Emmy

EMMY

Autumn was coming. The trees, moist and fresh in the summer were
throwing off their coats of vibrant green, putting on ones of dried
reds and yellows that rustled together high above in the cool early
afternoon breeze; like some secret conspiracy known only to them and
the wind.

Robert gates sat on the graffiti doused park bench, and, as he watched,
a small mound of leaves, neatly swept up in a pile by one of the park's
groundsmen suddenly exploded into a whirling frenzy; the wind providing
the music and energy for the mad dance.

Robert had decided, shortly after he had become unemployed, that the
world was arse about face, and very unfair.
Twenty five years old. No job, no money, and no girl, and still living
at home with his bloody parents.
He looked at his cheap digital watch that he'd nicked off a market
stall the week before. Half the digits were faded and you could only
tell the time by holding it at a particular angle. 12:15. He extracted
a packet of squashed fish paste sandwiches from his denim jacket
pocket, unwrapped them, and began to chew without really tasting. I
mean, he thought, I don't want a lot. Just enough to get by. To get
away from my parents house. To buy a car and get a girl. A nice girl;
pretty, eager, willing. Kids. I'd love kids.

This was the secret he harbored. One he'd never tell his mates
about.

All they were interested in was the club on a Friday and Saturday
night, getting their leg over, then discussing the details over a beer
and the match on a Sunday afternoon&;#8230;.in the pub again. Then,
skint out, till the next giro came along, so the cycle could be
repeated again. It was like some mangy dog that perpetually chased its
own tail, never quite catching up with itself. He wanted more than
that. He liked the girl's, and he wasn't averse to a quick grope in the
bushes&;#8230;but that's all it was. He wanted more.

He came to the park two days a week, to get himself away from his
parents nagging about getting out and finding a job. His dad hadn't
worked for five years since Timersons had closed. Steel had been the
lifeblood of the town, and since the biggest plant had shut, that blood
had slowly drained away, leaving a dried up husk. His dad said it was
different for him. Fifty now, and he wouldn't work again. Who wanted a
fifty year old that knew nothing but steel, when there was no more
steel to know anything about? Get out, you lazy young bugger, and get a
job!

Coming to the park was an escape for Robert. He felt sorry for his
father. The old man knew the real score. The chances of his son getting
a decent job that wasn't slave wages were nil. He'd watched his dad,
some nights, looking out of the back window at the skeletal remains of
what had been Timersons foundries etched on the skyline. He was
remembering better days when he had money, youth, and hope for his
kids. All gone now. Robert realised that when his father raged at him,
it wasn't him that he was angry at; it was life, and what the years did
to you as they ground you down. But you can't shout at life, only those
around you. His dad at fifty. Filled with beer and regret.

Another reason he came to the park was the kids.

Sitting like this, he could watch them play on the grass and the
swings. Must be great to be like that. No cares, worries. Sometimes he
would shut his eyes, trying desperately to recapture what it used to be
like to be a child. He could always summon some half-remembered
childhood joy from his past; but then it faded. Like waking up out of
deep sleep from a beautiful dream, attempting frantically to remember
what it as about&;#8230;.and having the memory slip elusively away,
the harder you tried to recall it, the further away it gets. But you
had to be careful. A bloke watching the kids in a park round here could
be accused of being a child molester. Men round here didn't sit in the
park, watching kids; they sat in smoky pubs and bars, swilling ale and
reading racing papers, having the occasional; fight to break the
monotony.

The women had the kids at home. The men got to the pub and the bookies.
It was like the eleventh bloody commandment.

