Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (7 page)

On the sofa Leanne's ma held the chip bag upside down and cried from laughter.

After the tears were wiped and the laughter died, Ma held out our door key to Leanne. ‘Now bring back three eggs an' three slices of bread.'

Leanne looked at Ma and frowned, stuck out her chin. ‘An' why do I have tae do that then?'

Ma sipped from her glass, her eyelids half lowered. ‘Cause I'm making you kids eggs an' soldiers!'

Leanne grabbed the key and raced through the door, me and Davey trailing behind.

I sat on the doorstep and mourned my plate of chips while Leanne skipped down the street shouting for all to hear, ‘We're havin' boiled eggs an' soldiers! Boiled eggs an' soldiers fer dinner!'

*

When January came with its winter winds biting through to our bones things had changed; I'd started proper school and hadn't gotten into trouble, except when Mrs Brown, our teacher, caught Davey humping on top of me and I said we were playing mammies and uncles. Ma was called to the school and nodded and looked concerned, then we'd laughed all the way home.

Ma'd cut off her hair so it stood from her head like the soft black feathers of a baby bird and started painting thick eyeliner around her eyes. Sometimes she even borrowed Jodie's pretty clothes. She looked nice again.

We started going to Grandma's every Sunday and Ma and her would cook the food while me and Uncle Frankie watched telly in the living room.

One Sunday he swore me off salt. I was sitting with him in my pink pants and blue vest, on the checkered bag of dirty washing he brought over to Grandma, digging into roast chicken and chips.

‘Don't eat salt, Janie.' Frankie pulled the brown china shaker from my chubby fingers. ‘It'll kill yer heart.' He put his rough hand just under my neck. ‘The thing that pumps all the blood?' He shoved a piece of chicken skin into his mouth. ‘It'll kill yeh, Janie, eatin' salt, like.'

I picked up a fat golden chip, brushed off the oily granules and wiped my greasy mitts on my thighs. Ma laughed from the kitchen doorway. ‘My wee brother, the fuckin' loon. Janie, take what yer cracked uncle says with a pinch of salt.' And, laughing at her own joke, she turned back towards the kitchen and Grandma, who was shouting for help with the dishes.

The colour rose in Frankie's face; he slammed his plate to one side and tilted his head back. ‘Yeh don't know everythin', yeh know, sis.'

Ma came back and leaned on the kitchen door frame, smiling. ‘Yer right enough, Frankie, but I knew enough tae run away to London and no' tae bloody Blackpool.'

Grandma came through holding a pair of pants in one hand and a bar of black soap in the other. ‘Aye, but unlike some he came back with a wad o' cash an' a bottle fer his ma. You just turned up with trouble an' a bun in the oven.'

Frankie snorted, picked up his plate and nodded down to me in agreement.

Ma's face dropped. ‘Well, Ma, he's over twenty now, do yeh no' think he's old enough tae take a bar of soap to his own skidders?'

Grandma raised her pencilled eyebrows and twirled the white cotton pants on her forefinger. ‘No' skidders like these. They're boskers, they need a ma's touch.'

On the bus home Ma huffed and dug her hands deep in her coat pockets. ‘Even his fuckin' skidders are better than mine.'

*

Frankie would sometimes drive us home on a Sunday after using Grandma's phone to call some pals round to ours. All the estate kids would crowd the car and Frankie would give one of them a pound to mind it even though I always said I'd do it.

‘Needs tae be a boy, Janie. Sides, I'll give yeh a pound anyway.'

Buchanan Terrace, like Ma, was starting to look better. Frankie had sent round paint the colour of vanilla ice cream and a brown sofa that left a flower pattern on your bare legs if you could sit still long enough.

We hung the curtains Grandma brought and it was a favourite game of mine to tangle myself up in one of them, wrapping it around my body and twisting until it swallowed my hair and pulled me into the Irn-bru cloth, then, eyes closed, I'd let the fizzy sunlight seep through my eyelids, warming my brain. That's how Ma would find me, still in my velvet chrysalis, ankle-socked feet sticking out.

For all our time in Buchanan Terrace one curtain was always happily crinkled while the other hung stiff, straight and unloved.

Frankie always came over Thursdays. He had to come once a week to collect the little bags of white powder that Ma measured from a bigger bag on scales with numbers like Frankie's digital watch. Ma did the measuring on Saturday mornings and the little spoons and jumping red numbers always stole my attention, even from
Fraggle Rock
.

