by Stuart Evers
When I pulled on the England jersey for the first time, as an under-sixteens, I came out and there were City fans singing my name. They shouted Birchy, Birchy, give us a wave. And I did. And I felt like the luckiest boy alive. I didn’t know how lucky I was.
Chris Birch, Near Miss – My Autobiography (Halfway Line Books, 2004)
14
Janice pushes open the door and rouses Neka from the bed on the floor, turns on the light.
‘It’s your father,’ she says. ‘He wants to speak to you.’
She’s in her nightdress, the sun has only just risen. Neka runs downstairs, picks up the telephone.
‘I’m coming to pick you up,’ her father says. ‘I’m coming now.’
‘But, Dad, you said—’
‘Never mind what I said. Get your things,’ he says. ‘Be ready in ten minutes.’
Anneka hands the receiver back to Janice. Anneka can feel herself turn white, so white she is translucent. Janice looks at her, looks at her daughter.
‘What did you do?’ Janice says. ‘What on earth did you two do?’
15
Even upstairs Gwen can hear the sound of his voice; its rage and howl. There are words – stupid, irresponsible, unbelievable – but also noises, animal grunts, cattle lows, that score his raging. Then it stops. She hears something crash and splinter and she runs downstairs. In the kitchen the telephone is cracked in several places; Drum kicking at its Bakelite shards.
‘What on earth’s going on?’ Gwen says, running to him, not finding him there; finding instead a man she can only dimly make out behind the wild eyes. He pushes her away, a dismissive, hardly forceful push, but one that sends her skittering on the stone flags.
‘What’s going on?’ she says. ‘You’re scaring me.’
A murderer on the loose. Up north somewhere. Gwen’s idea this. To let her from the gilded cage, out into the dangerous world. Her idea and her baby dead. Murdered and for what?
‘Is it Annie?’ she says. ‘Is she okay?’
There are welts on his fists; he has punched something; there is blood.
‘When she gets home, she won’t be,’ he says. ‘When I get my hands on her.’
‘She’s okay though?’
He stands by the fridge and it is for a moment normal; the usual kitchen conversation, talking about what to eat for dinner, what the plans are for the week. Just the bloodied hands and the glass eyes and the heaving breath saying different.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, she’s okay.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I said, didn’t I? I warned you, didn’t I? Trust her, you said.’
‘Can you just tell me what’s going on,’ she says. ‘Please?’
He sits down and she sits down with him.
‘She went to a party,’ he said. ‘Got in a car with two strange men. God only knows what happened.’
Her baby girl not murdered; her baby girl just a lying, deceitful teenager. Relief in that. Alive and in trouble, but alive nonetheless. The relief of that. The stupidity to be so scared about something so minor.
Gwen offers her arms, wraps him in them, but he refuses the embrace.
‘I said, didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I know. But she’s okay, isn’t she? All in one piece.’
He fills a glass of water, empties it, fills it, three times this, then downs the water and looks out the window.
‘She’s okay, yes,’ he says. ‘I spoke to her. She’s fine.’
‘How do you know she went to a party?’ she says.
‘Tommy saw them in a car when he was out running.’
‘And you’re sure?’
‘Positive. Knew it from the get-go. She’s planned this, I bet you.’
‘Shouldn’t you wait to hear her side?’ she says.
Upstairs is the book. Upstairs is Raymond Porter’s book. Upstairs, in another life Drum is reading it and suddenly piecing it all together, the way people sometimes can, a spiritual understanding of disloyalty. Instead it is Annie to answer. Annie to apologize and promise it won’t happen again.
‘You stay here,’ he says. ‘I’m going to get her now.’
‘Maybe I should—’
‘You stay here,’ he says. ‘You’ve done enough already.’
16
Nate hears the door go for the second time, and goes down to investigate the silence. No radio on, no sound but shoes being removed, coats being hung. From the stairs he watches his mother embrace his sister, the whiteness of her skin against her mother’s shoulder. His father is behind them and Nate has never seen his father look so grim-faced, so tensed in jaw and shoulder, like his body is constricting his movements to the absolute minimum. Nate inches down the stairs and waits behind the doorjamb. He watches them sit, her mother pour tea.
