The doctors said Mum had had an asthma attack and it was brought on by an allergy to our ponies, so not long after Mum got out of hospital my da told us he was taking Rusty and Silver to the glue factory after all the trouble they’d caused. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Goldie the goldfish died when Mum got sick, now Rusty and Silver were going to die too.
And so the day came when we had to say goodbye to them. Me and Mum and Izzy and Andrew went down to the greenhouse that morning and fed them the grass and the chicken weed we’d picked for them from the field across the road, and I put my arms around Rusty’s big head and stroked his mane and he nudged his nose into my side and nearly knocked me off my feet and I laughed and held his big head closer. Silver watched on from the other side of the greenhouse and when she saw Rusty getting all the attention she raced across and nudged her nose into my other side and swished her tail and snorted through those big nostrils of hers.
And I held their big heads in my arms and I kissed them both on the soft skin of their noses and they looked at me with their big brown eyes as if to say, Don’t forget about us.
And I whispered into both their ears, ‘As if I could.’
24
The houses that Bruce built
Many years after Chick died, Nanny and Grampa and Bruce still lived together in their council house at 9 Maitland Avenue. Their house was close to the graveyard where Chick was buried and every Sunday we went to the graveyard and put flowers on Chick’s grave and sometimes Grampa planted white snowdrops and blue forget-me-nots around the headstone.
Bruce was still working as a builder though not always in Spain. Once he even worked on a building site as far away as Australia and he lived in a house right next door to the beach. But Bruce never went to the beach ’cause he preferred the cold and the snow like you get in Scotland, where icy winds bite you and turn your pale cheeks red and how could the beach ever compete with the likes of that, when all it offers you is sand in your trunks and sea salt in your hair and the promise of a good scorching from the midday sun that leaves you wanting to die? So Bruce built what needed to be built in Australia and then he left that place for good and went back to Scotland where the icy wind bit him and he knew he was alive.
One day Bruce and my da decided what a great idea it would be to build two semi-detached bungalows on the two-and-a-half acres of land behind our little house, so we could all live next door to each other in harmony in our red-brick seventies bungalows, just like one big happy family and everybody agreed. Nanny, Grampa and Bruce would live in one of the bungalows and we would live in the other. The bungalows took a long time to build ’cause we could only buy bricks and cement whenever we had the money. Bruce spent more time away from Scotland skiing in the Swiss Alps than he should have, but when he wasn’t skiing he worked hard on getting the bungalows built and all of us helped and finally, with lots of shouting and unreasonable demands, the bungalows got finished, albeit five years later.
Me and Izzy and Andrew worked on the bungalows every day with Bruce after we’d done our homework. I didn’t like doing my homework but Mum promised if I did it every night from then until the following year when I went to the high school, she’d tell Bruce to build an extra space in my bedroom to put a desk and a desk lamp, and when Mum told me that, I promised I would do my homework every night in the week.
Building those bungalows was hard work but it was exciting and brilliant. Our favourite bit was when Bruce would call a tea break and we’d all sit down to pork ring sausages (that everybody ate except me) and jars of pickled gherkins and sour-dough bread sandwiches. We felt like real labourers who had earned their tea and we ate our sandwiches with filthy hands, and Bruce always finished his tea break with a cigarette and he drew long and hard on it and said nothing for fear it would spoil the pleasure of the nicotine entering his blood. Sometimes when we looked at him it seemed that his cigarette transported him to another world, maybe the world of lederhosen and après-ski on the piste, and he looked like he savoured those moments alone with his cigarette more than he savoured life itself.
Bruce was a professional builder and he knew everything. That meant that he had to have an assistant every day and if you were chosen to be his assistant for the day you had to spend that day carrying bricks up and down ladders, sweeping up Bruce’s mess and putting the kettle on to make his coffee. Bruce took seven sugars in his coffee and sometimes he would say, ‘Put the seven sugars in the cup and don’t stir it—I don’t like it too sweet,’ and we would laugh and think he was mad.
