Writing On the Wall

by Lynne Reid Banks

  But Vlady would know that it was, in a way. I mean that I should have known. He always said I was only thick because I didn’t want to use my head. All the clues were there, right from the off. I could read them now, like looking back and seeing lots of dirty great big road-signs, all lit up, that I hadn’t even bothered to look at when I passed them. I’d just gone speeding on, head down. Vlady would’ve spotted them. Why should he let me off for not?

  23 · Coming Home

  You wouldn’t believe there was worse to come, would you? But there was – in a way.

  I mean, in another way nothing could have been worse than what happened to me at the customs in Harwich. Whenever I think of that I go all cold. But that was mainly physical. What happened when I got home was mental. Mental torture.

  I’m not going to rehearse things ahead any more. It’s useless. It never, never turns out anything like you imagine. I’d thought Dad would be the angry one, him being so strict and honest, and Mum, being Mum, would let me off and be sorry for me. Put the electric blanket on in my bed again, if you see what I mean – give me comfort. Be uncritical. But it wasn’t like that.

  The thing was, Dad believed what I told him. He thought I’d been thick (though he never said so) but that when you came down to it, it wasn’t my fault. Vlady thought that too, though I took a fair bit of flak from him later. But Mum, and in their own ways Sean and Mary, took another view.

  Mum saw the whole thing as a family disgrace. She never even asked herself whose fault it was, or if I could’ve helped it happening. All she knew was, she’d got a daughter who was going to come up in court for drug-smuggling, and probably get in the papers. She couldn’t seem to see past that. She took the black view of everything. She thought Kev deserved worse than hanging for his part in it, but that didn’t let me off, not in her eyes.

  When we got home that night they were all sitting round the kitchen table, waiting. I almost heard them stop talking the minute the front door opened, and the whole house seemed to hold its breath while we walked the length of the corridor, down the two steps and into the room. Well, there’s one thing – whatever that court-room’s like, whatever the judge or whoever, says to me at the trial, it couldn’t be worse than seeing the looks on my family’s faces and hearing what they all had to say to me.

  Mum looked as if she’d been crying her eyes out for hours. She picked her head up off her arms as I came in and stared at me like a mad woman. Her eyes were all red and glassy, and not just from tears – from rage.

  “You idiot!” she cried out, straight off – only she said “eedjit”. “You stupid, stupid, stupid girl! What have you done now, what have you brought on us? I always knew you’d go to the bad! Stubborn, wilful – changing the name we gave you, even, whoever heard of such a thing? With your crazy moods and tantrums, how else could it end but in disgrace?”

  I wanted to turn and run away from her, from all of them, but Dad was behind me so I just stood. I looked away from Mum because I couldn’t bear her eyes, and gave a quick look round at the others. Only Lily wasn’t there. Mary was sitting by Mum, holding her hand and glaring at me. Sean had turned his chair till it was sideways on to me; he wasn’t looking at me at all, just smoking hard and jigging one of his legs over the other. Vlady was standing up. His eyes were fixed on mine through his glasses. I gave him a look – I really cared more, in a way, what he thought than any of the others – begging him to say something to support me.

  But it was Dad who spoke first. “It wasn’t her fault,” he said. “That Kevin, he put over one on her. She didn’t know anything about it till the police dog—”

  But Sean didn’t let him finish.

  “One look,” he said, still with his head turned away, “just one look at that rotten little weasel face of his should have told her. I knew he was no good. I said—”

  “You never!” I cried out, because Sean doesn’t talk to me much and he’d certainly never said a word about Kev, for or against.

  “Well, if I had, would you have listened? You never listen, you always think you know better. All the same, I knew.”

  “We all knew,” said Mary.

  “I didn’t,” said Vlady.

  They all looked at him, even Sean.

  “Easy enough to say now that you knew,” Vlady said. “Half the people I look at look rotten to me; I don’t judge by their faces. Anyway, she liked him, she was gone on him; nobody sees straight then.” He blushed, but went on: “It’s not people’s faces you go by anyway, it’s how they behave, how they treat you. We don’t know how he treated her while they were away. Only she knows if he gave her any hints what he was up to.”

