Dying Flames (10 page)

“He and I have always been good mates. We get on, because we have to. I think it would be best if I went on my own. I could feel a fool, of course: we don't know yet whether he's actually here.”

But they soon did. They were interrupted by the front door opening. Two shadowy figures were just visible in the hall, but through the door came Adam, his school-bag on his back, walking with a hangdog slump to his shoulders. The fire of his departure from Luigi's was now burning low. Christa's face twisted with pity. She wound down the window and called his name softly as he came out through the gate onto the street.

“Adam.”

He jumped, looked as if he might run, then saw her face.

“Did they chuck you out?” Christa asked.

“Yes. They wouldn't even let me stay overnight—just said I ought to go home and make it up with Mother.”

“You'd have a job. She's gone off again.”

“With a man?”

“What do you think? She left a note…. Why don't you get into the car?”

Adam, without reluctance, got in. His relief was palpable, but so was his sheepishness. Christa slipped out of the car and got into the backseat with him.

“I'm sorry I jumped,” Adam muttered. “You get strange ideas…”

“I'm sure you do,” said Graham. “It seems so easy, living rough, when you think about it, but it's hard and dangerous when you try it.”

“Yeah…. But I don't know what to do. I mean, even if Mum's not there, going home seems—”

“A bit of a climb down. Yes. Anyway, I'm not sure it's a good idea. Your mother comes home, there you both are all safe and she gets the idea that taking off is somehow
all right.
…And in my book it isn't. There's your grandfather.”

Christa made a face. “He'd cope for a few days, but he wouldn't like it. He's not great with people our age. If Kath was there, it would be better—”

“Kath from Bidford?”

“That's right. They get on really well together. There's Grandma Webster in Stanway, but it's a bit the same there: we love her, and she loves us coming on a visit, but anything more than a few hours she's not too happy about.”

“Look,” said Graham, starting the car. “We shouldn't be discussing this, late at night on a drizzly street after a difficult evening. I live an hour away, Adam. I've got a guest bedroom and a little box of a room. Will you both come back with me, for a night or two at least? So we can discuss what should happen next, without any pressure?”

“Yes,” said Adam, trying to keep the extent of his relief out of his voice. But he added, “It's very kind of you.”

“Not at all. Peggy seemed to think that because I had nothing to do with Terry, I was a bit responsible for you two.”

“That's just garbage,” said Adam bitterly. “Peggy's garbage. The sort of thing she thinks up to get people to do the things she ought to be doing herself.”

“I rather think you're right,” said Graham. “Especially as Peggy didn't have a lot to do with Terry's upbringing herself. So regard this as just a lonely middle-aged author getting himself a bit of companionship for a while, between books.”

“I'd better ring Grandad,” said Christa, taking out her mobile. She pressed numbers expertly in the near darkness, then said, “He's on Answer. He almost never does that. He must have put it on when he went back home, to keep in touch tonight…. Grandad, we've found Adam. He's fine. We're all going down to Hepton Magna, to stay with Graham for the night. Love you.” She put her mobile away. “I bet he's relieved.”

They were beginning to leave the hideous parts of Essex that were no more than London suburbs. Graham could see in his mirror that in the backseat Adam's head was resting on Christa's shoulder, his eyes shut. It was ten minutes later, when he saw Adam waking up and blinking, that he said:

“It doesn't have to be just a night at my place, you know. We ought to sit down tomorrow and decide exactly what is best for
you two.
”

Christa thought about this.

“You think it might be a good idea for us to get away from Romford for a bit, don't you?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

“That means get away from Mum.”

“Well…I shouldn't judge her…. I don't think your mother behaved very well tonight. I don't think she put your interests first.”

There was a duet of chortles and snorts from the back.

“You don't have to be embarrassed about criticizing Mum,” said Christa. “Our family is not a mother and two children, it's three independent people. Mother has
never
put our interests first, so we don't owe her, and certainly don't give her, any particular respect as a parent.”

“I see…I do feel in a way that she should be taught not to take you for granted—that she can't just come back and you children would move back in and everything would revert to normal.”

