by Sue Townsend
Brianne said, ‘A couple of days. We saved it. There’s never anything to do on Boxing Day, is there?’
Yvonne remarked, ‘I think it’s disgusting personally, myself. The two of your big brains against that little grieving girl.’
Brianne said, calmly, ‘Bri, time to fetch the Poppy files.’
Brian Junior got up, stretching his arms in an attempt to relax his rigid muscles, as if imploring Brianne to show him more respect. Heaving a deep sigh, he went into his bedroom.
When he returned with a large green box file, Brianne said, ‘Hand the papers round.’
‘What, like, at random?’
She nodded.
He dispersed the official-looking papers, some stapled, all printouts.
There was silence for a few moments, as people read the opening paragraphs of the documents they had been handed.
Ruby said, ‘Well, I’ve read this first bit of mine twice and I still don’t understand it.’
Yvonne asked, ‘Are we to be tested by the Big Brains?’
Brianne said, ‘You’ve got the birth certificate, Yvonne. Read it to us.’
‘Stop talking to me as if I’m a dog, a mongrel dog. When I was a girl —’
Brianne interrupted, ‘Yeah, when you were a girl, you were writing on a slate with a piece of chalk.’
Eva ordered her daughter, ‘Apologise to Granny.’
Brianne muttered ungraciously, ‘Soz.’
‘Well, it says here, this is the birth certificate of a child called Paula Gibb, born on the 31st of July 1993, her dad was Dean Arthur Gibb, car park attendant, and her mum was Claire Theresa Maria Gibb, bowling alley assistant.’
Brian Junior laughed out loud and said in a bad American accent, ‘Fuck it, dude, let’s go bowling.’
His family had never heard Brian Junior swear before. Eva was pleased at this proof that Brian Junior could be a normal foul-mouthed teenager.
Brianne turned to her brother. ‘Bri, no Lebowski, please. This is serious business.’
Alexander said, ‘I’ve got a social worker’s report here. When she was three and a half, Paula was temporarily taken into care and fostered.’
A stillness settled over the room.
Eva looked up from her printouts. ‘I’ve got an admission report for University Hospital, on the 11th of June 1995, and a six-month review written by her social worker, Delfina Ladzinski.’ Eva scanned the papers. Where do I start?’ She cleared her throat and read out what she thought were the most important details, as though she were reading the shipping forecast.
‘Medical assessment on being taken into care: cigarette burns on the backs of her hands and forearms, head lice, infected fleabites, impetigo. She was malnourished, unable to speak. Afraid to use the toilet. It’s hardly Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, is it?’
Yvonne got up. ‘Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve had enough of this. It’s Boxing Day. I want some turkey sandwiches and a game of Mr Potato Head, not all this wallowing in the gutter.’
Ruby said, ‘Sit down, Yvonne! There are some things that have to be faced full on. I’ve got a report here from Thames Valley Police, about an arson attack on a children’s home in Reading. Paula Gibb was questioned but said she’d only been trying to light a cigarette using a Zip firelighter. She’d panicked and thrown the firelighter into the Activities Room, where it landed in the middle of the pool table —’
Yvonne interrupted. ‘All this is making me poorly.’
Eva said, ‘It explains everything.’
Stanley insisted, ‘But none of that excuses her current behaviour.’
Alexander nodded. ‘My mum used to leave me locked in my room in the dark. I don’t know where she went. She ordered me to keep clear of the window and told me that if I cried she would send me away, so I did as I was told. But The done OK.’
He looked up to find Eva gazing back at him with a fierce look in her eyes, as if she were seeing him for the first time.
Yvonne said, miserably, ‘If I’d known there was a deranged person staying here — well, another deranged person — I would never have come.’
Eva countered, ‘I’m not deranged, Yvonne. Can I remind you that your son, my husband, is downstairs arguing with his mistress?’
Yvonne looked down and straightened the rings on her arthritic fingers.
Brian Junior said, ‘I’ve got her GCSE and A level certificates here. She got twelve GCSEs, nothing below a C grade, but only two A levels — an A in English, and an A* in Religious Studies.’
