Blood Relatives (14 page)

Mother went to bed, red-eyed and exhausted. When I looked in on her she wor fast asleep, her hair hanging across her cheek. Her clothes lay in a mess on t’ floor beside t’ bed. I went back downstairs and swept up all t’ broken crockery and emptied the pieces into t’ dustbin. I stood for a while wi’ my back against t’ sink, my fingers steepled against my nose.

Mitch didn’t show ’til early morning. I heard him crash against t’ hallway telephone table, swearing loudly, drunkenly climbing the stairs. I lay very still. I heard him in t’ bathroom, the tap running for a long time. I heard t’ toilet flush. I heard nowt more after that.

The next day Mitch wor hiding himsen away in t’ garage. The side door to t’ garage wor warped, and it scraped the floor as I shoved it open. Mitch didn’t look up, but he knew I wor there. He wor nailing a piece of wood. He took a second nail that he wor holding between his lips and hammered it into t’ plank too hard and for too long.

I spied his old bottle opener, dangling from t’ workbench on a string. When I wor eight–nine–ten Mitch would make me sit wi’ him in this garage, even though I wor itching to be elsewhere. We’d play a game of trying to flick beer-bottle tops into t’ wastebin. I wor encouraged to try drinking beer. I pretended to like it, even though I didn’t. I pretended to like it all – the beer, the footie banter, the darts we played hour after hour. He’d always beat me, cos I wor bored. At that age I wanted to please him. Tried my friggin’ hardest.

‘I want you to stop punishing her,’ I said.

His fingers tightened around t’ hammer handle. He wor building what looked like an oversized dolls’ house.

‘Excuse me, hammer, one moment,’ Mitch said, then laid it down, aligning it alongside a spirit level.

‘What are you making?’

He didn’t answer. He picked out another nail from a tobacco tin. ‘Craner tells me you’re his best boy. That he’s given you a pay rise.’

This rankled me. I worn’t here to make idle talk about Craner. I said, ‘I’m not giving you my keep no more. From now on I’m giving it straight to Mother.’

Mitch dropped the nail back into t’ tin and fished out a better one.

‘Tell me why, oh little nail? Why I work my socks off for her – for this family? Working all hours, putting food on t’ table, paying bills. And what thanks do I get? A snooping missus who thinks I’m topping prozzies, and a selfish, good-for-nothing …’

‘She knows she did a wrong thing. Isn’t that enough? Why,’ I said, ‘do you talk to things, when you won’t talk to Mother?’

Mitch kissed the nail, then dropped it back into t’ tin from an exaggerated height.

‘I want you to apologise.’ Mitch ignored me, so I put it another way. ‘I want you to say sorry. To Mother.’

‘You don’t tell me what to do or when!’ Mitch roared, his face distorting, his eyes bulging.

Summat snapped in me. I wor whipped up wi’ anger. In two sharpish steps I wor upon him. I punched him hard on t’ jawbone. Surprised, he lurched sideways, then stretched out an arm to try and balance himsen, sending an old jam jar of paintbrushes onto t’ floor.

‘What the fu …’

I hit him again, harder. He raised his elbow to protect himsen, and my next blow caught his forearm. Before he could proper right himsen I kicked him hard in t’ ribs and he keeled over. In his eye I saw t’ look of a wounded animal being turned on by its own kind. A cold hate came over me, and I kicked him pitilessly in t’ legs and the back. He curled up into a ball as I laid into his arms and shoulders. Wi’ each punch or kick he exhaled sharply, like a reeling boxer. I caught sight of t’ hammer within reach on t’ workbench. I could have sworn that it wor calling out to me, ‘Do it, do it, please, do it for me, do it for all of us,’ and in an icy second my fingers wor gripped about that hammer handle as it fell again and again onto his skull, the hammer cackling like a mad clown as skull-bone crunched and splintered, as blood spurted and splattered, as dirty grey matter oozed along t’ garage floor.

Only some deep throb at the back of my brain wouldn’t let me. Mitch had raised his arms to protect his head as I pummelled at him wi’ my bare fists ’til all t’ fury that wor flooding me had ebbed away.

Breathing hard, I dropped my arms by my side. Mitch lay very still, as if waiting.

I left him lying there. In my head I could hear t’ hammer sniggering.

It wor two days before Mandy returned home. She wor holed up in her room, playing records, pushing us all away ’til she wor ready to face t’ world again.

She’d left her diary out on t’ kitchen table, so I sneaked a peek, leafing through t’ pages for summat juicy. Ah. Seems that sis and that Emma snuck off to Wigan for t’ Northern Soul all-nighter. Christ, her friggin’ biro scrawl wor difficult to read in places. Summat about taking uppers and downers and … and … cider … cadging a ride home wi’ three student blokes … back of a VW Kombi … Emma snogging … older bloke … blah, blah … yeuchh! Sis being sick on t’ motorway grass verge.

