by Daisy Waugh
She nodded at him.
‘Messy Monroe, over there, who you’ve all had a bit o’ sport with in the past, of course, had her daughter removed from her, as you know, because of her association with me. And if we’re to be together, she an’ me an’ young Chloe, I need to get this conviction overturned. And until then – LAMSBURY SOCIAL SERVICES, IF YOU’RE LISTENIN’ – I shall be stayin’ here in Scotland, far away from both o’ them. So you can bloody well return the child straight away. OK? Right then. Are we finished?’
In the end she and Grey only had an hour on their own together before Messy needed to leave for Fiddleford again (with Mr and Mrs Deagle, it turned out. Charlie, during one of his previous telephone calls, had invited them both to stay.) The journalists took so long to leave, and then the Deagles took so long to stop talking about train times, and go upstairs and pack…
They left a silence when they had finally closed the door behind them, into which, after a small pause, Messy and Grey started laughing. Out of relief. Not because anything was funny. Out of the joy of being in the same room together. They trampled over the empty beer cans to get to each other.
‘I think,’ said Messy, squeezing him tight, ‘I think it’s going to be OK.’
‘Aye,’ said Grey, rubbing his cheek in her hair, breathing her in. ‘It’s going to be OK now…I’m sorry, Messy.’
‘Nonsense! Could have happened to anybody!’
‘Aye, very funny.’
‘Well. Almost anybody.’
‘…God, I love you, Messy. I love you so much.’
‘Yes…Good,’ she said vaguely.
‘Good?’
‘Look, we haven’t got much time. Are you going to show me round your home town or…what?’ She kissed him again, slowly and deliberately. ‘We’ve got an hour, Grey. Any ideas?’
‘Well…’ he said. ‘We could go and see how Jo’s doing.’
‘Or we could just telephone later.’
‘Or I could show you the petrol station where I used to work.’
‘Or I could just imagine it.’
He smirked. They both smirked. ‘Or there’s a bed and breakfast just around the corner…’
Jo was approaching the end of a long labour when, late the following morning, somebody from the council rang Messy at Fiddleford to inform her that in the light of recent developments (plastered as they were over that day’s newspapers) they had decided she could come to pick up her daughter at any time. Messy and the General were standing outside the children’s home about fifteen minutes later.
Most of the children (those who had agreed to attend that day) were already on their way to school by the time Messy and the General arrived, so the place was fairly empty. Set in a large converted town house on the expensive side of Lamsbury, it must once, beneath the lime-green paint, self-closing fire doors, and dismal hotpotch of institutional furniture, have been an elegant and pleasant place to live. No longer, of course. Though the pinboards were crammed with brightly coloured posters imploring residents to approach life more positively, there was, beneath its courageous, well-intentioned kindliness, an impersonality to the place which made Messy shiver, a core of lovelessness as poignant as it was, of course, inevitable. As they were led through the corridors to their appointment Messy had to fight the desire to just snatch what she had come for and run.
But first, in the carers’ staff room (vacated but for Chloe’s designated social worker and Paddy the care home duty officer) she was required to endure a long pep talk about parental responsibility. Various things were explained to her: that Social Services would be paying Chloe unannounced visits from now on; that until Grey’s conviction was officially overturned he was never to be left alone with Chloe under any circumstances.
‘OK. Fine. So where is she?’ said Messy, standing up, unable to wait any longer. ‘Can I go and fetch her now?’
But the social worker said she would fetch Chloe herself and bring her down. The reunion, she said, needed to be supervised.
‘Fine. Whatever. Anything…But please, please, will you supervise it then?’
The General, by contrast, feeling quite rightly that he would be ‘a bit de trop’ at such a tender moment, told Paddy he would slip away before the social worker brought Chloe in. He asked if he could go and see Colin.
‘Ah, Colin,’ said Paddy regretfully. ‘He’s not been a happy lad, Colin hasn’t. He’s been back in town up to his old tricks again.’
‘Well, what did you expect?’ said the General.
Paddy shook his head. ‘We’ve had the police out searching for him both nights. They found him halfway to Fiddleford one night. And then back at his mum’s the next. Sitting on the doorstep.’
