Rock a Bye Baby (8 page)

He stared at the front door. ‘You going in there?’

‘Yes. This is where I live.’

She had been unfastening the straps holding Annie in the pushchair.

On looking up, she saw him stare at the house then wave. She looked to see who he was waving to. The window panes upstairs reflected the sky. Light to the downstairs windows was blanked out by the privet hedge. They reflected nothing; in fact they looked as though they weren’t glass at all – more like black bitumen squares.

She turned her attention back to Garth. A trickle of saliva oozed from the corner of his mouth. Her pity was like a lump in her throat.

‘Would you like to see the chickens, Garth?’

She didn’t really want to see the chickens herself. They were stupid creatures fit only to be eaten.

Garth’s slack jaw firmed up. He clapped and gasped like an excited child. ‘See the chickens! Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck!’

‘Come on then.’

He followed her as she manoeuvred the pushchair up the garden path. She ordered him to stay there while she got the pushchair through the door.

Once inside she got Annie out of the pram.

‘Keep hold of the bread, Annie,’ she said.

Annie obeyed, her gummy mouth returning to suck at the corner of the loaf.

She heard raised voices. Gran was giving Marcie’s stepmother a piece of her mind. Cupping her ear against
the door, she tried to hear what was being said. There was something about Babs being underhand, something about her being devious behind her mother-in-law’s back. Babs sounded as though she might be on the verge of tears. This I have to see, Marcie decided. She grabbed the door knob and pushed the door open.

‘Here we are,’ she said.

Her grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table. Silver-framed photographs, a duster and a can of silver polish were spread out in front of her. The family photographs usually sat on the high mantelpiece above the stove. Marcie’s grandfather dressed in his naval uniform smiled out from one. Another was of both grandparents on their wedding day; another still of Marcie’s father as a toddler. Regular as clockwork, Saturday morning was when her grandmother took them all down and polished the frames.

At the sight of her mother, Annie began to howl. Her little arms reached out for her grandmother.

Marcie smirked. ‘Annie loves her granny. Isn’t that sweet?’

She couldn’t help throwing a look of triumph at Babs who scowled back, picked up a duster and began polishing a photo frame.

Annie was cooing and chuckling in her grandmother’s arms.

Marcie placed the bread on the table plus the change from half a crown.

‘It’s chewed,’ said Babs on glimpsing the corner of the crusty loaf. ‘What did you let her do that for?’

‘She was hungry,’ said Marcie. ‘You need to feed her more often and not go out to the pub so much.’

Babs began to ease her wide backside out of her chair. ‘Less of your cheek …’

‘Barbara! Make your child some porridge!’

Rosa Brooks fixed her with a hard stare.

Marcie smirked. She loved hearing Babs being told what to do, but her grandmother’s eyes were everywhere. Her smirk was noticed.

‘And you, young lady. We will have some respect in this house.’

Marcie turned to leave.

‘Where do you think you’re off to?’

Small she might be, but Rosa Brooks could fill a room with her voice.

‘I’m taking Daft Garth to see the chickens.’

She’d presumed her act of compassion would save her from a telling off. She was wrong.

‘Do not call him that. Garth is a human being and one of God’s creatures, as are we all.’ She made the sign of the cross on her thin chest, her voice softer now. ‘Go on. Show the poor boy the chickens.’

Babs did as her mother-in-law directed, fed her child and made her a bottle. Soon the little brat was asleep and Babs was free to sit down with a magazine and have a smoke. However, it was difficult to
concentrate. Her mother-in-law’s boot button eyes were boring into her.

‘You would leave and live in a council house rather than stay here with your family?’ Rosa’s voice was cold. Her daughter-in-law had done the unthinkable. She’d applied for and been given a council house. And all done without her – Rosa Brooks – knowing.

Babs stiffened but didn’t take her eyes from the words on the page. ‘I want my own place.’

‘Antonio will not allow that,’ Rosa exclaimed. She had great faith in her son. He put his family first above everything and cared about his mother’s welfare. That’s what she told herself and that is what she believed. Unfortunately he had not been lucky as far as matrimony was concerned. If Barbara was intending to take the whole family with her, Rosa would be left alone. Rosa did not want that; besides, she saw trouble looming. Babs was not the best of mothers. Things would fall apart. She was sure it would.

