Moderate Violence
By Veronica Bennett
Rickshaw paperback
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Rickshaw Publishing Ltd, 102 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 9PL
www.rickshawpublishing.co.uk
Copyright © Veronica Bennett 2013
The right of Victoria Bennett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-9565368-5-3
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
Cover designed by Richard Smith.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Rickshaw Publishing.
Printed and bound in Great Britain for Rickshaw Publishing Ltd by Print CPI Group.
Acknowledgements
In March 2011, I was lucky enough to be elected a Hawthornden Fellow, and spent a very productive month at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, working on Moderate Violence. The Hawthornden Foundation runs a writers’ retreat at the castle, where writers can concentrate on their project surrounded by the tranquility of the Esk Valley. This is made possible by the continued generosity of Mrs Drue Heinz.
I am very grateful for the opportunity granted me by Mrs Heinz and the Hawthornden Committee, and would also like to thank Hamish, Jonty, Colin, Sarah and James for a stimulating and enjoyable four weeks. Without their comments, suggestions and expertise, the book would be greatly diminished. Meanwhile, if it hadn't been for Sarah Molloy of A. M. Heath and Jo Doyle and Paul Michaelides of Rickshaw, the book would never even have been finished. Many thanks to them.
Veronica Bennett 2013
Chapter One
Jo was leaning on the wall beside the door that said ‘Mr B. Treasure, Headteacher’. The corridor wall felt cold through her school blouse. She pressed her shoulder blades harder against the bare bricks.
“Joanna Probert?”
Mr Treasure’s secretary’s face came round the door and regarded Jo with the sort of look cops give serial rapists in American TV shows. “Wait there.”
The face disappeared. Something deep beneath Jo’s skin - maybe her spleen or her gall bladder - rolled over. Here she stood against a wall, imprisoned. Why couldn’t a school just treat you like a human being? In the real world, if a secretary was as rude as that to someone waiting to see her boss, she’d get fired. But if you were wearing a white polyester-cotton blouse and a navy blue polyester skirt, everyone wearing ordinary clothes could be as unpleasant as they liked.
The face reappeared, still with its you’re-going-down-for-life-buddy stare. “All right, go in.”
Jo smiled pleasantly. "Thank you".
The secretary stood back. Jo walked through the outer office and opened Mr Treasure’s door.
“Ah. Jo,” he said, in the same voice he’d used when Jo was in Year Seven, and had come to get a Good Work Certificate (the kind that no one bothered to try to get after Year Seven). He stood up and motioned her to the visitors’ chair. “Sit down. I won’t keep you long.”
Jo sat down. “Is it about my dad?”
Mr Treasure, who was just sitting down again, stopped half way, as if she’d warned him that the paint on his chair was wet. His normally benign expression sharpened. “Well, yes, partly.”
“What’s the other part?”
He settled into his chair, put his elbows on the desk and made a tent with his fingers. Jo thought he looked very tired. There were dark patches under his eyes. Being a headteacher was surely a terrible job. “Let’s take one thing at a time,” he suggested. “Your dad first?”
Jo shrugged.
“Don’t shrug, Jo,” said Mr Treasure steadily. “This does concern you, you know.”
Jo was annoyed at herself. She could feel herself going pink. Mr Treasure was just so good at being right. When he was telling you off you always felt like an idiot.
“Your father had an appointment to see me today…” – he glanced at the open diary on the desk – “…at twelve thirty. But he didn’t appear. I think you probably have a good idea why, don’t you?”
Jo went pinker. “Yes, sir,” she whispered.
Mr Treasure sat back and looked at her calmly. “I don’t like being messed around.”
Jo tried to look at him, but her nerve failed and she looked instead at her hands. They felt sticky and school-stained. She spread them on the blue skirt that soon, with luck, she’d never have to wear again.
“No, sir,” she said. “I’m sorry he let you down.”
Mr Treasure didn’t go all martyred and teacherish. He said, “Look, we both know that he’s either got to sort this out himself or someone else has. And meanwhile, some sorting out has to be done in your life too, doesn’t it?”
Jo still couldn’t look up. “Is this the other part of why you wanted to see me?”
Mr Treasure didn’t give her an answer. He gave her another question. “How do you feel, Jo?”
She didn’t know what to say. “Now, do you mean?” she ventured, finally looking up at him, searching his face for clues. “Or in general?”
“Either.”
Jo still couldn’t work out what he was fishing for. “I feel…OK, I suppose,” she said warily.
He didn’t speak. He waited, alert for her next words. That thing inside her, whatever it was, rolled over again. “Er…lots of people manage without their mothers,” she said. “I mean, she’s not dead or anything.”
He still didn’t speak.
“And it’s not as if I’m a young kid,” she added.
She felt weary. Today hadn’t worked out well. Pascale had told her that she and Ed Samuels were having a trial separation so, since Jo sat next to Ed in History, she’d broached the subject. “Your limit of endurance is three months, then, is it?” she’d said casually as he’d slid into his chair. But he’d given her a God-you’re-stupid look and slammed down his history book, swearing at her under his breath.
