The Ice is Singing (11 page)

She and Gary would eat sausage butties in front of the telly; he would help her to dry up, carrying cups one at a time from the table to the cupboard, performing each task with the careful
interest of a child. He would talk about his day at school, the teachers and the story he’d been read; bring home misshapen drawings of people with huge heads and stick bodies, as the others
had done when they were little, before school became a dirty word.

He’s a good boy. He loves his Mum. I tell him he can make us a cup of tea. He fills the kettle, with the tap running slowly, watching it, careful. Turns the tap off before he moves the
kettle out from under it. No splashing. Checks the switch is off; plugs it in. It always takes a bit longer than you think, it’s like he’s the other side of glass – or water. I
think sometimes, he’s just putting his hand through, he’s just putting his eyes through. When it’s plugged in he switches it on. Waits, till he can hear the noise of the element
heating. Then he gives us a smile. He’s got a lovely smile. He’s so busy smiling he’s forgot what’s next so I point to the mugs. He puts them there side by side. Pushes them
carefully a couple more inches back from the edge, like he’s arranging them for a bleeding display. Every little thing matters to him. I like watching him, when I’m not in a hurry.
It’s soothing, like watching them fish at the dentist’s.

Only he’s not like the fish cos I know what he’s doing, I know why. He pushed the mugs in from the edge so’s they won’t fall off; he puts a tea bag in each cup, and
when he’s put them in he has another look to make sure they’re in. When the kettle boils he watches it till it switches itself off – I’ve told him not to touch it,
it’ll boil for a good minute before it goes off though. Then he pulls out the plug, holding the handle of the kettle as if it’ll bite him, turns it round awkwardly so’s he can
grasp it with his right, lifts it slowly and pours into each cup. He never spills a drop. When he puts it down he gives me a look again, checking I’m watching. Then he squashes the bags with
a spoon, he likes that bit, sometimes he starts to hum to himself. He does what I’ve told him – pulls a saucer by the cup, fishes the bag out, drops it on the saucer. Then the other
cup. Then he’s getting the milk out the fridge – carrying it carefully, with both hands, taking the top off careful, careful, with his big clumsy fingers.

It can take him fifteen minutes to mash a cup of tea, I’m not kidding. But he’ll do it. And be pleased as punch, when at last he’s coming towards me carrying the mug high,
not a drop spilt – grinning from ear to ear.

I know every movement. Every move he does, I know. Like I made him. I tell him how to do it. And when they learn him something new at school he comes home and shows me; he can write his
name. When he does something wrong, I tell him. He doesn’t get let off. He learns from it.

She tried to keep up with the others. Scolded Tracey and locked her in after the first time she stayed out all night. Went down the school to see the teacher when she got a
letter about Wayne truanting. Had long talks with Donna and took her to the doctor’s herself to get her put on the Pill, when she started going with that Damon. But if she locked them in they
simply went sullen and silent, pretending to ignore it when she unlocked the door again, then walked out past her as if she was nothing – dirt. It was all battle, with all of them; a losing
battle, as she well knew. When she controlled one side of her family it went tearing and roaring away like a forest fire in every other direction.

All except for Gary. He loved her. He wanted her. He was hers to control. If she was cross with him, he cried. When the others were in she had her work cut out protecting him, and he clung to
her side. If they teased or hurt him it could rouse her to slapping them still, big as they were. When the girls suddenly took a new interest in him and invited him into their room for a lot of
whispering and giggling she knew damn well what was going on, and called him out. She slapped him and shut him in her bedroom, then went to deal with a sniggering Donna and Lynda, and a quiet
sulky-looking Tracey.

‘You leave him alone. You hear me? He’s a little kid. I know he’s big – but in his mind he’s no more than a little boy just starting infants’. Just keep your
nasty ideas to yourself and don’t go mucking about with him. You hear me?’ She slammed the door on them and after a couple of minutes they trooped out sheepishly and went off
outside.

She listened to him crying and throwing himself against the bedroom door. He’d be all right. No one was going to get away with hurting
him
.