‘You’re not going to lie to me, are you?’ his father says to Anneka. ‘You wouldn’t do that, on top of everything else, would you?’
Anneka says nothing.
‘Who’s was the party?’ his mother says. ‘Someone from college?’
Anneka says nothing.
‘What scares me,’ his father says, ‘is the danger you put yourself in. Getting a lift with total strangers? What were you thinking?’
‘Who said I was in a car with total strangers?’
Her father gets up from his seat and the chair makes a loud scraping sound; it teeters on its legs as his father looks out of the window. Nate can see him breathing, the pushed-out breath.
‘It doesn’t matter who saw you,’ her mother says. ‘We know it was you.’
‘How could you be so fucking stupid?’ his father says to the window.
Nate has never heard his father swear before, never seen him so close to explosion, to actual violence. And yet it feels rigged; artificial. As though he’s been preparing this for years, taking rehearsed positions, only the players around him unsure of where to stand.
‘Was it Tommy?’ she says. ‘Was it him?’
‘I told you it doesn’t matter,’ he says. Admits it then. Admits it was Tommy. To do that to his sister. The grassing bastard.
‘He was at the party too,’ she says. ‘I saw him.’
‘It don’t care if Lord Lucan was there,’ her father says. ‘Only that you were.’
Nate’s seen this look before; the look that only his father can give. The precursor to a sanction that cuts to the heart of punishment. Like he’s seen into your soul and knows the one thing you want, the one thing not be taken away. A year before, the confiscation of football boots for fighting at school. The same face as then, almost delight in it.
‘That’s it, as far as I’m concerned. You can’t be trusted. You’ve taken my trust and you’ve burned it right in front of my eyes. And so you’re going to have to earn my trust again. This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to leave college and you’re going to work on the farm here with me. You’re going to earn my trust every day, right here.’
‘Dad, you can’t—’ Anneka says.
‘Drum,’ his mother says. ‘We should talk—’
‘Look at what happened the last time we talked,’ Drum says. ‘Just look at the state of her. She has to learn. I won’t be disrespected. I won’t be deceived like this. Not in my own house.’
The silence of the three of them. The panting breath, the odd look of victory on his father’s face. The sense of nowhere now to go, the script run out and now pure improvisation.
‘Now go to your room,’ he says.
Anneka looks at her mother and between them a mute conversation, an apology, a promise to fix this, a further apology.
‘I’m—’ Anneka says.
‘I don’t care what you are,’ her father says. ‘Get out of my sight.’
17
Late in the Sunday afternoon, Drum herds the cattle, his dutiful girls coming in for the night, all of them seeming quiet, subdued just for him; the cows taking his temperature, holding off on truculence. His daughter is not speaking to
him; his wife is not speaking to him. It is him, somehow, who is being judged; he who is somehow in the wrong. The whole affair has been handled badly. He will relent about college; he knows this, it is obvious. But he will set new sanctions. He will drive her to college and he will pick her up. She will not be allowed driving lessons for her birthday. She will learn to be trustworthy. It will seem like a fair compromise.
From down near the brook, he sees a thin column of smoke; more than a campfire, bigger of build. He walks down the incline towards it, sees flame in between the newly shedding trees. The hide is on fire; its roof just catching now, flames languid, almost calming. He heads back to the house, runs the incline and gets together buckets. He fills them from the brook, throws them over the hide, five or six of them to control the blaze, another ten or so to put it out.
Inside, it is blackly burned, the camp seats broken, remnants of paper on the singed carpeting. The smell of char and damp; of steaming wood. Plastic has melted into the flooring, pens and old toys. Not placed or arranged, just caught in the fire.
He walks the incline back home, stinking of smoke. He goes straight upstairs for a bath and does not tell anyone of the fire. They’ll find out soon enough.