Holly had explained. “Pascale’s trying to make Ed jealous by pretending she wants to go out with Tom Clarke. “You know what she’s like.”
“Why, though?” Jo had asked. “Ed’s her slave.”
Holly had gazed at Jo, her eyes full of sympathy. “You just don’t get it, do you? Pascale has to have at least two boys drooling over her or she won’t even get up in the morning. And she’s got this extra thrill with Ed, because you like him too.” She’d paused, still watching Jo. “Well, you do, don’t you?”
Jo sighed, doing her best to look straight at Mr Treasure so that he didn’t think it was a shifty, or insolent, or teenage-moody sigh. It was just weariness. “Look,” she said, “I’m not going to jump out of the window like Serena Wilkinson did when her mum and dad split up. Honestly, I’m OK.”
His eyes left her face. Jo watched while he altered the position of his blotter, very slightly, and moved the fountain pen lying beside it a few millimetres. “Sixteen isn’t a young kid, I agree,” he said. “But it’s not quite an adult either, is it?”
Jo frowned. Now what did he want her to say?
He took a cardboard folder from a drawer and placed it on the desk in front of her. “These are copies of your reports for this year,” he said. “Do you want to look at them?”
“I know what they say, sir.”
“So do I.” He leaned forward. “But I also know that despite what they say, you’re apparently about to leave us.”
“Sounds like I’ve got a terminal illness”
said Jo, wondering if she was smiling or grimacing. Maybe she did have a terminal illness. Terminal inability to work out what was going on.
“You know what I mean, Jo, so leave out the acting tough, will you? You’ll do very well in the Sixth Form, and afterwards at university, so why give up now?”
Into Jo’s mind came a picture of Ed Samuels sitting in his usual place by the window in the science lab, one elbow on the windowsill and the other hand doodling on his notepad. Jo’s seat was in the corner behind him. She could watch him without anyone seeing. “Um…” She tried to concentrate on what Mr Treasure had asked. “Well, it’s not because of my parents splitting up, sir. I mean, I’d want to leave school even if they hadn’t.”
His face didn’t change. “Why?”
“I just don’t see the point of it any more. I…I think I want a rest from it. Or I want a rest from something.” She looked into his face. “I don’t know what it is.”
“Had enough of exams?” he suggested.
“Maybe. Or maybe just…the whole thing.”
“School?”
Jo didn’t know how to answer. She thought about how weird it is that by the time you’ve been in a school for five years it might as well be five hundred. The place is wired into your consciousness as indelibly as your name. For the rest of your life you’ll remember the smell of the gym, the wads of chewing gum stuck on the undersides of the desks, and every single annoying thing about every single teacher. School would be with her whether she left now or in two years’ time. So it wasn’t school as a place. It was school as life, and Jo’s life was what she wanted to have a rest from. Or maybe escape from. She just wanted to be somewhere she wasn’t right now. But she couldn’t say all that to Mr Treasure.
He waited a long time for her to speak. When she remained silent he said, “Right.”
Jo looked at the unopened folder on the desk, waiting for what was coming next. Mr Treasure never shouted, so he wouldn’t do that. But once he’d opened that folder, she knew that whatever he said would make her feel bad.
He didn’t open the folder. “Will you do me a favour?” he asked quietly, with no undercurrent of frustration. “In fact, two favours?”
She nodded, watching him. His face didn’t have that bunched look teachers’ faces usually had when they were disappointed with you. He spoke calmly and gravely, like an actor in an appeal for a cancer charity.
“First, pass my message to your father and ask him to make another appointment.” When he saw that Jo was about to protest, he raised his palm. “No, don’t say there’s no point because you’re leaving school anyway. I want to speak to him, as arranged. And second, whatever you decide, I want to speak to you too. Come and see me…” – he consulted the diary – “…at two o’clock on the twenty-eighth of August.”
“That’s in the holidays,” said Jo stupidly.
“I’ll be here.”
Jo felt small. She seemed to have lost some sort of argument. “Why do you want to see me?”
“You’ll find out then.” He pushed back his chair. “Two favours, then. Don’t forget.”
Jo stood up. “I’ll put a reminder in my phone.”
“Good idea,” he said, standing up too. The interview was over.
* * * * * *
“Come on, Trev, one more step. That’s it. You can do it, now.”
Jo’s dad was even drunker than he’d been on the day Wales beat England 33-5, when he’d vomited into an empty dustbin then fallen asleep in it, upside down. He was too unsteady to find the front door without his friend Ken’s help. And Ken had had a few, too.
“I know where my own bloody house is, man,” said Trevor grumpily.
Watching from her bedroom window, Jo saw him push Ken away, stumble, sit down hard in the hydrangea bush and burst into laughter. Jo ran downstairs and opened the front door. “For Christ’s sake, Trevor!”
“For Christ’s sake, Trevor!” said Trevor and Ken together in high voices, and then collapsed into laughter again. Trevor was too weak to get out of the bush. He half sat, half lay among the broken branches, clutching his chest, his mouth open, his eyes blissfully closed.
“Will you help me get him out of there?” Jo asked Ken. “If you’re sober enough?”
