Goggle-eyes

by Anne Fine

  Lifting the nearest pile, which happened to be mine, she made for the door. But he stepped in front of her and prised the clothes from her arms. I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but I’ve no doubt that he was goggling at her as usual, because she was blushing when she protested:

  ‘No. Let me take them.’

  ‘No. Let her.’

  Wrenching the door fully open so I was forced to duck beneath the banisters, he bellowed up the stairs:

  ‘Kitty! Come down and fetch your laundry from your mother!’

  ‘And hang it neatly on your floor,’ said Mum.

  Goggle-eyes turned, and told her in stern tones:

  ‘It’s not a joke, Rosalind. Kitty’s room is a pit.’

  I saw Mum’s grin fade pretty fast, and I knew why. Mum’s like me. She hates it when people speak out of turn about things they don’t understand. What Goggle-eyes didn’t know was that Mum used to be at me all the time about my room, threatening and cajoling, stopping my allowance and forbidding me to go out with my friends until it was tidy. She must have spent entire weeks of her life fighting the battle of my room with me, grinding on and on about it until, once every couple of weeks or so, I used to crack and reckon it was probably less trouble to clear it up than keep on arguing that it’s my room and I should be allowed to keep it how I like. But after Dad left home, Mum just gave up. We had one or two last horrible rows about the mess, and then she suddenly seemed to throw her hands up about the whole business. I think, once she was on her own, she simply couldn’t face the effort and unpleasantness of all that endless nagging and scolding.

  What did old Goggle-eyes know about that? Nothing. He didn’t live with us. He didn’t know us. He didn’t understand that I’m one of those people who practically only have to glance in a room for it to begin to look as if a bomb hit it. If my poor mum stayed on my case long and hard enough to keep me tidy all the time, she’d have to give up hours of her time. She’d probably have to give up work.

  Mum has her pride. She wasn’t going to tell Gerald Faulkner that, now my father wasn’t in the house to back her up through every battle, she’d had to make a virtue of necessity and throw in the sponge. Keeping her tone light, she just said to him:

  ‘Oh, take it easy, Gerald. Maybe you’ve just forgotten what kids Kitty’s age are like.’

  ‘Don’t try to tell me they all have floors thick with tangled electrical wires, and filthy dishes, and books in great untidy heaps!’

  Mum was still trying to make light of it.

  ‘I call it her open-plan filing system.’

  ‘I call it disgusting.’

  He put his foot in it there. It was quite clear from the expression on Mum’s face that, for the moment, she had heard enough from Gerald Faulkner about his views on natty housekeeping. Purposefully silent, she reached out for the laundry pile. But Goggle-eyes refused to hand it over. He hadn’t finished yet.

  ‘You’re doing your girls no favours,’ he lectured. ‘Letting them get away with murder.’

  That really rattled Mum.

  ‘Murder?’ she snapped. ‘For heaven’s sake, Gerald! Look at the planet we live on! Wars. Famine. Poverty. These things bring misery to half the world! Ten million pounds a minute is spent on arms! My Kitty spends her time coming with me to meetings, raising money by shaking collecting cans, and trying to let the taxpayers of this country know that, for the cost of one single nuclear weapons system, we could afford a decent health service!’ She waved her arms in a flamboyant gesture. ‘What does it matter if her bedroom floor is knee deep in knickers?’

  Time to stop eavesdropping, and push the door open fast! I wasn’t going to risk hearing his answer to that one!

  ‘Ah!’ he said, hearing me come in. ‘At last!’

  He turned and dumped the laundry in my arms.

  ‘There you are,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Another forkful for your compost heap.’

  I thought what he said was rather funny actually (though I would rather have died than smiled). But for some reason a look of real irritation crossed Mum’s face. Her lips set in the way they did when she and Dad were on the verge of arguing.

  ‘Gerald,’ she said coldly. ‘It’s not my children’s fault I always reckoned I had better things to do with my time than stand over them while they folded their vests and put their things away neatly. So please try not to pick on Kitty because, like me, she now thinks there are more important things in life than properly made beds and tidy sock drawers!’

