Blood Family

by Anne Fine

  But I could remember back when we played the first tape. I know when Harris slammed out, Mum was a little nervous. There was a tremble in her voice when she said, ‘Never mind! Moving house makes people ratty. When he comes back, he’ll probably be in a better temper.’ She rubbed the red mark round the wrist he’d held too tightly and too long. She told me it was called a Chinese Burn, and that the girls in her class when she was at school gave them to one another. And then she tried to laugh, and said, ‘We’ll make some cocoa, and then see what’s on those old tapes in the corner. Maybe there’s a film.’

  She slid one in the old machine the other people hadn’t bothered to take away with them. (‘Leaving their crap!’ said Harris.) We waited, then the music for the song came on, and Mr Perkins came through the bright red door, took off his jacket and began to sing. And I remember Mum looking at him, then saying, ‘Perfect. All I’m bloody fit for!’ and giving this weird little laugh. And then she squeezed me – almost too tightly, like a giant Chinese Burn, and I was in her lap, all warm and comfy.

  But she hadn’t been like that for ages and ages and ages. So I didn’t want to go and see her. Even if the bruises had gone.

  Linda Radlett, Foster Carer

  He picked things up so quickly that it was easy to forget his childhood had been so strange. But every now and again he’d freeze, or look uncertain about the most straightforward thing, and we’d be reminded that, however sensible and caring his babyhood might have been, everything had been sent off track in recent years.

  Take mirrors. Mirrors fascinated Eddie. He stopped in front of them the way that other children do when they are at a fair, and find themselves facing distorting glass. ‘Look, Mum! I’m fat as a barrel!’ ‘See, Dad! I am the rubber boy!’

  Eddie just stared. Most times, I think, he took himself at first simply for some other child his age passing a window. His double-takes stemmed more from simple spatial puzzlement – how can someone be walking there? – than recognition of his own reflection. As soon as he had clocked it was himself that he was looking at, he’d stop and stare – gaze at himself in wonder. ‘Is this me?’ Of course we realized at once that, since he was too young to notice, he had never seen himself. Still, Alan and I couldn’t work out quite what it was that so astonished him. Was he surprised he looked so tall? So clean? So grave? Did he not realize children looked like that?

  Because he’d pass for normal almost anywhere. He was what an American I knew used to call ‘biddable’. Lord knows, we have had kids through here who’ve acted out so badly that we’ve recoiled from taking them anywhere in public. We have had children who’ve been, to use the jargon, ‘challenging in the extreme’.

  Eddie was not like that.

  It was as if he knew a lot of all this social stuff already, and simply hadn’t had the chance to practise it. And then we realized who we had to thank for that. Isn’t life strange? A quarter of the way across the world, in Canada, and thirty years ago, some sweet old fellow in a cardigan called Mr Perkins makes a series of telly programmes for children. Someone else bothers to record them, but doesn’t throw them out. And Edward James Taylor is saved for life. If this sort of thing could only happen a good deal more often, I might be able to believe in God.

  Alan and I tried not to ask the boy too many questions. But Rob did. One of the bones I’d pick with Social Services is that they can be too much like our dentist, treating small fry like adults where sometimes I believe it’s best for people like ourselves, who have been parents a long while, to use our intuition about what should be said, or what should happen next.

  Rob came a lot, sometimes just for a chat with Eddie, sometimes with news. ‘Guess what I’ve just found out. It seems you have a great-grandmother.’

  Eddie looked baffled.

  I heard the sofa sigh from Rob’s weight as he dropped on it. ‘That’s your mother’s own granny. She’s really old now, but she sends her love.’ Wearily he shook his head. ‘Maybe one day I’ll drive you up to visit her. Would you like that?’

  ‘Up?’

  I wondered if Eddie had a vision of this great-grandmother up somewhere in a cloud, or on a star.

  ‘On Tyneside,’ Rob said. ‘Quite a long way away.’ You could tell he was dreading the drive. We sat in silence for a moment or two, and then, as if his mind was drifting far away, Rob added, ‘Her feet are terrible, she says. Like sponges.’

