Swallowing Grandma (33 page)

‘Damnation. Is it brown sauce?’

‘It
was
a ladybird. Give it here, I’ll put some Vanish on it.’

Poll dropped the blouse across the ironing board and sat down on the sofa, looking defeated. ‘I’ve been worried,’ she muttered. ‘I hate it on my own.’

‘Didn’t Maggie come round, or Dickie?’

She didn’t answer, so I presumed they had. I put the blouse on a short wash and brewed us a hot chocolate each. Then I cut us two thick slices of parkin and brought them through.

After a few minutes chewing, she seemed happier. ‘Dickie’s left you a present. To say sorry, he reckons, although he were only having a bit of fun. It’s a queer do, stopping out all night up to I don’t know what, but then tekkin offence at one little joke. Anyway, he’s apologized. It’s in a bag on your bed.’

I left the parkin and went up to see. The redecorated room still gave me a pleasurable shock when I went in. Wherever I went in the future, this would always be my home. I wondered if Dogman had managed to find me a throw or some velvety material for cushions.

But no, it turned out to be an apron. A full-length laminated apron with a cartoon picture of a scruffy dog on the front that would sit about level with your tummy. I thought perhaps if he’d got it me because it reminded him of Winston. I checked the ties and they were all intact, no dodgy marks or stains anywhere. I’d seen aprons you could get that looked like you were walking round in your underwear; thank God he hadn’t got me anything like that.

I tried it on for fun and stood in front of the mirror. Something was written underneath the dog in swirly writing; I hadn’t seen it before. I struggled to spell it out from the reflection:
S-N-A-T-C-H
. Dogman wanted me to wear the word ‘snatch’ written over my crotch.

‘Whatever are you up to now?’ Poll found me at the bottom of the garden two minutes later, with the apron and a box of matches.

‘Watch,’ I said, and struck a match. I held it against the offending word. There was a feeble glow, then the laminate burst into flames. I laughed out loud. ‘Call that fireproof? How could you have worn that in a kitchen? It was a complete health hazard.’

‘Is that Dickie’s apron?’

‘It is.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Poll. ‘You’ll be put away.’

*

‘Come and live here,’ Mum said that evening. ‘You can have new furniture, decorate anywhere you like. I’ll get you a computer if you want. I’m not short of money. Move in with me.’

‘I can’t.’

She looked upset. ‘But you hate it at your grandma’s.’

‘I know, but it’s home. I’m, I’m not sure how I feel.’

‘About what?’

About you, I nearly said. ‘Everything.’

‘I suppose it’s a lot to take in all at once.’

I thought, you don’t know the half of it.

*

I told Maggie first.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. We were shelling peas in the kitchen while Poll had a nap upstairs.

Maggie seemed to know at once what I meant. ‘I know, love, I think you have. Will they still tek you?’

‘Yeah. I’ve to be in Oxford next Sunday, for Noughth Week.’

‘Is that when they show the northern students round?’

‘No. It’s a week for the new ones from all over to settle in, sort out their accommodation, meet their tutors.’

‘Ooh, hey.’ Maggie nudged me. ‘Tutors. You will be grand. You’ll not want to know us common folk.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

Peas plopped into the bowl between us and the weak autumn sun shone through the kitchen window.

‘I presume you’ve not said owt to your grandma?’

‘Not exactly.’

Maggie nodded. ‘You will tell her, though? You won’t just tek off? Because that would be very upsetting for her. I’ve a book she might find helpful.’

‘I’m going to tell her this afternoon, when she wakes up.’

Maggie looked grim. ‘I should have some Bailey’s ready, if I were you.’

By the time Poll appeared the peas were shelled and Maggie and I were watching
A Place in the Sun
. Bob and Carol from Leeds were examining an apartment in an Italian village. ‘It’s all very well,’ Maggie was saying, ‘these foreign places might be warm but no one speaks English, do they? And all them steps up and down.’

We got Poll sitting with a drink, Maggie standing by with her lavender cologne stick, then I explained to her that this time I was definitely leaving home.

‘Get away,’ she chuckled. ‘We’ve heard that one before. Shift out o’ t’ way, I can’t see the screen properly.’

I stayed where I was. ‘No, this time it’s different, I’ve decided.’

She scratched her side and yawned. ‘You’re not capable of mekkin decisions, you. Well, you aren’t, are you? Chopping and changing. I’ll believe it when I see it.’

