The Doorstep Child

by Annie Murray

  Gary released her and looked at her seriously. ‘You don’t want to stay here, Eves – take my word for it. It’s nice to see yer, but you know, we’re no good for yer. You need your kids. And . . . thing is . . .’ He looked away, suddenly shifty. ‘I got a few things going on here.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  He didn’t look at her. ‘You’re too good for us, Eves – you always was. Like a little princess, you are. You don’t wanna be down ’ere. Just stay tonight and then you’d best be moving on, all right?’

  She was startled, wounded. He’d been so welcoming at the start. She sensed that he was disconnected, could not remember what he’d said before.

  Gary jumped down from the roof to the path. ‘Oo, me knees,’ he groaned as his feet hit the ground, his face creasing with pain. Then he frowned. ‘Look, you don’t want to stay here.’ He stared up at her for a moment, but didn’t say any more.

  Fifty-Eight

  She spent that night cramped on the bench bed in the tiny cabin, her coat over her, clothes folded under her head. Gary laid sheets of newspaper over her as well. It started off warm because of the stove, but by morning she was rigid with cold and stiff all over.

  Carl, who managed to fold his body onto the cabin floor with a wad of newspapers under his head and others covering his body, seemed fresh and unconcerned when he got up. Carl was a confusing mixture of responsible and childlike. He had arrived back from work the night before carrying a bag of groceries and they had cooked up beans and eggs. He had remembered milk and more tea and some tins of soup. He had also gone off with the two blue containers and come back with fresh water.

  This morning the weather had turned drizzly and Evie’s spirits sank lower than they had been since she arrived.

  Gary seemed dull and lifeless as well. They had spent the evening chatting about the old days and he had felt something like her friend, but now he was locked into a mood she could not enter or understand. He disappeared for a while, in his donkey jacket and woolly hat, not saying where he was going. She knew now that there were things he was keeping from her, that he wanted her gone.

  Curious, she climbed out, shoulders hunched against the wet, and went to the hold of the boat, pulling back a corner of the tarpaulin. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see, but all that was there were some more bits of junk and a mucky old mattress laid in the bottom. Somehow irritated, she let the tarpaulin drop and went back inside. So what the hell was the big secret? She just thought Gary was trying to make himself sound important, as though he was big business.

  Inside again, she sat on the narrow bench, pulling her knees up, hugging them to her chest. She sat there for she didn’t know how long, blanked out, keeping memories pushed away. Julie, Tracy, Andrew . . . Mustn’t think, not about how bad I am, a bad mom, a bad wife, a bad person . . .

  She had to move in the end because it was so uncomfortable.

  I’ve got to get myself together, she thought, as the morning dribbled by and she had done nothing except look out at the rain falling into the cut. The glamour of the boat was quickly wearing off. But the effort she would need felt almost beyond her. How could she go out and get a job, or do anything, if she couldn’t even have a wash?

  Eventually she saw Gary coming back through the wet, hunched up, carrying a plastic water carrier in each hand – both white this time, not the blue ones. He must have decided to get the water instead of Carl doing it, she thought. She heard some thumping noises as he moved about in the hold of the boat. Then he appeared with a smaller plastic container and set the kettle on to boil. Evie felt impatience rising in her. All this, just to make a cup of tea! Her impatience drove her. What the hell was she doing sitting in this dump? She had to get her kids back.

  ‘I’m going to the baths,’ she told him. ‘And then I’m going to look for a job.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. He looked down. ‘Eves?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thing is . . . I’ve got some mates coming round tonight. Later, like.’

  She felt annoyance rise in her. Mates? Where was Gary going to fit them in? And where was she supposed to go? Why the hell had he said she could stay there?

  She shrugged huffily. ‘It’s your boat.’

  ‘We’ll keep out yer way – in the front.’

  ‘What – the hold? You’ll freeze?’

  ‘Nah, we’ll just have a few drinks like. Got a mate who makes the stuff for us.’ He grinned, showing his terrible, gappy teeth. ‘Keeps yer warm, that stuff does.’

