Bed of Roses (9 page)

Among many other small improvements, Fanny has introduced a simple system at the school, involving letters and telephones etc., which makes it virtually impossible for the children to play truant without their parents finding out. Before she arrived some of the older children used to catch the bus into Lamsbury and roam around making a great nuisance of themselves, or, worse still, they used to roam around Fiddleford, stealing crisps and drinks from tables at the Fiddleford Arms, or standing outside the post office and imitating Mrs Hooper’s laugh – which they could do sometimes, without any signs of boredom, for hours on end. Poor Mrs Hooper used to wake up in the night with their noises echoing inside her head.

But the truancy has stopped now, more or less. And Fanny, although still a long way from being forgiven for the shirt-stripping episode, has gained a handful of allies as a result.

The obese Mrs Guppy, of course, is not among them. Mrs Guppy, in spite of two letters and even a telephone call from Fanny (which ended before it ever began –

‘Hello, Mrs Guppy. I’m sorry to disturb you at home. It’s Fanny Flynn here. From the school…’

‘And you can fuck off.’
Clunk
.)

– still keeps her son Dane at home.

And for Fanny the temptation to let him stay there is strong. Because she could just leave him to rot; make a nominal report to someone at the LEA who would of course make a nominal report to someone else, and nothing would be done. Dane Guppy is only one pupil. One stupid, troublesome, charmless, aggressive, thoroughly disruptive pupil, with a mother Fanny would be happy never to have to see again.

Fanny is brooding over this one lunch-hour. And feeling guilty, as she always does. She’s on the verge – as she often is – of grabbing her keys and driving up to Mrs Guppy’s house to confront her. And she’s finding – as she often does – that being on the verge and actually doing, are two quite different things.

She gazes unhappily out of her open office window, away from the bungalows and the village hall, on to the view which she has already grown to love: the playing field, the winding lane, the church, the Manor’s cedar tree. It’s grey out there, she notices; it must be raining. Why are all the children in such a neat row?
Kneeling
in such a neat—

‘
Oliver Adams!
’ she yells through the open window. He jumps. The entire school jumps. ‘Bring whatever that thing is you have in your hand and come and see me. Right now, please. And everybody else, stand up! Hurry up! You all look
completely pathetic!
’

They had been kneeling before Ollie, who was sitting cross-legged on a log with a boy-guard on either side of him, and a mobile with Internet connection on his lap. Fanny knows what it is because she’s already caught him with it once before. He’s been making the children grovel in front of him, in exchange for a glimpse of porn.

It is the sight of Ollie, in all his Boden finery, meandering his remorse-free path across the playground, which finally spurs her to action. Because she knows exactly how the scene will play out. Ollie will stand in front of her desk and mumble resentful excuses, and wait until she allows him to leave. She will probably confiscate the stupid machine until the end of term. And then Oliver Adams will go home and return with some other toy. And the children will form another line. And nothing will change.

Meanwhile the illiterate, eleven-year-old Dane Guppy will continue to fester at home while what future he might ever have had slowly decomposes in front of him.

It occurs to her she’s like a police officer, fining a driver for not wearing his safety belt while there’s a rape going on in the passenger seat beside him. She grabs her bag, her keys and her dog and heads for the door, passing Ollie on his way up her office stairs as she rushes down them. She skids to a halt.

‘Hand it over!’ she says.

‘What?’ says Ollie innocently. ‘I haven’t got it.’

Fanny points a finger between his eyes and prods him on the forehead. His head bounces slightly; recentres itself. He scowls at her. ‘In case you didn’t know,’ he says, with lots of sarcasm, ‘Poking and prodding pupils tends to be against the law.’

‘And if I see that object again,’ she says, ignoring him, ‘I’m telling your mum. OK? And I’ll tell everyone in the village you’re a pervert.’

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Oh, I would.’ She hurries on, taking the last three steps in a single leap, and colliding straight into Robert.

‘Hey-hey-hey!’ he says, grabbing the chance to touch her, holding her back with a vicelike bony hand on each shoulder. ‘Steady! Where are you going in such a hurry?’

‘I might be a bit late back,’ Fanny says distractedly. ‘Can you keep an eye on my class?’

‘Will do,’ he says. ‘And you take it easy, young lady, hmm? OK? You’ll be no use to any of us, lying in a hospital bed!’

Lazy days all roll into one around Mrs Guppy’s dirty kitchen table. She sits at it, brooding, like an angry, asthmatic Buddha. She has an ashtray, a lighter and a pack and a half of Embassy Filter on one side of her, a cup of cool tea, thick with sugar, on the other. She has the Guppy sister-in-law sitting opposite her and a copy of the
Daily Star
, open at the horoscopes. She and the other Mrs Guppy live just outside the village, next door to each other, in large semidetached houses which their husbands built in the late eighties and which are already falling apart. The Mrs Guppys are always together. They wait, while the time passes, mostly in silence, marking their presence with occasional wheezes and monosyllables, interspersed with isolated snippets of news. An example (from a couple of days ago):

INT. GUPPY KITCHEN. DAY.

