Jake's Tower

by Elizabeth Laird

  Why didn’t they give him the bigger room at the back? They didn’t have any other kids. They didn’t have to stick him in here.

  This room is so small he probably used to lie here on the bed, like I’m doing now, and reach out to take something off the table by the far wall, just by stretching his arm out. And if he’d had the cupboard door open, he could have chucked things straight into it without getting up. That’s what I’d do anyway, if this was my room.

  Maybe he chose this room, though. Maybe he’s like me, and he likes small spaces where you can feel safe, places like the room up the tower in my dream house, or my secret place by the railway line, before the taggers got to it.

  When he was little, he probably used to get in here and shut the door and sit with his back against it. And he screwed up his eyes and didn’t breathe, when he heard footsteps on the stairs, in case his dad heard him, and came in to do him.

  I keep forgetting, though. His dad was called Jake, like me. He called me Jake, after his dad. He wouldn’t have done that if his dad had been a hitter.

  He and Steve were mates. I can’t believe that. I don’t want to know about that. And even if they were then, they wouldn’t be now. Not if I told my dad what Steve does to me. He’d be on my side, my dad would. A son’s more important than a friend. Any time.

  It must be nearly tea-time. I’ve been in here all day, with a thumping headache. Mrs Judd’s brought me cups of tea and stuff, but mostly I pretended I was asleep so she’d leave me alone.

  That’s the way I’ve wanted it. I’ve got up twice to go to the toilet, and I felt wobbly so I just came back in here and lay down again. When I was in the bathroom, though, I looked out of the window, and saw the drainpipe. My dad is a really, really brave person.

  When I woke up early this morning, before I came up here, I was still on the sofa downstairs, but I didn’t remember all at once where I was. There was just a chink of light coming through the curtains, and everything looked strange and scary.

  Mrs Judd came in on tiptoe, and I remembered everything all at once and shut my eyes again. She looked down at me for ages. I tried not let my eyelids flutter. I think she was having another good look at me, to check if I was really Danny’s son. And I thought, maybe she wishes I wasn’t. Maybe she’s trying to get out of all this.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes shut for ever, so I opened them and squinted up at her, and she said, ‘Awake at last. I’d forgotten about boys, the way they sleep.’

  Her voice was almost soft, though she isn’t that kind of person, and I felt as if I’d passed a test.

  She knows, I thought. She’s sure I’m me.

  She went to the window and pulled back the curtains. The sun was shining right into the room, so bright it made me screw my eyes up.

  ‘I’ll be late for school,’ I said, trying to sit up.

  She laughed.

  ‘You’re not going to school today. It’s gone eleven. Anyway, they’d take one look at your face and send for the doctor. Or the police.’

  That woke me up even further.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ I said, trying to sit up, though I ached all over. It felt funny waking up with all my clothes on. Sweaty and scratchy.

  ‘Out.’ She must have seen the fright on my face, because she went on quickly, ‘She’ll be back, though. She’s only gone to work to tell them she’ll be off for a day or two.’

  ‘Off? Why? She never takes time off, not for anything.’

  ‘Just till she gets things sorted out. Anyway, it’s the first place he’ll look for her, isn’t it?’

  My heart jumped.

  ‘He won’t find us here, though, will he? We’re safe here. He’ll do his nut if he gets on to us. He’ll make her go back. She always has to do what he wants in the end. And I’ll have to go back too.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ said Mrs Judd.

  She sounded angry, but I felt warm all the way through. My breath came out in a great big gust.

  She was picking the blankets up off the floor and folding them into perfect little squares.

  ‘I hope you’re hungry,’ she said. ‘There’s enough to feed an army in the kitchen.’

  The word ‘army’ gave me the guts I needed.

  ‘Mrs Judd,’ I said, swallowing, ‘do you think my dad’s going to be pleased to see me?’

  She didn’t answer till she’d put the blankets down on her chair.

  ‘You don’t have to say Mrs Judd,’ she said. ‘You can call me Grandma if you like.’

  She didn’t sound very sure about it, and to be honest, I wasn’t either. I could hardly say the word in my head, never mind out loud. She didn’t feel like a grandma. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and I managed to stand up, and followed her out to the kitchen. She hadn’t answered my question, and I didn’t feel like asking it again.

