The Ruby Slippers (8 page)

He arrives outside the block, on the opposite side, and notes the position of Old Rosa’s apartment. There are her windows, unlit and with the filthy nets sagging on their wires. He came here once before, four years ago when the grocer sent him with deliveries – that’s how good his brain is, to remember it from that one time to this day: second floor, left of the landing window. In the neighbouring apartment the flickering shimmer of a TV. The street is all but empty – just one distant silhouette slowly coming down, but no worry; he can be in and out quick as needs be.

The time is now. He crosses, goes in at the entrance, into near-darkness. The stairs are damp and dingy, just like he remembers, and as he reaches the first landing, he pulls his hat right down. His ears are alert: anyone comes up or down, he will hear them in time to back off. He skips up the last flight, pressing against the rails, his eyes peering over the top step. Under the door of the apartment opposite old Rosa’s is a crack of light, and a peephole in the door is a tiny star. Right. He cannot make any real noise or spend any time going in. He puts his gloved left hand to his right sleeve end and draws out the tyre-iron. Just the one chance – jam it in by the lock and go for it. If it gives, he goes in; if it doesn’t, turn and go, just turn and go. Excitement is in him, more delicious than fear. He takes three quick, fierce breaths, tiptoes to the door, gently forces the iron between door and frame, smiling to see it lodge tight. He levers it, at the same moment ramming his full force against the door, which suddenly flies open, taking him head first with it. He turns back and scrambles the door shut. His eye goes straight to the peephole. Nothing. Nobody comes to the neighbour’s door, nothing stirs, no voices, and he can hear the TV going with people laughing. He is in. But the door sprang too easy; he opens it an inch and sees the latch is off – the door was never locked. On the floor is a hank of carpet material and he realizes it was there to wedge the door shut. Quickly, he places it back and shuts the door tight.

■ ♦ ■

James gasps horribly, his fragile sleep snapped, his waking harsh and devoid of all awareness. His eyes grate open to the dingy light and he feels the couch, lumpy under him, his body clammy in his clothes. It comes to him: how he came home and fell asleep and has been lying here an hour at most, though it seems an age. He turns his head to look at Paolo’s picture on the mantelpiece and his spirits sink again. What is there to do but lie and wait?

Then comes a harsh buzz at the front door. Irascible, he pads along the hall: he has no time for anyone right now, and if this is some person selling charity art from Africa or a utilities salesman . . . The buzzer sounds again, longer and fiercer. He puts his eye to the peephole, sees the top of a tousled head and a blaze of pink brow. He throws the locks and opens the door. There stands a girl, forlorn and stooped, though her clothes are sassy. He blinks foolishly and stares back at her.

‘Daddy,’ says Siobhan, a seven-year-old again.

This isn’t how she’d planned it: she would knock boldly on the door; she would shake her father’s hand, or offer her cheek, depending on the reception. She would waltz into his apartment and be terribly smart and grown-up and overflowing with conversation. But
‘Daddy’
is all she can find it in her to say, and all she can do is stand there looking a total goof.

He is no better. ‘Siobhan . . .?’ he asks, a complete halfwit, because now she is completely crushed, her head bowed and tears falling on her shoes. Such unbearable pain to think that he has never planned and imagined this moment, as she has done all these years. How could he have neglected to sit down and frame her face in his mind, to make allowance for how she might have changed? How could he not instantly know her?

‘Siobhan . . . What are you doing here?’ Again, his words come out horribly wrong. He means to express his own bewilderment, but she hears only an accusation. ‘Daddy,’ she says again, and this time her sorrow gets through to him and he finally summons something closer to understanding. Gently, he takes her hand and guides her into the apartment. When he turns back from shutting the door, he finds her blue eyes gazing up at him – more like the little girl he remembers.

James looks at her standing in his hallway, fighting to hold back tears, and it makes him contemplate his poor handling of matters so far. ‘I’m so sorry . . . I really wasn’t . . .’ he gestures at the shadows, as if they could explain him and everything about him. Her eyes rove over the bland interior and back to him. He looks so worn out and shabby, far from the man she’d dreamed about. And there is something defensive in the way he says, ‘Listen, sorry, I came home from work and fell asleep,’ then hurries over to open the drapes.

