Swallowing Grandma (20 page)

‘I had to spend an hour in the zoo office explaining what I’d done – I think they were worried I’d start a trend, because they’d had some trouble with sickos pointing laser pens at the big cats’ eyes. I kept saying I was sorry if I’d hurt the bats but I don’t think anyone believed me. Then the Deputy Head arrived in her car to take me home separately.

‘And that was it. On the Monday, the Headmaster had my grandma in for a “chat” and told her the other parents were up in arms about me, Clare couldn’t sleep for nightmares, Julie had hung garlic all round her bedroom, that sort of thing. He probably wanted to say a lot more but Poll never let him finish. The funny thing is, she criticizes me herself all the time, but she wasn’t going to take it from him; at one point she threw a paperweight at him. I wish I’d been there. And the result was that I had a year off.’

‘Fucking hell. So Poll tutored you?’

I laughed out loud. ‘Poll? You must be kidding. I taught myself, more or less.’

‘What, and Social Services let you?’ Callum looked incredulous. ‘’Cause they were always on my mum’s case, checking up.’

‘Well, Miss Dragon helped me draw up a programme of work for the Support Officer to see, and provided me with some answers-in-the-back-type textbooks. She set me a few projects and did a spot of marking here and there. Mainly, though, I cribbed up on old Ladybirds.’ I pulled
The Public Services: Water Supply
out of the bookcase and passed it to him. ‘By the end of the year I’d the History series off by heart, all of Nature and Conservation, and my knowledge of Sixties technology was second to none. The Support Officer who interviewed me had his doubts, but I reckon what clinched it was when we went out into the back garden to look at my home-made rain gauge, and he commented on the spectacular mackerel sky there was that day. I said, “I think you’ll find they’re cirrocumulus clouds, actually.” He scribbled something down on his clipboard and left. The next year I started at the grammar school where, I can honestly say, I haven’t touched a bat since.’

Callum rose to his feet and applauded. ‘Jesus. Kat Millar, that is one hell of a story. You are so . . . ’ He didn’t finish, just shook his head at me, smiling, and sat down again. ‘I take my hat off to you for sheer surreal inventiveness. Dog-dazer! The only times I’ve tried to get revenge on someone it’s been pathetic, small-scale stuff. Pritt-stick on a chair, dropping someone’s folder down the back of a cupboard. A rank amateur. Though I did once leave a king prawn in a glove box.’

‘A prawn? What kind of cruel bastard does that to an innocent shellfish?’ I felt so high now I’d told him and he’d been OK.

‘It was
dead
. It was supposed to smell terrible after a while and send the owner of the car crazy. But he found it immediately and threw it out the window. Then I got called Prawn-balls for a while, but it wasn’t serious, he was a mate.’

‘
Prawn-balls?
’

‘Uh-huh. Mary Prawn-balls. It doesn’t do much for a guy’s image.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘You’ve gone all pink.’

‘I know, I do. After you with that hanky.’

When we’d sobered up slightly, I decided I knew him well enough to ask whether he wanted to help clear out the sink cupboard.

‘Well, shit, you sure know how to show a lad a good time,’ he said, starting to laugh again. ‘OK, then. On one condition.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That I’m invited to this birthday do next week.’ He pointed to Donna’s invite, which I’d stuck in the wooden frame of the oval mirror that hangs above the chest of drawers.

He completely threw me. ‘Oh, that. I didn’t know what you – I’m not going, to be honest . . . ’ A happy thought struck me. ‘And even if I was, how would you get back to Nantwich? It goes on till one in the morning.’

‘Oh, yeah. You’ve got a point. Forget it, then. I’ll still help you do your sticky cupboard, though.’

‘Good man.’

‘I might have to have a slash first. It was a big mug of tea.’

‘Straight across the landing, the door without the disgusting ceramic Westie plaque on it.’

The second the toilet door shut, I stopped grinning and made a dive for Callum’s jacket. In the inside pocket, carefully folded into a tiny square, was one of Dad’s early biology drawings:
Cockroach
: A) Dorsal View B) Ventral View 1. Head 2. Thorax 3. Abdomen 4. Antenna 5. Wings 6. Veins
or
nervures 7. Segment 8. Spiracle 9. Trochanter 10. Coxa 11. Femur 12. Tarsus.

I turned the note over but there was nothing obvious on the back. The toilet flushed so I folded the diagram back up again and stuck it in the pocket. What on earth did he want with that? I so wanted to ask him, but I didn’t want to admit I’d been rifling through his clothes.

