Beginnings

by Debbie McGowan

  Back when they were toddlers, and the Johanssons had first settled in England, Mrs. Jeffries was recently divorced, impoverished by the fight for maintenance and desperate to find a means of earning a few extra pounds, whilst eager to ensure that her three boys were not left to the care of someone else. Thus, when Mrs. Johansson had arrived at the playschool with her requirement for daycare, Mrs. Jeffries jumped straight at the opportunity.

  Kris and Dan instantly became friends, being of the same age and both boys, although at that point, it was where their shared interests began and ended. Dan was a typical little boy, who loved football and play-fighting, didn’t care if he was dirty or clean, adored his older brother. Kris was a much gentler child, who loved to play make-believe and could be very persuasive in getting other children to be his supporting characters.

  When the boys reached school age, they were devastated to find that their parents were sending them to different schools. Dan was to follow in the footsteps of his brothers and attend the bigger of the two local state primary schools. Kris was going to a public school, where the curriculum more closely resembled that back in Sweden. However, Dan’s mother continued to childmind Kris, with the school bus dropping him at the Jeffries’ household, from where he would later be collected by whichever parent had time.

  Towards the end of their primary school years, something significant happened. It was a terrible experience that neither would ever forget, although they each tried their hardest to do so.

  It started when, for two nights a week, Dan’s mother worked in a pub, and the boys were considered old enough to be safe under the distant guardianship of Eric, the albino cousin, and Great Uncle Anders. Dan’s eldest brother, Michael, at four years his senior, would collect his youngest brother on his way home from Scouts or youth club, depending on the day, and the arrangement had been in place for several months, before Michael discovered the truth of just how unsafe Great Uncle Anders’ guardianship really was.

  The Johanssons had a treehouse. It was a wonderful, rickety old shed, nestled in the bottom branches of one of the ancient oak trees, and consisted of a single room, with a door and a small square window. The boys had filled it with cushions, and it was big enough for three or four friends to stay for sleepovers, which they had done many times, and it was much fun. It felt like a great outdoors adventure, almost as if they were up in a cabin in the wilderness of some North American state, and they could make as much noise as they liked, for they couldn’t be heard in the house.

  It was summer—their last term as primary school pupils—and they had been playing football since they’d arrived home, the evening sun still hot and high—too hot and high for Eric to show his face. Dan kicked the ball against the back wall of the house and chugged to a halt, panting and wiping his sweat-damp brow with the back of his hand.

  “Got any orange?” he asked.

  Kris shrugged. “Yeah, I think so. Come on.”

  He beckoned Dan into the wonderful cool of the kitchen, so dark compared to the brightness of the garden that their eyes took time to adjust. Kris opened the fridge, located a carton of juice, and took it and two glasses back to the garden; they were not allowed to play inside.

  “Let’s sit in the treehouse,” he suggested.

  Dan nodded his acceptance and held the juice and glasses so that Kris could climb the rope ladder; he passed them up and then climbed it himself.

  “Blimey!” he said, diving through the doorway and landing in the middle of the cushions. “It’s roasting in here!”

  “We’ll leave the door open,” Kris suggested. “It’ll soon cool down.”

  The boys were exhausted, from the heat and the physical activity, and apart from the occasional slurping from glasses, the treehouse was in silence. Soon after, they started to snooze, appreciating the draught through the open door on this sticky summer’s evening, with the sun too hot and high for Eric to show his face.

  The first thing Dan became aware of was a slight jogging sensation, like someone was rattling his bed, and for a moment, lying there with his eyes shut, that’s what he believed it to be. Then he remembered where he was and startled awake, glancing around him at Kris, still sleeping, and then to the doorway, and the face of Great Uncle Anders. He looked as if he were in some sort of trance. It was he who was rocking the treehouse. He smiled the strangest smile, and then he was gone. Dan shook Kris awake.

  “What? What’s the matter?” Kris slurred as he slowly came to.

