She shook her head as another curler threatened to un ravel. ‘She’s obviously been moved so often that she’s developed an ingrained caution about getting attached to a new family. In case she gets whisked away again, right? This mindset makes it hard for her to settle down – that’s obvious.’
What is more obvious is that the young woman fancies herself as a diagnostic psychologist. And as an amateur therapist, obviously. Still, it’s an unobjectionable analysis and sound enough, I suppose, as far as it goes. I was carefully noncommittal.
A sigh. Frank was better at getting through to Kim, she thought. Being a guy helped, probably. Like with most things in life, right? I didn’t respond, although she appeared to think this was a womanly moment. Another rueful laugh. ‘I’ll just keep on plugging on, I guess.’
Some film I didn’t know was on the TV. She’d turned it down but not off. I caught her giving it a sideways glance, but I wasn’t ready to go, not quite yet. We wrote down each other’s phone numbers. Unnecessary, wasn’t it, as we were so close, Ellice said, but I was insistent.
Then I said, ‘You could always have a chat with Kim’s teachers. Do they know about her background?’
She shook her head again, energetically. Kim didn’t want her and Frank to say a word. ‘That was one thing she’s been really, really adamant about, so we went along with it. It was a bit weird, actually.’
‘She just wants to be normal,’ I said.
‘Don’t we all?’ She heaved another dramatic sigh. ‘I hope she makes some friends soon. I hope she does turn into a more normal girl, or at least a less introverted one, or at least not a deaf-mute – she’d be more fun to have around, that’s for sure.’ This was accompanied by a conspiratorial giggle, but it made me instantly uneasy.
I said I thought she was settling in well. As well as one could hope for.
‘Oh, do you think so? Well, she seems to have taken to you, which is amazing, isn’t it?’ A peal of laughter and a hug. I recoiled but failed to avoid it. She’s one of those people who hugs everybody; she should have been a luvvie like Davy.
‘I’m trying to be a mum to her, or at least a big sister. I’m doing my best to bond, I really am, believe me, Thea, but she’s such a self-contained little missy. And she’s so bloody self-effacing I forget she’s even here, half the time.’ Another peal in which I did not join.
It might be more constructive to let Kim dictate the relationship and progress at her own pace, I said. Which showed admirable restraint. Perhaps you should back right off, was what I was thinking.
Frank said Ellice had been keener on the idea of taking Kim than him, initially. I can see that her fervent desire to be a sister and/or, worse still, a mother to Kim, while tolerably well-meaning in its way, might very well be misplaced. It would make Kim retreat further into herself at home, I suspect.
It’s like approaching a bruised and wary young animal. You have to earn its trust, wait until it comes to you. And you have to be in it for the long haul. I am not sure that a young woman like Ellice, who I also suspect has money and is used to being handed everything on a plate, has either the patience or the intestinal fortitude for a long haul of any description.
I was a bit done in when we got back from the pound. It was all I could do to give poor, patient Teddy his dinner.
The drive wasn’t that long, but still the longest I’ve done for some time. I’d had the chariot serviced, to be on the safe side – it was a few months overdue – and curtailed my reading in bed the night before.
Kim came well prepared too, with a small backpack containing a notebook and pen, canvas hat, a bottle of water for each of us and a choice of chocolate bars to eat on the way. Her mobile phone was equipped with a camera in case of need, she said. And she brought a map with the exact location of the pound and detailed instructions on how to get there. She’d googled it off a net site, she said, and printed it out.
Before we left I asked her if she thought we should take Teddy with us. I had already made a decision on this, and was unsurprised when, without a moment’s hesitation, she confirmed it. Seeing the pound, even if it was a different one, might stir some buried memories, she said. Bad ones, maybe. And it might even bring back some deep-seated terrors or fears of abandonment.
This didn’t set off any alarm bells in my mind, although it probably should have.
‘I’ll be Teddy for today,’ she said, getting into the front seat next to me. I realised that this was the first time I had driven with anyone other than Teddy sitting next to me for a very long time, and said as much to Kim.
