Is There Anything You Want?

by Margaret Forster

  After the fourth Saturday, Mrs Hibbert realised that Emma would never be on time. She seemed incapable of punctuality and, what was worse, couldn’t understand its importance. When Mrs Hibbert tapped her wrist-watch and said, ‘Emma, it is twenty past two,’ Emma, just smiled, and if the time was repeated she looked puzzled. ‘So?’ she said, once, not cheekily, simply seeming to be confused. ‘So, Emma, you are supposed to be here at 2 p.m. We agreed your hours would be two to four every Saturday until you’ve finished your examinations.’ ‘Well,’ said Emma, cheerfully, ‘I’ll stay twenty minutes later, all right?’ It was not all right. Mrs Hibbert liked to listen to a certain radio programme on Saturdays at 4 p.m. but she didn’t want to tell Emma that. It didn’t sound important enough to be making a fuss about. So she just had to put up with Emma’s tardy ways and, as time went on, her occasional non-appearances. Now those were infuriating and definitely not to be tolerated. ‘You might at least have had the courtesy to tell me about this dental appointment,’ she complained. Emma was contrite, and said she had meant to. There was nothing Mrs Hibbert could then do, except sack Emma, and she didn’t want to do that. She liked the girl, and she was coming along nicely and proving useful.

  But she was concerned by how deeply Emma was in thrall to ‘Sluke. He came to collect Emma once and Mrs Hibbert’s dislike of him increased. He had long fair hair tied in a ponytail (with what looked like a bit of pink wool) and wore torn jeans (though Mrs Hibbert knew enough to recognise that the tears were deliberate and therefore fashionable, she supposed) and a T-shirt with ‘If You Want Me, Have Me’ on the front. Mrs Hibbert happened to be in the greenhouse when he made his appearance, but she heard Emma shout and heard her drop her trowel, and when she looked out of the greenhouse it was to see the girl flying down the garden path towards this creature, her arms outstretched. They stood swaying together, bodies locked together, faces squashed together. Mrs Hibbert turned her back on them and focused her attention on her tomato plants. She looked at her wrist-watch: ten to four. Emma had been fifteen minutes late, so was not due to finish until four-fifteen. She waited. As she expected, Emma duly appeared at the door of the greenhouse, looking flushed and very happy. ‘Mrs H . . . .’ she began (Mrs Hibbert was quite amused to be called Mrs H. and had allowed it) but then, seeing her employer’s expression, she stopped. ‘It’s just,’ she began again, ‘that Luke thought – I mean, he’s here, and . . .’ ‘I have eyes, Emma,’ Mrs Hibbert said. She could hear the boy kicking stones along the path as he patrolled impatiently up and down, not even having the good manners to come and introduce himself. ‘I’m afraid,’ she went on, ‘that I need you to finish planting those geraniums. Rain is forecast for tomorrow and I wish them to be bedded in.’

  Emma didn’t say a word. There was no argument. She raced back to where she had been putting the geraniums into the soil, and picking up her trowel began planting them. ‘Sluke stood and watched her. She was finished in record time, and ran to get the watering-can and water the plants in. ‘Sluke, of course, could have been standing ready with the can filled, but he hadn’t moved. Before Emma could come to the greenhouse again Mrs Hibbert called out that she could go now, after she’d cleaned her trowel and put it back in the shed and disposed of the empty trays the geraniums had been in. She watched as, all this done, Emma once more embraced ‘Sluke and then they went off together, having difficulty walking straight because they were so closely entwined. ‘Sluke’s hand, she noticed, cupped Emma’s right buttock. She could see what was likely to happen. It didn’t take a genius. Emma, to use an old-fashioned phrase, was going to get into trouble. Mrs Hibbert only hoped that that bookworm mother of hers had talked to her about birth control, or that she didn’t need to because Emma was already on the pill. But even if she was, other versions of trouble loomed. The foolish girl would do anything ‘Sluke asked. If he asked her to live with him, she would, and Mrs Hibbert knew where and how he lived. Emma had described, excitedly, his squat. Mrs Hibbert had thought squatting belonged to the 1970s and only happened in big cities, but apparently not. ‘Sluke and two of his chums had taken over a hut in a children’s playground. Mrs Hibbert hadn’t been able to understand how this could be possible, but Emma, full of admiration, had explained that ages ago ‘Sluke had noticed a playground where the asphalt surface was all cracked and broken up, and the swings chained together, and that the park-keeper’s hut had been boarded up and had a notice on it saying that the playground was closed until further notice owing to the damaged asphalt. He had kept an eye on it for a few weeks and when still no work had begun, he’d climbed over the railings and investigated the hut. He found that it had a sink, and a lavatory (though the water had been turned off) and a small Belling cooker. So he’d taken it over. He left the boards over the windows, so it was pretty gloomy inside, but he spent the nights there often and had a paraffin lamp which, Emma said, made the little room really romantic. Mrs Hibbert had stopped her at that point. She didn’t want to know about the so-called romance since she felt that if she’d been told she would have been honour-bound to inform Emma’s parents.

