White Goods (39 page)

‘
That really
shitted her up,’
Uncle
Gary continued. ‘The ease with which she made an error, the
fact you’d come across it, the fears the others would, too, sooner
or later. Including Tony. It was quite a clever move, getting you
on-board. Tony would never have suspected she’d involve you. And
she wouldn’t have – not directly. She wouldn’t have asked you to
pass the notes directly to him. Never. That’s why she kept me
involved. I wanted it to stop, but neither of them would let me.
And there was always the threat of her telling Tony. Or of someone
else telling him.’

That comment
was directed at me, I knew. I wanted to ask him what was so bad
about Mum and Jackie being in contact? What would have been so bad
about Dad finding out? What had Jackie done to make his disapproval
so great? And why had this little business of passing letters given
me such power; been such an easy money-spinner? Jackie was family,
after all; where was the harm; why all the fear? But
Uncle
Gary was
volunteering more information, so I let him carry on,
uninterrupted. The questions might not be necessary, if I just
listened.

‘But it didn’t stop at
the notes, Scotty. There was more to it you didn’t know about. He
wanted to see her again. She wanted the same, but it was him who
insisted. See, he needed something from her. He needed
money.’

So we were
back to the business of money again.
Tell
Ian we still want the money.
It had to be
connected, didn’t it? Ian had insisted it wasn’t him that owed the
money, but he wouldn’t say who. What had Mum’s letter said?
I have enclosed what you asked for, and hopefully
it is enough, this time, to see off your debts.
Yes, now I was making connections; now it was adding up and I
was getting results.

‘
Not sure how
much more I should tell you,’
Uncle
Gary continued, finishing off his fag, crushing
it into the floor with a heel. ‘Not really my business, but I’ll
tell you what I think is okay.’

I nodded,
accepting his compromise.
Jackie
was the big family mystery, and
Uncle
Gary wasn’t
family, not really, So, it wasn’t his place.

‘
It started
with Shirley. Seemed like a nice girl to start with. Friendly,
bubbly, a bit naughty, I guess. A rebel. But it went a bit deeper.
Before long, she had dragged Jackie in with her. She got him into
drugs, hard drugs and into all sorts. She’s the reason Jackie has
been kept away from you all. All that business. And the damage he
caused. Shirley was where it started, though. And it’s Shirley who
got the blame. At least, that’s who your mum blamed – Shirley, not
her precious Jackie. He was always the golden boy. Always had been.
Probably where she went wrong. Too soft on the first
born.’

Uncle
Gary looked directly at me, working out if the
significance of his words had hit me. But this was something I
already knew – from the letter I stolen from him and eventually
read. The big clue had been in how she had signed off:
with love, always, Mum.

‘
They really
haven’t told you any of this, have they?’

‘
No,’ I
answered, keeping my face neutral.

‘
Jesus, shit.’
He shook his head, puffed out a long, heavy breath.

‘
Can you tell
me more?’ I asked, hoping this wasn’t the end. ‘So, Jackie’s my
brother. He was Mum’s first born.’

‘
Yes. Her
first.’ He expelled the words slowly, reluctantly, cautious of the
boundary he was crossing.

‘
And Dad’s?’ I
asked it without thinking; the words flying from my mouth like a
reflex action.

Uncle
Gary lit another cigarette, using this break to
contemplate the territory he was now invading.

‘
No,’ he said,
saying it quickly, getting it over with. But it was far from over;
I had more questions.

I hadn’t expected this;
had just assumed Jackie belonged to them both.

‘
Whose, then?’
I asked, fitting the latest pieces of the puzzle together as
quickly as I could, grabbing the segments as soon as they shot
from
Uncle
Gary’s
mouth.

‘
Can’t answer
that one, Scotty.’

‘
Can’t?’

‘
Can’t. Won’t.
Not my place.’

‘
But you
know?’

