The Outside Child Read online

  Either way, this battered old birth certificate was clearly mine. Jane, plain Jane, no second name, born on the second of May. Mother, Margaret Alisoun Tucker. Father, Horatio Edward Tucker. All of 44, Shipshape Street, in the Metropolitan District of Bow.

  *

  I don’t know how I lived through the rest of that day. I was desperate to tell Plato. I didn’t dare ring him. His mother would be out of the bath by now and draped on the sofa with her cigarettes and gin at the ready, in preparation for a delirious evening of Scrabble. (If this sounds as if I didn’t have much patience with Plato’s mother at this time, then it sounds right!)

  Besides, Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie came home about half an hour later. And because they were tired, Aunt Sophie from drumming, and Aunt Bill from wearing shoes and not being able to finish her thistle picture, I had to get supper for all of us. Not that I minded.

  I meant to creep downstairs after the Aunts were in bed and look through the telephone directory for Horatio Tuckers, but although I thought I could keep myself awake by reciting long poems in Backspeak, I hardly got beyond Ts Senga Eve, ha rettib llihc ti saw, before I found myself drifting away under the soft featheriness of the duvet.

  *

  When I woke, it was morning and later than usual. Too late to walk to school, so Aunt Bill had to drive me in Rattlebones. (The school where Aunt Sophie taught the piano was in a different direction, and, anyway, she usually went on her bike.)

  I said, “You know that album you did of me, all my birthday pictures? I was looking at it yesterday and there isn’t one of me when I was three. Was it raining?”

  “Can’t remember.” She didn’t sound very interested.

  I said, “I never noticed before. I suppose I spent longer looking because I was left on my own and wanted something quiet to do.” I thought that might make her feel guilty. In case it didn’t, I added pathetically, “I wasn’t feeling very well.”

  “All right now, aren’t you?”

  “Mmm. I just wondered …”

  She said nothing. Perhaps she hadn’t heard me. Except when Rattlebones was resting in a traffic jam, or at a red light, this conversation was conducted at the top of our voices.

  I said, “I only mean, it seems odd. There’s one of me at two, and one of me at four, and one of me …”

  “I stuck them in the album. I do remember.”

  “I thought you would. I said to myself, Aunt Bill always remembers.”

  “Kind of you.” She glanced at me with half of a smile. Then she said, “It’s not a big secret. You spent your third birthday with your father and Amy. When they got married, he thought, they both thought, you should live with them. There was nothing we could say. It seemed natural and sensible. But it turned out you were too young to transplant. You came back to us. Came home. And that was the end of it. All’s well that ends well.”

  I said, “I’m glad I came back. But why didn’t Amy like me? What did I do wrong?”

  “Who said anything about doing wrong? Heavens above, you were only a baby. No one could blame you!”

  “Did anyone blame me?”

  “No. No, of course not.” But the veins in her cheek had suddenly reddened.

  She stopped outside the school and said firmly and almost crossly, “Don’t make a meal of it, poppet. Maybe it would have been better if we’d told you before. But it never seemed the right moment. Hard to know what to say to a child about adult foolishness. Your father loves Amy, but that’s not to deny she’s a difficult woman. And I daresay Sophie and I were difficult too, and made things harder for her than we need have done. But we’d had the care of you since you were a few days old. We couldn’t just hand you over, wave goodbye, and wash our hands of you. We loved you too much. And of course Amy thought we criticised her all the time. A couple of interfering old maids. Nutty as fruit cakes. Ha!” She gave a loud, indignant snort. “Your father was caught in the crossfire. Ducking for cover as usual!”

  This was all quite interesting, but not what I wanted to know. I didn’t care how they had all felt. It was a long time ago and nothing to do with me anymore. I wanted to know about Annabel and George but there was no point in asking Aunt Bill. She was only interested in the grown-ups, not in the children. I would be wasting my breath.

  Chapter Five

  “I expect it was Amy who tore up your birth certificate,” Plato said. “Then thought she’d gone too far and stuck it together again. I bet my stepmother would like to tear me up sometimes!”

