Ralph’s Children

by Hilary Norman

  Seconds passed. They looked at one another, uncertainly.

  ‘OK,’ the boy said.

  ‘You were reading Simon’s character last time, weren’t you?’ she asked the pretty, fair-haired girl the second time she came.

  ‘A bit,’ the girl said, cagily.

  ‘He suited you,’ she said.

  The girl said nothing.

  ‘I’ve been wondering,’ she went on, ‘if you’d let me join in.’

  ‘In what?’ the thin, less hostile boy asked.

  ‘Reading,’ the tall girl said. ‘She means reading the book.’

  They had got about halfway through the novel at that stage.

  ‘Why?’ the red-haired boy asked.

  ‘I’d just like to,’ she answered. ‘It’d be more fun for me, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I suppose –’ the same boy shrugged – ‘she could read the bits that aren’t people speaking.’

  ‘Narration,’ the tall girl said.

  ‘I’d rather be Ralph,’ she had said then, quickly, decisively, needing to be clear.

  She had thought of little else since the first time. Of her desire to play the part of their leader.

  ‘I wanted to be Ralph,’ the red-haired boy said.

  ‘You said you wanted to be Jack,’ the thin, freckled boy said.

  ‘You’re a perfect Jack,’ the fair-haired girl said.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ the tall girl reminded them, ‘she’s one of them.’

  ‘I just want to join in,’ she said.

  And then she held back, waiting, because it was the only way, not wanting them to realize quite how inexplicably violently she wanted it.

  They looked from one to the other.

  ‘OK,’ the red-haired boy said.

  She knew they were uncertain. Still waiting for her to bring them trouble. Which she did not.

  Not, at least, in any way they might have anticipated in those days of innocence.

  Kate

  However she felt about Delia, Kate reflected on Friday – the day after her near-debacle with Fireman – while steering her red Mini out of a pay and display space in Maidenhead, it was hard to deny, in retrospect, that her parents’ divorce had probably been right for them both. Her father’s love affair with Delia had shocked Bel, but it had also been a turning point. Not that she’d actually given up drink, but she had cut back with impressive self-discipline, gone on attending her self-help group, finding – and keeping – a job selling pretty clothes in a Henley boutique.

  As for her father, Kate had to admit he seemed positively in bloom, had found fulfilment in his new life, even helping Delia run her website design company – using his own freshly gleaned IT skills – from their riverside flat.

  To which Kate was now headed, bearing a spur-of-the-moment Thai takeaway for three because even though it was a business day, she knew they were home, having phoned briefly to say she was on her way and bringing a lunch.

  ‘Not the best time, darling,’ Michael had said.

  ‘You need to eat, however busy you are,’ Kate had said and put down the phone.

  A burst of goodwill, she decided, at the close of what seemed to her an almost irredeemably vile week – like crocus shoots, she thought, battling up through frost.

  Not to mention a sudden great need for her dad’s sympathetic ear.

  The apartment overlooking the Thames had smooth beech floors and crisp white walls, relieved by vivid Aboriginal landscapes and tall green plants. More Delia than Michael, Kate felt, but it clearly made him happy, and perhaps if Bel were to move out of their old home in Henley, she might have a greater chance of happiness too, or at least be freer of the past, good and bad.

  Goes for you, too.

  Nothing upbeat about Kate’s own separation.

  She was still living in the cottage she’d shared with Rob, surrounded by memories – the emptiness of the bed so painful some nights that Kate slept downstairs on the fawn-coloured sofa with its old coffee stain created when they’d been necking like kids one evening and Rob had knocked over his mug and they’d been too into each other to bother wiping it up. The gaps left by his personal things made her ache with longing, and of course she could easily have filled them . . .

  But he might come back.

  You’d have to ask him first.

  They’d begun meeting up for the odd drink or coffee about four months after their parting, and almost as soon as that first layer of ice had been cracked, they’d realized that they both felt much the same. Sad and ashamed of having failed one another, bewildered by that shocking breakdown of communication and their inability to overcome their differences.

  Kate still, deep down, feeling betrayed, wary of trusting Rob again.

  ‘I need to take this slowly,’ she’d told him in August.

  ‘I need to be with you now,’ he’d said. ‘I’m afraid if we wait too long, we may never find each other again.’

  ‘I think we already have,’ Kate had said. ‘At least, we’re on the way.’

  She had really believed they might be getting close to talking about real reconciliation on Tuesday, but then her bloody PMS had collaborated with her angst and still lingering anger, and blown it out of the water again.

  Now, this chilly Friday afternoon, she arrived at her father’s flat determined to make a real effort with Delia, for her dad’s sake mostly, but also because maybe this was her chance to turn a miserable week around, and if she could get through one at least lukewarm hour with Delia Price, then all things might be possible.

  The Christmas decorations started it.

  ‘It all looks wonderful,’ Kate managed, standing on the unblemished floor gazing ahead into the open plan living and dining area.

  Which was a true enough statement, if one wanted to live in a showplace. Not a bauble out of place – nothing, come to that, that could reasonably be described as a bauble. Plenty of style, but not a scrap of real warmth.

