by Sue Margolis
Despite all this, Butcher’s Row is less crime-ridden and easier on the eye than a lot of public housing estates. The prewar semis are pebbledashed and cottagey and have decent-size gardens front and back. The pavements are lined with trees and there’s a brand-new kids’ playground. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, many of the residents have been able to buy their homes. Some people—me included—think that reducing the public housing stock was one of Thatcher’s worst crimes, but there is no doubt that over the years, private ownership has improved the look of the place. There is more than a handful of tidy, freshly painted houses with neat gardens and nice cars outside and solid aspirational families inside.
Ginny’s front garden with its trimmed, wraparound privet hedge is particularly well tended. Pruned rosebushes line the crazy paving path to the front door. Between them, snowbells are starting to appear. On the porch, a garden gnome is smoking a pipe as he reclines in a deck chair.
Ginny must have seen me pull up, because she opens the door while I’m still admiring the gnome. “His name’s Gilbert,” she says. “I named him after a favorite uncle.”
She ushers me into a small living room. I’m struck by the original thirties fireplace with its reddish brown tiles. To one side, arranged at an angle, is an art deco armchair. The bentwood arms are scratched and bashed about. Horsehair is escaping from a split in the beige leather seat. A few hundred quid would see it right. Ditto the sagging bergère sofa, its wickerwork in holes. Ginny has covered it in a purple mohair throw and added velvet cushions.
“Sit your body down,” she says, picking up a copy of the Guardian lying on the sofa. I accept her offer of tea and she disappears into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
“I love this sofa,” I call out to her. “And the chair. You’ve got a great eye.”
“Thank you. I just wish I had the money to do the restoration. I picked them up at a flea market years ago and they’ve been in this state ever since.”
She returns with a plate of chocolate digestives, which she places on the coffee table. A Clarice Cliff jug stands toward one end, filled with dried flowers.
“So, come on, be honest,” she says, heading back to the kitchen, where the kettle is gurgling loudly as it comes to the boil. “Were you shocked when I told you I lived here?”
“Ginny, it’s none of my business where you live. And anyway—why does it matter?”
She doesn’t answer. I can hear the tinkling of teaspoon on china. In a moment she’s back carrying mugs of tea. They both say Tamiflu. I’m guessing another flea market find.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, lowering herself into the deco armchair. “Not in the grand scheme of things. But some of the mothers at Faraday House won’t let their children come on playdates with Ivo if I’m looking after him here. They make absurd excuses about it being too far. I don’t know what they think is going to happen. I keep telling them the neighbors only bugger the children when there’s a full moon.”
I burst out laughing. “Please tell me you didn’t actually say that.”
“No, but I wish I had. These people are such idiots.”
We both help ourselves to chocolate biscuits. Ginny dips hers in her tea and takes a bite. She looks thoughtful, as if she’s gearing up to tell me something.
“I owe you an apology,” she says.
“Really? What for?”
“For the other day. I mentioned my fall from grace and then I cut you off without an explanation. It was rude of me.”
“No, it wasn’t. Your life is your business. You owe me nothing.”
“Maybe not, but I’d like the two of us to be friends and I’m not sure it can happen if there’s a dirty great elephant in the room. So, if you’re happy to listen, I’d like to explain.”
It’s not a long story. Ginny’s parents were both independently wealthy. Her father became an engineer because he wanted a career, not because he needed one. They owned two houses—a villa on Hampstead Heath and a manor house on the Devon coast. “They sold the Devon place decades ago, but when I was a child my mother and I spent long, glorious summers there. My father came when he could get away from work. There were horses, tennis courts, a private beach with rock pools where I used to hunt for crabs with my cousins. There were picnic lunches, croquet and cream teas. It was pretty idyllic.”
Ginny went to boarding school and on to university. To her parents’ horror, instead of choosing a suitably ladylike subject such as English literature, French or art history, she chose politics and sociology. “I’d been sheltered from politics all my life. Then when I was still at school, a teacher gave me a book on the Russian Revolution. After that I started reading about British socialism and the history of the Labour Party. I became somewhat smitten with left-wing politics. You could say ‘fuck’ in my family, but not ‘socialism.’ My parents were appalled. Of course that was like a red rag to a bull. I would quote Marx at them over breakfast—inform them that the history of all hitherto-existing society is the history of class struggle. At first, they patronized me, informed me that I was going through a phase and that I’d grow out of it. It took months of nagging to persuade them to let me take politics at university. In the end I simply wore them down. Toward the end of the first term, I fell in with a bunch of Maoists who lived in a squat in Brixton. I dropped out in my second year. By then I’d hooked up with a layabout car mechanic named Kev. Of course the inevitable happened and I got pregnant. At the time, my father was abroad working, but my mother was scandalized and in complete and utter despair. In an ideal world she would have banished me to a nunnery. Instead she insisted I have an abortion and go back to university. I refused. I was determined to keep the baby. We had a huge fight, which ended with her throwing me out and telling me never to darken her door. I eloped with Kev. We moved into a single room with a shared bathroom over a pub. Emma was born a few months later.”
