So playing truant and being brought back to school in the back of a police car is a spectacular way to start. It would be funny if it was just youthful rebellion, but even Gabs bunking off school is underpinned by serious motives.
And of course I worry that this is my fault too – her lack of rebelliousness.
‘Maybe she’ll go off the rails when she goes to college,’ Eric said once, and he was joking, but I think, when he said it, he actually wanted to see her doing something a bit out of character.
Well, now she has.
‘So tell me what exactly happened,’ Eric says now. His voice is calm and practical and tinged with concern for Gabs. I’d given him a brief outline on the phone, once I was home this afternoon, but he wants filling in.
‘Well, it seems she hadn’t been at school at all today. She wasn’t even wearing her uniform when I picked her up, although I’m sure she was when she left this morning.’
‘She probably changed somewhere,’ Eric says.
I nod. ‘She must have thought it all out.’
‘Except what would happen if the police stopped her and questioned her.’
‘Poor Gabs,’ I say. I can imagine how humiliated she must have felt, being bundled into the back of the car and driven to school.
‘It wasn’t the first time,’ I tell Eric after a pause. ‘I noticed she’d not been wearing uniform a few times, but I didn’t really think anything of it.’
‘So, go on.’
‘Well, she’d gone into Hove. I think she must have thought there’d be less chance there of being seen by anyone she knew. She was busking outside the town hall.’
‘And the school didn’t notice she wasn’t there?’ Eric asks.
‘She told me her form tutor doesn’t really bother with the register. So I think she thought no one at school would actually notice.’
‘And did they?’
‘No. I don’t think they had a clue she wasn’t there, until the police brought her back.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ Eric says.
‘I know. They’re supposed to let us know if our kids don’t turn up, in case anything has happened to them!’ Gabs is fine, but scenarios start playing out in my mind anyway. ‘She could have been run over or abducted on the way to school and we’d never have known until it was too late.’
‘But she wasn’t, Bel. She’s OK,’ Eric says, and there is a hint of his old kindness in his tone. It makes me want to cry. ‘She just got into a bit of trouble. It’s about time she did.’
‘I knew you’d say that,’ I say, and smile despite myself. ‘And I know she’s OK. It’s just so out of character, and I’m really worried now about how everything is starting to affect her.’
‘She told you and the school that she needed to make money,’ Eric says. ‘Is she in some kind of trouble?’
‘No, Eric. We are,’ I say.
I thought he would have put two and two together by now. But I suppose the fact that we’ve been avoiding talking to each other means he’s not as aware of how Gabs has been feeling as I have been.
‘It’s not her that’s in trouble. It’s us. She’s been trying to raise money for Ben and Maggie. She knows they’re suing us. She thinks it’s her fault. She was trying to do something about it herself.’
‘But she can’t possibly hope to raise that amount of money by skipping school and busking,’ Eric says.
‘I know. Although she doesn’t know how much they’re asking. But I don’t think that’s the point. She made quite a bit the last couple of weekends too, when she went out with Lucy, and she’s not been spending her allowance.’ Gabs had told me all this on the way home.
‘But that still hardly adds up.’
‘She says she just wanted to do something. She was planning to take the money round to Ben and Maggie herself. She was thinking of getting the train up to Croydon tomorrow and knocking on their door.’
‘But we haven’t been to their house for ages. She doesn’t know how to get there.’
‘She’s a resourceful girl. She could have worked it out.’
‘And what did she think that would achieve?’
‘I don’t know. Realistically, I think she thought that if she did something they might drop the legal action. Gabs really liked Maggie, once she got to know her a bit, and she adored Iris too.’
‘But did she really think showing up on the doorstep with a few handfuls of coppers would be the answer?’
‘I’ve no idea, Eric. The point is, she was doing something. That’s what she said to me earlier. She said someone had to do something. She said you and I – but I know she meant me really – were just letting things happen. And she’s right. I know that.’
‘What did you say to her?’
