White Goods (12 page)

‘You just gonna stay
here?’ Justin asked, so I just said: ‘Yes, cos I can’t swim,’ and
that broke it – that made us both laugh. I quickly forgot about
Russell.

We messed about in the
shallow end for a bit longer. Justin tried to get me to put my face
under the water – ‘Go on, I’ll let you have a fag.’ ‘What?’ ‘Nicked
it from my sister.’ – but I just couldn’t do it. I thought of the
burning, suffocating feeling; I thought of Roy Fallick’s big fat
fist bruising my back; thought of my body smacking the surface and
knew I was better off with more of myself out of the water than in
it.

Finally, we got out. I
used the ladder, but Justin pulled himself up by his arms. His
trunks must have got caught up at the front, trapped between his
crutch and the edge of the pool, as they came down a bit and you
could see the crack of his bum. I didn’t say anything; he would
only have asked to see a bit of mine.

When we got to the
changing area, the one thing I was most dreading happened: all the
cubicles were occupied. So I had to follow Justin into the men’s
communal area. I hated it there, and not only because I was with
Justin and I didn’t want him to see me naked. When I came with Ian
or Dad (rarely) it was full of older men, all wrinkly and hairy,
showing off their hangy-down bits without any shame. I found it all
a bit alarming; for some reason this made Ian and Dad laugh. But on
this day it was empty – to start with.

I got my
stuff from the short grey locker I’d squeezed it all into, piling
it all up in my arms like I’m on
Crackerjack
; my shoes balancing on
the very top, like the cabbages they give to the contestants who
get a question wrong. As my feet splashed in dribbles of water
along the way back, I wondered if I’d got a verruca yet. It was a
good distraction from what I feared was coming: Justin getting a
look at both my whatsit and Della’s towel, and laughing at me for
both.

I found a
corner and dropped my stuff on a wooden bench, which was a bit wet
from other swimmers, but my arms were about to give way –
Crackerjack!
– and I
would have dropped it all anyway. My dry purple y-fronts fell on
the floor, getting completely soaked, so it would look like I’d wet
myself when I put them on. Justin was right beside me, but he
didn’t say anything. I could hear him – the slap of his wet trunks
as they hit the floor and a shuffling sound, as he dried himself
off with a towel. I put the Minnie Mouse towel around me, making
sure that most of Minnie was actually facing away to the corner,
which meant tucking it in at the back. Then I tried to take my
trunks down without the towel slipping off, which wasn’t that easy,
and I kept having to tuck it back in. I could hear Justin finishing
off – the smack of his pants as he flicked the elastic at his
waist, then pulling on his trousers and t-shirt – but he still
hadn’t said anything. Not even any pointless conversation, which
wasn’t like him.

Eventually,
there was a voice. It wasn’t Justin’s though. It came from the
other end of the changing area. I knew it well and it made my skin
goose-pimple, like it was suddenly colder, even though it wasn’t.
And the pain was there in the small of my back again, going
thud.
The voice was
unmistakeable to me.

‘What you fucking looking
at?’ it was Roy Fallick.

I didn’t dare turn;
didn’t dare. And I just wanted my parka back - curse Auntie Stella
and her washing and interfering.

‘What you fucking looking
at?’

This was an accusation
thrown at Justin on a regular basis. I waited for his response,
wondering if for once he might remain silent. He didn’t.

‘I’m looking at some fat
ugly cunt with a dick that looks like a brussel sprout, you
flid!’

‘Fuck off,
queer,’ Roy replied and I was expecting more – a thump –
thud! –
but what Justin
said seemed to shut him up and put him off. For a bit, at least. It
would come later, though.

Roy took himself and his
small vegetable off to see if a cubicle was free yet, I guess. In
any case, we didn’t see him at the pool again that day.

We were silent again for
a bit. Finishing off. Combing hair. Justin slapping on gel. Rolling
up our wet stuff in our towels. Checking we had
everything.