MRS GUPPY,
on the telephone, is wedged beside the

kitchen counter, dwarfing it, her back to
MRS GUPPY

OTHER,
who sits at the table, smoking
.

MRS GUPPY

And you can fuck off.

MRS GUPPY
slaps down the receiver.

MRS GUPPY

Miss Flynn, that were. From the school. (
Shuffles back to seat
.) Told her to fuck off.

MRS GUPPY OTHER (
Slurp
.) That’s right.

Silence.

Dane Guppy, meanwhile, reclines in his tracksuit in the sitting room next door, with the curtains drawn, because Mrs Guppy believes the neighbours are all spying, and with the plasma-screen television’s volume turned down, because Mrs Guppy hates the sound of recorded laughter. He has a pack of Top Trumps, which he shuffles, and a lighter, which he flicks, and he is bored. Every day for weeks now, it has been the same. Every day is the same.

Fanny has to go home to pick up her car and a newspaper article she cut out weeks ago, which she’d been meaning to send on to Mrs Guppy. It would only take ten minutes to walk there, but she knows enough about Mrs Guppy to be confident she’ll be wanting to make a quick getaway.

As she starts the car and accelerates, back past the school and out of the village, she’s remembering the story about Mrs Guppy and the landlord’s bleeding wife. She’s wondering which ditch, exactly, the landlord’s wife was found in, and she has to swerve to avoid a motorbike coming very fast in the opposite direction. They’re lucky; they don’t hit each other, and since neither is hurt, and both parties feel vaguely to blame, they hurry shamefacedly onwards, waving apologies at one another without really looking back. It’s only a few seconds later that Fanny realises – the silver bike, the
black helmet, the old suede jacket, the lean, jeaned thighs…They all belonged to Louis.

Little fucker!
she thinks.
Hasn’t bothered to call me for almost a month, and thinks he’s going to get a hero’s welcome. Certainly bloody well not.
But she can’t wipe the grin off her face.

It is Dane Guppy who comes to open the front door when Fanny at last summons the courage to bang on its lopsided knocker. Dane is desperate for any kind of distraction. He was up from in front of that silent telly like a shot. And when he first sees who it is, there’s no doubt about it, an expression of pure, unguarded happiness flashes across his face.

‘Oh,’ he says, quickly recovering, pulling the door half-closed again so that only his sickly grey face pokes out, ‘it’s you, is it? What do you want?’

‘What do you think I want, Dane? Go and fetch your mother.’

He laughs uncertainly. ‘She don’t like you very much.’

‘I know that. She’s already made that pretty clear. Why aren’t you at school, Dane?’

He smiles. ‘I’m sick,’ he says.

‘You don’t look sick to me. Go and fetch your mother. I want to speak to her. Is she in?’

‘No.’

‘Dane?’ comes a suspicious voice from behind him. Fanny’s stomach lurches. ‘Who’s that?’ calls Mrs Guppy, panting slightly as she makes her slow and heavy journey through the hall to the front door. ‘Who’re you talking to, Dane? Get back inside!’

‘It’s Miss Flynn,’ he says, staying put, noticing the effect his mother’s voice has on Fanny’s face, and sending her a gloating smile. ‘Come to take me back to school, Mum.’

‘What’s that?’ Mrs Guppy wheezes up behind him, and
with a swing of one gigantic arm, cuffs him off balance and out of the way. ‘You,’ she says to Dane, ‘do as you’re told and get inside!’

He retreats, but as he does so he glances at Fanny one last time. The gloating grin has vanished and instead, behind the dull grey eyes, there is the smallest hint of an appeal; even a flicker of gratitude. Fanny sees it. She sees it, and it spurs her on.

‘Hello, Mrs Guppy.’ She bends to rest one hand on Brute’s head, as if to reassure herself she’s not alone. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Fanny says. ‘I hope it’s not an inconvenient time…’

Mrs Guppy says nothing.

‘May I come in?’

Mrs Guppy doesn’t move. She keeps the door close to her but her size is such that there are still large gaps through which Fanny can glimpse parts of the hall. Except for a dirty beige carpet, it seems still to be unfinished. The windows are bare, the plaster walls unpainted, adorned only by cracks and the odd tuft of electrical wiring. From her place beneath the dilapidated porch Fanny smells frying, body odour and stale smoke. She’s not desperate for her suggestion to be accepted.

Anyway, it’s ignored. ‘What do you want?’ Mrs Guppy demands.

‘I want – That is—Look, Mrs Guppy, I know we haven’t exactly got off to a good start, and I’m sorry, because I know I have a terrible temper…’

(But it’s too late for forgiveness; one lost child, four confiscated children, twenty-two stones of fat, one slimy, cheating, weak-willed husband – one long, cruel, lazy, hated life. Too Late.) Fanny’s apology says nothing to her. She doesn’t even hear it. ‘What do you want?’ she asks again.

