by Anne Fine
I shuddered. The idea of sharing a Damart vest and longjohns with some of the people who come on our demonstrations was pretty revolting.
‘Another thing,’ he said, reaching out to correct Jude who was holding her fork wrong. ‘Why go to out of the way holes where only the sheep can see you? It’s mad. You ought to be outside government offices on weekdays, or in shopping centres on Saturday mornings. At least then a few people would get to read what it says on your banners before you’re carted off to the nearest police station.’
I didn’t answer that one. I didn’t know how. I’ve often thought myself that the sheep on the west of Scotland must be the most politically informed sheep in the world.
‘And if you must go out to the middle of nowhere, why waste time singing silly songs? You should get organized. Someone should bring stamps, and someone paper, and you should spend your journey writing letters to your member of parliament, and the prime minister, and all the local papers, explaining exactly what you’re all doing, and why.’
There’s no denying it. He was quite right.
‘“Oh, Little Town of Sellafield”!’ He snorted with contempt again, just as he had on the bus ride. ‘Pure, self-indulgent rubbish! The time spent singing would have been far better employed writing to the Director of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate expressing your concern at the rising incidence of childhood leukaemia around the plant!’
‘You ought to be on our side,’ I told him.
‘Certainly not!’ He shuddered. ‘I don’t approve at all!’
‘Then why pass out these handy hints?’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t help it,’ he told me. ‘I’m a small businessman. I can’t bear inefficiency. Wherever I see it, I want to root it out.’ He glowered suddenly. ‘And I can’t bear rudeness, either. I shall be writing to the Commander of that submarine base complaining about the mischievous behaviour of men supposedly under his command.’ The glower deepened to a thorough scowl. ‘My suit is ruined.’
He did sound a bit like Simon, I must admit. But, still, it wasn’t tactful of Jude to giggle.
‘Finished?’ he asked, noticing her empty plate. And then he laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. ‘You must be tired out. I think you’d better go straight up to bed just as soon as you’ve finished helping with the dishes.’
‘You must be joking,’ I said. ‘Jude never helps with the dishes.’
(I couldn’t help it. It’s a very sore point.)
His hand slid off her shoulder. ‘Never helps? Why not?’ He looked at her enquiringly, saying to me: ‘She’s got arms, hasn’t she? She can reach in the sink.’
Jude began edging off towards the door, making the most of her silent furry slippers.
I shrugged.
‘I suppose it’s just because she’s so much younger,’ I told him.
Gerald stared.
‘That is the silliest thing I ever heard,’ he said. ‘By that reasoning, the youngest child in every family in Scotland would reach adulthood without the faintest notion of how to make with the mop and the Fairy Liquid.’
It’s no more than the truth. I’ve said the same often enough myself. It’s just that, at this point, Jude always puts on her pathetic little waif face, and Mum goes all riddled with guilt and says something like: ‘Oh, well. Maybe tomorrow. But I’ll take a turn for her tonight since she’s not very good at it.’
Gerald was obviously immune to the pathetic little waif face. But, with him clearly taking up the part I usually played with such enthusiasm, for some extraordinary reason I took up Mum’s part.
‘She could do the breakfast things instead,’ I suggested. ‘She won’t be quite so tired then.’
Like someone playing grandmother’s footsteps, Jude stopped her shuffling towards the door.
‘She’s not so tired now,’ Gerald insisted. ‘She’s not as tired as I am, for example. I cooked the meal. And she’s not as tired as you are. You peeled the potatoes. And she slept for two whole hours on the bus.’
He turned to Jude. During this speech, she’d shuffled the last few feet towards the door, but she hadn’t quite summoned up enough courage to disappear through it. I think she sensed that, unlike Mum, he’d just come after her and fetch her back.
‘Would you like a stool to stand on?’ he asked her politely. ‘Or can you reach?’
I was still nervous, I don’t know why. Maybe it was the outraged look on Jude’s face.
