Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (12 page)

She yanked me out of bed and together we felt along the wall down to the hallway toilet, and while I sat in the black box, trying to squeeze out a few drops, I heard another someone join her. Outside, I could tell the shadow, even narrower than Ma's, was Cathy's.

‘Come on, we're having midnight munchies.'

Downstairs the shapes of Majid and Beardy No Name, as Ma called him, sat at the table and bread rolls, butter and a block of cheese were all laid out under the light stuttering from four white candles.

‘Iris! Sit down, have some food, it's going to spoil. And, Janie, we've kept three choc ices for you – dig in.' Majid waved his hand over the table making the flames flutter.

We sat silently at the table with the oven door open, the gas flame throwing a timid warmth and pale blue light across the floor. The wind pummelled angry fists against the windows and threw its weight against the walls and the oven burner jumped and sighed, like a scared girlfriend.

I crunched through the waxy shell of my choc ice and wondered how it could be so still and cosy inside while things were being thrown around in a tantrum outside.

‘Hurricane,' said Beardy No Name, his mouth full of bread.

‘What's one of them then?' I asked, dribbling a thin line of yellow down my chin.

‘It's a big wind, Janie, but we're nice an' safe here in the house with these strong brick walls.' Ma looked at the window behind her where thrown-up leaves and grit cracked against the glass as if asking for shelter.

I shrugged. I didn't think we wouldn't be safe. ‘He's just angry,' I said, tipping the choc-ice wrapper to my open mouth to get the melted ice cream.

‘Who?'

‘The wind, he wants tae come in an' have midnight munchies is all.'

‘Aye, well, he's not coming in,' Ma replied with another backward glance at the window.

Majid fetched a bottle of wine from his room. ‘This is turning into a party.' He shook the dark bottle.

‘Ma, am I staying up all night?'

‘Just the night, Janie, treat because of the big wind.'

‘Can I have some wine? Now I'm seven years old an' three days?'

‘Like fuck yeh can, come back in another eight years, fraggle. Eat yer last choc ice.'

They sipped from mugs. ‘No point getting out the glasses,' Majid said with a guilty smile and I sat on Ma's lap and listened; it turned out that Beardy No Name's name was Mark and he was writing a script about ‘the smarties scene in Manchester', but didn't want to live there so he wouldn't get ‘too close to my subject . . . know what I mean?' and Cathy nodded and took another gulp of her tea. Majid told everyone he was going to wait till it was official but that he was going to live with his partner Peter in Brighton and he prayed to God that was far enough away to avoid his parents and Whitechapel for another seven years.

I pushed my finger into the melted wax at the top of a candle, let it flash with heat then dry smooth over my fingertips and wondered how many secrets adults could hold. Ma didn't say much. She held me tightly on her lap, stroking my hair and sipping her wine from her mug. Occasionally Cathy would smile and wink across the table and I would feel Ma's grip loosen.

It was only when Cathy said, ‘You should see the new fella in Steve's old room, Iris. Moved in yesterday, very tasty. If I wasn't off men with my twelve steps I'd be in there like a shot.'

Ma didn't say a word for the rest of the night, just listened and laughed along, her bluish teeth and wine-stained lips lit up by candlelight.

*

Ma said Douglas or ‘call me Doug' looked fit from all the jogging he did. I thought it just looked that way from all the sitting around the kitchen he did in his black jogging bottoms and vest, smoking fat, loose roll-ups. He was Scottish too but ‘from outside Glasgow' and he had a job, an actual, proper job, delivering meat. He kept making jokes about it to Ma.

He had curly blond hair that would fall over his eyes and a huge nose that he let me grab between two fingers and shout, ‘Honk! Honk!' to anyone around who would listen and indulge me with a laugh.

He filled up the house with his army jokes and Drum tobacco roll-up smell and was always in the kitchen trying to get people to stop for a hand of gin rummy or to have ‘a jar' with him as they passed through. Everyone did, lost stars circling a steady moon, thrilled to be smiled at or teased for being a shite card player by the new big man of the house.

He reminded me of Uncle Frankie but he was more grown up, so maybe it was Tony who he was like, Tony but without the beatings or ‘business'; without the money but without that sour streak too.