“Teach her a lesson, you mean?”

“In a way, yes.”

“She'd think all her birthdays had come at once.” There was now an outright burst of laughter from the back. “She's wanted to get rid of us for years, you know. It would give her her ‘freedom.' She's happy with Terry because he doesn't threaten her freedom in any way.”

“Not that we stop her doing anything much,” said Adam.

“You're probably right,” said Graham. “But that shouldn't stop us doing anything if that thing is the best for
you.
I think it would be advisable to try to find a school for Adam—just temporarily. It would make it clear that he does have other choices, and it would look good if the authorities start sticking their noses in. And then there's you, Christa, and your courses at the Jeremy Bentham College.”

“They're pretty understanding there, especially about difficult home conditions. If you could get me to a railway station, I could stay the night in Romford when I need to, otherwise work from home. Your home. I'll need to collect books and clothes and things from Milton Terrace.”

“These are all just possibilities, of course,” said Graham. “What do you say, Adam?”

“I don't know…. It's very nice of you…but I was hoping to get selected for the underfifteens.”

“This is a lot more important than the underfifteens,” said Christa tartly.

Graham rushed in with balm.

“Romford is a place with a big catchment area. I'm not an expert, but I should have thought if you're considered promising in a Romford school, you'll be considered bloody brilliant in any school you might go to in my part of the world.”

“Oh? I hadn't thought of that,” said Adam.

Ten minutes later he said:

“It would have to be a football school. I wouldn't go to a rugger school.”

“Of course,” said Graham with a straight face.

Never underestimate the elasticity of youth, he said to himself. Whenever, as he covered the journey to home, he could see Adam's face in the mirror, he was looking out of a window, his eyes bright. Once he even saw a smile on his face.

They got to bed late that Monday night. Graham tried to be businesslike and organized the two beds efficiently, but of course the two children (I must stop thinking of them
both
as children, Graham had said to himself) were stimulated by the new surroundings, their sudden change of circumstances: even after they had all gone to bed, Graham heard them talking in the tiny extra bedroom, which Christa had taken, on the grounds that she would only be around in Hepton Magna for part of the time, so Adam should have the guest room. It was around two when Graham finally dropped off to sleep, and he rather thought next morning that they were still talking then.

When he awoke at nine fifteen he listened. They
were
still talking, or rather talking again, downstairs. Probably they'd rummaged around to get themselves breakfast. He took advantage of their preoccupation to use for the first time the telephone he'd had installed in his bedroom after his wife had left him. The person he rang was the headmistress of the local secondary school—a woman he knew well enough to exchange casual social banalities with. He explained to her Adam's current predicament.

“So his mother has gone off without making adequate provision for the children?” Mrs Hayward asked.

“Without making any provision. One of the ‘children' is nineteen—the age, I suppose, when they're delighted to be left on their own.”

“That doesn't mean they should be, or that they should be left in charge of a younger sibling.”

“Adam is fourteen, sports mad, and inclined to bunk off school, except that he's scared of not being selected for the various elevens, squads or whatever. The bunking-off is something, I suspect, that Peggy, his mother, can take in her stride—pay no attention to, in fact—but I feel he should get some schooling as long as she is away.”

“Of course. And you've no idea how long that will be?”

“No. It's not as though she's gone on a package holiday. She's just gone off with a man, identity unknown.”

“I see. It sounds a very unsatisfactory situation. Well, we'll do what we can for the boy.”

“I'll bring him along when they've finished breakfast, if that's all right by you.”

“Can I suggest that you
send
him along? Hepton Magna is not a large place, so he can't miss the school. Coming on the first day with a parent, or someone in loco parentis, can arouse ridicule when you're a fourteen-year-old. The third year have sports on Tuesday afternoons, so that will be a good time for Adam to make his own way.”

“Excellent idea. Many thanks.”

Adam showed something of a child's traditional reluctance to go to a new school, but the idea of being a large fish in a small pond won out, and he went off reasonably happily, even agreeing to take one of Graham's blank exercise books (in which he first-drafted his novels) as a token that he might do some regular school-work.

