Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell

by Alison Whitelock

  One Friday night, me and Izzy and Andrew were huddled together in the back of the van as we waited for Mum to drive to the next street so we could collect the money. It was freezing that night. The snow was turning to sleet and it blew straight into the back of the van ’cause there are no back doors on milk vans so it’s easier to jump in and out as you deliver the milk to those who sleep.

  ‘No’ long noo,’ Mum yelled out above the noise of the engine. ‘We’ll just finish up these last couple of streets and we’ll soon be hame havin’ a nice cuppa tea and a sausage. Hang on!’

  So we held on, singing ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’, and Andrew grabbed an empty milk bottle and pretended it was his microphone and he thought he was just like Neil Diamond and we told him his singing was shite, but he didn’t care and sang all the more. He even did the actions.

  As we pulled into Greenhills Crescent, Mum pulled on the handbrake and turned from the front seat to make sure we knew which doors we were going to knock on. The sight of the three of us frozen like snotters in the corner broke her heart.

  ‘That’s fuckin’ it,’ she said as she thought about my da toasting his arse at the log fire in The Village Tavern. She told us to get up the front beside her and we did. It wasn’t much warmer but at least we were close to her and that made us feel better straightaway. Izzy and I perched ourselves on the passenger seat and Andrew sat at Mum’s feet and clamped himself to her left leg making it nigh on impossible for Mum to change the gears.

  ‘That’s it for the night,’ she said angrily, still thinking about my da toasting his arse, ‘let’s get hame, and get those sausages in the pan!’

  We couldn’t wait and our mouths watered as we set off down the dual carriageway through the sleet and in the direction of home.

  ‘Mum, have we got any HP sauce in the hoose?’ Izzy asked Mum above the roar of the engine.

  ‘We have indeed, Izzy!’ she yelled back, her own saliva starting to flow at the thought. ‘We’ve even half a jar of pickled onions!’ And we let out squeals of delight ’cause all of us loved pickled onions, especially if we were having a sausage.

  We raced through the sleet as best we could in our beat-up old Transit van and Andrew broke into a wee song, the one he used to sing at the cub scouts and we all knew it, we’d been singing it for years. So we all joined in having a great old time when suddenly out of nowhere a car came up behind us with its headlights on full beam like it was searching for something and the headlights found the four of us huddled together in the front of the van. We ­narrowed our eyes, wincing into the glare, and I looked at Mum and she looked scared and dropped a gear with a crunch to slow the van down a bit.

  ‘Maybe they want to pass us,’ Mum said, adjusting her rear-view mirror to get a better look as we kept rolling slowly along and the car behind us got closer and closer and that’s when we saw it was my da. Mum pulled over and he pulled in behind us and Mum told him we were heading for home and that’s when the shouting started with my da asking Mum who she thought she was heading for home when we hadn’t finished collecting in all the money and Mum told him that we were cold and hungry and that she didn’t want to keep us out on a night as freezing as it was. And my da told Mum that she’d better get all the money in tonight or else there’d be trouble and we listened to him shout some more and all we wanted to do was go home and have a sausage with HP sauce and a pickled onion if there were any left, and Mum said there was and we believed everything she told us.

  And so my da stormed off and got back into his warm car with the walnut dashboard and headed back to his roaring log fire and his toasty arse. Mum was sick to the stomach and if there was anywhere she could have taken us that night to get away from him she would have, and so with tears in her eyes she turned towards us and did her best to sound like everything was fine.

  ‘Come on, let’s go back and get the rest of that money in, eh? Then we’ll get our sausages,’ she whispered, and we knew that she was sad. Before we set off, she took the shoes off each of us and checked the polystyrene insoles to make sure our feet weren’t too wet and then we did a U-turn across the dual carriageway and headed back to finish getting my da’s money in. And she tried to get us to sing that wee song again. ‘What was it again, Andrew? Come on, son, you know its my favourite, let’s hear it—you’ve a lovely voice.’ And Andrew started to sing it again. Slowly we all joined in but with less gusto than before and the van moved at a snail’s pace through the sleet and drivers behind us blew their horns in anger as we set off back up the dual carriageway.

