Once Upon a Time in England

by Helen Walsh

  ‘Can I help you?’

  This was the worst bit for Robbie, in flashback. He winced at the recollection, angry not at the showroom manager – no ‘please’, no ‘sir’ – but at himself for simply not getting it. Robbie, nervous, threw the guy a big smile. ‘I’ve come to see about the Series One.’ He ran the back of his hand across his glistening top lip and cast a proud, proprietary gaze towards the pebble-grey beauty.

  The manager looked him in the eye for a second – sense of commerce overcoming common sense for the briefest of instants – then turned, brutally, and walked away.

  Robbie stood exactly where he was, flabbergasted. Ellie tugged his hand. ‘When can we wide it?’

  Before he could answer, there was another fellow blocking his path, this one more than happy to call him ‘sir’. ‘Sir? Can I help you?’

  As the sun disappeared behind a cloud, Robbie now saw a line of baffled salesmen studding the window. All wore the same bleached expression, somewhere between contempt and middling terror. At first he thought their revulsion was aimed at his Ellie – her light-brown hair blackened by the rain, her green eyes peeled back by the pure black of her excited irises and her fudge-brown skin spattered dark by the dirt slung up from the wet carriageway. She’d been shaded in by the journey and the walk this morning, and the horrified Jag sales platoon were recoiling at the arrival of this half-breed kid. They’d sent out their stockiest bloke to dispatch them.

  Robbie had drawn himself up, injured, irate, ready to go and bust heads. But then the revolving door spat out a lady customer whose unambiguous glare was directed at Robbie, and Robbie alone. He shook his head in silent anger, looked at the floor, then looked up again and caught sight of himself in the reflection of the plate glass window. He saw what they were looking at, saw the whole picture – and flinched. His hair was wild, flayed to crazy tumbleweed by the lash of the wind and the rain. His face was sprayed in mud, his clothes sodden. And his little dark-skinned baby was just another prop, one more gypsy kid dragged along for the sympathy vote.

  The salesman had gestured with one arm, simultaneously indicating the way out, and that he wanted no trouble. Robbie stood there a moment longer, dreams in tatters, the realisation consuming him. Travellers. They all thought he and Ellie were from the site down the road. Fate sealed and heart broken, Robbie dragged up his bike and hauled it around. Ellie knew something bad had just happened, but she asked no questions. As they made their way back along the carriageway, past the straggle of caravans, the sky blackened and bore down on them again. Ellie saw a fat tear welling in his eye. ‘It’s OK, Daddy,’ she said.

  She only called him Daddy when she wanted something, these days – or when she sensed he needed her most. Robbie bit back the waves of vitriol and despair crashing through him and forced himself back into his favourite role, one he could still fulfil. He became Dad again, with all of his everything channelled into making Ellie grin and giggle. It didn’t take much. He rang his bell at strangers walking by, swerved up onto the pavement and attempted a wheelie and by the time they were pulling into the forecourt of Howarth’s Motors, Ellie was a kid again, shielded from the world out there. And for as long as possible, Robbie wanted to keep it that way.

  And so it was that, foolish and found-out, his soul drained of all and any hope, Robbie took his little tar-baby to Howarths and, after a detached and cursory inspection of the gleaming box, shook hands on HP terms for a brand new family saloon. The world had reached its verdict on Robbie Fitzgerald, and they'd found against him. He was a vagabond, an outsider, a threat, a menace; and Jaguars – even well-loved, elderly ones – were not for the likes of him. And that was that. Sheila was right. They should do as others did, set their sights on what was do-able, get-able. Keep their sight lines low, and do things by the book. How could he have thought any different? How could he have deluded himself so? A Jaguar! For him. Hurting and hungering now, he bypassed the Fords, the Vauxhalls – even a Citroën would bestow too much dignity upon one such as he. If this was how things were then so be it – he’d go the whole hog for them, open up his own veins and bleed martyrdom. Barely listening to the salesman, he accepted the colour they had in stock rather than wait for the now-fashionable metallic shades. This would be the sack-cloth that he’d wear now, day in, day out. He popped Ellie back on the bike, mugged a delighted face for her and set about the merry pedal ride home. But how his heart ached.

