Swallowing Grandma (17 page)

She came up to me as I was still queuing. ‘Are you sorted? Because I’ve got to go now, got to meet Nicks while she’s on her lunch break. If she’s speaking to me. Yeah? So, see you around? See you at my party, won’t I? And on results day, oh God.’ She made an unhappy mouth. ‘See you.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling suddenly flat. I looked down at the top again. There was no way I was going to be taking it home with me.

*

‘She’s going to have to come back with us,’ I heard Vince say to Poll, over Katherine’s squalling. ‘She’s its mother. Where else would she go?’

‘Hell fire,’ said Poll.

The baby carried on screaming.

*

I did it. I bought the white top, spoke to the scary girl behind the counter even though she had black nail varnish on and looked as if she could have gobbled me up for dinner. I had my library card on me, plus my Oxford letter I always carry, so that was two forms of ID. I thought everyone was watching me while I was standing at the counter, but when I turned round, they weren’t. After I’d signed everything I went and tried the top on in Evans’ changing rooms, which I know is a cock-eyed way to go about it, but it did fit so I didn’t have to take it back. Came home to Poll’s with the promise of unhairy legs and a killer cleavage, and even Dogman perched on one of the kitchen tops didn’t dampen my spirits.

Poll was sitting with her elbows on the table, troughing her way through a pack of party rings. ‘Dickie’s brought you summat.’

‘I’ve fetched you some chocolates,’ he said. ‘They’ve a bit of a bloom on but they taste OK.’ He was drinking a bottle of cider and making a performance out of it, sticking his lips out to the neck, tonguing the rim, gasping after each swig.

‘Gee, thanks,’ I said as sarcastically as I could get away with.

‘He’s good to you, is Dickie.’

‘I am,’ said Dogman, and belched.

There’s a pay-off, though, I felt like saying. These rubbishy gifts all came at a price. I had to put up with his weaselly eyes doing a constant body-search on me, his pathetic stream of innuendo and no-brain political commentaries, his smell. And the fact he was always in our house, winding up Poll against me, making me feel like the interloper. Mouldy chocolates were no kind of compensation.

In my head I heard Miss Dragon’s voice again. ‘Timeo Danaos,’ she was saying. Timeo Danaos. Not Timmy O, Danny S. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

‘Beware of Greeks,’ I said out loud, very pleased with myself.

‘Beware of Greeks?’ said Dogman, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘I should bloody well think so. They had my wallet off me when I was in Cyprus two year ago.’

*

For days I sat like an old lady, looking out of the window in Roger’s room. I shall die in this chair, I thought. Vince brought meals up, and sometimes my baby, though I don’t think it did either of us any good, me or her. One of us would be in tears within minutes. No one tells you how much screaming there is, do they? You expect newborns to scream sometimes, but Katherine never stopped. For God’s sake! I shouted at her. Once I tried screaming back. That brought Vince running. Afterwards he came up with a brandy. ‘I don’t want that,’ I snapped at him. He drank it straight down and left.

Sometimes, when Poll and Vince went out, I shuffled downstairs and prowled around. I brought back books, Reader’s Digests and tatty, old-fashioned children’s stories.
The Inquisitive Harvest Mouse
was the best one. I wanted to climb into the pages and make friends with the little girls, swap daisy chains. I wanted to share their sunny, Fifties picnic. It looked like a warm world.

Poll’s house was like ice. Most evenings there’d be shouting and thumping coming up from below. Then Vince would go out the back and chop wood with a big axe.

I knew this other girl would turn up, it was just a matter of when.

I spotted her before anyone. A brown Triumph Toledo drew up, and after a few minutes, a fair, plumpish woman got out. I pressed my face right against the glass to get a good view. She had on a denim skirt and a high-necked white blouse with a pink cardigan over the top. Nothing special. I wondered if I’d seen her before.

She stood and looked at the house, then turned and opened up the passenger-side back door. Her head disappeared as she bent to something – I knew what that was going to be – and the bottom fell out of my stomach when she straightened up and there it was, this baby. This baby in blue shorts.

Then, instead of walking up Poll’s path, she started off along the pavement, towards the top of the hill. I went dizzy with relief. After a hundred yards, she turned round and came back again.

