Evelyn Cathcart stacked the dirty crockery on a tray; she performed this task with the air of drudgery which had become habitual to her. Washing up was yet another of those humiliations which had been devised especially for her. A woman at the office, a much- lacquered blonde who worked for pin-money, had recently been presented with a washing-up machine because she had complained to her doting husband that she could not cope with running a home and doing a part-time job. ‘The more fool he!’ Evelyn thought. Although she had herself been treated badly, her sympathies were seldom for her own sex. ‘A washing-up machine indeed!’ She examined a crack in a cup and satisfied herself that it went right through. She put the cup to one side and said to Peter:
‘Don’t sniff.’
He scuffed his heels on the linoleum and she told him not to do that either. He said, ‘Bugger all.’ Evelyn put the macaroni dish down slowly on the table and stared at him; her body was rigid, her long face was distorted as the features coped with a variety of emotions, incredulity, shock, anger, the need for retribution . . . On the mantelpiece the clock ticked away the seconds; tension mounted, Peter waited. At last, Evelyn spoke. She said, ‘I don’t ever want to hear that expression again.’
The boy waggled his head and made a silly face.
‘Do you hear me, Peter?’
He tittered and scuffed the linoleum again.
‘And where did you hear it, anyway? From those boys on the council estate, I suppose. Have you been playing with them?’
He did not answer. Anxiety wrinkled her face, making her look ten years older.
‘Peter, have you been playing with those children?’
‘Mr. Drew’s children play with them.’
‘Oh yes.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘And the Welfare Officer’s children, too. Setting an example, no doubt. Well, that’s safe enough for them; but it’s an example we can’t afford to follow.’
She picked up the tray and went behind the curtain which separated the bed-sitting room from the kitchen area. Peter followed her.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he whined.
‘You can watch television.’
‘It’s too late for Parsley.’
‘There’ll be the news. You can tell me what has happened today.’
‘I want to go out.’
She walked past him and went to the television set; after a lot of twiddling and one or two thumps a rather ghostly image appeared. She studied it thoughtfully and then announced:
‘It’s Biafra. Can you see how thin those poor little children are, and how their tummies are distended? They are starving because people are talking and arguing and having conferences instead of getting food to them. Do they tell you about that at school?’
‘No,’ he said sulkily.
‘Then they should do. I don’t know what you learn at that school.’
She turned up the volume and went back to the kitchen area. After a moment, he fumbled with the curtains and she called out sharply:
‘Peter, don’t! You’ll pull that curtain down again.’ She twitched it back for him and the washing up water slopped on to the floor. ‘There! Now look what you’ve done.’ She could never leave cleaning up until the task in hand was completed, every spot, each blemish, must be dealt with as soon as seen; so now she grabbed a cloth and mopped the floor. Peter said:
‘Do I have to go back to school tomorrow?’
‘Yes. You must be better if you want to go out.’
He went back to the television set, dragging his feet. She turned to the washing-up bowl, rubbing with clumsy urgency at the crockery, an expression of desperation in her eyes. After a minute or two, she let the dish cloth drop into the basin and dragged the back of her hand across her forehead.
‘Peter,’ she called. ‘Have you been playing with those children again?’
He did not answer. She picked up a towel and walked into the sitting room, drying her hands with obsessive fastidiousness as though about to perform an operation.
‘Last night, when I went to the doctor’s surgery for your prescription, did you go out?’
He looked her in the face, blandly insolent, and said, ‘No.’
‘You’re telling me the truth?’
‘Yes. Can we see what’s on ITV?’
‘You’re not telling me the truth, are you?’ She flung the towel on the floor with a dramatic gesture of rejection and said vehemently, ‘If you go on like this something dreadful will happen. I shan’t be able to manage much longer. You’ll have to go away.’
The boy’s expression intimated that he knew who had the upper hand in this situation.
‘All right, then!’ she cried. ‘You don’t care. So that’s all right. We won’t bother any more. Shall I pack your case for when they come to fetch you?’