  I caught my breath. Dad absolutely hates it when Mum goes all tight-lipped and snooty on him. He scowls and snaps right back.

  But Goggle-eyes was unruffled. In fact, he was standing there grinning his head off.

  ‘Rosalind!’ he said. ‘How can you talk such utter piffle?’

  I think Mum was speechless from shock. (I know I was speechless from terror.) But Goggle-eyes was still beaming.

  ‘What you say sounds so lofty, so high-minded! But it’s pure rubbish.’

  ‘Rubbish?’ Poor Mum was mouthing like a fish.

  ‘Yes, rubbish. And I’ll tell you why.’ He waved a hand towards the ceiling. ‘I happened to walk past your bathroom half an hour ago, and, being the tidy sort of bloke I am, I couldn’t help noticing that it was in a shocking state. Simply shocking! Filthy rings round the bath. Teacups and bits of Lego everywhere. Soggy comics on the floor. Why, the lavatory was absolutely festooned with paper.’

  Mum opened her mouth to interrupt, but he lifted his hand to stop her, and pressed on.

  ‘Then what happened, Rosalind? I walked by twenty minutes later and it looked perfect. Clear floor, clean bath, nice gleaming surfaces. Who cleaned it up? Not me. I was still scouring the house for that airlock. Not Judith. She’s out there swinging upside down in the park. And I’ll bet that it wasn’t Kitty here. I’d be prepared to put my life savings on that!’

  I gave him the sour look that he deserved, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy smiling at Mum.

  ‘So who pitched in there with the wet mop, Rosalind? Who wiped the mirrors and the taps? Who was it took time off from going to meetings, and shaking cans in the street, and calling for an end to the arms race? Who was it cleaned up the bathroom?’

  Mum went bright pink.

  ‘See!’ he crowed. ‘It was you. Of course it was. And all I’m saying is that every now and again, a serious and committed citizen like yourself could do with a little bit of help with the housework from equally serious and committed Kitty here!’

  The look I gave him would have shrivelled Rasputin. Oh, it was definitely the evil eye. But I was on my own now. Mum’s face, as well as his, was wreathed in smiles.

  ‘Take care, Gerald,’ she giggled. ‘Mind what you say! You’ll end up in terrible trouble with Kitty.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m not afraid of Kitty. I’m not afraid of anyone. And I always say exactly what I think.’

  He didn’t have to tell me. I’d already noticed. I’d not forgotten that he took advantage of our very first meeting to rubbish all my views on nuclear arms. And I’d had plenty of opportunities since then to notice he always spoke his mind – though, to be fair, he’d welly in on anybody’s side. I’d thought at first, because he was so struck on Mum, he’d end up taking her part whenever he could, and staying tactfully quiet on the sidelines whenever he couldn’t. But it turned out he wasn’t like that.

  And it wasn’t because he couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. He’d proved that he could be as quiet as the grave when he chose. I was quite sure that he had never breathed a word to Mum about that spiteful essay about him I wrote for Mrs Lupey and left around for him to see. But, even so, my heart began to thump like mad when Mum finally moved the last of the laundry aside, and picked up the hammer and wrench he had laid on the table, revealing her precious scissors underneath.

  ‘My scissors! You found them!’

  I didn’t take my eyes off him for a second. Though he said nothing at all, he did let hi
s face break into one of those sunny smiles of his, and he shrugged very lightly.

  Mum, of course, jumped to the simplest conclusion.

  ‘I can’t believe it! I must be going daft. Fancy putting my scissors away in the tool box!’

  Still he said nothing, though he glanced at me.

  ‘Good thing the pipes went funny,’ Mum went on, sweeping the scissors up to safety on their special hook. ‘Otherwise these might not have shown up for weeks.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said.

  Only I knew precisely what he meant by that. He didn’t wink at me – no, not exactly. But one of his eyelids did flicker a little, I saw it, though I would rather have died than catch his eye, and let myself wink back.

  I did feel grateful, though. He’d saved my bacon. To show him I understood that, I dropped my pile of laundry down on Jude’s, and said, scooping them both up in my arms:

  ‘I’ll do the whole lot, since I’m going up there.’