  I watched poor Eddie trying to imagine this. ‘Sponges?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Rob – a little irritably, I thought, considering that it was he himself who’d brought the matter up. ‘The other news is that the flat you used to live in has now been re-let.’

  ‘Rob!’ I protested. (I mean, a home’s a home, however grim it’s been.)

  ‘He has to know,’ Rob muttered defensively.

  Re-let? What sort of language is that for someone of Eddie’s age? ‘What Rob is saying,’ I explained, ‘is that the flats where you lived belong to something called a Housing Association. And since Harris definitely won’t be going back, they have decided to clear out all his stuff, paint the place till it looks new, and put another family in there.’

  ‘So will I live with them?’

  At last, Rob was ashamed. I think he must have panicked momentarily because he said the worst thing he could say. ‘Of course not. You’ll be staying here with Linda and Alan.’

  Eddie was on it in a flash. ‘For ever?’

  Rob looked so miserable I couldn’t even give him my see-what-you’ve-done-now look. I had to rescue him, so I ticked Eddie off. ‘Come along, Eddie. You know better than that. Alan and I have told you plenty of times that we only look after children for a little while, till Rob here and the people he works with find them something that will work better.’

  (I won’t use their expression, ‘a for ever family’. It is such bollocks.)

  I left the two of them together for a while. When I came back, Rob was just leaving. I made some excuse to send Eddie down to Alan in the shed, and turned to Rob.

  ‘A great-granny, eh? But no one who could take the boy? No grandmother on that side?’

  ‘The police tracked down some hairdresser in Tynemouth who knew the family. She said the grandmother died some years ago.’

  ‘No father hiding anywhere in the woodwork?’

  He shook his head. ‘My money is on Harris. It seems the mum was managing fine till he showed up. My guess is that it wasn’t for the first time.’

  ‘I hope no one is going to rush to tell poor Eddie that.’ I sighed. ‘So. One great-granny. No future there, I suppose?’

  ‘No,’ Rob agreed. ‘She’s bed-bound in a home. The staff aren’t even sure she was on top of what they told her.’ He glanced around to check that Eddie hadn’t crept back to eavesdrop. ‘I have some better news, though. There won’t be a court case.’

  ‘His mum won’t testify?’

  ‘She’s quite unfit.’

  ‘What about a video link?’

  He leaned towards me. ‘Linda, she’s hopeless. Harris could come into court swinging a rusty mace, and any jury would still hesitate to convict. None of the neighbours will say a thing. And Lucy Taylor’s such a mess in the head it’s hard to imagine that she wasn’t always some sort of basket case.’

  ‘So is he going to get away with it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Rob said hotly. ‘They’re nailing him for drugs, and common assault and stolen goods, and animal cruelty and numerous shenanigans inside that club, and God knows what else. They’ve rustled up a list an arm’s length long.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that, without bodily harm or kidnapping, the man will be out within months.’

  ‘I know.’ He studied the ends of his fingers. ‘He was a crafty sod, to take care to lay off the child. But, on the bright side, Eddie can see someone now.’

  He meant a therapist, though in my experience with damaged children, that isn’t always a bright side. ‘Anyone in particular?’

  He loo
ked embarrassed. ‘I thought it might be Eleanor Holdenbach? Sometime next month?’

  Eleanor Holdenbach. It could have been a whole lot worse. And I was just relieved it wasn’t Otto Weeks. Otto’s so young he still has hobby horses. Most of the rest have worked for the council long enough to realize the job is just to tidy up what chunks of the child are left and brush as many of the splinters as they can out of sight, out of mind. Otto’s so full of beans he still believes that you can focus on exactly what went wrong, and make the poor little buggers whole again.

  So, ‘Eleanor,’ I said. ‘Next month.’

  Lewis Tanner, Investigations Department Technician

  We ran the tapes Martin brought in. God, that was a laugh. There we were, all of the other screens slopping over with what my grandmother calls ‘the bits no one should see in places they shouldn’t go’. And there, in the corner, on the old video player, this middle-aged goody-goody in a cardigan is asking some other codger how to make ice cream.