So who was my last non-doggy passenger, she wanted to know. I searched my memory and had to concede I couldn’t remember who it could possibly have been. She found this funny.
The journey took close to fifty minutes but seemed shorter because we chatted, fairly continuously. Soon after we set off, waiting to turn onto the highway, I warned her not to get too hopeful in case of disappointment.
‘I’m trying to not get too, like, hyped up,’ she said soberly. ‘You can’t afford to make a mistake, right? A puppy’s not something like a perfume bottle that you can just take back if you decide you don’t like it – that’s if you haven’t already opened it and then been stuck with it.’
Ellice’s recent words came uncomfortably to mind, along with Oscar’s subtexts. I glanced at Kim but couldn’t see her eyes behind those awful mirrored sunglasses.
She said, ‘I can’t write funny poems like you, but I’m doing a thank-you drawing that I’m in the middle of. For my official birthday presents.’ She does most of her reading in bed at night when they think she’s asleep. She’d devoured the Beau Geste I gave her in a marathon session one rainy night, under the covers.
‘I couldn’t believe those brothers. It’s so incredibly brave, right, to risk your life and take the blame for something you haven’t done. I know it’s a story but I so wish it was real life. Wouldn’t it be amazing if people were like that now, Ms Farmer?’
They could be like that in real life at any time, I said. They just had to be the right people.
She looked unconvinced. Maybe in the olden days there might’ve been, but there were hardly any people like that nowadays, she reckoned.
There weren’t many at any time, I agreed. But remnants did exist. What was important was to find them. All the people like that had to track each other down.
Immediately she asked, ‘Have you? Have you ever managed to find any of the remnants?’
I drew a deep breath. I wasn’t used to having a two-way conversation while driving – Teddy just sits and listens to my intermittent outbursts of road rage – let alone a probing conversation with a demanding subtext.
Finally I said, ‘On occasion. But, you know, I think I have been at fault. I could have searched harder. When you don’t find them in one place you have to look in others and not ever let yourself be discouraged.’
She nodded thoughtfully, lacing her fingers tightly in her lap. We drove on as she read out the instructions on the map. I wondered which of her foster carers had instilled in her the thank-you habit.
Her next question was: ‘Did you always know what you wanted to be, or did it just happen?’
I told her that in a way it had just happened, although I’d had an influential English teacher in high school. And I’d had an obligation to pay off a teaching scholarship. She wanted to know, as I’d already anticipated, and anticipated uneasily, if this had been the right decision. It was about half right, I said.
So what was the right half?
‘I was a good teacher of English. A very good teacher. My students invariably got excellent results.’
And the wrong half? This came at me far too fast for any thought of caution. I didn’t like children very much, I said.
She snorted, with a hand over her mouth. ‘That’s normal. Most teachers hate kids. They just hide it from you.’
This was news to me. Not reassuring news, exactly. I would have pondered it, to see w
hether I agreed, but she didn’t allow me any respite.
It must’ve got better when I was a principal, right? Like, you know, being in charge of everything? Organising the school exactly how I wanted.
In theory, I said. Not having to take orders from fools on a daily basis was advantageous. But there was an interfering board, and there were other disadvantages. You had to appoint people to teaching positions. I found my judgement of people was unreliable.
I tried to concentrate on the driving. Why, on imaginary god’s earth, was I telling this to a twelve-year-old?
‘Yeah?’ She looked surprised. She would’ve thought I was a good judge of people. A really good judge, she’d’ve thought.
‘Not of everyone,’ I said.
‘Well, some kinds of people are just screwed-up. They’re incredibly clever at hiding things, right? Like, their bad side, or their real nature?’
Before she could ask me if I had ever appointed such a screwed-up kind of person, I managed to get a question in first. ‘Do you know what you want to be yet? You draw very well. Your drawings are much better than my silly verses.’
She didn’t reply. Put her feet up on the edge of the seat and hugged her knees.
