Fall From Grace (2 page)

Paul followed her through to the kitchen where one of her teenage daughters was sat, or rather slumped, at the table, chin resting on hands supported by elbows bent on the table. She was smoking and sipping from a mug of what Paul took to be coffee and she looked completely disinterested in life. She was watching her toddler daughter run naked around the small space with a dummy in her mouth and a bag of crisps in her hand. The toddler looked at Paul and smiled. He winked at her and she giggled the way little people of her age do. He bent down to her.

‘Hello, Candice,’ he said, warmly, ‘do you remember me?’

‘And you are?’ her mother asked.

Paul asked as he straightened himself up and turned round. ‘I’m Paul’ he said. He held out his hand but Anita didn’t respond. ‘I work at the social services centre up at Broughton. We have met before. You’re Anita, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry Lorraine but since when did it become the right of those not in work to have children that they expect those in work to pay for? Did that pass me by or what?’

‘It’s just another attack on the poor and helpless.’

‘You may be poor, Lorraine,’ said Paul, ‘and there may be all kinds of reasons for that. But you’re not helpless. Now, how’s your Michaela getting on?’

‘Alright, although it’s no thanks to you.’

‘Lorraine, she’s fifteen, she needed to get back to school.’

‘She needs to be here looking after her baby!’ Lorraine insisted, ‘instead of which you made her go back to waste more of her time listening to useless teachers’.

Lorraine had made a complaint against her GP who was a colleague and friend of Paul’s in the community services centre. She said that Dr. Fergus Keene had refused to proscribe drugs to her eight-year-old son Sam who she claimed had A.D.D. Dr. Keene, on the other hand, had told her that her son was not suffering from A.D.D and therefore did not need the drugs. Lorraine had kept Sam off school that day and Paul went through to the lounge to talk to him.

‘He needs something to calm him down,’ Lorraine insisted between drags on her cigarette. Since Paul had arrived she’d never had one out of her fingers just like she’d never put down her mug of the hot brown liquid she called coffee.

‘And why do you say that, Lorraine?’ Paul asked.

‘Well you can see,’ she said, ‘he’s all over the bloody shop.’

What Paul could see was a little eight-year-old boy called Sam who was very easy to engage with once someone took an interest in him. He spent half an hour talking with Sam, asking him about school and what he liked to do there. Sam told him that books and reading were his favourite things and that had opened up a conversation about Harry Potter. Sam said he was halfway through the fifth book which didn’t surprise Paul considering all his school reports stated that his reading ability was a good three years ahead of his age. Sam was able to give him a full resume of all the leading Hogwarts characters. Paul thanked God for JK Rowling. Her books had gone way beyond the simple limits of entertainment. They were reaching into the minds of boys like Sam and taking him light years away from the gloom of his reality.

‘It’s no good him reading if he can’t behave,’ said Lorraine who didn’t seem too impressed by her son’s knowledge of the world of the boy wizard. She hadn’t said anything whilst Paul and Sam were talking. She’d just looked round and glared a few times.

‘Lorraine, what can we do for your son without resorting to drugs?’

‘Drugs are what he needs to calm him down!’ Lorraine insisted, ‘My nerves are shot to pieces because of his antics.’

‘You want us to drug him into not being a bother to you? Is that what this is all about, Lorraine? What kind of country do you think you’re living in? When are you going to take proper responsibility as a parent?’

‘My girls have never been any trouble to me, not even for one single second! But him…’ she stabbed her finger in the air in her son’s direction ‘… he’s been a pain since the minute he was born!’

‘So both your daughters having babies when they were underage isn’t a problem but your son showing an interest in getting educated is?’

‘If you put it like that.’

Useless bitch, thought Paul. Lorraine’s daughters were turning into extensions of herself whilst her son clearly had the potential to be something different and that’s what Lorraine couldn’t cope with. So she had to demonise him, isolating him within the family and pushing his behaviour into proving her point. It wasn’t the first time Paul had seen this kind of abuse. Kids on estates like the Tatton aren’t allowed to be bright. There was too much peer pressure to hold them back.

Paul could’ve read the riot act with her on that one but knew it would be no good. People like Lorraine attached herself to the idea of human rights like a heat seeking missile but she had no idea what it was really all about. It was just the latest avoidance of responsibility excuse and it made his blood boil.

