Interpreters

by Sue Eckstein

  Chapter Five

  ‘Hello, I’m Julia,’ I say to the small boy called Ben. ‘And I’ve got something in my contact lens. It’s making my eyes water.’

  ‘They’re doing sunflowers,’ Angie says as she comes into the sitting room carrying a bright blue Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox and holding out a small navy blue sweatshirt daubed with orange and yellow paint. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘She’s got something in her toncat lens,’ says Ben with authority.

  ‘Oh, that can be so painful! Why don’t you use the mirror in the downstairs loo?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m going to have another cup of tea. Would you like one?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Sorry about this. I won’t be long.’

  ‘No hurry.’

  ‘Can I see your toncat lens?’ asks Ben.

  ‘No, you come with me, Ben. I’ll get you some juice and a biscuit.’

  ‘But I want to see the lady’s toncat lens.’

  ‘She won’t be able to sort it out with you peering at her. Now come on. I’ve got Jaffa Cakes.’

  I sit on the loo seat, and bury my head in my lap. I haven’t cried about my father since the day my adolescent prophecy was fulfilled and now I can’t seem to stop.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ my father would have sighed, as he lit another cigarette or poured himself another cut-glass tumbler of neat whisky. Or ‘It’ll be better in the morning,’ if the trouble was more medical than metaphysical. He said that to Max, just minutes before Max’s eardrum perforated. And to me the time I trod on a nail on the drive which went through my shoe and embedded itself in my foot. ‘Good thing I didn’t drive over that nail,’ he said. ‘It would have punctured the tyre.’

  After what feels like quite a long time, I get up and look in the mirror. My mascara has run and the whites of my eyes are bright pink. I look more than a little mad. I splash cold water on my face and rub at the black smudges with loo paper. I practise polite smiles. When I return to the sitting room, Ben is sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the television, eating biscuits and watching a train pulling into a railway siding. ‘I’m sure they’ve got a mild form of Asperger’s, don’t you think?’ Angie asks pleasantly as she puts down her copy of Good Housekeeping and pours the tea into mugs.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Train enthusiasts. When Geoff and I moved in together, I found all these old notebooks of his, full of numbers and cryptic references to things like Crewe Works and Clapham Junction. And Didcot. It made me feel all funny – as though I’d come across a secret stash of well-thumbed porn mags or something.’ She nibbles at a biscuit. ‘Geoff insists it’s no odder than birdwatching, but I’m not convinced. I’m afraid the trainspotting gene seems to have passed down through the father’s line, as you can see. To the male of the species, at least. How’s the contact lens?’

  ‘Much better, thanks.’

  ‘They can be a real bugger, can’t they? I once spent a couple of hours looking for a missing lens that was sitting on my cheek the whole time. And God knows how often I’ve had to get Geoff to unscrew the U-bend.

  ‘I wonder if there’s anyone in the Close you’d still remember,’ Angie muses as she nurses her mug of tea and looks lovingly at the hunched, absorbed figure of her son. ‘I’m pretty sure there isn’t. The Croziers were the last of that era to go, I think. They retired to Spain, I seem to remember my parents said. And then one of them – her, I think – got one of those horrible cancers – pancreatic or something – and died very quickly. There’s a lovely family who moved down from Birmingham next door now. He’s something in the drinks business and she’s a life coach. They’ve got a son about Ben’s age but rather better behaved. And twins on the way. IVF. Were you hoping to see anyone else on the estate?’

  ‘No. I hadn’t planned to. I hadn’t planned to come here, actually.’

  Angie looks a little mystified. I feel I owe her some kind of explanation in return for the mugs of tea and equanimity.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment with a solicitor not far from here at four-thirty and I got all my timings completely wrong. I had one of those mornings…’

  ‘Tell me about them!’

  ‘And I suddenly thought that I’d come and see what Eynsford Park Estate looked like, thirty years on.’

  ‘And what does it look like?’

  ‘Different. But still very familiar. It’s weird.’

  ‘This is the first time you’ve ever been back?’

  ‘It is. I’ve lived abroad a lot. And what about you?’ I ask, hoping Angie won’t notice the subject changing direction. ‘What did you do after school?’