‘Antonio will want what I want,’ said Babs, blowing a cloud of smoke from pouting pink lips.

‘I will write to him,’ said Rosa.

‘Yeah! You do that.’

‘I will.’

Rosa threw down the tea towel and made her way to the living room and the dark oak bureau sitting in the corner. That’s where she did her letter writing.

Babs allowed herself a small smile of triumph. This
time she had won the battle with the old witch. Soon she and Tony would have a new beginning – and a new house.

Throwing the magazine back onto the yellow-topped table she took a big puff on her fag and threw her arms in the air. That old bat – Rosa could write all the letters she liked. Tony was on his way home, though neither his mother nor his family knew that.

The old girl had supposedly received a message from the other side – pie in the sky as far as Babs was concerned. She, however,
knew
beyond doubt that Tony was coming home.

Reaching into her bra cup she withdrew the letter he’d sent her. Actually the letter was addressed to his mother, but Babs had got to the post first, recognised what it was and who it was from, and decided to keep it for herself. She was fed up of being bossed around, fed up of that cheeky little cow Marcie and her stuck-up ways. Not letting them know he was coming home was her way at getting back at them all. She would be there at the station to greet him.

Humbled by her grandmother’s reprimand, but relieved to be out of the house, Marcie rejoined Garth. He was standing where she’d left him, staring up at the front bedroom windows, with a stupid smile on his face.

‘This way.’

She got as far as the front gate before realising that he might not have heard her. When she looked he was still smiling stupidly up at the bedroom windows.

‘Garth!’ she called out.

It was as though the gangly, misshapen young man was a wooden puppet and someone had suddenly pulled a string. His head jerked round before his body. Another string and his body followed his head.

She led him along the front of the rank of houses, turning at the end into the lane that ran along the back of the terrace. He made clucking sounds all the way and flapped his arms in a childish interpretation of a chicken.

It irritated her. She looked over her shoulder, mouth open ready to tell him to shut up. One look
at his face and she clamped her mouth shut. He reminded her of Annie – happy and trusting, lost in a world of his own.

Tall nettles grew in big clumps the whole length of the stony lane. Too narrow to take a car, the back entrance was mainly used for coal deliveries, the coalmen carrying sack after sack along the lane and up the garden paths to the coal house.

Beady-eyed chickens strutted up and down their run, watching them approach. The back garden was empty, Archie and Arnold out playing along the beach with their friends.

Mr Ellis from two doors down was taking a rest from digging his nuclear fallout shelter. He mopped his brow and waved.

‘I’m going down a lot deeper than I planned,’ he called. ‘Got to be ready for the enemy now old Churchill is gone. I reckon I’ll be more ready for them than anyone else on Sheppey.’

‘That’s good,’ she called back, and wondered if he were right to be so diligent. Yes, she was aware that Sir Winston Churchill had died earlier that year but he’d been an old man who’d done well in the war. She also wondered if he was digging it big enough to take everyone in Endeavour Terrace seeing as no one else was bothering. Or would he lock them all out if the Russians did come?

Marcie used the tree stump at the side of the
chicken hutch to get up on the roof. Garth declined her offer to join her there. He was absorbed in the chickens, clucking in response to their clucks and dipping and darting his head in the same manner. Being a chicken quite suited him. His hair was the colour of dark corn and formed what resembled a cock’s comb on the top of his head.

Poor thing. No dad and not much of a mother to speak of. Was it just getting pregnant and not being married that had made Edith Davies the way she was?

It occurred to her that if Rita didn’t watch herself she could end up the same way as Garth’s mother – what a chill thought that was. Though Alan Taylor did have the money to put things right.

The roof of the chicken hutch had soaked up the warmth of the sun. Marcie lay back against the single slope, her arms folded behind her head. She closed her eyes and pretended that her surroundings had melted away. That she was lying on a tropical beach and surrounded by blue sky and fluffy clouds. At least that bit’s true, she thought, squinting up at the sky with one eye.