Give me strength, thought Paul, ‘I mean talk instead of shouting, yelling and chastising? Do you never just sit down and talk to him? Do you ever show any delight in something he’s done? He’s been fine whilst I’ve been here talking to him and more importantly, listening to him. He’s calm and he’s happy.’

Paul knew he was heading down the road to trouble with this one but he didn’t care. Lorraine was holding her family back. She hadn’t achieved anything in life and she didn’t want them to either. It was classic. He’d seen it so many times.

‘Make something of himself?’ she scoffed, putting down her mug on the carpet by her feet and pointing her finger again. ‘I’ll tell you this now, I’m not having him getting fancy ideas. You’re just wasting my bloody time coming in here and telling me to sit down and talk to him. Well I tell you, I’ll go to any bloody doctor until I get them drugs!’

‘Lorraine, he doesn’t need drugs. I’m going to put you down for parenting skills classes.’

‘What?’

‘I think you’ll get a lot out of it and that’ll make Sam happier,’ said Paul. ‘We all need help from time to time. The classes will be at the centre and you attend the first three on your own then the rest together with Sam.’

‘Do I get any extra benefit for going?’

Paul was exasperated. ‘No, Lorraine, you don’t. You just get to be a better mother to your son.’ He noticed that Sam looked like he was about to start crying. ‘What’s wrong, Sam? What’s up, mate?’

‘I told you,’ said Lorraine, ‘he’s a flaming nuisance!’

‘He is if that’s what you want to make him, Lorraine, but a change of attitude from you could make it all so different,’ said Paul who then turned back to Sam. ‘I’m going to see your head teacher, Sam. I want to see if she can organise some extra reading classes for you because I know that makes you happy, doesn’t it?’

Lady Eleanor Harding knew that her time on this earth was running out. She’d already done well to last as long as she had given the excessive lifestyle she’d spent years enjoying. She’d just turned ninety and the will was still as strong even though the body yelled out at her to be more sensible. She still held her parties, although she tended to sit them out these days and watch everyone else having a good time with all the merchandise she’d provided. She still drew up the guest list. Charles and Camilla came up regularly for shooting parties and they always brought an entourage with them each time. Charles was so fortunate to be with his paramour at last after that other stupid slip of a girl had tried to disrupt their obvious happiness with something as ridiculous as love. How fortunate it was for all concerned that her interference in the royal tradition of duty had been curtailed in a Paris tunnel.

‘Dinner will be in an hour, your ladyship.’

Colin Bradley, her head of household staff, popped his head round the door and left again after making his announcement. She liked Bradley. He’d been with her for years and he was a good sort; obedient, loyal and she could tell him any old bollocks and he swallowed it whole like a whore desperate for cash. Except that lately he’d been getting rather moody. Ever since she’d told him he couldn’t have a pay rise he’d been acting like he’d just failed his exams. Oh, he’d get over it. Even without a pay rise he knew how much his bread was buttered working for her and at least he wasn’t one of the homosexuals. She had no objection to that sort in principle but these days they demanded to be treated as equal which she found exceptionally disturbing. Even her own late husband Ronald, a rampant homosexual who’d paid off more blackmailing threats than he could keep a count of, even he would never have approved of such open defiance of the acceptable order that’s everywhere today.

She picked up her copy of the Manchester Evening News that Bradley had left for her on the small table beside her chair. She gasped as she read the front page article. Poor Dieter was in trouble. His house in Glossop had been besieged by vultures from the press. The poor man wasn’t even able to open his front door and all because some stupid Polish bitch who should’ve kept her mouth shut had decided to use these modern times to exact her revenge. How dare she do such a thing! Couldn’t she have left the past where it should be? Eleanor felt the tears begin to moisten her cheeks. It was typical of Dieter that he hadn’t called her to ask for help. He’d always been too proud. Well she was going to help him. He wasn’t going to face this on his own.

She called Dieter on the phone and then she pressed her call button on the small console set she carried with her at all times. Bradley appeared moments later wearing his best appeasing smile. She gave him his instructions, said she’d already spoken to Dr. Edwards who’d given her directions to a narrow road behind his house where he would wait for Colin. She told him to go straight away.

*

‘Eleanor!’ called Dieter a couple of hours later as he was led down the hall by Colin who then made his escape. Watching these two coffin dodgers act like Mills and fucking Boon was just too sickening for words.

‘Dieter! Forgive me for the clandestine nature of my provision of sanctuary but there seemed to be no other way of rescuing you from the reality of being Gerald Edwards.’