Over

by Margaret Forster

  Jeremy was already in the classroom, surprisingly (for a Monday morning). I introduced Molly to him. She was a bit curt, I thought, a little abrupt. He asked her fairly obvious but harmless questions and she hardly bothered to reply. She turned her back on him and went to look at what he had been putting up on the walls. We are going to be doing transformations this week – tadpoles into frogs, caterpillars into butterflies – and so he’d been putting up appropriate illustrations. She studied them intently. There was an uncomfortable atmosphere and I was glad when Molly said she’d go, she had to get to Islington, somewhere near the Angel, by ten o’clock. When she’d gone, Jeremy asked if he’d ‘said’ something. I asked why on earth he thought that, and he shrugged and said Molly had seemed either offended or upset.

  I don’t know if she was either. It is a very long time since she was ever in this classroom, but I can’t imagine that she was affected by memories of when she and Miranda were last in it. She doesn’t do those sentimental memory-lane trips. When I indulge myself, I exasperate her. But if she was not overcome by some sort of memory I don’t know how to account for her attitude.

  *

  Time to tackle the Foundation Stage profiles demanded by the government. Nothing like the old school reports, either. Children, our guidelines tell us, should not be aware that they are being assessed. But what about the parents? Doesn’t fool them. They know their children are being well and truly assessed, and immediately they begin to compare and to worry.

  I try so hard to phrase my observations tactfully, and I always point out that in Reception there are no formal tests to pass or fail, but parents are acutely sensitive to what they interpret as criticism. The children at this stage are supposed to be able to talk clearly and confidently. Some hardly talk at all and have virtually no confidence, but it is difficult to write that without causing consternation. It is equally hard to describe overconfidence in an acceptable way. I struggle on, thinking what a waste of time this is. I want to tell parents to take no notice of these assessments – far too much emphasis is put upon them, and it will get worse. Next year, reading and writing and arithmetic will all be rated – below average, average, above average – oh, the dismay this will cause! The point of life is made to seem this kind of success: ‘above average’, or all is lost.

  My little ones have no idea what is in store for them.

  *

  Molly insisted on going to the Green Lanes address, the last we had for Don. I told her that Finn and I had already been, but she wanted to go herself and somehow gain entry. She said I didn’t have to go with her, but of course I did.

  It was the same performance again, ringing bells and either getting no answer or being yelled at. This time there was no friendly postman. ‘Well,’ said Molly, ‘we’ll break in.’ I said, to take her seriously, that we couldn’t be absolutely sure that the ground-floor room on the right really was Don’s, but she peered through, as Finn had done, and identified Don’s jacket hanging on the back of the door and a canvas bag he’d had for years. ‘This is wrong,’ I kept saying, but she ignored me. I was so nervous, looking round all the time for policemen to appear, or even just a neighbour who would phone them, but no one gave Molly a second look as she tried to lever the bottom window open. She stood on the upturned dustbin, as Finn had done, but she isn’t as tall and couldn’t really reach high enough. She got down, began looking for something else to stand on. Then the front door opened and she was in immediately, brushing past the woman who was coming out as though she was in a great hurry. I was left standing outside. The woman, leaving, didn’t say a word, just set off down the road.

  I hovered anxiously, wondering what on earth Molly thought she was going to do, and then all of a sudden there was her face at the window, giving the thumbs-up sign. She pointed to the front door, then came and opened it and I followed her in. The hallway was dark – the minute the front door closed I could barely make out anything. There was a corridor going off down the side of the staircase and Molly led me a short way down it to the door she’d forced open. It hadn’t, she whispered, been difficult – ‘It’s only a Yale,’ she said, as though that explained everything. Where on earth had she learned to spring a Yale lock? I didn’t bother asking. I didn’t like being in Don’s room. It emphasised more than anything else could have done how he had changed. For Don, who loved space and colour and light, to live here … Everything about that room was ugly. The dreary, torn wallpaper, the brown paint, the worn hair-cord carpet, the single divan bed sagging in the middle, the huge wardrobe, the Formica table with its spindly legs – everything. It was untouched by Don. His jacket and bag might be there, and as Molly opened the wardrobe I glimpsed some of his clothes, but he was not even faintly there. There was no impression of him at all. I hated to think of him reduced to this, a faceless, nameless man in a squalid room. It was perverse, there was no need for it.