The Winter House
1980
Friday 4 January
1
Three drawers removed from their chest; the drawers on the carpet, the clothes on the bed. A rummage of them: socks inside pants; bras inside T-shirts. Anneka kneels at the bedside, hands out, fingers extended, casting a spell. No movement in the fabric; no cotton twitches nor dancing singlets. One day. One day they will tango.
She begins with the socks, rolling them tightly, setting them flush against the left of the drawer. Knickers next, a fold across the waistband then laid on the right. Count them. Ten pairs. Ten pairs knickers; ten pairs socks. Bras next. Five. Draped between socks and knickers. Two black; three white. This taking half an hour. A further thirty minutes on T-shirts, arranging them in the lower drawer; changing the order, deciding eventually, as always, on three rows of three.
The clothes that remain on the bed are ragtag; garments that do not fold flat or keep their shape. A gym skirt; a thick-knit cardigan with buttons; two swimming costumes, both too small.
She’d once loved to swim. Loved it so much her father had called her Fish. For a time, he’d called her Fish more than love, or darling, or sweetheart: more even than the hated Annie. As she packed her swimsuit and towel, her father would say: ‘My Fish, time to swim!’ at the municipal pool he took her to, ‘My Fish, let’s swim!’ on swimming her first length a month after her sixth birthday. ‘My Fish, I’m so proud of you!’ Those once gilded words.
A reminder of that. Of that time. The piss-and-bleach smell, fogged eyes from chlorine, floating plasters and verruca socks. Not every time. Not every time a memory, but right now, yes.
On a summer holiday, she swam in the sea rather than paddling in its shallows. Her father followed her as she waded out, the grey cold up to her waist. She took small explorative steps, testing for shell and rock, until the seafloor suddenly gave and she was unmoored, adrift. Her father was on her quick and fleet, his hands on her torso, her arm. She was already at swim, though, already righted. She looked at him with disdain.
‘Even fish can drown,’ he said.
‘No they can’t,’ she said and turned away, swimming parallel to the beach, her eyes ahead, her father a vigilant distance behind. That shiver of freedom. He could have called her Water Baby, Sea Otter, Dolphin or Shark; instead he called her Fish.
She puts away the swimming costumes, clears the bed, job for the night done. She’s been quick. Under two hours, not even one o’clock yet. No chance of sleep before three. Never before three.
The wardrobe has been already sorted, but she considers starting on it again. No. She says this out loud. No. The wardrobe is only to be sorted before the drawers; any time afterwards is cheating. Cheat the ritual and there’s no chance of sleep at all.
Once there was sleep. When first they’d moved to the farm, she’d slept soundly, her room liking her in a way her old room never had. There were no nightmares, no city sounds to wake her. She adapted quickly to the quiet, the night-time animal noises; she was up with the larks, yes; but that normal in a farming house, the morning always loud: the cock crow and low of cattle, the suck of hoof in mud. Years of that. Then, around the turn of her eighteenth birthday, the last months before her A-levels, sleep abandoned her, disappearing like candle smoke.
She moves to the small desk by the window, the insomniac sky a jeweller’s cloth. There are three piles of papers on the desk: three subjects, three failures, three exams to re-sit. She turns on the lamp, a letter from Lissa on top of the history revision. A short letter, the shortest yet. Soon it will be postcards: picture postcards of the Roman Catholic cathedral, the Cavern, the Liver Birds. Wish you were here. Come visit. Must rush.
Had she been able to sleep, she would be in Liverpool now, with Lissa, in the flat they said they’d share. Had sleep not deserted her, Anneka would have passed exams as predicted, made good on her promise. Maybe if she’d had the night-time ritual then it would have been enough. Maybe if she’d never gone to Fernando’s party, she would now be gone, able to strut the streets rather than rot in the farmhouse.
She picks up her copy of Wuthering Heights, tries to read around the pencil annotations, the underscorings. Time was she could not read the set-text. Time was she hid it under her bed. Time was she saw, in the window above the desk at which she now sits, the ghost of Cathy Earnshaw clawing at the glass. Time was she heard scratching as the waif tried to gain entry. Time was she saw Heathcliff on her bed. Time was she saw, at the foot of the bed, Kate Bush dancing, all linens and silk, stark staring eyes and whooping shrill. Time was Heathcliff whispered and Cathy moaned and Kate Bush wailed. Time was that her father would come into her room, hold her shaking body.