‘There used to be a tree ’ere,’ Garth said suddenly.

With that same, single eye, she saw the top half of his face regarding her from above the ridge of the roof.

‘Well, that’s hardly earth-shattering news,’ she muttered. The stump was testament to that.

Garth went on talking in his slow way as though he hadn’t heard her.

‘And grass was here. And a little seat was here. And a flower bed full of flowers. And a bird bath …’

‘Chickens, Garth. There’s only ever been chickens.’

‘And people used to sit here.’

She blew out a gasp of frustration. ‘Shut up, Garth.’

The world blurred. Her mind drifted.

Garth gabbled on.

‘That was back when you were small. You and your mother used to come out here to sit under the tree. And she wore a red dress.’

Yes. A red dress with tiny brass buttons …

Her eyes blinked open. Perhaps it was the sun, or perhaps it was that he’d snapped her out of the edge of sleep, but she could see –
actually see
– the scene he was describing. Not physically of course, but in her mind’s eye as though it had really happened.

Bolt upright she looked down at this slow-speaking excuse for a man. He was clucking again, folding his arms against his side like chicken wings and going around in a circle, legs bent, head dipping backwards and forwards.

‘What was that you said, Garth?’

‘Cluck, cluck, cluck—’

‘Garth!’

His limbs jerked to stillness. Round eyed he looked up at her, his lower lip sagging.

‘You told me I was sitting here with a woman in a red dress.’ She couldn’t help the trembling in her voice. ‘Did I?’

Swinging her legs to the edge of the roof she got down onto the tree stump and from there to the ground. The grass was springy beneath her feet, as though the earth was made of sponge.

‘You said I used to sit here with my mother and that she was wearing a red dress. How do you know that, Garth? Did you see her sitting here? Do you remember seeing me sitting on her lap?’

He stared at her with pale, ill-focused eyes. A sliver of saliva trickled from his drooping lower lip. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

It was hard to control her anger – or perhaps it wasn’t anger – just a kind of craziness because she wanted to know the truth – a truth – about her mother. She’d had no picture in her mind until now. There was no photograph in a silver frame sitting on the mantelpiece. What had her mother looked like? Had she really worn a red dress with small brass buttons?

He shook his head like the fool he was, drooling, eyeballs popping, neck hanging forward at an awkward angle. How ugly he was. He looked like a tortoise warily emerging from its shell.

Questions buzzed like wasps around Marcie’s head.
They blinded her to her calmer self. They brought about a temper and strength that she didn’t know she had.

She grabbed the shoulders of his greasy shirt, the cotton feeling gritty in her hands. Her eyes blazed and her hands had balled into tight fists.

‘Did you meet my mother, Garth? Think! Did you really see her? REALLY see her?’

She was aware of how tense she’d become – and how loud.

Her shout had unsettled Garth. She wasn’t aware of that either or how terrifying a picture she presented. Neither did she see the alarm in his eyes or the quivering of his jowls. It wasn’t until he began to shake like a man on the verge of a fit; only then did she realise.

‘Garth! I’m sorry.’

She let go of his shirt. She wiped her hands down her skirt.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

Garth’s shaking lessened into an all-over shiver. He blinked as though he’d just woken up. His shoulders slumped and his spine seemed to curve as though in minutes he’d aged years.

‘I’d better get home for my tea. Beans on toast,’ he said thickly. ‘Beans on toast.’

Once the old gate had creaked shut behind him, she went back up on the roof. It didn’t matter that
the midges were biting her arms or that the sun was still hot enough to burn her face. There was a lot of thinking she needed to do. Most of all there were questions she needed to ask.

It wasn’t until teatime that she had the chance to ask the only person who would know whether what he’d said was true.

Her grandmother was sitting outside the back door knitting when she finally climbed down from the roof. Annie was playing with some water at the bottom of a galvanised bucket and chuckling as though it were the best game in the world.

The clicking and clacking of the knitting needles slowed or sped up in response to Rosa Brooks’s swiftly moving fingers, the sound echoing between the rank of houses and the factory wall on the other side of the back lane.