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He shrugged and pulled out a thread. He had long fingers. They were not graceful. After a while Leah said, ‘Why did you leave? Was it that bad?’
He said nothing and then he said, ‘I couldn’t hack it, that’s why.’
‘And you walked out: that’s a weird thing to do.’
‘I was going fucking mental, I had to.’
How odd it must be to just leave, to leave behind a child, with no explanations, or apologies, or anything. ‘Things change all the time, you think something’s bad, you can’t stand it, and then it changes.’ She knew she was saying that for her own benefit as well as Bailey’s.
‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘they were nice photies. I stuck one on me wall.’ And he smiled. Leah smiled too. They sat there for a while until Leah said, ‘I have to go home,’ and Bailey said, ‘That’s OK.’
As she walked home the roads were frosty and slippery and the air was sharp. She felt peaceful and light-headed. She crossed the park and she was unafraid: so much so she stopped at the top to look at the view. All the lights of Bristol. Bailey, I want to know you better. She walked down to Garden Hill skidding on the frosty roads as if her feet didn’t belong on the earth, as if they had no place there.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_aaaa3612-9690-5164-8b51-63a5019abb05)
When Leah arrived home the house was dark and quiet. She unlocked the door and crept up the stairs. She was halfway up when Al said from the darkness, ‘So, you’re back then?’ She was startled. She didn’t want to converse but he had different ideas.
‘Good meeting was it?’
‘Not too bad, a bit boring.’
‘Nice drink? At the Swan?’
‘Oh you know, same old stuff …’
They were, both of them, still in darkness. ‘Who was there?’
‘Phil, Clive, Vic Rodgers, Doris and Betty, for a bit, then they went home.’ She leaned on the banisters and peered into the front room: she could just see Al standing in the doorway.
‘So you had a good time?’
‘Yes … well … I’d better get to bed, it’s getting late.’
‘You lying bitch,’ hissed Al.
Leah froze. Al ran up the stairs and grabbed her. He dragged her into the front room. He pushed her on to the sofa and turned on the light. She blinked.
‘You’re lying!’ He was furious and pale.
‘I’m not.’ She was confused and beginning to shake.
‘You were never in the Swan.’ And before she could speak he threw a notepad at her. It hit her on the cheek. She picked it up off the floor. It was hers.
‘Nice Mr Chairperson Phil brought it round after the meeting because you left it behind, because you were in such a hurry. You didn’t go to the Swan, did you?’
‘No,’ said Leah, thinking as hard as she could of a way to stop this getting worse.
‘You’re a fucking liar.’
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘What I think? What do I think? I think you were down the dogs’ home.’
‘I had a drink with Bailey.’
‘Ah ha, well, well. Mr Sexy Shorts. So how did this come about?’
‘I arranged it.’
‘A nice secret little liaison. I would never have known, would I?’
‘I didn’t want you to get upset,’ she said pathetically.
‘How nice of you. How sweet and kind.’
She felt foolish and wretched. ‘We can’t talk sensibly now. Let’s discuss it in the morning.’ But this was the wrong thing to say. Al exploded and pounced on her, shaking and hitting her.
‘You’re sneaking off under my nose and you won’t discuss it. You bitch, I knew you were with him …’
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘You’re fucking him, aren’t you? You went back to his place.’
‘I did … but I didn’t … I mean I didn’t …’
‘I can tell, you know, if you’ve just bonked. I can tell, you know.’ He began to pull at her clothes. Leah screamed but Al had lost control.
‘You let him do it, but you won’t let me, he’s all over you … he fucks you, and you lie and pretend. What do you take me for, a complete idiot?’ He had got her on the floor and was trying to pull off her clothes. She struggled and wept. The more she struggled, the more he hit her. Then from upstairs came a loud bump and a wail. Someone had fallen out of bed. Al stopped and Leah scrambled back on to the sofa. They both listened, then looked at each other like frightened children. Leah was crying and tucking in her clothes. Her arm hurt and her leg and her face.
‘Oh get out!’ said Al. She didn’t move. She thought he was telling her to leave the house. ‘Get out!’ he said more desperately. ‘Go to bed, that’s what you want.’ And she ran. Upstairs and into her room. But even her room didn’t feel safe. She was too scared to get undressed and got into bed with her clothes on. Under the duvet she trembled. This wasn’t the first time he had hit her. This is going to go on and on and what can I do? What can I do? Downstairs she could hear thumps and bangs: it sounded like he was smashing up the whole house, but she wasn’t going to move, even if the children woke up and cried she wasn’t going to move.