‘Can’t we just leave the dishes till the morning?’ I asked. (Another of Mum’s great standby lines.)
‘No,’ Gerald said. ‘No, we can not. Only sluts and drunks leave the dishes till morning.’
(I made a mental note to tell Mum this.)
‘Anyway,’ he added. ‘You’re only trying to protect your sister. You are as bad as your mother in that respect. And Judith doesn’t need your help, you know. Everyone round here treats her as if she were still a baby, but in fact she is perfectly capable.’
Now that was definitely my line. If I’ve said that once, I’ve said it well over a thousand times. I had my mouth wide open when he turned to Jude.
‘Aren’t you?’ he demanded.
Jude narrowed her eyes. It was a toss-up, I reckoned, between heart-rending sobs and roof-raising temper. But I was wrong. The fact is that, for some reason or another best known to herself, our Jude simply adores old Goggle-eyes, and in her book the man can do no wrong. If he says she’s not tired, then she’s not tired. If he says she can wash up, then she can.
‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘And I don’t need a stool. I can reach.’
‘There’s my girl,’ Gerald said. ‘I knew you could do it!’
I was left speechless, honestly I was. When someone else steals your lines, what can you say?
She did the whole lot by herself. He told her how – glasses first; cutlery next; then dishes; last, the greasy pans. She toiled away, having a bit of trouble with the stacking, but Gerald kept his nerve and in the end she got through without any accidents at all. She looked really chuffed when she hung up the apron.
After she’d finished, he inspected it. (I’m not kidding. He actually came across and picked up a couple of forks and peered between the tines, then held up one or two glasses to the light.)
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘From now on you can wash up every other night. Is that all right with you?’
‘Fine,’ she said, grinning proudly. I nearly fainted. I must have been trying to wangle a deal halfway as fair as that for five whole years.
‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘That’s settled. And now, as a reward, I shall come upstairs with you and read you a story.’
He may, or may not, have read her the story first, I don’t know. It was at least ten minutes before I went up there. But when I walked past, on my way to the bathroom, it wasn’t a story he was reading to her, that was for sure. I heard the soothing rumble of his voice right from the top of the stairs.
‘Higher rate taxpayers, like non-taxpayers, have to take care they get the best from their savings. For both, tax-free investments such as Personal Equity Plan, Save as You Earn schemes, and friendly society investments are all attractive. Because of this, of course, the Inland Revenue sets very strict limits on how much can be invested…’
I peeped in. He was propped up against her pillows, his legs stretched out on her coverlet. He’d kicked his shoes off on the bedside rug. She lay comfortably in the crook of his arm, listening in rapt attention as he read to her from the Ross & Killearn Building Society Step-by-Step Guide to Good Money Management that came free with her big plastic acorn money box.
He came down ten minutes later, triumphantly flicking off unnecessary lights.
‘… seven, eight, nine! There! That should slow the little electric wheel down to a sprint!’
I followed him into the living room. I had to. It was practically pitch-dark now all over the rest of the house. Before he even noticed I was behind him, he’d stepped across and flicked the television switc
h as well. With perfect timing, Scots Money Box appeared on the screen.
I sat beside him on the sofa. (After he’d been so nice and cooked our supper, and saved me half the washing up for the next ten years, it seemed rude to sit miles away in the armchair.)
‘Don’t you ever get bored with all this stuff?’ I asked him.
‘Stuff?’ he said. ‘What stuff?’
I nodded towards the telly. Ms Moira McCready was warning everyone in Scotland that they should think very hard indeed about the new pension scheme options.
‘This stuff. Don’t you ever find it the slightest bit boring?’
‘Dear me, no.’ It seemed to be the first time the idea had struck him. ‘Not boring, no. Not at all boring.’
His answer interested me.
‘You don’t think it’s a bit of a boring way of looking at the lovely green planet you live on?’