After the initial terror and howling, he slumped against the bedroom door, sobbing heartbrokenly. She lit a cigarette and sat at the kitchen table listening as his cries tailed off then
restarted with a second wind. He was crying mechanically, perhaps having forgotten why he’d started.

‘Shut it, you thick pillock!’ she shouted. ‘You retard!’ She would look after him. If she had ever heard of him being upset at school she’d have been down there
within the hour, ready to do battle. But if she made him cry – as long as she was listening to him – he was all right. She knew she meant him to be all right. It didn’t count.

And then she met Bill. The council were finally getting round to decorating the flats. Leonie’s kitchen and bathroom were ruined with condensation. Bill and his mate Ted
started work in the kitchen one April morning at 9. Leonie cleared stuff out for them, then went off to do the shopping. When she returned, Bill was on his own. She made them both a cup of tea. He
stared at her in silence until she felt uncomfortable.

‘Where’s your mate?’

Bill laughed.

‘Go on.’

‘Two floors down.’

‘I thought you were all finished down there.’

‘Yeh – well. He has a little job down there that keeps needing a bit of touching up.’

Leonie stared at him blankly. Bill raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, and returned to his tin of paint.

Putting clothes away in the bedroom, Leonie realized what he’d meant. Sitting down heavily on the bed she imagined the workman, in the flat two floors below, taking off his overalls and
watching the woman as she unbuttoned her dress. Leonie had not imagined such a thing for a long time. Moving slowly, she went to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. She could see, through the
half-open kitchen door, the painter’s shoulder and arm pushing the roller rhythmically up and down, covering the wall by the sink with white paint. Hypnotized, she moved into the corridor and
along to the kitchen doorway, where she stood still, staring at him. Eventually he turned and saw her.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked sharply, angry that she had made him jump.

Leonie didn’t answer.

‘What’s the matter?’ he shouted, approaching the blank-faced woman in the doorway. ‘Have you lost your bloody tongue?’ Something in her attitude and her silence
filled him with blinding rage and he grasped her roughly to shake her. Unbalanced, she swayed heavily against him, and he saved her from falling by pushing at her other shoulder with the hand
holding the paint roller. It clattered to the floor, splashing them both with paint.

‘You stupid bitch! What the fuck’s the matter with you?’ He was propping her up, hands pushing against her shoulders. When she still didn’t speak he gave her a slight
push, and she bumped back against the wall.

‘What? What? What d’you want?’

With a grotesque movement, her head and shoulders lolling against the wall, her hips suddenly jutted forward. He moved quickly, pushing her back against the wall with the weight of his own
body.

‘You want that? D’you want that? A fat ugly cow like you?’ He ground himself against her, and she began to press her crotch rhythmically to him. Her plump face, slightly
upturned to him, was still expressionless. Raising his right hand he slapped her across the cheek, while their hips continued to press and gind rhythmically. They both climaxed quickly, pressed
against the wall, fully clothed. When he stepped back from her Leonie slid down and slumped on the floor.

‘You dirty bitch. Look what you’ve made me do.’

She watched him dully as he pulled open his overalls and wiped himself on a tea-towel he’d picked up from the kitchen floor.

‘Filth, you,’ he said; picked up his roller, and continued with his painting.

It was like a drug. While he was still painting her flat they did it two or three times a day, while he hit her and abused her. Leonie moved about her life in a stupor. She had never experienced
such a thing before: hadn’t touched a man, or wanted to, for years. When he moved on to other flats he returned to hers at least once a day; when the children were out she sat, almost
paralysed with longing, waiting for him on a kitchen chair, her body beginning to tremble and jerk at the first sound of his voice in greeting,

‘Well, you filthy bitch – what’re you waiting for?’

Lynda one evening noticed the bruising on her mother’s face, and asked what she’d been doing. Leonie talked vaguely about walking into a door. She had no idea what the children were
doing – anything. She was just waiting for the next time he’d push open the front door.

Then one day he didn’t come. She went through the evening in a trance, and went to bed once the younger children were in. She left the door on the latch, and heard him when he swung it
open. He grabbed her by the throat as she moved down the corridor towards him.

‘Back to the bedroom, bitch!’

