Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (14 page)

Ma started baking in the new flat. She got books from the library and made whatever she could with cheap stuff from the bucket shop.

My favourites were palmiers, two crumbling loops of puff pastry glossy with melted sugar. I thought they looked like a fanny but said butterfly to Ma.

We got some cheap minty-green paint from the supermarket and painted our bedroom but it was the shiny kind and as soon as winter came a long shadow of mould slunk up from the skirting boards and kept rising. It matched the black goo that surrounded the window frames.

The tablets must've worked though, because now Ma never wanted to sleep and stayed up late, a full ashtray by her elbow, watching
Prisoner: Cell Block H
.

School was the same except every day, for an hour, we had Holy Communion lessons. Me and Martin Hughes weren't being confirmed so we had to sit in the store cupboard with books of Bible stories. In the playground the girls talked about their white dresses and veils, how they would wear their hair in French plaits, the Holy Communion parties and presents they would get, and I begged Ma. ‘Please, Ma, please let me have Holy Communion! I promise not tae believe in it but it's not fair I'm being left out!'

Ma was firm and said we didn't have the cash anyway. I told my teacher I felt left out and she tilted her head and said, ‘A good soul going to waste.'

Ma visited the school.

There were Orange Parades through the streets sometimes and I'd go out to watch and wave until one of my pals' das caught me and said, ‘They'd spit at yeh as quick as look at yeh, Holy Communion or no Holy Communion. Run home now and tell yer ma tae look out fer yeh.'

I looked at the huge arms beating drums and their sweaty, serious faces and did as I was told.

Tiny was not any more. She was really called Tiffany and she had soft rolls of flesh at her joints and a head of wild hair like her da. I still wasn't jealous because twice at Christmas she knocked over the tree by headbutting it, trying to get at the sparkle of the tinsel. She was still a bit simple.

Doug didn't visit that Christmas and I knew full well the selection boxes with ‘DADDY' written in black block capitals had been bought by Tiny's Uncle Sammy but I ate the chocolate anyway.

The night I gave Ma her heart-shaped card caked with glitter was the night someone fired a gun outside our bedroom window.

In the morning yellow tape struggled against the wind and an angry policeman, without a uniform, came in, drank some tea and turned his nose up at Ma's palmiers. It was a drug shooting, he said, looking around the room. ‘Usual sort of thing.'

I stood with the other kids all that day, looking at the dark stain on the grass, wishing I'd seen something to tell the others.

Two nights later Ma said I wasn't going back to school. She'd heard there was work to be had and she was sick of staying cooped up ‘in this shitehole'. I didn't ask who'd told her, it was obvious from the whisky on her breath that it came from Sammy. Asking questions was no use because there were two suitcases already packed and at the door. The next morning we were on a National Express headed for North Shields, across the border into England, and another B&B with bunk beds, a griddle pan for cooking and a metered shower, 20p a go. Ma never mentioned the job again.

*

The B&B was better than Sleathes' but worse than Burton House. Ma said it wasn't a proper B&B, even though it was called the ‘Pride of Shields B&B', but a halfway house, and when I asked halfway to what, she told me to ‘shut it, smart-arse'.

She wouldn't let us go down and have the English Breakfast even though it was included, because she said everyone gave her the creeps. ‘Shovelling it into their gappy-teethed gobs like there was a famine.'

Ma was clever with the griddle pan though, and made a big bag of sausage squares last a whole week. She fried eggs and tinned potato slices to go with them and for afters we'd have Scotch pancakes with Tip Top and strawberry jam.

If I was bored I could go down the office that was really just someone's room, and pick a video from the case and by the time I ran back upstairs it would have popped on the screen because all the tellies were joined up, like magic.

Ma let me watch
Dirty Dancing
nearly every day because she was usually sleeping anyway. I asked her if she could ‘do the lift' with me but she'd no energy since the doctor here had given her those pills.

‘Fuckin' placebos, the bastard! Thinks I can't tell the difference.'

Tiny cried all night, because of the shouting from downstairs so I'd take her into my bunk with me.

I went to school and the kids called me the Loch Ness Monster and followed me after school to see if I really did live in a homeless shelter, like Kevin Hays said. I would casually walk into the back garden of a nice-looking house with my heart thumping in my mouth and hide behind a bush until they'd gone.

When I ran home to Ma and told her with a hot, shamed face what they'd done to me she just looked more tired than ever and went for a sleep.

One night I had to go out into the street in my knickers and Ma just in her dressing gown with Tiny in a blanket because one of the ‘mad auld fuckers' was holding a lighter under the smoke alarm. A fire engine came anyway and I hid behind Ma.

