Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (17 page)

She threw her bowl at me, the rim hit me on the chin and most of the rice pudding slid down inside my top. ‘Ma!'

‘What now?' Ma came out of the kitchen, saw me and bit back a laugh, ‘Well, don't just sit there, Janie. Go wash it off.'

Ma pulled Tiny onto her knee, and as I was walking to the bathroom, the creamy rice sliding over my belly, I could hear Tiny crying in the way that won't let you catch your breath. ‘Now I've no da an' no rice pudding.'

We watched
Antiques Roadshow
and I shared my half of rice pudding with Tiny and painted her nails. ‘Hey, do yeh know what yer da's gone off tae do?'

Tiny looked up at my face, her eyes small, ready for a row.

‘He's gone tae find work so he can buy yeh some nice things.'

She blew her nails, shiny ladybirds, and stared at me.

‘So he'll get yeh a nice princess dress an' maybe take yeh to see the sea. He loves yeh so much that he'd leave home tae make sure you could have some nice presents.'

She stopped blowing at her nails. ‘Really? He's going tae come back and bring presents like last time? When'll my da be home then?' She was smiling now, had a far-off look, probably imagining her da with a sack of loot like Santa.

‘Well, that depends on the presents. What was the last thing yeh asked him for?'

She smudged her nails sitting on her hands and bouncing. ‘A pony!'

‘Well, he'll be away saving up fer one then. So he might be a bit longer than last time.'

She went skipping off to Ma to tell her her da was bringing back a pony and I picked at the red, scabby smudges she'd left on the carpet. Poor Tiny, it wasn't her fault her da was a fly-by-night purse-stealing joker.

Hiya Girls,

Sorry about the short shrift. Had to get away. In Yarmouth. Lots of work to be had. You should come – I've a place here all ready.

Love to all my girls.

Doug

PS Tiny, there are donkeys on the beach here!

*

The postcard had a picture of a donkey in a straw hat with a stick of pink rock pushed between the yellow slabs of its teeth. Ma said it made her depressed, I said everything made her depressed even when she took her pills, and Tiny loved the postcard so much she took it to school to show her teacher and told everyone her da was buying her a donkey in a hat and that that was even better than a pony.

It was the week for post, because a few days after the postcard Ma got a letter from the school saying I hadn't attended for a month and would I be re-enrolling after the summer holidays. She made two cups of tea and we sat facing each other on the sofa. I could see the letterhead and knew I was in deep shite and I eyed the hot tea nervously, but Ma was so calm I wondered if she'd overdone her medication.

‘I mean, Janie, it makes yeh wonder what sort of school wouldn't know where its own pupils are fer a month, or fer that matter even think tae find out.' She shook her head sadly and handed me the packet of Hobnobs.

I shrugged. ‘Maybe they thought I'd gone back to Coatbridge High.'

‘Aye, maybe.' Ma was being vague; she took a sip of her tea. ‘It seems yeh've burnt all yer bridges now though. What you need is a new start.'

I choked down my bite of biscuit. ‘I'm not moving, Ma. I've mates here.'

‘Who said anything about that?'

‘I'm not eleven any more. Yeh can't guilt-trip me into coming. I suppose it's Yarmouth yeh want tae cart us off tae? Following Doug again! Cause that's worked out so fuckin' brilliant so far!'

She started losing her calm, put her tea down with a splash. ‘I did what I thought was best fer you two an' until yer a single mother with no protection an' no cash yeh can shut it. Yeh can hardly take the high ground when yeh've been truanting an' doing God knows fuckin' what!'

I stood up to shout down at her but she stood up too. ‘Bullshit! Yer fuckin' weak! I'm not moving an' yeh won't make me!'

I tried to pull away but she held my wrist tight and got close into my face so I could smell the metallic coat of tea on her tongue. ‘You little shite! I'm fuckin' weak, am I? I can't make yeh move? No? You fuckin' watch me.'

I pulled my hand away and ran out the front door. I was halfway down the road before I realised I'd no money for fares and nowhere to go in Coatbridge, so I sneaked back and let myself quietly into my room.

She sidled around me. Told me I'd be closer to London and the ‘real world', asked me if I really saw myself living in Coatbridge or Motherwell forever and I replied, ‘Fuck, no!' She told me it was one big party every night; there were always holidaymakers out for a good time, and I could get a little job and earn some cash.