  To be truthful, it was not really squalid. It was clean enough, and tidy, there was no mess, no horrible smells. I couldn’t see any cooking facilities, though there was an electric kettle plugged in on the floor, but maybe he had the use of a kitchen. I saw a small sink in one corner, but he seemed to have no bathroom of his own. All this time, as I stood there taking this in, Molly was searching. She had opened the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe and was going through its contents. I recognised the folders Don used for his investigations. I doubted if she would learn much from them, but I said nothing. Then she turned to the table, where there were several neat piles of papers. She was looking, I could see, at the postmarks. I’d given her the letter I’d taken from the postman and she’d already rung the person who’d written it (no, he hadn’t seen Mr Roscoe, or spoken to him). But she was convinced there would be some clue as to where her father had gone.

  I still hadn’t moved from the doorway. I felt that if I strayed further into this sad room I might be contaminated by it. Molly had no such fear. The room was nothing to her. She dismissed it as an irrelevance in her father’s life. His time there was an aberration. She talked out loud as she searched, commenting on Don’s efficiency, his organised mind. ‘He ticks everything he’s answered,’ she said, ‘and puts the date on.’ That was no surprise to me. Don has always been efficient and careful. He isn’t a man who ever mislays anything – he always knows where everything is, unlike his children who seem to him to live in chaos, constantly shouting that they’d lost something vital. That unappealing motto, ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’ was – is – Don’s.

  ‘Durham,’ Molly suddenly said, holding up a letter. ‘He might be in Durham. When did he disappear?’ Well, of course, I didn’t know that. I only knew when he had last been seen, and that was when he was in the Middlesex, twelve days ago. ‘Look,’ said Molly, and handed me the envelope, pointing to the postmark. ‘If he came here from the hospital this would just have arrived. Maybe he turned round and went straight off.’ I didn’t ask why he would do that. I could guess.

  *

  An interruption there – Finn came. Molly was excited, longing to tell him about what she’d discovered. Finn was more interested in how she’d got into the house, and Don’s room, and how she’d left it. She was impatient with his curiosity, and even more impatient when he chose to discredit her theory that Don had gone to Durham by wondering why in that case he had switched his mobile off, why would he not want to be contacted when he had nothing to hide. ‘He isn’t well, remember?’ Molly said. ‘He just doesn’t want to be bothered, or to speak to anyone. And he doesn’t want Mum telling him that what he’s doing is stupid or ridiculous.’

  Yes, I am upset. Did I tell Don he was stupid? Did I call him ridiculous? I didn’t think I ever had done, but Molly must think so. She must have heard me say such things. When? Not for a very long time, and not often. We never shouted at each other in front of the children. The few arguments afterwards were behind firmly closed doors, I’m sure. When I did start to become angry, and knew I was about to risk losing control
, I remember I always rushed to close the door of whichever room we were in. It was a favourite position of mine, my back to a closed door. But perhaps the closed doors did not keep in all sound. Did Molly hear shouting, and come to the door, and listen? She would have been unlikely to hear Don shout. When he was angry, his voice became hoarse and gruff, not loud at all. I was the shouter, shrill and almost hysterical. And evidently I called him stupid and ridiculous. If so, they were the wrong words. I didn’t mean stupid – how could I, when Don is so clever? I meant stubborn, misguided, blind – different words entirely. And he was never ridiculous so much as deluded. That was what I’d meant: he was stubborn and deluded, refusing to face up to facts.

  Does Molly imagine I drove him away? I hope not. It isn’t true. Don moved himself, in every respect, away from all of us, long before we actually separated. She’s forgetting that. Ought I to remind her? Maybe Finn will do this for me. I noticed how concerned he looked when Molly said that. He’s been here all the time and he hasn’t forgotten what Don was like, which Molly may have done. She seems to have returned as her father’s champion, though she left for Africa appearing to be dissociating herself from him.

