The Girl Below(2)

In front of me, the buzzer beckoned. What did I have to lose? Even if Peggy didn’t recognize me, surely she’d remember my parents and that would at least get me a cup of tea and a biscuit. We could talk about Peggy’s children, Harold and Pippa, who would be grown, with kids of their own by now. When I was a child, they were teenagers, old enough for Pippa to trip downstairs in her New Romantic get-up and impersonate a babysitter. Her brother, Harold, had been more of a rumor, a floppy-fringed sulker who’d gone away first to boarding school and then to Cambridge University, from where he’d come back arrogant and spoiled (or so my father was fond of saying). Harold did nothing to quash the impression of aloofness, hovering at the edge of Peggy’s soirees, shunning endless games of charades, and never lowering his gaze to the level of grasshoppers such as myself.

Pippa, on the other hand, had been my idol, and being looked after by her had been an event. She always arrived in a cloud of hair spray and kohl, armed with secrets from the teenage frontline, and I’d looked forward to the nights my parents went to parties as much as if I too was going out. She would demonstrate the latest dance moves—mostly jerky, New Wave stuff—and if I hounded her, she tossed me a few scraps of advice about snogging and other unbelievable acts. “Don’t put on too much lippy or it’ll rub off on his face,” and, “Never tell a guy you love him straight after you’ve bonked.” She had magnificent boobs, quite the biggest I’d ever seen, and together we’d raided my mother’s wardrobe and tried on all her clothes. Unlike her brother, she had not been sent to boarding school, but had made do with the local comprehensive and a hairdressing course at a third-rate polytechnic. My mother, who had gone without haircuts (and many other things) to send me to private school, thought Peggy had done her daughter a great disservice, but anyone who had ever met Harold could tell you that was not necessarily the case.

Spurred on by such memories, I pressed Peggy’s buzzer and felt the click of a small electric shock. A brisk voice hissed over the intercom, “Peggy Wright’s residence. Can I help you?” She sounded formal, like a receptionist.

“I’ve come to see Peggy. I’m an old friend.”

The woman didn’t reply but let me in, and I heaved open the front door, which slammed behind me on a spring. Since we’d lived there, the lobby had undergone a makeover. Instead of letters stacked on the radiator and piled haphazardly on the doormat, each apartment now had its own brass-numbered pigeonhole. The smell was different too, no longer boiled cabbage and mildew, but fresh paint and carpet shampoo. And Harold’s bicycle, which had leaned permanently against the bottom staircase, someone had finally moved that too.

I bounded up the first five flights of stairs, eager to see Peggy, but with three still to go I was gasping for breath and had to stop for a rest. Each landing was more or less identical, so it was hard to be absolutely sure, but I thought this floor had belonged to Jimmy, the bogeyman of the building. I had not even known his last name, only feared him, and I’d never stopped on his landing in case he jumped out and threw a sack over my head. When I tried to recall his appearance now, all I could remember was a shadowy, retreating figure, his face a caved-in slab.

Peggy’s front door was already open, sweet disinfectant vapors leaking out into the hall. I crossed the threshold, prepared for renovations, but none had been made: the black-lacquered walls, chessboard floor tiles, and accents of orange were, shockingly, identical to how I’d remembered them. So too was the ornamental birdcage, its perches wired with a colony of faded stuffed canaries. Not so much furniture as props, stage dressing for a farce set in 1970s Bohemia. So unchanged was the interior that when I looked in the hall mirror, I was surprised to see an adult face staring back at me.

The brisk woman appeared from the kitchen in white slacks and a white smock, an efficient spring in her white-plimsolled step. “She’s just had her afternoon dose,” she said. “So I expect she’ll be rather groggy.”

Too late, I noticed the dim lighting, the hushed, churchlike atmosphere, and regretted my impulsive visit. To arrive unannounced was so terribly un-English. After ten years in the colonies, I had forgotten my manners. Not only that, but something was clearly wrong with Peggy, wrong enough that she required the services of a live-in nurse.

“I’ll come back another time,” I said. “I’d hate to disturb her.”

“It’s probably best to see her while you still can,” said the nurse, directing me across the hallway. “She’s quite weak today but it always cheers her up to have visitors.”