Kate and Emma

by Monica Dickens

  It must have been a shock to him, but he never appears to be taken by surprise. He reacts very quickly to sudden events, and his face adjusts immediately, with his thoughts.

  Why did he look at me so sorrowfully? What have I done? He looked as if I had hurt him very badly.

  I had been told to stand by Johnny, but now he stepped back and sat down, and I was left there, with Kate smiling hopefully at me, sickly pale, and my father leaning on his arms waiting, a strange triangle to form in this place.

  A little stir had spread round the room when he said my name. People who didn’t know who I was were told by those who did. Eyes followed the lines of the triangle with slow curiosity from my father to me to Kate, and back to the bench again to see how he was taking it. Uncertain whether to greet me or not, Miss Draper was trying to look as if this sort of thing happened every day.

  When I had said my name and sworn the oath, my father said, very politely, ‘I’m sorry about this, Emma, but there is a point that I think only you can clarify.’

  Thank God he wasn’t going to call me Miss Bullock. I had been afraid of that, and of having to call him Sir, and the situation skidding too close to farce.

  ‘Yes?’ I gave him a non-committal face and voice to show him I was on my guard. If I had been brought in to denounce Kate, they had come to the wrong supermarket.

  ‘We need to fix the exact time that the little Thomas boy was shut up in the shed. Mr Jordan has said that you saw the boy about a month ago - the day you went to him for advice. When you next saw the mother, she told you that the child had gone away. Can you remember when that was?’

  ‘I think so. It was about two days before I went to Leeds. No, three, because I went to Leeds on Monday and I think it was Friday when I saw Kate. Yes, it was.’ I remembered now. ‘It was Friday. February the first.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’ When I got back to the office after seeing Kate, there was a message on my desk asking me to call Mrs Bullock at a Kingston number. What was my mother up to? Then I saw that it was Benita’s number. Odd. I still don’t think of anything to do with that house as my father’s. It is Benita’s address. Benita’s telephone number. Benita’s taste in pictures. He lives there, till death, I suppose, but I still see him as a visiting lover.

  It was Benita’s birthday. She wanted me to come for dinner. I almost said Yes. Then I made a rather thin excuse and said No. The excuse was so thin that Benita, who is very honest, said, ‘I’m too soon then. Damn. I suddenly thought this might be the moment. It isn’t, is it?’

  ‘No.’ I could be honest too.

  ‘You’re very miserly,’ she said, ‘with your forgiveness,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ I wonder if she told my father. I wonder if he even knew that she had telephoned.

  If the date meant anything to him, he didn’t show it. He said to Miss Draper, ‘That sets the time then at twenty-two days at the least, even if the child was only shut up outside the day before Emma’s visit on the first of February,’ and they both wrote it down.

  To answer my father, I was talking diagonally across the empty space in front of Kate, but it was hard not to look at her, although I tried not to. She was small and thin and horribly young, and she had put on a lot of lipstick that didn’t match the red coat, and she had the collar turned up to hide the birthmark. As if that were all that was needed to protect her from the stares! She sat alone in the middle of the room, bowed over a little and shrunk into herself, like a woman who was going to be stoned. From outside, I had seen her go into the courtroom with as much bravado as she could muster, but I guessed that it hadn’t lasted very long when her story was told and the eyes of the virtuous began to look at her.

  ‘Thank you, Emma.’ I thought he meant that I could go. I looked over my shoulder at Johnny, who nodded, and I was turning away when my father said, ‘Just one more thing.’

  I waited, looking at him, and he considered me. All right, I look like hell. But he didn’t know that I had travelled all night to be here, and that I had left behind the wreck of my future.

  ‘This is a very distressing case,’ he said, as much to the court as to me, because he would never forget the larger audience, even with his daughter on the stand, ‘and there is one particular aspect of it which disturbs me.’

  And me, nodded Miss Draper, although I doubt if she knew what he was going to say.