  Dan stared at him, eyes wide and mystified, confused by what had taken place. He didn’t understand any of it, but sensed that it was somehow very wrong. Soon after, Michael came to collect him, and he was so glad to be going home.

  The following week, another peculiar thing happened. It was raining lightly, and they were sitting under the parasol on the patio, watching the clouds gather and become darker, filling with excitement in anticipation of the storm that they could feel brewing in the air around them. Kris lifted his arms to show Dan the goosebumps that had formed on them. The wind dropped away suddenly, and they sat, quiet and still, paused in time and space.

  A clap of thunder made them jump out of their skins, and then the rain became torrential, huge globules of it splatting on the patio, the wind now starting to whirr around them, getting them wetter and wetter, until they decided to shelter in the treehouse and wait until it stopped. This time, it was Dan who climbed the ladder first, about to do his usual trick of diving headfirst through the door. He stopped, and Kris butted up behind him.

  “Hullo,” Dan said nervously.

  “Hello, Daniel,” Anders replied with a smile. “Come in. I’ll be going soon. Just resting out of the rain. I was gardening, you see.” He waved big, dirty hands to vindicate his presence.

  “Dan?” Kris questioned from below.

  Anders was still smiling and patted the cushions to beckon him inside. Dan complied.

  Great Uncle Anders never touched them, not on this or any subsequent occasion, between that first episode of him watching them, and the last.

  He liked to watch.

  To watch them play football in the garden, and then as they quenched their thirst afterwards.

  He liked to watch them play, with each other.

  They were young and powerless to protest that they didn’t like what Great Uncle Anders was asking of them, too frightened to tell him no, they didn’t want to do these things to each other, while he just liked to watch, that creepy smile on his face, his hands fidgeting in his pockets.

  And so to the very last time.

  Dan and Kris were trying to find reasons not to go in the treehouse. It wasn’t as if he forced them up there, yet somehow they couldn’t find the words to refuse. They climbed the ladder, reluctance slowing their steps, and edged around the wall. Anders smiled, hello, boys, come into my parlour, and like helpless flies, they were caught once again in his deceitful, abusive web, as still as still could be, hoping if they didn’t move he wouldn’t see them. Hoping for escape. Not a futile hope, for once: Michael’s voice.

  “Dan? Come on!”

  The treehouse shook with the weight of his eldest brother, fifteen and almost six foot already. A glimpse of what Michael ought not to have seen, his eyes darting between Great Uncle Anders and the half-naked boys, caught in a tableau…

  Dan cried, embarrassed, relieved, guilty, all the way home. “Why can’t Kris come too?” he implored.

  “He just can’t,” Michael said, his face serious, afraid. “We have to tell Mum.”

  “But Uncle Anders…” Dan’s voice was pleading, both hands pulling back on his brother’s hand. “Mike! Please!”

  “I’m gonna batter you in a minute,” Michael threatened angrily, but immediately softened and turned to his sobbing little brother. “It’s going to be OK. We’ll tell Mum, and it’ll all be OK.”

  Soon after, Great Uncle Anders returned to the homeland, and Eric the albino cousin was sent to a big, old hospital with lawns and trees and doctors wh
o didn’t wear white coats. Nobody spoke of what had happened; it were as if it had not been. But when Kris asked if he could go to the high school with Dan and his older brothers, his parents agreed without hesitation. The boys had been through enough.

  ***

  Dan had lost his football boots. That’s what he told his mother. They were brand new, she shouted in exasperation. He needed to remember where he had them last, she said. He shook his head, no. He needed to forget.

  * * * * *

  Birth of a Princess

  Adele placed the last of her dollies on the bed in front of her, pausing to straighten the skirt, baby-talking to the toy to explain her intent. The four dolls lay on their backs, equidistant from each other, lined up and on parade, like a tiny replica Miss World contest.

