Telling Tales

THE curtains are closed against a summer’s evening. Outside I can hear happy voices. Somewhere the blades of a lawn-mower turn. Outside, things move. Here things have stopped dead – dark pink dead like old flowers on a grave. Mum is perched on the pink fluffy dressing-stool. I am trying not to slide off the shiny pink bedspread. The policewoman is standing with her back to the darkened window. She doesn’t like me.

‘Now then, Katie,’ she says. ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions and you’re going to tell me what happened. In your own words.’

‘Yes.’

Understand right from wrong, do you Katie? You do know it’s bad to tell lies, don’t you?’

‘Of course, she doesn’t tell lies,’ Mum says. ‘Just tell the nice police lady what you saw, dear. You were full of it earlier.’

Earlier . . .

My name is Katherine Fairchild. Earlier today I had new sandals; delicious wedged soles with thick square edges like a new yellow bath-sponge. Shiny as conkers. Proud. New shoes. But they are gone because they are spoiled. Not because their edges are battered and grimy. Not because the crisp newness has withered and creases crack the scuffed toes. That happens to everything that starts new.

I don‘t like sandals any more. Sandals are for babies. I want a pair of white shoes with pointed toes and stiletto heels that go click-clack. Not flump-flump.

The bedroom too has a new sound. The tinny bedside clock is swimming under deep pink waters. The dark oak wardrobe and tallboy where dad keeps his cufflinks in a leather box are black beasts basking in the dusty pinkness.

The silence forces me. I speak. ‘I saw this man. This funny man.’

‘Made you laugh, did he?’ The policewoman isn’t smiling.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Not funny like that.’

The policewoman straightens herself. ‘Listen, love. You’ve got to start from the beginning. So we get it straight. You went to the park at two o’clock this afternoon. That’s right, isn’t it, Mrs Fairchild?

Mum nods.

‘You were on your own, right?’

I nod

‘Are you sure you weren’t meeting someone – a boy, maybe?’

I shake my head.

‘What did you do in the park, Katie?’

‘I played in the top field, first. Spinning.’

My name is Katherine Grey. I own this leaf-piled street, I kick the leaves high into the air with my new sandals. I have a room full of sandals at home. I change them every day. I own the park too but I still squeeze through the gap in the railings. Today they are as hot as rubbed pennies in my hand. The long grass in the top field tickles my bare legs like the nose of a friendly dog. This is my spinning place. The land rolls like rough cloth down the hillside to the city stretched flat and hazy far below. This is my domain.

I stretch my arms out as stiff as a scarecrow and turn round and round, slowly to start with, then faster and faster and faster, until, one by one, the roofs and chimneys, the wispy clouds and the big, blue sky itself start to turn with me, matching me turn for turn, becoming one blurred spinning-top, whirling and dipping together.

I flop to the ground. But the rest of the world keeps on spinning like a tilted saucer. Then it too is still. I am light-headed and want to laugh out loud.

Sometimes I lie on my front in the grass, my heavy sandals banging together in the air above and behind me. I watch the ants clamber up and down the grass-stalks. Perhaps they are the brave explorers of the ant-world, charting the height of every spike and spear, mapping them for the stay-at-home ants. If they are, then I must be God. God can flick them on their way with her fingernail or crush them with her thumb, enjoy the soft crunch, then wipe the stain away on her skirt.

‘Katie, don’t daydream. What did you do next?’

‘I played on the swings, Miss.’

Katherine Grey likes to swing as high as she dares, up and up. She kicks the big blue bowl of the sky with the big, yellow soles of her sandals. Here she thinks. She closes her eyes and tips her head back to the sun. It pours over her face in a hot waterfall. She is so big, as big as the sun, growing and growing, filling the sky; she and the sun together...

‘Right, so you played on the swings. Did you talk to anyone there?’

(Only the sun.) ‘No.’

‘Then what did you do?’

‘Then I went down the path through the woods.’

My name is Lady Katarina Le Blanche. My skirt is long. I lift the heavy brocade away from the summer dust. My satin shoes lightly tread the forest path between the mysterious blue pines. I emerge into a wide glade of stone terraces, crumbling stairways and empty fountains where a pair of stone lions snarl in silence. I wander among the naked stone maidens pouring empty ewers into empty pools. Stone dolphins turn their open mouths to await the flow, forever thirsty. Weeds thrust through the gravel scattered thinly across the paths. I touch the desiccated balustrades. Flakes of stone fall away into the overgrown laurels below, pattering like dry raindrops, leaving a fine white powder on my skin.

There is water, though, thick and green, in two square ponds either side of a wide, white staircase. Lady Katarina kneels down between them and watches the lazy goldfish, as plump as pigeons, weave slowly through the green water, their feathery tails flashing in what little light penetrates the green roof of tangled branches.

