by S. E. Lynes
‘Come in.’ Richard checks his list, stands up, offers his hand. ‘Graham Watson, isn’t it?’
The lad blinks, once, and is gone.
Thirteen
Nicola
2019
I barely remember the refuge. There were other women, other kids, but to my childish eyes they were all scary, mad, ugly. Now, of course, I see that they were afraid, anxious, damaged. We all were. I remember the volunteers helping my mother with the emergency benefit forms, her complaining that she needed a ruddy degree to understand the ruddy things. I remember asking for money to go to the shop to buy a packet of shortbread biscuits and my mother telling me that she only had ten pence in her purse; that I’d have to wait until the next day. I remember how silent the place was, despite being full. It was only later, dealing with these families in my professional life, that it dawned on me: these women, these children had been conditioned to be quiet. My clients helped me understand my own extremes of perfectionism and diligence, and of course my brother’s stutter. His silence.
I remember the school a little more clearly. Our new surname, Morrison – the strangeness of that. I remember the kid that threw a desk at one of the teachers, the death list in the girls’ toilets detailing all those who would be killed after school, the lads who sniffed glue on the far side of the school field, and the daily scraps, when all the kids would go running to watch some boy – or girl – knock seven bells out of another before the teacher came running, blowing hard into a metal whistle. Sometimes, when I recount things like that to my colleagues, I can see the blankness in their faces. They have no idea what I’m talking about. They have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a world where violence is as constant and normal as air.
I remember my brother withdrawing into himself. His stutter made it hard for him. He constructed a new identity: silent, since speaking was difficult; violent, since no one speaks out against a fist; mean, since kindness got you nowhere. I, meanwhile, kept my head down, worked hard, drew no attention. We developed what I have come to see as our own individual coping strategies. What else were we to do? Here finally is a leveller: in a different way perhaps to my legal peers and the particular cruelties of their privileged educations, at our school, personality wasn’t just about fitting in; it was about survival.
Graham told me later that we were in the shelter for over a year; that he finished his woeful education at that school. In my mind, the time frame is mere weeks. Funny how childhood shrinks and inflates memory where it chooses. Whatever, all I know is that by the time we left that place, Graham was not the same brother I had grown up with. Something inside him had shifted, hardened. I know from my experience dealing with people like us, like we were, that the moment of leaving an abusive partner and its immediate aftermath is the most dangerous. For the woman who leaves, it is then that she is most tempted to return. For the children, it is at best utterly confusing, at worst devastatingly traumatic. For Graham, it was then that he began to lose his way, of that I have no doubt. I wish I could have saved him. But he was my big brother. He had always looked after me. It never occurred to me to look after him.
In my mother’s room, I sit at her dressing table, rest my mug of tea on the cloth doily alongside her perfumes, her face powder, her little pot of Nivea. She loved this table and its matching upholstered stool. As a girl, I would watch her put on her make-up here, wrapped in her towelling dressing gown on the stool, me on the bed, behind her in the three mirrors. I would watch her angle her face to apply eyeshadow, make an O with her mouth while she painted her lips, pluck a tissue from the box to blot them. She would study herself, serious for a second, before winking at me in the mirror.
‘What d’you think?’ she would ask. ‘Knockout, eh?’
‘Beautiful,’ I would answer, meaning it so much it hurt, thrilled to find myself included in her private feminine ritual.
In the drawer, I find her lipsticks: Guerlain, Dior, Lancôme – all gifts from me, perks of a barrister’s salary. They are all untouched. I always knew that she only ever wore, would only ever wear, her trusty Avon. The others she kept, along with the perfumes I gave her, for a best that would never come. I have no idea what she thought best was – a trip to Buckingham Palace, perhaps, though she would never have coped with that. She was a bag of nerves when I graduated, convinced she was dressed wrongly; the same when I finished my pupillage and took her for dinner at Quaglino’s.
‘You choose for me,’ she said, confronted with the menu. And then, when the food arrived, she could not eat it.
