Number 10

by Sue Townsend

  Toyota chased the toddler, caught him and yanked him into the air by the back of his bunched up T–shirt. The toddler screamed and arched his back and then Toyota slapped at his legs and bare buttocks. The child took a deep breath and held it inside himself. The automatic responses of his small body failed him for a moment.

  Inside the car the three men waited for the toddler to draw breath again. The Prime Minister’s lips trembled. “It’s utterly barbaric, Jack, you must do something!”

  Toyota’s strong arms had lifted the bunched T–shirt higher and had brought the child’s face level with her, own, and she was now slapping at the child in a roughly syncopated rhythm. The words she was screaming into the toddler’s face acted as a type of punctuated counterpoint. “How. many. times. do. I. have, to. tell. you. to. stay. in. the. fuck. ing. house., Tush. in. ga?”

  “Tush.In.Ga?” queried the Prime Minister, who was pale now under his Max Factor Pan Stik.

  “Tushinga,” said Ali. “It’s an African name.”

  Jack reflected that it was only the very rich and the very poor who gave their children such extraordinary names.

  The two men shifted impatiently under their mattress umbrella, waiting for the toddler’s punishment to end. The little one now had sufficient air inside his lungs to scream. The terrible sound propelled the Prime Minister out of the car and up the path. He circumnavigated the mattress and confronted the woman. Tushinga was still hanging in the air with the slap marks showing like red petals against his pale, perfect skin.

  “Please! Stop now,” pleaded the Prime Minister.

  “Oo the fuck are you?” said Toyota, who was breathing heavily with her exertions. Beating a toddler was harder work than it looked.

  “I’m a social worker,” lied the Prime Minister.

  “You ain’t my social worker,” said Toyota.

  One of the flabby men shouted politely, “Can we get this fuckin’ mattress in the fuckin’ ‘ouse, please?”

  The Prime Minister, Toyota and the baby moved aside and the men struggled through the front door and disappeared inside.

  The Prime Minister picked up the feeding bottle, which he now saw was half full of what appeared to be Coca-Cola, and gave it to the sobbing child, saying, “Here, Tushinga, don’t cry. Mommy won’t smack you again.”

  “I’ll teck his bleddy head off if he don’t do as he’s told,” said Toyota. “He’s gotta learn.”

  “He won’t learn by being beaten, will he?” said the Prime Minister.

  “It’s ‘ow I learned,” said Toyota in a reasonable tone.

  “Hello there, Tushinga.” The Prime Minister chucked the child under the chin, but he turned and snuggled his head into his mother’s neck. His sobs were subsiding now and his mother began to stroke his hair away from his wet face and made a pattern of little kisses around one of his dimpled hands.

  “Ave you took over from Andy, then?” Toyota asked.

  The Prime Minister went on with the lie. “Yes, Andy’s had a nervous breakdown and I’m his replacement.” He knew there was a shortage of social workers due to stress and low recruitment levels.

  Toyota replied: “I can’t say I’m surprised. He were right jumpy the last time I seen him.” She indicated that the Prime Minister was to go inside the house, saying, “You’d betta come in for a cup of tea.”

  She looked suspiciously at the taxi parked at the kerb and said, “It’s no wonder there ain’t any places in the social-services nursery; they’re spending all their bleedin’ budget on taxis for cowin’ social workers.”

  The Prime Minister looked back pleadingly at Jack before Toyota led him inside the house. Jack waved then settled down in the back seat of the taxi to read the Daily Telegraph.

  Ali pulled a lever under the sagging driver’s seat and the back inclined. He was almost instantly asleep. This was turning into the perfect job; the meter already showed £39.40 and it was still only mid-morning.

  ♦

  Tushinga was playing with an empty video case and a few clothes pegs on a threadbare carpet, watched by Toyota and the Prime Minister. The living room was dominated by a large flat-screen television on a smoked-glass stand. It was showing a wildlife programme, and a pack of jackals were tearing a zebra to pieces. There was a black three–piece suite that was almost but not quite leather and hung on the wall above the gas fire was a lurid blown-up photograph of baby Tushinga.

