The Door That Led to Where

by Sally Gardner

  He waited, watching the busyness of the chambers and a wave of despair come over him. He was certain he’d blown it. The idea that he stood a chance of being employed here was off-the-wall crazy. His mum’s words echoed in his head. ‘You don’t get to wear a suit to work, not with one GCSE.’

  ‘Aiden.’ Morton Black stuck his head out of Mr Groat’s office. ‘Would you come back in?’

  AJ had so successfully persuaded himself that he was unemployable that for a moment he couldn’t work out what Mr Groat was saying.

  ‘We would like to offer you a three-month trial period as a baby clerk,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a glorified way of saying you will be an office boy,’ said Morton. ‘Your job will be to assist Stephen, the first clerk, and myself, maintaining the stock of stationery and chambers’ brochures, updating the chambers’ library, collecting and delivering documents.’

  ‘Will I be paid?’ asked AJ, hearing the red reptile breathing down his neck.

  ‘Most certainly,’ said Mr Groat. ‘Not much to begin with but if you prove yourself you will be put on a salary, and if you work hard, one day you might even become like Morton, a senior clerk, thinking he’ll retire at fifty-three. You will prove yourself, won’t you, Aiden?’

  There it was again. That incredible name. Could it really belong to him?

  ‘Yes, sir. I will do my best, my very best.’

  Had he heard them right? They were offering him a job, for real.

  ‘Good. Welcome to Baldwin Groat, Aiden.’

  The minute Morton and AJ were out of Mr Groat’s office, Morton turned to him, not in an unpleasant manner, but firm, as if he meant business.

  ‘You start on Monday and I want to see you suited and booted. No brothel creepers, no cowboy shirt.’

  AJ nodded.

  ‘Eight-thirty sharp, and I don’t tolerate lateness.’

  AJ stood on the pavement staring up at 4 Raymond Buildings, still unable to take in what had just happened. He wondered if by going through the door that led to Baldwin Groat’s chambers he had altered everything. He had gone in jobless, hopeless and nameless, and come out with a job, a glimmer of hope and a name he’d never heard before.

  All his life his mum had made no bones about telling him that A and J were just initials, nothing more. Those two meaningless letters had been a problem at school. He had stood out when all he wanted was to fit in.

  ‘It’s not a proper name,’ his teacher had told him.

  She had insisted he spelled it out: A-J-A-Y, until his mum had said with the subtlety of a cement mixer, ‘No, he’s just an A and a J.’

  What she wouldn’t tell the teacher was what those two stunted initials stood for, and she definitely wasn’t going to tell AJ. By the time he reached secondary school he’d given up asking her. The question of his name belonged with numerous other unanswered questions, like who his father was, or even what had happened to his father. That much she eventually told him.

  She had said, without a trace of emotion, ‘Dead.’

  AJ had assumed that the letter J must be the first letter of his father’s surname. He’d imagined it to be something like Jones – certainly nothing as exotic as Jobey. He said it over and over again. Jobey. Aiden Jobey. It felt as if it was a password to a future. In Aiden Jobey there was space to grow. AJ had always felt like a dead end. As he arrived back in Stoke Newington the name was beginning to fit him, although the mystery of why he had never been told it before hung over him in a black cloud.

  Chapter Three

  It was a mild September day, that time of year when the seasons haven’t yet made up their minds whether it’s still summer or the beginning of autumn. While Clissold Park smelled of dried leaves and overheated grass that had long forgotten the colour green, the chestnut trees braced themselves for the annual conker bashing. AJ was desperate to share the news of his job with someone other than his mum, whose reaction had been predictable to say the least.

  ‘You can start paying for your board and keep,’ she said. ‘Don’t think I’m a bleeding hotel.’

  He had thought about asking her for a loan for a suit, but he knew what she would say: ‘Do you think I’m made of money?’ So he hadn’t asked and he had a job and no suit.

  It was a relief to escape the flat, to head off to the skate park. He hoped to find his two best friends, Slim and Leon. He could rely on them being there as long as the weather was fine, but today he found Slim alone, attached as always to his one and only possession, his skateboard.

