St. Clare appears more confident this morning than when last we saw him. His questions are easy enough for Tyson Manley to answer and designed to give us a sympathetic picture of his life and background. The court hears that he has recently turned seventeen, having had his last birthday a month ago behind bars while on remand. We learn he grew up with his mother and two brothers, Vito and De-Niro, that he last saw his father when he was eight years old and has had no contact with him since, that Vito’s father is dead and De-Niro’s is currently serving time.
He is polite, says “sir” at the end of some of his responses. His voice is quiet. He meets St. Clare’s eyes with every answer. If I hadn’t been here listening to the evidence over the last week, if I did not know who he was or what he’d done, if I had simply met him on the street and had a short interchange with him, I would probably have thought he was a nice boy, and if it had happened in the last seven months, that thought would have been followed with lucky mum. I think I expected his voice to roar through the courtroom, that the capacity inside a person that permits them to rape and maim and kill would be evident in his mannerisms, the way he spoke. I expected the walls to shake, the stand to spontaneously combust, expected his speaking to have the impact on the room around him that his actions have had on our lives. Instead I am listening as he quietly, politely explains that he thinks Vito was the most affected by his dad not being around when they were growing up, that he was the one who kept getting into trouble with the police, the one his mother could not control. His own life was apparently sitting neatly on the right tracks till Vito was shot and killed in front of him in the park near their home, the killer never brought to justice by the police. He talks about his brother’s murder as calmly as if he were describing a scene from a play. I look over at De-Niro. His elbows are on his knees, his palms cup his chin as he leans forward. He looks sad. Interested but sad. His mother, on the other side of him, her eyes concealed behind her large sunglasses, sits ramrod straight in her seat, and presumably she is an expert at concealing her feelings, because she appears entirely unmoved.
“You began getting into trouble after the death of your brother, did you not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Within four months, you had been permanently excluded from school.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And were you able to start attending a new school straightaway?”
“No.”
“Precisely how long were you out of school?”
“Musta been six months.”
“And how was that time spent?”
“Hanging ’round. Playing Wii.”
“How would you describe that period in your life?”
“I was bored outta my box. Only things I could do cost dosh I never had.”
“And it was around this time that you were arrested for the first time?”
“Yeah.”
“And what was that for?”
“Possession of marijuana, sir.”
“You were convicted for this, I believe?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you like to tell us about that conviction?”
He’s relaxed, I think, in control. After a pause he says, “The police are always down my estate, always stopping and searching us when we ain’t doing nothing or causing no trouble. They say they stop and search the black youth ’cause we’re the ones committing the most crime, but at the end of the day ain’t it gonna look like we’re committing the most crime if it’s only our houses being searched, only us being frisked, only our underpants they’re looking down? I had a little draw on me, next thing they’re saying I’m some big weed dealer, which I weren’t. Couldn’t convict me for that ’cause they never had the evidence, but they still convicted me for possession. You know how many people get a caution for smoking a spliff? But I got a conviction.”
Lorna leans over, whispers, “I really hope his defense isn’t gonna be that he was framed by the police ’cause he’s black.”
I’m hoping in fact it is, a silly defense easily seen through by the jurors. Yet I think about what he says, try to imagine Ryan out of school for half a year, hanging around all day on the streets, wonder what he, the best of boys, would have gotten up to. The point of the compulsory education system we have is that it creates order. Whether each child comes out at the end of it with a barrowful of qualifications is another matter, but it promotes structure and discipline. It does actually usefully occupy young people. It provides the reason to set the alarm and get out of bed, put your uniform on, show up and focus to some extent on the day. What do you do in the absence of that structure, outside the rules, outside society? Was he expected to sit at home educating himself online? One day with nothing to do would have had Ryan climbing the walls; six months?
St. Clare has him talking about his mother, how hard she struggled to bring up the three boys on her own, bouts of homelessness, debt, and depression, how difficult it was for her coping with Vito’s death. He says it is only recently she has begun to function again, and I hear the subtext loudly; this is a poor guy from a messed-up family, whose mother already has a lot on her plate, and sending this son down, the next one in chronological order still alive, will probably push her over the edge. I think about Ms. Manley, about that single occasion in the toilet, the two of us alone. I know exactly how it feels to have a son killed; of course she’s traumatized, of course it took time to get back to a place where it was possible to function, but I look over at her all dolled up in her designer gear, reeking of perfume, half her face concealed by those ridiculous sunglasses, the little skin you can see made up to the nines, and I see nothing that speaks of softness or fragility or sadness. I see instead a woman with something skewed in her value system, something wrong with her priorities. If our circumstances were reversed, I could never have said the horrible words she said to me.
