Loving Amélie (3 page)

She came to, and gave Chris a
tight hug.

“Bugger on through, tonight,
mate, and I will be back sometime later tomorrow. We will talk about what
you’re going to do.”

“What
am
I going to do?”

“I’m guessing get in touch with
Amélie again. Or social services? I don’t know. But we will sort it. Do you
know how to change a nappy?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, I can show you quickly.
I’ve done it for my sister’s kids. But she’s asleep at the moment, so it will
need to be more theoretical than practical. Then I
really
have to go.”

Chapter Three

Chris Skinner was born in
Dudley in the West Midlands in the early 1960s. He was eighteen months younger
than his brother Peter, although there were times growing up that they were
mistaken for twins: this was the cause of considerable annoyance to the older
brother, and was more often than not the root cause of the scuffles and play
fights that peppered their early lives together.

Even as young as he was when
Chris came along, Peter could remember the notion of relief that he was going
to have a playmate: a distraction from being the constant centre of attention
(both good and bad); and someone who would at least alleviate what would
otherwise have been a rather dull existence.

Somehow, their passive parents,
Roy and Jean, instilled in Peter that he was to be his little brother’s
protector, and Peter took on this mantle without hesitation or complaint;
although with this rank came the expectation that little Christopher would pay
him back with unquestioning tolerance of his higher power:

“Why don’t
I
ever get to be Batman?” the younger
Skinner had frequently wailed to their mother.

This was particularly plangent
as the Batman costume was, in fact, Chris’s; and it didn’t even fit his lanky
brother very well. Batman would
never
wear football socks to cover his bare
calves.

“Oh, just be Robin for today,”
Jean would coo, for the “quiet” life she so coveted.

 
(Robin didn’t have a costume: it was usually whatever Chris
was wearing).

Linda had hung a photograph of
the brothers, taken when they were ten and eight respectively, in the corridor
that led to the kitchen in
Skinner’s.
They were standing shoulder to shoulder in matching
school jumpers: Peter sporting a savagely short fringe and a brazen smile of
haphazard teeth; Chris patently blushing despite it being in black and white,
with an untidy head and firmly closed mouth. It was a smile of sorts: Chris had
not wanted the gaps in his teeth recorded for posterity, and ended up,
ironically, looking like he had a mouthful of marbles instead.

They were the only two children
that came along for Roy and Jean; and were raised in a modest terraced house
with such a small back garden that the boys spent most of their outdoor lives
at the local park, where they could cycle their bikes through a tubular subway
that smelled of urine to a concrete-based world of opportunity and excitement.
The grassy parts were good for football, if there were enough spare items for
goalposts, or for skidding around on their bikes. Occasionally a park warden
would pitch up and tell them and the other children that cycling on the grass
was forbidden, as it “churned it up”. Peter and Chris would look at the warden
with contrite expressions on their faces until he had gone, when Peter would
say: “Sod off, it’s not a bowling green!” and Chris would giggle and stick up
two fingers after him.

Then they would return to
whatever grass-based activity took their fancy. The downside of this was, of
course, that it was a minefield of dog turds that could never be completely
avoided; and it was always a weary cycle home when one or other of them had
poo-smeared trousers to present to their mum for washing, plus an ear-bashing.

Peter was by far the more
athletic brother: he didn’t have his sibling’s troublesome lungs and could run
and climb and shout all day with enviable ease. Chris’s early
pièce de
resistance
, however, was the ability to draw a crowd by promising that he
could do a three hundred and sixty degree turn on the swing: clinging to the
chains for dear life and swooping so high that he looked like he might actually
achieve the impossible, and twirl right over the top bar and return back down
to his standing, swinging state. Occasionally, if there was a significant
audience – preferably including one or two girls – he would finish
by leaping off the swing and landing with a showy flourish of his arms. Having
witnessed this act with hidden terror at how much the frame of the swing was
lifting off the ground, Peter would then whoop his congratulations, and make
sure everyone knew that it was
his
little brother they were watching. On one occasion, he had even
tried to charge some onlookers for the spectacle – shaking an empty
Marvel
tin at
them – and collected several two pence pieces and a girl’s hairclip.

At school, Peter was finishing
one year pretty much as Chris was starting it. Given he had sat through his
older brother’s endless teatime accounts of life at the court of Henry the
Eighth, or his loud attempts to make sense of the hieroglyphical world of
algebra, Chris should have been better prepared for what was to come. He might
have turned his thoughts from his bowl of plums and custard to history, or the
distinction between an isosceles and a scalene triangle. But he didn’t. All
these concepts were as new and confounding when he heard about them in the
classroom as when he had been introduced to them over potato cakes and the
smell of old tea on the woollen cosy in his mother’s kitchen.

There was a question about
whether he might be dyslexic.

“If our kid is dyslexic, then I
am too!” Peter shouted from the sitting room; when their parents had Chris’s
latest school report spread out on the kitchen table. He had heard people got
extra time for homework and exams if they had “learning difficulties”.

“Don’t joke, Christopher. I
mean Peter,” replied his mum, distractedly. It wasn’t unusual for her to call
out ‘Peter! Chris! Roy!” when she wanted just one of them.

Roy was shaking his head;
although Chris sensed by the gentle drumming of his fingers on the evening
paper - that was already folded expectantly onto the horseracing pages - that
his dad was not going to be overly concerned with words like “drift” and
“focus”.

“What do
you
make of it, Chris?” said his mum,
making “it” the repository of all her younger son’s ambition and his family’s
inability to affect it either way.