‘Where was the mother?’
‘She won’t have anything to do with him.’ He looked from Messy to the General. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but that lad’s been in and out of here since he wasn’t much older than Chloe, and when he came in this time, he looked better than I’ve ever seen him. And that’s the truth. When he’s not screaming and yelling, all he’s talking about is his ruddy chickens!’
‘Yes, of course,’ murmured the General, nodding thoughtfully and edging towards the door, ‘the chickens. Right then. I shall leave you three to it – and Messy,’ he winked at her, ‘I shall be waiting for you and Chloe. In the car. On the corner of Kilbury and Knole Street. Left outside the door. All right? Got that?’
It wasn’t hard for the General to find him. He followed the noise. As soon as he stepped out of the staff room he could hear it: Colin’s voice, yelling out obscenities, and the sound of objects being smashed against walls. The General hurried down the corridor – almost, for the first time in twenty years, breaking into a run. Beyond what was the television lounge (except the telly had been stolen) and through yet more swinging fire doors, the General came upon a small ante-room. There were shards of glass all over the floor, a smashed window, an upside-down coffee table, a handful of angrily strewn plastic chairs and what looked like a mugful of coffee splattered against one wall. And in the middle of it all, Colin Fairwell. Still shouting, but now wrapped in the restraining embrace of Steve, one of Paddy’s kindly colleagues.
‘Good God!’ said the General. ‘What in Hell’s name is going on?’
Colin snapped to attention. Blushed a deep purple. ‘Oh,’ he said sullenly. ‘It’s you, is it?’
‘What are you doing, Colin?’ The General turned to Steve. ‘You can let go of him now.’
Steve hesitated.
‘Let go of him,’ the General snapped. ‘Please. If you wouldn’t mind…Your colleague, Paddy,’ he added, ‘knows who I am. He knows I’m here. I’m a friend of Colin’s.’
Steve looked warily down at his ferocious little captive. ‘I’m going to remove my arms now, Colin,’ he said patiently. ‘Are you ready?’…and released him. ‘OK? Calm now? Are you going to clear up the mess you’ve made?’
‘Fuck off,’ snarled Colin.
‘Colin, you’re being vile,’ said the General, scowling at him. ‘I’m so sorry. The boy’s got filthy manners sometimes, as you’ve obviously discovered. But from what I understand he’s had a rough couple of days. Mr—Forgive me, I don’t know your name?’
‘Steve.’
‘Mr Steve—’
‘No—’
‘I would be most awfully grateful, Mr Steve…Would you mind very much leaving us alone for a moment?’
He left them, reluctantly, and Colin and the General set to work straightening up the room. They didn’t speak for a while. It was obvious that Colin was very angry and the General could understand why, but it didn’t help him to know how to begin. They had almost finished tidying when he burst out awkwardly, ‘I had a meeting with Mrs Hooper, by the way. She said she’ll sell the eggs on the nod, so to speak. Under the counter, until we get the paperwork done.’
‘Not much use to me, though, is it? Stuck in this shit’ole.’
‘Well!’ The General was stung. �
��And you’ll settle in very nicely I dare say, using repulsive language like that.’
‘I am settlin’ in. Very nicely. Thank you.’
‘Ha! Excuse me, but it certainly didn’t look like that a moment ago.’
‘Yeah, right. Like you fuckin’ know. What do you know?’
‘Nothing at all…I wouldn’t pretend to.’
‘So shut yer ugly cake’ole then,’ Colin murmured.
The General pretended not to hear and together they picked up the pieces of broken mug in wounded silence, until Colin spoke again. ‘…Chloe’ll say goodbye though, won’t she?’ he said. ‘Before she goes.’
The General put the bits of crockery into a pile on the broken coffee table. He took a plastic chair and set it against the wall. He straightened it, adjusted the angle slightly. ‘I was rather thinking,’ he began, and adjusted the chair again, ‘…Colin, I gather your mother doesn’t – didn’t—’
‘On one of her walkabouts,’ he said defensively. ‘She’s a very busy woman.’