  Tens of thousands of cigarettes had been smoked in the room and the ceiling and walls were a fashionable light-nicotine shade.

  The Prime Minister was reminded of his own living-room décor. Adele had agonised for days over paint charts with an expensive interior designer who had charged her £500 an hour for a consultation and more for applying a few coats of paint called ‘Moody Camel’.

  He took a small notebook from his handbag and wrote a few notes. Toyota was being indiscreet about benefit fraud and as he wrote the Prime Minister imagined producing the notes on the floor of the House and silencing the critics in his party of the proposed government benefit-fraud crackdown.

  Toyota lit a Berkeley cigarette and politely offered one to the Prime Minister. “No thank you, I’ve never smoked,” he said, raising his hand in the stop signal.

  “Never?” said Toyota. “So how do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried?”

  She made him feel uneasy, as though being a non-smoker was a major flaw in his character.

  The fat men stood in the doorway, smoking and watching the television. They remained un-introduced.

  “Go on, try one,” urged Toyota. “Our mam give me my first fag when I were eleven.”

  One of the fat men said, “Right, we’re goin’ now, Toy; ave you got that tenner, then?”

  Toyota said, “I’ve got nowt in me purse. You can ‘ave a look if you like.”

  It transpired that Toyota had bought the five-pound mattress plus five pounds delivery from an old relation of one of the men. Her own mattress, now in the back garden, had been irretrievably damaged when Tushinga had got hold of her lighter. Toyota looked at the Prime Minister and said, “That’s why I have to be ‘ard on ‘im. I don’t want him growing up to be a hooligan.”

  “You’ll have to get us the flyer for the diesel,” said the other man. “That fuckin’ tank’s empty now.”

  Toyota flew into an instant rage. “You didn’t say nothin’ about payin’ you on the day. You’ll ‘ave to wait until I get me social.”

  “Me fuckin’ tank’s empty and neither of us ‘as got nothin’, an’ we’ve gorra nother job in half an hour.”

  “Why ain’t you gorrany money?” demanded Toyota.

  “Cause we ‘ad to pay up front for the scaffold we put up this morning, first thing,” he replied.

  “Phone our Derek and see if he’ll lend me a flyer,” said Toyota.

  One of the men took a pay-as-you-go mobile from out of his pocket, pressed a few buttons and said, “Toyota needs a tenner to pay for that mattress and the diesel.” He waited for a moment, then grunted and said to Toyota, “He says flick off, you still owe him for that baby buggy.”

  Toyota screamed, “The fuckin’ wheels fell off outside Lidel’s and Tushinga fell on the fuckin’ pavement. I were six fuckin’ hours in fuckin’ casualty!”

  The Prime Minister’s notes were getting confused. He had written: “mattress, lighter, fatmen VAT registered?”

  One man said to the other, “You’ll ‘ave to ask Polio John if he’ll let me siphon some diesel from out his invalid car, else we’re gonna lose that fuckin’ job!”

  Polio John was contacted and said that he was at the post office picking up his disability allowance, but he would drive by when he was done.

  The lights went out and the television turned itself off with a click.

  “I need a lecky card now,” sighed Toyota.

  When the Prime Minister looked baffled she explained that the electricity company considered her to be a credit risk, so they had installed a meter. Howev
er, since a meter full of silver coinage was a delicious temptation to youth lusting for Nike trainers and crack cocaine, a plastic card had to be bought and inserted instead. The cards were available at certain shops, garages, the police station and even the fire station.

  One of the fat men appeared to get an idea and said, “Ring Lucky Paul and ask him to nip to the garage and pick up a lecky card and a gallon of diesel. He’s got credit there.”

  Lucky Paul was contacted but said that he no longer had credit at the garage because the old manager had been sacked for selling dirty videos out the back and the new one was ‘a stuck up bastard from Manchester’.

  A moody silence fell as the three penurious people in the room brooded on their immediate financial problems.

  “I wish I could help,” said the Prime Minister.

  “S’all right,” said Toyota. “I know you ain’t allowed to give money out.”

  Without artificial light the room was very dark. Toyota said, “I’m gonna run out of fags soon.” She looked genuinely afraid.

