Mothers' Boys

by Margaret Forster

  She tried so hard to listen carefully but concentration was difficult. She was distracted by silly things, by the sound of the heating system, by the sudden cry of seagulls outside, by the way the Clerk of the Court played with his pen, constantly up-ending it and lightly tapping his papers at each turn. There was a moment of farce when a policeman’s walkie-talkie suddenly erupted. He was standing at the side-door, through which Leo would come, and they all heard the static and then a voice calling for attention. He blushed and turned it off and everyone smiled. Then Leo was brought in and put in the witness box, in that flimsy-looking affair, not like a witness box at all. She was looking straight at him but there was no eye contact, his eyes were dead, fixed on some far-off point no one could see. He looked neither nervous nor cocky, just quite still, his hands resting lightly on the ledge in front of him as though he were about to deliver a sermon. He replied calmly and clearly to all the obvious questions – his name, his age, the mere facts. But when he was asked to describe how and why he stabbed Joseph Samuel Kennedy he wouldn’t answer. He said, ‘I have nothing to say.’ Just like that. Asked if he pleaded guilty or not guilty, he said, ‘Guilty.’ And that was that.

  The hardest part was when the magistrates went out – to have to go on sitting there, waiting, when all she wanted to do was slink off, get through that door before the other mother. She stood when the buzzer went once more – hateful, crude noise – but she didn’t look up until she was seated again. The male magistrate spoke for the three of them. He didn’t make a meal of it, that was one thing. But she despised him for his unimpressive words, she would rather he had made a speech full of fury. He sounded so dreary, mumbling on about ‘this sort of thing must be stopped’. Hopeless. And the women either side looked more embarrassed than stern. Leo was sentenced to the maximum sentence, twelve months in a Young Offenders’ Institution. She hardly took in where it was.

  There and then she’d wanted to apologise. She sat there, fantasising how she would walk up to the mother and touch her on the shoulder of her jacket and she would turn, startled, and Sheila would take a deep breath and just say that she was sorry, so sorry, so very sorry. She wouldn’t ask for forgiveness, she would leave straight after saying her bit, she wouldn’t wait for the mother to reply. If she replied. (Would she herself have replied if it had been the other way round? No, probably not.) But what stopped her from actually doing what she wanted to do was the thought that it might look like a plea for sympathy. Sympathy for herself: look at me, feel for me, I am his grandmother, his mother to all intents and purposes. And how could she do that? Because she didn’t deserve sympathy, and certainly not from his mother. Yet it filled her with horror to think his mother might imagine she did not care, or that she was not sorry. Suppose his mother never guessed at how wretched she was? How she blamed herself? How she struggled to make sense of it all? How she felt for her? How she put herself in her position? Suppose his mother thought her as brutal as Leo? That he was from a brutal and brutalised home? That he had never had a chance because he had been unloved and starved and beaten, and that his parents’ treatment of him had led to all this?

  She couldn’t. His mother couldn’t think that, not if she’d listened to Leo’s solicitor. They hadn’t chosen her, neither she nor Alan had a clue. She’d been appointed to take Leo’s case somehow. ‘Call me Elaine,’ this solicitor had said, ‘it will make it a bit easier.’ But it hadn’t, not calling her by her Christian name or anything else. None of it had been easy. Speaking at all had not been easy. She’d replied to all Elaine’s questions haltingly, at that first awkward meeting, offering no more than the minimum answer. So much in her head, so little of it emerging in speech. Alan had been more useful. He’d rambled on and on, talked the hindleg off a donkey, repeated over and over that none of it made sense, Leo had had a good and loving home, he didn’t know why or how it had all gone wrong . . . Elaine had said it would make a great difference to Leo’s sentence, this parental – sorry, grand-parental – back-up, this proof of a solid, decent upbringing, but at the same time she would have to make much of the death of his parents, the trauma of it, the wrench being taken from Africa, his difficulties as a boy of mixed race in an almost completely white community – she would have to, because there were no other exonerating circumstances, were there?

