by Carol Morley
Mum took another snap at her sandwich.
‘I’m not going back,’ she said, her mouth full of soggy grey bread. ‘I’m not stepping another foot in that office.’
I wondered if the reason was that her perm had gone wrong. Parts of her hair were broken off at the roots.
‘The women at that place are far too common, Ann.’
Mum thought a lot of things were common: pierced ears, eating chips out of newspaper, sterilised milk, women with stringy necks, going abroad, waste paper baskets in lounges or bedrooms or bathrooms, eating in restaurants and putting support stickers for political parties in the window of your house.
Tiger’s tail swept the television screen again, like a pendulum. Mum made a snuffling noise and I realised she was crying.
‘You never hug me,’ she said.
It was true, I never did. I thought of Helen telling me how important it was for Captain to be touched. I reached my arms around my mum. She was thinner, but still fleshy and warm, and she smelled of perm solution and talc. She leant her head heavily on my shoulder and sobbed loudly. I watched Tiger’s coarse tongue clean his fur. I listened to the drone of the TV, to the sounds from another world, but still Mum’s voice bled into my head. I saw flakes of her skin like snow on the brightly coloured swirls of carpet. I imagined that I was looking down into the room and saw the mother, the girl, the cat.
‘I told that boss of his about the affair. He went and sacked the both of them. I don’t think he ever forgave me for losing him that airline job before you were born.’
Mum stopped talking. Her watery blue eyes settled on Tiger and the television. A flicker of optimism crossed her face.
‘One time when I was on the train on the way to visit your dad in the hospital, I saw some of the cast of Coronation Street.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes – there they were! In the carriage next to mine.’
I began to think about the kind of hospital Dad was in.
‘What have you gone and done?’ Mum said, noticing my bald patch.
‘It just went and happened,’ I told her.
‘What a pair – me and you, hey?’ Mum said, ruffling what was left of my hair as I shrank under her hand – not wanting to be part of a pair with her.
‘Let’s have some fish and chips,’ she said.
Glad to get away, I grabbed her purse and headed for the chippy. I never knew that Dad had worked at an airline, and I imagined him having an affair with an air hostess. I thought of how different things could have been. I would never have been born if he’d gone off with her. Or maybe half of me would be made up of air hostess genes. The thought hurt my head and I leant against the counter, feeling the heat against my body as I tried to rid myself of thinking about Dad and this mystery woman.
Back home we ate the fish and chips straight from the newspaper with our fingers, which Mum did not classify as common if you were inside your own home.
*
What was I searching for? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I was hoping to find something when I opened the doors of Mum’s wardrobe. The funeral dress hung lonely and friendless. Mum only had one other dress and she was wearing it. It was orange.
In a cardboard box at the bottom of the wardrobe I found my dad’s table tennis trophy. It wasn’t like I remembered. It had always looked so solid and gold on the mantelpiece out of my reach, but as I held it I realised it was light and more like painted plastic. I read his name on the little black plaque on the front and then carefully put it back in the box, where I noticed my mum’s funeral clutch bag. I snapped it open and found a clear plastic bag.
Inside the bag was an old-fashioned card. There were cut-out roses on the front that popped out – and on the back was written, in looped, inky handwriting To My Wife, For a Very Happy Birthday, Darling, from your Loving Husband. Dad’s wristwatch was in the bag too. I slid my fingers along the brown, cracked-leather strap and across the dial. It had once circled his wrist. The hands were stuck at ten to two like a smile. I wound the watch up. It didn’t work. I took out his silver lighter, but it wasn’t real silver, it was too light. It was cold and patterned with wavy lines with a blank square for the owner’s initials to be etched in. But Dad’s initials weren’t there. I flicked open the lid of the lighter and turned the wheel with my thumb; there was a grind and a spark but no matter how much I tried I couldn’t get it to flame.
