The Bricks That Built the Houses (8 page)

‘Mr John Darke?’

They crucified him. Painted him a villain. He was drawn in the press as an alcoholic manic-depressive dope-fiend. A callous reprobate out for the country’s young. Lurking in the classrooms of the university where he taught, poisoning minds and seducing bodies. Features were written by TV personalities calling him an insatiable sexual deviant. Columnists, gossip hounds and serious political journalists all had their piece to say on the matter, and it wasn’t just in the right-wing papers. It became fashionable to hate John Darke. Damning him meant you absolved yourself. They discussed
his homosexual leanings in the comments pages. They burned his reputation to the ground.

He was charged with having sexual intercourse with underage girls. Six counts of rape. He denied all the charges. For weeks there hadn’t been a page that wasn’t full of John Darke’s suspect character and his deviant tendencies.

He had never shown interest in underage girls, but he had been a man who enjoyed sex immensely. Before these serious days he had often indulged in casual affairs, but since he’d met Paula all that had changed. Or had it? The jury could not forget that here was a man who, intent on power, was charging around the country like a rock star on tour, meeting young girls who found him impressive. Who could be sure? Were there not testimonies? Young, crying girls, fourteen and fifteen, weeping in courtrooms, while John sat, silent, dark-eyed, destroyed.

Paula stuck by her man as long as she could but he was so quiet and strained in the visits. And no smoke without fire and she couldn’t bear to think that the man she loved most in the world, those hands that she’d held and adored, were the hands of a man who could do things like these. She swallowed her doubt, but the hook stuck in the flesh of her mouth, pulling her upwards, away from him.
This is a set-up
, he told her, and she nodded and told him she knew that it was. But if enough people believed in a lie, the truth didn’t matter at all.

On 17 November 1995, John Darke was found guilty by a jury of his peers. Some maintained that the jury must have had
their perspectives tinted by the hysteria in the papers, but these complaints died down after the complainants found themselves tarnished as paedophile apologists and conspirators.

Paula and Becky threw their clothes into bin bags and moved out of the flat. Paula held her child in one hand and dragged their bags with the other, and together they walked aimlessly into the night. Becky watched her mother dance in the paparazzi strobes.

Who could be sure if the accusations were true? Was he really a rapist of underage girls? Could he have done it? There were those who didn’t believe in the conviction. Who carried on reading his papers and meeting in secret, trying to get mobilised. But the damage was done. They couldn’t gather momentum against such a force. His followers were heart-broken, destroyed. They felt they had been shown by the ruling classes what happens to those who don’t play by the rules. The fire went out of the movement. John Darke’s followers became as shamed as their figurehead.

After three weeks, not knowing where else to turn, Paula and Becky moved in with Paula’s eldest brother Ron and his wife Linda, and their son Ted, who was only a year or so younger than Becky. Ron and Linda lived in a three-bed maisonette in a quiet cul-de-sac away from the bustle of Lewisham Way, up towards Charlton. The house looked out on to a sloping communal green and if you stood on your tiptoes at the top of the hill you could see the river churning its way to Greenwich.

Becky’s Auntie Linda was a tidy-framed lady with natural hair and skin the colour of fired clay. She dressed well and prided herself on her ability to find the only gem in a sprawling car-boot sale. Her heritage was Jamaican/Irish and she slipped between both accents when she was saying something important, but for the most part she spoke in the round vowels of south London. She was a straightforward woman, gentle-mannered. She could not tolerate stupidity and when she encountered it she called it by its name. She worried constantly about the state of things: she’d worry about the city, her family, her business, the weather, her husband’s health. She had a habit of staring off into the middle distance and tutting slowly whenever anything happened, convinced of some prophecy that was becoming truer and truer every day; everything on the news, in the street, in the house, fed her sense of growing dread. But she maintained a mischievous sense of humour. She was Becky’s favourite human being.

Ted was a goofy kid with little tight curls and dimples, and a sweet manner. As time passed, he became like a brother to Becky. He’d push her over and give her Chinese burns and lock her in cupboards.

