White Goods (21 page)

‘No tree?’ I asked,
almost instinctively.

‘Not you as well.’ Dad
sighed, but didn’t turn round to face us. ‘We’ve got plenty of decs
and it only stays up for a couple of days. We haven’t got company
this year, so I don’t see the point.’

‘Auntie Stella and Gary
are coming,’ Della reminded him.

‘Like I said,’ Dad
stressed.

‘We’ll get it,’ Ian
chipped in, but Dad’s mind was set in stone. He wasn’t going to
give in.

‘No,’ he said and we were
silent.

After pushing
our food around our plates at dinnertime, hardly touching it in
silent protest, we retreated to Della’s room to
refocus-our-efforts
, as Ian put
it.

‘We need to get
reinforcements in,’ he told us, like it was the war, only the silly
grin stretching out his face told us he knew it wasn’t.

‘Reinforcements?’ Della
questioned, raising an eyebrow, dubious.

‘What do you
mean,
no tree,
Tony?’ Auntie Stella was yelling, almost 24 hours to the
moment after I’d walked in on Della shouting at Dad. ‘I don’t think
so. I’m not coming here without a tree!’

‘Don’t come th-,’ Dad
began to strike back, but she wasn’t listening. For once, Auntie
Stella was going to come up trumps. She held her left hand out to
him, like an upturned iron: flat, hard, potentially
deadly.

‘What?’

‘Twenty,’ she said, left
hand still palm-side up. ‘That should do it.’

‘Twenty? You
can-.’

‘I don’t think you could
bear the shame of your kids going without a proper Christmas, what
with their mother not here and the rest they’ve gone through. And
what will people say? Tony? Do you hear me? I’m happy to make this
private matter public knowledge. People like nothing better than to
gossip. Know what I mean, Tony?’

And the twenty was handed
over.

Uncle
Gary arrived two nights later with a six-foot
twig that was remarkably similar in shape to the man
himself.

‘Where are the pine
needles, Santa?’ Ian asked.

‘In the back of my car,’
Gary announced, clearly irritated. ‘If you can pick the buggers up,
you can stick ‘em back on.’

‘Where’s my change?’ Dad
asked.

‘It was 25. She’s bought
new decs as well, so you owe me.’

‘Waste of money,’ Dad
grumbled, fumbling in his pockets and pulling out a crumpled fiver,
and I felt tears come into my eyes. Ian gave me a tap on the
shoulder.

‘He just misses her,
too,’ he said later, softly sticking up for Dad. ‘And it’s just
coming out all wrong. That’s all.’

‘He’s mean,’ Della
corrected.

‘Yes, he’s mean too,’ Ian
agreed and I found myself smiling.

‘It’ll get better, won’t
it?’ I said and Ian nodded, like Dad should have nodded, but I was
getting used to Ian taking his place. I preferred Ian,
too.

Auntie Stella
came back the day after, tutted at our festive stick, which looked
even more pitiful once Dad had stuck it in a bucket of mud and
propped it up in the corner of the front room. Dad was about to
dive in with his
didn’t-I-tell-you-it-was-a-waste-of-money
speech, but Auntie Stella was too quick for him.

‘Good job I got those new
decorations, eh? Some baubles and tinsel will soon liven it
up.’

And with
that, she took over. Not just the tree, but the whole of Christmas.
Somehow we didn’t seem to mind, either. It wasn’t like she was
showing any signs of moving back in – although
Uncle
Gary was looking older under
the strain of the impending nuptials, so I was a bit nervous. And
she wasn’t trying to take over where Mum had left off. She was
simply giving us the Christmas that Dad couldn’t be bothered
to.

