Another World

by Pat Barker

  Dr Jenner’s asking why she hadn’t taken Jasper to the doctor when he fell over at the Metrocentre. Fran tries to explain he was all right, not sick, not drowsy, not anything, running round playing, she hadn’t felt justified in bothering the doctor. He didn’t lose consciousness then?

  ‘No,’ says Fran. And then, ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘You weren’t there again today.’

  Fran’s beginning to feel she’s on some kind of short-list for the World’s Most Absent Mother prize. It isn’t fair. She gave up work to look after Jasper. And Nick can’t help because – Fran feels a slow stir of anger – because Nick bloody well wasn’t there either. Nick hasn’t been there very much at all recently.

  ‘So who was?’ Dr Jenner asks.

  ‘Who was what?’

  ‘Who was there when the accidents happened?’

  Nick says, ‘Gareth.’

  ‘And Gareth is?’

  ‘Fran’s son. My stepson.’

  ‘And he was there on both occasions?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fran thinks, No, he doesn’t mean that. ‘You’re saying they weren’t accidents?’

  ‘No-o, I’m saying… Perhaps it might be a good idea if you didn’t leave him alone with his brother.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Nick says.

  ‘Well, he’s going to need stitches.’

  Fran says, ‘Can I stay with him?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll just go and find a nurse to help me.’

  After he’s gone they sit in silence, each finding it hard not to look at the brightly lit skull on the screen. It doesn’t seem to connect with the little boy who sits on Fran’s knee, cheek pressed into her breasts, sucking his thumb and pulling at his ear. His face is dirty, tear-stained. Fran remembers bending over his bed after that disastrous trip to the Metrocentre. It seems so obvious now she should have called the doctor, got the full story out of Gareth, kicked up a tremendous fuss. They wouldn’t be here now if she had. Hindsight’s a cruel teacher. She has to remind herself forcefully that, at the time, calling the doctor out to a slight graze would have seemed like the action of a fussy, over-anxious, hysterical mother. But then she was stretched to the limit that day, she’d been only too happy to pretend everything was all right.

  Jasper’s quiet, too quiet, though at least he hasn’t been sick again. Fran clings to the few reassuring things Dr Jenner said. No fracture, that’s the main thing. No sign of haemorrhage. They just have to be careful. Watch out for drowsiness and sickness. Jasper looks drowsy at the moment, but then he’s had a hard day. This is the time he would normally have a nap. Even the vomiting – he doesn’t need a blow on the head to be sick in the car. He does it all the time.

  They’ll just have to wait.

  ‘I shouldn’t’ve gone to sleep,’ Fran says.

  ‘Neither should I.’

  ‘No, well, you were tired. You’ve had Geordie to look after.’ She doesn’t bother to disguise the bitterness, though up till now she truthfully hasn’t minded. She’s always accepted that, however peculiar it might seem to other people, this is something Nick has to do. But now, with Jasper’s blood stiffening on her fingers, it looks a bit different. A grown man chasing after his grandad and his auntie, leaving her with a house to run, shopping, cooking, kids to look after, one of them his daughter, for Christ’s sake. She’s stoking her anger deliberately, because it helps her forget how frightened she is. ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ she says slowly. ‘Was it?’

  ‘We don’t know that.’ Nick gropes for the right words. ‘Don’t think about it. Let’s just get this over first.’

  It could still be an accident, Fran tells herself. Some bizarre game of Gareth’s gone wrong. Twice.

  Dr Jenner comes back with a nurse, who’s carrying a kidney bowl and scissors. As soon as Jasper feels the scissors in his hair, he screams, and he goes on screaming through all the washing, clipping and stitching that follows.

  Outside in the waiting room, Gareth wriggles on his chair, looks up and finds Miranda staring at him again. ‘What you looking at, shit-face?’

  ‘You.’

  She goes back to her magazine. Ten minutes later Nick comes out, followed by Mum with Jasper in her arms, and says they can all go home.