Bruce and my da shared the costs of the bricks and cement and all the other ingredients we needed to build the bungalows and as we built, we dreamed of what it would be like to live in our semi-detached three-bedroom bungalows, with our fitted kitchens and avocado bathroom suites. Even before the walls were built we all knew where our bedrooms were going to be and if I saw Andrew walk across the foundations of my room, I’d tell him, ‘Get out of my fuckin’ room right now!’ and he’d run and hide and Bruce would laugh and light a cigarette and tell me to put the kettle on. It was going to be a dream come true to live there, all of us together, and all of us were excited.
Finally, the long and arduous task of building the bungalows came to an end and all that was left to do was paint the woodwork with shiny gloss paint and of course it was up to Mum to do the painting ’cause my da, he couldn’t even change a light bulb never mind paint a room. Every time Mum finished a room Quackers, our one-eyed cat, would come in and rub himself against the sticky skirting boards and one-eyed or not, Mum would curse him and chase him from the room. Once she had picked every cat hair from every skirting board in the house, we moved ourselves in.
The first few years of living next door to each other passed peacefully and Bruce painted his living-room walls lilac and we laughed at him and Mum said we shouldn’t laugh, ’cause Bruce painted his living-room walls lilac ’cause he was artistic and that made us laugh all the more.
Nanny used to come and go happily between the houses, from her own back door straight to our back door and into our kitchen, where me, Izzy, Andrew and Mum spent most of our time. My da spent most of his time in the good room by himself sitting on his leather armchair by the side of the gas fire, with his oil painting of Buster hanging right above his head. When Nanny came to visit she always had goodies for us from the market and it was brilliant. She was the kindest and most generous woman I’ve ever known and Mum takes after her in every way, except Mum doesn’t wear a beanie and Grampa’s leather slippers. Nanny would bring everything via those backdoors from pork ring sausages to leather-soled Italian shoes that had only been worn once, if you don’t mind, and every day she came was like Christmas Day, the kind of Christmas Days we’d dream about where my da would be somewhere else, preferably dead.
Then the joy of living in close proximity to those we loved suddenly stopped and it stopped on precisely the day that Bruce asked my da for the title deeds to his own semi-detached bungalow, the semi-detached bungalow Bruce had built with his own hands and paid for with his own money, the semi-detached bungalow that Nanny and Grampa were to live out the rest of their lives in.
And my da told Bruce he couldn’t have those deeds. He said no because Bruce’s semi-detached bungalow was sitting on my da’s two-and-a-half acres of land and according to my da that meant Bruce’s semi-detached bungalow really belonged to him and if Bruce wanted the title deeds then he was going to have to take my da to court to get them.
And of course Bruce was never going to take his sister’s husband to court and he hoped instead that he could appeal to my da’s reason. But my da’s a stranger to reason so all attempts at trying to resolve the matter between them failed and in the end relations broke down and my da stopped talking to Bruce and Nanny and Grampa. That’s when my da decided he wanted fucking rid of them from the bungalow next door and so he started on a campaign to make their lives unbearable so they’d end up desperate to move and my da would get to keep both proper
ties for himself.
With my da now refusing to speak directly with Bruce he made me the messenger of his unreasonable demands and offensive orders and whenever he wanted to get a message to Bruce about him vacating the property my da would send me next door with strict instructions on what to tell ‘that bastard Bruce’. Sometimes when I went next door to deliver those messages I’d find Bruce in front of the fire eating a huge plate of spaghetti bolognese that Nanny had made him and he would give me a fork and I’d sit down in front of the fire too and I’d share that big plate of spaghetti with him and one night he showed me how to twist the spaghetti using just my fork and he gave me a glass of red wine with a spoonful of sugar in it and we sat there slurping and sucking up strands of spaghetti together until eventually I’d forgotten what I had gone in there for. But once the spaghetti was finished I remembered again and so I’d give Bruce the message from my da and then I’d leave Bruce’s place ashamed and go back next door and give my da Bruce’s answer, which was always that he wasn’t going anywhere until he got the title deeds to his house. And my da would get right fucking mad and start shouting like a loony and banging on the walls so loud that Bruce and Nanny and Grampa had no choice but to hear.