‘I’ve been thinking about all you’ve just told me,’ he said as he walked back in. ‘Amazing. And you’re so modest about it.’

‘It didn’t occur to me there was anything to show off about,’ I shrugged. In truth, it had always been a millstone of shame around my neck.

He smiled. ‘You’re a dark horse, you.’

You took the words right out of my mouth, I nearly said.

*

‘Are you tekkin’ Katherine’s pram? Only I’ll hev to put t’ back seats deahn,’ Vince whispered from the doorway.

I jumped. ‘No,’ I said. He went away for a bit but then he came back with a bag full of clothes.

‘What about her sterilizer?’

‘No,’ I hissed. ‘No, none of it.’

He stopped trying to zip up his holdall. ‘Well, how’re you goin’ to manage?’

I just looked at him.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Reet.’ He wandered off and everything went quiet. After a minute or two, he stuck his head round the door and said, ‘I’ll go and unclip t’ baby carrier an’ bring it in again, then, shall I?’

I went over to the cot to say goodbye but I didn’t kiss her in case I woke her and the screaming started up once more. I didn’t want to leave to the sound of that. Anyway, we were trying not to alert Poll. I can honestly say I felt nothing except relief that I was leaving my baby.

In the car, before we set off, I tried to explain to Vince how I felt. ‘Do you know that story about Sinbad, where a little old man tricks his way onto Sinbad’s shoulders and then won’t get off? And he rides him like a horse, and turns Sinbad into his permanent slave? And when Sinbad gets angry, the old man beats him with a stick and throttles him with his thin little legs? And Sinbad has to get the old man drunk to escape?’

Vince was staring at me as if I was mad. ‘You can always go back for her when you’re feeling more yourself,’ was all he said.

He turned the key in the ignition and we drove off into the night.

The phone on the sideboard rang at eleven the next morning.

‘Kat?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Guess who.’

‘God, I don’t know.’ I didn’t either, not straight away. How was I to know Callum would phone me at home. Then light dawned. ‘Oh. It’s you, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t deny it, it’s me.’

‘How did you get my number?’

‘Rang Directory Enquiries, bozo, how do you think?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Obviously. ‘What is it?’

‘I can hardly hear you, you’re very faint. You sound like you’re in outer space. Can you speak up?’

It was force of habit. Even when Poll wasn’t in, as now, I still felt I needed to whisper if I was up to anything personal. Not that I had a lot of intimate phone calls to my history. ‘Sorry. Is everything OK?’

‘Yeah, fine. I thought I’d let you know, I’ve been doing some research and there’s a train goes from Bolton at half-past midnight.’

Standing where I was, I could see straight through to the front-room window that looks out onto the street. Some boys of about ten were walking past up the hill, throwing gun caps on the pavement and shrieking when they exploded. I heard a dog bark from a distance, and some adult voice shouting, then the boys’ jeering and swearing and more bangs.

‘Well done, that’s terrific,’ I said to Callum. ‘Goes where?’

‘Crewe.’ He sounded impatient.

‘And the reason you’re telling me is?’

There was a rapping sound from down the line. Then Callum came back on again. ‘That was me banging the receiver against my head. Listen, I mean I can go to that party, I’ll just have to leave early. Probably about ten past, quarter past twelve, depending on how far away the station is from the club.’

‘It’s pretty close,’ I said before I could stop myself.

‘Great.’

‘But, Callum, look, I’m not going.’ I leant against the sideboard and knocked a piece of paper to the floor. When I bent to see, it was a postcard from Rebecca that Poll must have picked up and neglected to tell me about.

Having a great time checking out National Trust properties.

Going to see a garden tomorrow landscaped by Capability

Brown! Counting the hours till Results Day!!! Becks X

Becks?

‘ – thought it might be a laugh,’ Callum was saying. ‘I’m always up for a party.’

‘I don’t like clubs,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t guess I’d never been in one. The front of the postcard showed blank-eyed Poseidon in marble.

‘Shame. It would have been a laugh.’

‘So you said.’

‘Hey, is Poll there?’

‘No. She’s—’ I thought quickly; ‘having her dinner at the Working Men’s with Dogman.’