  FIFTEEN

  As soon as Nick unlocks the front door, Gareth pushes past him and runs to his room. Fran takes Jasper upstairs, hoping he’ll have a nap, while Nick makes sandwiches for the older children. Bag of crisps each, and they can eat it in front of the telly.

  Through the open window he hears children’s voices. An indistinct murmur and then a girl’s voice: ‘I wasn’t there.’

  Upstairs, Miranda lies on her bed, stretched out with her hands on her tummy. She doesn’t move even when there’s a knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ she calls, expecting it to be Dad.

  Gareth sidles round the door.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You won’t tell them, will you?’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘About Jasper.’

  She goes still. ‘What about him?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I wasn’t there, remember?’

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘Gareth, I wasn’t.’

  ‘You were on the cliffs.’

  ‘Watch my lips. I wasn’t there.’ She sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. ‘Though you do realize, don’t you, you’ve just told me what happened? If I didn’t know before, I do now.’

  ‘You’d better not say anything.’

  ‘Oh, go away.’

  When he’s gone, Miranda lies down again, on her back with her eyes closed, but it’s no use. Jasper’s face with the eyes full of blood floats on the inside of her lids. I wasn’t there.

  Lying cunt, cow, sod, bitch, slag. She’s saying that now, but when the time comes she’ll drop him right in it.

  He tips all the old toys out of the carrier bag, and lines them up around his bed, facing the door. Then he realizes some of them should be facing the window, so he has to arrange them all again.

  He’s only just finished when Mum comes in. She sits on his bean bag and holds her arm out for him to come and sit beside her. There’s a deep red crease on her cheek where she’s been sleeping in an awkward position. He expects her to be angry, but she’s not. Or not on the surface.

  Fran knows she should leave it, for tonight anyway, but she can’t go to bed without knowing. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asks.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘What happened on the beach.’

  ‘Jasper falling over, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about, he just fell over. I told him, Jasper, mind what you’re doing, the rocks are slippy, but he wouldn’t listen ’cos he wanted to sail his lolly sticks, so he went on to the big slippy rocks and he fell.’

  ‘The trouble is, you see, the cut on his head, it’s not in a place where you could knock yourself very easily, just falling down. It’s, well, it’s right on the top of his head, and if you think of falling down, well, you don’t fall on the top of your head, do you? But if somebody was throwing stones –’

  ‘Are you asking Miranda all this? You’re not, are you? I get the blame for everything.’

  ‘Miranda wasn’t there.’

  ‘Yes she was. She was on the top of the cliffs.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When it happened.’

  ‘When what happened?’

  ‘When he fell.’

  ‘A lot of people throw stones, Gareth. You and Nick play that game, don’t you, when you try to hit a beer can.’

  Fran waits, watching the play of expressions on Gareth’s face.

  ‘I might have chucked some stones in the stream.’

  ‘Big stones?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pebbles?’

  ‘Yeah, pebbles.’

  ‘But one of them hit him.’

  No an
swer.

  ‘Didn’t it?’

  Gareth starts to cry. ‘I wasn’t aiming at him.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just sort of ran…’

  ‘You threw the stone and he ran into its path?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t believe me, I thought you’d think I’d done it on purpose, I always get the blame for everything, I thought you’d think I’d done it deliberately, but I never, honest I never, I was aiming to miss –’ He’s wailing. Suddenly he jumps up and shouts, ‘You’re saying I did it on purpose, and I didn’t.’

  ‘Gareth –’

  Fran tries to get hold of him, but he wrenches himself away, and starts revolving along the wall, clawing pictures and posters off it, till he crashes in the corner and lets himself slide down to the floor, where he lies, kicking his legs and jerking his head from side to side.

  Nick appears in the doorway.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Fran says.

  ‘What’s –’

  ‘Please, Nick.’

