On Loving Josiah (9 page)

She parked the car immediately outside the house. The curtains were closed. Good! Eve must be feeling suitably cowed. But Briggs was too professional to gloat, and she straightened her face in the car mirror. The doorbell made a sing-song chime. No one answered it, but nor did she expect them to.

‘Eve,’ she called through the letter-box. ‘I’ve got good news for you! Josiah likes school! He’s mixing with the other children very well! Let me in and I’ll tell you more!’ Her voice had the same tone as the doorbell. ‘Eve! Gibson!’ she called again. When there was still no reply, she shouted, ‘Look, I need you to open the door!’

Eve, meanwhile, was calmly filling a bucket with water in the bathroom. This was a first for her, she needed the light relief of it. She was pleased to notice through the crack in the curtains that Briggs had dressed herself up, and had a proper hairdo, which
suddenly
reminded her of her mother.

‘Hello June!’ called Eve from the landing window, all smiles. ‘I’m so sorry, I was in the bathroom and I didn’t hear you. Is there
anything
you want?’

Briggs craned her neck to look at her. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I want to tell you about Josiah’s progress today.’

‘Josiah’s progress?’ Eve mulled over the word. ‘Progress?’ she repeated.

‘Eve, I’m getting neck-ache. It would be good to speak to you face to face, you know. Could you be a love and let me in?’

‘Love? You’ve never called me “love” before? Does that mean that
I’
m
making progress? Or does it mean that
you’re
making progress?’

‘Open this door!’

‘Hold on a second!’ said Eve, disappearing from the window.

Briggs looked down, satisfied, and waited for the front door to open.

Eve fetched the bucket, and spat in it for good measure. Gleefully she surveyed Briggs’ coiffured hair. The moment before is always more delightful than the moment after, she thought to herself. The bucket was heavy; it took all her strength to balance it on the sill. Eve was as icy-calm as a ferret. She watched Briggs looking at her watch.

‘I hope that’s expensive,’ thought Eve.

She tilted the bucket, surely and steadily, and the water fell, fast and furious, a perfect hit.

‘Bad weather we’ve been having!’ Eve shouted down.

The woman walked, wet but professional, back to her car.

Eve never learnt of Briggs’s strategies for revenge, for within twelve hours she had left the country.

Wars happen when language runs out, and that is how it was with Eve that night. Not that she did not rant first, hour after hour,
striding
from room to room, declaiming that schools were breeding grounds for stupidity and cowardice, places where fear begot fear and like begot like, where homogeneity stifled every living soul.

‘That’s what they want to do to him!’ she cried out. ‘That’s what they want to do to my son! They want to kill his soul, and when it’s dead we can only pray his body will follow suit. I shall ask the doctors to release him from the machine, and I shall say, let him die now, and let us pray that he finds God in the hereafter because he was never given a chance on earth, he was only taught fear! You
morons! You morons that think you know better than I do! You dried up, shrivelled up, life-forms, the word ‘human-being’ is too big for you! And how dare you ridicule my husband! He has more spirit and understanding in his little toe than the whole lot of you wankers put together! You ignorant, empty worms, you pen-
pushing
, arrogant, stale idiots! You’ve never had an original thought in your lives, and in your trudging blindness you make a bloody sloth look alert!

‘But I shall kill you all before you kill Josiah! You’ve taken away my chance to breathe life into him, so I shall take away your chance to breathe death into him. I shall take away your evil schools, I shall burn the whole lot of them to the ground! I shall tackle the cog factories themselves, for that is all they are, manufacturing cogs to keep the world turning in its dire course, mindless cogs with less humanity than a cat!’

That was more or less the gist of it. Then Eve stormed out of the house at 5.45 only to return a few minutes later. She took a good look at herself in the mirror. ‘My God, I look quite mad,’ she said,
flattening
down her hair and trying to look serious. She went upstairs to change into smarter clothes. The only thing Eve found which was suitable was her wedding dress, a Laura Ashley floral number she’d picked up in a charity shop especially for the occasion.

‘I never thought I’d be wearing this again,’ she thought, as she stretched her arm behind her back to do up the zip. ‘And I’m sure I bought shoes to go with it!’ She rummaged around on the floor of her fitted wardrobe and found a pair of pink stilettos. Eve brushed her teeth, combed her hair and smiled at herself in the bathroom mirror. ‘Just a little lipstick’, she thought to herself, and applied some, though the only colour she could find was red. ‘This will be some party’, she said to her reflection.

Eve’s first stop was the petrol station. She opted for the leaded petrol, deciding it would be the more flammable, and bought two
full gallon containers. She smiled happily at all the people in the queue, remarking that it was a warm night for the time of year.

