Authors: Gillian White
Oh for a best friend. She would have done anything to get one. She tried. In those days she tried too hard to please. Even when Georgie was one of the gang she never found anyone of her own, anyone special with whom she could whisper, giggle at night and swap secrets. She could flick from person to person with an ease that was shocking. How many faces did she have, and which was the real one? Perhaps the other girls at school sensed there was something odd about her, and distrusted her. Or perhaps it was she who was threatened by closeness.
She never could work it out.
So there she was, alone on the road. And then there was that weirdest of feelings, pulling into the services, that unearthly forecourt where she stopped for petrol, wincing as the cold metal pump burned her hand, the freezing wind tightened her face, and even her eyes went dry as she stared at the slow-moving needle. She kept her mouth firmly closed to prevent breathing in that petroleum ice.
Then the crazy warmth of the restaurant, clattering trays and the listless women who reluctantly collected them, looking as if they wore slippers, although a quick glance showed they did not. Where did they live, these creatures from nowhere? There were fields as far as the eye could see. Godforsaken. Soulless. Were. they golems come forth from under some metal stanchion where they lived with their concrete men? And what would they say, these bravest of women, if they knew she was frightened of being here alone? Would the cardboard soles of their eyes crease and fracture as they recognized this fellow pilgrim, or would they shuffle away and ignore her, just another leaver of sticky wrappings, sugar-wet rings and tinfoil ashtrays?
Would their eyes tweak with interest if they knew who she was?
She took a steadying breath. There was no queue, but the effect of the place meant that everyone was somehow in one. They had come so far on their journeys that nobody could go back. These were committed travellers. And these fellow diners, these mild people dressed mainly in beige, could they possibly be the ones who, not five minutes earlier, encased in their steel chariots, had threatened her, overtaken her, chased her? Charging strangers seething by on a wet, straight road, exchanging sneaky sideways glances through shatterproof, dirty glass?
There was no real point in consulting her map, not yet. Not until she got off the motorway. Georgie stretched in her metal-framed chair and winced at the cramping of muscles held too long in one position. She sat in that restaurant and realized that this was the first positive thing she had done since Angela Hopkins’s death; everything up until then had happened within the circle of it. No wonder there was fear to suddenly find herself stepping outside. In all the awful intensity she’d almost forgotten there was an outside, she had forgotten it was possible to step over the edge and into the void.
Toby was a best friend. Her first. She married him after a six-week engagement. She had not known such love was possible.
The last time she came to Devon Toby had been with her, so that must mean she hadn’t been down here for the last ten years—incredible! Those were the days of hotels, the days of normal holidays, walking, exploring, riding, fishing and sailing. No children to think about, she smiled into her shiny white cup. The plastic spoon seemed to bend in the coffee, almost a Uri Geller illusion. Well, yes, they rode over that one, but not without pain. She could have them, he could not, that awfully unfair apportionment, deep swallows, meaningful glances and endless reassurances and no, she did not want to be inseminated with some student’s sperm; no, she did not want to adopt; no, she did not love Toby any less or think him less of a man or fear she would spend the rest of her life mourning the children she never had.
Childlessness meant that they kept their careers, and they took more interest in other people’s (children I mean, not careers). Godmother. Babysitter. Escort to the pantomime. Scourer of Hamleys at Christmas. It sounded rather sad put like that, a little pathetic when you looked at it, but it wasn’t sad in any way, she and Toby had loved it. You could set off and spend, quickly, recklessly, enormous parcels, favourite things.
My God, my God. The toys she had carted round to the Hopkins’s flat, not purchased at Hamleys, of course, but provided by generous well-wishers. (They had to sort through the tat that some people seemed to consider fair enough for the feckless poor.) Anne Stubbs’s office was full well before the end of November, so that all Georgie had to do was go in and choose the appropriate gifts. Anne was so suitable, a female version of Father Christmas with frosty white hair and even the suggestion of fluff on her chin. She beamed merrily over all the proceedings with flushed apple cheeks and a paper hat. But she who cared so much, who organized the toy campaign with so much enthusiasm, never got to see the joy she gave. At the end of the day all she was left with was an empty office, a few tattered pieces of string, carrier bags and cardboard boxes. Ah well. That’s life.
