The Doorstep Child

by Annie Murray

  ‘Oh, here’re some more of my grandchildren!’ Mom would cry when they arrived. ‘Come and give Nanna a love! Trace, Andrew, c’m’ere!’

  She made a great fuss of them, giving them sweets and little presents, buying their affection and attention. Evie could see Mom was loving being the great big queen bee, in the middle of everything, everyone running round her, bossing Rita about day after day. More fool Rita, Evie thought. But if that was how it was going to be, she didn’t really mind. She wanted her children to have grandparents, people to love them. And who else did she have? Jack’s family were a dead loss . . . Pray God it would be all right.

  ‘Aren’t you going to see what Santa’s brought for you?’ Evie said, desperate to lift her daughter’s sombre mood.

  Tracy lit up immediately. ‘Let’s get Andrew up now, shall we?’

  Soon the two of them were pulling paper off their presents as fast as they could.

  Evie had saved every penny she could for Christmas. She had put some paper streamers and tinsel up in their little sitting room to make it festive. She wanted to lavish presents on her children, not wanting them to feel they were missing anything, however much she was feeling desperate herself.

  There had been drinks down the pub after work on the twenty-third. Everyone had asked her to go along. Some of the others she worked with, sitting in rows, number crunching on the comptometers, were nice, friendly girls. To her surprise, a shy-looking man who she saw in the canteen sometimes asked her if she was going. Only then, she discovered his name was Alan. He was a quiet, gentle-looking man, a fair bit older than her, Evie realized, with a pale face and mousey hair. Nothing all that special to look at, except for his eyes, which were brown and smiling and seemed to radiate kindness and good nature. You couldn’t help liking the look of him.

  ‘I was hoping you’d be going along,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ With a twinkle he added, ‘Or even two?’

  Evie was flattered, but also a bit panicky. She just couldn’t cope with anything else at the moment. And anyway, she was still married – still felt married.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t,’ she said quietly. She smiled at him, though. He looked nice. ‘I can’t stop out late – I’ve got to get back to my kids.’ At the moment they were all that mattered.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked taken aback. He had obviously assumed she was single. ‘That’s a shame. Well, another time, maybe?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ she said. But she didn’t really mean it.

  She had bought little bits and pieces for their stockings – a pair of old brown wool ones of her own. Tracy was mad about writing and drawing, so she had put in felt tips and paper, some plastic stencils and a fat pen full of all different-coloured biros you could choose in turn by pressing a button, along with sweets and a tangerine. For Andrew she chose jack stones and Dinky cars and marbles. She had bought each of them some striped socks as well and a main present: a View-Master for Andrew, into which you could put little slides and watch them almost like a film. They did not have a television – the Grants did not have one in the house at all – so she hoped that would make up for it a bit. For Tracy she bought a Cindy doll, with shiny black hair and a selection of clothes to dress her in.

  ‘Oh!’ Andrew yelled, the grey specs of the View-Master pressed to his face, clicking down the little lever at the side to turn the slides. ‘It’s Dr Who!’

  She had to prise them off him to have breakfast. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get to Nanna’s and help!’

  They exchanged Christmas greetings with the Grants who were hurrying off to church. Later they were to go to their son’s in Bartley Green.

  ‘Have a lovely day!’ they said, in their neat hats and coats. ‘So nice to have all your family to go to!’

  As they approached along Alwold Road, they could hear raised voices. Immediately Evie’s stomach knotted up. Not Mom . . . Please no . . . But she could already hear that it was.

  They could see people outside the house, Mom in a red frock, someone else the other side of her, Shirley on the step, her hair hanging down, still in her nightie. Evie saw Ann lurking up by the wall of the house, as if trying to disappear into it.

  She took her children’s hands. Tracy looked up at her, seeming scared.

  ‘What’s happening, Mom? Is Nanna angry?’

  Evie wanted to turn back and go home. She could see her mother had already got more than warmed up. One hand was on her waist, the other waving in the air at the other person. The old shame washed through her – Mom, always spoiling for a fight. The mom everyone looked down on, wanted to keep away from. But she couldn’t just walk off – not now Tracy and Andrew were here. Not on Christmas Day.

  ‘Don’t you tell me what I can ******g well do in my own ******g house!’ she heard.