  ‘French at Goldsmith’s, then a PGCE. I never did the probationary year, though. The teaching practice just about finished me off. They don’t tell you on the course what to do when thirty-five twelve-year-olds fart at a pre-arranged time, or when a child comes to school every day with just a Crunchie bar in his lunchbox, or what to say when a social worker comes in to investigate an alleged case of incest. You know, in one of my classes, there were only two children who were living with both their biological parents. When I was at the High School – it was probably the same for you – there wasn’t a single girl in my class from a broken home. I suddenly realised what a cushy job all our teachers had. The worst thing I ever did was hand in my RE homework a day late. And that was only the once.’

  ‘I bit Jennifer Black.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I bit Jennifer Black. I ran at her from the far end of the playground and bit her in the chest.’

  For a while neither of us says anything. Angie Plaistow develops a keen interest in shunting locomotives. I don’t know where that memory was unearthed from, but I can see Jennifer very clearly – with her irritating frizzy blonde hair and horrid little upturned nose. I had regretted the incident immediately. Not because of the damage I’d inflicted – I was rather proud of the mouth-shaped mark that Jennifer tearfully demonstrated to an eager, somewhat shocked, crowd of seven-year-olds – but because I was worried that Mrs Black would come round to our house and shout at my mother. For days I dreaded the phone or doorbell ringing and, whenever it did, I would hold my breath as I hovered behind my mother, only letting it go when I was sure it wasn’t Mrs Black. She never did speak to my mother as far as I know, but Jennifer announced rather proudly, the day after the incident, that she wasn’t allowed to talk to me ever again. Ever.

  ‘I’ve got to pick up the rest of the brood in a bit,’ says Angie, looking at her watch. ‘And I promised I’d collect Geoff’s dry-cleaning.’

  ‘Yes, I must get going too. Thanks so much for the tea.’

  ‘It was lovely seeing you. Come on, Ben, shoes on. What time did you say your appointment was?’

  ‘Four-thirty.’

  ‘You’ll still be terribly early.’

  ‘It’s fine. Really.’

  ‘Look, you’re welcome to stay here.’

  ‘That’s very kind, but –’

  ‘Honestly. I won’t be long and I’m sure you don’t want to sit in the car outside the solicitor’s for hours.’

  If I stay, I could look around the house. I don’t know if the feeling I have at the pit of my stomach is dread or exhilaration.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t want a complete stranger sitting here eating your biscuits while you’re out.’

  ‘You haven’t touched any of my biscuits – and anyway, you’re not exactly a complete stranger. You could have a look around the house if you like. See what’s changed. Honestly, it’s no problem at all. I’d say if it was.’

  ‘Well, thanks. I’d like to do that – if you’re really sure you don’t mind.’

  ‘Just be careful as you go into the end bedroom. Catherine has a slightly disturbing fascination for all things military and the room could well be booby-trapped. And I’d love to hear more about you and your daughter. Emily said I’d find the article really interesting.’

  ‘No, look, I’ll go. You�
�ll have loads of things to do once you’ve picked everyone up.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. It’s fine. Really. Just make yourself at home. Come on, Ben, I said shoes on.’

  I finish my tea as Angie and Ben get ready to go out, and wait until I hear the front door close behind them before going upstairs.

  I stop on the small landing halfway up the stairs and sit down on the top step. Max and I used to crouch here after we’d been sent upstairs to bed, quiet as spies, as we tried to make out what was going on in that strange downstairs nighttime world from which we were excluded. There wasn’t very much to hear, but that didn’t deter us. My mother spent most evenings alone, waiting for my father to come home from the hospital, sewing or watching television or playing slow, sad pieces on the piano. When they were both home, we might hear footsteps on the parquet floor, the creak of the drinks cabinet door, an indistinct question from my mother, a pause, the equally muffled answer from my father, the footsteps receding, the study door shutting, the TV going on. Cilla. Anyone who had a heart.

  Sometimes, I would wake up in the night to the sound of my parents arguing and come and lie here, curled up in a little ball, my nightie pulled taut over my feet, envying Max as, safe in his cupboard, he slept through my mother’s shouting and my father’s silent response.

