street as he circled the swings,
the monkey bars and the slide, which the man was now sitting on top of, beside his little bully of a daughter. It was really quite clichéd to have a crush on him – he was such an alpha male. I was also punching way above my weight. See, I was even thinking about him in clichés. I sounded like something you'd read on a Love Heart.

‘Is there a problem?' I heard him shout. ‘There's a woman and a kid over there who are real upset.' I quite liked the way he left the ‘ly' out of ‘really', it made him sound like a cowboy.

I couldn't hear what the man said back, but his voice sounded low and intimated, not so full of bravado now.

‘Ah, would you ever cop on!' Nathan roared up in response and started waving the crowbar about, marching away and coming back with more. He seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. I knew he was showing off – he'd watched one too many episodes of
The Sopranos
.

‘Why don't you wise up or clear off?'

Alfie wasn't doing much for our case with his nose in the base of a buggy, reappearing seconds later with a ham sandwich between his teeth.

*

I left the dog at home and dropped Addie over to Sumita's for the afternoon. She said she'd take her and Rashi down to the aquarium to see the octopus (who, having mated, was unfortunately dying, the way octopuses do; I asked her not to tell the kids), then back to theirs for tea.

I set off for the library. I was looking forward to my shift. To sit in the warmth under its comforting artificial light, the sort of light that always brought me back to school – sprayed snowmen lit up in the little square windows of our classroom as we practised for the
nativity play, excited by the promise of parents and applause and of being in school at night, when it seemed like a far more exciting place.

I'd borrowed a charcoal-grey trouser suit from Ruth for the interview.

‘Of course I'm not saying you're fat,' she'd said, chewing on her bottom lip as she'd watched me yank at the zip. ‘It's just that we're different lengths.'

‘Be enthusiastic!' Mum had enthused over a poor phone line from Perugia. I'd asked endless questions and had sat forward on my seat, feeling confident that I would get the job; I generally did, it was only after interviews that things tended to go downhill quite swiftly.

I said hello or nodded and stood back to let people pass as I walked along the high street. I needed to feel that I was a decent, functioning member of society after my fight with that idiot in the park, needed to know that I got on with most normal human beings. I smiled at dusty old Mr Ledwidge who was standing in the doorway of his home services store, waiting for customers, at Mrs Dicker, humming in her little red electrical shop, as she reorganised her window display. To the bad-tempered baker who was wagging his finger at his young Asian employee over a black forest gateau, keeping one eye on the junkies at the door moving in slow motion, the way they do, looking for change for a bun, him on crutches, his baseball cap pulled low, her holding onto him, pregnant belly exposed. To the stylist with cobalt-blue hair, resting her backside on the window ledge of Hairbox, waiting for her nine o'clock curly blow-dry.

*

Belinda sucked in her stomach and lifted her breasts to squeeze through the tiny gap between the filing cabinet and her seat, knocking
the key for the toilet off its hook, as she did several times a day. She bent to retrieve it, cursing at herself for her clumsiness, and hung it back where it belonged. I breezed past, all business, with the newspapers in one arm and a decaf vanilla soya latte in the other. I'd entered the papers in the ledger already and was on my way upstairs to display them along tables in the ‘quiet' room. I quite liked this bit of my morning because it meant I could have a very quick read of them out of sight of my colleagues while enjoying the rest of my coffee. Then I'd thump downstairs, efficient and eager, and check the door count; an invisible beam you stepped across as you entered the library that recorded the footfall on any given day. Three hundred and fifty people had used the library the day before: to read, to research, to play, to keep warm, to use the facilities, to hang out with friends.

I was on shakier grounds, mathematically, totting up the fines, but I'd snuck in Addie's Hello Kitty calculator for anything tricky. Request fees, photocopying money, fees for lost books – click, click, clickedy click – and then another excuse to escape, to lodge these fees at the Bank of Ireland on the high street.

I snuck into Tesco for a takeaway tuna and sweetcorn sandwich on the way back from the bank. The automated voice at the self-service till told me, told everyone, in a chipper, approving tone that my Clubcard had been accepted. I was not just an organised librarian, careful with her money and always remembering her Clubcard when shopping. I was a fully functioning mother of one and people approved of me.

Back at my desk, I dealt with two queries. The first was from Charlie, a drinker and loner, who always came in to read the sports pages in the mornings and when the weather was cold or wet. He
considered this place home, even brought his own cushion, because his haemorrhoids made sitting uncomfortable.

‘Can I use the phone, please?' he asked me, smelling ripe.

‘It's for emergencies only, I'm afraid.'

‘This qualifies as an emergency, believe me, young lady,' he said, his words sliding all over the place. He leant over the desk, helped himself, knowing I was too new and too junior to stop him.

‘Dave? It's Charlie. Listen, come here to me,' he said, then cupped his hand over the receiver. ‘Did I leave a six-pack at yours?'

Mrs Stanley phoned as soon as Charlie had hung up, to enquire about her account. She was ninety-four and profoundly deaf. Even a question like ‘Can I help you?' had to be repeated and yelled. ‘It's all right, dear, no need to shout,' she always replied, quite irate.

I opened the double doors to the library at precisely ten o'clock. It felt good to let in some air and some natural light. It seemed deprived of both: a squat, seventies-style brick and stone building with brown carpets, porridge-coloured walls and the library staff in their taupe turtlenecks and beige cardigans perfectly camouflaged behind ancient grey hulks of computers. The peace lilies and spider plants by the information desk were drooping and looked like they couldn't breathe. Even the children's area was gloomy despite all its colour: the giant Duplo blocks dirty and old, the stuffed elephant saggy and depressed. And the smells: old books mixed with squiffy socks.

‘It's mayhem up there,' Pete said, his eyes behind thick glasses turned skyward. He was balancing a great stack of books in one hand. ‘A young fella trying to get on porn.' There was always trouble in the computer room. Pete had been at the library for twenty years and filed everything in a system and order that he alone understood. He
loved to be asked about this system and he loved explaining it in detail, to those less clever than him, but he was so bright he found it impossible to put it into simple language and much as they wanted to understand, one by one the communal eyes of the library staff glazed over.