‘Don’t put your feet on the seat,’ I said. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
‘I thought we did.’ The impish face. ‘You don’t want to know, Ms Farmer. It’s really dumb. And far-fetched. Kind of like a secret ambition.’ She started chewing her fingernails.
‘Don’t bite your nails. I don’t mind how dumb and far-fetched it is. And I like secrets, as you know.’ I took my eyes off the road. An enigmatic glance passed between us.
She frowned. ‘Thought I might want to do acting once.’
Yes? I was surprised but concealed it. Well, that could be an interesting occupation.
This prompted an emphatic headshake. She made a face. ‘Yuk.’
I stand corrected, I said mildly. All right then, out with the secret.
‘Well, okay. I s’pose. Don’t laugh, but.’ In a rush: ‘I’d like to write books. Fiction books.’ She peered round at me under the distracting mirrored glasses in which I could see myself. ‘Don’t go off the road, will you?’
There was no chance of that. I was driving slowly and with even more care, if anything, than I exercise with Teddy as my passenger. I told her I thought it was an excellent ambition, to be an author of novels. Far better than teaching because you could do it on your own, without having to have any other bothersome people around.
‘You’re so right. No snotty-nosed brats,’ she said.
She’s already joined the library, needless to say. Frank had suggested she should get Sandy Fay to recommend authors, and then go to the library and take their books out. It would be a lot cheaper than buying them, even second-hand. I agreed, but she confided that Mr Fay had told her she could pay for his books, and then return them and get all her money back.
That’s Sandy all over, he’s a hopeless businessman. Far too nice. No wonder he’s never made a cracker. She’s got in the habit of calling in on Sandy on the way home from school.
‘You were so right about him, he’s an awesome character.’
True enough, but did I really say that? I suppose she’d deduced my opinion from an earlier remark. From an earlier subtext, no doubt. Awesome is not a word, I can be fairly confident, that I have ever used in my life.
‘Yeah, he always says things about books that make you want to read them. I think he’s very insightful. As well as being the tallest human being I’ve ever met.’ An intimate smile, more to herself. ‘And he’s read absolutely everything that’s ever been written.’ She swivelled round in her seatbelt. ‘Hey. He’s one of the remnants, right?’
‘Now don’t go getting a crush on Sandy,’ I warned. I saw she was on the brink of asking me something back, then thought the better of it, which was just as well because I’m not at all sure what I would have replied.
A longish pause while she opened the snacks and handed me the Bounty bar I’d chosen.
‘I thought you’d go for that, it’s kind of more adult than a Mars bar.’ Then, ‘Did Mr Fay ever have any children?’
Didn’t and doesn’t, as far as I know, I said.
‘But wouldn’t you think you’d know?’
You’d think so, yes, but I’m not sure if I would. ‘He’s never mentioned any to me,’ I said. ‘Or any wife, for that matter.’ I thought fairly dispassionately of Sandy and Monica Harmonica on their knees, sorting the books from the Monleigh estate.
‘Hmm. Bit of a shame. He seems like he would’ve been a really good father. It’s kind of a waste.’ Upward inflexion, coupled with a slight hesitation.
‘Sandy is definitely not gay,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I thought not, definitely. So he’s available, right?’
‘I suppose so. Technically.’ We mulled this over while I negotiated a difficult convergence of roads.
Then she said, ‘Yeah, technically, but the question is, whether he’d ever do anything about it, at this stage. That’s the moot point.’
I agreed that was both the question and the moot point, at this juncture. Had she confided to Mr Fay that she wanted to become a writer? Or perhaps to Frank? Or Ellice?
The headshaking became more pronounced with each name. At Ellice’s name it grew forceful. She combed the fringe of glossy black hair out of her eyes with her fingers. It is a lot longer now than when I first saw her. Her fingernails are ragged but she doesn’t look as much like a street urchin.
‘You’re the first person I’ve ever told.’
