Cuckoo Read online

  The stumbling block was Frances. He couldn’t force this new acquisition on his wife and expect her to groom and polish it, along with all the rest. For seven anguished days, he fought against Miklos, Piroska and his new paternal pride – and lost. He couldn’t fail to lose, because fundamentally, he wanted Magda with him. It wasn’t simply duty, though there was some of that as well. Piroska had done her stint for fifteen years, without much help from him. But there was a deep desire to be completed by a daughter, vindicated even. He wanted almost to flaunt his fertility in front of Frances. He hated her constant innuendos that it was his deficiencies which prevented her from conceiving, that he was somehow less than a man because he couldn’t sire a child. Well, here was his child and his manhood, all in one. He tried to turn it to Frances’ own advantage, to offer her the child she craved, without the mess and disruption of a baby. No broken nights, nor nursery tantrums, but a ready-made family, to meet her desperate need. After the first shock, she might even come to welcome it. She could graft her maternal urges on to Magda, and turn fait accompli into deep fulfilment.

  It hadn’t happened. There were still broken nights and nursery tantrums. One simple child had turned their whole existence into a battleground, with Frances as the casualty. Magda hadn’t graced their life as he’d imagined, reclining elegantly beside him on the sofa, alluring and intelligent, listening to Beethoven sonatas when he could spare the time, or joining him for a few quick holes of golf. All she’d reclined on was his Queen Anne gate-leg table – cracked it right across – and used four-letter words when he switched off the wild din she claimed was music. It hurt to see his own flesh refusing to wash her hair or cut her nails, refusing even to turn into his daughter. And Frances making things still worse by constant recrimination and complaint.

  He slapped the soap against his thighs, working it into a lather. He wished to God he could wash all women away – their shrill, insistent voices, their continual contrariness, their infuriating habit of serving up guilt with dinner, or grudges with sex. The soap slid away from him and skidded along the bottom of the bath. He grabbed it angrily, digging his nails into the bar, as if to pay it back. Even if he escaped from all his females, there’d be more within a week. He didn’t want women – they were an expense and a distraction – yet still they wormed their way into his life, and some part of him clung on to them. Even when Magda was born, he’d been glad she was female – as glad as he could be in the circumstances.

  He remembered his first glimpse of her in that sterile Streatham hospital. A dark head and a white blanket. And Piroska radiant and transformed, her breasts like soft white cheeses. Frances was right to want a baby – there was something miraculous about it. That was why she angered him by always dragging the subject under a spotlight, probing it, examining it, reminding him of his own inadequacies both as a father to Magda, and in failing to become one in their own relationship.

  He stepped out of the shower and rubbed himself briskly with the largest yellow towel. No point agonizing. Too much speculation was a danger and a waste of time. The relationships he’d planned as a refreshment from the pressures of his work were turning into further stresses, his personal life becoming as fraught as his professional one. He had to take a stand. Basically, it was a question of priorities. Each problem, each woman, must be assigned to its pigeon-hole, and dealt with in order of importance. Worry itself was profitless, and guilt a sign of moral bankruptcy. It was only females who confused him and sex which weakened him. In his study, or his office, he didn’t give way to spineless introspection. He must return to the office and his own consummate control. If he left in five minutes, he’d have time to draft a report before the meeting. And the wasted lunch-hour could be repaid in midnight oil.

  Laura trailed in, wearing one stocking and a bra, and slipped her hands underneath the yellow towel. He caught her wrists and held them.

  ‘I’ve got exactly three minutes,’ he said and kissed her throat. The kiss took just two seconds – he could spare those. They’d be the last she’d be getting for a while.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Can’t you spare me even a minute, Charles?’

  ‘Well?’ Charles was peering over his amplifier, adjusting the balance of the speakers, fiddling with the bass control.

  ‘No, sitting down properly. I need to talk to you, want your full attention, for a change.’

  ‘Why say a minute, then, when you mean half an hour?’ Charles removed the Schoenberg and returned it to his alphabetical record storage cabinet, after Scarlatti and before Schütz.

  ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I should have booked a formal appointment. But considering it’s your daughter I want to talk about …’

  ‘Must you keep referring to Magda as ‘‘my daughter’’? Can’t you use her name?’

