The School Gate Survival Guide (4 page)

He didn’t answer. Usually I knew better than to ‘keep going on’ but people like us didn’t get a lot of chances. I sat on the end of the settee and put his foot on my lap. ‘Can you put the paper down, just for a sec?’

He looked sullenly over the top. His eyes were still beautiful.

I persevered. ‘I think this is a really big chance for them. I never got any qualifications and neither did you, so we’re stuck here. Morlands is such a rubbish school that if they stay there, they’ll end up like us. We’re never going to have enough money to move into a different catchment area. But with a good education at Stirling Hall, the kids could become engineers, architects, doctors, anything. I don’t think it’s fair to stand in their way.’

‘Yeah, but what about when they want to bring their mates home? No one is going to come round here in their Beamer in case it ends up on bricks. You ain’t thinking it through. Let’s say they do go there. We can pay for the school, but what about all the things that go with it? The parents ain’t going to want their toffee-nosed little darlings hanging about with Bronts and Harley, are they? Case they catch something awful off of them. They’re all going to be living in great big houses – I don’t want some kid called Verity or Jasper coming round here to get a look at how poor people live, how Harley pisses against the back fence when I’m on the khazi or how we have to stand on a chair with a match to get the boiler to light every time we want a bloody shower.’

I’d worked in houses where guitar lessons, French club and netball matches were the norm, as run-of-the-mill as living in a home where the children had a playroom and the adults had a study. Of course, there’d been some arrogant little shits along the way like the boy who said, ‘You can’t be a mummy. You’re a cleaner.’ But there’d also been some sweet kids, who’d brought out their old dolls, tea sets and jigsaws so I could give them to Bronte.

The one thing they all had in common was this idea, a confidence that when they spoke, they had a right to be listened to. I was thirty-six and still had to work up the courage to say what I thought when they held meetings at school to improve discipline. I’d think, right, I’m going to put my hand up next. No, next. Then someone would drop in a ‘statistically speaking’ or an ‘economically viable’ and I’d decide that my point was probably a bit obvious anyway and some bloke with a clipboard would thank everyone for their useful input and Colin would be moaning about getting down the pub before closing time and that would be that. If money could buy confidence, I had a chance to do one clever thing in my stupid life.

‘Talk about glass half bleeding empty,’ I said. ‘Yeah, we might get some kids come here who think we’re common as pig shit. On the other hand, Harley and Bronte might even make some nice friends, normal kids who don’t think that a good Saturday night out is kicking in the car wing mirrors on the estate.’

‘You just don’t get it, do you? They’re going to be the council house kids among a bunch of nobs. They ain’t ever going to fit in.’

‘We’ve got to give them a chance. They might see that there’s more to life than a quick shag against the fence in the back alley or getting pissed in the bus shelter on Special Brew.’ I started combing through all the possible tactics I could use to get Colin to agree. I’d only got as far as two – begging or a blow job – when Colin shrugged.

‘I don’t fucking know. I think you’re wrong. How we going to pay for all the kit and crap that they’re gonna need? You’re just sticking your head into a bag of trouble,’ he said.

Colin was voicing my worries. Somehow that made me angrier. ‘That’s typical you. Just sit there and be defeatist. You were just the same when I wanted to go to appeal to get them into a better primary school. Give up before we start instead of using a bit of brain power to see how we could make it work. I’ll have to take on more shifts. Maybe things’ll pick up and you’ll be able to get some work. It’s a real opportunity.’

‘Don’t think you can rely on me getting work anytime soon. It’s not looking good out there.’

I tried to remember that to win this one I needed him on my side. I bit back my ‘change the record’.

He picked at his ear, examined it and wiped it on his tracksuit. ‘The kids won’t thank you for it. Mind you, I might be able to up me rates and find a cushy job with them parents. Some of them must have a nice mansion that could do with a lick of paint,’ he said.

Once Colin started down the ‘What’s in it for me?’ route, I knew that I just had to sneak up and bolt the door behind him. ‘Can we try it for a term? Morlands is never full. People are petitioning not to go there, so I’m sure we’ll get them back in if we need to.’

Colin started scrabbling about on the floor for the batteries to the remote. He flicked on the West Ham vs. Arsenal match he’d recorded the night before. I needed to finish the conversation before he started singing the theme tune, ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’. God, he was starting to hum. I had about five seconds left.

