Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (15 page)

‘Yer Uncle Frankie's coming for a while.'

Ma sat on a grassy patch above us. We were at the new lakes, the ones built on the quarry land, on the first day of sunshine. Already my shoulders had turned soft and sore with sunburn while I helped Tiny move a rock from the muddy bank.

‘Fer a holiday?'

She stopped unwrapping the sandwiches from their plastic bag; corned beef and piccalilli, I'd made them myself, even scraping the cold white fat from the side of the meat. I wanted the day to be perfect, just the three of us having a summer picnic, like TV. I'd begged Ma to come out.

‘Not really a holiday. Janie, do yeh remember years ago just before we left Aberdeen yeh asked me if yer Uncle Frankie was sick?'

I gave my stick to Tiny. ‘You dig around an' I'll come back when it's ready to shift.' I walked up to Ma, covering her in my slight shadow. ‘I know what's wrong with Uncle Frankie, Ma.'

‘Are yeh sure, Janie?'

‘It was on
Grange Hill
, years ago now, but Uncle Frankie's better now? Like Zammo got better? From being an addict?'

‘He's not better yet, he's coming here so we can help him get better.'

I rubbed my sore shoulders and thought about how Ma was all folded in on herself in Hetton-le-Hole. How a row in a shop could send her to her bed for the rest of the day or make her sit down full of temper and tell me every detail with white spit gathering at the edges of her mouth.

I kicked the ground. ‘An' why isnae Grandma helping him get better?'

Ma made a tight face. ‘Same as always, too busy with the bingo an' gossip, but we're not turning our back on him as well. Not when he needs us most.'

The hot air was baking the soft earth, the smell of it laying on the skin, filling up nostrils. Ma unpacked our apples, crisps and Tunnock's Teacakes, flattened to sticky pancakes.

‘An' what if we don't want him? Where'll he even sleep?'

She gave me a hard look and I stepped away leaving her blinking in the sunlight. ‘What's that face about? I'm ashamed of yeh, Janie, after all yer uncle's done fer us. The least yeh can do is give up yer room fer him.'

I didn't tell her that that face meant I was scared, scared for Frankie and scared for her and us even more. We were a glass family, she was a glass ma and I needed to wrap us up, handle her gently.

Tiny looked up from the bank, in her summer dress and wellies, waving her stick.

‘Janie come now!'

I went down to help turn the rock. Underneath, toads no bigger than pebbles kicked themselves free from the warm mud and tried to jump to freedom, but only the fastest escaped Tiny's cupped hands slamming down on top of them.

‘Look, Tiny! Yer doing great. Yeh'll have a toad zoo!'

The day was ruined for us but it could still be saved for Tiny.

*

His skin looked like wet candle wax and there were no presents, only a limp, distracted cuddle each. Ma shielded us from him, took him straight to my room and went down to pay the taxi.

It was like having a wild animal in the next room and I made up a story that he was a werewolf; a kind one, bitten by accident, who we were curing. When Ma opened the door to bring him water, or just to calm him when the shouting got too bad, the smell of diarrhoea, sick and cold sweat wafted through the flat.

At night Ma sat up in the living room, smoking and keeping the TV down low to make sure she could hear if the door went, and by the third day she started looking sick herself with clammy skin, a hard, colourless mouth and roaming eyes.

In bed Tiny would curl herself into me, scared from the moans and pacing in the next room. Our Uncle Frankie made mutant through the thin walls and night-time shadows.

‘It's OK, he's not feeling well but soon he'll be better an' he'll stay an' live with us. We're going tae cure him an' then he'll be back to normal an' he'll buy us all big presents. He bought me a rocking horse once.'

On the fourth day Ma caught him on the stairs, his legs given out and kicking away like they wanted to dance, while his face, rolling loose eyeballs and gaping mouth, made him look like he wanted to die. We couldn't carry him so Ma just knelt beside him stroking back the hair matted to his forehead. I took his hand, a piece of dead meat.

‘Soon yeh'll be all better, Frankie, we'll cure yeh.'

Then I went and squeezed in with Tiny in the boiler cupboard though I'd grown too much to get the door closed against my legs.

*

It was the smell that woke me, a smell that said the door to his room was wide. I ran to Ma, asleep on the sofa fully clothed, the TV still moaning away in the corner.

Of course he wasn't in the room, his bucket was spilled and sinking into the carpet, sheets rumpled on the floor and a brown stain pooled on the bare mattress.

She was tugging on her trainers, breathing too hard. ‘Janie, yer tae stay here an' mind Tiny. If Frankie comes back then you lean out the window an' shout on me, understand? He can't have gotten far in that state.'

Tiny was at the door to the room.

‘Stinky!'

‘Shush, Tiny, let's go watch the cartoons.'