  He goes out again, though not before she’s seen how angry he is. All right, I shouldn’t be doing this tonight, she thinks. But if they’re going to go on living in this house together, they have to try and understand what happened. She still doesn’t believe Gareth. Throwing pebbles in the stream is one story; ‘I was aiming to miss’ is the beginning of another. But she won’t get any further tonight.

  ‘Come on, now,’ she says, bending over Gareth. ‘It’s not as bad as that.’

  Gareth’s whole body is shaking with sobs, though he hasn’t shed a single tear.

  ‘Calm down, now. Come on, calm down.’

  Gradually, as she continues to murmur reassurance, Gareth stops gasping for breath and lies still.

  Fran stays with him till she’s sure he’s calm, before going down to the living room, where she finds Nick pouring himself a large whisky. He looks up as she comes into the room. ‘What did you expect to achieve by that?’

  ‘I wanted to find out what happened.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Halfway, I think. He was throwing pebbles into the stream. Aiming to miss.’

  ‘To miss the stream?’

  ‘I did say halfway.’

  ‘And that might be as far as you ever get.’

  Fran shakes her head. ‘I’ve got to know what happened. I’m going into hospital in a few weeks’ time. I can’t take Jasper with me. I’m bringing a newborn baby back into the house. How do you think it feels to be told I’ve got to watch Gareth all the time?’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘That’s not what the doctor said.’

  ‘He doesn’t know Gareth. You plug Gareth into a computer he’s no danger to anybody.’

  ‘But he can’t live like that.’

  ‘Why not? He has been.’

  They stare at each other.

  ‘You think if he tells you everything it’ll wipe out the past.’ He puts on a schmaltzy soap-opera voice. ‘ “It’s good to talk.” Not always. It won’t help Gareth to say, “I tried to smash the little bugger’s head in because I hate his guts.” Even if it is true. And it certainly won’t help you to hear it.’

  Fran shakes her head. ‘We have to know.’

  ‘We? I’m part of this, am I?’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘Only just now I got the impression I wasn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Can I talk to him?’

  She hesitates. ‘Well, not tonight.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘I just thought it would come better from me.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Nick flicks his eyes at the ceiling. ‘You were making a grand job of that.’

  Silence. Nick clinks the ice cubes in the glass. ‘You know you’ve always said Gareth used to drive your boyfriends away, wouldn’t let them anywhere near him. I don’t think that was Gareth. I think it was you. He’s your test-tube baby, isn’t he, Fran?’

  She winces with the brutality of it. ‘No, I don’t think so. I could do with a bit of support.’

  ‘Well, I’m tired of being the token father. You’ve got to decide whether you want me in Gareth’s life or not.’ Seconds later, Nick’s horrified at himself. For somebody who’s just accused Fran of bad timing he’s putting on a pretty lousy performance. After an awkward pause, he says, ‘Look, why don’t you have a drink?’

  ‘Your solution to everything, isn’t it, Nick?’

  ‘No.’ They’re on the brink of a major row, one of those awful gut-churning affairs that starts over nothing and drags in everything. ‘One glass of wine won’t hurt. If it was that bad for the baby the entire French nation would be idiots.’

  She smiles slightly. ‘All right, go on, then.’

  ‘Red or white?’

  ‘Red.’

  In the slight stir of fetching a bottle opener and opening the wine, neither of them hears the front door open and close. They raise their glasses, rather wearily, and toast each other. It’s only much later, when Fran goes upstairs to check on the children, that she finds Gareth’s room empty, and a note taped to the computer screen.

  Gareth’s on the river path, legs pumping along. He’s making for the railway station hoping he’s got enough money to get a train to York, where his grandma lives. If he hasn’t, it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care where he goes, he only knows he has to get away from Mum before she starts asking any more questions. He could see the disbelief in her eyes. She knows Jasper didn’t fall.