‘Colin, listen to me.’

‘That ref needs bloody glasses. Oy, four eyes! Christ, he wouldn’t see a foul if they kicked him on the nose. Did you see that, Maia?’ he said, hurling an empty Coke can at the telly and sending an arc of brown drops shooting up the front room wall. He made no move to get a cloth.

I stood in front of the telly.

‘Mai! Out the way!’

‘Shall I send them for a term?’

‘Do what you want but don’t come crying to me when it comes back to bite you on the arse,’ he said, trying to peer round me.

I went straight to my handbag and dug out the solicitor’s silver embossed card.

The freezing January mornings didn’t agree with my van. It chose the kids’ first day at Stirling Hall to start making a chugging sound from the engine. I was terrified that it would grind to a halt with the effort of climbing over the speed bumps along the horseshoe-shaped drive at Stirling Hall. Christ, the school had its own one-way system, a slow-moving line of super-shiny, top of the range cars coming in one entrance and spilling out the other like a Motor Show parade. I had visions of breaking down right in the middle of it all, forcing everyone to squeeze past me. Harley was oblivious, hanging out of the window with his cap sitting at a jaunty angle on his blond curls, shouting about cars.

‘Wicked, Mum, look, look, there’s a Bentley. A Bentley Continental. Wow. Do you think it actually belongs to one of the parents? Cor, I saw one of them on
Top Gear
. Do you think they might let me have a ride, Mum? Will you ask them for me? Who do you think it belongs to? Do you think they got it new? Jeremy Clarkson says they cost £130,000. Do you think they paid that for it? Cool!’

‘Let’s see how it goes, Harley. Maybe the boy will be in your class and he might invite you round,’ I said. I peered at the woman behind the wheel. She didn’t have a hairstyle, she had an official hair ‘do’. A big puffy creation that would surely involve rollers. Definitely not a chop with the kitchen scissors in a shaving mirror and a head-upside-down blast from the hair dryer. I’d rather spend the entire day pulling matted hair out of plugholes than have her pass judgement on Harley over a cheese spread sandwich – or a bloody lobster tail or whatever Stirling Hall kids had for tea.

Bronte was clutching her rucksack on her knee, staring straight ahead, looking just like Colin when his horses fell at the last hurdle. That morning I’d gone in to wake her up all jolly and sing-song but she told me to get lost, she wasn’t bloody going and held on to the duvet for grim death. She actually swore at me. Little madam. I lost sight of my skipping through the daisies voice in favour of a ‘you’ll do as I say’ bellow. I practically dragged her out of bed by her ankles. She got dressed with a slowness that was right on the edge of defiance. She hated the red and green plaid skirt, said it was frumpy and minging and wanted to wear black trousers like she had at Morlands. I helped her into the blazer I’d spent a week’s wages on when I could have bought one for £20 second-hand. I had to walk away when I saw her twisting the buttons, complaining that they didn’t do up properly. Harley had been twirling his cap round his finger for fifteen minutes by the time Bronte slouched out the door. Just as I started to tell her she looked wonderful, she stared at me, her dark eyes narrowing and said, ‘You look horrible. Everyone will know you clean up other people’s shit.’

I decided not to speak to her. My hand tingled with the desire to give her a good slap but attitude adjustments would have to wait for another day. For now, getting her to school was enough. As I looked for somewhere to park, a Mitsubishi Pajero got so close to my bumper that the woman must have been trying to get into my slipstream. I glared into the rear-view mirror and noticed that my foundation looked a bit orange and I’d missed a couple of black hairs on my upper lip with the tweezers. Great. I couldn’t wait to be known as Whiskers.

‘Wind the window up, Harley. Stop shouting.’

‘Mum, there’s a Porsche Boxster. Jeremy Clarkson says you only buy one of those if you can’t afford a 911,’ said Harley, twisting around in his seat and pushing Bronte onto the gear stick.

‘Ouch. Get off,’ said Bronte. She shoved Harley back.

‘Stop pushing her, Harley. Close the window, now.’ I tried not to shout in case I couldn’t stop.

‘This is brill, Mum,’ said Harley, ignoring me and pointing out an open-topped BMW.

I gave up and turned my attention to Bronte. ‘Hey, Bronte, look at those lawns. They look like somewhere the queen might have a tea party. I bet they play rounders there in the summer. What do you think? Doesn’t it look amazing?’ I said, hoping to get a small glimmer of reassurance from her. She shook her head.