  Hints? Why did he have to say that? Of course there’d been hints, any amount of them. Sitting in that police station I’d made a list of them in my head, hadn’t I. Vlady was right. Never mind Kev’s face. If he’d stood in front of me two weeks ago and said, “Here, girl, I’ve got you in mind, I’m going to do a number on you, and have it off with you into the bargain”, it couldn’t have been much plainer – to anyone a little bit clever.

  But luckily nobody got around to asking me direct, because Mum was all geared up. She’d had hours to build up a head of steam and now she had to let it all out on me. And when Dad tried to come to my rescue, that only made her worse.

  “Ah sure, you’d take her side! She was always your darling! It was you let her go off to that God-forsaken Protestant pest-hole in the first place! Why could you not see that she went to a decent Catholic country if she had to be gallivanting off at all? At her age she should be at home, learning to look after a family! Not that any decent man’ll have her, after this!”

  There was a lot more of it before I was allowed to crawl away to bed. I felt like old Saint Sebastian, shot full of arrows. Only Mary hadn’t said much. When we were in bed I started crying. I hadn’t cried properly since Harwich and I needed to cry, howl even. I tried to keep it as quiet as I could, but it got on Mary’s wick, and suddenly she had one of her flare-ups. She sat up in bed with a jerk and slammed her feet down on the floor.

  “Shut up!” she said. “What you going on for? You never think of anybody but yourself, do you? You’ve always been the same, doing what you like, saying whatever comes into your head, and leaving me or someone else to cope.”

  “Like when?” I sniffed.

  “Like when? When not! No doubt you’ve managed to forget that night a few weeks ago when you flounced out and were gone for hours! Who do you think picked up the bits of your plate and mopped the floor and calmed Mum down! Do you know how many times I’ve had to be nice to Lily after you’ve been rotten to her? And tonight just takes the cake. Hours I’ve sat with Mum, drying her tears and making her tea and telling her things weren’t so bad – it’s not the first time I’ve done it because of you, neither! And now look at you! What do you care that I’ve got to get up for work tomorrow? Snivelling away there, expecting me to be sorry for you – well, I’m not! Whether you knew what Kev was up to or not, a lot of it’s your own fault. But you’ll never admit it, not our Tracy, oh, no! And you’ll make us pay your bills for you in the end, like you always have! Now I’m going to sleep downstairs and you can bawl your head off all night for all I care!”

  And she dragged her bedding off her bed and stamped out, leaving me alone.

  Like I said, Mary doesn’t blow up often. So when she does, you have to take notice. I’d stopped crying out of shock at what she was saying, and I didn’t start up again when she’d gone. I lay there on my back, thinking, Is she right? Am I really like that? Upsetting Mum and being mean to Lily and throwing tempers and leaving a trail of broken bits (not just plates) behind me for Mary, or Vlady, or Dad to pick up? Lying there in the dark I thought of a good few times, not just the Music Mill night, when I had. Made me feel as if all this business, now, was just a sort of highlight in my life’s work as a misery-maker.

  I tried to think about it properly but other things kept creeping in – stupid things, like that I
hadn’t given them their presents. When I thought of that, and how I’d planned to sit at the top of the table and tell them everything about our trip, and show them souvenirs, and make them laugh and go “oo-ah” at all my adventures – and then how it all ended – it was more than I could bear. One of the things Mum’d shouted at me was about the welcome-home meal she’d planned, my favourite foods and that, and how she felt like flinging them all through the window, that the stray cats deserved a treat better than I did. . . . I hated her, sort of, for saying that, for not taking my side and for making me feel so shitty. In the end I did start crying again. I cried myself to sleep.

  Next day I’d stopped, but I didn’t feel better. I felt worse. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to be at home. Lily was away, staying with Gran. I suspected Mum’d sent her on purpose, last night before I got back, to keep me from – I don’t know – contaminating her or something. Sean was between jobs again, so he was around, but he was avoiding me. When I came into a room, he’d move out of it. That was his way of showing what he thought of me.

