by Kerry Fisher
I would have loved to have joined in with a hundred other ideas of the sort of scuzzy old – or young – women Lawrence might have taken up with in the hope of making Clover laugh, but I couldn’t risk it in case I didn’t hit the spot and made her cry. Instead I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing sixth former and thrust it in her direction.
‘Come on, we’ll get him back for you. We’ll make your house into such a palace that he won’t want to live in some scummy bedsit. All men have a mid-life crisis.’ I glanced over my shoulder. ‘I think Frederica is Colin’s.’
‘Do you mind?’ Clover asked.
‘Couldn’t give a shit.’ The truth of that depressed me. I was glad when the bell rang for us all to go back in. I tapped Colin who said, ‘You go, I’ll be along in a minute, just finish my drink.’ I looked back to see him necking his wine and having a quick minesweep of a couple of glasses nearby. Clover and I left him to it.
Jen1 reached the door at the same time as me. ‘Harley makes a fantastic Artful Dodger. You should be really proud of him.’
‘Thank you.’ I felt embarrassed. I wasn’t sure how to handle praise.
‘Then again, I suppose the accent comes easier to him than to the others.’
She was gone before my brain caught up with what she meant. I would get her back. One of these days I would wipe that smile off her mean little Botoxed mouth.
Clover squeezed my arm as she left me to squash into her row at the back. ‘Bloody bitch. Don’t take any notice.’
Colin squeaked into the seat next to me a couple of seconds before the curtain went up causing great huffing and puffing from the other parents in our row. Colin jigged away in his seat to the music, making loud, though mostly complimentary, comments. I just wanted the show to be over so I could scoop up Harley and shut the door on this weird world, where nothing I did was right. I tried to focus on the story, but the fake Cockney accents didn’t seem so funny to me any more. The huge cheer that Harley got at the end, the sheer joy shining out of his face took the edge off my grump, but I was still the first one out of my seat when the curtain went down for the last time.
‘Hang on, hang on, where’s the fire?’ Colin said, struggling to pull out his jacket from under the chair. He always took his shoes off wherever he sat down, so he still had to put his trainers back on.
‘I’m really hot. I’ll wait for you outside.’ I marched out of the hall and headed towards the exit. Mr Peters was standing there with a couple of teaching assistants I recognised from Bronte’s year. I said goodbye without making eye contact and burst out into the cold spring air, scurrying across the lawn to wait on a low wall for Colin and Harley, tucked away in the shadows. By the time I looked up, Mr Peters was walking towards me.
‘Are you okay?’ he said, when he got within talking distance.
‘Fine, thanks. Just a bit hot.’
‘I told you Harley was brilliant. You should be really proud of him.’
‘I am proud of him. Just as he is.’ Mr Peters must have caught the curtness in my voice. A puzzled look crossed his face. He raised his eyebrows as though he was expecting me to say something else. I stared up, wanting to pick a fight. He didn’t look away and I felt myself unknotting under his gaze, all my wrinkles and crinkles straightening out. I could even feel the beginnings of a tiny smile. He sat down next to me.
‘Are you always this self-contained?’ he said. I was aware, in a distant way, of two people of different sexes sitting a smidge too close. If I leaned a bit to the left I would have been touching him.
I turned to look at him. ‘I’m not self-contained with people who know me, but it’s hard to be myself when everyone’s judging me the whole time.’
‘I hope you don’t put me in that category?’
‘Well, aren’t you?’
Mr Peters shook his head slowly. ‘No, I’m not, Maia.’
The noisy chatter of parents pouring out of the school floated across the lawn. I blocked it out. Our eyes were doing that dance, mirroring each other, flicking about but never releasing each other. It felt as intimate as tracing his lips with my fingers. Mr Peters broke free first. ‘Okay. If you’re all right, I’d better go and do my bit of PR for the evening. Don’t forget you can always give me a ring if there’s anything you want to discuss.’
I had to hand it to him. He did professional well. And personal, very well indeed.
