Separate Tracks Read online

  Forcing herself to be patient she sat down again. Emma’s watching face irritated her. The sound of Emma chewing was maddening. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Is that all there is to say?”

  “I’ve told you Mum, it was boring. We just walked round these places all day.” Injured irritation was audible in Emma’s voice. It rose in pitch. “I’m sorry I didn’t take a tape recording for you. All right, in the museum: ‘Notice the detail on that nineteenth-century Ashanti mask, wonderful craftsmanship don’t you think? Pay particular attention to the medieval curlicues—’ ” Her face was red, she put on an imitation of her father’s very correct accent, and her voice got louder.

  Eileen suddenly leaned across the table and swiped at her, hitting the side of her head.

  “What’s that for?” Holding her cheek.

  “He’s your father. You don’t care a damn for anyone, do you? He’s taken you out, tried to talk to you and interest you and all you can do—” She stopped. She didn’t mean that. She could hear her own voice, she wanted to hit Emma, she wanted him not to have wasted his time with the silly little bitch, and she wanted her husband and daughter to have had a good time and loved each other like a father and child should, and she was glad they hadn’t. Why should he be happy and understood, why should he expect to swan into their daughter’s life and be loved? But his face . . . his eyes in Emma’s now. She could hear his voice in the poor parody, know keenly that hesitant, pompous politeness that is one of his defences. See his arm half-outstretched around the shoulder to shepherd you to the next picture, looking at your face to see if you like it, his voice moving from politeness into nearness.

  Staring at the table top, she can hear Emma snivelling. She looks up and what can you say to the girl its not her fault. “I’m sorry.” She knows Emma senses a weakness and will play it.

  “Well, I don’t see what it’s for. You can’t just go round slapping people for no reason. Unless you’re mad.”

  Exaggerated patience, Eileen leans forward arms folded on the table top. “I hit you because I was angry. I’m sorry because I wasn’t really angry with you. I was angry at your father.”

  Emma rose, triumphant. “Well, bloody well go and hit him. I’m sick of getting it from both of you.” She flung out of the door and, fish on the line, Eileen was tugged to her feet.

  “What do you mean from both of us? What did he do?”

  Emma locked herself in the bathroom and shouted through the door, “Go and ask him yourself. It’s not my mess, it’s yours. I’m not your messenger—I’ve got my own life to live.” She turned the tap on, wincing at her own melodrama.

  Eileen, leaning against the kitchen doorpost, detected the falseness in her daughter’s tone but was philosophical now. Why shouldn’t she act? And the part they gave her certainly wasn’t fair, since they got all the histrionics and the poor child had to play continuity between them. She went slowly to lock the front and back doors and put the food away in the fridge. The silence, and odd noises in it, were loud in her ears. The fridge hummed for a minute when she closed the door. Water from the bathroom ran down the drain outside. A car passed, Emma’s footsteps went quickly from the bathroom to her bedroom, the door shut. Silence.

  Eileen watched her own reflection in the black window above the sink. She was a woman in a kitchen. She looked perfectly complete and normal. Each object in the kitchen stood out in the stillness with an identity of its own, teapot, herb jars, yellow Sunlight washing-up liquid. And there was she, hugging herself, staring out of the middle of it. In her house, in her life. It was all right. She walked to the door on tiptoe to not disturb it, turned off the light silently and went to bed comforted, like an open-mouthed child given the dummy.

  Chapter 8

  When he started secondary school, Anthony became an instant target for second and third years. He was unpopular with other first years, and so could often be found alone and vulnerable to attack. The teachers were quick to recognize him as a tale-teller; his persecutors were rarely punished. Besides, he was ugly and stupid, and thoroughly deserved it.

  Five weeks after the beginning of term, he was picked up by police at 11 o’clock on a Wednesday morning. He was standing outside a television rental shop, staring at the test card on the screen in the window. They took him back to school, where he was caned. The headmaster asked him the reason for his truancy and as a result a special assembly was held the next morning, at which they were all warned of heavy punishments in store for bullies. After a few days things reverted to normal and, having discovered that no one minded as long as you didn’t get caught, Anthony continued to play truant two or three days a fortnight. When the reason for his absence filtered down to his form teacher, though, his teacher made time for a little talk with Anthony. He was sorry for the lad—what a start in life! But he didn’t think this tale-telling and punishing of bullies was the answer at all.

