The Things We Never Said

by Wright, Susan Elliot

  ‘Lenny,’ she says. ‘What on earth? This place is a pigsty!’

  He looks sheepish. ‘I know. I’ve been doing split shifts. And the daily left in November . . .’ He looks around as though he’s seeing the room for the first time. ‘It is a bit of a state, isn’t it?’ Then his face brightens. ‘I forgot – I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  He leads her along the hall to her old room, tells her to close her eyes. When she opens them, she smiles. ‘Oh Lenny, it’s perfect.’

  ‘I made it,’ he says, running his hand along the sidebar of the wooden cot. ‘Not bad for a beginner, is it?’

  ‘It’s beautiful, Len. Thank you.’ She smiles as he shows her the blue teddy bear he’s painted at one end and the pink rabbit with the bright yellow bow at the other.

  *

  The tall, draughty windows in Maggie’s bedroom rattle in the wind, and ivy has started to grow into the room through a gap in the frame. She keeps finding things she left here before she went to Sheffield – hairspray, perfume, eyeliner – but it’s as though they belong to someone else. She picks up a record: ‘All I Have to Do is Dream’. Yes, she thinks, and boil a dozen nappies, and wash a mountain of woolly jackets and cot sheets. She shoves the record back in its sleeve just as the twins start to grizzle. Jonathan’s easier to feed, so she sees to him first. Breastfeeding certainly saves money, she thinks, but she wonders how long she’ll be able to stand it. Both twins clamp onto her nipple as though they’re terrified she’ll get away. As they take in the milk, she fancies she can see them filling up, becoming plumper and more rosy-cheeked while she herself becomes thinner, paler, weaker. She feels as though she may look in the mirror one day and find that she’s no longer there. Is that the sole purpose of mothers, she wonders: a source of nourishment that simply fades away when no longer needed? After all, hadn’t her own mother died as soon as her children became independent?

  When she tries to nurse a wailing Elizabeth, the child just pulls and twists at the nipple, stretching it out until Maggie winces in pain. Eventually, Elizabeth settles and drops off to sleep, milk spilling out of her mouth as though she’s overflowing.

  Maggie lights a cigarette and sighs as she looks out of the window. March. It’s snowed every day for weeks; how much longer can it last? It was bright and crisp this morning, but now it’s clouding over again and the sky is heavy and bulging. It’s all there, waiting.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jonathan is only out for a few seconds. He can’t remember Malcolm trying to bring him round, nor can he recall being hauled into the police station. In fact, the next thing he remembers is sitting on a long bench, slumped against the wall next to a lad with a nosebleed and a shrivelled-looking man in a donkey jacket. Every few seconds, the man, who stinks of cider and vomit, mutters and waves an uncertain fist at anyone who’s passing.

  A few feet away, Malcolm is leaning against the desk, partially supported by a skinny policeman who looks about sixteen. An older officer with a boozer’s nose is taking details. Jonathan opens his mouth to speak, but nothing happens, so he leans his head back against the wall and lets Malcolm do the talking.

  ‘Postcode?’

  ‘Sierra echo three,’ Malcolm slurs, ‘two fosstrot Zulu.’

  ‘Smartarse,’ the copper says without looking up. ‘Right, follow PC Linton here and get your heads down for a couple of hours. Then we’ll see.’

  ‘C’mon then, lads,’ the young copper says, pulling Jonathan to his feet.

  ‘Lads? We’re nearly old enough to be your fathers.’

  ‘Time you acted like it then, isn’t it? Come on.’

  They follow him down some stairs where he unlocks the door to a small cell. ‘Not both of you. This isn’t bloody scout camp.’

  Someone is throwing up in the next cell. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ the copper mutters. ‘You,’ he says, nodding at Jonathan and indicating a concrete bench covered with a thin blue mattress. ‘Lie down before you fall down.’ He turns to Malcolm. ‘You, follow me.’ He jangles his keys and calls back into the cell, ‘Sleep tight, and don’t bother ringing for room service.’ The door slams and Jonathan hears the key turn.

  He lies down on the mattress and groans. How on earth has he ended up in this state? In the corner there’s a stainless-steel lavatory – just the pan, no seat, and as far as he can tell, no paper. He hopes he won’t be needing it, but he’s desperate for . . . actually, his bladder doesn’t feel so uncomfortable now. He can probably wait. Something tugs at the sleeve of his memory, then everything begins to spin and he surrenders willingly to oblivion.

