Pat Barker - Border Crossing

It was odd, he thought. He’d spent hours watching every flicker of expression on Danny’s face, noticing torn cuticles, clean nails, the size of his pupils, minute changes in the way he dressed and held himself. And somehow in the process he’d stopped seeing him. At any rate, stopped seeing what Lauren was seeing now. A quite exceptionally good-looking young man.

Danny had height, good looks, charm. Thirteen years ago, watching him in the witness box, Tom had asked himself, How can so many things be right? With an uncomfortable sense of treading in his own footsteps, he asked it again now.

He set off through the crowds, wanting to get there quickly, hardly knowing whether he was worried about Lauren’s safety (but what could possibly happen to her here?) or simply disconcerted by the sense of exposure that the sight of her and Danny together aroused in him.

He reached her in time to see Danny’s back disappear into the crowd. ‘Who was that?’

‘The boy who tried to drown himself She was flushed. Tm glad I bumped into him. I was wondering what had happened.’

They stood facing each other. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ears in a gesture he was going to have to get used to not seeing. ‘Well,’ she said.

Somewhere a church clock chimed the hour.

‘We ought to be getting back,’ he said, sparing her the need to say it.

They set off, letting the crowds separate them, grateful to be able to postpone, even for a few minutes, the need to say goodbye.

Tom had been living alone, except at weekends, for more than a year now. There was no reason why Lauren’s deciding to get a divorce should make the house seem larger, but it did. He came down next morning to a living room that had expanded to the size of St Pancras Station. Pieces of furniture stood with their backs to the wall, watching him. One false move out of you, mate, they seemed to say, and we’re off too.

He spent the morning trying, and failing, to work. Then he rang his mother, arranged to have supper with her, and over the meal told her the news, which came as no surprise, and left, just after ten o’clock, feeling… brutal. He’d cancelled the future.

When he got back, the house seemed to have become emptier. Ridiculous; he was used to coming home to an empty house. Walking round it — since there was clearly no point in going to bed — he discovered that some rooms were worse than others. The bedroom, surprisingly, was tolerable. He simply switched to sleeping on Lauren’s side. The kitchen was very bad. Even sitting in her chair, he was aware of the noise of his own eating, biting, chewing, swallowing, and he couldn’t stand it. Like feeding time at the zoo. After the first morning he ate breakfast standing up, or walking round the garden, and had supper upstairs on a tray.

The computer screen unnerved him. The winking cursor was both too demanding, and not demanding enough. It could be ignored, as a patient sitting in the chair beside his desk could never have been ignored. He began to search for things to do to take him out of the house. He arranged to see Bernard Greene, Danny’s old headmaster, and he made a list of interviews he needed to do with kids on the Youth Violence Project.

Ryan Price was the first name on the list. Making the appointment wasn’t easy, because Ryan’s mother wasn’t on the phone, but keeping it was worse. He couldn’t take a taxi because no taxi driver would go on to the estate. He couldn’t park outside the house because the car would be stolen or torched by the time he got back, and the bus dropped you off on a corner that had one of the highest rates of muggings in mainland Britain. In the end he drove to the nearest GP’s surgery, left the car in one of their secure parking spaces and walked the rest of the way.

He turned the corner into Belford Street, and saw a police car pulled up on the kerb outside Ryan’s house. Two policemen were getting out. The older one nudged his companion. ‘Hey up, here comes the silver streak.’ A reference to a time, two years earlier, when Tom had got done for speeding. The police never tired of the joke.

‘Which one are you after?’ the older one asked.

Tom shrugged and spread his hands.

‘Well, if it’s Robbie and Craig, you can’t have ‘em.’

Big beer belly on him, the older one, but no swagger, no aggression. The younger one, all feet and Adam’s apple, was already peering into the living-room window.

Jean Price, a thin woman whose eight-month pregnancy barely showed, leapt up from a sofa laden with half-naked children, and ran to the window. ‘What do yous lot think you’re doing? Looking in at my window at half-past eight in the sodding morning?’

‘Howay, Jean. Open the door.’

‘You’re enough to give anybody a heart attack, you.’

‘C’mon, love. We’re only doing our job.’

She knew she had no choice. The door opened. ‘Only doing your job. Pair of bloody piss artists.’

‘We’ve come for Robbie and Craig, Jean. They were supposed to be in court yesterday, weren’t they?’

‘And what’s that got to do with me? It’s not up to me to get them into bloody court, know what I mean?’ She looked over their shoulders at Tom, whom she regarded as an ally, of sorts. ‘Can’t you tell them?’

They followed her into the living room, an almost bare room with an unguarded electric fire. The children, in vests and little else, stared at the policemen with big eyes.

‘Don’t get yourself upset, Jean,’ beer belly said.

‘Don’t get meself upset? I thought you were doing it.’ She raised a finger. ‘Them lads is fifteen and sixteen years. They’re old enough to get theirselves off to court, know what I mean? They get letters from their solicitors reminding them. They can read.’ She bent to pick up a child’s shoe, but couldn’t settle. ‘If they don’t want to go to court, that’s up to them.’

Beer belly went to the foot of the stairs and yelled, ‘Craig? Robbie? Come on down now.’

‘Hands off cocks, on socks,’ the younger one said.

‘Eeh, will you listen at the language in front of them bairns?’ She was talking to Tom now. ‘What the bloody hell am I supposed to do? I was sat in court when I was nine months pregnant with her. Here, this one. She was bloody near born in court, her.’

Beer belly started up the stairs.

‘Oh, make yourself at home, ‘Jean yelled after him. She turned back to Tom. ‘This is harassment, this is. I’ve got eight kids, I’m a single parent, I don’t need this.’ She was struggling to put on a little girl’s socks as she spoke, but her hands shook so badly she had togive up. I’m on tablets for me nerves, as it is. Anybody with kids this hour, they’re getting them offto school, know what I mean?’ She rounded on the police. ‘If you waited half an hour I’d be sat here with a cup of tea, know what I mean? Might even’ve give you one.’

Craig and Robbie tumbled into the room. Immediately Jean started slapping them hard about their heads and shoulders. ‘I haven’t half got summat to tell them about yous, pair of bleeding poofs.’ The police towered over her. ‘Barging in here half-past eight in the pissing morning.’ She turned to Tom. ‘I’m not telling you a word of a lie, I’ve bled every month of this pregnancy. I’m losing now.’

‘Then let’s get you to the doctor,’ Tom said.

‘What’s the point of that? He’d only put me in hospital. Where can I go into hospital?’ She pointed to the children, who stared solemnly back at her. ‘You know as well as I do, if that lot got took into care, I’d never get’em back.’

Robbie finished pulling his trainers on and stood up.

‘Right, then, are we off?’ beer belly said. ‘Can we give you a lift to the station, Jean?’