“So what will you do?” Graham asked Christa when Adam had set off, both of them still chewing toast at the table.

“I think I should go and collect more clothes and books and let them know at the college that things are going to be a bit haywire in the near future. I can stay the night with my friend Josie rather than alone at home, then I can go to a lecture or two, come back tomorrow evening, and stay till Monday. I think Adam will settle in better with me around.”

“I think so too,” said Graham heartfeltly. “So what we do next is get you to a station.”

Two hours later, with Christa seen off to London from Ipswich station, Graham was home and waiting for Adam to return from school. He decided to fill in the time by informing anyone who would be interested what the situation of Peggy's two children was. The first person had to be Peggy's father. Ted was glad to hear from him, but he himself had no fresh news.

“Nothing at all, I'm afraid,” he said. “I kept looking till two thirty, but then I went to bed. I'd got your message about Adam and Christa. Christa can take care of herself, so Adam is the main one I worry about. I can't care any longer about Peggy. What can be done about a middle-aged woman who's man mad and lives in a fantasy world?”

“I don't know,” said Graham. “I
am
worried about her, and that's the truth. She's gone off with a ‘friend.' Okay, probably a man. But what kind of man friend? An instant one, made on the street? More likely someone she knows a bit but not well. Going off with a man can be dangerous rather than pleasant. It's the sort of thing any parent warns a teenage girl against. I think the police should be brought in on this.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Ted. “That means you want me to do it, doesn't it?”

“I'd be grateful if you would.”

“I will, I suppose, but I feel quite embarrassed doing it. How do I explain if, after ten years of having nothing to do with my daughter, I call in the police when she's only been gone a night? And claims to be with a friend?”

“They'll understand it's basically a formality. You're not exactly calling them in to search for her. The important thing is that they are notified that none of her family knows where she is, and they have a description of her on their files.”

“In case a body is found,” said Ted unhappily.

“Well, yes, that, but only among other possibilities.”

“Oh, Lord.”

Adam came back sometime after four. Graham watched him walking from the direction of the school. He had a boy of his own age on either side of him, and they were talking and laughing. Graham realized at once that the day had been a great success, and that his first major decision on Adam, to get him a temporary placing in school, had been the right one.

When he came in, Adam was full of his day, the game of soccer he'd played that afternoon—in which he'd shone, in his own eyes at least—and the boys he'd palled up with.

“Oh, and I had school dinner, is that all right?”

“It's fine. What about lessons?”

Adam went vague on those, but at least it was clear that he'd been to some.

“Oh, and I'm going to Jack's place later on to download some tracks.”

“That's okay. When would you like to eat?”

“I told you, I had school dinner.”

“Well, have a sandwich. I don't want you begging Jack's mother for food.”

Adam seemed to have undergone a metamorphosis. From the glowering figure with the outsize chip on his shoulder he had become a contented (and rather full-of-himself) fourteen-year-old. He wolfed down two ham sandwiches, had a shower (because the showers at school were “really primitive”), and breezed out of the house. Graham noted the shower: Adam was obviously a boy who had never had maternal scoldings about keeping clean. But being a sportsman, he had worked out a regime for himself.

The evening stretched out, but then it always had. He hadn't noticed it when he was on his own. He didn't fancy music, or the television rubbish he often indulged in (television was the right medium for rubbish, he contended, and it did it much better than it did the serious stuff). There remained the entertainment medium that he realized he had become rather addicted to in the past few weeks: the telephone. He rang Enquiries, with nothing beyond the surname Telford and the place Wimbledon. He got two names, with the initials
D
and
S.
He rang the second.

“Two seven eight nine six four one.”

“Is that Mrs. Telford?”

“No, it's miss or Ms., whichever you prefer. I'm not bothered. I'm Sarah Telford.”

“Ah, I think I've got the wrong number. I was wanting to speak to the parents of Terry Telford.”

“Oh, that's my mum and dad. The number's in the directory, and it's
D
for Derek.”