She ventures into the bleary world he has wrapped around him, her eyes drawn through the drabness to daylight and the balcony and the tiny table out there with two coffee cups left facing each other. She sees the neighbourhood below, the neat little square with the little French fountain all dried up. And then, when she turns back, her eyes alight immediately on the mantelpiece. She ignores the small but exquisite Buddha head, the brass incense burner and other trinkets arranged there. She even ignores the cutesy portrait of her knee-high self. Instead, she fixes on the framed photograph of a dark-eyed man with a handsome, spiritual face . . .

James watches uneasily. The material world, which he has renounced so much of late, suddenly commands his attention: ‘Do you want a coffee? Can I offer you something?’ He visibly winces to hear himself sounding so limp and really downright camp, talking to her as if she were some visiting dignitary. She casts her eyes down and, to his relief, away from Paolo’s photograph. But then her gaze settles on the door of the spare room – Paolo’s room – the room no one must ever enter. He hurries over and shuts it tight, covering, meantime, with suitably polite enquiries:

‘So, how did you get here? Don’t tell me you came here all alone? Does your mother know?’ Practicalities, loose ends, small things suddenly important. Her awkward silence lays her open. ‘Oh my goodness!’ he pronounces prissily, taking out his cell phone. This, then, propels her to jump up, inhibitions to the wind, and rush over to snatch the phone from his hand. ‘Please, please don’t do that!’ she yells as he stands back amazed. Such wilfulness! An unaccustomed sense of pride rises in James’s chest: so this is Siobhan; this is his daughter.

‘Not yet! Please . . .’ she begs, softer of tone.

‘OK, OK,’ he demurs, holding up his hands. Meekly, she hands the phone back to him. ‘I had to come here, Daddy, I had to.’

‘Of course . . . Of course you did. Please, sit down. But Siobhan, you have to know, this is a bad time for me, a very bad time.’ He gazes squarely at her, all his pain collected for display.

For a moment she is almost overcome but then snaps to her senses: Bad? How totally rock-bottom is this? She jumps up and lets it out: ‘A bad time? You’re having a bad time? Well what the fuck do you think I’ve been going through for the past seven fucking years?!’

■ ♦ ■

Barrell leads the way again. Michael and Grace trudge silently along the damp street. Michael’s mind ticks over, unstoppable, browsing over the variety of nasty surprises that could lie in store behind Rosa’s door. He spares half a thought for the legendary hidden treasure, but of course it’s all just so much nonsense. The cost of clearing the stuff will most likely outweigh its value. Naturally, that cost will fall to them, as will the bill for the ‘arrangements’ when she dies, heaven forbid. It’s a real bind; they are not strictly obliged, but decency dictates, just as it always has. Go back twenty years or so, they had been Rosa’s only support. It was them who were forced to look on helplessly as her money had dried up, and her sanity with it.

And so, not even taking comfort in words, the old man, the old woman and the dog trudge the streets and turn the corners until they reach the entrance to the block where Barrell suddenly takes up the slack and leads them to arrive, soundless, outside her door. Night is coming on by the minute and the landing light is heartless, so that each looks on the other and sees a grey old ghost. Michael takes out the key, inserts it into the lock and turns, but the door won’t budge either way, and he rattles and shoves at it so hard in his frustration that it suddenly swings open. Grace bends down and picks up the carpet piece, holding it up with eyebrow raised and sighing – typical of the old woman to arrive at such a flimsy solution after the lock had packed up.

A terrible presence now comes upon the two of them. Even out here the smell is close to unbearable. Grace shakes her head helplessly; how did the neighbours ever come to put up with this? She looks pleadingly at Michael: No, her look says. No, they cannot possibly go in.

■ ♦ ■

They go via the Park, James seeking the wide open spaces and fresh air to carry away her anxieties and provide distractions, of which there are some: the usual joggers; animals calling from the zoo and a bunch of students over by the bridge making some kind of movie, with lights glaring and the runners all yapping into walkie-talkies and trying to look like they came straight from Hollywood. It’s the coward’s way out, of course, to distract her like this, but what else can he do? He knows he should call her mother, but the thought of speaking to Corinne after all these years is hideous and makes him jumpy. So for the moment he walks along with Siobhan, showing suitable fatherly interest and discovering the small and lovely things about his daughter that would have filled his days if things hadn’t gotten so damned twisted all that time ago.