But then I can’t determine the extent to which I have the right to judge her, and not just to judge, but to judge on my terms, in comparison with the life I’ve led. I’ve never had to bring up three boys on my own. I had one son, who had two parents, and raising him was still a hard task. My mother worked hard to provide, and Lloydie and I have worked hard to provide. We’ve never been loaded, never not had to concern ourselves with how much money we had coming in, but we have never been destitute, never been without a place to live or been dependent on the system to house and clothe and feed us. Lorna has been a single mother for most of Leah’s life, she has done a grand job raising my wonderful niece, and she has done most of it singlehandedly, worked and grafted and raised her child to understand right from wrong, but she has never been without a solid support network. Did Ms. Manley ever have anyone to lean on, to help when she needed it most, someone to take the kids off her hands, occasional respite? And what difference does any of this make anyway? Am I suggesting she is blameless insofar as Ryan’s death is concerned, that shitty life circumstances are a form of absolution? Because that’s rubbish. Calling my son “collateral damage” wasn’t the act of a person who is traumatized, it is the ignorance of a woman who does not know herself what’s right or wrong.
St. Clare asks, “Mr. Manley, what are your ambitions?”
“My what?”
“Dreams. For yourself. What do you hope for yourself, for your future?”
It is the first question to which Tyson Manley doesn’t have an off-the-cuff response, that he appears to really think about. The pause before he speaks is so long, I begin to wonder if he understands the question. Finally he answers, “I don’t have no dreams.”
“You must have one.”
“Nah, I don’t.”
“Not one single hope?”
A pause, then, “To be alive still, when I’m older.”
My eyes fill. The ache inside me makes my heart pound and that pounding continues throughout the time St. Clare flicks through his papers with slow deliberation, allowing his client’s words sufficient time to sink in.
“Mr. Manley, how woul
d you describe the relationship you had with Miss Nelson?”
“She weren’t my girlfriend, I’ll tell you that much. She hung around the guys and she would sleep with anyone. Yeah, I slept with her from time to time, she was chucking it about like it weren’t no big thing. Then she started telling me she wannid us to be girlfriend and boyfriend, like man’s gonna wanna be serious about any girl who ain’t got no pride in herself.”
“So you were not boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“No, sir.”
“I see. Much has been made of the fact that Miss Nelson and Ryan Williams, the deceased, were seeing each other and in telephone contact in the months before Mr. Williams was killed. The suggestion is that you were jealous of this relationship and because of this, intended harm to Ryan Williams.”
“That ain’t true.”
“Did you know Ryan Williams?”
“No.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you aware of anyone Miss Nelson has been out with in the past?”
“Seriously, I don’t know, but she’s slept with near ’nough every man I know.”
“And how did you feel about that, knowing that she was seeing other men, ‘sleeping’ with them, as you say?”
“I never felt no way. She weren’t my girl. I couldn’t care less.”
This is what happens when there are no rules, when there is no adult steering and guiding, when children are allowed to make bad decisions then follow them through. Ms. Manley is responsible for that. How can any woman raise a son so unconscious of any responsibility to treat women with respect, capable of the things this boy has done, able to come into court and lie his head off regarding his actions? What kind of person would keep her youngest son off school to witness this? What on earth does she think he’s learning? If my Ryan had ever spoken in my hearing about any girl he’d had relations with in that way, I would have gone in hard. First of all I would have wanted to know if she was so low, what it said about him that he still chose to have intercourse with her? That would have been the starting point and the conversation would have been downhill from there.
“Mr. Manley, as you are doubtless aware, Miss Nelson has made a series of grievous allegations against you. She has said that you and your friends monitored her phone . . .”
“Nah. That ain’t true.”
“That you listened to a message Ryan Williams left on her telephone and you flew into a rage . . .”
“There woulda had to be some kinda relationship in the first place. I never said she couldn’t see who she wannid.”
“She says you made threats about ‘sorting’ her and Ryan Williams . . .”
“That’s just lies, man.”
“You’re saying the evidence Miss Nelson gave to this court yesterday was not true?”
“I’m saying it was bare lies. Bare lies.” He shakes his head as if it completely disgusts him; dishonesty disgusts him. A number of the jurors have the same expression on their faces and I wonder if they are merely reflecting his expression or whether, like me, they think he has overplayed his hand, gone just a little too far with the drama. Kwame was right; he is showing off.
St. Clare questions him about Sweetie wanting him to be her baby’s official father on the birth certificate, his refusal, the manner in which she stormed off following the discussion, and how this led to Tyson Manley thinking she was going to try to do something to get him back. This neatly brings him back to the issue of why he thinks she lied under oath. They finish up with his version of the events of March 18, his arrival at Sweetie’s at four in the afternoon, just as she said in her original statement, more than two hours before the murder occurred, and his assertion that he remained at Sweetie’s home till after eight the following morning. By the time St. Clare has finished with his questions, it is quarter to one and the judge directs the court to break for lunch.
Lorna, Lloydie, and I go to the pub over the lunch break. We are a little earlier today than the last time we were here, and it is easier to find a table, quicker to get settled, order.
I say, “I wanted him to explain it to me, that’s what I was hoping for, even if I disagreed with his actions, that boy would explain them and maybe I would understand.”
“Understand how one kid kills another for nothing? You think there’s a way he could’ve explained it that you would understand?” Lorna asks. “You think he understands? You’re probably giving him more credit than he’s entitled to. He’s had a shitty innings, and he was just jealous.”
