The Doorstep Child

by Annie Murray

  She handed out her packages. ‘Here you are, Dad.’ She passed him the cigarettes.

  ‘Oh, ta, wench!’ Had he even noticed she had not been there for seven years, she wondered?

  ‘Here, Mom. Happy Christmas.’

  ‘Oh ar,’ Irene said. She ripped the paper off it, but as she did she was looking at Rita and Shirley, a mocking expression on her face, like a child trying to make trouble. Dread filled Evie again. She had a horrible feeling that Mom was biding her time, that trouble was brewing, of a kind she remembered so well.

  Her mother barely looked at the Cussons talc Evie had given her. She glanced at it with a look of contempt and dropped it down by the side of her chair like a piece of litter. Evie felt it like a knife going through her. She hates me. She still hates me . . . A sense of desperate loneliness filled her for a moment, but she was distracted from it by Rita’s voice, sweet as syrup.

  ‘’Ere you are, girls. These’re from your Auntie Rita and Uncle Conn.’ Rita was in a better mood now. Sitting on a chair she had brought in from the kitchen, she beckoned Tracy and Ann and gave each of them a long rectangular package. Evie saw Ann eye Tracy’s to see if she had anything more than her. But they looked just the same.

  ‘Barbie!’ Ann cried, after ripping off the red paper with Santas on. ‘Malibu Barbie! Look, Mom!’ She went over to Shirley. ‘She’s wearing a bikini!’

  She flew back then to see what Tracy had been given. Another Barbie, this time in a floaty costume in pink and purple trousers with flared legs. Round her waist was a wide suede belt with suede bits dangling from it and a suede band round her head, with its long, ash-blonde hair.

  Ann stared at it and her face turned stony. ‘I want that one, Mom!’ she shrieked. ‘Hers is nicer than mine – it’s got better clothes!’

  ‘No, Ann,’ Rita tried to appease her. ‘Your Barbie’s on her holidays, babby. She’s going to the beach. And you can dress her and undress her, look.’

  But Ann was heading into a full tantrum, throwing the doll in its box on the floor, stamping and howling, ‘I want the other one! Hers is better!’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Ann,’ Shirley snapped. To Rita she said furiously, ‘Well, that was a really good idea, wasn’t it? Why didn’t you get two the same so we dain’t have all this?’

  Tracy stood holding her doll, looking worried and embarrassed. In the end she went over to Ann holding out her own Barbie.

  ‘You have this one,’ she said. Evie had never been more proud of her. ‘I don’t mind. Mom gave me a nice Cindy doll as well so we can swap – you can have my Barbie.’

  Ann stopped crying like a switch being snapped off. Without a second’s hesitation she grabbed the Barbie in the pink and purple outfit and thrust Malibu Barbie at Tracy.

  ‘Here, you have her. This one’s mine now and she’s much better.’

  ‘How about saying thanks, Ann?’ Evie said. ‘Don’t just snatch it like that.’

  It was as if she had just done the worst thing ever. Everyone’s eyes were on her – Mom’s (not Dad’s, who was snoring, head back), Rita’s and Shirley’s. The hostility almost fizzed on the air.

  ‘What did you say?’ Shirley said.

  In those seconds, she was right back there – the door slammed, her on the outside looking in. All the chill loneliness of it. She tried to get hold of herself, to fight it. Tracy was here, looking at her, trying to make sense of it all. She must say something. She was grown-up. She didn’t have to be trodden down by them all.

  ‘I just thought she might say thanks,’ Evie said. ‘Tracy didn’t have to do that.’

  Rita sat forward, with an air of menace. ‘Who d’yer think you are, Eves?’ She spoke quietly, the quiet of a playground bully before they get going. ‘Think yer really someone, don’t yer – coming back ’ere with your airs and graces and “oh, I’ve been to Canada . . .”’ Her voice was horrible, mocking, made worse by a round of applause from the telly.

  ‘No,’ Evie started to protest. But she was surrounded by the old female spite.

  ‘Come ’ere, Trace,’ Rita said, waving Tracy towards her. She put her arm round Tracy, holding her close. ‘Don’t you take no notice of us. You got your dolly? Nice, ain’t she? You’re a good girl, swapping with Ann like that. You gunna watch some telly now?’

