| MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL
By Moira Cooke
Sometimes I feel little more than an object of pity to my next door neighbours.
‘Poor Sandra, she lost the use of both legs in a car accident,’
I can hear one saying,
before the other one adds: ‘Then would you know, an early stroke
cost her the powers of speech.’
To them Sandra is become a person of little account.
They are generous though, Ted and Barbara. They have a key to my house
and drop round often enough. They let themselves in, plump up a few cushions,
make me a cup of tea then enquire solicitously: ‘How are we today,
Sandra?’
‘We are fine,’ I’m tempted to respond queen-like. As
if my misfortunes have inexplicably created two of me. And in a way they
have. First there’s me, then there’s my mirror, my window
on the world. Though it’s funny to think installing the mirror was
Ted’s idea in the first place.
‘It’ll give you a whole new dimension on life,’ he claimed
as he fixed up a huge plate glass sheet along one empty wall in my downstairs
bedroom.
It won’t give me back the use of my legs or the powers of speech,
I reflect, even if it does allow me to watch the world and its antics
beyond the boundary of their garden.
Yet this is precisely where Ted and Barbara grew careless. They were careless
of exactly what I could see and as a result careless of what I might come
to know. I know what time they get up, what time they go to bed, what
time they eat, use the bathroom. The list is endless. Through the world
in my mirror I’ve come to know things about Ted and Barbara they
don’t even know about themselves . . .
Doreen, my helper, comes in daily. She gets me up, dresses me and seats
me at an angle to my mirror. Then my day begins. Living my life through
a plate glass mirror tilted at an angle to reflect the outside world.
‘Tennyson, wasn’t it, wrote a poem about someone like you,’
muses Doreen. ‘The Lady of Shalott, as I recall. She was locked
in a tower and forced to live her life through a mirror angled to reflect
the world below. ‘Winding down to Camelot . . .’ she quotes.
Or Summertown, as it is in my case. For a cleaning lady I’m impressed.
Maybe the same poem is where Ted got his idea from, though secretly I
doubt he’s the sort that reads poetry.
Summertown lies a mere stone’s throw away. Yet if it wasn’t
for my mirror, it might as well be a million miles away. But if I were
to throw a stone its trajectory would travel in a straight line across
Ted and Barbara’s garden.
And this is precisely where they became careless. They realise I’ve
become addicted to what goes on in Summertown, but what they forgot is
that I’m equally addicted to the goings-on in their world. Until
my mirror revealed all, I really had no idea at all what my neighbours
got up to.
Take Barbara for example, she adores sunbathing in the altogether in their
back garden. Two little sun-baked melons and a pinball of fluff pointing
heavenwards as soon as the sun makes its appearance. In the privacy (sic!)
of her back garden, there is of course no problem with that.
Ted frequently takes photos of her, darting about like a crazed honey
bee between the verbena and the lavatera bushes and vying for the best
angle. And that also is his right. He’s even turned their back shed
into some sort of photographic workshop. I nearly said dark room but I
guess that shows how disconnected from the world I’ve become. These
things are all digital nowadays anyways.
‘Bit of a hobby,’ he confessed to me on one of his visits
handing across photos from their latest holiday. Not of course photos
of Barbara naked as the day she was born. ‘Just look at that for
clarity,’ he boasted.
I wanted tell him the mirror also could be very precise. Its images are
never blurred. Like Ted’s digitally enhanced images, I suppose.
‘I wonder what he does with all those photos of Barbara?’
I mused after he’d gone.
The mirror of course, my constant companion, declined to respond. It simply
conjured up the next image for my perusal. I may have lost the use of
my legs and my speech but there’s nothing wrong with my brain. And
that’s where Ted and Barbara got it all so wrong.
It’s as if the mirror senses what I’m waiting for. Doreen
gives it an extra spit and a shine and in response it dutifully coughs
up the next image. Ted has added a small extension to his printing workshop
turning it into a kind of office.
A man carrying a black briefcase has started calling once or twice a week.
He appears very businesslike, but what does he come there for? To collect
Ted’s digitally enhanced photos of Barbara?
Of late the man with the briefcase has started coming around when Ted’s
not there. Only he doesn’t bring his briefcase with him on these
occasions. He stays for longer too. That makes me somewhat uneasy, but
I’m no squealer.
Some weeks later Ted calls round alone. ‘I expect you’re wondering
where Barbara is?’ he asks nonchalantly. As usual he’s not
anticipating any response on my part. He’ll answer himself anyway
in due course.
I’m careful not to glance in the direction of my mirror in case
it gives Ted ideas. One glance and Ted also might realise I witnessed
the terrible row which raged last night for over an hour between him and
Barbara. Backwards and forwards it went, him pointing his finger and accusing
her. Of what? Betrayal? Unfaithfulness?
Then Barbara in turn shrieking and pointing her finger at him. Had she
no idea he was trading co-operation in his new found hobby for her reputation?
Had she no inkling of what her husband was up to? Even the mirror and
I had worked that one out.
‘Barbara has gone on holiday to her mother’s,’ Ted reveals.
‘It could be for an extended visit.’
A longer vacation than either of you intended, I’m thinking.
Ted pauses, eyes glued to the mirror. Slowly he rotates his head through
ninety degrees as if following the trajectory of an imaginary stone over
the fence, across their pristine lawn where Barbara sunbathes in the all-together,
then straight in through the open dining room window where last night’s
vicious row took place.
‘Still enjoying the view from your window, Sandra?’ Ted asks.
‘It must make such a difference. Why you can see . . . almost everything.’
Almost everything, I want to echo.
Without warning Ted snatches up a metal hairbrush from the dressing table
and hurls it against the mirror shattering it into a thousand pieces.
My life is over more surely than when Ted turns abruptly, snatches up
a kitchen knife from my lunch tray and plunges it into my side.
‘Bitch, you saw everything,’ he spits out like a cobra spitting
venom. ‘Well, dead people tell no lies.’
Snatching my mobile phone from where it lies at my side, he sneaks away
like a thief in the night secure in the belief that no one will find the
body until morning. My breath comes in heaving gasps. I mustn’t
yield to a pain greater even than that of losing the use of both legs
and speech.
Around me lie shards of glass of varying sizes. One large one has landed
in my lap. I pick it up and gaze at the remnants of me. I’m dying.
Ted knew that, yet didn’t wait round for the final curtain call.
I feel inside the woven purse that hangs constantly around my neck.
I’m not finished yet. Broken maybe, but not finished. Nor is my
mirror. The mirror must reveal one final truth. Careless, that’s
what Ted and Barbara were, giving me a window not just to the outside
world but also to their private sick world. I watched Ted throttle Barbara
last night with his bare hands. That’s how I know for certain, she’s
paying a long visit to her mother.
I’m going away too but not for a visit. There’s no coming
back from where I’m going. Yet the mirror has one final role to
play. I extract a lipstick from my purse.
‘Fancy wearing lippie in her condition,’ I once overheard
Barbara’s snide remark to Ted. As if my hearing had vanished along
with my legs and speech.
Using the lipstick I write in shaky letters on the shard of glass: TED
DID IT. HE KILLED BARBARA AND HE KILLED ME.
I struggle to prop up the glass where Doreen will find it when she comes
to bed me down for the night. Our new arrangement, evenings as well as
mornings, something else Ted forgot. He didn’t even wait to finish
me off properly but left me with just enough of myself to use the mirror
one last time, the mirror he so kindly installed for me.
He imagines he’ll be long gone by morning. Yet if the mirror plays
its role, the police will have him before he can say ‘Mirror, mirror
on the wall . . .’ And it certainly won’t be him who proves
the fairest of them all. |
