Paperboy (15 page)

Kath opened her ancient, linen-covered Mrs Beeton
²
book and started baking. Like many English cooks of the era, she was wonderful when it came to pies, puddings, cakes and pastries, and appalling with meat and salads. All meat was either slow-roasted to shoe leather, or boiled until it resembled human flesh. Salads consisted of lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, tinned beetroot slices, cucumber and quartered tomatoes, with no dressing other than the vinegary bite of Heinz Salad Cream.

In honour of the occasion she baked fairy cakes, an iced fruit cake, angel cake, a Battenberg cake and marzipan slices with almonds. My father coated the cracked hide of the three-piece suite with something called Leather Nourishment and spent an hour blowing under sheets of newspaper to get the front-room fire started.

At twenty past four, my mother’s calm demeanour started to crack. At half past, the doorbell finally rang. There they stood, William and Mrs Fowler, looking like Grant Wood’s painting
American Gothic
, with the barn replaced by a Victorian terrace. My grandfather had put on the only shirt and tie he owned, and had been made to wash his hair. He looked like a cross between a scarecrow and a badly embalmed corpse. And there
she
stood, the terror of the neighbourhood, decked out in navy blue, the black wicker hat wedged down hard over her steel-grey hair, the heavy ebony walking stick supporting her thick legs. She waited to be invited across the threshold, like Mrs Dracula.

‘We were expecting you at four,’ said Kath.

‘I was told half past four,’ said Mrs Fowler, daring her to disagree. As she removed her coat she glanced at the cheap hall wallpaper and sniffed disapprovingly. Her husband looked as if his collar was slowly choking him to death.

Kath attempted to guide them into the front room, but lacked the force to pull it off. Mrs Fowler walked straight past the carefully prepared neutral territory and into the little kitchen parlour where we spent most of our time. It was the only place in the house that had not been tidied up. She looked about in unconcealed distaste, pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped the kitchen chair before seating herself. ‘I thought you said you had a garden,’ she said, pointing out of the window. ‘That’s a back yard.’

‘Oh yes, we do overlook the yard here,’ my mother anxiously agreed, ‘but the garden is conveniently located around the corner.’ Anyone would have thought she was showing the place to a prospective buyer.

Mrs Fowler lumbered to her feet and went to inspect the flowerbeds. What she saw was a thirty-foot-long rubbish dump containing a collapsing corrugated-iron shelter, the remains of two old motorbikes, various holes and piles of nettle-covered bricks, some diseased nasturtiums and one stem of a succulent plant that the narcoleptic tortoise had taken a few beakfuls out of. Just below the window, a dead bush shook as the cat strained inside it, extruding a pale poo that it could not be bothered to bury. A half-eaten sausage sandwich lay on the windowsill, left by Bill when he was working on his bike.

‘I’m surprised next door hasn’t complained to you about rats,’ said Mrs Fowler, peering at the enforced proximity of the neighbours’ washing. This would have to have been the day when Percy’s mum’s gigantic
pants
were all hung out. The annoying thing was that Mrs Fowler didn’t have a garden at all, so she had no right to criticize.

Discomfited by formality, William was itching to get outside and attack something with a ring spanner. He was clearly suffering from shed withdrawal.

Mrs Fowler hated being in a house where she was not in charge. She reminded me of Peggy Mount in
Sailor Beware
, a film about a pinafored battleaxe who wrecks her daughter’s wedding.

‘What are you feeding him?’ she asked, heading towards the scullery cupboards, but Kath managed to attach herself to the passing arm that held the stick and veer it around in a smart pivot, relaunching her in the opposite direction.

‘We’re having high tea in the front room,’ she announced, glaring at her husband and eldest son. We looked back from the doorway like a pair of craven cowards, then reversed into the narrow corridor as an advance party.

After pausing to inspect the room, my grandmother entered and lowered herself on to the sofa. Beneath her, one of the leather cushions released a dreadful flatulent sigh. Her hands could not gain purchase on the arms of the suite because they were still slippery with Leather Nourishment, and she slowly slid over.