Ma got fluttery when she played cards with him, slapping his hand when he let her win and sending me up to bed alone while she poured them both another drink.

I'll say one thing, Doug brought my ma back. She was less tired, and instead of my flat, pinched, quiet ma I'd gotten used to, she was her old, wild self; full of noise, temper and laughs.

*

Ma's duvet was in the same rumpled peak that it had been in the night before when I finally gave up waiting for her and fell asleep. Solid fear filled my chest at the sight of the empty bed then melted to a burning temper, pumping through my arms and legs. A temper so savage it threatened to dislodge the crumbs of sleep from the corners of my eyes.

I stomped down the stairs.

‘Ma! Where are yeh? Ma!'

I shouted on each landing red-faced and indignant; I wanted the whole house to know my ma had abandoned me for gin rummy and Doug.

I found her at the kitchen table with him. Their hands wrapped around mugs of tea above the table and their feet twined around each other underneath.

‘Janie, my gorgeous, come here!' Her voice was too loud.

I stood where I was, unsmiling.

‘Aw, out of the wrong side of bed? I've some good news fer yeh though. Yer getting a new daddy!'

Still I didn't move. I just stared at them, though, to my shame, I felt hot tears burning behind my eyes.

‘It's Doug,' she added as if there might be another possible da lurking in the fridge. ‘Come on, come an' have a cuddle with yer ma and yer new daddy.'

I wanted to say that I had a real da but I scuffed my bare feet across the tiles as I walked, stood behind them and felt left out as they breathed the same morning bad-breath on me. Ma showed me her thin ring with a big sparkly bit of glass that she said was just like a diamond and I shrugged.

‘It's just till I save up. Then I'll get yeh a proper ring.'

He kissed Ma on the side of the head and I was nudged out by the side of his face. He turned to me with a sloppy grin and I raised my hand and squeezed his big, oily nose, giving it a good twist while I shouted ‘Honk! Honk!' right into his stupid face.

I was thinking that at least Tony Hogan bought me an ice-cream float before he stole my ma.

*

It was a week and a half after the hurricane blew through that Doug proposed to Ma and a month after that they married in a Canterbury registry office. Everyone from Burton House came and instead of presents Ma asked if they could chip in a bit to the registrar and bring a bottle to the reception.

Grandma came down on the coach and arrived in a taxi carrying her big wide wedding hat, borrowed from Aggie. For the few nights before the wedding Grandma shared the upstairs room with me and would come up late from drinking downstairs, waking me with her boozy belches and static crackling poly-mix slacks.

‘Poor as a pauper but a good fella, a good daddy for yeh finally, Janie.'

I told everyone at my new school that my Ma was going to be a bride; even though I hated it there. Ma had found out about clothing vouchers from the social and I had a squeaky navy jumper and pleated skirt to wear but then I saw everyone else wore maroon and I thought of Ma's shy face when she handed over the vouchers at the cash desk and wanted to burn the stupid jumper and skirt.

Every morning, after the register, Miss Addle would make us put our hand up if we were ‘school, packed or free' lunches and my heart would pummel as me and Toby, who picked his nose and ate it and who had a hole the size of a digestive in his navy jumper, went and collected our green dinner tickets that said FREE in big black letters across the front.

I had one friend. Molly was round-faced with Barbie hair but because she had thick-framed red glasses and a round plaster that covered one eye no one would be her friend. Even though I was free dinners and didn't have the right coloured uniform I still got to be boss because I didn't have glasses or a plaster over one eye; so I bossed her all over the playground playing bride and bridesmaids, but in a quiet voice because my voice always betrayed me as being different.

Sometimes having a green dinner ticket, navy jumper and a funny voice, would make me make myself as small as possible in a toilet cubicle, swollen-eyed and rageful, until a teacher would come and get me and take me back to class. So for me the best thing about Ma's wedding was getting a day off school.