  ‘Delia did the whole thing,’ Michael said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Kate said.

  Her father and Delia shot each other a look of unity. Against her scepticism, against her.

  ‘I brought Thai,’ Kate said, holding up the box.

  ‘Darling, I wish you hadn’t,’ Michael said. ‘I was trying to tell you when you phoned, but you hung up.’

  ‘If you’ve eaten,’ Kate said, ‘you can probably heat it up for dinner.’

  ‘Except,’ Delia said, ‘we’re going to be in Amsterdam.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of packing,’ her father said.

  Another look passed between them. Lovers, packing to go away.

  ‘We’re really sorry,’ Delia said.

  Yeah, Kate thought.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you at least dish up for yourself?’ Michael suggested. ‘Then we can come in and out, and pick at bits while we pack.’

  ‘Not the greatest idea,’ Delia said, ‘getting pad thai on your shirts.’

  Kate tried to remind herself that this was the woman who had turned Michael’s life downside up.

  Who’d also put the kibosh on any hopes of her parents getting back together.

  ‘Couldn’t we just sit down together for a little while?’ Kate directed the question at her father. ‘You don’t have to touch the food.’

  ‘Why don’t you do that, Mike,’ Delia said. ‘I’ll finish the packing.’

  Kate hated it when she called him that.

  ‘Really?’ Michael looked pleased.

  ‘So long as you don’t mind my choosing all the wrong things,’ Delia said.

  ‘What time’s your flight?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Not till six,’ Michael said.

  ‘Oceans of time,’ Kate said.

  ‘Not really,’ Delia said. ‘Not if we want to look in on those people.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Michael said. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘New client,’ Delia said.

  ‘Got the picture,’
Kate said. ‘No time for me, right.’

  The dark, hormonal, selfish mood was steaming back up to the surface.

  ‘Darling, don’t be—’

  ‘And what’s with all this “darling” business, Dad?’ He’d hardly ever called her that in the past, pre-Delia, not that way, at least, like some actor.

  ‘Is that a sin too now?’ Delia enquired. ‘Along with daring to go away for a weekend?’

  ‘It might have been nice to know, yes?’

  Which was nonsense, and Kate knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself now.

  ‘Are you OK?’ her father asked.

  ‘Do you care?’ Kate asked back.

  ‘Jeez,’ Delia said.

  ‘And you can just butt out,’ Kate said.

  ‘Kate, stop it,’ Michael told her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Delia said.

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Times like this,’ Kate said, ‘I understand why Mum turned to drink.’

  Neither original, nor the first time she’d said it.

  No retaliation from her father, just disappointment in his eyes.

  ‘She says she never drank to escape till she married you, and I believe her.’

  No stopping her once she’d begun.

  Much like Bel in the past.

  ‘What’s all this about, Kate?’ Michael asked wearily.

  ‘Oh, sod off to Amsterdam and have a great time,’ she said.

  Very adult.

  ‘I hope we will,’ Delia said, and put an arm around her father.

  Kate headed for the door.

  ‘Don’t forget your lunch,’ Delia said.

  Kate banged the white front door behind her so hard it made the sleek brass knocker clang, raging not at them but at herself for her appalling display, so exactly the kind she despised in others.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  No one left to piss off now, because she hadn’t called her mother back since putting the phone down on her yesterday, and she didn’t want Bel to find out that Delia and Mike were going to Amsterdam, because she’d always wanted to go there with him.

  End of a perfect week then. Nothing to do now but sod off herself. Get right away and make it harder for anyone to find her – not that anyone would want to, and who could blame them?

  She made the decision as she was getting back into the Mini.

  Time out needed for her too.

  Just her car and the open road and, at journey’s end, a bottle of wine, something seriously fattening to eat and, finally, a peaceful night or two’s sleep at Caisleán, the old barn that she and Rob had converted together as a weekend retreat in the section of south Oxfordshire that formed part of the Berkshire Downs.

  God, she missed him, but there was nothing she could do about it today.

  All she wanted, all she needed, right now, was to be left alone.

  Laurie

  Eight years had passed since Sam’s birth. Since when Laurie had completed her degree course at art college, collecting her useless qualifications while Sam got his ‘start’.

  She’d gone to Reading this time, in case people remembered her and asked questions, her parents said, so better to study somewhere no one knew her. And meantime, Sam was doing well and living contentedly at the Mann Children’s Home without her. Happy when she visited, knowing perfectly well who she was, as loving and full of hugs with her as he was with most people.

  They loved Sam at Rudolf Mann House, and Sam was easy to love; a sweet-natured boy with considerable learning difficulties but with little tendency towards tantrums. Compliant for the most part, like his mother, who worked now, when bidden, at his grandparents’ stables (not that Sam knew who his grandparents were), who painted more or less to order, seldom for pleasure, unless it was a gift for Sam.

  Laurie knew by now, had known for a long time, that her parents had lied, that of course Sam could have come to live with them, the way thousands of children with Down’s syndrome were taken care of by their families even if it was harder teaching them simple skills, even if their lives could be a battle. But all the fight had gone out of Laurie long ago, and she supposed they probably thought of her with contempt at the home – she knew that one of them did, at least; a woman who had come out to speak to her one Saturday afternoon when she was bringing her son back after their day together.

