White Goods (19 page)

This year, we
didn’t hear a word from Dad about the Christmas shopping tradition,
until Ian spoke up. Then Dad did what we’d come to expect – he
handed over some cash and said we’d have to go on our own: he had
to
see-a-man-about-one
. Part of me was disappointed, and you could tell Della and
Ian were put-out, angry more than anything. But, it wasn’t so bad
in the end. And some things were always better when the adults
weren’t there.

On the walk in, Justin and
Tina met us, which wouldn’t have happened before.

‘You are joking, aren’t
you?’ Della had gawped, looking at Tina, who had Deely Boppers
attached to her head. ‘Not even without the head gear, thank you.’
That’s something Della had started doing – saying thanks when she
didn’t mean it. She’d also started telling us when she wasn’t
thinking. ‘She coming with us? I think not.’

Della walked
on ahead, distancing herself from us,
in
case somebody saw her
,
although we could all still see her, clear as day, so that
didn’t make complete sense. After a bit of debating, Justin agreed
to take Tina home. We waited for five minutes, saw him in the
distance, running back, and then we headed off again.

‘If we’ve missed the
lights going on because of that bloody-.’ Della started, but Ian
shushed her.

‘Leave it, Della. Lights
aren’t for ages yet.’

And she did, sensing
something, like I did, in his voice: a sad, empty sound.

And suddenly, Mum wasn’t
there this year.

Like this was the moment
when we all remembered again.

We were all quiet for a
bit, listening, as Justin’s pounding feet and rasping breath caught
up with us. He wasn’t alone – he’d brought Stevie with him, his
younger brother.

Della was not
pleased.

‘Bring back Tina, all is
forgiven. Thank you very much,’ she’d mumbled and Ian had laughed
silently, nudging her.

I could see
her point. Whilst Tina was a bit of an embarrassment, what with the
Deely Boppers and her general lack of understanding about what was
acceptable behaviour in a shop, Stevie was a
right-little-shit
– Mum, Dad, Della,
Ian, me, even Chrissie Tankard. Right. Little. Shit.

Stevie was younger than
us – just eleven. Justin was twelve, like me.

She must have
conceived that one on the maternity ward –
Mum. I didn’t like to ask what she’d meant.

Whereas Justin was a bit
spiteful, a bit bitchy, Stevie was pure evil. There was no getting
away from it. Punching and biting his way through primary school.
He was suspended for spitting at a teacher, too. Even Roy Fallick
steered clear. He nicked stuff, too – caught shoplifting once,
although he’d probably done it a thousand times without anyone
catching him. He had this habit of shouting at people too – making
old ladies jump out of their skin or just swearing at grown-ups and
running off. That’s what Della was dreading.

‘Nasty little bugger,’
she muttered, walking slightly ahead of us again, pulling a
tight-lipped face that gave her the look of Nan Buckley.

‘Just ignore him and he
won’t be able to wind you up, okay?’ Ian told Della, walking beside
her, whilst the remaining three of us trailed behind.

I enjoyed the walk into
town, as all of the shops had their Christmas lights on – a few
multicoloured bulbs somehow transforming the most boring of window
displays – and all of a sudden, I found myself stopping to admire
bathroom suites and garden machinery under the warm glow of blue,
green, red and orange lights.

‘Keep up,
Scotty!’

When we
reached the main part of town, lines of lights stretched across the
streets from left to right, attached to opposite buildings. One big
shop –
Army & Navy
– had an illuminated, blow-up Santa on its flat roof, with a
Christmas tree either side of it, fairy lights flashing on and
off.

‘Right, who needs to do
what?’ Ian asked, taking the part of parent again, which he was
doing a lot more and I still liked it; he was definitely better
than Dad and more reliable.

‘I need stuff
from
Share
,’
Della said first, quickly adding: ‘So I’ll meet you by the main
Christmas tree at eight-fifteen, in time for the lights on.’ And
she went off to buy her make-up and stuff.