  Slim, with dark hair and brown eyes, was taller than AJ, more grown into himself.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked.

  ‘I had a job interview.’

  ‘A job interview? That’s impressive, bro,’ said Slim. ‘Where at?’

  ‘A law firm,’ said AJ. ‘Called Baldwin Groat.’

  ‘You’re joking, man. You mean a cube farm? Did you get the job?’

  ‘Yeah, on trial. Office boy. The place doesn’t exactly have cubicles, more huge rooms lined with books.’

  ‘Shit. What did you do to make that little miracle happen?’

  ‘Nothing. Mum wrote a letter.’

  ‘That’s heavy. What did she write? That she would do them over unless they gave you employment?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said AJ, and changed the subject. ‘Why is Leon not here?’

  ‘Wait a mo,’ said Slim. ‘How did your mum know about a toff place like that?’

  ‘She had a job cleaning for them before I was born.’

  ‘Hold that picture, bro: so she knows these dudes and after nearly seventeen years she’s written to them and they’ve come over all fairy godmother and given you a job. Now why doesn’t that add up in my book?’

  AJ didn’t want to think about the whys of it or how Mr Groat knew what his initials stood for.

  ‘Leon,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘As my rap of the “Electronic Jungle of Despair” goes, “Life is shitty, times is gritty, Leon’s been taken back into care.”’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘His mum, being dosed up higher than the Shard, thought she was a white swan from a kiddies’ book and flew off the balcony of their flat. Smack in her head, smack onto the pavement, smack into intensive care.’

  ‘When?’ asked AJ.

  ‘This morning.’

  AJ sat down next to Slim. There wasn’t much to say. It was an old, scratched record they’d heard many times before. But the news of Leon’s return into care took the shine off AJ’s day.

  Leon’s mum was a drug addict. She loved her sons but couldn’t look after them. The first time Leon and his little brother were taken into care was when their social worker discovered them eating cat food off the floor while the cat was on the table eating their breakfast. Leon’s mum said she couldn’t see the difference. The truth was she couldn’t see anything. Leon’s brother, Joel, was only eighteen months old then.

  Their gran, a religious lady high up in the Church of the Celestial Coming, had taken Joel in. She said that Joel was definitely the child of her son, Amos, and still had the chance of being saved. But as far as Leon was concerned, she said he could never be Amos’s son, being too pale in the skin. Hell’s Highway already had Leon’s name printed on the advertising hoardings. He was three when she’d had this helpful revelation and because of it Leon had been in and out of care for the last thirteen years. After a lot of praying for guidance Gran had taken Joel home to Jamaica leaving Leon battling to help his mum with her demons.

  ‘Where have they taken Leon this time?’ asked AJ.

  ‘Back to the foster family in Muswell Hill. But they won’t want him for long, as he’s nearly seventeen.’

  As if reading AJ’s thoughts, Slim said, ‘Nothing changes. We’re all up against the white wall of hopelessness. My auntie couldn’t care less about my exam results as long as I work on Uncle Jek’s stall. The old geezer’s only good for shouting out the bargains and being rude to the punters. He
can’t even count how many pints he’s drunk. But wait a bit – if you have this job, don’t you need to look the business?’

  ‘Yeah. The trouble is I haven’t any money to buy a suit. So as you say, life is shitty.’

  ‘What about your mum?’

  ‘Are you a comedian?’ asked AJ. ‘Roxy needs new trainers and the wheel fell off her scooter so Mum is buying her a proper one from the bike shop.’ Roxy was AJ’s half-sister, the apple of Jan’s eye. The word ‘no’ never applied to her. ‘I thought about nicking a suit from Oxfam but it wouldn’t look good at the law firm if I was done for shoplifting.’

  Slim laughed. ‘Come on, bro. I’ve got an idea.’

  Unlike AJ, Slim had a family wardrobe stuffed full of relatives, distant, near, and a lot in between. He reckoned that if they stood hand in hand they would stretch the whole distance from Stokey to Dalston, maybe even as far as Shoreditch. AJ had never worked out where Slim fitted in this jammed wardrobe of unnamed relatives. It was one of the things AJ, Slim and Leon had in common: broken families.

