Introduction

SARAH SCHOFIELD’S first collection, Safely Gathered In, is a book about loss, grief, miscommunication, the emotional power of cultural detritus and characters at the end of their tether.

There’s a blend of traditional storytelling and bold experimentation with form.

Rejoice, an accessible and politically engaged story, draws these themes together and considers the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

Initially, this seems an odd focus for a writer who wasn’t born when Thatcher was elected, so why does this proponent of nationalism, spending cuts and the unfettered free market resonate at the heart of this tale?    

“I was born in the 1980s,” says Schofield, “so Thatcher was insistently present throughout my earliest years and memories. In some ways I am the girl in the story — fascinated by the woman — the mechanical speech, the stiff presence, the manicured hair and persona … I was raised a feminist yet here was an incredibly powerful woman, asserting her space, and instinctively, even as a child without understanding the politics at play, I felt a jarring gap.

“I think children are particularly sensitive to the gaps between what adults say and what they do. This held my eye, just as intoxicatingly as with the girl in the story.

“This story, particularly in the way it folds back on itself historically, was an opportunity to explore my memory of Thatcher. To view the current political climate through the lens of the past.

“I couldn’t write much during the early pandemic lockdowns. On top of the demands of a young family, I felt paralysed by the situation.

“Just one aspect of many, the PPE crisis gave me a deep trembling despair at the failings of our government in the treatment of those we needed to protect.

“And that gap yawned open between the things said and the things done. The defensiveness, the emphatic attempt to steer the narrative of history. More and more I felt this was a folding back, an overlapping of political climates and personas.

“The untruths and caricatures, the mishandling and questionable regard for life and livelihood, the manipulation with scripted soundbites and national clapping. The divisive language. Thatcher’s ‘rejoice’ rang like tinnitus. Just rejoice. Those words. It’s the same tired narrative, undermining critique, culpability or scrutiny.”

Safely Gathered In by Sarah Schofield was published by Comma Press in November, it is available from: commapress.co.uk/books/safely-gathered-in