  She worried about the girl. Emma was impressionable in a way Mrs Hibbert knew herself never to have been, and easily deflected from her studies. Mrs Hibbert had asked Emma about her GCSE results and which A-levels she had just taken, and knew she was a clever girl who had a conditional place to study medicine at Newcastle. This pleased Mrs Hibbert enormously, and she was moved to tell Emma about Christine, her niece by marriage, and how well she had done, and what important work she was involved in at St Mary’s. But Emma hadn’t really listened. She’d said, to Mrs Hibbert’s alarm, that Luke wanted her to go travelling with him and she was attracted to the idea. She didn’t, she confessed (a confession which made Mrs Hibbert feel ill), want to lose him. He was ‘special’, he was ‘different’. With that, Mrs Hibbert could agree: ‘Sluke was different, different from the clever, hard-working, and up to now ambitious Emma. He was ignorant, lazy and had no ambition except to ensnare Emma and get out of her anything he could. This included the money she earned from her gardening – Mrs Hibbert’s cash. She had seen Emma hand it over when ‘Sluke came for her, and when she’d tackled the girl about this she’d been told that Luke bought food for both of them and it was only fair.

  By this time, as Mrs Hibbert knew, Emma had moved into the playground hut with ‘Sluke. She’d phoned Mrs Hibbert the day she did this, saying she couldn’t come because she and Luke were making the hut more ‘homely’. Luke was going to make a table out of some packing cases and they’d got hold of an inflatable mattress they were going to mend (it had a puncture) and blow up, and she, Emma, was going to paint the walls. The following week when she did turn up she was wildly enthusiastic about what she referred to as ‘our little pad’ in which she and Luke were blissfully comfortable. Mrs Hibbert, aghast, had wondered aloud what Emma’s parents thought. They’d gone away, on holiday, a long holiday, completely unlike them, according to Emma. She and her sister Laura were on their own, but at the moment Laura was away on holiday too and knew nothing about Emma’s squat. She assured Mrs Hibbert that she was looking after the house, visiting it each day to feed the cat and to check that everything was fine. She went there for baths too, but – and Mrs Hibbert found this rather telling – didn’t let Luke go there, because she knew her parents would not like it. He had, in fact, suggested that they could use the Greens’ family house while her parents were away, but Emma had vetoed this. She preferred the hut, she said.

  That evening, when Emma had gone off to the hut, Mrs Hibbert tried to analyse why she felt so dreadfully anxious. There was no need for her to feel responsible for the girl, none at all. She hardly knew her and whatever happened no blame could ever be laid at her door. But that was a cheat. Mrs Hibbert hated cheats, people who absolved themselves from what they perfectly well knew was their moral responsibility. The point was, Emma had put her in possession of the facts by telling her about the squatting, and so she could not truthfully
claim to have no involvement in the girl’s life. Emma was vulnerable. ‘Sluke dominated her easily and completely. This was dangerous, and something should be done about it, but what? That was what kept Mrs Hibbert awake at night. She went over and over what Emma had told her about ‘Sluke: he had dropped out of the sixth form, he worked in a bar ‘sometimes’, his parents were divorced, he lived with his mother when he wasn’t in the hut, he didn’t get on with her, he was going to go travelling when he’d got some cash together. Emma was worth ten of him, but it was no good telling her that. Mrs Hibbert just wished that Mr and Mrs Green would hurry home, or that at least the sister would.

