Blood Family

by Anne Fine

  ‘Got at me?’ (I was baffled.)

  ‘Teased you because you’ll grow into someone so ugly not even you can look at yourself without collapsing.’

  ‘I didn’t even hear them.’

  ‘That’s what he said. He said you were pale as a grub, and on a different planet. He said—’ She broke off. ‘Edward, are you crying?’

  I suppose I must have been.

  She shuffled nearer. ‘God, sorry, Eddie. I didn’t mean to come in here and upset you. I just wanted to know what happened. You know – why you were so odd at supper.’

  That frightened me. ‘Do you think that they noticed?’

  Alice shrugged. ‘Not sure. But you’ll be down before they see you again.’

  ‘Down?’

  ‘From whatever you took.’

  ‘I haven’t taken anything.’

  She grinned. ‘Oh, yes, and pigs can fly.’

  ‘No, really.’

  Now she was getting ratty. ‘Come off it, Ed! You should have seen yourself. Eyes glittering, with all that rubbish about wool and wefts and warps and stuff tumbling out of your mouth at five hundred miles an hour. I am amazed they didn’t notice. You were dead lucky that Natasha wasn’t listening, and Nicholas was half asleep.’ She leaned in closer. ‘Come on, Ed. I thought that we were mates. Somebody must have given you something. So tell me.’

  ‘Nobody gave me anything! I just saw Harris!’

  ‘Harris?’

  ‘You know.’ Already I could feel myself shrivelling on the rug. ‘Bryce Harris! That man who lived with us – me and my mum.’

  ‘Oh, him! The Beast!’

  ‘The Beast?’

  ‘That’s what we called him – well, that’s what I called him.’ She saw my baffled look. ‘They had to warn me,’ she explained. ‘Before you came. They had to explain a bit about the mean stuff that had happened to you in your life, in case you acted weird.’ She laid her fingers on mine, but only to stop me picking threads out of the rug. ‘I don’t know if they ever said he was called Harris. I know it was definitely me who called him the Beast because I remember Nicholas nodding and saying, “That’s about it.” And the name sort of stuck.’

  ‘I never heard you say it.’

  She said with scorn, ‘Why would you? I certainly knew better than to mention him in front of you.’ She waited for a moment, then she said, ‘Why, is he out?’

  ‘Of prison? How should I know?’

  ‘You said you saw him.’

  And again I did. The image swooped at me. ‘No!’ I almost shouted. (Later she told me I was flapping my hands in front of me, as if to brush moths away.) ‘I saw his face.’

  ‘Sssh! Keep it down!’

  But I’d collapsed into a flood of tears and snivelling. She dug a heap of tissues out of the box on my shelf and sat cross-legged, waiting for me to stop my sobbing long enough to tell her what had happened. As soon as she had understood, she tried to comfort me. ‘That doesn’t mean that Harris is your dad! He might simply be some uncle or cousin, or even someone who just happens to look a bit like you’ll look when you’re older.’

  I must have given her a look of utter disbelief because she pressed on hotly, ‘What’s wrong with that? Everyone tells me I look like Natasha.’

  ‘No, they don’t. Only Mrs Joy. And Nicholas says that she only says it because she’s about a hundred years old and thinks it’s a way of being nice, and making you feel better about being adopted.’

  She hit back. ‘All right. So maybe Harris is your real dad. You can see why your mother gave you a different name and made you think he wasn’t.’

  But perhaps she hadn’t. When I tried thinking about it, I had no idea how I first came to be so sure that Harris was not my father. I couldn’t remember anything said by my mum, or snarled by Harris, about my being anyone else’s child.

  Alice gave up on watching me struggle to remember. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Next time we visit, I can have a go at asking Lucy for you.’

  I didn’t bother to respond. After all, both of us knew my mother couldn’t even say for sure if she took sugar in her tea.

  She took a different tack. ‘Or you could ask Natasha and Nicholas if you can have one of those DNA tests.’

  Through my brain rushed one terrifying scene after another. A mix-up with letters so Harris saw my new name and address. Harris phoning the health centre and somehow finding out my own appointment time.