  “You’ve got to learn to stick up for yourself, lad. That way, they won’t always be after you, you see? If you can defend yourself, well, you’re laughing aren’t you? Why don’t you go along to Mr Clay’s junior boxing club on Thursday after school and pick up a few tips, eh?”

  Having been reminded again on Thursday, Anthony went to the boxing club, which had only three first year recruits, and where he was consequently welcomed. And throughout the course of his school career he attended boxing club sporadically and became a competent boxer, by the school’s standards. His teachers seized on the fact with relief when he got to the fifth year and it was time for reports and careers references: boxing was the only hobby or interest they could find.

  Chapter 9

  Emma met Anthony when she took a temporary job at the family group home where he was raised. The address was a number on Prospect Crescent. She got lost trying to find it. The bus dropped her on what seemed to be a country lane, bordered to the left by fields. She turned off right, into Hope Street. Hope Street formed a T-junction with Independence Avenue. The far end of Independence Avenue was a cul de sac, but Sunrise Avenue and Bright Street formed junctions with it. Promise Crescent and Dawn Crescent led off Sunrise Avenue but they were both cul-de-sacs. Sunrise Avenue met Bright Street again at the end.

  Emma was in new country. The peculiar layout of the streets, the absence of traffic and the remarkable similarity of all the houses contributed to the sense of foreignness. She had never walked anywhere before where the streets were not arranged in blocks. She had never walked through a council estate. She went up Bright Street and came out at Independence Avenue again. She wasn’t sure if she’d been there before. The houses were grey pebble dash, their doors were green. Half-net curtains bandaged the windows. In front of each semi-detached pair of houses lay a rectangle of yellowish grass circumscribed by a narrow concrete footpath. There was no one in sight.

  53 Prospect Crescent was just like the others. When the door opened, there was a smiling, pink-clad woman and a doll on a chair. “Hello, love.”

  “Mrs Garter?”

  “That’s me, love—you have made good time—I didn’t think you’d be here before tea—I’m ever so pleased to see you I’ve been on my own for three and a half weeks now since the last one left—three and a half weeks—they don’t give a damn up at county hall they just leave you to rot—come on—” She seemed to speak without breathing. Emma looked up the stairs and saw two small black faces watching her through the banisters. She smiled awkwardly, but the children maintained fixed stares.

  “The cleaner comes in, of course, but it’s not the same, it’s the responsibility that gets you—cleaning’s the easy part of it d’you like housework? You do look young my dear, how old are you? You can’t be much older than some of the children—don’t you worry about them they’re all right when you get to know them you won’t have any trouble you’ll be one of the family in a day or two—” She led the way to the kitchen.

  Mrs Garter was fat and smelled of disinfectant. The outlines of her dark-colo
ured lacy slip were visible through her pink nylon housecoat. In the kitchen she started telling the histories of the children in a loud, confidential tone. Emma was embarrassed by her intimacy; she sat on the edge of a kitchen chair with her eyes averted from the woman’s fleshy friendly face. She stared at the walls, at the eight hooks with matching mugs, the eight pairs of wellies lined up by the door, the eight named coat-hooks. She strained her ears for any sound of children, but there was nothing. The woman’s voice demanded attention, laced with the headline language of violence and scandal. “Ever such a nice woman” had kept the little girl called Delia locked in a bedroom in her own filth for six months, only shoving a bowl of food through the door from time to time. She’d taken against Delia, apparently, though she had four others whom she looked after beautifully. “Mind you, they’ve all got different fathers!” said Mrs Garter. “They’re all the colours of the rainbow!”

  Mrs Garter took her round the house, and Emma received a fleeting impression of small clean rooms with bunk beds and labelled drawers. Mrs Garter’s own room was in a different style, florid and fussy. Every item of furniture seemed to be wearing a frilly pink skirt.

