White Goods (15 page)

‘
No, no, she
wouldn’t have,’ Dad had said, a stretched sound to his voice, like
it was getting thinner and thinner, like an old sheet, over-washed,
about to rip apart.

‘
Or could you
or she possibly have any enemies? Anyone who might want to cause
your family any harm?’

‘
No. No one.
No would want to harm my Theresa,’ Dad had said, quietly and they
had believed him.

So, now you
know.

I lied last
time.

No Abba
blaring.

No tripping over soggy
laundry.

No dishwasher in the
way.

But the police, they were
there. They were involved.

In the playground, a small
crowd had gathered around me to listen.

‘
Shit,’ Walter
Smith said, when I had finished, his gob open wide to trap
wasps.

‘
Load of
bollocks,’ Roy Fallick responded from the back, shaking his
head.

Then the school bell rang
and everyone headed off to line up outside our classroom. By
lunchtime, interest in me and my macabre tale had all but petered
away.

6.

A memory.

We are in a car.
Five-of-us. I think. Yes - we are driving at night and there are
five of us – but not the usual crowd. Someone is missing; someone
has been replaced.

Dad – Dad is missing. Dad
has been replaced. `

I’m in the back of the
car, sandwiched between my brother and sister. Mum is in the front,
driving and the fifth person is next to her. A brand new addition
to our family tableaux.

‘Tonight’s
our little secret, okay?’ Mum had said to us, repeatedly,
fearfully. Terrified that word of what we were doing would get back
to
headquarters.
‘Dad doesn’t need to hear about this, does he?’

There’s a very dark sky:
purple-black. However, there are stars; I remember them. No, not
stars – lights. We are high on a hill and we have stopped. I need a
wee. Della feels sick. So, we stop the car. Stretch our legs. At
night. And there we are, at the top of a hill, looking down on a
town.

It looks like a city of
stars.

The scene has several
soundtracks: distant traffic; my wee making a hissing, crackling
sound as it splashes against a bush; Della making a dry heaving
sound, though nothing’s coming out.

‘
You’ll be alright, baby. Just a bit
of car sickness,’
Mum is telling
her.

‘
You alright?’
someone asks me - Jackie.

Yes, I think to myself,
looking out at the city of stars. How could I not be with that
view?

‘
What about you?’
I ask. I look at him and he looks tired, has
black hollows instead of eyes. ‘
What about
you, Jackie?’

In my memory, he pats my
head, whilst I’m making a zipping up noise with my flies, and then
Della finally hurls.

Better out
than in, my baby girl.

Back in the car there’s a
funny smell in the air – it’s Della’s breath, but you can’t say
anything. And anyway, I’m quickly asleep.

And then we are
there.

‘
We’re there,’
someone confirms. Jackie, I think; yes, it was Jackie’s
voice.

I’m awake and look out
the window. It’s black-dark now, but I can see some things: a short
fat place, a home, with a white picket fence at the front, like in
a dream or a pretty picture. But it’s real; I am there.

‘
Come on kids,’
Mum and Jackie seem to say between them, blurring in my
memory and I can’t tell them apart. They look and sound like the
same person. ‘
Time to get out of the car.
We’re here. We’ve arrived.’

‘Where are
we?’
I ask, but Della is sick again, so no
one answers.

At least, if they did, I
don’t remember.

I don’t
remember.

7.

We’d been back
at school quite a bit when the attack happened. Harvest Festival
had come and gone – Dad gave us three dodgy hair-driers to take,
but Della said there was
no-way-on-earth
she was showing
herself up like that, so we ditched them in favour of some tins of
marrowfat peas. Half term had passed as well, and it was darker
when we walked home from school. November; it happened in November.
On a Sunday.

Sundays had
always been a traditional day for visiting Red Nanny, or having her
visiting us. Mum had never encouraged the latter too much, on
account of her having to do all the work
even-though-she’s-not-my-mother!
So
she only tended to come to us on special weekends, like Bank
Holidays or Christmastime, and most Sundays Dad would go to her,
dragging one of us along to
give-your-Nan-a-treat.

But things
were still changing, because Mum had gone.
Everything is gonna change
had been
wrapped up with
Sorry for your loss
and I hadn’t believed either. But it was true.
Everything was changing. Day by day – big stuff and small stuff all
mixed in together.

Red Nanny and Dad – that
changed. Guess it started with us losing Mum.

‘Got a lot of
respect for your mother,’ Nan Buckley had said to me once, and it
was weird.
Got a lot of respect for your
mother.

I could see
Mum rolling her eyes, arms folded across her chest, with a
cigarette in one hand, her face saying
pull-the-other-one-Doris.

But I
believed her; she meant it. Maybe people just felt different about
each other when they got older or were dead; like the rules had
changed or something. It had never felt as though she’d liked Mum
when she was there. It was as if Nan didn’t quite approve. Like she
wasn’t quite good enough for
her-precious-Anthony –
Mum saying
it, all sarky.
Nan Buckley was a bit like
Mum was when she spoke about Chrissie Tankard, Justin’s
mum.

‘You’re more like each
other than you think,’ Dad would accuse Nan Buckley, when he
thought no one else could hear. Nan would pull a face – one I’d
seen on someone else, confirming Dad’s allegation. But now he
wasn’t saying anything to her. Another change – he’d stopped
visiting her.

‘Go visit her, please,’
he instructed all three of us one Sunday, about a month after the
funeral. He handed Ian a fiver and said it was to get some flowers.
Ian had given him a long look and then Dad had dug out another
crumpled note. ‘Get yourselves something on the way
back.’

‘You not coming with us
Dad?’ I asked. Pointing out the obvious, Della later
stressed.