On Christmas
Day, Dad somehow seemed to make up for it. He had actually bought
us some presents. Mainly bits and bobs. Ian got a Brut boxing glove
soap-on-a-rope (suspiciously similar to the one Mum had bought Dad
the year before) and pants; I got pens, a colouring pad, a Rubix
Cube and pants too; much to her mortification, Della found a bra in
with her presents, opening it in between a chocolate orange and
a
Love Is
compact
mirror. We got bigger stuff too – I got the latest Blondie LP and a
navy towelling dressing gown; Ian got a Walkman and some vouchers
for Fosters; and Della got a flat square box, inside which was a
silver heart on a chain. You could tell she didn’t really like it,
but he’d tried, and she liked that bit of it.

Dinner was
lovely, too. Cooked by
Uncle
Gary, who was surprisingly good and took all
the
poof
and
Delia Smith
comments from Dad in good spirit. It was all the usual stuff
– turkey, roast potatoes, vegetables we only saw once a year,
followed by Christmas pudding. Then, after a couple of hours, we
had cold meats and mashed spuds – courtesy of Auntie Stella. And
even though the mash was a bit lumpy in places and we were stuffed
to the point of popping, we tucked in. And it wasn’t just
the-three-of-us for once – it was the-six-of-us, which didn’t sit
quite right, because it included
Uncle
Gary. But for a while, as I
tucked into pickles and ham, I lived with it. I felt okay. Yeah, it
felt like a proper Christmas.

‘Not so bad,
eh?’ Auntie Stella later slurred, giving me an affectionate nudge.
She seemed to have completely forgotten about the incident
in
Uncle
Gary’s
red bedroom; another Christmas surprise I was grateful to
receive.

By then, we were all sat
together in the lounge, fulfilling yet another Buckley festive
tradition – watching the TV.

The fallout from taking
Justin along to meet Nan Buckley finally manifested itself on
Boxing Day.

It announced itself with a
hard rap on our front door in the afternoon.

With the TV on loud and
voices notched up due to the influence of alcohol, we might not
have heard it. But the rapping was angry, intense – like someone
trying to knock it down, so you couldn’t ignore it.

‘
Hang on, hang
on,’ Dad eventually blustered, a bit narked, but a bit concerned
too. Our house was clear of boxes from Dontask for once, so we
didn’t have to scramble about and get rid of anything. But Dad was
still on edge, habitually.

I knew the knock would be
about me. Felt it instinctively. I guess I’d been waiting for
something to happen. For someone to find out what I’d been up
to.

I kept my distance, but I
could see it all unfold, slower than it was actually happening.
Dragging itself out to punish me for longer.

Dad opening the
door.

The man outside – Dad’s
age, but thinner, smarter looking, a red tie poking through the top
of his winter mac. Angry eyes behind clear rimmed
glasses.

Dad more or less silent,
as the man explained the reason for his visit.

Then I realised what
Justin had done at Nan Buckley’s. Hanging about in her kitchenette,
offering to make that pot of tea, going through her cupboards,
opening her tea caddy.

In the distance, in a car
parked across the road, I could see her.

In her best coat, black
handbag with the brass clasp on the top in the centre of her lap,
hands on top, like she was going somewhere. I willed her to look my
way. To see me. To smile, but she looked straight-ahead.

Eventually, the man shook
Dad’s hand and then turned and walked away.

The door closed, my view
of Nan Buckley reducing to a slit and then nothing.

Dad turned to me and I
walked out of my shadow, towards him, to meet what was
coming.

He was calm. I expected a
wallop, but he didn’t raise a hand or even raise his voice. It was
like he knew the truth of it. Like he knew I’d been stupid, but not
bad. Like he knew the bad bit was someone else’s fault.

And I didn’t ask him to go
back, to open the door and invite her in. Didn’t question his
detached approach. Didn’t waste my breath.

‘
You know what
you’ve got to do, don’t you?’

Yes, I told
him.

‘
And you know
where that money went?’

Yes. And I could get it
back.

‘
Ok, I said
I’d take it back once we had it. You want me to come with you? I
can talk to-.’

No. I had to do this on my
own. Make it right again.

‘
And
Scotty.’

Yes?

