White Goods (18 page)

‘
Fire!’

‘
Shit!’

Auntie Stella
and
Uncle
Gary
both dashed out to see which it was - in fact, it turned out to be
both.

My little
accident in the bathroom’s
extra
loo
had finally been discovered; try as we
might, we hadn’t been able to clear it all out of the bum washer.
This discovery was thanks to a little fire started by Sharon
Tankard: she’d left a sly fag burning on the bathroom windowsill. A
draught from an open window had wafted Gary’s lacy net curtains
over the hot ash and they were instantly
whooshed
in flames. Sharon was all
denials, whilst Chrissie shooed her daughter out quickly,
threatening her with allsorts, but
not-bothering-to-apologise-or-clean-up-the-mess
– Auntie Stella, once her tears were
clear.

The party
ended quickly after that, everyone sensing a change in the
atmosphere. Plus some of the blokes needed a pee and Auntie Stella
had taken over the bathroom, trying to
clear-up-what-someone-else-had-left!
So, they all left to wee outside somewhere. Auntie Stella
knew the mess was me, I could tell, but she couldn’t prove it. Ian
offered to help, but she shooed him away, giving us both more
daggered looks.

‘
Don’t think I
haven’t forgotten, young man’ she said, referring to earlier, in
the red bedroom. I still wondered how much she’d seen and how much
she knew.

We lurked in the hallway
for a bit, waiting for Dad, who was in the kitchen, still
drinking.

‘
Can’t we go?’
I pleaded to Ian, desperate to get out away from Auntie Stella’s
glaring, fearful she might say something to Dad.
‘Please.’

He slipped off quickly
into the kitchen, emerging seconds later, stuffing a key into the
pocket of his jeans.

‘
Come on,’ he
said, pushing me towards the door. ‘Della, you coming
too?’

And so we left
– just the three-of-us – with a farewell chorus of
that’s-it,
just-you-leave-it-all-for-me-to-clear-up
and a glare from
Uncle
Gary that burned into me, even though I looked
away.

Sorry,
I said in my head.
Sorry.

Outside, walking home, we
all shared a coke, which Della had taken from the kitchen at the
last minute. Getting home, it was weird. Ian unlocking and letting
us in. Like we didn’t have any parents anymore.

Like they’d both
died.

It made me think back to
the summer before. To our last caravan holiday. Mum and Dad and how
they were. Mum was gone now and Dad was... Dad was changed. Nothing
had changed and yet everything had changed.

‘
It’ll be
alright,’ Ian said, looking at me, telling what was in my head. ‘Up
to bed then,’ he added. Like
he
was my dad. It should have annoyed me, his being
bossy, his being in charge. But it didn’t. Despite everything, I
really wished it.

‘
Yeah,’ I
said, going up, getting undressed and into bed, falling asleep
deeply and quickly.

Red Nanny liked my telling
of the party. I missed out the bits about the poo and the envelope
I’d found, but she enjoyed the drama of the rest. She was
fascinated by the description of the flat, and pulled a face at any
mention of Auntie Stella, so I went a bit over-the-top with those
bits, to get the best laughs.

With my party story
finished, I decided it was probably time to leave. You had to stay
for a certain amount of time, or it was rude.

‘
I’m gonna go
Nan,’ I told her, standing quickly and she looked up,
smiling.

‘
You just give
my love to your mother, Sean,’ she said, following me to the door
and I left without looking back.

Outside, I was a bit early
and there was no Della to meet me.

Geoff was still out the
front, raking leaves off his otherwise perfect lawns.

‘
He cuts them
with a pair of scissors,’ Nan Buckley had once claimed. ‘He’s a
perfectionist. It’s that army discipline.’

I’d never seen him do it,
though; only ever seen him use one of those whizzing blades on the
end of a long stick.

As I waited, he nodded at
me, but didn’t say anything to me this time; just carried on with
his clearing up.