  One of the men said, “If we don’t get to this job we won’t get paid, an’ that means we can’t pay for the rest of the fuckin’ scaffold hire, and then we lose that job an’ all.”

  The Prime Minister half remembered a poem his father used to recite to him, something about the lack of a nail and a battle being lost.

  Toyota had a moment of inspiration. “Didn’t Coughing Tony got his asbestos money through last week?”

  “Yeah, but ‘e coughed his lungs up on Sunday an’ died in the ambulance.”

  Toyota lost her temper again. “Why didn’t nobody tell me? I used to do ‘is shoppin’ and fetch ‘is chips when ‘e were bad.”

  Tears sprang immediately from her eyes and she sobbed noisily for a few moments, watched nervously by the three men. Nobody moved to comfort her. The Prime Minister felt his chest constrict; there was a ringing in his ears and was that a pain in his left arm? He leaned back in the black chair and tried to control his breathing; the problem of the £10 seemed insurmountable. He had been less worried about the billions Britain owed to the World Bank.

  ♦

  Jack was reading with great interest a transcript of the conversation between Adele and her chiropodist, Peter Bowron:

  PB : There’s a patch of rough skin on the heel…Yeah, Graham Norton’s got the dinkiest little feet and he really takes care of them.

  AF-C : I’ve been trying to get Eddy to come and see you. His feet are…well, unpleasant.

  PB : Malodorous?

  AF-C : And sweaty.

  PB : Yeah, I saw him on the box. Digital shows everything. He was perspiring, well, freely.

  AF-C : It’s anxiety. He looks like Mr Cool but inside, Pete, he’s a mess.

  The next minute and five seconds of the conversation is muffled by the sound of a foot-sanding machine.

  PB : There, that’s lovely and smooth now.

  AF-C : Lovely.

  PB : I’ll tell you who’s got great feet and that’s Roy Hattersley. He only came the once, he had an ingrowing toenail, but I’ve never forgotten his feet. They were straight and true. Beautiful instep, fabulously agile toes. He could have been a foot model.

  AF-C : But he’s a traitor, Pete.

  PB : Perhaps, but he’s got fantastic feet. Do you want a peppermint massage?

  AF-C : Yes please, Pete…Is it true you do Posh ‘n’ Becks? I’ve heard the rumour.

  PB : I can’t talk about Posh ‘n’ Becks, Adele. I’ve signed a confidentiality clause in the contract.

  AF-C : You can tell me. I’m very discreet. Ed tells me everything. He’s not supposed to but he has to talk to somebody. Take Bush’s Star Wars defence plan. Ed thinks Bush is crazy to even think about it but…

  PB : Do you want the half- or the full-leg massage?

  AF-C : Full. I’ve got two hours before I’m at the Palace.

  PB : What’s the Queen like?

  AF-C : The Queen? My God, she could bore for England. It’s dogs, horses and postage stamps. Talking to her is like wading through porridge, she’d never even heard of Wittgenstein. Odd, since she’s a Nazi! [Laughter]

  Jack folded the paper and glanced towards the house, where Toyota could be seen looking out of the window. He got out of the car and went up the path to the front door. A moment later he was inside the house handing a £10 note over to one of the mattress-carriers.

  Ali drove the Prime Minister, Jack, Toyota and Tushinga round to the one-stop centre. It was a low, purpose-built redbrick building with a frilly roll of razor wire fixed to the point where the walls met the roof.

  A uniformed security guard directed them to a parking space. Next door, connected to the car park by a covered walkway, was the Gumpton Leisure Centre. A family of four were going through the entrance to the swimming pool carrying towels that looked like giant Swiss rolls under their arms. Their accents suggested that they were not residents of the Gumpton estate.