  ‘Don’t you shout at me, you dirty cow!’ the neighbour shrieked back. ‘This neighbourhood’s gone right down since you and your tribe of yobs moved in ’ere. It was all right before.’

  ‘Well, yow should teach yower brats to keep their mucky hands off other people’s belongings!’

  Evie could feel the silent shock of her children. She knew from experience that her mother had begun on the drink, that her aggression was already beyond reason. She was swaying slightly, slurring her words, and there was no way of talking any sense into her when she was like that. Weekends were the time of dedicated drinking. Evie always kept away at weekends and even Shirley escaped if she could. She had not expected it yet – not at this time on Christmas morning.

  ‘Why’s she shouting?’ Tracy said in a small voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Evie said, despair washing through her. ‘Something’s upset her.’

  So far as she could make out as they drew near, the neighbour’s son had taken something he shouldn’t have.

  A man appeared out of the next-door house, dressed but barefoot as if disturbed by the racket.

  ‘What’s going on, Susan?’ he yelled.

  ‘Oh, it’s just this’ – his wife couldn’t seem to find a word and flapped her hand in Irene Sutton’s direction instead – ‘carrying on!’ She seemed bolder now she had back-up. ‘Roddy borrowed a scooter or summat, that’s all, and now she’s acting as if it’s a bank robbery.’

  ‘Stole, more like!’ Mom roared. ‘Your lad’s a thieving little—’

  ‘Irene!’ Now Dad came storming outside in his vest. ‘Get in ’ere and shurrup!’

  ‘Don’t yow cowing well tell me to shurrup! It’s ’er yer want to be talking to. Tell her to keep that little runt of ’ers off of things that don’t belong to ’im!’

  A four-way shouting match then kicked off between the two couples. Evie was just on the point of turning round and going away, sick at the sight, when Shirley looked across and saw her.

  ‘Evie!’ she called, beckoning. Evie felt as if she was being rescued. But she wondered afterwards, many times, whether if she had refused then and turned for home, things would have been different in the long run. But she knew, really, that they would not.

  Forty-Seven

  The house smelt, as ever, of stale fags and burnt toast and some unsavoury whiff whose origins Evie did not want to think about. On the kitchen table lay an enormous turkey, plucked and indecent-looking.

  ‘It’s too big to fit in the oven,’ Shirley said. She seemed tired and jaded. ‘I dunno how we’re s’posed to cook the thing. Dad’ll have to saw a bit off.’

  ‘Started already, have they?’ Evie did a drinking mime.

  Shirley rolled her eyes. ‘Jimmy came round, before they went off to church – with a scooter he’d had. He left it here for later and that lad fancied a go on it.’ She rolled her eyes again.

  ‘Why don’t you go and find Ann?’ Evie said to Tracy.

  ‘Go on, Trace, she’s upstairs,’ Shirley put on a syrupy voice. ‘Why don’t you go with her, Andrew?’

  Andrew hid his head in Evie’s side. She knew he was unsettled by what he had seen.

  ‘He’s staying with me,’ Ev
ie said. ‘He’s not used to all this carry-on.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Shirley sneered. ‘Listen to you, Lady Muck.’

  ‘What?’ I just said—’

  ‘Oh, shut it,’ Shirley said, slamming out of the room.

  Everyone was in the foulest of tempers. Mom and Dad finally gave up lambasting the neighbours and came in, slamming the front door so that the frame cracked.

  ‘Look at that bleeding thing!’ Dad erupted at the sight of the turkey on the table. ‘Yer daft cow, Irene! Why in God’s name did yer buy one that size?’

  ‘It were a bargain, that’s why.’ She slumped down on a chair by the table, eyeing the oversized fowl.

  Dad pressed a finger to his temple, twizzling it round. ‘It were a bargain – that’s ’cause no one wanted it,’ he said, as if addressing a very stupid child. ‘’Cept you fell for it, dain’t yer? You’re barmy you are, Irene. Soft in the cowing ’ead.’

  ‘Oh, shut yer cake’ole,’ Mom said, looking round for a drink. Evie knew from lifelong practice that that was what was on her mind. ‘Get yer saw out.’ She gave a belly chuckle at this double meaning. ‘Go on, get it out, if yer still can! You’ll ’ave to cut it in half.’

