More Than Love Letters (5 page)

 

Dear Becs,

Like I would have forgotten!

St Edith’s Primary, I am pleased to report, is positively awash with ABIEs. The egg-boxes are of course merely a cipher: it could be completed homework, reply slips, or old sheets for painting scenery. The ABIEs always man the tombola at the Christmas bazaar, they wield the spades for the new wildlife garden, they are first on the buzzers at PTA quiz nights. How on earth do you manage without them?

But I do have one DYTTy (female) – though I have so far avoided the calling in of her mate. And I also suffer the presence in small numbers of another species which I bet you are safe from in Moss Side. The dreaded FFF: brimming with class confidence and absolutely lacking in volume control, the infamous Four-by-Four Foghorn.

Love,

Margaret xx

 

(‘Vituperative’: 2.5.)

WITCH

Women of lpswich Together Combating Homelessness

 

Extract from minutes of meeting
at Emily’s house, 17 March 2005, 8 p.m.

 

Helen took another overdose on Friday evening. Margaret went with her to A&E, and she was kept in overnight for observation, before being transferred to a psychiatric ward over the weekend, and discharged on Monday morning.

The residents at their weekly house meeting held the annual vote about whether to get a cat. Unanimous approval, as usual, was not achieved: Carole was concerned about the cleanliness aspect.

 

Angie has left her husband and gone into the Women’s Aid refuge. He has assaulted her a number of times, but she is reluctant to go to the police since this is a breach of his bail conditions, and she doesn’t want him to go back to prison. Women’s Aid are taking over supporting Angie for the present, but Emily and Pat T. will continue to liaise.

 

Margaret reported that there is a problem about our funding Nasreen’s rent out of the voids allowance. Under current legislation, asylum seekers are not entitled to any recourse to public funds; she had spoken on the phone to a solicitor she knows who works with a refugee centre in London, and it seems that if we use our own funds to support Nasreen’s housing, this may place in jeopardy our core borough council grant funding. It was agreed that for the moment her rent could simply be treated as in arrears, while ways are found of fund-raising externally to cover it. Susan suggested holding a disco, but Alison pointed out that the likely profits would not go very far towards meeting £95 a week for the indefinite future. Alison agreed to help Margaret look into applications to relevant charities and grant-making trusts.

 

The main downstairs living room, kitchen, and office areas are due for repainting, and Margaret reported that the maintenance budget should cover hiring a professional decorator. Pat and Pat recommended their friend Jo, who runs an all-women house maintenance company, Varnish ’n’ Nails. It was agreed to approach them for a quote. Colours were discussed. Persephone favoured a warm ochre or orange, but magnolia was finally settled upon.

 

 

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
18/3/05 16:32
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Hi Michael,

Come on, mate, I have got to find a way of escaping from these stagnant back bench waters. All I need is a very small rock to climb on to. Give me some ideas, please! How can I win back the smiles of the Rottweiler? What juicy bone should I toss in his direction? What’s hot at the moment in the Inner Circles? Help me out here.

In mounting desperation,

Richard.

 

Richard Slater (Labour)

Member of Parliament for Ipswich

 

 

From:
Michael Carragan
[[email protected]]
Sent:
18/3/05 16:50
To:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]

 

ASBOs, Richard, they are the thing. Yob culture in our city centres on Friday and Saturday nights. The unenviable task of our valiant boys in blue. The need to arm them with greater powers, to make our streets safe again for the law-abiding majority.

What you need is some kind of stunt. Get yourself in the papers highlighting the problem in some way. That will get you back under the eye of our glorious leader.

Michael.

 

Michael Carragan (Labour),

Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West.

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
18/3/05 16:54
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Thanks for the tip, Mike. I’ll give it some thought. But don’t you miss the days when we were in opposition and civil liberties were the thing?

Richard.

 

Richard Slater (Labour)

Member of Parliament for Ipswich

 

 

42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich

 

19 March 2005

Dear Gran,

I’m glad it’s working out OK with Kirsty, and that you are managing to do a bit of cooking. Does Kirsty pick up your groceries, or can you get to the shops yourself now? As you see, I’ve sent you a mobile phone. I hope you won’t think it’s cheeky of me. It’s only a basic one – I didn’t think you’d want all the extra gadgets. There’s no monthly charge, you just pay as you go. I’ve charged it up for you and put a card in with £30 of credit. That should keep you going for a bit, and then you can get a new card. They’ll have them at the post office in East Markhurst. I expect you’ve read in the papers about the dangers of mobile phones, and they can definitely be a health hazard if you use them all the time. I’m always really careful to keep mine for emergencies, but I’m sure the occasional call won’t do you any harm – I mean, you’re not going to be chatting away on it all day, are you? I thought you could give Mum this number and then you can sit down comfortably and chat with her without needing to get out into the hall. But don’t worry, I’ll keep on writing to you, Gran! You can also arrange to block all those sales calls – there’s a thing called the Telephone Preference Service. I’ll sort it out for you next time I come over, if you want. I’ve just done it for us at home. Cora had stopped answering her phone at all in the early evenings. She said it was always someone trying to sell something, and I was worried she’d miss calls from her friends – not that she gets many. I think she’s a bit of a loner really, sort of self-contained.

