And much more along the same lines.
Then Lisette ran away again. A few days later, she returned, collected the baby, and left for good. Richard MacLean, able to understand and express on stage and screen any feeling you care to name, was a Grade A moron in the emotion department when it came to his wife. Neither of them knew anything about post-natal depression or why living with a handsome, brilliant, temperamental, faithless actor would cause a woman to go off the deep end after the birth of her second child.
“I really am at a total loss,” confessed a heavy-eyed Richard to Kirsten, who looked as though she had recently finished her A levels, but in fact had reached the advanced age of twenty-four. He’d just had another traumatic evening trying to get Eliza to go to sleep, or even to stay in bed. He wasn’t a cruel father, but he was tired, so he tried yelling at her. She immediately curled herself into a tight ball on the floor in the corner of the drawing room and closed her eyes, apparently asleep. “She won’t go to bed, she won’t stay with a baby-sitter or go with my sister. She never used to be like that.”
Richard ran his hands through his hair. “When she finally goes to sleep in a chair and I take her upstairs, I’ll wake up in the morning with her in my bed.” A couple of nights ago, Richard had put Eliza to bed and locked his bedroom door, which took a lot of resolve because he was a bit of a softy. In the morning he found her stretched across the doorway, sound asleep, and he felt like an absolute monster, of course.
Richard loved his little daughter, but the poor sod had absolutely no idea what was going on. Put simply, Eliza, at three, had lost her mother and her baby sister, and was acting out, something fierce. Anybody, well, almost anybody, could see she was refusing to go to bed in case her only remaining caretaker disappeared in the night like the rest of the family.
“Get her a pet,” Kirsten advised him, with the simplistic wisdom of the young. “Cats are good,” she continued. “They’re self-cleaning and they bury their droppings.” Richard, in a state of advanced sleep-deprivation, had no fight left in him, and so decided to shop for a moggie on the following day. He obtained, from the veterinarian’s clinic, an ordinary female tabby cat, about seven or eight months old, nothing unusual except for her large, round, brilliant green eyes. They called her Mehitabel and she slept with Eliza, followed her around, and allowed her all manner of familiarity which she wouldn’t tolerate from anyone else. Calling her for dinner was a tongue-twister, so sometimes they just yelled “Belly-Belly-Belly!” And gradually Eliza adjusted.
Victoria (when a serious talking-to was imminent) Eliza (the default condition) Annie (when she was good) visited her mother and sister at preordained intervals and was told to be on her best behaviour. At such times Kathy pulled Eliza’s hair and scribbled on her books. Such behaviour during reciprocal visits met with instant and painful consequences, as nature intends. Eventually, though, the visits became less regulated and hence more tolerable.
* * *
Although this story isn’t about the supernatural, both father and daughter had the look of the Sidhe, with that unearthly beauty which can both fascinate and repel, causing the suggestible to believe that faerie kind and humans can and do mate, producing offspring that are unholy and probably dangerous. Eliza was independent, argumentative, slim, and dark-haired, like her father. Unfair though it was, and as much as he tried to hide it, Richard preferred her to her softer, more compliant sister. Eliza knew her father loved her but there was no doubt that his preoccupation lay with other matters at times, principally his work, and his love life.
Richard wasn’t averse to monogamy, unless he was married, so he only had one woman at a time, changing partners once or twice a year. Apparently the Post-it note stuck to each of their foreheads showed the use-by date clearly enough. Due to the turnover, there was no point in Eliza’s regarding them as potential mother figures. In any case, they were mostly in his bedroom or in the kitchen fixing a snack and wearing either her father’s shirt or the Emperor’s New Clothes. Apparently having a man walking around naked in front of his own little daughter could be grounds for summoning a social worker, but having his girlfriends flashing the gifts God gave them was no problem. Eliza was quite blasé about the naked human female form after all this.1
1 She was curious to see her father naked, just for completion, however he obstinately remained fully clothed at all times in her company, so she was forced to ask some of her little classmates to show her their willies. This got her into trouble of course.
In the fullness of time, Kirsten went the way of the others. She did not take it well and, eventually, with great reluctance, Richard took Eliza out of the nice, friendly, new-age nursery school where some of his friends in the profession took their children. Her new nursery school had a fee structure which assured the desired exclusivity, and consistent progression all the way through her school years. Eliza, however, was distressed at the premature change, and Richard realised, to some extent anyway, what Lisette had meant about shitting in Eliza’s nest. He made a mental note never again to seduce a woman, no matter how comely, involved in his daughter’s education.
Eliza grew up with the firm belief that, mostly, if you wanted anything done you had to do it yourself. This included buying clothes and school books, and putting dressings on wounds. On one occasion, she phoned a taxi to take her to hospital to have her broken arm set, returning home, while the hospital staff had their backs turned, in time to feed the cat. Mehitabel was a constant in these times of continually shifting role models and thankfully she came from a line of long-lived felines with good road sense.
* * *
It was sometime in February, 1989, and Eliza was about to turn five. She had a mulish look on her face, one that Richard recognised only too well.
“No, I won’t,” she said emphatically.
“Why not?” asked Richard. “You’re always acting. I’ve seen you as a pirate, a princess, a vampire. I think you’d be good at it. Why don’t we get you some lessons, and you can learn to do it properly as part of your schoolwork.”
“I don’t want to,” she said, uncertainly, not wanting to disappoint her father. She didn’t know why she felt so strongly about it. Maybe she had already overdosed on theatre, having spent days and evenings sitting with the other theatre orphans, wrapped in blankets against the cold, while their parents rehearsed. Whatever her motivation, she remained adamant that she would not be following in his footsteps and treading any kind of boards. If she had been a little older, even by a couple of years, she may have told him what she already felt, but didn’t yet have the words for: I want to be normal. I want to be myself.
So he yielded with bad grace, and therefore, because some kind of performance skills were mandatory for a MacLean, he insisted that she learn no fewer than two musical instruments and undergo vocal training. Regular practice, if Eliza was recalcitrant, was enforced on pain of being shouted at, vis-à-vis, in a terrifyingly loud and resonant voice designed to reach the back stalls. Richard excused this example of harsh parenting on the grounds that projecting his voice was instinctive because of his calling2 and averred he had no intention of terrifying small children.
2 “Acting is the art of speaking in a loud clear voice and the avoidance of bumping into the furniture.” – Alfred Lunt.
She had long since got over her tendency, when shouted at, to curl up in a ball in the nearest corner. At four or five she started standing her ground and shouting back at him. From seven on she just folded her hands and waited for him to finish. One could almost believe she had decided not to reinforce bad behaviour with attention. Much later, she ignored him or shouted back as the occasion demanded, and neither of them thought very much of the altercations.
Eliza had already demanded to learn the violin at the age of four. She chose the tin whistle as her second instrument, which was, as he