‘Then I’m privileged indeed,’ I said. I found myself experiencing, rather absurdly, a feeling of gratification that I had been told ahead of Sandy. It was at that point that we arrived at the entrance of the pound.
It must have expanded, it was much bigger than I remembered. The car park was nearly full already. There were people doing the rounds of dozens of dog pens in a purposeful manner, mainly family groups. And it was noisy. It was nearly fourteen years ago, but I remembered the particularly upsetting quality of the noise – the barking and yowling of dozens of agitated caged animals.
There was a long desk in the front hall, for registrations and form-filling and exchange of money. We stood and watched. Attendants came in and out sporadically, bringing dogs on leads and delivering them to their eager new owners. Many of the dogs, you could see, were nervous. Teddy, I remembered, had seemed wary and almost downcast as I led him out. The way he had responded to me at first, in the pen, was far more indicative of his future happy, demonstrative character.
The bare, cramped enclosures were a sad reminder of an old-fashioned zoo, I said to Kim. She had fallen silent, almost from the moment we came in. We walked past the first of the cages. Most had a single occupant, on its feet in an energetic, often frantic attempt to attract the attention of the passers-by.
Kim said, ‘It’s like they know they’re anonymous, and they think they might never get out of prison. And they desperately want us to know who they are.’
I could hardly hear her, with all the excited barking and hurling against the metal grids of the cages. I’d had the identical thought. Each one wanted to register the fact of its existence, and its predicament.
To begin with she stopped at each cage to gaze long and intensely at the animal inside. I began to think we were destined to stay here for hours.
She said, ‘Even if it’s not the kind you think you want, every dog is special in its own way, isn’t it? Each one wagging its tail, despairingly hoping we’ll turn out to be the ones who might love it. I can’t bear to disappoint them. It’s so sad.’
She walked with her arms folded tightly around her chest. Her posture had become more hunched, but I put it down to her natural empathy and wasn’t overly concerned. We passed a thin, ten-year-old boxer, and then a squirming spaniel puppy who was being lifted out of its cage into the outstretched arms of a small boy.
Kim stood still, watc
hing. ‘Isn’t it, you know, really, really strange? That people can just come by and look them over, and then just pick one out? That they think they like the look of? Almost like they weren’t living things, like they were tins of food on a supermarket shelf, or something?’ Her voice sounded strained, but I wasn’t unduly alarmed, even then.
Nearly all the dogs were past the puppy stage. The majority were considerably older and had either been someone’s discarded pet or had gone missing. You could see people casually assess and then dismiss those animals as they walked straight past.
Kim spoke to a young attendant who was cleaning out an empty cage. It looked like most of the dogs weren’t ever going to be wanted by anyone, she said. What would happen to those left behind? I waited apprehensively as the boy, probably a university student, straightened up. I knew what he was going to say.
‘We can’t keep them for ever. No space, no money. If their owners don’t reclaim them and nobody else wants them, after three months they get put down, mostly. All the older guys, and the ones that aren’t too cute. After a bit you get to know the guys that aren’t going to make it. All the losers.’ He gave her a sympathetic look. ‘A stray dog’s life’s a bummer, right?’
Kim nodded, her face taut. We walked on. The most distressing cases were the defeated ones who seemed to have given up already and were lying on the floor of their cages, inert and hopeless.
She said, ‘I feel like we shouldn’t pass by too fast, because it’s so uncaring. But, we can’t give them any false hope.’ Her voice trembled. ‘We don’t want them to think that we’re going to be their saviour when we’re absolutely not.’
All of a sudden, although I knew instantly that I should have seen it coming, she seemed to crumple. She hit her head violently with an open hand and turned to me in a flood of tears.
‘I’m really, really sorry, Ms Farmer, but I don’t want to stay here any longer. I’m not going to be able to do it. I just can’t. Choose one. It’s too difficult.’ She scrubbed at her eyes with her fists. I handed her a handkerchief. She blew her nose several times and stuffed it in her pocket.
The Precipice Page 13