  Tracy nodded, wide-eyed, and crept across to sit in front of the television.

  ‘Can’t even keep a husband.’ Mom was already joining in, always game for a fight. She was slurred, pugnacious. ‘Soon got shot of you, dain’t ’e? Crawling back ’ere. You always was cowing trouble – thinking you was better than the rest of us.’

  Evie noticed Shirley was keeping quiet. Any comments about being deserted by husbands were a bit too close to home for her. But she sat watching with an intent, spiteful expression, as if enjoying seeing them beating Evie down. It was like a wave, knocking her over, leaving her dizzy.

  Mom kept on then. ‘Don’t think you can come back ’ere pushing any of us about. Yower . . .’ She hiccoughed, then belched. ‘Scum, that’s what you are – always was.’ She looked blearily at Tracy. ‘Yower kids are all right. You’re all right, ain’t yer, Trace?’ Her fleshy face creased into an ingratiating grin. ‘You glad to see yower nanna and aunties, ain’t yer?’

  Tracy turned for a second and nodded obediently. She cast an anxious glance at Evie before turning back to the refuge of the TV.

  ‘Thing about yower mom is,’ Evie heard her mother continue, talking loudly at Tracy’s back. Evie had lowered her gaze to her lap, her cheeks burning. ‘She ain’t quite right in the head – never was. You don’t want to take any notice of ’er. If you want any help, bab, you come to Nanna and your aunties.’

  Evie forced herself to her feet, her legs unsteady. ‘Right, we’re going now,’ she said. Her voice trembled. ‘Come on, Trace, Andrew.’

  Tracy got up, seeming relieved, and came to her side immediately, but Andrew started crying that he wanted to stay and play.

  ‘Oh, let them stay!’ Rita urged. ‘You’re spoiling Christmas for ’em. You can’t just take them away. What you gunna do? Sit in that miserable bedsit all evening?’

  Evie was gathering up her things, head down.

  ‘Andrew,’ she hissed at him, desperate, her body tight with weeping that would soon escape, must not escape while she was here. ‘Will you just shut it?’

  ‘I hate you!’ Andrew bawled. ‘I don’t wanna go home!’

  ‘Go on then, yer silly little bitch,’ were her mother’s parting words. ‘Good bloody riddance!’

  Evie stepped out into the night with her distressed children, Andrew still gulping with sobs. She found she could barely swallow. It was as if a trapdoor had opened in the floor and she had fallen down it, right back into the past, into the lonely place of her childhood which she thought she had left far behind. A place where she was hated, where she was stupid and of no account. At that moment that was exactly how she felt.

  ‘Oh dear, dear,’ Mrs Grant said as they stepped into the house and she heard Andrew grizzling. ‘Have we had a little bit too much excitement?’

  This being one of those not especially helpful observations, Andrew cried more loudly. Evie did not meet Mrs Grant’s eye. She felt too bad, too taut with hurt and sadness.

  ‘I’ll just get him up to bed,’ she muttered.

  ‘Happy Christmas, dear,’ Mrs Grant called up the stairs after her.

  Still close to tears which she did not want to shed, she undressed Andrew. He clung to her then, like a little monkey, sniffling and exhausted. Evie found comfort in his warm body, his damp cheek pressed to hers.

  ‘Come on, little feller,’ she said, laying him down in his bed. ‘What you need is some kip.’

  Tracy was waiting for her in the other room, sitting at the edge of a chair, eyes wide with worry.

  ‘Mom . . . why were Nanna and Auntie being so nasty to you?’

  Evie could see that she could not make sense of her own nice treatment from Mom and Rita set
against what she had seen today. She could see the girl’s confusion and she struggled to find something to say.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, trying to make light of it. ‘It was just the booze talking. You don’t want to take any notice.’

  ‘But didn’t you mind, Mom?’ Tracy said.

  She forced a smile. ‘Oh no, not too much. They didn’t really mean it.’

  When Tracy was asleep, Evie lay in bed in the dark. She knew it was true – about the booze. But she felt flayed by what had happened. She had got used to being grown-up. To kind people who took her as she was and didn’t attack her. But now she had driven her husband away and was back here – where she had chosen to be. And she could not see any way out.

  Forty-Eight

  It was not just the booze.

