Swallowing Grandma (6 page)

Ally from the kitchens put her head round the door. ‘D’you want a drink, you two? I’m just coming round with the trolley now.’ Ally gave me the creeps. I used to think she was about fifty, but one day she was talking about the time she left school and I realized she was only ten years older than me. It’s true her skin was unlined and her permed hair was brown, not grey. But she was enormous. Biceps like giant hams, hips that barely made it through the door frame. The sort of fat that makes strangers stop and stare in the street; morbid obesity. I should have felt some kind of solidarity with her, fatties united, but I just found her repulsive. That’s the way you’re heading, a voice in my head warned whenever any of Ally’s flesh was on display.

‘My Cuddly Carer,’ said Cissie. ‘We’ll have two teas and a Penguin each. Forget your figures, eh?’

Ally winked roguishly. ‘Coming right up.’

Everybody loved Ally.

‘No sugar in mine,’ I shouted after her massive back.

Ally handed out rations, beaming, and lumbered out of the room. Cissie checked over each shoulder, careless talk costs lives, and lowered her voice. ‘So how’s your secret boyfriend?’

A tricky one, this. ‘Give us your biscuit here, I’ll do it.’ I tore open the plastic and my stomach rumbled as I caught the scent of chocolate. (Imagine that, went my head, imagine that in your mouth right now.) I handed it back.

‘We’ve had a row,’ I said decisively.

‘Aw, love. What a shame. What happened?’

‘He was too possessive. I needed my independence.’ I thought of Donna silhouetted in the tall window and felt a stab of physical pain in my chest. ‘And he didn’t respect me enough. He wasn’t as nice as I thought he was.’

Cissie tutted and looked sad. ‘I tek it Poll still doesn’t know? Very wise.’ She bit her biscuit and chewed thoughtfully. ‘A fall-out, eh. And can you not make it up?’

‘No. I need my own space for a while. I’ve got my exams . . . ’

‘Aye, well, you’ve got to concentrate on your exams, that’s true. Are you not having your Penguin?’

‘I had a huge breakfast.’ (Weeny tub of diet yoghurt. Took me about thirty seconds to eat.) ‘I’ll save it for later, smashing. Cissie, I was wondering, is Poll really poor? I don’t mean starving or anything; obviously she gets by day to day. I mean, has she any savings that you know about? Or antiques to sell, that sort of thing? Long-term nest eggs?’

Cissie wiped the chocolate off her mouth with a tissue. ‘It’s not really any of my business, love. I don’t think she has, she’s never mentioned anything.’ She screwed up the tissue in her fingers. ‘You know I’ve nowt to leave. I’ve already given her that mantel clock of Florence’s, not that I had much choice in the matter. I’ve a tiny bit in the Abbey National, that’s all, and that’s coming to you, with my mother’s rings—’

‘Oh,’ I said, embarrassed, ‘I wasn’t thinking of that. Anyway, you’re not going anywhere for a good while, are you?’

‘I should hope not.’ She laughed, but what she said next was drowned out.

‘Hel
lo
, playmates.’ It was shiny-head Mr Poole, ex-Bank Top butcher. ‘And how are we today? Excuse me while I park here a mo.’ He steadied his Zimmer frame against the door jamb. ‘Mind my bike! I’m en route for reception, but I needed a breather. So I thought, why not drop in on the lovely Mrs S?’

Cissie was all smiles. ‘It’s that man again.’

‘Testing, testing.’ Mr Poole tapped his hearing aid. ‘Can y’ hear me, Mother?’

‘Can I do you now, sir?’

‘I don’t meynd if I do.’

They’re worse than kids when they get going.

‘An’ how’s your Poll?’ Mr Poole said to me when he’d got his breath back. ‘Still a rum ’un?’

I saw Cissie nodding out of the corner of my eye.

‘Pollyanna Millar, terror of the playground sixty year ago. Our John’s still got t’ scar wheer she kicked him to mek him join th’ Ovaltineys. After a gold badge, she reckoned. She all but crippled ’im for months.’

‘She got one in t’ finish,’ said Cissie. ‘Wore it to school every day, I remember Florence pinning it on. But there were a lot of blood spilt ovver it. She went round all t’ littleuns, mekkin’ ’em sign up. An’ a lot o’ t’ juniors were frittened of her an’ all.’

‘He’s the scar on his shin
till this day
.’

I looked from one to the other. ‘Yeah, but, sixty years ago. You wouldn’t still have a scar, not after all that time.’

