White Goods (27 page)

On/off. On
again.

‘I don’t,’ she managed,
wincing, his grip biting at her thin wrists, feeling herself come
and go, flickering.

On/off/on.

‘You
don’t
what?
Don’t
have any spare money? Really? Nothing to give? I don’t think so.
This place is a small goldmine. How did I get in? Came through the
front door the stupid kids failed to lock when they left. Got a
good look in the front room on my way. Just had a delivery has he?
Plenty of money in those boxes, I’ll bet. Plenty. So, I don’t need
your cash – I’ll just help myself to a few goods.’

‘You mustn’t-.’ She tries
to intervene, tries to summon her strength again, but it’s as if
his vice-like grip is draining her power.

‘Gonna stop me? Really?
Don’t see how. A weak, stupid bitch like you? You’ve never been
able to stop me in the past! Never! So what makes you think you can
stop me now?’

‘
Please.
Just go, just leave-.’

But he shakes his head,
vehemently refusing her request.

‘Too late for that!
Haven’t you been listening? It’s too late. Too late for reasoning!
Reason isn’t what I need. Left it too late. I need money, you
stupid bitch! And if you haven’t got any to give me, then I’ll just
have to help myself to Tony’s stuff.’

On/off/on.

Suddenly, she’s on the
kitchen floor, has fallen onto the black and red linoleum. He must
have pushed her back, sent her flying. But she doesn’t recall. And
where is he? Where has he gone?

Her switch goes again,
blacking out her consciousness. On/off. On again.

He’s outside,
under the lean-to. He’s going through the white boxes Tony has
stored there; ripping them open, searching for something of value,
something to take. She has to stop him.
Tony would kill her if knew…
So,
she
has
to stop
him.

‘Just stop, just put them
back, just-.’

But it’s no good. He’s
not listening. And he’s opening more boxes, tearing them apart,
creating a mess, creating havoc. And she feels it: the storm.
Rising like fury in her, the heat of fear, panic and rage roaring
through her veins. Then a thunderclap leaves her senseless, knocks
her out.

On/off.

On/off.

On again.

When she
comes around, the scene has changed. Everything is a blur. She is
slumped again on the kitchen floor. Pain is coming from the back of
her head. She feels it with her right hand – her good hand – and
then checks her fingers. They are covered in blood. In front of
her, she can just make out the dodgy electric heater that Tony had
brought home to mend.
He hit me with
it,
she thinks, wondering where he is,
what he’s managed to take whilst she’s been unconscious.

Then, just as another
wave of oblivion washes over her, a face comes up close to hers and
speaks:

‘Everything will be
alright,’ it reassures.

On/off.

On.

Off.

I didn’t tell
them this in the playground. Didn’t let Roy Fallick or Walter Smith
in on this version of events. See, this isn’t the one I preferred.
This isn’t the one I wanted to have to live with, it’s just the one
I
had
to live
with.

I wanted Nan Buckley back
and Mum gone. It would have been better all round, easier to live
with. But it wasn’t so - Nan Buckley was dead and Mum was still
alive. Just.

Yet Roy and company
didn’t need to know that – as far as they were concerned she had
died in an accident with domestic goods, albeit they were never
certain which one. And if they asked again, if they needed another
macabre tale of death to keep them entertained at break-time, I had
plenty more stored up. Killer twin-tubs and deathly pressure
cookers were waiting in the wings. Just in case.

And as far as I was
concerned, it was staying that way: I was keeping her dead. I might
have faced up to the truth myself at last, but there was no need to
drag others in.

No need at
all.

12.

It was a lie that led to
us finding out about Della’s secret. A lie she told us on the last
Wednesday of the Easter holidays.

Easter had been quiet. I
didn’t have Justin as a friend anymore. He spoke to me at school if
he had to, but he was sullen. Not just sulking, though – it was
darker than that. In silence, something was quietly building up.
Come the Easter holidays, I thought he might call on me. He didn’t,
though, not once. I didn’t call on him either. I hadn’t known what
to expect from him or his siblings. What if he’d told them the
truth: about my cowardice, about how the bullies were really after
me, because of something Ian had done?

‘
Tell Ian we
still want that money.’

What money?

I had yet to ask
Ian.

It wasn’t just that I was
frightened to call round for Justin, to make the first move, or
that I was afraid of the Tankard family reception – I was
frightened to go out at all on my own. I couldn’t get away with it
during term time, but as soon as the holidays came, I hid myself
away, avoiding the outside.

As usual, our house was
full of boxes. It was always worse in the holidays, particularly if
a national celebration like Christmas or Easter was looming. This
particular year, Dad and his Dontask colleagues had branched out –
the majority of the boxes clogging up our front room had chocolate
eggs in them, not electrical goods.

‘
It was Gary’s
idea, apparently,’ Della told me. We were in the back room, making
our way through a damaged egg Dad had reluctantly parted with.
‘Building up his wedding funds.’

Della and Ian
had begun speculating that, sooner or later,
Uncle
Gary would retract his
unintended proposal or do a runner. But I knew better: I still had
the envelope I’d taken from under his bed. All the time I possessed
that, I knew he would keep his promise and ensure our well-meaning
aunt was kept from our threshold.

If any doubts remained
about the validity of the impending nuptials, they were banished by
another announcement.

‘
We’ve set a
date,’ Auntie Stella announced, as we all sat down to a roast
dinner on Easter Sunday.

It was a
combined effort from both our houses: Della and Dad had formed an
unlikely partnership in our kitchen, preparing the vegetables and
Yorkshire puddings;
Uncle
Gary had cooked the beef in his ultra-modern,
built-in oven, delivering it pre-carved; Auntie Stella had supplied
a trifle, courtesy of Marks and Sparks.

