Goggle-eyes

by Anne Fine

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘All right?’ She swirled around, skirts flying. ‘Am I all right? I’m better than all right. I am magnificent!’

  ‘What happened? Why are you so excited?’

  (I wondered suddenly if Goggle-eyes had captured her outside the court, shoved a ring on her finger, and made her agree to marry him.)

  ‘What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. I was wonderful.’

  ‘Were you acquitted?’

  ‘Acquitted?’ She looked blank for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think I was acquitted. I think I was discharged.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  She reached out for my hands, and spun me round. ‘Oh, how should I know, Kitty? I’m not a lawyer.’ Then, dropping my hands, she kept on spinning round by herself. ‘But I should be. I made the best speech in the world!’

  ‘How come?’ I interrupted her. ‘How come you got to make a speech at all? I thought you told me you were going to plead guilty.’

  She blushed. (That’s not like her.)

  ‘I was. But then I got a bit confused, and pleaded the wrong way.’

  ‘That’s not like you.’

  ‘I told you, I got confused.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked suddenly. She’s not the only one who’d make a good lawyer. I myself have a pretty cunning line in subtle prosecution questions. ‘Why did you get confused? Was there anyone sitting in court you were surprised to see?’

  She stopped her spinning and peered at me suspiciously.

  ‘You knew,’ she accused me. ‘You knew he’d be there! You could have warned me, Kitty. He practically startled me out of my wits. You’ve no idea what a shock it was to see him sitting there glowering at me between the Quakers and all Flowery Headscarf’s supporters from St Thomas & St James.’

  ‘At least he turned up.’

  She grinned.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He turned up. And since he startled me into pleading not guilty, he got to hear my historic statement.’

  She would have started off the swirling and spinning again, but I stopped her.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘He had to sit there and listen to you. So now it’s your turn. Phone him up.’

  Mum stared.

  ‘Phone him up? Why?’

  I stared her out.

  ‘Because,’ I said. ‘I miss him. I’d like to see him. And so would Jude. You saw him today, but we didn’t, so now it’s our turn. You phone him up and ask him over here.’

  Normally, she’d have argued. I know she would. At least for a couple of hours. But I had sort of floored her with perfect timing. She felt so good that nothing could spoil her mood. Part of her was pleased that he’d taken the trouble to turn up and support her. And part of her felt guilty because, deep down, she really knew we missed him badly. Mrs Lupey says living successfully in a family is largely a matter of timing, and, I must say, I picked exactly the right moment to put the boot in.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll phone. I don’t mind. We’ll have him round tonight if he’s free.’

  ‘He’s free,’ I told her. ‘He’s been free for weeks.’

  Of course he was free. I didn’t have to eavesdrop Mum’s end of the call for more than a few seconds before it was quite clear he’d be round at our house in almost no time at all. Trust Mum to take advantage! ‘Oh, please, Gerald. On your way, would you pick Jude up from Hetty’s?’

  I don’t know what he answered. But I can guess what he felt. I know how Jude felt, anyway, because Hetty’s dad told us later Jude threw herself into Gerald’s arms with such force he was astonished Gerald wasn’t more seriously winded than he was.

  They both looked fine by the time they arrived home. I let them in, since Mum was still upstairs. He strode through the door and hugged me tightly. His pockets were absolutely bulging with lemons.

  ‘You’ll ruin your suit,’ I warned him. ‘It’ll go baggy.’

  ‘I don’t care!’

  He swung me round. (It seemed to be National Make Kitty Dizzy Day.)

  ‘Your mother was wonderful in court,’ he told me. ‘She was magnificent. She made the best speech in the world!’

  I grinned.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘She already told me.’

  ‘Glad to know her total lack of modesty remains undimmed,’ he remarked (quite charitably for him, I thought), and set to work – steadily, reliably and predictably – with knife and chopping board, ice-cubes and lemons.

  And that’s how we go on. He’s around a lot. I can’t say he’s altered any of his views. He still thinks I ought to keep my room clean and tidy, and open my curtains first thing in the morning, and not eat between meals. He still goes round the house complaining: ‘These lights are on again! I’ve just been round and switched the whole lot off. Now they’re all on again!’ He hasn’t changed.

  Mum has, though. He’s got her firmly on his side now. She’s on my back every Saturday morning, thrusting the duster in my hand, parking the vacuum cleaner outside my door. ‘Give it to Jude after you’ve finished,’ she tells me. ‘She has to clean hers too.’ (At least everything’s fair now.) Mum’s back to being as tough with us as she used to be before Dad left. I think Gerald gives her the moral support that she needs to keep battling. She’s even stopped paying me for the potatoes.

  He’s still got the old sharp tongue. You can’t organize a street collection or a demonstration without getting a barrage from Gerald about how you ought to be doing it differently, or more efficiently, or somewhere else. But he’s been very helpful. His little printing firm runs off all our fliers and information sheets now, and I can’t believe it’s really all quite as cheap as he tells me. But he never comes along on demonstrations any more. He just sits at home with his feet up, reading the paper. We don’t mind. After all, he was only an embarrassment. And when we come home now, crabby and exhausted, we never have to stop off at Patsy’s Frying Palace and hang around for ages waiting for the next batch of chips. He always has something splendid waiting.