  *

  It seems like only minutes later when someone shakes him awake. He sits up too quickly and pain hammers into his skull.

  ‘Come on, rise and shine.’ It’s the same PC that put him in here earlier, only now he smells of sweat and cheeseburgers. ‘It’s all kicked off in New Cross and we need the space.’

  Jonathan looks around. ‘What, you mean I can go?’

  ‘You can, Sir. No tea in bed though, I’m afraid. It’s the maid’s day off. Your mate’s waiting upstairs. Sobered up quite quick after he puked. Report to the desk, then you can both sling your hooks.’

  Jonathan shuffles up the stairs, heart pounding with the effort. He feels sick, dizzy, and desperately thirsty. How could he have been so stupid? According to the clock on the wall, it’s almost half past three. Fiona will be worried sick; he needs to call her. Reception is crowded with loudmouthed youths, shouting and swearing at the officers trying to manhandle them into the processing area. The unmistakable smell of marijuana hangs in the air.

  ‘Lucky we’ve been so busy,’ the custody sergeant says, as Jonathan signs for his things. ‘If it weren’t for the paperwork I’d have done you for Drunk and Incapable.’ He raises his eyebrows. ‘Not to mention Indecent Exposure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ A fragment of memory skitters through his mind.

  ‘Good job PC Collins came along when he did.’ The policeman’s beard shifts as a grin spreads across his big face. He shakes his head slowly, in an exaggerated way. ‘Dear oh dear oh dear. Much longer with it all hanging out in this weather and you’d have been singing soprano.’

  The jigsaw of the final moments before he passed out begins to reassemble itself in Jonathan’s head. He groans.

  The sergeant nods in the direction of a room off the reception area. ‘Your mate’s through there,’ he says, whist ling ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’, as Jonathan walks towards the door.

  Malcolm’s face is not so much pale as translucent. ‘That was Cass,’ he says, putting his phone away. ‘Her mother’s going over to babysit and then she’s coming to pick us up. She tried to get hold of Fiona, apparently, but she’s not answering.’

  ‘That’s us both in the shit then.’

  ‘Yep. I told Cass we’d get a cab but she doesn’t trust us. She said I should thank the lord she didn’t get the kids up out of bed and trail them down here to show me up for the worthless streak of snake-shit that I am. Quote, unquote. Then she hung up on me.’

  ‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Malcolm is quiet for a minute. ‘This business with . . . you know, all this bollocks that you might have inherited some killer streak or something—’

  ‘I know you think it’s bollocks, but for God’s sake, it was bad enough thinking I might take after my—’

  ‘Just belt up for two bloody minutes, will you?’ Malcolm snaps, lunging towards him so violently that, for a moment, Jonathan thinks he’s going to hit him, but instead he grabs his shoulders. ‘Listen, for fuck’s sake. There’s something I’ve never told you before. Something I don’t like to even think about.’ He leans forward, head bowed, arms resting on his knees; he laces and unlaces his fingers.

  The anguish etched on Malcolm’s face shocks Jonathan into silence, but then the door swings open and a spiky-haired teenager in a leather jacket and ripped jeans swaggers over to the vending machine and punches in his select
ion. Malcolm’s hands drop to his sides and he turns away again. An older man follows the younger, his eyes flicking nervously around the room. He leans and says something to the boy who shrugs him off, grabs a can from the mouth of the machine and stalks towards the door. The man looks around with an apologetic expression as the youth snarls at him from the doorway. ‘Dad! I need to get my head down, innit?’ As the man hurries after his son, Jonathan glimpses an inch of pyjama-bottom poking out beneath his trousers. He is wearing carpet slippers.

  The heavy door swings shut behind them, causing a brief draught before the stillness returns. Malcolm turns to Jonathan again; he looks crushed. ‘Listen,’ he sighs. ‘My father . . .’ His voice catches. ‘My father started touching me up when I was ten.’

  Jonathan thinks he’s misheard.

  ‘I had five younger brothers and sisters; my mum locked herself in the spare room most nights – we’d all heard her telling him she couldn’t cope with any more kids. One night, they had this huge row. She screamed at him that he wouldn’t be such a good Catholic if it was him who had the babies. He yelled something back, then he ripped the bathroom cabinet off the wall and chucked it through the window.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Jonathan speaks in a whisper.

