Blood Relatives (17 page)

‘So what now?’ said Gordon.

That wor decided for us. A farmer appeared around t’ side of t’ house, flat cap, ruddy blasted face, trouser bottoms pushed into mud-caked boots, brandishing a walking stick. It wor hard to imagine this man had sired Tad.

‘Who are you? What you want?’ he barked, poking the air wi’ t’ stick.

I opened the passenger door and leant out. ‘I’m looking for Tad. Does he live here?’

I realised that I didn’t know Tad’s proper name. The man’s jaw jutted, as if he wor insulted by t’ question.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘It’s just that I’m a mate of his, and he hasn’t been in touch for a while, so I wor wonderi …’

‘No one wi’ that name lives here. So yer can skedaddle. Be off wi’ yer.’

Just then a girl appeared, pulling on an anorak, the hem of her light skirt blowing in t’ breeze. She raised an arm to her forehead, shielding her eyes against t’ lowering sun.

‘Rachel?’ I called out. ‘Rachel, do you remember me? Is Tad here? Can I talk to him?’

She squinted at me, as if trying to work out who I wor. Her father scowled. The dogs in t’ shippen wor baying for blood.

‘Rachel, get yersen indoors!’

‘Rachel. Is Tad here?’

She glanced quickly at her father, then shook her head briefly. ‘Gone,’ she mouthed, before ducking back inside. Tad’s father gripped his stick tightly, his thin lips whitening.

‘Like I said, there’s no one here wi’ that name. Be off wi’ yer! You’re not welcome. Your type ain’t wanted ’ere. Be off, or I’ll ’ave yer fer trespass!’

We got back in t’ car and drove back to t’ lane end. As soon as we reached a passing place on t’ single-track road Gordon pulled over and killed the engine. I stared numbly out at the swaying roadside grass. Gordon wor drumming his fingers on t’ steering wheel. From somewhere overhead came t’ plaintive cry of a lone peewit carried aloft on t’ breeze.

The Sunday next wor Mother’s birthday. It almost slid me by. I snaffled a box o’ Quality Street and a card from a petrol garage while I wor out on t’ round. I’d been in a bad mood all day. I found the page for Blandford Gardens in t’ round-book and scored the address through wi’ a pen ’til I’d made a hole. When I wor done, Eric said, ‘What’s all that about?’

‘Nowt. It’s nowt, all right? He’s gone, ain’t he? So I’m taking him out of t’ round-book.’

For t’ rest of t’ round I wor fumed up. Eric didn’t ask owt more, and we just got on wi’ it.

When I got home late that afternoon I found Mitch in t’ kitchen, taping up a brown-paper parcel.

‘Where’s Mand?’ he said, breaking the sellotape on his teeth.

‘How should I know? Unlike some, I’ve been out working all day.’

‘What’s eating you?’

‘Nowt. Pig of a day, that’s all. Maybe she’s in town wi’ her mates.’

‘Well, she should be home by now. Your mother’s over at Mavis’s.’ He held the tape up in front of his eyes. ‘Now then, tape, what did I say about hiding your end?’

I said, ‘I’ll be upstairs.’

Mother showed up in t’ early evening and flumped her shit-brown leather handbag down on t’ kitchen table.

‘There’s nowt to eat,’ she said.

‘Thought we’d order in,’ said Mitch.

‘Order in, Mitch? Anyone’d think you’d had a win on t’ horses.’

‘I don’t do t’ horses, remember? Not like yer dad. He practically lived in t’ bookies’.’

‘Don’t speak ill of t’ dead. Sometimes, Mitchell, I don’t know what day it is, never mind what you get up to. Where’ve you been all day?’

‘Looking at televisions. We need a new’un.’

‘We can’t afford it.’

She laid t’ birthday card Mavis had given her on t’ draining board and said in a slightly excited tone, ‘What’s that, then?’

Mitch held the brown-paper package out to her like a small boy wi’ a prize from t’ fair.

‘It’s. Erm. I mean. Well. It’s.’

When she didn’t take it from him he put it on t’ table and slid it toward her. ‘It
is
your birthday.’

She frowned, tearing at the wrapping joylessly.

‘Hair rollers,’ she said wi’ an edge of suspicion. ‘But I’ve got hair rollers, Mitch. You remember, the third prize in that shampoo competition a while back?’

‘Then it’s time you had new ones,’ he protested lamely. ‘And these are heated.’

She rubbed the box lid wi’ her sleeve and looked down on t’ model’s face gleaming back at her, all glistening lips and sculpted hair.

