My Daughter, My Mother (38 page)

Forty-Six

‘Well, when exactly
does
she think she’s coming home?’

Margaret stood by the table in the back room, doling out the food: chicken-and-mushroom pies with oven chips and peas. She saw Karen looking down her nose at the meal.

‘What’s up with you, miss? Not good enough for yer?’

‘No, it’s just – now and then Mom, it’d be better for us if we had some fresher food, that’s all. Instead of ready-made stuff. All the vitamins get lost in the processing . . .’ Karen trailed off, silenced by the look in her mother’s eye.

Margaret stared at her, holding the spatula she was using to lift the pies. She felt like slapping Karen with it. Little Miss Know-It-All. And of course Fred wouldn’t say anything – he’d just sit there, gormless as ever.

‘Anyway,’ Karen said hurriedly, keen to keep the peace, ‘when Joanne rang last night she said – well, like I told you – Amy’s fine and she’s going to stop there a bit longer and give Dave time to cool down. She wants to think things through.’

‘Well, that seems—’ Fred started to say, but Margaret interrupted.

‘I should think she
does
want to think things through – and the quicker, the better. Going off, leaving her husband; it’s an absolute disgrace . . .’

She set off on the explosive diatribe that Fred and Karen had heard many times since Joanne’s first phone call two weeks ago. Even when she’d sat down, her rage seemed to billow, bigger than her, around the table.

‘In my day, you made your bed and you lay on it – none of this fooling about.’ She sat down and sprinkled Sarson’s vinegar on her chips. ‘There’s that lad struggling on his own, and not being able to see his daughter . . .’

‘Well, surely he can look after himself for a bit?’ Karen said, trying to quell her impatience. ‘He’s not completely helpless.’

‘That’s not the point,’ Margaret said, knifing her pie so that steam came swirling out of it. They couldn’t seem to see it – none of them. Joanne had done wrong; you just didn’t leave home like that. Didn’t call attention to yourself.

‘Mom,’ Karen said sharply, ‘Dave’s been violent to her: knocking her about – God, how many more times? And he had a go at Amy. That’s what made her leave . . . She was protecting her child –
your grandchild
.’

‘He shouldn’t be doing that,’ Fred said mildly.

‘You don’t think I believe that for a moment, do you?’ Margaret said. ‘Not Dave. I mean, he’s a good lad – always has been. Why would he start suddenly doing that, out of the blue? She must’ve provoked him. That’s the trouble with you girls nowadays; you want too much, never satisfied.’

Karen sighed, delving into the pastry to salvage its contents. She slid the soggy pie-case to the side of the plate.

‘People change, Mom,’ she said, but without much hope of getting through to her. ‘Something’s happened to him, even if you can’t see it. And if you can’t give support to your own daughter, instead of someone else’s son – well, I’d say that’s pretty sad.’

Margaret went up to bed by half-past nine. She never seemed to feel well, one way or another, and at the moment could hardly stand being with any of them. She could barely cope with herself, on her own.

‘I’ll wait up and see if Jo phones,’ Karen called to her father. He was in the front room watching telly, something about detectives, and for a minute Karen didn’t think he’d heard her. But he lurched forward and turned the TV off.

‘She’ll be phoning soon, will ’er?’

‘It depends . . .’ She went into the front room, stepping over the torn bit of carpet. It was a shaggy thing in brown, black and orange squares. All the chairs faced the TV. ‘The house is quite noisy – kids playing up and everything. She tends to wait till things have settled down a bit. It could be a while.’ She hesitated. ‘Did you want to speak to her?’

Fred seemed to shrink into the chair as if under interrogation. ‘Well, I thought I might.’

Karen sat down on the chair closest to him. ‘I’m sure she’d be really pleased. She’s missing everyone. She feels as if everyone’s turned against her.’

‘Well, they haven’t, have they? You haven’t, for a start.’

‘No, I know – but Mom, and . . . it’s just I suppose she’s not having an easy time. It’s easy to get upset over anything and everything.’

Fred nodded. Karen watched her father’s thin, saggy face with a mixture of affection and exasperation. He’d always been a kindly dad, if a bit ineffectual. She wished he’d stand up more to Mom and her moods.

‘You believe her, don’t you, Dad?’

