Lying Together (9 page)

I could see it might be better without having to wake up all through the night. Wayne didn't like me getting up. He'd say, ‘Let the little bugger wait. See to me first.' I had to fill my mouth with his cock while Nigel screamed next door. Then I had to sit in the cold and feed him. Then I had to take something to make me sleep. Sometimes I wouldn't wake up till the afternoon, Nigel screaming again. And me still tired.

‘You'll get over it,' said Wayne. ‘You can have plenty more little bastards, no problem. Only they can be mine this time.'

She was all sweetness and light when we went to talk things over. Wayne surprised her with his suit and gold cufflinks and the shirt I'd ironed that morning and the way he agreed with everything she said. They got on like a house on fire. They had a lot in common: they both had a problem with me. Wayne smiled and said he was going to sort me out. Stop my bad habits. Make me smarten myself up. Take a pride. Help him in his business. ‘There's a lot she could do.'

She got Dad to get out the photo album. Showed Wayne the snaps. Me, shy, neat, squinting up at the sun at Mablethorpe.
She was a lovely little girl. No trouble at all, then.

I went over to look at Nigel. She'd got him all decked out in white. Perfect. Spotless. Tightly wrapped like a Christmas parcel. She saw me looking, said,
You don't have to worry, Geraldine. I'll look after him. I'll see he has the best of everything. The very best. Just like I gave you.

ANGEL CHILD

I
didn't used to think you could give a child too much attention. I thought if you put the effort in, they'd return the compliment and be a credit to you. Clifford says you don't have children in order to expect anything from them, but I reckon that where Geraldine's concerned, he's as disappointed as I am. Except that he sits down under it all. Sits in that damned armchair and sighs as if I'm not worth listening to. As if it's all mouth-breath to him.

It's not as though he wasn't as keen as me for her to have all those private lessons; as if he didn't pipe his eye when he went to see her do a solo fairy in the ballet concert and play an angel in the Christmas play. He thought she was lovely, took snaps by the dozen, showed them to all our friends. But he never understood that children don't bring themselves up. You have to work at them. But Clifford never worked at anything. ‘As long as she's happy,' he'd say, in that stick-in-the-mud way of his. As if happiness was an alternative to success.

I'd get worked up then. ‘Can you be happy stuck in a little terraced house with no education and no prospects? When you're clever and talented and could do all sorts if only you had the chance?'

He'd say, ‘Calm down, Theresa. Don't shout.' But I'm one of eight and I've had to shout all my life to get noticed. Geraldine has never needed to shout, though. She's an only child and I used to listen to her every word with bated breath. Anything she asked for she could have. Yet by the time she was ten she started to turn on me, saying of all things, ‘You don't listen! Why don't you ever listen?'

‘I've listened too much, my girl,' I said in the end, the day she wanted to go out shopping in my best high heels. ‘Now it's your turn.' She didn't like that; she turned sullen, scowled at me. But you've got to be firm. That's why I know it's not my fault she went off the rails.

It was gradual of course, the onset. When she was little, she was a sunbeam. Lovely blond hair, almost white. Skin you could nearly see through, so delicate. Big clear eyes. She was a wonderful child to dress, never spilled her drinks, never played in the muck, sat nicely on the grass in the back garden and arranged her dolls in rows, or read a book. She was a real prodigy with reading, went through all Clifford's classics by the time she was eleven. ‘That girl's got a future ahead of her,' I'd say. ‘She's exceptional.'

They tried to bring her down to their level, of course. The rowdy element I mean – the Bates boys, Brenda Morris and the like – common kids. That's the trouble with living in a mixed area like this. Clifford could never see it. ‘Live and let live,' he'd say. That would have been all very well, if the rowdy element had let us live how we wanted to. They'd sit on our front wall and suck horrible sherbet-dabs from that cheap shop over the bridge, yelling out names to everyone who passed. I started to find flat grey plasters of chewing gum all over Geraldine's knickers and I knew they'd put them there. No respect for property, those kids. God knows what sort of behaviour they'd get away with, day in and day out. I told Geraldine to keep away, to play with Sandra Smith instead.

Sandra was a really nice child. She lived in The Avenue. That's where we should have been if Clifford had had more go in him. There was a house going cheap there when we were first married. But Clifford was always frightened to take a chance. He said Coldstream Terrace would see us out and why did we need a great semi-detached place like that? It makes me mad to think of that now. It was before the prices went silly and we could have had it easily. Then I wouldn't have had Sylvia Smith patronizing me with her coffee mornings and jumble sales. I'd have been there throwing my own house open to cardboard boxes and piles of National Geographic. After all, what's Malcolm Smith but a jumped-up salesman working out of his front room?
The office
Sylvia calls it, but who has a sideboard, a dining table and eight straight-backed chairs in their office?