There is one picture from the wedding day, taken by Sheila Burton, the owner of Burton House. In the photo Beardy Mark and Cathy stand to one side looking at the pavement or maybe their shoes, while Doug, Ma, Grandma and me stand in the middle. Doug has a beige checked jacket on and his wild hair shines with Brylcreem, Grandma is in her big borrowed hat and a pastel suit pouting into the camera and Ma stands between them in a pale blue dress ordered from a catalogue. In the photo you can't see the safety pins at the back of her dress; ‘Fuckin' catalogue sizes,' she'd shouted when it finally arrived. Ma is offering up a relaxed smile to Doug and, in front, in my pink summer dress, too thin for almost-Christmas, I stare stubbornly into the camera with my grubby teddy squeezed tightly under one arm.

The reception was held between the kitchen and Madjid's room. There was a leg of lamb, chipolata sausages, roast chicken and bread rolls that Doug said he ‘dropped' delivering and everyone laughed but no one ate any of it except for me and Beardy Mark. Instead, everyone sat around on the bed and sofa in Majid's room and got smashed making cocktails from the collection of bottles on top of the chest of drawers. Everyone except for Sheila Burton, who sat straight-backed on the sofa, taking little sips of her glass of fizzy wine.

Fights sparked and petered out, drowned in booze and back-slaps, and at one point Ma went and cried in the downstairs toilet over something Doug had said until he coaxed her out and they went upstairs to bed.

After everyone had drunk everything, even the sticky yellow Italian stuff that Sheila Burton had brought along, I carried two slices of the wedding cake, Victoria sponge with a silver plastic blob that might or might not have been a bride and groom, to Ma and Doug. I left it outside the door and went to cosy up with Grandma who was gummy and snoring in bed; her teeth beside her on the pillow.

In the morning everyone was quiet, the wedding food and empty bottles already thrown in the bin. Ma and Doug sat at the table and, after making me get two big glasses of water, Ma told me the news.

‘We're going home to Scotland, but to where Doug's from.'

‘Fer Christmas?'

‘To live, Janie.'

I said nothing until Ma said that meant I wouldn't have to go back to school until the new year and then I leapt on them shouting that they were the best ma and da ever and they gave grim smiles and said, ‘Ta, but be a bit quieter about it fer Christ's sake.'

*

We were doing a moonlit flit. It meant I wasn't allowed to talk about the move and when I asked if I could say goodbye to one-eyed Molly and give her the felt-tipped note I'd written, Ma took it instead, saying she'd send it on.

We left past midnight on a Thursday in a blue Transit van that had patches of rust like a mangy dog, with sad gaffer-taped headlights for eyes. We all had winter coats and shoes ordered express delivery from the catalogue addressed to Mrs Pettigrew but Ma said they were definitely ours for going to Scotland.

Doug ordered tapes from the back of a magazine for Mr Pettigrew and he gave the Madonna to Cathy and the Smiths to Beardy Mark and then Ma shouted at him for only leaving us with Meat Loaf and
War of the Worlds, the Musical
for the long ride.

I watched Beardy Mark and Doug quickly load the van with the chest of drawers and table from mine and Ma's room, the desk from his own, plus both the lamps.

‘Are we taking them then?' I asked as their heads swivelled, checking the coast was clear before loading the wardrobe.

‘Aye, we bought them from Mrs Burton so we'll have some furniture fer our new house.' Doug turned and raised his eyebrows to Ma who was laughing. ‘Jesus, she's worse than the polis.'

We drove off, after a few gruff splutters from the engine, under the black night sky with ‘Bat Out of Hell' blasting from the open windows and Ma and Doug laughing so hard they had to wipe away tears to see the long road ahead. In a huff, I didn't laugh at all. Maybe I could see it would be a very long road indeed.

I was told to call her Gran, a woman who seemed older than anyone I'd ever met, with tufts of sofa stuffing for hair and big white teeth smiling in her wrinkled face.

‘Ma? Do I need tae? She's no my real gran anyway,' I asked while water thundered into the bathtub that had a film of grey halfway up it even after a going-over with a Brillo pad and Jif.

‘Just do as Doug says an' stop bothering me with it. I've enough tae be thinking about.'

Ma and Doug's laughter didn't even last till the end of our Canterbury road. It stopped the minute the engine was rumbling and the exhaust started farting out its oily innards.

