Cat Step, page 6
Then they should have said their piece to frighten me. I did feel the threat of them with their uniforms and radios and hard boots and pocket books in front of me on Audrey’s doorstep.
‘Why would you think that was a good idea, to prosecute me?’ I said.
‘If we think it’s in the public’s interest or the child’s interest it would be a good idea.’
‘And do you?’
‘You technically committed a crime,’ the policeman said. ‘You broke the law. You put your child in danger.’
‘We’ll be in touch,’ said the policewoman.
‘If I’m to be prosecuted?’
‘Yes. And when it goes to court. Which it probably will.’
‘When what goes to court?’
There was a beat before they spoke which I’m sure they enjoyed. ‘The attempted robbery from your car.’
I thought that I would leave Lennoxtown before they came back. We would be gone, me and Emily, and they wouldn’t be able to drag me to court for anyone or anything.
The policeman looked past me into the flat.
‘Is she in?’
‘Who?’
‘The old lady who lives here.’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Oh.’ He seemed a little struck.
His colleague frowned. ‘Did you fix your car window?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
The policeman half smiled at me before the pair of them walked away and got into their marked car. The gold on the hills above the white-walled houses mocked me. Too beautiful. Even the sheep shone with gold.
The social worker returned, as she promised she would, on the day Paul came to plaster the walls and ceilings.
‘A brief word with Emily. And a brief word with you,’ Sara said.
‘Come on Emily,’ I said, ‘let’s get this done,’ and I opened the door wide to let the rain and the wind and the social worker enter the flat.
She stepped on the plastic floor covering Paul had put down. The hall walls were plastered salmon pink and a bare bulb hung above us. The lounge was messy. Emily sat on the sofa, too close to the edge, but she often sat that way and never fell off.
‘Do you want to speak to both of us or just Emily this time?’
I reached for the remote control to turn off the television.
‘No, Mummy!’ Emily said.
‘We need to talk to the social worker,’ I said.
‘No!’ Emily flung her body backwards and slid off the sofa. Tears came.
Paul opened the door, on stilts. He dipped his head under the frame. Emily screamed. ‘Should have said, I’ll be on these for a while. Easier to reach the ceiling. I’ll keep this door shut in case your wee one comes out.’ His metal stilts were splattered with plaster.
Emily resumed her crying. ‘Can we pause the telly?’ she said.
‘We can’t pause this telly.’
‘We can pause Granny’s.’
‘I know.’
Our voices were getting louder. I stood up.
The social worker asked for five minutes with Emily so I left them and went to the kitchen to fill the kettle with water.
Paul ducked under the doorway. ‘Can I show you something,’ he said.
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘I’ll take a coffee.’
I let the kettle boil and followed him into the room with no bed, the one I took the table from. High on his stilts Paul showed me the damp pink walls and lighter patches where the plaster had begun to dry. ‘You’ll need to keep the heating off while this dries. Sometimes it cracks and there’s nothing you can do about it. If it cracks, I’ll come back. But if you keep the heating off it should be okay.’
The room’s coldness was unpleasant. It was a bleak room now. Nothing of Robbie’s gran left and nothing of us.
‘What colour do you want me to paint it?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t really thought about that. Cream, I suppose. Magnolia. Whatever colour sells houses.’
I stood in the doorway and watched him stretch above his head, holding a board in one hand and a trowel in the other which he used to skim plaster across the ceiling. He was steady on his stilts, taking wide solid steps. I leaned into the hallway, listening for sounds of Emily and the social worker.
‘You’re better off just putting some music on,’ he said. ‘You won’t hear anything through the door.’ Paul didn’t say any more but he was a smart man, he knew something was going on.
‘She’s my pal’s missus,’ he said and I thought, of course, they all know each other here.
‘It’s nothing serious,’ I said. ‘Well, I don’t think it is. I left her in the car for two minutes and someone called the police.’
He stopped working. ‘My girlfriend told me about that. Well, my ex-girlfriend now. My daughter’s mum.’
‘How long’s she been in with her? Five minutes?’
‘You’d think they’d go after the real child abuse cases. Waste of everybody’s time.’
His stilts looked like metal bones, plaster-splattered tibia and fibula. I studied anatomy at dance college and knew that I was prone to a lateral ankle sprain and Achilles tendinitis.
‘Don’t you have to be careful on those things? Don’t your arms ache?’ I said.
‘I get used to it.’
‘Can’t you use a ladder?’
‘I could. But it would take longer and cost you more.’ There was a slight strain in his voice as he stretched to the ceiling.
‘But if you fall, that’s dangerous isn’t it?’
‘You need to remember to throw the trowel if you fall, just get out of the way of the trowel.’
‘Throw in the trowel.’
I laughed at myself.
‘I haven’t heard that before.’ He smiled and rubbed his forehead. ‘I’ve only fallen twice. Once I stepped backwards onto something a spark left lying around, and once I tripped on a dust sheet. It’s why I use the plastic instead.’ He pointed his trowel to the floor. ‘You’re not allowed stilts on building sites anymore. It’s frowned upon. Health and Safety. But it’s okay just me doing a homer.’