  I’ve been asking it all day, though, in my head.

  Mum didn’t come back till gone five. I was feeling better all of a sudden. My headache had gone, more or less, and I wasn’t dizzy any more.

  I was back downstairs on the sofa watching TV when she rang on the doorbell. I went to answer it. I checked it was her through the glass pane, though, before I let her in.

  ‘Gawd,’ she said, when she saw my face. ‘Look at you.’

  It’s true. My face is even worse than last night, now the bruises are coming out.

  She was carrying a supermarket bag in each hand and she put them down to take off her jacket.

  ‘Where have you been all day, Mum?’ I was trying to sound cool but I didn’t feel it. I’d started to get dead worried. ‘He didn’t see you, did he? Are you sure he hasn’t followed you back here?’

  Mrs Judd came out of the kitchen before she had time to answer.

  ‘How did you get on, then?’ she asked.

  Mum was hanging on to the banister rail with one hand and easing her shoes off with the other. Her toes looked red and cramped up as if she’d been walking miles, and she was wriggling them in relief.

  She put her shoes tidily under the hall table and I looked up and saw an almost approving look in Mrs Judd’s face.

  ‘They’ve got a bloody nerve,’ Mum said, picking her bags up and following Mrs Judd into the kitchen. ‘ “You’ve made yourself voluntarily homeless, Miss Lindsay. You’ll have to take your place in the queue like everyone else.” ’

  She put her bags down on the kitchen table. Mrs Judd had her back to us. She was bending down, looking through the glass door of her oven. A lovely smell of cooking meat was coming out of it.

  ‘Does that mean we’ve got to go home, then?’ I said.

  ‘No.’ Mrs Judd straightened up and turned round. ‘You’re not going near Steve Barlow, either of you.’

  She sounded so bossy I could see Mum wanted to say something back just for the heck of it, but she was pleased in a way too. She wasn’t used to having someone on her side.

  ‘I’ve bought chips and stuff for Jake’s tea,’ she said, beginning to unpack her bags. ‘Let me know when it’s convenient to use the kitchen. I won’t get in your way.’

  ‘What did you go and do that for?’ Mrs Judd looked annoyed. ‘I’ve done us a casserole and a crumble for afters. It’ll be ready at six. Go and sit in the front room. You look done in. I don’t want two crocks on my hands.’

  Mum didn’t like that.

  ‘We’re not going to be on your hands,’ she said, flaring up. ‘I’m not ungrateful. You’ve given us a bed and all that, but you don’t have to feed us. All I want is to get a place on our own and a chance to get back on my feet. I don’t need you or Steve or anyone else.’

  What about the baby? I thought, and I could feel my forehead wrinkle up with worry lines. You’ll need someone then. I can’t help you enough, not on my own. Not with the baby.

  ‘Mum, what about—’ I started to say before I could stop myself, but she turned on me like a wildcat.

  ‘What about nothing,’ she said. ‘Shut up, Jake.’
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  Mrs Judd had calmly taken Mum’s carrier bags off the table and dumped them on the draining board.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh, Marie. If anyone ever needed looking after it’s you. You always have done but you never got it. More shame to me.’

  ‘That is such crap, excuse my French,’ Mum said, angry spots on her cheeks.

  ‘You two came here last night to this house,’ Mrs Judd went on, squashing Mum flat as if she was driving the tank in the picture upstairs on my dad’s wall, ‘like a couple of stray kittens to get what you should have had years ago. Your rights. I’m glad you had the sense to do it, and I’m ashamed of myself for nearly sending you away. But . . .’ She stopped, and glared at Mum as if she was deeply offended. ‘Now you’re here I’m not letting you wander off back out there into all kinds of trouble. Steve Barlow’s not coming anywhere near my grandson again, or you for that matter. You’re staying with me till you get properly sorted out, with safeguards, and there’ll be no more oven-ready chips and chicken nuggets. Look at you. Skin and bones, the pair of you. It’s years since I had the chance to do any proper cooking and you’re not going to deprive me of it.’