  I went and sat in the back of the van by myself and I watched the road as it rolled away from me like a giant ­conveyor belt and it seemed to me that that was how life was, one big conveyor belt rolling beneath you and once you’re on that belt, it’s hard to get off.

  And as I watched the road roll away from me I thought about the sausages and the HP sauce and the pickled onions we’d have when we’d finally get home and then I closed my eyes and I wished my da would have stayed with us in the van and told Mum he loved her and maybe sung us one of his Neil Diamond songs or ‘Ave Maria’, but he didn’t. So I had no choice but to imagine myself putting a sawn-off shot gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger and I smiled to myself and felt hopeful for the future.

  10

  If you’ve got leaving on your mind

  She was wearing a blue-and-gold headscarf and a red brushed-nylon coat that tied in the middle and felt warm and soft to the touch. It was four o’clock already and as I ran out of school it was starting to get dark, ‘dark o’clock,’ Mum used to say. When I got to the school gates I was surprised to see my da there too and I looked at Mum in her red brushed-nylon coat and her blue-and-gold headscarf tied tight around her ears and my heart sank when I saw she wasn’t smiling.

  I couldn’t think why my da would be there ’cause he was never there to pick us up at four o’clock, but I hadn’t the mind to think about him when I saw her so sad. I ran across to Mum, my mind racing, not understanding, and Izzy and Andrew were there too by now and I think somebody took my hand, I’m not sure, and even now I don’t like to remember it. Then Mum bent down and spoke to us. She gave me a kiss and next I knew she was walking away in the opposite direction to us and I was being dragged along by somebody’s hand. I turned around to look at Mum one last time but she had her back to us, and as she walked away with her face to the wind I knew that she was crying.

  Whoever had my hand kept dragging me and I gave myself a sore neck trying to turn around to try to catch another glimpse of Mum until I lost my footing and ended up dangling at the end of this hand. But I got my one last look at Mum and I stared at her for a few seconds, focusing with all the strength I had, not wanting her ever to disappear, but before I knew it she was just a red brushed-nylon dot in the distance. My eyes welled up and magnified the dot for a second before the tears spilled over and ran down my cheeks and the very next moment the darkness ate her up and all we were left with was him.

  When we got older we knew why Mum’d had to leave and it wasn’t just about getting the milk money in on a Friday night. He’d hit her around a few times too and once half her face was black and blue and she said she walked into the door and I believed her. I believed everything she told us. I looked at that door for a long time after and ­wondered how a door so flat could cause so much damage and I didn’t think for a minute she was lying. I can still see that door now, as clear as day, the dimpled glass, the double security lock, the white gloss paint with the runs in it. Mum wore dark glasses for days till the swelling went down and Izzy said she looked just like Jackie O on the telly and I nodded and laughed though I didn’t know who Jackie O was.

  Once before when my da hit Mum she went to the local police and, well, they wouldn’t do anything. They just said it was a husband and wife affair and they didn’t get involved in the likes of that. So there was nothing Mum could do and nowhere Mum could go, I mean, where can you go when you’ve three kids, four dogs, five cats and a don
key called Annie? When we got older Mum told us that sometimes the pain of living with him drove her to think about putting her head in the gas oven or even jumping off the Cartland Bridge, and that’s the highest bridge in Europe. And so it was no wonder that she left that day. You’d have done the same.

  ‘Right, come on you lot, let’s get back to the hoose,’ my da growled and headed towards the milk van while we followed. We climbed inside through the doors that weren’t there ’cause milk vans don’t have back doors and sat on the aluminium floor that was icy to the touch. Andrew dared me to lick it to see if my tongue would stick and the cold seeped up through our duffle coats and into our arses and nearly gave us piles. Mum always used to say, ‘Don’t sit on the cold floor of the van or you’ll get piles.’ I shut my eyes and imagined it was her driving us home now and not him and thought about how she’d put the two-bar electric fire on when we got home and we’d all race to thaw our arses out in front of it and push and shove each other out of the way in a game that mostly ended in tears and always in burnt arses.

