Seven Endings
By K J Blackwood
Copyright 2012 K J Blackwood
Contents:
The Maid
The Dark Photographer
Fear of Flying
Communication Error – a tragedy
The Worm that Turned
Cat Lady
Poor Thing
The Maid
“When you get back from nursery can you take Peter to the park for an hour or so Asuncion? I have some work to do and I could do without interruptions,” said Mrs Patterson, briefly looking up from her phone as she scrolled through a message.
“Yes Madam,” Asuncion replied with a smile. She was always smiling. Sometimes she thought her face might split in two with the effort. How she hated smiling. Yet she’d become very proficient at it over the years. She would win prizes for her smiles if there were such a competition.
Asuncion had worked for James and Beth Patterson for the last three years. He was some sort of investment banker, she wasn’t really sure, and she did very little at all, or so it seemed to Asuncion. She was employed as a maid but as well as all the cleaning and laundry an inordinately large amount of her time was taken up looking after Peter, the Pattersons’ precious little four-year old boy.
Asuncion hated them all. Beth with her perfect pale skin and her natural, sun-kissed blonde hair, looking like an advert for expensive shampoo, her manicured fingernails that never seemed to chip and her effortless way with other people; James with his chestnut brown wavy mop and pale, slender fingers that had clearly never done manual work of any description. Always smiling, the two of them, always so charming. She hated that they were so nice to her. She wanted them to be cruel, to justify the way she felt. To justify what she was doing to them, to their child.
Asuncion hadn’t seen her own four children for over a year. They lived thousands of miles away in the Philippines with her mother and she had just two weeks holiday each year in which to visit them. Every spare penny that she could save was sent back to pay for their schooling. Being apart from them was like a dagger twisted in her heart daily, as if she was being emotionally, spiritually tortured throughout her working day. Mrs Patterson didn’t work, of course, in fact she appeared to do nothing at all except chat on the phone or make herself look pretty. And they had so much money from whatever work it was that Mr Patterson did. They could do whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted. And what they chose to do invariably didn’t involve the company of their son. She despised them for the unfairness of it all. The only respite she managed from her intense pain was obtained through her relationship with their little prince. Peter had piercing sapphire blue eyes, fine curly hair that was blonder than his mother’s and the clearest milky-white skin. With his pure Anglo-Saxon heritage he was the poster boy for perfection and privilege. Asuncion despised him and everything he stood for.
“Come on Peter,” she called to him, in the sing-song way that she used when talking to him in the presence of his parents, “time to go to school!”
Peter was at the kitchen table having just finished his breakfast. He looked over at Asuncion without saying a word, his eyes round, sad and not a little afraid. He glanced over to his mother, who was typing a message on her Blackberry, as usual, then back to Asuncion, who was looking straight back at him, without even the trace of a smile on her face.
“Have a lovely time darling, Asuncion’s going to take you to the park after nursery, isn’t that nice? A little treat before lunch. Mummy will see you later,” Mrs Patterson said, not actually looking at her son but continuing to tap away at her phone, making the little clicking sounds that he forever associated with her presence the way some children associate a particular perfume with their mothers. Peter didn’t reply, but got down from his chair and went into the hall to pick up his little blue rucksack and put on his duffle coat.
“Bye Mrs Patterson, say bye to Mummy Peter!” Asuncion called out as she also went into the hall and took Peter’s hand.
“Bye Mummy,” he whispered quietly, without looking up at Asuncion or back at his mother.
Asuncion opened the front door and pushed Peter outside, dropping his hand the moment the door closed behind them.
“Come on. Walk. We’re late. Stupid boy. Always making me late. You’re lazy like your stupid Mummy. Faster.” She pushed him ahead of her and picked up speed. The nursery was only a fifteen minute walk away, across a main road and through a park. Asuncion could walk really fast and Peter struggled to keep up with her on his little legs. He didn’t want to upset her though so he didn’t complain or ask her to slow down. He knew if he didn’t do exactly as she said he’d suffer at her hands later. In fact even if he did do what she said she might still hurt him, but at least that way there was a chance that she wouldn’t. Being only four he didn’t understand the concept of cruelty, all he knew was that Asuncion seemed to like hurting him and making him cry, and that there was nothing he could do about it, his parents were no help. She was the Queen of his little world.
