I moved across. He took my place and gathered Jude into his arms. She sprawled across him with her legs on me. It was a bit of a squash, but not uncomfortable. Jude slid her thumb out of her mouth just long enough to reach across the aisle and pick a crumpled newspaper off the seat cushion.
‘Read to me,’ she ordered.
He slid his arm further around her, to open the paper. I watched with interest. He could have chosen to read to her about a massive punch-up in a public lavatory in Tottenham Court Road. Or the mysterious midnight explosion of a furniture polish factory in Wrexham. Or the woman suing a posh French restaurant because she found chunks of stewed carpet in her crème brûlée. But no, not him. He chose to read Jude the Review of the Week’s Business News.
‘Shares continued their steady revival with the FT-SE share index finishing the week improving 33.2 points to 1,750.2,’ he droned. ‘The FT 30 share index gained 27.3 points to 1,405.1, crossing the 1400 points line for the first time in two months. Gilts improved by up to three quarters of a million pounds…’
She wasn’t listening, of course. She was asleep.
He slept, too, after a bit. His head lolled back. His glasses slid a little down his nose, and he made this soft sort of rustling noise through his lips as he breathed, like papers on a desk stirred by the breeze. From time to time Jude thrashed about a bit in her sleep, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He just slid his arms more tightly round her till she settled again, murmuring something soothing in her ear, and patting whichever bit of her lay under his hand. He didn’t even bother to open his eyes. As we pulled into the main street of our home town, I realized Jude had stayed fast asleep in his arms for the whole journey. I’m not mean about old Goggle-eyes on principle, you know. Even I can give credit where it’s due, and it was due that afternoon. He can be really kind and fatherly when he tries.
And he can be really bossy and fatherly, too. He was that way when we got back. Admittedly he’d promised Mum that he’d look after us for her, but you’d think that he actually owned us, the way he went on. He wouldn’t let us do what we usually do after a demonstration, and pick up supper from the chippie on the corner. (Mum always lets us. She says she reckons political activity may be psychologically inspiriting but it’s physically enfeebling, and she couldn’t possibly come home and cook.) Gerald dragged us bodily past Patsy’s Frying Palace, and ended up going through the kitchen with a toothcomb, looking for something ‘sensible’. That was the word he used. He turned down all Jude’s suggestions for quick and easy things to eat – ice-cream, frozen party sausage rolls, fried bananas – on the grounds that they just weren’t sensible, and sent her upstairs with a lump of cheese and an apple to keep her going while she had her bath.
I stayed in the kitchen doorway, nibbling the chunk of cheese he’d given me, and found myself dragooned into peeling potatoes.
‘Can’t we have frozen chips?’
‘No, we can’t. It was a strenuous day, and both of you need something sensible, and then an early night.’
‘Can’t we stay up for Mum?’
He paused, trimming the fat off some pork chops he’d found in the fridge.
‘You can,’ he told me. ‘Judith can’t.’
He’s odd that way. He never seems to have the least trouble making decisions. Poor Mum could never say a thing like that straight out. She’d hum and haw, and try and wriggle out of it with stupid little sayings like ‘We’ll see’ and ‘Let’s wait and find out how it goes’. And if Jude started arguing that it wasn’t fair that she should be sent up to bed earlier just because she’s younger, Mum would tie herself in the most terrible knots trying to persuade her to agree, without directly bossing her.
Bossing’s no problem for Goggle-eyes. If Jude came down and tried to argue with him, all she’d get would be: ‘Because you’re younger, that’s why.’ Or even: ‘Because I say so.’ I could have made a fuss. But, after all, he’d said I could stay up. And anyway, you only had to look at Jude to see she was exhausted. So I said nothing and just kept on grinding away at the sink, peeling the mucky spuds. And suddenly, like a reward from heaven for my self-restraint, his arm appeared at my side with one of those smashing ice-tinkling, tonic-fizzing, lemon-swirling drinks of his.
‘Cheers!’ he said.
He’s absolutely right. There’s something really cheerful about these sparkling drinks he puts in your hand. Even the glasses look brighter than all the rest in the cupboard, as if he’d polished them till they glittered on a tea towel before even starting to put anything in them. And it was nice of him to go to all the trouble of making me one anyway, even though Mum wasn’t there. I knew he’d done it especially because, when I turned round, I saw he’d chosen something completely different for himself. So he had sliced the lemon and dug out the ice-cubes and fetched the tonic bottle just for me.
‘Cheers!’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’ And I nearly said ‘Gerald’, except I thought he might have noticed and I might have blushed.
Supper was fun, when we finally got round to eating it. (He sent Jude back upstairs twice before he would serve out: once for her dressing gown, and once for her furry slippers.) We didn’t have to worry, either, about keeping enough for Mum. He filled a heat-proof dish with hers, and put it in the oven to keep warm.
‘There,’ he said firmly. ‘Now what’s left on the table is all ours.’
You wouldn’t believe how many spuds I ate that evening. I must have been halfway starving to death. Even Jude finished off her peas and ate two thick slices of bread and butter on top of everything else. We chewed and chewed, and it was only after half the food had disappeared that we got round to talking.
Goggle-eyes started it.
‘Do you want to know what I think?’ he asked me suddenly, fork aloft.
Normally I’d have made a face that said ‘No thanks, I don’t’, even if I reluctantly murmured, ‘Yes. Tell me.’ But I was curious.
‘What do you think?’
He dabbed his mouth with a napkin he’d found in the bottom of a drawerful of stuff that was going to Oxfam.
‘Frankly, I think all you scruff-pots give the anti-nuclear movement a really bad name.’
Good job I had a mouthful of pork chop! He got a chance to explain before I could start yelling at him.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You people ought to dress better. You ought to change things round. Look at your mother. She goes off to work at the hospital every morning looking smart and respectable, but does she wear her little CND badge? No, she doesn’t. So no one who ever meets her during the day thinks: “What a nice, responsible woman that is. She was so kind and helpful to me. She seems like a splendid citizen, and I bet she’s a wonderful mother. But, fancy! She’s wearing one of those little CND badges. She must be a member of the anti-nuclear movement. So they can’t all be the misinformed, woolly-hatted trouble-makers and layabouts the papers often make out.”’
I’d swallowed, but I didn’t interrupt. It seemed to me what he was saying made some sort of sense.
‘Then, take today,’ he went on. ‘She leaves all those smart work clothes in the wardrobe, and puts on a tatty collection of warm woollen jumble. She chooses boots that look as if they were specifically designed to kick policemen on the shins, and wears an anorak that would disgrace a tramp. And then she proudly pins on her CND badge!’