  I don’t know how long things will last between him and Mum. You’d think it would be difficult to spend so much time with someone who thinks so differently about the world. But there have been no great explosions between them since that day when she went to court. Mum claims that’s because, secretly, though Gerald won’t admit it, he was completely won round by her eloquence to our point of view. Gerald says that’s nonsense. He says all that happened that day was that he finally understood what it all meant to her. He said she stood there, leaning on the rail, telling the whole court about the paint peeling off the walls in her hospital, and babies brought in grey-faced from coughing in damp rooms, and crippled children staring bleakly out of rain-splattered windows because their wheelchair batteries have run down and there’s no one to change them. And how the sheer waste of it breaks her heart. So many people struggling night and day to care for those they love against tremendous odds, whilst little cliques of self-important rulers and blinkered soldiers play senseless and expensive war-games.

  And it’s our planet, said Mum. Ours more than theirs. There’s more of us. And when we go to all the trouble and strain of raising our children properly, we want to know that there’s a future. If we take time preparing proper meals and making our children practise their musical instruments, we want to know the chances are that they’ll grow up and there will always be music.

  That’s why I cut the wire, Mum said. Because all day I work with people who need help. And I know more money is spent on these shiny new missiles than is ever spent on the people these missiles are supposed to be defending. And if things don’t change, more and more people are going to come to believe the way they’re living isn’t worth protecting.

  Gerald says he hasn’t changed his own mind at all. But now he understands better why Mum acts as she does. Next time, he says with a sly grin, he’ll support her more strongly, and look after both of us so she can go to jail. (She always smiles back so sweetly when he says t
his, but, if I know Mum, it won’t be so long before poor Gerald finds he’s been taken up on his very kind offer, and she’s been sent down for a month!)

  I wouldn’t mind. I get along with Gerald really well now. Dad sometimes asks, when he phones up from Berwick upon Tweed:

  ‘No sign of wedding bells yet?’ and I say:

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  But, thinking about it a couple of nights ago, I realized things have changed more than I ever could have imagined since the day Gerald first came to our house. I still think the way he thinks is mad, of course. Nuclear weapons cost the earth and they could cost us the earth. But I can live with him. He still thinks there are reds under the beds, but even Gerald’s slowly coming round to the view that better some are red than all are dead.

  Mum says not to worry. Like everyone else with any sense at all, he’ll have to come round in the end. She even got him out last week, marching in support of her nurses. (Trust Gerald! He turned up at the hospital carrying a banner that said Rectify the Anomaly. Mum nearly died!)

  He still won’t pitch out for CND, though. I don’t mind any more. I just feel so sorry for him that he’s too blind to see what I see, too numb to feel what I feel. Sometimes when I go leaping and hopping down the street, and the air’s crisp and sharp, and the leaves crackle under my feet, and the sun slides out from behind clouds like shining silver, I think that Gerald can’t ever have felt this happy, not even when he was young. For, if he had, he’d surely make more of an effort now to help us save the lovely little green planet we’re living on, so others can take their turn for ever and ever.

  And sometimes, when he’s lolling about on the sofa on Sunday mornings, testing Jude on her knowledge of the stock market, I don’t even bother thinking that. I just find him soothing and amiable and steady – easy to have around. I’m used to him, I suppose. He’s part of the furniture. I honestly believe, if he and Mum got married, I wouldn’t mind.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  She wrinkled her nose suspiciously, but she didn’t argue. She just sat tight for a few seconds, thinking. I didn’t disturb her.

  Then:

  ‘Of course, Toad-shoes is different. He’s not like Goggle-eyes at all. He’s awful. I’ll tell you what he’s like. He’s –’

  A frightful banging on the door interrupted her. I thought for a moment this was Liz again, back to screech another public service announcement through the lost property cupboard door. But this particular visitor was no ineffectual knob-rattling slouch. With one sharp tug, the door flew open. Helly and I were blinded by the light.

  Mission Control.

  I don’t think, for all her great insight, Mrs Lupey is any more cut out to be a Samaritan than I am. Considering the last time she set eyes on Helen Johnston Helly was a gibbering, blubbering wreck, I thought the tone of voice was somewhat waspish:

  ‘Are you two ever planning to come out?’

  I stumbled to my feet. Oh, agony! Pins and needles! While I was doubled with pain, grinding my foot against the floor, Mrs Lupey put poor old Helly through the third degree.

  ‘Feeling better, dear?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Lupey. I’m ever so much better. I think I’m fine now, honestly.’

  ‘You don’t want to go home?’

  ‘No, really. I’m all right. I feel much better.’

  ‘You’ve been in this cupboard for an awfully long time.’

  ‘Kitty’s been telling me a story.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ She turned towards me, and I think she winked. ‘I’ll say one thing for Kitty. She spins a good yarn.’

  Helen was busy now, brushing the bits of fluff off the sleeves of her woolly. She answered perfectly cheerfully:

  ‘I can’t believe Kitty and I have been in here all morning!’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Mrs Lupey, standing back to let her out. ‘That is the power of the story-teller for you.’

  (It’s one of Loopy’s Great Theories. She’s always on about it. Living your life is a long and doggy business, says Mrs Lupey. And stories and books help. Some help you with the living itself. Some help you just take a break. The best do both at the same time.)

  She may be right. One way or the other, I’d certainly cheered up Helly Johnston. She strode right out of that cupboard smiling, and, patting me warmly on the hand for thanks, ran off upstairs to have lunch with her mate Liz without so much as a backward look.

  Mrs Lupey took hold of my shoulders, and turned me to face her.

  ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘I knew that I could count on you. You’ve done a good job, Number Twenty-two.’

  Fortunately she was as hungry as I was. She didn’t hang about to find out any details about what was bothering Helly Johnston. She took straight off.

  Good job, too. I’d have been stumped to tell her anything except the villain’s name: Toad-shoes. And I’m still standing by, waiting to hear the full story. Helen’s so busy and cheerful again these days, she won’t take the time off to fill me in with all the grisly particulars.

  I’ll just have to keep waiting. And so will you.