‘Yes of course. Only I was thinking. Do you think – that is to say we are all going to miss you at Fiddleford – or wherever we may be. Dreadfully. But perhaps…You’ll think it presumptuous. Only I know nothing about these sorts of things. I was thinking maybe of some sort of adoption—’
Colin looked coolly at the General. ‘You’re too old,’ he said baldly.
‘Ah well. Yes of course. I’m so sorry.’ Colin’s watchful eyes stayed on him. ‘How silly of me – and you have a family of your own. And so on. Or not. What not. Anyway—I certainly didn’t mean to—I hope you’re not—’
‘No, because what I was thinkin’,’ Colin interrupted, ‘was if you went for one o’ those resident’s orders. Especially seeing as I’ve already been staying with you. An’ the chickens are proba’ly missin’ me. You can say that, you know. Even if they ain’t. I reckon we stand a chance of a resident’s order, General. Once all the fuss ’as died down.’
‘Ha!’ said the General in astonishment. ‘Ha! I say! Ha!…Well. Excellent. Right then. Let’s finish this up and then you might need to fetch a pullover or something—’
Colin looked confused.
The General held a finger to the side of his nose. ‘As an intermediary arrangement,’ he muttered, sidling closer to him, ‘I was thinking we might implement a somewhat covert system of unofficial exeats. Don’t you think? Because it strikes me that so long as we get you back by tea time—’ He cast an eye around the room, at the window that Colin had just smashed, at the pile of broken crockery sitting beside the broken table leg. ‘…I can’t honestly imagine they’re going to miss you much.’
‘You what?’ he yelled. ‘You mean we’re going to Fiddleford? Today?’
‘Shhh!’
Colin threw his arms around the General’s neck and kissed him.
‘For Heaven’s sake!’ The General shook him off. ‘I shall be waiting for you in the car. On the corner of Kilbury Road and Knole Street. Do you know it?’
‘O’ course I do.’
‘Right then! Time check?’
‘I’ll be twenty seconds.’
‘Excellent. I shall see you there.’ The General was humming as he left the room.
Way back in gestation week twenty-eight, when Jo Smiley still felt very much on top of her game, she had gone to the trouble of typing out a detailed Birth Plan which, if things had gone as they were meant to, she would have handed over to the midwife on arrival at the Lamsbury cottage hospital, three weeks hence. There were, it had stipulated, to be no painkillers; no monitors; where possible, no white coats. She wanted underwater labour; she wanted Mozart; she wanted Jo Malone Red Roses Bath essence…
Jo, her mind filled with New Age propaganda and, as always, desperate to do things perfectly, had been determined to embrace the whole ghastly birthing experience with wakeful, open-hearted enthusiasm. Because childbirth, so she had heard (and so the opening paragraph of her Birth Plan had explained), was meant to be ‘a mystical thing, a magical apotheosis, a precious opportunity to connect with the cosmic self, a process where pain, in perfect synthesis with nature, metamorphoses into a life-giving, life-affirming orgasm of almost spiritual intensity’.
But the overnight bag she had so tenderly put together at Fiddleford all those weeks ago, which had included the bath essence, the Mozart and the Birth Plan, was a long way from the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh. And Jo had never known such agony. Within two hours of arriving at the hospital she had demanded an epidural, and had promptly fallen asleep.
Fourteen hours later, having barely felt a thing, having made him swear never to breathe a word about the epidural drip still attached to the base of her spine, she and Charlie looked down on their brand-new, sleeping twins – a girl (called Georgina) and a boy, of course; both beautiful, of course, with a mass of dark hair each…and all their worries faded away. There were the four of them, together, and nothing else mattered. Nothing in all the world.
At some point a little later, when they were idly envisaging their children’s future, Charlie mentioned the offer he’d had on the house. And Jo had laughed.
‘Are you mad?’ she said. ‘I love Fiddleford! We both love Fiddleford! Why on earth would we want to sell it?’
‘Yes, but realistically—’
‘These last few days, Charlie, I’ve actually missed Fiddleford almost as much as I’ve missed you. Not quite as much. Obviously. But almost.’
