Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma

Praise for
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma

“Real and heartfelt, carried along by stunning, earthy dialogue that captures the rough poetry of daily speech . . . Hudson avoids the usual sentimental clichés and gives us, without a shred of hipster cynicism, the hope and tough warmth for which she has such a sharp eye.”

—
The Guardian
(London)

“Colorful, funny, joyful, and compelling.”

—
The
Observer
(London)

“There's little doubt that this young writer is going to be a star. . . . In the course of this picaresque and haunting tale, Hudson achieves something rare and remarkable.”

—
The Herald
(Scotland)

“A laugh out loud read.” —
In Style
(London)

“Concurrently very funny and incredibly sad . . . The writing sizzles.”

—
The Bookseller
(London)

“A sympathetic coming-of-age tale and a valuable counterpoint to widespread social attitudes to women in poverty.”

—
Metro

“Hudson's skill in articulating, often hilariously, the family's hand-to-mouth uncertainty through the eyes of a child . . . recalls Roddy Doyle's best conversational triumphs.”

—
Aberdeen Voice
(Scotland)

“Vividly written and bleakly beautiful, and its characters and events will linger in your mind long after you close the book.”

—
PANK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Growing up in a succession of council estates, B&Bs, and trailer parks provided her with a keen eye for idiosyncratic behaviors, a love of travel, and plenty of material for this, her first novel. She currently lives, works, and writes in London.
Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma
was shortlisted for the
Guardian
First Book Award, the Green Carnation Prize, and the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year.

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First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus, The Random House Group Limited
2012

Published by arrangement with The Random House Group Limited

Published in Penguin Books
2014

Copyright ©
2012
by Kerry Hudson

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Hudson, Kerry.

Tony Hogan bought me an ice-cream float before he stole my Ma / Kerry Hudson.

pages cm

ISBN
978-0-14-312464-1

ISBN
978-1-101-63482-0 (eBoook)

1
. Working class families—Scotland—Fiction.
2
. Dysfunctional families—Scotland—Fiction.
3
. Aberdeen (Scotland)—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.

PR
6108
.U
373
T
66 2013

823
'.
92
—dc
23

2013018974

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To the three best women I know: Susanna, Maria, Levia.

‘Get out, you cunting, shitting, little fucking fucker!' were the first words I ever heard. The midwife, a shiny-faced woman who learned entirely new turns of phrase that night, smoothed Ma's hair.

‘Yer both fine. We'll have tae give yeh a quick stitch-up later, but – baby girl just ripped you a wee bit coming out.'

Ma laid me, sticky and slack-limbed, on her chest and wondered how something so pink, puckered and fragile could be so vicious as to tear the person who was meant to love her most in the world. But that was the Ryan Women: fishwives to the marrow, they were always ready to fight and knew the places that would cut deepest.

*

I was not vicious, though. No one could tell if I was clever, or sly as my grandma had predicted while blowing Benson & Hedges smoke rings over my ma's swollen belly. I was a ‘bad baby', forever gurning and spitting out my ma's nipple. My delicate skin had mottled with the indignation of being ripped by forceps from a warm, cosy spot where I was perfectly happy.

For all my fretful kicking at the air and scratching at my own face, my saving grace was beauty. Everyone said so; a golden baby with extra-blue eyes, the slope of my nose and forehead just so.

‘She'll be a wee heartbreaker,' Grandma said, smoothing down her mint-green nylon trousers. ‘But she'll have a lot o' jealousy. An' I know wha' a burden it is tae be born with beauty.' Grandma's violet eyes filled and the tears seeped through her pale powder into the wrinkles underneath.

Ma held me to her bony chest, resting my bum on the roll of flesh under her sharp ribs, which was all that remained of my home.

‘Aye, she takes after her daddy. He was gorgeous. Those American blue eyes. She's the spit of him.'

Ma's face crumpled, her mouth sagged in a whine and her face turned pink. I wondered what I'd been born into.

Other mas in the ward came over and eyed me suspiciously, checking I wasn't heavier, livelier or prettier than their babies. Ma's – my – family came and held their faces so close to mine I could smell whether they'd had booze or food for breakfast. It was mostly booze.

Uncle Frankie, who had a scatter of freckles across his face, eyes the colour of Aberdeen skies and hair like silky copper, picked me up and held me above his head like a football trophy.