I tried again. ‘Come on, love. Let’s try and get off to a good start. Everyone feels a bit shy on their first day, isn’t that right, Harley? You’ll soon make friends.’

Harley tried to help out. ‘Yeah, come on, Bront, it’ll be okay. Anyway, Dad says we can go back to Morlands if we don’t like it here.’

Bronte turned her mouth down so far at the corners, it almost made me laugh. ‘Dad said Stirling Hall was for tossers, anyway. Though he thought I looked really pretty in my uniform.’

Good old Dad. Colin had wandered about the kitchen in his boxers, eating toast without a plate, sounding like he was sucking up his tea through a straw. He made no attempt to help as I double-checked the football socks with named garter, the ‘laces, no Velcro’ rugby boots, the navy ‘no logo’ PE shorts, and every other bloody bit of sports equipment an Olympian in the making could need. I had refused to let myself mourn the days of any T-shirt and a tracksuit, out loud anyway.

I tried to reverse into the one tiny slither of space I could find that wasn’t blocked by a monster 4x4. The Mitsubishi woman, ‘Jen1’, leant on the horn as I had a second go. She was obviously in a hurry to get somewhere. Her plastic surgeon probably, judging by her ugly mush. I wished her a flat tyre as I finally managed to park up.

We got out of the van. I adjusted Bronte’s hat and looked away from the hands I could see waving behind the Mitsubishi’s shiny windscreen. I was never going to beat a Stirling Hall mother in a spelling bee but I’d fancy my chances in a slanging match. I’d get Jen1 back another day.

‘Why was that lady waving at you, Mum?’ said Harley.

‘I’ve no idea.’ I shuffled him forward.

‘She was trying to talk to you. Won’t she think you’re rude? You told us to be polite to everyone we met today.’

Just when the toothpick holding my patience together looked about to snap, Bronte threw her new rucksack down and ground to a halt like a fat old Labrador that’s decided it’s not walking one step further.

‘Mum, I’m not going. I want to go back to Morlands. We should’ve started in September. January’s too late. Everyone will have made friends and I won’t have anyone to play with.’

I dug deep. Ferreted about for a kind word. Beamed myself into my other world as Julie Andrews, dancing about in
The Sound of Music
singing ‘Do-Re-Mi’, like I did at work when people who were too lazy to pick their pants off the floor started having a go at me. The voice in my head was screaming, ‘You ungrateful cow. Here I am making sure you get a fantastic education and all you can do is whine your arse off.’

I managed a reasonably calm, ‘It’s too late for that. Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine. I spoke to your teacher and she seemed really nice.’ In fact, all I could remember was how I’d nodded blankly at Bronte’s teacher as she talked about ‘prep’ for a good fifteen minutes until I realised she was on about homework.

I stood on the edge of the sea of green blazers belonging to the prep school kids. A steady stream of older children, dressed in grey, dodged around the little ones and headed over to the senior school building on the far side of the cricket pitch. It had towers. Towers! I would be so proud if Harley and Bronte ended up there. However, the odds weren’t looking too hot if I couldn’t even get Bronte through the doors of the prep school today.

Harley stood beside me, relaxed, as though we were queuing for the cinema, happily gawping round at the cars. The other kids were swarming through the stone arch into the playground beyond. In my hurry to get away from Colin and his repetitions of ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain’ in stupid voices, I’d forgotten to re-read the letter and find out where I needed to take them. I glanced around for a mum I liked the look of. Which was more difficult than it first appeared. Not the woman with a long, grey plait down her back. Bloody lentil-eater, for sure. She looked like she knitted her own knickers. Maybe the one next to her. No, she had a briefcase. And stilettos. Obviously rushing off to some mega job in the City. No time for her to be a traffic warden for me when there was a bonus to be had. God, this was hopeless. I felt homesick for the mothers at Morlands with their flip-flops, dark roots and Marlboros, shoving packets of crisps at chubby children and talking about
EastEnders
as though it was real life.

Bronte looked up at me. ‘I’m not bloody going,’ she said, her eyes darting around for an escape route. That got me moving. I walked straight up to the nearest person, a young woman with peroxide blonde hair and skintight jeans, holding a spaniel on a lead.