  ‘It appears that this mother had been ill-treating the child for some time. Now it’s possible that there may be some criticism of Mr Jordan for not taking any steps to avert the tragedy.’

  ‘How could he?. He didn’t know.’

  ‘But you went to him almost a week before the boy disappeared, and told what you knew about the mother’s behaviour.’

  ‘Well, I - no, not exactly.’ I couldn’t look at either Kate or my father. I felt the colour flare up. I had nothing to hide. I was only going to tell the truth, and yet I felt like a trapped criminal. I knew now how it must feel to be on trial for your life, and know you can’t prove your innocence.

  ‘Mr Jordan has told the court that you asked him for help.’

  ‘Yes, I did, but - at the same time, I asked him not to help, if you see what I mean.’

  My father raised the eyebrow that operates on its own, but he didn’t say anything sarcastic. He said, rather kindly, ‘Please explain, Emma.’

  Explain. Explain. How can anyone explain the mystery of Kate and me and the stubborn force which holds us? How can anyone explain these few years of our youth together, which have made treachery so impossible that I would not even have run to Johnny at the end if I had been brave enough to seek a dead Sammy by myself?

  There were three of us in it now. Me, Kate and Johnny. Whatever I said would make it worse for one of us. I could see no help in my father’s waiting face. No help in Kate’s blank eyes, which had gone too far away in misery. Opposite me sat the clerk of the court, two probation officers and an indifferent young barrister waiting to defend some delinquent whose parents had never thought of fighting for him until it was too late. At the end of the room, a scattering of police, and some downy students with notebooks. On my right beyond the door, the people from the Children’s department. Behind me, Johnny and an old-timer from one of the other societies. Any one of them, even the youngest student with the fresh face and the soft clean hair, could have put up a better show than our Miss Bullock, case worker, who was now about to be shown up for the bungler she was.

  ‘I didn’t want to make things worse.’

  ‘Go on,’ my father said, as he had said so many, many times in my childhood when I had started a roundabout story to try to deflect attention from a breakage, or trouble at school.

  ‘Kate’s my friend,’ I flung at him. ‘I was trying to save her, not sell her. And I knew her very well. I’ve known her for years.’

  You know I have, Daddy. I told you once that she and I were going to live together and you said: I like you, Emma. I like the way you set your heart on things.

  ‘She hates interference. I knew that she’d resent it bitterly if anyone - Mr Jordan or anyone - came uninvited. That’s why I said I’d go back and ask her if she’d like him to help. Then it would be her idea, you see, and she’d co-operate.’

  ‘Had it been going on for a long time, the ill-treatment of the boy?’

  I didn’t answer. How could I answer, with Kate sitting there in front of me, hunched over and rocking a little, like a child trying to ride out a scolding?

  I saw my father’s mouth twitch. He could force me, I suppose, but instead, he changed the question.

  ‘Tell me exactly what it was that finally sent you to Mr Jordan.’

  ‘Sammy was missing. You must know that.’

  ‘I mean the time before that. Tell me.’

  From somewhere, God knows where, I dredged up the courage to say, ‘I know I am on oath, but I don’t believe you can make me say things I don’t want to.’

  After I had said that, I felt very c
alm. It was like being cruelly teased at school, and you finally plucked up the courage to say: I don’t give a damn what you say about me, and you felt you could go away and sleep for a week. The court was on tiptoe to see my father and me at strife, but I felt suddenly at ease, and warmed by something like the old love for him, because we were enemies who understood each other.

  ‘You’re hiding something?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ You can kill me before I’ll tell you that Kate put that scar on Sammy’s leg.

  ‘I’m sorry, Emma, to keep on about this, but for Mr Jordan’s sake, as well as my own peace of mind, I feel we must get this straight. His reputation is involved, you know.’

  ‘I don’t see why. He’s been wonderful, over everything.’ Thank God Johnny was sitting behind me. My father was gunning for him, and I didn’t want to see his face.

  ‘You’ve known Mr Jordan for a few years, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve known for some time that this mother was treating her children badly.’