Uncle
Gary stared at the floor, drew on his cigarette
again. No answer was coming. I tried a different
question.

‘
What else can
you tell me?’

‘
Not much.
It’s just not for me to say, but I can tell you one thing: he’s
missing. The day your Mum first went missing, Jackie went missing
too. I know she turned up again, that the police found her on the
day of your Nan’s funeral in that sorry state. But Jackie hasn’t
turned up. I don’t know where he went or what happened. Just that I
haven’t seen or heard from him since.’ He took in several drags of
cigarette in a row, then tossed it across the room. It was a signal
we were done. ‘That’s gotta be it, Scot. I can’t tell you anything
else. You’ll have to ask your family now.’

He stood, as
if he was waiting for my permission; waiting for me to sign him
out. Then I realised: I still had the letter I’d stolen.
That’s
what he was
waiting for. As I dug it out of my pocket, another question sprung
into my head.

‘
You said
Jackie needed money. From Mum,’ I said, keeping my hand in my
pocket, holding onto my ticket to the truth until I was certain I
was getting all I could. ‘What happened to it?’

The beatings
Ian had received; the attack on Justin at the Jubilee Park toilets;
my near-hanging at the Barley Mow: it all had to be
connected.
Tell Ian we still want the
money.

‘
Did she give
him the money, Uncle Gary?’ I asked, using the familial term on
purpose, as I had before. ‘Did Jackie get the money he
needed?’

He stared back
at me, but kept silent. I knew I was getting nothing else. But in
that silence, I got the answer I needed. It was in his face.
Uncle
Gary had been
trusted. He was the go-between between Mum and Jackie. Yet, both
had gone missing, were still missing in my view, although a partial
version of Mum was available for us to visit at the secure
hospital. And money was still owed.

Uncle
Gary held out his hand – he was still waiting for
the letter I’d taken. The letter I’d taken from his plushly
furnished flat. I thought about his fitted kitchen, his fancy
bathroom, and his posh lounge/diner all in white. I thought about
his flash new cars, too, and wondered just how much money was
involved. How much was still owed.

I considered pushing it
further, asking for more information – about Jackie, about the
money – but he had answered nearly all my questions to date and I
wasn’t sure he would impart much else. So, I gave him the letter,
as promised.

He took it and nodded,
appreciating that I was sticking to my end of the deal.

‘
I’ll leave
your Aunt a note,’ he offered, putting the letter in the back
pocket of his trousers. ‘But you’ll have to explain some of it.
You’ll have to take some responsibility.’

Then he walked away,
bending his bony frame up, so he could exit the derelict house
through the gap in the corrugated iron that was the makeshift
door.

I stayed where I was for
a while longer. Not sure how long, but I left enough time for him
to get away. Despite being involved in whatever had happened
between Mum and my newly revealed half-brother, I did feel sorry
for him. They had dragged him into their affair and hadn’t let him
go. I knew he’d taken the money that was meant for Jackie – no
wonder he’d been worried about Dad finding out, and no wonder he’d
so willingly bought my silence. But I still felt for him. I’d made
him move in with Auntie Stella, too, and I understood first-hand
what that demanded.

As I waited,
I thought over my action plan. Thought over what I would say when I
got home. Thought over the questions I still had. And there were
many.
Why had Jackie been banished from
our lives? Had his drug problem been that bad? Why wouldn’t anyone
talk about him in front of me? Why had they acted like he hadn’t
existed?
There were other mysteries, too;
connections I couldn’t link up.
How was
Crinky Crunkle involved in all this? What were the photos of
Shirley and
Uncle
Gary doing at his place? And what about Shirley? Why had she
been at the park, all those years ago, talking to Mum on the park
bench? What had she wanted?