The little minx!

The next paypacket I gave half directly to Mother. Without a word she folded the one-pound notes into her purse. She said that now my hair wor shorter I needed to wash my neck better, as I wor leaving a black line on my shirt collars.

14/12/1977 (survived)

Gina pitched up at the FK Club wi’ Jeremy on his chain.

I spotted them before they clocked me. Lines of tables ran left and right up to t’ stage edge. The National Front mob wor in one corner, outnumbered by t’ Anti-Nazi League/Rock Against Racism crowd across t’ room, all badged up wi’ their allegiances, ignoring each other. For now.

DJ Clare knew t’ score all right, coolly mixing Patti Smith and dub reggae wi’ Clash, New York Dolls and X-Ray Spex. ‘White Punks on Clare’, someone had scrawled on t’ toilet wall.

Back in t’ main room, I watched Gina drifting between t’ Nazi boys and no man’s land, flashing her shark smile, giving off her provocative pout. When she did finally clock me, she lowered her chin and eyeballed me like a snake hypnotising its prey. Her shark smile gleamed.

Behind her wor Tad (so he wor here!), decked out in army-surplus keks and a white German army vest, staring off into t’ middle distance. For t’ merest moment it rankled wi’ me, a nanosecond in which I saw mesen forcing Tad’s head down t’ FK Club toilets and then shafting him hard up the arse ’til he begged and thanked me over and over. But maybe that would show him I cared too much.

‘Look who it isn’t,’ Gina sneered, tapping a badge on my lapel wi’ her nail.

‘Hello, Gina. What have you been up to?’

She pawed at me, stroking my Buzzcocks badge, then lingering thoughtfully over t’ small pink triangle nestling alongside it, before letting her forefinger slide down my chest to my belt buckle.

‘Well, let’s see,’ she said, holding up two fingers. The ends glistened wi’ dried wallpaper paste. I fathomed that they hadn’t been pasting up rolls of Laura Ashley.

‘Posters. For the repatriation campaign. It’s for the good of them and the country. The rest of us are still out there, but Tad said he wasn’t going to miss Wayne County & the Electric Chairs for anything.’

I shook my head. ‘Live and let live, I say.’

‘Oh, we’d let them live, poppet, they just have to live somewhere else.’

‘God, you people repulse me.’

‘Ooooh, hear that, Tad? We repulse him. And I thought you wanted a threesome. A ménage à twa. Tad’s up for it, aren’t you?’

The corners of Tad’s lips curled like burning paper.

Wayne County & the Electric Chairs ambled on. They had one good number – ‘Fuck Off’ – which they played twice. American drudge rock dressed up as punk. The crowd wor restless and the atmosphere wor tense. The gig ended shambolically. I pushed my way down t’ corridor toward t’ exit, shuffling along next to a guy wi’ a shedload of Rock Against Racism badges covering his striped jersey.

I started the long trudge home. It didn’t take long before I spotted their handiwork. Three in a row on t’ end wall of a terraced house. The posters still rippled wi’ darker patches of wet glue. The lazy buggers must have put them up all around t’ Chapeltown streets near t’ FK Club.

Taking hold of t’ top corners of t’ first poster I yanked hard, sliding my fingers down t’ edges. At first the pain wor indefinable, as if I’d grazed my knuckles against t’ brick. But when I saw t’ dark blood, waves of pain flooded my fingers. I cried out and shoved my hands under my armpits and doubled over. I heard running footsteps behind me, heard my name being shouted. Tad.

‘You idiot! Oh fuck, oh Christ! You fucking idiot! Are you hurt? Jeez, you’re bleeding.’

Dark rivulets scurried from shredded fingers.

‘Didn’t no one ever tell you they put razors behind t’ poster edges? Didn’t you know that? I thought you knew. I’m sorry. Jeez, I’m fucking sorry. Here, show me your hands. We need to get you to a hospital. You’ll need to get that stitched. Oh, Christ, this is my fault, all my fault. I should have said summat. But I didn’t think you wor that gormless.’

Tad walked wi’ me t’ mile or so to t’ A & E at Leeds General Infirmary. He said sorry so often I told him to shut the fuck up. He wor nigh-on blubbing.

In t’ waiting room blood droplets spilled onto t’ floor through t’ snot rag he’d given me to wrap around my fingers.

‘Show me,’ he said.

I unfolded one hand. Blood oozed. He bent forward to kiss my fingertips. I snatched my hand away.

‘Did you put them razors there?’

He shook his head in denial.

‘Look at me, you ball of shite! Did you?’