  ‘She is your daughter, isn’t she? Or are you ashamed of the relationship?’

  ‘No, I’m not ashamed. But you use it as a battle-cry, and a way of getting at me. I’ve told you I’m sorry, Frances, several times in fact. Do you expect me to go on prostrating myself for the rest of my life for springing Magda on you? Where is she, anyway?’

  ‘At Viv’s.’

  ‘She’s always at Viv’s.’

  ‘She likes it there.’ And no wonder, Frances thought. Viv and David weren’t always drawn up for battle, circling each other, torturing. Viv’s house wasn’t wrapped in cellophane and tissue paper, with ‘keep off the grass’ printed all over the garden. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. Magda’s made friends with Bunty, so Viv suggested we try to get her into Highfield.’

  ‘What’s Highfield?’ Charles hunted down a Satie which had strayed behind the Schoenbergs and filed it back in order.

  ‘Charles, you know it’s Bunty’s school. You’ve even been there.’

  ‘Christ, that bear garden!’

  ‘It’s not a bear garden, it’s a perfectly respectable place. Magda’s not used to private schools, in any case. You told me yourself she’d been stuck in her local comprehensive …’

  ‘Yes, and look what it’s done to her.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting she stays there. She couldn’t, anyway. It’s a dreadful journey, now she’s moved from Streatham. But she’d have a ready-made friend if she went to school with Bunty. They could travel together. Viv could even pick them up.’ Frances had it all worked out. If Magda couldn’t live at Viv’s, she could do the next best thing, stay there as much as possible, make bosom friends with Bunty, and keep out of the way.

  ‘It’s not a Catholic school.’

  ‘Well surely you don’t want Magda to be brought up a Catholic, do you?’

  ‘She is a Catholic, Frances.’

  ‘But you hate Catholicism. You spent the first few years of our marriage forcing your atheism down my throat. I suppose that was just a reaction to being caught out by a religious fanatic who wouldn’t use the Pill.’

  Frances had never spoken to Charles like that before. She could hear her own voice, harsh and hectoring. It was usually a soft silk voice, but Magda seemed to have turned her into some bristling, prickly thing; released some cruelty in her, which she never knew existed. Even in the matter of the school, she was being selfish and hypocritical, considering her own peace and privacy, rather than Magda’s happiness. Yet the child could be happy at Highfield. It was a decent school, not too demanding, and she would start with the advantage of a friend in her own year. If Charles were really worried about religion (and it seemed preposterous), then Magda could attend catechism class with Bunty. That would leave Sunday mornings Magda-free as well, maybe all day, if Viv suggested lunch. Sunday lunch at Viv’s house had been known to last until five.

  She knew what Charles wanted – to send Magda to St Helier’s, a small private school on the Green. They had no canteen facilities, so Magda would be home for lunch; the school holidays were longer there, and they had every Wednesday off. Magda would be far too close to home. She could almost see the convent from the window of he
r bedroom, whereas Highfield was two miles away. If Magda went to St Helier’s, she’d soon look down on the Highfield girls, and the friendship with Bunty would swiftly peter out. Somehow, she couldn’t handle Magda on her own, must have Viv as ally.

  Charles sat down, at last, but now he was reorganizing his briefcase, setting out the papers in neat piles on the table, pausing a moment over a letter or memorandum, and then relegating it to the appropriate section. She never had his full attention, always had to share him with books, or music, or paperwork. Yet wasn’t she the same herself – with Magda – grudging the child her undivided attention? Both she and Charles tried to squeeze caring and conversation in among the chores.

  Charles stowed a stray sheet of paper into a loose-leaf file, and placed it at the far end of the table. ‘I’ve more or less decided on boarding school for Magda.’

  ‘Boarding school! But you don’t believe in them for girls.’

  ‘It’s you that don’t believe in them, my darling. You have an amazing habit of kidnapping my rubber stamp for all your own views. But never mind. I’m sending her for your sake. It’s the obvious solution. She’ll get a first-rate education and you’ll only have to see her in the holidays.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want her, Charles …’

  Charles snapped his briefcase shut. ‘Frances, for God’s sake, be honest.’