‘So, she’s not just a psychopath,’ Alexander said, ‘she’s quite a clever psychopath. Now that is frightening.’
They all jumped and stared at the bedroom door as they heard the front door slam, followed by the familiar clump of Poppy’s boots in the hall.
Eva said, ‘I want to talk to her. Brian Junior, will you ask her to come up here, please?’
‘Why me, why do I have to go? I don’t want to speak to her. I don’t want to look at her. I don’t want to breathe the same air as her.’
Everybody looked at everybody else, but nobody moved.
Alexander said, ‘I’ll go.’
He went downstairs and eventually found her pretending to be asleep on the sofa in the sitting room, covered in a red blanket. She didn’t open her eyes, but Alexander could see by the flickering of her eyelids that she wasn’t really asleep.
He said, loudly, ‘Eva wants to see you,’ then watched her impersonating someone waking up. He felt a mixture of pity and contempt for her.
Poppy/Paula exclaimed, ‘I must have fallen asleep! It was an exhausting morning. Everybody at the shelter wanted a little bit of Poppy time.’
Alexander said, ‘Well, now Eva wants a little bit of Poppy time.’
When they walked into Eva’s bedroom, Poppy was met by a room full of accusatory faces. But she’d been in similar situations many times before. ‘Style it out, girl,’ she said to herself.
Eva patted the side of the bed and said, ‘Sit here, Paula. You don’t have to lie any more. We know who you are. We know your parents are alive.’ She held up a piece of paper. ‘It says here that your mother went to the Department of Work and Pensions on the 22nd of December, and asked for a crisis loan, claiming that she had no money for Christmas. Your mother is Claire Theresa Maria Gibb, isn’t she? Incidentally, are you Poppy or Paula?’
‘Poppy,’ the girl said, with a crooked nervous smile. ‘Please, don’t call me Paula. Please. Don’t call me Paula. I gave myself a new name. Don’t call me Paula.’
Eva took her hand and said, ‘OK. You’re Poppy. Why don’t you try to be yourself?’
Poppy’s first instinct was to pretend to cry, and sob, ‘But I don’t know who I am!’ Then she became curious: who was she? She would try to drop the little-girl voice, she thought. When she looked at the fraying 1950s evening dress she was wearing, it suddenly didn’t seem as charmingly eccentric as vintage clothes did on Helena Bonham Carter. And her big boots, with the carefully loosened laces, no longer gave her ‘character’. She shifted the gears in her brain into neutral and waited a few seconds to see where this would take her. She said, testing her new voice, ‘Can I stay until uni starts, please?’
Brianne and Brian Junior said, in unison, ‘No!’
Eva said, ‘Yes, you can stay until term starts. But these are the house rules. One, no more lies.’
Poppy repeated, ‘No more lies.’
‘Two, no more lounging on the sofa in your underwear. And three, no more stealing.’
Brianne said, ‘I found our egg timer in her bag last night.’
Poppy sat down next to Alexander, who said, ‘You’ve been given a great chance. Don’t fuck it up.’
Brianne said, ‘So, that’s it, is it? She’s forgiven, is she?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘Just like I’ve forgiven Dad.’
Stanley raised his hand and asked, ‘May I say something?’ He looked at Poppy. ‘I’m not a very forgiving person, and I ca
nnot tell you how angry and distressed I am about your swastika tattoo. It has been preying on my mind. I know you are young, but you must have studied modern history and be fully aware that the swastika symbolises a great evil. And please don’t tell me that your fascist tattoo represents a Hindu god, or some such nonsense. You and I know that you chose a swastika either because you’re a Nazi, or because you wanted to boast about your alienation from our mostly decent society in order to shock. You could have chosen a snake, a flower, a bluebird, but you chose the swastika. I have in my house a collection of videos which chart the progress of the Second World War. One of those videos shows the liberation of Belsen, the concentration camp. Have you heard of Belsen?’
‘It’s where Anne Frank died. I did her for GCSE.’