‘Move up, old girl,’ said William, making a joke of it. ‘We won’t be giving you pickled eggs again.’ She fired poisoned lances at him.

My mother offered sandwiches. Mrs Fowler took one and lifted a corner, checking inside. ‘Is this paste?’

‘Shippam’s,’ Kath assured her. ‘Salmon and shrimp.’
³

‘I don’t eat things from jars, you never know where they’ve been.’ She returned it to the plate with a sniff.

‘I’ll have one,’ said William, but his hand was slapped away.

Kath was on safer ground with the cakes, and passed them around to general compliments, with a notable silence from Mrs Fowler that everyone took as a good sign.

William’s thick ridged fingernails looked absurd when placed on either side of a fairy cake. ‘Are there any gherkins?’ he asked. His wife made it plain that if he was planning to let the side down every single time he opened his mouth, he might as well be somewhere else. ‘Come on, Billy, show me this problem with your pressure gauge,’ he said, rising and wiping his hands on his trousers.

Bill released an audible sigh of relief. ‘Righto, it’s a bit of a bugger, but if we can take it to bits …’ He didn’t dare catch my mother’s eye as the pair of them scuttled from the room. The door closed. The clock ticked. Mrs Fowler coughed. The silent seconds stretched to a minute.

‘My son likes a good hot meal when he gets home from work,’ she announced, apropos of nothing at all. ‘Thoroughly cooked right through, not half raw. Lamb chops.’ A pause. ‘Pork.’ No reaction. ‘An occasional steak.’

Kath wasn’t rising to the bait.

‘Peas.’ Mrs Fowler left little pauses to give her words gravitas.

‘Cabbage.’ Pause.

‘Onions.’ She stared hard at the wallpaper above Kath’s head, thinking.

‘Sponge pudding.’ Pause.

‘Custard.’ Pause.

‘And a banana. My son—’

‘ – is also my husband,’ said Kath hotly. ‘He is always provided with a tasty, attractive and nutritious meal.’ She now sounded like a post-war diet pamphlet.

‘ – loves strawberry jelly for his afters.’ Mrs Fowler sniffed and looked around. ‘Are you planning to have more children?’

Kath looked mortified. ‘No,’ she said quietly, glancing at me. Steven was asleep upstairs.

‘I ask because the last one clearly wasn’t planned. You should think about having a coil fitted. When there are unexpected mouths to feed, you must learn to cut your cloth according—’

‘I don’t think I need to be told how to have children!’

‘Well, there’s obviously not enough money to go around.’

‘We manage perfectly well.’

‘Then I wonder why he complains about the amount of mince you cook.’

‘Bill doesn’t believe in giving me housekeeping money. I have to take night jobs—’

‘Unsuitable jobs for a homemaker, no wonder he has to come to me for his meals.’ She was finally enjoying herself. There was nothing like a good row to create an atmosphere in which she could breathe more freely.

‘He comes to you because you won’t loosen your apron strings.’

‘It’s his choice. I have never told him what to do.’

‘Of course not, you’ve made it amply clear what would happen if he didn’t.’

Mrs Fowler’s back straightened, like a hedgehog unfurling. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You haven’t spoken to your daughter for ten years. You act as if she doesn’t exist, and your son’s not strong enough to stand up to you.’

‘So this is what you really think of your husband, is it? You push him into a marriage he’s not ready for—’

‘We were engaged for
six years
before he found the courage to defy you and propose!’

‘ – and you’re still not happy with your lot!’

I buried myself in the intricacies of my train set as the two women fought for control of my father. It seemed peculiar to me that a man as weedy and inconsequential as Bill should be the subject of so many arguments. He didn’t seem much of a prize. I tuned back in as my grandmother was saying, ‘I didn’t come here to be insulted!’

‘I wonder where you usually go,’ Kath speculated.

‘I will not stay in this house for another minute!’

‘You had to be dragged here in the first place. I’m amazed you managed to last this long,’ my mother volleyed back.