As she frankly didn’t know where any of the schools of
Cambridge
were, not even the primary school where they had sent Josiah, she had to ask directions. And who better to ask than the gangs of drunken, smoking teenagers hanging around the street corners, all of whom, she was quite sure, would love to see their schools burnt down. Teetering on her pink heels, she swayed her petrol cans as happily as if they had been fancy bags from a boutique.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, a picture of innocent enthusiasm, ‘Can anyone direct me to the nearest school?’

‘You look like you’re about to burn it down!’ laughed one, who was handsome and wore a Breton cap at an angle on his head.

‘Oh but I am!’ she said, meeting his eye. ‘Only I’ve forgotten matches. Has anyone got a box of matches going spare?’

A box landed at her feet. She picked it up and tucked it into her cleavage.

‘Thanks boys,’ she said.

They laughed, and gave her directions to Chesterton
Comprehensive
. On Eve tottered, and they waved at her.

Eve might have been a lady of leisure, watering-can in hand, enjoying an evening stroll in her garden. She flitted about the town with her petrol, sprinkling a little over a community college here, a primary school there. She would make a pile of dry leaves on a window-sill, scatter a few drops of petrol, and then set them alight; or eagerly throw lighted matches through any letter boxes she found, only to lose interest even before they had hit the floor. But what a fine sunset there was that evening! How warm and glorious the shades of purple and pink! It was God’s handwriting sprawled across the sky, and was she not the saviour of all disaffected youth? And indeed, there wasn’t a lad who beheld the vision of her that night who remained unaffected, and they all concluded she was pretty hot.

When Eve got home she made herself a cup of tea. There was a letter on the mat but she left it there, probably from that twat Briggs, she thought. But it was enough to stir her mood; for she was a little more contemplative now. She envisaged nine schools reduced to a few charred splinters, and then the ensuing police investigation. Oh dear, she had witnesses of course. Why had she never learnt to
take
care
? But then she relaxed. In fact, there was a moment when she was quite the heroine: she was waving to the crowds outside the Old Bailey in white kid gloves up to her elbows; they did a feature on her for
Blue Peter
in which the various children interviewed were beside themselves with gratitude for Eve’s initiative. And then she suddenly understood that she was an arsonist and she would be sent to prison.

Her initial response to this revelation was anger. Freedom was not just a right (rights were like sweets handed out by toadying
politicians
); freedom was given by God. Freedom was honest, natural and true. She had burned down the schools of Cambridge to fight on Freedom’s behalf, and now they were going to lock her up for what was only in the end (because of course they would build more schools) a mere suggestion. There were paltry, pock-pitted men on God’s earth who wanted to stop her from walking among its meadows, sheltering in its copses, breathing in the very air warmed by the sun – so who did they think they were? How dare they have that power over her?

Eve found her passport and it was in date by a month. Wasn’t it South America one was supposed to fly to at moments like this? But she had neither visa nor money: hadn’t she heard that the Costa del Sol was almost as good? Even at this moment they would be looking for her; she fancied she heard fire engines in the distance – perhaps they would have to call in more from neighbouring forces. And of course the police would even now be preparing her photofit. By morning there would be pictures of her all over town.

She packed a few things and called a taxi. Later, when she was on
the plane to Naples, she took off those pink shoes at last, and was shocked to see the state of her feet, the blisters eating into her heels, the caked blood where the dainty straps of the shoes had dug into her. Good God, she thought, I hadn’t even realised I was in pain.

Eve caused at most perhaps two hundred pounds worth of damage. A window frame had been badly charred at Hills Road Sixth Form college. Close observers might have noticed a few blackened bricks at Milton Primary and Parkside; but even the early morning cleaners didn’t understand the significance of a couple of used matches near the door of several of the schools’ entrance halls, and they swept them up with as much indifference as they did the odd cigarette end in the toilets. And when the superintendent arrived at eight to inspect the charred window outside the toilets at Chesterton Comprehensive, he shrugged his shoulders and shook his head and mumbled, ‘bloody teenagers’. 

‘
CALL ME MUM
,’ said Mrs Sylvia Leatherpot, as she leaned over Josiah’s breakfast bowl and poured out his cornflakes, ‘and I want you to know, we don’t mind the teeniest, teeniest bit about your accident last night, do we George?’

George, who’d even given up smoking so that his childless wife could be a foster parent, smiled fulsomely over his newspaper and said, ‘Not one bit, Joe.’

‘My name isn’t Joe,’ said Josiah.

‘Well,’ said Sylvia, ‘we were thinking, weren’t we, George?’

‘Yes, dear,’ said George, encouragingly.

‘We were thinking that boys can be cruel. And girls can be. Weren’t we, George?’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘And what with “Jozziah” not being a regular name, and seeing as you’re a new boy and all that and want to make the most of your new school, well we thought it best that you called yourself “Joe”.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Josiah.

‘You see, “Joe” is an ordinary sort of name.’

‘No it isn’t,’ said Josiah.

