The Generation Game (26 page)

At the sound of the closing hornpipe, she switches her attention to me. Or rather to the weather, which is beating a persistent rhythm at the window.

‘Time to batten down the hatches,’ she warns, with the wisdom of old mariners and their wives. ‘It’s coming in.’

Wink refers to the weather as ‘It’, as if it is a person of many disguises. Today the weather is to trick us all. Apart from maybe Wink who has sniffed ‘It’ out. Or maybe
it is Captain. Maybe he harks back to the monsoons of the Congo, where, in his youth, he swooped through the trees of the equatorial rainforests. He is certainly restless tonight and snatches any
possibility of Wink’s attention for himself so there isn’t much point in bringing up my future career prospects.

‘Shall I get the tea on?’

‘Why don’t you pop out and get fish and chips. I fancy fish and chips.’ She gets a fiver out her bag. ‘Get some mushy peas and all. And the scrapings for Bob. He likes
the scrapings.’

The fish and chip shop is empty too so I am back before long but there is still no sign of Bob.

‘Plate his up and put it in the oven,’ Wink suggests.

I do as I am told, feeling like Mrs Raby. Then Wink and I eat off our laps in the living room, in front of the telly, John Craven’s
Newsround
, the same way we used to all those
years ago over the road in Wink’s old place, watching
The Generation Game
.

‘I miss Bruce,’ she says, eyeing up John’s jumper. Then she looks at me. ‘But probably not half as much as you miss Helena.’

I am not sure how I feel. I keep on eating my cod.

‘I miss Andy,’ I say eventually. And I do. At this moment I miss him more than Helena.

‘Don’t be too hard on her,’ Wink says. ‘One day you’ll understand.’

‘What is there to understand?’

‘More than you think,’ she says enigmatically. ‘Most probably,’ she adds.

When I’ve finished washing up and poured Wink a sherry, I open Captain’s cage. But he doesn’t want to come out. ‘Shut that door,’ he says in his campest voice.

‘Poor love,’ says Wink. ‘He’s sickening for something.’ He does look odd. Head down and a bit droopy-feathered.

‘But I am more worried about Bob. He’s never this late – not without due warning.’

‘Don’t worry,’ says Wink. ‘
Top of the Pops
is on soon.’

‘I’m going to have a bath,’ I say. ‘Some of those kids were filthy.’

‘Oh, Philippa,’ she says. ‘I never asked, did I? I never asked how you got on.’

‘Not so good, Wink. Looks like I’ll have to fall back on that other plan.’

‘Which one’s that?’

‘Your plan. The one where I find a husband.’

‘Don’t be daft. What do you want one of them for? You’re alright on your own for now. You don’t want to go thinking about that. There’s plenty of time.’

‘Yes, I’ve always had lots of that: time. More than enough to go round.’

‘You can always get a parrot,’ she says. ‘They’ll outlast any husband. Captain certainly has.’

She reaches out to him and he edges out the cage door, then swoops and lands on her shoulder, nuzzling into her curly white hair.

Once I’ve scrubbed away the grime of school, I decide it is late enough to put on my pyjamas and dressing gown and make a mug of Ovaltine for Wink and myself even though
Tomorrow’s World
is still on and most people my age are out and about as the night is still much too young, except for Cheryl who’ll most likely be up all night trudging the
wards learning about the latest medical advancements from her husband among other people. I have to make do with
Tomorrow’s World’s
Maggie Philbin.

Only the most dedicated of young people will be out in this though. The wind is now rattling the windows but you can make out the motorway-drone of the sea in the distance. Captain has retreated
to his cage. Wink is out like a light. But Bob is still not back. And, like Captain, I can feel it in my bones: ‘It’ is coming in.

He is still not back by the time the news has finished. Then there is the weather to sit through. Wink likes watching the weather, presumably because she likes to know what
‘It’ is getting up to. So I tap her shoulder gently to wake her up. When that doesn’t work, I tap a little harder, bringing her back to life.

‘Oh good,’ she says. ‘It’s Michael.’

Michael Fish is her favourite weather forecaster. She struggles to lean forward in her chair all the better to see and hear him.

Michael tells us to ‘batten down the hatches, there is some really stormy weather on the way’, which gets Wink’s nod of approval. Perhaps she was a meteorologist in a former
life as she’s already predicted this herself.

I get up and check behind the curtains, looking out into the dark street where the chestnut tree is getting rather uptight.

