Often Dottie looked away when Hudson was doing something that she had asked him not to do. There were times when the thought of returning to the house was unbearable, when the thought of being faced with the boy’s hate was too much. She stayed at work later whenever she could, but this was not something she could do often. She had to get back in time to get food ready. Sophie was now working in a British Rail cafeteria in Victoria Station, and by the time she came home her feet were killing her. Dottie sometimes came home to find Sophie asleep on her bed and Hudson out on the streets somewhere. She pretended not to see when Sophie held Hudson for too long, fondling him until he fell silent with a peculiar stillness. It was Sophie’s gift, she thought. She had a way of giving comfort, a warmth that drew people to her. Dottie made herself look away rather than say anything. It comforted both of them, and she knew there could be no harm in it.
They had a celebration for his fifteenth birthday. That was one of their happiest moments: gifts and a birthday cake with fifteen beautiful and dainty candles. The little flames shone with a steady, held-in strength, ready if required to burn until the end of time. Hudson hesitated before blowing the candles out, as if he was thinking of saying something. Then he smiled and took a huge breath which spluttered out prematurely as he was overcome by suppressed laughter. His sisters prevented the bad luck that attends two attempts at blowing out birthday candles by joining in mightily and the three of them blew out the fragile lights together.
When their festivities had passed beyond the stage of raucous excitement, and they were laughing and talking quietly, he told them about his time in Dover. He spoke tentatively and reluctantly. If they asked any questions he became difficult and abusive. They learnt to listen with ready smiles while his eyes darted suspiciously from one to the other, watchful for mockery or censure. He had gone to a really good school, he told them. Not like the dump he was attending now. ‘My dad got me into a public school for nothing, because he knew some people there. Sometimes he taught there. The boys were all right. They called me Sunny and I didn’t have any of this racial shit I get here. Sometimes they called me Chalky because I wasn’t, like Little John. You know, like in Robin Hood. Little John because he was so big. The teachers were brilliant and everybody was really all right. I got into the Rugby fifth. Do you know what that is? There were five rugby sides and I was picked for the lowest one, but the captain said he thought I would make a good scrum-half one day.’
‘Don’t they play rugby at your school here?’ Dottie asked. She had no idea what rugby was, or whether it was a good thing to do, but the look of pride in Hudson’s face was enough to prompt her question even though she knew he did not like to be interrupted.
‘Don’t be so thick!’ Hudson said and shook his head at her imbecility. ‘My dad was good at rugby when he was younger. He showed me photos of when he was at school. During the war he was in the Royal Navy and travelled all over the place. Once he played rugby for the Navy against Hong Kong Colony in the Far East. He was always making jokes and taking us places, my brother and I. At Christmas we went to a carol service in Dover Church. All the schools came and the church was really crowded. The church had huge pillars, really fat, stone pillars. I was standing behind one of them so I couldn’t see all the people singing. It was as if the songs were coming from behind me and all around. I had never been to a carol service before. It was beautiful. The light was like in the caves under the cliffs, soft and hazy. My dad took us there too, but it was dangerous. You could hear the pebbles rattling down, and you had to be careful that the tide did not catch you out. Afterwards we had a donkey ride on the cliffs. On a really clear day you can see France, you know.’
‘It sounds lovely!’ Sophie said.
‘He was going to teach me to swim this summer. I started to learn last year, and I did a little bit at school, but he said that by the end of the summer I would swim by hook or by crook. My brother could swim from when he was four.’
‘What’s your brother’s name?’ Dottie asked.
‘Frank,’ Hudson said, and started to sob. Both sisters made a movement towards him but he leapt up and screamed at them, telling them to keep their filthy hands off him.
‘What does your . . . dad teach?’ Dottie asked after a moment, after Hudson had sat down again. She was hoping to persuade him to continue talking. It made him sad to do so, but she could not doubt that it was better for him to speak about his loss than to hug it to himself as if it were something much more precious than an intimate and prized pain. They needed to sit together and talk about these things, because it was about all their lives, she thought. Perhaps she had been wrong to take him away from so much happiness, but she had only sought to repair what had always been there before, to make life whole again. Not just for herself, but for all of them. ‘What does your dad teach?’ Dottie asked again, passing more confidently over the dad that had made her stumble before.
‘He doesn’t teach,’ Hudson said after a moment. His face had knotted and unknotted itself in the time it took him to make a reply. The muscles on his face had contracted with anger, and his mouth had sharpened to a tight pucker as he sought to control himself. ‘He’s a headmaster,’ he said, and ran out of the room.
4
Brenda urged Dottie not to give up. ‘He’ll come through. Don’t blame yourself. You’ve got to keep trying. I’m sorry, my darling, but I’ve got some more bad news. He threw a stone at a teacher’s car yesterday . . . smashed the windscreen and hit the teacher’s daughter. Did he say anything?’
Dottie shook her head, but did not find it difficult to believe that Hudson could have done that. At least, part of her understood that he could have done such a thing even as another part wanted to protest and argue a case for him. Brenda smiled wearily, and sighed at the complications that lay before them, indulging a moment of self-pity. ‘The police have been called in,’ she said. ‘They picked him up from school, and apparently he claims that it was an accident. The teacher didn’t see who had thrown the stone, but several of the schoolchildren did. He denied it at first, but then he said it was an accident. The school rang me to tell me about it, in case I wanted to go to him. Hudson asked for me to be sent for. Do you want to come?’