  ‘They all treat me the same. Like I’m the enemy. Your mother, the whole lot of them,’ I once heard her cry out, her voice hoarse with despair. ‘Well, don’t they? Why don’t you ever support me? Why aren’t you ever on my side?’

  ‘What, dear?’

  What, dear. I don’t think I ever once heard my father use my mother’s name. It was as though she didn’t have a name. The few friends of mine or Max’s who met her called her Mrs Rosenthal, my grandmother called her your mother and we called her Mum – and that was that.

  On Thursday afternoons, we were banished to this landing with a packet of Bourbon biscuits. We used to sit on the top step, nibbling away at the dense chocolate filling as we listened to Schumann’s Kinderszenen or the Moonlight Sonata, interspersed with the piano teacher’s sporadic words of encouragement. After an hour or so, my mother would open the frosted glass door and we’d be called downstairs for our own lessons. I hated the piano but loved the piano teacher. Mr Elliot was an old man – he told me he was fifty-four – and reminded me of the doctor in Brief Encounter – a film that Max and I had yawned our way through one rainy afternoon some time before the advent of our own matinee idol.

  For the love of Mr Elliot, with his dark brown slicked-back hair and his hazel eyes that disappeared into a mass of crinkles when he smiled, I struggled hopelessly with bass clefs, treble clefs, minims and quavers. I did everything I could to make sure he would never realise that I couldn’t make any sense whatsoever of the symbols on the sheets of music that he placed in front of me unless I’d first heard the piece played through a few times.

  ‘All right, Julia. What about a new piece? This one looks a lot of fun. “In Grandmother’s Garden”. Just two notes for the left hand to worry about and the right hand’s playing the tune. It’s in four four and don’t forget the F sharp here and here. Right. Off you go.’

  ‘Mr Elliot?’

  ‘Yes, Julia?’

  ‘How many times have you seen The Sound of Music?’

  ‘Just the once. What about you?’

  ‘Three times. Sarah Woodley in my class has seen it seven times.’

  ‘Good gracious. All those singing nuns and stormtroopers. Now, let’s start with the left hand.’

  ‘I’d quite like to be a nun.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I’d like to give all my things to the poor and wear a wimpole.’

  ‘I’m not sure many nuns wear wimples these days but I’m sure you’d look very fetching in one. Now, Julia – the left hand starts on a G. This G.’

  ‘Mr Elliot?’

  ‘Yes, Julia?’

  ‘What’s your favourite kind of torture?’

  ‘Torture?’

  ‘Yes. You know – like being rolled down a hill in a barrel full of nails or having a tap dripping on to your head for years and years, or one of those racks where they turn the handles until your arms and legs come right out of their sockets and fall on to the floor.’

  ‘I think I’d go for the barrel full of nails. I tell you what, why don’t I play this through for you a couple of times before you start? You count me in.’

  Max – who also loved Mr Elliot, though perhaps not quite as passionately – took it all very seriously and learned very quickly, before transferring his allegiance to the violin, if not the violin teacher.

  When Mr Elliot was in the house, everything felt different. The house took on a festive, party atmosphere. My mother laughed. We all laughed. Quite often he would stay for tea.

  ‘Come again tomorrow!’ Max and I would beg as he threw his leather music case into the back of his grey Austin. ‘Go on! You wouldn’t mind, would you, Mum?’

  And so, by the spring of 1967, Mr Elliot – Roland as he asked us to call him – was coming to see us most days. On sunny afternoons after school, my mother would drive us all into the country where Max and I climbed trees and looked for beetles while she and Roland sat on a tartan rug on the grass watching us. Sometimes we’d feel rather sorry for our father, who was stuck at work saving the lives of small children and missing out on all the fun. One day during the summer holiday he came home, after what must have been an unusually quiet day at the hospital, to find the four of us flushed with sunshine and happiness, eating Battenberg cake in the garden. He looked slightly surprised to see us all, I thought.

  ‘Roland.’

  Roland stood up to shake my father’s hand. ‘Oscar. Good to see you again. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thank you, and you?’

  ‘Fine. Enjoying the lovely weather and the delightful company.’