‘No, not me. Scout’s honour. Not me.’

Tad’s face puckered like a kid who’d just kicked a ball through a window. He fidgeted and paced around while t’ waiting time stretched. A copy of yesterday’s evening paper lay on t’ side table wi’ a load of shite magazines. Tad picked up the paper. HE had struck again. Another prozzie had been attacked the previous night in Chapeltown. Tad stared at the headline then laid the paper back face-down.

From behind a cubicle curtain I could hear someone groaning and vomiting. The raw stench of vomit drifted like a toxic chemical through t’ waiting room.

After an age, I wor called into a cubicle. A nurse pitched up and asked me some questions about ‘all that punk stuff’, and banged on about a tetanus injection. The forefingers of both my hands wor ripped, so wor t’ second finger of my left and the thumb of my right. She stitched up the worst gashes, and cracked a joke about cross stitching that she’d probably told a billion times before. She said that I wor lucky, there didn’t seem to be any grit in t’ wounds. The stitches done, I wor cleaned and bandaged up and given some antiseptic ointment. My fingers and right thumb wor taped together to prevent the cuts reopening. When I emerged from t’ cubicle I found that Tad had buggered off.

I walked home, cos I couldn’t pull t’ change for t’ night bus out of my pocket. Rain spat in my face. My hands throbbed like they wor beacons. I couldn’t fish out my house keys neither, so I leant against t’ bell – ‘Greensleeves’, ‘English Country Garden’, ‘Frère Jacques’ – before t’ hallway light came on and Mitch’s form appeared behind t’ frosted glass, like a man underwater.

‘Sorry. Forgot my key,’ I said, keeping my hands hidden. In his half-awake, morose state Mitch swore at me, but didn’t say owt more.

In my room I managed to wriggle out of my jacket and lever off each boot using t’other foot. I needed a piss, but undoing my fly buttons wor difficult and painful. It wor like pissing wi’ oven gloves on, so I pissed free-handed. My piss sprinkled over Mother’s new salmon-pink toilet mat, the salmon-pink toilet-brush cosy, the salmon-pink toilet-seat cover and the floor. I crawled into bed, curled up into t’ foetal position wi’ my hands between my knees, and lay there, the ebb and flow of pain rocking me into an exhausting, half-wakeful slumber.

The rest of t’ week I wor off work. I couldn’t carry any bottles or count change. The nurse had said the stitches would just fall out, and that I shouldn’t pick at them. Mother fussed about. Mitch told me I wor a right fucking idiot.

Even holding a fork or turning a doorknob or tap wor tricky. Washing mesen, cleaning my teeth or tugging mesen off were impossible tasks, so I gave up on all three, although I did slip out of t’ house and find some oldish bloke in a park cottage who wor willing to give me a blowjob. It wor a brilliant blowjob, though I had to close my eyes to shut him out. Afterward the bloke kept saying, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ in a pathetic whisper. I told him to fuck off. Then he took his teeth out of his side jacket pocket and slid them back in his gob.

On seeing my bound-up fingers the Gay Lib crowd huddled around me, showing syrupy concern. Had I fallen on broken glass, cut mesen washing up, cut mesen at work? I put these misapprehensions right and told them about t’ National Front posters wi’ t’ razor blades behind. I kept working over t’ story, milking every detail ’til it turned into summat gleaming that I no longer recognised. I wor t’ hero of t’ hour.

Another friggin’ downer wor not being able to hold a snooker cue. In any case, the women had stopped coming to Gay Lib meetings. Lorna had joined some breakaway group called the Revolutionary Feminists. Maybe they had better snooker players. Or had bought an island. As it happened, I wor becoming less of an onlooker from t’ margins; sometimes my voice got heard. What’s more, I worn’t even t’ runt any more. This seventeen-year-old had pitched up – cocky lad wi’ long blond curls and a voice like marshmallow.

Gordon looked out of sorts. He wor standing a little apart, almost ghostly through his own wreathing smoke, waiting, I assumed, ’til t’ interest in me had thinned and he had me to himsen.

‘Looks like you’ve been through the wars, my boy.’

‘I’m not your boy.’

The ciggie end wobbled.

‘It’s just a turn of phrase.’

He rooted around in his pockets, as if summat wor trapped there. ‘No, Rick, you are right,’ he went on, ‘you are right. You are not my boy. I shouldn’t call you that.’

I couldn’t fathom why he wor so upset. He played wi’ his tie end.

I said, ‘Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate you doing stuff for me and playing the chauffeur and us having a pint … It’s just that, well … Why, Gordon? Why me? You haven’t made one pass at me.’

Gordon exhaled. ‘I simply enjoy your company. What else should a man like me expect? Isn’t that reason enough?’

