White Goods (8 page)

‘
How about I
give you a lift there?’

Uncle
Gary had followed me out.

‘
To
Harry’s
chip
shop
?’

I stared, blankly. Torn
between a bit of time on my own, or time with Gary and whatever
benefits that might bring.

‘
A ride in my
new car?’ he added.

Not-a-word-to-anyone;
that
was the sort of thing he usually said.
But not on that day; it just went without saying,
I guess.

It was hot in his car. I
felt the heat of the brown leather seats through my nylon trousers.
He lit a fag and then wound down the window, letting out some of
the smoke.

‘
Things will
be different now,’ he said and I wanted to ask him: who do you
think you are, my dad? But I didn’t. ‘No need for our little
meetings anymore,’ he added and I understood. The little trips
in
Uncle
Gary’s
car.
Our little secret,
as he called it.
Just
between us. No one else needs to know.
Putting a note in my hand afterwards.
Just between us.

I didn’t say
anything and for a few minutes,
Uncle
Gary had sat there, pulling on
his cigarette. Then, he’d stuck the keys in and revved up the
engine.

‘
Right,’ he
said, throwing the dog-end out of the window like it’s a dart.
‘To
Harry’s.’

Standing in the fish and
chip shop, it felt like days had passed since the funeral, not
hours, not just a few hundred minutes, not just several thousand
seconds. Days, longer. At the time, it didn’t seem out of place to
be there. It seemed right. Just life. Just an errand; getting our
tea. Later, when I think back, it doesn’t seem true. It couldn’t
all have happened on the same day: the funeral; seeing Shirley
White; buying chips like it’s a Friday; and then what happened when
I got back. Looking back, it just seems too much, like a rush, a
jumble, impossible to fit in and digest. But that’s how it all
happened: that’s how it always happened. Everything at once, like a
story no one believes. A tall tale. Life is a tall tale; that’s
about it.

They stared at me, the
other customers. At first, I didn’t really understand. I hadn’t
jumped the queue or anything. But there they were, staring and
Harry began speaking. To me, I realised after a bit.

‘
What is it
you want, Scot, lad?’

He was letting
me go first. They all were. An alternative to
sorry for your loss.
Something worth
having. Only, I didn’t have a clue what to order. I hadn’t thought
it through at all, not really. I just had that lovely smell of fat
and vinegar up my nose. But then time jumped again, like it had
earlier that day, and I watched my order going in waxy paper bags,
then wrapped in copies of
The Sun
and
The Express.
Portions of salty, soggy chips, battered
sausages, battered fish, a couple of fish cakes and some wooden
forks. Harry’s wife popped through to look, bringing with her
a
Wavy Line
carrier bag, putting all the newspaper parcels in there for
me. Harry refused to take the tenner.

‘
On the
house,’ he said, dropping me a wink.

Harry’s wife handed me the
bag of food, slowly, very personally, like it was a special moment.
Our moment. I felt it, too. Something about her. Something motherly
that drew me in. And then she opened her gob:

‘
Aren’t you
just a bit hot in that coat?’ she said. I said nothing in return
and, sensing she had said the wrong thing, she tried again, only
making it worse: ‘Sorry for your loss.’

And any meaning there, any
feeling, was gone.

Back at the house, no one
had been that bothered by my absence. Della and Ian made a few
comments, but that was it. Nothing from Dad.

‘
Saw you go
off with
Uncle
Gary,’ Della teased. ‘In his flash car?’

Ian had simply taken the
bag of food from me, feeling it for heat. It was still warm, but
not very.

‘
You’ve been
gone a while,’ he stated. My hands were in my pockets, feeling the
money: went out with just a tenner, but came back with
twenty.

I shrugged. Nothing else
was said. And Dad hadn’t even noticed. He was too drunk.

‘
Stick them in
the oven,’ Ian called to Della, as he turned from me.

She took them
with the message
I’m-not-your-slave
expelled in a single huff.

Whilst I’d been out, the
‘wake’ had shifted its gears and progressed to ‘a general piss-up,’
as Ian put it. The kind of event that Mum would have tutted at,
bringing it all to an end with a single glare. Only she wasn’t
there to do that. So, it had carried on.

Mum’s friends
and some older relatives had more or less disappeared – including a
great-aunt Sally I’d never met before (‘We really got an Aunt
Sally?’ I had sniggered, thinking of that Worzel Gummidge
programme.) The
hangers-on
(Dad’s phrase) were us kids, Auntie
Stella,
Uncle
Gary and Dad’s mates: Lazy-eyed Jim, Paddy, Beery-Dave and
Alfie-from-the-butchers, who had supplied a pig’s head for making
brawn as a mark of respect to Mum’s life.

‘
What’s
brawn?’ I had asked, but no one answered, stunned to silence, it
seemed, by Alfie’s moving tribute.

Justin and other Tankards
had also left, taking some of Dad’s beers and spirits with them,
according to Dad. So, Auntie Stella had popped out to the local
off-licence, accompanied by her completely sober boyfriend, to top
up supplies.

The house
smelt of beer, fags and farts by then, but you soon got used to it.
And when Auntie Stella and
Uncle
Gary came back with some whiskey, beers and
several more portions of chips from the chippy, their
sharp-yet-fatty scent soon took the edge off.

‘
Stick some
more songs on, Della,’ Dad had requested, and Della had instantly
picked out her Abba records – not thinking, I guess – and we had
Greatest Hits Volume One playing moments later.

‘
Mum didn’t
like Abba,’ I said, but no one seemed to notice, no one seemed to
remember just who the party was for.