“No, I don’t think you’re right. Sweetie said he never cared about her. He doesn’t. He doesn’t care about anyone. He wasn’t some jealous lover . . .”
“He wasn’t jealous of Ryan’s brains or looks, he was jealous Sweetie had found a route to possibilities, to maybe being happy, when he hasn’t, possibly never will. His future’s so bleak. He was jealous that for a second it looked like hers might not be.”
Lloydie says quietly, “What I don’t understand is he looks so . . . normal.”
Lorna leans over and gives Lloydie a big hug, rubs his back. Under the table, I take Lloydie’s hand. I know exactly what he means. I came to court to hate him. I came to court to see evil personified, and instead of a devil, have found myself looking at a boy, a confused and severely damaged boy the same age as our son.
He says, “I just don’t understand it.”
I say, “There’s no logic, Lloyd, to any of this.”
Lorna says, “Marcia’s right, there’s nothing to understand. It just is.”
“What’s she like?” I ask. “The baby?”
Lorna smiles. “Gorgeous. She has a tiny curly coolie afro. She’s absolutely adorable. I have to stop on the way back and pick them up some bits. When they turned up yesterday, Sweetie had the baby in one arm and a carrier bag on the other, one of those big hospital property bags with all their stuff inside. Everything she has was in her arms. I could have cried.”
I remember taking Ryan home the day after he was born. Lloydie had decorated the nursery while I was pregnant. We’d done the shopping for the cot and buggy and car seat. We’d bought a chest of drawers, the one still inside his room now, and the top drawers were filled with delicious tiny baby clothes, the essentials, Babygros and vests and socks and mittens, and gorgeous gift outfits bought by Dan and Rose, friends at work, my mother, Lorna in excited-auntie overdrive. We spent ages trying to decide which outfit we would put on him for his first-ever trip, from hospital to home, couldn’t make a decision, brought two in the end to the hospital with us, made the choice of what to dress him in on the day. Lloydie had left us a few hours after Ryan was born, was gone for ages. When we arrived back, dinner had been cooked and there was a bottle of Champagne on the kitchen table, two new flutes beside it. I remember looking at those flutes, at my husband, at the beautiful baby we had made, thinking, I will never forget this moment, it is perfect.
“Who does she look like?”
I meant the question to sound more neutral. I should have asked, Does she look like her mum? But that’s not what I want to ask. I want to ask, Does she look like Ryan? Does she look like Ryan did at the same age?
“She looks like a newborn baby, a tiny sweet newborn baby girl.”
“Are they both okay?” Lloydie asks.
“They’re fine. They’re well. I fed the baby this morning before I left home. Sweetie was sleeping, poor thing. She’s exhausted.” She shakes her head. “I was watching her while I was feeding the baby and I just couldn’t believe someone so young has been through so much.”
She could be speaking about Leah, I hear it in her voice, a maternal defense rising; she’s ready to fight for her, this girl from the streets, a nobody. I hope Sweetie doesn’t let my sister down, that she hasn’t robbed Lorna and vacated her flat by the time she gets home. It is an uncharitable thought. Despite St. Clare’s efforts to paint her as a compulsive liar, in all my dealings with her, she’s been nothing but candid.
Our help could do it, help her change her life, completely change the outcome for that baby.
I ask, “Do you think she’d agree to do a DNA test?”
Lorna stops raising her glass to her lips, midway. “Why should she?”
“So we can know for sure, either way, for definite . . .”
“I don’t know. I’m not gonna ask her. I don’t think you should, either.”
“What, you don’t think it’s important to know whether she’s my grandchild or not?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, that’s fine for you to say.” I don’t expand, don’t add that her child is still living, that hers is the comfortable perspective of those whose children have not been slain, wiped out for good. I don’t need to expand, because she knows exactly what I mean and is furious.
“Don’t you ever, ever talk to me like I never loved Ryan! Don’t you ever, ever speak to me as if I don’t hurt, as if I don’t mourn and bleed and cry for him, as if when he died, part of me didn’t die with him as well.”
“So can’t you understand that I need to know?”
“Why? Because if that baby is Ryan’s child that makes her valuable? Because then, she can count on our support and help and some chance of a decent future? And if she’s not, we can all just turn our backs and leave them to fend for themselves? If she doesn’t bear your precious genes, Ryan’s DNA, it’ll be fine for the whole bloody world to ignore her, for her to be chucked out of school, chucked out of society, chucked on the heap, to be drugged up, beaten up, for videos of her being raped to be plastered on YouTube? Don’t you understand that’s exactly what’s wrong with everything?”
“I have a right to know.”
“If it’s your right, you ask.”
“It is and I will,” I say.
Because I know she is. She has to be my son’s child, because I need her to be so much. Because there is nothing more I want, nothing more. It is the only outcome that can bring some sense to the senselessness of what has happened, give us a reason to go on. This baby is my grandchild. Despite the National Lottery odds, someone still wins the jackpot.
The Mother Page 19