A Blessing In Disguise (24 page)

‘But not to Becky!' I hope.

‘No,' Mr Chester says. ‘That's why I've told you. And now I'll be getting off, and we'll call it a closed book. I usually go to the wholesaler's on a Wednesday afternoon.'

I can hardly describe how I feel after I've seen him out and I'm left on my own. I feel sick, and my legs are trembling, but it's far worse than that. This is worse than twenty Miss Frazers. I sit down and put my head in my hands, trying to shut everything out, and then I hear the doorbell and somehow I know that it's been ringing a few seconds. I take a deep breath and go to open the door and there, smiling at me, is Nigel Baines.

‘I was passing,' he says. ‘Well, I was in the neighbourhood, so I thought I'd drop in, if that's all right?'

A few minutes ago I'd have said I didn't want to see anyone in the world, but looking at him I change my mind and realize that right now there's no-one I'd rather see.

We go into the living room. I sit on the sofa and he takes an armchair opposite to me.

‘I knew you were upset about Becky,' he begins. ‘There wasn't much more I could say in front of her so I thought this might be a good time.'

‘You have no idea just how good!' I say. ‘But before you go any further let me tell you something about Becky. Something I've found out in the last few minutes – though I'm not sure whether I
should
tell you. Perhaps it should be just between me and her. I don't know what to do!'

‘If it will help,' Nigel says, ‘then tell me. If you don't want to, then don't. But even if you choose not to tell me I think you have to do something about Becky. She's obviously deeply worried and disturbed. If you can solve it, then that's fine, but it shouldn't be allowed to go on too long, either for your sake or hers.'

So I tell him. I relate everything Mr Chester has said to me, and also about the empty money box, leaving nothing out, and he hears me out without interrupting.

‘It's so unlike Becky!' I say at the end. ‘Oh, she can be naughty, and awkward – especially since we came to Thurston. But she's always been honest, never told lies – and never, ever, did I think of her as stealing! A thief! My little daughter a thief!'

And then I can't cope with it one second longer and I burst into tears. He sits there, saying nothing, letting me cry my fill. Then when I stop, and I start searching around, unsuccessfully, for a tissue to dry my eyes and blow my nose, he brings out a clean, white, folded handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to me.

‘Thank you,' I say, drying my eyes, trying to pull myself together. ‘I thought it was only in old films that men took a snowy-white handkerchief from a pocket and handed it to the weeping female.'

He laughs. ‘Hollywood to the rescue!' he says.

‘Do you always carry a spare handkerchief?' I enquire, giving my nose a good blow.

He doesn't answer that. Instead he says, ‘It's something to do with school, isn't it? I think we've both sussed that out.'

‘I agree,' I say. ‘But I don't know what.'

‘Have you had a word with Evelyn Sharp?' he asks.

‘No, I didn't want to bother her. I thought I could deal with it. Becky and I had a blip recently because someone told Becky her mother wasn't a proper Vicar, but I thought we'd sorted that out. I don't see how it can be anything to do with that. You might not know, but children of the clergy don't always have an easy time at school. They're expected to know things they don't know, sometimes even teachers expect that of them. They're expected to behave like saints instead of like normal children. And then they blame their parents for being in the job, and they become rebellious. I knew this ages ago. My best friend at school was the daughter of the local Vicar. She was the most rebellious girl in the school, always in trouble of some sort.'

‘That doesn't surprise me,' Nigel says.

‘So at the moment Becky blames everything on me. It wasn't easy for her when her father died, and now I've made everything worse by moving to Thurston. So I've been asking myself, did I do the right thing, coming here?'

‘And what answer did you give yourself?' he wants to know.

‘That I did do the right thing. But now I have to talk seriously to Becky, and I intend to do that as soon as she gets home from school.'

Nigel nods agreement. ‘And now, what about you? Becky apart, how are you getting on in Thurston?'

He's so easy to talk to that I find myself telling him about Miss Frazer and about the Bishop's impending visit. ‘All to do with women priests!' I say. ‘I'll get over it. At least you don't have that trouble in your church!'