A spot of pink rose on his cheeks. I think he thought I might be getting at him. But I was taking the most enormous care not to seem hostile or aggressive or contemptuous. I truly wanted to know. His eyes shifted from me to Ms Moira McCready on the telly going on and on about the advantages of contracting out of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme, and finally he answered:
‘It’s just the way I’ve always thought about things.’ I took even more care now. Casually picking at a loose thread in my sock, I asked him politely:
‘But, Gerald.’ (Yes! I said it!) ‘Suppose you looked around you one day really hard, and suddenly had a sort of vision. Suppose you saw the trees and skies and clouds and birds and animals as clearly as if you were seeing them for the first time, and realized you maybe only had a hundred years to live on the planet, and make the most of them all, and be happy. Wouldn’t you think, after that vision, whenever you were reading the Stock Exchange reports or Building Society handbooks, that maybe the way you think about things is – well – a little bit boring?’
(I meant thin, miserable, unimaginative, blind, stupid! But, being polite, I said ‘boring’.)
However carefully I wrapped the question up, I still thought he might find it rude. But I wanted to know the answer, I honestly did. It suddenly occurred to me that part of the reason I couldn’t stand Goggle-eyes was because he was so different from me and Mum, and thought and cared about such different things. And suddenly I thought, if I could only understand, I might be able to get along with him better.
However offensive the question may have appeared to him, he didn’t seem cross. He gave it quite a bit of thought while Ms Moira McCready burbled on about additional voluntary contributions, and death in service cover, and alternative options. And then he finally came out with it – his explanation.
‘Maybe it’s just because I really am boring myself. I think I might be. Sometimes I look at people like you and your mother, and I think: “No, I was never like that, even when I was young.” Maybe I was born boring. Maybe I was boring in my cradle.’
His eyes were still watching Ms Moira McCready opening and shutting her mouth, but he no longer heard her. He wasn’t just politely answering me now. He was telling me something that mattered to him, too.
‘And part of me thinks that’s what your mother really likes about me. I may be boring, but I have one or two of the old-fashioned virtues that often go along with that. I’m steady and reliable and predictable, too. Maybe she needs that. Sometimes I honestly believe that is a side of me she likes to have near her. I know your sister does.’
He turned and smiled.
‘And I think I rather hoped that, one day, you might too.’
There’s no way to answer a remark like that. Oh, you can drift upstairs after a bit, and think about it all you like; but there’s no answer you can really give except to shrug in an embarrassed way and smile back, and I did both those. But, later, lying in bed waiting for Mum, I wondered if I hadn’t been a bit unfair on poor old Gerald Faulkner, deciding so early on that he was the worst thing to have happened to our household since Dad packed his boxes and went off to Berwick upon Tweed. After all, if you thought about it, it wasn’t really Gerald’s fault that Mum seemed so much brighter and merrier when she had his company as well, and not just ours. Or that she went out to the cinema so often right after she first met him. She could have said no, and stayed home. (I got a bit of a guilt pang when I remembered she’d tried that and I’d got even crosser!) No. I’d not been all that fair.
And it had been a bit mean, too, to blame poor Goggle-eyes just because he liked to see Mum in her smartest clothes, and thought she had nice legs. Simon thought Mum had nice legs. So did Dad, when he bothered to say so. What was so wrong, for heaven’s sake, with simply liking someone’s legs?
I was still lying there in the dark, wondering why on earth I’d gone so berserk that first evening, when Mum came home.
I don’t know why I didn’t throw back the covers and rush downstairs to greet her at once. Perhaps, if I had, the ghastly, ghastly quarrel between Mum and Goggle-eyes would never have had the time to happen. So why did I stay upstairs, lurking so quietly under the blankets pretending I was fast asleep? Was it really only because I was exhausted and the bed was toasty warm? Or was it because, right from the moment Mum slammed through the front door, shaking the walls and shouting, ‘I’m home, folks!’ so triumphantly, I could tell there was trouble brewing.
‘Rosalind! Please! The girls are fast asleep. Don’t make so much noise!’
