Porky

  Back home, I helped with the preparations because Dad was so excited. We tucked sheets and blankets into the pram. In my alarm, I’d forgotten about my own baby. My brother had been called Edward; Teddy for short. Why did they bother to think up a name?

  Because Dad seemed so expectant and cheerful, I didn’t feel as cautious in his company as I had done recently, which I suppose was one good aspect. He patted my bottom in his breezy way, like the old Dad did, and promised that they’d be home in a couple of days, so little Podge mustn’t look so worried. By now I’d seen Teddy suck at a small hospital bottle, but I knew that would stop when he came home and then it was up to me. He would be my responsibility; would I be feeding him in secret?

  One night, when Rinty was howling outside, I went to sleep and dreamed that all our sheds were crammed with babies. There were rows of them in the caravan too, lying bare in the straw, like piglets. The caravan had grown as big as a warehouse. They were all crying, they wouldn’t stop, and I was trying to feed them from the bucket, trying to cram in the food with my fingers, but why would they be eating apple peelings and why wouldn’t they stop crying? I knew it was hopeless, and I knew that my own baby, and Nancy’s and Debbie’s, were amongst the others but I couldn’t find out which ones they were.

  Teddy and Mum came home at last. Dad had bought some tulips from the lady at the lay-by, and put them in a vase on the telly, all by himself.

  ‘For our boy,’ he said, wiping his wet hands on his trousers. Then he saw my expression and pulled a mournful face. ‘Give us a hug.’ He had been celebrating again. ‘Dad loves you too . . .’

  He pressed me against him. We stayed like that. For a moment everything fell from me, all my worries, and I thought: Dad will make it all right. I clutched him round his chest and smelt the warm wool. I’d been so silly; this was how we should be, me pressed against his belt buckle and him stroking my hair. How could I have felt unsafe? He was here, he was mine, I loved him.

  He took away his arms and I stayed there, clinging. ‘Look, no hands!’ he cried to the furniture. Then he enfolded me again. At that moment I felt exactly right: I felt exactly ten years old. He lifted me up in the air.

  ‘Phew!’ he said, and put me down.

  Soon they’d be home, and then, perhaps, everything would stay being all right. We’d be a proper family at last.

  I was feeding Teddy when the lady arrived. I heard the car stop outside, and Rinty barking. Teddy was gulping down his milk, his eyes fixed on me. Mum was in the bathroom, pulling out her curlers; the door was shut but I could feel the curlers fall one by one into the sink. I carried Teddy to the back porch.

  ‘Who’s the little mum, then?’ she said, smiling. ‘Taking lessons already?’

  She was the health visitor. We’d been expecting her, but she was early. There was a pleasant look on her face as she glanced around the lounge. I hoped she was noticing Dad’s tulips.

  ‘My Mum’ll be out in a minute,’ I said.

  ‘May I sit down? – No, no, you’ve got little Edward.’ She removed a plate from the settee and sat down, her handbag in her lap. She had a bigger case, too, which she put on the floor.

  ‘Do you want to look at him?’ Holding Teddy carefully, I passed him to her. ‘I haven’t burped him yet.’

  She held him against her shoulder and rubbed his back. ‘We’re a bonny big boy, aren’t we?’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We put on lots of lovely ounces in hospital. Didn’t we, Eddie?’

  Teddy burped, and we both laughed. I stopped laughing, to hear if anyone was coming, and then I said quickly, ‘Do some mothers not want to feed their babies?’

  ‘They prefer not to.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They choose not to, dear – especially if they want to get back to work, which I understand your mother does.’

  ‘But what happens to their babies?’

  I heard the handle turn on the bathroom door.

  ‘Oh, this powdered stuff’s marvellous now. Dear me, don’t look so worried.’

  Mum came in then, her hair stiffly curled. While she was telling the lady how her complications were getting on, and while the lady took out a metal thing and weighed Teddy, I had a think.

