White Goods (6 page)

Mistakes: Dad pouring me
tea, which I hated; Dad cooking the eggs in the bacon fat,
forgetting Della had been vegetarian for a month; Dad forgetting
the fried bread altogether, leaving slices of fat-soaked bread on a
chipped plate next to the cooker. Mistakes by Dad.

Dad, who
people had started referring to as
he,
using that voice, and sometimes
just mouthing it.

He’s taken it
badly, hasn’t he?

He’s in
shock, who wouldn’t be?

He’s gotta
pull himself together, for those kids; they need him more than ever
now.

He’s blaming
himself, you know.

And the
police are involved; they’ve been asking questions.

The last one mouthed by
the woman from the Wavy Line shop, thinking I couldn’t lip-read,
but I was learning fast.

‘I’ll do your eggs again,
Del,’ Dad offered, covering his mistakes, his tracks, making me a
squash, drinking the tea he’d poured me himself.

After breakfast, Dad put
everything in the dishwasher, including the sharp knives with
wooden handles that you were supposed to wash by hand, and set it
going on a hot wash. Another mistake, you might think. No one said
anything. We just left the room to get ready, salt on our lips from
bacon and grief.

Ian helped me
dress that day, took care of me, like we’d both aged in different
directions – me younger, needier, him older, stronger. I wore the
brown trousers I’d worn as a paige boy for Cousin Susan’s wedding
(Dad’s cousin.) They were nylon,
no-need-to-iron-them.
Also a cream
shirt with a frill down the front. It came with a bow tie and a
cucumber (
Cumberbund,
Mum had corrected me, but I never once remembered.) I didn’t
wear those bits to the funeral. Instead, Ian helped me with a new
black tie – Dad went out and bought us all one. It was a bit tricky
– Ian getting it too tight or too fat on the first few goes – and I
wanted to take it off, but Ian insisted I wore it.

‘We gotta look smart for
her,’ he told me, and the gap in our years got bigger
again.

So, I accepted the tie
had to stay, even if it sat a bit bumpy over the fancy frill of the
shirt.

Ian wore new black
trousers – nylon – and a white school shirt. He gelled his hair
flat and did mine too. And whilst I pulled on my socks at the last
minute, he disappeared and returned with two pairs of shiny black
lace ups. The curtains in our room were still closed, letting in
just a slither of blinding sun, which caught on the toes of the
shoes, making them sparkle. I thought of Dorothy, in the Wizard of
Oz, but then remembered – her shoes were red.

Suddenly, the moment had
come.

‘Let’s make
her proud,’ Ian said, like she was gonna turn up. Like she was
gonna catch a glimpse of us - how smart we looked - and change her
mind:
‘Oh, you’ve done me proud, I think
I’ll live after all. What was I thinking?’

‘Make Dad proud,’ he
added and that made a little more sense.

Even Della was dressed up
in black – a simple knee length dress with small white dots all
over, long sleeves and buttons all down the front.

‘Car’s here,’
someone said, like Car was a person come to pick us up, not a
vehicle at all.
‘Car’s here.’ ‘Is
he?’
So all four of us – the new four,
down from the-five-of-us – got in a big black car, with its own
driver and were taken gently in silence to the place where
‘she is waiting for us’
– from Ian, he was the man of words that day.

Auntie Stella
and
Uncle
Gary
met us there – at the crematorium. She wore a pencil-thin skirt,
with a slit up the back that gave a glimpse of suspenders, a big
black hat like an
Airfix
model ship, and a pair of stilettos –
white.
Uncle
Gary
had dressed properly – black suit, tie and shoes; the jacket hung
badly on his hanger-like frame, but he’d made the
effort.

Everyone was a bit
reserved with my dad, like they weren’t sure: what to say; how
close to get.

‘
Terrible
business.’

‘
Shocking what
you’ve been through.’

‘
How are you
bearing up?’

‘
And the kids?
How they doing?’

All around, a dark
carousel of words, of shock, pity, awkwardness.

Auntie Stella’s tarty
black and white effort wasn’t the only shock appearance that day.
There were more.

When the Tankards
arrived, everyone turned and stared. You see, they’d brought Tina
with them.

Tina Tankard.

‘Is Tina
Justin’s cousin?’ Mum once asked, when she’d first heard talk
of
‘this Tina’
.
Della had laughed. ‘Auntie, then?’ Mum continued, cooking breakfast
one morning. She was a little bothered by Della’s smirking, but she
pursued her inquiry all the same.

‘Doubt it,’ Della had
interjected, still laughing, but Mum waved her off: it wasn’t that
important to her and she’d lost interest, distracted by scrambled
eggs turning rubbery in a pan. ‘Bugger.’

Cousin? Auntie? It wasn’t
that simple.

‘She’s a member of the
family,’ Justin’s dad had explained, when I found him underneath
her, on the grass pitch that was to the right of their house. He’d
been drinking.

Tina Tankard. Talk of the
town, sort of.

‘What a sight,’ Auntie
Stella scoffed, adjusting the brim on HMS Funeral and trying to
pull her skirt down a bit, to reach her knees. ‘Let’s go in and say
goodbye.’

Weird things.

Sorry for
your loss.
Like I’d misplaced something,
like I couldn’t find her – but I knew where she was. In that wooden
box. Dead, not lost. Gone forever.