  My da pulled the van in off the main road and parked it on the gravel driveway and we jumped out and headed towards the house. The place looked dark and empty. I thought that maybe she was inside, you know, sitting in the dark, ’cause there had been a power cut or something and that she was in there right now looking for the candles. I remembered the last time we had a power cut and one of our neighbours, Sonia, came to our door with a big box of candles that she had spare after she’d noticed our lights off for a long, long time. The next day we made a huge pot of mince and onion curry and took a big plate of it to Sonia and that was our way of saying thanks, without ­actually saying it, ’cause back in those days you didn’t thank people for stuff, you just grunted in their general direction and then made them a mince and onion curry or a short-crust apple pie. Either way they’d be happy and grateful too, but as tradition dictated they didn’t say thanks either. They just ate what was offered and gave you your plates and short-crust apple-pie dishes back clean.

  We got inside the house and the worst was confirmed. Mum wasn’t there. But Buster our pet boxer was and he stuck his wet nose up my school skirt and licked my arse and I knelt down and cuddled him and when I looked into his big brown eyes he sniffed at my face and licked my salty tears.

  ‘Yir mither’s gone,’ my da said and we didn’t say anything, just sat there on the green vinyl couch with our duffle coats on. The room was dark and cold and he put on one bar of the two-bar electric fire and heated his own arse at it and I looked at him and wished the hairs on his arse would catch fire.

  Days passed, I don’t know how many, I lost track. We went to school every day and every day we looked at the school gates at four o’clock just in case she’d be there again with her red brushed-nylon coat and blue-and-gold headscarf, but she never came. Sometimes I thought if I shut my eyes and wished hard enough when I opened them she’d be there, but Izzy said it didn’t work like that and that we just had to be patient.

  It seemed like an eternity since we last saw her. Then one day we came home from school and both bars of the ­electric fire were on and there was a big pot of mince and onion curry on the electric ring and me, Izzy and Andrew dropped our school bags and ran through the house calling her, desperate to see her, and as we ran through the living room I saw her red brushed-nylon coat slung across the arm of the green vinyl couch and I felt warm inside.

  11

  Nanny wears a beanie and Grampa joins the circus

  She was Mum’s mum and the kindest woman in the world. I never saw her consume anything other than tea and toast and I learnt her generosity by osmosis. Nanny was a market trader and the market lay down a cobbled laneway in the backstreets of Glasgow where hawkers and tinkers set up market stalls too and sold their wares regardless of the weather. It stank in the lane and it was dreech and dank but nothing would stop Nanny from going there ’cause she had her customers to attend to. So every day she put on her beanie and her winter coat and she went down the lane and that was that. The lane was full of drunk men who begged for money to buy whisky. I saw a sober man once and I was so surprised I asked Nanny, ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He’s sober, hen,’ Nanny said, without missing a beat, while she rummaged through Jessie’s cardigans and jumpers, four for a pound.

  Nanny had a sixth sense for finding a bargain and she passed this glorious gift on to me and it doesn’t matter where I go, I’ll always find a bargain—like that time I found Cartier shoes at St Vincent de Paul for a few dollars, right next to a stunning Victorian damask bedspread they’d wanted five dollars for, but I knocked them down to three ’cause I have to get a bargain and there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s in my genes.

  The other trait I’ve inherited from Nanny is wearing a beanie that closely resembles a tea-cosy. Last time Mum came to visit me in Sydney, I wore my beanie to go shopping with her and she told me I looked daft. She’s ­convinced I only wear it for a laugh. But the real reason is it reminds me of Nanny while it keeps me warm and it ­comforts me when I feel down.