  As for Mum, she wasn’t speaking to me at all this morning. She fed me, but she didn’t speak. She kept blowing her nose and sniffing as she did the housework, so I’d know she was crying. After a bit, every sniff was like a saw dragged across my nerves. Nobody could stick that for long, however they’ve deserved it.

  I had breakfast on my own and then went back up to my room. I hadn’t unpacked anything last night, so I started on that, to keep myself occupied. I pulled all the stuff out of my rucksack. It fell in a lump of clothes and food and presents and rubbish onto our bit of carpet. Lying right on top of the heap was that post-card I bought, of the Destroyed City man. I looked at him, all hollow, with no heart left in him. Despairing. . . . Well, I knew how he felt now all right. I stuck him up in the corner of the mirror, and if Mary didn’t like him she knew what she could do.

  Then I sorted out my dirty clothes, including the ones they’d thrown me out of that hotel for – they were half mouldy by now. What I’d normally have done, would be sling them all in the washing-machine for Mum to do. But I couldn’t do that now. I just wanted to make myself invisible, not make work for her. So I washed them out myself in our hand-basin, using toilet soap. Then I carried them, and my sleeping-bag, down to hang on the line.

  After that I meant to go back in and finish tidying up – all Mary needed from me was a mess all over the floor. But just as I was going, the back door opened and Sean came out for a smoke. The minute he saw me he turned right round and went back in. That made me burn inside. I wanted to rush after him and bang him with my fists and shout, “What’s the matter, have I got plague or something? What kind of a brother are you anyhow?” But I knew that any kind of a row would only set me off crying again, and I’d made up my mind in the night that I’d cried all I was going to. For the moment, anyway.

  Still, I couldn’t go back in the house after that. So I went for a walk.

  Trouble was, I didn’t know where to go. Of course I wanted to see Michael, but he’d be at work probably, on the site, miles away. And I wanted to see Con in a way, but it’s funny, there are times when it’s your oldest friends you want. So I went to Karen’s.

  She lives in a block of flats near us. Not the tower blocks, the low, old-fashioned kind with curved balconies running all round. I climbed the steps to the third floor and rang her bell. Her mum opened the door.

  “Oh,” she said when she saw me. “It’s you, Tracy. Well. You’d better come in.”

  No prizes for guessing what she thought of me. I’d have liked to turn and run – I couldn’t take any more disapproval, not from anyone – but Karen had heard and she called me to go through into their living-room.

  She was sitting there on the settee. With Cliff. She jumped up when I came in. He didn’t move himself, of course. Didn’t look at me either. Kept his nose in some magazine. They’d been having something to eat on plates, and some Pepsi. Karen’s lipstick had all come off, whether from eating or kissing I couldn’t be sure, but looking at Cliff I could guess. On again.

  “Hallo, Trace, how are you?” she said, all bright. “They let you out, then?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Did you think they’d lock me up straight away?”

  She looked embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t know, did I. We was all dead worried about you.”

  “All of you?”

  “If you mean Kev, he wasn’t on the train with us. He got an earlier one. You know, we all stayed with you till they made us go, and he’d bunked off by then, can you wonder?”

  I suddenly imagined them rabbiting on about me all the way to Liverpool Street on the train. It made me curl up.

  “What did you all think?” I asked. “I suppose you talked about nothing else on the way home.”

  “Yeah, well. . . .” She looked uncomfortable and kept trying to catch Cliff’s eye but he wouldn’t look at her. I could sense her mother, hanging about in, the doorway behind my back, making signals at her. What signals? “Get her out of here,” maybe. I was feeling let down, something awful. I don’t know what I’d expected – perhaps a hug from Karen, or her saying something right out about how she knew how I must be feeling and that they all knew I hadn’t done it. . . . Instead she was moving things about on the table and looking as if she wished I’d go.

  After a long silence she suddenly looked at me brightly and said, “Oh, by the way, guess what? Dad got tickets for The Generation Game tomorrow at the Bush. Me and Cliffs going.”

  I thought she must be going to ask me to come, or why mention it? But then I saw she only had two tickets and it was just something to say. She started on about how she couldn’t wait to go and all that, but I interrupted.

  “I suppose you think Kev and me was in it together.”