Rejoice
by Sarah Schofield

IT IS almost dark when I get to Dad’s. Through the window I see him and April sitting round the table in the lounge. They are colouring in. She laughs, showing off the gap in her teeth. Her square black handbag sits on the windowsill.
I let myself in. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Cuppa?’
I nod.
‘How was work?’
‘Busy.’
‘Our NHS heroes.’ He rests his head against mine. I wonder how he manages to be sarcastic and sincere. I know he is thinking about Dan and doesn’t know what else to say. He goes into the kitchen, tossing his newspaper to me on the way past. ‘Another chunk sold off. Like I said…’
I glance at the paper but the ringing starts up in my ears again and I can’t bring myself to read it.
April has moved from the table and is sitting on the carpet. There are VHS cassettes scattered around her and a cardboard box stacked with curling newspaper pages and magazines. Dad’s collection of cuttings and recordings from the ’80s and ’90s. Margaret Thatcher stares out from the cover of Time magazine. I step over it to stand beside April and drop a kiss onto her forehead. She ducks and picks up a video cassette.
‘Dad. I’ve told you…’ I call through into the kitchen. The ringing in my ears begins to spike again. Always there now.
‘Ah.’ He looks in for a moment before returning to the kitchen. ‘She’s just curious about the VHS machine. I’ve been meaning to put them onto DVD.’
‘No-one watches DVDs anymore.’
‘Well, you know —’
‘And why would you want to?’ I take the video out of April’s hand and drop it back into the storage box.
He comes back through and hands me a cup of tea. ‘Lest we forget…’
April comes over and lifts the cassette back out of the box. She takes it to the dusty video player, slides it in and presses play. The Commons. Thatcher is fielding questions and the braying from behind her grows with every haughty rise and fall of her voice. She wears an emerald green suit; a silk bow at her throat. April returns to her colouring at the table, glancing at the screen from time to time. As she colours, I detect her twitching interest. She has mastery of it now; just a momentary pause, a prick of her ears, gives her away. A creeping dread starts across my shoulders and cascades to my stomach. The ringing in my ears intensifies. I watch the pen squeak mechanically back and forth across the scrap of card in the little girl’s fingers.
‘You know, this is all on the internet now, Dad. You don’t have to keep this in your house.’ April flinches as I turn the TV off.
He shrugs. ‘This whole business. It’s made me…’
‘Nostalgic?’ I raise my eyebrows.
‘No!’ He looks hurt. ‘No.’ The phone rings and he takes it into the other room to answer. I sit down at the table with April.
‘How was school?’
‘Okay.’ She puts her pen down and selects another.
I try to hear what my father is saying on the phone. I go to the kitchen. He stands tall, hand in one pocket, looking out of the back window. He is nodding. ‘Mm hm. Yes,’ he says. ‘When is that? Yes — of course.’
From the front room, I hear the clunk of the video player and the whir of a cassette rewinding; an instantly familiar sound. I stand unseen in the doorway, caught between the two of them. I am struck by how time can fold back on itself — my father busy again organising marches, the return of this spectre; The Iron Lady. April has abandoned her colouring — carefully cut pieces of Rice Krispie box are scattered across the table. She stands in front of the TV with the remote in her hand, her handbag clamped into the crook of her arm. She bends forward to press play. The TV is set on mute. A Challenger tank bounces across scrubland. A figure in white stands erect out of the hatch, a Union Jack fluttering wildly beside them. The camera cuts to a close-up. Thatcher, goggles strapped over a white headscarf, holds onto the hatch with one gauntleted hand. She looks from side to side as the tank rolls along. Her chiffon scarf billows. The footage ends and April stoops to press rewind.
‘We’re going, sweetheart,’ I say.
She jumps away from the TV.
‘Go and find your shoes.’
My father comes back into the room. ‘You’re off?’
‘Don’t be taking too much on,’ I say. ‘And please don’t let her watch this stuff.’
On the drive home, April sits quietly in the back holding the bag on her knees.
‘Are you hungry?’ I say. ‘Did you have fun at Grandad’s?’
She nods and looks out of the window.
I wonder, not for the first time, whether I am right to simply ignore it and, like nose picking or shouting, it will just stop. Since she first watched Dad’s recordings a few weeks ago it seems to have become an obsession. I have seen the search history on my YouTube app:
Fatchair
Factur
Margret Thachur
I should block it. Or stop her using my phone. I definitely should do that.
Dan would’ve thought this is funny. I should think it’s funny.
We pull into our drive and I turn off the engine.
The house is cold. I gather the post on the doormat and set April up watching cartoons. While I heat up a tin of spaghetti hoops I flick through the post and open a letter. We are writing to you because we believe you are eligible for Coronavirus Life Assurance scheme 2020 but you have not yet claimed. Since we last contacted you —
‘Do I look like her, Mummy?’ My daughter stands in the doorway, holding the bag in the crook of her arm. She presses her hands together under her chin.
I stare back down at the letter.  
‘Mummy, I said —’
I crumple it into my pocket and stir the spaghetti hoops. ‘Go and wash your hands,’ I say. The molten sauce thickens and the hoops roll in the pan. I carry two plates into the lounge. April sits upright on the sofa with my phone. I watch her scrolling, pausing, smiling. She mouths something.
‘What’s that, baby?’ I go over to her. The heat rises in my cheeks. The familiar prickle behind my eyes.
‘Nothing,’ she says.
I snatch the phone out of her hand. On the home screen, there is a new picture behind the app tiles of her and me drinking milkshakes. I hand her a plate.
I sit and scoop a forkful of hoops into my mouth. The sauce blisters my tongue. I swallow. ‘Eat up before it goes cold,’ I say.
She stares at her plate.
‘Come on, my lovely.’

‘Bathtime,’ I say.
She goes upstairs. I follow her and turn on the taps. While she gets undressed, I go downstairs and take my phone from the sofa and tuck it high on the bookcase. I go to the sink and wash my hands, lathering the foam between my chapped fingers. The antibacterial soap stings in the cracks in my skin.
In the bath she lines up a flotilla of plastic boats. She sits, the water lapping around her tummy, crashing her arms down on the bobbing toys. ‘You’re this boat, Mummy.’ She hands me one. ‘I’ll be this one. Ready?’
I reach for the shower gel. ‘Let’s blow bubbles.’
Later, when I carry her to bed, she grips the hair at the back of my neck and I hold her close. She tells me to sing to her. I stroke her cheek like I did when she was tiny and I look at her face. I see Dan, but I also see myself there, around her eyes and in the corner of her mouth. It is elusive — and when I look too hard it evades me.
‘Mummy.’ She strokes my cheek and yawns.