‘What about you,
Scotty?’

I shrugged. I hadn’t
really thought about actually shopping. I was just coming because
that’s what we always did. With Mum.

‘I wanna try
out Woollies?’ Stevie chirped up, pulling a stupid grin, which was
his attempt at
butter-wouldn’t-melt
– Mum. He had a tooth missing in the front, which
Justin said their dad had done to him.

‘Right,’ said Ian, not
really answering, but Justin and Stevie went ahead into Woolworths
and so Ian and me followed.

I liked Woollies. It had
everything you could want in the one shop. Apart from food, which
annoyed Mum.

‘I’ll have to
go to that Tesco place, just for a few things!’

It didn’t bother me. It
had games, sweets, cards, stationary, books, even clothes. But the
bit I liked most was the music section. I always spent the most
time in there, and Mum always left me in that section, whilst she
did the rest of her shop.

There were rows and rows
of LP covers that you could flick through – A to Z and a different
section if there was a sale on. They kept the actual LPs behind the
counter, in the inner sleeves, so you couldn’t just take them. But
the twelve inches – which was a new thing, not everything came in
twelve inch – they had the records in the sleeves. There were tapes
too – a whole load of blank ones, so you could make up your own
compilations, and proper ones that you couldn’t record over, unless
you blocked up the holes with tissue and sellotape – then you
could. But the bit I liked the very most was the singles. In
Woolworths, they had the whole top 75 on display along the wall –
number one at the top left hand corner, with number 75 at the
bottom right hand. You got all the new releases at the bottom too.
There was a display carousel for all the flops or ones that were
out of the charts – marked down to 49 pence. This is where I’d
started to spend more and more of my time, looking for bargains I
could buy with my pocket money.

Before we’d left home,
Ian had shared the money Dad had given him between the three of us
– four quid for him, and three quid for Della and me.

‘I’m getting Dad
something, too – you only need to get for me and Scot,’ he’d said,
when Della had moaned he was being unfair.

Della’s face
had told me not to expect much from her and, since she’d gone off
to shop in
Share,
I was certain there wouldn’t be much left after she’d raided
the make-up section. Still, I intended to get something for
her.

Looking in
the bargains, there was a copy of
The
Winner Takes It All
, still in a picture
sleeve. So, I picked that out. Then I scanned the singles chart on
the wall. There were two things that caught my eye there:
Super Trouper
, which was
still number one and would complete Della’s present, and
There’s No One Quite Like
Grandma
, which was a bit further down the
chart and also very true, so that was Nan Buckley sorted too, even
though I didn’t have to buy for her.

Just as I was
paying, there was a bit of scuffle behind me and an
Oi!
shouted by someone;
a deep, male voice. Turning round, with my singles in a little bag,
I saw Justin and Stevie charging off, with a couple of shop
assistants chasing after them.

‘Come on,
we’d better go,’ Ian said to me and we left the shop. We had a
quick look in
Share
for Della, couldn’t find her and headed off to
Army & Navy,
where
Ian promised to take me to see Father Christmas.

I hadn’t
believed in Father Christmas since Roy Fallick had ruined it for us
all two years before, revealing how it was all a load of bollocks
for
nancy boys and lezzers
and that really it was just your Dad dressed up.
So, when Mum had taken me to see Santa that year, I’d had a good
look in his eye and a quick tug on his beard to see if would come
off. It didn’t and he had brown eyes, not blue, so Father Christmas
definitely wasn’t
my
Dad; he wasn’t Roy Fallick’s either, who was in prison at the
time. Still, after Mum had apologised for my behaviour in the
grotto and asked me to explain myself, it all came out: the full
parental confession. The elves, the sleigh – it was all lies, she
revealed. Mum said, as she was
on-a-roll,
she might as well
dispel-some-other-myths
;
so she revealed all about the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny
whilst she was at it.
Myths.
I remembered that – the grown-up word for lies, I
reckoned.

