DD,
Is it just because it’s February that everything is so awful? Maybe I’ve got that SAD thing, where you don’t see enough sunlight and you get depressed. It’s virtually dark when I leave home in the morning. And even if it isn’t raining, which it usually is, it’s not a nice walk across the Meadows from Bruntsfield to Rankeillor in the winter. The paths are frozen, so you have to walk on the grass and that’s all muddy and horrible.
And when we have Alex’s lessons, we have to sit underground, like trolls. And by the time we get out and I walk home, it’s nearly dark again. I can’t remember what the sun looks like. And this is something no-one tells you about being deaf: you need light more than other people, so you can read them. This time of year, if Carly comes back to mine for tea, I can feel my head starting to ache from trying to read what she’s saying on the way home.
And it was horrible in class today without Ricky, even though he’s usually a waste of space. I felt like Alex was disappointed in us somehow. Like we’d all let her down because one of us got in trouble. Not that she said that. She just looked sad today. Sadder than usual. I don’t know if Jono’s apologised to her for shouting at her the other day. He had a go at Carly today, too.
Alex really believes we’d be better people if we read more Greek tragedy. She thinks it has these big truths in it, you know. And when we were doing this debate today – it was kind of lame, but fun at the same time – I thought she might actually have a point. The four of us were trying to work out who is the most tragic person in the play, and I realised this is exactly how my parents used to behave with each other. Who’s the most bereaved? Who’s the saddest? Who can make everyone else feel guiltiest? Who can run away the furthest? I wonder if she asked me to be Jocasta because I said she suffered the most, in the play. No wonder she let Annika be Oedipus when she has the shortest fuse in the world, apart from Jono. And he played Laius, who is so obnoxious that Oedipus kills him as soon as he meets him. Perfect casting, I reckon.
Though my mum is being nice at the moment, actually. She bought me this big illustrated book of Greek myths. I don’t know why. She said she could see I was really passionate about something at school (she always calls Rankeillor Street ‘school’, she never calls it the Unit), and she wanted to encourage me. It sounds a bit young for me, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It’s not drawings, it’s pictures from vases and stuff: Jason and the golden fleece, Odysseus and the Cyclops, Theseus and the Minotaur.
It was nice of her, anyway. It’s because she’s going away this weekend (she says with friends, but I’m pretty certain it’s with this guy from work she’s been seeing) and she feels bad about it. I was supposed to be going down to see my dad, but now he’s busy, so I can’t. She worries if I’m here on my own, especially overnight. So Carly said I could spend the weekend at hers.
Her mum pretends to like me, but she secretly hates me, I think. She wishes Carly wasn’t friends with me, and she totally blames me for us getting chucked out of Bruntsfield and dumped in the Unit. She never believed Carly – she knew it was my fault and that Carly was just covering for me. But she can’t actually say that, because she’s posh, and she doesn’t want to discriminate against someone disabled. I think she’s worried they won’t serve her in Jenners if they hear she was mean to a deaf girl. Last time I went to stay, she took us to a signed performance of some fuck-awful play. I have literally never spoken to her in sign. I hardly know any, because most deaf people don’t use sign. They lip-read and have hearing aids, like I do.
The next morning, I stopped off to see Robert before I went down to the basement. I wasn’t able to shake off my concern about the fourth-years. Yes, there were other difficult children on the Unit. There were other personality clashes, fights and disagreements. But somehow the fourth-years seemed less happy than the other kids, and it was making me uneasy. They antagonised each other so much and they were targets for troublemakers, as Ricky’s suspension proved. I’d started the term thinking they had a problem with me. But now I was beginning to think something had been wrong with this group long before I arrived. I needed to do something, before a broken nose was the least of their misdemeanours.
‘Does he have a few minutes?’ I asked Cynthia, who was brushing dust from her trousers.