  “Angela, you have the prettiest hair,” Adele whispered, smoothing her hand over the brunette doll’s long, nylon locks. “So you mustn’t be cross that Jasmine gets to wear the red coat today. Yes, I know it looks very nice.” She sighed, ticking the doll off in response to her imagined complaint. “Now, come here, Elizabeth.” She picked up the second doll from the left—smaller, blonde, and wearing riding clothes. “It’s nearly time for your horse-riding…”

  Adele paused, the doll still in her hands, and listened to the voices rising from downstairs. She put ‘Elizabeth’ down again, climbed off the bed and quietly closed the door to her room. She returned to her bed, sat cross-legged once more, and put her hands over her ears.

  “Miss Polly had a dolly who was sick, sick, sick…” she began to sing, trying to drown out the sound of her parents’ shouting.

  “How long, Michelle?” her father demanded.

  “So she phoned for the doctor to be quick, quick, quick…”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” her mother shrieked back.

  “The doctor came with his bag…”

  “You are a liar!”

  “…with his bag and his hat…”

  “I don’t care what you believe. I know the truth!”

  Adele skipped across the room to her tiny, pink dressing table, and looked at the postcard from Shaunna. She was on holiday for all of the summer, at her aunty’s farm in Ireland.

  To Adele,

  I am having a good time.

  I miss you.

  There are horses and we are going to ride on them tomorrow my Aunty Pammy said.

  I have a new cousin and he is three weeks old.

  Don’t forget my birthday present.

  Mum says we can go to the fair when we get back.

  Love and kisses,

  Shaunna xxx

  “Who is he?” her father said. He tried to say it quietly, but he was too angry.

  “There is no-one,” her mother spat.

  “And he knocked at the door with a rat-tat-tat…”

  “Who is he?” Now her father’s voice was loud, booming.

  Adele picked up Angela doll. “He looked at the dolly and he shook his head…” She shook her head at the doll.

  “He is no-one!” her mother yelled. “No-one! Like you! Nothing! A nobody!”

  “And he said, ‘Miss Polly, send her straight to bed!’…”

  “I saw you together,” her father said, suddenly much quieter.

  “He wrote on the paper for a pill, pill, pill…”

  Adele’s mother—Michelle—was not French, but she worked as a secretary who had to turn English words into French ones and back again. She was called a ‘biling wall’, or something like that, and she was very clever at learning languages. Now she started shouting in French, believing that neither her husband nor her daughter understood. She was mistaken, for Adele had inherited her mother’s natural aptitude and had been privy to the secret conversations with secret strangers that were forever a normal part of her daily existence. Eleven years of listening to her mother swear and say sex words in French—she didn’t want to know those words, especially not now.

  “A fat, dirty shit of a man, I married,” her mother said in French, in a cruel, spiteful voice. There was a pause, as she stopped to light a cigarette, blowing smoke in her husband’s face, while he watched her, confused and unable to defend himself against insults he could not comprehend.

  “A fat, dirty shit, who doesn’t care about his wife or daughter. You would leave me alone, day upon day, to look after your brat. I have no life. No life, Harry! It is your fault I am fucking Anthon. Yours!”

  “Anthon? Who the hell is Anthon?” The names were all he could discern from what she had said.

  “He is a man. Not like you, Harry Reeves. A real man!” This she hollered in English. “He would not ask me to have his child, nor give up my life to care for it. He would only ask me to love him.”

  “Then damn well go to him!” her father growled.

  Silence.

  “We don’t need you—me and my child—our daughter.”

  Still the silence continued.

  “Go on! Get out, Michelle, and never come back.”

  The talking stopped. Adele sniffed. Poor Angela doll was almost drowned in tears. The front door slammed shut. She heard her father go into the living room. The TV switched on, then switched off again. He started to talk under his breath, his voice now she could hear, the words all slurring together, getting louder and louder, until he let out a bellow so vast and so deep that Adele remembered the mummy elephant at the zoo on their school trip a few weeks ago. It, too, had been sad.