Realising the only course
of action I could take was to go home and confront them, I left the
derelict shell and took myself home, unaware of the events that
preceded me, of the hellish bedlam I was about to enter…

Adrian Tankard’s bloody
arrival had the oddest effect: it calmed everyone down. The roaring
blaze of fury was extinguished; the screaming and the wailing
stopped in an instant, as if it had been switched off at the
source. Instead, a stunned silence reigned, as we all looked on at
what Adrian Tankard had brought to our door.

It was Dad who broke the
silence.

‘We need to hide that
corpse,’ he said, wiping his brow, moving forward to take the
lifeless body from Adrian’s arms.

But it was Auntie
Stella’s chilling, practical suggestion that restored it, leaving
us dumb with astonishment.

‘I know just the place,’
she suggested, calmly walking past me, leading the men up the
garden path, like she knew what she was doing.

Like she had done this
kind of thing before.

20.

Thursday.

The aftermath of
Wednesday.

A day for calm being
restored, I had hoped. A day for answering the questions I still
had; a day for the rest of the truth. Yeah, that’s what I had hoped
for, but it didn’t turn out quite like that.

I woke early. The house
was quiet, like a Sunday church before the congregation arrived.
Ian was still sleeping. I crept out of our bedroom, tiptoed
downstairs, and headed towards the loo at the very end of our home.
Passing through the squashed-up backroom, appliance-heavy kitchen
and bright pink bathroom to reach my destination, there was little
evidence of what had occurred the night before. An empty whiskey
bottle lay on the dining table, on its side; any slight movement,
and it would have rolled onto the floor. A big glass ashtray
balanced on the arm of a chair, overflowing with little orange
butts, floating on a sea of grey powder.

Because my new navy parka
was still a bit big, I had to unzip it in order to have a wee. It
was the first time I’d undone it since my visit to Mum’s the
afternoon before. I’d kept it on all night, sleeping on top of my
covers, relishing the security I imagined it gave me.

‘Off!’ Auntie
Stella had instructed the previous night, once Adrian’s mess had
been cleared up.
Adrian’s mess
– that’s what they were calling it. Like it was a
spillage, something that required a cloth and soapy water. ‘Off!’
she repeated, an authoritative iciness in her tone – a mix of
impatience and
don’t-think-I’ve-forgotten.
‘It’s
got blood on it, for goodness sake!’

In the end, she’d handed
Della a wet sponge.

‘Deal with your brother,
please.’

So, the parka had stayed
on, keeping the good in, shutting the bad out, shutting everything
out until I had to unzip it to have a wee the next
morning.

With the flush still
hissing as the cistern refilled, I moved back into the bathroom and
began to run a bath. I liked my bath to be a certain way, a
particular way that no one else could get quite right.

Do it yourself
next time!
A memory of Mum ticking me off,
furious at my
lack-of-gratitude
when I’d complained there was too much froth,
that it wasn’t hot enough.

I had a ritual for the
whole thing – from the twist of taps to the draining away of the
water at the very end. The cold went in first – just a couple of
inches – then I turned it off and just let the hot flush in,
gushing into the surface of the shallow cold, creating an instant
steam. I didn’t add anything: no bubbles or smelly salts. Just left
it pure. I liked to get in whilst it was still filling up. I didn’t
sit down straightaway; it was a gradual thing, as my body got used
to the increasing heat of the water. First, it was just my ankles
and the bottom half of my calves. Itchy bubbles appeared on my legs
and the small hairs there would stand up, as if shocked by the
temperature of the flow. Then, once the bath was just over half
full, I began the rest of my body’s gradual lowering into the
still, burning waters. Bending at my knees, the rest of me followed
in this order: bum, back, then shoulders and head, keeping as still
as I could the whole time. And I had to go slow, had to expose my
skin to the boiling pool bit by bit in order to endure its searing
impact. Goosebumps and air bubbles spread across my skin like a
rash. Once I was fully submerged, I just sat still; I couldn’t move
for a long time. The water would be too hot; I had to wait whilst
my body adjusted, whilst the water cooled off a little. Then I
could finally begin to move my arms and legs again.