In a Good Light (19 page)

‘Fuckinell it's captain Pugwash,' said one of the ordinary, unpretentious people, whose influence Mum had so warmly recommended, on my first day at Underwood. At least, thanks to Grandpa Percy's TV I now knew who Captain Pugwash was. ‘What's wrong with your eye?' she demanded, contacting my black patch with a fat finger.

‘Nothing,' I said truthfully: it was the unpatched eye that was defective. Through it I examined my interrogator. She was above average height, and girth, with a barrel-shaped body and two flaps of fat where there would one day be proper breasts. Her hair had been scragged back into a stumpy ponytail with what seemed unnecessary severity, giving her the grim appearance of someone facing into a
strong wind. Her cheeks were a sore shade of pink, and when she spoke I could see her teeth were imprisoned behind metal grilles. A group of her cronies gathered round us to see how the confrontation would develop.

‘Watcher wearing it for then?' she wanted to know.

‘Because I like it,' I said. ‘I think it makes me look nice.' I'd learned this trick from Christian: if you're ever faced with a stupid remark, just say the exact opposite of what's expected and see what happens.

‘You must be mad then,' she said. The onlookers laughed. ‘She's mad.'

‘I am,' I agreed. ‘I went mad when I was six, and I've been like it ever since.'

‘You're getting on my nerves,' the girl said. ‘You'd better bring me fifty pence tomorrow.'

I looked at her, mystified. Did she need money to buy something that would calm her nerves? ‘Why?' I asked.

‘Don't get me angry,' came the reply, which sounded fairly angry already. ‘Just bring it.'

‘I need to take fifty pence to school today,' I said over breakfast the following morning.

Christian had been for his run and was now trying to fit six Weetabix into a bowl that could comfortably accommodate two. I watched him stack them two by two to form a squat tower, and then trickle milk over them until they collapsed into a grey sludge, which he ate with great relish.

‘It's not a good idea to take money to school,' Mum said. ‘It might get taken.' In view of the circumstances I could hardly dispute this prediction. ‘What do you need it for?'

‘Nothing,' I said. ‘I'll manage.'

She tracked me down to the furthest corner of the playground at breaktime, where I was trying to blend into the fence. I wasn't the only one engaged in this attempt, I noticed. A little leadership, a little organisation, and we could have formed a marauding band of our own.

‘Where's my money?' she said, arm out, palm uppermost.

This use of the possessive rankled. ‘Wherever you keep it,' I replied. ‘
My
money's in the bank.'

‘Just give it. I've got other people to see after you,' she said.

‘I haven't got it,' I said, shrugging. She looked from me to her two accomplices with an exaggerated expression of disbelief.

‘What have you got then?' she demanded, removing my school bag from my shoulder and having a good rummage. She pocketed a foil pack of sandwiches and my banana before opening the lid of my thermos flask and tipping the contents out onto the floor. ‘Fuckinell,' she said, as half a pint of Mum's chunky vegetable soup hit the deck. ‘It looks like puke.'

‘That's my lunch,' I protested, my unpatched eye watering with rage. No one, except me and Christian, was allowed to insult Mum's cooking, unappetising though it was.

‘What are you going to do about it?' the girl wanted to know.

Do? I did what any right-thinking daughter of a Christian minister and a pacifist would do in the circumstances: I punched her in the mouth.

She was too taken aback to retaliate, and was in any case fully occupied with the business of trying to staunch the outwash of blood: I had forgotten about that brace.

‘Sorry!' I said, horrified, and yet strangely elated. My fist
still throbbed from the impact. I wouldn't be able to hold a pen steady for the rest of the day, an inconvenience I hadn't foreseen. I offered her a wad of cleanish tissues from my pocket to mop up the blood, but she applied them instead to her eyes, a gesture that made me feel doubly guilty.

‘You didn't have to do that!' one of the cronies remonstrated. ‘It was only a joke.' She put her arm round the victim and enquired tenderly, ‘Are you all right, Dawn? Do you want me to get Miss?'

Dawn shook her head, fat-lipped. She would have a stupendous pout for the rest of the week.