Next to her lipsticks, in its own velvet-lined compartment, is a cassette tape. Woman’s Hour is written on the label in black felt-tip pen. That’s weird. As far as I know, she only ever listened to Radio 2; loved Jimmy Young, thought Terry Wogan was hilarious.
There’s a portable radio cassette player on her bedside table. It makes me smile, because I don’t know another living soul who still owns one. At home, our music is all digital, unless Seb is in the mood to listen to his vintage vinyl. We can choose to listen to whichever song we want, by whoever we want, wherever we want, and it will come to us through speakers in the ceiling. We control the sound through our mobile phones. If she’d ever had the nerve to visit me in London, my mum would have shaken her head. Heavens, she might have said. Whatever next? As for Seb’s record player in the sitting room, it’s a statement piece, apparently, though to me, it’s a pretentious attempt to somehow channel the perceived authenticity of anything old – sorry, vintage. Vintage, my arse, my brother would say, and I tend to agree. As far as I’m concerned, the past can stay where it is.
To distract myself, I slide the tape into the deck and press play. The presenter is talking about a show called Girls’ Talk opening in the West End. None the wiser, I rewind, play.
‘Of course, what you have to realise is that by that time, the woman has no self-esteem left …’ An educated voice. An expert of some sort.
‘What?’ I mutter. Stop, rewind, play.
‘I had to break the cycle,’ a different woman says. The voice is deeper, slower than my mother’s. But the vowels are hers.
Stop, rewind, play.
‘… held my head under the water.’
My mother. Disguised. But that phrase gives her away, at least to me.
Stop, rewind, play.
The bright enunciation of the presenter: ‘… with the daily threat of violence. Reporter Laura Budd spoke to some of these women and heard their stories …’
I feel behind me for the edge of the bed, sit down slowly.
‘I suppose I didn’t realise it was his problem.’ My mother’s artificially slow voice speaks to me through the tinny speakers. ‘I thought it was my fault, like. I mean, the first time I made him cross. It was after our first was born. I was tired, I suppose, and I said something out of turn. I said something I shouldn’t’ve. He’d been to the pub and he’d said he’d be back, like, and then, when he came in so late I asked him where he’d been, you know, why he’d not come home, and that was it.’
I pull three tissues from the box on my mother’s bedside table and wipe my eyes.
‘But he was so sorry afterwards. He was on his knees. Crying, he was. Begging and that, like, you know? He told me it’d never happen again, he’d never hit a woman before … and I believed him. He said he loved me. He couldn’t live without me. And we were married. We had our … we had a child. Then we had two children. We were a family, like, you know? That’s not something you can just walk away from.’
Another woman’s voice speaks. Different story, same underlying theme. Women broken over years by abusive men. It is impossible to listen to, but I can’t stop myself listening. Another woman, who had to have corrective surgery on her nose, then Carol again – that night under the bathwater.
‘I thought I was dying. I could feel myself dying, like, you know? And I thought, if I live, I go tonight.’ A suck, a blow – my mother, pulling on her B&H. ‘I did live, God knows how. And I did ge
t them out. I wanted to go back, but the social worker here told me that’s common … She’s helping me understand things, like. I’m determined not to go back. I don’t want my kids growing up thinking it’s normal, do you know what I mean? It’s no way to behave, is it? No way to treat people.’
‘Did anyone know?’ The reporter’s voice, well spoken, soft.
‘My neighbours knew what they heard. I never said owt, like. They knew I di’n’t want any police or owt like that. But none of them knew the half of it, not really.’
The piece ends. A short, respectful silence ensues before the expert starts in.