Now the wind was getting up and the clouds were rolling across the sky like speeded-up film. It was spitting with rain as well. She shivered and I saw the baby wriggle in her arms and open its mouth to cry. She opened the car door again, peered inside, then slammed it, crossly. I watched her take off her cardigan and swaddle the baby tightly up, so only its head was poking out, and kiss it, and hold it close. She looked perished. I’d never do that for Katherine, I thought. I’d hang on to my cardi and let her freeze.

I knew that next she would come through the front gate.

I went over to the bedroom door as the bell was ringing. I heard: ‘Oh, hello, my name’s Jude and I’ve come all the way from Wrenbury.’

‘Oh aye, wheer’s that, love?’ – Vince’s voice.

‘Who is it?’ – from Poll.

‘I’ve come to see you about Roger.’

The front door slammed shut. I slid down the wall till I was sitting with my back against it, and waited.

It didn’t take long; about ninety seconds. I heard Poll shout, and a crash like broken glass. A scraping noise, like furniture moving, a yelp of protest. I came out of the bedroom and started down the stairs.

‘I’m not having it, get out! I’m not having another one in the house. You can’t prove owt, we’ve only your word. You’re after money? Well, you’ve come to t’ wrong house. Can’t you see this is a house of sorrow? What do you think them drawn curtains mean? How dare you.’

I ran back up and got to the window in time to see the girl stumbling down the path. The rain spattered hard against the pane now, distorting the detail, but I still saw Poll’s Negro-lady money box smash on the brick behind her heels. The cast iron shattered apart like a bomb.

‘I’ll lame you!’ screamed Poll, her voice almost unrecognizable. ‘You’ve no respect – filthy liar – you ever come back here again—’

The girl almost threw her baby into the back seat. When she turned to get in the car herself, there was dark on her forehead, could’ve been blood, could just have been a shadow. I hoped it was blood.

As the car pulled away, tyres squealing, Katherine started to cry again.

I waited till the day I was supposed to meet Callum to do the wax business.

SILKEE Sensitive with Aloe Vera. The gentle and effective way to remove unwanted hair. Do Not use on ears, nose, eyebrows, breasts, genitals or perianal areas.
Not suitable for the elderly
.

What you had to do was rub the strips of paper between your palms, as if you were praying. Then you peeled the layers of paper apart and there was a coating of what looked like earwax on each one. You pressed this to your skin, did a bit more rubbing, then dragged it off, yelping. It left a clearing of baldness in amongst the forest of shin-hair, together with some patches of scabby yellow wax. It looked as if my leg was going septic.

I tried again round the back, on my calf. Yaargh. Another smooth bit. But now I saw that if I wasn’t careful I’d end up with a sort of patchwork effect, hedgerows of fuzz. So, despite the pain, I set to and pursued those remaining clumps of hair. They got smaller and smaller, till I was using a whole strip for about three of the buggers. Finally I was done. One leg was completely depilated. Then I realized I’d run out of strips.

They made it look like fun-fun-fun on the TV advert, group of model types falling on the bed together, laughing, stroking each other’s limbs. Nowhere in the proceedings does anyone cry with pain, howl, sweat or pee themselves in agony. ‘With practice,’ the leaflet said, ‘the technique becomes easy and painless.’ I could not
believe
they had been allowed to print that.

I swore a bit, then hunted out the instructions.
Each strip can be used up to three times
, it said. But when I checked the pile of discarded ones, a load were stuck to the carpet where I’d thrown them, and the ones that had made it into the bin were now covered in pencil shavings and hole-punchings. There were about four usable ones left. I picked up the bin and chucked it at the wall in temper, daft really because it would be me who’d have to clear the mess up.

It was at this point someone knocked on the bedroom door.

‘Go away,’ I shouted, assuming it was Poll.

The door opened a crack and Maggie peeped round. ‘I’m sorry, love. I just wanted to check you was OK. I thought I heard you crying. And then there was that thud, and I wondered if you’d fallen down, or summat. But I’ll leave you in peace. Sorry to disturb you.’

Now why couldn’t she have been my grandma?

When I got downstairs, Maggie and Poll were getting ready to go out, Maggie discreetly removing a truly disgusting hanky from the table and swapping it for a clean one from her own pocket. She nodded at me, and I hooked the thing with the kitchen tongs and dropped it in the washer.

‘Bingo,’ said Poll as she wrestled to find the arm hole of her raincoat. Luckily they’ve started using huge cards that even her mole-eyes can see.