  ‘Ellie?’ Her mother continued scouring her mud-speckled face for answers. Robbie came into the room and Susheela turned her questioning gaze onto him. ‘What has happened? Tell me, somebody.’

  Ellie jumped up, clapping her hands for joy. ‘We’ve got a Lardar! A norringe Lar-dar!’

  Susheela had never heard of this make. She paused and, hesitantly, edged out her question, afraid of the reply. ‘A … a new one?’

  Robbie did his utmost to force a smile. ‘Yep. Brand spanker!’

  He stood there, holding the pose, smiling hard as he fought back the tears. Sheila didn’t notice a thing. She hugged him tight, heart thumping with joy as she gleefully imagined Jean Bishop’s face.

  Three

  Sheila had had misgivings right until the first of the ladies rang the front doorbell, and now she knew for sure it had all been a wretched mistake. How could people be so nice to your face, smile right into your eyes then be so cruel the moment your back was turned? She froze against the kitchen wall, tray in hand. She could still hear the two of them – at least Jean had not got involved – giggling in there. Served her right. Served her right for being so ridiculous as to take them up on it and host a coffee morning in the first place. Robbie would wring her neck if he ever found out. The one time she’d ever ventured the subject, he as good as laughed in her face. ‘Women’s Institute,’ he called the ladies in the close. He seemed to hate all of them, but reserved a special contempt for Jean Bishop – or Emily Bishop as he insisted on referring to the neighbourhood Avon Lady. ‘Just want a nosey, She,’ he poo-pooed, when she’d gingerly enquired about having some friends around. ‘These types aren’t your friends, love. Just want a good look at what you’ve got.’ Or haven’t got, she’d thought, but didn’t say.

  But vanity got the better of her and, after an avalanche of praise and encouragement from Jean, she’d agreed to the little get-together. She would have liked to have waited till her new curtains were back from the tailor, but this was the only week she had the run of the house. Partly in an attempt to lure Vincent from the cocoon of his bedroom – since breaking up three weeks ago, he’d barely set foot outside the house – and also to gently acclimatise Ellie to the six-hour school day before she started at St Mary’s next month, she’d enrolled them both at a week-long summer school the local community centre was running.

  So, it was just the five of them – Jean, herself, Marge Wallace from Number 17 and her pretty sister-in-law Penny, who everyone said looked like Sheena Easton (but who had to be at least thirty, surely). And Liza was coming too. Of all the young mums at Ellie’s playgroup, Liza, with her long, gazelle legs clad in Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, was the star. Everyone wanted to know Liza Cohen.

  Marge and Penny arrived together, ten minutes early. Sheila was in a flummox, unsure whether to trim the crust off the sandwiches or if chocolate eclairs were vulgar. That was all she’d heard off Marge all week – ‘vulgar’. Those all-in-one boiler suits she loved were, apparently, vulgar. The beautiful Cotswold stone-effect cladding on the Harrisons’ house opposite was vulgar. Their regular bus driver was vulgar. This last, at least, gave Sheila an opportunity to boast about their new car. ‘We went for a saloon car. It made sense, what with Ellie starting school in September.’

  Marge contorted her face into that tight, terrifying mask that was intended to demonstrate pleasure but gave off only the most virulent envy. ‘Really?’ She smiled through gritted teeth. ‘A sal-oon car?’

  No sooner had Sheila seated Marge and Penny – who declined both tea and coffee and asked if she had �
��something naughty’ – than they were picking things up, turning them over, nudging one another. Sheila went off to the garage in a fug of panic. What did they mean, something naughty? Well, it was obvious – they meant drink. But where did Robbie keep it, if he kept it at all? And suddenly, triumphantly, she spotted it up on the paint shelf. Of course! He’d been given it by his workmates for his birthday and he was keeping it for Christmas, but she could easily get another before then. Robbie would never know. She got right up onto her tiptoes and started, inch by inch, to ease it towards her. From back within the house came the sharp single drill of the doorbell. By the time she’d lugged the booze back into the front room, Marge had already let Jean in. She was standing regally in the centre of the Persian rug, hair heavily lacquered, surveying the turnout.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, clearly disappointed. ‘I thought you said Liza Cohen was coming?’