“Don’t you be so bloody cheeky!” bellowed Trevor. “You’re not too old for a punishment, Jo-girl.”
He allowed Ken to take one arm, and Jo the other, so that they could pull him on to his feet and guide him, lurching, into the house.
“Jo-girl, Jo-girl, give it a go-girl,” said Trevor in a sing-song voice. “Jeez, I should be a bloody songwriter.”
“You might have to be a songwriter now, mate,” said Ken. “Come on, Jo, let’s put him on the sofa.”
“What?” asked Jo.
“I said let’s put him – ”
“No, about him having to be a songwriter now.”
Ken, who was younger and chubbier than her lanky father, looked at her with watery, just-stopped-laughing eyes. “Oh…” They lowered Trevor to the sofa, where he lay with his head on a cushion, snorting. “I think I’d better leave your dad to tell you.”
“He’s asleep,” said Jo.
“No he’s not, he’s just arsing around.” He jabbed Trevor’s shoulder. Trevor didn’t move. “All right, he’s asleep. But it’s for him to tell you.”
“Is it the reason he’s been in the pub all afternoon?” she asked.
“Well…” Ken sat down in an armchair and put his elbows on his knees.
“He’s lost his job, hasn’t he?”
Ken looked at the carpet. Poor Ken, thought Jo. Trevor had dropped him in it, as he had countless times before. He shouldn’t have to be doing this. “Yep,” he said. “But they’ve given him a redundancy payment.”
“How much?”
“Er...”
“How much, Ken?”
Ken interlaced his stubby fingers. He was still looking at the carpet. “Not enough, he thinks.”
“So he’s pissed off as well as pissed, is he?” asked Jo coldly. “Guinness pissed off, or whisky-and-chaser pissed off?”
He lifted his head and they looked at each other.
“Neat gin pissed off?” she suggested. “In the middle of the afternoon?”
Ken didn’t say anything. They went on looking at each other. Then a sudden deluge of not-giving-a-toss flooded over Jo, and she opened the door.
Ken took the hint and got up. He nodded towards her sleeping father. "Maybe stay out of the way when he wakes up,” he said apologetically, and shut the door behind him.
* * * * * *
The truth was that Trevor was a drunk. Jo didn’t blame him. If your wife walked out, leaving you to look after your only child, but was always criticizing how you did it, and you hated being an accountant as fiercely as it’s possible to hate a job (and only did it in order to support the wife), you’d probably be a drunk too.
But it was inconvenient, for sure. Sometimes it made Jo so angry that she would flip impatiently through Key Pathways in Triple Science, a textbook unparalleled in its tedium, looking for ways to poison him, electrocute him or blow him up without anyone noticing it wasn’t an accident. At other times it made her sorry, in the way you’d feel sorry for a saucer-eyed African child, helpless in the face of disaster. But she had given up trying to talk to him about it, because he would go all daddy’s-girl and hug her, saying that she was the Sparkliest Diamond in the Princess of Perfection’s Crown. She would unwind his arms and tell him he stank of beer and fags, and start to do her homework with hot eyes and a jerky heartbeat. Then, when she came downstairs, he’d be snoring on the sofa and she’d have to get herself spaghetti on toast for dinner.
Recently, the whole thing had begun to make her feel numb with boredom. Not resigned, not intolerant, not even resentful. Just utterly, indescribably uninterested. Life with Trevor was like the soap operas on TV, which Jo had stopped watching because they were all about divorce and drunkenness. She resented acting in a s
oap opera without even getting paid, so ignoring the problem seemed the best way to go. She was, as Mr Treasure had reminded her, only sixteen.
This time, it took a long time for Trevor to wake up. Jo had eaten beans on toast and washed up and watched two episodes of The Big Bang Theory and revised for an hour by the time he stirred. She was working at the dining table, so she could keep an eye on him. She’d read somewhere that drunks can choke if they vomit. It wasn’t that she minded Trevor choking, but that she might be held responsible, and probably sent to prison for murdering him.
Suddenly he sat up, coughing. Jo resisted the impulse to impale him with spiky questions, the kind of questions that her mum, Tess, had always made sound so ugly. And she had no desire to look torn-up and jagged-edged like Tess had looked when she’d asked them.
“It’s all right,” she said, “you’ve just been asleep. Cup of tea?”
Trevor had his head in his hands. “No, no,” he groaned.
“Water, then. And a headache pill?”
He didn’t say anything, so Jo got the water and the pills anyway, and held them out to him.
He looked awful. His eyes, which old videos told her had been bright and attractive when he was young, hadn’t looked like that for ages. They were bloodshot, and he needed to clean his teeth, and maybe shave and comb his hair, too. She looked at his hair. It was the best thing about his appearance. It still looked like it did in the old videos, since he hadn’t lost much of it. It was made of a hundred different colours, from almost blond to dark red, and changed in every light. It was what had made Tess first notice him. Now it was flattened where he had been sleeping, and it wasn’t very clean.
“Who was in the pub?” she asked, watching him jerk his head back as he swallowed the pills. That can’t help a headache, she thought. “All the regulars? You must have had a jolly old time.”
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