They got him home late in the evening. He sat silently through all the questions, sullen and angry, glaring at the floor. At first he had looked at Dottie with incredulity, as if surprised to see her there. Then he had looked away from both the women and refused to say a word to them. The police sergeant kept in the background but it was obvious he expected little to come out of the conversation. They asked him what was likely to be the outcome. ‘Juvenile Court,’ he said with a shrug, and offered them another cup of tea. At about nine o’clock in the evening, the teacher rang the station to ask if he could withdraw his complaint. The sergeant was doubtful but bowed in the end to the teacher’s insistence. They had to wait for the teacher to come to the station and make his withdrawal in person before they were able to go home.
Sophie was still not home when they got back. She stayed out late sometimes with her friends, some women she had got to know at the cafeteria. Dottie knew that sometimes she went with men. She could tell it on her when she came in, but she did not feel she could say anything to her about it. What was there to say? What did she know, to say anything? She was having to learn to leave people alone, she thought. This was what Hudson was teaching her. If she had minded her own business, instead of allowing her nostalgia for times that had never been to direct her, Hudson would have been spared the terrors he was living through. If she had thought less about being right, and tried to find out from him what he wanted to do . . .
‘Come here, you horrible boy,’ Brenda said when they were home. ‘I’ve a good mind to wring your neck. When are you going to stop being a nuisance to everyone and straighten yourself out?’
‘Fuck off, you stupid cow!’ Hudson shouted. ‘Mind your own business. I don’t want anything to do with you. I didn’t even want to come here.�
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‘Well, you are here, and you might as well get used to it and stop making such a pathetic display of yourself,’ Brenda said, her face red with anger.
Suddenly Hudson started to laugh, pointing at Brenda Holly’s red face. ‘You look like a boiled crab,’ he said. ‘Ugly bitch!’
Brenda Holly slapped him as hard as she had the strength to. She saw him stagger backwards and almost fall. Dottie rushed towards him and took hold of his elbow. She looked round at Brenda, her eyes flashing. Hudson shook her off and ran out, shouting obscenities over his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, I should have known better,’ Brenda said, looking tired. ‘I had no right to do that . . . I don’t know how you can stand it. Why do you let him terrorise you? You poor love, after all that you’ve done for yourself! You shouldn’t have had to put up with this misery for all these months.’ Brenda sighed, then lifted her head to look Dottie in the eyes. She smiled and raised her eyebrows to acknowledge the difficulties they were in. ‘He’ll come through,’ she said, nodding firmly. ‘Don’t give up on him. Tell him I’m sorry. I’ll come back tomorrow and see him. I’m sorry, my love. I’d better go . . .’
‘He won’t have anyone to talk to if you don’t come,’ Dottie said. ‘He won’t talk to me.’
Brenda shrugged, then shook her head wearily. ‘I can’t take any more now. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said.
Hudson must have been watching, for he came back moments after Brenda left. ‘If you let that white woman come back here, I’m leaving,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see her again. Do you understand? You’ve been letting her come into our lives and mess everything up. You don’t understand what these white people are like. It was her fault. She messed things up for us from the start.’ It was her fault, it was her fault, and more and much more along those lines. Dottie listened without saying a word, which gradually drove Hudson to greater excesses and wilder accusations. ‘If that woman ever comes here again I’ll beat her up. I’ll slash her tyres. White people hate us. They’ll do anything to keep us down, unless we fight back and protect ourselves. I should’ve hit her with something when she touched me then, but she’d have just taken me back to the station . . . and . . . and made something else up. Like I was trying to rape her or something like that. Well, that’s what will happen if she comes back here. One of my mates at school, his brother did that. He got a few friends together and they did that because this council woman was always interfering.’
‘Your pants are still smelling of piss and you can talk about doing things like that to people!’ Dottie said quietly, describing her own incredulity rather than expecting Hudson to take notice of her.
‘So you’d better tell her not to come back here. I’m warning you, that’s all,’ he shouted, pretending he had not heard her.
She wished they had the mythical two-roomed flat that the landlord had promised them, so she could get away from him. The promises had come to nothing because Sophie had fallen out with the landlord, and the little room under the eaves remained occupied. The sallow young man proved more resourceful than appearances suggested, manufacturing ingenious excuses and launching cringing pleas for time when all else failed. The landlord lost interest in harrying him, but perhaps he was also punishing Sophie for whatever offence it was she had caused him. Now when he came for the rent, instead of warbling his crooked love-song at the door, or even taking a step or two into the room, the landlord glared into the corridor until Dottie had finished checking the cash and was ready to hand it over.