So, I sat on
the stairs, just out of sight, thinking, whilst half the
neighbourhood celebrated the life of
our
beloved one
– words of the vicar
who
didn’t-know-her-from-Adam
– with chips, fags and cheap booze.
Thinking.

Thinking about how we were
gonna have to get on with it all.

Without her.

At around ten pm, the
first of the day’s final two dramas occurred.

It started quietly: a
gentle knock at the door and the quiet tones of a female in
uniform. Della had answered the door.

‘
We just need
to speak to your father.’

‘
Dad, it’s the
police!’ Della called out and, watching from my position at the
bottom of the stairs, I have never seen Dad move so quickly. With
the bulk of a rhino and the speed of a cheetah, he took just
seconds to get himself from a chair in the back room to block the
frame of our front door.

‘
What business
have you got coming round here on a day like this! Leave me and my
family in peace!’

Everyone in the back
started to move immediately, quickly, but in a pattern, like they’d
rehearsed it. Or like a board game, everyone going round, taking
their turn, not jumping ahead, but calm, polite, with a purpose.
The back door was opened and Dad’s old mates left
swiftly.

‘
Looks like an
elephant has sat on it,’ Auntie Stella had said, looking at the
abandoned, crumpled room.

The small drama continued
at the other end of our house.

‘
Mr Buckley,
we really need to talk. I appreciate that it’s a-.’

Whatever the policewoman
had appreciated at that point was never heard, as Dad slammed the
door in her face.

‘
Mr
Buckley!
Mr Buckley!
Will you please open this door?
We
need to you come with us.’ Her voice had got louder, then trailed
off at the end. Reckon she knew: knew it was wrong to be there, on
that day, whatever he knew, whatever he’d done.

Dad stayed where he was,
on the other side of the door. We looked at him and at where he in
turn was looking: at the white boxes stacked up in our front
room.

He nodded at us and we
knew what he wanted us all to do. Then he opened the front door,
and slipped out, shutting it instantly behind him.

‘
I’m coming,’
he said, his voice muffled, and minutes later we heard a car roll
away from out the front, Dad in it with a couple of
coppers.

It took us just fifteen
minutes to hide the boxes away – they weren’t heavy.

‘
Kettles and
toasters,’
Uncle
Gary explained, helping out, as we put them in wardrobes and
under beds; as we’d done before.

Business as
usual.
Only it wasn’t, was it? Not on that
day. It was in our faces: mine, Ian’s, Della’s. In Auntie Stella’s
pursed lips that were silently blaming
Uncle
Gary.
You and your dodgy deals,
her face
said,
bringing the police round here on
the day of her funeral.

‘
How were we
to know?’ he pleaded, later, once the cover-up operation was
complete, embarrassed that she might just be right.

They were in the front
room, which was empty bar the usual stuff you’d expect to see: the
mustard carpet with the leafy pattern, the green sofa and chairs,
the stereo in the corner.

‘
The boxes
were here before it all happened. We just haven’t been able to
shift them. Tony’ll be alright, I’m sure.’

Auntie Stella
was looking through the curtains, as a car drew up. It wasn’t Dad.
She turned, glared at
Uncle
Gary, and saw that I was watching.

‘
Bed for you,
Scotty,’ she said, coming towards me, shooing me up the stairs.
‘You too,’ she called out to Della and Ian, who obeyed with sulky
huffs. ‘Your Uncle Gary’s in charge, whilst I go down the cop shop
and sort your father out.’

We didn’t go
straight to bed, despite Auntie Stella’s ruling. We didn’t
tell
Uncle
Gary
we were ignoring it, but he soon realised, when we all came back
down the minute she had gone.

‘You kids do
what you need to do,’ he said, flatly, acknowledging he had no
jurisdiction with us, despite Auntie Stella’s parting statement.
Mum was
lost
and
Dad had gone off with the police.
Leaving-us-to-it
was probably the
best approach.

Della and Ian
started cleaning up, and
Uncle
Gary soon joined in.

‘You helping, Squirt?’
Ian asked, but didn’t wait for my answer.

I just stayed
in the front room, appreciating it for its original purpose. What
Nan Buckley would’ve called a parlour.
The
front parlour.

‘Anthony, why
do you put all that stuff in the front parlour?’
I could hear her now.

Thinking of her triggered
something. I started to recall another get-together. A Christmas,
at 45 Victoria Avenue.

We had a full
house: the five-of-us, Nan Buckley, Auntie Stella and
Uncle
Ashley.
(‘Why’s he been invited?’ – Dad. ‘Shush, Tone,
they’ll hear you. Stella reckons he’s the one!’ - Mum. ‘Be like the
last one, then?’ – Dad. ‘How long does one have to wait for a
sherry these days, Anthony?’ our nan.) As well as
Uncle
Ashley, we were
also expecting a visit from the Queen of Sheba. This was according
to Mum, who was fretting about
‘where was
she expected to put her Majesty
.
’
Dad saw
offence in this comment, but in the end the Queen of Sheba didn’t
come at all – it was just our nan.

‘
You can have
the Queen’s place,’ I said to her and she’d tried to smile sweetly
at me, but you could tell she didn’t quite get it.

The front
room –
the front parlour
– had been cleared out for Christmas day. In
fact, Dad had been instructed to
keep-it-clear
-
in-the-run-up-or-else!
But it wasn’t
any less crowded, as the tree had to go in the there too: a big
white fake one that hit the ceiling. It was new.

‘Did it fall off the back
of a lorry?’ Mum had inquired, looking it up and down when Dad had
brought it home.

I had a look myself, but
couldn’t see any damage.