The bell rang for lessons. ‘I didn't mean it,' I said, still feeling that the defensive nature of my action was not being properly acknowledged. I tapped my head, remembering our conversation of the day before. ‘It was the madness coming out,' I added, reclaiming my bag and flask, before making my way back to class. I didn't bother about the sandwiches and banana: I thought that might be pushing my luck. Besides, the sight of all that blood had taken the edge off my appetite.

I kept expecting to be hauled before the headmaster for the affray, and jumped every time there was a knock at the classroom door, expecting a summons. But none came. In school it was just as in Dad's prison: there was no form of life lower than a grass.

Outside school, of course, different rules applied. At seven o'clock that evening the doorbell rang. This wasn't an uncommon occurrence – word had got about that the occupants of the Old Schoolhouse were a soft touch as far as donations were concerned, and we were regularly troubled by people collecting for charities, genuine or
otherwise. The traffic of funds was by no means always one-way, as Mum kept her own collecting tin on the hall table and would occasionally jangle it under the astonished caller's nose.

This time it was Dad who opened the door, while I hovered behind. We had been washing up and he was still wearing a Liberty print apron with a ruffled hem, over the top of his clerical garb. Mum was in the loft checking for squirrel damage; Grandpa was watching TV; Christian was working in his room.

The caller was a short, pigeon-chested man of about Dad's age. His fiery red arms and neck, revealed by a tight white T-shirt, implied a summer spent out of doors. He was shifting from foot to foot in an agitated manner, and seemed slightly thrown by the sight of Dad's dog-collar and floral pinny.

‘You Mr Fairchild?' he demanded.

‘I am,' said Dad politely, peeling off his rubber gloves with a snap and passing them back to me.

‘Your kid thumped my kid in the mouth.' The man was still bobbing from side to side, as though preparing to throw, or possibly dodge, a punch himself.

Dad frowned. ‘Goodness. I'd better see what he's got to say about it.' He moved to the foot of the stairs and called, ‘Christian! Can you come here, please?'

A moment later Christian loped down, looking perplexed.

‘Not him,' said the man, who had now caught sight of me lurking in the background. ‘Her!'

The three of them stared at me incredulously. The anonymity of the headmaster's study would have been a treat in comparison.

‘Is this true?' Dad asked, in a voice that seemed to plead for a denial.

‘Well yes, but only after she nicked my lunch,' I replied. I was about to launch into a full account of my (relative) innocence, when I was saved by the complainant himself.

‘Blimey, she's not very big,' he said, looking me over. I suppose the eyepatch might have contributed to an appearance of vulnerability. ‘Oy, Dawn,' he summoned the victim, who had been standing out of sight behind the bramble hedge. ‘Is this the girl you mean?'

Dawn emerged reluctantly from her hiding place. One side of her bottom lip still bulged, which made her look gormless as well as asymmetrical. I could see she wasn't nearly so hard now she was on our turf. She seemed to have lost all stomach for the confrontation, which had obviously been his idea, not hers. When she saw Christian, handsome in his Turton's uniform, with shirt collar unbuttoned and tie at half-mast, she even blushed. ‘Yeah, it is, but . . .'

‘I thought it was one of the bigger girls who'd been picking on you,' said her father, looking thoroughly ill at ease now. ‘You made out it was.'

‘No I never,' Dawn muttered.

‘But, I'm not being funny, you'd make two of her.'

I noticed that Dad and Christian had gradually moved closer to me, one on each side, and I was touched by this protective gesture.

‘Nevertheless, Esther, I think an apology is in order,' Dad said, in his best ‘severe' voice.

‘I did apologise at the time,' I said. ‘But I'll do it again if you insist. Sorry I hit you, Dawn.'

‘Say you're sorry you nicked her lunch, or whatever,' said the man, nudging Dawn.

‘Sorry I nicked your lunch,' she intoned listlessly. She was desperate to get away.

‘That's it.' He nodded his approval. ‘Kiss and make up.' He took a large, grey handkerchief from his jeans pocket and used it to wipe his neck.

‘Would you like to come in and have a drink? We don't have to stand here discussing this on the doorstep,' said Dad politely, as if they were just a couple of regular parishioners wanting spiritual advice. It wouldn't have crossed his mind that the man had come here for a punch-up.

‘No, no,' said Dawn's father hastily. ‘We don't want to keep you. Just thought it was best to get this straightened out.'