  ‘We were picking slivers of glass off the front path for days after. Anyway, that’s when he started on me. I won’t go into what he did, but shall we say it progressed. He’d come into our room while my mum was on nights. I’d lie there watching the door and waiting for the handle to turn, trying not to cry in case I woke my brothers up.’ He takes a breath. ‘Then, after two years, it stopped.’

  Jonathan lays his hand briefly on Malcolm’s arm. A wave of nausea threatens to engulf him but he fights it down.

  ‘I was so glad I didn’t have to watch for that fucking doorknob that it never occurred to me to wonder why it had stopped. I only found out a few years ago; he’d moved on to my sister, Karen. She was ten – that was the magic number. You’re into double figures now, he used to say, as though it was some sort of grown-up privilege. According to Karen, he got at our brother Andy as well. Andy’s never told me himself. I just thank God the old bastard dropped dead before he could touch the little ones.’

  ‘Malc, I don’t know what to say. Here I am, going on about my problems when all the time . . .’ A series of images flashes through his mind: Malcolm as best man at his and Fiona’s wedding, Malcolm’s wedding to Cass, Malcolm with his sons from his first marriage, flying kites on Blackheath. And the everyday stuff, Malcolm bringing beer when they built the shed, Malcolm backing him up at school, Malcolm cajoling him back to am-dram when he was about to drop it. In every mental snapshot, Malcolm is smiling, encouraging, not a trace of self-pity. ‘I had no idea.’ He moves to place a comforting hand on Malcolm’s shoulder, but their arms knock awkwardly together. ‘Sorry, I was . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What about your mum?’

  ‘We never told her. What he did was down to him; no one else.’ Malcolm turns towards him, a stricken light in his eyes. ‘All this like father, like son stuff is nonsense. I’ve got kids, remember?’

  ‘Oh God, no, I didn’t mean . . .’

  Malcolm picks up his cup and drains it. ‘So any more genetic inevitability claptrap, and I might just have to knock your block off.’

  ‘Point taken.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it again, all right?’

  ‘Okay, but—’

  ‘Never. I mean it.’ Malcom stands. ‘Right.’ He jingles the coins in his pocket. ‘Let’s grab another coffee to fortify ourselves before Cass gets here.’

  Just then, the door opens and an officer they’ve not seen before informs them that Cassie is waiting in reception. ‘You naughty boys are in trouble, aren’t you?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  After a few weeks, it becomes clear that they can’t all survive on what Leonard earns, so Maggie finds a job she can do at home – making rubber pants for babies. She gets Leonard to set up their mother’s old Singer sewing machine in the living room, and she starts work. A box containing pieces of transparent rubber, cut out and ready to sew, is delivered each week along with two bags of white rubber bands – small ones for the legs and bigger ones for the tops. Maggie stitches up the sides, then sews the bands in and hey presto, rubber pants! She works throughout the summer, clattering away at the sewing machine, her foot rhythmically working the treadle. When she pauses to light a cigarette, it’s as though the machine is holding its breath, waiting for her to start again. Occasionally she looks out at the sun, high in the sky. Maybe she could take a short break, take the twins down to the beach perhaps. But no; she has a quota to fill.

  As she machines away, much faster now she’s been doing it for a while, she thinks back to the day she’d got talking to Janine, who’d put her in touch with the people for whom she makes the rubber pants. It was back in May, the first day that it had been warm enough to go to the beach. The sun had still been weak, but doing its best to melt the grime-streaked snowman remains that still lingered in some of the front gardens even then. Maggie had looked down at the twins as she wheeled them along the promenade, Jonathan gnawing on a teething ring, Elizabeth leaning against him and just looking around, blinking at the world. Flashes of sunlight glanced off the water; the air smelled salty and carried the tang of freshly caught fish. She got them down the slope to the beach, and managed to drag the pushchair across the pebbles to a spot nearer the sea. They were trying to wriggle out of their straps, so she unbuckled them, lifted them out and set them down on the stones, where they gazed in wonder at seagulls as big as themselves, and waves gently fizzing onto the shore. She gave them each an Ovaltine rusk and they gnawed away happily while she flicked through a copy of Woman’s Realm.