Asuncion always walked at a pace just a little faster than Peter could comfortably keep up with, even though she would have preferred to walk at a more leisurely speed and there was no need for them to rush to school in this way. Her own children had to walk several miles to get to school each day, without any adult supervision and certainly without any complaint. She wasn’t going to make it easy for this spoilt brat. When they first walked to nursery together about a year ago he’d cried that his feet hurt and he couldn’t keep up. It wasn’t surprising, really, because she’d put small stones from the garden in his shoes. It must have been agony! How she’d enjoyed seeing the tears run down his little face as she dragged him along the pavement! That was the first time that she’d intentionally hurt him and the mixed feelings of enjoyment and relief that she experienced had released something within her – that night she had sat on her bed and cried and cried, with heartache for the children that she couldn’t see and with twisted guilty joy at the justice she was, in some small way, obtaining for them. She continued to put stones in his shoes occasionally, when she was feeling bad. It took the edge off her pain.
As they neared the nursery they started to bump into the other children with their nannies or mothers. Asuncion smiled at everyone she recognised, she was polite and always replied to people when they spoke to her, but she tended to keep to herself. She wasn’t like them. The mothers were mostly in their thirties and forties and would chat to one another and discuss what was going on in their lives; the nannies were all very young white girls, mostly English but there were also a couple of Kiwis, an Aussie and a South African. Different but the same. Asuncion was the only dark-skinned, non-English speaking person at the nursery. Everyone was perfectly polite to her but it was clear that they didn’t see her as one of them. If there had been another Filipino there for her to talk to she might have been less bitter. As it was, though, her only Filipino friends in London were maids or cleaners that either didn’t have any children to look after or who didn’t have any children of their own, so they didn’t understand her pain. The pain of separation from your own children combined with the salt-in-wound agony of looking after someone else’s. Asuncion was completely alone in her grief.
She managed to drop Peter off without having a single conversation with anyone, just a few nods and the odd “Morning” with a rictus grin plastered to her face. A pretty normal weekday. The boy would be in classes for three hours so after leaving him with the teacher she went back to the house to start washing and cleaning.
Asuncion got back in less than ten minutes and saw that “Madam” was busy chatting away on her mobile phone in the sitting room. She could talk for hours and hours that woman. Even at the weekend, when her beloved son w
as home all day she preferred to gossip with her friends. What is the point of having children when you can’t be bothered to spend any time with them? Asuncion would have given anything to be with her own babies, she had no choice but to be apart from them – to be with them meant for all of them to live in uneducated poverty, which wasn’t a choice at all for a loving mother.
The Pattersons’ disinterest in their son meant that Asuncion was lumbered with the brat most of the time. She constantly had to think of new ways to amuse herself with him. She was particularly pleased with her stones-in-shoes trick. Over the last year she’d invented a few little games to play with Peter. The most important thing was that his parents shouldn’t find out, which meant no marks or scars and making sure he was too scared of her to say anything, which is easy enough with a four-year-old. Sometimes she he would twist the hair on the back of his head so that it brought tears to his eyes, but she never twisted hard enough for any of it to come out. He’d learned to do his best not to cry out with the pain, because she told him that if he was heard by anyone his parents would be very disappointed at his lack of bravery and they would send him to live with another family and he’d never see them again. How she’d laughed at his big, sad, watering eyes as she told him that for the first time!
Asuncion went up the three flights of stairs to her room to sit and rest for a few minutes before beginning her chores. Her phone rang in her pocket. This was very unusual. The only people that called her were the Pattersons and it couldn’t be them because Madam was downstairs. Asuncion’s family in the Philippines had the number but never called because of the cost – they always emailed instead. She quickly took out the handset and looked at the number on the phone’s old, monochrome screen. It was her Aunt calling from home. Her blood ran cold as she pressed the green “answer” button and the last thing she remembered before she went into shock was the tinny, muffled sound of wailing and crying coming from the earpiece.
