It was stuffy in the little room with the door shut and I felt hot.
Mr Rainbird half smiled. ‘Some people would say that’s no bad thing.’
I knew he said it not as a teacher and head of Year Seven, but as himself. I wondered if he was married and whether his wife was the sort who thinks all men are monsters.
I smiled back. ‘In Jack’s case, a father figure would be helpful.’
The root of Jack’s problem was with me, but the root of that problem went back much further. Back beyond Stanley, even Tony. I could do relationships with women, I reckoned, but I got it wrong with men. From Ted onwards. The smile suddenly dried on my mouth. I blinked, afraid of another surge of irrational tears.
‘So, what should we do?’ Mr Rainbird asked. He was looking down at his hands and I knew it was to give me a chance to recompose myself. ‘He can’t afford to go on missing lessons.’
I stared hard at the pile of exercise books until I had my face under control. ‘I’ll go home and talk to him. I’ll try and get to the root of this. And I’ll make sure he comes to school on Monday.’
‘I’ll talk to him too,’ he said. ‘Maybe between us we can work out what the problem is. What do you think he’s doing instead of being at school?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think he’s doing anything. I think he’s … just killing time.’ He was waiting for this to be over, dreaming of when he would be old enough to change something for himself. I remembered how that was.
We both stood up and Mr Rainbird edged round his desk to open the door for me. In the confined space he had to reach past me and his shirtsleeve brushed against my shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes, thanks.’ I wondered how distraught I actually looked.
‘We’ll speak again, then.’ He didn’t attempt any empty reassurances and he didn’t make authoritarian demands. I liked him. We shook hands a second time and I retraced my path down the corridor and out to the gates. The school was quiet and empty now, the tide reaching its low ebb.
Jack was sitting in his accustomed place. There was plenty of evidence of toast, cheese, jam and yoghurt having been eaten. It was no wonder that he came home hungry. He would have had almost nothing to eat since breakfast because he went out with only enough money for a bus fare and a phone call home. We both knew that to take any more would only attract muggers. Jason Smith, he once told me, had had forty pounds in his pocket in school one day and made the mistake of mentioning it.
I made myself a cup of tea and swept up some of the food debris. I could feel Jack tensely waiting for me to say something. He had been waiting yesterday too, and the day before, and when I didn’t the relief had allowed him to fall into a doze.
I turned off the television and sat down with my tea. ‘I’ve just been to see Mr Rainbird.’
He flinched, just a little. I waited, but he didn’t volunteer anything.
‘I want you to tell me why you haven’t been to school for three days.’
His face was a crescent of misery. I had been keeping my imagination in check but now it broke loose and galloped away from me. I pictured drug deals, the skinny shifty kids who hung around by the canal, a leering fat man beckoning from a doorway. The images catapulted me out of my chair and I grabbed Jack by the arms and shook him hard. ‘Where’ve you been?’ I yelled. ‘Who have you been with?’
He stared at me. His eyes had rings under them and there was dirt and jam around his mouth.
‘Where? Who?’ I shouted again and my shaking made his head wobble.
‘Nowhere,’ he breathed. ‘Just … nowhere.’
‘You must have been somewhere.’
‘I walked around. Sat on a bench. Then when it was time to come home, I came home.’
‘For three whole days?’
He nodded, mute and despairing.
I sank back on my heels and tried to take stock. I wouldn’t gain anything by allowing anger to balloon out of my fears for him. ‘That must have been horrible. Much worse than going to school. You must have felt lonely.’
If he had let some pervert befriend him, if he had been sniffing glue out of a brown-paper bag, or stealing from Sue’s Superette on the corner, or buying crack or other things that I couldn’t even imagine, would he give me a clue?
He said, ‘I watched the pigeons. They’re filthy. Did you know that there are hardly any sparrows left in London?’
I closed my eyes for a second. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or infuriated. ‘Let’s not talk about birds right now, Jack. Let’s try to work out exactly what it is about going to school that makes you so miserable you’d rather sit alone on a bench all day.’
He appeared to consider the matter. I looked at the way that tufts of hair partly exposed the pink lobe of his ear and the prickle of recent acne along his jawline. In profile he resembled Tony, increasingly so now that his proper face was emerging out of the putty softness of childhood.
‘I dunno.’ The shrug again.
‘Yes, you do. Is someone picking on you? A teacher? Other kids?’
‘Not really. They think I’m sad. But I think they’re even sadder.’
The rock of his unhappiness held glinting seams of mineral disdain. Jack was sharp-witted and he wouldn’t have much time for losers, even though he might currently consider himself to be one.
‘All of them? Everyone? Isn’t there anyone you like or admire?’
‘Mr Rainbird’s okay. Most of the girls are just lame, they’re always sniggering and whispering and fooling about. Some of the boys are all right. People like Wes Gordon and Jason Smith. But they wouldn’t be interested in me. And the rest are dumb.’
This was the most information he had volunteered in about six months, since the end of the maddening old days when he used to respond to every remark or instruction with ‘why?’.
I supposed Wes and Jason would be the cool ones, big, blunt-faced boys surrounded by hangers-on like those I had seen swaggering out of school this afternoon. I couldn’t see Jack in their company any more than he could see himself.
I pushed my luck. ‘Go on.’
His face contracted with irritation and his shoulders hunched up. It was just like watching a hermit crab pull back into its shell.
‘That’s all,’ he snapped. ‘You always want stuff. There’s nothing, all right? I’ll go back to school on Monday if that’s what you want.’
‘I want you to want to go. What I want isn’t important.’
His head lifted then and he stared straight at me. It was a full-on, cold, appraising stare that told me Jack wasn’t my baby any more. ‘Is that so?’ he sneered.
I