‘I told her I’d call Ben. I told her I’d try and speak to him. I told her I’d try to find a way to sort this mess out for all our sakes.’
‘And have you?’ Eric asks.
‘I’ll do it after dinner,’ I say, as the door of the kitchen opens and Harvey comes in with a big bag of fish and chips, which he plonks on the table.
‘What?’ he says, looking from Eric to me, aware that he’s caught us in the middle of something important.
‘Do you want to get some plates?’ Eric says. ‘And get the vinegar out as well, will you?’
Ben, Friday evening
Maggie is upstairs bathing Iris when I get back from my meeting with Hedda and Angus McDonald. I sit on the chair we’ve put by the bath for whichever of us isn’t bathing Iris to sit and watch. I never fully understood, before having Iris, how people like Isobel could watch their offspring with such rapt attention when they were doing so very little to merit it. I get it now, and I keep wondering how long it will last.
‘She looks a bit happier now,’ I say, sitting down, feeling my heart lurch as Iris looks up, her face covered in bubbles, and smiles at me. ‘I’m sorry I had to go out again, Mags.’
‘She’s been OK,’ Maggie replies, scooping up a cupful of water and letting it cascade into the bath a few inches in front of Iris. She sticks her hands forward, trying to catch the water as it flows, cackling a bit with pleasure at the sensation.
‘How was your urgent meeting?’ There is a barb in the word ‘urgent’ but I ignore it.
‘It was – well, I don’t know how to describe it exactly. It’s probably best if I wait until we have dinner to tell you about it.’
‘Yes, we don’t want to upset Iris now that she’s happy.’
‘Should I go and make a start? Did you have anything planned?’ I try to placate her.
‘I haven’t even thought about it,’ Maggie says. ‘So yes, why don’t you go and see what you can find for us to eat? I’m hungry and I’m sure you are too.’
‘Sure.’ I stand up to go.
Maggie focuses all her attention back on Iris. She takes a rubber duck from a basket of toys fixed with suction cups on the tiles. ‘Here’s the duck,’ she says, smiling and pushing it along the surface of the water towards Iris. ‘Quack, quack. Quack, quack!’
I turn to look at them both and, as I do, Iris picks up the duck and makes a bizarre and heart-wrenching sound.
‘Cwar cwar,’ she says.
At least that is what it sounds like, to me anyway. I hear the sounds as if they are crystal-clear words. ‘Cwar cwar.’
‘Did you hear that?’ I say to Maggie, tingling with excitement.
‘What?’ Maggie says, giving me the cold shoulder still.
‘She said quack quack!’ I say excitedly. ‘Didn’t you hear her? It sounded like cwar cwar, but she must have been repeating what you just said. Didn’t you hear her, Maggie?’
I need Maggie to have heard this too. I need Maggie to confirm what I just heard. I need Maggie also to have witnessed that some miracle has just happened and that Iris isn’t deaf after all, that she heard her mother say ‘quack, quack’ and repeated it, like any normal child.
But she didn’t. She hadn’t.
�
�She didn’t say anything, Ben,’ Maggie turns to me with a look that I can’t quite interpret. She sounds a little more forgiving when she speaks again. ‘She just made one of her noises. That was all it was.’
‘Yes, of course.’
I’m disappointed, of course, hugely, and I feel slightly ridiculous, too, for daring to hope when we know perfectly well that she couldn’t hear.
‘I’ll go and make a start on dinner.’
‘Is she asleep?’ I ask, as Maggie comes into the kitchen. I’m sautéing two pork fillets and waiting for some rice to cook. ‘Dinner won’t be long.’
‘Yes,’ Maggie says wearily, going to the fridge and taking out a bottle of white wine from which she pours herself a large glass. ‘Finally.’
She doesn’t look to see or ask if I already have a drink. I am clearly still out of favour.
‘I’ll go up and kiss her,’ I say, brushing past Maggie.
‘No.’ She steps back from the fridge, blocking my path. ‘You might wake her again. I’ve had enough for one day. I can’t cope if she wakes up again just now.’