After some time I was too ashamed to deliver the messages from my da so whenever he sent me next door again to give a message to that bastard Bruce, I’d just go and see Bruce and have some spaghetti and a glass of red wine with a spoonful of sugar in it and we’d sit in front of the fire and I’d tell Bruce nothing and instead I’d listen to him tell me tales about skiing down icy slopes and through snowy pine forests in Switzerland. Then when the spaghetti and the stories were over I’d go back home with no reply to my da’s message and then the screaming and shouting would start again.
Bruce stayed put with Nanny and Grampa as long as he could and my da’s shouting and screaming made life unbearable for them. One day my da’s pal, Peter the undertaker, needed to park his hearse somewhere for a few days and my da said it would be okay to park it on our two-and-a-half acres and he told Peter to park it right outside Nanny and Grampa’s lounge-room window. And Nanny and Grampa had to look at that car night and day and their hearts were heavier than before and they wondered if they’d ever see an end to the pain and trauma of living in close proximity to those they loved with their fitted kitchens and avocado bathroom suites.
Throughout all the unrest Nanny still came to visit us via the back doors and sometimes when she arrived she’d run into my da in the kitchen and she didn’t know what to say. But it didn’t stop her coming and still she brought goodies for all of us including woollen socks for my da’s sensitive feet, the only sensitive part about him, and her kindness and generosity never faltered during the most stressful time of her life, when she was nearly 80 years old and should have been living in peace in close proximity to those she loved. This was the time in Nanny’s life when we should have been listening to her tell stories about her life around the table in front of the open fire eating spaghetti bolognese and drinking red wine with a spoonful of sugar in it. Instead, all of us lived in fear and dreamed of how life could have been and my da continued to shout and scream and Nanny and Grampa sat together next door in their lilac living room with heavy hearts and stared out of their window into the waiting hearse.
25
My new best pal
Mum said I shouldn’t worry about starting high school with no best pals to hang about with on my first day, but it’s hard when you’re standing there in the playground wishing there was somebody you could talk to, and then you start raking in your bag pretending you’re trying to find something and there’s only so many times you can do that before people start to notice and think there’s something wrong with you. Mum said making good pals is something that takes time but then I thought, well me and Maggie didn’t take any time at all ’cause we were best pals on that first day we met at school.
So I just sat in the schoolyard at break times on my own and tried to look like I didn’t care. Mum had given me another home perm and my hair had gone yellow again and everybody sniggered at me in the corridor as I walked past them between classes. And sometimes I’d hide in the toilets at break time so that nobody could see me and I’d pass the time thinking about my old best pal Maggie and how she never used to laugh at any of my perms and the more I thought about Maggie, the more I missed her and the more I missed her, the more I knew I’d never get another best pal just like her.
When I was in the schoolyard I’d watch the groups of girls all huddled together in their own private circles and I wished I could have huddled in their private circles too, but nobody asked me. And sometimes I’d go to the tuck shop to give myself something to do and I’d get myself a Cadbury’s Crème Egg and I’d peel off the shiny paper from around it and I’d bite the top off and then I’d lick out the creamy stuff inside like they do on the telly and then when I was finished, I’d pick the skin from around my fingernails till they bled and wait for the next class to start.