‘What the fuck is this? This won't get us out of the town never mind tae fuckin' Scotland.'

‘No need to swear, Iris.' Doug gave a tight smile and peered through the smog. ‘Here, Janie, we're goin' back in disguise.'

He chuckled and looked in my direction but there was no chance of us being pals while I was squeezed between Ma and him, them shouting over the top of my head, trying to drown out Meat Loaf and the greasy farts of the engine. I kicked at the dashboard and turned Meat Loaf up.

Ma was sick the whole way and, because Doug took the ‘scenic route', we had to sleep a night in the back of the freezing van. In the morning Ma ordered him to stop the van and she screamed at him in the field saying it was all off because if he couldn't even get us to Scotland what sort of man was he? And then she had to be sick again.

Doug did what he always did in the face of Ma's temper, he stood tall and stared into the distance, working away with his jaw and not saying a word except, ‘No need to swear.'

I watched from the van, using a wetted finger to get into the corner of my crisp packet and wondered why Ma would marry someone who didn't like swearing and why I hadn't got sick at all but Ma was on her hands and her knees vomiting into the grass.

By the time we pulled into Airdrie our van was on its last legs and Ma, Doug and me sat in a thick silence with the
War of the Worlds
raging on the tape player and inside the van.

Ma scrubbed my scalp raw getting the shampoo to lather and muttered under her breath, ‘If he thinks I've come up here tae look after his mother he's another think coming. And what a fuckin' hole; he said Airdrie was a lovely wee town, a good place fer kids. Do yeh think this is a good place fer kids, eh, Janie?'

I couldn't answer because she was pouring a measuring jug of bathwater over my head.

‘Not a penny to our names an' stuck here in this place. Fuckin' cheek of him promising the fuckin' world and giving us Airdrie.'

Doug said it was only until the social sorted us out with a nice council place and until then his ma would kindly let us stay in the bedroom she didn't sleep in anyway.

Her bungalow was full of hanging cords and panic buttons. Every shiny red button had a sign saying ‘Emergency button. Do not press unless in Emergency.' They looked like they tasted of sour cherry and when Gran caught me licking one she didn't say anything, just wafted her digestive-biscuit smell past and wandered into another room.

The back living-room wall was entirely covered with a wallpaper picture of a tropical sunset complete with palm trees and beach. When we arrived Ma looked at the wall and smirked and Doug said, ‘My brother Sammy got it fer her to brighten the place up. It cost a bomb.' His face said there was nothing funny about his ma's tropical wall. ‘He's one of a log cabin in his lounge, an' it's very peaceful to look on.'

Gran was thrilled to see her ‘wee boy' and me, and even though she smelt of digestives, her big white smile, mad-professor hair and generosity with the TV remote won me over. I even ate the oatmeal she gave me when she mixed up the salt and sugar so I had to stuff my cheeks with it, like a hamster, and go for a pee to spit it out.

Gran didn't seem to be so happy to see Ma. Her teeth disappeared and she kept saying, ‘I'm glad tae see he's found a good woman at last.' With a face not glad at all and then she'd look at the floor and make a sound like ‘Hmm'.

Ma wrapped a towel around me. ‘An' don't be fooled by her old-lady act. She's smart as yeh like an' no pleased tae see us, I'll tell yeh that. She wants her wee Douglas all tae herself.' She rubbed my arms so hard they burned. ‘Not that he'd see it. The sooner the better fer that council place – Janie, stop bein' awkward an' just stand still.' She gave my backside a hard slap.

*

It turned out that it wouldn't be better any sooner though, because the social said we'd made ourselves ‘voluntarily homeless', and when Doug explained that he came home to look after his ma they just said we had somewhere to stay then.

‘But there's four of us in a one-bedroom place! Did yeh tell them? I should've gone myself instead of staying here cooped up till I'm going mental.'

I looked round from my spot on the floor and Doug was standing above her, taking deep breaths from those wide nostrils, so I collected my crayons in both hands and sat up beside Ma on the bed giving Doug my worst look.