Becky’s Uncle Ron was short and round, and had a laugh like a broken engine, stuttering and guttural. He was south London Jewish and was proud of his heritage. He was a softy really, but in public he scowled and swaggered and cut his eyes at anyone he didn’t like the look of. He wore what Linda picked out for him. His dark hair was long at the top
and neat at the sides, swept back off his head in a little baggy quiff. He had a happy mouth full of teeth, ground down from cheap teenage speed and yellowing from sweets and fags, piercing bright blue eyes that shone when he thought hard, set deep in his face, and a brow that stood out like a headline. He walked with his arms linked behind his back, chest pushed out, greeting people he knew with a bow of the head.

Ron had met Linda in the early 1980s. He was a ska boy, and she was a DJ at the clubs he used to go to. The process was not without its dramas, but it all ended well; she got the boy, and he got the girl and he still felt gooey in her arms. He had tattoos on his wrists that Becky knew meant something but she never asked what, and a dark temper that would flare up suddenly when roused and hands big enough to break faces.

Ron and Linda ran a caff together called Giuseppe’s on Lewisham High Street. There was a market there and lots of people and shops and noise. Becky liked going to Giuseppe’s after school and sitting at the counter and drinking the milkshakes that Linda made especially for her.

Paula told Becky that her dad was in jail because the police were scared of him. Her family hid the papers from her in the first few weeks after John’s arrest, and they were careful with the telly.

They never talked about it. Every time she tried, her mum got panicky and tore at her hair and tears came to her eyes,
so Becky learned it was best to stop asking and soon the silence around her father’s absence seemed too prevalent and painful to challenge.

In Becky’s earliest memories, her mum was always strong and funny, beautiful and talented, no nonsense. Smoking fags out the window of Ron and Linda’s house. Shouting at the telly when they sat and watched
EastEnders
. Holding Becky’s hand while Becky learned to roller skate, walking round and round the field eating endless ice creams. Showing Becky photos of all the famous people she had shot; beautiful black-and-white moments from a time when Becky hadn’t happened yet. Going out for tea and cake in town together, looking through the pages of high-end magazines at all the colours and the clothes. She remembered her mum taking her to dance class and staying when the other mothers left, sitting quietly and watching all the steps her daughter learned.

But Becky would hear her crying in the night. And when no one else was in, Paula would stand in the doorway of the room she shared with Becky, drunk, her eyes drooping and her voice shrill, and she’d start the same old monologue Becky had heard hundreds of times. ‘I could have been a legend, you know. Before I met your father I was famous. I was destined for great things . . .’

The crying mum and the happy mum were like two different people, never in the same space at the same time, but both lived in Paula, and you never knew which one you’d get. Over
time, Becky grew scared of getting home from school in case her mum was still in bed and drunk and crying. When she was like this, nobody was safe, she would surface in a silk dressing gown, make-up smudged and smoking fags and shouting foul abuse at people who weren’t there, and at people who were.

It was a Saturday morning in the middle of December, Becky had just turned thirteen and Paula wanted them to go ice skating, like they used to, but Becky was embarrassed to be seen out with her mum, temperamental as Paula was; drunk, loud, and usually outrageously flirtatious with bewildered men. Becky was sitting in the front room watching the telly. Paula was leaning in the doorway.

Paula had suffered a crushing blow that morning. For the past three months she had been desperately trying to find contact details for her old workmates and commissioning editors, and had at last tracked down the mobile number of Katarina Raphael, once a photojournalist like her, but now the picture editor at British
Vogue
. Paula had counted Katarina as a friend some fifteen years before, but they hadn’t spoken in over a decade, although Paula had been watching Katarina’s progress from afar. Katarina’s recent well-publicised promotion had fuelled Paula’s latest attempt at stirring the ashes of her career. But Katarina had not remembered Paula. She had not remembered Paula’s name, Paula’s voice or Paula’s photographs. She had told her that she was sorry, but Paula must have dialled the wrong number.

‘I don’t want to go ice skating.’ Becky wouldn’t look up from the TV; she was watching an American high-school sitcom.

‘You used to love it.’ Paula held on to the wall, watched her daughter staring at the screen.

‘I’m happy just sitting here, Mum. I’m tired.’

‘You just want to watch TV all day?’

‘Yeah.’ Becky shrugged. Annoyed at the interruption.

‘We hardly see each other any more, Rebecca.’ Paula walked over and stood in front of the TV. ‘Let’s go out.’ Her words baggy from drink. ‘Let’s go look at the photos in the Portrait Gallery.’

Becky looked up at her mum, spoke firmly, her voice tired. ‘I don’t want to.’