  We sat and roared. I gave Martin a call, but he insisted that we did a thorough job and played every tape through. And he is right that all too often underneath this stuff, you catch a glimpse of something that sickens you so much you want to pack in the whole caboodle – move to some other section where you don’t feel, when you go home at night, that you’d prefer a single bed.

  Don’t tell my wife I said that!

  Anyhow, we followed orders. Jawohl, mein Kommandant! For six days in a row, we slid in these old tapes. There were five programmes on each. We got to know the songs. The two of us began to sing each time the show began.

  ‘Happy days, and happy ways

  I hope you know how glad I am

  To see you here with me today

  We’re going to have great fun.’

  We even sang it in the canteen once. (Fat Terry said he thought it sounded rather familiar, but he’s a hundred years old.) Then we went back to shove in the next tape. This was the visit to the fire station. (The officer was tactful. He didn’t mention that they call dead bodies ‘crispies’.) Then came how plasticine is made. How people engrave on glass. We learned it all. It was a very educational week.

  And, as Gurdeep said, not one wet knob or fanny from start to finish. That made a pleasant change.

  Eddie

  I thought that Rob had already asked me every question on earth. And Sue had often come along as well, sometimes in uniform, and sometimes not. They’d kept it up between them, tiptoeing around Linda and Alan (‘We’ll be all right in here, will we? Out from under your feet?’). They’d tried to keep it light, cheering me up along the way with biscuits, and offers to take me along to the playground. (‘All of us need a breath of fresh air. Fancy a kick about?’)

  But they’d kept at it. ‘Eddie, what did you do all day? How did you pass the time?’ ‘Did you ever have the little bed? Or did you always sleep along with Gem on that blanket?’ I told them that the little bed was mine until one day he’d tipped me out of it, saying he needed the room to store a few boxes he’d brought home, and Rob said, more into Sue’s tiny silver recording machine than to me, ‘To clarify, Eddie, can you tell us who you mean by “he”?’

  I couldn’t work out what he was talking about, so I’d kept quiet. I mean, he knew that I meant Harris. Why was he asking?

  And I remember Rob had tried again. ‘What did you call him, when you spoke to him?’

  I probably looked blank. I’d never called him anything.

  Sue tried. ‘What did your mum call him?’

  She hadn’t, much. But still I said it, just to keep them off me. ‘Bryce.’

  ‘So did you call him Bryce as well?’

  They waited. Maybe they were thinking that I was trying to remember.

  ‘Well, did you call him Dad?’ persisted Sue.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Harris?’ She tried to hide it, but she was watching me as if she thought I was pretending to be thick. ‘Or Mr Harris, even?’

  ‘I never called him anything.’

  ‘What if you wanted to call him over to look at something?’

  Did I look frightened at the very idea? Who’d want him looking? I found a ladybird once, and he pulled her legs off, one by one, in front of my face. Then, holding me tight between his knees so I couldn’t get away, he crushed her tiny body slowly between his big fat thumbs. But in the end I couldn’t see for crying anyway. So I won there.

  ‘Right, then,’ I do remember Sue saying very firmly into the machine. ‘For now, we’re going to refer to Edward Taylor’s mother’s partner as “Harris” on this tape.’

  And on we’d gone. ‘What did you eat? Did you have to tell them when you were hungry, or did they feed you anyway?’ ‘Who gave you food? Was it hot or cold?’ ‘Were you allowed to take food out of the cupboards by yourself or did you have to ask?’

  Next time, they’d take another tack. I look back now and I can hardly believe that I had no idea what they were fishing for, with some of their questions. ‘Eddie, I must ask, did you see anyone apart from Harris and your mum? Did he have mates in ever?’ ‘Eddie, did Harris ever hit you?’ ‘Where on your body?’ ‘How often, Ed – can you tell me?’ ‘How hard? I know it isn’t easy to explain, but’ – Rob slapped a hand on his own thigh - ‘this hard? Or was it harder, more like this?’ His hairy hand came down with such a thwack he made himself yelp.

  After we’d giggled at that, it was Sue’s turn to lean forward. ‘Did your mum ever try to stop him hitting you?’

  I tried so hard to hide the answer. But they were waiting. Waiting, just like Harris did.

  Maybe I panicked. Anyhow, I must have nodded.