He rubbed a hand over his face. The effort of speaking about such things was almost physical.

‘I can’t see why the wench’d make it up. Not after all this time. Anyway, ’er’s not like that.’

‘I’m sure she’d like to hear from you.’

Fred nodded, with the air of a man facing the gallows. Then he said, ‘Your mother’s not had an easy life.’

Karen got ready to seize an opportunity. ‘The war, you mean?’

‘Oh no, I don’t know much about the war. I mean her home life: I saw her a bit when we was kids. The Old Man – well, he wasn’t very nice. And he had this woman in tow . . . Thing is, I only saw them about the place a bit. I never knew them proper, like.’

‘Why not?’ Karen said, puzzled.

‘Well, as soon as I got to know Margaret a bit, we had to move on and I never saw ’er till years later.’

‘I never knew that: that you’d known each other when you were children!’

‘Well, hardly – I mean, not for long . . .’

‘So, why did you move? Where to?’

Fred seemed to shrink into himself. ‘Well, there was just us kids, yer see. My father was killed in the war. And then Mom . . .’ He shook his head as if he couldn’t find the words, and for a second Karen thought he was going to give up, but the spasm passed.

‘Well, our mom, she tried her best, but she couldn’t cope with it all – like, all of us on her own, and Dad gone. And I came home that day and—’ He looked up, indicated something hanging. ‘There she was . . .’

Karen sat, stunned.

‘So there was nothing for it – we was taken to the Home.’

‘Oh, Dad, why’ve you never said before?’ Tearful, she went to reach out to him, take his skinny, scrawny arm, but he withdrew and got up out of the chair.

‘Sad times,’ he said, looking away. ‘But you have to get through them. Put it be’ind yer. It was all a long time ago now.’

They watched TV together, the
News at Ten
. Karen made cups of tea and brought them through, treating her father tenderly. The phone rang just after the break. Karen rushed to answer.

‘Hello? Jo? How are you? How’s Amy? Oh, you’ve been into town again – that’s good.’

Nothing much had changed. Joanne always wanted to know about Dave: had he been round? (He hadn’t, not for a while now.) What was happening? Saying that she’d leave it one more week, but she couldn’t stand the refuge much longer. Some of the women were okay, but there were kids there who were a nightmare.

‘Joanne, Dad’s here – he’d like a word.’

Karen beckoned Fred over. He took the receiver as if it was something burning hot and held it close to his ear in a wary fashion.

‘Hello? Love?’

Karen heard the Pinky-and-Perky scramble of Joanne’s words coming through the phone. She sounded upset.

‘Yes, I know, love, I know. It’s all right. No – of course I don’t, no. Well, yes, I s’pose you will have to sometime . . . No, no, I won’t. Oh, I don’t know about that. No – you look after yourself, love. Bye-bye then. Tara.’

‘What about Mom?’ Joanne said tearfully, when Karen was back on.

‘She’s still finding it all a bit difficult,’ Karen said.

Margaret lay in bed, turning her head from side to side, trying to get comfortable.

She was still brimming with fury over Joanne, but Karen’s words that evening had got through to her and shamed her:
And if you can’t give support to your own daughter, instead of someone else’s son
. . . Lifting herself on one elbow, she tilted the shade of the bedside light so that it wasn’t shining in her eyes and took a sip of water. Once she was settled down again on her back, staring up at the walls, she tried to sift through the unfocused rage inside her and work out what she felt about things. Thoughts came to her like yells of protest in a debate.

Promises are meant to be kept!

Dave’s a good boy – what’s he ever done that’s so terrible?

Nobody knows the meaning of sticking at things these days!
I’ve
stuck at it, God knows . . .

Some things must last – surely there must be something good that lasts?

Karen kept going on about Joanne making a choice.
She had to make a choice, Mom.
This, above all, made Margaret clench her fists with explosive rage.

You weren’t supposed to have a choice!

‘Why should she have a choice? When did
I
ever have any choice?’ she said out loud, her tone curdled with childish resentment. ‘Choice? Since when has there ever been a choice – about anything. Tell me that, eh?’

Forty-Seven

Joanne was finding life in the refuge more and more difficult.