‘He does,’ she replied. Her usually neat hair was ruffled, and when I walked into Robert’s office, I could see why. Cynthia must have cracked and forced him to deal with the piles of paper that towered over him from every flat surface. His office had never been emptier, though two drawers in his filing cabinet now didn’t close. He was sitting over the shredder, with his tie clamped inside his waistcoat, filling a fourth bin bag with shreds. His hair was damp with sweat and annoyance.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘It looks amazing.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied, looking around the room with grim pride. ‘We’ve been here since seven. How can I help?’
‘I’m worried about my group.’
‘I don’t need to ask which one, do I?’ he groaned. ‘Here.’ He shunted a second shredder in my direction, and thrust a pile of documents into my hand. ‘Slice while you talk.’
‘I wonder if I should break them into two groups.’ I’d been thinking about this since the previous lesson. It was the only solution I’d come up with. ‘They really don’t get on well, and I think—’
‘Let me stop you right there.’ Robert ran his hand across his forehead. ‘It can’t happen. The timetable takes a week to devise at the start of each term. They don’t have much space structured into their days, because when we tried that, their behaviour deteriorated considerably. You’ll have to keep them as they are.’
‘It wouldn’t be possible to—’
‘Alex…’ He shredded a page to emphasise his dramatic pause. ‘It can’t be done. Fitting your classes into four days nearly broke me. I can’t do any more. I’m sorry.’
I acknowledged the guilt trip, but I couldn’t let it slide. I tried again. ‘I’m just worried that—’
He waved the sheaf of papers he was about to shred. ‘You’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.’
‘But they aren’t fine. Ricky’s been suspended, hasn’t he? Fighting on the stairwell isn’t a sign that he’s coping well, is it?’ I could hear my voice becoming shrill, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t think Robert was listening to any of my concerns.
He sighed. ‘Ricky, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, has some problems when he’s provoked. He isn’t unique among the children here. We’re trying to teach him negotiation skills, and he’s improved a great deal. A very great deal. Sometimes he falls off the wagon. It happens.’
‘But Jono—’ Surely we could both agree that Jono was getting nothing out of lessons with me. He could barely stay in his seat.
‘Jono is a very difficult boy. He was thrown out of school for causing criminal damage. If he isn’t setting fire to the basement, you’re doing fine.’
He wasn’t taking this anywhere near as seriously as I’d anticipated he would. ‘The basement is too damp to burn,’ I pointed out, but he ignored me. I tried a different tack. ‘He has a very antagonistic attitude to the girls.’
‘Well, he knows better than to pick on Carly,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Carly was bullied very badly at her previous school: malicious texts and pictures and so on. One day she was in a classroom on her own. Another girl, whom she’d accused of bullying her before, entered the classroom. A few moments later so did Melody. Next thing anyone knew, the nameless bully was semi-conscious on the classroom floor. She was never prepared to say who had done what, but in the school’s estimation, someone had slammed a desk lid on her head several times. Hard enough to fracture her skull in two places.’
‘Seriously? Mel and Carly did this? I had them down as the well-behaved ones.’ Well, them and Ricky, until he’d been suspended.
‘The school interviewed Carly and Mel separately. Mel took her hearing aids out and refused
to answer any questions. Carly said Mel had done nothing. The girl, as I say, refused to give any statement other than that she couldn’t remember and might have fallen. Carly and Mel were handed over to my custody, or care, or whatever it is we provide here, after one of the teachers at Bruntsfield – was it Bruntsfield they were at?’ I shrugged. I was catching it from the kids. ‘Yes, Bruntsfield,’ he continued. ‘One of their teachers is friends with one of the Rankeillor Charity trustees, and she – rightly – thought they might benefit from coming here.’
I was shocked. I’d begun to think of Mel and Carly as – for want of a better word – my allies in the group. I liked them. They didn’t have much time for Annika, for a start, which made a big difference to our lessons. If either of them had gone along with her bitching, Annika would have undermined my authority completely by now. Mel stood up to Jono, without deliberately baiting him, which I admired. I found it hard to imagine either of them doing anything even close to what Robert had described. But then, perhaps bullying could provoke anyone into extreme behaviour. I shouldn’t judge them when I only knew half of the story.