In the plastic bag I discovered a lock of my long hair that I had given Mum. It felt strange that she had placed it in the bag with Dad’s things. I held my hair in one hand and Dad’s watch in the other and closed my eyes. I tried to think of a spell that could bring him back, but all I could think of was abracadabra. I said it, all the same, over and over. I opened my eyes and for the tiniest fraction of a second hoped he was there.
Like a lucky dip, I reached into the bag again and pulled out a stiff piece of paper – Dad’s death certificate. I saw that the cause of death was Carbon Monoxide Poisoning. I repeated the words out-loud. I knew that he had gassed himself, but I never realised there was a proper name for what he had done.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning: so many ‘o’s in the words. I hated those ‘o’s. They were like tubes for gas to travel through. The only use of carbon I knew was in carbon paper. I didn’t understand how Dad could have been poisoned by carbon, but thought it must be significant that its first three letters were car.
I drew out and unfolded a large sheet of flimsy paper. It was a copy of a letter. Dad always used pale blue sheets of Basildon Bond, which I liked holding up to the light to see the fancy watermark, and I could tell, even without the watermark, that this was the same paper. I was holding a copy of the last letter he wrote. Where was the original?
Dad’s clear handwriting leaned to the right.
Dear Brynn, I’m so sorry to do this to you and the kids. Why had Dad only written the letter to Mum? Why wasn’t I mentioned? I was just lumped together with my brother and sister. We were just the kids. I had spent so much time thinking about Dad and yet he hadn’t even bothered to mention me by name.
I took the letter to my bedroom. Dad had written that he hadn’t felt the same since the last breakdown. I looked up breakdown in my dictionary. I scanned the page under break and found breakdown: a stoppage through accident; collapse; disintegration; a vigorous and noisy Negro dance or the like; an analysis.
I thought of Dad collapsing and disintegrating, surrounded by poison, and how odd it was that break-down also meant a kind of dance. I looked up analysis too, and found something that I liked the sound of: the tracing of things to their source.
I folded the letter into the pages of my dictionary against the definition of carbon: a non-metallic element, widely diffused, occurring uncombined in diamond and graphite. This seemed to have nothing to do with cars, but, as I looked further down the page, I came to carbon monoxide (CO): a colourless, odourless, very poisonous gas.
What had killed Dad was as invisible as air. It was nothing that I would ever see.
*
Two men slouched towards the off-licence. One man was the tallest I had ever seen while the other was the shortest, like two human fairground attractions.
‘’Scuse,’ Helen called out to them. ‘Could you go in offy and get us bottles of wine and sherry? It’s for me mam.’
‘That right?’ Tall smirked. He took the pound notes Helen held out and shambled into the shop, while Short stayed outside and ogled us, through his thick, steamed-up glasses.
I crossed my eyes and looked down at the drops of rain running down my nose. Helen had been drunk twice before. ‘Can’t wait to get off me head again,’ she said. I couldn’t wait either; I was desperate to get off mine.
Tall came out of the shop and winked as he handed Helen the paper bag. ‘Ta,’ she said.
We ran off to find a secluded place to mix the booze. I anxiously gulped the last of the lemonade from the can we were going to use to mix and disguise my portion. I wondered whether I
would be able to swallow the wine and sherry. In the past the smell of any kind of booze, even Christmas chocolate liqueurs, had made me want to retch.
We found a quiet spot near some bushes. Helen unscrewed the tops from the bottles and I held the tins steadily as she shared the mixture equally between them. She hid the near empty bottles in the bushes for us to come back to later.
Helen drank from her tin and she made it look easy. As I held mine gingerly in front of me, she nodded in encouragement. I lifted my tin closer and was hit by a vile smell of aftershave, turpentine and nail varnish remover. I doubted I could get the stuff past my lips.
‘Hold yer nose, yer mard arse,’ Helen said. ‘Yer won’t be mithered by taste.’
I pinched my nostrils with my fingers, lifted the tin, put my head back, poured and swallowed. A quick heat rose in my throat. I decided I was swigging a liquid chemical and I was part of an experiment. I took the next sip without holding my nose.
We roamed the shopping centre and I began to know what being drunk was like.