  I’d got it confused, I was realizing that. This lady just made it official. After all, these past three days, since they’d been home, my Mum was often mixing Teddy’s bottle herself. She’d fed him, sitting on the kitchen chair and looking quite normal. Comfortable was not a word you’d use to describe my Mum; she wasn’t a cosy person. But she didn’t look as if she was forced to do it, or that she’d suddenly stop tomorrow.

  It was all my fault. I’d mistrusted my Mum. I shouldn’t do that, it was wicked. Just because she wasn’t interested in me, that didn’t mean she was going to lose interest in Teddy and let him shrivel up.

  I did another stupid thing. While they were away in Mum’s bedroom, putting Teddy in his crib, I hurried over to Dad’s tulips. This lady, she’d made me see them for the first time; he’d stuck them in all lopsided, still with the rubber band around the stalks. But their petals were already curling back like pink tongues; when I moved them the petals fell off, all of them, silently, and lay on the top of the TV. Green rods were left, with knobs on. Blushing with shame, I picked up the vase, with its bendy stalks, and hid it behind the chair.

  I brushed away the petals just in time. They came back into the lounge; Mum was still telling the lady about her aches and pains and I slipped out of the front veranda. When the lady was opening her car door, and Mum had gone back inside, I was sauntering round to the yard quite casually.

  ‘Goodbye, Heather.’ She stopped, her hand on the handle. She was dark and hairy; there was a blotch on her cheek with a tuft growing from it. I trusted her.

  ‘How old are people before they can have babies?’

  She raised her thick eyebrows and smiled. ‘Someone’s in a hurry, aren’t they? There’s plenty of time for that, I can promise you, dear.’

  ‘But how soon?’

  She paused, half-frowning. My face was burning; but she was my only chance.

  ‘You love your little brother, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, I could see that. But they don’t stay babies for ever. It’s easy when they’re tiny . . . like dolls. My dear, I’ve seen it so very often.’

  ‘What have you seen?’

  She had put down her case. She shrugged, her eyebrows raised. ‘You see, Heather, it’s so easy to have a baby.’

  ‘Is it?’ My heart stopped.

  ‘It’s such an easy way out.’ She gestured around our yard. ‘But that needn’t be the only escape.’

  I didn’t understand this; I waited.

  ‘But times have changed,’ she went on. ‘Thank goodness.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s different nowadays, for girls . . . Heather, dear, I hope you’ll find that out . . . I’m talking about opportunities – do you understand? Opportunities for, well, expanding your life . . .’

  ‘But when can you start one?’ I went on, desperately. ‘When you’re little? When you’re, say . . . well . . . ten or eleven?’

  She stared. ‘Ten?’ She was frowning now. ‘Someone’s been telling you stories?’ She glanced at the porch. ‘Your parents?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I know your father enjoys a joke.’

  ‘No! Don’t tell Dad!’

  ‘My dear . . .’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Nobody can possibly have a baby when they’re ten. Or, indeed, eleven.’

  ‘But what if you love someone?’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘If you really love them? What then?’

  ‘Heather, you can’t.’

  ‘You can’t love them? Can’t you?’

  ‘You can’t have a baby.’ She smiled. ‘Understood?’

  I nodded. I was afraid she was going
to look at her watch, and she did.

  When she’d driven away I went into the caravan. I wanted Kanga but I didn’t dare fetch her from my room.

  I met other people later, when there was much more to tell. Scores of them. Some, I’m sure, were the understanding type . . . You never know, they might have been able to help. But I never dared talk to them like I talked to that lady.

  Chapter Five

  BY JUNE MUM was back at work in Terminal Two. That’s at the airport. I was back at school. So clattery-bright, my school, after those weeks at home. Every term-time I was startled by the voices and the laughter.

  Teddy was sent to Oonagh’s in West Drayton. I went to school on the bus; Dad picked me up at 3.30 and then we collected Teddy and came home. School had just been playing; I felt I was starting my proper job when I was home with Teddy, changing his nappy and then wrapping him up for his walk. I tied his bootees and swaddled him up in his shawl. The afternoons were long and sunny; looking back on it, he was lucky not to suffocate. I liked him close to me, so I didn’t want the pram. I held him tightly in my arms; we’d walk over to the railway carriage and I’d show him the eggs. I talked to Teddy all the time; I’d never known I had so much to say. He kept his passionate blue eyes fixed on my face.