‘Thanks
then,’ he said eventually, in a way that meant the opposite. Why
did people do that? It was a Della special, that: ‘Oh, that’s just
brilliant.’ ‘Aren’t you the clever one?’ ‘Yeah, that’s really gonna
make a difference, that.’ And now Justin had started doing
it.
Thanks then.
But I hadn’t done anything, so I didn’t reply.
You probably need to stop staring at
people,
is what I had wanted to
say,
cos they clearly don’t like
it,
but I didn’t. I would only have got
some snappy comment back. Keeping quiet didn’t stop him making
another remark, however.

‘So,’ he said, as we were
about to leave, narrowing his eyes a bit, like he was pissed off,
‘what’s with the Minnie Mouse towel?’

On the way out, I bought
us both a Texan Bar from the machine near the exit and Justin
seemed to warm up again.

‘What shall we do now?’
he asked, ripping open the wrapper, as we went down the steps to
street level. But we were instantly distracted, as a little crowd
had gathered around Tina, including a policeman wearing one of
those tall navy hats with the silver bit on the top. ‘A tit,’
Justin called it, but I knew it was wrong to say. Even though the
police had come for Dad on the night of the funeral, they were just
doing their job, probably.

‘She with you boys,
then?’ the copper asked, when we approached. ‘She’s been making
quite a bit of noise.’

I thought
Justin might get a bit cheeky – make some bacon jokes or something.
He usually did. At school, with teachers, he was always being kept
in during the break or after school, or being sent to stand outside
the head mistress’ office. His mum was called-in a few times,
too.
‘What do you expect me to do?’
I’d overheard her say in the playground to Mrs
Pothecary, our teacher.
‘You’re the one
looking after him here, not me. He don’t get into any trouble at
home.’
Which wasn’t true, but you didn’t
correct Justin’s mum. She left a nasty mark on your arm if you
did.

Anyway, he was quiet and
polite to the policeman outside the swimming pool. No back chat,
nothing.

‘Can I take Tina home?’
he asked in a softer voice I didn’t recognise.

‘Tina?’ the policeman
chuckled, and that seemed to work, so I guess Justin knew what he
was doing, because the copper said: ‘Go on then, but don’t leave
her like this again, or I’ll speak to your parents.’

‘Does he know
you?’ I said, as we walked away, Tina’s feet –
Stilettos,
Justin called then –
clip-clopping on the pavement.

‘All the coppers know
me,’ he bragged, like it was a good thing – like a prize or a
trophy. Something for show-and-tell or assembly. ‘Right, what
next?’ he asked, finishing the last bit of his Texan Bar and
dropping his wrapper in the gutter, without even checking if the
policeman was still looking. Back to his old self.

I wondered
what would happen when I finally got home. It was going to go one
of two ways: either a committee of ‘faces’ would be waiting for an
explanation –
And where do you think
you’ve been?
- or no one would have
noticed my absence. It was the last of the two.

It was five o’clock when
I went through the back door. Me and Justin had spent the afternoon
in the big park in town – Jubilee Park – and then gone back to his
for a bit, breaking another of Mum’s rules.

At home,
Auntie Stella was in the kitchen, stirring something brown in a
pot. She wore one of Mum’s aprons – in blue and white checks – and
a pair of pink, high-heeled slippers, with pink feathers stuck on
the front. Definitely her own, I thought. She dropped some big
white things, like baby’s fists, into the brown stuff, so I guessed
we had stew and dumplings coming. Dad was
out somewhere.

‘Where you been?’ Ian
asked, as he shooed me into Della’s room – our official den of
conspiracy - but I didn’t have to answer, as Della spoke
immediately.

‘She’s doing proper
cooking now,’ she cut-in, arms crossed over her chest, pulling a
face like a sulking dog. ‘Dad’ll love it.’

‘Has something happened
to Marilyn?’ I asked, but they both ignored me.

‘We need to sabotage it,’
Ian announced.

‘So, what’s that
mean?’

They both looked at me,
Della’s sulky dog curling up like a cat into a grin.