But Geraldine was a contrary little madam. She dug in her heels every time Sandra invited her, whining, complaining, not wanting to go. ‘I suppose you prefer those awful Bates boys?' I said.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I do! I bloody do!' She almost spat at me. I wasn't having that. I had to shake her. Hard.

‘That girl's got a temper,' I told Clifford, but he wouldn't have it.

‘Leave her alone, Theresa,' he said. ‘All your questions – you make things worse.' It was easy for Clifford – it's easy for a man to shrug off responsibility. He used to go in the garden so he wouldn't be there when she came home late from school, so I had to be the one to ask her where she'd been. I could see his back bent over the marigolds, saying, ‘I'm on your side, chicken.'

I had plans for St Bridget's when Geraldine was eleven. A good school, strong on discipline, and a nice bottle-green uniform. ‘The nuns'll have none of your nonsense,' I told her. ‘You won't be able to try your tricks with them.' Clifford went so far as to raise himself out of his armchair on this one. Said I'd done nothing but complain about the nuns all my life and now I was proposing putting Geraldine through the same process. Well, I've lapsed, I admit, but the discipline never did me any harm. The thought of Sister Mary-Margaret still frightens me to death.

It was no go, though. Clifford and Geraldine got together, had a strategy all worked out. Said Sandra Smith and Everybody was going to Marston Road Comp and what brilliant results all the pupils got. ‘Oxford and Cambridge,' said Clifford. ‘You'd like that. Theresa.'

So she went. But my first instincts were right. I'd seen those kids lolling about in town – the hair, the clothes, the carryings-on. In a couple of years Geraldine was as bad as the rest. One person can't fight against it. And you get no help from the teachers. They just tell you to calm down. Mr Anderson, for example, just pulling his beard and saying he'll investigate matters and he's sure it's not serious, and you know damn well you won't hear another word, as if behaviour and manners and bad influences are nothing to do with them.

Doctors are just the same. They're supposed to help, be up with the latest trends. I said, ‘These tattoos can be surgically removed – I've seen it on the television – and I want it done for Geraldine. He said I was over-reacting, to ‘keep calm'. I'd like to see how calm he'd have been if it was his daughter with ‘DAVE' all over her knuckles. He'd think it was too common for a doctor's daughter. But I suppose he thought Geraldine was just a working-class trollop. He took a bit more notice when I hauled her back with her wrists cut to pieces. I got a prescription out of him then. ‘It's only superficial,' he said. ‘But bring her back in a fortnight.'

A lot he knew, giving her pills like that. Six days later she was in St Luke's, taken out on a stretcher, red blanket, the lot, and all the rowdy element gawping. Kevin Bates had the nerve to ask if he could go and see her at visiting time. ‘You scum can keep away,' I said. ‘Haven't you done enough?'

It took something to walk down the street after that. I knew what they were thinking. Gloating, in fact. But I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me in pieces. I put on my best green coat, powdered the blotches on my face, walked out in front of them all, and stood at the bus stop daring them to say a word.

Geraldine was propped on pillows, her dyed hair sticking up in spikes. She said, ‘Hello, Mum.' No apologies.

I didn't know about the baby then, of course, but the young doctor called me to the nurses' office. I stood watching her through the glass partition while he was telling me. She looked so innocent, with her white skin. So pure. How could she have let anyone mess her about? I remembered those plasters of chewing gum, the stained knickers she thought I didn't know about, stuffed behind the wardrobe. She'd never confided in me. Nobody did. Certainly not Clifford. He never gave me any support. He'd gone to work as usual. ‘Give her my love,' he said, his back to me. ‘Say I'll pop in and see her tonight.'

They thought the baby was all right. She hadn't taken very many. A cry for help, they said. All I could think of was who had driven her to this. That Dave? Those boys Mr Chislett had seen her with in the park – those leather boys, the ones with the jackets and chains, the ones who smoked all the time – who she pretended she didn't know? ‘Who was it?' I shook her. ‘Tell me which one!' I'd see he had his come-uppance. There was a law about these things. She was only a child.

The little bitch wouldn't say. ‘Anyway, I'm having an abortion.' She'd got it all worked out. But if ever I've done one good thing in my life, it was getting that idea out of her head. I didn't even let up when that staff-nurse came and told me to calm down. Sister Mary-Margaret would have been proud.

