Four Waifs on Our Doorstep (7 page)

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. It did seem very obvious, but they are so young. Perhaps I was imagining it. But Hamish said something last night.’ I paused. ‘He said that
Wayne, the guy who broke Caroline’s arm . . . he said that Wayne sexed Anita.’

‘Sexed her? Are you sure that’s what he said?’

‘Yes, absolutely sure. But I didn’t ask him what he meant or how he knew. Maybe he’ll say more about it one day, when he’s ready.’

‘Perhaps you misunderstood him, Trisha,’ said Carol, making a note on her pad.

‘I hope so,’ I nodded, knowing I hadn’t.

Just then, the children tumbled back into the house, all rushing into the kitchen, followed by Mike, looking sheepish.

‘Sorry, I couldn’t keep them out there any longer. They’re a barrel of monkeys today.’

‘OK, kids . . .’ I got up and stood in front of our tall fridge to prevent a food-fight in front of our visitor. ‘You’ve worn Mike out, so you can come and sit back at
the table and play quietly while Carol and I finish our chat. And you can have some of these.’ I put out a plate of rock-cakes for them, which they all grabbed straight away and shovelled
into their mouths before I had even got back to my seat.

‘Have you thought yet about schools for Hamish and Anita?’ asked Carol.

‘Well, no. It’s all been such a whirlwind, and it was just an emergency order to start with.’

‘That’s right, but now they’ll be here for longer, with the full care order, I think it will help you to get the two older ones settled in somewhere soon.’

‘So how did you get on with Carol?’ asked Mike later that evening.

‘All right, I think. She said she’d get a support worker to come for a few hours each week to give me a break.’

‘So you can go out and lunch with your friends?’ He grinned.

‘Some hope! As if I’d have time for that when I’ve got all the shopping and washing and ironing and cleaning to do for everyone.’

‘Do you think the kids have been any better today?’

‘Not that I noticed,’ I said. ‘I wonder what tomorrow will bring.’

6

I
had been trying to get Hamish and Anita into schools – I rang every school I could think of, but it was always the same conversation.

‘Their names and dates of birth please, Mrs Merry.’

That part was straightforward.

‘Are you wanting them to start straight away?’

‘Well, I’d like to settle them in here for another two or three weeks first. So maybe they could start after the Easter holiday?’

‘You do realise that these children should legally be in school now?’

‘Yes, I do realise that, but they’ve had a horrendous time before they came here, and they need . . .’

‘What school did they go to before you moved to this area?’

‘I don’t know.’ I didn’t feel like explaining all the background before I even knew if the school had any places for them.

‘I’m sorry?’ Not so much an apology as a question.

‘I don’t know,’ I repeated. ‘As their foster mother, I wasn’t told what school they went to.’ There was a silence at the other end. I could almost picture the
expression on her face.

‘So . . . these are foster children?’

‘Yes, that’s right. They’ve been badly neglected I’m afraid, and they’ve had a hard time, so they do have a few problems . . .’

‘Oh.’ A very curt sound.

‘So, can you take them from the beginning of next term?’

‘No, we’re completely full in those year groups,’ she said in a snooty voice. ‘I’m sorry.’

Well, I knew she wasn’t sorry.

After the last school in the city turned them down, I wasn’t sure what to do next. So I rang the education department at County Hall and told them the story of trying to find places and
all the schools being full.

‘They can’t be,’ said this clipped voice on the other end of the phone. ‘We do have places in years one and two in some of our schools, so I don’t understand why
they turned you away.’

‘Oh, but I do understand,’ I said. ‘None of the schools turned me down until I explained the children’s backgrounds.’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Merry?’

‘Their being foster children, taken away from years of severe neglect and brought to us, damaged and starved. As soon as I mentioned foster children and problems, suddenly every school
place was full.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Well, you don’t have to believe. It’s true. I could hardly send them to a school without any explanation, as they are both likely to carry their problems into the classroom
with them, and they will need sympathetic, caring teachers.’

‘All the teachers in our schools are sympathetic and caring, Mrs Merry.’