  Over the next days and weeks, Evie felt as if everything had tilted in a downward direction and she could not seem to right it.

  She woke on Boxing Day, feeling desperate. Andrew, who had been so upset the night before, woke fresh and happy. He was too young to have noticed what was happening. Tracy, though, Evie could see, was subdued. It made her feel terrible.

  Why the hell didn’t I stay in Canada? Her mind was in a turmoil of pain and regret. Why did I think things would be different?

  She had come rushing home in search of this dream of a family she had never had and she thought she was strong. Canada had felt a safe, clean place, away from this hurt and shame. She would have had to live closer to a different hurt – the hard truth that Jack was with another woman. And Bea had left, who she had considered her best friend. But she could have made new friends. Looking back now, Rosette and the people there felt like a haven of innocence and kindness. It had lulled her into forgetting.

  Now she felt as if she was beginning to crack all over under the force of her family. All the strength and confidence she had built up in Canada, the new Evie who belonged, who was not forever shut out, was beginning to drain away. She was letting herself slide back into being the numb, bruised child she had always been, shut out again on the cold step, and she couldn’t seem to stop it.

  They stayed away from the family that day, even though Andrew kept asking why he couldn’t go and play with Wayne. Evie took them to the park, trying to keep up a cheerful atmosphere, forcing her laughter as she watched them by the pond, wrangling over a heel of stale bread for the ducks. But she was close to tears all day. Once they got back to the flat they toasted crumpets on the gas fire and she made herself play games with them – Ludo and Snakes and Ladders. The afternoon seemed endless and only when the two of them were finally asleep and she lay in bed did she give way to her bitter sadness.

  It would be a relief to get back to work and into the routine of things, even though it meant Tracy and Andrew going to Mom and Dad’s after school.

  They were all right with the kids, so far as she could see. More than all right. Mom, Rita and Shirley were all sugar sweetness to the children. Every time they clapped eyes on her kids they were as nice as anything. No one, she realized, likes to have children dislike them – not even her mother. With the grand exception of herself, she thought bitterly. Mom had never shown any signs of caring about that.

  ‘Nanna lets us,’ Andrew would say when she stopped him eating sweets before a meal or leaping about on Mrs Grant’s furniture.

  ‘Well, Nanna can do as she likes in her house, but this is my house,’ she tried once.

  Andrew stared at her with hostility. ‘S’not your house – it’s Mrs Grant’s. Why ain’t we got a house, like Nanna, and Auntie Reet?’

  ‘It’s not “ain’t” Andrew,’ she told him. ‘It’s “isn’t”. Try and speak properly, will you?’

  ‘But Nanna says—’

  ‘I don’t care what Nanna says!’ she erupted. ‘You do as I tell you!’

  Then, of course, she was furious with herself.

  Tracy was more unsure, more torn. On work days, Evie fetched them from her mother’s. These days she avoided going in if possible. She would call to Tracy and Andrew and wait until they came out – even if it was raining sometimes.

  ‘Not good enough for you, are we?’ Mom kept saying nastily, when she bothered to rouse herself to say anything.

  On the walk home, Tracy had started saying things like, ‘Mom, Auntie Rita said that when you were all little girls, you were always dirty – and you were spiteful to everyone.’ She would look up at Evie in a troubled way, wanting and not wanting to believe her aunt, who was sweet and nice to her.

  Evie burned with frustration and rage. How dare Rita tell all these lies to her kids? But she didn’t want to get angry with Tracy. If only she could send them to someone else after school – but who? There was no one. And she would have to pay. It would take most of her money. She felt trapped.

  ‘Oh,’ she said dismissively. ‘You don’t want to believe everything Rita tells you.’

  Tracy frowned from under her bobble hat. ‘But why were you dirty, Mom?’

  Because Nanna neglected me. Because she never bothered with me from the word go . . .

  ‘Well, love, we were all quite grubby in those days.’

  The frown deepened. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we didn’t live in a very nice house. You’ve never lived in the old back-to-back houses like we had in Ladywood.’ She paused. Some of their neighbours had kept themselves fastidiously clean even in those old rattrap houses. She didn’t really want to explain that her own mother just couldn’t be bothered, except with titivating herself.