‘Can I have a go?' My eyes were fixed on the shiny spoons, the soft white powder.

‘No, Janie, how many times do I have tae say? Watch the telly.'

‘Just tell me what it is though?'

Ma gave me a look and then sighed. ‘It's special flour. An' I have tae measure wee bags so that people's cakes come out just right. Now watch the telly. If I can't concentrate the cakes'll be shite and then we'll not have chocolate biscuits or cola this week an' yer Uncle Frankie won't come over.'

I still loved Frankie, especially now he came over every week, so I let her concentrate.

Once, he gave me, Davey and Leanne two pounds each and we ran with the ice-cream van and bought something on every street of the estate. We managed ten stops, to Arbroath Street, before our puff and the money ran out on us.

When Frankie came over, especially on Thursdays, he went to the toilet for a long time. Ma always said he was just having a shite and he came out eventually, just a bit sleepy and pale.

‘Frankie, did you have a big poo?'

He gave his lazy laugh and looked over at Ma. ‘Fuckin' hell Iris, what are yeh like?' He'd watch telly with us till it got dark then he always had to go.

On school nights me and Ma would watch the Terry Wogan show, dinner on our laps. Ma had stopped me from staying at Leanne's for dinner because she'd rowed with Leanne's ma, so she gave me the chips I'd come to love and ‘something with some vitamins' to stop my sulks. Sometimes it was sausage and egg and chips, sometimes egg, chips and beans. Eggs and our evenings with the cheeky Irish host went together.

I didn't want to eat eggs; eggs came from chicken's bums and they were really baby chicks. Having one given to me from the frying pan made me panicked, reckless. I did not want an egg in my tummy.

The first time I hid an egg Ma was in the kitchen getting us Jaffa Cakes and tea for afters. I turned my knife on its side, lifted the egg and slid it under the sofa. But guilt festered in my stomach, a slimy green thing under my scratchy school jumper; the egg was there, waiting in the dark, to expose me as naughty Janie who didn't deserve her Jaffa Cakes at all.

The Sunday after I hid the egg, Frankie came over with some pals. Ma put on Madness, pencilled around her eyes and drank brandy. They stayed for a long time and Frankie's pals kept grabbing at Ma when she tried to get up and she'd flutter and giggle, like she was being tickled, before falling over on wobbly brandy legs.

I sat in my vest and pants and watched the spider dance on stiff dead legs in the record player, worried about the egg sitting under Ma and Frankie's pals' bums, before falling asleep in front of our two-bar electric fire. When I woke up, my face bumpy from the carpet and my skin blotchy from the fire, there was no one there but I heard voices in the kitchen.

Through the door frame I saw Frankie standing at the kitchen counter, his sleeve rolled up and arm held tight with a shoelace. I smelt matches and something sweet and he had a needle, like for getting jabs, in his hand.

‘Fuckin' hell! Mate, mate, it's the wee un,' said Frankie's pal slouched against the kitchen sink, not Meathead who never came over any more.

‘Frankie? Are yeh sick? Will I get Ma?'

‘Get the fuck out, Janie!' He started towards me, arm raised and ready to hit, the shoelace waving like a ribbon in the wind.

I ran to Ma's room; her door was blocked from the inside and I banged my fist on it. I could hear noises, I knew she was there but she wouldn't come out, I knew that as well. So I made myself small in the corner between my bed and the wall, my favourite nook since I had fallen asleep there in my tangerine curtain nest.

It was my fault Ma was ignoring me. She must know about the egg. In my mind, full of the teachings of Bert and Ernie, I made a deal: I would tell the truth. Be a good girl and maybe she would talk to me again and Uncle Frankie would get better. With this promise made I wedged myself deeper into my nook and cried until sleep lapped at the sharp edges of that night. I waited two days before I told Ma, with tears in my eyes, a black bat's wings beating against my ribcage.

‘Ma, I'm sorry.' Her tight face turned the pale, sickly colour I remembered from the days before Tony went away. I couldn't talk, my chest heaved. ‘I'm sorry.'

Ma grabbed me.

‘What? Tell me fuckin' what?'