Paula started pacing backwards and forwards in front of the TV. Shaking her head. Breathing heavily. She gritted her teeth behind her pursed lips.

‘Can you let me just watch this, Mum? I like this programme.’ Becky weaved from side to side, trying to see round her mum. Paula saw what Becky was doing and stood firmly in front of the screen, trying to catch her daughter’s eye. Becky looked down at the carpet. ‘It’s only on once a week.’

‘NO!’ Paula shouted. She turned the TV off, and stood victoriously in front of it with her hands on her hips. She stared at Becky, eyes burning, but Becky didn’t look up. Becky sat very still on the sofa and tried to count the individual strands that made up the carpet.

Paula walked towards her and leaned down into her face. ‘Are you not even going to look at me, Becky?’ she asked, her voice calm, but her movements jagged.

‘Mum,’ Becky moaned. ‘Muuuum, please.’ She turned her head away.

Paula raised an extended finger. Spoke at a dramatic volume. ‘I gave my life up for you,’ she began.

Becky rolled her eyes and sat back into the sofa, huffing in exaggerated boredom. ‘Heard it all before,’ she sang, covering her face with a cushion.

‘Your Dad and you. I could have had a life of my own. But I gave everything up, and look where it’s got me . . . You don’t even talk to me any more. And
him
?’ Her dressing gown billowed as she thrust her hands about, her underwear visible, the curtains open.

Becky heard him referred to and tears came to her eyes. She breathed them back without her mother seeing, and shrivelled inside to think of the neighbours. She watched Paula’s face contort and squash and puff.

‘Your precious fucking father.’ Paula’s hair was sticking out madly from her head; it was always wild before she tamed it with products and special brushes and rollers. Her skin was stretched and thin at the edges of her face, blue lines appearing beneath the surface.

Becky looked at her mother and saw a monster. She cowered down into the sofa, hoping she’d never end up looking like that. Paula stood, one hand on her hip, the other
holding her head. Her dressing gown was open, her boob was hanging out of her night slip. Becky’s stomach pushed itself out of her belly button and sprinted for the door. Ran down the street with no shoes on.

‘You think he’s better than
me
? Because, what? I take a drink now and then, to calm the nerves. Now and then?’

Becky breathed quietly.

‘Can’t you hear me?’

Becky stared at the corner of the cushion that she clutched to her chest. Promised herself she wouldn’t cry. There was no use crying, it just made things worse.

‘You wait here,’ Paula said, raising a finger and pointing it hard at her daughter. ‘Just wait here.’

She backed out of the room. Becky heard her running up to their bedroom and slamming the door and banging around up there. She heard the door being wrenched open, hitting the wall, and footsteps thumping down the stairs, skidding on the steps, and the door being smashed into. Then her mother, breathing ragged breaths, holding her hand against her mouth, eyes like open bottles, walked purposefully into the room. She handed her daughter an old newspaper.

‘There you go,’ she said. ‘There’s your fucking father.’ Paula stared at Becky, spiteful, hurt. Wanting love. She waited for Becky to look at the newspaper. Becky didn’t move. Paula waited for as long as her nerves could take, but seeing that Becky was not going to look, she slammed the paper down at her daughter’s feet and left it spreadeagled on the floor before
she turned and flounced out, back upstairs. Becky heard the door slam and the music start playing.
You don’t have to say you love me
. . .

Becky fell towards the paper, slipped from the sofa and sat awkwardly hunched on the floor next to it. She crumpled her body together, her knees tucked up to her chest, and she read it, weeping till it hurt her face, cover to cover, twice over.

After that episode, Becky grew timid around her mother. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d learned. She saw her dad everywhere. Every shop sign she noticed had
John’s
written on it, every TV show was about dads and daughters. Every lesson in school was about people being punished for what they believed in. And then some girls in her year who she smoked fags with all started boasting about the older guys they were sleeping with, and Becky couldn’t help but imagine the girls themselves. The ones he had apparently slept with. There had been six of them. What did they look like? They can’t have looked much older than she looked. She had nightmares about it. She felt disgusted with herself for missing him. She sat in front of the computers in the library searching for his books, and finding all of them had been recalled. At lunchtimes she hid in the IT department, going online on the old school computers and soaking up all she could find. Every spare minute she had, she found herself back there, logging on and searching and then hating everything she’d just read and wishing she could forget it. She
became withdrawn, she lost weight. She started skipping dance classes, punishing herself.