I was stupid, stupid to meet Bailey and lie about it. I will never be able to go out like other people and chat and laugh. I will have to stay at home always because he will always be angry and one day he will get something completely wrong and lose his rag and kill me, and that will be the end. He will get a knife and kill me and I don’t mind because it will be over … I will be in a coffin surrounded by flowers and he will cry … but he will go to prison and what about the children? Not his parents, that would be awful, but my mum, she could have them and make cakes and pies and they could play in the garden like me and Jimbo … My friends will all cry and send flowers … and Bailey? But I mustn’t think about Bailey … He will be upset, we could have been friends … I’m thinking of you in your jeans, smiling like you did when I left. Perhaps you’re in bed, perhaps you’re asleep and if I think hard enough perhaps you can hear me. I’m thinking of your room and the pictures of dragons and you’re in bed. Wake up Bailey, please wake up. Al is going to kill me …
Al suddenly burst into her room. She rolled over with a jolt. He went over to her bed and with a huge cry pulled one end of it from under her and tipped the whole thing over. She fell down and hit her head on the wall and the blankets and duvets fell with her. ‘Stupid bitch!’ he shouted and left, slamming the door and breaking the handle. She lay there, her head ringing. She was wedged on the floor between the upended mattress and the wall. Strangely, it felt safe and protected. She was very tired now, too tired to move. Wrapped up in bedlinen she felt like a chrysalis. It was better not to move. It was better to be still.
She was a girl at her parents’ house in Ruislip. The sun was shining on her bed. It was summer. Her brother was in the garden mowing the lawn. She could hear him up and down with the old mower. He was the boy, it was his privilege to mow the lawn. She was never allowed to do it. Up and down. She could smell the cut grass through the open window, the curtains were flapping. She could smell that sweet sickly summery smell. Up and down the lawn. The twin tub gurgled water down the drain. Mama was in the kitchen feeding the washing into the spinner. The baby was in the pram outside hitting the string of rattle bunnies and wafting upstairs was Daddy’s tobacco pipe smoke. She crept downstairs in bare feet. The hallway floor was tiled with yellow, black and brick-red tiles in a pattern. They were cold to walk on. She tiptoed into the study. Daddy Claremont was marking papers at his desk. He was an English teacher at the monastery. The boys called him Daddy Claremont. Jimbo told her when he started there. Now they both called him that.
‘Are you very busy, Daddy Claremont?’ she said.
‘So-so my fairy. Nothing to occupy you?’
‘I finished my game.’
‘Well, I’m still playing mine.’ He was puffing his pipe. He was in his weekend clothes: khaki trousers and a beige cardigan with leather patches on the elbows. She looked over his shoulder. He was circling words on somebody’s essay in red pen. ‘Cooper cannot spell, nor can he write English, nor can he understand the beauty of Hopkins.’
‘Is he in Jimbo’s class?’
‘No my petal, he’s in the upper fifth. Could do better, Cooper.’ He stopped writing and puffed his pipe. She wanted to ask if she could help with the lawn but she knew he would say no. She wished she was a boy. They had much more fun.
‘How about helping Mama?’
She grimaced. ‘I think she’s nearly finished.’
‘Play with the baby?’
‘She’s not crying.’ This was the worst option. All babies did was sleep and poo and cry. Outside, Jimbo was still struggling up and down the lawn. He was a year older than her but she was the same size and she was much stronger. She looked around the study. On either side of the fireplace were shelves of books, rows and rows up to the ceiling. There was a large map of the world on the wall and framed photographs of India. On the desk were several fossils, a sheep’s skull and a horseshoe. Her father went back to his marking. ‘Ah, Eldon the elder, let’s see what you have to offer …’
‘Can I read?’ said Leah. ‘Can I read an art book? I’ll be very quiet.’
‘Any noise …’ warned her father.
She was delighted. She chose a large book called The Renaissance. She took it to the sofa at the far end of the room. She opened it. It smelt of clean paper with only the faintest whiff of pipe. This was her favourite book. She didn’t read it, although she could have. She looked at each picture over and over again. A lady coming out of the sea on a shell, a wind god blowing her hair. Another lady in a flowery wood. Little cherubs in the sky and a man with not much on and three ladies dancing. That was called Primavera which meant ‘Spring’. In the paintings the women had hair to their waists and the men looked like angels with wistful sad faces. This painting was called St Sebastian and he was the most beautiful of them all. Strapped up a tree in a strange stony landscape and being shot at with arrows. He was staring up to heaven in a resigned sort of way. His wavy hair was down to his shoulders. He looked like no man she had ever seen. He didn’t have a moustache or a hairy chest or go pink in the sun. He was tall and smooth and beautiful and so sad she wanted to cry …
She was woken by Jo peering over the edge of the mattress. ‘Mum, what have you done to your bed?’
