A City of Strangers (5 page)

“Aye, I see. Of course, it's a moral question. I'm not a religious body, by and large, but I know the difference between right and wrong. And I know that what he's surrounded by is nasty and ugly. But look at the difference between him and his brothers and sisters. He's not taken harm this far, and it's my judgment he won't take harm in the years ahead—God willing.”

They were interrupted by a knock at the kitchen door. Lottie shouted “Come in,” and the face of a young black woman appeared, and then the rest of her.

“Sorry—you've got visitors.”

“Hello, Selena—I was hoping you wouldn't come,” said Lottie Makepeace.

“Thanks very much,” the woman said, coming over and taking no offense. She was young, pretty, and overflowing with life—not least because she was very pregnant. Her eyes danced with inquisitiveness and mischief, but there was also a steeliness that betokened determination: not a lady to cross, Carol guessed. “We're just off to the new house, and I thought I'd take those roots of primula you promised me.”

“Mike Phelan's teacher,” said Lottie, indicating Carol. Selena laughed.

“Oh—
that's
why you'd rather I hadn't come. I'm Selena Cray.” They shook hands and sat at either side of the kitchen table. “What have you been telling her, Lottie? That Jack Phelan is nothing worse than a likeable rogue?”

Lottie was busying herself with bundles of newspaper on the draining board, from which fragments of earth fell. Then she came over and poured three cups of tea.

“I'm telling her nothing but the truth. There's no need for a prosecuting council when I'm around.”

“I think I saw he was something worse than a likeable rogue, the one encounter I had with him,” said Carol.

“Well, you try being pregnant, the wife of a policeman, and black,” said Selena equably. “If you've had an encounter, you can imagine the sort of things he says, or shouts. The pregnancy jokes I can stand. You get ‘bun in the oven' jokes anywhere—though Phelan's are remarkably uninventive. The gibes about Malcolm being a policeman I can grit my teeth and bear. There's
others around here don't like the idea of ‘the fuzz' actually living on the Estate. But I definitely do draw the line—or I would with anyone else—at ‘nigger' and ‘wog' and that sort of thing. Sometimes they all get mixed up—you know: ‘What color's the bun in your oven?' or ‘Is he going to come out with a helmet on?'—really brilliant stuff.”

“How do you cope?”

“Good humor. It may seem like a cop-out, but I decided that with him it was the only way. ‘Lovely morning, Mr. Phelan,' ‘Got out of bed the wrong side today, did you, Mr. Phelan?'—that sort of thing. With a dazzling smile. It doesn't stop him, of course, but it leaves
me
less drained than anger would.” She paused. “It's the children that are more difficult.”

“Oh,” said Carol. “Them too.”

“What can you expect, with a father like that? When you get kids shouting horrible or just plain stupid insults at you, it all seems so . . . hopeless. And then there's that terrible boy Kevin. I shouldn't say ‘boy': He doesn't have the excuse of being a child any longer. We've had swastikas on our door, and NF and BUDI.”

“BUDI?”

“British Unilateral Declaration of Independence. It's another way of saying ‘Wogs out.' Subtle, aren't they?” She drained her cup and took up the bundle of plants that Lottie had left by her on the kitchen table. “It's not so bad for us,” she said. “The police are well paid, and I work for a bank. We've been here less than a year, and it was always only a question of time before we found what we wanted and got our own place. We'll be out in a month's time. But think what it's like to be faced with the Phelans as neighbors for the rest of your life. Lottie ought to have her rent halved—
and
a long-service medal.” She kissed her. “Thanks, love. I'll put them in tonight, and I'll think of you every time they flower.” At the door she paused and looked at Carol. “But Michael's all right,” she said as she left.

Carol looked at Mrs. Makepeace.

“There seems to be general agreement that Michael is all right,” she said. “Maybe I'm wasting my time. Maybe I should be concentrating on the other Phelans.”

“Then you
would
be wasting your time,” said Lottie forthrightly.

“How many are there?”

“Six. Kevin's the oldest—seventeen, I think. You've heard about him, I imagine, and most of it'll be true. He's a monstrosity, and the less I have to do with him the better. June's sixteen—and if she's not on the streets already she's getting well into training for it. Cilla's thirteen—a sly little thing, one as wants watching every hour of the day. Then there's Michael at twelve. They went a bit slower after that.”

“Caught up with modern technology?”

Lottie laughed.

“The word around here is that they only had them for the Child Benefit money, and only had the last two because it needed topping up. They might just as well call it beer money as far as the Phelans are concerned. Anyway, Jackie is six, Dale is two.”

“Surely they must be . . . saveable?”

Lottie patted her on the arm.

“Don't cast me as Joan of Arc, lovie. I'm only an old woman who happens to live next door.”

“But
six,
and
two!”

“I know, lovie. But I think you've got to have the will for something better. I look at them and I see them going the same way. I used to look at Michael at their ages, and somehow I always knew he'd be different.”

“How did Michael come to be so close to you?”

Lottie Makepeace thought.

“Really it was like he picked me out. I talked to him once or twice over the fence, and then he started coming round—of his own accord, like. My children were gone—one in Canada, one to find work down south. It was nice having him around. Sometimes I could have a word with Jack Phelan, or Mary—if he wanted new shoes, or a warm coat. Now and then I can talk them round—once in a while, that's all. If the little one latched on to me when he's a bit bigger—I can't see it happening, but if it did—then I'd do the same for him as I have for Michael. But that's as much as I can say. I think wi' Jackie it's too late.”