I waited until I heard the door go and I'd made Tiny a piece and jam.

‘Yer tae stay right here, alright, Tiny? Don't move till I'm back.'

She wasn't listening, she was watching
The Raccoons
, bouncing along to the theme music and tucking into her jam sandwich.

I put on my sandals and tried to think where a werewolf would go, if he needed to hide when the sun came. If he was scared, if he didn't want to hurt anyone, especially his sister or nieces.

I ran past the swings and the horses that nipped your fingers if you tried to feed them Polo mints and through the field of tall yellow grass that tiny moths flew out of if you brushed your fingers through it.

The shed on the allotments, it reminded me of the garages from Craigneuk; people who were sick, and werewolves, they liked quiet, dark places where no one else went.

The door was locked but you could squeeze through the slats and into the hot air that smelt of earth and sweat. In the light that spilled through in lines I could see ripped-up magazines with blonde women showing their boobs and fannies, and a bike, on its side with one wheel and no saddle, in the corner. Then I saw my Uncle Frankie, in a ball on his knees, forehead to the floor, bum in the air, like Tiny still did sometimes, a shoelace dangling from a bare leg. His lips dry and pale and his Aberdeen-sky eyes empty.

*

Ma didn't go to the funeral. We didn't have the money for coach fares and Ma said she wouldn't look ‘that woman', Grandma, in the face again. On the day she lit a candle on the windowsill instead, drank a full bottle of vodka and fell into a disturbed, twitchy sleep.

I covered her with a duvet and me and Tiny drew pictures for Uncle Frankie in heaven, a kind werewolf who couldn't be cured after all.

In the second week of comprehensive school I came home to hear Ma roaring with laughter. The last year, since Frankie, had left Ma as thin as the skin on a blister and I tried my best to watch for the sharp moments that might leave her raw and sore.

Hearing that laugh made my stomach twist, though I had my own worries resting on my nylon-blazered shoulders. The table had a half-empty whisky bottle, a pouch of Drum tobacco and a
Sun
newspaper on it, and before I saw him I knew he was back.

They looked so cosy, the three of them sitting on the sofa, knees pointed into each other's and Tiny, four now, with a sturdy body a miniature of her da's, sitting on his lap. Stupid Tiny, she didn't even know him. Not as stupid as Ma though, because she did.

‘Janie!' She was pissed, words sliding off her tongue like oil. ‘Look who's come tae visit an' he got yeh a present!'

She sloshed her glass towards the table where a bright yellow tape player sat.

‘I wonder who he stole the money off fer that then?'

I didn't want a visitor. I definitely didn't want Doug. I wanted to disappear into the sea of bottle-green uniforms like all the other kids at comp; just another sloping back and shy bobbing head. I had the proper uniform because there was a special shop to go to and Ma had got vouchers but kids could see the difference. A plain rucksack that said Nick instead of Nike, biros and square rubbers from plastic packets at Somerfield's instead of ones with cartoon characters and rubbers in animal shapes from WH Smith's. I didn't have a charm bracelet, a perm, an anklet of my ma's to borrow and wear over my tights or a tube of pale lip gloss to smear over my lips in the canteen.

Instead, I stood, legs like two pieces of string dangling from my skirt, in my too-big fat fucking ‘You'll Grow into Them Shoes' as girls with golden foundation, mascara and friends streaked past nudging my shoulders. Unmade-up, in my pink-plastic-framed NHS specs, I couldn't even read my timetable from behind the blur of tears I held in so as not to mark myself for target practice.

Ma slammed her glass down and Tiny jumped and looked round at us all with her wide blue eyes and a smile like she thought this might be the start of a new game.

‘Janie! If yeh can't be civil to a guest in our house yeh can just go to your room.'

But she was talking to my back because I already had my hand on the door ready to give it one of my best slams.

*

‘It's yer choice, Janie. No one is going tae force yeh, but yeh trust me, don't yeh? Yeh know I only want best fer you an' Tiny?'

She was still slurring but you could see she was concentrating on what she was saying. I tucked my skinny knees up my under my chin.

‘It's not you I've a problem trusting, Ma. Have yeh forgotten he stole yer purse and left us, “lambs to the slaughter” you said?' I picked at a scab on my heel, let a fat drop of blood balloon and sink into the cracks in my skin. ‘An' Tiny? What about him just deserting her?' I didn't say and you, and me.

We were in my room, the room that was once Frankie's. When it was cold the walls got wet and a bit slimy and there was still a stain on the carpet the shape of Italy and a worse one on the bottom side of my mattress but they reminded me of Frankie so I didn't mind too much.

I stared at my New Kids on the Block poster and eyed the battered sausage and chips Ma had brought in.

‘Have some.'

She pushed the paper across the sheets and I shoved a chip into my mouth.