  ‘There weren’t any baths, you see. There wasn’t even any water in the house. We had a wash in the scullery and brought the tin bath in by the fire once in a blue moon.’ Thinking back, the times Mom had got round to giving them a bath were so few she could only remember two or three occasions.

  Tracy was looking at her. ‘She says I shouldn’t be friends with Sharon – that she’s dirty too.’

  ‘Trace.’ Evie stopped and took her daughter by the shoulders. ‘Sharon’s a nice girl, and she’s your friend. You be friends with who you want, right?’ She spotted a tube of fruit gums sticking out of Tracy’s coat pocket.

  ‘Who gave you those?’ she asked.

  ‘Auntie Shirley,’ she said. ‘Ann had some so she got me some as well.’

  ‘Your teeth,’ Evie said. Her heart was like lead but she spoke lightly. ‘They’ll be black as night soon.’

  The second week in January Rita’s baby arrived. She was taken to Selly Oak Hospital in the middle of the night.

  When Evie went to pick up the kids after work the next day, Shirley came to the door. She had taken to looking at Evie with a sarky kind of expression all the time. Evie noticed that since Christmas there had been no talk of her coming round on Saturday nights. Shirley had joined the camp of mother and sister, the camp of the old days – three against one.

  ‘So,’ Shirley said, folding her arms and standing in the doorway. She was in her work clothes and Evie imagined her standing like that to guard the doctor from his patients, officious expression and all. ‘She’s had it.’

  ‘What? Reet?’

  Shirley nodded. ‘It’s another boy. Conn was round earlier. They’re going to call him Dean.’

  ‘Oh,’ Evie said. ‘Not a girl then.’

  ‘He said she’s not very pleased,’ Shirley said with a smug expression which said, Well, she may have a husband and a home of her own, but that’s one thing she can’t do.

  ‘She’ll get used to the idea,’ Evie said.

  ‘You coming in?’ Shirley seemed torn between wanting company and wanting to be nasty.

  ‘Not today. Kids ready?’

  Andrew ran past then, in some game with Wayne. ‘Oh Mom!’ he groaned. ‘I don’t wanna go home – s’boring.’

  On the way home, Andrew sulked, dragging his feet. Evie asked Tracy about her day. She seemed subdued as well.

  ‘It was OK – at school. But Ann broke my pen.’ From her pocket she pulled the fat, orange plastic pen with all the di
fferent coloured inks inside. ‘It doesn’t work anymore.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Evie said. ‘I don’t s’pose she meant to.’

  Tracy looked up at her. ‘She did mean to.’ Tears came into her eyes. ‘She’s nice sometimes and then other times she’s really horrible. I never did anything to her.’

  I know the feeling, Evie thought. She looked up at the grey winter sky. Why had she come back here? Why didn’t she escape – go somewhere else, away from everybody? But that all seemed far beyond her. Here she was. She had nowhere else. Her children were settled in the school, she had help – even if it came at a price to her. And she liked her job and earned a reasonable wage. How could they get away again now?

  Work at Kalamazoo was a good part of her life. She found herself chatting and making friends with the other girls on the comptometers. They were work friends at least, even if she did not see anything much of them outside. She thought sometimes about getting in touch with Carol, her old friend. The two of them had dropped each other a note, just at Christmas, over the years. Carol was married now and had moved up to Walsall and Evie just couldn’t seem to get round to contacting her.

  For the moment she had enough to cope with. She had still heard not a word from Jack, although she had written to him a couple of times to tell him her address and how Tracy and Andrew were getting on. Not that he cares, she thought bitterly. We might just as well not exist. The Grants, though kind, were rather sober people and all Evie felt most of the time was the lonely weight of having to bring up her children on her own.

  If it had not been for the others at work, she might have spent more time brooding. But usually, if her thoughts were sinking down, sitting in the rows of girls all number crunching, as often as not some joker came along and told a funny story and she found herself laughing along with them. And often – very often – in the canteen, she found Alan Dickson, that gentle, friendly man, at her side, chatting about his three-year-old nephew, asking how her day was going. She just seemed to be in too much of a daze to take much notice.

  One afternoon at the end of January, she came out of the building into a louring, windy afternoon. The sky looked fit to burst itself upon them with either rain or snow and it did nothing to lift the spirits. She was just about to shut the door when she saw Alan coming along, also on his way out, so she waited a second.