‘It’s more common than “Jozziah”,’ said Sylvia, gently.

‘My name is Josiah.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Sylvia, and looked at her husband for moral support.

‘You call yourself how you will,’ said George. ‘We were just trying to help.’

‘Yes, that’s all we were trying to do,’ said his wife, patting the boy on his shoulder.

Tracy arrived to drive Josiah to school. She had wanted to tell him he’d be going home that afternoon, but when she and June Briggs had gone to the Nelsons’ house early that morning they’d found the place empty and curiously, unlocked. So they’d taken the liberty of walking around. Yesterday’s toast was still on the table: interrupted, half-eaten.

Tracy had sunk down onto a kitchen chair. ‘They did know, didn’t they, that we’d only taken a temporary measure? We did make that clear, didn’t we?’

‘You know what?’ June had said, smiling, ‘That kid’s finally going to get a life.’

But that wasn’t how it seemed to Tracy when she saw Josiah. He kept staring at her, one moment furious, the next, desperate. And all the while Mrs Leatherpot kept chattering on, as happily as if she’d been given a puppy.

‘So how are you settling in, then?’ Tracy asked Josiah kindly (and thinking, did I really say ‘settling in?’ God help him.) And because she couldn’t bear to hear his answer, she quickly changed the subject. ‘So what did you think of your first day at school, then?’

‘School! School! Oh he had such a wondrous day, didn’t he, George? There was a slight leg-pulling at first I’m afraid, well that’s what the form-teacher observed, about his name, and George and I thought he might be better off to call himself “Joe” just to fit in, but apart from that it was glory all the way! He’s already at the top of his class, he is! He adds up faster than anyone, and takes away too! And he reads as well as a fish!’

‘Oh God,’ said Tracy. Josiah ran out of the room, and Tracy
followed
him.

‘I don’t know what’s got into him,’ said Mrs Leatherpot, ‘he’s been as good as gold, he honestly has.’

For a good few minutes the boy was completely lost: the three of them scoured the house and not a trace. Then from an upstairs window Tracy noticed a small, crouching figure at the bottom of the garden. She stopped the couple from following her, and as she walked up to him she noticed he was eating earth.

‘Oh God!’ she sighed, ‘I can’t take this.’

His back was towards her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

Josiah turned round: pale face, morose brown eyes and mud around his mouth.

‘What have you been eating?’ asked Tracy, gently.

‘Minerals,’ said Josiah. ‘Potassium, calcium, and a little zinc.’

‘Josiah!’ exclaimed Tracy, with feeling, ‘It seems you barely need to go to school! You’re a very, very bright little boy! And you’ll go home soon! I’ll see to it personally, I promise!’

‘Do you like children?’ asked Josiah.

‘Oh yes, I love children! I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I didn’t love children!’

Then Tracy kissed him on his forehead, she just couldn’t help herself.

‘Because I don’t,’ said Josiah. ‘I don’t like children at all.’

They never thought to phone the ports or the airports: after all, why would they run away? June Briggs said she’d eat her hat if they found Eve and Gibson together. They’d probably find Eve with Michael Fothering, who might finally claim his paternity. But when the police drew a blank with Fothering, Briggs got in contact with Eve’s mother: no, Mrs de Selincourt hadn’t seen her daughter for seven
years, but she cared sufficiently about her to suggest places she might have gone. She even gave them the address of Gilbert Fitzpatrick’s cottage, and for weeks afterwards would ring to see whether Eve had turned up. In the end Eve became logged as an Official Missing Person, but after a few weeks of intense searching in London, spurred on by Tracy, the investigation flagged.

Meanwhile they found Gibson after about a week, almost dead with hypothermia in undergrowth on the fen. But even Tracy considered his condition too shocking to re-introduce him to his son: he couldn’t speak and he could barely walk, and his arms flailed wildly and
indiscriminately
at anyone in his path. One social worker even lost a tooth, while the duty psychiatrist had his glasses smashed and a piece of glass had to be extracted from his eye under a general anaesthetic. In short, Gibson Nelson had become dangerous: they deemed him lucky to be sent back to Fulbright.

So Josiah had to stay with the Leatherpots. He wet the bed every night and barely spoke to them. Mrs Leatherpot told Tracy that ‘it was evident that he’d had a very sorry life’ and asked to be told more about it, so that she might be more of a help to him. ‘Particularly as he might be here longer than you said,’ she argued. But Tracy was discreet.

Sylvia Leatherpot was very kind and patient with Josiah. When he came back from school she would sit next to him on the settee and tell him all about her adventures when she was a schoolgirl, and the kind of pranks she got up to. Then when she was done with
chatting
she would take out her set of emery boards and settle down to work on the beautification of her hands.