As she listened to Hudson’s cruelties, she wanted, more than anything, to be by herself, to think about what had happened. But she did not want to shut him up. She was afraid that he would become even wilder, and would do something terrible. In the end, she sensed him winding down, running out of steam. His voice became more whining, asking for sympathy. Dottie still kept quiet, resisting his appeal, wanting him to go to bed. ‘Where’s Sophie?’ he asked. ‘She’s playing about with some man, isn’t she? I can’t understand who’d want a fatty like her. Do you know what she promised me for Christmas? She said she’d buy me football boots. What are you going to get for me?’
Dottie tried not to say anything, but Hudson waited. In his eyes was a blank look, as if he had not really said anything, and was not waiting for an answer from her. She felt his edginess and it made her anxious. She knew that she was expecting him to do something unpredictable, and she understood that she no longer fathomed him. It frightened her, and made her realise the extent of his ascendancy. ‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. For the first time since his return, she wondered if there was something wrong with him, something wrong in his head. She hurriedly dispersed the thought before it had had time to take root. ‘I’ve got some ideas, but I’m not telling you yet,’ she said with a smile.
Without another word, he went to get ready for bed. She heard his preparations and saw the curtain bumping up here and there as he manoeuvred himself around the triangle of space. When she came back from the bathroom all was silent. As she undressed, she had a powerful feeling of being watched. She suspected that he often watched them when they undressed, but there was nothing she could do about that. The position of his corner meant there was nowhere to hide in the room. The sheets were so thin that the holes that kept appearing in the curtain could easily be no more than accidents and ordinary wear. She had stitched some of the tiny holes, but they kept reappearing. She was afraid that if she persisted with the repairs it would seem as if she was prudish about such things. She might even drive herself into a state over it all. Once or twice she had switched the light off before changing, but Sophie had laughed at her and told her not to be such an old maid. Her fears would look too obvious if she switched the light off to change and then switched it on again moments later to wait for Sophie. She could not bear the thought of Hudson jumping out of his tent with even more abuse.
5
Brenda laughed when Dottie told her about what Hudson had said, but she never got another word out of him. However much she teased or cajoled him, he either completely ignored her or left the room. She bought him a large reference book for Christmas, but he refused to accept it, and in the end she was forced to leave it on the chest of drawers and go. As the months passed her visits became less frequent, and tended to become more formal. If she found Dottie alone, then she became her old self, full of advice and self-importance, and unstinting in her affection for her young friend. She tried to encourage Dottie to call her at the office sometimes for a chat, but Dottie hated the phone, and the only time she had gone to the office the clerk at the main desk had refused to let her through without an appointment.
She could have done with a friend. Sophie was out most of the time, running with a crowd of women who always seemed to be going to drinking parties and dances. We put up with hardships from our first day out of the womb, Dottie thought. Until one day we can choose our lives for ourselves. And then we can make nothing more of it than to drink and dance like an advanced kind of monkey. She had hoped that with Sophie working they could afford somewhere better to live, but that had come to nothing. She saw as little of Sophie’s money as of Sophie herself, and she was not interested in fighting things out with her. It was all she could do to keep her mouth shut when Sophie was setting forth for her parties, with her bright shiny dresses and tarty make-up. It had happened slowly, and with each advance Sophie’s manner became stiffer and more stubborn, as if she was expecting to be criticised. Dottie wished she had said something earlier, but she was then educating herself to be less interfering. She could not think what she could say now that would make the situation better.
It made everything seem worse for her that she had no one to talk to, she thought. Hudson was driving her crazy and there was no one she could go to for a good grumble and moan, or for words of comfort or advice. He had become answerable to no one. He came and went as he pleased, especially after the New Year, when the landlord relented and let him have the little room upstairs. It was only big enough
for a bed and a couple of sticks of furniture, a chest of drawers and a rickety table Dottie had bought for him to do his homework on. He was to come down to their room to eat or sit and talk, but it became impossible to keep track of him. He went to school when he felt like it and sometimes did not come home for days. The school did not bother to complain any more. He was already over the age when he could be forced to attend, and no doubt the school was only too pleased when he did not turn up. Once he disappeared for two weeks, and Dottie began to fear that something terrible had happened to him. She would have gone to the police, except she suspected that that would only add to Hudson’s troubles.
She tried to talk to him, to persuade him that there was more to do and take pleasure in than wandering the streets. She did not dare mention to him the other things she was afraid he might be doing when he was not at home. Where had he gone for two weeks? She described the rich possibilities of his life, if only he would put his mind to making them amount to something. She heard the insincerity in her voice, the strident insistence on fantasies of achievement and fulfilment. You could be anything you like, she told him, clutching wildly at old lies. Whenever she appealed to him in this way, he turned his face away from her with a pained expression. In some desperation, she once suggested that he write a letter to his old foster parents and his brother Frank. His face set into a look of anger at the mention of his brother’s name, but only for a moment. Perhaps they could all take a trip down to Dover for the day, Dottie continued, encouraged that the memories were still potent for him and could still rouse a show of protest. To say hello to them and thank them for having been so kind, she said. At that he had laughed with raucous mockery, his growing body shaking with exaggerated mirth. It was the laughter of a hooligan, deliberately jeering and uncouth. It was intended to be as much a challenge and an insult to her as it was a response to her over-eager optimism. ‘Don’t be pathetic,’ he said. ‘What do you want to go and see those white creeps for?’
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