  I thought that Plato must be a discouraging stepson. Always watching and judging.

  I said, “Stepmothers are not always awful. Only in books.”

  “And in my experience, too,” Plato said. Then he looked a little shame-faced. “That’s not fair! My experience is limited to one, and she’s no worse than my mother and father. In fact she’s a whole lot better in some ways. She doesn’t smoke or knock back the gin, and even if she doesn’t like me very much, I can’t really say that’s a black mark against her. And she likes Aliki and Aliki likes her. Aliki was coming to England this summer. But there was a letter for my mother this morning. Aliki wants to stay in the States for the holidays and go with THEM to a house on a lake. They asked me to come, but I can’t, of course.” He pulled a sour face and sighed. “Someone has to look out for my mother.”

  “Is she very upset about Aliki?”

  “She will be, soon as she opens the letter. I shoved it at the bottom of the pile once I’d gummed it up again, but she’ll have read it by now.”

  It was after school. Plato had been riding me around on his cross bar, looking for a telephone box that was working and had a directory in it. We had found one outside the post office and were waiting for the fat lady inside to finish her conversation. I said, “Perhaps she’ll be over the worst by the time you get home.”

  “You’re hopeful,” Plato said. He looked tired, but perhaps it was only his asthma; it must have been an effort, pedalling my weight on his bike. He was wheezing a bit; his voice sounded dusty. He said, “I’m fed up, too. I was looking forward to seeing Aliki.”

  I felt ashamed because I was glad that she wasn’t coming. I said, “You’ll have me. We might go to Dorset to stay with some friends for a week, but that’s all. But I suppose I’m not as good as a sister!”

  “Just as good. Just not the same. She’s younger than me. I have to look after her. So it’s different from a friend. I mean, I have to worry about her.”

  I thought, I would probably worry about Annabel and George if I knew them. Only I didn’t. I hadn’t been allowed to. I said, crossly, “I wouldn’t know about that. It sounds soppy to me.”

  “Yako,” Plato said.

  “What do you mean? Okay what?”

  “Yako, stel og.”

  He got on his bike.

  I said, “Let’s go where?”

  The fat lady had finished her call and was backing out of the telephone box, laden with shopping bags, pushing the door with her big bottom. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. She beamed at us. “I’m always like that when I get on to my sister!”

  “That’s all right,” Plato said, smiling back. Then, to me, “Let’s go anywhere. Home, if you like. No point in hanging round here if you think being interested in your brother and sister is soppy.”

  “Don’t be a pig.”

  “Is that what I am? I know that I snort and snuffle, though it’s not polite to rub it in, is it? But I wasn’t aware that I walked on four legs. And you’d have to fatten me up quite a lot to make me worth killing for bacon.”

  He giggled at his own brilliant wit. I felt murderous.

  I said, “If you go on like that, I’ll kill you just for the thrill of it. I’m not surprised your stepmother doesn’t like you if you make stupid jokes all the time … Oh, please, Plato! It’s not fair! You know I can’t do it without you. If we got the right number, it would be awful if I’d made the call. My father might answer!”

  “So? No reason why you sho
uldn’t ring him up, is there?”

  The idea made me feel sick. And so cold that I actually started to shiver. How I felt must have shown in my face because he got off his bike at once. He said, “You’re right, I’m a pig. A foul pig. Though I believe if pigs are given the chance to keep clean, they’re quite fastidious animals.” He opened the door of the telephone box.

  I said, “Don’t tease me, Plato!”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.” He took his glasses off to read the directory and he looked different without them. Naked, and younger. He frowned, and muttered under his breath, “Tucker, F. Tucker, F. E. Tucker, Frederick. Tucker, G. Tucker, Georgina. Tucker, G. W. Family Butcher. Tucker, H. Tucker, H. A….”

  I said, “Stop, Plato. I feel faint. My head’s swimmy and my hands have gone sticky.”

  “Girls!” he said. “Sit down and put your head between your knees. Do you want me to stop?”

  He peered blindly at me. I shook my head.

