Ralph’s Children Read online

  ‘PIG’. When our boy was three, his parents were jailed for child cruelty and his baby sister adopted, but he was placed into care. Described as generally placid, with periodic flashes of temper, always followed by acute shame. If there is blame to be apportioned, Pig usually takes it on himself. He’s rake-thin, freckled, not special looking perhaps, but certainly not unattractive. He has a kind heart.

  ‘ROGER’. She came into the care system aged seven, while single mum was having chemo and unable to cope with her two kids. Her half-brother went to live with his dad, but there was no one to take Roger. Her mum was afraid a foster family might give her more than she could match when she recovered, so Roger came to Challow Hall. According to her file, Roger showed no emotion when told her mother had died, though another note refers to ‘a display of apparent grief’ at the funeral home – as if this was disbelieved. It’s true to say that our Roger is a fine actress.

  Over time, as Ralph had observed and participated in their evolving games, she had come to understand more about the bond that had formed between the four even before role-playing had reinforced their mutual trust and interdependence. Much of what they had in common, they shared with many children at Challow Hall and other homes; kids who nurtured feelings of intense bitterness against authority figures, do-gooders and parents who had, for whatever reasons, caused them to be placed in care. Ralph wrote:

  These four, however, all appear to have particularly powerful feelings either for or against mothers. Whether their own, or foster mums, or bad mothers in general, or beloved lost mums. Fathers, it seems, don’t really count in their experience; their own either weren’t there to begin with, or pissed off, or got sent down – and face it, no one expects much of dads, but mums are meant to be different. Better.

  And two years later, by which time they were all inextricably bound together, she had added to her theme:

  They have developed strong feelings about the ‘glory’ of motherhood or, conversely, the Philip Larkin approach: ‘They fuck you up . . .’

  Ralph never wrote a word about her own parents. About her father.

  Still shut away, closed off, that part of her life.

  Better things – at last – to occupy her now.

  Their games always revolved around ‘the Beast’.

  They were children, after all, taking the parts of other children in an adventure setting, with a beast that had to be slain if they were to survive. The kind of metaphor commonly employed by children in pretend games all over the world. Yet these children had swiftly developed a more sophisticated slant to their games, nominating actual people whom they disliked as Beast.

  A certain harshness in their play even then.

  Innocent, though, at heart – Ralph wrote.

  ‘Shirley’s the Beast today,’ Jack nominated one week.

  Meaning Matt Shirley, a kid who had brought him down in a football game the previous day.

  They didn’t attack the real Shirley in their game, because Ralph discouraged violence. Pig was chosen by Jack to play the part of Shirley, and that was the way the games all went; each one in turn chose a Beast and which member of the group was to act him or her.

  Harmless back then, but undoubtedly complex and unusual. A springboard to mental and physical freedom, as Ralph saw it, enabling, even empowering them and increasing her urge to protect what she saw as a healthy outlet for their fantasies.

  She was well aware, in those early days, that they had tolerated her because they felt they had little choice, yet still she felt honoured that they had let her stay amongst them, on the outer edges of their play – though it had always, if she was truthful, been more intense than child’s play.

  She had been, at the time, thirty and alone. No siblings, her mother long dead of an embolism, her father remarried and vanished from her life, wholly indifferent to her by then. Her own flawed psychology buried deep along with her past sufferings, leaving her, she felt, as a blank canvas on which these children – her children, as she had begun to think of them – could paint with personal creativity, gradually bringing her, as Ralph, to life alongside them.

  A secret life, of course. One which would, had it been discovered, have brought her dismissal, perhaps worse. But the fact was, she had felt truly alive and filled with potential for the first time in her own sad existence, and nothing could have made her want to give that up.

  There seemed a purity about it all then which she had no idea would change.

  She never expected to lose herself in her new identity as their leader.

  Chief.

  Never expected to guide them into the mire, to taint their souls, ruin their lives.

  Not to mention her own.

  Kate

  Caisleán – Gaelic for castle, so Rob had told her when he’d chosen the name for their converted barn – was less than an hour’s drive from home but small and isolated enough for tranquillity.

  All Kate had wanted, on leaving her father and Delia’s place in Maidenhead, was to reach the retreat as rapidly as possible. But by the time she’d got back to the cottage to pack a weekend bag and her laptop, it was after three; and then she’d had to go back to Reading to pick up some notes at the News – and luckily, Fireman was in his Friday afternoon meeting, so there was little risk of an encounter, though she had mustered the common sense to shoot off a swift email telling him she was going to the barn to rewrite her Christmas column – and Lord knew she needed a few brownie points after her awful tantrum.

  After that, she’d stocked up at Waitrose in Church Street – more than enough ready meals and bread, cheese and wine for the weekend, plus some Belgian chocs and mince pies and cream – but by then it was ten past four, which was a pity because winter darkness meant she’d be deprived of the beauty of her journey – half the pleasure of going up there – and also because if she was on her own, she preferred arriving at Caisleán in daylight, being settled and cosy, with a nice fire lit, before dusk fell on the Downs.