I stared after him, watching him stride across the lawn. Harley and Colin appeared at the exit as Mr Peters took up his position by the door. They shook hands and Mr Peters pointed Colin in my direction. ‘All right, love?’ Colin said, as he ambled over, shoelaces undone and something a bit unsteady about his walk. We walked back to the van, Harley nattering on, asking whether I noticed he sang the wrong line, if I thought he’d been as good as Marlon, if any of the teachers had said anything about him. For once, Colin’s compliments were genuine, with no advice about how to improve things.
Colin took my hand as we got to the van. ‘That school ain’t as bad as I thought. Few toffee-nosed parents but Harley’s doing good there. I liked that Peters bloke. I told him that I thought the place would be full of wankers but that it had been a nice surprise, like.’ He leant into my ear and I could smell the wine on him. ‘Let’s get Harley into bed quick when we get home. I feel like giving you a bit of a seeing-to.’
Mr Peters was going to have to come to the rescue again, in mind, if not in body.
16
Policemen have a different knock from friends. Or postmen. Or meter readers. And bailiffs have a different knock from them all. It was the first day back after half-term and I was in that last stressy five minutes before leaving for school. Bronte was complaining that I hadn’t done her plaits properly, there was the usual faff to find a pen for me to sign the homework book, plus the discovery that nothing in our cupboard could pass for a ‘plain’ biscuit. A thump on the front door told me I was about to see a meaty fist poking through some splintered wood. I hoped it was one of Colin’s grebbo friends come for the repayment of a gambling debt. Harley rushed to open the door, but I shoved in front of him.
I put the chain on and shouted at Bronte to go and get Colin out of bed. One bloody hurdle after another. I opened the door and smiled through the gap. ‘Hello. Can I help you?’ For a bailiff, he wasn’t as brick shithousey as some. I didn’t think I’d beat him at an arm wrestle, though. I glanced down at his hands to see if he had any pliers in them, but he just had an ID card which he held close to the door with a gruff ‘Bailiffs. Need to auction some stuff to pay your council tax debts. You get the letter saying we was coming?’
‘I haven’t seen a letter.’ I didn’t tell him I’d stopped opening anything that looked like a bill and Colin wasn’t much of a secretary.
‘By our reckonings, you owe £375 of council tax and we’ve been ordered to take some stuff. Could you open up for me, love? There isn’t any point resisting cos we’ll just come back again.’ He moved a step closer to the door. I backed away. Colin came thumping past me, bare-chested and doing up his jeans. He bellowed something at me as he rushed into the kitchen, but I didn’t catch it.
I adopted my most reasonable voice. ‘You can’t come in just like that. We haven’t got anything worth anything anyway.’
‘All right, love. No need to panic. Why don’t you let me in so I can be sure that’s the case, then I can report back to them and maybe they’ll leave you alone?’
I hesitated. He looked like the sort of bloke who would steal a handbag off the back of a baby’s pram.
‘Come on, love, open up. The sooner you let me in, the sooner we can both get going.’
Colin came flying out of the kitchen. He pushed me out of the way and stuck his face in the gap. ‘Oy, fuck off, do you hear? You ain’t coming in here stealing my stuff. Now bugger off.’ I could see the spit flying out of his mouth and landing on the door. The guy outside started to argue that we needed to sign something so he could leave but Colin didn’t give him a ch
ance. He slammed the door shut, then turned on me.
‘You stupid cow. You were about to let him in, weren’t you? Don’t you know fucking anything? The bloody back door was open. He could’ve just walked in. You’ve got to keep everything locked, otherwise they’ll just come in, climb in through the bloody windows. I promise you, once he’s in here, he’ll be taking everything – TV, DVD, CD, microwave. They’re always telling you to sign stuff but it’s to say they can come back and take it. Bloody hell, Mai, you can be one stupid woman.’
Shock gave me courage. ‘Well, let me tell you something. You aren’t so clever yourself. If you got off your lazy arse and got a bloody job instead of pissing all my money up a wall, because let’s face it, you don’t bloody well earn any, we wouldn’t be in a position where we had some great lummox turning up to take our stuff. So before you start having a go at me, maybe you should take a look at yourself.’