It occurred to me that everyone broke the law in their own small way.
He stretched to spread plaster over the ceiling. His balance was impeccable, his movements no more and no less than was required.
‘You’d make a good dancer,’ I said. ‘You must have a good core.’
He laughed and rested his arms. ‘I don’t know about that. This flat is going to look lovely once you’ve finished with it,’ he said. ‘You won’t want to leave.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
I left him to his work and stood at the window in my bedroom. The rain had stopped and flashes of blue sky showed behind the clouds. A woman pulling a shopping trolley walked slowly on the other side of the street. Two older boys from a house with a swing in the garden kicked a football. From inside our flat I heard the scrape of Paul’s trowel and the low murmur of the social worker’s voice but I couldn’t hear Emily. Perhaps Sara was showing her pictures of sad faces and happy faces and asking her to say how she was feeling. I hated the thought of Emily’s finger hovering over a sad face, of her giving simple answers to loaded questions and incriminating me in God knows what. My left eyelid trembled, a twitch I couldn’t control. No wonder. Robbie used to help with that kind of thing.
We visited Robbie’s gran when I was pregnant with Emily. So I’d been to Lennoxtown before on a wet winter’s day. We drove from Glasgow airport in a hire car and I felt sick as we chugged through the rain. I remember winding down my window and not caring that rain was coming into the car and falling on me. When we got to Lennoxtown the cloud was so low the hills were completely hidden. I couldn’t see them at all and it was a surprise when the cloud finally lifted and there they were, full as a face in front of me.
So Lennoxtown was a village in the falling rain. And his gran was a lady who kept a cold house. It was freezing. We were back from Florida. We told her I was pregnant. A girl, she said, looking hard at my stomach, There’s a girl in there for sure. I was only fourteen weeks. My stomach was flat, the muscles well worked from the dancing and the gym on the ship. How could she know?
I couldn’t see any of Robbie in her face. She was a small woman whose roll neck jumper hung off her bony shoulders. Her body had been operated on too many times with cancers taken out from her lungs and lymph nodes. She said she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life but Robbie remembered that his grandad always had a pipe in his hand, so maybe she’d picked up her cancer from his smoke. She liked to take her tea on a tray and watch the game shows. That’s what she told me on the day we visited her anyway.
She had a weep over Robbie’s dad, her son, who she said she missed every minute of every day. Robbie put his youthful arms around her shoulders and she cried into his neck.
‘We’ll put some flowers down,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come with us?’
She said she couldn’t because they were calling the raffle at her luncheon club and she’d promised she’d be there, but she asked if we’d put some flowers on Robbie’s grandad’s grave too, and his mum’s. She told us exactly where they were, which rows, which gravestones were either side, but Robbie knew. Once, she called Robbie by his brother’s name, Aidan, and we wondered if she understood who she was talking to. I saw a flicker of distress on Robbie’s face.
The man from the luncheon club knocked on the door, his minibus parked outside, and she told us it was time for her to go. She smartened herself with a woollen scarf and told us to find something to eat in the kitchen. ‘Leave me a couple of crackers. That’s all I’ll eat when I get in.’ We said we would be back to see her at the end of our trip. ‘Let yourselves out,’ she called. ‘Just pull the door shut. I have keys.’ We helped her down her stairs and watched the man close the minibus door. She waved and he tooted.
‘Do you want to say hello to anyone?’ I asked Robbie. ‘Show me anything?’
He said no, there was nobody he wanted to see. Only his gran and he’d seen her and found her resilient. Her breadbin was empty. Her fridge contained a couple of yoghurts and not much else. I grabbed a banana and a custard cream and we shut the door behind us. Robbie drove in silence and didn’t want to answer any of my questions about his village. He gave no comment on the handsome church at the top of the hill or the stone buildings on Main Street. We drove along the looping streets to the graveyard and we stooped through the rain to find the graves.
We got the flowers from the Co-op. We bought food there too. So I’d been to the Co-op before, with Emily barely formed in my womb, safe from the worst her mother could do, not yet abandoned.
‘Mummy!’ Emily’s hands were round my legs. I turned from the window and walked with her into the cool salmon hall with the bare bulb and the clicking sound of Paul’s stilts coming from the plastic floor cover in the spare room.
‘Are you all done?’ I hugged Emily as she hung on to my legs.
‘Liz?’ The social worker. She asked for a final few minutes with me, so it was my turn in the lounge on the sofa. Emily came too. She grabbed at the remote control.
‘I’ve had a chat with Emily and there is some further action needed.’ Sara looked at me without blinking.
I shook my head. ‘What kind of action?’
‘The nursery is a wee bit concerned about Emily.’
‘In what way?’
‘She’s showing signs of detachment. She’s painfully shy. Lacking in confidence. Her behaviour can be erratic.’
Emily was listening. I beckoned for her to come and sit on my lap. She did so and lifted my top, putting her hands on my belly. I pulled my top down. She put her hands back on my belly.
‘Stress and isolation can make things spiral.’
