Woodhill Wood (3 page)

Gurde had often sat through her long, embarrassing monologues, watching as her audiences gave the appropriate sympathetic or congratulatory glances as she reeled off the events as they sprang to mind. He wondered if anybody really wanted to hear the explicit details of things her friends or family might have confided in her. Gurde knew better than to tell her anything of importance. The father did too.

The table had fallen silent but it would only be a temporary lull. Gurde wished he had left some food to play with but he didn't dare reach for more.

Ben had enough peas left to build a pair of goal posts at the edge of his plate and was busily playing touch football, using his knife to flick peas gently back and forth, weaving the ball pea past the goalkeeper pea to score in between the pea posts. He was careful to make sure the game remained firmly on his plate, so that the ball could not escape to roll across the table and draw attention to him.

The father went back to shoveling food into his mouth and chewing noisily. He was not satisfied, and the silence was a sure sign that the first skirmish had only been a rehearsal. Gurde waited for the father's next move, knowing he'd had time to think of a trap for her so that he could escape from the table. His prosecutor's mind was perfectly tuned, able to build an argument out of the simplest comment and drive it through until he was in complete control. She would have no chance against him.

He took off his glasses, placed them on the table beside his plate, and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. He looked at Gurde and smiled and then he repeated the same gesture to Ben; both boys knew better than to take sides. Then he sat back in his chair, sighed deeply and pushed his plate away from him.

"What do you want to know about the case, then?" he said in his favourite pained voice. Pawn to Queen four.

"I thought you said you shouldn't talk about your cases? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she mumbled.

"...but you asked me about the Jenkinson case. What did you want to know? I mean, if you're really interested.."

"Not really." She glanced down at her plate.

"So.. were you just trying to trick me into talking about it?"

"No... that wasn't it... I was just wondering... I mean.. I didn't want to know the details... I was just.."

"Don't start messing me about, Pat. What did you want to know?"

"Just... how it's going?"

"How it's going? What kind of question is that? Be more specific."

"I was only trying to..."

"...trying to make me look foolish in front of the children. You always try to do this. You're just not clever enough to pull it off, are you?"

"Trying what?" He had her now and still she couldn't stop her mouth from working. "What did I do?" she said.

"You know damn well. Little games. Asking me questions that there's no answer to. I can't sit for a moment without you trying to kick the legs away from under me in front of the children. I suppose it amuses you. On my birthday, too. Is there no day when I can expect a little respect?"

"I'm sorry," she said, "I was just asking...."

She rose from the table and hurried into the kitchen to fetch her cigarettes but she knew she had to return. He would wait for her, stewing in her absence, making himself angry.

She sat back in her place and fumbled with the matches as she tried to light up. He waited patiently until she had drawn in her first chestful of smoke.

"Well?" he said, knowing he could twist it a little further. The woman in the dock at the end of the table realised she had forgotten an ashtray. She flicked the ash into her open palm as she tried to compose herself.

"Well?" he repeated, staring down the table. She looked away, towards the drawn blinds, concentrating on her cigarette. He shook his head and returned to the food on his plate. There was no rush, she wasn't going anywhere.

"Shall we go away for a while, love?" she said after a few minutes. "I think you... we... need a holiday."

"Don't change the subject."

But she pursued this new subject in desperation.

"I'm sure Matt and Ben could manage by themselves for a weekend. We could go up to the coast. A forty-seventh birthday present. We haven't been away for ages."

"Why do I put up with this? I ask a simple question and you start rabbiting on about something else. If you are trying to make me look foolish then you're making a serious mistake." He pushed his chair back from the table and shot to his feet. "I'm not going to sit here and be made a fool of!"

"Don't be ridiculous. Finish your meal."

His face bulged. There were tears in her eyes as she realised that her tone had lit another fuse. She tried to put it out quickly.

"Please love... finish your meal. I was only trying to... make conversation... wasn't I boys?"

Gurde's eyes met Ben's. Neither were prepared to look in either direction. Both suddenly visible. There was some relief in that because it signified the end was near. The children were always brought in as her last line of defence. It was normally enough.

"That's right. Turn the kids against me!"

He marched out of the room slamming both the dining room and study doors.

Suddenly freed from her need to plan her words she was able to cry openly. She drew long and hard on her cigarette and blew a great cloud of spinning, grey smoke out over the table. Her hands were trembling.

"Is it me?" she sobbed, "What did I do this time?"

"Nothing Mum," Ben said.

"What did I do?"

"It's not you," Gurde said.

"Is it me?"

Gurde glanced at Ben and managed to restrain the smirk that was creeping into his face. Ben noticed the twitch in his brother's cheek and began to struggle as well.

She turned to stare again at the patterns on the blinds. The tears continued to roll down her cheeks from reddening eyes as she drew again on her cigarette.

Gurde slid off the bench and headed for the door. Ben took the cue and followed closely behind. From the study, Gurde could hear the sound of books being dropped heavily on to the desk. The boys raced upstairs to the safety of their rooms before the sniggering struck.

After an hour of re-reading comics, Gurde heard Ben's door open and he quietly followed the brother back down the stairs. The mother was still sitting at the dining room table in front of an ashtray full of buckled cigarette ends. She smiled weakly and lit up another.