We get on ever so well, though. I suppose I’ve never exactly been gregarious, either. Anyway, you’d laugh – you remember how you always tease Dad about the state of his study, with more books visible than floor, let alone desk space? Well, Cora’s house is a bit like that – books in heaps everywhere, including the kitchen and the loo. With the distinctive odour of the second-hand stall still clinging about them, they have long since exhausted the available shelf space, and are proofing every skirting board by at least one volume’s thickness against mice. And a really eclectic mix she’s got, too – everything from the Brontës to Mills and Boon. We have lots of the same favourites – like Lord Peter Wimsey, and
Frenchman’s Creek
, and those Margaret Forster family histories (like the one with the old diary, you know, that I bought you for Christmas).

I’ve been feeling so grateful, recently, for us, for how things were when I was little, for how they still are. I mean, our family, Mum and Dad, and you, and Grandad when he was alive. It’s seeing some of the women in the safe house I’m involved with now, the one I told you about. There’s this girl Helen, just nineteen she is, and, well, her father abused her, and now she has terrible depression and has to take anti-depressant drugs, and she often feels suicidal or damages herself, cutting her arms and things. She called me out the other night (the support group have a telephone rota for emergencies), and when I got there one of the other residents let me in and said Helen was in her room, and she was just sitting on her bed, curled up in a kind of foetal position, eyes closed, hugging herself, and rocking slowly backwards and forwards. It took ten minutes before she could even speak to me at all. She hadn’t taken anything, but she’d cut herself with a razor blade. Not deep cuts, I don’t mean, not like when people slit their wrists, just a mass of scratches, all up her forearms, livid and raw and painful-looking. After a bit, once she could sort of let go a bit and uncoil herself, I got her to the office where the first aid stuff is, and helped her bind her arms up. I wondered if we should put something on the scratches, but she said no – she seemed to know all about what to do. But I think she was grateful to have me there, even if I wasn’t much practical use. It’s not that I was scared, Gran – it’s not like she had tried to kill herself this time – but it’s seeing another person in so much pain inside, and not being able to help.

Helen says she thinks she might be better going into the psychiatric hospital for a while. She’s been in the house nearly two years, and she’s very settled there. She is friendly with another resident called Lauren (though they are chalk and cheese! Lauren is ever so loud – she reminds me of my friend Becs from college, that you met at Mum and Dad’s one time, do you remember? She’d just dyed a crimson streak in her hair and Dad said she looked like a badger in the sunset). Helen has also made friends with the new girl, Nasreen. Nasreen’s English still isn’t too good – she can’t keep up with Lauren’s sassy patter, but Helen never seems to mind taking the time to listen to what she’s saying. Anyway, I know Helen really wants to stay, but the problem is Emily and Pat T. (they are the paid staff) only work Monday to Friday, and they finish at five o’clock, and even during the day they are often out at meetings or visiting the ex-residents that we still support. There’s the phone rota in the evenings and at weekends, but it’s not the same really. So we might say ‘safe house’ but of course it isn’t; it doesn’t have the cover to be really safe. I really think Helen might need a higher level of support. But I’m sure she thinks it will be a kind of defeat to have to go into hospital, an admission that she isn’t coping.

I was thinking about what you said about nature rambles, and I thought how much I liked them too. When I was in the juniors I could have told you exactly which tree was a sycamore and an ash and a beech, but now I haven’t a clue. I didn’t even have a book that would tell me, I had to look them all up on the internet. Anyway, it wasn’t in my lesson plan for the term but I decided to take my class out on Tuesday afternoon, since it was the last week of term – just round the school field, because you need parental permission letters in advance nowadays, and a formal risk assessment, to take them off site. I’d never realised how much variety there is, just in our own grounds – there were even some cowslips on the bank by the fence at the far end of the field. Then we got the pictures of all the different trees and plants and birds and insects that we’d seen on the smartboard, and they drew pictures of them and marked their identifying features. I hadn’t seen them so engrossed since that doctor came in and showed them the human organs in jars. At least, they were engrossed until it turned out that Josh Cayley had an allergy to wild borage, and his fingers puffed up enormously where he’d been touching it, and he ran round the classroom saying he was Edward Sausagehands. We’ve also been doing that Islam project, you know, and yesterday I told them about how Muslims always keep their copy of the Koran on a high shelf, so you look up to it, and no other books can be higher than it is. Nicky Stefanopoulos said he’s going to keep his football programmes on the top of his wardrobe from now on, and always wash his hand before he touches them.

We’ve been wondering about how to involve Jack Caulfield (the blind boy) in PE a bit more. He loves gymnastics, and swimming, but the problem is the team games – ball sports and things, you know. We played rounders last week, and of course he can’t take a turn with the bat, and is no use at all as a short fielder. But we found he’s surprisingly good at bowling. Point him the right direction, and after a couple of loose balls he quickly becomes very consistent at what Karen (who watches a lot of sport on TV) calls ‘maintaining his length and line’. And you should see Jack run, Gran! He sprints full tilt across the school field, with that irrepressible imperative to expend energy that comes with being eight years old. Every now and then he’ll trip, or hit someone, and go down full length, but more often than not he’s fine. It’s having the confidence to do it that is so hard to credit.

Well, look after yourself, won’t you, Gran? Don’t be trying to do
too
much yourself. Leave poor Kirsty something to do as well! And I’m really looking forward to seeing you at the weekend.

Lots of love,

Margaret x

 

 

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
24/3/05 16:06
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

Michael, hi. Are you going to be in London for Easter? Fancy a drink?

Richard.

 

Richard Slater (Labour)

Member of Parliament for Ipswich

From:
Michael Carragan
[[email protected]]
Sent:
24/3/05 16:30
To:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]

 

Sorry, mate, I’m going to my folks. Why don’t you bloody well go and see your mother? Michael.

 

Michael Carragan (Labour)

Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West

 

 

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
24/3/05 16:39
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]