One Bead of Gold

The children had all been brought to this house in the middle of the night. One more fight between her parents had woken her. Her mother shouting again in that terrible sergeant-major's voice of hers. Her father swearing at her mother. The mother threw things at the father. There was a scuffle, hitting, shouting, accusing, swearing, menacing. The mother phoned the police, threatening to tell about the stolen and smuggled goods hidden in the garage. The father yanked the big, black phone out of the living-room wall, wooden box and all, making a horrible tearing noise. Jacqueline and Jonathan hid in the dark dining room staring at the hole in the living room wall, horrified. Lucinda stood up in her cot, howling, hanging on to the top of the rails in the dark. The children could make out the dim shape of her white nightie across the living room through the open door of the baby's room. Their father bellowed at her to shut up, scaring her into screaming twice as loudly. In two strides he was beside her, his fist raised. He knocked her right across the cot. She bashed into the bars on the other side and lay quietly, gasping. Jacqueline and Jonathan crept under the dining room table where they could peek out from under the edge of the tablecloth but had a better chance of not being seen. Their mother shrieked at their father. He punched her. She clawed back, calling him names. Blows were traded. Insults. Palpable hatred. Jonathan crept towards the kitchen, intending to get a knife and kill his father to save his mother. Lucinda recovered her breath and began to howl. Jacqueline sped in terror to her bedroom to hide. A blow from their mother turned their father's head. He caught sight of a movement past the living room door. "What are you bloody kids doing out of bed? I'll teach you!" He was slowed down by their mother hauling on his arm, hitting at him, yelling at him, but still Jonathan was caught as he tried to get back to the bedroom. More shouting. Beating. Swearing. The baby wailing on and on and on. Some people came and found Jacqueline hiding under Jonathan's bed. They put her in a car with the other two and told her they'd all be alright now. No one would ever hit them again. She was too weary and sick to care. They were driven to a strange building all stark and white inside that smelled like the dentist's. A man doctor looked at all three children. He even made them take their night clothes off and pressed on the sore spots, even the old sore spots from last time that didn't really hurt any more until he said, "Does this hurt?" and made it hurt with his fingers. He wasn't even their doctor. Jacqueline hated him. She hated the nurse that made her do what he said. Worse yet, some rude people took photos of the bruises and marks and people like police asked really nosy questions about home. They were pretending they weren't police, but Jacqueline wasn't fooled. She knew who they were whether they wore uniforms or not and she despised them for thinking they could fool her. She hated them all. She wouldn't do or say anything they wanted. They couldn't make her tell on her parents. After they were there for what seemed like forever, the doctor gave them something ‘to make them feel better’. It made them feel dopey. The nosy people put them in another car with a man driving and a lady in the back with them. Jacqueline wouldn't let the lady hold Lucinda. She fought to have the baby on her own lap. Lucinda clung to her, terrified of the strangers, so the lady had to give in. "They all exhibit this strong separation anxiety," the man said and Jacqueline hated him, too. Turning Lucinda so that the icky lady couldn't make silly faces and make friends with her, Jacqueline hugged the baby to herself, ignoring how the weight hurt her legs. Through the thinness of her nightdress she could clearly feel the lumps on Lucinda's head from crashing into the bars of her cot when their father had hit her. The hard lumps against her chest made Jacqueline feel as if she had a knife twisting in her stomach. She hated her father with a burning hot loathing and wished she had told the nosy people everything he did so that he would get into trouble. She wished the icky lady would shut up. As the car hummed out of the lights of the city into the darkness of the countryside the children squeezed together as tightly as they could. They had fought hard to prevent the icky lady from sitting between them and now they tried just as hard to avoid any touch from her, shrinking away from her consoling pats and glaring balefully up at her when she tried to comfort them with kindly words, which she did constantly. The woman seemed too stupid to realise that they were too clever to be taken in by her. Their fear and loathing turned to contempt. If this was how smart the welfare workers were, Jacqueline was sure she and Jonathan would have no difficulty getting away from them. Their parents had warned them over and over again that the police would take them away and lock them up where they would never see one another again. Then they would grow up behind bars, never knowing what had happened to the others or to their mummy and daddy. The children had lived in terror of that, but now that it was happening it looked like there was a chance they could escape and make their way home. Yet as the car took them further and further from everything familiar they pressed tightly against one another, keeping their distance from the welfare worker and cuddling Lucinda as she dozed off. They wanted to be touching and holding her tightly forever. For all of her life. They felt that they would only survive as long as they were touching one another. Just the same, Jacqueline couldn't bring herself to look at Jonathan. She knew he was all swollen and discoloured, that almost any touch anywhere on his body hurt him. Looking at him reminded her of the times she had looked like that and felt like that; when she had been kept home from school because of ‘falls’ or ‘flu’ or an ‘illness in the family’. She had to always remember what excuse it was to keep her out of sight until any marks that showed had faded. It was one of the leaping horrors of her life that she would forget and say the wrong thing and a teacher would ask questions, which would end up with Jacqueline being locked up in one of those places for bad children. Their mother was better than their father at making sure nothing showed. He would just get mad and hit out blindly, but their mother more often made sure anything she did to the children wouldn't cause awkward questions. Thinking of how much some of her mother's punishments hurt, Jacqueline trembled, closed her eyes and leaned against Jonathan. She knew that her weight was causing him pain, but she needed the touch of him. Guilty about making it worse for him, she pulled back after a moment and looked away. She didn't dare speak to him where they might be heard and she couldn't bring herself to look at him. She could almost feel his pain as it was.