  While Ray was at the table, sleeves rolled up, sawing along the turkey’s back, a ripe stream of curses falling from his lips, Rita, Conn and all their crew arrived, all spit and polish in Sunday best. The boys all had their hair slicked back and were now acting up after having to be unnaturally demure during Mass.

  ‘Look at you lot!’ Irene mocked them. ‘Done up like fourpenny cowing rabbits! That soap in your hair, Jimmy? You look like the Brylcreem boy!’

  Jimmy, who hated church with a passion, unlike Joseph who was an altar boy, blushed furiously and kicked a chair.

  ‘What’s that horrible stink?’ Rita said, screwing up her nose. She was swamped by a huge flowery frock and walked about all the time pushing her hands into the small of her back as if to emphasize to everyone just how pregnant she was, which was very. The baby was due next month. She pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Sod off, kids. I’ve ’ad enough of you all this morning. And what’re you gawping at?’ she snapped at Evie.

  ‘Nothing,’ Evie said. ‘Only . . . you sure it’s not twins?’

  ‘No, it ain’t sodding twins, all right?’ Rita lashed out.

  ‘Get that cowing bird in the oven,’ Mom said, to no one in particular, though obviously not intending to lift a finger herself. ‘And you can all get on and do the spuds. Pour me some of that ale, Ray.’ She kicked her shoes off and sat back.

  Evie decided she’d take herself upstairs to see how Tracy and Ann were getting on.

  ‘And where d’yer think you’re off to?’ Rita bawled at her. ‘You ain’t leaving me to do everything as usual, Lady Muck. You can stay ’ere and do the veg – and get Shirl wherever she is. Thinks she can just sit on her backside an’ all.’

  One day . . . That was all. Just one day with her family. Was it so impossible to think they could get through that?

  But Christmas Day crawled past with agonizing slowness and by the end of it, Evie knew her honeymoon with her family was truly over.

  The boys roared in and out, overexcited and needing their dinner, which would not be ready until nearly five o’clock. They had fights, bawled, yelled, bled, even with Conn out there kicking a ball about with them and limply trying to keep order. Evie peeled potatoes and scraped carrots, Rita waddled around bossing everyone about while Mom bossed her about. She groaned that her back hurt. Shirley, like a vicious storm cloud, took on a pile of sprouts. With glowering slowness, she cut the stalk off each as if she was beheading someone. Tracy and Ann appeared every so often, looking hungry and miserable. And Irene and Ray drank. And drank.

  Evie slipped out of the kitchen once her jobs were done, wanting to get away from them all. She felt more and more desperate. If it had just been her, she might have left – just slunk out of the front door and never gone back. Nothing ever changed. Nothing. But there were the kids . . .

  In the front room, on the grey nylon carpet, were a couple of defeated-looking armchairs covered in threadbare grey velour, with dark circles worn by previous owners’ heads. There was a small table with ring stains and an overflowing glass ashtray, but most of the surface was hidden by the television on which Bing Crosby was singing in a heartfelt way to the empty room. Someone had stuck up a few half-hearted crepe streamers, draping the wall over the gas fire, but a large part of the room was now taken up with a huge Christmas tree, laden with tinsel and plastic shiny baubles. Among the branches Evie could see packages in red paper.

  The tree was the best thing in the room. Evie looked into it with a sense of sinking desolation. Why were Mom and Dad so incapable of making a home that anyone would want to live in? Why was Mom so lazy and filthy? Why was she always the one who had to open her great big mouth and get into a fight?

  Standing in the doorway, a sense of despair washed over her again. Why had she left Canada and the gentle life they had had there? Oh Jack, Jack . . . Tears filled her eyes. It happened like that, she found. Missing him suddenly, knowing all that she had lost, like being stabbed. It wasn’t just that he had fallen for another woman. It was her fault. The children. She had forced him into having them. She had never been good enough.

  And coming back here, she had thought things might have changed, that she had changed enough to face this family. Now, standing here, listening to Rita moaning in the kitchen, to a loud, wrenching belch from her father, to the wrangling of the boys outside, she felt five years old again. Stuck here, with them. And she had allowed it to happen. She had come running back – back to nought, right where she started. Less than nought.