Maggie came in at this point: ‘She is going, Poll. She’s bought her ticket and I’ve seen it.’

I gaped at the lie. But it was a canny thing to say, because it seemed to dawn on Poll that I was serious.

‘But you wrote and told them you weren’t coming, didn’t you? They’ll have given your place to someone else.’

‘No, I never did.’

Poll was beginning to look really alarmed. ‘You’ll never manage. You’re one of life’s square pegs. It doesn’t matter where you go, you’ll never fit in. I bet you’ll be back in a fortnight, won’t she, Maggie?’

Maggie kept quiet.

‘What’ll happen to me? I’m nearly blind, you know. How will I cope when my sight goes completely?’

‘It won’t, will it? It’s not got any worse for two years now. They said at the hospital, you never go totally blind with dry macular degeneration.’

‘You do.’

‘You don’t. I was there, remember.’

Poll stood up, trembling with rage. ‘
Them as calls their grandmother a liar Is in danger of hell fire
,’ she chanted, jabbing me in the chest for good measure.

I made the mistake of laughing, and before I knew it, she’d slapped me hard across the face. I couldn’t believe she’d done it. I put up my hand to rub away the sensation of her cold bony fingers on my cheek, and to relieve the stinging. ‘My
God
.’

‘Now, Poll,’ said Maggie, trying to draw her away from me, ‘I know it’s hard, but there are these stages you need to go through. Reeling, Feeling, Kneeling and Healing. No, not Kneeling, Dealing. That’s how you cope with a big loss. It’s in a book I’ve got. So you’re at the Reeling stage at the moment, which is natural, ’cause it’s been a shock, but then you come out of that and go into Dealing, I think, is it? But don’t tek it out on Katherine, she’s only doing what the young ones do. I wept buckets when Dawn left and she were only on t’ new estate round the back. It’s nature, flying the nest.’

‘I’ll get a new care package sorted before I go,’ I said. ‘I know I’ve left it late but Maggie’ll help out till it’s in place. The Rehab Officer’s coming on Monday for a chat, and you know she’s a lovely woman.’

‘Is it that lame one with the long fair hair?’ said Maggie, letting go of Poll’s cardigan. ‘Oh, she’s smashing, in’t she? She knows what it’s like to be crippled.’

But Poll was still in a fury. ‘Oh, oh, my heart,’ she cried, sinking onto the sofa. ‘You’ve killed me.’

I stayed where I was, but Maggie bent stiffly to help. She patted Poll’s forehead and took her hand, then straightened up, half turning to me. ‘It’s hard for her. She loves you, you see.’

‘No, she doesn’t,’ I said, ‘she just wants to keep me here as an unpaid carer. She’s frightened of having to cope on her own.’

‘You’re the one as is frightened,’ Poll moaned from her sickbed. ‘All I’ve ever tried to do is protect you.’

‘Shall I telephone for a doctor, do you think?’ asked Maggie. ‘I can feel her heart pounding away and she’s very pale. What do you reckon?’

I started to walk to the door. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie, I’m not staying around for the performance. Do what you like, call a whole fleet of ambulances if you want. The Bailey’s is on the sideboard. I’m off.’

‘That’s right, run away,’ called Poll, raising her head briefly.

‘That’s exactly what I am going to do,’ I said.

*

‘It’s Maggie I feel sorry for,’ I told Cissie as we sat by the picture window watching the gardener hoover up leaves from the lawn. ‘Too much falls on her shoulders. She’ll be cursing me before Christmas is here.’

‘No, she won’t,’ replied Cissie. ‘She likes it, fussing over Poll. It meks her feel important. There are some people in life who need to be needed; Maggie’s one of them. Soon as her daughter left home, she was on the lookout for someone to mither. She’ll enjoy stepping into the breach till social services get themselves into gear. And really, Poll doesn’t need that much practical help, does she? There’s plenty worse off than her.’

‘It’s more emotional support she needs at the moment.’ I sighed. ‘You don’t think people’ll criticize me for going away and leaving her?’

‘They’ll be clapping you on the back and cheering, more like. Eeh, love, you’ve your own life to live as well. Get on, enjoy yourself while you’re young. It soon passes.’ She looked mournfully down at her own body. ‘Then you end up like this. Just look at them ankles.’