  Basically, Harris finding me.

  All that I said to Alice was, ‘I think I’d rather not know.’

  She shrugged, ‘Well, even if he is your dad, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be anything like him. Look at me! My mother never told me anything about my father. For all I know he was a serial axe murderer or something. Having a rotten mum or dad is not the worst thing in the world. Hundreds of people must have them.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Millions, actually. All over the world.’

  I must have been crying again by then, because she jumped to her feet. ‘Wait here! Don’t move! I’m going to fetch you something to cheer you up.’

  ‘What?’

  But she was gone, across the landing, back to her own room.

  It can’t have been more than a minute before she was back. And as she scuttled through my door again, holding her school bag, she asked me, ‘What have you got to block it?’

  ‘Block what?’

  ‘The door, dummy!’ Already she was looking in my cupboard. ‘This’ll do.’ Dragging out the big square box I’d pushed in there less than an hour before, she rammed it up against the door.

  ‘You sit on it,’ she ordered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Safer.’ Out of her pocket, she pulled a twist of paper. ‘Here, have one of these. It’ll make you feel better.’

  The truth is that I didn’t clock what she was giving me. The only thing I recognized was the bright can she pulled out of her bag and offered me so I could wash the pill down. It was one of those shiny ring-pull affairs they sell at corner shops and railway stations: bright, chirpy alcoholic drinks with cheerful Friday-night names like Whisky Kick, Vodka Fizz and Gin Whirl.

  I’d had a sip of almost every gin and tonic Nicholas had ever poured for himself, and sometimes more if he had left the room. (Natasha hardly ever drank. She said she’d seen enough pools of vomit on her expensive glossy marquee floors to put her off booze for life.) I’d never had a proper drink all to myself. I must have glugged it down because even Alice warned, ‘Hey! Steady on!’ and, as I found out later, she had been throwing these things back for ages – since she fell in with one of Justin’s brothers at a friend’s party.

  I gave her back the empty can so she could stow it out of sight, away in the bottom of her school bag.

  ‘Better?’

  I nodded. ‘Nice warm feeling. Tingly toes.’

  ‘That’s not the Tequila Tang. That is the bluey kicking in.’

  ‘The bluey?’

  ‘What I gave you.’

  ‘That pill? I thought that was an aspirin.’

  ‘Eddie, you’re such a nerd.’

  Now I was grinning too. We shared a silly conversation about my yarn about the yarn factory. (I thought that was a hoot.) And then it started. It was the weirdest feeling, as if each muscle in my face was part of a giant cobweb, throbbing pleasantly behind a shell of warm skin. Even as I was liking that, the warmth spread down. I hadn’t realized that my stomach was a knot until it loosened. You would have thought someone had opened a trap door in my heels, and all the misery and upset was dropping through to leave room for this warmth and light and happiness to take its place, all through my body. Somehow the two of us changed places, Alice and I, and she was sitting on the box to guard the door, and I was back on the rug, feeling myself spin in the gentlest of cradles, with strangely glimmering colours sheeting through my brain, while what had been the usual boring drumming of rain against the window panes had turned into the sound of magical bells.

  ‘Edward, don’t drop off in y
our clothes!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re practically asleep.’

  ‘Am I?’ I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself staring at the ceiling, and not the wall. ‘How long have I been lying down?’

  ‘Ages. Natasha will be back. I’d better go.’

  ‘Thanks for the—’ I’d no idea what it was called. ‘Thanks for the stuff.’

  Alice gave me the most beautiful smile. ‘You’re welcome.’ Behind her skin and hair and all those colours she rubbed around her eyes, I saw her as she must have been when she was four or five years old, open to anything, ready to clown around, eager and keen.

  ‘You look so young,’ I told her, filled with wonder.

  ‘I am young.’

  It really mattered that she understood. ‘No, Alice, I am serious. You suddenly look about five. All glowing, like a happy angel.’

  She blew a kiss at me – not anything soppy, just a friendly gesture. ‘Have a good trip!’ she said. ‘Be happy, Edward.’