‘Yeh did it, sis! An' what a little beauty an' all!'

Even though he was as short as Ma and a bit chubby around the edges he made the other mas laugh and tuck wisps of hair behind their ears and the nurses raise their eyebrows and lower their chins; a very nurse thing to do, I'd noticed.

My Great Auntie Aggie came, wearing saucer-sized glasses and carrying a half-eaten bag of sherbet lemons. She said I was the image of Rodney Boyle, her first love who broke her heart, and went to sit at the end of the bed, with an unlit fag in her hand, to update Grandma on the ‘Andy Maguinness fiasco'. My ears, no bigger than a slice of button mushroom, told me the young one ‘was begging for it'. After they'd sucked and crunched their way through the sherbet lemons and the juicier details, ‘standing up in the bus station toilet, Aggie. Imagine, the filth! I won't be using them again, I'll tell yeh that,' they hoisted their handbags onto their shoulders and marched off in their matching beige high heels to the bingo.

The flickering light was switched off and the nurse put me in the plastic box of a cot. When the squeaks of her shoes were far enough away Ma picked me up and tucked my head in the crook of her shoulder. I allowed her one minute of peace and curled my lips, so small and sweet that they asked to be bitten like jelly sweets, into what my ma joyfully thought was my first smile. It was, in fact, the beginnings of wind. As I felt her arms slacken with the possibility of sleep, I filled my lungs and screamed like only a Ryan Woman can.

The crabbit woman opposite sat up and snapped her bedside light on.

‘For goodness' sake, lassie –' her gold cross glinted as she leaned forward – ‘see to your child and give the rest of us some peace. She'll be spoilt before she leaves the crib.'

My ma, Iris Ryan as they knew and loved her, sat up and declared with as much dignity as a woman who has two milky wet patches on the front of her nightie can, ‘My lassie can cry as long as she wants tae, an' anyway, it was probably yer ugly mug that set her off!'

She swung her heavy legs to the floor and took me out to walk the green, gleaming corridors. I stopped crying, gave her the gift of another woozy, windy smile, and understood for the first time that she was my ma and it was us against the world from that night on.

*

Uncle Frankie borrowed a red car from his pal Meathead and I was swaddled in my basket on Ma's knee in the front seat, sucking on two fingers, my feet cushioned on the stringy wet tissues that Ma kept stuffing there. She'd cried for the last twenty-four hours, the sobs getting quieter and her eyes puffier with each hour. She'd cried so much there wasn't a clump or speck of mascara to be seen; Frankie said he hardly recognised her. In those hours Ma undid years of indelible mascara residue.

‘Come on, sis, yer going home. Ma'll look after the wee un and yeh can have a rest.'

Ma bit the inside of her cheeks, stared straight ahead and let tears stream and soak into the neckline of her T-shirt.

‘Just start the car, Frankie.'

But he didn't; instead he reached to the back seat for a plastic bag.

‘An' look what I got yeh. A wee pressie!'

Ma took it, sandwiched it between her stomach and the end of my basket, then waited for the car to move.

‘Look inside then.'

She pushed down the sides of the bag and produced a thin black bottle of vodka and a lurid pink miniskirt, which even in her pre-pregnancy days my skinny ma couldn't have got herself into. She stared at the pink skirt as though deciphering a code, turned it over in her hands.

‘What's this?' she demanded, her temper stopping the tears. ‘Is this some kind of joke? Taking the piss out of yer sister's fat arse?'

Frankie's blue eyes were wide in confusion, a blush spread behind his freckles. ‘What? Reenie, naw, I –'

‘For the last time it's fuckin' Iris! I didnae go all the way to fuckin' London to come back an' be the same old Irene!' A fleck of spit landed on my cheek, my engine revved, I gave a few hiccups and started up crying.

‘Iris. Sorry. But honest, it's no' a joke. I just wanted tae remind yeh there'll be lots more nights out tae be had. Now yer no preggers any more. Yeh can hit the town. An' Shelley, she's my new girl, she was meant tae come an' help me choose an outfit fer yeh but then she had tae babysit an', I just . . .'

Even with my eyes closed to summon my loudest wails I could tell Frankie was close to tears himself.