I wor trying not to split my friggin’ sides. The other thirty or so boxes wor stashed in t’ garage under a horse blanket. He’d had more, ’til I helped offload about half of them to some bloke in Shipley, along wi’ a few hundred packs of ciggies all labelled in Dutch. Turned out that Mitch had bought the dog from this bloke’s wife. He’d introduced me to t’ bloke by saying, ‘This is my lad.’ Which made me feel strange. I shook the bloke’s hand. He eyed me untrustingly, and grunted.

‘From me,’ I said to Mother, holding out the unwrapped choccies and the unsigned card. ‘Happy birthday.’

‘Oh, thank you, Ricky,’ she gushed. She pecked me on t’ forehead, opened the card and glanced at it briefly before putting it down next to t’ chocs. Her mind wor still on t’ hair rollers.

‘Not knocked off, are they Mitch? You said you wor done wi’ all that. Because if you so much as …’

Mitch picked up the box and held it close to his mouth. ‘Are we knocked off? Tell me, are we dodgy goods then? No? Certain? Oh, that’s good, cos Mitch here wouldn’t want his wife to have summat that wor nicked for her birthday.’ He doffed an invisible hat at her. ‘Not absolutely new, I know, I know, but this bloke I know had one box left, so I said, “I’ll take those for my missus if you knock down t’ price,” and so …’

Mother rented out a smile. ‘You could have wiped the box.’

Mitch looked crestfallen. ‘Well, if you don’t want ’em …’

He tried to take the box from her, but she batted him away. ‘No,’ she said, placing her hand firmly on t’ lid, ‘they’re just fine.’

Over dinner (an Indian takeaway treat, so Mother didn’t have to wash up on her birthday), Mother blathered on about Mavis’s new decor. Don had spent t’ past three weekends redecorating, and Mavis had invited Mother over that afternoon ‘for an exclusive’.

‘She calls it the lounge now,’ said Mother sniffily.

Mandy grabbed the foil container wi’ t’ remaining chicken biriyani and upended it onto her plate. She’d rolled up just before dinner wi’ a silver bracelet for hersen and a bangle for Mother. I guessed that she’d lifted it, but I didn’t say owt. The bangle wor a thick, green wooden thing, and not Mother’s style at all. But she acted dead pleased anyways.

Mother prattled on about Mavis’s lounge having new curtains wi’ matching wallpaper the colour of milky tea, wi’ an orange floral pattern and whatnot. The doors and skirting boards had been painted mushroom gloss. New carpet too, wi’ a swirly olive and ochre pattern that Mother said kiddies might like to imagine as roads for their toy cars. Shame, Mother said, that Mavis and Don had never had kids. Friggin’ lucky kids, more like, I wor thinking, never to have been born. Mavis always wheedled summat out of Don after he’d battered her about and wor all remorseful after. Made me happy our place wor so scuzzy. Meant that Mitch worn’t battering Mother all t’ time. Except when she got it into her head that Mitch wor t’ Ripper, and even then he’d took it out on t’ crockery.

‘Maybe she’ll get the suite next time round,’ said Mandy between mouthfuls. I tore into a naan bread and mopped up some lamb bhuna gravy.

Then Mother started reminiscing about back before I wor born, when she took a part-time job as a barmaid in a bowling alley. Mavis wor her co-barmaid back then. She got the times all wrong, like adults do, saying that she’d met Mitch while she wor working there. Mother wor always muddling her stories, mixing one bit wi’ t’other.

I said, ‘That can’t be right. You must have met before that. Otherwise …’

Mitch stood up at the table. ‘What does it matter who met who, when and where?’

He scowled at Mother, who wor biting on her lower lip. I screwed up my face and reached across t’ table for t’ last scrap of naan bread. Parent lovey-dovey stuff always made me squirm.

Eric had said that people start dying when they live in t’ past all t’ time.

Gran had been refusing food, so they’d been force-feeding her. Mother wor going over more often, cos she wor afraid that every visit might be t’ last. Gran sure had the family stubborn streak in her. That last cup in her cupboard wor t’ one marked ‘Let me die.’

One day I went wi’ Mother on t’ bus, cos she hated going on her tod and Mitch wor never at home and sis wor pretending she wor too squeamish so she could sneak off to see whoever wor her latest boyfriend. I had my own reasons. I picked my moment. ‘What wor Gerald like?’

Mother pulled in her chin. ‘Gerald? Different. Why?’

‘In what way, different? I mean, apart from t’ carpets and the posh house and all that.’

‘Well, your gran didn’t take to him. She didn’t like folk who’d got on in t’ world. “Puffed up”, she called him.’

‘Is that why she’s always blathering on about “that man”? She must mean Gerald.’

‘You think so?’

After checking that none of our fellow busfolk wor earwigging, I asked in a low voice, ‘Did you leave him?’

