by Carys Bray
‘All right. How’s Uncle Jim?’
‘Oh, you know.’
‘He’s not himself?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Kelly called.’
‘Did she?’
‘She said to tell you that she booked a lane at Premier Bowl for her and the boys and some of their friends tomorrow evening. But the friends can’t come. And she wants to know if we’ll go instead.’
‘Hmm,’ he says, pretending uncertainty. ‘What do you think? Fancy a bit of bowling?’ He mimes a shot. ‘Str-ike! Could be fun . . .’
‘All right.’
‘But?’
‘She can be a bit . . .’
‘Much?’
‘I don’t mind her messing with my hair while she’s cutting it.’
‘She’s just trying to be nice.’
‘But I don’t want to go for a manicure.’
‘All right.’
‘Or a facial.’
‘Okay.’
‘And I don’t want a Katniss braid.’
‘I’ll tell her.’
‘No you won’t.’
Kelly is usually good at talking to people, she does it all day – Going anywhere nice on your holidays? Shall we try a different colour? And she’s got kids of her own. But her boys are younger than Clover and there’s something easy and animal about them. They’ve always liked Darren; perhaps they like anyone, everyone.
‘She isn’t used to girls. That’s all. What do you want me to do? Reckon I should shout, “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DAUGHTER”?’ he asks, mimicking the Australian in their favourite YouTube video, the man who yells, ‘GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY PENIS!’ at the police while they’re trying to arrest him.
The unspoken penis dangles for a moment. Maybe he shouldn’t joke about things like that any more. Perhaps it’s inappropriate.
‘Yeah, I reckon you should,’ she says. ‘Do it just like that, Dad. I dare you.’ And then she laughs. Which helps.
After he’s wolfed a couple of slices of toast and downed a cup of tea, Darren sits on the couch and watches the rest of the programme. The best part is the showstopper, the fancy thing the bakers have to make at the end. This week, it’s a 3D biscuit scene. He is gobsmacked by their creations: a train, a sea monster, even a bloody carousel! When it’s finished, he goes into the kitchen and roots about. He heads back into the lounge holding a baking tray upon which he has placed two knives, a packet of Biscoff biscuits and the jar of Biscoff spread.
‘Here,’ he says, ‘look at this.’
Clover watches as he unfastens the jar and smears two blobs of Biscoff spread on the tray.
‘I’ll just . . . hang on . . . yeah, like this.’ He stands two biscuits upright, facing each other. Then he pastes spread on to the underside of a third biscuit, which he places on top of the other two, like a roof. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You, too. Get building.’
When the tray is smeared in spread and populated by a series of triumphal biscuit arches, Darren purses his lips, dog’s arse tight, like the lady on the programme, and does his best posh voice.
‘Now, Darren, what have you made for us today?’
Clover grins.
‘I’ve made Stonehenge. Out of a packet of biscuits and a bit of Biscoff spread.’ He lifts the biscuit roof off one of the Stonehenge arches and breaks it in half. ‘That’s a lovely snap,’ he trills, crumbs spraying out of his mouth as he pronounces, ‘Well done, Darren! It’s a good bake.’
Clover laughs and he gets his phone out of his pocket and takes a photo of her holding Stonehenge, evidence that she was happy, to show her later, should he need it.
Once Clover is in bed he gets a beer out of the fridge and calls Kelly. She’s had a drink – drinks, in fact. A couple of glasses of wine, she tells him. It’s been one of those days. The boys are in bed, though, she adds.
He puts his phone on speaker and rests it on the arm of the recliner. Kelly talks like she drives: quickly, changing gear at the last minute. Her voice zips out of his phone sharper, thinner, but otherwise it’s almost as if she’s there in the room with him, chatting as the sun steers past tips of the trees at the top of the bank and slips beneath the railings.
‘. . . and the thing with you, Darren, if you don’t mind me saying – which I’m sure you don’t, you’re a good listener, aren’t you? – you don’t get all fidgety when someone’s talking to you, and I like that about you, I do – but the thing with you is . . . remember the time when I’d just started school and there was a boy in my class – I can’t even remember his name now – who kept following me around and calling me Smelly Kelly? God, I was only four – and I was used to Colin teasing me, that’s what brothers do – but this was different, meaner somehow. So I didn’t know what to do, and I remember one lunchtime you followed the boy for a bit and gave him a taste of his own medicine, and he stopped after that. Anyway, the thing with you is, you’re not a walkover, but you don’t say much, do you?’
‘Well . . .’ he says.
‘Do you remember that?’
‘Not –’
‘So,’ she begins again, and he senses a gear change. ‘Today Tyler asked if he could make his own toast and I said yes – they’ve got to learn to be independent some time, haven’t they? And do you know what he said? He said, “Do I put it in portrait or landscape?” Portrait or landscape! Can you believe that? God, I felt old.’
He smiles. One of the surprising things about adulthood is how few people accompany you there and what a relief it is to occasionally talk to someone who knew the child-you and the teenaged-you; someone who has seen all your versions, every update, and stuck with you through all of it. That’s really something.
‘. . . knackered by the time I fetched the boys from Mum’s.’
‘Did you carry them at all, today – Tyler and Dylan?’ he asks.
‘You mean actually pick them up?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Probably. Hang on . . . yeah, I did, but Tyler’s getting big for it now, he’s like a little tank – why?’
‘Just wondering.’
‘You all right for tomorrow? Did Clover tell you?’
‘Yeah.’