‘Shush now, shush now,’ her father would say. ‘A bad dream, that’s all, a bad dream.’
And she’d want to say she could not sleep. That she could not sleep, let alone dream. But she’d say nothing, just flit her eyes around the room, watching for the ghost Cathy, the banshee Bush. Not telling her father. Keeping it back for herself.
On her desk, the letter from Lissa. Miss you, it says, by way of signing off. Lissa came home for Christmas, talked of people Anneka did not know, of hanging out at News From Nowhere, a bookshop not a club, and Eric’s, a club not a bookshop, where she saw all the bands now, The Raincoats, her favourite. The third loss this.
The first after Fernando’s party. She was allowed to continue at college, but good to his word, Anneka was never far from her father’s orbit. College and home and no points between, him there in the morning, there in the afternoon. She remained friends with Lissa, but it changed things: Lissa finding new extra-curricular friends; Lissa finding new music, new clothes; Lissa with stories from her weekend; Lissa with a boyfriend.
The second when Anneka stopped sleeping, started acting oddly. Lissa asking if she was on smack. Lissa telling her to see a doctor, to get some Valium. Anything. The way she pleaded, and the way Anneka said no. All was fine. Just tired, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. The tutors were worried though; they saw the spiralling of her work.
Her English tutor, a young man with a ginger beard and a flat Mancunian accent, was the first to take her aside, to ask if all was well.
‘Why do you ask?’ Anneka said.
‘This essay,’ he said. ‘It’s incoherent. It’s poorly written. It has no logic. It also has quotes from Jane Eyre in it.’
She did not believe him, but there they were: Rochester and Heathcliff transposed, Orson Welles not Laurence Olivier.
‘Whatever it is you’re up to, Anneka,’ he said. ‘Knock it on the head. You look like raw mince.’
The second time, her history tutor asked her to stop behind after a lesson. He took off his glasses, as though she would trust him more if she saw his e
yes, and asked if everything was okay.
‘After what you did to me, you think anything is okay?’ Anneka said. ‘After all the filthy things you did?’
She accused him of all kinds of interference. Saw him upon her. But also Heathcliff watching. Cathy laughing. Kate Bush strumming a zither. Then knew. Stopped there. The history tutor white-faced and almost cowering.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean any of that. I’ve been . . .’
But she didn’t know what she’d been, and the tutor took her to the dean, and the dean sent her home, and her mother sent her to the doctor, and the doctor prescribed pills she pretended to take but did not.
Seven exams all told; seven failures. In the exam on Wuthering Heights, she saw Orson Welles, and he whispered in her ear, ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’ She transcribed it as he whispered, filling furious sides, enjoying every semi-colon. On leaving, she did not know she’d failed; she thought she’d written the essay of her life.
Anneka gets up from the desk, sits herself in the window alcove, the distant lights of town and the darkness below; no Heathcliff now, no Kate Bush, no Cathy laughing. She opens the window and lights a cigarette, the cold air parading the smoke. She looks down to the road, past the dell, and there are lights, headlamps on the road. Then on the track, a white skittering through the trees.
She does not recognize the car; it is large, old-fashioned. It bucks the tracks and a light comes on inside the Carter house; Daphne in the kitchen window, fully dressed, pouring gin. The car pulls up outside the house, a man gets out. A tall spindle of a man carrying a small case.
Anneka watches him disappear inside, reappear in the kitchen with Daphne, her glass empty and hidden in the large sink. She watches them talk, Daphne all nods, like she’s taking orders. And then the telephone rings. Not in the Carter house, but downstairs. Anneka hears her parents’ door open and her father hurriedly take the stairs, the muffle of his voice from downstairs. She hears the receiver click in its cradle. She hears the silence of the house.