It’s my weekend day off and I ask April what she would like to do.
‘Charity shop treasure hunt,’ she says.
We are in the Barnardo’s shop. I pull a mask from my pocket while April stands beside me, holding her handbag. The woman at the counter smiles through her face shield. ‘I like your bag. Just like mummy, hey?’
The skin across my face tightens but I force a smile into my eyes. Sweat is gathering on my top lip under my mask. But when I glance down at April, she looks as mortified as I feel. And it’s as close to joyful I’ve been in months.
I send April to the toy section while I look at the books. ‘We need new puzzles,’ I call to her.
I pull out a gardening book and flick through it. ‘What do you think, for Grandad?’ I turn towards the toys, holding out the book. But she isn’t there. I scan round the shop.
I can’t see her.
She isn’t here. I step around the clothes rails. ‘April?’ The panic rises in me, my whole body responds. The buzzing in my ears shifts to high pitch shrilling. ‘April?’  
I turn to the shop door. It is propped open.
I run out onto the street and look up and down. ‘April?’ I shout. Which way? Would she head towards the library? Surely she wouldn’t just go on her own. Someone must have grabbed her. The weird looking guy by the —
Someone touches my sleeve. ‘Love?’ The shop assistant points back into the store.
Halfway down the side aisle.
April.
She looks like she is genuflecting. She has something held in her hands and gazes up at me. I must have walked straight past her.
The terror rolls back. I take a deep breath, trying to subdue the noise in my head. I stride over and take her by the arm. ‘Why didn’t you answer me? I was calling you.’
She tries to peel my fingers away but I hold firm.
‘Come on, we’re going.’
Her eyes are wide.
‘Come on,’ I say again. I loosen my grip on her arm and she wriggles free.
She turns away from me and strokes the thing she is holding.
‘What is that?’
‘Nothing.’  
It is something white. Synthetic fabric. A handkerchief? My own hands, empty, are shaking. I press them into my pockets. On her arm, a red oval grows where I’d held her.
I soften my voice. ‘Is that the treasure today?’
She caresses the material.
‘Would you like it?’
She nods.
‘And then a snack-stop?’ I say quietly. She looks up and I tilt my head towards the café across the road. ‘Chocolate milkshakes?’
She stands, carries the material to the counter and lays it down. It is bigger than I’d realised. Not a handkerchief.
‘Thanks,’ I say to the shop assistant, as I pay. ‘Thanks for before…’  
April picks up the fabric and moves away. A moment later, I turn to where she is standing. She has found a mirror. She is balancing on tiptoes and putting the scarf over her head. She has folded it into a triangular shape. She is tying it in a bow under her chin.

People stare at us as we walk across the road to the café. I tweak my mask up higher and swear silently behind it. Once inside, we go to our table. I slide the scarf off her head and tousle her fringe. She frowns and rubs the red patch at the top of her arm.
‘Can I play my game?’
I pass her my phone. I watch her as I wait at the counter behind the taped distancing markers. I know she isn’t playing a game because her thumbs aren’t moving. Her eyes flicker my way and she slides down in the chair.
‘Usual?’ says the woman behind the counter.
‘Yeah. Thank you,’ I get out my card while she makes our drinks. I don’t take my eyes off April.
‘She’s getting so grown up, isn’t she?’ The woman puts the drinks on the counter.
‘Six going on sixteen,’ I say.
‘Hm.’ She smiles and points at the card reader. ‘When you’re ready.’
I hold my card against the machine. It takes a moment to register. When I glance back up at April, she has pulled the scarf back up onto her head.
Heat rises up my neck. My breath is sour inside my mask.
As I approach our table, I am sure I hear a strident orotund voice coming from the phone but when I peer over her shoulder she is watching Peppa Pig.