The boys hurried into the living room, clicked on the television, and immersed themselves. Gurde heard the father go through for a can of beer from the fridge. He walked past her. No words were spoken.

The radio clicked on at eight o'clock and Gurde automatically rolled over and hit the snooze button. The music died away. He buried his face in the pillow and imagined it was the weekend, when he could throw off the covers and go in search of the missing scaffolding pole.

After what seemed like only a few seconds the music burst into life again and this time he turned it down to a bearable level, rolled over and poked a leg out from under the covers to test the coldness of the room.

"Matty! Ben! Are you up!"

He could hear her coming up the stairs. She was probably carrying a cup of tea for Dad, unless he had slept in the study again. Gurde groaned when he remembered that he hadn't locked the bedroom door. She marched into the room, headed straight for the curtains and threw them open.

"Come on... uppitykick!"

"Aw... Mum!"

"Come on... and turn that muck off. I've told you before that it's bad for you."

Gurde rolled further towards the wall as the mother walked over and began to fiddle with the buttons on the clock-radio.

"How do you turn it off? It's rubbish... It's giving me a headache."

He sat up and grudgingly turned off the thumping beat.

"Right, that's better. Up you get!"

She hurried out to give Ben the same treatment. Gurde swung out of bed and went in search of the black clothes strewn across the floor, finally finding the last black sock under the pile of comics from the night before.

The mother was already back down in the kitchen, where she was standing scooping soggy Weetabix into her mouth from the bowl in her hand. Streams of grey milk ran from her spoon as she hurried to finish it before the knock on the door came.

"Have you cleaned your teeth?" she asked. Gurde just looked at her. "I wish you would," she said.

The knock on the back door sent her scurrying for her briefcase under the far table. "I'm off," she said and disappeared out into the morning darkness. He heard her start chattering cheerfully to the man outside and knew she was already somebody else.

The voices faded as they hurried down to the waiting car at the bottom of the drive. He knew how she must feel. He felt the same release when he left the school buildings each day and ran for home. It was strange that she longed to leave the house and go to school.

Matt Duff had gone with her once. Too ill to be left alone, he was dragged the twenty miles to the comprehensive were she taught. He was dumped wheezing in the staff room with a book, while she went off to take her classes. He tried to read, and tried to sleep, but it was no use, so he dragged himself down the corridors to see if he could find her and watch her at work. It didn't take me long to find her at the black wall of a white-washed room dotted with faded posters. It could have been a class from that other school: twenty miles away and still all the children were dressed in black. Only the white, woven badges on the top pocket of their blazers were different. The mother stood at the front, stalking back and forth across the stage.

He watched in astonishment as she held that class of thirty under control. Through the narrow glass strip down the side of the door he saw a different person. She threw her English lessons at the pack and they swallowed her words without complaint. They listened to her as she talked and they seemed interested. They seemed to believe what she said.

He saw her call somebody out to the front with a beckoning finger. He was taller than she was, and yet he quivered as she wagged her finger under his nose. She made a comment and the class laughed at the boy's expense. He had never seen anyone humiliated with such skill. The boy bowed his head and walked away defeated. And then her face changed and she took on an expression so severe that he was glad of the security of the corridor. The tall boy must have mouthed some comment to his friends as he returned to his seat and she had picked up the reaction in their faces. There was a silence before he saw the mother's lips spit out another remark, and again the class roared with laughter.

This woman was not the one the father had married. Or perhaps it was. Gurde found it difficult to link her to the mother that he knew. She raised her hand and the class stopped laughing. Then she walked over to her desk, picked up a book and began reading out segments, asking questions and getting responses from the class.

He returned to the staff room. He sat reading, and wondering if she would still be the same when she returned.

After an hour the bell rang and a few minutes later she hurried through the staff room door carrying her briefcase. It was depressing to see her strong persona evaporate as she saw her son and was reminded of what he represented.

Gurde finished a cup of tea before following the mother out into the morning gloom. If he didn't leave quickly on the days that the father worked at home he would miss the last bus for school. This was because the father had the uncanny ability to appear at the last moment and begin to organise, insisting that shoes be shinier and shirts be cleaner, to demonstrate that he was still in control of his children.

That morning Gurde was lucky and hurried out of the back door leaving Ben to be late instead. He walked down the straight drive between the hedge and the wall, blowing out clouds of condensation from an imaginary cigarette that he held between two fingers.

Reaching the road, he turned right along the pavement and glanced at his watch; there was time to waste now that he was safely out of the house.

He stopped to inspect the stonework of the wall that ran along the bottom of the garden: the only section of wall that he had yet to master.

All around the garden he knew every crack in the stone, and he could easily climb up to run along the rounded top. He had many routes out of the garden - and many more back in - but the way up from the road, high and imposing, remained unclimbed. He ran his fingers lovingly over the damp sandstone, looking for a new hold that might guide him skyward.

Coming over the other way was easy because the wall was only half as high on the far side. He could sprint down the lawn and lunge forward, slap both hands against the stone, push up and then twist to land backside-first on the top. Once up, he could lean back, swing his legs over and slip smoothly down the ten feet to the pavement. It was like the vaulting that he watched the Olympic gymnasts do on television, only more challenging because the wall never stayed the same. A new piece of wet moss would be all that was needed to break the flow.