  I showed him the piglets, galloping round the field with their stiff legs and their flapping ears. He knew my secret names for them, of course. In his bonnet he looked like a piglet himself. I just stood with him, for hours, watching his teeny fingers fiddling with his shawl. I felt weak from loving him.

  Dad loved him too, though I got nervous when he whooped the bundle up in the air. I thought he’d toss Teddy up like a beach ball. Dad laughed at me then, and Teddy made chortling noises too. But when Teddy cried I had to spring into action, because Dad panicked.

  ‘Shut up!’ he’d shout. ‘Shut up bawling!’

  I remembered Mum’s bruises. Dad had such a quick temper; I could never trust him that way . . . Not quite.

  That summer was my last as a little girl. For one thing, I was eleven; in the autumn I’d be moving up into the new school, West Drayton Secondary. Nancy was going to another school and Debbie was going to Canada, so I’d have to make new friends. The big school filled me with terror and pride.

  But there was another reason too. The day things changed, it was hot and sunny. Half-term, it must have been, because I was home. I was in the caravan when I saw a car drive into the yard. Two men climbed out. They wore suits. Hardly anyone visited us, specially not in a suit. The two men talked to each other for a moment, then they glanced around the yard.

  I ducked below the window. When I raised my head they must have gone round the front, to ring on the bell nobody used. After a while they reappeared and knocked on the back porch. They moved away and looked our bungalow up and down. The way they did this, I suddenly saw it clearly: the green wood, stained under the windows; the rusting, corrugated-iron roof. One man rubbed on the window; then he wiped his fingers on his hanky and smiled at the other one. When he did that, I knew I wasn’t going to let them see me.

  Then Dad came up. He must have been down at our car park field. They talked for a moment, then Dad went inside and came out again with his jacket. As he put it on he bellowed,

  ‘Heth!’

  I climbed down from the caravan.

  ‘Where’s your manners? There’s two good friends of mine here.’

  I had to shake their hands.

  ‘Say hello to . . . er –’

  ‘Mike,’ said one.

  ‘Tony,’ said the other.

  ‘Just popping off,’ said Dad. ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘Pepsi?’ I asked.

  He gave a thumbs-up sign and climbed into the car.

  It was hours before he came back. Out in the depot the tea-time hooter was sounding when I heard the car returning. They must have enjoyed themselves because they were laughing and joking outside. I slipped out of the front veranda and sat down on the grass. I leaned against the wooden frame and watched the car bouncing away along the ruts. It turned left, into the traffic.

  I didn’t know, then, how I’d look back to that afternoon; how I’d try to remember it as it was, before everything happened. An ant was walking up my leg; it struggled over the pale hairs. I’ve got hairs, I realized; that was the first time I’d noticed them.

  ‘Heth?’

  The inner door opened, then the veranda door. His trousers stood in front of me. His hands were behind his back.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Guess.’

  I squinted up but the sun was in my eyes, so I couldn’t tell from his expression.

  ‘Left,’ I said.

  He usually cheated and changed hands, but today he didn’t. He held out his palm; in it lay a scrunched-up paper napkin. He lowered himself down beside me and opened the napkin, carefully, on the grass.

  ‘Whoops,’ he said. The little cheese biscuits were all broken. ‘Must’ve sat on them.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said truthfully. I picked up the bits and ate them.

  ‘Had them in these bowls,’ he said. ‘Them and olives, but I know you don’t like the olives . . . Ever so smart, it was. Know the Global?’

  I nodded.

  ‘In there. Got this Eurolounge . . . Velvet seating and all, with dinky little whatsits on them. Tassels. You’d have loved it, Heth. I told them . . . I said, my little girl would love this.’

  ‘What were those men?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those two men you went with.’

  He smiled and closed his eyes. He was leaning against the veranda.

