The Child in Time (25 page)

‘You might need stitches,’ Stephen said. ‘You should do something about that tonight really.’

He gave Morley his paper parcel. His guest was looking in the direction of the drinks tray. ‘Open it and have a look. I’d like a Scotch, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Stephen poured drinks for them both. Watched closely by Morley, he sat down to examine the book he had taken from the bloodied paper bag. The plain flimsy cover bore the word ‘Proof’ and below that a white label stuck on at a careless angle announced, ‘Restricted reading Code E-8.
Copy no.5.’ The front pages were blank. Stephen arrived at the introduction and read, ‘Childcare writers of the post-war era sentimentally ignored the fact that children are at heart selfish, and reasonably so, for they are programmed for survival.’ He flipped through the book backwards and read a few chapter headings – ‘The Disciplined Mind’, ‘Adolescence Overcome’, ‘Security in Obedience’, ‘Boys and Girls – vive la différence’, ‘A Sound Smack Saves Nine’. In this last chapter he read, ‘Those who argue dogmatically against all forms of corporal punishment find themselves urging a variety of psychological reprisals against the child – withdrawal of approval or privileges, the humiliation of an early bedtime and so on. There is no evidence to suggest that these more protracted forms of punishment, which can waste a good deal of a busy parent’s time, cause less longterm damage than a swift clip across the ear or a few smart slaps to the backside. Common sense suggests the contrary. Raise your hand once and show you mean business! It is likely you will never have to raise it again.’

Morley waited, rising from his chair at one point to refill his glass. Stephen turned more pages. A cartoon showed two little girls at play. Underneath, a caption read, ‘There’s nothing wrong with this miniature ironing set. Let the girls assert their femininity!’ At last Stephen returned the book to its bag and tossed it on to the table. The Commission was still collecting reports from its fourteen sub-committees and was not due to complete its work for another four months. His one wish was to phone his father and congratulate him on his judgement. But he could do that when he saw him later in the week.

Morley said, ‘I ought to tell you how it came my way.’ A middle-level civil servant, whose name was not known to Morley, had phoned him at work and asked to meet in a nearby workmen’s café. The man turned out to have responsibilities in Government publications. He belonged to a long line of disaffected civil servants; every year two or three
were tried in the courts for treason or the like. But that was not his primary reason for wanting to hand over the book; it was because he was able to do so with impunity. There had been a break-in the night before at the office where he worked. The thieves had been interested mostly in heavy-duty office equipment. They had taken the coffee- and soup-making machine. Morley’s man had been one of the first on the scene the following morning. He had slipped the book into his briefcase and reported it as one of the items inside a small safe which the thieves had somehow carried away.

The book had come to the Government press three months previously and there were now ten bound copies circulating among the Civil Service élite and three or four Cabinet Ministers. Each copy was accounted for and tracked with the diligence usually associated with defence papers. In fact, it was only because of a forgotten clerical error that this particular copy was not inside the stolen safe. Morley’s civil servant believed that the intention was to publish a month or two after the Commission had completed its own report, and to claim that the handbook drew from the Commission’s work. Quite why proof copies were circulating so early on was not clear.

‘Perhaps,’ Morley said, ‘Downing Street needed to carry a few Ministers along for political reasons.’

Stephen said, ‘I don’t see why they couldn’t trust the Commission to come up with the kind of book they wanted. They appointed its chairman, and all the chairmen to the sub-committees.’

‘They couldn’t have it both ways,’ Morley said. ‘Even though they tried. They couldn’t leave it to the great and good, experts and celebrities gathered for public consumption, to come up with exactly the right book. The grown-ups know best.’ Morley was probing his cut with his fingertips. He winced. ‘Anyway, this is how seriously they take it. You’ve heard it all, I’m sure, how the nation is to be regenerated by reformed childcare practice.’

He said his head was beginning to throb, and that he wanted to go home. He explained that he had come in order to discuss what was to be done. He could not talk to his wife because she too worked in the Civil Service, as a medical officer, and he did not want to compromise her. ‘She’ll fix my head when I get back.’

Since they could do little more than create a degree of embarrassment, the matter was easily settled. It was agreed that after Stephen had made a copy for a newspaper, he should keep the book in his apartment, and that the identifying number should be scraped off to protect the civil servant. Stephen phoned for a taxi, and while they waited for it to arrive, Morley talked about his children. He had three boys. Loving them, he said, was not only a delight, it was a lesson in vulnerability. During the height of the Olympic Games crisis he and his wife had lain awake all night, speechless with fear for the boys, horrified by their own helplessness to keep them from harm. They lay side by side, unable to speak their thoughts, reluctant even to acknowledge that they were awake. At dawn the youngest had climbed into bed with them as usual, and it was then that his wife had started to cry, so hopelessly that in the end Morley had carried the boy back to his room and slept with him there. Later she told him that it was the child’s absolute trust that had broken her up; the boy believed he was safe beneath the covers cuddling against his mother, and because he was not, because he could be destroyed in minutes, she felt she had betrayed him. Remembering his own savage insouciance at that time, Stephen shook his head and said nothing.