  No, there were not. But what Sheila doubted was the wisdom of what this Elaine said she would have to dwell on at length. It was dishonest. He’d only been three. He couldn’t remember Africa, or his parents. He had had no difficulties as a mixed-race boy. Well, none she’d known of, nothing significant, surely. Nobody had ever taunted him, or if they had he’d never mentioned it, he hadn’t suffered living where they lived or she would have been aware of it. But had she fooled herself? Leo was always a quiet child, even when he did start to speak normally, but she still wanted to convince herself that she would have known about any victimisation. The school would have known. He was a prize pupil, the teachers followed his progress carefully, he was more than noticed. He wasn’t popular, she knew that, he had no real friends, which had always troubled her, but that wasn’t the same as being persecuted, so that he in turn might have wished to persecute. She would rather Joe Kennedy’s mother had heard all this than the stuff Elaine eventually came out with in court, trying to make hearts bleed with the story of the car crash and the not speaking, and the tale of the awful first year. It had embarrassed her to listen to it. She had looked down at her feet, blood thudding in her ears. When she next had looked up, Leo was smiling. She wished he wouldn’t. It would be misunderstood. She’d told him often not to smirk and he’d just shrugged his shoulders, indicating that he couldn’t help it. What was he smirking at? She hadn’t been attending.

  Then the court was adjourned and she saw him and his mother and his father rise, all three tall and handsome and clean and beyond reproach, while she and Alan were so battered and shabby and somehow responsible, defiled by Leo’s wickedness. How could she apologise?

  *

  Joe hated the policemen. He hated the doctor, he hated the solicitor, but most of all he hated the policemen, each one and especially Detective Sergeant Graham.

  Harriet disliked him too. She didn’t like the way he’d walked into the house in the first place, mock-polite, she felt. She didn’t like how he spoke or what he said. ‘I’d like to express my sympathy,’ he’d said, in an unctuous tone, ‘the lad’s been through a terrible ordeal, terrible.’ And he’d shaken his head and clucked his tongue. She’d been annoyed when she heard Sam offer him a cup of coffee, gratefully accepted, with milk, one sugar. Afterwards, she’d said, ‘Why did you have to give him coffee?’ and Sam had been rightly surprised. Coffee was always offered to visitors, coffee or a drink, if the time was appropriate. She’d known she couldn’t defend her objection.

  So Detective Sergeant Graham had drunk the coffee. And stared. He did a lot of staring. She wondered if he thought it made him look compassionate, this solemn stare, and longed to tell him it did not. It made him look foolish. She wanted to slap him. And Sam was always so nice to him, so friendly, so quick to agree that Graham’s job, the job of the police in general, was difficult. There were so few clues at the beginning. Joe had seen his attackers only for a minute, only a quick but clear glimpse before they blindfolded him. One was white and big and one black and big, and both had had knives. Well, obviously, they must have done, in view of his injuries. Sam sympathised with how hard it would be trying to catch these two. Graham was pleased, he cleared his throat and nodded and said that he was glad the problems were appreciated and that everyone would be doing their level best.

  He wanted to talk to Joe again, at length, on his own. Sam said of course at the same time as she said no. Joe had been through enough, he’d already given his statement to a policeman and had nothing more to add. She wouldn’t have him plagued, he needed to sleep. Graham said he was prepared to be patient, he took her point, but he’d have to see the lad himself, preferably soon. She wished
he would stop calling Joe a lad. It seemed to be a term of affection but she found it sloppy. What was wrong with his name, what was wrong with ‘Joe’?

  When he’d gone, that first time, Sam was angry with her. ‘There’s no need to antagonise the police,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake, it isn’t their fault.’ ‘And there’s no need to be so chummy,’ she flashed back, ‘all matey, as though you had to keep in with them or something.’ ‘We have to work with them,’ Sam said, ‘we might as well be friendly, make it easier all round.’ He said he didn’t see what was wrong with Graham anyway, he seemed perfectly nice and quite couth for a policeman. Sam said it as a joke but she didn’t take it as one. And she felt quite triumphant when, on Graham’s next call, Louis was there and said, when Graham had left, that he didn’t like him. Sam repeated what he’d said about having to work with Graham, and Louis said, ‘No, Dad, he has to work with us.’ Exactly. Louis had pin-pointed what she didn’t like about Graham or about the way Sam treated him – it was as though, in the middle of all their grief, they had also to take on the burden of handling this policeman, and she couldn’t bear it. There was no energy to be friendly, to offer cups of coffee, as though this was a social relationship when it wasn’t. She wanted to be formal, distant. It was the only way she could bear it.