It didn’t seem like reason enough to me.

The nursing home called to say that Gran had had a stroke. It had left her wi’ slurred speech, as one side of her face wor paralysed. It also left her incontinent.

Mother dealt wi’ this news by vacuuming. She vacuumed the landing and then t’ bathroom carpet, whipping the flex along behind her. Seemed she vacuumed everything three times. When she’d done t’ hall she changed the attachment and sucked up every last microbe of dust on t’ stairs, bashing the attachment end into t’ corners. Finally she stamped on t’ switch and the vacuum cleaner died wi’ a decapitated howl.

Now that Gran wor rattling St Peter’s gates I wor feeling a bit remorseful, cos I’d only been to see her the once. So I said to Mother that I’d go wi’ her on her next visit. Mother said there’d be no point, since Gran hardly recognised anyone. She just slumped in her chair or slept, drugged up on t’ pills they ground into her food or whatever they did so she didn’t keep wandering off. When she wor awake she chuntered on about strangers from way back or folk long dead.

Mother unplugged the vacuum cleaner and wound up the flex. ‘Whatever world your gran’s living in, we’re not part of it. She just blathers on about Frank and someone else. The nurses say nice things, but then they’re paid to, aren’t they?’

‘This might sound daft, but wor Granddad having an affair?’

Mother swished a duster over some picture frames on t’ hallway windowledge.

‘Well, I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind. Him always being out of t’ house. But I think that wor just his way. And I think she made him an unwelcome guest in his own home, always badgering him for treading dirt in, smoking and being so untidy, so it worn’t as if he needed much excuse to be elsewhere. But as for another woman – I don’t think he could be bothered. And if there wor another woman, he would have been out on his ear if your gran had got wind of it.’

She flapped the duster, releasing trillions of dust motes.

‘He wor a long-suffering, easy-going soul, wor your granddad. Had to be to deal wi’ all her bitterness.’

‘What did Gran have to be so bitter about?’

Mother clicked her tongue. ‘Do you know what your gran used to say to me? “Nowt good will come of you,” that’s what she kept saying, and if you hear summat like that often enough you end up believing it. What I don’t believe – and I can say this now you’re as good as grown – is that she got the life she wanted. Not from Frank. He hardly ever took her out. All right, sometimes he took her for a run-out in t’ car, or dropped her off in town, but most times she wor stuck in that dreary little house while he wor off gallivanting wi’ his mates. It wor a bad marriage, but they just got on wi’ it. Lived their separate lives. You did in those days. I always got the idea that they never gelled in t’ bedroom department, if you get my drift. Of course she never said owt, but as I got older I could sense it.’

I reddened at the image that popped up in my head of my grandfolk having sex. Fazel had said that wor t’ reason straights find homosexuals disgusting. The very word homosexual triggers imaginings of us having sex.

Mother said, ‘Don’t you ever go repeating that.’

I promised I wouldn’t. Who would I repeat it to anyway?

I wor flabbered to see how much Gran had gone downhill. Her head wor lolling on her chest, like her neck bones wouldn’t hold it up. She wor drooling. Mother wiped away t’ drool from her chin and dabbed her cardie, then gently cupped her hands beneath her chin and cocked her head up.

‘Hello, Mum. Look who I’ve brought along today. Rick. You know Rick. Your grandson.’

Mother tilted Gran’s head toward me. She gave out an anguished cry, as if I frightened her somehow.

‘She don’t know who I am.’

‘Perhaps if you wore some normal clothes she would. That scarecrow hair! Makes me ashamed to be seen out wi’ you.’

We offered Gran some tea in a plastic mug wi’ a child’s spout. Her lips parted slightly, crookedly as one side of her face wor frozen, then closed again.

‘Doesn’t Richard look a sight, eh? Dyed his hair all black and stuck it up wi’ my lacquer, and he’s got these little cross earrings … see?’

‘Mother! She ain’t registering.’

‘You don’t know that, Rick. Sometimes I’m sure she can hear me. Mum, don’t you want your tea?’

Gran drooled some more, mumbled summat. Mother ploughed on.

‘Mandy’s got a job. Just for Christmas. She’s working in Schofield’s. We’re hoping they’ll like her and take her on permanently. She’s in women’s clothing. Tops mostly. You like Schofield’s, don’t you? You always did enjoy a cuppa and a desecrated coconut slice in their café – do you remember?’

‘Desiccated.’

Mother shot me a don’t-you-get-smart-wi’-me look. We wor wasting our time here. We could be Morecambe and Wise for all it mattered.

Mother said, ‘This is the worst I’ve seen her. Not three week gone she wor better than this. Makes you wonder what they give her.’

‘Aye. Well, she sure ain’t no trouble.’