  *

  That’s better. Ruth rang and, hearing how upset I sounded, asked what was wrong. She listened patiently while I told her and then said she thought I was looking at Molly’s behaviour in the wrong way. Think about it, she said. The girl has been away a long time. She left with no inkling that you and Don were going to split up, and that you’d sell the home she’d lived in all her life. She left after a fairly painful scene with her father with whom she’s had virtually no contact since. Then when she comes home, she’s told he has vanished after collapsing and being hospitalised. She’s shocked. You don’t seem unduly concerned. You’re angry with him. You no longer seem to her the caring person you used to be. To her, it is all the most awful mess, don’t you think? So she wants to try to sort it out. She feels concern and compassion for her father, and is puzzled by you …

  ‘Don’t Ruth,’ I said, ‘Don’t.’

  *

  Molly’s spoken to Alex. Don did go to see him, it turns out, but that was last week and he isn’t in Durham now, she’s fairly sure of that. Alex said he was perfectly civil, there was no ugly confrontation. He just asked questions, the same questions about the boat that Alex had already been asked a dozen times, and the crucial other question: how did Miranda come to be sailing on her own? This had, of course, been gone into at the inquest. It was the part I’d listened to most intently, my eyes never leaving Alex’s face for a second. Details about the condition of the boat might have passed over my head, because I didn’t understand the terminology, but when it came to understanding the relationship between Alex and Miranda I felt capable of understanding anything. And yet I was unable to do so. Something remained inexplicable. I listened to Alex say that he and my daughter had ‘not been getting on too well’ the day before, ten days into the holiday. The coroner pressed him: had there been an argument? Alex, visibly upset, shook his head and looked down. The coroner repeated his question. Alex said no, not until the following morning. He had told Miranda he fancied going cycling for a change. He’d hurt his finger pulling ropes the day before and wanted to rest it. Miranda said how could he hold the handlebars of a bike if his finger was so sore and had accused him of pretending it was painful. She’d said he just wanted to get away from her, didn’t he, because he’d gone off her and preferred Trisha. He’d told her she was paranoid. She’d told him just to go off with Trisha, then, she’d sail on her own. He had laughed. (It was hard to hear this – the coroner had to ask him to speak up.) He’d laughed, said she wasn’t capable. ‘Anything else?’ the coroner asked. ‘Did you say anything else?’ Alex was silent. His hands gripped the rail in front of him very tightly. I knew instinctively that he had said something else. Some insult. The coroner almost certainly knew it too. Alex was allowed just to shake his head.

  None of the rest of the party had much to add, except Trisha. She was older than Alex, a second-year student with him at Durham. I felt she’d dressed carefully for the inquest, and that a plain white shirt, buttoned up to the neck, and a calf-length black skirt were not her usual clothes. Even clad in these prim garments she looked voluptuous and sexy. She was at great pains to insist that there had been ‘nothing between’ her and Alex. The coroner only wanted to know if Alex had said anything to her about Miranda and whether she had seen Miranda take his boat out. Her voice trembled slightly when she repeated what Alex had said when he came to find her. She began ‘He said’ – and stopped. She started again, and stopped. The tension in the courtroom was high. We all waited. ‘He said he was sick of Miranda, she was a wimp.’

  It wasn’t so terrible. A wimp. Hardly devastating as an insult. The coroner passed straight on to the next question, whether Trisha had seen Miranda take the boat out. No. She and Alex had gone straight off to hire bicycles. No one had noticed Miranda leave the marina. It was busy that morning. The others were either still asleep in their boats or else were in the café. The coroner remarked that in spite of hearing that Miranda was not a competent sailor she must have had more expertise than suspected to manoeuvre such a boat out of the marina without mishap and without attracting attention. Quite. I was pleased he said that. He went on to say that the boat had been judged seaworthy – there was no evidence that the engine or any other part was at fault. It had been well maintained by the owner (Alex’s father) who had had it regularly checked. The cause of the fatal accident was freak weather conditions combined with the inexperience of the sailor.