  But she knew what she hated most of all was Graham thinking that he knew the details. He mentioned them once – ‘the details are pretty horrifying’ – and she found herself flushing. He was always trying for eye contact, wanting to exchange meaningful looks, and she refused to let him. The last thing she wanted was to be close, in any way, to Graham. Once, he’d said, ‘You seem hostile, Mrs Kennedy,’ and she had denied she was. ‘I prefer to be business-like,’ she’d said. ‘I am a businesswoman after all.’ She didn’t say this apologetically but as a statement, but he was off, wanting her to talk about her business, about how she ran it, how it was doing, and she was brusque again, telling him in almost as many words that it was no concern of his, surely. He’d smiled and agreed. Then, when he’d stood up, about to leave, he’d said, ‘I know how you must feel, Mrs Kennedy. I’ve got lads of my own.’ She’d been so angry, said he couldn’t possibly know how she felt, everyone said that and it was nonsense, she was sick of it.

  Apparently he’d had a word with Sam after that outburst. Suggested his wife should see a counsellor. At least she could laugh at that, if unkindly, contemptuously. A counsellor! How absurd. It made her squirm to hear the word. Stupid people who took a course and then presumed to advise others about how to deal with their grief – dear God, it was outrageous. The last thing in the world she wanted was to be counselled. The word appeared everywhere. ‘Seeing a counsellor’ had become a cliché, utterly banal. It was the same attitude as the police had towards Joe – he should see a therapist. He would never, they said, ‘get over it’ unless he did, unless he ‘talked it through’. Jesus! The soft option, talking, talking to counsellors, therapists, strangers, as though it helped one iota. Joe didn’t want to talk to anyone. He’d answered all their questions and that was enough. If he talked to anyone, more than he had already done, it would be to his family. Sam said he didn’t know how an educated woman could be so ignorant. He said it was like listening to someone refusing to believe a dentist could relieve the suffering of toothache. Psychiatry was a skilled profession, he said, and she was being typically British, sneering at it. He said he was even willing to go and see a psychiatrist himself, if she and Joe would. She was astonished by this, he immediately had the upper hand for the first time. ‘You?’ she said. ‘I don’t believe it, you, the great blocker-out? Now why would you agree to see a psychiatrist?’ And he said, very quietly, ‘I have to try to do something, we can’t go on like this.’

  *

  The probation officer was really very kind, kinder than anyone Sheila had yet come into contact with. She hadn’t wanted to see any probation officer – wasn’t it enough to have had to put up with policemen and lawyers? What on earth did she want with a probation officer? It was like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted, surely. But apparently the circumstances required that someone called a Through Care Probation Officer be put on the case to liaise between Leo and his family, and over the months Sheila had got used to the occasional visits.

  More humiliation, though in fact the first words the probation officer had said, after the usual pleasantries, were, ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Mrs Armstrong, you really mustn’t, nobody else does.’ That had made her smile wearily. ‘Don’t they?’ she’d said. ‘How do you know? I’ll bet there’s plenty as do, not that it makes any difference.’ ‘Nobody who knows the facts,’ said the probation officer firmly. ‘Nobody in this neighbourhood who’s watched you and Mr Armstrong bring Leo up. Everyone knows what a good home he’s had, there’s no doubt about that.’ And this probation officer, this Helen woman, had touched her hand reassuringly. Surprising, Sheila thought, to do that. Just a pat, but done so spontaneously, or so it appeared. She was a funny little person anyway, this Helen. Small, earnest. She had a dark jacket on with a rose in the buttonhole, a thing Sheila hadn’t seen for a long time. She indicated the flower and said, ‘Off to a wedding?’ and this Helen said no, it was her father, he grew roses and was so proud of them and it pleased him that she liked to wear his roses in her buttonhole.