‘Maggie, I’m sorry,’ I say, stepping towards her.
‘Don’t,’ she replies, moving away, shunning any sympathy or support I might be able to give her. ‘Just tell me why your solicitor needed to see you so urgently.’
‘Our solicitor,’ I say.
We fall silent and I anticipate admitting defeat.
‘The meeting was with the senior partner,’ I tell her.
‘Why? Has there been a development?’
We are both standing in the space between the fridge and the dining table. I move away from Maggie, towards the stove, where I busy myself with the pork and rice. Maggie sits at the table, sipping her wine, waiting.
‘There has,’ I say, spooning out rice and pouring a little cream into the sautéed pork before sliding a chop on to each plate. I take them over to the table and sit at a right angle to my partner.
‘Apparently I was being taken for a ride,’ I say, looking at her, wondering if she will be secretly pleased.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The senior partner asked me to come in because, until today, he was unaware that Hedda had taken on the case, and when he found out he told her to drop it.’
‘Oh, Ben.’ Maggie slides her hand across the table and puts it over mine. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why should you be sorry?’ I pull my hand away. ‘That’s it. That’s the end of it. He said he didn’t think we had a hope in hell of winning the case. So unless we can pay the costs of pursuing it ourselves, which he’s well aware we can’t, then Hedda has to stop acting on our behalf.’
‘I’m sorry because I know you thought it might help,’ Maggie says simply.
‘You were never keen. So I guess you’re happy,’ I reply.
‘No, I wasn’t keen because I thought it would divert your attention away from me and Iris, which it has. But I agreed that you should go ahead because I thought it might help you. I thought if it helped you get something out of your system, maybe it would ultimately help us all. Somehow.’
‘I’m sorry, Maggie.’ I wonder at her understanding. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so rubbish at dealing with all of this. I was just – no, I still am so angry, so frustrated by the unnecessariness of it all. I was just trying to do something.’
‘Ben…’ Maggie puts her hand out again and holds mine, and this time I let her. ‘Don’t think I don’t feel the same. I just have a different way of dealing with it. We have to accept what’s happened and deal with that.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘And I do. It’s just – ’
‘No,’ she interrupts me. ‘You don’t. You haven’t. Not yet. You’re railing against it all the time in different ways. Like up there in the bathroom just now, thinking you heard Iris speaking. You know she can’t speak. You know we have to learn to sign to her. You know that’s the case but you keep ignoring it. You keep hoping you can do something to change the way Iris is. But you can’t, Ben; neither of us can.’
I know Maggie is right.
‘We have to be there for her,’ Maggie continues. ‘We can’t be off fighting other people, when she needs us more than ever now.’
I try to say ‘but’, but the word won’t come out. I’m back where I was thirty years ago, trying to speak but unable.
‘The trouble is,’ I say instead, as Maggie watches my face twisting in the strange way it used to when I tried to speak, ‘you’re right. I loved her so much when she was born. I still do. But I don’t want her to be deaf. I want her to be normal, like everyone else. And I can’t make her normal. I can’t do anything to change what’s happened but I can’t simply accept it, the way you seem to. Does that make me a terrible person?’
‘No, Ben,’ Maggie says gently. ‘It doesn’t make you a terrible person. It makes you the person you are, the person I love. But we can’t fight this. We have to accept it.’
‘You’re so much better than me.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Maggie replies, taking her hand away now. ‘I’m not better. I’m just different.’ She pauses to cut the piece of meat on the plate in front of her. ‘So what happens now?’
‘With the solicitor?’
‘Yes.’ She takes a mouthful. ‘This is good. Thanks.’
I am about to tell her when the phone rings.
‘I’d better get it,’ Maggie says. ‘It might be Mum. She said she’d call this evening.’
She gets up, perhaps glad of the diversion, and picks the phone out of its cradle on the wall by the doorway. ‘Hello,’ I hear her say, relaxed and easy the way she is when she talks to her mother. But her tone changes. ‘Yes. It is.’