  How could she be honest? Tell her husband that she wished his daughter dead. No, no, not dead, that was truly wicked. Just negated; someone who had never been; a bad dream she could wake up from, and find that Charles was still her exclusive property, no Magda, no Piroska. And yet wasn’t it just as wicked to wish a child away? A sort of late abortion? She had never believed in abortion, nor in boarding schools. So how could she shatter her life principles on the stony rock of one oppressive child? Charles didn’t seem to find it difficult.

  ‘She’ll be away more than half the year as a boarder. And even in the holidays, they take them on school trips – skiing in the Alps, or pilgrimages to Rome.’

  Frances fiddled with a paperclip. It was tempting, certainly. They could choose a school deep in the country, too remote for frequent visiting, wipe Magda out from September to Christmas. Or could they? Did you forget the foetus you flushed down the lavatory? However many miles they put between them, Magda would still be there, still alive, still suffering.

  ‘Yes, but Charles, she’s just had one big upheaval in her life, losing her mother and coming to live here. If we pack her off again before she’s even …’

  ‘No one’s packing her off anywhere, Frances. Don’t distort everything. I’ve spent a lot of time and trouble on the problem, and I’ve found a very decent convent school. The nuns are kind, but strict. Magda needs that. She’s had no discipline at all.’

  And whose fault was that? Frances bit back the remark. Her husband looked irritable enough. He had picked up a bronze sculpture, a small figure of a girl, and appeared to be trying to wrench its head off. How, in all conscience, could he suggest a convent school? He had drilled into her long ago the dangers of indoctrination. An indoctrinated Magda might be easier, of course. The nuns could make her docile and obedient, force her out of jeans into stern blue gymslips. Break her spirit, break her heart.

  Charles traced a finger along the bowed bronze legs. ‘She’ll pick up some accomplishments at a convent – embroidery, piano lessons, skills they don’t bother with at Highfield.’

  ‘Charles, you can’t be serious. Magda wouldn’t do embroidery!’ He must be blind to the reality of his own daughter. Did he see her as he wanted her to be, instead of the angry, slouching rebel who had actually arrived? No, that wasn’t fair. Magda had another, sunnier side, the one she showed at Viv’s. She found her voice at Viv’s, even laughed, occasionally; helped with the children. But back with them, she froze again, returned to the sullen waxwork who had been moulded in mid-scowl.

  Frances jabbed the paperclip, hard, into her palm. She’d tried, for heaven’s sake; had the whole studio redecorated, so that Magda would have a nicer room. She’d replaced the Victorian patchwork with an easy-care quilt, and teamed it with frilled curtains in a stylish pattern of blue and purple cornflowers. She’d adapted the scheme from a picture in Homes and Gardens and persuaded Reggie, their elderly tame painter, to complete it in just a week. She had tried to keep it a secret from Magda, which wasn’t easy with the smell of paint and Reggie underfoot, but Magda was often round at Viv’s, or deafening herself with Radio Caterwaul at the very top of the house.

  On Saturday, the room was completed. She had added the last touches: a row of children’s classics on the new bookshelves, a bunch of real cornflowers from the garden, a quilted nightdress-case she had made herself. The surprise was planned for after dinner. Magda had spent the whole of roast lamb and apple pie defying them. She had eaten the pie with her fingers and then wiped them on the tablecloth. She refused to remove the badge on her shirt which said ‘FUCK OFF, I’ M A JUNKIE’. She informed Charles he was a Nazi, and damned Richmond as a dump. She herself had tried to keep the peace; she didn’t want the evening spoilt. They had trooped upstairs together, stopped outside the studio. The room looked delicate and charming, its hazy blues and mauves contrasting with the dazzling white of the fluffy goatskin rug.

  ‘It’s yours,’ she’d said to Magda. ‘Your very own room. You can have your friends here, play your records. We’ve even got a really special desk for your homework.’