Fanny sighs. ‘I want Dane back at school, Mrs Guppy. I think he should be at school.’

Mrs Guppy smiles. ‘Anything else?’

‘Unless there’s a reason he shouldn’t be in school which I am unaware of?’

‘Dane’s not at school because I’m not sending him.’

‘So he’s not ill, then?’

‘Dane’s not at school because I’m not sending him,’ she says again, and begins to shunt herself back into the house.

But Fanny’s not finished yet. The adrenalin is pumping, and she moves instinctively. ‘No, wait!’ she says. She puts a foot in the closing door. ‘It’s actually illegal for you to keep your son away from school, you do know that, don’t you?’

‘Is that right?’ Mrs Guppy mocks.

‘And did you know that he’s nearly twelve, and he still can’t read and write? Did you know that, Mrs Guppy?’

‘I’d be moving that foot if I was you.’

‘And did you know that if you refuse to allow him to be educated, simply because you have a problem with the way
I
choose to dress, Mrs Guppy—’ Fanny’s voice begins to rise.

‘I told you to move your foot.’

‘I’m sorry. No. The dressing thing – that was silly.’ Fanny taps impatiently at her own forehead. ‘That’s not what I meant. Please, don’t keep talking about my foot. Please, just let me finish. Let me come in. I’m just saying that you’re punishing him for something
I
did. And that’s just so
unfair
.’

Mrs Guppy gazes coldly down, pulls back the door with her mighty arm and slams it against Fanny’s foot. A gust of stale air. Fanny smells frying, smells body odour and stale cigarettes, and she winces in pain. But for some reason she does not move the foot. She doesn’t even consider it.

‘And if there’s nothing wrong with his health,’ she continues, ‘if he’s not ill – which, Mrs Guppy, I know he isn’t – you do realise, don’t you, that you can be sent to jail, you can be locked up—’

WHAM! The door hits against her foot once again. Another gust of stale air. And pain.

‘Move it, Miss Flynn.’

‘Mrs Guppy, I haven’t finished!’

WHAM! Stale air. Pain. And coughing from inside the house, and something else; a bitter, distinctive smell. They both recognise it at once. Fanny stops, sniffs. Mrs Guppy, who’s been watching her carefully – alert to possible reprisal – glances nervously back into the hall. Through the cracks of the badly fitted sitting-room door seeps a tail of black smoke.

‘DANE?’ thunders Mrs Guppy. ‘Get out here! You stupid sod! DANE?’ She stands there, not moving. ‘DANE! What the bloody hell have you done now? Get out here this minute, or I’ll—’

They hear choking from behind the door. He’s rattling at the handle.

‘Mrs Guppy!’ Fanny can’t get past her. ‘For God’s sake, get him out of there!’

‘DANE. Get Out Here Now!’ Quickly, again instinctively, Fanny somehow squeezes past her, reaching the sitting-room door just as it bursts open and Dane Guppy stumbles through. Mrs Guppy takes the four steps that had ever been required to rescue him, and whacks him around the head. ‘You stupid bugger! You’ve done it again, haven’t you?’ she says. ‘One of these days I’m going to lock you in there and leave you to burn. Go an’ call Emergencies.’

Fanny peers into the sitting room. Beside the door the contents of a metal wastepaper basket are on fire. ‘It’s nothing,’ she calls out. ‘Half a bucket of water’ll do it.’

‘You still here?’ asks Mrs Guppy. It sounds ominous.

‘No. I’m just going,’ says Fanny quickly, backing away. She fumbles in her back pocket, produces a folded piece of newspaper. ‘But you should read this. I brought it for you.
It’s an article about a mother who was sent to jail for refusing to make her children go to school.’ Mrs Guppy does not move to take it. ‘I think you should read it,’ Fanny says again. ‘That is – if you can.’

‘’Course I bloody can.’

‘Ah,’ Fanny smiles, ‘lucky you.’

Mrs Guppy takes a step towards her, small eyes gleaming dangerously.

‘OK!…OK…I’m leaving!’ Still holding out the paper, Fanny edges round her towards the front door. ‘I’ll leave it here for you, then.’ Awkwardly, because there is nowhere else to put it, Fanny lets the paper drop, and they watch it flutter slowly to the ground. It settles on the dirty beige carpet, where Fanny assumes it will stay for many months to come. ‘The woman,’ she adds as an afterthought, ‘who kept her children at home, she was fined as well, you know. Several thousand pounds.’

And now it is definitely time to move on. With a final nervous smile, Fanny carefully withdraws. She manages to keep her voice steady as she calls for Brute, and her legs straight as she turns out of the short drive. She keeps walking until she hears the front door bang, and she knows she is out of sight, and then her knees buckle. She has to crawl the last few yards to her car.

She waits there, recovering, she doesn’t know for how long, but until well after the fire engine from Lamsbury has scuttled past, discovered it was unneeded, and lumbered away again.