  Sheila fidgeted with her pendant, unsure what to say. ‘She said she was coming.’

  All eyes fell upon the object Sheila was struggling to keep hold of – a Party Four can of Tartan Ale. Surely that counted as naughty? Penny jammed a hand across her mouth, twinkling eyes giving away her hilarity.

  Sheila moved it from the table down to the floor, trying to contain a mounting irritation. ‘Here. Somebody open that while I bring the coffees in.’

  No sooner had she left the room than the snort of derision erupted. Stung, she couldn’t help stopping dead in her tracks nonetheless. The first voice she heard was Penny’s, still breathless with laughter. ‘Imagine Liza’s face if she saw that!’

  ‘Come off it! As if Liza Cohen’s going to be coming here.’

  ‘I don’t know, darling – they do like to rough it,’ specially that husband of hers. I hear he’s a proper commie.’

  Blinded with anger, disappointment, grief and betrayal, Sheila nevertheless found herself thinking only two things. She did know Liza Cohen – she knew her well. And what, if you please, was a commie? So it was with particular delight that, for a second time, the shrill note of the doorbell snapped her out of the doldrums. And it was with nothing other than a childish glee that she introduced her friends to the smiling and immediately likeable Liza Cohen.

  Four

  For all Robbie’s misgivings and insecurities about the people of Hayes Close – some of which had been duly vindicated, although she could never admit to this – Sheila had no doubt that moving to Thelwall had been the right decision. It was a huge leap forward for the Fitzgeralds. And for her, too. Yes, people still stared – although they weren’t the same disapproving lip-curling glowers she’d endured in Orford; this was more harmless fascination – and yes, some of the locals hadn’t been as hospitable as she’d hoped for. But for the most part she felt safe out here in the suburbs. She could venture outside the womb of the house without deference to the dizzying fear of what lay around the corner. She was happy. And yet more and more, she was aware of a growing sense of tristesse in her soul that was nothing to do with the events of that night. Sheila was starting to question if the cache of family life was enough to sustain her alone. She loved that she was a source of constancy for her babies, and until Ellie was old enough and for as long as Robbie’s income permitted, she would continue to relish her role as stay-at-home mother. But in recent months, a dark haze had crept over her world and not even the love of her children could shift it. What she craved, as she came to understand, was friendship. Companionship. And not the kind that was on offer from the women of Hayes Close. She yearned to be close to Liza, but not even a kampong girl like Sheila was so naive as to assume that Liza’s loveliness was born out of anything other than just that. She was a good egg and she liked Sheila – this much she knew for certain – but there was an unambiguous air of charity to her affections. What Liza wanted was to help. That’s what the cookery lesson was about. Liza had been badgering her about it ever since the coffee morning. She’d visited Goa as a student and was desperate to learn the rudiments of Indian cuisine, and Sheila was the ideal teacher. It was lovely of her, it was, but Sheila knew the reasons why and really, Liza didn’t have to.

  The simple truth was that Sheila was beginning to lament the friendship she’d once shared with Robbie, viewing it as a period in her life that was bound up with the first flush of newly-wed romance, one that could never return, not even when Vincent and Ellie left the nest. She missed their conversations, their laughter, their Saturday night supper club. But it was what it was, and not only did she understand it completely, she was in awe of how far they’d come. She loved that they were now the guardians of these amazing little people. But that was all they were these days and she couldn’t help wonder how it was for Robbie and if it was enough.