In the end what she said didn't matter, because I'd felt trapped in a thick box of smoke, of booze, dope and looming dead ends for just long enough to be looking for what might be beyond it, and I groped my way towards that shaft of light at the bottom of the door, and towards Great Yarmouth.

Doug came the following week with a borrowed car. Ma was the first at the window after he tooted the horn.

‘What the fuck is that?'

I pulled the curtain back. Doug stood in front of a low thin car, the kind from seventies detective programmes, grinning away like Mr Big Balls himself. The car was a wreck and exactly the same colour as the curtains I used to tangle myself up in at Buchanan Terrace as a kid.

‘It's the fuckin' Tango mobile, that's what that is.
You know when you've been Tangoed!
I'm not arriving in that, Ma. Yeh can let me out at the edge of the town an' I'll walk.'

Ma laughed. ‘Janie, fer God's sake, are yeh expecting a parade fer yer arrival in Great Yarmouth?'

She went to tell Tiny her da had arrived, but I could already see her barrelling out the door and up into Doug's arms where he spun her round, drew circles with Tiny's ink splash of hair. I knew she would bloody love that car.

*

It took us two days to get to Great Yarmouth. We were skint because of the car and the petrol and because Ma insisted on paying the gas and electric bills. ‘It's folk like us that ends up paying anyway,' though Doug told her not to bother. She asked about the car.

‘Eighty quid! Could yeh no get cheaper?'

‘Tha's twenty quid a day, here an' back! Any cheaper an' it would be free an' we'd be packin' yer stuff intae fresh air.'

‘An what about petrol?'

‘About fifty.'

Ma let out an exasperated sigh and went back upstairs. Doug looked at Tiny and shrugged and she shrugged back.

The car was barely big enough for four people, never mind the bin liners and crisp boxes filled with our crap, or Ma and Tiny's excitement that you could practically hear pinging against the tin-can roof.

‘It'll save us money in the long run, bringing everything,' said Ma when Doug told her the car wouldn't take it.

I sat in the back, my feet resting on our telly, looking through my knees at the back of Ma and Doug's heads, thinking about my last weekend in Motherwell.

Paul had got ‘special skunk spliffs' and four bottles of MD 20/20 that we mixed into big bottles of lemonade. The spliffs got me so wasted that I thought I was paralysed and couldn't move my tongue until Moira gave me a shake and asked if she could borrow my eyeliner. When the booze was done we went to Jenni's, whose parents were away.

I didn't even get through the door before the lad grabbed me, I hadn't seen him round Jenni's before, and started getting off with me. He looked a bit older and maybe sexy, but my eyelids kept drooping so I couldn't be sure. Still, I kissed back.

I don't remember getting inside Jenni's but I remember asking him to give me a hickey and him giving me a necklace of them, each love bite a perfect circle the size of a ping-pong ball. It looked like I'd taken a Hoover to myself. Next, I was looking at a Transformers quilt and he was naked and I was too. I was sure he'd see I just had downy blonde fluff, dandelion seeds, and not a thick bush of pubes like I was meant to have, and I tried to cover myself.

‘C'mon. I'm fuckin' dying here. It's no' like yer a virgin.'

Had I said so? He squeezed my nipples, they were tiny hard Jelly Tots, and kept pushing his knee between my legs to get them wider. I tried to remember why I was pushing him away.

‘I dinnae know yer name.'

He kept his hands on my tits, giving them little rough squeezes. ‘I'm Pete Malachy, I go to St Patrick's, I'm sixteen. Now c'mon!'

It seemed fair enough, I let him in between my legs, felt his weight on top of me then I wriggled away again.

‘What now? Fuck.'

‘Protection. Have yeh a condom?'

‘I'm a Catholic.'

Even after two ‘special spliffs' and a bottle of Kiwi MD 20/20 that sounded fucked to me. ‘No condom, no shag.'

It was only thanks to being pissed I was able to say that.

He walked across the room, his cock bobbing like a woodpecker garden ornament. I watched him rip the packet open and closed my eyes. I felt his weight and then a sharp pain, like using tampons for the first time, and he started pushing away.