He looked down the path that ran between the lines of neatly ordered,
slightly swaying trees and saw, distantly, the old lady, pushing the
big old cream and white square pram towards him. Sending the Nan out to
look after the kids wasn't unusual. Part-time work was all the rage in
Mrs. Thatcher's Britain, and it was the women that did it. Having an
old pram wasn't unusual either; there wasn't money around for better.
Most had ones that were either second-hand or hand-me-downs.
He'd seen her in the park lots of times before, but never felt the
compulsion to speak to her, in her shabby tweed coat and her lumbering
gait, her puffing face, red and crabb-apple wrinkled under an old furry
hat.
This was the time that she fed the ducks. Pushing the old pram between
a gap in the trees, she went down to the edge of the pond, where some
bedraggled ducks gathered in the expectation of the bread feast that
they knew she brought. Pavlov's ducks, thought Robert, laughing to
himself. She reached under the pram. Bringing an old bread bag, then,
with labored, jerking haste began to distribute the stale crusts with
wide sweeps of her fat arms. Every few casts, she stopped to check
beneath the layers of baby blankets piled on to her small passenger,
before resuming the feeding of the noisy feathered crowd that she had
attracted. The bread was gone, but she had to convince the multitude of
birds by tipping the bag upside down and shaking the last few precious
crumbs to the ground, which they then began arguing over.
Robert looked in his own sandwich bag, to see if he had any tasty
morsels that he could throw to the greedy ducks before he went home.
Unnoticed, the old lady had pushed the pram back up the slope and had
plonked herself heavily beside him on the bench. He was about to get
up, when she spoke.

'Hasn't changed much, y'know'. He found himself answering
automatically:

'You mean the park?' he enquired.

'Yes', she replied. 'Came here when I was a young girl, before the war
with my baby daughter. Brought her here for years. Don't change much'.
Robert wanted to think of what to say to bring the conversation to a
halt and leave, but instead of saying goodbye, he found himself
saying:

'Suppose she's all grown up now, and left you with the baby. Must be
like old times, eh?'

She turned to face him for the first time, a conspiratorial little
smirk on her face.

'They never grow up; not really. She's still my little Emmy, even after
all these years. S'pose your mother thinks of you the same?'

'S'pose she does', he said, with a half chuckle. They were both silent
for a while, as a teenage girl with a buggy walked past, hair bleached
blonde, and tight white leggings. It was as if the young girl was an
unwelcome eavesdropper on an intimate conversation between two old
friends, rather than a couple of strangers.

'That's a change', she said 'Never see that in my day&;#8230;wasn't
heard of'. Robert grasped that she was referring to the strolling
teenage mom.

'No, suppose that didn't happen much when you were younger'. With his
comment, she looked at him intently for a moment, her watery eyes, pin
bright, narrowed for a second, as if looking for something in him. She
seemed to find it, because she shuffled up the bench, moving closer to
him, then held onto his arm, her withered, rouged lips close to his
ear. He looked straight ahead, not wanting to look directly at her,
uncomfortable at her closeness.

'It happened to my girl, y'know&;#8230;years ago when the war was
on'. She continued , not waiting for his approval or disapproval.
Robert realised that he was privileged to hear this confession from the
old dear, and although not entirely comfortable with the situation, it
still fascinated him. He decided to hear it out to the end.

'Yes, it was during the war, you see. My Gladys was a pretty young
thing&;#8230;everybody liked her'. She gave a breathy wheeze of a
chuckle, before continuing. 'Her old dad loved her so much. It would
have broke his heart when he found out what his little girl had been
doing in the bushes with Tommy Jenkins at night&;#8230;but she loved
Tommy. Least I think she thought she did.' She sighed with some obvious
regret. 'Couldn't have loved her, though. Must have found out she was
expecting&;#8230;joined up as quick as he could and buggered off.
Found out he'd been killed in France a few months later. Sad really. He
was a tall, beautiful lad. Big and strong, black wavy hair. Fancied him
m'self'. She smaned, a low dirty noise, distasteful and crude.
'Yes..he went away. All men do, eventually, in one way or
another'.
She stopped and turned to gently rock the pram, as if for her own
comfort rather than the baby's. ' I never realised she'd caught. Only
fifteen, y'see. Being sick all the while. I thought it was just a bug
going round. Pretty soon, she stopped being sick, so I let it pass; but
she knew. Hid it well though, tying things around her, so folks didn't
realise. Fooled me, I can tell you. Had no idea at all, least that's
what I told myself later. It was hard in them day's trying to bring up
a teenage girl on your own, with your man away at war.' Robert took
this as a kind of self-apology, and wisely said nothing. She seemed to
take his silence as acceptance. She continued.
'In the end, one night in September, she must have known it was coming.
She sneaked out of the house and came down here to the park. We didn't
live far away then'. She indicated in an off-hand manner over her
shoulder to a copse by the park's perimeter fence. 'It was there, in
the bushes that she gave birth to her. Funny. That's where the baby
must have been made. When I think of her straining away, alone in the
bushes, no help, nobody coming near. Dr.'s said it must have been
breech, and she'd somehow managed to turn the baby herself. God knows
how. The pain must have been excruciating'.