It’s not the
same without her.
But everything was the
same. Nothing had changed. Della was still a cow. Ian was
still
doing-what-he-shouldn’t
. And Dad was
still filling the house up with stuff, box after box from
Dontask,
dropped off
by
Uncle
Gary and
Adrian Tankard. No change with
Uncle
Gary either:
It’s just between us, right? Not a word to
anyone, Scotty.
The house. Our stuff.
Still the same; it was just that she wouldn’t be in it
again.
She.
But
nothing had changed – other than her, maybe.

At the
crematorium, everyone filed in before us and we had to wait
outside: the
four-of-us
, plus Auntie Stella, and
Uncle
Gary, too, but only after a
bit of reluctance and a threat of tears from Auntie
Stella.

‘Just get at
the back, man. Stella, put a sock in it. Have some respect.’
Dad.

Outside, the building was
made of beige bricks – new, not like your normal church, made from
old flint. Not that it was a church.

‘
A house of
remembrance,’ Auntie Stella insisted a couple of times.

‘
With a
furnace,’ Ian had added once, smirking guiltily with
Della.

‘
What do you
mean?’ I asked and their humour had dissolved, like I’d pulled the
plug out of their faces, draining the colour in an
instant.

‘
Time for a
chat,’ Ian had said, half at me, half at Della. For once, he
actually gave a straight answer.

Did I have any
questions?
he asked me at the end of
that.

Just
one,
I said in my head:
What’s so fucking funny about that?

‘
No, I get
it,’ I said instead, stony, quiet.

The Tankards
left Tina outside, waiting on the corner of the building –
‘Just like a prozzie,’
as Justin would have said. Ian and myself glanced her way at
the same time, and then at each other.

‘
Jesus,’ he
laughed, which was totally the wrong thing to say at a funeral, but
somehow it was ok in the moment. Somehow it fitted. ‘What
would
she
think?’

Dad’s voice broke the
moment with a command:

‘
Right, time
to go in.’

Inside, the building did
look a bit like a church, but modern, a sort of church converted
from a hall. Like a wedding reception, with pews and candles. The
walls were cream and the ceiling high – but not like a church. Not
soaring, not reaching up into space. God. Not reaching up to
Him.

We sat down at
the very front, on the right, where seats had been saved for us. At
the back, people were standing up.
A good
turn out,
I heard several times.
Good of you to come, so lovely to see
you.

She was at the
front, in a white coffin. Tall purple candles in golden
candlesticks stood on either side. Just behind her, there was a
short red curtain, like a mini stage. Bit like Punch and Judy. A
vicar-man stood before us all and told us about
our dearly departed,
right after
telling us that he never knew her at all, which seemed a bit
pointless.

‘
Please all
stand,’ came the command from the front, and we all got to our
feet.

Suddenly, we were all
singing: like in assembly; like it was Harvest Festival, but there
were no dented tins of macaroni cheese up the front. Just a box and
a man talking; a man who knew nothing whatsoever about the person
inside it.

A blur of two
hymns and a prayer later, and it happened. Just like Ian singing
‘The Twelfth of Never’ back in Cornwall, it was her magic moment.
For one night only (or afternoon) she was up there in lights
(candlelight) and it was all eyes on our star turn. In her white
box.
Are they gonna cut her in half? Will
the audience gasp?
Only, it was all
backwards. The mini red curtains opened and she moved off the
stage, on a kind of conveyor belt, like on the Generation Game
–
Didn’t she do well?
– out to the back and the curtains closed again –
Shut that door!
– and
she was gone. Not lost. Gone.

Just gone.

Later, Dad
said he was gonna bring her home. Like she’d been in a nursing home
or something. And, true to his word, he did bring her home.
Where shall we put her?
he said but it wasn’t her at all. It was just a big pot of
ash, which he placed on top of the stereo in the front room. Ash.
They had burned her.

‘
Wonder who
she’s in there with?’ Auntie Stella had whispered to
Uncle
Gary, an odd
comment that I would remember years later and finally
understand.

After the box had gone and
the curtains had closed again, we began to file out of the
building. As we moved, I overheard a conversation
nearby.

‘
So, do you
reckon you-know-who will turn up?’

‘
Not if
they’ve got any sense.’

‘
No, but that
one never did.’

Jackie. They were talking
about Jackie, I was certain.

I looked about me, at the
group of ladies that were talking. One of them smiled weakly at
me.

‘
Time to go,
Scotty,’ said Ian, eyeing the women briefly. I wanted to ask Ian
about him - about Jackie. But I didn’t; Ian would only have got
cross, or given me the silent treatment. Like they all did when it
came to Jackie.

Once outside again, we saw
the Tankards reunited with Tina. I couldn’t help but
smile.

Ian smiled too, but his
had a lot of sadness in it. ‘We’re gonna be alright, you know?’ he
said, giving my shoulder a tap and then we were off.

It was a bit
of a squeeze back at our house, which was where we had the
celebration
party, as
Auntie Stella called it. Someone else said it was a
wake
; like we’d all been
asleep and needed a pick-me-up. The front room was full of boxes
from Dontask – big white boxes - so we were all packed into the
back room and kitchen.

When we’d
left, the house had smelled of soap and aftershave, as Dad had
splashed a bit of
Denim
on us all. The last of Mum’s
Charlie
had mingled in there too –
from Della. I also caught Ian sniffing the bottle, bringing
her
back home a bit, I
guess. Later, it was different. Sweaty men. Beery breath. Sherry.
Sardine and tomato paste, from the sandwiches. Warm cheese. Smoke,
too, from cigarettes and cigars; a thick cloud building up. Like at
the crematorium;
all gone up in
smoke!
No one had said that, though –
according to most
our dearly
departed
was still just lost.
Sorry for your loss.