  Gareth’s brought hardly anything with him, a fiver and some loose change from Mum’s bedside table and the crawling sniper, who’s in his jeans pocket. Gareth keeps putting a hand in to touch him, because he’s a sort of friend.

  Even if he gets to Gran she’ll only ring up and tell them where he is. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s got to do something to show them what he wants. Telling them’s no use, because they never listen.

  The wind crawls over the river, making it go goose-pimply. His arms too. It’s getting colder, he wishes he’d brought a coat, but it was so hot on the beach, he thought it would go on being hot. To take his mind off shivering and being cold, he looks up the river, counting the bridges. Redheugh, Railway, Metro, High Level, Swing and Tyne, all their lights reflected in the water. It’s getting dark. Crossing the road, he cuts through the back streets to the railway station.

  Where the first thing he sees is two policemen. He can hardly believe his eyes, but there they are, and not going anywhere either by the looks of them, just standing there with walkie-talkies crackling on their chests. They can’t be looking for him, it’s too soon.

  He strides confidently across to the arrivals and departures board, but the columns of figures baffle him. He thinks there’s a train to York in forty-five minutes’ time, but he isn’t sure and daren’t attract attention to himself by asking. There aren’t any other kids his age on their own. He’ll be all right for a few minutes, but not for forty-five, if he hangs round that long the police’ll start asking questions. Can’t go for a coke because he daren’t spend any money, can’t go into the W. H. Smith’s because they’ll think he’s going to pinch something. Probably the safest thing’s to go to the gents and just hang about in there.

  ‘Hello, sonny,’ says the man at the next stall. ‘You on your own?’

  Gareth looks down and thinks, Shit, because the guy isn’t peeing, he’s playing with himself.

  ‘No, me dad’s in the short-stay car-park.’ A glance at his watch. ‘Christ, he’ll murder me.’

  Gareth zips up and gets out of there so fast he practically leaves scorch marks on the tiles. It’s like Digger’s brother said: ‘I’ll be buggered if I let a pervert poke my bum.’ Everybody laughed when he said it and so did Gareth, though it took him a week to get the joke.

  Ticket office. There’s a woman in front of him and she’s taking ages
. Gareth’s jogging up and down as if he wants to go to the toilet, which he certainly doesn’t. At last she folds a fiver into her purse, fumbles her tickets off the counter with big clumsy pink fingers and goes. Thank God.

  ‘How much is a single to York?’ Definitely a single. No way is he ever coming back.

  ‘Nine pounds, eighty pence,’ the woman says.

  ‘Half fare?’

  ‘Yes, half fare.’ A shrewd look. ‘Does your mum know where you are?’

  ‘ ’Course she does. I’m going to see me grandma next week. Me mum wasn’t sure what the fare was.’

  Again Gareth gets out as fast as he can. He’s running out of the station when he bumps into one of the cops. A solid wall of black chest with crackles and voices coming out of it.

  ‘You all right, son?’

  ‘Yes, I’m just going home.’

  They look at each other. ‘All right, mind you do.’

  Gareth doesn’t stop running till he reaches the river and by that time he’s so out of breath he feels sick. He bends double like runners do when they’ve lost a race and waits for it to pass. So far running away’s been a total failure. Probably he’ll just go home. He’s not giving in, though, he’s only going back to plan and do it better next time. But he goes slowly, dragging his feet.

  The river’s on one side of him, the fenced-off works on the other. There are pictures of Alsatians on the tall railings, which are surmounted by coils of barbed wire. The wind whistles between the boarded-up buildings. He finds a stick and drags it along the wire, trying to make the Alsatians bark, but there’s no sign of them. The street lamps are on, but there are still patches of intense darkness that Gareth withdraws into whenever he hears somebody coming, but they’re on the main road. There aren’t many people. Everybody’s in their homes or in the town centre. Nobody lives down here. Shot Factory Lane, he reads on a street sign, and turns into it, more to find out where it leads than because he thinks it’ll take him nearer home.