And then one day, Morag Black came up to me in the schoolyard and she said I was only hanging around by myself ’cause I thought I was too good for everybody there. And how could I tell her that that wasn’t true, that I wanted to be in one of their private circles hanging around in the schoolyard talking about boys and lipstick and God alone knows what. Then she put me up against the wall and told me I was a fucking snob and that I was lucky she didn’t kick my fucking arse and take my dinner money off me and when she let me go I ran straight to the toilets and locked myself in a cubicle and thought about my old best pal Maggie again.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that nobody wanted to know me in the schoolyard, the teachers in the English department didn’t want to know me either ’cause I kept failing their stupid exams. One day Miss Clarke the English teacher asked me what it was about interpreting the works of the great writers and poets of our time that I didn’t get. And that’s when I told her I wished we could just read the great writers and poets of our time and enjoy them without having to pull them apart and answer questions on what they were thinking about at the time they wrote the stuff and she didn’t seem to like that answer very much. And then she said if I wanted to keep on studying English I had to try harder, and while she was at it she said as if my interpretation skills weren’t bad enough my handwriting was shite too, and that she’d never seen handwriting as bad as mine in her entire life and that was saying something ’cause her da was a doctor. And I told her my da’s no’ a doctor and his handwriting’s shite too and that’s when she told me one more word like that from you my lady and you’ll find yourself outside the headmaster’s door.
And so I thought I was trying harder but still I kept failing the exams and on the last exam I failed Miss Clarke wrote at the bottom of the page in red ink, ‘Ask your mother to contact the English department in the first instance.’ I didn’t know what ‘the first instance’ meant but Mum seemed to know.
So Mum went up to the school the next day and knocked on the door of the English department and Miss Clarke opened the door and told Mum to come in and sit down and she went to the filing cabinet and brought out copies of my past exam papers and showed them to Mum. Mum looked through the papers with the red crosses, and then she looked up at Miss Clarke and said, ‘So what’s the problem?’ And Miss Clarke said the problem was that I didn’t have a clue about what was required of me to complete the English course and that they were going to have to give my place to another child with more ability who wouldn’t drag down the morale of the brighter students. Mum asked Miss Clarke what I would do in place of English and Miss Clarke said there were still some places left in the chemistry class and then Mum said, do you think if Ali can’t understand a poem, she’ll be able to understand what’s going on in chemistry? And that’s when Miss Clarke stood up and said that wasn’t her problem, and closed my file and stamped something on the front with a big rubber stamp and showed Mum the door.
When Mum came home that night she told me I
couldn’t take the English class anymore ’cause they had to give my place to another child with more ability. And then I said to Mum, ‘First it was long division I couldn’t do in the arithmetic class and now it’s English. What’s left, Mum? What am I good at?’ And Mum said I was good at plenty of things.
‘Like what?’
‘Well, I mean, there’s … oh, I mean, let me think … there must be a hundred things you’re good at.’
And I said, ‘Name one, Mum,’ and she said, ‘Well, needlework. There. You’re good at needlework.’
‘I am not, Mum. I’m shite at needlework. You saw that skirt I tried to make that time and even you said it was shite.’
‘Aye, well that’s true. Now look, I know, you’re good at P.E.! See, I told you you were good at something!’
‘You did not, Mum, you told me I was good at plenty of things—P.E.’s only one thing.’
And so I ended up in chemistry. Nobody asked me if I even wanted to join that class and next I know, I’m having to show up at Room E11 in the Science Block on Monday mornings at ten o’clock for an hour of drudgery and it may as well have been in Chinese for all I understood. I sat by myself ’cause nobody wanted to know me in the chemistry class either and I made friends with the Bunsen burners and the test tubes and the things to stand the test tubes in. I hated chemistry and while Mrs Berry the chemistry teacher was going on about electrons and neutrons and hydrogen and carbon, my mind turned to Maggie in the English class probably writing poems and stories and reading Macbeth aloud in front of the class with her new best pal Linda with the shiny chestnut hair and the big tits while I sat in Room E11 with the Bunsen burners and the test tubes and the things to stand the test tubes in, writing out lines of x’s and y’s and talking about the periodic table of elements and who gives a fuck.
Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell Page 10