  ‘Would you?’ Mum looked pleased. ‘That’s a help.’

  I didn’t wait for praise from Goggle-eyes. I took the clothes upstairs and put them away. While I was at it, I picked up all the dirty cups and bowls and plates lying about my room – there was a stack of them – and carried them down, along with the tin of stale cat food.

  I found Mum rooting on the pantry floor.

  ‘Kitty, any chance of you getting me some potatoes?’

  ‘Can’t it wait till I get back?’

  She looked up.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the library.’

  Mum frowned. She’s off libraries. She’s been off them for weeks, making life very awkward for me and Jude. She used to be dead keen. Like everyone else, she had this rosy vision of libraries as cool and silent repositories of neatly-shelved wisdom: temples of learning, gems of culture, high-points of civilization, that sort of thing. If I said I was going to the library, she’d smile and go all soft inside, and you could tell she was thinking, whatever her faults, she couldn’t have failed too badly as a parent. At least we still used the library.

  Then things began to go sour. First Jude came home one day insisting Floss needed four separate injections to keep her breathing safely through the winter. When, two weeks later, a bill came from the vet for fifteen pounds, Mum asked Jude irritably: ‘Where did you hear about these injections, anyway?’ Jude answered innocently enough: ‘There was a notice on the library wall,’ and that was the start of Mum’s steady disenchantment. I thought she might march straight round there and complain.

  Then, two or three weeks later, I came home destroyed because I’d stood about for half an hour, unable to peel my eyes from some terrible video they were showing over and over in the foyer about the tactics of the South African police. Mum phoned the chief librarian about that. Then Jude had nightmares for a fortnight after the old anti-vivisection poster of white mice in a cage was taken down and replaced by one far more vivid and heart-rending, featuring a cat that looked for all the world just like our Floss.

  So things were set fair for trouble already. But how was I to know that only that morning Jude made the serious mistake of telling our rather touchy neighbours they ought to be worming their dog far more often (Courtesy: Library Factsheet No. 44), and Mum had only just got back from trying to make peace next door.

  ‘Why are you going to the library?’ she asked suspiciously, through gritted teeth.

  ‘I want to get something.’

  ‘A book?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What, then?’

  I didn’t answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me.

  ‘A computer game? Right?’

  Rumbled, I nodded.

  ‘That’s it!’ she shrieked. ‘That’s it! Finito! From now on that bloody library is off limits. It’s out of bounds!’

  I raised my eyes to heaven. Goggle-eyes burst out laughing. Mum rounded on him directly.

  ‘All very well for you to laugh!’ she told him. ‘I bet you never had this trouble when your boys were children!’

  I stared. I hadn’t realized he had grown-up sons.

  Mum sighed. ‘You were lucky. Your children grew up in the good old days when libraries were libraries! I bet your boys used to stroll down there and spend a quiet half an hour or so choosing real books. Then they’d come home, and you’d have at least a couple of hours’ peace while they sat down and read them, cover to cover.’

  Still beaming, Goggle-eyes nodded. Yes, his face said. That’s how it was back in the good old days.

  ‘Well, things are different now,’ Mum snapped. ‘They’re back home in under ten minutes with some daft pip-pip-pipping computer game stuck under their arm, and all you hear for hours after they get back is “Shouldn’t we play safe, and join the R.A.C., Mum?” and “Can I take classes in Serbo-Croat at the university extension, Mum?” and “What is cocaine, Mum?”’

  She leaned across, and snapped her fingers in my face.

  ‘Well, that’s it!’ she said again. ‘The party’s over. Speaking both as a parent and a ratepayer, I have to announce that libraries are now far more trouble than they’re worth. You can just go upstairs and shelve the few tatty books you have in alphabetical order.’

  ‘The library doesn’t keep books in alphabetical order any longer,’ I told her.

  Her mouth dropped open, honestly it did.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said softly. ‘Have the heavens fallen? Tell me, Gerald. Did I hear what my daughter said?’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said, before he could chime in. ‘The children’s section is all done by dots now. Red dots for teenage, blue for middle school, pink for primary and green for babies.’