It wasn’t quite as easy
as they made out. Della and Ian were supposed to drag her away from
the stew, distract her with something, and then I was supposed to
put something in it to spoil it. But they made the rules
complicated.

‘Don’t make it too
obvious.’

‘She’ll know if you make
it too bad.’

‘We still need her to
serve it up, for Dad to try it.’

‘And you mustn’t change
the colour or anything.’

The last bit seemed the
easiest, because you couldn’t really change the colour of something
once it was brown. I knew that from mixing up paints when we did
Art at school; I always ended up with lots of different
browns.

‘And don’t make it too
obvious when you’re done,’ Ian insisted.

‘Yeah, don’t
come charging in and say:
‘I’ve done
it!’
’ Della added, and they both thought
this was hysterical.

‘I won’t,’ I said, but I
was still a bit worried about how I was going to pull this
off.

The distracting bit took
quite a while to sort out.

‘I gotta stay with this
dish till it’s done,’ Auntie Stella kept insisting, whenever Ian or
Della asked for her attention. ‘Just give me a minute or
so.’

Come and see
this on the TV, Auntie Stella? Can you have a look at my leg, I
think I hurt it? Auntie Stella, there’s a mark on the carpet – can
you have a look? Have you seen what’s going on over the road –
look?

I kept expecting her to
catch on, but she just laughed lightly to herself. I think she was
pleased to be in high demand, like it was a sign we were accepting
her being there at last. I felt a bit mean, but then again we
hadn’t asked her to stay; hadn’t asked her to lose her flat. She’d
asked herself.

‘All finished,’ she
eventually announced, switching off the gas, giving it one final
stir, click-clacking with her stiletto slippers as she left the
kitchen in search of the others. ‘Now, what’s all this
about...’

Somehow they
managed to entice her upstairs. Well, Della had – and Ian was on
lookout. ‘Oh, your Mum’s stuff,’ I heard Auntie Stella say. ‘You
wanna sort through it now?’ Which was interesting, because she
sounded all surprised, like it was a bit too soon to do it, even
though we knew she’d been
ferreting-through-it-like-a-desperate-tramp
(Della, in a bitter, teary voice) for
days.

Down in the
kitchen, I was trying to remember the rules.
‘Don’t make it too obvious.’ ‘She’ll know if you make it too
bad.’ ‘We still need her to serve it up, for Dad to try it.’ ‘And
you mustn’t change the colour or anything.’

I looked at
the kitchen clock. It was 5:50 by then. Dad might be back soon. I
was never sure what he was doing, what
job
he was on
.
But it
usually brought him home around six.

In the cupboards, there
were all sorts of ingredients to choose from. Gravy powder, pepper,
chilli powder, lots of herbs and stuff I’d never heard of or wasn’t
sure had ever been used. Custard powder too, which I thought about,
but I wondered if it just might change the colour a bit after
all.

In the end, I picked up
the salt. Making it a bit saltier might be enough. It was in a big
bag, the size of a bag of flour, but plastic and see-through, apart
from the writing on it. Someone had snipped a corner off, so you
could pour it out. I took it down from the cupboard and began to
tip a little bit in, slowly.

‘She’s on her way!’ Ian
was suddenly behind me, his voice abruptly in my ear, making me
jump. Making my hand jolt.

‘Shit, Ian!’ I cried,
moving the bag away from the pan as quickly as possible, but it was
still at an angle, and it tipped over the cooker, then all over the
floor, making a huge mess. A thick white line of powder ran across
our black and red lino; a line of gunpowder, in my imagination,
just waiting for the fuse to be lit. It didn’t take
long.

‘You idiot,’ Ian scolded
me, taking the bag, shooing me away. ‘Get a dustpan and brush and
quick.’

Then it all seemed to go
slow motion. Me getting the brush. Ian stirring the stew, clearing
up the salt that had spilt on the hob. Auntie Stella getting closer
and closer. Her voice too. The words coming out long and slow.
What. Are. You. Kids. Up. To? What. Have. You. Done?