  “Tucker, H. E. is Oakwood Avenue, SW14, which is somewhere like Barnes, I think. Tucker, Harold …” He let out a triumphant crow. “Hang on, Jane. We’ve got him. Tucker, Horatio …”

  I hung on to the door of the telephone box. I couldn’t speak.

  “Shipshape Street, E3,” Plato said. “But not 44, I’m afraid. Number 22. Looks as if he moved up the road. It may not be him, of course.”

  He put his glasses back on and blinked at me. Although he smiled, I knew he was almost as scared as I was. He took his inhaler out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it back. Then he took out the phone card that his mother insisted he carry with him in case he should have an accident and need to ring home. He said, “Shall I?”

  “Suppose they guess?”

  “They won’t. I meant, do you want me to? Really?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can’t do any harm,” he said thoughtfully—as if he were persuading himself rather than me. He took his inhaler out again and this time he used it. Then he punched the buttons. I could hear the number ringing. Ringing and ringing. I thought that they must be out and felt weak with relief. Then someone answered. Plato looked at me and winked. He said, using the deep voice he always seemed able to produce when he wanted, “Good afternoon. Is that Mrs Tucker? Do you have a few moments to answer one or two questions? This is a government survey.”

  I could hear a female voice quacking briefly, though not what she said.

  “Education,” Plato said. “It won’t take long, Mrs Tucker. I am a civil servant working in the Ministry of Education. Would you be so good as to tell me how many children you have, and their ages?” He paused, the female voice quacked. “A boy and a girl,” Plato said. “And the girl is the older. Thank you, Mrs Tucker. Now, if I may know your husband’s occupation?” More quacking. “A marine engineer,” Plato said. “A mariner. That must mean a fairly lonely life for you, Mrs Tucker. Still, the children keep you company, I suppose. Now all I need is the name of the school they attend at the moment.” He listened. “Shipshape Primary, thank you, Mrs Tucker. That is the name of your street, so I assume it must be conveniently near. Convenience is one of the matters we are covering in our survey. Thank you, Mrs Tucker. You have been most helpful. My name, should you wish to check my credentials, is Theodore Roosevelt. Like the famous American President. Thank you again. And good day to you.”

  He put the telephone down and looked at me. He had sounded so solemnly grown-up. Now he was just a little boy who had played a joke on someone, spreading his hand across his mouth and sniggering through his fingers.

  I said, “That was wonderful. I could never have done it!”

  “I got in some practice last night. I started off pretending I was doing research for a drug company, asking how many people there were in the family and what sort of medicines they took, but that didn’t work so well. People don’t like to tell you they take laxatives or stomach pills. And the people who didn’t mind sounded old. Too old to have children. So I thought about education. It seemed the obvious thing.”

  I thought it was bad for him to be so pleased with himself. I said, “Why didn’t you ask HER what she did for a job? It’s old-fashioned to think it’s only husbands go out to work.”

  “Sexist, you mean. I did think of that. But then I thought, since they must realise I know their address, they might think I was a burglar trying to find out if they were out in the day.”

  “You didn’t sound like a burglar. You sounded respectable.”

  “Some burglars must sound respectable. I just didn’t want anyone to start worrying after they’d put the phone down. People don’t worry about education.”

  I said, “What did SHE sound like?”

  “Quite nice. Quite young. A bit proud.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “As if she was putting on her best manners in case I was someone important. But if she’d decided I wasn’t, she might have turned haughty. Why don’t you ring yourself, if you’re curious?”

  I found myself trembling. “I couldn’t!”

  “You don’t have to say who you are. You can pretend you’ve got a wrong number.”

  “It might not be them.”

  “Then it wouldn’t matter, would it? Ask for Elizabeth Tucker. Say, is that Elizabeth Tucker? She might say, no, this is Amy. Then we’d be certain we’d got the right people.”

  “There can’t be two Horatio Tuckers who live in Shipshape Street with a wife and two children!”

  “Why sound so gloomy? Didn’t you want to find them?”

  A man said, “You children quite finished?”