  “No, no. Oh why? That bitch!” Her father began to sob, the sobbing muffled. “Oh why, why, why?” Bangs and crashes of objects hurled. “Why, Michelle? I love you. How could you do this to us again?”

  She was gone.

  Adele wiped the tears from Angela doll’s face and set her down on the bed once again.

  “‘I’ll be ba-ack in the morning with my bill, bill, bill.’”

  * * * * *

  For Life

  Another hour wasted in another deserted classroom, while the upper-school team played against Holy Rosary just outside the window. They cheered again, and Andy instinctively turned to look.

  “Mr. Jeffries. We’re not here to entertain you,” Mr. Long said loudly without looking up from his marking.

  Andy sighed and went back to his maths. Boring, boring, boring. And his own fault. He was late—third late in three weeks equals detention with the headmaster, or, in fact, the deputy head, Mr. Schlong, as he’d heard some of Aitch’s mates call him. Andy had laughed along, but didn’t have the faintest clue why they called him that.

  Sir coughed into his hand and adjusted his position in his teacher seat. Andy sighed again and completed question four of twenty. He was allowed to go when he’d finished them. That’s what Sir had said, but his mind kept drifting off, to the big lads in footy kits, distracted by the thwack of a well-placed boot and another round of cheers, slightly quieter than before. The opposition had scored.

  “Come on, laddo, crack on with it,” Mr. Long chastised, a little more sympathetically this time. “The sooner it’s done…”

  “I know, Sir. Sorry.”

  Andy sat up straight and tore through another five questions before he started to daydream once more. He was never in this much trouble at primary school—a few playtimes and lunch breaks spent in the corridor outside Mrs. Patel’s office, mostly for fighting, and usually with Dan. Sometimes he didn’t even know why he was in trouble. Like Bonfire Night in first year of juniors, when he took sparklers to school. It wasn’t as if they lit them inside, or anything. They’d even waited until all the infants had gone in, just to make sure. And Mum was fuming.

  “On first name terms with the head-bloody-teacher,” she snarled as she stormed down the school drive and out to the car, Andy trailing behind. The other two were allowed to stay in school. It just wasn’t fair. Back home and then, “To your room,” she commanded.

  He dragged himself up the stairs and threw himself onto the bed, staring up at the poster of the skydiver above him. One day, he was going to be up
there, falling through the clouds with his arms and legs stretched out, like an enormous spider, but with less legs, obviously. He huffed and rolled onto his side.

  “Are you not done yet?” Mr. Long’s voice brought him back, and he did another two sums. They were easy: substitution, it was called, and most of them he could do in his head, but Miss insisted on seeing the working out, which was why he couldn’t concentrate, because he couldn’t be bothered.

  Let x = 4.5

  4x - 2y = 10

  Find y

  He scribbled down: y=4, then crossed it out and started over:

  4 x 4.5 = 18

  18 - 2y = 10

  18 - 10 = 2y

  2y = 8

  y = 4

  He double underlined the answer and moved on to question thirteen: let x = 6 and y = 9.

  Yawn.

  Their team scored again; by his reckoning, that put them three-two in the lead. He wanted to be out there playing with them.

  “Everything all right, Sir?” Mr. Harris peered around the classroom door. Andy didn’t have any lessons with him, but he taught in the room next to their form room, and he had the loudest sneeze. He spent about ten minutes every morning just sneezing, over and over again, calling out the names of the pupils in his form in between. Three weeks into high school, and they still thought it was dead funny.

  “All fine, Sir,” Mr. Long said. “Just waiting on young Andrew here to finish his maths.”

  Andy glanced from one to the other of the two male teachers and decided to get on with it. He was done wasting his playing-out time, and he’d get away with saying he was late home because he’d missed the bus.

  Mr. Harris and Mr. Long chatted about teacher stuff—staff meetings, reports, the same old rubbish they always talked about, it sounded really boring being a teacher—while Andy whizzed through the remaining seven questions. He slammed his stuff in his bag, shoved his chair back and got up, immediately heading for the door.