Stanley continued, ‘When the Allied troops arrived to free the prisoners, they found skeletal creatures barely alive, pleading for food and water. A large pit was discovered, full of dead bodies. Horrifically, some poor wretches were still alive. A bulldozer —’
Ruby shouted, ‘No more, Stanley!’
‘I apologise, I didn’t want to upset …’ He turned back to Poppy. ‘If you would like to see the video, you are welcome to come and sit with me, and we will watch it together.’
Poppy shook her head.
There was silence.
Eventually, Poppy said, ‘I’ll have it removed, lasered off. I adore Anne Frank. I forgot she was a Jew I cried when the Nazis found her in the attic. I only had a swastika tattoo when I was fourteen because I was infatuated with a boy who loved Hitler. He had a suitcase under his bed, full of daggers and medals and stuff. He told me that Hitler was an animal lover and a vegetarian, and he only wanted to bring peace to the world. When we were in his bedroom, his rule was that we called each other Adolf and Eva.’
Everybody looked at Eva, who said, ‘Blame my mother.’
Ruby said indignantly, ‘You’re named after the film star. Eva Marie Saint.’
‘He went off me after two months,’ said Poppy, ‘but the tattoo stayed.’
Stanley nodded. ‘I shan’t speak of it again.’ He gave a little cough, which acted as a punctuation mark, then turned to Ruby and said, ‘Ah, Eva Marie Saint. The scene with Marlon Brando. The swing, the glove, her lovely face.’
The conversation had turned.
Alexander was the last to leave Eva’s room.
‘If you need me, ring,’ he said, ‘and I’ll come running.’ When he had gone, Eva could not get the words of the song out of her head. She started to sing it quietly, to herself. Winter, spring, summer or fall …’
In the middle of the night, when the rest of the household were asleep, Poppy crept into Eva’s room. The walls were illuminated by the full moon, and it was by this light that Poppy climbed into the bed.
Eva stirred but did not wake.
Poppy laid her face against Eva’s shoulder, and put her arm around Eva’s waist.
In the morning, Eva felt the presence of another person. But when she turned to look, she saw only a depression in the pillow.
36
Mr Lin was excited when he saw Ho’s handwriting on a letter he had picked up from his district post office in the Beijing suburbs. Perhaps Ho was writing to express holiday greetings. Mr Lin knew that in England people celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ — who, he had been told, was not only the son of their God, but had also been a revolutionary communist who was tortured and executed by the authorities.
He thought he would wait until he got home to open the letter. Or perhaps he would hand it to his wife and see the pleasure on her face. They both missed their child. It had been a difficult decision to send Ho to England, but they did not want him to be a factory worker like themselves. They wanted Ho to be a plastic surgeon and make a great deal of money. Young Chinese women across the world were growing ashamed of their oval eyes and small breasts.
Mr Lin stopped at a stall to buy a live chicken. He selected one that would provide meat for several days, paid for it and then carried it upside down to the vegetable and fruit market, where he bought a gift pack of holy apples as a present for his wife. The apples cost five times as much as ordinary apples, but Mr Lin liked his wife very much indeed. She hardly ever quarrelled with him, her hair was still black and her face had few lines. The only time she was sad was when she spoke about the daughter they could never have.
He reached the playground, which lay at the foot of the tower block where he and his wife lived on the twenty-seventh floor. He looked up and located their window He hoped the lift was still working.
When he arrived home, panting and breathless, his wife rose from her chair and came to greet him.
He said, ‘See who is writing to us,’ and handed her Ho’s letter.
She smiled with delight and touched the colourful red, green and gold nativity stamp as though it were a precious artefact. ‘It is the birth of their Jesus,’ she said.
The chicken squawked and struggled to be free. Mr Ho took it into the tiny kitchen and threw it into the sink. Then he and his wife sat down together, facing each other at the small table. Mrs Ho lay the letter down between them.
Mr Ho took the holy apples out of the plastic bag and placed them next to Ho’s letter.
His wife smiled with delight.
He said, ‘They are for you.’