  They left the park and headed to Mr Toker’s laundry and dry-cleaner’s on Church Street. Inside, on the wall near the door, was a photo from the 1930s of five men playing golf outside a ramshackled laundrette. They weren’t wearing trousers, just baggy knickers, and socks held up by garters. The sign read ‘Free golf while we press your suit’.

  ‘Yes?’ said Mr Toker, adding, ‘And no, I don’t have a penny if that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘No, bro!’

  ‘Don’t you bro me.’

  ‘Sorry. No, Uncle Şevket,’ said Slim. ‘AJ’s got a job.’

  Mr Toker studied AJ, not sure whether to take him seriously.

  ‘Is this one of your high-flying, fancy stories?’

  ‘No,’ said AJ. ‘I do have a job, but no suit, and without a suit I have no job.’

  ‘Do I look like a gentleman’s outfitters?’ said Mr Toker. ‘Go away, the two of you, and stop wasting my time.’

  The other sign that AJ liked was smaller than the golf photo. It read ‘Anything not collected after three months will be sold’.

  AJ pointed to the sign.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I can pay for it on Friday. But if I don’t have a suit for Monday, I’m stuffed.’

  Mr Toker called to his wife. ‘Sarah. Do we have any suits that would fit this scallywag?’

  AJ and Slim could see a large lady bending over a basket in the back room.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why would we?’

  ‘There. You heard the oracle speak. Now bugger off.’

  ‘If you could just lend me one I will pay you back when I have my first pay cheque,’ pleaded AJ.

  Mr Toker laughed. ‘Neither am I a pawnbroker.’ He sat down at the sewing machine behind the counter. ‘Scarper.’

  ‘He will pay you, Uncle Şevket,’ said Slim. ‘I promise.

  ‘How? Neither of you has a penny on you.’

  The sewing machine’s click-clack agreed with its boss.

  ‘Not a penny, not a pound,’ it seemed to say.

  ‘I’ll leave my skateboard here – it’s worth good money,’ said Slim.

  Mr Toker and the sewing machine stopped. Mr Toker looked up.

  ‘You would do that for your friend? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slim, handing over his skateboard. ‘It’s worth way more than a forgotten suit.’

  Mr Toker put the skateboard under the counter, went to the shop door and turned the sign to Closed.

  ‘All right. A deal’s a deal.’

  Slim looked a little shaken.

  Mr Toker began to call out AJ’s measurements to his wife, who sighed as she looked through the rails of unclaimed suits. Finally she pulled out one in grey.

  ‘Go to the back and try it on,’ she said. ‘And here – take this shirt.’

  Apart from being made for someone altogether taller, the suit fitted AJ perfectly. Without a word, Mr Toker pinned up the trousers and the cuffs then stood back, squinting.

  ‘Where is this job of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Baldwin Groat,’ said AJ. ‘In Gray’s Inn.’

  ‘The suit will be ready tomorrow after three,’ said Mr Toker. ‘Thirty pounds is the price to have the skateboard back.’

  ‘I owe you,’ said AJ to Slim.

  ‘Big time,’ said Slim. ‘That skateboard is … everything.’

  ‘I know,’ said AJ. ‘I won’t let you down – promise, bro.’

  Chapter Four

  On Monday AJ turned up for work in the suit and a pair of brogues two sizes too big that he’d found on top of a clothes bank. There was no polite introduction to the workings of Baldwin Groat. Morton, the senior clerk, told him that if he was to survive there he would need wit and intelligence. AJ found himself thrown in the deep end of the legal soup.

  ‘We don’t need more staff,’ Stephen, the first clerk, had complained. ‘We manage perfectly well.’

  ‘Aiden was taken on by Mr Groat,’ said Morton. ‘Any complaints should be addressed to him as head of chambers.’

  Stephen was twenty-seven and had been at Baldwin Groat since he was eighteen. The son of one of the junior barristers, he had wanted to become a lawyer like his father but finding the examinations beyond him had gone for the option of being a clerk. Such was his position and so long had he stayed in that position that he saw any new clerk as a threat. AJ was no exception. Stephen instantly took a dislike to him.