  She pushed the video box aside, and shimmered out.

  It was a pretty primitive machine. Plug in. Switch on. Self-tune. I’d lost my sense of time, but still it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes before the clicking and the whirring stopped.

  I didn’t want to miss a single moment, so I leaned forward to rewind. The machine chugged back to the start, and I pressed Play. The picture settled and the jaunty music that I knew so well burst out upon the room. I stabbed the volume button till it was much quieter. I didn’t need it loud. The tune swam in my head.

  I don’t know what I’d thought would happen. Perhaps I’d feared I would fall straight back into being that pale child who Rob found cowering against the wall. Perhaps I’d thought I’d sit with a smirk on my face, astonished that even my much younger self could have been so entranced by some old duffer in a cardigan with leather buttons.

  What I’d not reckoned on was this third child. This stranger who, as Mr Perkins backed in through the door, shaking the drops from his umbrella and turning to catch my eyes with his warm, fatherly smile, whispered to him so happily, ‘Hi, Mr Perkins.’

  I actually heard myself say it. I felt myself shunt closer across the rug, till Mr Perkins was so near to me he almost blurred. I felt myself mouthing the words I knew by heart. ‘Hello. My, it’s so cold and rainy out there today! But we’re warm and cosy in here. So shall we sing our song together?’

  And we did.

  ‘Happy days, and happy ways

  I hope you know how glad I am

  To see you here with me today

  We’re going to have great fun.’

  It was the trip to the pet show. Even before he told us I knew that, the way that if you’ve listened to a set of songs often enough in the same order, what’s coming next is always ringing in your brain before the first chords start. He filled the kettle and fed Sooty-Sue as usual, all the while talking to us about responsibility – about not pestering our parents to give us living creatures we wouldn’t be able to keep well and happy. ‘A pet should never be one person’s present,’ he told us gravely. ‘They have to be a wanted member of the whole family. They are a lot of work, and need a good deal of attention. So everyone in the household has to agree.’

  Then we went off to see the children who showed us their pets. I hadn’t forgotten any. I still knew all their names, even before he introduced us again. Then, when they’d showed us how they cleaned out a rabbit hutch, or fetched hay for their pony, or made a hibernation box so that their tortoise would be warm and safe through the winter, he drew us in. ‘See? These children here have learned all sorts of skills to keep their pets happy and well. And we can also be good at looking after all the animals we meet, even if it is only being kind to the cat next door, or remembering to take a carrot to the horse we pass on our Sunday walk.’

  He smiled. ‘Let’s sing our song about learning to do things, shall we?’

  I sang along with him, the way I always had.

  ‘Some things seem very hard to do

  You think you won’t be able

  To get them right,

  But then you do

  And you win through

  Because you’re strong and brave inside

  But most of all, of course, because you want to,

  Want to, want to.

  Because you’re strong and brave inside

  And really, really want to.’

  All the time we were singing, he was on his way back to his house, swinging his bright umbrella. He checked the stick insect inside the jar (‘About the easiest pet you can keep.’) and stroked Sooty-Sue while he kept chatting about other animals. Then he put on his jacket and picked up his umbrella again. ‘It’s still raining! Never mind. I have a good feeling that it’ll be much sunnier next time we meet. I’ll see you then, shall I?’

  Again, I heard myself whispering, ‘Yes.’

  He looked me full in the face. His eyes were twinkling – full of fun and love. ‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Try to be happy.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ I whispered. ‘Goodbye, Mr Perkins. Goodbye, Dad.’

  III

  Edward

  I’ve no idea why it ate in to me so badly, the realization that Harris and I must be blood family. As Alice pointed out, pretty well everyone has a bad sheep or two among their relations somewhere, and even those like her who don’t know any details can’t bank on them not being there simply because of that. I’d seen enough on telly and in the newspapers to know that Harris wasn’t by any means the foulest person around. He was a bully and a drunk. He was a horrible man. He didn’t care about a single soul except himself. And he was violent.

  But there are worse about.