She cried, ‘But I have not bought you anything!’
‘No need, you gave me Ho. You open the letter.’
She opened it slowly and carefully, and scanned the first few lines. Then she paused and her face became stone. She pushed it across the table and said, ‘You must be strong, husband.’
Mr Lin gave several cries as he read through the document. When he came to the end, he said, ‘I have never liked the Poppy flower. It is vulgar and it spreads its seeds too easily.’
The chicken squawked.
Mr Lin got up, took a sharp knife and a wooden block, and quickly severed the chicken’s neck. He threw it back into the sink and watched the bright blood gush down the plughole.
37
On New Year’s Eve a stranger, a woman, called at the door and asked to speak to Eva.
Titania, whose turn it was to answer the door, asked, ‘Who may I say is calling?’
The woman said, ‘I live at the end of Redwood Road. I’d rather not give my name.
Titania invited the woman to wait in the hall while she went upstairs.
When Eva saw her, she said, ‘You’re wearing the awful apron Brian bought me for Christmas. What else have you commandeered?’
Titania laughed and said, ‘Only your husband.’
Eva observed, ‘That drab olive green suits you, though. You should wear more of it.’ Then she said, ‘Fetch her up.’
When Titania had gone downstairs, Eva combed her hair with her fingers and straightened the pillows.
The woman was in youthful middle age and had made the decision to let her hair grow au naturel. It was grey and wiry. She was wearing a grey tracksuit and grey Hi-Tec trainers. She looked like a pencil scribble on a white page.
Eva invited her to sit on the soup chair.
The woman announced, in well-spoken tones, ‘My name is Bella Harper. I walk past your window at least four times a day.’
Eva said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen you taking your kids to school.’
Bella pulled a handful of tissues out of her tracksuit pocket.
Eva braced herself for what was to come. She had developed a revulsion for tears. People cried too easily these days.
Bella said, ‘I need some advice about the best and kindest way to leave my husband. This Christmas has been torture. We’ve all been tormented by him. I feel as though my exposed nerves have been agitated by a cold wind. I’m not sure that I can cope with any more.’
Eva asked, ‘Why have you come to me?’
‘You’re always here. Sometimes I walk around the area in the small hours, and I often see you at the window, smoking.’
‘I’m a fool,’ said Ev
a. ‘You don’t want to take advice from me.’
‘I’ve got to share my story with somebody who I don’t know and doesn’t know me.’
Eva stifled a yawn and tried to look interested. In her experience, nothing good came from giving advice.
Bella twisted a tissue around her fingers.
Eva prompted, ‘OK, once upon a time… would that help?’
Bella said, ‘Yes, once upon a time there was a boy and a girl who lived in the same village. When they were both fifteen, they became engaged. Both of their families were very happy. One day, the boy lost his temper because the girl could not keep up with him when he went running. He shouted at the girl and frightened her. Then, just before the wedding, the boy and girl were in his car. She pulled the cigarette lighter from the dashboard, and accidentally dropped it on the carpet. The boy punched her on the right side of her face. Then he pulled her round to face him and punched her on the left. She lost two teeth and went to an emergency dentist. It took six weeks for the bruises to fade. But the wedding went ahead. It wasn’t long before the boy was hitting the girl whenever he lost his temper. Afterwards, he would beg me to forgive him. I should have left him before the children were born.’
Eva asked, ‘How many children?’
‘Two boys,’ replied Bella. ‘I became so frightened of him that I couldn’t relax when he was in the house. When he came home from work, the boys would go to their rooms and close the door.’ Bella was wringing her hands. ‘That’s the end of the story.’
Eva said, ‘You want to know what to do? How many strong men do you know?’
Bella said, ‘Oh no, I don’t condone violence.’
Eva repeated, ‘How many strong men do you know?’
Bella counted in her head. ‘Seven.’
‘You must phone these men, and ask them to come to your rescue. You’ll know when it’s time.’
Bella nodded.
What’s your husband’s name?’
‘Kenneth Harper.’
‘And for how much longer are you going to live with Kenneth Harper?’