Maggie's Boy

by Beryl Kingston

  Alison was furious at being given orders in such a peremptory way. He always presumes I’ll do what he wants, she thought. But she also knew that she didn’t have much option. Rigg was right about keeping in with his mother because she had ultimate control over the will on which so much depended. If he was going to pay off his debts when the two-year arrangement came to an end, he would need every penny of it. She drew the line at chocolates but the flowers were an investment. She would have to deliver them.

  They arrived in an Interflora van the following morning, just as she and Brad were setting out to work. A dozen red roses addressed to Mrs Toan. Twelve beautiful blooms, all with stems of identical length and heads of perfect scarlet, like a line of chorus girls standing ready to perform.

  ‘Blimey!’ Brad said, joining her at the door. ‘Easter presents now! Who’re they from? Morgan?’

  ‘Course not,’ Alison said. ‘He wouldn’t be so extravagant. They’re from Rigg, for his mother. It’s her birthday tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh lovely!’ Brad said with heavy sarcasm. ‘What are you supposed to do with them?’

  ‘I shall put them in water for the moment,’ Alison said, deliberately misunderstanding the question. ‘I haven’t got time for anything else. We’re late as it is.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ Brad said, scowling. ‘Why’ve they come here?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ Alison said, running the tap for the roses. ‘Can’t stop now. Come on, kids, look sharp.’ She hid the flowers in her bedroom and. steered the children out of Brad’s narrow front door, down the stairs, and away from criticism.

  Next morning it was pouring with rain and then the trouble really began.

  ‘You’re not going out in this,’ Brad said, when Alison put Emma’s anorak on, ‘for heaven’s sake. You’ll be drowned.’

  ‘I must deliver the flowers,’ Alison said, helping Emma into her anorak. ‘It’s her birthday.’

  ‘I knew it would be those bloody flowers,’ Brad said. ‘Let her wait. What’s she ever done for you?’

  Brad turned her attention to the children. ‘You don’t want to go out in all this rain, do you, kids?’

  Jon and Emma were glad of an ally. ‘No.’

  ‘I must do it, Brad,’ Alison insisted. ‘It’s important.’

  Brad lit a cigarette and glared at her friend through the smoke. ‘You’ll get soaked,’ she warned.

  They did. As they walked up Fish Lane a sudden, stinging shower came slanting down upon them, driving in through the inadequate plastic cover of the buggy and soaking right through Alison’s anorak. Within minutes they were all as wet as if they’d been swimming in their clothes and both children were complaining miserably.

  ‘Never mind,’ Alison said, fighting to stay cheerful. ‘It’ll soon stop. It’s only a shower. The sun’ll come out in a minute and we’ll all get dry again.’

  Sure enough, by the time they reached Maggie’s house the worst of the shower was over; but the roses were so battered they looked as though they were at least a week old.

  Maggie Toan came to the door in an expensive négligé and regarded both the soggy group and the flowers in a disparaging fashion.

  ‘They’re from Rigg,’ Alison explained, holding them out towards her.

  ‘He phoned me this morning,’ Maggie said, shaking raindrops from the cellophane wrapper. ‘Dear boy. He never forgets my birthday, even when he’s busy.’

  Alison dripped on the doorstep.

  ‘I’d invite you in,’ her mother-in-law said, looking down her powdered nose at Emma and Jon, who were steaming behind their plastic cover, ‘but you’re really too wet, aren’t you. Better get home, my dear, and change those children into dry clothes.’

  So there was nothing for it but to trudge back along the promenade to Brad’s flat.

  Brad was back from her breakfast duty, cooking bacon and eggs for Martin who was sitting at the kitchen table with a wodge of Sunday papers under his elbow, reading a Times supplement.

  ‘Good heavens!’ he said, when he saw the state they were in.

  ‘We got caught in a shower,’ Alison explained, skinning the wet anorak from her shivering daughter.

  ‘I told you so,’ Brad said, banging about in the kitchen. ‘This is all the Great-I-Am’s doing. I hope you realise. If they’re ill it’ll be all his fault.’

  It was exactly what Alison was afraid of. ‘They won’t be ill,’ she said, repressing any guilt. ‘They’re good strong kids. Bit of rain never hurt anybody.’