I looked up
and down the street and couldn’t see Della, not even in the
distance. So, I quickly popped into the newsagents and spent some
of the money I’d earned from the visit – I bought a
Look-In
and a Sherbet
Fountain. I didn’t like the long piece of black liquorice, but I
liked the rest of the powdery sweet that filled the yellow tube. I
always pulled the black stick out and tipped the sherbet into my
mouth, only giving up when the paper tube got soggy and you started
to get bits of it on your tongue.

Back out in
the street, I looked up and down again: right was the way into
town; left was the crematorium end. Heading left, I saw a familiar
figure. It wasn’t Della. I checked my watch – it was one of those
new digital ones, with the alarm that went off every hour with
a
pip
. Della was
ten minutes late. Maybe she had forgotten. I kept watching the
figure up ahead. I hadn’t seen her since the day of Mum’s funeral.
Something told me she had turned up for a reason.

Even though
I’d get into trouble for not waiting and possibly cause all sorts
of worry, I left the agreed meeting point just beyond Beverley
Courts. I followed Shirley White down the road and onto the
wasteland where we were not allowed to go
under-any-circumstances-you-hear-me.

The wasteland was a big
hilly area, covered in brambles and tall grass, with lots of unseen
holes and marshy bits you could get caught up in. It went on
forever. Somewhere in the middle – according to Justin, although
I’d never found it – there was a sinking mud pit where the
crematorium people put the bodies they didn’t have time to burn. I
thought of the urn at home that had ashes in it and crossed my
fingers.

Once on the waste ground,
I lost Shirley, but I had a feeling she’d headed for the
crematorium, which was right next door. It took me ten minutes to
make my way through the hilly grass, avoiding falling down any
holes and hoping I didn’t discover the legendary mud pit of the
dead. There was an orchard of trees that separated this ground from
the crematorium; no fence, just the trees. When I came across them
and entered the crematorium grounds, everything changed. I didn’t
find Shirley White.

I found Ian.

I found two other boys
too.

I stayed where I was, just
hidden in the orchard of trees. Frozen. Petrified. In my heart, I
wanted to rush in, tell them to stop, pull them off. But I
couldn’t. I was stuck. And I knew – knew I could do no good. I’d
just get a beating too. I felt sick. Sick for myself and sick with
shame for Ian.

Two of them against one.
His attackers were the same age as Ian; sixteen, maybe a bit older.
Shaved heads, but I couldn’t see their faces. Ian was up against
the wall of the crematorium building, left of the entrance. One
stood to the side of him, like a guard, whilst the other was
pounding his fists into Ian’s stomach. Punch after punch after
punch, coming at him relentlessly, as if from a machine on
auto-pilot, not another person.

I wondered, afterwards, if
they would ever have stopped, if the lady hadn’t
appeared.

There was a house at the
very edge of the crematorium and the woman who lived there appeared
in her front garden. Either side of her was a row of young children
– possibly five or six year olds – in party hats. The boy who was
standing guard seemed to notice them watching. He said something to
the one punching and the pummelling quickly ceased. Then one of
them said something to Ian, like a warning I think, and Ian nodded,
as if he had agreed to something. The lady just stayed where she
was, flanked by the infant party, until Ian’s attackers drifted off
– taking their time, slouching away with a swagger of slow
arrogance.

I waited till
it was clear and then I moved in. The woman watched me for a second
or so – checking if
I
was gonna lay into him too – but by the time I’d reached him
and helped him to his feet, she and her troupe of children had gone
back inside, back to their jelly, ice cream and pinning the tail on
a donkey.

‘
What you
doing here?’ Ian managed, wincing.

‘
I followed-.’
I stopped, thinking. Should I tell him about Shirley? ‘You. I saw
you up ahead.’

He looked at me, working
me out.

‘
I saw what
happened. Sorry. I was scared.’

‘
It’s
ok.’

And it was. I could tell.
He wasn’t cross with me.

‘
Don’t follow
me again, though. Okay?’

It was an odd request and
I wanted to ask why, but I didn’t feel I had the right, so I just
agreed.