Two years on, I still
wanted to visit Santa’s Grotto, though – you got a present, after
all. We’d been waiting five minutes when Justin and Stevie caught
up with us, pushing in to join us, which got them a bit of abuse.
We expected Stevie to kick off, start swearing or something, but he
didn’t. The brothers just ignored the jeers and stood their
ground.

‘So,’ Ian asked, looking
down on them both a bit, disapproving, ‘what made you two leave
Woollies so quickly?’

‘Nothing,’ Stevie had
replied, grinning and Justin had looked away, shamed a bit by the
tone of Ian’s voice, I thought. But we knew what they’d been up to,
and sooner or later, we’d all get caught up in it.

When we finally got to
the front of the queue, it turned out the Tankard boys didn’t have
any money left to see Santa, so they had to wait outside, whilst we
went ahead.

‘Let’s hope they behave
themselves,’ Ian muttered, more to himself than to anyone in
particular.

Inside the grotto, we got
one massive shock.

‘Bloody hell!’ said Ian,
instantly folding up with laughter

‘Jesus!’ I added, knowing
I could get away with it, even if it was blasphemous and not
allowed at school.

‘That’s it, you both
laugh,’ Santa said, all sarky like.

‘They must have used a
helluva lot of padding on you!’

‘Keep on laughing, why
don’t ya?’

‘Auntie Stella know
you’re doing this?’ I asked, as Santa pulled down his beard and
took off his red hood. ‘You look hot.’

Uncle
Gary sighed. ‘Just earning a bit extra for this
bloody wedding.’

‘Ah, she’s
got you working hard, eh?’ Ian was still joking along, but I could
tell there was something in
Uncle
Gary’s voice, something aimed at me.

Getting back to the job
in hand, Santa put his hat and beard back on and tapped on his
knee.

‘You gonna sit on Santa’s
knee then?’

‘Can your skinny legs
take the weight, Santa?’ Ian laughed, pushing me
forward.

But I didn’t want to.
There was a look in Santa’s eyes that went with the tone now;
subtle, just enough for me to notice. It wasn’t just the wedding.
He knew. He knew what I’d done, what I’d taken from his red
room.

‘I’m a bit too old now,’
I said, abruptly, in the way Justin might, suddenly shot with
confidence. ‘Anyway, we need to find Della, right?’ I added,
turning to Ian.

He still had merry eyes,
but shrugged. He’d only come for me, after all.

‘See you about then,
Santa!’ was Ian’s parting comment, and he saluted Gary
too.

I just walked out, not
looking back, but I heard Gary behind me.

‘Talk to you
soon, Scotty,’ he said.
Talk to you
soon.

It was only once we’re on
our way home that I realised I’d left without a present.

It was 7:45pm
when we came out of
Army &
Navy
, still 30 minutes until Della had
arranged to meet us by the big Christmas tree. Justin and Stevie
were nowhere to be seen; Ian thought this was a good
thing.

‘You know trouble is
brewing,’ he said, checking his watch again – 29 minutes to go.
‘Where do you want to go next?’

As we’d done
the records in
Woolworths,
I wanted to check out
Our Price
and
WH Smiths.
There was also a place
called
Shattered
Records
, but that was further out of town,
near the bus station. Ian said that was too far out tonight. I
liked it there, because it sold second-hand LPs and singles and had
great picture discs and coloured vinyl hanging in the window and
decorating the walls. But that would have to wait for another
time.

Ian usually
got impatient with me in record shops, because I
took-so-long
, looking at
the covers, making up my dream collection in my head. Sometimes,
when I couldn’t sleep at night, I’d make my way through my ideal
A-Z, exhausting all the bands that began with A and what I could
have by them, and making my way down to Z, or until I fell asleep.
But Ian was calm tonight, not minding as I zipped through all the
singles and twelve-inches; he even showed a bit of
interest.