  ‘Not the other children. She’s always been good to the girls.’

  ‘The boy then.’ He brushed the correction aside. ‘If you knew that the boy was being abused, why did you never say anything about it to Mr Jordan?’

  It’s easy not to answer. I found that out.

  ‘Let’s simplify it then,’ he said, more legally. ‘Did you ever tell Mr Jordan what you knew?’

  I should have taken time to put up my hair. I caught sight of the damn plait hanging over my shoulder like a dead snake, and I thought I looked like a rude schoolgirl defying the headmistress.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him?’

  I have always been able to look at him without blinking. As a child, I would do it to try to disconcert him, while I struggled behind the look for an answer that he would find pleasing.

  ‘Did you know that the boy was being abused? ‘

  Alone in the small crowded courtroom, we matched eyes, and then he said, ‘Answer me, Emma.’

  I pulled my eyes away to the childish huddle that was Kate. Was I supposed to take up a stone too? She suddenly shrugged one shoulder up and pulled a crazy face at me, so like my old incorrigible Kate that I was able to say, ‘Whatever I knew, I wouldn’t have told him.’

  Before my father could say anything, I said it for him. ‘I know, I was wrong, but it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to make things right for her myself. All right, I failed. What happened with Sammy - it was my fault. I know that. I knew that as soon as I opened the door and the torch shone in and showed me what was in the shed.’

  Bear witness. Bear witness to what you see.

  ‘I’d say it was more the mother’s fault than yours,’ my father said, and then I did a terrible thing.

  A magistrate’s daughter, I made a scene, like some of the grievance-maddened mothers do, storming at the unruffled bench, who have them quietly removed, no rough stuff.

  ‘It’s not her fault!’ I cried out to him. ‘Don’t you know the kind of life she’s had? Don’t you know? Don’t you remember what she was like, here in this court, when she was sixteen? She never had anything, and she’s got nothing now. Nothing but debts and dirt and children and despair. No wonder she’s half out of her mind at times. Don’t let them prosecute her. It isn’t her fault. None of it. Don’t let them punish her!’

  ‘Take it easy, Emmie,’ he said gently. ‘Prosecution has nothing to do with me. That’s for the police, or Mr Jordan’s people.’

  ‘But you can help.’

  ‘It’s not my business. This court is only concerned with the child.’

  He wouldn’t help. Someone opened the door for me, and I went out, hating him. Or was it the law I hated - or was it myself - for making him my enemy?

  AT THE END, when they had all finished talking about me, I was asked whether I had any questions, or anything to say. I had come into the court with a whole lot of things in my mind to tell them, but when I got the chance, for some reason I said No. Nothing to say.

  ‘You agree with everything that has been said?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Em had done her best for me. What more could I do? I was too bloody tired to care. Em’s father had a mumble, mumble with the mutton in the lamb hat, and then he raised his voice as if I was deaf.

  ‘Mrs Thomas.’

  ‘Stand up,’ someone said, so I stood up.

  ‘We are going to make an order for your son to go into the care of the local authority. We think that’s the best thing for the time being. Do you agree?’

  Fat lot of use saying No. I said, ‘Yes.’ They can slit my throat before I’ll call him Sir. My best friend’s father. If life had turned out different, I’d have been calling him David.

  Emma told me once about a woman she’d seen, who when they told her they were going to take her child, yelled bloody murder and had to be hauled out with her heels drumming the floor. I went quietly. Case over. That’s that one out, let’s have the next poor idiot in.

  I couldn’t see Emma, and I felt a bit lost. Ruth had the girls, and there was no one at home. For a moment, I didn’t know which way to go, and then someone came up to me, and it was the blunt-spoken woman with the smile who had come from the prison when Bob went inside. She took my hand as if I was a child, so I went with her, and we had some tea and something to eat, and I thought perhaps not quite the whole world was against me after all.

  ‘I HATE HIM. Don’t look so moral, Johnny. I hate him.’