‘Are yeh saying I can't be trusted with something as simple as a housing appointment, Iris?'

I didn't look up, I kept colouring, my crayon making a darker and darker green.

‘No, I'm saying that maybe yer not as interested in being away from yer ma an' yer brother an' that fuckin' Sheenie's as yeh pretend. But then, yer not the one stuck in here cooking an' cleaning and explaining tae Janie why yer ma smells funny.'

I dropped my crayon. ‘Ma!'

Doug shot me a look of disgust and Ma put her head in her hands.

‘There's no need to swear.'

Bad feelings flooded the room and I added mine, though I wasn't sure who they were for, and then Gran knocked at the door and stuck her big teeth in the crack and said, ‘
Emmerdale
's on, Janie, the one wi' the sheep tha' yeh like. I'll make yeh a piece an' jam tae have while yeh watch it.' Then she shuffled off again.

Ma scratched her fingers across her scalp. ‘Fuck it. We'll just have tae say I'm pregnant. I'm fairly sure anyway. I'm late.'

‘Yer sure?'

‘Fairly, I said.'

Doug walked around the bed, smiling a sappy grin, kissed Ma and then started looking at her belly like it might be see-through and I gave them both my worst look, jumped off the bed and went to watch
Emmerdale
, slamming the door behind me.

*

Pregnant and full of pent-up temper or not Ma couldn't get the social to rehouse us before Christmas. The atmosphere became so bad that Gran's red strings and buttons didn't seem so silly any more. I started walking to the deserted Buckfast-bottle-strewn square of concrete where someone had stuck a swing set but nothing else; maybe the same person who put just a slide in my Canterbury park.

I sat on the one swing that hadn't been twisted over the top of the metal frame, though it swung in a diagonal line and if you went too high you got bashed on your side. In Airdrie, in December, the wind felt cold enough to strip off the top layer of your skin, and I swung as high as I dared and let it bite at my face and lips while I thought about what I could do to make Ma love me and not the new baby. Pooing in a corner and blaming it on the baby was the only plan I had.

Doug went to Sheenies, a rough, one-room bar down the road, with his brother Sammy a few nights a week. On those nights Ma would lie in bed with two hot-water bottles and work her way through the yellowing pages of Gran's Mills & Boon collection, though Gran, mindful of her unborn grandchild's comfort if not Ma's, disturbed her every five minutes to see if she wanted ‘a wee drop of tea, Iris?'

On Mondays the four of us went to queue at the post office and Gran had whispered conversations with the old biddies at the front, who then stared at Ma like she might knife them once they'd cashed their pension books. Doug went to the jobcentre to sign on and Ma to the supermarket with a list for Gran (lemon sole, bread, milk, eggs, rich tea biscuits, PG Tips) and a list with normal food for us (burgers, fish fingers, chocolate biscuits, potato waffles, cheese triangles, oven chips).

I was left at the library which had the same quiet and the same smell as Canterbury Library even if the books were sometimes ripped and there weren't as many. As soon as we got home I'd eat my Monday Treat Smarties, cooking myself in front of the gas fire with my books, turning, a roasting pig, when one side of my face blotched up from being too hot.

Eventually Doug would always say it wasn't good to be cooped up reading all the time and I would be sent out to have a swing on my own in the littered, cracked concrete square and think about ways to make Ma love me more than Doug. Somehow blaming poo in the corner on him wasn't good enough.

*

Ma said Christmas, death and moving were the three most stressful things in the world. She said that we'd been through two and no wonder she was a nervous wreck.

In the days before Christmas, just like I knew I'd eat my chocolate from the Advent calendar that Doug had drunkenly pinched for me from the Shell garage first thing in the morning, I knew there'd be a whispered argument about one thing or another.

‘. . . Fer god's sake, woman, just let her cook. It's her house after all. Are yeh no glad of the rest?'

‘No I will fuckin' not and don't call me woman! I've seen what she does tae a nice fillet o' lemon sole so I'm not letting her near our turkey dinner.'

Each argument ended with the door slamming as Doug went to stand in the patch of grass outside the bungalow and have a roll-up with his angry back to the house.

