Second Best, page 11
Oblivious to what was being discussed, the unmolested toddlers under the table had tired of the intellectuality of pattern-making, and turned to cards. I looked down at the picture on the lid of the box of paints, which depicted two healthy, happy children on a see—saw. Their clothes and hair styles were of the nineteen forties; they might well have sat beside their parents listening to ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’, which mother had never stopped hoping the B.B.C. would resurrect. Colin said, “Anyway, what was it you wanted to ask us?”
“It was nothing really. Just wanted to let you know what was happening, so that if I do get approved and have a child to come and live with me you won’t wonder what’s going on.”
I heard the words come out, and knew that they were the wrong words, and that, if I went away without saying what I had come to say, it would be more difficult to come back and say it later. For what must have been a long time I just sat, looking at the paint-box but seeing no more than a blur of primary colours, knowing that I should get up, was indeed expected to get up, say my goodbyes and leave, rather than remain as I was locked in time, wallowing in present disappointment and the prospect of a future filled with much of the same. I looked down through the misty colours of the box to the end of a long tunnel where, instead of the nineteen forties children, a tubby man in a light brown overcoat sat on a damp bench with a ten-year-old boy, eating sandwiches and watching two fat ladies playing their own kind of tennis on a Public Court. The man had asked the boy if there was anything worrying him, and, picking the cucumber out of the sandwiches, the boy had shaken his head, which might have been a comment on the sogginess of the sandwiches, or an indication that nothing troubled him, or even a gesture signifying that he was not in the habit of discussing his problems with prospective adopters on their very first visit. The man had said, “If you agree, I’d like to give you a proper home and look after you,” but the nod the boy then gave had not meant ‘Yes, thank you, that would be very nice,' but simply, ‘Carry on, I’m listening.’
“Are you alright?” I realised the words came from close to me, and, turning my head, saw a pair of muscular knees and above them the worried face of Champion the Wonder Horse as it had looked when entering the classroom to sit a half—term spelling test. Colin Needham was squatting beside me.
“She’ll be back any minute. I know she’d like to talk to you She’s got a lot more confidence now than when you and she . .”
He was squatting close to me, clearly worried about me; his cordless dressing-gown had fallen open. “She will be back. She’s never away long,” he said. His skimpy underwear was inadequate to conceal what he was showing me -- the reason, if any reason were needed, why Elsie had found my conversation inadequate. It looked as if Cape Canaveral was about to make its most spectacular blast off yet. Simply the anticipation of his wife’s return had aroused lust in Colin Needham’s body, and this must have been so frequent an occurrence in Colin’s life that he no longer even noticed it, so that his face continued to express anxiety about the health of his guest.
I diverted my eyes to the children under the table. Colin said, “Are you sure you don’t really want one of your own? This lot have changed me. Well, you know yourself how I used to be a bit wild. Your own is always the best, Graham. There’s nothing like knowing you’ve made something like that. Look at our Jeff here.” He stood, reached under the table, lifted an infant in pale blue cotton dungarees, and dangled it in mid—air for me to take. I stood also. A thick worm of mucus hung suspended between the child’s nose and mouth, and the child’s lower lip curled downwards and his eyes narrowed as I approached.
I took him. He was heavier than I expected, his breath noisy, being taken in large gulps through his open mouth. The tiny body wriggled and writhed inside my arms, then contracted, making itself stiff in an attempt to slide from my grasp to the floor.
And I loved it. It was someone else’s child, and I wanted it. Very badly. No large doe-like eyes here, no ‘Help me, I’m so small and helpless’ expression, no ‘Hug and care for me, and I’ll develop all your virtues and wipe the slate clean of your faults,’ just an unattractive lump of writhing humanity, and all I could think about was the gut-deep aching need I had to take care of it.
“You’re not used to tiddlers like our Jeffo, are you?” I shook my head, attempting as I did so to avoid being hit in the face by one of the tiddler’s fists. “What does it feel like?”
“Difficult.”