  ‘Does Mr Baldwin know about this new baby clerk?’ he asked the senior clerk.

  ‘Is that any business of yours, Stephen?’ Morton snapped.

  ‘No, but it’s –’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  As far as AJ could make out from the junior barristers, the most dynamic of the QCs in the practice was Mr Baldwin. He was abroad on a case and AJ had peeped inside his room. A photo of the eminent Queen’s Counsel sat on the desk in a silver frame. AJ couldn‘t understand why he would want a picture of himself unless it was to remind him who he was. From the photo AJ decided that he was a man who took himself very seriously indeed, a man without a chin, and with a bottom lip much bigger than the top, which combined to squeeze themselves into a pout.

  Mr Groat, who had no photos of himself, or anyone else for that matter, was seen as something of an eccentric.

  Whenever they were alone Stephen took delight in telling AJ exactly how short his career in the law firm would be.

  ‘When Mr Baldwin’s back you’ll be out on your arse,’ said Stephen. ‘One GCSE. You think Mr Baldwin will stand for that? He only takes the brightest and the best. You can’t say you quite fit the description.’

  AJ was used to bullies. They were to be found in every gang he had ever come across. He ignored Stephen.

  ‘You don’t need to charge about the place,’ Stephen would say. ‘You just get us more work.’

  Again AJ ignored him. He would rather be doing anything than standing there looking like a hatstand as Stephen did.

  On the Friday of his first week, Morton called him into his office.

  ‘You’re for it,’ said Stephen helpfully. ‘I didn’t think you’d last longer than a week. Never mind. You can put it down to work experience.’

  AJ stood in front of the senior clerk’s desk. ‘You’re a quiet one, Aiden,’ said Morton. ‘Do you like it here?’

  The idea that he might like or dislike the job was a luxury of thought AJ hadn’t allowed himself.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Have a good weekend.’

  His seventeenth birthday, hardly remembered, was quickly forgotten. That Saturday AJ was able to get Slim’s skateboard back and they went in search of Leon. They reckoned the best place to find him would be the undercroft of the Southbank Centre. The three of them had been going there since they were eleven.

  October had come in unseasonally warm, taking everyone by surprise. Half the inhabitants of London were slow cooking in new winter clothes while the other h
alf were out to shimmer in the sunshine in shorts and skimpy dresses, doing their best to chase away the thought of autumn altogether.

  It was a relief to find Leon, though he looked tired and thinner. His mum was still in a coma and he visited her whenever he could. His foster family meant well but thought that he shouldn’t see her, that it wasn’t good for his stability.

  ‘I ain’t going back there,’ said Leon. ‘I’d rather live rough than stay in that up-its-arse-house. They eat brown rice and shit like that, full of what’s good for you. They say that if I carry on living with Mum, I’ll end up just like her. They understand nothing except what they read in the Guardian. I tell you, life is better in the Sun. At least the women have tits. I haven’t been going to college either.’

  Of the three of them, Leon had done the best in his exams and been accepted at sixth-form college.

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ asked Slim.

  ‘Move back home. Live there on my own. I’m not a kid.’

  ‘Live on what?’ said AJ.

  ‘That’s where I thought you might help me out, bro.’

  Leon disappeared down the ramp.

  ‘In the nineteenth century,’ AJ said to Slim, ‘we would’ve been considered men by now. Do you ever think that you were born in the wrong century? At the wrong time, to the wrong parents?’

  ‘No, never. All I know is we all live in the Electronic Jungle of Despair.’

  On Monday, AJ noticed that no one in chambers slouched, nor did the junior barristers linger in the clerks’ room. The day was wired tight.

  AJ waited anxiously to be called into Mr Baldwin’s office. Stephen had a knowing look about him.

  ‘I wouldn’t make yourself too comfortable here,’ he said. ‘If Mr Baldwin doesn’t like you – well, that’s that.’

  Charles Baldwin QC was a well-dressed man, a time fighter, someone who invested a lot of energy in staying young. A smug smile stuck firmly to his tight features.