  ‘All right then.’ She knew she had to leave. This was like a cold shower, waking her up. She knew she should be grateful, that she needed to be pushed out and sent on her way. ‘Look, take this.’ She still owed Mrs Grant rent money which she had in her purse. She handed Gary a couple of pounds for food. ‘I’m going to look for a job.’

  She set off, tramping all the way back into Selly Oak with her bag of clothes. It was even further than she remembered. There were baths, in Tiverton Road. On the way she went into a chemist and bought a comb and some soap and she paid to go and wash. She rinsed out the undies she was wearing, which had been given to her by the hospital, and put on the spare ones from the bag which were actually hers. After this she did feel marginally better.

  But dressing in her work clothes after all this time felt very strange and frightening. They meant responsibility, having to find the strength to get out and get something done. She wasn’t sure she could. The clothes felt as if they belonged to someone else. Her skirt was tight on her and the black court shoes felt narrow and cramping after months of slopping about in slippers and old plimsolls. She dressed very slowly. Looking in the mirror, she saw her round, white, pimply face looking back at her.

  God, I look terrible, she thought. For the first time she saw why Tracy had not recognized her. Her hair was hanging long and limp. She looked fat, pale, sad . . . Just not how she had been before. Maybe that was all. She had seen it as a darker, awful rejection. But perhaps her daughter had simply not recognized her.

  Right, she thought. Wandering the shops in Bournbrook, she found a hairdresser’s and came out after a good trim, feeling already better, and hanging on to her thread of hope.

  She caught a bus along the road to Northfield on a wave of optimism. Maybe she should try and get her old job back after all. She at least knew people there. She could find somewhere to live – somewhere well away from Mom. And then they could all go back to normal . . .

  ‘I’m so sorry, Evie,’ Maureen at Kalamazoo told her. She spoke to Evie kindly but with an air of caution. They must know where she’d been. Alan had known. Despite the haircut and the way she was holding on tight to herself inside, she felt as if she was walking about with ‘Mental Patient’ tattooed across her forehead. And as soon as Maureen started speaking her hope quickly disappeared.

  ‘I don’t have a free position at the moment. I had to give your job to someone else – we didn’t know when you were coming back, you see.’ Evie did see, but still it felt like a personal rejection. She had got the job so easily before.

  ‘It’s not that we don’t want you back. Look, give me your address – a phone number? I’ll let you know as soon as there’s a vacancy.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Evie said. ‘I don’t . . . I mean, I’m moving and I don’t know where I’m going to be yet.’

  ‘I see.’ Maureen looked even warier, but forced a smile. ‘Well, look, love . . . pop in again in a while, all right? And we’ll see where we are then. Or if you want a reference . . .’

  She didn’t specify what ‘a while’ meant. A reference. It felt as if they wanted rid of her.

  She told herself that it was completely reasonable to find that her old job had been taken, but she was cast right down. Even though it was not the reason Maureen had given her, it felt as if every door was closed to her because she had been in that hospital. The life she had had before seemed shut away from her. Gone forever.

  It felt terrible walking out of
the offices at what was now almost the end of the working day. She wished to God she had never come back or felt that bright streak of hope.

  ‘Evie? Is that you?’ Feet hurried behind her and her heart seemed to buck with dread. She recognized his voice. The kindly man who had written to her in hospital.

  Turning, she saw him, and was surprised in that moment by how familiar he seemed after all. Nice, reassuring Alan Dickson. She smiled faintly. Inside she felt lost, empty.

  ‘It’s nice to see you,’ he said. She could hear genuine pleasure through the shyness. He was not the sort to pretend and she liked him for that.

  She could not think of anything to say.

  ‘So . . . are you coming back to work?’ he said. He put his hands in the pockets of his brown suit jacket as if he was not sure what else to do with them. He must have just had a haircut as the mousey hair was shaved close at the sides of his neck. ‘I mean . . . you’re feeling better?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said. Her voice seemed to lack force. She wondered if he could even hear it. ‘But they don’t have a place for me at the moment.’

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Well, that’s bad, that is. That’s a shame.’ He seemed really put out on her behalf. Maybe on his own as well. ‘I’m sure they will soon. Where will you go?’