‘Janie, no one cares that yer just in yer pants. Be sensible,' though she pulled her dressing gown around herself and shuffled us away from the eyes of the rest of the B&B crowd.

*

Not long after that night Ma got a housing association man come see us. He had a suit, clipboard and clean white nails. Ma showed him around.

‘As yeh can see it's wee fer three of us. You've no idea what having a house would mean.'

He smiled and turned his wedding ring. ‘I think I can imagine.'

I didn't look round, it was the bit where Patrick Swayze goes back to take Baby out of the corner, but I piped up, ‘An' yeh've tae pay twenty pee fer a shower, and if it's Sunday, then yeh have tae wait until Monday after the benefits book's cashed. An' we've all tae go together in case any of the auld buggers tries peeking. Just fer a shower!'

‘Janie!' I didn't need to turn round to know Ma was blushing.

‘Well, it's true, Ma. An' it's not even a proper B&B, it's for halfway people.'

The next week the man came in his big silver car and drove us far away from North Shields. He let me read his kids' books in the back seat and even had a car seat for Tiny, but Ma kept saying, ‘God, it's far out, isn't it?'

He nodded. ‘Lots of countryside for the kiddies though.'

The estate was in a village called Hetton-le-Hole. There were bushes planted high up with walls around them, lines of washing left out that no one pinched and red-brick flats with just two floors.

‘It's quiet, but it's safe and family-orientated. I think you'll fit in well.'

He threw Ma a smile and waited, but maybe she didn't see it because she didn't smile back.

*

The last of the mines were closing in Hetton-le-Hole. It was on everybody's lips, a permanent greasy stain. The
Hetton Gazette
had the headline ‘
THE DEATH OF HETTON
?' our first week there.

It was a mining town and without the pits it was just a northern village with no jobs, a French name and lots of angry men. Women stood facing each other in the supermarket aisles; hands knotted, lips bitten, shaking their heads in sympathy and outrage.

Sometimes, on the way to the shops, we'd walk past the mines and I'd see the men, standing in the pale April sunshine, with sunken faces and defeated shoulders drinking from Thermos cups and holding their signs. Ma once gave me a pound to put in the bucket and smiled, embarrassed it was so little, at the man but he just nodded. His grim nod said he understood, God knows he understood.

At school lots of the kids had das who were in the strike. We'd crowd around and they'd tell us about the fights with the scabs and how they were getting a holiday to the sea and a new telly when their da won.

The school was an old-fashioned sort of school. There was country and maypole dancing, a brass band, a netball team and at Easter everyone had to paint an egg and make a bonnet for the competition. I never won because the night before we realised we didn't have any eggs and Ma made my bonnet from old magazine pictures and a shoebox.

‘They don't know their arse from their fucking elbow. No originality. They're only interested in flowers and ribbons.'

She seemed more upset than me.

Because there wasn't any uniform at school Ma had taken me to the C&A sale and bought me ‘a school outfit'. I got a matching pink jumper and skirt and a shiny black plastic coat. Ma washed the skirt and jumper every second night but the other kids still called me a tramp. I wore it for two whole weeks before I ran home, up the stairs and took it all off in a pile in front of Ma.

‘I'm not wearing it. They say I smell cause I wear the same clothes, Ma. They call me bin liner.'

Ma had been watching
Countdown
while Tiny banged her bread-roll fists on the top of her highchair. ‘Janie, hold on, they call you
bin liner
?'

I could see the corners of her mouth twitching like someone was yanking invisible threads.

‘Ma! It's no funny. I've no pals, no one'll be my partner fer country dancing. I've tae go with the teacher.'

I could feel the blood raging away in my face as I stood in my pants and vest, every muscle tight with the shame of it. Ma laughed and then laughed harder as my face burned. She bent over trying to struggle out an apology to me but that only made her laugh harder.

I ran to the boiler cupboard and tucked myself inside. She would have to drag me to school if she wanted me to wear that shite again.

The next morning I put on leggings and a T-shirt and Ma didn't say a word, neither did the other kids at school. In the afternoon Simon Dean asked me to be his country-dancing partner and that night Ma bought me a Cadbury's Creme Egg and thanked me for giving her a good laugh for the first time in ages.

*

I made pals with Lesley who was even scruffier than me and Trisha who was a Jehovah's Witness; I asked her all the time what it meant but she didn't seem to know.

I wore my leggings and T-shirts every day, rolled my almost-white knee socks down to my ankle and practised doing the splits and handstands.