I know when I’m being patronised and I don’t take it well. ‘So what do you want me to do?’ I challenged her.

‘Well, you’ll just have to keep trying.’

That was my red rag moment.

‘No,’ I raised my voice. ‘That’s it. I’ve tried every school in the city and they’ve all said no. So if you don’t find my foster children places, I
won’t be sending them to school.’

‘But you must. If you don’t send them to school, you’ll be breaking the law.’

‘OK. Take me to court!’

On the second Friday after the kids came to stay, we took them out to the zoo. Everyone enjoyed looking at the animals, except for me, trying to keep them all together and calm
them down – an impossible task. As we left, I looked at my watch. It was much later than I thought and I remember worrying that they would all be starving and I wouldn’t have time to
cook anything. Oh God, I thought, it will be manic when we get home and they find out there’s nothing cooking. You see, I always used to make sure, if they’d been out with Mike, that
when they came back the kitchen window would be open and they could smell the food as they got out of the car. But not today.

‘Are you going to be able to cope with the kids while I start cooking their tea?’ I asked Mike as we drove home. ‘They’re going to be starving.’

‘Well, why don’t we have fish and chips?’ He grinned.

‘But we don’t want to give them junk food.’

‘Fresh fish isn’t junk food.’

‘Well . . . Go on then. Let’s have fish and chips.’

‘Do you want fish and chips, kids?’ he boomed into the back of the car, where they were all squabbling as usual. It brought them to a halt all right. Nobody answered, so I assumed
that perhaps they’d never had fish and chips before. I turned round to face them.

‘You’ll like it,’ I said. ‘All golden and crispy.’

‘Yes please,’ said Hamish, and they all joined in, so that was that.

I turned back to look at Mike. ‘So that’s five fish and chips please, and just chips for me.’ I’m vegetarian so I would find some cheese to have later at home.

We pulled up outside the chippy and Mike got out, then stuck his head back in through the window.

‘Come on, Hame, I’ll need some help to carry it all.’

So Hamish climbed out of the car.

‘I want to go too,’ wailed Anita.

‘And me,’ added Caroline, trying to clamber over her, until Anita shoved her back.

‘The chippy’s always full on a Friday night,’ said Mike. ‘So I can only take one of you in, and Hamish is the biggest to help me.’

So I sat in the people-carrier that we had to buy to fit us all in safely, and the three younger ones sat in the back, Simon silently strapped into his car-seat and the girls starting off again
with their squabbling. I just sat and looked at the door of the chippy, willing the boys to come out soon. It was before we had smartphones of course, but I did wish I’d had a video camera
with me when Hamish emerged through that doorway.

He came through first, carrying a big pile of wrapped packages of fish and chips. You could almost see the air waving as the steam and aroma came out through the white paper. He had this amazing
expression on his face – as if he was in paradise, his lips in a beaming smile and his nostrils quivering with pleasure as he sniffed the delicious smell. He sniffed right in, then let out a
long, satisfied breath, as he held the precious packages in his arms out in front of him, as if it was gold. Even the queen’s crown could not have been more precious to him than those fish
and chips.

‘Do you want me to hold it, Hame?’ I asked him.

‘No, no,’ he replied quickly, putting his arm over to protect his treasure. ‘I can look after it.’

When we got back to Church Road, we all went and sat down on our two church pews, one each side of the long kitchen table, as Hamish carried the white packages over. The smell of the fish wafted
out, filling the kitchen before we even opened the paper. All their little noses were twitching. Of course, Hamish had seen the fish and chips being wrapped up, but the girls and Simon didn’t
know what it would look like.

I went to get the salt and vinegar and Hamish carefully lowered the pile down in the middle, then sat down himself.

I could see the children were all desperate to look inside and tuck in.

‘Let’s not bother with plates,’ I said.

They all stopped and looked at me.

‘But what about knives and forks?’ said Hamish with a shocked expression.

I smiled at the irony of it. Of course, I’d been drumming into the four of them since the day they arrived that they mustn’t eat everything with their hands, and they had just got
into the habit of using cutlery . . .