  ‘Are you?’

  My father looked around as though wondering which particular delightful company Roland was referring to. Then he glanced in the direction of his study.

  ‘Well, I must get –’

  ‘Why don’t you take a day off work and come out with us tomorrow, Dad?’ I asked. ‘Roland’s coming if he can cancel one of his lessons and we’re going to Rochester Castle.’

  I can’t remember what he replied, but I do remember that he never took up the offer of accompanying us on what Max and I increasingly came to think of as our family outings. My mother was very happy during those months and so Max and I grew happier and less wary, less scared she might suddenly go mad again and disappear once more. Her piano lessons got longer and longer, though, oddly, we never heard much Schumann or Beethoven, or anything else really. She sometimes forgot to give us biscuits. My father would come home late in the evening to find Roland and my mother watching The Forsyte Saga together. He didn’t have a TV of his own.

  That was the year we went on holiday to Spain – me, Max, Mum and Roland. The idea was that we would drive down to a villa belonging to a friend of Roland’s, camping on the way, and my father, who was far too busy at work to take more than a week of leave, would fly out to join us once we had arrived.

  Things didn’t go completely to plan. The car journey was strangely tense. For a reason neither Max nor I could understand, our mother refused to share her compartment of the tent with Roland and chose, instead, to sleep in the car. Edgy with incomprehension, Max and I lay in our section of the tent during those warm Mediterranean nights, giggling as we listened to Roland snoring away on the other side of the canvas dividing-wall or spied on him in his voluminous underpants and string vest. Once we caught sight of his dangly willy and had to burrow deep into our sleeping bags to muffle our hysterical laughter.

  The night before we arrived at our Spanish villa, I woke to the sound of voices outside the tent. I nudged Max awake and we shuffled, caterpillar-like in our sleeping bags, towards the entrance. We unzipped the door a couple of inches. My mother and Roland were sitting on the ground a
few yards away. Roland was holding her hand.

  ‘Of course I can’t,’ we heard her say, her voice husky with misery or anger, we didn’t know which.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  ‘Because I can’t. And I can’t go on like this. It’s killing me.’

  If Max hadn’t sneezed at that point, we might have found out what it was she couldn’t go on doing. What was killing her. But he did and we didn’t. For a while we thought she was just upset because she’d got sick of sleeping in the car, but, when we got to the resort near Malaga, and Roland stayed at the villa and the rest of us moved into an apartment on the beach to await our father, we began to think it might have been something else. It was only the three of us on the long, hot drive back to England.

  Shortly after we got home, we heard the familiar sound of Roland’s Austin outside the house. Max and I rushed down the corridor to open the door, ready to hurl ourselves into his arms as we always did.

  ‘Just go upstairs,’ my mother said, blocking our route to the door. ‘We’re out.’ We stood behind her listening to the incessant ringing of the bell.

  ‘But he knows we’re here. He heard us,’ I whispered, feeling both desperately sorry for Roland and terribly ashamed at being party to this deception. ‘He’ll think it’s really rude. Let him in! Please, Mum.’

  ‘Go upstairs.’

  ‘He wants to see us. He’s come over specially.’ By now I was no longer whispering.

  ‘It’s not you he’s come to see.’

  ‘Open the door. Please, Mum,’ Max begged, the corners of his mouth quivering.

  ‘Go upstairs!’

  So Max and I stood at her bedroom window, and watched through a crack in the net curtains as Roland Elliot drove out of the Close and out of our lives. We never heard our mother play the piano again.

  V

  My father used to sit in his summer house at the end of the garden and listen to the foreign broadcasts on the wireless even though it was absolutely forbidden. Or probably because it was forbidden. He hated Hitler – thought he was a ridiculous little failed painter – said we’d lose this stupid war. For a long time, we were the only people I knew without a swastika in the house, and when we finally got a flag he insisted on buying the smallest one he could find. It was about this big. I always hoped that the SS man who lived at the end of our road would hear him listening to the wireless and come and get him taken away. My God! I’d have been so happy if that had happened. I came so close reporting my father – I got as far as dialling once – then put the phone down. I don’t know why I didn’t do it. I wish I had.