  ‘That bloody Rigg!’ Brad said. ‘If he wants his mother to have a bunch a’ bloody flowers on her birthday he should come down an’ do it himself. She’s his mother, not yours. You let him trample on you.’

  Alison knew that only too well and she didn’t want to be told it. ‘Yes, well, it’s done now,’ she said, leading the children into the bedroom.

  ‘More’s the pity,’ Brad said, returning to the bacon, which was beginning to burn. ‘Now look at this bloody breakfast.’ She took her anger out on a can of beans, opening them with such force that the juice spilled out all over the cooker. But her annoyance still rankled. Martin got snapped at when he asked if there was another cup of tea, the Sunday papers were swept off the table on to the floor as she dished up his breakfast, and she smoked two cigarettes as he ate, puffing angrily and saying nothing, her eyes screwed up against the excessive smoke.

  By the time Alison and her reclothed children reappeared in the living room, the atmosphere was so heavy with smoke and bad temper that Martin was beginning to think he’d have to find some excuse to leave, Easter Sunday or no. He’d always been uncomfortable on the edge of someone else’s quarrel and to be exposed to Brad’s anger was more than he could bear.

  But she didn’t give him the chance to speak or move. She attacked Alison the minute she was in the room.

  ‘Got any more errands to run for him?’ she mocked. ‘Or can we get on with the holiday now?’

  ‘Leave it, Brad, please,’ Alison begged, glancing anxiously at the children. ‘Shall we do one of your jigsaws, Emma? What about the animal one? Would you like that one?’

  ‘No. Damn it all. I won’t leave it,’ Brad said. ‘It’s time you learned a thing or two about that bloody husband of yours. He’s a bloody crook.’

  Jon had taken a picture book from the toy box and was reading it, much too quietly, glancing up at them from time to time out of the corner of his eye in a way that made him look both vulnerable and sly. Alison was sitting on the floor next to Emma, spreading out the pieces of the puzzle. ‘Please!’ she begged.

  Martin tried to intervene. ‘Brad, don’t you think…’

  There was no stopping Brad now. ‘No, I don’t think,’ she said, glaring at him. ‘And never mind please. He’s a bloody crook and it’s high time she knew it. Swanning around in that bloody BMW when she’s pushing the kids about in a second-hand buggy; wearing bloody Armani suits when the kids are in reach-me-downs from a car-boot sale; three bloody shops when she’s living in a slum.’

  ‘It wasn’t a slum,’ Alison said, stung by the criticism. ‘I won’t have that. I kept it lovely and clean.’

  ‘It was a slum,’ Brad said intractably. ‘Shore Street is a slum. Nasty, cheap, little houses and he’s swanning about giving himself airs. The Great-I-Am. Millionaire. I don’t think.’

  ‘Well we haven’t got a house at all now, have we,’ Alison said, fighting back. ‘Cheap or nasty. So perhaps you’re satisfied. We haven’t got anything. We’re just a welfare family. The lowest of the low. A nasty, slummy, welfare family.’

  ‘And whose fault’s that?’ Brad stormed on. ‘I’ll tell you whose fault The Great-greedy-I-Am. I knew it was a mistake when he started all that malarkey with the mortgage.’

  ‘He wasn’t the only one,’ Alison said hotly. ‘All sorts of people took out second mortgages. Re-mortgaging is a fact of life.’

  ‘Fact of greed more like. He milked that place for every penny he could get out o
f it. And you know he did. Milked it dry and didn’t pay the mortgage. Re-mortgaging my eye! Pure greed, that’s what that was. What did you get out of it, except debt? Did he buy you an Armani suit? No he didn’t. Did you get a BMW? No you didn’t. You got repossessed. It’s all me, me, me with Mr Rigby Selfish Toan. And you let him get away with it.’

  Jon had retreated into the corner of the room behind Brad’s huge moquette settee. He was sitting with his head bent over his book, his face horribly pale, and Emma was scowling, her plump little hands shuffling the wooden pieces of the jigsaw, turning them over and over. For their sakes, Alison knew she ought to stop this conversation, now, while she could, but a hideous curiosity drove her on. ‘What do you mean an Armani suit?’ she said. ‘Why do you keep on about Armani suits?’

  ‘Because that’s what he wears.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ Alison said, spilling into anger. ‘I won’t have that. He doesn’t. You’re lying.’