  He had a pink, shiny face like a satin cushion with a pinched button mouth in the middle. He said, “Telephone boxes are not places to play in, you know.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” Plato said. He stood aside and held the door open. “Though we weren’t playing. My poor grandmother has just fallen downstairs and broken both her legs and her collar bone, and my father has sent me to ring my uncles and aunts. We’ve got a telephone at home but it’s been cut off because my father lost his job last month and we haven’t paid the bill.”

  The man was looking startled. He said, “Well, in that case …”

  “Oh, no, Sir,” Plato said. “Please make your call. I’m sure it’s important. And as one of my uncles is out, I have to wait and try again in a minute. So if you won’t be too long …” He sighed and shook his head sorrowfully. “My grandmother is ninety-seven. The doctors don’t hold out much hope. And of course she would like to see her children before …”

  The man said hastily, “Very natural. I won’t hold up your errand of mercy too long.”

  He went into the telephone box and closed the door behind him. I said, “He didn’t believe you.”

  “Not altogether,” Plato said. “But he can’t be sure, can he?”

  He stood where the man could see him and looked anxious and solemn.

  I tried to make him laugh. I said, “I’m sorry about your grandmother. Did she fall or was she pushed?”

  “It’s terrible to make jokes about a poor dying woman,” Plato said. And then, with no change of tone or expression, “We’ve got a couple of days off next week. All the lower forms, while the Upper School are doing exams. Primary schools aren’t on holiday. We could hang around Shipshape Street and check on the kids going home.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “Other side of the city. I looked in the A to Z. We’d have to go up to Waterloo on the train and then on the Underground.”

  I said, “I’m not allowed to go to London on my own.”

  “You wouldn’t be alone. You’d be with me. And you don’t have to tell your aunts anyway. Just go off as if you were going to school.”

  “They’ll know that I’m not! We always get a note to take home when we have a free day.”

  Plato looked at me pityingly. “Whatever for? I never give notes to my mother. It’s the only way I ever get any time to myself.”

  I felt dreadfully stupid. It had never oc
curred to me to hide anything from Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie even though they were stricter about where I went and what time I came home than most parents. Plato was younger than I was. But in some ways he seemed a lot older. “I suppose …” I began.

  “Kool das,” Plato hissed. He hung his head and looked even more dejected.

  The man came out of the booth. He said, “All yours now. I hope you have better news of your grandmother when you get home.”

  Plato smiled bravely. “Thank you, Sir.” He kept his head down while the man walked away. Then he grinned at me. “You going to ring?”

  “Yako,” I said.

  It was like the moment in a flying dream just before you fall over the edge of the cliff. The telephone rang and rang. Plato whispered, “She took a long time to answer me, too. Perhaps they’re all in the garden.”

  Playing with the children, I thought. Perhaps my father was pushing Annabel on the swing. Or teaching George to ride his bicycle. In my mind I saw them in tall, flowery grass, running and laughing.

  The telephone rang. And rang. Then someone picked it up and my stomach turned over.

  “Hallo,” my father said.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. I was frozen.

  “Ted Tucker here,” my father said. “Who is it?”

  Another voice joined in. A little, high voice. “Hallo. Hallo.”

  “Put the phone down, George darling,” my father said.

  “I want to speak, Daddy. I want to speak on the telephone.”

  My father laughed. “Hallo, George. Goodbye, George.”

  “I don’t want to speak to you, Daddy. I want to speak to the people.”

  I thought, he is on an extension! If my father puts his receiver down, I could say, “Hallo, George.”

  But my father laughed again. He said, “It’s all right, Georgie. You can put the phone down. There isn’t anyone to speak to. There isn’t anyone there.”

  Chapter Six

  I ate school dinners but Plato took a packed lunch because his mother was afraid of germs in the school kitchen. I could have got up early and taken something from the fridge, but I felt bad enough letting Aunt Bill and Aunt Sophie think I was going to school just as usual, without cheating in that way as well. Besides, I knew that Plato, who packed his own lunches because his mother was always too tired to get up in the mornings, would have plenty for both of us.