‘Not yet,' he agrees. ‘But when the time comes – and I'm one of those who think it will – then we'll have it in spades!' He stands up. ‘I'm truly sorry about all this, Venus, and I wish I could stay but I'll have to be off. I've several visits to make.'

‘I'm afraid I've talked too much,' I apologize.

‘No!' he says. ‘And if you want to talk more, any time, give me a ring at home. Or I could come and see you. I'd be happy to.'

I go with him to the door, and I stand there as he walks down the path. Halfway down he turns round. ‘I'm glad you
did
come to Thurston!' he says.

Becky will be home in twenty minutes and I'm thinking very hard about what I'll say to her, how I'll make a start on it. Will I say straight out, ‘Becky, I know you've been stealing and I want to know why,' or will I say, ‘Becky, I know there's something wrong and you've got to tell me what it is!'?

As it turns out, I don't try either of those approaches. She walks into the house looking so white-faced, so unhappy, that any anger there might have been in me fades right away.

‘Darling,' I say, ‘you look frozen! Are you all right?'

‘You know I'm not all right,' she retorts. ‘I told you I wasn't but you made me go to school.'

‘Well we won't go into that right now,' I tell her. ‘I'm going to make a cup of tea and toast some buns and then you and I are going to sit down and have a proper talk.'

She makes a move towards the door.

‘And don't bother to go up to your room,' I say. ‘I shall simply follow you.'

So I make the tea and she drinks it, and eats a toasted bun, and then I say, ‘Now! I have some questions to ask you, darling, and I want the truth. Whatever it is, you're not going to get into trouble. I promise! So now are you going to tell me what all this is about?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about!' she says sullenly.

‘I think you do, but if not, I'll tell you.'

She says nothing.

‘First of all,' I say, ‘why have you been stealing chocolate?'

If I thought she was white when she came in from school, she's now three shades paler, and then within seconds she flushes red to the roots of her hair.

‘I haven't!' she says. ‘Whoever says so is lying!'

‘I'm afraid not, Becky. Mr Chester himself told me. He came to see me this afternoon. He saw you do it. You've done it not once, but at least three times, haven't you?'

With that she rushes out of the room and up the stairs, but I follow her immediately and since there are no locks on the bedroom doors she can't shut me out. She flings herself face down on the bed and buries her face in the pillow. I sit on a chair at the side of the bed and stroke her hair, something she's always liked when she's been unhappy.

‘Becky,' I say, ‘I'm not going to punish you. I don't have that in mind no matter what you've done. I know there's something wrong and I want to help you. You're my daughter and I love you but how can I help you if you won't tell me what it is? Please, Becky!'

Then there's a silence, which probably lasts a minute but feels like ten, after which she says, her voice muffled because she's still face down, ‘What will Mr Chester do?'

‘Mr Chester will do nothing,' I assure her. ‘He came to tell me because he thought I ought to know, because he didn't think you were the sort of girl to be stealing for no reason – and I know you're not. So please tell me, Becky!'

She's realized of course – she's not stupid – that she's just as good as admitted to the stealing, so now we have another starting point.

‘It's to do with school, isn't it?' I prompt her. ‘That's why you were taking the chocolate. You were giving it to the other girls, to make yourself popular. Was that it?'

At that she sits up quickly and twists around to face me.

‘No, it was NOT!' she flares. ‘Who would want to be popular with that lot? I hate them! I hate them!'

‘Then why?' I ask. ‘Why did you do it? And who is “them”?'

‘Because they made me. They said I was a goody-goody because I was the Vicar's daughter. I was a namby-pamby. I said I wasn't and they said I had to prove it or they'd find something worse to do.'

‘And how had you to prove it?' I ask quietly.

‘I had to steal two chocolate bars from Chester's every day for two weeks. I wasn't to miss a single school day or there'd be trouble worse than I could ever imagine.'

I feel the rage rising inside me. I have to take a deep breath and hold myself in check. I've never quite believed anyone who said that children could be downright wicked, but in this moment I do.

