Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (3 page)

It took over two years for Tony Hogan to show up. Until then I busied myself taking my first steps in a sunny patch of garden cleared of nettles. I learned words: Ma, Frankie, coffee and poo. My favourite word when he walked into our lives was, unsurprisingly and appropriately, a joyful, sometimes frustrated, ‘fuck!' I loved the attention that word would bring.

Ma laughed more. Sometimes she laughed so much that tears seeped out and those sparkly little drops became big heaving sobs. I kept an eye on her.

When I turned one, and Ma's friends came over to drink to my birthday, Jodie arrived with a black eye and a limp and Ma wouldn't let her leave again. She stayed in my room and slept under the Danger Mouse duvet that Frankie had bought me.

I had lots of uncles but Uncle Frankie was the one who came every week, brought presents and wanted to play with me and not just Ma. The other uncles picked me up for about three minutes and then put me aside like a fag end, not taking their eyes off Ma or the bedroom door over her shoulder.

Jodie chased Frankie for a whole year, wearing less and less as her lust – and his uninterest – got more and more. I once caught her sitting on my Danger Mouse duvet with her nose buried deep in the collar of his jacket and her hand down her knickers. One day Frankie told her to settle for his pal Meathead instead. Jodie did as she was told.

After a few months living at Monarch Avenue Ma said she was ‘burying the hatchet' and started catching the bus to Grandma's where Ma cleaned and bought shopping and I'd watch
Sesame Street
. Today is brought to you by the letter F and the word ‘fuck'.

Sometimes I'd try to spray the foamy polish for Ma when I could see from the slump of her shoulders that she was tired from listening to half-pissed advice on child-rearing while polishing fifty-six decorative plates.

*

Back at our house it was sometimes so full I couldn't put names to the quick-changing faces, smells and antics. I couldn't tell you who the man with a moustache and torn anorak was who went into the toilets for an hour at a time, or the name of the woman who had bracelets dancing up and down her scratched wrists. If something dodgy happened Ma would say, ‘It's just a pal of Frankie's. I'll make him get shot.'

Busy as the house was, Ma always found the time to bathe me in my too-small pink plastic bath in front of the fire. I always got my vitamin drops that tasted of banana and the smell of bleach and she still spent an hour a day encouraging me, unsuccessfully, to ‘cack a housey and pee a wallie' on my bright red potty.

The night I was made to remember Ma's lie about Tony Hogan was the night she said I could do without a nappy and babysitter and Jodie, glass in hand and tights already laddered, appealed to Ma.

‘Are yeh sure, Iris? Just have some patience, do yeh no remember fat wee Mark from the Grafton Hilton?'

Ma was at the mirror, shaking her hips in time to the Human League, using a needle to separate her clumped mascaraed lashes.

‘Aye, I remember, exactly!' She laid down the needle and looked hazily for her fag packet. ‘Besides –' her words were oil sliding on her tongue – ‘my ma had all of us out of nappies by the time we were two an' I'll be fucked if I'm giving her another thing tae crow over.'

Jodie scooped a handful of blue gel from a tub and slicked it through her hair; the bubblegum smell filled the room.

‘You an' yer bloody ma, Iris. Honest, if yeh popped out a solid gold baby yer ma would say that hers was diamond-encrusted and shat pure platinum.'

Ma found her fags and lit one up, the lighter making two passes before finding the tip.

‘Aye, aye. More importantly, is Meathead bringing some mates tonight or what?'

‘Aye, a new bunch he's in with.'

‘Well, I hope one of them is a ride.'

Ma stood by Jodie at the mirror and they turned their hips this way then that; Jodie wedged into a lacy red dress and Ma, with those cheekbones and that rail-thin body, in leather trousers and a black satin blouse.

‘Right, are yeh going tae help me with the drawers?' Ma scooped bottles of nail polish, crusty eyeliners and a dirty ashtray off the top of the chest of drawers.

‘Iris, seriously, are yeh sure about this? We can just get them tae bring over some booze an' draw and have a wee party here?'

‘Not a chance.' Ma fluffed her tight, chemically enhanced curls in the mirror. ‘I havnae been out all week. An' it's fine, Denise said she'd nip through every hour or two.'

Ma bent and gave me a boozy smacker on the cheek.

‘Alright, Janie-Jane, see yer potty? When yeh want tae go cack a housey or pee a wallie yeh go an' sit on there. Sleep tight, wee one, an' keep that water in the basin!'