There was more I wanted to say but a shooting pain across my left cheek stopped me dead. That and the force of Colin’s fist knocking me into the banister, plus a follow-up slap that made my ear ring.
‘You fucking bitch.’ He marched off into the kitchen where I heard him rattle the jar I kept pound coins in for milk and bread. Then the back door slammed.
I put my hand up. My cheek was wet where his eternity ring had caught me under the eye. I bought him that ring when I was twenty, when he just had to say ‘Mai?’ and I’d run to him like a dog promised a Bonio. Colin had never hit me properly before. A few pushes. The odd unfriendly shove. Loads of threats about me getting a bit of ‘backhand’. But he’d never ever hit me. I sat down on the stairs, too shocked to cry, feeling my face to check the swelling. I didn’t want to look in the mirror.
I’d always despised women who let men get away with thumping them, thought they were pathetic for putting up with it. But where was I going to go? Absolutely nowhere. Just this week, the local paper had said our council would take fourteen years to clear its waiting list. I’d be bloody fifty. What was I going to do? Take the kids to Stirling Hall from a caravan on the pikey site down by the railway tracks? Could I make him leave? Bronte would want to go with him. She’d turn against me for sure. I had no choice but to keep buggering on, telling myself that I wouldn’t always live like this.
I heard footsteps behind me. Harley handed me a damp tea towel. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ He was trying not to cry. I hugged him, told him that Dad had made a mistake, he didn’t mean to hit me and asked him to fetch my sunglasses from the drawer upstairs.
We were seriously late for school but I daren’t step foot outside the house without checking that the bailiff wasn’t lurking, ready to spring through the door the second I took the chain off. I checked the back garden and sent Harley round to the front. He banged on the door to say all was clear and Bronte and I scuttled out like a couple of battery hens making a bid for freedom. I was shouting at the kids to hurry up when I suddenly realised there was no van to hurry to. A dry spot further up the road outlined where the van had stood until probably half an hour ago when we’d been so busy making sure all the downstairs windows were shut, it had completely escaped our notice that they’d towed the van away. I cursed myself for not parking it in the next street. My cheek throbbed and the tears I’d been hanging on to refused to cooperate and poured down my face, stinging the cut under my eye.
Harley held my hand. ‘I know, Mum, let’s ask Sandy to take us. She won’t mind. We’ll still get there in time for first break. We could say that the van broke down, couldn’t we? They don’t have to know we’re so poor they took it away, do they?’ I nodded, unable to think of a better plan.
Bronte threw down her bag. ‘I am not going to school in a Reliant Robin. It’s bad enough that we have to go in a van. I’ll get the bus.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I can’t go in that, everyone in my class will see me.’
I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her towards Sandy’s house. ‘You will do what you are told. I am having a shit morning, an absolutely shit day, and you are not going to make it worse. Do you hear me? Get moving, now.’
I expected her to fight against me, but I think even she was shocked that Colin had thumped me, so she grumped along beside me. I banged on Sandy’s door.
She opened up, a fag in one hand and a can of Coke in the other. She’d gone blonde again since I’d last seen her. ‘Jesus, Maia, what happened to your face?’ I shrugged and darted a look towards the kids. She shook her head. Sandy was no stranger to fat lips and black eyes.
‘Can you take us to the school? The bailiffs have taken the van,’ I said.
‘Bastards. Ain’t they got nothing better to do? What was it for? The leccy? They took my TV once for that. Council tax? Double bastards. They want to start picking up a bit of litter and sorting out them needles and condoms in that back alley before they start worrying about whether we’ve bloody paid or not. Come on, I’ll get me keys.’