It wasn't what I expected but I knew I should be making some noises so I made a few squeaks, kept my eyes closed, my legs wide and hoped it would finish soon.

Afterwards he got up and got dressed and, since I was still lying naked on Jenni's brother's Transformers sheets, he helped me into my miniskirt and vest, threaded my lazy legs through my knickers.

As he was leaving he stuck his head back in the door.

‘What's yer name?'

‘Janie.'

‘Was I yer first?'

I was tired. ‘Aye. Thanks an all that.'

His grin spread. ‘Fuck! I knew it.'

Then he was gone. I felt like sleeping or crying but then Moira came in and gave me some cider and said, ‘He's a fuckin' ride! I wish I'd lost it tae him.'

I shrugged, suddenly felt great and said, ‘Well, no need tae sound so fuckin' surprised.'

In the back of the Tango Mobile, I ate my salad-cream sandwich while Tiny slept with her head on my lap. I was fourteen, I wasn't a virgin and I was going to the seaside.

*

We made it, just. We had to sleep in a lay-by during the night and in the morning we woke with our tempers and our muscles wound tight and ready to ping. One by one we took a piss by the side of the road. I was last and watched the yellow streams run into each other and under the car.

We ran out of loaf and salad cream so we stopped at a BP garage and Ma got us microwave burgers. The car stank, layer upon layer of reek, my feet stewing in my Docs (hormones Ma said), Doug's ‘silent but violents', though he delicately lifted one arse cheek when he let one off so it was hardly a secret, onions, lard and our unbrushed teeth thick with stale sugar.

It was roasting too; our tops stuck to our skin and I could feel little drops of sweat scuttling down the backs of my legs like beasties. Ma begged Doug to crack a window but the handle was stuck.

Not including the occasional Christmas shop or Monday taxi, I'd only been in a car about five times in my life, but even I knew that the smoke it was belching out wasn't right. We could all see it, the engine, and Ma were About to Blow.

‘Fuckin' do something, Doug. We can't drive this for another four hours.'

Ma peered through the grey smoke, Tiny got up on her knees to watch the black clouds rise from the bonnet and I inched lower in my seat, away from the curious eyes behind other car windows.

‘Like wha', Iris? Yeh know yer problem, yeh've no sense o' limitations.'

‘Oh, I've plenty of a sense of your limitations!'

Doug beeped the horn with a series of thumps to the steering wheel and we swerved to the side of the motorway. The only blessing was that we couldn't see what might be coming.

*

We didn't have cash for a mechanic but Doug still walked to a garage and got them to tow us. Me and Tiny sat in the back of the Tango Mobile while they cranked it up, pushing us back against the seat, burger boxes, half-bitten crusts and stringy tissues collecting at our feet.

When we got to the garage Doug and Ma explained about the cash problem and the mechanic, a skinny bloke in his twenties with big pores and a greasy nose, called his boss.

‘Boss' was ancient, bow-legged and swollen at his joints; I wondered how he'd got his leg up into his overalls that morning. He looked at us standing in a row, Tiny pulling her knickers out of her arse, the rest of our cheeks burning, nodded and said Ma could leave her family allowance book as security. Ma tried, but he wouldn't take the telly. That was a relief.

Even though Doug let me have my R.E.M. tape on and Ma bought us an ice lolly at the next shop the excitement was gone. That mechanic had a face on him like he'd caught us taking a piss in the street and our dignity was pooled down at our ankles like jeans.

The car managed to limp into Great Yarmouth, past a pasta factory, the empty docks, through a council estate not quite as rough as Greenend, but for the last stretch along the seafront it lurched like a pensioner coughing up something grim and let out a streak of black smoke from its bonnet. The sun was bright, the air smelt of sea and eventually we pulled up opposite the Sea Life Centre.

I knew the shame was bad when Doug got out with a red face; the man who'd press a finger to one side of his nose and propel a gluey missile from the other nostril onto the pavement of Coatbridge High Street was embarrassed by our Tango Mobile, bin liners and crisp boxes stuffed with knickers and laddered tights. He turned to Ma.

‘Yer no payin' tha' garage a penny! Phone the social an' tell them yeh lost yer book. The auld bastard.'

He gave the car door a kick with his size eleven boot and one of the windows thumped down. Ma looked at the open window.

‘Well, that's fucking typical.'