White Goods (24 page)

‘Cos
it’s
not
embarrassing at all,’ Della continued, confirming my
assumptions, folding her arms, expelling a
humph
.

We were getting ready to
visit Mum.

Having got me to do it
once at Christmas, Ian had pushed the idea repeatedly, until I gave
in again on the first weekend of February.

Dad’s reaction to the
whole Nan Buckley episode made me reconsider his gesture with the
coat. He hadn’t got mad; he’d just come across as a good man and it
made me look at the new parka differently. Made me accept it for
the apology it was. And it felt like I needed protecting again,
that I needed a new layer to shield me, now that Ian was exposing
me to things. Things I didn’t want to face; things I didn’t want to
believe.

Dad had cut his drinking
back too. Less lunchtimes and evenings in the pub and less empties
in the morning: all were evidence of this.

So, as a recognition, I
started wearing the spanking new, navy parka. Plus, being February,
it kept me warm.

‘Come on then,’ Della
muttered, heading out the front door. ‘Let’s get this over
with.’

As we left, I looked back
at Dad, to see if I could catch his eye, and tempt him to join us.
He was sitting in the front room, on the good furniture. Just
sitting, not doing anything. But he didn’t look up. And so we went
without him.

After we’d got to the top
of our road, we turned right, went up St James Road, then turned
right again at the top, in the direction of the crematorium. I had
so many memories of that walk, of that road. Nan Buckley. Her
replacement, Sylvie. The funeral. And now this – visiting Mum,
after months of telling myself and others that she no longer
existed. Giving her countless brutal endings she had no chance of
recovering from had been a waste of time: like it or not, I was
going to have to face her. Face what she’d become and where they’d
put her.

Before we reached the
crematorium, we passed a house on our right: derelict, with
corrugated aluminium panels covering the doors and windows, weeds
growing as high as trees in the garden. I caught a glimpse of
someone in there: a flash of blond hair and a red jumper. I knew
who it was. I’d sneaked in there a few times with him, messing
about. It smelt damp inside, there was broken glass and a staircase
with missing treads.

‘You alright?’ Ian asked
me, catching me staring back, as we walked on.

‘Yes,’ I told him, but I
wasn’t.

I didn’t want to go back
into the ruined house, but I did want to see the person I’d caught
a brief snatch of. See, me and Justin had fallen out again. And
this time it was different. This time it felt like something had
changed.

That something had
changed him.

‘Come on,’ Ian said,
using his encouraging voice, patting my back through the padding of
my crisp, clean parka, and I allowed him and Della to lead me on,
through the crematorium gates, whilst my head was somewhere else
completely…

It wasn’t to do with the
money Justin stole, or the fact I sneaked it back.

We never
mentioned that; it was like the one action cancelled out the other,
like it never happened. And just days after my breaking into
Justin’s house and stealing it back, he was calling round for me
again. There was one difference, though – Justin wasn’t allowed in
our house at all anymore,
what-with-him-being-a-thief
(Dad,
Della, Ian, Auntie Stella and even
Uncle
Gary.) I thought Dad might ban
me from being friends with him altogether, but that wasn’t
mentioned. So, when he called round, I had to talk to him on the
doorstep and, if we were going somewhere, he’d have to wait there
whilst I went and got my coat and joined him again.

On the last day we were
friends, he’d turned up with Tina, wondering if I wanted to go
swimming. It was a Saturday in January. When I asked Dad, he said
no, I couldn’t go somewhere like that with him. Only to his house
or a park. Not somewhere where there was money, he shouted out and
Justin pretended not to hear.

‘Let’s go to Jubilee
Park,’ I suggested, like it was my idea, like it was something I
was eager to do. Justin shrugged, looked down. ‘But not with Tina,’
I added.

He turned and walked off,
saying nothing.

‘I’ll be ready in ten,’ I
hollered after him, wondering if he’d come back.

Quarter of an hour later,
he turned the corner into our road again and we headed off to the
park.

It took about half an
hour to reach the park. It was in the centre of town, tucked behind
the shops. It was a huge area, split into different parts and
surrounded by an ancient stone wall. The main entrance took you
straight to the cricket green, with its white wooden hut and
scoreboard. A path took you alongside it to the right, past a
church that sat in the centre of the park. It was built of flint
stone and was always closed up. I’d never seen anyone go in or out.
Beyond that, there was another green for picnicking, then a bowling
green, which was fenced in by a thick, low evergreen hedge.
Adjacent to this, on the left, was a small aviary of colourful
birds. They were looked after by the park keeper, whose red-brick
house was just behind. We went left at this point, past the public
loos, to the play park area. This was where Mum always took us.
She’d make sandwiches, boil some eggs, bring a flask of tea and
she’d sit on a bench, whilst the three of us ran about. She made
everything from home, apart from the crisps, which were
peach-coloured, prawn-cocktail snacks from Marks and Sparks that
used to melt in your mouth. Food from Marks and Sparks; a rare
treat we always eagerly relished.

Me and Justin hadn’t
brought any food, but he’d bought a quarter of midget gems from a
sweet shop on the way and I’d bought six chocolate spanners from
the same place, so we had a picnic of sorts. The play park had a
roundabout, a tall slide and swings that were tyres on chains. We
sat on the latter, swinging gently, scuffing the toes of our shoes
along the ground, as we ate our sickly lunch. I did feel a bit sick
after four spanners, so I swapped them for some of Justin’s gems,
like the change might even things out in my stomach. I was about to
eat them, when two bigger boys entered the park and got on the
roundabout.

‘Come on,’ Justin said, a
bit edgy, jumping off his tyre and walking ahead. ‘Let’s go to the
top.’