“I never used to understand why folks always want to pick up small children, but you do when you’ve had one. It’s the life in there, isn’t it? Holding a kid you’ve given life to, Graham. There’s just nothing like it!”
The curled lip close to my ear erupted into a wail of anger so loud and so sudden that I felt my heart stop momentarily. “Listen to that! He’s a little devil when he feels like it. He’s full, of life. Shut it, Jeffo, will you? I’m telling this man about parenthood.”
I lowered Jeffo to the floor gently, and the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
“Now there you are, you see, that’s number one mistake you’ve just made. Give in to them the moment they yell, and they know what to do next time.” I suppose I must have looked rather abashed, because Colin’s tone became encouraging. “Tell you another thing I like. We could do it now, and I could show you, ‘cept our two had theirs last night, and too much water’s not good for them. It’s watching them play in the bath. Gives you a really funny feeling that. Our Tina’s feet are just incredible. I’ve never seen anything so perfect. Doesn’t work with other people’s kids, though. It has to be your own.”
Six foot two and broad in proportion, muscled and sweaty, with a six o’clock shadow like wire-wool! Who would have thought Champion the Wonder Horse could be so gentle? “Did you ever play with dolls when you were a small child? A teddy-bear, perhaps? Were you ever allowed a puppy? I remembered Margery in full flow at the Community Centre. It’s all well documented. Boys as well as girls can satisfy the desire to give birth and care for a baby. It’s an important stage of development. Problem starts when some cack-handed adult makes the male child aware of what he’s doing, before he’s achieved a secure sense of identity, and moved on to the next stage. Then you have infant George, faced with an almost uncontrollable desire to be tender, caring, even perhaps to suckle this helpless thing, and you’re telling George that in reality his uncontrollable desire can’t ever be satisfied; you’re telling infant George he’s unnatural, a freak, a one—off, when he isn’t. And by the time George is twelve years old, he’s got his name down for the S.A.S just to prove you wrong about him being a nancy boy. He’ll probably never discover that his foul-mouthed sergeant had the very same infantile desire to dress and undress dolls.
“Is it marriage you don’t like the idea of, is that it?”
“I don’t think I’m going to meet anyone now.”
“Haven’t been out and about much to see, though, have you? Too late now, of course, but fifteen year or so back, if I’d known you were interested, you could have come around with me. You always seemed a bit . . well, you know. . .“ I nodded, knowing only too well what he meant. “Sad really, when you think about it. Was it just shyness, then, do you think, what I took to be you being a bit stand-offish?’
“Mostly shyness.”
“Reckon I’ve been lucky. Well, you know, don’t you? You being interested in her yourself . . at one time.”
“Platonic”
“Yes, she said. She thinks you’re a proper gentleman. What age would this child you’re going to adopt be then?”
“Ten, eleven maybe.”
“Christ, man, they’re a mess by that age! And someone else’s. You must be mad.”
“I wouldn’t be considered for a younger child. And there’s no guarantee I’ll be approved at all, but I’d like to try. What I really came to talk about was references.” I waited. It was clear that Colin did not understand what was required. “From people who’ve known me a long time, preferably people with experience of children.” I decided to go the whole hog. I also supposed to try and gain experience myself. Baby-sitting. Helping to run a group or Youth Club. Something like that. I mean, if you and Elsie . .” I looked at the card—school under the table, who now seemed to be playing a version of Seven Card Stud with jacks and deuces wild. “If you ever needed . . “
“We don’t go out much. Haven’t the money. If we do, then Mum-in-law likes to come round and sit with the kids. My own mum was complaining just the other day that we hardly ever ask her to do it.”
“Seems as if you’ve got a Waiting list"
“Yes, it is a bit like that.”
“And the reference?”
“Why don’t I talk to Elsie? She knows you better than I do -- and anyway, they’ll probably want to know you’re not totally uninterested in women. I’m still not all that brilliant at writing official things.”