‘Bedtime,’ I say. April kneels on a chair at the dining table surrounded by cut out, coloured rectangles. They are stacked on a Snakes and Ladders board we found in a charity shop some weeks ago.
‘Mummy, don’t touch anything,’ she says. ‘I can’t tidy it up yet.’
‘Perhaps we can have a quick game,’ I say.
‘This is the money. And these are the coupons.’ She pushes some cardboard squares towards me. ‘It’s the one with the most at the end that wins.’ She looks up. ‘Most money, not coupons.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s really better with more than two players,’ she says.
‘Well,’ I fold my hands. ‘I’m sure we can — ’
‘More than two is what it’s meant to be.’ As she explains the rules to me there is something odd yet familiar about the way she is speaking. A slow, sonorous emphasis to the oration. And then I hear something else. I close my eyes and listen closely to confirm I am right; a rhotacism. As if her ‘r’ is a tiny dignified challenge. Like she is stoically trying to conceal her endeavours. My heart beats in my throat. I watch her mouth opening and closing, her tongue moving between the gap in her teeth. A part of me is impressed with the effect. The bigger part is quelling repulsion. I breathe deeply.
‘And finally,’ she says, ‘if you win a golden ticket you have to shout ‘Gotcha!’ before the other players can. Do you understand?’
Something niggles. But it feels too big to look at right now. ‘Perhaps you can explain as we play?’ I say.
She unclasps her handbag and takes out a dice. She doles out the money, slipping extra onto her pile.
‘Hey, that’s cheating!’ I say.
April’s eyes flush with tears. ‘Let’s not play anymore,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I reach for her hand. ‘Come on. Who goes first?’
‘No. Let’s put it away.’
‘If you show me, we can play with Grandad tomorrow?’
April hands me a counter. She rolls the dice three times, finally rolling a six. ‘A six!’ She counts along the board. Then she rolls again.
‘Isn’t it my turn?’ I rub at a headache that is nudging at my brow.
‘If you roll a six you go again.’ April shakes the dice vigorously between cupped palms. It is an action so reminiscent of Dan that I nearly tell her. She rolls another six and plays again. Then a four, jumping the squares with her counter. I stare bleakly at mine still waiting at the first square. I think about tomorrow’s consultations I need to prepare for once April has gone to bed. The post-Covid backlog.
‘You turn, if you want to.’
My head snaps up.
‘What did you say?’
April is holding out the dice.
‘What did you say?’ I reach out and squeeze her fingers in mine.
‘Your turn.’ Her eyes are wide. I look down. My knuckles are pale; her little fingers crushed together inside my fist. An ugly knot that is both myself and something other, something unknown. A lithopedion.
‘Mummy.’ She pulls against me. I let go and April jerks back into her chair.
We meet eye to eye.
‘Teeth,’ I say. ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’
I bleach the surfaces in the kitchen. My hands sting as I wring the cloth out in the sink.
Later, when she is asleep, I press April’s hand against my lips. I stroke the outline of my sleeping child. I feel the hard edges of her handbag tucked under the duvet.

It is late. I sit at the kitchen table with my laptop, reading over patients’ case notes. April’s board game lies beside my laptop where I’d promised to leave it set up.
I touch the stack of money.
I stand and stretch and I go to the bin across the room and pop the lid. I sit at the table and take a bank note, screw it into a tiny ball and flick it towards the bin. I do this over and over, until they are all gone.
Later, I pick through the rubbish. I sit and uncrumple the bank notes. I set up the ironing board and press each one until my fingertips are cross-hatched with iron brands.