‘. . . Off tae Sheenies again?'

‘Aye, an' what of it? Sammy's paying.'

‘I'll come an' all then. Yer ma can look after Janie.'

‘I've told yeh before, Sheenies is no place fer a pregnant woman, an' like I just said, Sammy's paying.'

‘Well, maybe yer wee brother knows how to look after a woman a bit better than you.'

Slam.

‘. . . Listen, she's just worried about the bill.'

‘Doug, it's fuckin' freezing. We're already wearing two jumpers an' carrying hot-water bottles around. Have yeh forgotten I'm preggers?'

‘It's just in the night-time she wants it off. She's worried sick about it. She's not sleeping.'

‘Over my dead body is the heating going off, end of.'

‘Aye, well, I hope it's no over hers that it's staying on.'

Slam.

There were no slammed doors on Christmas Day; instead there was a tense sprinkle of pleases and thank yous, if you wouldn't minds and you're more than welcomes, which were worse.

I opened my colouring book and pens that wasn't a shell suit, with the grown-ups' eyes and still smiles heavy on me and was just ripping into my selection box when Ma ruined it by saying, ‘Next year yeh'll have a wee brother or sister to open yer presents with.'

I didn't eat my Mars bar for another whole ten minutes to teach her not to speak about the baby on my special days.

Ma decided all the women would cook, and the kitchen was so silent you could count how many drips the tap made over the sound of ‘The Snowman' playing in the living room. Ma made the chicken.

‘Just as good as turkey,' she'd said to the checkout girl, clicking and unclicking her purse, though the girl looked like she didn't care if we had bread and water for Christmas dinner.

Once the chicken was in Ma helped me make the Bird's Trifle and when Gran made our sprouts by giving them a sprinkling of bicarb soda and pouring the boiled kettle over Ma told me under her breath, ‘Not a word, Janie. You concentrate on yer trifle.'

We ate dinner on the lounge table covered with one of Gran's good white sheets, with
Top of the Pops
on one side and the tropical wall on the other. Ma had to fight Doug to keep
Top of the Pops
on, but since there was just the sound of scraping cutlery on plates and the occasional ‘Mmm, lovely', I was even glad when Status Quo came on.

Finally Ma put down her fork and stared around the table with a cheery smile that didn't reach the top half of her face. ‘Right, time fer some news!'

I tore my eyes away from the telly. ‘My trifle?'

‘Aye, the first bit of good news is that Janie made delicious trifle fer afters.'

I nodded.

‘The second bit of good news is that we'll have a new place tae live before the new year!'

Doug put his knife and fork down. ‘What? An' when were yeh planning on telling this tae me?'

‘Now. It's a Christmas surprise. No – a miracle!'

‘When did yeh find out?'

‘A few days ago. The social called but you were having an early one at Sheenies.'

She forked a sprout and it fell from the prongs landing with a snotty splat.

‘Oh, yeh'll be off before New Year's even?' said Gran, who stared at Doug and then the abandoned sprouts on our plates. Doug ignored her.

‘So when are we seeing it? Where is it?'

‘Oh, we're not looking at it. I just said yes. We can't stay here another week. I'll go mental if I don't get out.' She smiled at Gran who was staring at Doug with a vague expression. ‘No offence. It's a two bedroom in Balfour Court, they've even put us in a new kitchen. Have yeh heard of it?'

Gran put down her cutlery and made her ‘Mmm' sound and Doug pushed his chair away from the table and stood.

‘You took a flat fer us without speaking tae me about it? In Balfour fuckin' Court? Are yeh fuckin' mad, woman?'

‘You shouldnae have been at Sheenies then,' Ma replied with a hard smile and a shrug of her shoulders. Doug started for the door with long strides. ‘Oh, an' Douglas? I'm not yer woman and there's no need tae swear, alright?'

Slam.

Doug stood with his back to the house and didn't come in until there were fag ends like confetti on the little patch of grass and the Queen had done her speech. Ma sat smiling at Gran who fiddled with her medallion of the Virgin Mary and looked so winded by the news that I scooped up the mash of sprouts, so like bogeys, and shoved them into my mouth.