The pile of forms and photocopies which Robert had given me before I started at Rankeillor covered only the most basic information on each child. He had more detailed paperwork in his office, but you had to apply with a good reason to read any of it. The Unit had stern views on data protection, which Robert was happy to enforce, determined that the children shouldn’t become prisoners of their files and of the low expectations that accompanied them. Only a child’s pastoral supervisor or social worker had full access to Robert’s filing cabinet. Mostly people simply swapped gossip in the staffroom instead. I supposed this story must have been old news before I arrived here.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I blurted, ‘But Mel seems so normal. They both do.’
‘And that’s because she is normal. She’s certainly normal for here. She has, like all of them, some difficulty controlling her temper. But she likes you. She’s behaving well in lessons, isn’t she?’
‘She turns up every day. She seems engaged.’
‘Then don’t worry. Please don’t. Meet me after work and we’ll have a drink somewhere nice.’ His face crumpled as he pleaded with me. I knew when I was beaten.
* * *
The following Monday, Ricky was first into the classroom. He was almost bouncing: I guessed he had returned to the Unit a hero. Donnie Brooks, I now knew from the building grapevine, was not a popular boy.
‘Ricky, I’m glad you’re back.’
‘Hello, miss.’ He grinned. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘I understand you were conducting your own epic battles on the stairs?’
‘Not really. Donnie went down after one punch. I can’t wait till he gets bigger. It’ll make it so much easier—’
‘Ricky, I feel sure that if I don’t know what the end of that sentence is, I won’t ever have to admit it to the police.’
‘Yes, miss. Sorry.’ He smiled again and sat down.
The others straggled in behind him. Having them for the first lesson of the day always meant that the first ten minutes were a bust. Carly and Mel turned up together, Annika was late and Jono later still. When he finally arrived, he was sweaty and harassed.
‘Nice to see you, Jono.’
‘Sorry.’ He was panting.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘Not really, I can’t find… It doesn’t matter.’
He sat down heavily and there was a small cracking sound. I hoped his chair wasn’t going to collapse. Annika sniggered, but said nothing.
Jono looked down at his feet, and let out a cry of anger. ‘It’s here. I…’
‘What is it?’
‘Which one of you fucking cunts did this?’ He was on his feet, and turned away from me to the girls.
Annika was smirking, Mel was reading the back of her book. Carly cracked first.
‘What exactly is it you think we’ve done?’ she asked.
‘This.’ He reached down and lifted the chair leg. A shattered plastic games console was beneath it. ‘My PSP. That’s why I was late. I couldn’t find it and that’s because one of you took it and left it here so it would get broken.’
‘It’s hardly our fault you’re so heavy,’ said Annika.
‘That isn’t either helpful or pleasant, Annika.’ I had to step in. I’d never seen him so upset. ‘The weight of anyone would have cracked it. I’m so sorry, Jono. Let me take it to Robert’s office at break. I’ll see if it’s covered on the Unit’s insurance.’
‘It won’t be,’ said Annika. ‘We’re not supposed to bring that stuff to school.’
Jono’s darkening face was now plastered with his damp hair, the sweat was dripping onto his shoulders.
Ricky pawed at Jono’s arm. ‘Leave it, pal. It wasn’t any of them. Why would they do something like that?’
‘Who else would have done it?’ Jono turned his fury on Ricky, who didn’t reply.
I answered him. ‘None of us knows who did it, Jono. I’m really sorry it’s broken. But I don’t think you can just fling accusations at everyone. Let me take it to Robert. I’ll see what I can do.’ I reached over and touched his arm. He flinched and so did I. For a moment, I thought he might hit me. I looked up into his eyes: I hadn’t really noticed before that he was taller than me. ‘Please.’
His face suddenly morphed from almost-adult to child. In a second you could see what he must have looked like when he was a toddler, all round face and screwed-up eyes, trying so hard not to cry.
He opened his hand, and I took the broken plastic from him. The screen was completely shattered. It was someone’s perfect revenge.