For her part, Siobhan is mad at herself for losing the momentum – such a fool for letting herself get carried away like that, and now she has to fall in with his small talk, although it would be mean not to. By the time they reach the zoo, she has shared with him her love of cheese, her abhorrence of anchovies, her passion for the colour orange. He has called her ‘Shibby’ and she has called him dad, although at one point she was bold enough to inform him that her mother sometimes refers to him as ‘the long-gone, no-good faggot father’, and, unbelievably, he had laughed, which had endeared him to her an inch or so. But then she realizes that, so far, everything has come from her; he has given away next to nothing. So then, with the zoo behind her, leaning against the fence, she just comes out with it, her voice breathy but adamant all the same: ‘Daddy, please tell me – the photograph, on your mantelpiece . . . who is that man?’

‘Ah . . .’ He would gladly run from this right now, but sees that she will not be fobbed off. ‘That is Paolo, Shibby. Paolo, my partner.’

She falls silent. OK, so it’s no news he’s gay – it was the cause of his going after all – but seeing the photograph and hearing him say these things, it’s all suddenly quite shocking. ‘Is that so bad?’ he asks, so very reasonable.

‘Where is he now?’

‘He’s in the hospital. Sick. Very, I’m afraid. I – I’m waiting to hear . . . It could be any time,’ this said so gravely it leaves her with nothing to say but, ‘Oh.’

‘Look,’ he says, forcing a lift in his voice. ‘Ice cream, chocolate. Whaddya say? Run over and get some.’ And he gives her money and sends her towards the distant kiosk, where people are lined up. Quickly, he bites the bullet, fumbles out his phone and dials, feeling himself shrinking with each strident ring. Then, there it is after all this time, that voice so cold and martyr-like: ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Corinne. It’s me. James.’

Silence closes around her, then: ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Well, it’s Siobhan. She’s here.’

Clearly, it’s no surprise to her. She wades in: ‘Do you realize how sick with worry I’ve been? I called the police!’

And that is how it goes. She is all tight-lipped and icy, outraged in the first instance to imagine him worming his way back into her life, and then hot and stuttering in the second as she realizes her little girl has come to no harm. She listens to him not a jot when he points out that Siobhan’s arrival had come out of nowhere, that this is all entirely down to the girl’s extraordinary determination. So all-consuming is her contempt for him that she pays no heed when James offers at once to rent a car and return Siobhan, insisting there and then on driving the whole way to collect her daughter herself. ‘Keep your cell on,’ she orders. ‘And make sure we hand over somewhere neutral. I’ll ring again when I get to the city.’

He puts the phone back in his pocket. ‘Hand over somewhere neutral’ – as if this was some sleazy drug-drop. ‘Fuck!’ he blurts out loud – he should have handled that better. But then he softens to see Siobhan strolling back up the path towards him, an ice-cream cone huge in her hand, and on her face a broad breezy smile.

■ ♦ ■

It’s the dog who finally makes the decision for them. Before either Grace or Michael can come up with a solid enough excuse to sound the retreat, Barrell noses in the open door and for once throws his weight, yanking Michael into the apartment. ‘Oh my goodness!’ burbles Grace, as she scurries after them into the stinking darkness, but then there’s a whimper from the dog, and an awful sound as Michael lands in something vile. ‘Hold, dog, hold!’ he gasps, fighting to hold onto the heavy animal. ‘Find the light, quick!’ Grace scrapes at the wall by the door, fumbling for switches. A light comes on, dim and inadequate, lacking the will to illuminate the fetid room. ‘Stay! Stay!’ yells Michael, now violently twisting the leash to hold the dog to him. Grace’s eyes begin to adjust. All around, there are piled layers of discarded things. To head height in places it towers, a shapeless maze of garbage, possessions of every kind: clothes, objects, furnishings and unidentified rotting matter, all cut through with passageways that lead to awful ends. ‘Oh no, please no!’ pleads Grace, pulling her coat up over her face. The unholy stench is the worst thing of all. Michael sucks in air through his mouth, one hand cupped over his nose, the other braced against the dog, who strains towards a large, mouldy old wardrobe, picked out in a sickly haze of light, oozing in through two small windows in the kitchen area at the back. The wardrobe is an edifice, an outcrop in a clearing in an ethereal landscape. Inside it is Harrison. Crammed into one side of the boxy space, his head jammed under a shelf, he is gripped with fear, shuddering for air, sweat running down his face like it’s springing from his eye sockets. The knuckles of one hand stand out white as his fingers twist impossibly around a flimsy little catch to prevent the door from swinging open. The other hand is fused around the handle of the dagger, its wicked blade at the ready.