  Once when I was in the lane with Nanny I saw this drunk man begging and it was wet and cold and his trousers were in tatters and his shoes had no soles. He’d managed to beg enough to get himself some booze; I could see his wee quarter bottle of Cutty Sark sticking out of his back pocket. Nanny passed him by as he stood there in the wet and as she did she pulled out a couple of coins from the pocket of her winter coat and placed them discreetly in his outstretched hand. Jessie saw what Nanny did and called out to her from the other side of the lane, ‘Haw, Nellie, he’ll only buy drink wi’ it!’ And Nanny walked across to Jessie and leant across her table full of cardigans and jumpers, four for a pound, and whispered discreetly, ‘I know he’ll only buy booze wi’ it, Jessie, but you tell me, what else does he have in his life?’

  And Jessie didn’t know what to say and so she shuffled from foot to foot and asked Nanny if she was interested in any of the nearly new bra and brief sets she’d just got in at two pound the set.

  ‘Thanks, Jessie, but I’m not in the market for bras and briefs today. I’m looking out for a few jars of catering-size pickled gherkins for Maria the art teacher.’

  ‘Try Whistling Tommy in the arcade, I think he just got a job lot in from that big hotel down there at the quay,’ Jessie said. Nanny thanked her and made her way to Whistling Tommy and that’s how it worked down the lane.

  Nanny was married to Grampa and Grampa did everything Nanny told him. He even went to the chapel on a Sunday for the two of them and sometimes when me and Izzy and Andrew went to visit them on a Saturday night, Nanny would say to Grampa, ‘Right, Bampsy!’—she always called him Bampsy—‘Get the potato pancakes on!’ And so Grampa had to get into the kitchen and start peeling and grating potatoes and he had to follow the recipe Nanny’s mum had handed down to her. Nanny’s mum came from Lithuania where they make potato pancakes all day long, only they don’t call them potato pancakes but they call them blinis, and what kind of a name is that?

  Grampa’s parents were Lithuanian too, and his dad used to ride wild horses bareback on the prairies of Lithuania, just like in the Wild West movies you get on the telly sometimes on a Saturday afternoon. So Grampa grew up with a love of horses and ponies, but his da wouldn’t let him ride them bareback on any prairies and was it any wonder that when he was still a wee boy he ran away from home and joined a travelling circus where he rode white horses bareback around the circus ring and children who came to the Saturday matinees screamed with excitement and delight?

  One day a man came to the town where Grampa’s circus was playing to make the first radio broadcast ever made from that little town. The broadcast would be made from the local swimming baths, ’cause that was the only building big enough to house the number of people who had shown up to see what was going on. The man in charge said he needed someone to jump into the swimming pool at the start of the broadcast so people for miles around could hear the sp
lash through their radios in the comfort of their own homes. When the man asked for a volunteer Grampa stuck up his hand and the man said, ‘Round of applause please for our volunteer!’

  The crowd went mad as Grampa ran back to his circus caravan and put on his stripy swimming trunks then raced back to the pool and waited for his cue to jump. When it came Grampa took a run and a jump and he splashed into the water and half the pool emptied out, near enough soaking the man who was holding the microphone. The crowd went wild. When Grampa came back up to the surface of the water everyone was cheering and clapping for the man in the stripy swimming trunks who’d just made history in their little town. Grampa stood dripping at the side of the pool and his chest swelled with pride.

  When Nanny and Grampa got married they had two sons, Chick and Bruce, as well as Mum, and when all three were grown up Bruce bought himself a wee car and that summer he drove Nanny and Grampa all the way from Scotland to Europe for a holiday and they toured all over and slept in a tent at bedtime. Grampa took his cine-camera and made movies of Nanny in the bulb fields in Amsterdam, at the Palace of Versailles, and at The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. When they got back to Scotland, me, Izzy and Andrew watched the movie with Mum on Grampa’s home projector screen and when we got to the bit with Nanny at The Little Mermaid, Mum started singing, ‘Wonderful, wonderful, Co-pen-ha-gen!’ and we all looked at Mum and then at each other and all of us thought she was mad. Years later Bruce had the movies put on a videotape to preserve the memories and I still have my copy of that video. It’s more precious to me than anything else I own and I watch it in my quiet moments to see Nanny at the Palace of Versailles, waving at the camera like she’s waving at me, and sometimes I wave back though I know it’s daft, but I loved her so much you see.