  They stared at each other across the kitchen table, and my eyes were going backwards and forwards like when you’re watching a tennis match on TV. I knew who’d win. Mum always caved in when she came up against someone strong, and you could no more budge Mrs Judd, my grandma, than the Tower of London.

  Mum slumped down on a chair by the table like a cushion that’s just lost all its stuffing.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but what happens if my dad comes home? Does he ever? Will he soon? What will he think if he finds us here?’

  That brought Mum’s head up again.

  ‘I know you think that’s what I’m after, your darling Danny,’ she said, ‘but I’m not. Not now. Not ever. I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole. You can tell him that from me, Mrs Judd, next time he gives you a call.’

  Mrs Judd sighed, as if she was really irritated.

  ‘For God’s sake, you two, I wish you’d stop calling me Mrs Judd. Makes me feel like a perishing landlady. I’m Grandma to you, Jake; and, Marie, you can call me Doreen.’

  Mum said nothing, but I said, ‘Yes, Grandma.’ And I wasn’t going to shut up this time, so I went on, ‘I really want to know. Where is my dad? Is he coming home? What will he think about me? Oh, yes, and have I got any brothers and sisters?’

  I’ve always had to make do on scraps of information, little titbits, and it’s been like trying to make up one of those big mosaic pictures with only one or two tiny little tiles. There was just that story about how he came to see me in the hospital when I was born, and the letter, and once or twice things Mum let slip. I was like one of those starving famine people you see on the TV, picking little seeds out of the dust to survive.

  But now I feel like I’m looking at this totally amazing feast, and the table’s cracking up under the weight of mounds and mounds of food and I don’t know where to start. Just looking at it all gives me indigestion.

  Mrs Judd got started while she was dishing out her casserole, and she didn’t stop till we’d polished off the crumble.

  I could see Mum didn’t like it much at first. She’s never wanted to talk about my dad. And the way Mrs Judd was going on about him made her tighten her mouth till it was a straight line across her face.

  The thing is, I reckon, that Danny is a one-track mind thing with Mrs Judd. She may be mad with him at the moment, on account of the way he ditched Mum and me, but she forgot about that once she got started.

  ‘Can’t say I was all that keen on him going into the army,’ she began. ‘There was the danger, and from what you hear, the bullying and all that. But it got him away from home and . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘And from going with bad company. Me for instance,’ said Mum, her face reddening.

  ‘All right, yes.’ Mrs Judd isn’t one to duck things when they come right at her. ‘I’ll admit it. I’m not saying I shouldn’t have seen things differently, with regard to you, though at the time . . . But there was Steve too. Very glad, I was, to see the back of him. And you can’t say I wasn’t right about that.’

  ‘Steve’s got his points,’ Mum said. ‘It wasn’t all . . .’

  Then she saw me looking at her, and she stopped.

  ‘The army did a lot for Danny,’ Mrs Judd said, her voice all fond again. ‘Got him a good training. REME. Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, that’s what he was in. Travelled all over the world – Germany, Belize, Falklands, Kenya – and he was in the Gulf War too.’

  ‘Was he in a battle?’ I said. ‘Did he have to shoot guns and let off bombs and stuff?’

  ‘It was more the vehicle maintenance side of things. Repairing tanks. Servicing trucks. Keeping everything in trim.’ She picked up the salt and pepper and put them tidily side by side, bang in the middle of the table. ‘Essential work on the supply side.’

  ‘Safe and easy, you mean,’ said Mum. ‘Never was much of a one for getting himself hurt, Danny. Drainpipe or no drainpipe.’

  ‘Or hurting other people,’ I said hopefully, but I don’t think either of them heard me.

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of danger in REME,’ Mrs Judd said, sounding annoyed. ‘In the Gulf they had all sorts. Bombs flying about, mines, explosions, you name it.’

  ‘What about this wife of his, then?’ Mum said, looking at the piece of meat she was cutting up as if that was the only thing she was interested in. ‘I suppose she swans off to Africa and Germany and wherever with him.’