  Leaving that message for Fireman meant – she reflected, leaving behind Reading’s built-up area and bright lights – that she was now committed to working for at least part of the weekend, but she’d remembered to stick her new Anne Tyler in her bag, and a couple of classic DVDs, too, in case there was nothing that appealed to her on TV, and the Radio Berkshire weekend forecast was colder, which suited Kate too, because there were few things she liked better than walking in the wind over the Downs before snuggling in front of the fireplace.

  Few things, of course, except doing that with Rob.

  ‘So stupid,’ she said to herself, regretting yet again her own idiotic temper.

  Missing him more than ever.

  Darkness was already straining her eyes and creasing her forehead, though traffic was unusually light for a Friday afternoon as Kate, still on the A329 nearing Streatley, allowed her concentration to wander into a swift fantasy in which Rob arrived at Caisleán determined to win her back.

  ‘Grow up,’ she told herself sharply.

  Even if Rob did want to see her, it wouldn’t be possible this weekend, because he’d told her that Penny had asked him to have Emily, and that hadn’t happened in a long time, and since there was, quite rightly, no one more important to Rob than Emmie, Kate would not dream of disturbing their—

  The bang as her car’s front offside tyre burst was as loud as a gunshot.

  ‘Jesus!’

  The Mini veered lethally into the oncoming lane, terrifying the driver of the small Mercedes coming the other way, then zigzagging for what felt to Kate like hundreds of yards, and the steering wheel seemed to be juddering in her hands, and she only just avoided a van looming out of a narrow road to the left, and she was conscious of flashing lights and furious hooting from somewhere behind her, but finally, mercifully, the little car came to a halt on the edge of the grass verge.

  ‘Jesus,’ Kate said again, blood roaring in her ears.

  And then another bang, almost an explosion of sounds, reverberated
through her as two – no, three – cars behind her skidded and collided with each other.

  Time passed as Kate sat, shaking.

  Too afraid to turn around and see the havoc she had caused.

  Praying silently for no one to be hurt.

  Please.

  The Game

  ‘Game on.’

  The word had gone out within minutes.

  Jack’s wife was used to being dumped with their kids at a moment’s notice.

  Pig was ready to call in sick.

  Neither Simon nor Roger had anyone to answer to.

  ‘Take care,’ Ralph had told them all.

  She had never felt more bereft than now at being left behind.

  Laurie

  The day before she visited Sam always brought a mix of happiness and fear to Laurie because she so longed to see him but was desperately afraid that something might happen to prevent her from going. And heaven knew there’d been no shortage of times when her parents had done their best to achieve that, though not even Shelly’s flu last summer and Pete’s broken wrist the previous winter had prevented Laurie from arriving at Rudolf Mann House on the dot of 8 a.m. on Saturday morning.

  Not that her anxieties ended there.

  Would Sam be happy to see her? Would he look fit and well? Would he enjoy their time together? How would he be when they had to part?

  Laurie knew how she would be.

  She remembered one visit that had begun badly because Sam had been taken ill at breakfast time, but Laurie had spent the day sitting with him, and in a way, it had turned into one of her happiest memories because Sam had really needed a mother that day and she had actually been there for him, aware that there were others at the home who could have helped him just as well, probably better, than she could, amateur that she was.

  But they were not his mother.

  The bitch had been there that day, had almost managed to sour it for her.

  ‘Enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ she said to Laurie as she was leaving.

  ‘I certainly didn’t enjoy my son being ill,’ Laurie had said, managing to find the right words, ‘but yes, I’m glad I’ve been able to be here with him.’

  And the bitch had just smiled, given a shrug, and turned away.

  Only thirteen hours and fifty minutes to go till she saw him.

  Dinner time soon in the Moon house.

  The atmosphere between them the evening before visiting days was always strained. No questions were asked about Laurie’s plans for the weekend. More than eight years since Sam’s birth and they were still the same.

  At some levels, Laurie still loved her parents, but on these particular Friday evenings, she hated them as much as the bitch. More so, if she was honest about it.

  Thirteen and three-quarter hours to go.

  The Game

  Ralph sat in her winter garden, decaying leaves whirling around her, circling and enclosing her, whipped up by a sudden squall. Seen from a distance, she might have been at the core of a vortex, the base of a small tornado, but she was utterly still.

  Thinking about them.

  About the new game.

  About that other, early game that had kept her from being with them – fully – ever again.

  Some of the leaves landed on her head, stalks catching in her hair. The wind dropped and they remained there, like a twisty golden crown.

  The Chief.

  It had happened during their third year together, when the children had been about thirteen and she had been thirty-three.

  The games had long since ceased to be childlike, their edges too razor sharp for that. They still took turns to nominate a Beast and punish him or her, but whenever possible, they no longer role-played the Beast, but used the real targets instead.

  It had been Roger’s idea to move the game up that notch.

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ had been Pig’s reaction.

  ‘We might get caught,’ Simon had agreed.