After work the next day, I let myself into Dad’s house and listen at the door. They’re in the lounge.
‘Not again!’ Dad says and laughs.
I go through. They look up from April’s board game.
‘It’s brutal, this…’ he smiles at April. ‘But quite wonderful! How was your shift?’
‘Busy,’ I say. I lean against the doorframe.
He pulls out the chair beside him. ‘We need another player. Cuppa?’
‘Thanks, Dad.’ I squeeze his hand.
‘You’re exhausted.’
‘I’m okay.’
He lays his hand on my shoulder and then goes to the kitchen.
I sit down beside April. We both stare at the board game and then I wrap my arm around her.
‘How was school?’
‘Good.’
I lean in to her. I look closer. Her lips are coral red. Slightly shimmery. Badly drawn. ‘What’s that?’
She raises a hand part way to her face. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Come here.’ I pull her towards me and scrub at her mouth with my fingers. She tries to pull away.
Dad comes back into the room. ‘Steady on, love.’ He stands beside April. ‘We didn’t think you’d mind…’
I stare at the stain on my fingers.
‘Just a bit of lipstick. April found it in your old room.’
April fiddles with the stack of bank notes. She looks at me.
‘Come on, let’s get going,’ I say.
‘Stay for supper,’ Dad says. He turns to April with exaggerated delight. ‘I’m doing courgette surprise.’
I think about the empty fridge at home. I haven’t had time to shop.
In the kitchen, Dad sets the garlic sizzling in a slick of butter. He slices yellow courgettes and tosses them in. He is nimble, but I see his wrist strain under the weight of the pan.
‘Can I help?’
‘Relax,’ he says and points to the breakfast bar. I perch on a stool and move a box of printed leaflets to make space to rest my elbows. I pick one out and read it.
‘This is a bit old school.’ I lay it back into the box.
He smiles and dices a block of feta. He pulls basil leaves off the plant on his windowsill.
Dad serves up and we eat.
April stabs a courgette slice. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Just try it…’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘No. It’s okay!’ He gets up and pulls open the freezer. ‘I’ve got fish fingers somewhere.’
After supper I insist on doing the washing up. I drop the plates into the sink and run the hot tap. I watch the grease pooling on the surface.  
‘What’s up, love?’
‘Nothing.’
He looks at me. I pull the crumpled letter out of my cardigan pocket. I pass it to Dad and he puts on his glasses.
‘It’s for Dan.’
I turn back to the sink and scrub at the frying pan. After a couple of minutes he takes his glasses off again.
‘I don’t want their money,’ I say.
‘It’s not their money.’
I dry my hands and stack up the plates from the draining board. April is standing in the doorway.
‘Give it to charity, then,’ he says.
My hands tremble as I open cupboard doors. ‘They did this. If they had provided him with adequate PPE —’
Dad takes the plates off me. ‘April, go and play in the lounge, sweetheart.’
‘I’m waiting for you to play my game,’ she says.
‘Great — set it up, we’ll be there in a minute.’
April rolls her eyes and goes into the lounge. I hear the clunk and whir of a VHS cassette sliding into the machine.
‘It’s just an insult, Dad. Don’t get me started.’
‘I know love. I know.’
‘After all that fucking clapping.’ I stare out of the window. ‘And now they’re just selling it off bit by bit.’
‘That’s why I’m, you know…’ he points to the stack of leaflets. ‘Come on the march with me. It’s just local. But it’s something.’

Just before we leave, I go upstairs and stand in my old bedroom. April’s room now, when I’m on nights. My old denim curtains still hang at the window but the sill is busy with new cartoon figurines. The overpriced kind they sell in the supermarket toy aisle.
My dolls house stands on the chest of drawers. I touch the door’s brass knocker. It is double fronted, papered to look like wooden slats and sandstone. It has cream shutters at each window and an attached garage with a flip-up door. Someone has painted ivy up the front. I swing the front open. I know these spaces intimately. Fancy wrapping paper ironed flat and pasted into each room, wood panelling around the dining room fashioned from Cuprinol-dipped lolly sticks, the baby grand; a birthday gift from a great auntie, and tiny beaded chandeliers hanging from the ceilings. I reach in and draw the Liberty fabric curtains across the window. I remember when I’d found that fabric in a jumble sale box of off-cuts — immediately I had wanted it for my dolls’ house. I had imagined how it would look in the windows, from the inside, if one were to look out. And I realize that that was always the way I’d seen it. To be inside. To sit at that piano, to lie in that four poster, to walk down those stairs with their tiny brass stair rods and to gaze up at those chandeliers. To decide what to buy next. To look round at all you had built up and feel enclosed and pleased with yourself. A house where there wasn’t food parcel deliveries and angry banners painted at kitchen tables.
A sudden recollection makes me recoil. Dan and I looking for our first home together. Weeks, it seemed, lying together in this bedroom scouring listings. I had dismissed each one. There was always a plausible reason — too far from the hospital, too noisy for night shifts — Dan getting more and more frustrated with me until, eventually, he slipped out of the house one evening convinced it was he, not the houses, that was the problem. I swing the front door back and forth on its tiny brass hinge. My throat feels suddenly dry and tight. How did I talk him round? We’d found somewhere soon after, I’m sure.
A noise at the door makes me turn.
‘April’s getting her stuff together.’
‘Where did this come from?’
‘Ah… Remember Derek, at the Branch? Derek’s girl was a few years older than you.’
I nod.
He puts his glasses on and peers inside. ‘You can take it home if you like. April spends hours up here playing with it.’     
‘We don’t have room,’ I snap shut the front of the house. ‘She’ll grow out of it. Pass it to someone else.’ I point towards the windowsill. ‘And stop buying her all this plastic rubbish. She’s got enough.’