  Delia was jet black. Emma recognized one of the faces that had stared through the banisters. Delia only seemed to know how to stare. Mrs Garter talked on in the child’s hearing. Delia had come on well, she wasn’t half so wild. She couldn’t even feed herself when she came. Wicked, wasn’t it? Delia’s white eyes followed the movements of Mrs Garter’s thick wrist hoisting the teapot. The other children stared at their plates. They weren’t allowed to talk at meals.

  The table was set with a dish of red jam at each end and a fluorescent orange lump of cheese. In the middle was a plate with twenty slices of bread and butter, two piles of ten. When Mrs Garter poured the tea the girl nearest her put milk in each mug, and the next girl administered one spoonful of sugar to each one and stirred. There was a plate with nine yellow squares of sponge cake, and in front of a little blond boy’s plate sat a chocolate iced cupcake wrapped in silver foil. It turned out that he was Jeremy, Mrs Garter’s own son. “I’m sorry for them,” said Mrs Garter, “but bringing my own boy up just as miserable isn’t going to help anyone.” Besides cupcakes, Jeremy was allowed into the kitchen, and on to Mrs Garter’s pink lap.

  Opposite Emma sat a boy of about fifteen. He had a pale bony face, with a semi-circle of red spots under his mouth. His short sandy hair stood on end. He chewed with his mouth open, like a sheep. He didn’t look at her. Mrs Garter started to talk about him when she’d finished with Delia. Anthony Childs. He was a lazy one. He didn’t lift a finger at school and he’d live to regret that, she knew. He seemed to think that food and a roof over his head were his right, he’d have a rude awakening when he was sixteen, what did he think would happen then? He couldn’t stay here forever. The boy chewed stolidly on, ignoring her. Emma pushed her chair back from the table in an attempt to disassociate herself from Mrs Garter, who appealed to her, “They’ve got no idea some of them, you know, he’s in cloud-cuckoo-land, isn’t he? He hasn’t even thought about a job, he has it too easy here, that’s the trouble.”

  Emma stared at the table cloth. It was generally possible to silence people by refusing to make eye contact with them. But not Mrs Garter. The meal was endless, the woman’s easy voice running on over the unnaturally loud sounds of children chewing and swallowing and slurping their tea. Self-consciously Emma cradled her cup in her hands, wondering if there would be an inquisition over the last uneaten slab of cake (which must have been intended for her). Impossible to imagine a week of such meals, let alone six months. Impossible that she could willingly be here.

  But she had chosen it. She had a university place a year away, and two impulses determined that she spent the interim here rather than travelling to India or making as much money as possible. The first was pure indignation at the state of the world. Some people were starving to death while others had too much; people were being terrorized and killed in wars which were not only expensive but also totally pointless. Politicians spent billions of pounds on horrible weapons, while people were hungry, illiterate and ill. At thirteen, Emma’s intention had been to learn as many foreign languages as possible, then set off on a round-the-world mission to explain to all heads of government, in simple terms that they would be able to understand, why it would be better for everyone if they stopped building weapons and fighting, and started to be nice to each other. Now she was eighteen, it seemed she had been a little arrogant, and she was aware that her impulse to set the world to rights was old-fashioned and in slightly bad taste. But enough of it stayed with her to prompt her into “something worthwhile—helping people in some way—” for her year off.

  The second impulse was a newer one; guilt. Recently she had discovered that she was privileged and middle-class. This humiliated her and made her angry with her parents. It put her on the wrong side, and she hadn’t asked for it. At least she came from a broken home, that was something. She wanted to meet working-class people—people whose lives were real, not cushioned by banknotes and hypocritical etiquette. Mrs G. was a disappointment, though. Would a real working-class person have a pink frilly skirt on her dressing table? Emma thought not.