‘So we’ll be back about four. And we’re having our dinner at the Working Men’s. What are you going to do with yourself?’

‘Dunno,’ I said, kicking the washing machine with my toe. Bugger off and leave me alone, I wanted to say. ‘Might go down the library.’

‘That cupboard under the sink wants clearing, if you’ve nowt else to do,’ said Poll, stuffing the clean hanky in her bag. She made a face at Maggie. ‘We had a leak, you know.’

‘Oh, heck, was it your pipes?’

‘No, it were one of these pouches of washing liquid. It bursted, and we didn’t know till it had gone all ovver. I kept coming in here an’ sniffing. Spring Fresh; by God, it did pong. Then Katherine went to get some bleach an’ t’ bottle were stuck to t’ bottom of t’ cupboard. It all needs swilling out properly.’

‘That’s my day sorted, then,’ I muttered.

‘I’ll give you a hand if you wait till we get back,’ said Maggie. ‘You get yourself off out. You’re only young, you don’t want to be stuck indoors at your age. Go to the library and have some fun. Ooh, look, your belt’s twisted. You must be in love.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ grunted Poll. ‘Love. Pigs might fly. Are we going, or what?’

Maggie gave me a cheeky pinch on the arm as she went past and tapped the side of her nose.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said under my breath.

After they’d gone I let Winston out for a totter round the garden and went to put some lipstick on. It felt peculiar, as if I’d not wiped my mouth after eating a cream cake, but I resisted the urge to rub it straight off. I brushed my hair and tied it back in a low ponytail. Then, at the last minute, I noticed through my tights that my legs had come out all spotty, so I changed into the birthday tunic top and pants. A check in the mirror showed I looked quite smart. The effect was almost ruined by a wax strip which had attached itself sneakily to my heel, but Winston saved the day by limping back in and trying to eat it.

Up at the library Miss Dragon and Miss Mouse were busy dealing with the holiday influx of schoolchildren, and I couldn’t see Callum anywhere. I took myself over to the Returned Today section and was just about to start trawling through when I spotted him in Newspapers, reading the
Guardian
Media supplement.

‘You look different,’ I said.

‘So do you.’

‘No, I mean you look
really
different. Why did you cut your hair?’ He’d had a clipper cut, not skinhead-short, but short. He was wearing black framed glasses and a light coloured jacket.

‘Felt like a change. And it’s cooler on my scalp.’ He ran his hand over the top of his head, feeling the fuzz.

‘And the glasses?’

‘Got sick of contacts. I’ll go back to them, sometime. When I get bored with specs.’

‘You’re like Sherlock Holmes, master of disguise.’

He pretended to be peering at me through a magnifying glass. ‘The Mysterious Case of the Missing Mother. Where did Elizabeth Castle run off to when she ducked out of Bank Top?’

‘That’s not funny.’

‘Sorry. Hey, cheer up, I’ve brought you some stuff you might like.’

He pulled his backpack out from under the table and flipped it open.

‘Here you go.’ There was a small paper bag and a brown envelope. ‘This one first; this is the proper present. From my holidays. She makes them, Mum’s friend, the one in the barn. Shona. She used to live on a boat in France but somebody tried to set fire to it, so she came home.’

I unpleated the top and put my hand inside. I touched something cold. It slid out into my hand like a coin.

‘A wasp?’

‘No, you noggin, it’s a bee. She does them in enamel. You can put it on a chain if you don’t like the thong.’

I was staring at it. ‘Are you sure it’s not a wasp? It’s on the skinny side for a bee.’ The back was blank metal.

‘Don’t be silly, that’s just the style. Who’d make wasp jewellery? Bees are cool, they make honey and royal jelly, they pollinate fruit trees. And they don’t sting you unless they absolutely have to. Wasps, on the other hand, are pure evil. They live in litter bins and eat carrion.’

‘They’re not all bad. I’ll tell you something really important about wasps.’

‘What?’

‘Not now. Later. Maybe.’

Callum scratched his head and frowned at me. ‘You’re being very enigmatic today.’

Miss Dragon walked past, scanning our table as she went. ‘Everything all right?’

We nodded. I held up the necklace for her to see.

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘A median wasp.’

‘It’s a
bee
, for God’s sake,’ laughed Callum.