‘It’s OK with fish and chips,’ I explained. ‘You can eat those with your fingers, you know.’

They all looked stunned for a second, as if this was some kind of trick I was playing on them. But then the unwrapping ceremony began. I watched them with amazement. It was as if they were all
trying to keep up the suspense, slowly unravelling their paper, one corner at a time, sniff-sniff-sniffing as they did so.

‘Ooohh,’ gasped Anita dramatically, as if it was nectar.

‘Go on,’ I coaxed them all as I unwrapped Simon’s package for him, sprinkled on some salt and vinegar and handed him a chip. ‘Tuck in.’

As everyone savoured their first mouthful, Hamish puffed out his little chest with pride. It was so lovely to see him like that, his face beaming, with no worries about anything, perhaps for the
first time ever.

All the portions of fish were huge and the chips were piled up high as well. As we all sat there, eating and enjoying it all, nobody spoke a word. When it was finally gone and the papers were
all empty I could hear each of them take in a big breath and let it out slowly, one after the other. Four big fat bellies and four very satisfied children.

Well, that was the start of a family tradition. The following Friday morning, I can remember Hamish coming down early and into the kitchen.

‘It’s our fish and chips night tonight, isn’t it?’ he said in an excited half-whisper.

‘But I was going to . . .’ I began.

His face fell.

‘I know we had fish and chips last Friday,’ I said. ‘But it’s not every Friday.’

There were only a few times that I ever saw Hamish close to tears. He hardly ever cried, but the lip was going . . . At that moment I’d have bought him a whole fish and chip shop.

Just then, Mike walked in.

‘We’ll have fish and chips tonight,’ I said.

‘Oh really?’ he said with a quizzical smile.

So that was it, our ritual. Every Friday from then on was fish and chips night. I’d have scrubbed floors if I had to, just to make sure Hamish could have his fish and chips on Fridays.

Even when we took them on holiday we would take them all down to the quay and have a bag of chips and a Mr Whippy.

From the very first evening they were with us, all of the three older children behaved badly towards each other and swore like troopers. Simon didn’t speak at all then,
but even Caroline, with her speech defect, used all the swear words. With Anita, it was almost every word if she was angry. I do find children fascinating. As I watched and listened to them speak
with each other, I soon noticed that both the girls only used the word ‘cunt’ to each other, but never to their brothers. And it was ‘fucking hell’ every time, in every
situation. Especially Anita.

They used every single swear word you can imagine. And the sad thing was that with the older two it was usually in context, though Caroline sometimes got it spectacularly wrong.

It was strange for us, and upsetting or shocking for other people, but we had to remember not to show how we felt about the swearing at first. Of course, we’re all used to hearing swear
words in the shops, in the park, on the television . . . but this was different. We couldn’t assume they knew these words were anything wrong.

‘These children have been in a worse mess than we realised,’ I murmured to Mike one morning, when the air was particularly blue.

I mentioned the swearing to Carol, the social worker, the next time she came round.

‘Well, of course, your expectations might be a bit high,’ she said.

I didn’t say anything back, but I did think: Oh yeah? All five- and six-year-olds can wipe their bottoms, and know what toilet paper is, don’t they?

One day, I took Anita to one side when we were in a shop and she swore loudly at Caroline.

‘You know, Anita, “cunt” is not an acceptable word when you’re with other people, especially with other children, because it’s what we call a swear word, and a lot
of people don’t like swear words, so they prefer not to hear them.’

She looked a bit surprised, shrugged and that was that. I’m not even sure she understood what I was saying. But I always had to be careful, because all these words were presumably the
normal conversation they had grown up with, till now, and if I’d been too disapproving of them, it would have been a slur on their parents, and I couldn’t do that.

I had to just say: ‘We don’t say that when other people are around.’ Or: ‘Please don’t use that language when we’re in the supermarket, because it’s not
acceptable there.’ ‘If you want to use those words,’ I used to tell the children, ‘if you’re angry about something, go upstairs and use them in your
bedroom.’