‘Aw, dinnae cry, Janie.' It was the vinegar but I ate another chip and let her think that I was. ‘He's changed. He's been in work fer the last seven months and saving up tae come an' see us with a few bob.'

I grabbed the sausage and took a sharp bite of the end. ‘Well, at least yer purse'll be safe. Should I be hiding my jar of five pees?'

Ma gave a laugh then a silent belch, the sweet, boozy smell fought with the vinegar and grease.

‘I'm only asking, Janie. Like I say –' she pushed her finger into the mattress with a loose, clumsy hand – ‘it's yer choice an' no one, no one, would ever force yeh, but imagine a fresh start and you in a proper Scottish comp, not with these snobby, ignorant bumpkins.'

I thought back to the girls with their dangly earrings and hair glistening and stiff with hairspray.

‘An' he's a flat already fer us in Glasgow. The city, Janie! But, like I say, it's yer choice.'

I wiped my greasy fingers down my shins, making them shine in the light of the bulb.

‘Janie?' I looked up at her smudged mascara, smeary lipstick; I didn't even know she still had a tube, ‘Yeh know I havnae been that happy here, not since even before Frankie? An' Tiny, Tiny will finally have a da and . . . and you of course if yeh wanted.'

She gave my hair a sloppy stroke. ‘Just you have a think an' I'll leave yeh to yer chipper.'

The whisky must have soaked right down to the marrow because her shoulder hit the door frame as her hand slapped the light switch off.

‘Ma!'

‘Sorry, sorry.'

After the third slap the bulb popped back on. I took a bite of my sausage and looked over at Joey, who had sweet brown eyes and curly hair, my favourite New Kid on the Block.

‘Well, some fuckin' choice, eh, Joey?'

*

A few days later we caught the coach because Ma said we had Doug to help carry everything and we didn't need the furniture since he'd kitted out the new flat for us from Argos.

I carried my school bag and library books, with my school uniform stuffed into the bottom. My New Kids on the Block and Bros posters were rolled together into a tube and held with a hair bobble; I didn't really like Bros that much any more but I thought they might still be popular in Scotland.

I ran around the station hitting Tiny on the arse with Bros and the New Kids while Doug and Ma sat on the seats, the metal kind that you slide right off if you don't watch yourself, especially if you've a whisky hangover like they did. Tiny shrieked and giggled, stomping about on those chubby legs of hers until I missed her arse and caught the back of her legs and she cried out. Then she grabbed the posters in both hands and started twisting.

‘Ma! Tiny broke my posters!'

Ma and Doug were nose to nose.

‘You said it was Glasgow! I might be cabbage-looking but I'm not fuckin' stupid.'

Doug turned his head and Tiny ran to his side, tugging his sleeve.

‘Da, Janie hit me. She started it an' all. Da!'

‘Ma!' I held the poster in front of their faces. ‘Look at what she did tae my posters.'

‘Maybe you'd had too much whisky. I said it was close. One train just. Closer than Airdrie is what I said.'

‘I do not believe this! So where? If it's not Glasgow after all, fuckin' where?'

‘Da!' Tiny stamped her feet.

‘Ma, are yeh no' goin' tae do anythin' about my posters?'

‘Right, enough.' Doug grabbed the poster tube from in front of his face and squashed Bros and the New Kids hard into the mouth of the bin next to him.

‘Ma!' I grabbed Tiny and gave her a hard slap across the back of her legs. ‘Yeh wee fuckin' bitch, that was yer fault.'

Tiny showed her bottom teeth, that was her worst face, and started swinging kicks at my shins with her red wellies. ‘I'll get yeh, Janie, yeh fat cow.'

‘Doug, don't try an' distract the situation. Where have we uprooted ourselves tae go an' live?' Ma stared at him waiting for an answer, I stared at Ma waiting for intervention and Tiny just kept swinging kicks. He tightened his jaw and closed his eyes.

‘A town called Coatbridge. And for the final time, all of yeh, there's no need tae fuckin' swear!'

They called our coach and we walked towards the gate with filthy looks and muttered swear words hanging about us like flies around dog shit. I pulled my posters from the bin and Ma took them.

‘Don't you worry. We'll get this straightened out. You just trust yer ma.'

But I'd given up trusting Ma to sort anything out and snatched the posters back.

It was a slow journey back to Scotland even if I did have a packet of Fruit Pastilles, a Curly Wurly, five stolen library books and three trips to throw up to keep me busy.

*

There were less pensioners in Coatbridge but that just meant the junkies didn't have easy targets for Monday muggings. Syke Side was a tower-block estate and Doug and Ma's fresh start went stale very quickly.