  ‘Hush, Emma. It was easier for you than for him. You won’t get away with that kind of dumb insolence in a magistrates’ court.’

  ‘You’re not going to prosecute her!’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘I won’t give evidence.’

  ‘You’d have to, if you were summonsed.’

  ‘You could get me out of it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re worse than my father. He tried to make me sell Kate.’

  ‘He tried to make you tell the truth. That’s no crime, in a courtroom.’

  ‘He tried to make me sell you too. He was hateful.’

  ‘I thought he was pretty decent, considering how badly you behaved.’

  ‘It was for you! It wasn’t only for Kate. I was trying to stop him persecuting you.’

  ‘You don’t understand. He—’

  ‘Don’t treat me like a child, Johnny. I’ve been in that court before. I understand all right.’

  ‘He wasn’t persecuting me. He was trying to protect me. People are quick to criticize, he knows that. They say: Isn’t it wonderful, the work they do? But if we make any mistakes, they jump on us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re suspicious. We work with people who’ve been pretty much rejected. They’ve got to find a flaw in that somewhere.’

  ‘My father isn’t all that omniscient,’ I said, rejecting the celestial choirs. ‘I don’t think he likes you any better than he likes me.’

  ‘His loss then,’ Johnny said cheerfully. Since I got to know him so well, through crisis, he speaks of my father with less deference. ‘If it was true. Why don’t you give him a chance, Emma? How long are you going to carry on the war?’

  ‘He broke a vow.’

  ‘Everyone can’t be as tough as you are,’ he said, but not admiringly; too indulgently, as if honour were only a childish obsession. Sometimes he talks to me like my father would if I were still seeing my father. I can’t stand it.

  ‘Don’t treat me like a child,’ I said again. ‘I can’t stand it. Especially now, when everything is wrecked.’

  But the wreck, it seemed, might be salvaged. Joel sent me a telegram to say that he was coming to London at the week-end. It would have been all right. We could have rescued it. We would both have said that we were wrong, which was going to be part of our recipe for peaceful marriage. If you say: I was wrong, it makes the other person say generously: ‘No, no, you were right,’ so that makes you both right. We would have started a
gain, and it would have worked out all right.

  What threw everything out was meeting Tom.

  I saw the back of his head going into a hotel, and many things became clear to me in that instant.

  ‘Tom.’ There was a small crowd going into the hotel, and he turned and saw me across people, and his face, like mine, was stricken, not smiling. He grabbed me and pushed me through the crowd and out of the hotel.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Anywhere but here. It’s a lunch.’ We went into a taxi and, like fools, into each other’s arms, and all the good of the years of strength and honour was undone.

  WHEN MOLLYARTHUR HEARD what the court had done about Sammy, she asked if she could have him up in York, and they let her.

  Lucky for him. If I’d been sent to someone like Moll at four years old, I could have told a different story.

  Mrs Evans from the prison says that they will bring Bob to the magistrates’ court. I wish they wouldn’t. I’m not ready to face him yet. He loved that kid, Bob did, and when he hears I’ve let them take him away from me, there’s no telling what he’ll do.

  However, perhaps it’s just as well to see him first in a public place like that. He’ll be handcuffed, perhaps, like he was when the copper brought him up out of the Tunnel with the big drop on the end of his nose.

  See him safely like that, in the court, and then when he comes home next month, it won’t be so bad. Mrs Evans says they have a job lined up for him. In the coke yard out at the gas works. He’s going to love that. I wonder if he knows.

  Em came to the flat the day after I got the summons, and we read it together and laughed at some of the jokes. If you didn’t already know what you’d done, it wouldn’t make you any wiser.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Em said, and I said I wasn’t, which is true. I feel sort of shut away inside, like a nun walled up inside Kate. Whatever they do to me, I don’t think they can hurt me, but if they want to send me to the birdcage, which Ruth Sullivan says with relish they could do, they’ll have to keep the girls for me, which is not going to help bring down taxes this year.