“Jack Phelan doesn't mistreat them?”

“Oh, no. Someone complained to the Social Security years ago that the kids were being mistreated—they thought they should be taken into care because they were neglected, and were trying to strengthen their case. But Jack saw off the chap they sent round, and there was never anything in it. Mary will slap them now and then, but a slapping never did a child any harm.”

“Nor any good either.”

“It's the
mother
it does good to,” said Lottie Makepeace, with grim realism. “You've no idea how frustrating having kids around you all day can be. No—if Jack slapped them now and then it might mean he had some standards, thought there was things they shouldn't do. The problem is, beyond his own convenience, he doesn't give a damn.”

Carol got up to go, feeling distinctly disheartened. Lottie Makepeace stood up too, and took her by the hands.

“Don't fret, lass. It's no tragedy if there's nothing you can do, because as far as Michael is concerned there's nothing much you need to do. Keep an eye on him, and keep him interested, and I'll do the same. For the rest,
things'll not change. The Phelans will go on as they've always gone on, God help us!”

But in that Lottie Makepeace, for all her common sense, was wrong. And the fact that she was wrong was suggested by a significant little incident that had happened earlier that evening.

The Railway King was a seventies public house of brick and clapboard, drab and mean in its furnishings, ill-lit and dubiously clean. Videos changed hands round the back for fifty or sixty pounds, and the police periodically visited in twos. It was not the pub nearest to Jack Phelan's house on the Belfield Grove Estate, but it was Jack Phelan's pub. The beer was 2p a pint cheaper than the beer in the Estate pub, and he liked the possibility of picking up a fast buck on any dodgy deal that was going. Besides, the landlord of the nearest pub was large and masterful and stood no nonsense, where the landlord of the Railway King was small and tolerant. He needed to be.

On the evening that Carol visited Lottie Makepeace, most of the Phelan family were in the Railway King. Kevin was no longer living at home (to the relief of the whole estate), but he came along with them before going about his business, whatever that was. He and June, being arguably of drinking age if the police dropped in, drank with their parents in the bar, while the rest—minus Cilla, who was visiting a friend—stayed in the scrubby little play area out back, periodically running in to demand crisps or a packet of nuts. The landlord turned a blind eye, as he so often had to do where the Phelans were concerned.

And something happened that night that really made his day. The Phelans had come in and got themselves settled with a maximum of fuss and noise and threats of “Git out the back or I'll scalp the lot of yer” to the young ones. Then Jack came up to the bar, ran through a list of drinks for all the family, and then added grandiosely, waving around the public bar: “And drinks all round. What's everybody having?”

That action was so unlikely, so inconceivable, that for a matter of seconds the landlord stood there gaping.

“I said drinks all round,” said Jack Phelan, still genial. “I've just had a win on the pools.”

It was true that it was yet early evening, and there were few in the bar, but the landlord couldn't get over the gesture.

“You should have been in earlier,” he whispered to customers all the rest
of the evening. “Jack Phelan bought drinks all round. Says as how he's had a win on the pools.”

“Must have been half a million at least, if Jack Phelan bought a round,” said one of the regulars, who had the measure, or thought he had, of the Phelan family.

T
ime seldom hung heavy on Rosamund Eastlake's hands. She lived in a series of interconnected dream worlds—some having a relation to real life, some wholly imaginary. Through all of them she herself drifted, gauzy and lovely, playing some part on the sidelines. When Adrian knocked on the door on the morning that was to change her life she was sitting, faded but ethereal as usual, and going through the morning papers, scissors at her side.

“Off now, darling,” said Adrian, bending to kiss her. “Anything interesting this morning?”

“The Duchess of York in Australia,” said his mother, rather wistfully. “Such . . . unusual clothes.”

She never approached closer to criticism than that, but it was notable that most of the pictures of the Duchess in her scrapbooks were head and shoulder jobs. She flicked the page over quickly. On the next page of the
Express
was a picture of the Prime Minister in Poland. Rosamund Eastlake put her head to one side, and Adrian waited for the inevitable.

“She is wonderfully energetic, of course. . . . Such a pity she's such a common woman. . . . She can be lady
like
at times, but that's not at all the same thing, is it?”

Adrian bent to kiss her again. He no longer had to bite back any mention of the fact that his maternal grandfather had been an ironmonger. That was not an aspect of herself that found a place in any of his mother's dream worlds. Rosamund was a lifelong member of the local Conservative Association, but she longed back to the days of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when Conservative politicians gave the impression that they occupied themselves with matters of state during intervals snatched from shooting grouse or landing salmon.

“You've got enough to read?”

“Oh,
plenty.
You know, I'm thinking of starting the
Whiteoaks Chronicles
again. Don't worry about me, my dear. Get something nice for tea.”

When he had gone and she had heard the bolts click on the back door, and the front door firmly shut, Rosamund Eastlake returned to her trawl through the day's newspapers. The haul was meager, but she was not too dissatisfied. The fortieth birthday of the Prince of Wales was approaching, and much could be expected then. She pasted one picture and a little report into the current volume of her scrapbook, and then sat back in her chair, closed her eyes, and sank slowly into a delicious but vague reverie which she would have been hard put to describe, if asked.

When she came back to the real world her mouth was dry and she thought she would fancy a cup of coffee. She had the wherewithal to make one in her room, indeed she had anything she might conceivably need in the course of the day there, but today she thought she would go down to the kitchen. She stood up, feeling slightly stiff, knotted the belt of her housecoat around her, and went out onto the landing.