  Still, there was something missing. Why did Miranda have such a violent response to Alex’s wish to go cycling with Trisha? Why did she not just cry, or sulk? Why did she not simply pack up, and leave, tell him their affair was over and she was going home? Why did she not turn to us, or Molly? But maybe she was in a rage and merely wanted to prove she could sail the wretched boat and had meant simply to get it out to sea and then return it to its mooring. But she couldn’t manage it. She got it out into the open sea OK, and calmed down, but she’d gone too far and the storm came … who knows? We don’t. We have to accept the unacceptable, that Miranda acted dangerously, and died.

  But Don had to go on not accepting this. He asked the same old question again and Alex gave the same answer. He told Molly there was only one new question, about the weather. Did he listen to the weather report that morning? He said he didn’t. The weather was good. The sky was blue, just a few small clouds, and there was a light wind. And, anyway, he wasn’t going to be sailing. At the inquest (everything was translated for our benefit), there was a lot said about the weather and how dramatically and unexpectedly it had changed, with winds sweeping in which gusted up to 30 knots. These winds had not been forecast until an hour before Miranda set sail. An unusually strong high-pressure system had driven the barometer up rapidly, causing these conditions, and producing steep seas.

  Was Don becoming so deluded that he was seeking to blame the boy for not listening to the weather forecast that morning? And to go on from that to deciding he was culpable for Miranda’s death? I couldn’t think why else he would be asking. I’m trying now to imagine how Don would think but it is almost impossible. Does he know that a weather warning was given and that someone knew that a violent storm was about to sweep into the area? And that Miranda was allowed to take the boat out by this someone, who was, or was not, aware that she wasn’t an experienced sailor? This would fit his peculiar understanding of the word ‘negligence’. Maybe he’d got nowhere with his investigations into dodgy parts – masts, engines, it made little difference – and now he was chasing the human element.

  How can he bear to, all this time afterwards? Suppose he finds that someone at the marina did hear the storm warning and failed to stop Miranda – why should they, anyway? – what does he want to do about it? It is up to sailors to listen to weather reports. It was no longer the responsibility of the marina. Or was Don now switchi
ng from finding a culprit to emphasis on the other part of his mission – establishing the truth. So, if the truth turns out to be that someone official at the marina listened to a weather report, but that nobody thought to stop a young woman taking a boat out, how does that help? How does ‘the truth’ help?

  He won’t be able to prove anything anyway, just as he couldn’t prove that the zip on Miranda’s lifejacket was faulty – the lifejacket was eventually washed ashore, so either she had never worn it or it had been torn off her body – or that the metal tank of the engine was corroded. He tried hardest of all to prove that, but the Swedish manufacturers said they used the best grade stainless steel and none of their engines had ever corroded. There was no proof, either, that the engine had malfunctioned or that the fuel had been dirty, causing it to be inoperable. Everything, absolutely everything, as the coroner said, pointed to Miranda’s inexperience, her inability to handle the boat in the freak weather conditions, that arose. He cannot accept that his daughter took out a boat she was not fit to sail.

  *

  Glad, as ever, to be back to school. Other people groan at the thought of Monday mornings, but I love them. My mind stops swirling around in frantic, pointless patterns and once more I know what I am doing and how to do it. ‘Don’t you like weekends?’ Jeremy once asked as I bounced into the classroom one Monday morning when he’d crawled in barely able to face the day. ‘Of course I do.’ That is what I told him, very briskly, but it isn’t the truth, or it is no longer the whole truth. I used to love weekends in the old days when I wasn’t teaching, because they meant Don was at home and we did things with the children – ordinary things, like swimming and going to the zoo, and so on. But now the weekends find me at a loss, consciously trying to organise my time so that I won’t simply loll around and panic at the emptiness. I can’t tell Jeremy any of that, so I stick to saying I like weekends but I like Mondays too. I can’t tell him that only work keeps me sane. I ought to get to know Jeremy better, show more interest. I would have done at one time, but these days I don’t make the effort. It takes too much energy. I do occasionally, when we’re tidying up, ask him about himself but maybe he senses that I’m only being polite because his replies are as brief as my enquiries. I know he has a girlfriend and they share a flat with another couple. I know he plays the guitar. I know he went to university but dropped out after a term, hated it. And he suffers from asthma. That’s about it. I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to develop any but a working relationship with Jeremy. I wonder if he minds?