‘You would if you’d been clouted wi’ a clog.’ Mr Poole wagged a knobbly finger at me. ‘Vicious things. They’d a’ iron band all round t’ sole. She cut our John’s shin reight oppen. She were a nowty wench, your grandmother, when she were younger.’ He glanced at Cissie. ‘I’m not speykin’ out o’ turn, am I?’

Cissie shook her head. ‘You’re not, no. She deafened an American serviceman with a liquorice stick. Perforated his eardrum.’ I started to giggle. ‘It’s not funny. Poor lad. They were our allies.’

‘That wasn’t Poll’s fault, though, was it? She’s always told me it was because he was interfering with her. She was only a schoolgirl. He said some rude words and she took fright; that’s the version she told me.’

‘Did he ’eck as like. That’s what she told everyone so’s not to get into bother. Does she hit you?’

‘Nah.’ I laughed at the idea. ‘Not since I was tiny. I’m twice her size these days. I’d just dodge, if she ever did.’

‘She’s an evil tongue on her, though, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. You forget,’ Cissie concluded, ‘I’ve known her longer than you, and I’ve seen you in tears often enough. She can be really sharp when she wants.’

I felt my cheeks flush and put my face down till it passed.

Mr Poole nodded. ‘Mustard. She nearly took Eric Benson’s finger off wi’ a home-med firework, do you remember? Collecting cartridge cases and filling ’em’ wi’ gunpowder she’d filched out of t’ quarry. She thought she were a boy, that was half the trouble.’ Then, after an awkward pause, he went on, ‘Still, we all do things as we’re not proud of when we’re young.’

‘Oh aye, that’s true,’ said Cissie.

‘Anyways, I’d best be off. People to see, pills to tek.’ He patted his chest. ‘Leave you two ladies to your gossip.’

‘TTFN,’ said Cissie, blowing a kiss. Dulux slid away and dropped on the floor but she didn’t notice.

The rubber tips on Mr Poole’s Zimmer made a squeaky noise that got fainter and fainter as we listened. Cissie seemed subdued.

‘I suppose we’re all a bit nowty, once in a while. I remember throwing all our Florence’s make-up out of an upstairs window. I were angry with her because her husband was still alive. Velouty de Dixor all ovver t’ flags. It meks no sense, I can see that now. You do some daft tricks when you’re young.’

I couldn’t think what to say, so I bent down and retrieved the sheepdog for her.

‘Here you go. He was making a bid for freedom.’

‘Eeh, y’are a love. So, tell me again about this boyfriend. Donny, in’t it? Tell me again what happened. Are you
sure
as you can’t patch things up?’

I came away feeling strung out. I’m not a natural liar, despite all the practice I get fending off Poll’s incessant probing. I only invented the boyfriend for Cissie. I thought it would cheer her up, give us something to talk about. I didn’t invent him for myself. I’m not that sad. Maybe I could kill him off, a drugs overdose or a drunken stroll up the railway line after closing time. Mind you, then she’d be scouring the
Bolton Evening News
every night and there’d be a whole new load of questions to answer.

As I walked up to the entrance I caught sight of Mr Poole sitting half-hidden in a winged chair behind a weeping fig. He had a tea towel over his lap and his hand beneath it was jerking up and down, up and down. Christ, I thought. Even in here it’s full of pervs.

I veered slightly so that I would pass near him, and hissed, ‘You’re disgusting,’ at the top of his head. He looked up, surprised. His face seemed odd and naked. As I glared at him the cloth fell away across his knee and I could see that he was holding a pair of glasses in his lap. His flies, I noted, were completely closed.

‘Just a sec,’ he said, sliding his glasses onto his nose. ‘That’s better. Couldn’t see a blessed thing before.’ He peered up at me. ‘Now, what’s tha sayin’?’

‘It needs dusting. This place.’

He tipped his head to one side. ‘Does it? I corn’t tell.’

‘That’s probably why your glasses were so dirty.’

‘Aye,’ he said.

‘So what’s happened,’ the woman at reception was saying down the phone, ‘is she’s fallen on top of her umbrella and the spoke’s gone in her eye.’

I fled the place, cramming the Penguin down my throat as I went.

*

Dad let me have Radio One on as we drove in that last morning. Goody goody two-shoes. I was busy making deals in my head. All the songs had messages in them, but none of them mentioned death, so I thought we’d be all right.

My dad spent ages with the doctor while I read a magazine article about the glory of Venice. Then a nurse came. She took me into a side room and said, ‘You know your mum was very sick. She’s been really brave but she was a very poorly woman. Sometimes you can’t fight illness. Sometimes the body’s just too badly damaged.’