Poll doesn’t go visiting much, because in general people put furniture in stupid places. But the truth was, Poll had gone round to Maggie’s with a bunch of magazines and some bottles of Guinness because Maggie had fallen in our kitchen and sprained her ankle. The reason I didn’t want to tell Callum was that Maggie had slipped on one of my Poll-traps, which he’d seen me setting up. ‘Why, exactly, are you trailing a line of wash liquid across the doorway, Kat?’ he’d asked, sliding the last box of antique Robin starch back in the cupboard for me. ‘Mice,’ I’d told him. He didn’t ask again, so I suppose he believed me. Well, he’d effectively lied to me about the cockroach drawing.

‘Dogman?’ Callum snorted. ‘What a name. I’m going to have to see this bloke some time. Does he actually look like a dog?’

‘No, he smells like one.’ And given half a chance, he’d clamp himself to your leg.

‘Nice. So, you’re definitely not going on Saturday?’

‘No.’

‘OK. Well, I’ll, er, I’ll be in touch. Is it all right to ring you here?’

‘Not really. If Poll picked up the phone and it was your voice, a male voice, I’d never hear the last of it.’ I could just imagine the sort of things she’d say, my life wouldn’t be worth living. And if she found out who he really was, my God.

‘And you’ve not got a mobile, have you.’

‘No.’ No point: no one to ring.

‘Have you got a Hotmail account? I could email you at the library.’

‘Sorry.’ How crap is she, he must have been thinking. ‘It’s OK to send messages through Miss Dragon. So long as you don’t call her Miss Dragon.’

Callum made a noise that might have been a sigh, or simply an extra-large breath. ‘Right. Fine. I’ll be sending you a message, sometime.’

After he’d rung off I felt utterly flat. I went upstairs and tried on the basque again – now too loose – and the black skirt, with the boots. Then I put some make-up on and wetted my hair down so it wasn’t quite so sproingy, then I twisted it up and fastened it with a jumbo slide and teased some strands down on either side of my face. I got the nail clippers out and snipped off some of the madder hairs from my eyebrows. Before I took it all off again, I pulled the curtains to, so the bedroom was in semi-darkness, and tried to imagine what I’d look like in a club. Stupid, was the answer, so I drew the curtains and put everything away. I left my hair up, though, and also I did put a couple of stitches in the back seam of the basque, because it seemed a pity not to. I could still detect Callum’s male scent lingering by the bed.

‘Hoy, Katherine.’ I heard the front door bang open and Poll clatter in. ‘Are y’ up there? Katherine?’

‘Katherine,’ shouted Dogman in a particularly stupid voice. ‘Katerina!’

She reached the bottom of the stairs and yelled, ‘Are we gettin’ our dinner on? Dickie’s fetched a big box o’ beefburgers, and Maggie’s sent you one of them giant Toblerones. Next door brought it her off their holidays but she says she han’t the teeth to cope with it.’

Dogman started up, I don’t know who ever told him he could sing.

Well I was there, so were you

The mayor and the vicar and the council too

All the wives and ladies on full view

The night John Willie took his ferret to a do.

I checked my watch. Time for a binge.

*

The night before Donna’s party, I had a funny dream. I was in a stone tower, I saw it first from the outside and then I was in it, trapped on the top floor. I’d laid an egg, and Callum was there. He said, ‘I’ll look after it, your egg. Trust me.’ He put it inside his underpants to keep warm and then started to climb out of the window, holding on to my hair to stop himself falling. My head was hanging over the sill and I heard him say, ‘I know a great recipe for Spanish omelette.’ Then I woke up and found my plait was fast down the side of the headboard.

So I was in a foul temper all day and Poll, for once, insisted on coming late-afternoon shopping, and that was probably why the Great Row happened. We’d been sniping most of the morning, through dinner, and all the way up to Spar. Then, round the aisles, she kept putting daft things in the basket and I kept taking them out again and slamming them back down on the shelves. It was like taking a naughty toddler round.

‘We don’t have a dishwasher, well we do, it’s me, but we don’t need dishwasher tablets,’ I snapped, snatching them out of her wrinkly hand.

‘They’re for t’ washin’ machine,’ she argued. ‘I’ve seen ’em on t’ telly, big white tablets. You know nowt, you do.’

‘At least I can read,’ I said nastily. An elderly woman I didn’t recognize glanced across the freezer cabinet, saw Poll’s white stick and frowned at me. Heartless teen attacking disabled grannie. ‘Who put these crystallized violets in? As if I didn’t know.’

‘They looked like cotton buds,’ she said, glowering. ‘They’re in t’ same sized container. And you’ve finished t’ others off and never towd me.’