Bronte clambered into the back, muttering away. Harley, bless him, was busily telling Sandy about how the Top Gear team had tried to convert a Reliant Robin into a space shuttle. I slumped in the front seat, wondering how the hell I was ever going to speak to Colin again. How was I going to get my van back without coughing up £375 plus a huge recovery fee? Without the van I couldn’t work, which meant things could only get worse. It was the first time I’d really admitted to myself that my private school experiment had been madness. How I’d thought that I was going to keep the kids in rugby boots, lacrosse sticks and duffle coats when we couldn’t even pay the rent on a fleapit, I didn’t know. A triumph of optimism over realism. That old professor no doubt thought she was doing me a favour. In fact, all I’d really done was show my kids what they could never have.
Sandy’s Reliant Robin laboured up Stirling Hall’s drive as she sang, ‘Who ate all the pies?’ Thankfully as we were over an hour late, there was no one about. ‘Do you want me to wait for you, sweetheart?’ she said.
‘No, I’ll get the bus back. I don’t know how long I’ll be. I need to sign the kids in. Thanks a lot though.’ I tried to smile but my whole face creaked.
‘Just call me James.’ She waved and skidded off down the drive, bouncing over the speed bumps till I thought the thing would tip over.
I pulled my sunglasses down over the worst cut, took a deep breath and walked into reception. ‘Good morning, Ms Etxeleku. Children been to the dentist’s, have they?’ said the secretary, sliding back the glass window.
I should have gone along with that, but my brain was numb. ‘No, the car broke down.’ I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘van’.
‘Poor you, never mind, these things happen, if you’ll sign the late book here. Harley, your class is just about to get changed for swimming. Crikey, Ms Etxeleku, are you okay? Your face?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ I didn’t offer any explanation, despite the fact that the secretary was practically dangling through the window to get a better look. I turned my back on her to say goodbye to the children and walked out. I hurried away down the drive, past the rugby fields and the tennis courts. Colin was right. I was wrong. We were going to end up on the streets if I carried on fooling myself that Stirling Hall was an option for us. I’d write a letter tonight to give notice and see if I could get the kids back into Morlands.
I stood at the end of the drive. I looked back at the grey stone building. The last time I felt so hopeless was when I buried Mum. I thought about Clover and what she’d said about Lawrence and the working-class chip on his shoulder. He and I would be good company for each other right now. There were some things that a woman with a trust fund wouldn’t understand as well as a woman with a black eye and a bailiff habit.
I sped up as I heard a car rumbling down the drive. I had seventy-five pence, which meant I would have to get off the bus halfway home. I was just working out which jobs I could walk to, assuming that I could carry all my cleaning stuff, when the car stopped beside me. Mr Peters wound down
the window and told me to get in. Obviously, that garrulous old bag of a secretary couldn’t keep her mouth shut for two seconds. He sounded stern. I did as I was told.
‘What on earth happened to you?’
The ‘It’s nothing’ of thousands of women before me formed on my lips. I screwed up my eyes and jumped. We were leaving Stirling Hall anyway. ‘Colin hit me.’
Mr Peters didn’t reply to that, but the skin tightened around his mouth. ‘I gather the van has broken down.’
He thought I was scum anyway. ‘The bailiffs took it.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘Is that linked to the black eye?’
‘Yep.’
Mr Peters drove out past the last of the built-up area of Sandbury, cut down a long country lane and parked up in some woods. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘What do you mean, do? I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to get on with it. What can I do? Go to the police? Help my kids by giving their dad a criminal record? He’s never hurt me before. It was just the shock that things had got so bad that the bailiffs were standing outside our door.’ Even to my ears, I sounded pathetic.
‘Don’t make excuses for him, Maia. He’s twice the size of you.’ I’d never heard Mr Peters sound cold before.
‘It’s not about me making fucking excuses, oh fuck, I said fuck, sorry. I’m not making excuses. Well, I am. But people like you, you don’t get it. You live in your fancy houses, drive nice cars and if you get a bill, it’s not the end of the world, you can pay it. It’s just not like that for me. It’s about trying to keep a roof over the kids’ heads and, I dunno, getting through the days and feeding them and hoping to have some good times now and again and remembering to keep the bloody kitchen door locked so that the bailiffs can’t walk in. I shouldn’t have sent them to Stirling Hall, cos that’s made everything more difficult and now I can’t even go to work cos I’ve lost the van.’