He responded to this performance with the triumphant smile of one who sees that the enemy has now thrown its entire reserve force into the attack.
Evelyn went back to the washing up. When she had finished she collected underclothes which had been draped round the gas-stove, damped them, and set up the ironing board in the sitting room.
‘You’ll have to go to bed in a minute,’ she said to Peter who was now absorbed in watching a model aeroplane display.
‘I want to watch Z cars.’
‘No. You can’t wait for that. If you’re going back to school tomorrow, you’ll have to go to bed early.’
‘I don’t want to go back to school,’ he protested automatically, his eyes still drawn by the model aeroplanes.
‘Peter, I can’t get Mrs. Hancock to look after you another day. I can’t afford it.’
She ironed one of his shirts while he sat quietly watching the television screen. Then, as she picked up a pair of pants, she said:
‘Why don’t you want to go back to school?’
‘I don’t like school.’
She pressed the iron down heavily and said, ‘Oh, what are we to do? What are we to do?’ The review of the model aeroplane display had ended and the news camera shifted to a factory where the workers were on strike. Peter wriggled round on the divan and looked at his mother. She paid no attention to him. He scuffed the linoleum, and when this failed to attract a rebuke, he gave one or two prolonged sniffs. But Evelyn Cathcart had gone away; she had gone away more surely and irrevocably than the times when she rushed out of the room, declaring that she was leaving him and would never come back. Then, although he was sometimes a little frightened if she stayed out for long, he felt that it was a game in which he was included. But this was one of the other times; the times when his mother retreated into a world of her own where he could never find her. He did not understand what happened at such times; he merely sensed that she had gone away and it terrified him. He began to grizzle, but it had no effect. She pressed the iron down with a slow, deadly determination, her face masklike, the eyes blazing down on the ironing board. Peter’s face was white. After another minute of silence, he put his hands to his ears and started to scream. He had her attention after that.
Once he had worked himself into this state he was well-nigh uncontrollable as the staff at Crossgate School knew to their cost. Now, he tore at his mother like a wild animal, spitting, biting, clawing, kicking and screaming all the while. Before order was restored the dividing curtain was once more pulled down, three plates had been smashed and a carton of sugar spilt on the floor. By the time Evelyn Cathcart had got him to bed he had been sick and she had started one of her bad headaches. She sat beside his bed, staring at him, her face more harrowed than ever.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What is it makes you like this? Is it that school? Is there some trouble there? Have they been taking it out on you because I complained? Tell me, you must tell me.’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know . . .’
He had taken his pillow and was hugging it to him, burrowing into it as though seeking comfort.
‘Peter, answer me. You must answer me. Did Mr. Drew say something to you, were the teachers unkind?’ She tried to pull the pillow away, but he clung to it and began to cry again. She drew away, her back arched like an animal preparing to fight an ancient foe. He sensed the heightened drama and responded by keying up his own performance.
‘You musn’t be afraid,’ she said. ‘I shan’t let them get away with it. Don’t worry; they won’t get away with it.’
‘They’ had been getting away with it all her adult life. When the man with whom she had lived went back to his wife, they had wanted her to put the child in a home, but she would not consider it. She knew the penalty for what she had done, she had been brought up chapel. ‘I brought him into the world,’ she had said. ‘He is my responsibility.’ She went to the chapel regularly and sat at the back where she gained a mournful pleasure singing hymns, such as:
‘I take, O Cross, thy shadow,
For my abiding place!
I ask no other sunshine than
The sunshine of His face;
Content to let the world go by,
To know no gain nor loss—
My sinful self my only shame,
My glory all—the Cross.
Sometimes, in these moments, she experienced a sense of bitter fellowship. The chapel folk tried to welcome her into their midst, but she would have none of that; she knew the place that she must fill in society.