  ‘Eves!’ She heard Rita’s voice bawl for her. ‘Where are yer? Get in ’ere and help, yer lazy cow!’

  They all squeezed into the back kitchen for dinner. Even with the table at full stretch, some of the boys had to eat off their laps on stools away from the table. Andrew and Wayne, the smallest, sat perched side by side on the back doorstep.

  By the time they were eating it was already dark outside and the gloom was offset by the bulb hanging over them, shrouded by a brown shade. Rita doled out the food at the cooker, like a dinner lady. By this time, Evie was desperate, her thoughts turning like a rusty old roundabout. How had she got herself into this again?

  Mom and Dad were so tanked up that Evie could see her father’s eyes drooping over his puffy cheeks. He never said much these days. The minute dinner was over he’d be snoring in the front room. Mom was in full fighting mood. She managed not to say anything about the Irish because Conn was there and she had to be careful. Conn, as usual, said not a word anyway, but ate huge piles of food. Everyone else except the Irish came in for a drunken tongue lashing.

  ‘’Ole of cowing Birminum’s full of blackies and Pakis now . . .’ She thought this rhyme very amusing and often repeated it. Her face was a deep pink, her voice slurred. ‘Comin’ ’ere, taking our cowin’ jobs . . . That feller Enoch Powell was right, send ’em back to the cowing jungle . . . ’Ere, pass me the Bisto. Don’t go and tip it all on yours, Ray! ’Ow can you ’ave a proper Christmas with all them blackies about, eh? The government ought to do summat, they oughta . . .’

  On and on – they’d never shut her up now. Same old thing. Then it was the Pakis and their stinking food and then the neighbours and that stuck-up cow across the street with her husband who thought he was too good for them all because he worked at the Austin . . .

  For God’s sake, change the record, Evie wanted to scream, as her mother rambled on. All these people you’re being so nasty about – I bet every one of them’s better than you are!

  Everyone else ate, hungry, not daring to interrupt, except Dad, who now and again said half-heartedly, ‘Oh, shurrit, Irene,’ while knowing she wouldn’t now she was off. The sun rose in the morning; Irene Sutton – wife, mother, dreaded neighbour – quarrelled with anything that moved. What was new?

  But suddenl
y, as Evie finished up her last mouthfuls of potato and gravy, she realized Rita was staring across the table at her. Looking up, seeing her, she felt a cold stab of dread. The look was so familiar, like the old days . . .

  ‘So . . .’ Rita sat back with her nasty face on, the one that said she had spite to pour over someone and that someone was Evie. ‘Looks like that husband of yours ain’t coming back then, eh? Left you, ’as ’e? Miss High and bloody Mighty?’

  Evie froze. Tracy and Andrew were both in the room. She could hear Andrew and Wayne tittering and shoving each other. But Tracy had gone pale and was staring at her, eyes wide, an anguished expression on her face. Evie felt as if her heart was going to slam out of her chest.

  ‘Reet,’ she tried to protest. ‘Not with the kids here . . .’

  ‘Oh!’ Rita, who was next to Tracy, leaned towards her, put her arm round her niece’s shoulders and squeezed her. ‘Our Trace don’t mind her Auntie Rita, do yer, babby?’ She kissed Tracy’s cheek.

  Tracy turned awkwardly and gave her a forced smile.

  ‘There,’ Rita said. ‘You’re gorgeous, ain’t yer, Trace? Ooh.’ She stroked her bump. ‘I ’ope this is going to be a little girl like you, Trace, eh?’ She nudged Tracy again, laughing. ‘Yer auntie dain’t mean anything. She loves you, yer auntie does – and your little brother. ’Ere’ – she chucked Tracy under the chin – ‘I’ve got ever such a nice present for you, Trace – and you Ann, so you don’t need to put that face on.’

  Tracy, blushing, looked pleased and confused. Ann looked sulky at the attention her aunt was giving Tracy. She had been used to being the only girl.

  After the dinner was over they all moved into the front room with the telly on, cups of tea and boxes of Maltesers and Quality Street. Soon there was a mess of bright-coloured wrappers all over the floor, mingling with the paper the boys had ripped off their presents. Evie had bought smellies for her mom and sisters. She’d had no clue what to get for her father, so had bought him some fags.