She left me with my basin of water and jam jars and I carried on my endless, joyful cycle of filling and pouring, filling and pouring, while Ma talked about her ‘clammy arse in these trousers', and they pulled the chest of drawers across the door.

‘Ta-ta!'

In a clatter of heels and one dropped and retrieved handbag they were gone, leaving just the smell of fags and bubblegum hair gel.

For a while I filled and poured and filled again, fascinated with the long arc of water, changing shape as it went from jar to jar, jar to basin. Then, like a sudden blow winding me, I felt it: the quiet. So quiet I could hear the fridge's disgruntled hum and a rubbish bin being kicked over in the street.

‘Ma!' But my voice was swallowed into the quiet, ‘Ma! Ma! Ma?'

I knew she had gone. I knew it after the first wail but I filled my lungs, it felt better to shout. I threw myself belly down on the bed and screamed, I thought maybe Denise would hear and come and give me a cuddle, take me to her flat to watch some telly.

I cried till my lungs burned and my face was stiff with snot and it wasn't until I felt the familiar clenching in my stomach that I stopped. The potty was in the corner, shiny and red, still smelling of plastic from lack of use but I would not go to it. I would not please my ma by getting up and ‘cacking a housey' in that stupid red pot. And so, my first act of rebellion was to shite myself. That'll show her, I thought, as I felt the hot ooze down my legs.

The bangs on the door woke me as Ma tried to get the key in the lock. My bottom half felt sticky and itchy; I started to cry. Ma stumbled along the hallway to our room and stood in front of the chest of drawers.

‘Chony, gimme a shand with thish.' Ma's tongue was swollen from the vodka.

‘Fuckin' hell, what's the smell?'

The first time Tony saw me I had a red, snot-encrusted face and my own filth sliding down my legs onto Ma's duvet cover. The first time I saw Tony with his sharp nose, slitty eyes and mouth twisted in disgust I knew that, if I hadn't already, I would have shat myself right there and then.

*

At first Tony bulldozed my days in small ways, with streaky underpants thrown over my Lego, placing a lit joint between Ma's lips as soon as she woke or dumping me at Denise's so he and Ma could go for steak dinners. With him around there was never enough time for baths and the lid of my vitamin bottle stuck shut.

Tony had yellow-blond hair that he dyed once a month leaving the bathroom smelling of pissy ammonia. He spent half an hour, more sometimes, making sure the spikes of his hair were just so. One day he caught me watching him, turned, and gave me my first ever smack. It left a grown-man-shaped handprint on my bum cheek for twenty minutes but Ma never saw it.

He had a complexion the colour of Spam that mixed badly with bleached hair, and an earring with a dangling silver skull. When people first met Tony you could see their eyes dancing over him; their mouths twitching in amusement. Until he met their eye with a dead stare and said: ‘Tony. Tony Hogan. Yeh might have heard of me.' And even if they hadn't yet, if they didn't already know he was the Aberdonian King, or at least Duke, of thugs and drugs, they pretended, showing respect by nodding and averting their eyes.

And Ma? Ma loved the power of being connected, truthfully this time, to that name. She thought she had willed it that first day on Monarch Avenue, told Jodie, ‘It was fate,' and hooked her arm through his in ownership, smiling up blindly at his sharp nose and dark eyes.

When he asked her to go to the shop for fags, he took a bum-shaped wad of warm twenties from his back pocket, peeled off two and told her to buy herself some sweeties and Ma giggled. Not a grown-up's laugh but a skittish, excitable noise. Definitely a giggle.

Tony and Jodie didn't get on.

‘She's trying tae turn you against me, Iris. Jealousy.' He kissed the inside of Ma's wrist, gave it a bite. ‘An' who can blame her, eh?'

Jodie soon left to live with Meathead and his ma in a flat above the chip shop. With Jodie gone Tony moved me back to my bedroom by dumping my toys, clothes and me onto my bed in a pile. When Ma got home from the shops she found us all in a shocked bundle and he grabbed her elbow and told her in the shadow of the hallway, ‘This is a suitable place for a bairn, our bed is not.'

Ma squinted and looked at me quietly organising my things by size and colour. ‘Aye, I suppose yer right. I couldn't get Tennent's, do yeh want a Skol?'