  Five

  The school holidays were drawing to an end. The carefree haze Vincent had floated through these last five weeks seemed to dissipate into the balmy, mottled heat of late August and in its wake came the gradual return of all those tics and nerves, the instinctive inner tension, niggling reminders of what lay just around the corner. First thing in the morning he’d wake with that familiar tightening in his guts, a strangulating grip around his sternum that made him car sick while still in bed. He’d get a tingling in his hands that caused the pads of his fingertips to swell and flare out. Then on the bank holiday Monday, his bowels seized up – packing his stomach tight and fat, like an unpricked sausage. He’d had five blissful weeks of respite from all this, five weeks in which he’d barely been aware of the mishaps and malfunctions of his own body. It had all been fine. Even his shits had come thoughtlessly and naturally once he’d fallen into stride with summer. But now that careless utopia was being leached away by the looming return to school. It was a matter of days, now. He was a nervous wreck.

  Vincent sat on his window sill, Ellie by his side. It had been much the hottest day of summer. Outside on the street, the heat hung low in cloying drapes, languid enough to step through. Nothing stirred but for the lazy ripple of the heat haze where the end of the road met the ship canal. Looking out through the open window, it was hard to discern any movement at all, any sign of life other than the distant thrum of the motorway flyover. Ellie dragged a Matchbox car up and down the sill. Vincent patiently shushed her while he pondered, forcing her to make the requisite ‘brmmm’ noise in her head. While his mother respected his solitude, Ellie burst it like a grape, over and over again. Vincent adored his little sister unconditionally though, and each time she bounded into his bedroom, grinning her gappy grin, he put himself to one side, smiled and made space for her. And Ellie knew it – knew she didn’t have to work hard for his affections. She could monopolise them just by being herself.

  This time, though, he ignored her tacit clamouring for attention and continued to scribble into a nearly full jotter. He hesitated, absent-mindedly sucking the tip of his pen as he looked to the window for inspiration, staining the corners of his mouth until he could taste the sweet, acidic ink and spat it out. He always wrote in the same position that he read in – knees bunched up, shoulders pushed forward, head almost horizontal to his desk, tongue protruding and a delicate frown rippling his brow. He could remain in this pod-like pose for hours, moving only to knead the cramp from his legs or push his glasses back in place. His books, and there were many of them, heaved from all four walls of his room. The white synthetic shelves his mum had put up were already buckling under the weight of all those books, from Hans Christian Andersen to Jules Verne. In recent weeks, his mum had been forced to find another home for the spare blankets and towels so that the small airing cupboard above his bed could be fitted with yet more shelves. Most of his books were second hand, bought at school jumble sales – and often just to have, rather than to read immediately. But he had a collection of new editions, which he displayed in pole position above his bed. He arranged them categorically – sci-fi, nature, classics, historical – and alphabetically, too.

  The discovery during the holiday of a main library, only a few bus stops away in Stockt
on Heath, was a boon for Vincent. The local branch library only had a smattering of serious titles among the Biggles and Just William staples. But junior membership of the Stockton Heath branch led him into a whole new world, and only inspired him to acquire more books, rather than simply borrow them from the library. His poky little room just couldn’t accommodate them all. Once every six weeks he would rotate his books ninety degrees clockwise so the books in the airing cupboard didn’t curl up at the corners, and the books on his window ledge didn’t get damp with condensation.

  Whereas once he would zip through almost any work of fiction, Vincent had taken up the pen himself now, and writing had altered his experience of books for good. He now read fiction with a critical eye. The simple delectations of reading – of empathising, repelling or losing himself completely to the story – had been usurped by a higher art. Vincent sought gratification in the pleasures of language; he was fascinated with how words collided and burnt to form sentences, to form images and worlds. He marvelled at the process, and the art. He developed a liking for lean, stripped-down prose – though not exclusively. But if a writer took too convoluted a path to convey something simple he would find himself striking a line through it with a pencil.

  Just before lunch there was a knock at the door down below. Ellie and Vincent peered over the flat asphalt roof of the porch and saw a trio of heads with sticky-out ears. Boys’ heads; boys’ ears. Standing off behind them, minding the bikes, was a fourth kid – a fat lad.