Pat Barker - Another World

Last year was the best time. Digger and him had been a gang all on their own, people said you couldn’t have a gang with just two, but you could, they were, though probably because nobody else wanted to join. And they made a den on the waste ground behind the railway line. A stream ran through it, with lots of willow trees, small ones, and they always had rags and bits of polythene hanging from the branches. At one point the stream had big pipes going across it, making a kind of bridge, and then on one side it opened out into a swamp and further up there was a steep hill with bushes on the top. Gareth saw you could have a den in the bushes, they were quite thick, nobody’d be able to see in. But what was even better you could dam the stream, flood the marshy ground and turn the whole area into a real bog, like in the Hound of the Baskervilles , and nobody’d know the way through, but they would, and anybody who tried to find the den would sink into the mud with screams and yells, hands clawing and waving in the air until there were just a few bubbles breaking on the surface and the hands sticking out, twitching a bit, and then going still and sliding slowly into the mud. Fucking brilliant.

But the marsh wasn’t easy to flood. He was the one who saw how to do it, nobody else, but by that time they’d turned into a real gang, everybody wanted to join. Even Paul sort of belonged and one night the three of them slept out and Paul spunked up. He said he had and Gareth didn’t disbelieve him for a second because he went all red in the face and there was a new smell in the tent.

He didn’t know why it had gone wrong. Except they all started thieving and one day in Woolies Gareth panicked and ran away and Darryl got nicked and blamed him though it wasn’t his fault and Darryl said he was chicken and Digger joined in and then Darryl started pushing and shoving and trying to make Gareth fight and there was a ring of lads all round yelling and Digger was yelling and when Gareth got knocked over and kicked in the teeth he didn’t do anything, didn’t even say anything. Just looked.

‘Can I go to Metroland?’ he asks.

‘After we get the shoes.’

And after I find somewhere to park, Fran thinks. Round and round, up and down, why couldn’t people stay at home and sunbathe? She’d never expected it to be this busy. She sees a place, on the edge of the road in full sun, but it’ll have to do. Jasper stands patiently while she gets her handbag from under the passenger seat and then puts his hand in hers. ‘All right, off we go.’

Gareth’s dragging his feet, not just figuratively. ‘It’s no wonder your shoes don’t last,’ Fran says, as he scuffs and trails along behind.

The windows of clothes and shoe shops display huge photographs of smiling children, neatly dressed in school uniforms, clutching new pencil cases and satchels, greeting the new term full of energy and hope and youthful vigour.

Twats, Gareth thinks.

Mum stops outside Stead & Simpson. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Let’s have a look in here.’

The next hour’s a nightmare. It’s the sort of thing you’d like to blot out of your consciousness for ever, but you can’t. Fran was afraid, when they set off, that Gareth might be uncooperative, but it’s worse than that. He’s being pseudo-cooperative. Every shoe in the shop’s on the floor in front of them. Gareth’s still limping obediently up and down. ‘No, it’s too tight,’ he says, shaking his head regretfully. ‘Would you like to try the other one?’ says the assistant. ‘What’s the point of trying the other one if this one’s too tight?’ Gareth snaps. Mask slipped a bit there. He forces a smile.

‘No good, I’m afraid,’ the assistant says to Fran. She wants them out of the shop. Jasper, excited by the idea of taking shoes out of boxes — he’s been watching her do it for an hour — decides to join in. Soon high-heeled shoes from the ladies’ display stand are flying through the air. It’s time to retreat.

Outside Fran says to Gareth, ‘If you ever show me up like that again, I’ll bloody murder you.’

‘What have I done? It was him hoying shoes.’

Fran walks on.

‘But of course that’s all right, isn’t it, he never gets wrong for anything.’

‘He’s a baby. He doesn’t understand.’

‘Anyway they don’t wear shoes like that.’

‘Black shoes, Gareth. It says on the list.’

‘I know what it says . But they wear trainers.’

He can’t understand why she doesn’t get it. If he goes to school wearing shoes like that he’ll get filled in. And then he thinks, What does it matter? He’ll get filled in anyway.

Barratt’s next. Jasper can’t believe his luck, and immediately starts following the lady round, taking shoes off the stands and hurling them across the floor with shrieks of joy. Fran, desperate, taps him on the leg, not hard, but he starts to scream. Several women turn to stare at her. Rotten lousy mother, she hears them thinking. Can’t control her child without resorting to slaps. ‘No, it rubs a bit at the back,’ she hears Gareth saying. Dragging a screaming Jasper by the arm, Fran marches across and says, ‘We’ll take those.’

By the time she gets them out of the shop Jasper’s dancing with rage. Fran kneels down and tries to reason with him. Several women turn to stare at her. Stupid, middle-class, Hampstead-style mother, she hears them thinking. Can’t she see what that child needs is a good slap?

And then Gareth starts, and that’s terrible because a two-year-old having a temper tantrum’s just normal. An eleven-year-old boy having one’s a case for family therapy. She offers him money to go to Metroland, too much money, she’s bribing him, she knows she is, she doesn’t care, and then, guiltily relieved to see the back of him, takes Jasper into Mothercare. He’s quiet now, upstaged by Gareth’s performance, by how much sheer noise Gareth can make.

Twenty minutes later Fran’s in a communal changing room trying on shirts, about the only garment she can get into now that will still fit her after the birth. The room’s crowded, but at least Fran’s spared the usual feelings of inadequacy. She has a cast-iron excuse for having no waist. Jasper’s sitting on the bench staring at a little girl, a few feet away, who’s sucking her thumb and watching her mother try on dresses. That’s what I could do with, Fran thinks. A bit of mother — daughter bonding. ‘What do you think?’ the mother says, craning round to see her back view in the mirror.

The little girl takes her thumb out of her mouth, and says, ‘Your bum’s wobbly.’

The woman and Fran exchange glances and laugh. Cancel the mother — daughter bonding, Fran thinks. I’ll settle for a football team.

Five minutes later Jasper’s near the end of his tether, grizzling and pulling his ears. Fran pays, scrabbling about for her Access card, and in the process drops all her bags. Blowing wisps of hair out of her eyes, she picks them up again, but by this time Jasper’s run out of the shop. She chases him, grabs him by the hand, pulls him, screaming, back to the counter, collects her things together again, forgets the blouse, goes back, gets it, finally sets off for Metroland, where she finds Gareth absorbed in a game that involves two vaguely oriental-looking gentlemen taking it in turns to kick each other in the head.

‘Come on, Gareth.’

‘Aw, Ma-am.’

‘No, look, Gareth, come on. If we go now we can get a video. You can choose it.’

For a moment it looks as if she’s in for another temper tantrum — he hasn’t been this bad for a long time — but then, with a final tap and pull of levers, Gareth gives in. Laden with bags, Jasper running on ahead, Gareth trailing behind, Fran trudges to the car and reaches for her keys. No keys. No handbag. Christ . Where can she have left it? For a few moments her mind isn’t blank, it’s a jumble. She sees herself on a bank of video surveillance screens going into half a dozen shops at once. All those shops, but no, wait a minute, she had the bag just now in the dress shop. She had to scrabble about in the bottom to find the Access card. Oh, Christ, the Access card. All her credit cards, car keys, cheque book, house keys.