She saw Sooky again, and it was the best thing that happened all week. Each day there were the comings and goings of social workers. Megan had visited a number of times. They talked about Dave’s caution from the police. Megan steered Joanne into thinking about her future. If she went back home, they would very likely be looking at a supervision order, a social worker visiting regularly for a time. Alternately, if she was going to leave him, they could offer help with finding accommodation.

Joanne felt paralysed and unable to decide anything.

‘Just give me a few more days,’ she pleaded. She knew they didn’t want people lingering too long in the hostels. They were a refuge, but they were not to become home – too many others were waiting.

The difficulty lay partly in the days hanging so heavily, and all the uncertainty of her own future. But also in the stress and misery of living with some of the other women. Over the fortnight she had been there, she had got to know Doreen better than any of the others. Doreen was a cowed, depressed woman with a drink problem, but in her passive way she was pleasant, and she and Joanne sometimes sat and talked. Her son Danny also seemed to have a sweet nature, though he was fearful and changeable. Doreen told Joanne she had done the right thing, getting out before things got even worse.

‘I should have left him years back,’ she said, rocking back and forth as she did almost all the time. ‘I blame myself. I never had the spirit for it – and I didn’t feel I could leave the boys, not with him.’

Mariam, also, had begun to meet their eye. Every so often she was called into the office for conversations through interpreters, which left her frightened and weeping. Her case presented all sort of problems, Marcia said, the more so because of her age. At fifteen she could not be legally married in Britain. She was frightened of being deported and equally terrified of being sent back to her husband. But at least, Joanne found, they could exchange looks of sympathy now – she, Mariam and Doreen. Linda was locked in her own world, and psychiatric social workers were calling now. There was talk of her being taken into hospital.

It was Gina who caused all the trouble. In any case, all her emotional life flowed near the surface and was acted out in public. Now, in addition, the big toe of her left foot had gone septic. Since Gina caused a huge ruckus about everything she did, everyone soon knew about it. The pain this was causing her, and her resulting bad temper, brought on a crisis.

Late one afternoon Joanne was on her way downstairs to the kitchen to give Amy her tea. She stopped on the stairs, the rising sounds from the kitchen making her heart pound, as it did so easily these days: raised voices – Gina in full cry, shrill and out of control.

‘We’ll go back up and wait till they’ve finished, shall we, babby?’ she murmured to Amy, who was in her arms. Amy looked at her, wide-eyed at the noises from below, and clung to her more tightly. ‘Yes, it’s not very nice, is it? It’s just those naughty boys, don’t you worry, pet.’

There was a smash of glass and then the sounds escalated, building into a piercing scream. Joanne’s stomach turned over. A second later Mariam came tearing from the kitchen and across the hall to hammer on the office door, just as Jackie, hearing the noise, opened it. Mariam, who appeared terrified, beckoned to her urgently.

The screams from the kitchen were like those of a pig being killed. Doreen silently joined Joanne on the stairs, holding Danny by the hand. Danny hid his face in his mother’s waist.

‘It’s Gina,’ Joanne said. As if she needed to.

Jackie’s muscular form rushed back across the hall to the office. They heard her phoning. A few moments later she crossed the hall again and returned leading a limping, loudly sobbing Gina and the boys, the younger of them shrieking and sobbing, clutching a blood-soaked cloth to his face, which was contorted in pain.

‘Oh my God!’ Doreen breathed, sinking down on the stairs.

‘What the hell has she done?’ Joanne said. The sight chilled her right through. Amy started to cry.

‘The boys won’t be coming back,’ Jackie said, when Gina and her sons had been taken in the ambulance. Her sallow skin had gone pale and she was visibly shaking. Joanne, Doreen and Mariam were standing in the office.

‘Her social worker is on her way to the hospital – Jason and Michael will be going into care.’ Jackie seemed to need to recite events, as if to make sure she had done everything necessary. The line between staff and inmates suddenly felt very thin. ‘I’ve had to call the police as well. God, she really has reached the end of the line.’

‘What exactly happened?’ Doreen asked.

Jackie looked at Mariam, who was wide-eyed with shock and obviously close to tears.

‘Mariam was the only one in there. One of the interpreters is on her way: we need to get the details straight . . . But Gina obviously lost it with them – well, with Michael, it seems. She smashed a glass and just went for him . . . slashed right across his cheek.’