Blood Family (6 page)

Marie reached out for him, but it turned out to be more of a push than a clutch. He staggered backwards, losing his balance in the shallow water enough to have to
sit down. But once he realized that the water still came up no deeper than a bath, he was away. Before we left, even on that first day, Eddie was spending most of his time on his stomach, ferrying himself across the baby pool with his hands, pretending to swim.

I didn’t know how long we’d have him. Sometimes that can depend on when the child sees a psychologist. And if there’s any possibility of giving evidence in court, that often gets delayed in case the defence starts arguing that ideas have been put in the child’s mind. So I was really waiting for Rob to let me know. I’d used the standard grant to take him shopping for clothes. He was entranced. Usually we encourage them to make their own choices, but that didn’t work with Eddie. He only wanted things like Thomas the Tank Engine shirts, and other baby stuff that would have had him shredded at the local primary school. He hadn’t learned that pink is social death for boys. I had to be quite firm.

So in the end we compromised with suitable stuff for daytime, but Thomas pyjamas. He loved the things so much that I went back the following week to get another pair. But even in the largest size, they were too short. ‘You’re soft, you are,’ said Alan, when he saw me sewing extra strips onto the legs and sleeves to lengthen them.

But I’d have sold my soul for Eddie. I had fallen in love.

(They warn you about that when you sign on.)

The first time Linda mentioned it, we were sitting at the table, the way we did every day. Her hand had closed round mine to make sure I was holding the pencil the way she said was best – ‘No, Eddie. Like
that
. And now make me a capital S, just like a lovely curled snake. Yes, that’s right! Perfect!’

I was so happy. And then she suddenly made her voice go all casual, and out it came. ‘By the way, I was thinking about your mum last night. The bruises on her leg must have gone now. Maybe she’s feeling better. Would you like me to talk to Rob about fixing up a visit?’

I didn’t trust myself to answer so I shook my head.

She kept on, trying to persuade me. ‘She’d probably be really pleased to see how well your writing’s coming on.’

I knew that Linda didn’t really think that. I knew what they all thought because I listened all the time. Up on the landing. At doors. I acted good. I
was
good. But I still had two ears that worked, and wasn’t stupid. From the day of that first hammering on the door, I’d overheard all sorts of things that people said about my mum, whispering in corridors or talking quietly on phones – ‘in no fit state to defend the child’, ‘probably too scared to testify’, ‘under that bastard’s thumb’ – until I knew full well that everyone thought that she was useless.
Useless
.

But I could remember back when we played the first tape. I know when Harris slammed out, Mum was a
little nervous. There was a tremble in her voice when she said, ‘Never mind! Moving house makes people ratty. When he comes back, he’ll probably be in a better temper.’ She rubbed the red mark round the wrist he’d held too tightly and too long. She told me it was called a Chinese Burn, and that the girls in her class when she was at school gave them to one another. And then she tried to laugh, and said, ‘We’ll make some cocoa, and then see what’s on those old tapes in the corner. Maybe there’s a film.’

She slid one in the old machine the other people hadn’t bothered to take away with them. (‘Leaving their crap!’ said Harris.) We waited, then the music for the song came on, and Mr Perkins came through the bright red door, took off his jacket and began to sing. And I remember Mum looking at him, then saying, ‘Perfect. All I’m bloody fit for!’ and giving this weird little laugh. And then she squeezed me – almost too tightly, like a giant Chinese Burn, and I was in her lap, all warm and comfy.

But she hadn’t been like that for ages and ages and ages. So I didn’t want to go and see her. Even if the bruises had gone.

He picked things up so quickly that it was easy to forget his childhood had been so strange. But every now and again he’d freeze, or look uncertain about the most
straightforward thing, and we’d be reminded that, however sensible and caring his babyhood might have been, everything had been sent off track in recent years.

Take mirrors. Mirrors fascinated Eddie. He stopped in front of them the way that other children do when they are at a fair, and find themselves facing distorting glass. ‘Look, Mum! I’m fat as a barrel!’ ‘See, Dad! I am the rubber boy!’