Frankie was a wee boy trying to impress a teenager, laughing too soon at Tony's patter, rolling up his T-shirt sleeves over his shoulders and calling Ma ‘the wee woman', just like Tony.

They sat drinking whisky with Special Brew, Tony setting the world to rights, swaggering his shoulders in his chair. ‘I know a bloke, good as gold he is, he has some of the best stuff coming intae Scotland at the mo.'

Frankie nodded his ginger bowl cut slowly, sucked air through his teeth.

Tony took another swig of Special Brew. ‘It's uncut like, so yeh can make a tidy profit with a wee bit of home economics,' he snorted, ‘but for business or pleasure just say the word an' I can put yeh in touch.'

‘Aye, cheers, man. That'd be good.'

Frankie's voice magically deepened, but a giveaway pink blossomed behind his freckles. Tony laughed and ruffled Frankie's mop.

‘Just don't fuck it up, eh, son?

Frankie shook his head and gulped his whisky too fast, leaving him coughing long after Tony's thin laughter had stopped dead.

*

Grandma wasn't sure about Tony or his clothes and she asked Ma, red frosted lips around a fag.

‘What's his job again?' but Ma didn't need to answer because, just then, an Interflora bouquet arrived and all Grandma's questions evaporated from her tongue at the sight of a dozen red roses.

So, Tony smothered the life that me and Ma had built, a furry mould growing over a sweating slab of cheese.

*

It started with an earring; something that small. Insignificant even, unless the earring is a little swastika pinned through an ear.

Ma said she wouldn't go out with him wearing it. They'd been drinking warm cans of lager in the sun, draped across each other on a thick blanket thrown over the regrown nettles. Ma laughed as she said it and he brought his face close to hers and gave her a hard look with those dead eyes.

‘Ashamed of me, are yeh?'

‘What? No, I just meant –' Ma tried to pull away but Tony held her shoulder, dug a dirty thumbnail into the soft dip above her collarbone. Ma's eyelids fluttered and her heavy gold hoops swayed in sympathy.

‘Naw, I'm just saying that I'm not comfy with it. In London I had loads of coloured pals.' Her voice skittered along with her eyelids.

‘When I was in London,' Tony mimicked in a squeaky voice and the nail dug in deeper. Even from my place, well in front of them, I could see it cut the flesh.

‘Aye? An' did yeh let them fuck yeh? The blackies with their big donkey dicks an' maybe Pakis with their wee chipolatas?'

Ma struggled but he had her wrist, his fist white from holding so tightly. She stopped struggling and lowered her head. ‘No as it happens. But your opinion's yours an' mine is mine. Can we just forget about it? Let's just have a nice night. We can leave Janie at Denise's an' –'

Tony took a swig from his lager and spat it in her face. The sweet sticky smell filled the air and I felt my stomach turn.

‘Tony! I –'

‘Do you, yeh stupid, ignorant bitch, think you can tell me what tae do just cause yeh lived in London? A whore in a squat? Think yeh'll tell me what tae wear?'

I could see her eyes roaming, searching me out. She saw me, knees pulled up, by the back door.

‘Janie, get inside right now.' Her voice was steady, she even tried to smile, but I couldn't move, I was glued to the ground with the morbid fascination of a child seeing something too adult.

Tony poked a finger through each of Ma's gold hoops.

‘'Member I bought these for yeh?'

Her lashes quivered, black blades of grass in the summer heat, and her eyes met Tony's.

‘Aye, aye, Tony, they're lovely. Thanks . . . it was –' she hunted for words, took a breath – ‘it was good of yeh.'

‘Well, I'm taking them back.'

Tony snatched with both hands and ripped the hoops from her soft white lobes, then he stood and pushed Ma to the ground, forced one knee on her chest and held her arms with his free hand.

‘Janie,' Ma said, ‘go to your bedroom right now and close the door. Fucking now, I said.'

And I did. I turned my back on my ma being pinned to the ground by a known psychopath and then I closed my ears to the screams and thumps by cramming my Penfold pillow around my head.

*

The next morning Tony took us for breakfast and I was allowed to have a Coke float and a bowl of chips. I was deep into an impressive sulk.

Ma glowed, though she had two bloody lines in her earlobes and a long deep scratch on the inside of her arm. Tony kept giving her little pecking kisses at the side of her neck, his blond spikes brushing the earlobes he'd ripped just the day before.