Back home, I let her stay up late. We watch cartoons together and I make her hot chocolate with marshmallows. We read stories in her bed and she rests her head against me.
She comes into my room in the night. I look at the clock but it flashes zero.
‘Mummy,’ she says.
I turn to her in the half-light and reel back. She is withered and sunken. Maggots crawl from her hairline. She has Dan’s desperate breathless eyes.
‘Mummy.’
I open my eyes. April is standing beside my bed. She is wide eyed. I pull back the duvet and scoop her next to me.  
I lie in the dark until I feel her relax into sleep then I get up and go to sit at the top of the dark stairs, with my hands pressed against my ears. It’s almost enough to hold the screaming sound inside.
I go into April’s room and slide the handbag from under her duvet. Unclasping it, I breathe in. Desiccated lavender and licorice imps. Within are two video cassettes. Her board game is also in there, the counters slide around the polyester lining at the bottom.
I unlock the front door and slip out into the street. I lift the lid of the grey bin and force the bag inside, rupturing bin bags and spilling their contents. I quietly lower the lid.
I stand at the front door and let the cool into the house. I look at my watch. 3.16 am. This is the time of night that Dan and I sometimes spoke about. Usually with a glass of wine in hand. This odd time when on a night shift, patients often seemed to slip into an in between place of holding on and letting go. Bodily and cerebrally — you could pause here and look back at yourself. Like catching your own reflection from the side. I go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. I sit on the doorstep and let the tears run down my face.

It is 4am. I am wiping congealed spaghetti hoops and the contents of the vacuum cleaner off April’s handbag. I work Mr Sheen into all the stitched edges and over the curve of the strap.

Dad picks us up in the morning. I’ve packed a rucksack with a thermos and sandwiches. From over her bowl of cornflakes, April has been eyeing her handbag on the kitchen table.
‘Go on,’ I say and she reaches for it. She checks inside before arming it and running to Dad’s car.
The day is bright and crisp and there is something optimistic in the gathering of people; a crowd carefully observing social distancing. Someone hands me a mask with the NHS logo on it. While Dad gets banners from the boot, I watch April trying to fix her headscarf in the car mirror. After a few moments, I go over and adjust it, tying it securely under her chin. She watches me closely.
We hold hands as we move into the procession. Some people look at her and smile but no-one says anything about her scarf and we travel with the flow. Perhaps no-one else sees what I see in the bag, in the scarf, in her. Perhaps there is nothing to see.
Dad darts ahead, greeting people and tapping elbows. He looks vital and well. The sun is warm on my face. The traffic has stopped for us and I notice the quiet. I like how April’s hand feels inside mine.
On the way home, Dad puts the radio on and hums along. I scroll my newsfeed.
‘It’s trending.’
‘Oh yes?’
I read on. ‘There’s some photos. Local councillors were there apparently. Did you see them?’
‘That’s great, that’s something.’ Dad’s eyes are shining.
‘Nothing concrete, but —’
‘Just rejoice at that news,’ says a small voice in the back of the car. ‘Just rejoice.’
My father turns to me. His face is momentarily unreadable. And then he hollers; his deep, hooting laughter that I haven’t heard since before Dan died. He wipes his face and grins over his shoulder at April.
I smile. I force out a corner of laughter. But inside, I recoil tightly back in. The screaming starts again, highly pitched aching against my eardrums. I clutch the phone in my hand and watch the world hurtle past as the breath is squeezed from me.