*
Curled up inside a shopping trolley, shop windows whizzing by as Helen pushed me at speed and let go of the handle. I was freefalling, spinning onto my side, clambering out of the trolley, amazed that my tin was still upright in my hand.
Sitting on a toilet forgetting why I was there. Coming out of the cubicle and the blotchy-faced attendant with too many outlines for one person. She picked up my tin to dump it.
‘No!’ I shouted. It didn’t sound like my voice.
I lunged at the attendant and saw all of the layers of her shocked face. I got my tin back. I looked at my reflection and realised that it was me and wasn’t me. Helen was right. Being off your head was great.
We re-filled our tins and then, I don’t know, but a rush of wet warmth between my legs. Hadn’t I gone to the toilet just now or was that ages ago?
‘I’ve wet meself!’ I shouted out to a lad.
Gadding. About. Twelve. Years. Old.
Helen?
‘I’ve wet meself,’ to anyone I met.
There’s Helen. I’m trying to get on a bus. Helen is pushing me up the steps. Stumbling. Laughing. Driver won’t let me on. Concerned expression. Funny, the way his face is serious.
‘What’s wrong with ’er?’
The driver radios for an ambulance.
‘Run,’ says Helen, dragging me away by the hood of my cagoule.
Get away. Get away. I am running, I’m running, all the layers of me, up Plaza steps, along Underbank, feet, breath, pounding.
‘Where’s me tin?’
Where’s Helen? Don’t know. Me. I am in a doorway. A shop doorway. A shadow. Lips. Hands. Teeth. Darkness.
I don’t know.
*
My eyes opened to Tiswas on the TV. I tried to speak but no words came out. Helen was kneeling close to the screen, with Captain on her shoulder. She turned around and smiled. ‘Yer puked on me mam’s new cardigan last night,’ she said.
We spent the rest of the morning watching the telly while Helen scratched away at the lovebites on my neck with a plastic comb, her tried and tested method of making them seem more like a naturally occurring rash.
brynn
She saw her daughter writing an essay for school entitled ‘Loneliness’. She wonders what on earth Ann knows about that. She’s always gallivanting off without a by your leave and dragging some unfortunate creature back with her. Slum kids, really.
She wonders if she could write a story too. She finds some paper and a pen and sits for a while. But she only writes one word – She – before crossing it off and writing He. She can’t get any further.
She sometimes sees him in crowds. But when she catches up with him, it’s never him, of course. Ann doesn’t mention him and she doesn’t mention him to Ann. That’s the way. No photos on display to remind them. Move forward. No point moping about. Moping gets nobody anywhere.
She’s got a new job at Debenhams – that newly built brown brick department store in Mersey Square – but she doesn’t think she’ll stay long. She saw a newspaper advert for a houseboat near Wigan and the rent was quite cheap and she thought that would be a nice way to live, gently rocking on the water.
She would have liked a bit more of her family around her. She thinks back to her brother’s photograph and where they’ve all got to. Her sister Barb has just had a breakdown and is living back at home, even though she’s twenty-seven. Proof that no woman should go on having kids in her forties, let alone her own mother. Her sister Jan has got three young kids and she’s bringing them up on her own, which can’t be easy. Her other sister married a bank manager and lives in a big house and she never sees her. Her brother has got his own photographic shop in Derby and is always busy. They were once all huddled together in a small house and she couldn’t wait to get away and start her own life. Now they’re all flung apart she suddenly longs to be back in that photograph with a different future ahead.
She realises she’s moping and tries to snap out of it. She looks at herself in the mirror. She’s heading for size eighteen. First thing in the morning she’ll start a new diet.
something to show you
Of course, Mickey, Lucy and Helen didn’t realise they were involved in my ongoing study on fathers, but they didn’t need to know. I just made sure I took in whatever they said about them and made a note of it, along with any particularly interesting behaviour I observed for myself from their dads. So far: Mickey hadn’t mentioned her dad lately and I never saw him around; Lucy’s dad was going on more and more business trips and had moved out of the bedroom he shared with her mum and Helen’s Real Dad was best avoided in case he clamped his hand on my knee again.