‘Daddy did it,’ said Leah.
‘Wow!’ And Ben and Tom came in to look as well.
‘Were you making a house?’ said Tom.
‘We were having an argument,’ said Leah, trying to sit up in the tangle of sheets.
‘I heard you shouting,’ said Ben. ‘I fell out of bed.’
‘Oh dear …’ said Leah. ‘Oh dear … what time is it?’
‘It’s eight.’
‘You better have your breakfast, boys.’
‘Daddy’s making porridge,’ said Jo. ‘He said he’s going to get us ready today and you’re to stay in bed, he said you’re not very well today.’ They all looked at her for a visible sign of illness. ‘You’ve got a black eye,’ said Ben.
‘Oh, I haven’t!’ She felt her head where she had hit the wall. Downstairs, Al was calling. The boys scampered away. She crawled back under the duvet. She felt like lead, a piece of grey flat lead. She listened to the voices coming up from the kitchen. Al was laughing, he sounded quite cheerful. A car honked and the children left for school scolding each other about who had forgotten what. Then the house was quiet. Leah felt herself go tense but Al didn’t come to see her. She could hear hoovering noises from the front room. Then silence. Then the front door slammed. Al had gone to college.
She got out of bed past midday. She went to the boys’ room as she always did, to make their beds, but they were already made and the toys put away. Downstairs was the same. Whatever he had broken last night he had tidied up and the kitchen was clean. She was disorientated, it was as if she didn’t exist. She ran a bath and floated there for some time. She had a large bruise on one leg and on her arm and one just above her left eye. It wasn’t a black eye, it was hardly noticeable. She got dressed in a turquoise jumper and lilac leggings, the colours of summer. And what could they all do this summer? Go to the sea? She thought about it and sorted out the boys’ shirts into tidy piles, humming to herself. She rearranged the books on the shelf, the tallest ones at one end going right down to the little Beatrix Potter books. In her room she hauled the mattress back on to its base, it didn’t take that long. I better start thinking about tea soon … but I haven’t had any lunch or breakfast … She went to the kitchen and heated up the bean soup from last night and made a sandwich and sat down at the table.
She bit her sandwich and chewed and chewed it but she couldn’t swallow. When she did the food fell into her stomach as if it didn’t want to be there. She stirred her soup but she couldn’t eat that either. If I don’t eat I will get ill and I won’t be able to cope. Al is always telling me I don’t eat enough, that’s why I have no energy … I must eat. But she couldn’t. Then all the fear from last night came back.
I’m going to die. She pushed away the plate and began to cry. She rested her head on the table. She could hear herself crying as if it were somebody else and she couldn’t stop it. If I don’t leave I will die. I have to leave this place. I have to leave.
She didn’t hear Al come in. He had bought a bunch of flowers, which he put on the table. She accidentally touched them and looked up. She was so startled she screamed.
‘They’re for you,’ said Al, pushing the flowers towards her.
They were a mixed bunch, the sort one buys at garages. She tried to stop crying.
‘I’m sorry … about last night.’
‘Oh? Oh?’ She was convinced he was still angry with her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as if she hadn’t heard the first time. She was still crying. ‘I was out of control. It was wrong. I know you’re not bonking Bailey. It got mixed up with everything … There’s a lot we have to sort out. We have to do a lot of talking … Can you please stop crying.’
‘I can’t,’ wailed Leah.
‘I’m sorry I hit you. I didn’t mean to. Can you hear what I’m saying? Leah, I’m trying to sort things out.’ He waited. He ate the sandwich and the bowl of soup. Leah stopped and was wiping her nose on her sleeve.
‘How are you feeling?’ said Al.
‘I don’t know.’ But she did know. She felt totally and utterly wretched, but she wasn’t going to tell Al that.
‘We have to find a way of relating properly. Communication between us is appalling. If we are to progress we are going to have to be more honest with each other …’
‘I’ve had enough,’ said Leah.
‘I see.’ He sounded slightly irritated.
‘Al, you don’t understand, I’ve had enough. I have. This is the end.’
