Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield

mothers grey with exhaustion.
    Margaret Mellors had never advertised the fact that she would willingly look after any of the children with all the skill of the apple-cheeked grandmothers who featured in their books but not otherwise in their lives, but such news did not need to be shouted. In the last four years which had marked both a vacuum in her life as well as changing fortunes for the street, news of her willingness had spread into a kind of fame and her house had become inundated with children. Only now she was stroking that irresistible blond head with a tentative touch, because she had sensed a slight shift in attitude towards her from the mothers of children like this. There had been a perceptible if slow alteration in their willingness to leave children at her house. At first, Margaret thought it was all about the onset of winter and the deep suspicion held by all these young people for the old-fashioned decrepitude of her spotless abode, but she had come to recognise it as something more. The disparity of the lives somehow made the grapevine of unwelcome gossip appallingly slow, as well as inaccurate, but still Mrs Mellors was being sent to Coventry by those who needed her most.
    â€˜Hallo, Margaret! How are you? Say hallo, Sylvia, will you please. Nicely.’ The warmth of the mother’s greeting made Margaret relax and the acceptance of the child gave her a feeling of authority. Whatever it was that had blighted the reputation of her own home, it was not herself. No-one despised her bird-like body and her clean, talcum-powder smell. She hoped not, but in a way she would have preferred it if the opposite was true; if only they did not all dislike poor darling Logo as much, and if only they could realise that the lies which framed him were utterly and completely unfair. Talk about screamers and shouters, he was certainly one of them, but essentially a good boy, despite the Bible and the singing, if only they would see it. The problem around here was they were all so busy.
    â€˜Hallo to you too! Where are you going then? Shopping? God save us, you won’t have much chance, will you?’ Margaret’s hand was still in the child’s hair, touching the delicious warmth of the neck lightly. She knew when not to irritate and the child did not resist, squirming happily before she came to rest straddled over the old woman’s leg, resting against her stomach and her stick, biding her time for attention.
    â€˜You haven’t been round to see me lately, have you?’ said Margaret, brightly. ‘Are you going to nursery school now?’
    â€˜Yeth,’ said the child.
    The mother shifted her weight from one foot to another unhappily.
    â€˜Well the truth is, Margaret, she’s supposed to go, but half the time they can’t have her, so it only works out to two mornings a week, and the rest of the time she drives me round the bend. I take that much time off work and I’m only part time as it is—’
    â€˜Why don’t you send her to me then?’ Margaret asked mildly, looking away from the woman and peering down the street as if she had just seen something worth close examination. The child began to hum loudly, then set off round them both in close circles, making the dangerous noise of a wasp.
    â€˜Oh, do shush, sweetheart,’ said Margaret. The child shushed and came back to rummage in Margaret’s half-full shopping bag with noisy rudeness. Margaret did not protest, while the mother looked at her big, calm face, at odds with the little body, with something like hunger.
    â€˜Look, Margaret, I’d send her into you like a shot, but you must know I can’t, not with that man next door to you. You know what I mean. Is he really your son? People says he’s your son, you’re both so … petite, but he doesn’t look like you. Well anyway, if it’s true, and someone told me it wasn’t, I don’t mean to be rude but I can’t send