And Nigel, when he came, was an angel of a child. Blond hair, skin you could almost see through, big clear eyes. Geraldine never had to lift a finger for him. I did everything. She just sat around, watching TV, eating. ‘Why don't you go back to school, or college?' I said. I thought she might take some exams, train for something. Be an air hostess, like she'd wanted as a child. Or a TV announcer. Now that I'd got her out of all those dead black clothes, permed her hair a bit, she looked pretty again. I said why didn't she go for an interview, or go to night school? I said I'd look after Nigel, full time if necessary. She needn't worry about him at all.

I should have realized that she was too quiet, that something was brewing. While I was out one afternoon, getting some mushrooms for tea, she went. Taking Nigel and only one change of clothes. Clifford came back early, said didn't I have any sense and couldn't I see I'd driven her away? And went to dig the garden, of all things. I wouldn't let him get away with that, followed him down to the greenhouse. ‘Why is it my fault? Haven't I done everything, absolutely everything, for her?'

‘Too bloody much. That's your trouble.' He started making mincemeat of the slugs with the edge of his spade. ‘She'd be all right if you'd leave her alone.' The usual Clifford story: Do nothing; let his little chicken have her way. Well, she'd had her way for too long. Now I was going to have mine.

The young copper they sent wasn't up to much. I said I wanted someone a bit more senior on such a serious matter. He said this sort of thing was pretty routine. ‘They go off all the time, these young girls.'

‘But not if they're suicidal and involved in drugs; not with a six-week-old baby. You'll all be for the high jump if something happens to my grandson.' He took more notice then.

‘Who is she likely to have gone to?'

I said if I knew that I wouldn't be involving them, would I? But he kept going on about her having to have school friends, boyfriends, ‘that sort of thing'. He asked about the father of the baby. I said that was a closed book. I wasn't having Dave sticking his oar in, claiming custody or whatever. I suggested that Mr Anderson might earn his wages for once by parting with some information from the school. ‘And you could try Brenda Morris, somewhere over the bridge.'

It was weeks before we heard. Every day I thought about Nigel, wondered if she was remembering to feed him, change his nappy. Clifford said, ‘Aren't you worried about
Geraldine
? How
she's
managing to live?'

‘Speak for yourself.' He was the one who'd let her go to the dogs.

In the end, they found her just round the corner, on the Westwood Estate. Living with an older man. Rough sort, they said, as if I needed telling. With a record for GBH.

‘Take it easy now, madam,' said the copper when we went down in a police car with a woman PC. ‘He could turn nasty.' But by the time we'd arrived he'd skedaddled the back way.

Geraldine was on the sofa, all in black again, great rings around her eyes, wrists covered up. ‘Wayne doesn't like the pigs,' she said with a laugh. ‘They make him nervous.' I'd have made him nervous, too, if he'd laid a finger on Nigel.

The place was a tip. No housework happening there. That's not what was making her look worn out. And the child was a disgrace. Caked was the word. Encrusted. I could hardly bear to pick him up. There were bottles everywhere, cider. I could smell drink on her breath. And her bag was crammed full of pills. ‘What's this?' I said, holding it up.

‘Valium,' said Geraldine, grabbing at it. ‘Now leave my effing stuff alone!'

She refused to come back with me. Argued the toss as usual, said she was sixteen now and could make her own decisions. I told her she could do as she liked but I wasn't going to have my grandson living in that place, being brought up by a drunkard. She fell over then, started to cry onto the filthy vinyl floor. I made her a cup of tea in the only mug I could find while the social workers were called. They took one look at Geraldine and said she wasn't fit to cope. Asked me if I was in a position to help. ‘A temporary measure,' said the one with the beard. ‘Until we can assess the situation properly.' I noticed he didn't sit down.

Clifford missed all this, said, ‘Where's Geraldine?' when he came home and saw Nigel in his cot. I told him she's shacked up with a violent ex-con, drinking and drugging herself to death, and is he satisfied?

Now, it's not often I'm wrong about someone, but I've had to eat my words about Wayne, in spite of his name. He was very frank with Clifford and me when he came to tea, explaining about his childhood and how he was taken advantage of by his friends. He always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, he said. That was why he'd gone to prison. He was just in the off-licence buying a beer when these lads had come in. He'd known them of course and he'd tried to take the gun off them, but they had stuck together and Wayne had got the blame. He runs his own business now – buying and selling videos – and I must say he was very presentable; neat collar and tie. More than I can say of her, dragging around in a dirty old top with sick stains down the front, scrabbling in her bag for tranquillizers and cigarettes. Wayne says she needs taking in hand, given a bit of discipline. I'm amazed how quickly he's cottoned on to that, but he says prison opens your eyes to a lot of things. Geraldine says nothing, just gives me one of her dull-eyed looks. But I feel happier in my mind that she's with someone who'll keep her up to the mark.