  So she was a thoughtful young woman, she obviously liked to be kind, and it was realising this that made Sheila in the end, after nearly a year, bold. She cut in on Helen’s routine questions and said there was one she would like to ask herself and was told to ask away. ‘What I want to know is,’ she said, ‘has his mother ever realised how sorry I am? How ashamed? I can’t bear her to think . . .’ and then she hadn’t been able to go on. Not because of any tears, they still wouldn’t come, but because she couldn’t find the words for what she wanted to say. ‘I think about her all the time,’ she went on eventually (Helen having said nothing). ‘I can’t get her out of my head. What she must be going through. If it had been the other way round . . .’ and again she had to stop. Imagining it. What was done. She’d vowed not to, never to imagine it. It did no good, it was disgusting, she knew it. But she must do it, it would be natural. And her heart must still be murderous towards Leo and perhaps towards his mother, his grandmother . . .

  Helen was clearly uncomfortable. She bit her lip and said, ‘Well, Mrs Armstrong, I don’t know Mrs Kennedy, I haven’t had anything to do with her, you see, so I can’t say, but if it was me, I mean if I was her, I don’t think I’d blame you. I might want to know about Leo’s background, to see if I could understand the cause of . . . of what he’d done . . . but I don’t think I’d blame you. Parents can’t help how their children turn out, can they? I mean, not always. It’s too easy blaming them for everything. And I expect she knows that.’ All very sensible. Sheila admitted it was. But it didn’t help. ‘What I’d like,’ she said, ‘what I’ve always wanted to do all this time is somehow to let her know . . . not to meet her or anything, but to send some message, somehow, I don’t know what . . .’ Her voice trailed to a halt. Helen looked so doubtful. ‘You don’t think it would be a good idea? Maybe you’re right, maybe it would seem like a cheek, it might hurt her even more, my thinking it mattered saying sorry, as if it did any good. Oh, I don’t know. Nothing’s right, nothing feels right any more.’

  The same feelings she’d had so many years ago, bringing Leo home. Nothing had felt right from the moment the news of the accident came. Nothing was ever really right ever again, but life went on. That’s what people said, life must go on. She’d been so unlike her usual self all that time in Africa . . . no routine, no familiarity, everything strange and out of kilter. From the moment she woke up there was nothing she could recognise – the light was harsh, brilliantly so, that sun blasting its way through the shutters, and then the bare floor, she didn’t even know what it was made of, and the sad trickle of water coming from that spout of a tap and no kettle to make her tea. No tea either, not as she knew
it. They’d given her a little tin box with some mouldy-looking loose-leaf tea in it and shown her the so-called kitchen at the end of the corridor with its camping stove and told her she could make tea whenever she wished. It felt so terrible, so destructive, the lack of familiarity. She ached to be surrounded by her own things, to have the confidence they gave her. She remembered looking in the little plastic-edged mirror – that was all there was in her room apart from the truckle bed – and thinking, Is that all I am, my kettle, my tea, my cooker, my fridge? Her face was so blank, flat and blank, concealing her terror.

  Yet this was how Pat had lived, how she’d chosen to live. They’d shown her the married quarters. Pat and John and Leo had lived in a bungalow in the grounds, which she’d known from the photographs. But there’d been no shots of the inside. Three basic rooms, one with a camping stove in a curtained-off corner, and a cubicle of a bathroom. A proper lavatory, true, but no bath, and the shower was a rusty-looking pipe suspended over a cement trough. This was where Pat had written all those lyrical letters, full of her contentment. Looking round, Sheila had known she would not have been able to enjoy one moment’s happiness, not here. Nothing would have felt right. She wouldn’t have existed, not unless she’d been able to invent a new persona, which she would not have wanted to do. Again and again in the months that followed she reminded herself of this whenever she saw how lost Leo was. When the cold rain streamed down the windows and she saw his face she remembered that loud sun and understood his bewilderment. Alan said he was only a small child, his memory was undeveloped, he wouldn’t notice the difference, but she knew he was wrong. Leo, child or not, didn’t feel right, he wasn’t himself any more, and it was worse for him because he couldn’t articulate his feelings or make sense of anything. Only time would help, which it did, agonisingly slowly, as difficult for her to endure as for him. It would come over her in great waves, nothing was ever going to be the same again, there was no going back. Leo had changed her life irrevocably. Life was about putting up with everything that happened. It would be on her tombstone: ‘She Put Up With Everything’.