Spiderweb (5 page)

Stella plunged. ‘Did Nadine ever tell you about the summer vac when we hitch-hiked to the south of France?’

‘Many times.’

Ah. Well, yes, I dare say she would, in nearly forty years of marriage. Stupid question. Even so …

‘A well-worn theme,’ said Richard, with a wintry smile. ‘The lorry driver who bought you a bottle of red wine. Nude bathing in the Dordogne. Your version would be entirely different, I’m sure. Alternative evidence.’

‘I wasn’t proposing to give it. I was just thinking of her.’

‘Quite so. As do I. Daily.’ He wiped his mouth and folded his napkin. A chair leg faintly scraped.

‘Coffee?’

‘Thank you, no. I must be on my way.’

At the door he paused. ‘Please keep in touch. Call on me for local information.’

‘I will indeed.’ He doesn’t much care for me, thought Stella. Never did, I imagine. That could be mutual. And there is no reason why we should feel ourselves obliged to maintain an artificial association. A token exchange of civilities from time to time, that will surely do. He was helpful over finding the cottage and is dutifully welcoming, but no doubt sees me as a burden to be assumed for Nadine’s sake. Which does not suit me – I who have never been anyone’s burden.

She embarked on a brisk farewell. But he ignored her. He was silent for a moment and then said, ‘Nadine thought the world of you. A sentiment I shared, if I may say so.’

Wrong-footed, she thought. How mistaken can you be? Or is this simply more of his unrelenting good manners? He thanked her for the lunch and departed abruptly. She gazed after him, vaguely puzzled, and saw his car elbowed aside by a green pick-up van which dashed down the lane from the main road.

Their father was talking to a farmer who’d come about some combining he wanted done in August. Probably he wanted to give the combine a look over. People who came down about a contract could get angry when they found that half the things in the ad they didn’t do. There’d never been a mole drainer and the bagging system was from when their father was in partnership with Everitt from Bishop’s Lydeard. But she said, leave the ad the way it is, it looks better like that. So that was how it had been since for ever. And the combine was all right.

When their father had finished with this man, he was going to do a repair job near Carhampton. They’d decided earlier to get him to take them with him in the pick-up. Now they edged towards the door.

She waited till Peter’s hand was on the latch. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’

‘Going with Dad on that Carhampton job. Give him a hand.’

‘You’re coming to Minehead with me. I’m taking Gran to the bank. You can go and pick up some stuff at the supermarket while I’m seeing to her.’

They’d been expecting that. She didn’t like them going off with their father. She liked them where she knew what they were doing. She didn’t want them away from the place, unless it was to go to school. You should know when you’re well off, she said. There’s plenty of mothers wouldn’t give a damn. Turn their backs on their children and don’t want to know. I’m not like that, and just you remember.

They were burning away at her, but there was no point in arguing. Anything you said she could say for longer and louder, on and on, for days if she put her mind to it. And their father wouldn’t back them up, anyway. They might as well forget it.

It was every four weeks, the business of taking Gran to the bank. Their mother would have Gran’s cheque book in her bag with the cheque written out and then Gran signed it in the bank, in her shaky writing, breathing hard while she did it, making sure of the name. And then the girl behind the counter gave her the money, a big wodge of it. Then they all went to the other bank, their mother’s bank, and she paid the money into her account there. And after that she took Gran to the café for a pot of tea and a plate of pastries. That’s what Gran had been waiting for, greedy old sod. She didn’t make any fuss about going to the bank because she knew what came next. She’d sit there gobbling cakes, the crumbs dribbling down her chin. The boys hated that. They’d wait outside rather than have to watch, though they wouldn’t have minded one of those cream éclaks.

It was always a performance, at the bank. Their mother laughed and joked with the girl behind the counter, or the man or whoever it was. They all knew Gran and asked her how she was and that, and Gran would grin and look pleased and their mother would do the talking for her, saying she was fine, aren’t you, Mum? Or that she’d had a bit of a bad chest but was pulling round all right. Once, Michael asked her why she didn’t just take Gran’s money out of the hole in the wall, or take it all out instead of bit by bit when she needed it. She’d snapped at him not to ask stupid questions.

Another time, she’d said that one day Gran would have to go into the old people’s home. ‘Be better for her there. They’ve got professionals to look after them, and I can’t be running after her for ever.’

Michael and Peter thought it would be better to send her there now. She was disgusting, Gran, in their opinion. She farted. And it turned you up watching her eat. But when one of them said as much, once, his mother flared up. ‘You can just shut up. I don’t want to hear that sort of talk. This is her home. She’s my mother, isn’t she? So just you pack it in, talking like that.’ Only the day before, they’d heard her shouting at Gran about how she couldn’t expect to have people dancing attendance on her and she was an ungrateful old woman.

