Hard Word (13 page)

‘I hear all this from the sitting room. Katie gets to the door first, then Miriam, then Laura. I hear the rumble of the policeman's voice. He's being pleasant, jokey, and then Katie's shrieking, ‘‘But she isn't our Granny at all'' – And then what sounds like ‘‘Fuck'' from the policeman. Then Miriam at the door saying, ‘‘That's right, Officer, she's not my mother.'' And as I come through the hallway to help out, there's another blue light pulls into the drive –'

‘Police Benefit at the Trents,' Tony says.

‘And then, through the front door I see Mother getting out of the second car, and Katie's shrieking, ‘‘That's her, that's our Granny.'' And I hear the first cop saying to the second as they pass, ‘‘Well, who the fuck's granny is this one?''

‘You've got to admit, Phil –' Tony says. He's having trouble with his coffee.

‘Yeah, okay. Objectively it's funny. But Jesus, I reckon we've had one decent night's sleep in six months. Miriam's strung like a wire.'

‘So, why's she still working?'

‘Because, without it, she claims she'd have twanged by now.' ‘Jesus, Phil, okay, I understand, that's tough. I don't suppose there's anything –?'

‘No, but thanks for the offer. It's Miriam's decision.'

‘Even if you all go under?'

‘She'll decide before that. For the sake of the girls.'

‘Women,' Tony says. And I think
yes,
but I also think how apart he and I are, and I want to talk to Miriam. I signal for the bill.

‘No, it's mine,' Tony says. ‘I ask, so I pay. Even if I don't get the result.'

We chat then, waiting for the bill. Back to chat. So that no business is carried back to the office. It's a rule as well. It's how you keep friends.

‘This Laura –' Tony starts again. Chatty, but obsessed.

‘Yes,' I say, as the bill comes. I've got to exchange, offer something. ‘She's a really unusual girl. She certainly pulls me up.'

‘She could pull me up any time.'

‘I have this stupid school story,' I say. ‘I've been telling it for years now, and it's always got a laugh out of Laura. Since the time she was nine. Her and her friends. It's nothing really. It's about this teacher I used to have, that I had some liking for, but all the kids laughed at him, and so I got to doing it as well. I was telling the story again recently, a week or so back. It's dopey really. This guy Rifka – he was our French teacher – he used to take half the lesson to get the kids into the classroom, and we always thought we had him under control. Anyway this last time I tell it, Laura doesn't laugh. I say, ‘‘What's the matter, it's no longer funny? You've heard it too often?'' ‘‘No,'' she says. ‘‘I've been thinking, that's all. About Mr Rifka,'' she says, ‘‘and how he must have gone along with it all the time.'' ‘‘Gone along?'' I said. ‘‘Well, he must have known,'' she said, ‘‘and he must have gone along.'' ‘‘But why?'' I said. ‘‘Why would he?'' ‘‘Well, if he had only half the period left to teach, it must have halved the agony for him too, mustn't it?'' And you know, all these years I'd never thought of it that way. That he was the puppet master all along, not us. But she saw it.'

‘Eyes like that,' Tony says. Signing the bill.

Laura

This family is weird, and I don't mean just a little bit but seriously weird.

We had this project from school in Communication and the way people speak in different social groups and registers and everything. Or if they're men or women. We had to do a family first. And it's strange how in a family you don't listen to what people say, you just kind of go
Oh-yeah-oh-yeah
inside your head like you do with radio talkback and you only take any notice if you hear something different. But if you actually listen to it and then analyse it like we've got to do for this project, then you realize what rubbish people mostly talk.

We had to set up a recorder somewhere in the house where people spend a lot of time, like in the living room or the kitchen or somewhere, and tape what they said – except it couldn't be sex or violence, and Toni said that wouldn't leave much to tape in her house, and Miss Temple said she was just attention-seeking. And then after we'd taped it we had to listen to it and take some bits out and transcribe them, which means write them out, which takes about four million years and you get to hate the people who talk the most.

Anyway I put my recorder in the kitchen behind our bread tin because that's the room everybody goes through to get to other parts of the house, and I set it to start at six-thirty because that's when Mum's normally cooking and Philip often comes home then, and even Grandma Vera sometimes comes out. It's like people live in caves in our house and only come out when they smell food.