A pause.
‘Well, you know. We’re OK, in the circumstances.’
I strain to try to hear who is on the other end of the line.
‘Yes, he’s right here. I’ll get him.’
She takes the two steps to where I’m sitting, her arm outstretched, ostensibly to hand me the phone but also looking as if she wants it as far away from her as possible.
‘Who is it?’ I mouth, but the phone is in my hand and I have to find out for myself.
‘Hello, Ben speaking,’ I say.
‘Ben.’ A familiar voice speaks down the line. ‘It’s Isobel.’
After I finish talking to her and arranging to go down and see her next Monday, I feel strangely alone. I have no idea what meeting up with Isobel is going to achieve but, as Hedda has let me down, I feel I have no choice.
‘If it makes you feel better,’ Maggie says when I tell her I’m going.
‘Do you mind?’
‘No, I don’t mind. I just want the whole thing over. I want to get on with our lives. If you need to have it out with Isobel, well and good.’
But she doesn’t sound happy and, when I get into bed later that evening, she rolls over and turns her back to me.
‘Mags?’ I think she might be sleeping.
‘What?’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. I’m just tired.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, rolling towards her and putting my hand on her stomach. I know I haven’t been being the person she wanted me to be over the past few weeks, but I’m going to make it up to her. I begin moving my hand across her stomach, stroking, soothing.
‘I need to go to sleep now, Ben,’ Maggie says, pushing my hand away.
WEEK FOUR
Isobel, Monday morning
‘You’re a bum-bailey!’
‘And you’re a foot-licker!’
‘Bum-bailey!’ retorts Vincent
‘Foot-licker!’ repeats Harvey.
I’m only half listening, as I clear away the breakfast debris and wipe down kitchen surfaces with a zeal born out of anxiety. I unplug the toaster from its socket in the wall and hold it upside-down over the sink, tapping it furiously against the ceramic edge so that the lumps of burnt toast shower into the washing-up bowl. For some reason, I believe the huge anxiety I feel about
meeting Ben later this morning will somehow be eased if the toaster is crumb-free and the kitchen is gleaming.
There is no logic to my thoughts, but there is less logic to psychology than our next-door neighbour, who is a psychotherapist, would have us believe. I wonder if he can hear the boys now, their argument crescendoing around the kitchen, seeping through the party wall and disturbing his breakfast.
‘Clotpol!’ Vincent shouts
‘Codpiece!’ Harvey appears to trump him again.
‘Boys, that’s enough!’ I raise my voice higher than theirs, slamming the toaster so hard against the side of the sink at the same time that the shock of the combined sounds stuns them both, momentarily, into silence.
Vincent looks upset but Harvey just gives me his ‘you’re being totally unreasonable’ look, one perfected over the years of me being totally unreasonable.
I take a deep breath.
‘We’re not arguing,’ he says.
‘No, we’re practising.’ Vincent is emboldened by his brother’s defiance. ‘You’re so gorbellied, Mum.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ Harvey says. ‘It’s Elizabethan swearing. We’re doing it in English, for Shakespeare.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I say as Harvey puts his thumb in his mouth, nibbling the edge of a nail or loose skin or something, and pulls it out again. ‘Harvey, don’t bite your nails.’
‘I’m not!’ He triumphs over me this time. ‘I am biting my thumb at you. Romeo and Juliet!’
‘Well, whatever it is,’ I say, returning to the toaster, irritated now, not with them, but with myself for feeling so wound up about Ben’s impending arrival, ‘it’s time you two went to school.’
‘Stressy,’ Harvey mutters under his breath and he picks up his bag.
‘Dankish,’ Vincent mutters under his.
I have no idea what it means, but no doubt it’s apposite.
I continue my cleaning frenzy after the boys have gone. Vinnie’s bedroom is still a mass of camping mats, sleeping bags and sweet wrappers. He had several friends to stay, after his party on Saturday, and I didn’t get round to tidying up yesterday.
Living With It Page 27