The train from Glasgow was only twenty minutes, and Doug looked hopeful, but then there was the forty-minute bus journey to Syke Side, through the streets of fume-belching factories, and the scramble through the estate to Doug's block because boys on the garage roofs were throwing stones, aimed to hurt, even though Doug said he would ‘punch yer teeth so far down yer throat yeh'll have tae shove yer hand up yer arse tae bite yer nails!'

‘But look,' Doug said when we stopped to catch our puff by the door of his block, ‘it doesnae smell of piss like Buchanan. An' we're only on the fourth floor so we'll never need tae use the lift.'

‘Oh joy, it doesnae smell of piss. Whoop-de-fuckin'-doo,' replied Ma through her out-of-breath gasps.

The living room was bare except for a black coffee table and a sticky, black leatherette sofa. Ma opened her mouth and let the air out like she was slowly deflating.

‘This isn't going tae work, is it?'

Doug put his hands in his pockets, looked at his belly and shook his head. ‘Doesnae look like it, but let's just wait an' see.'

*

The whole flat smelt of chip fat and roll-ups and Doug, it turned out, had been laid off for a few weeks, ‘but only until work picks up again,' he said. That first weekend we stayed indoors watching the telly, eating chips and biting the ends off each other's sentences with narky little ones of our own. I watched Ma carefully but if anything she just seemed glad to have some company. Though it was company from Doug and that should have worried me itself.

Tiny spent hours playing in the bath with washing-up liquid bottles, jam jars or bouncing on her da's knee; holding up his curls, amazed at how they matched. I sulked, complained there was only HP Sauce and tormented Tiny.

‘Yeh'll have his nose an' all though.'

That made her cry which was nice for a minute until Ma forced me out to the shop for marge, bread and ketchup so I wouldn't ‘sit with a face like a slapped arse making us all more miserable'.

She didn't get it, and I wouldn't tell her, that I was scared shitless of that estate. I told myself it was just like Craigneuk, but when I walked past the empty petrol cans and dog shit, glad the boys weren't on the garage roofs throwing stones, I knew it wasn't the same. I was eleven now and that made everything different.

Doug had pointed the shop out when we got off the bus. It was fifteen minutes' walk through the estate, at the beginning of a piece of scrubby wasteland. I almost took myself and the hot pound coins clamped inside my fist back home when I saw the outside.

The shop was covered in metal boards, the kind you see when a flat's been burnt out and they want to stop the junkies from sneaking in while it's empty. The door was pushed back against the wall and it had ‘Open' written in dripping red paint. Inside there was a rectangle of ripped lino and another sheet of metal that made a wall between the girl behind the till and her customers. You couldn't even see the food. Behind a tiny square of thick plastic glass the girl, dark circles under her eyes, gave the tiniest of nods. I looked at the dents in the metal and scrapes on the window.

‘You. Are yeh here tae buy somethin'?'

‘Aye, um, tub of marge an' a loaf o' white sliced an' ketchup . . . please.'

‘It's all sliced white.'

She slammed a metal shutter across the window and then it slammed open again.

‘The red sauce – Heinz or Happy Shopper?'

‘I, uh, the cheapest?'

‘What a fuckin' surprise!' she replied and gave the metal hatch an extra-strong slam.

It was almost October but when I got outside I could feel the sweat drying under the T-shirt I'd borrowed from Ma. Someone was burning a car at the far end of the wasteland. If I had to come here every time I wanted red sauce, I thought, I'll bloody well learn to love HP. I shoved the bread under my armpit and kept walking.

They stood on the corner, in their pink padded bomber jackets, two ready-to-squeeze spots. They looked bored and dangerous and I looked for a way to get past them. They were about my age but their jackets were open to show tight black vests with the tops of white lacy bra cups underneath. They had dark foundation on their faces with a grubby tidemark around it.

One was smoking and singing, that song by the floppy-haired bloke with the funny mole, ‘You are the one and only, don't nobody take that away from me. You are the one and only . . .' The other was trying to get a good hock up and was bent, ready for it to drop into the gutter. I looked away too late. The girl stopped singing.

‘Who the fuck is she?'

The girl let her mucus-thick spit drip and then splat beside her trainers before looking up. ‘Haw! Do yeh want yer hole kicked, hen?'

I stood flat-chested in my ma's stinking T-shirt. I didn't even own a bra never mind a white lacy one and I'd a Mother's Pride stuffed under my armpit. I was dead.

The girl made a show of taking a few steps forward and her mate a show of digging her fingers into her bomber jacket and holding her back.

‘She's no' worth it! Think about yer probation.'

I bolted as fast as I could through the estate, my feet slapping down on the cracks of paving stones. The ketchup slipped from my sweaty hand just before I got to the flat.

Later, from Doug's window, you could see the red splat and shards of glass. All that was missing from the picture was the chalk outline of a stupid girl who didn't own a bra and who was dead meat on an estate like Syke Side.