But getting rid of my tramp clothes and bin-liner raincoat wasn't the end of it, the sole started to come away from my left shoe. A hole was so big you could put your hand in and your fingers would come out of the other end, waggling like long toes. We didn't have any glue so Ma, sleep still in her eyes and a face on her that meant she wasn't in the mood, Blu-tacked it up. ‘There, good as new. Now get off tae school.'

Through the day I walked pigeon-toed, my feet turned inside for fear of anyone seeing the telltale pale blue line between sole and shoe. I wondered, full of temper, why Lesley, whose da had worked at the mines but didn't even get a payout, had soles and shoes that stayed together and I didn't. The next day Ma let me wear my gym plimsolls and, woken for a while from her wide-eyed dream, said she'd start looking around the second-handers for me. There was a sticky-up bit in the plimsoll where the big toe was trying to get out, they hurt a bit, but there wasn't a bit of Blu-tack in sight.

*

Ma loved us. She loved the smell of us, our chatter, the feel of our skin. She told us so. She loved Tiny's everyday discoveries and cuddles and my temper, sweet parts and cleverness.

Ma hated Hetton-le-Hole, she told us that too. ‘The arsehole of England.'

She hated the estate. ‘The fuckin' net-curtain brigade. “
Oh, how are you and the children today?
” I feel like I'm getting a Spanish Inquisition, yeh take a shite an' everyone knows the colour before yeh've turned round fer a look yerself.'

On Mondays Ma had her drink after the weekly shop. She would come down with Tiny to pick me up from school, swaying in the wind like a thin tree, staring daggers at the other mas who looked her way. Sometimes she took my teacher aside and complained about whatever had caused umbrage that week; not talking about Nelson Mandela's release, giving me kids' books when as a teacher couldn't she see I was too clever for them? Or sitting me outside for cheek. The teacher shot me panicked glances from the corner, probably getting wasted herself just from the fumes and then gave me an illustrated version of
The Scarlet Letter
.

But it was the Mondays that Ma didn't come that were the worst. The flat would be a tip, the TV blaring and Tiny would be raking her fingers through a tub of marge or pouring shampoo into a box of icing sugar. Ma would sit slumped in her chair, in a stained T-shirt with her flies open and would look up and slur, ‘Janie mah lil' angshel, come gi' yer ma a big kish.'

I stayed where I was. ‘You're drunk and look at what Tiny's doing.'

I'd march around tidying up, feeling selfless as a nun or nurse and while I walked around with my tight, disapproving face Ma would start in. ‘Don't yeh fuckin' lecshure me! I'm the ma. After all the shacrifices I made fer you kids. Stayin' in this dump. I have a treat once a week but Miss Fuckin' Prim here doeshnae want me tae have a treat. Well, fuck you!' I'd carry Tiny out of the room. ‘Fuck off then, yeh ungrateful little shites!'

We'd go to the boiler cupboard and play ‘The Germans are Coming'. It was an easy game, we just sat there in the dark and then I'd try to surprise myself and whisper, ‘The Germans are coming, the Germans are coming!' then I'd stay as quiet as I could, barely breathing with the hot hand of terror clenching at my throat and my heart beating circles in my chest. Sometimes Tiny got really scared and started to cry but that was better because it was more dangerous hiding a baby from the Germans.

When we played ‘The Germans are Coming' it was as if I was Anne Frank, from the telly, being brave for my sister.

The rest of the week Ma slept, watched TV with cups of tea and an overflowing ashtray or sat me down for a ‘pep talk'.

Talking back wasn't allowed during ‘pep talks'; instead Ma talked in circles with bright eyes. She rolled, smoked and stubbed out endless fags and bent forward to make sure I was listening.

‘Yeh see, there's out there an' in here, do yeh understand, Janie? An' in here, Janie, yer safe tae be yerself but out there yeh've tae be an iron fist. An iron fist in a velvet glove, do yeh see now?'

I didn't but I wanted to, it was important, I was scared of getting it wrong.

‘Now, say it with me, “An iron fist in a velvet glove.” Good girl, an' don't trust anyone, Janie.'

She grabbed my chin. ‘Do yeh understand they'd fuck yeh just as quick as look at yeh. The world's an awful place but I brought you kids intae it an' I've tae do my best tae protect yeh.'

She stared beyond me, eyes narrowed, let the roll-up burn down to her fingers, and when the orange tip licked at the skin she jerked. ‘Alright, go an' play, but just remember.'

And even for the Mondays, Blu-tacked shoes and name-calling, I knew Ma loved us and so I took everything she said and stored it away in the slots of my ribs and when we lay in the big bed at night tucked into each other, a set of Russian dolls, each protecting the other, I felt like the luckiest girl in Hetton, maybe even all of Northumbria.