‘William!’ called my grandmother. ‘We’re going home
right now
.’ Turning to pick up her wicker hat, she discovered that Wobbles had just finished stripping it to shreds. She slapped the cat so hard that it flew across the room, hackled and yowling, roused from deep slumber to a state of heightened terror. Rising to her full, imposing, navy-blue light-absorbing height, she swung around to her daughter-in-law. ‘I knew it! I always knew you would be nothing but trouble.’

‘Of course you did,’ said my mother. ‘I committed the unforgivable sin of marrying your son.’

My grandmother stumped towards the door as her husband caught up with her and turned to the family with a sheepish apology on his face. Kath was white and shaking, but held her ground on the front step until he had bundled the old woman out of sight.

‘Well,’ she said, slamming the door with satisfying
finality
and marching back down the hall, ‘I feel much better for that.’

What upset her most of all was not her mother-in-law’s attitude, but the fact that Bill’s loyalty remained firmly planted on the wrong side.

1
A weekly periodical that preferred articles on crocheted jumpers to the discussion of orgasms, which weren’t invented until 1985.

2
The only cookery book that existed in English households for about 150 years. Mrs Beeton died at the age of twenty-eight, surprisingly not from her own cooking.

3
It was a known fact that you couldn’t open a jar of fish paste without wanting to eat the whole thing. Perhaps it contained morphine.

15

The Big Picture: Part One

‘WE’RE GOING TO
be late,’ I yelled down the hall.

‘No, we’re not,’ Bill yelled back. ‘There’s plenty of time yet. It’ll only take us ten minutes to get to the Blackheath Roxy, five minutes to park and buy Mivvis, then you’ve got trailers before the first feature so we’ll have a good ten minutes spare. And afterwards we can look in on Mrs Fowler and Granddad.’

‘It’s a double bill,
Carry On Cruising
and
The Cracksman
. We’ll never make it in time for the beginning,’ I insisted. We were going on the only one of my father’s motorbikes that was running at the moment, and part of it was still in bits on the floor of the back room. Why did I want to see
The Cracksman
, starring squeaky-voiced, baby-faced, curly-headed comic Charlie Drake? Why would anyone? It seemed as if half of all the films that showed in our cinemas were British.

‘It’ll only take me a minute to put the silencer back on,’ Bill yelled. ‘Go and find the Swarfega, I’m covered in oil.’

The best way to get out of the House of Recriminations
was
to start going to the pictures in the evenings, and after much begging, it was agreed that on my eleventh birthday I would be allowed to do so. The timing was right, as I had read virtually everything in the library deemed suitable for my age except
The Mechanics of Soil Erosion
in the reference section.

I had always been allowed to go to the flicks during the day, but that limited you to Disney films starring blue-eyed, perky, pigtailed talent-vacuum Hayley Mills, and Ray Harryhausen’s piratical fantasies. Not that I had anything against Harryhausen; he had souped up Jules Verne stories to create movies like
Mysterious Island
and
First Men in
the Moon
. His finest moment came with
Jason and the Argonauts
, as the gods showed signs of mortality and mortals displayed heroism close to godliness. The jerky stop-frame animations actually helped certain scenes, especially in the electrifying moment when the huge statue of Talos came creakingly to life and stepped down from his pedestal, complemented by a wonderful Bernard Hermann score that set the hairs rising behind my ears.

In
The Valley of Gwangi
Harryhausen pitted some rather camp cowboys against stop-framed blue-tinged dinosaurs. It never occurred to me that this was a strange subject for a film, since I had encountered it before, in a stinker called
The Beast of Hollow
Mountain
. Sadly, there were only two cowboys-versus-dinosaurs
¹
films for me to see, but the former was blessed with a stirring score and some genuinely peculiar moments involving a very tiny horse. Later, I also loved
One Million Years BC
, a historically dubious cavemen-versus-dinosaurs film that looked like the ‘before’ section of a hair-conditioner commercial,
which
had Raquel Welch posing in a chamois-leather bikini and little chamois bootees while giant prehistoric turtles lumbered sleepily across Gran Canaria.