At the back door, Colin shivered at the freshness of the air in the world outside and said,, “She’ll be sorry to have missed you. I know she’d like to have talked to you. She’s changed a lot too, you know.”
* * *
“Perhaps I’m trying to go too fast, I don’t know.” I waited, hoping to be contradicted. Instead she stared at me through the gap between door and jamb. “We had a bit of a row, you see. I sense he doesn’t want me poking into his past, even with his supervision.”
“Supervision he’s now withholding by staying around the corner in the car, right?”
“Right. It’s always difficult to know what to do for the best, isn’t it?”
“Always.” The woman thought for a moment before undoing the safety-chain and holding the door open just wide enough for me to enter. “Has he poked into yours?”
“Sorry?”
“Your past? Go through.” I went through, and she followed me. “Has James had a good look at that?”
The room was dark and untidy, with clothes strewn about, and smelt of damp. “That’s one of the problems. My past is hardly worth poking about in. It’s very dull compared to his, you see. Same house, same school, only child, reasonably comfortable.” The woman pointed to a chair, and I sat in it. Though she was fat, and had heavy streaks of grey in her hair, she could not yet be sixty, and must have retired early from the Children’s Home. I wondered what she found to do with her time these days, and suspected that the answer might be, not very much.
“What about your wife? Can’t she offer him a little diversity? A few skeletons to be rattled?”
“I’m not married.’
“Widowed, or divorced?”
“Just never married
There was a long silence, during which the woman leaned back in her chair and looked at me. Though I was, of course, ill at ease, I did my best not to show it.
“And they’ve actually let you get as far as the Life Story Book stage?”
“Yes. And it’s looking very hopeful. That’s why I don’t want to make any mistakes now.”
Her businesslike, no—nonsense expression softened a little. She seemed genuinely pleased for me. “Congratulations. Good for you! Things must have moved on in the last two years. James with a single-parent Dad, eh? Well, yes, I suppose there’s some kind of logic there, even if it is only postponing the real problem. They must have put you through hell.”
“Not really. Everyone’s been very helpful.”
One of the ways in which they had been helpful was in finding me this woman —- and not only the woman, of course. There had been past Foster Parents not all of whom bore James good will, teachers at various schools of whom the same could be said, many of the names which figured in his Life Story Book, but not the maternal grandparents, who still chose not to reply to letters. Bernie the Tank Top had told me forcefully that, however much I might be tempted to think of adoption as a new beginning, that was far from the truth. “You can’t say. ‘This is Day One. We start from here.’ He comes with baggage. You can’t ignore it.” I would have to talk to as many of the people in James’ Life Story Book as could be found, and would see me. “Even as it is,” Bernie had said, “You’ll filter a lot of it out. You’ll only take in what you want to receive.”
This woman had been James’ Key Worker at a previous home. “What did you mean by ‘postponing the problem’?” I said.
“Nothing. Just my out-of-date amateur psychiatry. Surely your single status alone should give you enough bonus points in James’ eyes? Single man adopting screwed-up ten-year-old boy?
“Isn’t my being single likely to make it harder for him. Taunts about me, about the sort of man I might be, from other children?”
“Rubbish. He can handle any amount of that. Water off a duck’s back for that young man, unless of he’s changed since I knew him -— developed into a shrinking violet. Stranger things have happened in Child Care.”
“He is very sensitive.”
“Course he is. When there’s something in it for him. Aren’t we all? No, you’re worrying over nothing. If James lands himself a real home—situation, with a mature male to dote over him, and no woman around to complicate matters, then he’ll have come up smelling of daises. It’s what he’s always wanted. Fantasised about even.”
“The woman at the Children’s Home said you had got quite close to him at one time.”
“I was about the only member of the female sex he’d allow within arms’ length of him.”
“Why would that have been?”
“Has he ever mentioned his mother?”
“No. And I’ve been warned not to ask about her yet.”