‘Of course, what you have to remember, in terms of these women staying, is that it’s a question of—’
I press stop. I am shaking all over, the sharp edges of my fingernails cutting into the palms of my hands. I put my fists to my cheeks. My skin is hot, clammy. I eject the cassette. Withdraw it slowly from the slot. My head throbs. My chest rises and falls. With a roar, I pull at the tape, wrenching out great fistfuls of thin brown ribbon, which slithers and pools on my mother’s floral bedspread. I bite at the cassette, madly, feel the pushback into my gums. Another roar and I’ve thrown the damn thing against the wall; the ribbon flies after in a frenzy of flickering loops.
My chest heaves. I burst into tears. Before I’m wholly aware of it, I’m on my feet, punching the bed, the pillows, grabbing the pillows and beating them against the mattress, hauling up the duvet and fighting with it, wrapping it around me, screaming at it. I collapse onto it. I am crying. I am laughing. I am insane. I am all over the place. I lie back in the whipped-up bedding and stare at the ceiling. I want her back. I want her back now. I want my mum. It’s not fair, what she had to go through. How dare how fucking DARE ANYONE how dare he how DARE HE do that to her, to us? Years wasted, wasted, my poor beautiful brother, my mother, all I want is to lie next to her here and look up at the ceiling with her and tell her … oh, things. Just … just stuff. All I want is a few more minutes, that’s all. That’s all.
‘Mum.’ Tears fall fat and wet, slide down my neck into my top. Surely if I say it enough times she’ll hear.
She never told me she’d been on the radio. She must have recorded this interview in the shelter. That must have taken guts, days or weeks after she left, terrified as she was that my father would find us. One more brave thing she did to add to the pile, this woman who in her later years was so nervous about the smallest things, as if she had used up all her mettle on her family’s survival.
I wonder what else she did there, at the refuge, how she spent her days, whether she went out. She must have done, must have gone to the shops for food, but we never talked about that. All I know is that several months after that interview, we were housed, and that, as a kid, I was excited at first, until we pitched up in that terrible place. If I sound like a snob, well, I’m sorry. I lived there and it was terrible. You kept your head down and you stayed indoors at night, avoided the lost souls who shuffled like wraiths in their baggy, filthy clothes. They put us there so that I wouldn’t have to change schools again. Ironic, since I’d only just moved up and certainly had no desire to stay. But we were all of us in a system run by forces outside our control. As for my mother, she was above all terrified that my dad would find us, worried sick that her son had become a stranger, and wondering how the hell she would ever pull herself free. The house she was offered was the safest choice she had. It was the only choice.
Fourteen
Carol
Rochdale, 1985
Carol pushes open her new front door, tries to keep her heart afloat. Junk mail shushes on the brown carpet and a gust of musty air hits her. At least Pauline is here. And the kids.
Keys in hand, she walks down the hallway into the kitchen. It’s a little brighter in here, at least – big windows, another window in the back door, all in need of a damn good clean. The whole place smells of damp. She runs her fingers along the worktop. Wipes her sticky fingertips on her jeans. There’s a dark line where the worktop meets the wall – she didn’t notice that when she came here before with the social worker, who told her that this was the best she would get. Three small burn holes scar the Formica surface – fags, she thinks. Who would put out a ciggie on a worktop?
She digs into her bag for a tissue and wipes her hand. Looks about her, tries not to think of the home she left, of Ted sitting in what seems to her now to be the lap of luxury while she is here, facing this, this place, where she has to live now because of him. This, all of it, is the price of safety.
So why doesn’t she feel safe?
The kids run ahead, clatter up the wooden slatted stairs, arguing over who’s getting which room. Don’t get too excited, she wants to shout. They’re both grim.
‘It’s a bloody palace is this, Caz,’ Pauline shouts from the lounge.
‘Told you,’ Carol shouts back, grateful for Pauline’s sense of humour, lifting herself to meet it, heading back out of the kitchen. ‘Windsor Castle’s got nothing on this place.’
There’s no flap on the letter box. Cold air comes through in icy gusts.