  Evie shrugged. ‘I’ll try somewhere else,’ she said, with no idea. ‘In town maybe.’

  ‘I . . .’ He blushed then. His hands scrabbled in his pockets. ‘I hope you didn’t mind me writing . . . when you were . . . you know. I’d like to keep in touch – be friends, like . . . D’you . . . I mean, where are you living? Would you let me have your address?’

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

  He looked frankly into her eyes then. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m trying to push anything, Evie. Only, I really like you – care about you, see? That’s all. I’d hate not ever to see you again.’

  She wanted to be touched, grateful. In a distant way she was, but she could not seem to summon emotion.

  ‘Thanks.’ She tried to smile again. ‘Only I really don’t have an address.’

  ‘Look, you know I work here.’ He was patting all his pockets now, brought out a bus ticket, a biro. ‘Here’s my address. And phone.’ He wrote hastily and handed her the ticket. ‘If you ever fancy a drink . . . a bit of company . . .’

  He was so genuine, seemed to care so much about her, that she hardly knew what to say.

  ‘Thanks.’ She tucked the ticket in her coat pocket. ‘Thanks, Alan.’

  It wasn’t until she was on the bus on the way back to Selly Oak that she realized there must be places where she could get down onto the cut much nearer to where Pearl was tied up. But she didn’t know where they were. She was in no rush to get back there. She had a seat in the fuggy warmth of the bus and she sat back as they swept along the Bristol Road, looking out of the window, trying to fight the despair which rose in her like floodwater.

  If Kalamazoo wouldn’t take her back, it meant that no one would. She would never get a job. And she didn’t deserve to get a job. People had seen through her, through her good looks, her trying so hard to please and do well. They could see what she was really like – rotten inside. Alan Dickson didn’t seem to see it. She remembered his gentle kindness. But what good would I ever be to him now? she thought. To a nice man like him. He’s got no idea what I’m really like. She felt like a person who was contaminated, poisoning everything she touched.

  And so the wheel turned, down and down.

  By the time she got off the bus, near Oak Tree Lane, the late afternoon was full of steel-grey gloom. She crossed over, towards the Dingle and the dank towpath. It was quiet. A bike passed her, but no one else. She was glad to be out of sight of other people, as if even the eyes of strangers were boring into her, seeing her badness. She felt injured, as if she might crack apart. Maybe she should start taking the pills again.

  She had to find something, to get away from here. She knew Gary was hiding things from her, that he had only shown her a small part of his life.

  A couple of trains passed not far away. As she drew closer to Cadbury’s she heard the distant sound of a dog. It was letting out long, anguished howls which seemed to express how she felt herself.

  It took her until she had almost reached Pearl to realize it was Gary’s dog, Rocket. As Evie drew near, she could see the animal’s low, solid outline on the bank next to the boat, her head back, howling to the sky.

  What’s up with her? Evie thought. Maybe Gary’s forgotten to feed her. She was not too worried. Not until she saw Carl emerge from the front end of the boat. He jumped down to the bank and in that moment glimpsed her coming towards him.

  ‘Evie!’ He started to run, lumbering towards her, but not just running. His body flailed about in some desperate state. ‘Evie, quick! C’m’ere! Gary won’t wake up! There’s summat . . .’ He was sobbing as he reached her and seized her arm, yanking at her. ‘C’mon!’

  ‘All right, all right, Carly, calm down!’ She reached for his hand but he was in too much of a state to be quieted. ‘I’m coming. What’s happened?’

  Like a crazed bear, Carl hauled her along, not to the cabin but to the front part of the boat. He lifted the loose flap of the tarp by the cabin and, through his sobs, yelled, ‘Gary! Gary! Evie’s here. You got to wake up!’

  In the dark of the hold Evie could make out the edges of the mattress and, nearby, ghostly white shapes – the plastic water carriers which Gary had brought back. On the mattress she could see a long, dark shape. Evie felt her heartbeat harden to a doomy thump.

  ‘Gary?’ There was no response. ‘Come on, Carl, we’ve got to get in.’

  They clambered over the side. Once under the tarpaulin, she was hit by it – a horrible pungent stink that made her wrinkle her nose.

