Eddie had selected a route for their daily permitted exercise which included a park where the two children could expend some of their, apparently inexhaustible, energy running round on the grass. That was all fine in theory, but Abigail wanted to play on the slide and she started to wail when Eddie told her that the children’s play area was out of bounds. She flung herself against the locked gate and kicked her feet against the ground in frustration. Ricky, taking on the role of the know-all older brother, then treated her to a lecture on not touching anything out side the house and keeping two metres away from anyone apart from their family.
Time to head for home, thought Eddie. He removed Abigail’s hands from the gate, forcibly uncurling each finger and gripping them firmly to prevent her clinging on again. Then he carried her over to her pushchair. ‘Come along, Ricky! We need to go back now.’
But Ricky had spotted a group of teenage boys sitting on the swings, smoking cigarettes. With all the fervour of a Southern Baptist preacher berating backsliding members of his flock, he advanced upon them and started explaining the social-distancing rules in a voice so loud that Eddie was convinced the words must carry across the whole park and probably into some of the surrounding houses. He ran after his son and grabbed his hand, grateful that they were separated from the youths by the railings that surrounded the play area.
‘Come along, Ricky. Time to go back. If you’re a good boy, we’ll do baking after lunch.’
Ricky pulled away, but Eddie held fast to his hand and dragged him back to where Abigail was sitting in her push chair. She had recovered from her tearful outburst and now, with green eyes smiling and her hair shimmering in the bright sunshine, had the appearance of a cherub.
Their departure from the park was accompanied by Ricky declaring to the world his opinion that the police should be called to arrest the offenders.
Eddie felt hot and sweaty just thinking about the incident. Where had Ricky got this forthright determination to set everyone right? He would never have had the courage to approach perfect strangers to admonish them in such away himself, and he certainly could not imagine Crystal doing so! Perhaps it was spending so much time with his grandfather that did it. Being a retired police officer, Peter did have the ability to assert calm authority when the need arose. Perhaps he would have felt obliged to speak to the youths and ask them to go home. But then he wasn’t four years old and a mere three foot four tall – and he didn’t have brown skin and frizzy black hair! Eddie didn’t want his son to think that he owed white people any sort of deference because of their race, but was it time that he learned that his colour was liable to make that sort of insolent behaviour all the more unacceptable to certain people than if it had come from, say, his white, red-haired sister?
He was pondering on this question when they arrived back at their block of flats. Ricky proudly held open the glass doors of the foyer to allow his father through with the pushchair. Then he turned and started marching across towards the lift. Eddie called him back.
‘No Ricky! Come back over here! We’ve got to wait our turn.’
The middle-aged woman who was waiting for the lift to descend turned and smiled at them. She waved at the children and Abigail waved enthusiastically back. Ricky recited solemnly the words printed on the notice on the wall next to the lift doors: Only one household at a time in the lift.
The doors opened and the woman got in. Then they closed again and the family crossed the foyer to wait their turn. Abigail clamoured to be lifted up to press the button to summon the lift, but Ricky was there first. He grinned round triumphantly as the light came on signifying that his request had been noted.
‘Not fair! Not fair!’ his sister wailed. ‘My turn!’
‘That was naughty, Ricky,’ Eddie agreed. ‘You pressed the button on the way down. You should have let Abbie do it this time.’
‘She did it both ways yesterday,’ Ricky argued.
‘No, she didn’t. You did it on the way back. Don’t you remember? You were still eating your ice cream and I had to hold it for you.’
‘I didn’t mean then!’ Ricky retorted. ‘I meant afterwards, when Mummy was back and you and Abbie went to get more milk ’cos we’d run out.’
‘But you didn’t come then,’ Eddie protested. ‘You stayed at home with Mummy.’
‘So I can’t have pressed the button!’ Ricky smiled smugly up at his father, confident that he had made a compelling point in support of his case. Perhaps, after all, his vocation was to become a barrister in later life, rather than a police officer.