  Meanwhile, living in the squat Emma started to look worn. If ‘Sluke was using her gardening wages to buy food (which Mrs Hibbert doubted – she was convinced he was buying something else entirely) then he was buying the wrong sort. Emma’s healthy complexion vanished. She became very pale, no colour in her cheeks at all, and spotty. Her hair grew lank, and she lost weight. She still smiled cheerfully, but the smile was strained and looked false. Mrs Hibbert began making her nourishing fruit juice drinks and offering her a bowl of home-made soup with some wholemeal bread at the end of her gardening. Everything she offered was gratefully accepted and gobbled up in seconds. One day, just as Emma was about to leave, it started to rain heavily. It had rained at the end of many of Emma’s afternoons in the garden and Mrs Hibbert had not offered to drive her home, but suddenly she decided to do so, realising that she needed to see this hut to be able properly to assess Emma’s situation (that was how she justified her offer, but really she knew it was just that she wanted to satisfy her curiosity). Emma was not as keen to be driven home as might have been expected, though the rain was torrential and she would have got very wet cycling. She hesitated, and said she didn’t want to put Mrs Hibbert to any bother, and suggested maybe she could just wait in the kitchen till the rain eased off, but Mrs Hibbert said no, that would not be convenient. So the bike was put in the tool shed, to be collected later in the week, and the two of them got into the car. Emma told Mrs Hibbert where the playground was – right on the other side of town, on its very outskirts – and she drove there in fifteen minutes. She pulled up at its gates, which were of course padlocked together. Emma got out, thanked her, and went on standing there, getting soaked. Mrs Hibbert had no intention of moving. She sat watching as the girl finally turned away from the car and trudged along the railings until she reached a gap where they were bent out of shape. She squeezed through, and skirted the swings to reach the hut. Mrs Hibbert saw that it was a very small hut and that as Emma had described it was boarded up. Emma looked round, gave a limp wave to Mrs Hibbert, took a key from her pocket – so ‘Sluke had either found or fashioned a key to the lock – and went inside.

  It was too pathetic. Something had to be done. Mrs Hibbert raged all the way home, thinking of that poor girl alone in that horrible dark hut, waiting for that feckless boy to join her. Scandalous. She felt she should have marched across to that hut (except she couldn’t have got through the railings, she reminded herself) and hammered on the door, and when Emma had opened it, grabbed her by the hand and pulled her out. She should have brought her home and insisted that she see sense and return to the family home. She would have been called an interfering old busybody perhaps, but sometimes one had to interfere. She couldn’t settle to anything that evening. Her hand kept going to lift the telephone but she couldn’t think whom to phone. And then, about nine o’clock, she found herself dialling (she had kept her old-fashioned telephone, not wanting one of those push-button abominations) the Greens’ family house, just on the off-chance that Emma’s sister had returned. When Mrs Green answered, Mrs Hibbert was so surprised she was momentarily speechless. ‘Oh!’ she managed to say, sounding stupid. ‘Yes?’ Mrs Green said, impatiently. ‘Who is this, please?’ Mrs Hibbert told her who she was, gathering her normal confidence as she went on. She expressed her concern for Emma, said she knew the Greens had been on a long holiday and probably were unaware that Emma was squatting in a derelict playground hut, but that she had taken her there today and had been appalled at the circumstances in which their daughter was choosing to live. She didn’t mention ‘Sluke. Mrs Green’s reaction was very strange. There was a long pause, and then she said, ‘Emma is nearly 18 now. She isn’t a child. She knows what she wants.’ There was no thank you for calling, thank you for caring, thank you for informing us, how kind and thoughtful of you. Just ‘Emma is nearly 18 now. She isn’t a child. She knows what she wants.’

  Finally, the woman did add that she understood Mrs Hibbert’s concern but urged her not to worry. Emma was stronger than she looked and would be able to survive such minor hardships as living in a playground hut. ‘It will probably do her good,’ Mrs Green said. And then she asked, ‘What did you say your name was?’ and when Mrs Hibbert repeated it there was another silence. ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Green and hung up. As soon as she’d replaced the receiver, Mrs Hibbert regretted what she had done. What would Emma think, what would she say? She would surely feel betrayed. But then, as she got ready for bed, Mrs Hibbert consoled herself with the thought that, as Mrs Green was so very odd, she might never mention the phone call at all. This, it seemed, was true. The next time Emma came (twice a week, now her exams were over), nothing was mentioned about a phone call to her mother. She just said her parents were home again and that she’d told them she’d moved in with Luke. Mrs Hibbert didn’t ask what they had said, but Emma volunteered the information anyway. ‘Dad’s furious,’ she said, ‘but Mum says it’s my own affair.’ ‘How extraordinary,’ Mrs Hibbert couldn’t help commenting. ‘What?’ said Emma. ‘Well, that your mother should be so untroubled.’