“But what about your father? Did you contact him?”
“He went along with my mother. Said I’d let down the family name. I was sure that once they met their granddaughter, their hearts would melt and we would be reconciled. But it wasn’t to be. Six weeks after Emma was born, my father had a heart attack and died. My mother wrote to me, blaming me for his death. She banned me from the funeral and told me again that she never wanted to see me or ‘the child.’ So there we were, living with a baby on Kev’s wage, which barely covered the rent.”
“How on earth did you manage?”
“You just get on with it. I had no choice. My darling uncle Gilbert took pity on us and sent checks several times a year. His money kept the wolf from the door. We didn’t starve. But when I got pregnant a second time, Kev couldn’t handle it. He started drinking, seeing other women. Then one night he didn’t come home. A day or so later he called from a phone box to say the marriage was over and I shouldn’t try to find him. When Uncle Gilbert died a few years back, he left me a few thousand, so I hired a private investigator to try and find Kev. I’m not sure what I was hoping to achieve. I didn’t want money. In fact, I assumed he wouldn’t have any. I think it was curiosity more than anything. The investigator located him almost immediately: in the cemetery. He’d died years before in a car crash. The report in the local paper said he’d been seven times over the alcohol limit.”
Ginny said that after Kev walked out, it was three years before she and the children were rehoused by the council. The single room over the pub was replaced by a two-bedroom apartment in a new social housing development nearby. Later on they moved to the house they live in now. Friends babysat while she cleaned offices and waited tables. After her children started school she did an Open University degree and qualified as a social worker. “On my salary buying even a small flat somewhere like Eden Hill was out of the question. So the kids and I were forced to stay here. Then two years ago Social Services made me redundant. By then I was sixty, so I have my pension. I get by.”
“OK, tell me to mind my own business, but surely your son could help you out
financially?”
“He could and he’s offered a hundred times. As has my brother, William, who’s also loaded. They’ve both offered to buy me a flat. But I don’t want their money. It would make me feel dependent, constantly indebted. I can’t think of anything worse. Plus I need to be here.”
“Why?”
Ginny stares into her mug of tea. Seconds pass before she looks up.
“My daughter lives two doors away.” She lets out a soft, bitter laugh. “Talk about history repeating itself. Emma also fell for a layabout—although she had the sense not to marry him. She got pregnant by him at sixteen and again at eighteen. Then he left her. The difference between her situation and mine was that she knew where to find him. She hauled the blighter in front of a judge and managed to get a few quid a month off him in child support. But he has no interest in the boys.”
“Poor girl. Poor kids.”
“I blame myself. I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good role model… .”
“Of course you were. Look at you. You pulled yourself up. You got a degree. And Ben has done really well for himself.”
She shrugs. “He has and I’m proud of him. But Emma worries me. She’s bright. She’s got a great eye for fashion. She buys and sells vintage clothes online. What she’d like to do is open her own shop and maybe even start a chain, but she can’t do that without capital.”
“And her rich brother and uncle?”
“They think that because she dropped out of high school, she’s lazy. They’re happy to give her the money to study fashion, to get some qualifications, but not to build up the business. They think that even though she’s in her thirties, she needs to get a degree, work in fashion for a few years, see how the business works and then go out on her own.”
“They could be right.”
“They’re not. My daughter is many things, but lazy isn’t one of them. That girl works day and night trying to make ends meet. All she does is sit in front of her laptop. She runs herself ragged hunting all over the world for bargains. And she’s good at it. She makes a decent profit, just not enough to live on.”
“Can’t be easy.”
“It isn’t. And the other problem is that because she’s always working, she tends to ignore the boys and let them run wild. They’re only ten and twelve, but they’re starting to get into mischief. I help out a lot of the time, but when they’re on their own they’re always getting into fights with kids in the neighborhood. They’ve been caught letting down car tires. The other day, a neighbor found them playing chicken on the main road. They’re also getting a reputation at school. On top of all this they never get to see Ivo because Madeline, my daughter-in-law, doesn’t like him mixing with them. It’s so sad. I hate the idea of these cousins growing up not knowing each other.”
“Ginny, I am so sorry. I had no idea you were going through all this.”
While she’s been telling me her story, her eyes have become glassy. She wipes them with the heel of her hand. Then, in a few seconds, she’s back to herself. “Right, that’s enough self-pity for one day. How about another cup of tea?” She picks up both our mugs. Mine is still half-full, but she doesn’t notice.
“What’s wrong with a bit of self-pity?”
“Everything. Moaners are so tedious. Chin up, chest out … that’s what I was taught. If life throws you a curveball or two, you get on with it.”
“And what if you can’t get on with it?”
“You have to.”
With that she disappears into the kitchen again. She returns with fresh tea and a notepad under her arm. “Right … the school fair. I’ve jotted down a few ideas.”
• • •
When I get home, Mum is sitting on the sofa with the kids. Rosie is gabbling into the phone. “We had fun today. Me and Nana made loom bands—mine’s pink, and Nana’s is green. At first hers went a bit wrong, but I helped her sort it out. Then we made one for Sam—his is blue.”