‘
And don’t
mention this to Dad or Della, okay? That won’t help. Okay? I’ll
sort this. I’ll handle this one.’

As we left - Ian holding
his stomach, walking slowly - I realised I wasn’t the only one who
had watched the beating. At the entrance, waiting for us, was
Justin. He must have followed me. He looked sheepish and went to
say something, but I just ignored him. So, he walked behind,
following me again, as I made my way home.

‘
You not
speaking to him, then?’

‘
No. He was
with Roy and Clint earlier. Been hanging out with them.’

‘
Oh.’ Ian
seemed to think for a bit, then he spoke again. ‘Looks like he’s
trying to hang out with you again at the moment.’

I looked back – Justin was
still there, lurking behind us. I turned back, shrugged.

‘
You gonna
make him wait a bit first, eh?’ There was a smile in Ian’s voice,
mixed with his pain.

‘
Yeah,’ I
said, grinning a bit. Yeah, Justin could pay for his betrayal. It
wouldn’t hurt.

When we got back to our
house, I went in first, checking if the coast was clear. Dad was
still out and music was coming from Della’s room, so she was back
from wherever she’d been. No doubt she’d be cross with me for not
waiting to meet her, but I was glad I hadn’t. I was glad I’d been
able to walk back with Ian.

I signalled to Ian that it
was safe and he quickly nipped in, diving straight for the
bathroom.

I acted as a sentry,
looking out our front room window for any signs of Dad returning.
Justin was out there, just across the road, waiting for me to do
something, I guess. I knocked on the window and he looked
in.

‘
See you
tomorrow?’ I said, making my mouth movements big, so he could
lip-read. He nodded and then walked off.

I looked away
from the window for a sec, smiling, glad to have his friendship
again. Glad not to have lost
that
as well.
Sorry for your
loss.
When I looked back, she was there.
Across the road, standing just where Justin had been. Shirley
White.

She, like Justin, had
followed me home.

And, just like Justin, she
was gone again in a few seconds, like I’d imagined it.

But I knew I had seen her,
and I knew what she wanted me to do. I could just feel
it.

‘
The right
thing,’ I told myself. She wanted me to do the right thing. I
stayed there, thinking about
Uncle
Gary and what I’d found in his room. What I’d
slipped in my pocket when he wasn’t looking.

I told myself and the
space left by Shirley that I’d think it over.

8.

Dad got the build up to
Christmas wrong, just as he had the return to school.

We didn’t get advent
calendars; he forgot about both the Christmas play I was in and
Della’s stint singing with the school choir. He nearly forgot the
Christmas tree, as well. Luckily, Auntie Stella came round to nosey
and pulled him up on that one.

That’s how Auntie Stella
got back on side; sort of.

That was the week prior
to Christmas. Before that, lots of other stuff happened. More
changes.

And we ended up with more
loss to be sorry for.

My fault.

You can’t
really put the blame on him, Tony.

Dad should
have kept an eye on him.

Stay away,
ok? You must stay away.

It all started because
Dad still wasn’t visiting Nan Buckley, because of Ian and Della
having secrets and not coming along, and because of me and Justin
deciding to be friends again.

I didn’t say any of that
when it happened; I just had to deal with it and accept my
loss.

During the first week in
December, the Christmas lights went on in town.

The year
before, Mum had taken the three of us into town to see them
switched on. In the centre of town, where the four main high
streets met, they had put up a huge Christmas tree, with a little
fence around it so you couldn’t get too close and knock it over. At
eighty-thirty, the lights had flickered on and then we had all
ooh’d and aah’d and then done a bit of late-night shopping. We’d
gone into
Boots
and Mum had bought Dad a
Brut
soap-on-a-rope in the shape of a boxing glove,
because of Henry Cooper being in the adverts and that. Then we’d
gone into Marks and Sparks to get him new pants and hankies. After
that, she’d given Ian a couple of quid to take us to the Wimpy,
whilst she slipped off to Woollies for
never-you-mind.