‘No,’ he laughed. ‘That’s appalling! Is that really true?’
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘What about everyone else we’ve got living there? We can’t just turf them out! Where would they all go? And what about all the people in the future? They’ll still need somewhere to hide. Where are they going to go?’
‘Yes, but practically speaking—’
‘Charlie, fuck practically speaking. Fuck the council! Fuck everybody who’s trying to close us down!’
‘That’s disgusting language,’ a woman in the neighbouring bed informed her amiably.
‘Sorry.’ But she was mid-stream. ‘Seriously, Charlie,’ she tried to whisper, ‘fuck all the petty bloody law enforcers! And fuck the media and its trivial fucking “moral” outrage! They’re a bunch of lazy, smug, hypocritical, mealymouthed, mean-hearted sodding dictators and I hate the lot of them. Fuck them! Fuck their opinions! Fuck their pathetic little laws! It’s our house. It’s our refuge. Why the fuck should we submit?’
‘My God,’ he said appreciatively, and slowly the ward filled, first with his, and then her own astonished laughter. ‘You’re supposed to be exhausted!’
‘Adrenaline,’ she mumbled. ‘Must be the adrenaline.’
‘Ten months in the country and you’ve turned into a revolutionary! It’s extraordinary!’
They drank to that, as well as to the twins. They drank champagne even though Jo was breast-feeding, and they realised as they drank that never in their lives had they ever felt more united, or happier, or more in love.
And for the next couple of days, while Jo recuperated and they began the long journey (by hire car) back to the South, they didn’t mention the possibility of selling Fiddleford again. At first because they honestly didn’t think about it. They were too happy, and still a long way from home. It wasn’t until they had crossed the border into England that the anxiety began to gnaw, and after that, with each mile they left behind them, the reality of what lay ahead loomed gloomier. They didn’t speak much. By the time they passed Taunton they hardly spoke at all; neither wanted to be the one to say it but they both knew, and they both knew the other knew: Fiddleford was going to have to go.
Messy and Grey’s contribution for the cottage and walled garden, though very welcome, would hardly even cover the cost of the Fire Authority demands. And then there was the water, and the kitchen and, worst of all of course, the stables. Charlie and Jo hadn’t a hope of raising £750,000. And the council, having taken possession, could do with them what they liked: sell them off for executive housing
; open a conference centre, a Safe Injecting Zone, a public swimming baths…their refuge could not be a refuge if the world had access to it, too. The refuge could not function. It would have to close. And eventually – this year, next year – Maurice Morrison would be still lurking, waiting. And the house would have to be sold.
Fiddleford Manor was strangely silent when its current owners finally arrived home. In the hall they were confronted not by the expected welcoming party, who were all in the cottage still eating lunch, but by a mountain of depressing-looking post. They paused in front of it, exchanged glances.
‘Come on,’ sighed Charlie. ‘While the babies are still asleep. Let’s get the worst over and done with.’
‘Crikey,’ chuckled Jo, fingering the pile unenthusiastically, and then pulling out a coy peppermint green envelope. ‘Look at this one!’
The letter she held was addressed to them both. In a neat, childish hand, above a smiling watermelon motif, both their names were spelt wrong.
In London Sue-Marie had spent the early part of the morning at Maurice’s hairdresser and then later, at his tactful instigation, consulting with a cosmetic surgeon about her repulsive facial flaps. Maurice had assured her that though he personally thought the flaps were ‘rather special’, it was now incumbent on her, with the more public role she would henceforth be playing, to allow the world to read the expression in her eyes.
She loved her new hair, and the surgeon had assured her that her ‘overlap’, as he called it, could be removed with no trouble at all. And though the sex of her imagination (or sex of any description at all) had yet to materialise, Sue-Marie Gunston was feeling great. She was in love with London. She was in love with her new social whirl. Her new, metropolitan future, far away from boring Lamsbury and the dirty countryside, was looking very golden and in a week or two, thanks to Maurice’s munificence, she would even be able to see it when she smiled.