“Let me talk. It’s my turn.” Sam tries and fails to wrestle the phone from his sister.
“Go away.” She pushes him in the chest and puts the phone back to her other ear.
“But you’ve been talking for ages.”
“I made you a loom band.”
“So what? That doesn’t mean you get longer on the phone.”
Rosie takes Denise out of her jeans pocket. She screws up her face and holds the carrot aloft—a crucifix against the vampire. I do wish she’d keep Denise in her bedroom. But since I swapped her for a fresh carrot, at least she isn’t oozing anymore.
“They’re talking to Abby and Tom,” Mum whispers.
Since they arrived in Nicaragua, the Internet has been down. So instead of Skyping, Abby and Tom have been calling us from the MediGlobal satellite phone. The problem is that all the medical staff wants to call their families, so the pressure on it is huge and we only get a couple of minutes at a time.
I tell Rosie to let her brother have a turn.
“In a minute.”
“No. Now.”
“But—”
“Rosie … I said now.”
Another grimace. Then: “Bye, Mummy. Bye, Daddy. Miss you. Love you.” She’s still making kissing noises down the phone when her brother grabs it off her.
While Sam chats away, I ask my mother what sort of an afternoon she’s had with the kids.
“Lovely. We made loom bands. We chatted.”
“What about?” My question isn’t innocuous. It’s loaded. I’m worried she’s been talking to the kids about the war.
“Oh, you know. This and that.”
“What sort of this and that?”
She doesn’t get a chance to reply because Sam breaks in to tell me that Abby wants a word. He hands me the phone.
“Hi, darling. How’s it all going?”
“We’re fine.”
She sounds exhausted.
“Are they managing to get food supplies in? Are you getting enough to eat?”
“Yep. It’s all good.”
I bet they’re living on rice and beans.
“I hope you’re managing to get some rest.”
“It’s still pretty full-on. Tom operated on more than a dozen people yesterday. Broken bones mainly. I had a couple of kids with internal injuries die on me in the night.”
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s awful. It must have been gut-wrenching. But what about you? When did you last sleep?”
“I’ll grab a few hours later.”
I’m imagining her heavy-eyed, the weight falling off her.
“Please take care. Both of you.”
“We are. How are the kids? They sound great. But I worry and I still feeling guilty about leaving them.”
“Abby, listen to me. You have to stop this. Each time you call I tell you the kids are fine. They tell you they’re fine. You have to start believing it. If you carry on fretting like this you’re going to make yourself ill. Then you’ll be no use to anybody.”
“OK. I’m sorry.” She’s sounding sheepish now. “And you’re OK? You’re coping?”
“It’s all good. I promise.”
She says she has to go. There’s a queue of people wanting to use the phone.
“Go. Take care. Love you. Love to Tom. And get some rest… .”
The kids are a bit upset they don’t get a chance to say good-bye, so we have hugs on the sofa instead. Pretty soon they’ve cheered up and they’re showing off their loom bands. Meanwhile Mum is checking on the chicken she’s got in the oven.
After we’ve eaten I start running baths. Once they’re in their pj’s we have half an hour of Shrek and then I announce it’s bedtime. They protest and beg to finish the film. I offer them another fifteen minutes. We finally agree on thirty.
Sam has grown out of bedtime stories and prefers to read to himself from what Rosie calls “chapter books.” He disappears to his room. I tell him I’ll be in to say good night after I’ve read to Rosie.
After a few more pages of Aliens in Underpants Save t
he World, I pull the comforter up under Rosie’s chin and kiss her night-night. Then she can’t find Denise. I finally locate her in the bathroom, under a pile of damp towels.
Rosie rolls onto her side, clutching Denise in both hands. I go to turn off the lamp.
“No, leave it on. I’m scared. And before you go, can you check under my bed?”
“Darling, there are no burglars. A burglar couldn’t even fit under this bed. It’s too low.”
“I don’t want you to check for burglars. I want you to check for Hitlers.”
• • •
Downstairs Mum is watching one of her programs— some hospital drama.
“This chap’s dying of lung cancer. Did you know that when you get lung cancer, the secondary growth often appears first? With him it was a brain tumor. They managed to get rid of the brain tumor, but—”
I’ve switched off the TV.
“Hey—why did you do that?”
“We need to talk. What have you been telling the children?”
“Nothing. Switch the TV back on.”
“No.” To make my point, I position myself in front of the screen. “And if you didn’t say anything, then why did Rosie just ask me to check under the bed for Hitlers?”
“They asked me about what it was like growing up in Germany.”
“And you told them.”
“They should know the truth—what human beings are capable of.”
“Mum—they’re children. Rosie’s not much more than a baby. They need to be protected.”
“I was a child. Who protected me?”
“Nobody. And that was a tragedy—a catastrophe. But what were you hoping to achieve by telling the kids your story?” I take a breath. “Please tell me you didn’t tell them about the camps.”
“Of course I didn’t. You think I’m mad?”
“You told me. I was six when I found out what Belsen was. Just because you had your innocence snatched from you, it doesn’t give you the right to do the same to other children. You did it to me. That was bad enough.”