I got down on my knees in front of the sofa and Ma followed. She lifted the sofa a few inches with both hands and there was my monster, gleaming in the half-light, winking with his orange eye, promising revenge. She rescued it, hard at the edges with congealed grease, its yolk cracked down the middle.

Ma stood, egg in her hand, silent. I was sorry I told her. I explained, about chickens' bums and baby chicks in tearful, half-gulped-down breaths. She bent down and stared at me. I waited for her to ‘blow'. That was always the warning. ‘Janie, I'm warning yeh, I'm about tae blow.' I held my breath, closed my eyes and prepared for the famous Ryan temper to fall down on me. I held my breath until sparkles appeared then opened my eyes to the silence. Ma looked at my face, her shoulders fell and she tutted. Shook her head and put her hand to my face. ‘Janie yeh know yeh don't ever have tae be afraid of me? I'm yer ma, Janie.'

‘I know, Ma.' Then, as though pressing a bruise, I said it quickly. ‘Ma? Is Frankie sick? Cause he has tae give himself jabs?'

Ma sat on the sofa's edge and said to the split orange eye in her palm, ‘Out of the mouth of babes.' She looked up. ‘Aye, Janie, I do think he's sick but he doesnae want anyone knowing so yer not tae talk about it, OK? Promise?'

‘Aye, I promise.'

And so that first promise of silence shattered inside of me like the twist of a kaleidoscope; to be joined by so many more jagged secrets, pushed into a little body for safe keeping until they threatened to cut their way out.

*

The summer I was six it was so hot that the gold of the sun turned the windows of the estate into shiny new pennies that winked and glinted around us. I spent all my time at the swings, waiting for the highest point, that split second when it felt like floating and then jumping off to land on feet that fizzed in shock when they hit the concrete.

That day I didn't land on my feet and ran up the stairs with a grit-filled scrape biting with every step. Our front door was wide open. I saw shapes moving through the frosted glass of the living-room door, people trapped under a layer of ice, then I heard Ma laughing in a way that made me think of her head thrown back and that made me forget about the sting of my knee.

‘Ma?'

The laughter stopped and she opened the door, just enough to squeeze her body through sideways. ‘Janie, yer finished playing already?'

‘Aye. I hurt my knee.' I stared past her, ‘Who's in there?'

‘Come into the kitchen, Janie, I'll get yeh some juice and fix yer knee up. An' take off yer jumper, yeh've a face on yeh like a beetroot.'

She sat me on the sink draining board and I tugged off my squeaky wool jumper while she made me a Vimto.

‘Do yeh remember yer Uncle Tony?'

She wet the dishes sponge and pressed it against my knee. I stopped drinking but kept the glass to my face. I frowned behind the sticky rim as the sponge soaked my raw skin.

‘Come on, Janie, it's just a wee scrape. An' of course yeh remember Tony . . . silly question. Well, he hasnae been tae see us in ages, has he?'

‘It's against the law. You said. You said if he did the police would come and I'd get taken away.' My words smacked against the bottom of the glass and echoed back out.

‘Shh! Janie, not so loud.' She ran her fingers across her scalp. ‘Janie, he's all better now. He was . . . sick, like yer Uncle Frankie, but he's feeling better.'

I stuck the glass over my chin and mouth and gulped the air out of it so it stuck to the bottom of my face.

‘Iris?' The familiar shout from the living room. Ma pulled the glass off my chin and it gave a loud fart.

‘It's just a visit. Will yeh come through?'

Would I? I wasn't leaving him alone with my ma again. She lifted me down from the sink, and though my legs dangled down to her knees, she hoisted me onto her hip to carry me through.

Tony was sprawled across the rug in front of the fire, though it wasn't on. He was the same; he didn't look any better to me. Same dirty denim and spiked hair and chunky, silver rings. The only change was that he'd shaved and had the first of the year's sunburn that made a T-shape across his face.

‘Janie my wee petal, look how big yeh got.'

He straightened and opened his arms to me and I moved behind Ma who placed her splayed fingers and palm on the crown of my head and said in a quiet voice, ‘We'll just give her time. She'll come round. She's too young tae understand.'

‘Can I watch the telly?'

‘Aye, go on.'

I heard their laughter behind me and drinks pouring and I knew that Ma wanted to get shot of me and that it might be a long visit.

It was the chimes of the ice-cream van that cut through my sullen channel flicking. Ma came over.

‘Janie do yeh want an ice cream or not?'