  Toyota had talked continually during the ten-minute journey to the one-stop centre, where Jack was going to buy her enough electricity for three days, if she was careful and didn’t switch on the fan heater in her bedroom. Though how the fuck she was going to get that mattress dry, she didn’t know. She’d been on a scheme to train as a care assistant. She really liked old people; they had more to talk about than young people. Her mam had looked after Tushinga, but he was too much of a handful now he was running about, and her mam couldn’t move so quickly with her bad knee. And the social-services nursery was full so, even though there were people crying out for care assistants, Toyota couldn’t work. A private nursery cost over a hundred quid a week, so she would have to stay on benefits and live from hand to fucking mouth and buy her and Tushinga’s clothes from the Cancer shop.

  Tushinga had been asked to a party yesterday but he couldn’t go because she had no money for a birthday card and a present. And he needed shoes. Proper shoes, seeing as how he was walking; she wanted his first shoes to be new, not fucked-up second-hand ones.

  She’d been good at geography at school. She’d done a project on Africa. She’d given every country a different felt-tipped colour. One day she would like to travel there and see the animals running round free.

  She’d done everything to make her money last the week. She’d put it in different jugs and boxes, and kept pound corns in an egg-cup, but did they know the price of disposable nappies? She had to get Tushinga toilet-trained quick. Andy, her old social worker, had told her that Tushinga was too young to control his bladder and bowels, but he understood what it meant when the fucking ice-cream van played ‘Greensleeves’ outside all right. He were just too lazy to fetch his potty.

  Andy had said she should stop smoking, but it were only five a day now—and anyway, he smoked himself so he could talk.

  She never went out, and she was only nineteen. Tushinga’s dad had only seen him the one time, at the hospital the second day after he’d been born. He’d turned up with his mates and brought a giant teddy that his mam had won in a raffle, so it didn’t count as a present. Sometimes he sent some money with Polio John, but he hadn’t remembered his baby’s first birthday. She knew she was a big girl and she weren’t that pretty, but some men didn’t mind that. She had a good personality and there weren’t nothing about the wildlife in Africa she didn’t know. She used to get books on animals out of the old library they had on the estate. It was lovely in there, quiet and smelling of polish, and with them high, curved windows. But that were a carpet warehouse now and the new library were just a room at the one-stop centre, and it were never open when you come to use it.

  She didn’t know what ‘Tushinga’ meant in African, but she would find out one day.

  While Toyota bought her electricity card, Jack and the Prime Minister read the notices in the entrance lobby. A poster informed them that the Gumpton Youth Club met on Thursdays from seven to nine in the community room, apparently shared by the pensioners’ bingo association and the pre-school playgroup (no pl
aces available).

  Jack said, “During the war there was a day nursery on every corner so that the women could go to work.”

  The Prime Minister replied irritably, “There are innumerable measures in place to facilitate single parents going back to work, Jack.”

  Upstairs, behind coded door-locks, the council workers, urban-renewal workers, social workers, probation officers and the community policeman were meeting with the Gumpton Residents Committee. It was agreed between them that a grant should be applied for and that, should the application be successful, a new ping-pong table, four bats and a quantity of balls would be purchased in an attempt to combat vandalism and joy-riding on the estate.

  Jack and the Prime Minister gave Toyota a lift back to her house. Jack carried Tushinga up the path for her. He liked the feel of the kid’s arms around his neck. He gave Toyota a £20 note and said, “I don’t care how you spend it, love.”

  When he got back inside the car he said savagely to the Prime Minister, “It was twelve-fifteen on a Wednesday afternoon, so why wasn’t the library open?”

  The Prime Minister said nothing, but felt vaguely ashamed. His chest tightened again and he could feel pins and needles in the fingers of his left hand, but he remained silent. It couldn’t be a heart attack—he was a fit man, and he played tennis and made love twice a week. His heart ought to be in good condition. He picked up Jack’s newspaper and scanned the lead story. So what if Adele had called the Queen a Nazi? She was a person in her own right and was entitled to her opinion. He had great faith in Alex McPherson; he would be working like an absolute dog to minimise the damage to the government. He settled back in his seat and pulled the seatbelt over his body. He pushed these unpleasant thoughts to the very back of his mind. He still had three days left of his holiday.

  Ali said, “Where next, boss?”

  Jack asked the Prime Minister what he would like to see next. “Is there a church here?” asked the Prime Minister.

  ∨ Number Ten ∧

  ELEVEN