mothers, the deputy secretary thought no more of it: Victoria would be all right.
When Victoria woke from a short anxious sleep, into this unfamiliar place, Edward was seated at a very big table, and a tall woman, with her blonde hair down all around her face, sat opposite, leaning her arms on the table. Victoria had seen her in the playground coming to pick up Thomas.
Victoria kept quiet for a little, afraid to make her existence known, but then Edward, who had been keeping an eye on her, cried out, ‘Oh, Victoria, you’re awake, come and have some supper. This is Victoria,’ he told his mother, who said, ‘Hello, Victoria,’ and finished some remark she had been making to her son. That a little girl she didn’t know was asleep in her kitchen was nothing that needed comment. Edward’s friends, and Thomas’s, washed in and out of her house on social or school tides, and she welcomed them all. Thomas’s social life, in particular, since he was after all only seven and could not come and go like twelve-year-old Edward, was a bit of a trial, being such a complicated network of visits to this or that attraction, planetarium, museums, river boats, friends, sleep-overs, sleepins, eat-overs. Making events match with kids and times was a feat of organisation. She was pleased, rather than not, that the little girl was black because, as she never stopped complaining to Edward, his friends were all much too white, now that we lived in a multicultural society.
Why was Thomas at a very inferior school? Ideology. Mostly his father’s, Lionel, who was an old-fashioned socialist. While Thomas would certainly be lifted out and up into one of the good schools, at the right time, he was taking his chances in the lowest depths now. The phrase was Jessy’s, when engaged in altercation with her ex-husband, ‘Here is news from the lower depths,’ she would cry, announcing measles or some contretemps with a bill she could not pay. But she made the most of a situation she deplored, because she was able to look her less principled friends in the eye and say, ‘I’m sorry, but he has to know how the other half lives. Lionel insists.’
Victoria was lifted, put into a chair where her chin barely appeared over the edge of the table, and Edward adjusted the situation with big fat cushions. ‘And now, what do you feel like eating, Victoria?’
Victoria was not used to being asked and since nothing she saw on the table seemed familiar, looked helpless, and even ready to cry again. Edward understood and simply piled a plate with what he was eating, which happened to be Thai takeaway that Jessy had brought home, stuffed tomatoes from last night’s supper, and left over savoury rice. Victoria was hungry, and she did try, but only the rice seemed to meet with the approval of her stomach. Edward, who watched her – well, like an elder brother, as he would Thomas – found her some cake. That was better and she ate it all.
Jessy silently observed, her plate untouched, the cup of tea between her long hands held below her mouth, so steam went up past her face. Her eyes were large and green and Victoria thought they were witches’ eyes. Her mother talked often about witches, and while her aunt never did, it was her mother’s sing-song incantory voice that stayed in the child’s mind, explaining the bad things that happened. And they so often did.
‘Well, what are we going to do with you, Victoria?’ at last said Jessy Staveney, carelessly enough, as she might have done with any of the small children who appeared and had to be dealt with.
At this, tears sprang into Victoria’s eyes and she wailed. Even worse than the witchy eyes, ever since she could remember, even before her mother died, What shall I, what are we, what should I do with Victoria, was the refrain of her days and nights. She had been so often in the way, with her mother’s uncles. She was in the way when her mother had wanted to go to work, but did not know what to do with her, her child Victoria. And she knew her aunt Marion had not really wanted her, though she was always kind.
‘Poor little girl, she’s tired,’ said Jessy. ‘Well, I’ve got to get off. I’ve got a client’s first play at the Comedy and I must be there. Perhaps Victoria should just stay the night?’ she said to Edward, whose own eyes were full of tears too, so terribly, so unforgivably guilty, did he feel about everything.
Victoria was sitting straight up, her fists down by her sides, her face turned up to the ceiling from where struck a clear and truthful light illuminating the hopelessness of her despair. She sobbed, eyes tight shut.
‘Poor child,’ Jessy summed up, and departed.
Edward, who had not yet taken in that this child was not perhaps six, or seven, now came around to her, picked her up, put her on his lap, and sat clutching her tight. Her tears wetted his shoulder and the heat and fret of the taut little body made him feel not much better than a murderer.
‘Victoria,’ he said, in the intervals of her sobs, ‘shouldn’t I telephone somebody to say you are here?’
‘My auntie’s in hospital.’
‘Who else do you go to?’ – thinking of the networks of people used by him and by Thomas.
‘My auntie’s friend.’
At last necessity stopped Victoria’s sobs. She said her auntie’s friend was Mrs Chadwick, yes, there was a telephone.
Edward rang several Chadwicks until he reached a girl who said her mother was out. She was Bessie. Yes, she thought it would be all right if Victoria stayed the night. There was no bed for her here tonight: Bessie had her friends in to watch videos.
‘That’s all right, then,’ said Edward, abandoning his own plans for the evening. This necessitated several more telephone calls.
Meanwhile, Victoria was wandering about the great room, which she had not yet really understood was the kitchen, staring, but not touching, and she was wondering, Where are the beds?
There were no beds.
‘Where do you sleep, then?’ she asked Edward.
‘In my bedroom.’
‘Isn’t this your room?’
‘This is the kitchen.’
‘Where are all the other people?’
He had no idea what she meant. He sat, telephone silent in front of him, leaning his head on a fist, contemplating the child.
At last he said, hoping that this was what she was on about, ‘My mothers room is at the top of the house, and I have a room just up the stairs, and so does Thomas.’
Some monstrous truth seemed trying to get admittance into Victoria’s already over-stretched brain. It sounded as if he was saying this room did not comprise all their home. Victoria slept on a pull-out bed in her aunt’s lounge. She was not taking it in: she could not. She subsided back into the big chair which was like a hug, and actually put her thumb in her mouth though she was telling herself, You’re not a baby, stop it.
Who else lives here, she wanted to ask, but did not dare. Where are all the other people?
Edward was looking steadily at her, hoping for enlightenment. That anguished little face … those hot eyes … He followed his instincts, went to her, picked her up, cradled her.
‘I’ll tell you a story,’ he said.
And he began on The Three Bears, which Victoria had seen on television. She had not really thought before that you could listen to a story, without seeing it in pictures. A voice, without pictures: she liked this new thing, the kind boy’s voice, just above her head, and the way he changed it to fit Big Bear, Middle Bear