‘Who’s stressed? Is Emily stressed? I don’t think she is.’ It seemed to me futile for her to continue. ‘We’re not going to be here long. Honestly, we’re only staying a couple more weeks.’
Emily put her hands down the V of my top. I removed her hands. She put her head to my chest and asked for milk. She liked to pretend she was a baby.
‘Well, while you are here, perhaps we could get our heads together at the nursery to see how we can support you.’
‘No.’
‘Please, Mummy.’
‘No.’
‘Can you tell me a little about your relationship with Emily’s dad?’
‘No.’
‘Can you give me an idea of how you’re coping with things?’
‘No.’
And Emily said ‘No’ too, copying me, pulling up my top and pressing her hands onto my belly again.
The social worker stood up and Emily threw her arms around her legs. It was a relief to have my body to myself. I watched Sara bend to pat Emily’s back. Emily took her hand. ‘I’m going to arrange a meeting with you, me, the nursery and a specialist family worker,’ she said to me. ‘It’ll take place at the nursery. I’ll make a dash while the rain is off.’
We walked through the cool hallway.
‘I’ll send a wee note to your health visitor.’
‘Put a sign up on the nursery notice board too,’ I said.
I thought I heard Paul laugh.
And then she was gone. And Emily clamoured for the attention she’d lost while Sara had been in the house so she jumped and pulled and chattered while I went straight to the kitchen to sort out her tea. The trouble with visits from social workers was that they put everything out. The tea was late, the bath was late, Emily was hungry, I was hungry. I made Paul his coffee and drank one myself. I think his company did us good. He spoke to Emily as well as me which stopped her from seeking my attention. He showed her a scar on his elbow from when he fell off his bike as a boy. He told me his asthma flared from time to time. He liked to take his bike out to Fintry and beyond.
‘I can’t ride a bike,’ Emily said, and I thought, There’s another thing I need to do.
When the eating was done Emily and I watched Paul on his stilts. He was finishing up. Patches of plaster were lighter looking than others. The room was cool already with the windows open. He stood on his high legs looking down at us.
‘How long before you’ll paint the walls?’ I asked.
‘I can fit you in next week.’ He sat on the window ledge and unbuckled his stilts.
‘Good.’
‘Can I come back and check my work?’
I knew what he meant and welcomed the thought of an adult at my body rather than a child. ‘Anytime,’ I said. I surprised myself.
We liked a bath: Emily because she relaxed in the warm water and bubbles, me because I could do things knowing that the water was entertaining her. I could gather up wet or dirty washing, I could clean, I could fold, I could make phone calls. Perhaps I should have considered, because of the trouble I was in, whether or not I should be leaving her unattended in the bath but I had to do stuff, I had to, otherwise we would drown in undone chores and when she went to bed, that was it, my body caved, cracked, submitted to a great punch of tiredness. I couldn’t be tidying up then. That’s how it felt to me anyway.
I always sat with her for a bit though.
‘What did Sara the lady say to you?’
‘I can’t remember.’
It fascinated me, what she chose to respond to, and what she didn’t.
‘Did she ask you any questions?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘I bet she said, And how is your mummy? Is she the best mummy in the world? Does she make the best baths, the nicest dinners, does she give the best cuddles?’
‘Yes!’
‘You do love me, you do!’
I liked her. We played while she sat in the bath and water filled the tub. Something felt held between us, like the tiny popping bubbles. I did most of the talking, unable to stop the chat or the singing, feeling a touch too high. I knew why.
‘Head back. Flannel.’
I poured water from a jug over Emily’s head. Her tipped-back head was smooth. Her narrow shoulders glistened with the fallen water.
‘Mummy?’
‘Yes.’
‘When I grow up I’m going to be a dancer like you.’
I kissed her forehead. ‘You can put your head back to normal now. That’s lovely, Emily.’
‘I can dance already.’
‘I know you can.’
I rubbed shampoo into her hair. Emily held the flannel to her eyes and I rinsed the shampoo. ‘Last time. There. What did she ask you, Emily?’
‘Will you get in with me?’
I remembered the time the three of us squashed into our London bathtub, me and Robbie passing Emily between us until I felt afraid that she was too small and too fragile to be in a big bath, her parents’ balance not quite secure, our confidence not quite formed.
‘Will you get in?’
‘I could…’
‘Please, Mummy. You can have these bubbles here.’ She pushed a handful of bubbles towards the other end of the bath.
I sat on the toilet seat and pulled off my socks. Emily squealed in happiness and drew her knees to her chest then pushed her heels along the bottom of the bath. She made waves.
My phone rang. It was Australia. Robbie’s brother.
‘Emily, hold on, I have to get this.’
It would be early in the morning in Australia. Aidan would be calling before leaving for work. I had to answer or I would need to phone him back and it cost too much. I answered.
Emily called out for me.
‘Emily, shush, I’m trying to concentrate. Say that again?’
He wanted to know about Paul. Did I get his bank details? Was he going to paint the flat too? Take this number of a painter just in case Paul falls through.
‘Mummy, are you coming in the bath?’
‘In a minute.’