‘Don’t worry, duck,’ says Wink. ‘He’ll be fine. He’s most probably run into an old friend.’

Perhaps that’s what I am worried about. There is only one old friend of Bob’s who would purposefully run into him.

At half past eleven I’ve helped Wink into bed and am helping myself to some of her sherry when the phone rings.

‘Philippa,’ a small cough-voice says. ‘It’s me.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I ran into an old friend.’

‘Sheila by any chance?’

‘Yes.’ He sounds surprised that I’ve found him out. ‘Anyway, no need to worry. I’m staying over here as ‘It’s’ coming in.’

A poor excuse if ever there was one.

‘It’s hardly a hurricane.’

‘Yes, but Sheila’s made up the spare bed for me now. In Terry’s room.’

The thought of Terry’s room does something to my insides and I end the conversation with Bob a little curtly.

‘You mean ‘Justin’.’

‘Yes… Justin, Terry, whatever he’s called.’

‘You should have phoned earlier.’

‘I’m s — ’

Then the line goes dead. If I wasn’t still holding the handset, I’d believe I’d put the phone down on him. But I am still clutching it. There is no Bob. Just a crackle. Still,
at least I can go to bed now, knowing he hasn’t been blown off the planet but into the arms of Auntie Sheila. What has she done with Bernie? Unless Bob really is staying in Justin’s
bed.

Justin.

That sets my insides off again. Will I ever get any sleep?

But it doesn’t matter, does it? I am not going back to school tomorrow. I can have a lie in. Bob isn’t even here to ask me how I’ve got on. So I’m not going to worry
about what he thinks.

And no. I don’t get any sleep. When I eventually switch off the light at around one o’clock, I lie there picking out all the noises: bin lids in the street, the
branches of the horse chestnut, the odd clang that could be any number of objects coming loose from their mooring. I switch the bedside lamp on. It flickers every now and then. I stare at the
curtains which ripple unnervingly, tossing the Cavalier around on a wave of wind. This is too much.

I get up to check on Wink. She is fast asleep, snoring, her eye mask on. I tiptoe out and make my way to the living room, where the wind seems worse. The windows rattle more insistently and the
branches of the conker tree flap more furiously. The wind whistles up through the floorboards; I can feel it round my ankles. Captain isn’t happy about all this. He is thrashing around inside
his cage. I take off the travel rug and open the door to stroke his head which he usually likes when he is feeling stressed. It works to a certain extent but he still mutters under his breath,
‘Don’t panic, don’t panic.’

‘Don’t worry, Captain,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not panicking. Go to sleep.’

The thought of sleep entices me back to bed. I can hardly keep awake. It has been a long day, what with the children and Mr Donnelly and Christopher Bennett and Bob and ‘It’. My legs
are dead, my brain numb though I just have enough energy left over to be annoyed with Bob. He should’ve phoned earlier. He should be here now, making me Ovaltine and keeping me company in the
storm.

I read
Spycatcher
for a while, a copy that Wink managed to get hold of somehow. This does the trick and soon my eyelids begin to droop, but every time sleep pulls me under, there is
another new noise to try and make sense of. Eventually sleep wins the battle and I am dreaming once again of being that glamorous Russian spy in a Bond film, trapped in a train compartment with 007
himself, when I am slapped wide awake by a heart-thumping, stomach-sinking crash, a sickening mixture of glass shattering, wood creaking and something heavy falling over. For a second I think the
train has crashed but then I get a grip and am out of bed, heading for Wink’s room… maybe she’s fallen out of bed…

No, she is still there. I can make out her frail body in the darkness. All quiet, all still. She’d sleep through anything… the noise must’ve come from the living
room…

I’m not quite sure what comes out of my mouth when I open the door. I’m not sure if I am able to say anything at all. It looks like we’ve been the victims of a cruel and nasty
burglary or a direct hit by a bomb. Or maybe I am still dreaming, like Max in
Where The Wild Things Are
. Our living room has turned into the world all around.

Gradually my brain catches up with what has happened. For the wind is now screaming straight at me. There is no glass left in the window. It has been smashed by the horse chestnut tree which
has… no, no, no… fallen right into the room and is pinning the crushed cage to the floor.

Above the furore of the storm, I make out a screechy voice saying ‘Shut that door, shut that door,’ as if Larry Grayson is present right here in our living room.

Then I spot a flash of red. Red tail feathers. There is Captain in the branches of the tree, as if he is back in the rainforest, like my father. Yes, I am most definitely dreaming.