Actually she didn’t do much dancing. Nobody did. Gran just sat in her chair most of the time, like a heap of old rags, and to tell the truth she didn’t really bother them that much. Most of the time they never noticed her. And she’d always been there.

When Gran’s money ran out, she’d put her in the old people’s home, that must be it. Fair enough.

Gran had lived in a big house once. She had a bunch of old photos in her bag, creased to bits, and one of them showed this big house with her standing in front of it, only young-looking and with a little girl who was their mother. Gran had dropped it on the floor once and Michael picked it up and they both looked at it. They weren’t interested but it had been a bit surprising – that house, and Gran and their mother all different.

Sometimes she was quite nice to Gran. She’d tease her a bit and make jokes and Gran would cackle that old woman’s laugh that was really irritating. But then next day she’d be shouting at her and Gran would sit huddled up like a dog that thinks you’re going to hit it. Gran was sixpence in the shilling, she didn’t know if it was Monday or Tuesday, sometimes she didn’t even know her own name, but she watched their mother all the time, to see what might be going to happen – like people watch the weather forecast because there’s fuck all you can do about it but you may as well know. They did the same themselves. In that way, it was the same for Gran as it was for them. It annoyed them, knowing that.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said, making them jump. They’d been watching their father put tools into the back of the pick-up. The farmer from Taunton had gone. ‘You’re not going with him. Stop standing there like a pair of dummies. Tell Gran to get a move on.’

It was half-term week. It was only at half-term and in the holidays that they got lumbered with going to Minehead with her. On school days they were safe from that.

West Somerset Social Services – Health Visitor’s Report:
Case No. 4670/921. Mrs Millicent Danbury

Mrs Danbury is eighty-six years old and suffers from Alzheimer’s. She is resident with her daughter and son-in-law and is cared for by her daughter, Mrs Karen Hiscox. Mrs Hiscox is evidently much attached to her mother and shows her affection and attention. She is determined that the old lady should not be institutionalized until absolutely necessary, although she makes it clear that the present situation places a considerable burden on her. The home conditions are reasonable, although somewhat untidy. Mrs Hiscox runs a smallholding in conjunction with her husband’s agricultural hire and repair business. There are fourteen-and fifteen-year-old sons with whom Mrs Hiscox also appears to be much concerned.

This old lady is living in satisfactory circumstances in a happy family unit. Information was given about Day Centre facilities but Mrs Hiscox felt that her mother would become confused and anxious if removed at all from the home environment.

School was no problem. They had it sewn up. If anyone thumped either of them, they both of them thumped back, only harder. They stuck together as much as they could and people had learned to steer clear of them, not to try anything on. They didn’t have any friends, but that was all right. And she’d said not to get mixed up with the other kids. ‘They’re rubbish, that lot,’ she said. ‘You keep to yourselves. And don’t let any of them put anything over you.’ She told them what to do if anyone did.

Letter from Mr George Tomlinson, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Grove School, to Mr Daniel Chivers, Headmaster

Dear Headmaster,

I am writing in connection with a letter I have received from Mrs Hiscox. Mrs Hiscox complains that Mr Rogers of Form Four used verbal and physical violence in reprimanding her son Peter for a misdemeanour. The exact nature of the misdemeanour is unclear – Mrs Hiscox mentions a difference of opinion with another boy – but she states that Mr Rogers, in intervening and cautioning Peter, called him ‘a stupid little git’, slapped him about the head and in so doing bruised his face. Her elder son Michael was apparently a witness of the incident and bears out this account.

I understand from Mrs Hiscox that she has already approached you about this incident but is dissatisfied with your response. I am therefore obliged to investigate the matter and would ask if you and Mr Rogers could be available to discuss it with me at a time to be arranged.

Yours sincerely,

     George Tomlinson

Letter from Mr George Tomlinson to Mr Daniel Chivers

Dear Headmaster,

I have received a further letter from Mrs Hiscox of which a copy is enclosed. I need make no comment, I think.

I recall the point you made during our discussion to the effect that the mother has expressed her intention of removing both boys from the school as soon as they reach the school leaving age. Since they are now fourteen and fifteen, it is merely a question of endurance, so far as you and the rest of the staff are concerned. I note that both boys are low achievers in academic terms and lack motivation. It is clear from the files made available to me that these boys have been an ongoing problem. Of particular note is the contradictory and extravagant nature of the complaints and allegations made at fairly regular intervals by the mother. May I convey my recognition and appreciation of the restraint that has been displayed by you and other members of staff in connection with this family.