DD,
Today, I have two things to report. The first is that I’ve found out something else about Alex. I spent the weekend at Carly’s. Which was brilliant, actually. Her mum was less weird than usual. Maybe she’s getting used to me. We went there together on Friday, after we finished at Rankeillor.
It’s a nice walk over to Carly’s: across the North Bridge, then over to Princes Street, to the shops so Carly could buy some hair extensions and I could get some nail varnish, even though I’ve broken three nails so they look like shit at the moment. Then we head down Dundas Street, which is all fancy little shops with ornaments and stuff. For rich old people. At the bottom of Dundas Street the shops run out and we get to Inverleith Row, which is where Carly lives, in one of those big terraces. It must be amazing living right by the Botanics. I love going there. They’re the most beautiful gardens in Scotland, Carly’s mum says, and she might be right. I haven’t been to any others, so I don’t know for sure.
The other thing that’s good about them is that it’s always so quiet there. They’re so big that you can wander round for hours and not hear anything. But everywhere’s quiet to me, right? That’s another myth about deaf people I can put right. Hearing aids mean that I spend a lot of my time hearing too much. Sirens are the worst thing. It’s like someone drilling into my head when a police car comes past. And they’re not even emergencies half the time. I once saw an ambulance driver, all guns blazing, going up Nicolson Street eating a doughnut. If it’s a real emergency, you don’t have time to stop and buy a cake. They just like using the siren. But I would honestly rather get run over than have to hear them coming.
So on Saturday we went to the Botanic Gardens and walked round the hothouses and the rock garden. That’s the best part – it’s so high up there. You can see all the way over Edinburgh. I love that.
But I’m getting ahead of the story, because it was Friday when we saw her. On Friday night, we went out for pizza in the Old Town. There’s a new place that Carly’s mum had been to with some people from work and she thought we’d like it there. And we did, actually: the garlic bread was all crispy and oily. It was really good.
Then on the way home we went down curly little Cockburn Street so we could look in the windows. They have loads of cool stuff there – proper shops, you know, where you ca
n buy clothes and bags and those cute little Japanese dolls that Carly loves. I bought her two of them for Christmas. Then we walked up past Waverley Station. I don’t like going down a hill and then up one if you don’t have to, but the North Bridge was rammed with people on Friday evening: hen nights, stag nights, the lot. All with their matching t-shirts and hilarious Jimmy wigs. Carly’s mum doesn’t like crowds, so we went the hilly way instead.
And it was lucky we did, because as we went past the station we saw Alex coming out of there. If it had been even a few seconds earlier, we’d have missed her: the airport buses all wait there, so you can’t usually see across the road. But the bus had just pulled away, and the next bus hadn’t pulled up into the space yet, and there she was. She didn’t see us, though. Carly wanted to go and say hello, but I stopped her. Alex looked really tired and really sad, so I thought we should leave her alone.
But still, this means we know where she goes on a Friday. Actually, it doesn’t. As Carly pointed out, it means we sort-of know where she went on one Friday. And since no-one would go to Waverley for a look round the shops, all we really know is that she goes somewhere by train on Fridays. Or on one Friday.
But that’s more than we knew before, isn’t it? Carly thinks she goes to London to visit the grave of her fiancé. That’s a bit lame, I admit, but it is romantic. And I reckon Alex is the romantic kind. Or why does she like all those plays so much? I know they’re not romantic like I-pine-away-for-the-love-of-you bollocks. But I don’t think that’s all that romantic, actually. You know who pined away for the love of someone who died? Greyfriars Bobby, and he’s a fucking dog.
Tragedies are romantic because they’re about people fucking up their own and other people’s lives even though they’re often trying really hard not to. And happy endings are much less romantic than fuck-ups, aren’t they? Carly thinks I’m mental for believing this. We talked about it in her room that night. She wants everyone to kiss and live happily-ever-after. I bet she does that, actually. I bet she meets a boy who really loves her and they do just fall in love and be happy forever. He’d better not be a dick, is all I can say. I’ve seen enough of that with my mum.
The Furies: A Novel Page 9