She would shuffle first towards the left, and then towards the right, as she held her hands up to the light, and more than once told Josiah the great wisdom of her auntie Joyce, who ‘always said there was something beautiful in all of us. “It might be your eyes, or it might be your hair, but God never left not one of us out,” that’s
what she used to say, and she was right. And with me, Jozziah, it happens to be my nails. God blessed me with beautiful fingernails and beautiful hands.’

On one occasion, when Josiah had been there about a week, Sylvia Leatherpot said to him, ‘Now just stay there a tick and I’ll show you something.’ She blew the nail-dust from her fingers and levered herself out of an armchair. In the corner of the sitting-room was a book-shelf stuffed full of magazines, hundreds of them. She found a copy of
Woman
’
s
Own
and brought it over to show him.

‘Now, look here,’ she said. ‘You have a look through here and keep your eyes peeled. You might just recognize something.’

Josiah scanned the pages of the magazine with dead-pan face.

‘No, no, no, Josiah! You’ve passed it!’ exclaimed Mrs Leatherpot. ‘I’ll give you a clue.’ She took the magazine and slowly thumbed through the relevant pages of eyeshadows, lipsticks, and yes, fingernails.

‘Do you recognize anything?’ she said.

Josiah shook his head.

‘Look, look again!’ Mrs Leatherpot wasn’t going to let him off lightly.

Josiah surveyed her coldly and pointed to an eyelid covered in ‘lavender’. Mrs Leatherpot giggled anxiously and was on the point of asking him to have another go but thought the better of it. (What is it? wondered Josiah.)

Tracy was ever the bearer of bad news. Within a fortnight the bad news was even getting to Mrs Leatherpot, who found herself being tetchy with her young charge, and she wanted Josiah’s mother to come and take him back.

‘He’s not grateful,’ she would complain. ‘He’s not grateful for anything. I don’t think he’s ever been taught to say “Thank you”. I say to him, I’ll not be giving you supper tomorrow, young man, if you don’t learn to say “Thank you” but it makes no difference. It’s
as though he was completely deaf. Now, what’s the news on Mrs Nelson?’

Then one afternoon, after delivering Josiah back from school (which she did whenever she could), and after sitting through twenty minutes’ worth of Mrs Leatherpot’s complaints about his ‘rude behaviour’, Tracy was about to get into her car when she was aware of two small arms clasped about her thighs.

‘Please don’t leave me here,’ sobbed Josiah, ‘you have to take me to my father’. This was as long a sentence as he had ever uttered.

‘Your father?’

‘I want my Daddy’, he whimpered.

‘You want to see your father?’ Had they ever seriously considered that old sullen man that hung about in the shadows while Eve
performed
her circus tricks for them? So even he could inspire love. And why shouldn’t he, for God’s sake? Tracy turned to Josiah and knelt on the gravel in the drive so that she could take his small hands in hers.

‘Josiah,’ she said, solemnly, ‘I promise you, cross my heart and hope to die, you’ll see your father soon.’

However, June Briggs didn’t care two hoots about Tracy’s promise. She shouted, ‘Are you mad, Tracy? What did you say you’d promised him?’

Tracy held her ground. ‘Do you understand what we’ve done? Do you understand that we’ve just fucked up big-time? It’s our moral duty to mend what we’ve broken.’

‘Oh yes, and you think a little trip to Fulbright hospital to visit a man who’s so sedated he probably wouldn’t even recognize him, you think that’s going to do the trick, do you?’

‘June, he’s his father.’

‘We don’t even know that, do we?’

‘Well, he’s been a father to him, and that’s what matters. Josiah needs to see him! And even if Eve doesn’t come back, it’s ten times
better to have Gibson and Josiah living together again than the awful, awful situation we have now!’

‘Tracy, you know what? You’ve become too emotionally involved with this case. I’ve told you before, social work is a profession, and I expect you to behave as a professional.’

Shortly after this, Tracy resigned. And as Tracy could no longer do anything for him, Josiah had to take matters in hand himself. One evening he sidled up to Mrs Leatherpot while she was watching TV. There was a moment, just a moment, when Sylvia fancied he was showing her that much yearned-for affection, and she didn’t even resist it when Josiah took her hand in his own. Josiah then proceeded to cut off one of her fingernails with the kitchen scissors he was hiding behind his back. The ensuing drama was their last as a little foster family in Cambridgeshire: he was picked up by Social Services within the hour, ‘for his own safety’ as Mrs Leatherpot put it.

There were now so many people looking after Josiah that he couldn’t remember which was which. There was the magisterial June Briggs herself; there was a friendly old lady in charge of adoptions who gave her opinion; there was a younger lady in charge of foster placements but who was new and who needed the older lady to advise her. June Briggs decided Josiah needed a man, firm and consistent, in fact the most reliable social worker in her team, but the man in question already had a caseload of over eighty, and at least four cases which were equally pressing. None of the above loved Josiah or took up his cause, and his first few placements ended before the first week was out.