I am pulled from my shocked inertia by a voice outside in the street.

‘You alright up there?’

I can’t get anywhere near the window to see who it is so I go down to the shop and switch on the light. Mr Taylor is banging on the door, peering through the glass, his dressing gown
billowing all around him, revealing the prize-winning knobbly knees that I never expected to see again.

‘You look terrible Philippa,’ he says as I let him in. ‘Is anyone hurt?’

‘No, Wink and I were in bed, poor old Captain’s alright, I must’ve left his cage open, I was so tired, not thinking, he’s sat in the tree.’

‘Show me,’ he says, authoritatively, and he bolts the shop door saying, ‘you can’t be too careful… looters… ’ (He is a
Daily Mail
regular.) And
as he guides me back up the stairs, I realise I am shaking.

‘Let me call 999 for you,’ he says after a moment’s surveillance of the great outdoors in our living room. ‘You’ll need some help clearing this lot up.’

‘I’d better phone Bob first.’

‘Isn’t he here?’

‘He’s at Sheila’s.’

‘Ah,’ he mutters, saying very little, meaning an awful lot.

Half an hour later Bob is back, looking almost as ruffled as Captain, who is now ensconced in the bathroom, much to his annoyance as he was enjoying his rumble in the jungle.

‘I’ll just check on Wink,’ he says. ‘She can sleep through anything that one.’

For some reason I follow him into Wink’s bedroom. Just to check. He switches on her bedside lamp and we both notice, Bob and I, at the same time. Her snoring has stopped. Her chest is very
still. She’s taken off her eye mask and is lying serenely on her back, lids closed but with her favourite blue eye shadow smudged across them. A bit of pink on her lips. Rouge on her cheeks.
She isn’t asleep though. She has gone. Gone with the wind, leaving behind a droopy-feathered, dust-covered African Grey parrot. And a huge hole in my life that I don’t think will ever
be filled again.

They say it is a tiny hole. It may repair itself without surgery. We’ll have to wait and see. Wait and see. Wait. I’m good at waiting. I can do this. We can do
this, you and I. You and I.

I don’t have to go back and face Mr Donnelly and his herd of hooligans. By the time the consequences of the storm are dealt with, and my poor old Wink sent off down the
final conveyor belt, it is taken as understood between Bob and myself that I will stay in the shop for the time being. I dance around him as Helena once did, fitting my movements to his. But under
the counter sits Wink’s ashes so that every day, as I reach for a paper bag, I think of her.

‘Bob, we’ve got to do something,’ I say finally, one closing time, picking up the urn and dusting it with my sleeve. ‘She can’t stay there forever.’

‘Alright,’ he says, locking up. ‘Grab your coat and a torch. It’s high tide. Let’s do it.’

And we know exactly what it is we have to do because Wink has laid it all out straight in the will that we found in her bedside cabinet. We never knew she was so organised. Or that she was so
flush, leaving her savings to Bob and me. For a rainy day.

Which, luckily it isn’t today, though the wind is a bit fresh (and hopefully in the right direction).

Bob tucks Wink inside his sheepskin coat and we let ourselves out the back, past the chippy and Wink’s old house, down into Belgrave Road, past the Chinese, the florists, the hairdressers,
the junk shop, Toy Town, the guest houses and the hotels, over the footbridge and along the front, past the Princess Theatre and on to the harbour, all the way around until we find a quiet spot,
where we can sit in the dark, on the wall, the waves crashing at our feet.

He takes the lid off the urn and says, ‘Didn’t she do well.’

Then we take it in turns, dipping our cold hands into the ash, scattering it like bird seed, watching the wind take it up and out to sea. Our Wink.

Five years later, I feel I should perhaps be reassessing my career opportunities. Patty and Lugsy have gone, to Canada of all places, Vancouver Island, almost a continent away
from Helena (who at least marked Wink’s passing with the biggest bunch of lilies Interflora could muster). Sheila dips in and out of Bob’s life according to her whims, less of late as
Bernie requires more of her attention since his latest bout of heart trouble. Linda, at the last report, has married a naval officer, someone she met through Clive, and is living happily ever after
in Plymouth. Cheryl is now a proper doctor with her own stethoscope and everything and has decided to give her Pill the boot as she reckons her fertility is at its ripest at twenty-seven. As for
Captain, he is now more than ripe, probably somewhere in his fifties, though the vet thinks he might have another twenty years in him. And Wink was right, certainly longer than any husband
could’ve managed.