  ‘Know something, Podge?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Promise you won’t tell?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  He paused, still smiling. ‘We’re sitting on a gold mine, that’s what.’

  ‘What?’

  Eyes closed, he put a finger to his lips. ‘Sssh.’

  ‘A gold mine?’

  ‘I knew it . . . Didn’t have to tell me. Didn’t have to tell old Frank. Not that they did, in so many words . . . Oh no, not them . . . Devious buggers.’ He looked at me with one eye, and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Mum’s the word, eh?’

  I stared at him, but his eyes had closed again. Then his head slid sideways and he started snoring.

  I sat there for a moment, too panic-stricken to move. Down beyond the pigs, a car bumped slowly out of our field and drove off. Bye-bye, 50p. I looked at my Dad’s poor, frayed cuffs. I thought of my Mum, working herself to the bone, she said, to make ends meet. Where’s the money to come from? she said.

  The problem was to find out where the gold was hidden. Why hadn’t Dad told me about this before? He couldn’t know where it was, or he would have dug it up by now. How could he sit there, when those men would surely be coming back? They knew. They would find it first, unless I hurried.

  I found a trowel in the veranda and went round the back. Our yard was cracked, but none of the gaps were big enough to insert my trowel. Anyway, where would I go from there? Even with a spade, I couldn’t lever up our yard, I didn’t have the strength. Around our bungalow the earth was hard and dusty, all scratched by the hens. They gathered behind me, to watch. I stabbed at the ground; it hadn’t rained for weeks, it was like iron. The handle was wobbly because a screw was missing. I jabbed and stabbed: why was nothing ever mended in our house? If only I could dig properly, Dad could buy himself a new trowel, a new anything. He could build himself a pub in the yard instead of leaving us alone.

  The possibilities made me dizzy. I didn’t really want anything for myself, nothing big, but that afternoon – probably because for the first time I could do something to remedy it – that afternoon I realized how money might make my parents happier. The words sprang up: we are poor. It wasn’t my Mum going on about it, but me realizing it for myself.

  I made no progress. The ground was just chipped, here and there. I was useless. I didn’t like to try the grass out the front becaus
e Dad was there.

  I went indoors. Thinking back now, I’m not sure I knew what I was seeking. Gold coins? I was too old to believe in hidden treasure. But I was still young enough to believe in miracles: that something could be found that would make my parents happier . . . That I could do it if I tried.

  Everywhere the floor creaked. I knew there were holes under the carpet because we’d all learned how to avoid them – a stride was necessary, for instance, outside the bathroom door, and there was a subsiding area of carpet behind the telly. When my Mum went on about them, Dad said he only had one pair of hands.

  I started in the kitchen because the lino was loose. Lifting it, I saw the floorboards all broken. Dusty gaps showed what must have been earth but it looked even less promising than outside. I felt foolish, kneeling there with my trowel.

  Just then I heard a car outside. Mum was back from work; Oonagh’s husband had given her a lift. By the time she’d come indoors I’d put back the lino and also hidden, in the fridge, Dad’s plate of Spam and tomatoes that I’d made for his lunch, and that he hadn’t seen. I hid the trowel in the cupboard. Her footstep made me feel infantile. I jerked shut the cupboard door, which was warped.

  It was late that night when the shouting started. I was in bed but I woke up at the noise. I couldn’t hear the TV, which alarmed me; Mum must have switched it off. I knew then that it must be bad, so I went under the blankets and put Kanga’s arm in my mouth.

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ shouted my Dad.

  ‘Let her hear. Let her know what sort of a man she has for a father.’

  My bedclothes muffled the voices but they were all too recognizable. My teeth dug into Kanga.

  ‘What a spineless nobody he is . . . What a good-for-nothing slob.’

  ‘Say that again, Coral. I’m waiting . . . Go on.’

  ‘No need, is there?’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘We both know it, don’t we?’

  ‘Look –’

  ‘I’m wondering what they were saying, when they dumped you here . . . When they’d opened their door and let you roll out –’

  ‘I told you, we got along fine. Real matey, we were –’