I looked at her.

‘Your mum died during the night. She wasn’t in any pain.’

I said, ‘Well, she bloody should have been. I am.’ And all the time, this song kept going round and round my head, getting so loud I couldn’t think. It was as if my brain was broken. ‘Where’s Dad?’ I managed to ask. ‘I need to see him.’

‘Give him a few minutes, love,’ said the nurse. ‘I’ll take you to your mum.’

‘What’s the point?’ I shouted.

‘I’ll leave you for a minute, then,’ she said.

I stood totally still for a few seconds, then I lay down on the lino floor and started punching my stomach as hard as I could. I never even saw the doctor come in.

For all his evil nature, Vince sorted out a lot of household jobs before he left. He re-papered the chimney breast around the new gas fire, he laid lino over the chipped tiles in the porch, and he took out the hedge and replaced it with a larch-lap fence so it’d be less bother to maintain. He even creosoted it afterwards. He was quite thoughtful, as cheating love-rats go.

But that was nearly two decades ago, and although the flowery wallpaper and the lino were still good, the fence was now collapsing in the middle and several of the laps had dropped off. Dogman had been drafted in to help replace a couple of critical panels.

‘You don’t want to go paying garden-centre prices for stakes,’ he’d told Poll. ‘They charge silly money. I can get ’em for you. I’ve a mate.’

So on this sunny morning, Poll was in the garden holding a sharpened pole upright while Dickie hammered it into the soil with a mallet, and I stayed out of the way. They were singing advertising jingles to each other and laughing in a stupid way. I could have snatched that mallet and seen them both off with one good swipe. I was trying to watch a programme that would change my life.

So the next time you visit your grocer

Tell him no other sausage will do

And to all his replies tell him, ‘No, sir,

It’s Donnelly’s sausage for you.’

I strained to hear over Dickie’s yodelling.

‘I was a mess,’ the young woman with maroon hair was saying. ‘I really was. A total wreck. My skin was, like, yellow, and I had these great bags under my eyes. And my teeth were a state, all the enamel coming off, the dentist used to go mad so I stopped going. But the worst was the sore throats, I always had a sore throat. I always felt like sh—, like a wreck.’

‘And you were “hung up on control”, you said before.’ The presenter pointed the microphone back at her face.

‘Well, it was like, I can’t control that side of things, you know, the eating, so I wanted to control everything else. Smacking the kids for tipping their toys out because I couldn’t, you know, cope with the clutter. Do you get me?’

‘I’ll come back to you, Elaine,’ said the presenter, leaping lightly up an aisle to kneel at the side of a middle-aged woman in a red suit. ‘What was it you wanted to say—?

‘Jo.’

‘Jo. Have you a question for Elaine?’

Jo leaned in close towards the microphone. ‘Same thing with me. Five, six times a day. I got through a load of toothbrushes. And air freshener. Our upstairs stank like a harem.’ She gave a short laugh, and the audience joined in supportively.

‘And your husband never knew?’

‘Never.’

‘He didn’t have his suspicions, when you disappeared off to the toilet after every meal, and came down reeking of freshmint and perfume?’ Close-up of presenter looking surprised.

‘No. You see, you get very, erm, cunning; you do these tricks, scams. You might say, “I’m going to have a nice hot bath” – and do it while the taps are running to cover the noise. Or have the radio on. And when you’ve been doing it for a few months, you get so you can, you can be really quick. And you can hide your empty packets and till receipts, stick them at the bottom of the bin or whatever; I used to burn ours on the fire.’

There was a muffled shout from across the studio; the presenter sprang to his feet and jogged back to Elaine. ‘Yeah, plus, there’s a lot of husbands and boyfriends who don’t
want
to know. Even if they suspect. It’s easy to block out what you can’t face.’ Much nodding. ‘I mean, how do you come out and say it? To your, to the person you so-called love and trust? How do you say, “Oh, darling, are you making – deliberately making – yourself sick all the time?” I mean, it’s just disgusting, isn’t it, to say that?’

The camera lingered on Elaine’s expression while someone said something else in the background. The presenter put his hand on her shoulder for a moment.

Then the shot changed to a dowdy woman, fiftyish, sitting in the front row. Some doctor or other, written a book. Get off, you fat cow, I snapped at the screen. She droned on about levels of electrolytes and long-term damage to the oesophagus while I cursed myself for not having switched on sooner. Poll wandered in and asked if I wanted a hot-cross bun because she was doing one for Dickie. I said yes just to get her out of the room.