  The windows were wide open to dilute the smell of paint. An oleander bush pushed against the panes, scattering fragrant blossoms on the sill. The walls matched the curtains in a tapestry of rambling flowers. The quilt was plain blue terylene, frilled round the edges, and there were cushions of the same material on the graceful bedroom chair. Charles had chosen the pictures carefully – the John Pipers were too precious for a child – but he had replaced them with some Edward Bawden watercolours, tranquil landscapes in muted, low-key colours. The desk was his own, a Regency jewel, which she’d harmonized with the modern furnishings.

  ‘Well?’ she’d said, smiling. They were still outside, all three of them, as if the room were too immaculate to enter. She and Charles were looking at Magda, waiting for her reaction. They knew she wouldn’t rave, but …

  ‘It stinks!’ the girl had shouted, and rushed up to her old room, muttering obscenities about stupid fucking frills and poncy flowers.

  On the Sunday, Charles had summoned Magda to his study and dealt sternly with the ‘fuckings’. He then forced her to move in among the cornflowers and the terylene; explained how much the room had cost, in terms of time and trouble. Magda had said nothing, just jabbed her foot against his desk.

  She obeyed that evening, sullenly, dumping all her possessions on the floor, a tangled mess of shoes, jeans, records, junk. She tacked punk posters over the gilt-framed Bawden prints, stuffed the cushions under the bed, flung the nightdress-case in the dirty linen basket. Then she put her wildest, rowdiest rock group on the stereo and played it at full blast, over and over, long past midnight. When Frances knocked, she didn’t even answer, just turned it up louder still. At three A. M., the house was vibrating with drums and screaming with electric guitars. Frances lay alone in bed, staring up at the quaking ceiling and the wincing chandelier, torn between fear, fury and exhaustion. Charles had escaped, caught the late-night plane to Paris for an emergency board meeting of a French property developer.

  When he returned, the stereo was broken, and Magda and the rock group had fled to Viv’s.

  ‘I’ve written to the nuns already,’ he was saying. ‘They’ve sent a prospectus. The fees are very reasonable. They’ve got lovely grounds, even a trout stream and a lake. I really think it’s the best thing in the circumstances.’

  Frances took an apple from the fruit dish and laid her cheek against its cold green skin. Boarding school would mean quiet uninterrupted nights, tidy rooms, well-mannered meals … She bit into the apple with sharp teeth. ‘We can’t send her, Charles
. I know we can’t. She’d hate it.’ Her friend Theresa had run away from a convent boarding school when she was only seven. And then been expelled at seventeen. The only men she ‘d ever seen in the hundred years between were an octogenarian gardener and a Polish priest with a private line to Hell. They’d taught her that dancing was dangerous and Protestants were damned, and she’d spent much of her childhood praying fervently for her favourite Auntie Annie, who was a C. of E. ballroom-dancing teacher.

  Oh, yes, it would be idyllic to have the house to themselves again, to springclean Magda off the premises and return to their civilized, sound-proofed way of life. But to sacrifice a child for your own peace and privacy … Theresa had told her how she’d cried every night with earache, and the nuns had instructed her to welcome the pain, and offer up her little agonies for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. They’d even had to keep a Penance notebook, a record of all their penances and privations, so they could tot up how many souls they’d saved. It sounded like something out of Charles’ system, except Charles didn’t believe in gratuitous suffering. He suffered only in the cause of efficiency and order, or of Britain’s financial solvency.

  ‘Look, Charles, I’m sorry if I’ve been too hard on Magda. But don’t send her away. She’s suffered enough.’

  She was surprised by her own words. Here was a chance to put half of England between herself and Magda, and she was turning it down, refusing the very thing she’d wanted since the child first set foot inside the house. It wasn’t just a prissy desire to live up to her principles, though that was there as well. She did oppose boarding schools and religious education, and everybody knew it. Even if she’d borrowed her beliefs from Charles to start with, they were firmly grafted in her own mind now. But there were deeper feelings, too – irrational but important ones. She yearned for a child and Magda had arrived. Only a mockery of the child she wanted, a bane, not a blessing, but perhaps also an initiation, or a trial. The way she treated Magda might determine the fate of her own baby, its very existence, even Charles would scoff at such superstitious non sequiturs. She almost scoffed herself. But some strange inner voice kept repeating, ‘Would you send your own child away?’ The answer was an unequivocal no. So how could she send Magda?