She knew also that one was better off without any help from the do-gooders. They were well-intentioned, but their patience was very limited; they would talk to you for half an hour, an hour, a whole morning, but always in the end there was a withdrawal, as though at a certain level of demand the current of sympathy must be switched off; regretfully, wearily, crisply—the tone varied, the implication never—she was dismissed with, ‘I have tried to explain to you, Miss Cathcart . . .’ ‘I have nothing to add to what I have already told you. Miss Cathcart . . .’‘I don’t think we are going to get anywhere. Miss Cathcart . . .’‘We have been over this ground before. Miss Cathcart . . .’ The Children’s Officer, herself childless, had even had the effrontery to say, ‘You make it difficult to help you, Miss Cathcart . . .’ The trouble, of course, was that they wanted to tell you what was wrong, as though anyone could know better than a mother.
For a time, she had thought that Mr. Drew was different. He had listened when she explained to him about the difficulties of Peter’s upbringing and when, during his second year at school, she had said that Peter was unhappy and felt victimized, Mr. Drew had agreed to move him into another class. But it had all been a particularly subtle form of blackmail. As time went by, he had been less co-operative and it had been suggested that she might be a little more co-operative. ‘We have gone more than half-way to meet you. Miss Cathcart . . .’
She got up from Peter’s bed, which was in a dark recess, and tiptoed across the room to the dresser. The man with the hammer was at work again in her head and she needed another pain killer. What could she do? she wondered, as she filled a glass with water. She could not speak to Mr. Drew; he would undoubtedly be vindictive after the report in the newspaper. She could not go to the education office after her treatment there, and it was no use going to Welfare because they would be in league with the education people. She well-remembered on one occasion the Welfare Officer saying to a caller over the internal telephone, ‘Yes, I have her with me at the moment.’ She had not been deceived by the impassive features.
So where could she go now that she had exhausted authority of one kind or another? Her throat was so dry that she had difficulty in swallowing the tablet. She had allowed herself to be pushed further than she had intended. At first, the account in the newspaper had pleased her; but gradually she had become increasingly apprehensive. The young man in the newspaper office had been so responsive, and he had encouraged her by such statements as ‘That’s what we are here for.’ She had been elated and had talked a great deal. She rinsed the glass, automatically rubbing the rim hard with a dish cloth before drying it. Suppose they said that Peter could not return to Crossgate School? What would she do? It was so near; she could take him there on her way to work in the morning, and Mr. Drew had agreed to let him stay at the school until half¬past four in the afternoon when Mrs. Hancock could collect him. The only alternative was the Marshes School which was much further away and which drew entirely from the council housing estate. She went back to the sitting room. She felt sick and her heart was thumping. She picked up her handbag and took out the purse; her fingers were trembling so much that she could not count the coins so she emptied the contents on to the divan. Three sixpenny pieces and five pennies. That should be enough. She had no very clear idea what she was going to say, except that she must call this thing off before it went any further. Peter was still asleep. She left the door on the latch and ran quickly down the stairs; there was a telephone box only a few hundred yards along the street.
It was a bad line and she could not make him understand who she was at first; then she was so agitated that she could not express herself properly. Her sense of grievance overcame her and she said one or two things that she had not meant to. He said that he would come to see her, which was not what she had intended.
Later, he said angrily to his editor, ‘I tell you the woman was terrified! The boy is afraid to return to school because they have been taking it out on him. She’s a poor creature who has hit out just once in her miserable life and brought the full majesty of local government down on her head. It was pathetic to see the state they had got her into.’
Roger Meakin, with that mixture of naivety and cynicism peculiar to journalists, believed that the unfortunate are invariably virtuous and all officials corrupt. He also believed that right must prevail whoever might be sacrificed in the process. He had no intention of allowing Miss Cathcart to be subdued by authority. Miss Cathcart was the first cause that the Recorder had ever offered him and he cherished her; she was the medium through which he could strike at the things he most hated, bureaucracy, the arrogance of office, the dictatorship of the professional classes. He was fortunate in that his editor shared his crusading zeal.