  ‘You’re joking! You are joking! Dots?’

  ‘Well – little round stickers, really.’

  Mum buried her head in her hands.

  ‘Little round stickers,’ she groaned. ‘Gerald, it’s finally happened. The barbarians have taken over.’ She lifted her head. ‘But why are they waiting?’ she suddenly demanded. ‘What’s holding them up? Why don’t they just tear down the book shelves and hurl the books into four huge piles: Boring, All right, Dead good, and Brilliant!’

  Goggle-eyes’ shoulders were heaving with laughter. Mum turned on him.

  ‘No, honestly,’ she insisted. ‘I’m serious. Why pretend any longer? What does it matter that we, the British public, once had a library system that was the envy of the world?’

  She might have been on stage in the West End. Poor Goggle-eyes was wiping tears of laughter from his cheeks. I raised my eyes to heaven yet again.

  Then Mum stuck out her hand dramatically.

  ‘Give me your library ticket. Go on. Hand it over.’

  I shook my head and jumped back fast.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Hand it over. It’s confiscated.’

  ‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’ I said, pantomime-style.

  ‘Oh, yes, it is!’

  ‘Oh, no, it isn’t!’

  All the time, keeping the table between us, I kept moving steadily and stealthily towards the back door. Mum suddenly made as if to chase me; and, making a huge effort, Gerald Faulkner managed to control his laughter long enough to catch her in his arms and hold her back, while I got safely through the door.

  ‘Bye-eee!’ I called, haring down the garden path.

  I sang all the way to the library. I couldn’t help it. One or two people stared (I’m not the greatest singer in the world) but I didn’t care. I felt light and happy. It always cheers me up when Mum stops worrying about work, or the mortgage, or how we’re turning out, and just acts daft. And it seemed ages since we’d had a really silly scene like that, with her halfway serious and halfway fooling, and not caring for a moment how everything turned out.

  And maybe it had helped, having Goggle-eyes there watching everything, laughing. Maybe Mum just felt far more cheerful when she had company. She and Dad used to muck about quite a bit before things went wrong. Maybe there
were advantages to having someone else around the place.

  I thought about it quite a lot while I was in the library. And then again when I walked home, the long way, and saw Jude hanging upside down from the park railings, her hair sweeping the grass. She’d taken to him, too, right from the start. She’d let him help her with her project on The Sea Shore, she ate his chocolates, and she sat on his knee through all the repeats of Blackadder. I’d watch her out of the corner of my eye, practically rolling off his lap onto the floor whenever something struck Goggle-eyes as particularly amusing. It didn’t seem to bother Jude that she was curled in the arms of the opposition, a die-hard, reds-under-the-beds deterrent-monger who actually believes that on the day nuclear weapons are dismantled in Britain, Russians will march in from Moscow, stamping the snow from the steppes off their feet.

  And it didn’t seem to bother Mum either (though she at least did make the effort to point out to him that countries like Norway and Sweden and Austria are miles nearer Russia than we are, and don’t have nuclear weapons, and aren’t invaded).

  Maybe I shouldn’t let it bother me.

  I came home prepared to give it a real try. I know I did. I came home with feelings towards Gerald Faulkner that weren’t exactly warm, but they were neutral. He’d done me more than one good favour that day. He might not be well and truly tuned in to Small Planet Earth, but he did have his good points. How was I to know that, within seconds of my stepping in the house, he’d blow it? Stand there like the Grand Inquisitor, and send himself hurtling right back to the top of my hit list.

  ‘Let me get this straight.’ He rested both hands on the table, and leaned across. ‘Kitty has just dug those potatoes out of the ground for you.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Mum, tipping the sodden black lumps into the sink and turning the full force of the taps on them, to rinse off the soil.

  ‘And they’re from the vegetable plot at the bottom of the garden.’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Begun by her father, but now kept up by Kitty with a bit of help from Judith.’

  ‘Not much help,’ I reminded everyone. (Jude spends all her free time out on that park.)