‘Got things to do, son,’
was all he said. We all knew what that meant, but we didn’t say
anything. I just hoped he was nice-drunk when we got in, not
salty-stew-drunk.

‘Come on,’ Ian had said,
and we’d taken the twenty-minute walk to see Red Nanny in almost
silence.

For the first few weeks
all three of us visited Nan Buckley, but it got a bit boring. There
wasn’t really much to the visits. We took flowers each time and
Della would display them nicely, but that was about it.

‘
Why doesn’t
Dad come?’ I asked on the way home one Sunday, and Ian and Della
had just looked at each other, like they knew something.
‘What?’

Ian just shook his head,
as if I knew better than to ask.

No more was
said.

It could be a
bit squashed-in at Nan Buckley’s when we were all there at once. It
was even worse if Meals-On-Wheels turned up, which always confused
me, cos the lady carried a tray and wore flat shoes, not wheels at
all. I always expected her to come along roller-skating, like
Michael Crawford on
Some Mother’s Do Have
‘Em
.

Also, it could be a bit
boring; you could spend the whole time thinking about somewhere
else you wanted to be.

So, after a few weeks we
did a deal and something else changed: it was just me that went to
her flat. We all walked together and met up afterwards, but the
others headed off towards the crematorium instead. Sometimes I got
to keep the fiver Dad gave us; spent it on sweets in the newsagents
just before you got to her retirement flat. Nan Buckley never said
anything about the flowers we brought her, anyway.

I liked the
walk there. The houses that way were very different to ours. The
ones down our road were mainly painted. Ours was boring – white,
and getting dirty. But there were all sorts of colours – blues,
green and yellows. Our neighbours – Mad Barbara and Silent Dan –
painted their house a different colour each year. This summer
they’d
gone-blonde
according to Barbara, like she’d had her hair done. The
render was bright yellow, with an orange front door. I’d preferred
last year’s: turquoise, with a red door.

‘
Keeps your
spirits up!’ Mad Barbara exclaimed, whenever anyone commented. We
all just smiled politely. Everyone knew that Barbara was doo-lally.
One year Mum had let slip that it was Dad’s birthday and Barbara
had come round that evening with a cake in the shape of a pair of
boobs.

‘
Think I
recognise those,’ Dad had said, and Mum, instead of giving one of
her looks, had for once laughed under her hand.

‘
Who’s that
then?’ Mad Barbara had asked, all innocent.

‘
She’s
nuts!’
Della had whispered to
Ian.

‘
She must be
if she’s after Dad.’

At the end of our road,
the houses changed: they were all red brick and this carried on all
the way to Red Nanny’s place. I liked them, though. Coming out of
Victoria Avenue, you turned right into St James Road.

Council,
was Mum’s single comment if
you mentioned that road.
Council.

Like it was a bad smell;
like shame lived there. But I liked the fact they were all the
same, like a blur of red bricks. And the road curved round, so you
were never quite sure when it was going to end, not until you were
nearly there. I’d liked that too – sometimes it seemed like the
road got longer, liked they’d built more houses overnight.
Sometimes it seemed shorter, like they had knocked some down.
Course, it was just me walking faster or slower, but it made it
interesting, like an adventure.

‘
How
exciting,’
Della had said when I’d tried
to explain it, doing that thing where you say the opposite of what
you mean, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I didn’t mention it
again.

When St James Road finally
stopped curving, you were on Red Nanny’s road. It was long and
straight and busy with cars, but there was a zebra crossing half
way down. You crossed that, walked to the sweet shop and Beverley
Courts was just next to it.

On this
particular Sunday, things were different again. We nearly always
walked there together, splitting just before we got to Nan’s and
then meeting up afterwards by the sweet shop. But this time, Ian
didn’t come at all; said he had
some
business
to attend to and he left the
house ahead of us. So, it was just me and Della. As usual, when we
got to the end of St James Road, instead of turning left and
walking with me to Red Nanny’s flat at Beverly Courts, Della turned
right.

‘You sure you don’t want
to come with me?’ she checked, before heading off in the opposite
direction, towards the crematorium. ‘And you’ll be alright on your
own?’

I’m not sure
when the boys started following me – it might have been as far back
as our road - but I was only aware of them once Della had gone.
Justin and his new friends: Roy Fallick and his soon-to-be
stepbrother. Clint, that was his name: Clint Bailey. It wasn’t that
me and Justin had fallen out or anything; it’s just something had
happened when we’d bumped into Roy and Clint in town that time
after swimming; the time I’d run off after
Uncle
Gary’s car. I wasn’t
sure
what
exactly
– maybe they’d shown each other their whatsits, maybe that’s where
I went wrong – but whatever it was, they were now hanging out and I
just didn’t fit in. There was something menacing about Roy, like
whatever he said, however nice, there was something nasty coming
next. Something bad hidden. And sometimes you just couldn’t see it
coming. He brought something bad out in Justin too: a spitefulness
that I didn’t like. So, I’d started to keep away. Started to keep
myself to myself.

‘Look who it is,’ Roy
called out from behind. I looked back. Della was now a dot in the
distance, and the three boys were about ten feet behind me. I still
had a five-minute walk to Beverly Courts, so I carried on forward.
‘Oi, Buckley, I’m talking to you.’

I looked back again and
decided to stop. I did feel uneasy. Roy had the small branch from a
tree in his hand, which he was dragging along behind him, and I
wondered where it had come from and what he was going to do. It was
a busy road, though, with lots of passers-by, so I guessed they
wouldn’t do much to me. And Justin wouldn’t let them, I was certain
of that. He might stand there and laugh at the odd insult, but that
was it. So, I tried not to worry too much, although I kept walking;
kept up my brisk pace.