  She endured the evening; when all the children had finished eating one asked to be excused and Mrs Garter gave permission. They all vanished except two girls who started to stack the plates. Emma sat awkwardly still, not helping for fear of upsetting some unknown balance of chores. Mrs G. asked her kindly about herself, and Emma gave her stiltedly bare details. Once she caught the eye of the older girl as she was picking up the heavy teapot, and smiled, but the girl showed no recognition. The children spent the evening clustered in hostile silence around the TV. Emma’s cardboard face could no longer even smile. Mrs G. dismissed her before bath time, directing her to her room in the house opposite. Another assistant houseparent and a teacher lived there. Emma’s room would be the downstairs back. Mrs G. found her the key and gave her a pair of clean flannelette sheets. I haven’t spoken to one of them, Emma thought, but she was weak with relief at leaving the house.

  Her room was full of dark utility furniture, a square dressing table and chest of drawers. Mechanically she unpacked her clothes. There were not enough coat-hangers. The kitchen was empty and unused. Well, she would not be eating here, would she. She remembered the tea table suddenly and vividly, then closed her mind firmly. It would be all right. Before she went to bed she phoned her mother from the coin box at the corner to tell her she had arrived safely.

  Chapter 10

  The next day Mrs G. gave her a pink nylon housecoat too, and told her about the children. Emma quickly confused the problems belonging to each child—bedwetting, temper tantrums, thumbsucking, allergies, hay fever, nightmares, sleepwalking, truanting from school, smoking, dandruff, eczema, athlete’s foot—the lists were endless. She listened unwillingly. It was obvious to her that many of these problems were due to the upsets the children had suffered and that pills and potions and clean towels every day couldn’t help at all. It was a pity, she decided, that someone with Mrs G.’s responsibilities should have had no psychiatric training. She flounced upstairs to do the bedrooms, while Mrs G. went shopping. With energetic efficiency she dragged the heavy bunkbeds from the walls and swept the lino. Then leaning on the broom and catching her breath, she examined her surroundings.

  The room was bleak. The floor was covered in mustard-coloured lino with a scratchy pattern of thin brown lines. The woodwork was matching chocolate brown, and the walls papered with a yellow floral pattern. A muffled light entered the window through heavy net curtains. There were two double bunkbeds, reminding her of youth hostels, with their air of having supported innumerable lumpen tired bodies. They were made as neatly as hospital beds. On each, there were two grey blankets and a dark blue bedspread. How had children made beds like that? She wondered who slept in which. There were no signs of individuality. Beside each bed was a locker, with labels stuck on
each drawer. Marcus underwear. Leroy shirts. She opened them and looked at the grey socks and white underpants. Each drawer contained what it said, clean clothes neatly folded. The tops of the lockers were bare. She looked in the small wardrobe. There were coats and a school blazer and two pairs of gym shoes. On one side of the window stood a straight-backed kitchen chair. There was nothing else in the room. The walls were bare, no personal possessions anywhere. She felt under the pillows—not a book or an old teddy or even a packet of cigarettes.

  It was worse than a prison. Who expected children to live like this? She burned with indignation. They could put posters on the walls, couldn’t they? The children’s own drawings, if nothing else. They could surely afford a few books? Didn’t they own anything? Things that children collect don’t cost money. She thought of her own bedroom, still littered with treasures gathered on walks and holidays—shells, pebbles, fir cones and bits of driftwood. OK, they hadn’t got snowflake paperweights or a collection of foreign coins, but they could have something, surely? Emma dusted the clean bare surfaces, heaved the beds back into position and stood to survey her work. It was a room unsoftened by any human touch whatsoever. The girls’ room was the same, except the bedspreads were deep pink. Emma wrinkled her face in contempt.

  When the children came home from school, she felt more confident than the previous evening. Things would change. They wouldn’t live like battery hens while she was around. Susan, a pale skinny girl aged seven, and Delia came back first. They were sent upstairs to change their clothes.

  “Can I take them out?” Emma asked Mrs G.

  “Yes, if you want—tea’s at 5.30. They can show you the neighbourhood, can’t they?”

  Nervously Emma waylaid the girls as they came downstairs. “Would you like to go for a walk?” Delia stared at her as if she were a post, and Susan burst into giggles. “Shall we go out? You can show me where your school is, and the shops.” Emma was very conscious of Mrs G. in the background, overhearing.