Yep, that’s life. Heart attacks? Heart attacks were for old men on golf courses in the wind, or sitting around board-room tables, too much gin, too many veins, too much hard living. Heart attacks were irrelevant, they just did not apply to young guys of Toby’s age who jogged and played squash and believed in low fat and high fibre. The disbelief, the unfairness of life almost throttled Georgie then, that, and the being alone again, nobody’s favourite person. When a decent length of time had gone by, people (her mother) said, ‘You are young yet. You will find another life, another man…’ as if, without Toby she had died, too, flung herself on his funeral pyre, especially as they were without issue. When the point of her life was so illusive work became all important.
‘Although why you work with those terrible people I’ll never understand.’
‘I know you won’t, Mum.’ Georgie met her eyes calmly. ‘So there’s no point in you trying.’
When she looks back on herself and Toby she marvels at how young they had been.
Work and friends became very important. But now Georgie had no work and felt uneasy around her friends, it was easy to think, once again, that without them she no longer existed. Death by proxy, like when Toby died. Especially here, in this motorway service area with the wind blowing blotchy sleet at the windows and the chrome hot-chocolate machine dribbling bubbles of hot froth.
Of course, when this was all over, when she was found to be ‘blameless’, she would be welcomed back into the fold. But it wouldn’t be exactly as if she had never been away now,
would it?
There’d be a stain. No smoke without fire. The waters would be muddied and would never clear completely.
‘Wasn’t there something, some years ago, some tragedy, I seem to remember…’
She needn’t return if she didn’t want to. Survival would be difficult but at a pinch Georgie could manage on Toby’s insurance if she pulled in her horns, left London, stopped spending on theatres, holidays and clothes, stopped ordering crates of wine and eating out when she felt like it. Huh. That makes it sound as though her life was nothing but one long holiday and that she was rolling in dosh. But no, she was what they call comfortably off because there was only herself to support and she worked long hours. She had worked very hard for her creature comforts, most weekends and quite frequently ten- or twelve-hour days.
When you whittled it down those creature comforts amounted to a half-paid-for flat—a square box in a column of boxes, a three-year-old Vauxhall Astra, an Apple Mac, a fax machine and an old dog named Lola.
And that flat, that place she’d considered her sanctuary, that place where she went at the end of the day to escape from the world, that flat which was her private den in the centre of the whirlwind of life, that precious refuge was violated now by hate mail and vicious telephone calls. But that was not all. Almost worse than this invasion by strangers were the polite summonses to talks and discussions, the letters of consolation, all the paraphernalia of death, and the devious newspapers pushed through her door.
There was confusion over her future. Confusion over her past.
There was anger, terrible anger. She raged at herself and the system, at the self-righteous public and the way that men like Ray Hopkins found women like Gail to marry, have kids and refuse to accept another man’s child. There was the fury, the childish resentment, at being singled out and hauled to the front to take the blame for the rest of the class. Oh yes, it could have been anyone,
but why is it always me?
And why is it always Angela Hopkins? The child who clings and won’t shake off?
‘
It’s absolutely disgusting allowing women with no kids of their own to supervise other people’s, surely that’s a mistake! Surely only a mother can truly recognize the signs.
’
Oh yes, Georgie listened to the radio discussions, such sensible voices in a vacuum, talking as if words couldn’t kill. People on
Woman’s Hour
, complacent experts she’d often heard and admired, with opinions she had respected, imagining that because they were on the radio or wrote columns in newspapers they were wise, they knew best. Appalled by her own naivety, she cursed the simplistic way her views had been formed in the past. They chatted on to fill the time, to fill the space, to fill the hour, and collected their cheques at the door with their macs.
Whispering.
Talking against her.
While she kept silent. Closed. Not permitted to speak. Defending herself. Controlling her grief.