“I will try harder,” he
replied, confident that if he made these words sound like an answer rather than
another question (it usually worked with the teachers), he would be able to
slope off and watch
Top of the Pops
with Peter. And his dad exhaled relief through his
dentures, as though they should all be satisfied that this statement of vague
intent was enough.

It was unlikely that Chris had
any significant impediments to his concentration or learning, although it was
never investigated further. He left school with a respectable handful of
O-Levels and CSEs – only one less than his brother – whom he
followed to Groundwell College to study catering. This was “a bit of a girl’s
choice”, according to Roy, who had been at the printing works all his life and
couldn’t recommend this to anyone, and so conceded that at least the boys would
never be out of work or hungry if they could cook.

It was at this time that
Peter’s fortunes took a fateful turn. He was dating Cheryl Hinchcliff, a girl
from a local family that was generally disapproved of in the Skinner household,
as their mum knew Mrs Hinchcliff – a cleaner at the offices where she
herself worked as a filing clerk – and she judged her to be “a bad lot”.
The initial signs were too many absences from work, then she refused to chip in
for a present when Lesley from Accounts left to have her baby, and finally it
transpired that Mr Hinchcliff had been in prison for grievous bodily harm.

“I don’t think she’s a nice
young lady,” their mum declared. It was bland, but brutal.

Peter and Cheryl had gone to
the cinema, having had tea and a toasted sandwich with them that afternoon from
the new sandwich toaster; leaving the rest of the family to look at the crumbs
on their plates and take a view on their relationship. Chris mused that it was
like reading toast crumbs rather than tea leaves – which they didn’t have
as they used teabags – although he could only reflect what a fine pair of
breasts Cheryl had, straining superbly under a tight white blouse, and making
an alluring crevice to cradle the “C” of the necklace she wore on a silver
chain.

“She
seems
nice enough,” ventured his father,
who was still a couple of years off being able to turn to his younger son and
share the sentiment that
niceness
wasn’t requisite in this particular match.

Peter began frequenting the
local pubs and clubs, often with Cheryl’s brothers and assorted henchmen; and
Chris noticed from that time that almost every Sunday morning in their
household began with an egg and bacon scolding. His bedroom was above the
kitchen, and although he tried to bury his head from the details, he could
generally tell by the ascent of his mum’s voice from inquiry through heated
conversation to a full-blown summit of shouting, then a slammed door, that
Peter had got in trouble again.

Invariably Chris and his father
would then sit abandoned at the breakfast table in depressed solidarity, having
been served their eggs with an angry spatula. It would occur to each of them to
say something to console Jean, that ‘enough was enough’, that Peter’s behaviour
was ‘out of order’ and ‘something should be done’. But their mutual resolve
would somehow evaporate, and they would eat quietly, then turn their attention
to the Sunday paper and talk about how Wolves got on the day before.

Eventually, Peter got into a
fight that turned him into a successful chef.

While drinking in a less than
salubrious pub in what his mum would have called the “wrong” end of town, he
became riled when a punter made a pass at Cheryl, who - as was her wont - stood
in open-mouthed, speechless defence of her overly exposed breasts. Peter let
fly with his fists and punched the guy, who turned out to be a plain clothes
policeman investigating the premises for underage drinking; and Peter was
arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer.

The local paper, bearing news
of the affray, lay on the Skinner’s kitchen table like a missive contaminated
with the plague.

Although the policeman in
question eventually decided the charge should be dropped on account of
mitigating circumstances, including Peter’s good character, the incident hung
over the family for a time like a bereavement. He was ordered to do six months’
community service: helping out at an old people’s home.

“Any chance of a lift out of
here?” Peter had asked his brother, who was underneath the chassis of his Ford
Anglia, glad to be distracted by looking for the cause of leaking brake fluid.

“Rather you than me, mate,”
Chris replied, wriggling out briefly. “You dick.”

They stood together dejectedly
by the rusty, leaky car; each wishing he wasn’t in this scenario, or - dare
they vocalise it - that the Tardis of their carefree childhood fantasies would
come gyrating by and whisk at least one of them away.

Groundwell College was mightily
aggrieved. Peter had already been given warnings for lateness and
insubordination; and, although his tutor liked him and thought he had the
makings of a promising chef, there was talk of him being asked to leave the
course. On a day when they had been making puff pastry, he listened intently
while his mother lectured him about “that nasty girl” and “his wasted future”,
before he presented her with a small pastry bird, golden baked and glossy, with
a chocolate chip eye. She burst into tears.

Then his salvation came in the
form of the H.U.T.

The
Hand Up Trust
was a charitable
organisation established to offer disadvantaged but talented youngsters a
better start. A representative from the trust visited Groundwell at that time
and was introduced to Peter and another boy called Kevin Cork. Corky had been
in trouble for glue-sniffing and petty theft, but had something of a talent for
landscape gardening. Following the H.U.T’s visit, the refined grounds man of a
stately home in Oxfordshire got in touch with Corky and offered him an
apprenticeship. With a glowing recommendation from the Skinner boys’ tutor,
despite the unfortunate brawling business, Peter was given the opportunity to
travel to Montpelier to continue his studies at a prestigious cookery school.
It was an almost unbelievable turnaround of fate. Jean declared she would ask
for nothing in her prayers ever again – although not being seen regularly
at prayer, the family generally felt she could make
one or two
more requests in their favour
with a fairly clear conscience.

Without altercation, Peter
split up with Cheryl Hinchcliff and packed his bags for his French adventure:
swapping the chipped Formica of the Groundwell kitchens for the polished
granite and stainless steel of Montpelier; and leaving Chris behind to pursue
an early career and young adulthood that would be neither as glorious nor
inglorious as his older brother’s.