  It’s just I didn’t want to be anything to do with him – not simply in my day-to-day life, but in any way at all. He was the man who’d kicked my mother about, and beaten her simple, and I was desperate for there to be no link between us at all. Why should I want this monster muscling in and spoiling things in my mind when, from the start it seems, I had already chosen kind, gentle Mr Perkins as my real father?

  And Eleanor Holdenbach must have realized that. Once, on my way back sooner than expected from the lavatory along from her office, I’d overheard her saying to Rob: ‘That Mr Perkins has been a life-saver.’ The memory stuck because I’d been surprised that she knew anything about Mr Perkins, apart from what I’d told her. She’d claimed she’d never watched his show, so how would she have known what I, who’d spent a thousand hours in his company, had never known – that he must once have rescued someone who was in desperate straits?

  I hadn’t realized she’d been talking of me.

  So perhaps, when things took such a nosedive after the visit to the university, I should have had the sense to ask to see her again. They’d always, all of them, kept saying through the years, ‘Edward, if ever you should feel the need to talk to someone . . .’ Always I’d tuned out at once. Bleh, bleh. Bleh, bleh. And why should I have felt the need? I had been happy enough.

  But now I found things going wrong. Haunted was what I felt. Between me and whatever I was looking at – a set of questions in a school test, something on television, even a soaring football – Harris’s face would suddenly appear. Sometimes his look was threatening. Sometimes he wore that smirk I knew so well, or that grim look of concentration that used to spread across his face whenever he hurled me aside and set about my mum.

  ‘Edward? Edward Stead, are you paying attention?’

  Each teacher in turn lost patience. But how could I explain, without letting on who I’d once been, and who I dreaded to be? Nicholas begged me, ‘What is the matter, Edward? The school’s at its wits’ end with you this term. What’s on your mind?’

  I couldn’t tell him either, though for the life of me I don’t know why. So on I struggled, restless and nervous, lying awake at nights and snapping at everyone. Time and again, I saw Natasha seek out Nicholas’s eyes across the supper table. ‘You deal with him,’ he
r face said, plain as paint. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  Alice stopped teasing me – a sure sign that our partnership was under strain. Sometimes I caught her watching me, a worried look on her face. And then one evening, after a meal studded with Natasha’s increasingly irritated scoldings, Nicholas’s tired pleas and my unhelpful snarls, she came into my room.

  I didn’t make things easy. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Now, now! Miss Manners wouldn’t think that was a very nice welcome.’

  ‘Just push off, Alice.’

  ‘No. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’

  She made a face. ‘So tell me something new. You don’t want to talk to anyone.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ I thought of adding, ‘Especially not to you.’ But even to me, that sounded far too childish.

  By now she’d hitched up her school skirt and slid herself onto my table. She threw one leg across the other as if she knew that such a grown-up, feminine pose would stop me trying to manhandle her out of the room the way I might have done before. ‘What has got into you, Eddie? You’re being horrible to everyone.’

  ‘I’m all right so long as everyone leaves me alone.’

  ‘You’re not, though. You’re a mess. And Justin says that all your teachers think you’re going to fail your exams.’

  ‘It’s none of Justin’s business. Or yours.’

  Now she was leaning forward. ‘But it is, though, isn’t it? Because all this is my fault. It was me who started you off.’

  ‘Started me off?’

  ‘With the bluey.’

  ‘The bluey?’

  ‘Yes. That was the first you’d had, wasn’t it?’

  Now I remembered. She was talking of the pill she’d given me so many weeks before.

  She’d started up again. ‘And now you’re clearly on to something else. So it’s my fault. I shouldn’t ever have given you anything that night. I feel so guilty. I don’t know what you’re on, or where you’re getting it. But it’s not doing you any good and I think you should stop.’ Her cheeks were pink now. ‘In fact, I think that you should probably stop trying to deal with all this in your own screwed-up head. You ought to go downstairs right now and ask to talk to Nicholas on his own, and tell him all about that stupid Bryce Harris computer picture, and what’s been happening.’