‘Forget it, Frankie. Let's just go.'

‘See, Reenie, I mean Iris. I just got this wee thing until yeh could come with me an' pick somethin' proper.' The last sentence was barely audible over the rain smashing down on the windscreen and my tantrum.

Tears gathered on Ma's lowered lashes. ‘Sorry, Frankie. It's a lovely thought. I'm just tired, will yeh start the car now?'

Frankie looked at Ma, her eyes closed, head back against the seat, then at my legs and fists beating in rhythm with my screams, and shook his head.

‘An' another thing,' said Ma, eyes still closed, ‘what's so important that Ma couldn't come?'

A bead of sweat popped on Frankie's forehead and rolled into the auburn thicket of his eyebrow. His eyes roamed but found nothing to rest on.

‘Aw, ehm, bingo.'

Colour rose in my ma's face for the first time that day, her eyes snapped open. ‘Bingo? Yer telling me the two fat ladies and legs eleven is why she's no here tae collect her first grandchild?'

Frankie turned off the heater, wiped the back of his neck with the palm of his hand. ‘Aye, but it's –' he looked over at Ma then directed the rest of his sentence in a whisper to his knees – ‘Triple Jackpot on Thursdays.'

‘The fucking bitch.'

As we pulled out of the car park, Ma stared straight ahead, glitter-eyed and tearless, and I let sleep seep into my exhausted wee body.

*

We drove through the grey estate and Frankie helped us to the door, carrying me with the bottle of vodka under one armpit and a teddy with a pink bow under the other. Ma said he could keep the skirt to clean his windows with and followed behind dragging her string bag that held a nightie, a Harold Robbins novel, a few grubby sanitary towels.

At the doorstep Ma gave a twitch of her lips that might have been a smile.

‘Thanks fer getting us. An' sorry fer earlier, I'm a hormonal monster. I just can't believe I'm back at this dump.'

Frankie leaned over to give her a kiss, their close-together heads putting me in shadow until the blue sky and smoke-puff clouds opened up between them again.

‘Listen, yer going tae be a great ma. Member how yeh looked after me?'

‘Aye, well our darling ma was always half pissed or down the bingo so . . . no' much has changed, has it? Will yeh come up an' have a drink of that fancy vodka? Wet the bairn's head?'

‘Sorry, sis, Shelley promised tae make it up tae me fer no coming shopping.'

‘Well, Romeo, yeh'd best not keep her waiting.'

Frankie's grin dropped. ‘There's another thing.' He passed me to Ma, put the vodka and teddy on the doorstep and pulled out a brown envelope from his back pocket. ‘Now don't get pissed off. It's just a wee bit of cash in case anything comes up an' yer no' wanting tae go back to McHennessy's.'

Ma's eyes filled as he slid the envelope into my basket. ‘Frankie . . .'

‘It's no much because of the rent going up and that new telly, just a few hunner in case.'

‘Yer too good, an' that's the truth.' They stood and looked at each other. ‘Now, are yeh going tae keep yer hot date waiting?'

Frankie gave Ma another quick kiss and squeezed my hand between forefinger and thumb – ‘She's gorgeous –' and bounded down the steps.

‘An' Frankie?' Ma shouted to his back. ‘Fer fuck's sake use some protection! You don't want tae end up with one of these!' But he was already inside the car, the Specials' ‘Too Much Too Young' vibrating through the windows.

*

Ma wrestled, vodka under one arm and me balanced on her knee, to unlock the door. The little flat smelt of fag ash and stale dinner dishes. In the bedroom Ma sat on the rumpled bed, putting me behind her, and reached for a note on the bedside table that said ‘IRENE' in big block capitals, a circular scribble where the pen wouldn't work above the R. Ma leaned forward and I saw the bumps of her spine through her T-shirt, the sag of her shoulders once she'd finished reading.

‘Well, my wee one, Granny wants us tae run out fer some milk an' twenty Benson & Hedges. Welcome fuckin' home.'

She put me in the cot and through its slats I saw the glint of the slim bottle as she tipped it towards her lips.

It was half empty when she staggered from the room and came back with the pink teddy, sodden and grimy from its hours discarded on the doorstep, and put it into my cot. Then, she lay down and fell into a sleep so deep that even my screaming for dinner wouldn't break it.