Eddie just stared. Most times, I think, he took himself at first simply for some other child his age passing a window. His double-takes stemmed more from simple spatial puzzlement – how can someone be walking
there
? – than recognition of his own reflection. As soon as he had clocked it was himself that he was looking at, he’d stop and stare – gaze at himself in wonder. ‘Is this me?’ Of course we realized at once that, since he was too young to notice, he had never seen himself. Still, Alan and I couldn’t work out quite what it was that so astonished him. Was he surprised he looked so tall? So clean? So grave? Did he not realize children looked like that?

Because he’d pass for normal almost anywhere. He was what an American I knew used to call ‘biddable’. Lord knows, we have had kids through here who’ve acted out so badly that we’ve recoiled from taking them anywhere in public. We have had children who’ve been, to use the jargon, ‘challenging in the extreme’.

Eddie was not like that.

It was as if he knew a lot of all this social stuff already,
and simply hadn’t had the chance to practise it. And then we realized who we had to thank for that. Isn’t life strange? A quarter of the way across the world, in Canada, and thirty years ago, some sweet old fellow in a cardigan called Mr Perkins makes a series of telly programmes for children. Someone else bothers to record them, but doesn’t throw them out. And Edward James Taylor is saved for life. If this sort of thing could only happen a good deal more often, I might be able to believe in God.

Alan and I tried not to ask the boy too many questions. But Rob did. One of the bones I’d pick with Social Services is that they can be too much like our dentist, treating small fry like adults where sometimes I believe it’s best for people like ourselves, who have been parents a long while, to use our intuition about what should be said, or what should happen next.

Rob came a lot, sometimes just for a chat with Eddie, sometimes with news. ‘Guess what I’ve just found out. It seems you have a great-grandmother.’

Eddie looked baffled.

I heard the sofa sigh from Rob’s weight as he dropped on it. ‘That’s your mother’s own granny. She’s really old now, but she sends her love.’ Wearily he shook his head. ‘Maybe one day I’ll drive you up to visit her. Would you like that?’

‘Up?’

I wondered if Eddie had a vision of this great-grandmother up somewhere in a cloud, or on a star.

‘On Tyneside,’ Rob said. ‘Quite a long way away.’ You could tell he was dreading the drive. We sat in silence for a moment or two, and then, as if his mind was drifting far away, Rob added, ‘Her feet are terrible, she says. Like sponges.’

I watched poor Eddie trying to imagine this. ‘Sponges?’

‘Never mind that,’ said Rob – a little irritably, I thought, considering that it was he himself who’d brought the matter up. ‘The other news is that the flat you used to live in has now been re-let.’

‘Rob!’ I protested. (I mean, a home’s a home, however grim it’s been.)

‘He has to
know
,’ Rob muttered defensively.

Re-let? What sort of language is that for someone of Eddie’s age? ‘What Rob is
saying
,’ I explained, ‘is that the flats where you lived belong to something called a Housing Association. And since Harris definitely won’t be going back, they have decided to clear out all his stuff, paint the place till it looks new, and put another family in there.’

‘So will I live with
them
?’

At last, Rob was ashamed. I think he must have panicked momentarily because he said the worst thing he could say. ‘Of course not. You’ll be staying here with Linda and Alan.’

Eddie was on it in a flash. ‘For
ever
?’

Rob looked so miserable I couldn’t even give him my
see-what-you’ve-done-now look. I had to rescue him, so I ticked Eddie off. ‘Come along, Eddie. You know better than that. Alan and I have told you plenty of times that we only look after children for a little while, till Rob here and the people he works with find them something that will work better.’

(I won’t use their expression, ‘a for ever family’. It is such
bollocks
.)

I left the two of them together for a while. When I came back, Rob was just leaving. I made some excuse to send Eddie down to Alan in the shed, and turned to Rob.

‘A great-granny, eh? But no one who could take the boy? No grandmother on that side?’

‘The police tracked down some hairdresser in Tynemouth who knew the family. She said the grandmother died some years ago.’

‘No father hiding anywhere in the woodwork?’

He shook his head. ‘My money is on Harris. It seems the mum was managing fine till he showed up. My guess is that it wasn’t for the first time.’