  ‘Gary?’ Kneeling on the old mattress, she could tell as soon as she touched him, nudged him, that he was deeply unconscious. ‘Oh God, Gary, what’ve you done?’

  The sound of the dog howling and Carl sobbing behind her made her take command.

  ‘Carl. You’ve got to get help. You run back – go the garage or wherever it is you get the water and get them to ring an ambulance. All right? Tell them we’re on the cut and they’ve got to ring 999.’

  She heard his mewling breaths as he hurried away. The dog stayed behind, still howling.

  ‘Gary!’ She spoke sharply now. Being alone with him felt frightening. ‘Come on, you’ve got to wake up! What the hell’ve you been drinking?’

  She shook and shook him, screamed at him.

  But there was no response.

  Fifty-Nine

  She knew Gary was gone. She had not done anything like check his pulse or listen for his heart. But as she waited with him in the boat, with Rocket yowling in the dusk outside, as she rubbed his hands, his chest, wept over him, begging him to say something, just please, for God’s sake, wake up and say something, she knew he had already left them. The dog knew it and she felt it too.

  ‘Whatever he’s been drinking . . .’ the doctor said, his anger unmistakeable. He had drawn them to one side in the busy Casualty department, a few feet from Gary’s prone body covered now by a sheet. ‘Whoever made it should be prosecuted. Must be anti-freeze or some such. We’re doing blood tests. This is manslaughter – if not worse. I’m calling in the police. I need you to stay here.’

  He eyed Carl doubtfully. His body was jerking with sobs.

  ‘Just give us a minute,’ Evie said. ‘He’s not quite . . . you know . . . I’ll talk to him, calm him down.’

  ‘What is it, Carl?’ They stood out in the outer corridor, having calmed him enough to have a fierce, whispered conversation. ‘What is the stuff? Who did he get it from?’

  Carl’s eyes were puffy and now stretched with fear. He couldn’t keep still, kept beating his arms about as if warding off swarming insects.

  ‘’E got stuff from his mate – Wally. ’E makes it – sells it to people, li
ke . . . to ’is mates. Wally don’t mean no harm. ’E’s all right, Wally is.’

  ‘Well, he may be,’ Evie said. The doctor’s expression had set light to a rage inside her. ‘But whatever the hell he’s put in that stuff he’s brewing, he’s killed your brother. What about whoever else drinks the stuff, Carl? You’ve got to tell them where he is.’

  Carl’s face stretched as if the thoughts he was having were putting pressure on his whole head.

  ‘Oh!’ he moaned. He took his head in his hands and bent over. ‘I can’t . . . Oh, I dunno . . . Dunno what to do . . .’

  She grabbed his arm, her body taut with the need to lash out and hurt someone, anyone, as an outlet for her own feelings.

  ‘Sodding well tell them where this prat Wally lives – that’s what you have to do, Carl! For God’s sake, he’s killed your brother with his . . . hooch concoction or bloody anti-freeze or whatever it was in there! D’you understand, Carl?’ She was up close to him, gripping his upper arms, shaking him. ‘Gary’s dead, thanks to him! He’s not all right – he’s a murderer!’

  Carl began trembling and sobbing again so much that she relented and took a step back. It was no good, she could see. And she didn’t want any of this – none of it. She needed to get away, to find her kids . . . For the moment, no one was around.

  ‘Look,’ she hissed to Carl, eyeing the long corridor which reached to the back doors of the hospital. ‘We’re just going to go, all right. Take my hand, Carly.’ He was nodding, still sobbing. ‘When I say run, you run, fast as you can, and we’ll go home.’

  She heard a door open somewhere and her heart lurched.

  ‘Quick!’ She hauled on his arm. ‘Run!’

  It was only when they were away, after hurtling along Oak Tree Lane and round onto the road towards the Dingle, that they slowed and she realized how much she was shaking.

  They walked holding hands, both of them crying. It was a cold, clear night, a three-quarter moon reflecting in the black water. They heard Rocket, who they had had to lock in the cabin, howling from along the riverbank. The sound made both of them sob harder.