“Or ever, would be my advice. Women to James aren’t just unnerving, as they are to many pre-pubescent boys; they’re also disgusting, and they’re evil. You may not have discovered any of this yet, but it has been known for the smell of face-powder to cause him to throw-up. Whenever he saw a passably attractive young woman on television, he’d start scratching his arms till they bled. Now you know what I meant by ‘postponing the real problem’.
I began to doubt the efficacy of Lynn as a support system. However, it was possible that the woman might be exaggerating for some purpose of her own. I said, “Why didn’t he consider you disgusting and evil?”
“He did, at first. Even though I was middle-aged, fat and far removed from the dolly bird type that used to make him itch. Good thing there was no one taking snap-shots the day I sat on him for the best part of an hour. Had him pinned to the floor, screaming his head off while I dangled my boobs in his face. He spat, he bit, he wet himself, banged his head, held his breath, pulled out hanks of my hair. I think if I’d been the make-up wearing type he might well have done himself in.” She stopped, looked at me, made a decision, and said, “You have been told that he has attempted twice to do just that?” I nodded. “Tell him I’m deeply hurt he wouldn’t get out of the car to come and see me, after all we went through. We had some good times together until he was moved. So he’s going to allow you to be a stand—in for his real dad, is he? You must be someone very special. I assume his dad’s still in prison?”
“Yes. Before everything is finalised -— if it is — we’ll be going to see him.”
The woman sighed heavily, leaned back in her chair and looked at me thoughtfully. “You poor bastard! That’s a condition of the adoption, I suppose. All this ‘open’ rubbish they’re so fond of these days. If born—to parents want to keep tabs on their kids, they should fucking well look after them properly in the first place, or better still not have given birth to them at all.”
“It’s not like that. I very much want to meet him, and Jamie is very keen.”
“I’ll bet he is. All his idea, I expect.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, but the Social Worker was also in favour.”
“And how old is she? Fourteen?”
I had no intention of being disloyal to the Infant Social Worker. I said, “No, she’s very mature in her outlook.”
“Look, friend, I don’t mean to be rude, but you’d better go now. We’re both wasting our time and this is beginning to sicken me; it’s just so bloody predictable. You’re out of your depth, and you’re being used by a ten—year-old to get another glimpse of his dad. You’ll never get to adopt him, and believe me, you’re well out of it. The moment those two meet again, even through the bars of a cell, you’ll be out on your ear.”
“Have you ever met the father?"
“Don’t need to. All I know is he’s got some kind of background in -- I don’t know -- mercenary or something, free lance soldier or whatever, and it’s landed him in clink. I’m simply going on what I know of Sunny Jim out there, if he is still out there. For Christ’s sake, man, wake up! Why do you think he’s not sitting in here all comfy with you and me right now?” I began to feel like an errant infant being given a pep talk by the headmistress, and could sense my lower lip beginning to curl.
“I told you, we had an argument.”
“Because you’d managed to find me?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it was. I thought he’d be pleased, you see.”
“And was he? . . As a matter of fact?” I shook my head. Helpless, hopeless, I was to be awarded the lowest marks in my class, and kept in after the bell. I was to write out a thousand times ‘L must think faster.’
“What a surprise! So you said he didn’t have to come inside and meet his old mucker Maureen, if it was going to upset him?”
“One has to be careful.”
“Oh yes, one does. Who knows what I might come out with about him? You’re just not up to this game, are you? He’s many moves ahead of you, isn’t he?”
“We’re talking about a ten—year—old child.”
“Well, just in case that ‘child’ isn’t still waiting in the car where you left him, there’s a phone-box on the corner. It’s usual to inform the police when a child in your care has done a runner, and they’re none too happy if you delay.” The woman rose quickly to her feet, and led the way to the door. I was to be dismissed, let off this time with a caution. “Thank you for dropping by, and either get your act together, and stop believing the sun shines out of his anus, or leave him to the mercies of ‘Care’ and the so—called professionals. He might be as bent as a snake buckle, but by God he deserves someone with a bit more grey matter between his ears.”