Ally stumped across the lawn in front of us and shouted something at the gardener, who laughed and switched his hoover off. They stood chatting happily for a minute, and I saw him glancing down her blouse a few times. As she walked off she wiggled her bottom at him and he put his lips together like he was whistling. Where did she get that kind of confidence from?

‘Can I ask you something?’

Cissie stopped scrutinizing her legs and turned her face to me. ‘What, love?’

‘Tell me honestly, what was my dad really like?’

She made a noncommittal noise and stared into the middle distance.

‘No, tell me. I know you didn’t like him; I know about his affair. But what was he like as a person?’

‘The trouble with you,’ said Cissie, ‘is that you see people as either all good or all bad. Nowt in between. When, in reality, everyone’s mixed up nice and nasty. That’s the way humans are. Some are nastier than others, of course.’

‘Like my dad?’

‘No, love; no. Being absolutely truthful, I never took to him especially, but he weren’t a bad lad. Well, he were, but not really
evil
. Spoilt, of course. That were his mother. But not a cruel boy. You can’t blame him for loving life. I’m sure he never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings when he took up with that other woman, he probably just didn’t think it through.’

I pictured Mum and Jude, side by side, smiling hopefully. ‘So who did he love, in the end?’

‘Himself, chiefly,’ said Cissie. ‘Poll had always taught him the sun shone out of his own backside. How was he to know any better?’

Afterwards, I wondered if I’d ever tell her about finding Mum. One day.

Over my head there were white railway tracks in the blue, guiding me off into infinity.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ I shouted into the air. ‘There’s no such thing as sky messages. There never was.’

*

My dad used to say, when I was little, Softly softly catchee monkey. I didn’t get it at the time. But I know now it means go slowly. I’ll have her, if it takes years. What else have I got to do with my life?

The postcard had been sent to the library, but it was Miss Dragon who handed it to me, not Mum.

Kat

So so so so
sorry
. I HAVE to talk to you. Midday Friday?

The front showed a portrait of Charlotte Brontë and there was no signature, but I knew who it was from and where he’d be.

Miss Dragon raised her eyebrows as I put the card in my coat pocket. ‘I don’t mean to interfere, Kat,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t want to see him again, I can field him for you. Pass on a message.’

I glanced round the library to make sure no one was listening in. No sign of Mum, anyway.

‘You didn’t like him, did you?’

‘Since you ask, no. Much too charming. I thought he was lovely, for about ten minutes. Have you two fallen out?’

‘You could say that.’ I replayed his face coming towards mine through the half-light, and it was like a kick in the chest. Mrs Dragon watched me with concern. ‘Listen, have you told anyone else who he said he was? I mean,
anyone
?’

‘Absolutely not.’

I could have kissed her for her old-fashioned rectitude, her bobbly check skirt, her brogues.

‘Thanks. I’ll really miss you when I go.’

‘Of course you won’t, you’ll be far too busy having an interesting time. But thank you.’

‘And there’s no need to worry about Callum. I’ll face him. It’s something that has to be done.’

She gave me a long, fond look. ‘If you say so. But I’ll disembowel him if he does anything untoward; tell him that from me.’

*

He was sitting outside on the library bench when I saw him again. Too chicken to go in, I thought. His hair had grown slightly but the glasses were back, and he had an army greatcoat round his shoulders.

‘Where do you want to go?’ he said, standing as I approached. ‘I don’t want to stay round here. Too many people.’

For what? ‘Let’s go to the cemetery, then,’ I said, my mouth dry with nerves and anger. ‘Oh, and I’ve got this for you.’ I held out the little paper bag to him.

‘Not the pendant? Please don’t get rid of that.’

‘No. This photo. You might as well have the original. What would I want a picture of my dad’s mistress for?’

He looked mortified as he recognized again the pregnant woman leaning on the Metro, but he didn’t say a word. I wondered whether I should have ripped the photo up in his face; too late now, though. The bag went in his pocket and we set off down the village.

I’d intended not to talk till we got there, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘I feel like I’ll never be able to trust anything you ever tell me again,’ I said bitterly as we walked past the school road. ‘I don’t understand why you had to deceive me like that. I thought we were friends, that you liked me. So why couldn’t you have told me the truth from the start? Or keep up the deception, one or the other. In fact, why did you have to go rooting around at all?’

He hung his head. ‘It’s important for boys to know about their dads. I’ve always wanted to find out about him; Mum would never give.’