  “No! We don’t, of course not, do we, Cliff?”

  “I dunno what to think, do I,” mumbled Cliff. “When I got all the facts, I’ll tell you what I think. Till then I’m keeping well out of it.”

  “Oh well,” I said, “if it’s facts you want, you’d better come to my trial. You’ll have to go back to Harwich for it. Bit further than the Bush, but it might be even more of a laugh than The Generation Game.”

  I hope I didn’t flounce out, but I certainly brushed past Karen’s mother without saying goodbye. And I seem to remember banging the flat-door a bit. Not hard. I was being very controlled, for me. But I was hurt. No denying that.

  After that I had to test Con out, see if she’d gone all shifty-eyed about me. I walked fast through the streets to her house. The thought of Kev kept stabbing me like a blunt knife. He kept creeping into my thoughts and then I’d get this stab, and shove him out again. I felt I might be able to talk to Con about this feeling. She wasn’t so gone on one of his pals that she wouldn’t see my side clear. Not Con! Her own person, Con was. I knew that now, and I felt stupid for thinking Karen would be more help to me than Con would.

  I almost ran up the path to her house and knocked, and rang the bell. I was impatient, waiting – I was mad to see her and get a bit of sense and comfort from her. But when the door finally opened, I got another shock.

  It was her mum. I think I’d only seen her a couple of times before – she never came to school functions and that, and now I saw why. She looked awful. She was very thin and even ugly, though you couldn’t tell how she’d look if she’d only do herself up a bit. Her hair was half grey and straggly, and her clothes were all anyhow. Her hands were jumping all over the place, mostly around her face as if she was trying to hide it. No wonder. She’d got a black eye and her bottom lip was up like a damson. She’d been crying too, unless her eyes were red and watery naturally.

  She looked at me, blank. “Yes?” she said, with a kind of gasp in her voice, like a hiccup.

  “Is Con in?”

  “Who?” she said. She really did, as if she’d never heard of her.

  “Con.”

  “Oh! Connie. She’s gone.”

 
; “Gone?” I said.

  “Yes. In the night. She went. She said she’d go one day. Now she has.”

  “Where to?” I asked.

  She started to cry again. She looked as if she was always on the edge of it, and the least thing would push her over.

  “She’s left us,” she said. “I don’t blame her. She couldn’t stand it. She said if the rows didn’t stop, she’d go.” She leant against the doorpost and sobbed into both hands, her poor grey hair in rats’-tails on her neck.

  It was horrible – my own disappointment, and being sorry for her on top. I didn’t know what to do. I kind of put my hand on her shoulder and patted her. Without thinking I said what Dad would say:

  “Can I help somesing?”

  She shook her head, trying to stop herself crying. I looked over my shoulder. People were passing, looking up the path. I said, “Maybe you’d like to go inside.” I looked past her into the dark hall. I could smell cats, and dirt. Who could wonder? Someone in that state couldn’t clean the house – obviously. Still, I can’t say I wanted to go in there with her, and I was relieved when she fished a hanky out of her sleeve and mopped up a bit and said, “Yes I will. But you run along, dear. It’s Tracy, isn’t it? Yes. Sorry I didn’t know you at first. Connie talked about you. She thought a lot of you.” She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and took a step backwards in the doorway.

  “It’s not so bad, you know,” I said. “She’ll come back to see you. When she’s settled.”

  “Oh yes, I daresay,” she said. “Better if she doesn’t, in a way. Let her stop on her own and make her own life.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” I said. “She’ll be okay.”

  She gave me a quick look. “You really think so?”

  “Yeah, I do. She’s strong.”

  “If she is,” her mum said slowly, “I don’t know where she gets it from.”

  We stood there, and I waited for her to go in and shut the door. It seemed unfeeling to walk away while she was standing there. But she seemed to have forgotten me. She just looked up at the sky with her eyes wide open. I remembered hearing that if you stare at the light after you’ve been crying, it stops your eyes being red. Maybe she was doing that, before her husband came home for his lunch (if he did) and saw the state she was in. . . . Rotten sod. But then maybe she drove him mad. . . . You never know about people’s lives, what drives them to things.