  ‘So what happened then?’

  And when they’d finally dragged that answer out of me, and Rob had held me tight, and I’d stopped sobbing, he’d said, ‘Sorry, Eddie! God, I am so sorry! I had no idea!’ And I looked across at Sue and she was scarlet in the face and scrabbling on the carpet on her hands and knees, picking up hundreds of tiny bits of grey foam rubber.

  I hadn’t meant to rip that cushion into shreds. I didn’t realize I’d been clinging on to it so tightly. ‘We will tell Linda it was not your fault that it got torn,’ Rob promised me. And he made sure he did, as they were leaving. He even called me back so I could hear.

  Linda looked down at the carpet, which was still speckled grey around my chair. ‘Never you mind. We’ve had far worse than that.’

  I couldn’t understand what she was saying. What, I was worried, could be worse than what Harris did to Mum that time she tried to stop him?

  That was the end, that day. But Sue and Rob came back again, and I remember being mystified at how some of the very same questions got asked over and over. I couldn’t understand why. It felt to me, back then, as if Mr Perkins had asked one of the people we visited, ‘Do the pancakes you’re tossing ever end up on the floor by mistake?’ and then, after she’d answered, kept asking the question again, but just a different way. I do remember worrying that they hadn’t listened, or they hadn’t believed my answers. Why else would they ask things like, ‘Was Harris ever nice to you?’ when they knew that he wasn’t? Or, ‘Did he ever come home with presents or promise you special things?’ or, ‘Did he or any of his friends ever put their arms around you or hug you – anything like that?’ I had already told them that no one ever came, and Harris didn’t touch me – no, never laid a hand on me, so long as I was crouched down quietly against that wall, gripping my legs so tightly to keep myself steady that I made bruises on myself, trying to stay safe by keeping what Harris called my ‘dirty little pink snout’ well out of it.

  Being as good as gold so he wouldn’t get ratty.

  Charlotte Next Door

  Linda came round some days to borrow my baby sister. It was usually for swimming, but after their new boy came, sometimes it was for her to go next door and sit with him in their sandpit. (Dad dug ours over after I stopped playing in it. Marie came years after me. She was a big surprise.)

  Linda and A
lan keep their old sandpit covered so the cats can’t mess in it. Marie really likes it. I thought at first their new boy would be only two years old, like her. But then I saw him. He was nearly as old as me! And he was wearing Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas. I didn’t want to play with him when I saw that, and nobody suggested it. I don’t know why.

  I don’t know either why the boy – his name was Eddie – would want to sit next to Marie, mucking about with sand. He did, though. She would crawl about, grabbing the spades and shovels, and bashing the top of buckets. He just sat jammed against the edge, scooping up handfuls of sand and watching it trickle away between his fingers. Over and over. Whenever Marie got upset because she couldn’t see her favourite yellow scraper, he’d push it back in view. And sometimes, when she was chattering her nonsense, he’d nod as if he might be listening.

  He didn’t talk, though – except to say to Marie things like, ‘There it is,’ and, ‘Over there.’

  I watched quite often. Usually Alan was gardening somewhere near, pretending not to keep an eye on things.

  I asked Linda once, when I’d been sent round there to tell them that it was our tea time, ‘Why do you put him in there with a baby?’

  She looked at me. I could tell that she was going to make up some excuse. But then she didn’t.

  ‘I think he finds it soothing,’ she told me. ‘And some days, when he’s had his visitors, it calms him down.’

  I knew who she meant by ‘his visitors’. She meant the dumpy man and the smart lady they called Sue.

  Eddie

  You cannot say I wasn’t used to questions. But Eleanor. She had braids wrapped around her head, grey hair and dangly necklaces. Her spectacles hung round her neck when they weren’t on her nose. I couldn’t stand her – well, not her exactly, more the way she made me feel, because that awful waiting that we always did reminded me of being near to Harris. It made my heart thump, knowing that she’d be saying something any moment, but not knowing what or when. I’d try so hard to keep still, then I’d look in my lap to see my hands squirm. Or I would notice red and realize I’d gnawed a fingernail so far down that it was bleeding again.