  ‘We won’t,’ Roger had said.

  ‘Not if we plan it right,’ Jack had backed her up.

  Planning it right, they decided, meant isolating the Beast from outsiders, playing under cover of darkness and using war paint – as the children had in the novel that had first inspired them – faces smeared with black and layers of brilliant colour to confuse and alarm their target and, most important, to make them unrecognizable.

  They were wary of getting caught, though it was not authority of which they were wary, but the awful spectre of being split up.

  ‘I couldn’t bear it,’ Pig had said.

  ‘It would be rough,’ the girl called Roger agreed.

  ‘It would be piss-horrible,’ Jack said.

  ‘We mustn’t let it happen,’ said the girl called Simon, ‘not ever.’

  ‘We won’t,’ Jack said. ‘Not with Ralph to help us.’

  ‘If she will,’ Pig said.

  ‘She always does,’ Roger said.

  It was true. Ralph knew that somewhere along the way she had become their creature, rather than simply their protector. And if her relationship with them had begun out of fascination, it had long since become something of an addiction.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she had said, when they’d first broached the new idea – knowing that by not stamping wholeheartedly on it, she had as good as given it her blessing.

  ‘Whoever we punish,’ Simon said earnestly, ‘would have to be a true Beast.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Jack said.

  ‘We’re not brutes,’ Pig said.

  There was no shortage of potential Beasts, but the children were practical, realistic about degrees of risk. If they were to take action against, say, one of the more detested teachers at school, they knew they’d be unlikely to get away with it; and the same could be said for the skinny old battleaxe who ran the Bartlet village shop, and who mistrusted every kid who stepped out of Challow Hall.

  They had fewer misgivings about the cleaner.

  Rose Miller, a pinch-faced woman with meaty arms, worked five days a week in the home, lived in a terraced cottage just outside the village, was always loving to the smelly mongrel dog she called Billy, but was a nasty piece of work when it came to her little girl and boy, always yelling at and smacking them in the shops and in the road. Real slaps, too, not just taps on the bum or arm, bestowed with a force that left the kids in little doubt of what probably went on once she got them indoors.

  And since nothing was worse, in their eyes, than mothers who were cruel to their children, the group had unanimously agreed that Rose Miller deserved whatever they could manage to give her.

  Intimidation, mostly.

  ‘And pain,’ Jack had urged one evening at Wayland’s Smithy.

  ‘Not pain,’ Ralph had intervened. ‘I won’t be a party to thuggery.’

  ‘Not even if it’s deserved?’ Pig asked.

  Ralph had heard longing in his tone, aware that while Pig was in most ways a gentle soul, his own parents’ savagery had made child abuse anathema to him.

  ‘Not even then,’ she had answered firmly.

  ‘So what’s the point,’ Jack had wanted to know, ‘if we can’t hurt the cow?’

  ‘We can make her afraid,’ Roger said. ‘Show her that if she can’t take better care of her kids, she’ll pay for it.’

  They’d all looked back at Ralph, waiting to see if she objected to that.

  It would, she knew, have been the moment to call a halt, but she was too fascinated to know how the new game might unfold, and so she had said neither no nor yes, and knew that she might as well have given them an A for effort.

  They were all quiet for a minute.

  ‘What if it goes wrong?’ Simon had asked. ‘What if she recognizes us and tells?’

  ‘She won’t,’ Roger said. ‘And if she does . . .’

  ‘Worst comes to worst,’ Jack said with a shrug, ‘they’ll lock us up.’

  ‘Separately,’ Pig said, grimly.

  ‘They might not believe her,’ Ralph said,
quietly, and explained that she thought Rose Miller might be fiddling social security, because she’d been keeping an eye on the cleaner herself, had tracked her as she went to jobs in three other villages in the district, had even stood behind her in the post office in Ashbury one afternoon when she’d been collecting her benefit.

  ‘So we could blackmail her,’ Jack had said with relish.

  ‘No,’ Ralph said. ‘But if worst did come to worst, she might not be believed.’

  ‘I wish,’ she had said to them, on the morning itself, ‘you wouldn’t do this.’

  They were not in the Smithy at that hour, but in the former vegetable garden at Challow Hall, plenty of kids around, Ralph having walked past the four carrying her battered attaché case, casually stooping to pick up the dented football they’d been kicking aimlessly around.

  ‘You’re not going to tell, are you?’ Pig had asked her anxiously.

  ‘Of course not,’ she’d said. ‘I just want you to think about it one more time.’

  ‘We’ve thought about it,’ Roger said.

  ‘You need to understand –’ Ralph spoke quietly – ‘that however rotten she is, it doesn’t make what you’re planning to do right.’

  Right and wrong, good and evil, still separated in her mind back then.

  ‘We,’ Roger said, quite sharply. ‘You’ve helped us, remember.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ralph said, and saw Simon glance uneasily around.

  ‘Are you going to stop us?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Without reporting you,’ Ralph answered him, ‘I don’t see how I can.’