I can imagine the look that came over Mum’s face at this sort of greeting.
‘Is this the welcome for the conquering heroine?’
When he answered his voice was muffled, but I could still hear.
‘There’s nothing heroic about waking two exhausted children.’
Mum sounded even more reproachful now.
‘You might have let them stay up!’
‘Kept them up, you mean? Just to cheer you in? That’s a bit self-indulgent, isn’t it, when they’ve got school in the morning?’
I expect she was all cold and cross after hours of hanging about in the police station, and then the long ride home.
‘They would have been a lot more welcoming than you!’
‘Naturally. They’ve been a lot better indoctrinated than I have into believing that what you’re doing is important.’
What were those thuds? Were they just her muddy boots hitting the floor, one after another?
‘It is important.’
‘Some people might say that getting yourself arrested on the spur of the moment is not so much important as irresponsible!’
Now that was definitely the coat cupboard door being slammed shut. I know what she’s like when she’s getting really annoyed. I bet she even swung round and put her hands on her hips before starting in on him properly.
‘Now listen, Gerald. It’s good of you to bring the girls home and stay with them. I’m very grateful. But I’m not prepared to stand here and listen to abuse, and I don’t take kindly to being called irresponsible by you. I am not irresponsible!’ Her voice was rising now, louder and louder. She was working herself up. ‘I think very hard before I take either of my children on anything like this. I don’t take them anywhere the army is – I’ve seen how mean and rough and badly disciplined those boys can be! I don’t take them anywhere there’s horses, or razor-wire. I don’t take them anywhere at night, or anywhere things might get out of hand. So don’t you dare to call me irresponsible!’
She was shouting at him now. Shouting at him good and hard. I wasn’t at all surprised to see Jude float like a wraith through the dimly lit shape of my open bedroom doorway, and feel her climbing in my bed at my side.
‘She’ll stop in a minute,’ I whispered. ‘She’s just very cold and tired and hungry, and he said the wrong thing.’
She didn’t stop. She was so cold and tired and hungry she let him have it like a meat axe between the eyes. I’m amazed that the neighbours didn’t start pounding on the walls – or perhaps they preferred listening? They could have listene
d while she yelled at him that she was sick to death of having to pitch out and make such efforts. And she was angry – yes, angry – more angry than he could imagine or she could say! Angry enough to leave home and band with thousands and thousands of other people to pull down the miles of wire fences that hid these fiendish, stupid, cripplingly expensive weapons from all the people who were paying for them, and in whose name the lovely green planet we were living on might soon be changed into a smoking ball of rubble.
‘You say it’s kept the peace!’ she yelled. ‘Peace? Call this peace? Don’t be so stupid, Gerald! Don’t be so blind! This isn’t peace. Peace is security. Peace is living in confidence. This – this is like being six miles high in a tinny aeroplane thinking you feel quite safe, then, the moment a little bit of turbulence hits you, realizing you are actually terrified, and would sell your soul to have both feet firmly fixed on good brown earth!
‘You!’ she shrieked. ‘People like you are the dangerous ones now! People like you who are so thick, so stubborn, so gullible! Go on! Ignore the billions of pounds wasted each year on these terrible weapons. Go on! Ignore the risks the power stations might explode, or start leaking worse than they do already. Carry on, Gerald! Believe the government “experts”, though you know well enough they’ve lied to you again and again! And don’t forget to ignore the generations of children forced to grow up fearing they’ll blow up! Go on, Gerald! Go home and put your head in a paper bag! Keep goggling away at your important share prices and your important interest rates! Don’t act irresponsibly, for heaven’s sake! Don’t worry about our frail little green planet!’
I’m hugging Jude tight now, to stop her trembling.
‘He won’t yell back at her,’ I whispered. ‘He won’t, I promise. He won’t stay and fight. He won’t lose his temper and he won’t hit her. He’s steady and reliable and predictable. You can depend on Gerald. He will just go.’