But this night when I set up the recorder, Mum was late for once and Philip was early. And so I got Philip and Grandma Vera instead of everyone together, but then something brilliant happened because Philip got sick of talking to Grandma Vera and left her in the kitchen and then Mum came home and had exactly the same conversation with Grandma as Philip had just had, and Miss Temple said you mightn't get this in a century of taping, you'd have to script it with actors or something, though Philip's always saying everyone has the same conversation with Grandma all the time.

It was only later – when I was writing the whole thing out – that I realized it wasn't the same conversation at all. It only seemed like it was. And I had to do parts of it again and set it out like a play. Miss Temple said I shouldn't keep saying
And then Philip goes,
or
And then Grandma Vera goes,
because saying people
go something
is a speech form not a written form of discourse. Everything's a form of discourse to Miss Temple, even photos from the paper, or the way you dress – she even thinks chops from the butchers can be a form of discourse and Toni of course can't help herself and goes
I'd like to see dat course
and gets sent out.

And it's weird you know because, although I wasn't there at the time or anything but just listening to the tape later in my room, it
is
like a play and I can tell just from Philip's voice that he's reading the paper or his mail while he's talking and he's only pretending to listen to Grandma Vera. He's such a hypocrite, Philip – I bet he doesn't speak like that when he's at work or in a restaurant with all his mates and that, and you can tell Grandma Vera's really upset. She's on this one track all the time at the moment:

[At this point, Miss Temple says, it's actually hard to tell which one has the Alzheimer's, but she said I wasn't to tell Philip that.]

There's nothing on the tape for a while then, just some shuffling – Grandma Vera must be in her slippers – and some slight muttering that you can't make out any words from, like mice scrabbling behind a wall. Then just some odd words, with lots of pauses between them:

‘You can see the immediate difference,' Miss Temple says later. ‘Not only in gender-mediated discourse receptivity …' (which means Mum's listening and Philip's not) … ‘but in intention. Miriam says,
You're not going in a home, Mother,
while Philip says,
No one has said you're going in a home.
Is there a possible ambivalence there, do you think, Laura?'

This is the problem with teachers. You spend five minutes talking to them and you've got to spend the next five years with your head in a dictionary trying to figure out what they've said. But when I do, I can see what she means, and I'm slowly starting to think there might be something in this discourse thing, but I still don't see how a dress can be discourse, or chops.

[
Then there's a few minutes when Philip comes back and he and Mum are smooching and yuk – and I think we can omit that, Miss Temple decides quickly – and Grandma Vera's still muttering, and the next thing you can hear really clearly is Philip over by the sink whispering.
]

[
There's complete silence for a moment, and I imagine all four of them looking at one another, and then GVsays in the happiest voice you could imagine:
]

Men and women, Miss Temple says, not only have different discourse styles, they use discourse for different purposes – whatever that means. Toni says if Miss Temple keeps using
her
discourse style, she'll never get herself a man. Men won't sit and listen to discourse if they've got better things to do like football or sex. But I tell her I think I could get interested in discourse, and she goes, ‘Yeh? Well, with tits like you've got, you won't get a chance. Even Philip Davies has noticed.'

And it's true, there
is
another Philip, he's the school captain and he's a sort of a spunk but not a brilliant one but most people like him even if he does show off sometimes when he gives these speeches at assembly and things and goes, ‘School …'
School!
– now
that's
weird, like you're talking to a building or something instead of seven hundred other kids. ‘But what's he supposed to say?' said Toni, who really wished he'd noticed her and not me, ‘
Comrades?
Anyway he came up in the yard the other day and said ‘Hi', and I just said ‘Hi' back, and Toni went ‘Hi' and pretended to be really happy about something and in a trance like she'd just been asked to the Oscars Ball by Mel Gibson and she did this whirl like she was in a movie from the 1920s or Fred Astaire's girlfriend or something, and it was all to show Philip how good her legs were, but all he said was: ‘I like your hair up, Laura. It makes you look mature,' and goes away with his friends. ‘Matuuure,' Toni goes. ‘Yeech. He means he likes your tits.' ‘What have my tits got to do with my hair up?' I say, and she says, ‘Are you kidding?' But I don't see the connection myself.