And the PM listeners on Radio Four muscled in on their phones and faxes, castigating the uncaring world in which toddlers could be lured to their deaths in brightly lit shopping centres, women could scream and blow their alarms, and children could sob through the night and nobody would raise an eyebrow.
Community was dead.
It was dog eat dog.
Women ought to stay at home and unmarried mothers be punished.
Somebody must be punished.
Somebody must be made to suffer.
Where was God? Normally one could rely on him. For a scourge. For a famine.
Trial by rocking chair.
In contrast there was Helen Mace’s incredible insight and kindness. ‘We need you to babysit for us, Georgie. I’ve tried all round and there’s nobody else, and Roger and I really should go. I feel bad having to ask in the middle of all this shit, but we could have supper afterwards, you could stay the night if you wanted.’
And her own intentional cruelty, hitting out against invisible critics. ‘Aren’t you being a bit obvious, Helen? I don’t wield the knife you know. I am not a murderess afraid of being around children lest my control drops for a terrible moment…’
‘Shut up, you paranoid person. You have distanced yourself from the kids, Georgie, and they miss you. That’s all.’
She’d missed them, too. There was that extraordinary evening then, sitting in the rocker in the Maces’ unruly sitting room, predominantly pine, the kids’ artwork decorating the walls and the fire glowing softly behind the guard. Children in pyjamas spitting into recorders, making their hideous sounds. ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ Children in ladder-back chairs scooping sloppy cereal. ‘Watch this! Watch this!’ Children pressing transfers into scrapbooks and bringing her meals of plasticine. Trusting.
Oily couldn’t sleep. Get him up. Nurse him. Bring him to the rocker and smell his hair. Story book flops. Rub the downy skin where his pyjama leg runs out, between there and his dog-eared rabbit slipper, because it feels cold there. Wipe his mouth where his dreams bubble over. Feel his breathing against your chest, quicker, more shallow than your own, and moist where your two bodies meet. Finally drop him back in his bed, unfastening from your neck his velour and gripping hands.
‘Everything OK?’ The astonishing bustle of adults arriving in a child-quiet house. Adults with an unquestionable right to be there.
‘Everything’s fine!’
But it wasn’t fine.
Helen knew. Lots of people probably knew but turned away from it. To Georgina Jefferson, who would never admit it, it was mourning her own lost children for the very first time.
But back to the motorway services which smelled of pine and shepherd’s pie.
She smiled up at a tired-looking family searching for an unoccupied table. Most were unoccupied, but they trudged on, searching, searching, nearer the window, out of the draught, a smoker, a table uncluttered and welcoming. Huh, some chance. So many choices and so important. They were all trying to co-operate. Travel was stamped on their faces, and they hauled their luggage after them like an extra problem, afraid to leave it unguarded in the car.
Could it only be two years ago?
‘There’s this new family. HOPKINS. We’ll have to give it to you, Georgie, because Pat is beside herself already. Some concern from the school. Irregular attendance; they’ve noticed bruises, too regular to be got by playing. Not a lot known about the family. Two younger siblings, fine as far as the visiting NSPCC officer could see. Not old enough for school yet, but maybe we could find them some day care to give the mother a break. Case conference here at ten o’clock in the morning, check that the health visitor knows.’
The phone rang then. Georgie remembers the phone and how it had broken the flow. How could she take on another case? She could hardly cope with the ones she had. She never had time to voice her opinion because of that blasted phone. Angie might still be alive if she’d passed that file on to somebody else. She also remembers how she’d scanned the address on the top of the file and winced when she saw the familiar words, Kurzon Mount Buildings, because of the hours she’d already spent wandering round that soulless construction, peering for signs or directions or numbers, knocking on doors with no knockers. Ringing on bells which weren’t working. Standing. Hopelessly. Looking down into the wretched yard, or play area, or clothes-drying area, or car-mending area, or dog-shitting area, depending on how you used it. A concrete, sunless, treeless base down between the square of buildings, the tier upon tier of mindless balconies, the maze of concrete stairways.
Buildings designed for rats not people because rats, being wise and resourceful creatures, could have burrowed their way out.