Robert looked at her. 'What happened when you found out &;#8230;what
did you say to Gladys'?

'Nothing. What could I say?'

'Didn't you ask her why she hadn't told you'?

She patted his leg with a mottled and withered leathery hand. 'Can't
ask the dead, deary. She died of blood loss and shock, probably not
long after having the baby. On her own in the cold, in the bushes. A
warden walking past heard the baby cry, and it was him that got the
help I should have given'. She gave a sigh, before continuing.

'After the funeral, my husband, who'd been given leave to come home
packed up his kit and left. He never spoke to me from the time he
walked through the door till the time he left. He never said, but he
blamed me; I know he did. The silence said it all. He just walked out
the door and I never saw him again. There I was, left with nothing but
Emmy and veiled accusations from the neighbors. A husband leaving you,
and people saying you had a bastard to bring up. The smans, the
heads shaking and the tongues wagging.'

Feelings of intense sorrow whelmed up in Robert. Poor old cow, he
thought. He desperately thought of some platitude or comfort that he
could give. Felt obligated to give. It sounded terribly lame when it
came out.

'At least you had the baby to look after, eh? What did you call
it?'

'It was a little girl. I called her Emmy, after my mother.'

'So she grew up, and now you've got your great-granddaughter to look
after. Lovely'.

She turned to Robert, and her eyes had become as deep, black and cold
as a winter's sea. They held a look that froze him to the core. He knew
instinctively that something here wasn't right, he wanted to leave but
he was held onto the bench as if he had been manacled to its rough
graffiti splashed surface by the old lady's anger and pain.

'The baby was always crying. Night after night she sobbed. I couldn't
bear to look at her half the time. I was too wrapped up in myself and
my own troubles. Too involved with what was dead, instead of what was
still alive. It was about three months after she was born, early on a
December morning&;#8230;very early, still dark outside. Dark and
cold. Emmy was crying again, so I brought her down to the park, by the
pond, to show her the ducks. The water was so cold. Bits of ice on it.
I don't know why, but I waded in, to give her a bath&;#8230;that's
what I told myself. As I held her under to wash her head, she stopped
crying. Later, I brought her back up. She was quiet and settled. Fast
asleep, bless her. I hid her under my Mack and took her home. Police
found out what I'd done eventually, and I was arrested. Didn't go to
prison though. They shut me away in St. Jude's; said I was mad. Suppose
I was mad for a time. But in there, despite all the howling bedlam
going on around me I fought for the power during all those long nights,
fought for the power and won it. The power to look after little Emmy
like I should have done all those years ago'. She started to fasten up
her top coat button. Cold, mottled fingers. Dead fingers.

'When I was sure I had the power, then I knew it was time. The cold
pond water in Emmy's little lungs was her escape, and a piece of sharp
glass was mine. I won't fail her now, like I failed her the first time,
or like I failed dear Gladys. I've got my second chance.'

Robert started to get a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He
wanted to look inside the pram, to reassure himself that he would be
looking at a pink, healthy, sleeping infant; but he was terrified to do
so, fearing the horror that really lurked beneath the musty blankets.
Robert Gates was cured of looking into prams for the rest of his
life.

She heaved herself to her feet, pushing the pram up the hill,
muttering;

'Now Emmy will always be my little baby'.

?Ian. M Faulkner
February 2000