‘Absolutely.' Dad nodded emphatically. ‘Very glad you did.' He thrust out his hand, which was still dusted with primrose lint from the inside of the rubber glove. Dawn's father automatically wiped his own palm on the side of his jeans before shaking.

‘Girls, eh?' he said, with an exaggerated shake of the head.

‘Yes, indeed,' said Dad, seeing the pair off with a cordial wave. Sometimes his manners made you want to cry.

As we resumed the washing up Dad remarked in his dry way that he hoped my thirst for violence had been fully slaked by the incident, and he needn't expect to find any more enraged fathers on the doorstep in future. I assured him it had, and the subject was never raised again.

IT WAS NOT
long after this that Christian went away for a week on an Outdoor Pursuits trip with the school. I know it must have been some time that term, because I was still wearing my eyepatch. I remember how it made a little reservoir for my tears. I never quite understood it, but the trip had something to do with the Duke of Edinburgh. After a year or so of performing good works and feats of skill and endurance, half a dozen boys and a teacher from Turton's were to go climbing in Snowdonia in the harshest possible conditions with the minimum of equipment. The survivors would get a medal at Buckingham Palace. Something like that.

Christian took Grandpa Percy's rucksack, which looked like a relic from the First World War. It was made of tubular steel and leather and thick green canvas, and was formidably heavy even when empty. Once it was stuffed with Christian's share of the camping equipment – tent pegs,
mallet, groundsheet, sleeping bag, dried food, gas canister, maps, torch, billy-cans – it would have felled a donkey.

‘Goodness,' Mum said, watching Christian's bent-backed progress around the garden. ‘Do you seriously think you'll get to the top of Snowdon with that thing?'

‘I'll be lucky to get to Paddington,' Christian gasped, legs buckling.

‘It always was a blighter to carry,' Grandpa Percy conceded. I couldn't help feeling that this was a serious shortcoming for a piece of luggage.

‘Is there nothing you can jettison?' Mum pleaded. She was starting to suffer from twingey cartilages herself, and was alert to the fragility of knee joints.

‘We'll have a weigh-in at the station and even out the loads,' Christian reassured her. His fellow travellers – all Turton's fee-payers – would be roughing it with the very latest in outdoor survival gear and aluminium-framed nylon backpacks so lightweight that only the waist strap stopped them floating away.

He couldn't be persuaded to have a lift to the station, wanting to do the whole journey, door-to-tentflap, under his own steam.

‘Will you send me a postcard?' I asked. It was the first time he'd been away for such a long stretch, and my anxiety at the prospect of a lonely week was only intensified by his eagerness to be gone: the yearning ran only one way.

‘Yes, of course,' Christian replied. ‘There's a pillar box on the summit of Snowdon. It's emptied twice a day.'

I pulled a face and he just laughed, maddeningly.

‘Here's a pound for emergencies,' said Mum, taking the last note from her purse. ‘I'd like it back if possible.' It occurred to me to wonder what species of mountain-top
emergency could possibly be solved by a pound note, but Christian looked suitably grateful as he put it away. Mum didn't often wave money in his direction.

I handed over my own offering: a four-ounce bar of plain chocolate. It was something people in stories always seemed to have about their person, untouched, ready to produce in moments of extremity. This always struck me as unconvincing, but it gave me pleasure to imagine Christian awaiting rescue on some bleak crag, sustained only by dark chocolate and the memory of sisterly love. The gift was not made without sacrifice: it had cost me a sizeable part of my fortune, which consisted of the loose change culled from down the sides of our baggy armchairs. This was a useful, though unpredictable source of income. Experience had taught me that the collision between unwary male visitors with pockets full of coins and our slack and springless furniture produced the highest yields, and it was in this way that I had scraped together my modest fund.

‘Thanks, Pest,' Christian said. He put the chocolate in the pocket of his parka, and gave me a kiss on the cheek – a pleasing variant of his usual embrace, which was to crush my head under his armpit.

Mum, who had been ransacking the broom cupboard, reappeared holding a scuffed shopping bag on wheels. ‘If we get rid of the bag,' she said, starting to wrench the tartan vinyl, ‘you can strap your rucksack onto the frame and wheel it along.'