  ‘Sandra? Ha!’ Mrs Judd speared a piece of potato with a jab of her fork. ‘Ran off with a lance corporal, didn’t she? All over Danny like suntan oil one day, trying to get money out of him, then off to spend it with one of Danny’s own platoon mates the next. He went AWOL, did Mr Lance Corporal. They got him though. Banged him up in the glasshouse for a bit. Sandra left him soon after, but she never went back to Danny. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘But what about the kids?’ I said. ‘Their family?’

  ‘What family?’

  ‘Mum, you said, every time I asked you, he’d got another family. That means kids, doesn’t it?’

  Mum shrugged.

  ‘I thought he did have. Last I’d heard, this Sandra was going to have a baby.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Mrs Judd looked upset.

  ‘Barney. That friend of Steve’s who used to go around with him and Danny. Danny wrote to him sometimes. He sent a letter to me through Barney once.’

  ‘So what happened to the baby?’ I asked.

  Turned out she was lying. Always trying to make herself interesting, Sandra was. Took good care not to fall pregnant, didn’t she? Little Miss Me-First. “Why would I want to saddle myself with a screaming kid? I want to live my own life. So you know where you can get off, Danny, and your old mum who’s dying to be a grandma.” ’

  ‘You mean,’ I said, wanting to make sure I’d got this really straight, ‘that I haven’t got any brothers and sisters at all? That I’m the only one?’

  Mrs Judd put out her leathery old hand and touched mine.

  ‘You are. My only grandchild. And when I think how I missed out on it all, taking you out in your pram, and feeding the ducks in the park, and seeing you in your nativity play at school, I feel really sick.’

  ‘You feel sick?’ Mum said sarcastically. ‘Never mind the bleeding ducks. You could have got him out of Steve’s way when things went bad and I didn’t have the guts to face up to what was happening.’

  They’d both worked themselves into a corner and stopped talking. Mrs Judd got up and cleared the plates away and fetched the crumble out of the oven.

  ‘You said he’s in Lancashire now,’ I said. ‘What’s the army doing in Lancashire? There isn’t a war on there, is there?’

  ‘Oh, Danny’s not in the army now,’ said Mrs Judd, and one of the few pieces of my mosaic came unhitched and went flying off into nothingness. ‘
He’s on motorway construction. Earthworks foreman on the M6 upgrade.’

  She sounded proud. Mum laughed.

  ‘Road building? Shovelling dirt on a motorway? Bit of a comedown for you, isn’t it, Doreen, with his dad running his own shop and all?’

  ‘My grandad had a shop?’ I said, feeling as if I was being buffeted from one side to the other.

  ‘My Jake had a nice little shoe business on the high street. Yes,’ Mrs Judd went on. ‘He wanted Danny to take it on but it was always going to be the big picture for Danny. I could see that from very early on.’

  The big picture. I liked that. Foreign travel. Tanks and heavy vehicles and convoys. Earthworks and motorways and tunnels and bridges.

  ‘When’s he coming home, then?’ I said.

  ‘Well, this isn’t exactly his home any more,’ Mrs Judd said regretfully. ‘He’s got a place of his own up Preston way. He’s out on the roads, though, most of the time. Doesn’t get more than one weekend in three off. I never know when he’s coming down here. He likes to surprise me, Danny does. There’s a knock on the door one day and there he is, with a bag of laundry in one hand and a box of Quality Street in the other. They don’t change, Marie. You’ll find that out when Jake’s older. Whatever Danny’s done, and I’m not proud of him at the moment, I’m still his mum and I always will be.’

  And I’m his son and I always have been, I thought.

  But now that I’m back here, lying in his bed, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m right. The picture of my dad that I carry in my head has grown up with me. It’s always been a part of me. Whatever Steve did to me, it never went away. Actually, it got more and more important.

  I can see now that it was all wrong. The face I’ve dreamed up at night before I’ve gone to sleep, the man I’ve called out for in my heart when I was so scared I thought I was done for – he’s never been real at all.

  There’s no one in a scarlet tunic with gold stripes on his arms and a couple of kids climbing on his knees. There probably never was a red uniform, and there wasn’t even one baby.

  Instead, there’s a fuzzy photo of a man in khaki overalls standing in the shadow of a tank (I was right about that bit, anyway. Mrs Judd said he was the one at the back), and an earthworks foreman, whatever that means.