Asuncion didn’t complete any of her chores. She sat in her room on her small bed, rocking backwards and forwards, not crying, just rocking, staring at the floor, at her hands, at her feet. Her feet that resembled her childrens’ feet. They all shared the same slender big toe. Not anymore. Her children lay in a morgue thousands of miles away, their beautiful toes charred beyond recognition.
At almost midday Asuncion looked at her watch and saw that it was time to pick Peter up from school. She put on her shoes and went down to the hallway, where she took her coat from the coat rack next to the front door.
“Asuncion, is that you?” a voice called from the sitting room.
“Yes, Madam, I’m just going to collect Peter and take him to the park,” she called back, looking hatefully in the direction of the voice.
“Where have you been? I was calling you earlier because the kitchen floor is filthy and in desperate need of a mop. What have you been doing?” Mrs Patterson had come out of the sitting room and was standing in the doorway, looking at Asuncion with a questioning, condescending expression on her face. Asuncion wanted to rip her face off with her bare hands. Of course she didn’t show it, instead she raised her mouth and cheeks into a smile and replied.
“I’m sorry Madam, I had something personal to deal with, nothing for you to worry about, but I’ll make up the time later – all the jobs will get done,” she simpered. Naturally Mrs Patterson was oblivious to the fact that the smile didn’t reach Asuncion’s eyes, that her face was actually blank, save for the raised corners of her mouth.
“Okay, as long as it does. Remember that personal things are to be dealt with in your own time, not during the working day that I’m paying you for,” she continued, “but we’ll overlook it this once,” she added brightly with her own false smile.
“Yes, Madam, thank you. I’ll go and take Peter to the park now.”
“Don’t bring him back before 1, I’ve still got some calls to make and I can do without his nonsense.”
“Yes, Madam, of course.” Asuncion beamed at Mrs Patterson and hurriedly let herself out of the house, closing the front door quietly behind her to show Madam that she understood she wasn’t to be disturbed.
Before she knew it she was at the school and standing with all the other women waiting to collect their young charges. She didn’t bother to greet any of them this time, not so much as a smile. As the bell rang they all entered the classroom and the room was filled with laughter, a little crying and grizzling and the general bustle of kids, of life. Peter was standing quietly on his own, looking depressed. Asuncion regarded him coldly.
“Get your coat.” She snapped. He walked to the side of the room and took his little duffle coat from a hook that was less than halfway up the wall, child-height. The room was actually very cute if you stopped to look at the child-friendliness of it, like a room designed for munchkins.
She didn’t allow him time to say goodbye to his classmates, she took his hand and dragged him out of the room and across the school playground, out of the gates and toward the park. It was as they passed the Shell petrol station that she knew what she had to do.
The petrol station attendant thought it was odd that a Filipino maid should be buying a plastic can of petrol, but of course it wasn’t his place to ask questions. It’s not like it was against the law or anything, and she’d been so nice, so friendly and smiling. She’d probably just run out of petrol nearby or something. Why would he have questioned it or said anything? Happens all the time, doesn’t it? That’s what he said when the police interviewed him, and he continued to say it to himself years later.
It was the black smoke which alerted the mothers at the park to the fire. It was coming from a little copse of trees just outside the fenced area. One of the mothers saw a park warden and told him about it, because it wasn’t usual for them to be burning rubbish midweek, especially in the woods, and the blackness of the smoke made her think it was probably started with petrol.
The warden said it was the smell of the fire that made him realise something was very wrong with it. It was like barbecued pork, rich and sweet, he initially joked that it would have been quite tasty-smelling if it weren’t for the petrol fumes that mingled with it. The horrified looks on the police officers’ faces meant he didn’t ever repeat the joke.
“Tragic”, the coroner predictably called the case. It had taken a while to find out the details of Asuncion’s life and it was clear to him that the death of her own children and mother in a house fire had sent this otherwise mentally-balanced woman insane. There was of course nothing anyone could have done to prevent what happened.
The Pattersons paid for the repatriation of Asuncion’s body to the Philippines to be buried with her children. They understood her grief as part of their own tragedy, which they talked about at length with psychiatrists and at dinner parties for years to come.