“I've got it then. I wonder if you could help me, though, and then I wouldn't have to bother them. It's a slightly delicate matter, potentially.”

“I'll try, of course.”

Graham swung into fictional mode.

“I'm a journalist, and I'm doing an article—it may develop into a series—on people who have been adopted and have sought out their birth parents.”

“I feel I've seen articles on that subject before.”

Sharp, Graham thought. Be careful.

“There's nothing new under the sun, especially in journalism,” he said, sounding confident. “Now Terry is adopted, isn't he?”

“That's right.”

“And he's discovered both his birth father and mother?”

There was a definite silence.

“It's news to me if he has,” she said at last.

“That was what I was told. Does this mean that his adoptive parents have been kept in the dark about this?”

“Well, if they knew, I'm quite sure I would have been told.”

“You're in regular touch with them?”

“I was round there this morning, and Terry rang while I was there. We talked afterwards about him doing supply teaching, and hoping to get a permanent teaching position. Nothing at all was said about his birth parents. My mum and dad have never said anything about it. It hasn't been discussed as far as I know.”

“Nothing? Ever?”

“Perhaps I shouldn't have said
never.
They may have said—speculated, as it were—that one day he might want to find out who his mother was, maybe make contact with her. Nothing more than that.”

“Do you think your parents would be upset if he did that?”

There was another pause.

“I honestly don't know. I should think they'd prefer it if they were told first. It's possible that they might feel it as a kind of blow, a comment on them as parents. Though God knows Terry got more love than any child I know.”

“Were you adopted too?”

“No. But it was a difficult birth, and Mum was told not to have any more. I was ten when Terry arrived, so he got an awful lot of love from me as well. How did you know—if it's true—that Terry had met up with his birth parents?”

Graham once again drew on his talents as a fiction writer.

“I was with a crowd at a club. He was one of them—I've seen him but not spoken to him. It was mentioned that he'd sought out his birth parents and was very happy with both of them. That's why he seemed to be an ideal subject. But the adoptive parents are very much in the picture as far as my article is concerned, and of course I couldn't approach them if Terry himself hasn't.”

“I'm quite sure he hasn't.”

“It seems an odd situation: his friends know he's done this, but his parents don't.”

The definite, decided voice at the other end came straight back.

“It doesn't seem odd to me at all. When you were in your teens and twenties, I bet you had a lot of things in your life that your friends knew about, but which you made damned sure your parents didn't.”

“Point taken. I don't think your parents are going to be suitable for my piece, especially as I wouldn't want to upset them. Would you keep quiet about this call?”

“Of course. They're very gentle people. I'd hate to upset them.”

Putting the phone down, Graham had again a vision of his mother, hair covered by a knotted head scarf, her hands plunged into hot washing-up water in the sink. The image was succeeded by another: of his mother at school sports day, at which he never shone and only tried to mark time convincingly. But her face was bright with pride—perhaps at how convincingly he was faking, perhaps because she was taken in herself.

That image was in its turn succeeded by another: of his father in the garden, where he worked all the hours he could secure from his spare time. He could not understand why Graham would not join him, and why he sometimes made remarks like “There's more to life than working in the garden.”

“There is,” he would say. “But nothing that gives half the satisfaction.”

Yes, there had been things in Graham's young life that he had never shared with his parents. Then he remembered that he had never said anything about Peggy to any of his friends either.

Adam got back quite early from Jack's. He said he'd had a good time, but it was obvious he could hardly keep his eyes open. The events of Monday night were taking their toll. He went off to bed, and Graham missed his company. But he missed that of Christa still more.

She returned the next evening. She had put in a few appearances at classes and lectures, but she had made her position clear to the principal. She had been home to Milton Terrace, accompanied by her friend Josie (she couldn't explain why she was nervous, but she was, and got out of the house as quickly as possible). She had piled clothes and books into the largest suitcase she could find, then made sure Graham met her at Ipswich station. His heart leapt within him when he saw how long-term she apparently regarded her stay with him as being.

“Won't Darren miss you?” he asked, gesturing at the case.