  Within minutes, the twins had an admirer – a little girl called Diane, whose heavily pregnant mother was sitting nearby.

  ‘I’m Janine,’ the woman smiled. ‘You are lucky having twins – all the agony out of the way in one go!’ Janine wore pearls and a pale-green frock and apart from being in the family way, she looked just like Jackie Kennedy. She took out a pack of Park Drive and offered one to Maggie, and the two of them spent the afternoon chatting and smoking in the warm sunshine. Diane, besotted, entertained the twins with her new ‘Tressy’ doll – a rather creepy thing in Maggie’s opinion, with hair that ‘grew’ when you pushed a button in its back. It was as they were packing up to go that Maggie mentioned being short of money. ‘Have you got a sewing machine?’ Janine asked. And she told Maggie about the rubber pants. ‘It’s not much money,’ she’d said as she wrote down the telephone number on the back of Maggie’s cigarette packet. ‘But I’ve done it since Diane was born, and if it weren’t for junior here,’ she gestured to her swollen belly, ‘I’d still be doing it.’

  Maggie could kick herself for not asking Janine for her number; she barely sees anyone except Leonard these days, and she could really do with a friend.

  *

  By the time the chill of autumn settles once more around Maggie’s shoulders, she is heartily sick of rubber pants. It’s difficult to sew when her fingers are so cold, but she needs the money. She hates this weather. The air smells damp and smoky, and a dense fog is trying to push its way in from outside. This isn’t exactly a ‘pea-souper’, but fog unsettles Maggie almost as much as it did her mother. It was, after all, what killed her father. He’d been covering for another chef in London during the smog of 1952 when he went down with bronchitis. The hotel sent him back home to Hastings, but he never recovered.

  The twins sit side by side in their high chairs. Jonathan eats impatiently as usual, his mouth opening up like a little bird for each spoonful. He chomps twice, swallows, opens again then bangs the plastic tray in protest at the delay while Maggie tries to spoon mashed banana and custard into a reluctant Elizabeth, who clamps her mouth shut and twists away, her face wrinkling in misery. Jonathan reaches for his sister and his fingers brush against h
er forehead. She stops her fretting and rests her head against her brother’s hand. ‘Mimbet,’ Jonathan says, his eleven-month-old attempt at ‘Elizabeth’. His fingers flex and scrunch in her hair as though testing its silkiness. Briefly, Elizabeth is calm.

  How different they are: Jonathan with his scrubby little tufts of golden hair, robust and solid and always laughing; Elizabeth with her satiny white-blonde curls, tiny, fragile, skin almost translucent.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ Maggie coaxes. ‘Just one mouthful.’ But Elizabeth refuses and resumes her whimpering. ‘Come on.’ Maggie pushes the plastic spoon against her child’s firmly closed lips. Elizabeth is testing her; Elizabeth knows she is not a proper mother, merely an accidental one who is failing. ‘Please, darling. Be a good girl for Mummy.’ But Elizabeth shakes her head. ‘Oh, for crying out loud!’ Maggie scrapes her chair back and tries to wipe spilt food off her already-stained slacks. ‘Can’t you eat the damn stuff just one time without a fuss?’

  Elizabeth starts to cry. ‘You’re doing this deliberately,’ Maggie snaps. Jonathan’s eyes widen and his lower lip trembles. He too starts to yell. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ She lifts Jonathan out of the highchair, moves aside the overflowing laundry basket with her foot and sets him down on the rug, then puts Elizabeth down next to him. Jonathan, easily distracted, starts happily tearing off strips of the Daily Sketch and trying to eat them. Maggie disengages the paper from his tightly curled fingers and gives him some wooden bricks instead. Elizabeth makes no attempt to play, despite Maggie’s open handbag being within her reach. Her skin is pale, the pallor emphasised by the redness of her eyes, which seem tiny and piggish in her moon-face. When Jonathan tries to interest her in a green brick, she continues to sit immobile. He tries a red brick, but to no avail. Maggie touches her daughter’s forehead and is shocked by the intensity of the heat. How could she not have noticed? Thank God Leonard insisted on having a telephone put in. But when she asks if the doctor can call round, the receptionist can barely keep the outrage from her voice: ‘Doctor has far too big a round to be coming out to snuffly babies,’ she says. ‘Bring her along to evening surgery. Five o’clock.’ And she hangs up.