Mother sighed. ‘I stuck it for six month. But I wor like a bird in a gilded cage. I’d lie on his bed in t’ afternoons while he wor out at work and listen to t’ radio or just to t’ house humming … you know, that hum a fridge or air conditioning makes? Don’t get me wrong, the house wor lovely, and Gerald wor always very sweet to me, but I wor lonely, Rick. I didn’t have no friends nearby, and Gerald didn’t like me hanging about wi’ my old crowd, Mavis and Nora and all of ’em. He’d charmed me into marrying him, what wi’ his dosh from t’ carpet business and all t’ restaurant dinners and work dos, but he wor nearly twice my age, and I wor just a slip of a girl. I soon realised I’d been a fool, and that I didn’t love him really. I cared for him, but that’s not the same, is it? That’s not love. So one day I packed a bag, left him a note in an envelope wi’ t’ house key, and went home to Mum and Dad.’

‘How did that go down?’

‘Dad wor all right about it – well he would be, he just took life as it comes. But Mother wor livid. She told me I should lie in t’ bed I’d made for mesen. She wor all for sending me back. At the time I thought all she cared about wor what the neighbours might think.’

I paused, pulling the question from t’ depths within.

‘Is he my dad? Gerald?’

Mother inhaled sharply.

I said, ‘I worked it out yonks ago.’

‘I knew you’d ask these questions one day.’

‘Where is he now?’

Mother’s voice thickened. ‘I wor three month pregnant when I went back to Mum and Dad. Only I never told him. I half-expected him to show up at the house, but he never did. He didn’t try to get me back. Dad went to see him one time, to clear the air, but Gerald worn’t the type of man to try and win me back.’

‘He wor too cowardly?’

‘Too proud, more like. I’d made Dad promise he’d say nowt about me being pregnant, and he didn’t. I broke Gerald’s heart, mind. It’s a hard thing to live wi’, that.’

She looked down at the bus floor.

‘So what happened to him?’

‘Heart attack, so I heard. Well, he always did work all hours. Your gran spotted the death notice in t’ paper. You know how she wor always reading the births, marriages and deaths columns. Kept her entertained. I’m ashamed to say that when I heard, I thought it wor for t’ best.’

She glanced out the bus window at some passing shop fronts, then said, ‘Do you know how you got your name? It wor Lionhearted Richard.’

‘Eh?’

‘When you wor born your granddad danced a little jig and said this wor his lucky day and he should make good use of his luck. So t’ next day he went to t’ races and put five pound to win on a horse called Lionhearted Richard in t’ 2.30 at Doncaster. It came in at fifty to one. A grandson and a winning horse on t’ same weekend. He said it wor fated. So you wor christened Richard.’

‘I wor named after a horse?’

‘A winning horse.’

Her lids fluttered as if she had an affliction. ‘All I ever wanted in this life wor a proper family.’

I took her hand and she squeezed my fingers briefly as if to say ‘That’s that, then,’ and then let my hand go. She fumbled in her bag for a paper hankie, but unable to find one, closed it again. We rode the rest of t’ way to t’ nursing home in a soft, shared silence. As we walked through t’ gates and up the driveway, the gothic turrets seemingly bearing down on us like the building itsen wor leaning forward to earwig, I ventured one more question.

‘So is Mandy my half-sister?’

Mother smiled weakly.

‘Look at the gardens, Rick. Aren’t them fuchsias beautiful?’

Back from his honeymoon in Jersey, Eric wor still in t’ full flush of being newly wed. Anyone would have thought he’d been to Barbados or he’d had a win on t’ pools the way he kept blathering on. The sunshine! The castle! The hotel wi’ t’ balcony overlooking the bay! The seafood!

I said he hadn’t caught the sun much.

When I mentioned Eric’s honeymoon to Mitch in an attempt to make conversation – it wor late one Saturday afternoon and we wor watching wrestling on t’ box cos it wor siling it down outside – Mitch said poncily that marriage is like a mountain stream: fresh at the source where it comes out of t’ ground, but as it scurries down t’ hill it picks up all manner of nasty stuff along t’ way. ‘Which is why you shouldn’t sup from lower down,’ I said. ‘In case there’s a dead sheep further up that you don’t know about.’

The first test of t’ water quality in Eric’s marriage would be t’ sprog that wor due in a couple of months. The way I saw it, Eric wor so taken up wi’ the idea of becoming a dad that he hadn’t given much thought to
being
a dad. Lourdes wor doling out some unwanted advice on motherhood along wi’ her horse-piss tea. Anyone could see this riled him.

‘As if she knows owt about being a parent,’ he fumed as we rearranged the van load. He paused, wi’ a bottle of lemon barley water in his hand, seeking out the right crate for it, and said, ‘You’ve got all this coming one day.’