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she had told Laurie. ‘He never frets after you’ve left him.’

  Bitch, Laurie had thought, though she knew she ought to be glad, because she never wanted Sam to be unhappy for a second, and this woman – who had to be extra worthy because she had a disability herself, which meant that she’d not only overcome, but was giving of herself to God knew how many children, while Laurie, who had nothing wrong with her, couldn’t manage to give her own son more than one day a fortnight – was surely right to think badly of her.

  Bitch.

  Laurie supposed her fight would come back if someone were ever to want to hurt Sam in any way. But that was never going to happen so long as he lived in his safe haven.

  Safe and sound near the hamlet of Barford St John, southwest of Banbury. Far enough away from his mother’s home to be virtually sure that no one from their world would ever spot Laurie coming to call at Rudolf Mann House, let alone identify Sam as anything to do with the Moon family.

  Laurie didn’t hate them any more.

  Just herself.

  ‘At least,’ Shelly had said to her when Sam was about five and Laurie was showing her a photograph of his smiling face, ‘you’ll always know you’ve done right by him.’

  The photographs Laurie used to give her parents were never displayed in frames like Andrew and Sara’s children’s photos. Sam’s pictures always disappeared, and Laurie had once decided that her parents either cut them up or burned them in case someone went through their rubbish.

  She had stopped giving them his photos a long time ago.

  That was not important. They were not really important any more. Except that they paid Sam’s bills because she could not, because she had not listened to them when they wanted her to become a lawyer or doctor, which meant that the time would never come when she could begin to take on what they did for her son.

  But Sam was alive and well, and Laurie was able to see him once a fortnight.

  That had been laid down in the ground rules made after Provence, along with the law of ‘absolute secrecy’. They had negotiated a little, had suggested at first that Laurie see Sam only once monthly, but with what was left of her will she had dug in her heels, and they had given way.

  After that it was take it or leave it. So she took it.

  She was pleased with the picture she’d completed in time for her next visit. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Sam’s face when he realized it was the memory of their day out at the funfair in Banbury. Couldn’t wait for one of his wonderful hugs.

  ‘They’re so loving,’ people often said about children with Down’s syndrome. Most of them knowing so very little about the realities of their everyday problems.

  Just like Laurie.

  The Game

  In the beginning, the group’s pretend games were always set in their imaginary, greatly restricted version of Golding’s wild, fictitious island, the two boys and two girls continuing to swap characters till they felt they had the right fit. When that much had become clear to them – who was playing who – they’d junked the rest of the characters and plot, but each of them had held tight to their own role as if they really needed it, almost in the way that younger children sometimes needed battered stuffed bears or a night light.

  I find it remarkable – Ralph had written in the private journal in which she’d begun to set down her observations on the children and their metamorphoses – how snugly their characters do seem to fit them. And where they didn’t exactly fit, the manner in which they’ve adapted to their new alternative selves.

  Easy enough to see why they needed imaginary identities, since an
ything was likely to be happier than their own, real lives, and though Ralph had not been officially privy to their files, she had found opportunities to read them.

  Sad stories. Their collective pasts even worse than their present.

  Since beginning her friendship with the children, she had found herself wishing for the first time in her life that she had persisted with her studies, perhaps become a psychologist, a person really up to helping these extraordinary children.

  Though if she had, of course, she would probably not have come to Challow Hall at the right time. Would not have been able to follow their lights and find them.

  She began to write her journal in a manner she felt a trained psychologist might; told herself this was a kind of personal further education, that she was conducting a sociological exercise. She tried to analyse her motives in befriending the children, and concluded that there was nothing at all reprehensible in it. She simply wanted to be their friend; wanted to be among them and playing their games, partly because it was the most fun she had ever known, but mostly because she hoped she might be the kind of person they needed on their side. An adult as much on their wavelength as it was possible to be.

  From the beginning of her notes, she used their adopted names for anonymity’s sake, in case anyone else found the journal; but as time passed, she realized she had actually begun to think of them by those names, found it interesting how little the gender of the names mattered – girls renaming themselves Roger and Simon.

  Even beginning to think of herself as Ralph.

  ‘JACK’. Our boy, with his red hair; sharp green eyes and straight, too grim mouth, unlucky from the off, dumped as a newborn in a Bristol shopping centre car park without so much as a note from his presumably desperate mother. In care from the start. No adoption for Jack, just a string of foster homes, his behavioural problems reportedly ending each attempt. Deep abiding anger described by families and social workers, along with an inability to love or be loved. Supposed inability. I am not convinced about that.

  ‘SIMON’. Our girl is soft and fair, but they say she’s prey to depression. Her early history was dire, even pre-birth. Her teenage mum, terrified that her own violent parents would find out if she sought abortion, punched herself repeatedly in the hope that she might kill her foetus. But it survived – Simon survived – born with internal injuries, needing surgery, after which her wretched mother committed suicide and left a note of confession. Simon’s scars are invisible, but her inheritance weighs upon her. She fears, according to Dr Lindo, that she may be a wicked person.