The
top
was my favourite place in the park.
There was a big hill in the park, with a path that twisted all
around it, taking you up and up, until you reached another little
park, which had grass, a couple of benches and a view of the whole
town. It had a railing all the way around it, separating it off,
making it special. The pathway up to it had walls of bushes either
side, which had hiding places in them, if you knew where to look.
Ian had hidden in here once from Mum, when I was about five, and
she’d gone mad with worry looking for him, getting other people in
the park to help her and everything. On the way home, she’d told
Ian that he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week
once-your-father-finds-out-about-your-little-prank!
But I guess Dad didn’t find out, cos Ian was
sitting all over the place the very next day.

We had to walk past the
older boys on the roundabout to get to the start of the path and,
whilst Justin just looked ahead, I turned round. They were staring
at us. There was something else too. I recognised them. One of them
was Roy Fallick’s so-called step-brother, Clint. The other… I
didn’t place him straightaway, but it came to me later. Much later,
when it was too late.

As we made
our way along the winding path, up to
the
top,
I thought about the time Ian hid
himself again and remembered something else about the
day.

We had all been playing
in the park, just before Ian had run off. Ian and Della were on the
roundabout; she screaming, as he made it go too fast for her. I was
on the slide. I loved it, even though I was small and it seemed so
big, so high, and so fast.

Mum was on a
bench, sat with our picnic stuff. And then, just for a brief
moment, another woman joined her, started talking to Mum. I’d
forgotten about this; put it to the back of my mind, because it
didn’t really matter. But, years later, as me and Justin were
heading for
the top
, I remembered it again.

I remembered it
differently.

The woman – a stranger to
us – had sat next to Mum. Then Ian had disappeared, and the woman
had gone too. That was always my memory, but now it had a new bit.
Now I remembered something extra: she wasn’t a stranger, we knew
who the woman was.

‘Race you!’ Justin was
saying, suddenly ahead of me, breaking into a sprint. I joined in,
trying my best, but I knew he’d beat me. He always did.

We were the
only people at
the top
and that was how I liked it best. It was quieter up there,
like you were in the clouds and they had muffled out the noise of
the world below. We’d been up here once, alone, and Justin had
taken the opportunity to suggest we got our wotsits out,
just to look,
he’d said.
After his solo exposure at Christmas, that didn’t come up this
time. Instead, we stood up on one of the benches and looked all
around us.

Because it was still
winter, there weren’t any people playing cricket, but we saw some
kids starting up a football match on the green. The park keeper was
heading out of his front gate towards them. There wasn’t anyone
playing bowls or having a picnic either. Just a few people walking
about, some with dogs on leads. On a bench, near the locked up
church, a man sat all by himself. He had a cream mac on and Justin
said he was called Old Mac, strangely enough, but not because of
his old coat; it appeared it was just his name.

‘He’s a tramp my dad
knows,’ he explained, his eyes moving on, looking back to the play
park.

The older boys we’d seen
before had moved on and we couldn’t see them anymore.

‘Come on,’ Justin
instructed and he was on the move again. Something bugged me, I
couldn’t say what, but something felt a little wrong. Not enough to
say, but just like a little feeling in the core of my stomach.
‘Coming or what?’ Justin insisted, as I’d stalled,
thinking.

‘Where to
next?’

‘
Why did you
hide that day?’ I asked Ian, breaking from my thoughts about Justin
and the park. We were getting close to the crematorium by
then.

‘
What
day?’

‘
In the park,’
I said. ‘When I was five. You ran off. Hid for ages. In Jubilee
Park.’

‘
When?’ he
asked, walking ahead, not looking at me or Della. ‘I don’t
remember.’

We were opposite the
crematorium entrance by then; all we had to do was cross a road and
go through a gate.

I wondered if he was
lying. If I remembered, surely he did? I had only been five at the
time; he would have been eight or nine, his memory stronger than
mine. Maybe it needed jogging a bit more? So I gave him a bit more
to go on: I gave him a few more details.

But the details I gave,
the words that left my mouth, made him slow to a stop.

He turned, looked at me.
He looked quite shocked, like I’d said something he couldn’t
believe.

‘
Say that
again?’

And so I did, slowly,
suddenly a little apprehensive of what was coming out.

‘
When Shirley
White sat next to Mum on the bench,’ I repeated.

He just stared at me, not
moving and this eventually drew Della’s attention.

‘
What’s going
on between you two?’ she asked, for once speaking in a plain
manner. ‘What?’

Ian took a breath, still
glaring at me, trying to read what was going on behind my eyes, and
he spoke.

‘
I was just
saying we needed to be mindful of the traffic,’ he said.

It was obvious he was
lying. Della knew that straight off. But the way he said it, the
words he used to make that clumsy, unlikely sentence, stopped her
questioning him further.

‘
Okay,’ she
offered instead, drawing the word out in a doubtful manner;
oh-kayyy.
‘Let’s get
this over with then.’

And so, with the road
almost free of any cars, we crossed and entered the crematorium
gates. All the while, as we made further progress to our
destination, I let my mind drift back to that day in the park with
Justin. The day things between the two of us changed.

After we’d
been to
the top
,
looking down over the whole park and noting the disappearance of
Clint and his pal, Justin wanted to head off to the sweet shop
tucked away just outside Jubilee Park.

‘
You got some
money left, then?’ I asked him, certain he’d already spent his lot,
but he didn’t answer me.

‘
Come on,’ he
said instead, and I followed him, glad we were friends, grateful
that the business with Red Nanny hadn’t ruined what I otherwise saw
as a good friendship.