‘
Stay away,
ok? You must stay away from her.’

Although it was Boxing
Day, you could still take yourself round Justin’s house. Even when
it was special days, like Christmas and Easter, the Tankards still
welcomed you in, giving you a plate of something or handing you a
drink, making you join in whatever was going on.

‘
Oh look, it’s
Bodger the Lodger,’ Stevie-the-little-shit (as Della had started
calling him) said, when Chrissie ushered me into their lounge. His
family, including his nan (she was called Yellow Nanny behind her
back, on account of being a coward
‘and
her teeth’
, according to Justin) were all
in there. A few of them were playing Kerplunk. Sharon and Justin
were watching a repeat of Top of The Pops.

‘
Kenny
Everett’s on next,’ Justin said, patting a space next to his on
their brown and orange sofa. It had wooden bits on the arms, where
you could rest your coffee cup or, in Sharon’s case, your
ashtray.

‘
Couldn’t we
go and play?’ I offered, as the Christmas Number One (‘There’s No
One Quite Like Grandma) finally faded out. ‘You know,
upstairs.’

I didn’t have to ask him
twice.

It was a while since I’d
been on my own with Justin – last time was the funeral, in fact –
and I knew a certain subject might make it into conversation. I
also knew I might have little choice this time. I needed to get
into his room - and then I needed to find an opportunity to have a
good look through his stuff.

Justin had his own room.
It was an L-shaped room, with a bed and window view in each
section. The walls were covered in brown wallpaper, patterned with
big orange flowers, and the floors had dark green shag pile on them
and lots of others things I didn’t like to think about, but if you
got your head down there, it did smell a bit.

Stevie-the-little-shit’s
room was next door and looked like a typical boy’s room – bed
unmade, bits of model airplanes on top of his chest of drawers,
skiddy pants on the floor, even a porn mag under his bed that he’d
once let me have a look at.

Justin’s room – on the
other hand – was very neat, with both beds made and his dirties in
the wash basket. He had a chest of drawers, too, and he kept his
mini tape recorder and pile of tapes (mostly nicked) on top of
this. On the wall behind his bed, he had a picture of Pam and Bobby
from Dallas. Victoria Principal had a black marker moustache, which
no one had owned up to, but he’d still insisted it stay
up.

The beds had
drawers underneath them, like at Gary’s flat, and that was where I
most wanted to look. Pull them open and have a rummage. I had a
plan that I would just steam ahead, insist we had a ferret through
them and then hopefully I’d just stumble across what I had come
for. Justin would have to hand it over – but he’d be all innocence
and
how-did-it-get-there.
Then I’d leave and that would be that. We’d just
return the stolen money to Red Nanny and life would carry on
nicely.

‘
What shall we
do?’ Justin said, giving me the perfect opportunity.

‘
Go through
your drawers,’ I said in return, not quite believing how bold I’d
been, but he wasn’t actually listening.

‘
We could, you
know,’ he said, all suggestive, and I realised we were exactly
where I didn’t want to be.

‘
We could
what?’ I stuttered, my heart beating, knowing it was coming, that
moment I’d been dreading. And I was all out of excuses. I’d used
all my imagination and efforts in getting myself there, intending
to execute a very different plan. And, worst of all, I had insisted
we went up to his room. I had encouraged him; there could be little
denying it.

‘
Quick,’
Justin rushed, hand on his belt buckle as he spoke, ‘before anyone
comes in.’ He’d unzipped his navy cords and I could see stripy
pants showing through and still there were no excuses coming
through my lips. ‘After three – one, two, thr-,’

‘
What the
fuck?’

Stevie had materialised
out of what appeared to be nowhere.

‘
You’ve got
your nob out!’ he exclaimed, and I realised that Justin had gone
ahead with his plan to reveal all. I tried not to look at it, as he
quickly covered himself up.

‘
Get out of my
room!’ Justin cried back, but it was too late. He’d been seen; the
damage was done.