After Morley had left, he went into his daughter’s bare room and turned on the light. There was still a dustbin liner full of her stuff lying on the mattress of the single wooden bed. The room smelled damp. He knelt down and turned the valve on the radiator. He remained crouched for a moment on the floor, testing his feelings; it was not loss he
confronted now, it was a fact, like a high wall. But inanimate, neutral. A fact. He said the word out loud, like a curse. Returning to the study, he took Morley’s chair by the fire and thought about his story. He saw them, man and wife, side by side on their backs like stone figures on a Medieval tomb. Nuclear war. He was suddenly, childishly, afraid to undress and go to bed. The world outside the room, outside his clothes even, seemed bitter, harsh beyond reason. The frail sanity he had established was under threat. He had been still for twenty minutes, and he was sinking. The silence was gaining in volume. He made a great effort and leaned forwards to build up the fire. He cleared his throat noisily to hear his own voice. As the flames took hold of the new coal, he settled back, and before he fell asleep he promised himself he would not let go. His tutorial was at ten the next morning, and he was due on court at three.

Stephen’s mother had begun her convalescence in February. She was allowed out of bed for the afternoons and early evenings. As soon as it was warmer, she would be permitted to walk the four hundred yards to the Post Office. She had lost fifteen pounds during her illness, and most of the sight in one eye. Knitting, reading or watching television gave her pains in her good eye, so the radio and conversation were her main pleasures now. Like many women of her generation, she did not like to mention any discomfort. When his father had to spend half a day away from home visiting his sister, who was also ill, Stephen was asked if he would come and keep his mother company. He was happy to oblige. He liked seeing his parents singly; it was easier to break the habitual patterns, he felt less limited in his role as son. And there was the possibility of resuming the conversation they had begun in the kitchen half a year ago.

He was surprised to be met at the front door by her, to see her once more in everyday clothes instead of the
bed-jacket in shocking pink. Losing weight had tightened her facial skin, giving her a superficially youthful appearance which was heightened by a rakish eye patch. After they had embraced fleetingly, and while he was complimenting her on her progress and making a cumbersome pirate joke, she led the way into the living room.

She apologised for the chaos there visible only to herself. One reason why she was keen to regain her strength, she said, was because she wanted to start putting the house to rights. Though not a single object seemed out of place, Stephen said it was surely a good sign she felt that way. It was also an indication of just how enfeebled she was that, after only ritual protest, she permitted him to make them a pot of tea in her own kitchen. But she called out instructions through the open hatch and, while he was not looking, pulled out the nest of coffee tables and arranged them to receive the tray and their cups. In the kitchen Stephen waited for the kettle to boil and examined the contents of an array of pill bottles. The iridescent intensity of the reds and yellows suggested powerful technology, deep intervention in the system. Elsewhere, an innovation was the large sign in his father’s hand by the wall phone listing the doctor’s emergency numbers and those of a few private ambulance companies.

Mrs Lewis presided over the pouring, though her hand shook with the weight of the teapot. They pretended not to see the splashes which drenched the tray. They talked about the weather; it was forecast that before the first signs of spring they would have to endure heavy snowfalls. Mrs Lewis skilfully evaded her son’s questions about the doctor’s most recent visit. Instead they discussed Stephen’s aunt’s illness and whether Mr Lewis would be safe crossing West London by public transport. They debated the suitability of large-print books. Twenty minutes passed and Stephen began to worry that his mother would tire before he could move the conversation in the direction he wanted.
So after the next short break in the talk he said, ‘Do you remember you were telling me about those new bikes?’

She seemed to have been waiting for this. She smiled immediately. ‘Your father has his own reasons for wanting to forget about those.’

‘You mean he’s pretending to forget?’

‘It’s the Air Force training. If it’s untidy or it doesn’t fit, throw it out.’ She was speaking affectionately. She continued, ‘The day we bought those bikes was a difficult one, for both of us. He likes to think that everything that’s happened since then was bound to happen, that there was never any choice. He says he doesn’t remember, so we never talk about it.’ Though her tone was still reflective and unaccusing, a firmness in these last words seemed to be establishing a pretext for indiscretion. She was also being wilfully obscure and a little self-dramatising. She sat back in her chair with her teacup suspended an inch above its saucer, waiting to be prompted.

Stephen took care not to appear too interested; he knew her guilty loyalties could be easily aroused. He let a few seconds pass before saying, ‘I suppose forty years is a long time, after all.’

She was shaking her head emphatically. ‘Memory’s got nothing to do with years. You remember what you remember. The moment I first set eyes on your father is as clear to me now as it ever was.’ Stephen half knew the account of his parents’ first meeting. But he was aware that what was being offered as evidence of the timelessness of memory was her way into the story she wanted to tell.

During the first three years after the war Stephen’s mother, Claire Temperly, worked in a small department store in a market town in Kent. The full social impact of the war, in particular the disappearance of a whole class of domestic servants, and with it the way of life of the less than wealthy
middle classes, had yet to make itself fully felt, and the store – a kind of local Harrods on two floors – still managed to keep up some pre-war pretensions.

‘It wasn’t the sort of place my mum would feel happy doing her shopping in. She’d be made to feel out of place.’ Boys in dark blue uniforms with silver braid, and caps bearing the store’s insignia, waited by the revolving doors to conduct the lady shoppers across the plum-coloured carpet to the appropriate department. If the assistants there were busy, the ladies would be shown to comfortable chairs. The boys said Ma’am and touched their caps frequently, but they were never tipped.