‘
Second
weekend in August,’
Uncle
Gary added, completing her declaration, smiling.
Suddenly, it was the real thing – not just a desperate action on
the part of a desperate man.

‘
Lovely,’ Dad
had added, slightly vacant, like he wasn’t really listening or
interested, sounding a bit like Della did sometimes. ‘Ian, pass up
them leftover spuds, will you?’

‘
And we’ve
been discussing bridesmaids,’ Auntie Stella continued and, without
anyone saying a further word or really thinking about it, we all
looked in one direction: Della’s.

We all held
different expressions. Dad raised his eyebrows, surprised, yet
there was a twinkle of pride in his eyes. Auntie Stella looked very
emotional and I was expecting
your-mother-would-be-very-proud
to
come out of her mouth any second. Gary was smiling, but it was a
very neutral smile. Ian, like me, had a huge grin on his face – of
the glowing, gloating kind. Della simply looked stunned: eyes wide,
nowhere to run. She spoke after what seemed like a year of
expressionless silence.

‘
Can I choose
my own dress?’ she said.

The ring of the front
doorbell halted Auntie Stella’s reply: it was Beery Dave with 12
boxes of battery-operated Basil Brushes.

‘
You pull on
that cord and he says
Dirty-Gertie-from-number-30,
’ Dave
explained, as Dad agreed to sell them on his behalf. As Beery Dave
piled the boxes in the front room, a succession of muffled
boom-boom-booms
was set
off, like a trigger of dogs barking in a kennels.

‘
Don’t ask,’
Dad told us all, coming back, even though we’d heard the entire
conversation. In the background, the last of the Basils’ stifled
guffaws petered out.

Auntie Stella and Della
had managed to agree and arrange everything whilst Dad had done his
doorstep business with Dave: they would choose Della’s bridesmaid
dress together.

‘
Army and
Navy. Thursday. You can meet me there at 1:30 – I’ll see if I can
get a late lunch. Now, who’s ready for afters?’

Easter Monday was a bit
like a normal Sunday: a bit boring. There wasn’t much to do: no
shops were open; the swimming pool was closed; and, even if there
were places to go, you weren’t supposed to go there with your
friends. You were supposed to stay in and be quiet: yeah, like a
normal Sunday.

‘
You could
call on Justin. They don’t mind round there,’ Ian
suggested.

I considered
saying something; explaining why I couldn’t just go round there
anymore. Telling him the full reason, including the threat they had
made.
‘Tell Ian we still want that
money.’
I still needed to ask him about
it, ask him what Justin’s attackers might have meant with their
parting shot. But he got in first with another question.

‘
Why did you
ask me about Shirley White?’ he said. ‘What do you
remember?’

So, instead of asking him
a question, I answered his. I told him about the memory: of the
picnic in the park and Shirley coming and sitting next to Mum on
the bench. Only, Ian didn’t seem that interested: it was just an
old story, a little glimpse of the past that didn’t mean very much
to him. So, I mentioned her being at the dump on the day of Nan
Buckley’s funeral, of seeing her near the Poultry Cross that night
we went Christmas shopping, and about how she had led me to him,
the day he was beaten up at the crematorium.

‘
And she
followed us home,’ I said, completing my recent history with
Shirley. ‘I saw her out the front, looking in at me.’

‘
She followed
you?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
And what did
she say.’

‘
Nothing.’

‘
Did you see
where she went?’

‘
No.’

Ian was lost in his own
mind for a bit, his questioning at a close. So, I asked one of my
own.

‘
Ian, why is
it so important?’

‘
It isn’t; I’m
just curious,’ he reassured me, looking at me quickly, then darting
his eyes away again. ‘It’s not important at all.’

Boring Monday was
eventually over, replaced by Tuesday, which was like a normal
Monday: shops open, people out and about, kids making noise in the
street again, everyone back to work.

‘
You boys,
too,’ Dad informed me and Ian, before he set off himself. ‘Those
left-over Easter eggs and Basil Brushes won’t shift themselves.
I’ll give you a fair cut of any profits.’ Dad drained the last of
his breakfast tea in a second and left by the back door, before Ian
had a chance to clarify
the-exact-details-of-our-employment-contract,
as he put it.

I hadn’t been out selling
before; Ian had on a couple of occasions, only when Dad had too
much stock in the house and needed to move it on
swiftly.

‘
We’ll just
try door to door,’ Ian suggested as a starting point. ‘See how far
that gets us.’

‘
But we can’t
carry them all.’

He grinned at me. There
was a wheelbarrow at the end of our garden, parked next to the
shed. We gave it a bit of a clean and lined it with an old blanket
from the airing cupboard, before we loaded it with an equal amount
of eggs and Basils.

‘
Right, let’s
make our first million,’ Ian chirped, as we wheeled it out the
back, cutting across our neighbours’ garden to reach the alleyway
that brought us out to the front. ‘You okay?’ he checked with me,
as we came out into the street.

It was the first time I
had ventured further than our house since the Easter holidays had
begun. If I appeared nervous on the outside, I was petrified
inside. I looked about - our road was empty. In any case, I’d not
seen either of Justin’s attackers near our part of town
before.

All the time
we were out, I kept my eyes peeled, looking out for those older
boys. We took the goods up both sides of our road and along to the
nice end of the estate where Auntie Stella and
Uncle
Gary lived. Ian suggested
venturing into the rough side, but I shook my head.

‘
They won’t
have any money,’ I insisted, fearful of heading in that direction.
That was a step too far for me. Roy hung out in the rough end of
the estate. And if Roy hung out there, so did his soon-to-be
step-brother, Clint. And Clint was the link to the other
boys.