Here she awaits her lover. He is late. Perchance he has deserted her. But what can she hear? She leaps up. A flurry of hooves on gravel heralds his arrival. Leaping from his strong, white stallion, he slashes his way through the thicket with his broad sword. Lady Katarina all but faints as he stands beneath her at the foot of the sweeping marble staircase. His grey, battle-weary eyes soften as they meet hers. He mounts the steps two by two. He is near . . .

‘That‘s where you saw the courting couple, wasn’t it, Katie?’

‘I saw a girl and a boy kissing.’

‘That’s what I meant.’

My name is Kate Kennedy. I live in New York. I chew gum. I wear white stilettos and click-clack along the path like the girl I can see running towards me. She has a long blonde pony-tail and a full pink skirt with black musical notes splashed across it. She is running away from a boy. She stops to let him grab her around the waist. She is laughing. They fall down onto a bench, the boy on top of the girl. It looks like he is eating her face. He puts his hand into the neck of her white sweater. I can see it moving about like a ferret in a sack. The blonde girl pulls herself away, laughing. She runs off down the path. Click-clack go the heels of her white stilettos. The boy follows.

‘Like spying on courting couples, do you, Katie?’

‘I couldn’t help it. They were making a lot of noise. That’s why I didn’t see the man until he was standing beside me.’

‘How long had he been there. What was he doing?’

‘He was smoking a very thin cigarette and watching me. The cigarette was bent in the middle and bits of ash kept falling off the end.’

My name is Katie Fairchild. I am not frightened of this grey man but of the grey ash falling like silent, grey snow onto his grey coat. He is sad. But I don’t want him to speak to me. I start to walk away.

‘Remember carefully, Katie. What exactly did the man say?

‘He said, "Were they at it?" ’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said "Yes." ’

‘You said "Yes." ’

The policewoman is smiling at me with her mouth but not her eyes.

‘I said "yes" so he’d go away. But then he said, "I’ll give you half a crown if you follow them and tell me what they’re up to." ’

‘Did you take his money?’

‘No.’

‘I think you did, Katie. I think you went to the pictures with that money and bought yourself an ice-cream. Isn’t that right, Katie? Do you know what "at it" means Katie?’

‘Not really.’

‘I think you do, Katie.’

I don’t tell her about the sandals. ‘I like your shoes, little girl,’ the man says. ‘I’ll give you five bob for them.’

‘No.’

‘Let me touch them for a tanner then.’ He sounds out of breath. ‘Lovely little girl.’ He takes a step towards me.

I am nobody. I am the wind. Down the crumbling steps I fly, leaping the laurels, jumping the wishing well. I don’t stop until I reach the line where the gravel becomes tarmac and the proper park begins – what grown-ups mean when they say ‘The Park’. I stop. I am a girl with plaits and scuffed sandals and safe because I am unseen among strangers. People are clockwork people doing the usual things people do in parks; feeding the ducks; walking dogs; playing with balls; sucking ice-lollies and throwing the wrappers in the wire bins that guard the paths; sitting on green benches; listening to the band. Clockwork people in a clock world.

I take off the sandals and throw them in the boating lake.

I leave the park by the main gates at the bottom of the hill. They open onto a busy street. It is getting dark. There are queues at the bus-stops. The buses shine, but I have no money, so I turn the corner and walk back up the steep street that flanks the park, keeping under the street lights that come on one by one. Nobody sees that my feet are bare.

It is Saturday afternoon. There will be sardines on toast, potted meat sandwiches and the football results. Mum is in the warm kitchen slicing bread. My feet are cold.

‘You’ve been a long time, Katie. Are you all right?’

‘I saw this man – this funny man. Then a dog ran off with my sandals and chewed them to pieces.’

Mum slabs more butter on the loaf and cuts off a slice.

‘Put your slippers on. You’ll catch your death. What funny man?’

Dad is reading the paper in front of the television. Black and white paper in front of black and white pictures.

‘Phone the police, Ian. Our Katie’s been interfered with.’

The policewoman is not smiling any more. ‘I don’t believe you. I’ll tell you what happened. You met a boy in the park and you went to the pictures. You both took off your clothes but when you got dressed again you couldn’t find your shoes. So you spun your Mum a yarn.’

She turns to my mother. ‘You see it all the time in this job.’

I am crying. I go to my room and hide myself under the covers.

Later . . .

The rising wind rattles the window frame and rain spatters the dark glass. But I am as dry as the chrysalis shed by the butterfly that is now dancing in the sunshine. The policewoman has gone. There is a knock on my door. It’s Dad.

‘You’ve not had your tea,’ he says. ‘You must be starving.’

‘I wasn’t telling stories. I don’t tell stories,’ I say.

‘I know you don’t.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, Katie?’

‘Can I have some new shoes? Grown up shoes, white – with heels. Can I, Dad? Can I?’.

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