‘And what would that trouble be?' I enquire.

‘They didn't say. They said it would be awful!'

‘So what did you do?'

‘Well, I had the money I'd been saving in my box so instead of stealing I used that and I didn't tell them I wasn't stealing. It was the stealing part they wanted to make me do, it wasn't the chocolate.'

‘And your money ran out, didn't it?'

‘Yes. They wanted things like Mars Bars and caramel bars. It was about sixty pence a day. I tried to think of excuses for missing a day or two but they kept on at me.'

‘And that was when you started stealing? But darling, why didn't you tell me?' I ask.

‘What good would that do?' she says harshly. ‘If you hadn't been a Vicar they wouldn't have done it, would they? That's why it started!'

Another stab to the heart, but this time it didn't quite go home. A bully is a bully is a bully. That's not my fault.

‘They would have found some other reason if bullying a new girl was what they wanted to do,' I tell her. ‘If you'd confided in me I'd have told you what to say, what to do.'

‘Like what?' she says scornfully.

‘Well, I would have suggested you should turn right around to them and say you were
not
a goody-goody,
not
a namby-pamby, that you didn't have to prove it to them or to anyone else. You are a person in your own right, Becky. Always stand up to bullies! Never give in to them!'

‘I didn't know that, did I?' Becky says. ‘I was afraid of them.'

‘Of course you didn't, my love. And there's nothing bad about being afraid, you have to find the best way to deal with your fears, and that's not easy, even when you're grown up.' And at that moment, and in a way I resent her for it, Miss Frazer shoots into my mind, and I don't want her sneaking in on me when all my concern is for my daughter. And why has she shot into my mind? Because she, too, is a bully. And
I
have to stand up to
her.
And I will.

‘Why didn't you tell Mr Beagle?' I ask Becky – and I'm also wondering why he didn't notice anything.

‘Because he's still away,' she answers. ‘His flu turned to bronchitis. We've had two supply teachers already.'

‘Well,' I say, ‘we'll have to tell Mrs Sharp because she's the Head and she needs to know, but I won't make a big fuss and I can tell you for certain that no-one is going to blame you. Now give me a big hug! And then tell me what you'd like best in the world for your supper and I'll cook it for you!'

‘Fish-and-chips, from the fish shop,' she says without a pause.

As you can imagine, I didn't sleep much last night though Becky, bless her heart, seemed easier when I said ‘good-night' to her. We'd had our fish-and-chip supper, she had had a warm bath, we'd read a bit of Harry Potter when she was in bed, and by the time I closed the book her eyelids were drooping and she was ready for sleep. We said prayers together – I gave her both a priestly blessing and a mother's blessing – and I left her.

Several things kept me wakeful. First and foremost was the thought of what Becky had been going through without me ever suspecting the cause. How could I have missed it? It wasn't that I hadn't cared – though had I, I asked myself, cared more about what was being done to me?

I thought about Mr Chester. What an understanding man he'd shown himself to be. After I've seen Evelyn I shall call on him, tell him what's happened, and at some point I'll take Becky with me so that we can iron out any awkwardness. I don't want her to feel she can't go in and out of his shop freely in the future.

I also thought about Nigel Baines. Right from the first meeting when he took me to the hospital Nigel's been so good, so helpful; he's easy to talk to. I miss Philip for a hundred reasons and one of them is that I don't have a man to talk things over with. That doesn't mean I don't value my women friends. Of course I do.

In spite of my disturbed night I was up early this morning, and now I'm seeing Becky off to school. ‘It's going to be all right,' I assure her. ‘Remember what we said. Say “No” to anything you think isn't right. And remember I'll be seeing Mrs Sharp this morning. I'm sure she'll sort everything out.' It's all very well, isn't it, for me to tell her to be brave? She's the one who has to face it. I had phoned Evelyn, told her I needed to see her rather urgently, but didn't say why and she didn't ask, so I'm seeing her at eleven-thirty.