‘Not fair! Not fair!’ Abbie repeated, kicking her feet against the frame of the pushchair. Her shrill voice echoed up the stairs that wound round the outside of the lift shaft.
Eddie kneeled down and put his face close to hers, speaking softly in an effort to comfort her, while keeping an eye on the illuminated numbers displayed next to the lift doors. It was still on its way up. What a pity that Mrs Cartwright lived on the top floor! Abigail continued to scream. She was tired after her time in the park and hungry for her lunch – and, despite the undoubted logic of Ricky’s reasoning, Eddie had every sympathy with her assessment of the lift button situation as unfair on her.
A mother and two children came down the stairs. They were lucky enough to have a flat on the second floor. The two little girls stared at Abbie as they passed. Ricky smiled at them in a superior way and informed them sagely that two-year-olds are always throwing tantrums.
At that moment, Eddie was unsure whether he most desired to smother his daughter or to throttle his son. What he was certain about was that he fervently wished that lift would come back down soon and that nobody else would enter the foyer in the interim.
‘Hi Eddie!’ the young mother greeted him with a sympathetic grin. ‘I can see it’s one of those days!’
Eddie smiled and shrugged. ‘You could say that!’
The lift gave a beep, signifying that it had arrived at the ground floor. The doors opened and Ricky raced in. He stood beneath the control panel eager to be lifted up to press the “8” button that would send them speeding – if that was the right word, the ageing lift often seemed to travel painfully slowly – up to their flat.
‘No Ricky,’ Eddie told him, as he carefully manoeuvred the pushchair inside. ‘It’s Abbie’s turn now.’
‘But she did it on the way down!’ Ricky protested.
‘And you pressed the button outside, just now; so now it’s her turn again.’
Eddie picked up Abbie and held her so that she could reached the button mark “8”. She pressed it, grinning as it lit up to show that the lift had noted her request and would stop on that floor. An electronic voice announced, ‘Doors closing! Lift going up.’
Angry at what he perceived as a monstrous injustice, Ricky reached up and pressed all the buttons that he could reach: 1, 2, 3. He stretched as high as he could, but the others were beyond the tips of his fingers. Eddie put Abigail down and pulled Ricky away from the control panel.
‘Ricky! That’s naughty.’
The lift doors opened; they had reached the first floor. Eddie hastily pressed the door-closed button. The disembodied voice declared once more, ‘Doors closing! Lift going up.’
The same happened on the second floor. Then, at floor three, the doors opened and an older couple first stepped forward and then drew back. They retreated down the passage to allow space for the lift passengers to emerge.
‘Sorry!’ Eddie called out in deep embarrassment. ‘Wrong floor!’
‘Doors closing! Lift going up.’
He turned to see his son grinning broadly. Ricky had managed to reach the door-close button. Fortunately, Abigail seemed not to have noticed her brother stealing a march on her in the button-pressing stakes. She was more interested in watching the lights changing on the display that indicated which floor they were currently on.
‘Six … seven … eight!’ she announced.
‘That’s right, Abbie,’ Eddie agreed. ‘Eight. Out we get!’
He steered the pushchair out on to the landing, turning to check that both children had followed him out of the lift. Ricky pushed past and headed off in the direction of their flat. Abigail started off after him, then hesitated and took hold of the side of the pushchair instead.
‘Ricky was naughty, wasn’t he?’ she commented as she walked sedately along beside her father. ‘I’m a good girl, aren’t I?’
‘Well, most of the time,’ Eddie conceded, fumbling in his pocket for the key to open the front door.
‘I rang the bell!’ Ricky declared proudly. ‘I’ve grown! I can reach it now.’
Eddie sighed. ‘If you’re big enough to reach the doorbell,’ he told Ricky, ‘you’re big enough to know that you mustn’t ring it. What’s the point, anyway? There’s nobody to answer it: we’re all out here!’