‘No. Gary’s there. We can’t.’

‘Get rid of him.’

She shook her head. ‘Not tonight. Tomorrow.’

‘Now.’

‘I can’t.’

He tightened his grip on her throat, then loosened it slowly. ‘I’ll have to make you wait for it then, till tomorrow, won’t I?’ He unclasped his hands, turned and left so
quickly that she could not catch hold of his jacket, although she was running after him.

Gary cried when she told him he had to move beds. She was uncertain where to put him. If she put him in with Wayne and Darren they would torment him – and there was no question of putting
him with the girls. If she put him in the sitting room he couldn’t go to sleep till everyone else had gone to bed, and he needed to go to sleep early. In the end she decided to leave him in
her room, making him a bed on the floor in the corner. He slept deeply – never stirred in the night – so why shouldn’t he stay there? He wouldn’t be any the wiser.

And for the first few nights it went smoothly. He whimpered when she put him to bed in his new place, and stretched out his arms to her bed, but she was firm, and by the time Bill arrived he was
asleep.

Then Bill stayed all night. Leonie was woken in the morning by Gary’s terrified howls. He had crept up to the bed to climb in with her, and come face to face with Bill.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

Leonie hugged the sobbing boy, his face buried in her shoulder.

‘What’s wrong with him, I said.’

‘Nothing. He’s – he’s just a bit slow.’

‘Mental, is he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does he usually sleep with you?’

She nodded. Gary’s sobs quietened.

‘Do you fuck with him?’

Leonie turned to face Bill, who was propped up on one elbow in the bed, watching her. ‘Get out.’

‘He’s a big lad.’

‘Get out. Now.’ Gary began to scream again, terrified by the tone of his mother’s voice. Bill climbed out of bed and pulled his clothes on. When he was dressed he stood still,
looking at Leonie.

‘Get out, I said.’

He went.

He came back three days later, in the afternoon. And from then onwards he stayed at the flat two or three nights a week. Gary still cried at the sight of him, but he was learning to calm down
more quickly. The boy became more withdrawn – his mother had hardly spoken to him for weeks, and although he painstakingly continued to make her cups of tea, she rarely acknowledged them or
thanked him. Gary slept with his face to the wall, and no longer tried to creep into bed in the mornings – even when Bill wasn’t there.

The other children were full of resentment. ‘What have you brought him here for? We don’t want him in our place!’ There was no explanation Leonie could have articulated to
herself, and she simply replied that it was hard luck, they’d have to put up with him. He and Wayne had a fight one night, on the way back from the pub – Wayne had been lying in wait
for him. Bill must have thrashed him because Wayne didn’t come home for a couple of days, and when he did it was only to collect his things. He told his mum he’d joined the army. Leonie
said good, better than hanging about the estate with no job and no prospects. But when she heard he was going to Belfast she cried.

A year later Bill was living at the flat. Sex between himself and Leonie made up in violence what it had lost in intensity and frequency. The children all knew how violent he was, and were
cautious not to cross his path. Donna was married now, and had a flat of her own. Lynda, who’d got a little baby, moved out after a couple of months, and stayed at Donna’s. Leonie had
told her she’d help out with the baby, but Lynda didn’t dare to leave the child with her for fear of Bill. Tracey fixed a bolt to the inside of her bedroom door. Leonie, whose last
dregs of will and self-determination seemed to have been drained by him, serviced him as she did the children – shopping, cleaning, washing, cooking. He gave her money from time to time, but
she never knew when it would be, nor how much, and it was never enough.

Gary, more subdued and self-contained now, lived in total fear of him. Normally slow, fear had the effect of stunning him. If he was making a drink and Bill shouted, ‘Hurry up with
that!’ he would spill it or continue to add more and more spoonfuls of sugar, or simply freeze in mid-air like a chameleon and be unable to continue at all until Bill’s attention
shifted from him. His misery was compounded by the fact that, when startled, he sometimes wet himself.

Leonie defended him. It was the only thing that ever made her turn on Bill. The other children knew she would do nothing if he knocked them about – they knew he hit her, anyway. But when
he started on Gary, she was ready to fight.