‘Well, naturally you are going to be feeling negative –’
‘No, Al, listen, it’s the end. I don’t want to go on.’ She looked at the flowers. They would be dead by the end of the week. ‘It’s the end.’ And she could see he finally understood. An expression passed over his face which she hadn’t seen for a long time, an incredulous expression that had none of his recent anger or cynicism. He used to say, ‘Are you sure?’ and Leah would say, ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Leah the way she used to when they first met, before they had children and everything had gone wrong. But his face was hardening up again.
‘Well, that’s ten years down the drain. Now what? I’m not going to move out.’
‘I could go somewhere,’ said Leah vaguely. She couldn’t think about details.
‘Where? You know what the housing situation is like. And what about the children? They’re my children too, I’m not letting them go.’
‘We could sort something.’ She rested her head in her arms. She felt she could sleep for a week. Al was dividing up the furniture. ‘You’re not having the music system or the telly, I bought that …’ She closed her eyes.
He shook her. She sat up with a start. ‘Leah, go to bed. The children will be back soon. Go and have an early night.’
‘Was I asleep?’
‘Look, I’m sorry about everything. I’m sorry, Leah.’ He led her to the foot of the stairs. ‘Everything’s going to change now, it’s all going to be different. You get your own place, then we won’t wind each other up …’ He was almost crying. ‘Then we can start appreciating each other again … Oh, and I forgot to tell you. I’ve packed in college, but we can discuss that in the morning …’
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_5799aec9-154f-5b38-b6e2-7341b0f625c1)
I’ve been in bed all Friday and most of today. Al brings me cups of tea and bits of food. He’s keeping the children away. He is being very nice. I’ve been dreaming and thinking and my thoughts are like my dreams. I’m thinking about Al.
I met him when I was at university in Norwich. He used to stand on the campus steps selling Anarchy Now. He was dirty then and dishevelled with his hair down his back and a stained old boilersuit. I was a first-year English student all keen to have discussions about postmodernism and structuralism and everything was so very very exciting … my hair in an Alice band and I wore pretty blouses and flowery skirts. I had never met anyone like Al before who was also reading English but he used to storm out of seminars shouting, ‘This is bourgeois crap!’ I had never even seen anyone like Al before. I was clever. I got As and Bs for my essays but Al and the anarchists they got straight Fs and didn’t care. They called me ‘Miss Brainbox’ and ‘Miss Middle Class’. I thought, why are they so angry? I sat opposite Al in the coffee bar and I said, ‘Hello, I’m Leah,’ and he said, ‘Who do you think you are? Fuck off.’ But I didn’t and it sort of went on from there.
He lived with the anarchists and five Germans in a farmhouse in Loddon. Their parties went on all weekend. I stayed with him and I stopped wearing blouses and flowery skirts. I got a boilersuit and I didn’t wash and I got drunk and stoned and fucked and loved it. It was all so exciting. He got kicked out of college and didn’t care and I still got As and Bs. He said I was drugged by the system and anarchy was the only wayand the middle classes were to be demolished. His parents were at Oxford and he said they had forced him through a vile education based on repression and narrow-mindedness and he was going to establish a new method based on freedom. We moved to Brundall and he fell out with the anarchists. He did odd jobs in the boatyards and I was in my second year and my parents were having a fit … In the third year I was pregnant and I sat my finals with a belly like a barrel and that was in June and Jo was born in July. We got married because both our parents were having fits, but a wedding and a baby and they all became friends, even though Al’s dad writes books about Anglo-Saxons and his mum’s a specialist in Victorian women and my dad was just an English teacher in a tin-pot Catholic boys’ school and my mum’s, well, just a mum … But we were respectable and everybody adored little Jo. I got a 2.2, which was disappointing and Al kept working in the boatyards.
But he was always a rebel. He fell out with the boatyard owner and our landlord and we got evicted. Just before Christmas we left Norfolk with all our things in a van and went to Devon because Al wanted to learn furniture making. Six months later he fell out with the man who ran the course and set up on his own. And Ben was born. We lived in a tiny poky cottage and we couldn’t move because the rents were too high. Then Al’s mother did a generous thing: she bought us a house. I wanted to go to a town because I was sick of the countryside and being alone but Al liked it in Devon and we had plenty of rows about that. But we came to Bristol because there might be more work for him here but there wasn’t. Then Tom was born. I started going to the Project. Al was always angry with the world and now he was angry with me and we haven’t stopped fighting. He gave up the business and remembered his aim to transform Education and he started training to be a primary school teacher … and here we are.
