The
wheels of a baby buggy hit my chair with such force that a quantity
of the hot brown drink in the thick mug I was holding slopped
onto the table top. I could not remember whether I had ordered
tea or coffee and there was no clue to be had from the taste of
what I had sipped so far. Automatically I pulled out a tissue
and mopped up the mess, but in a way it made matters worse because
it stirred up several other things which had dried there before.
Out
of curiosity I ran my fingers under the edge of the table. It
was both comforting and disturbing to feel the collection of dried-on
stuff under there. Years ago we had a habit of sticking chewing
gum there while we ate burgers or bacon butties. Sometimes it
was other stuff if we had no paper hankies. I wondered what it
would look like if I turned the table over. It certainly felt
as if no Food Safety Inspector had thought of checking.
The
buggy now rammed another table and I thought maybe we would all
soon be able to see for ourselves as the table wobbled precariously.
Then
from a long way away I heard a voice saying, “Allo, Val.
It is Val, innit?” A hand squeezed my arm. “It’s
me, Val. Don’t you remember me?”
I
tried to focus on the face and get free of the clutching hand.
A sticky face was pressing against my leg and another child started
screeching. “Come on, Val. Don’t be all stuck up.
You must remember.”
Nobody
had called me Val for years. Not since I had left this, ‘my
home town’. I looked at the grey face, the straggly hair
and the grubby coat with a couple of buttons missing, but it was
really that whining tone of voice that cut through the mists.
“Is it Janine?” I stuttered.
“Course
it’s Janine. Your best mate. Or I thought I was till you
went off and I never heard another word. I nearly got on to the
papers to see if you had been sold into white slavery, but I fell
pregnant with my first and I soon had other things on my mind.
He’s ten now and a right little devil.”
One
child was still wiping its face on my skirt. The other was still
screeching and yet another lay 
peacefully
oblivious, next to him in the buggy, a bottle of cold tea hanging
out of its mouth and several bits of previous snacks down the
front of a sad old coat.
Janine
reached over and stubbed out her cigarette on one of the dirty
plates which had been on the table when I arrived. She sat down
uninvited. “Couldn’t get me a cuppa, could you, Val?
Only I left my purse at home.” She was already signalling
to the man behind the counter.
Trapped,
I said, “Do the children want anything?” ( Apart from
a good wash, a hairbrush and some warm clothes I thought.) Soon,
enough junk food and drinks for a week had arrived at the table.
At least the screeching stopped and the child left my skirt alone
for more interesting things. A quantity of things disappeared
into a bag on the back of the buggy and I later found out that
this was one of Janine’s regular tricks – to let the
children pester customers, beg a drink and then lay in supplies
to keep the kids quiet for a bit. She also had some connection
with the man running the place, so it was in both their interests
for her to beg and help his sales figures at the same time.
“Got
any cigs, Val?” Janine whined between gulps of coffee or
tea. I shook my head. “No, of course, no smoking or drinking,
and definitely none of the other. Miss Goody Goody, eh?”
She reached over and looked at my left hand. “Not married,
so no change there either.”
“My
husband was a soldier and he was killed in Northern Ireland,”
I said, surprised that it suddenly hurt so much again.
Janine
didn’t seem to notice, but she never did have much idea
of the impact she had on other people, which is how we came to
meet in the first place I suppose.
We
both turned up at about the same time in the county’s Assessment
Centre. We were both just fourteen. She had been chucked out of
every school in her town, for rampaging around, ignoring the rules
and refusing any attempts to discipline her.
On
the other hand I had desperately wanted to go to school. It was
another, better, world for me and I just loved learning and having
the chance to be a young girl. But I had been taken into care
because I did not attend school, sometimes for weeks at a time.
There were eight of us in the family and I was the second oldest
girl. My sister, Jane, had a job and Ma was keen to see her off
to that 
every
day, because she usually turned over most of her money on payday.
My ‘job’ was to help at home and since neither of
my parents set any store by schooling they saw no reason not to
keep me as an unpaid servant and child minder. A couple of times
I was also unofficial midwife because my mother was too drunk
to notice she was in labour.
When
Janine said I had a reputation for not being interested in sex
and boys she was right, because I only saw the pain and the blood
and had to get up night after night to do feeds, as baby after
baby came into a house where no-one was really fit to look after
them. I tried, but what do you know at eight, or ten, or twelve.
I certainly had no intention of starting down that path myself
at fourteen, unlike Janine.
“So,
where did you go? Where have you been? Are you back for good now?”
The Janine Inquisition was in full swing.
To be continued next month.