‘I hope no one is going to rush to tell poor Eddie
that
.’ I sighed. ‘So. One great-granny. No future there, I suppose?’

‘No,’ Rob agreed. ‘She’s bed-bound in a home. The staff aren’t even sure she was on top of what they told her.’ He glanced around to check that Eddie hadn’t crept back to eavesdrop. ‘I have some better news, though. There won’t be a court case.’

‘His mum won’t testify?’

‘She’s quite unfit.’

‘What about a video link?’

He leaned towards me. ‘Linda, she’s
hopeless
. Harris could come into court swinging a rusty mace, and any jury would still hesitate to convict. None of the neighbours will say a thing. And Lucy Taylor’s such a mess in the head it’s hard to imagine that she wasn’t always some sort of basket case.’

‘So is he going to get away with it?’

‘Of course not,’ Rob said hotly. ‘They’re nailing him for drugs, and common assault and stolen goods, and animal cruelty and numerous shenanigans inside that club, and God knows what else. They’ve rustled up a list an arm’s length long.’

‘You know as well as I do that, without bodily harm or kidnapping, the man will be out within months.’

‘I know.’ He studied the ends of his fingers. ‘He was a crafty sod, to take care to lay off the child. But, on the bright side, Eddie can see someone now.’

He meant a therapist, though in my experience with damaged children, that isn’t always a bright side. ‘Anyone in particular?’

He looked embarrassed. ‘I thought it might be Eleanor Holdenbach? Sometime next month?’

Eleanor Holdenbach. It could have been a whole lot worse. And I was just relieved it wasn’t Otto Weeks. Otto’s so young he still has hobby horses. Most of the rest have
worked for the council long enough to realize the job is just to tidy up what chunks of the child are left and brush as many of the splinters as they can out of sight, out of mind. Otto’s so full of beans he still believes that you can focus on exactly what went wrong, and make the poor little buggers whole again.

So, ‘Eleanor,’ I said. ‘Next month.’

We ran the tapes Martin brought in. God, that was a laugh. There we were, all of the other screens slopping over with what my grandmother calls ‘the bits no one should see in places they shouldn’t go’. And there, in the corner, on the old video player, this middle-aged goody-goody in a cardigan is asking some other codger how to make ice cream.

We sat and roared. I gave Martin a call, but he insisted that we did a thorough job and played every tape through. And he is right that all too often underneath this stuff, you catch a glimpse of something that sickens you so much you want to pack in the whole caboodle – move to some other section where you don’t feel, when you go home at night, that you’d prefer a single bed.

Don’t tell my wife I said that!

Anyhow, we followed orders.
Jawohl, mein Kommandant!
For six days in a row, we slid in these old tapes. There were five programmes on each. We got to know the songs. The two of us began to sing each time the show began.

We even sang it in the canteen once. (Fat Terry said he thought it sounded rather familiar, but he’s a hundred years old.) Then we went back to shove in the next tape. This was the visit to the fire station. (The officer was tactful. He didn’t mention that they call dead bodies ‘crispies’.) Then came how plasticine is made. How people engrave on glass. We learned it all. It was a very educational week.

And, as Gurdeep said, not one wet knob or fanny from start to finish. That made a pleasant change.

I thought that Rob had already asked me every question on earth. And Sue had often come along as well, sometimes in uniform, and sometimes not. They’d kept it up between them, tiptoeing around Linda and Alan (‘We’ll
be all right in here, will we? Out from under your feet?’). They’d tried to keep it light, cheering me up along the way with biscuits, and offers to take me along to the playground. (‘All of us need a breath of fresh air. Fancy a kick about?’)

But they’d kept at it. ‘Eddie, what did you
do
all day? How did you pass the time?’ ‘Did you ever have the little bed? Or did you always sleep along with Gem on that blanket?’ I told them that the little bed was mine until one day he’d tipped me out of it, saying he needed the room to store a few boxes he’d brought home, and Rob said, more into Sue’s tiny silver recording machine than to me, ‘To clarify, Eddie, can you tell us who you mean by “he”?’

I couldn’t work out what he was talking about, so I’d kept quiet. I mean, he
knew
that I meant Harris. Why was he asking?