I liked to keep my friends separate and I was never going to form a gang – that was too complicated and merging. I hung out with Helen to get drunk, Lucy to smoke and Mickey to meet boys. Whenever Mickey saw a lad that she liked, she would fold her hands into fists so that they couldn’t see her warts.
*
Mickey chucked the chip wrapper into the air and as it fluttered to the ground we wondered what to do next. She was wearing her new Northern Soul navy blue pinafore. She spun around on her laced up Monkey Boots and her long full skirt flared open into a circle and revealed her thin, caramel legs. She showed me a few new dance moves, which I tried to replicate.
‘Can’t dance fer toffee can yers,’ she said.
That was true. It wasn’t just my pencil skirt and stilettos getting in the way. I didn’t have any rhythm.
‘Look!’ Mickey said, mid-spin, her eyes fixed into the distance. I followed her gaze and saw the lads coming our way. There were five of them, a little older than us, and the best one of them was a punk with bleached blond hair.
We waited until they were close, tossed them a bored look and walked away. They followed, like we knew that they would. We had no idea where we were going but when we saw the train station we flounced through the unmanned ticket office and onto the platform. I followed Mickey like a loyal dog as she carried on down the slope and onto the tracks.
My heels jammed into the stony gravel as I tottered to keep up. Mickey turned around and looked towards the lads, dropped her chin to her shoulder and bit her lip. I looked back and saw that they were still on the platform.
‘Where yer going?’ a lad shouted.
‘Never yer mind,’ Mickey replied.
If we carried on going forward we were going to end up in the blackness of the tunnel and I wondered if there would be rats and spiders crawling the walls.
Clatter, vibration.
‘Train!’ Mickey yelled.
I was sandwiched between the track and a high wall. Mickey had already made it onto the bank. I tried to haul myself up, but my arms were weak and my skirt tightly bound my legs. I couldn’t make it.
A two-tone horn echoed in my head. There was no room for both the train and me on the tracks. I was going to be hit and I would die.
Perhaps it wasn’t such a
bad thing.
Mickey stretched her hand down to me but I refused to take it.
‘Ann! Come on.’
I didn’t care. I was going to die and I would see Dad on the other side.
‘Fuck’s sake yer moron!’
Headlights flared into view.
Then I thought of Mum having to open the door to another policeman.
I grasped Mickey’s slim wrist. She yanked and I scraped up the wall and onto the bank like a caught fish.
The train passed us, lit-up carriage windows flashed by, the fast train to Crewe.
We sat amongst the thorny bushes in the damp air and caught our breath. Mickey’s panting disappeared along with the sound of the train. She punched my shoulder hard and I rocked from the pain.
‘What a barmcake!’ she said.
I giggled and that got Mickey started. We laughed for ages and only stopped when we saw the lads were still gathered on the platform.
Mickey launched herself back onto the tracks in a single jump in her sturdy boots. I sat cautiously on the edge of the wall and turned around and lowered myself down before dropping. Mickey steadied me and turned impatiently. I hobbled behind her as we retraced our steps to the platform.
The lads were waiting and looked impressed, I reckoned.
‘He’s mine,’ Mickey whispered to me, picking out the punk. I couldn’t argue, after all, she had saved my life.
‘Okay,’ I said, selecting the next best-looking lad.
Mickey linked my arm so I didn’t stumble through the wasteland, as we followed the lads to a derelict building, where we all sat, huddled in an old, boarded-up entrance. Pressed against Mickey and me, the lads had a spitting competition to see who could spit the furthest, and we listened to the sound of phlegm being gathered in their throats and watched it being forced into froth balls that were spat into the night air. The lads laughed and talked about us like we weren’t there, of our meat holes, our fish holes, and I realised how terrified I was of what I smelt like and tightly crossed my legs. But I looked at Mickey and smiled, and she smiled back. We were glad to have boyfriends.