  ‘No I ain’t,’ Brad said, furiously. ‘It ain’t my style.’

  ‘I was the one who took his suits to the cleaners. I know you’re wrong.’

  ‘Now you listen here,’ Brad said, stubbing out her cigarette and leaning forwards out of her chair so that her face was inches away from Alison’s. ‘I kept my mouth shut for years. I could ha’ told you plenty about that ratbag a’ yours, but I never. You wanna watch what you’re sayin.’’

  ‘You’ve always hated him,’ Alison said. She was very near tears but she couldn’t stop. Not now. Not with so much said. ‘You never had a good word to say for him. Admit it. And I thought you were my friend.’

  ‘I’m the best friend you’ll ever have,’ Brad said. ‘I tell you the truth. And the truth is that Rigby Toan’s been a liar an’ a fraud an’ a con artist right from day one. You’re worth ten of him. A bloody, rotten, little con artist. He’s conned you good an’ proper.’

  They were still eye to wild eye. ‘You can’t say that!’ Alison cried. ‘You’re saying my whole marriage has been a fraud.’

  Brad leaned back in her chair. ‘Right,’ she said, lighting up another cigarette. ‘He’s never told you anything. You’ve always been the last to know. Did he tell you about not paying the mortgage? No. Did he tell you he’d gone to Spain? No. Well then.’

  Alison was on her feet now, facing her opponent, but she couldn’t answer. Because it was true. She bit her lip and looked down at Emma, who was banging one of the pieces on the floor. She corrected the child automatically, in a dull voice. ‘Don’t do that Emma. You’ll break it.’

  ‘All that bloody silly cloak an’ dagger stuff,’ Brad went on. ‘Running away to Spain. Skulking out there for months and months. Never tellin’ you. Do me a favour, Ali. He could’ve told you any time he wanted. But he didn’t want, did he? You weren’t supposed to know, mate. Face it!’

  Emma suddenly threw the jigsaw pieces into the air and began to scream at the top of her voice. ‘I hate it! I hate you! I hate everything! It’s horrid. I kick ’em in the goolies.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Alison shouted at her. ‘Stop it!’ But the screaming child was already far gone in fear and anger. She lay on the floor, kicking out wildly in all directions.

  ‘That’s it!’ Alison said. ‘We’re going to Gran’s. Get your coat, Jon.’

  The little boy crawled out from behind the settee. ‘It’s wet,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind. Get it! It can dry at Gran’s. You can wear a jersey. Go on! Do as I say!’

  It wasn’t fair to be shouting at Jon, not when he’d been so good and it was Emma who was throwing a tantrum. But she was too distressed to be fair. Her one thought was to get out of the house and away from Brad’s criticism. ‘Get up, Emma. Stop that row!’

  ‘You don’t have to go rushing out,’ Brad said, backing down. But Alison was already on her way to her bedroom to snatch up the first three jerseys she could find.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ she cried. ‘Not now. Not now I know what you think of me. I’ve got some pride.’

  ‘That’s just bloody silly,’ Brad shouted. ‘That’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.’

  The noise in the room was deafening, with Brad shouting and Emma shrieking in a high-pitched incessant scream. Red in the face and sliding along the floor, she writhed away from all attempts to put on her jersey. In the end, Alison picked her up, stiff and screaming, hoisted her bodily across her hip and bumped her out of the flat and down the stairs. The wet buggy was still in the lobby and still spattered with rain. ‘Get in!’ she yelled. ‘Stop that row and get in!’

  Carrying their wet coats in his arms, Jon followed them downstairs. He stood quietly beside the buggy while the fight continued and winced as Alison pushed Emma’s arms into her harness. The little girl arched her back and fought with all her might, and she was still screaming as they set out on their long walk to Gran’s.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Alison asked him as they were walking through the Pier Gardens. At least it wasn’t raining and Emma was reduced to simply sobbing now, slumped in the buggy with her eyes shut.

  ‘I feel a bit sick,’ Jon said. And was, suddenly and precipitately, all over his shoes.

  There was nothing to clean him with but tufts of grass from the edge of the lawns. We’re like gypsies, Alison thought. Tramping about in all weathers, pushed from pillar to post, cleaning ourselves with grass, being complained about. Worse really. At least gypsies have got caravans to go back to.