Pauline has her back to her. She’s looking out of the front window. At least in here the carpet isn’t too bad, looking at it properly: brown shag pile, cream swirls like the Coffee Mate advert. Not Carol’s taste, but it’ll go well enough with her fawn three-piece. It makes sense to have the settee along the wall on the right. The television can go in the corner by the window.
‘Lovely view,’ says Pauline sarcastically.
Carol remembers she no longer owns a settee or armchairs, or a telly for that matter. She owns nothing, nothing at all. The carpet might as well be sky-blue pink with a finny addy border, as her mum used to say. She shivers. It’s colder in here than outside. This frozen, closed-up air is seeping into her bones.
‘I think the heating panel’s in the kitchen,’ she says, pulling her coat tight around her.
Pauline’s shoulders make black curves against the light. Carol feels a rush of love for these shoulders, for this woman who’s taken a day off work and driven nearly two hours just to help her. She joins her friend at the window and nods to the stretch of paving stones, the painted metal fence that runs between the block and the chicaned dead-end road. Opposite, there is an abandoned supermarket trolley.
‘There’s always a broken trolley in these places, isn’t there?’ she says. ‘It’s like shithole rules or something. Like carrots in sick.’
‘Now, now.’ Pauline fumbles in her bag for what Carol hopes is a packet of fags. She’s too tired, all of a sudden, to go and get her own. Pauline lights two cigarettes and hands one to her. ‘If we smoke, it might make the place smell a bit better.’
Carol laughs, despite everything. ‘Thanks.’
There are no trees, no little grass verges, no green at all. A few of the front yards are neat enough, she supposes; others seem to be dumping grounds for heavy rubbish. Some of the windows have curtains, some are boarded up. There’s a radiator in next door’s garden.
On the far side of the street, a group of kids huddle in the gutter. Tatty coats hang off their shoulders and not one of them has a scarf or gloves or a hat. Their bare heads bend over whatever it is they’re up to – drugs, most probably. A couple of them stand up, and she sees that they’re playing marbles, rolling them along the drainage grid from one gap to the next. Her body relaxes a bit.
Pauline opens the window so they can flick their ash outside. Above them, Graham and Nicola are still bickering. Normally Carol would’ve chucked them outside, told them to go exploring, sent them to the shop. But maybe it’s better if they stay in today.
She and Pauline finish their cigarettes, crush the butts on the outer wall and throw them to the ground.
‘Pauline?’
‘Yes, love?’
‘What am I going to do?’
Pauline rubs Carol’s arm briskly. ‘We’ll soon have it fixed up. They’re bringing you some furniture, aren’t they? Tommy’s coming later with
quilts and that. And wait till we go through them boxes – there’s all sorts in there.’
‘Have you seen our Johnny?’
‘Not recently. Why, do you want me to tell him where you are?’
She shakes her head. ‘Not just yet. In a bit.’
‘All right, love. No rush, is there?’
Carol sighs. ‘Of course, Ted’s got all my pans and I don’t think he can even boil an egg. His mother waited on him hand and foot, you know, until I took over – like a bloody idiot.’ She looks Pauline in the eye. ‘Do you see him at all?’
‘He’s been over a couple of times but he’s not come in. Seems to think we know where you are, but Tommy told him to let us know if he finds you ’cos we’re worried sick. That do?’
Carol nods, wipes her face with her hand. ‘How is he in himself, like?’
Pauline grimaces, shakes her head. She opens her mouth to speak but appears to think better of it. It’s no more than a moment, then she says, ‘You don’t need to think about that any more, love.’
‘I’m not. It’s just that now I’m here … now I’m not in the shelter like, I … I mean, what if he finds us, P? What if he followed you here today?’
‘Well he won’t … he didn’t, all right? Forget about him, Caz. Honest to God, you’ll give yourself an ulcer.’ She looks about her. ‘You need to think about this place now. Lick of paint, bit of Shake ’n’ Vac on them carpets, honestly, it’ll be smashing. And it’s not for ever, is it? It’s only tempor— Oh, come on, love. Don’t cry.’