  She gave a great deal of thought to Mrs Green’s attitude after that. Did her lack of concern, or apparent lack of concern, mean that she didn’t care about her daughter? Or was it, on the contrary, a sign that she trusted her and respected her wishes? Mrs Hibbert couldn’t decide. The father’s reaction, on the other hand, was entirely appropriate and easy to understand. She wondered if he would seek out ‘Sluke and try to talk to him. Emma did let drop that she wasn’t going home at the moment because her father’s anger had not abated. This meant, as Mrs Hibbert quickly noted, that she was not having a bath or shower. She looked grubbier each time she came to garden and finally, when she’d arrived bedraggled anyway, with her hair positively greasy, and had dug out and transplanted some small potentillas, Mrs Hibbert had offered her the chance to have a bath. Emma stayed in the bathroom an irritatingly long time and emerged with her skin glowing and her hair smelling sweetly of lemon shampoo. This was a little disconcerting. The shampoo had been in the bathroom cabinet, which meant the girl must have opened it. Permission had not been given to do this. Still, Mrs Hibbert let the trivial intrusion go. What she could not let go was how Emma left the bathroom: wet towel in a heap on the floor, hairs in the plughole – quite disgusting for someone else to have to remove. She spoke sharply to the girl, but privately blamed that mother of hers for not bringing her up properly.

  Having a bath before her tea soon became Emma’s habit, but though this improved her appearance it did not improve it enough. Her clothes sometimes looked filthy, especially her jeans. Emma said she hadn’t been able to wash them because of the weather. ‘The weather?’ said Mrs Hibbert. ‘Good heavens, what an excuse. There are two launderettes in town, Emma, and I believe they have drying machines.’ Emma’s eyes filled with tears and she said she couldn’t afford to use a launderette, and she didn’t want to take her dirty clothes to her parents’ home to put them in the washing machine there because her father would be sure to find out and he’d say it was proof that she couldn’t manage on her own. ‘Well, you can’t,’ snapped Mrs Hibbert. Emma then wept. Between hiccuping sobs, she said that she and Luke had run out of money. They hadn’t enough to feed Charlie’s dog. It was the first Mrs Hibbert had heard of Charlie or his dog. She was scandalised to hear that Luke had agreed to look after his friend’s
dog, because he, Charlie, was going to work on an oil rig for three months. Charlie had left money but Luke had lost it. Naturally, Mrs Hibbert wanted ‘lost’ defined. It turned out that the money had to be used to pay Luke’s fine, which was for a driving offence – it was all so ridiculous. She began to lecture Emma on the necessity of ‘Sluke getting a job and of Emma herself returning home, but the sobs only grew louder. By then the girl had her head down on the kitchen table, where she’d been having her tea (and Mrs Hibbert had certainly observed scones being slipped into the bag at her feet). Her arms were over her head and what she was saying was muffled, but her words could still be made out: ‘I love him! I can’t leave him! You don’t understand! I love him!’

  It was all rather upsetting, and Mrs Hibbert felt quite shaky when Emma had trailed off. What upset her most was that the girl would imagine that she knew nothing about what it was like to be hopelessly in love. She would be bound to think, from everything she knew about her employer (not much, so far as feelings went) that she would be scornful of being in love. Mrs Hibbert had badly wanted to tell Emma that this was not true, but it was too embarrassing. She simply could not have embarked on the story of how much in love she had been, not just with Francis, long before he had even noticed her, but with someone before that. The emotion – love, not lust, definitely not lust – welling up inside her at the mere sight of Francis had made her light-headed and giddy and for the first time in her life she had lost weight. It had all been torture. She had known she wasn’t pretty, that she was too serious, she wasn’t young, and that there was nothing about her to attract him. If Francis had asked her to live in a derelict playground hut with him, she would not have hesitated.