Yours sincerely,

     George Tomlinson

The boys knew that the teachers didn’t like them and they didn’t give a damn. They hated the teachers, anyway. They were a lot of stupid gits – and Michael had told one of them that once, when the teacher was hustling him. Besides, if any teacher picked on them, they only had to tell her and she’d be down there bawling them out, or shouting down the phone at them, or writing letters to the headmaster and people. And the teachers didn’t care for that. Some of them were scared of her – Michael and Peter had seen it in their eyes when they stood behind her and she was on at whoever it was she’d come down to see, yelling at the top of her voice and saying the sort of things people like that don’t get said to them.

So there wasn’t anything anyone at school could do to them, in the end. They only had to tell her, and back each other up.

If she was on your side, you were fine. Not if she wasn’t. They knew about that too.

Today she wasn’t bothering much with them. It wasn’t them she was interested in, right now. She’d been having a go at their father, the night before. She was still lit up. That was why she hadn’t wanted them to go off in the pick-up, partly. She didn’t want them and Dad getting together. Not that that was likely. Dad didn’t talk much at the best of times. After a row he didn’t talk at all.

He wasn’t like her. When he was angry he went all quiet and that was worse, in a way. You waited for him to blow up, like a radiator. You waited for the bang and the hissing steam. But he was quiet most of the time, that was normal too. He said what had to be said and that was all. He never smiled. Hardly ever. She’d throw that at him when they were having a row.

‘Po-face!’ she’d say. ‘You and your bloody po-face. Look, let’s teach you how to smile. See?’ And she’d stand in front of him with a great glaring grin, all her teeth bared. Like this, she’d say. ‘Got it? Smiling, this is called.’

Their father would slam out of the house, then. That was how their rows ended, usually – him slamming out and coming back hours later, reeking of beer probably, saying nothing to no one. And her as pleased as punch, singing about the place.

The boys weren’t bothered. You were in the clear so long as you kept well out of it and didn’t let her catch you listening or watching. If that happened, you’d be for it. The same went for Gran if she was fool enough not to pretend to be asleep or play even more batty than usual. But she’d learned to keep her head down. Maybe she wasn’t so daft. There were times when you wondered – when you saw a look in her eye that made you think she was plain miserable and that was all that was wrong with her. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you, if you were old like that? The boys told each other that old people should just be put away, like animals, in their opinion. That made sense, didn’t it? You wouldn’t keep an old dog hanging around, would you?

Their father had the pick-up ready now and roared off without a word. Thek mother bundled Gran into the car. She shouted, ‘Hurry up, you lot,’ without turning round. They’d been behind the sheds, in the hope she might forget about them. Fat chance. She always knew exactly where they were, without looking.

She drove like she always drove, sprinting when she could, nosing up the back of slow cars, swerving out to overtake. That could be quite good fun – people’s shocked faces as you went past and the driver’s hand on the horn when she was already practically out of sight round the next bend. Or the flaring headlights in front as she cut in and the buzz you got, wondering if they’d brake in time, if she’d make it. But she always did.

She’d been had up a few times. Endorsements. But she hardly ever hit anything, just the odd near-miss. She was known for her driving. They’d heard her tell people she’d done racing driving when she was younger, that she had some sort of racing driver certificate. Or that she’d done driving for films, been a stunt woman. When they asked their father about that, he just shrugged.

But she was an ace driver, no question. That was the thing about her, she always had to be on top, to have the edge over the other bugger.

They’d be on the road, as soon as Michael was seventeen. They’d been driving the tractors for years, both of them, up and down the track. They’d drive the combine sometimes, too. They wouldn’t need any lessons. Just for Michael to pass the test and they’d be away. Get an old banger and off.

Sometimes they talked about this. It was Peter who had the ideas – what sort of car they’d get and how they’d beef it up – and Michael who said, ‘Yeah! Yeah – that’s right, that’s what we can do!’ It was usually like that. Peter thought of something and Michael joined in and then they did it together. Or just talked, in the case of this car. Winding each other up – we’ll get a Golf GTI … no, a Honda.

When they got to Minehead she parked the car and made for the bank. They were to go to the supermarket for some stuff and then meet her at the café. They saw her head off down the street – that swaggering walk, full steam ahead so people had to get out of her way, stopping at the zebra, impatient, to look back for Gran shuffling along behind. As soon as she was out or sight they went into Woolworth s for an ice-cream.