  ‘Come on,’ she encouraged, looking from Jon’s white face to Emma’s blotchy one. ‘Soon be at Gran’s. We’ll be better then. And that nasty old rain’s gone. That’s good, isn’t it.’ And we’re away from the row. Walking out had put paid to that.

  But back in Brad’s flat the row was still going on.

  Martin put his foot in it as soon as the front door had closed. ‘Poor Ali!’ he said. ‘You were hard on her, Brad.’

  ‘Nobody asked you!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, retreating before the blaze of her anger, ‘but you were.’

  ‘I was only telling her the truth,’ she said defiantly. ‘Look at the state of this room. She walks out – toys all over the place and I’m supposed to clear them up.’ That was unfair: Ali did twice as much housework as she ever did.

  Martin knelt down on the floor and began to gather up the pieces of Emma’s wooden jigsaw. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have,’ he ventured.

  Brad was lighting a very necessary cigarette. ‘Course I should have. Somebody had to.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t the right time,’ he said mildly, fitting the pieces into their box.

  Brad tossed the match into the waste-paper basket. ‘Oh there’s a right and a wrong time for telling the truth, is there?’

  For the first time in their relationship, Martin argued against her. It alarmed him but he felt impelled to go on. ‘Yes,’ he said seriously. ‘I think there is. Sometimes it’s not possible to accept too much truth. Really Brad. How can I put this? It hurts too much.’

  ‘Well tough,’ Brad said, glaring at him.

  ‘We all need a space to retreat to when we’re feeling insecure,’ he tried to explain. ‘Somewhere quiet and private where we can lick our wounds – understand why we’re being hurt – come to terms with pain. Honesty cuts off our escape.’

  Brad wasn’t impressed. ‘If you’re such a chicken you’ve got to run away all the time,’ she said, ‘then hard cheese.’

  ‘How can I make you understand?’ he asked, addressing the question more to himself than to her. ‘Suppose, for example, you’re in love with someone and you don’t know how they feel about you. Or you know how they feel and it isn’t what you really want them to feel. Say you’re looking for commitment, marriage, children, all that sort of thing, and she’s – well, not ready to commit herself. That makes you very insecure. To be told the truth when you’re in that sort of state would push you down into despair. You couldn’t take it.’

  Brad was too angry to understand Martin’s message. ‘
You’re telling me I mustn’t tell the truth, is that it?’

  Her ferocity unnerved him. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Not always. It can be very healing sometimes. I mean, it’s just it isn’t always appropriate.’

  ‘Now you listen to me, buster,’ she said. ‘If I want to tell the truth, I shall tell it. No matter what.’

  ‘But you frighten people with it, don’t you see?’

  ‘Well if you’re so scared, you’d better push off. I’m sure nobody’s keeping you.’

  It was the moment he’d feared ever since their relationship began, but he faced up to it valiantly. ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Yes I do. Go away.’

  It was spoken so coldly, and with an air of such finality that he took his coat and left the room and the flat, convinced that it was over, and the sooner they put a distance between themselves the better. He was in such a hurry that he didn’t look back and he didn’t say goodbye.

  Left on her own, Brad smoked her cigarette and scowled at the dirty breakfast plates. Now that the row was over and the room was peaceful, Martin’s words echoed in her head. She began to understand that he’d been telling her something else. Something more important and nothing to do with Rigg, Something about them. ‘Suppose you’re in love with someone,’ he’d said. And ‘say you’re looking for commitment, marriage, children … and she’s not ready to commit herself.’ Did he want to marry her? Was that it? Why didn’t he tell her, stupid fool? Did she frighten him? No! She couldn’t accept that, she’d never frightened anybody. Anyway, it was all too late now. He’d gone and that was that. He needn’t think she’d go running after him. She’d never run after any man in the whole of her life, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now.

  To her surprise and horror, she realised that her eyes were filling with tears. ‘Damn smoke,’ she said, blinking the tell-tale moisture away.

  Elsie Wareham was surprised too. She had not been expecting Ali and the children to Sunday dinner and she could see from the state they were in that something unpleasant must have happened.

  ‘What a nice surprise,’ she said, holding the door open. ‘Are you staying to dinner?’