This is where he should mention Clover’s hair; say that Kelly is not to offer to braid it like the girl from The Hunger Games. Or stroke it. Or try to pass on free samples of Frizz Ease treatments. But he can’t.
The hair thing started when, years ago, before she married and had her boys, Kelly came round to babysit so he could go out for a drink with Colin. She’d looked after Clover before, but hadn’t ever put her to bed.
When he got back later, slightly soused, Darren popped upstairs to check on Clover. Her face was clenched and blotchy, as if she had fallen asleep crying.
‘Was everything okay?’ he asked, downstairs.
‘I gave her a bath,’ Kelly said. ‘I just wanted – she’s got such lovely hair, and I thought it would be . . . You haven’t got a hairdryer. Unless you’ve . . . unless there’s one somewhere in the middle bedroom? I’m sorry. I wasn’t snooping. I popped my head around the door, but then I saw . . . and I . . . I just assumed you’d sorted it all . . . Would you like some help with it?’
He shook his head, once. No, underscored.
‘Okay. I just . . . you’re my friend . . . and I . . .’ She lifted her hands, surrendering easily. ‘So I called my mum and got her to bring a hairdryer round. I’ve got a diffuser – they’re good for curly hair. But when I turned it on, Clover went mental. She shouted, “Hot, hot, hot!” and ran away. I thought she was messing at first. I made her sit on my knee. And she howled. Then I tried to coax her into it. I offered her a treat, but she got dead angry with me. How do you dry her hair? You don’t take her out with it wet, do you? Her little head will get cold.’
‘She doesn’t go out with it wet. I’m not stupid.’
She was upset. And he’d had a few. That was how it happened, he thinks. She sat down and they talked about the salon where she’d been working since she finished
her NVQ, about her plan to open Kelly’s Cuts one day, and Colin’s joke that it sounded more like a butcher’s than a hairdresser’s. He remembers all that, but he doesn’t remember how she came to unbutton her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples sat on the bony stave of her ribs like a pair of crotchets. His hands hung limply by his sides until she lifted them and placed them on firm skin, marbled like wet plaster. He tried not to think of Becky, whose naked body had been creamy and soft, so soft.
He was careful; they were mates and he didn’t want to spoil things. ‘Shall I . . . Is it okay if I . . . There?’
‘Hmm.’
‘And –’
‘Hmm.’
‘Do you –’
‘Yes.’
‘This okay?’
‘Hmm.’
‘Is it all right if I –’
‘Darren?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Thank you,’ he said afterwards. And he knew it was wrong, even before she scrunched her face and curtsied.
‘No, thank you, Darren.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he added, immediately aware he’d got that wrong, too.
He called her in the morning to make sure things were all right between them and was relieved when she was herself: chatty, casual.
The next time she babysat, she kissed him on his return. Or maybe he kissed her. Either way, it started in the hall and she finished it – finished him – on the dining-room floor.
He went out with Colin more frequently. Sometimes he’d say he was tired and pick up a couple of beers on the way home. One night, as she sat on the kitchen worktop, legs around his waist, head resting on his shoulder, she said, ‘We could go out for a drink some time.’
‘I’ll get Edna to have Clover.’
‘Colin’ll do it.’
‘Edna won’t mind – that way Colin can come, too.’
She unwrapped her legs and arms. Slid off the worktop. Closed her zip and fastened her buttons. ‘I don’t want to go for a drink with Colin. I want . . .’
He willed her to stop before she spoiled everything, and she did stop, for a moment.
‘Maybe you should ask Edna in future,’ she said. ‘That might be better for everyone.’ She didn’t offer to babysit again. And he didn’t ask.
Kelly carries on talking. He listens to the sound of her voice rather than the individual words: the up and down of it, the light and bright of it, until, eventually, she says goodnight and, alone in the dark and quiet, he dozes off in the recliner.
He wakes in the early hours, tiptoes up the stairs, pees, strips down to his pants and slips into bed. Too hot, he kicks off the covers and lies there, thinking about the way Edna stopped him a while ago as he passed her house on his way home and congratulated him for telling Clover about the Facts of Life. It was also his responsibility, she announced, to teach Clover HOW to be a WOMAN. In fact, she’d been in the bookshop, the lovely, old-fashioned one in town, and had seen a book called exactly that: How to Be a Woman.
He rolls on to his side and stuffs his arm under the pillow. It might help, that book. Might fill him in on a few things. Let him know what to expect and what he needs to cover. Even when you think you’re doing well, you miss stuff. He remembers years ago when Clover started doing swimming lessons at school.
‘Can you teach me how to do a towel-hat on my head?’ she asked.
‘A what?’
‘A towel-hat. In a pile.’
‘You mean a turban?’
‘Yes, one of those. All the girls do them after swimming, in the changing rooms.’
It was something he hadn’t thought of, and there’s bound to be a shedload of other stuff. He should be prepared. It helps, that feeling of having stuff at his fingertips, should he need it. It really helps.
Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’
Catalogue
Object: Book.
Description: ‘Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree’ (Little Golden Book). In good condition.
Item Number: 1.
Provenance: This book must have been bought by Becky Brookfield (my mother) for Clover Quinn (me). On the inside cover it says ‘Love from Mummy xxxx’ in blue biro.
Display: Display this book open, so ‘Love from Mummy’ is visible.
Curator: Clover Quinn.
Keeper: Darren Quinn.
5
Uncle Jim is not himself. Last time he was not himself it was Christmas and there weren’t any beds at the special hospital by the park, so he had to go to Liverpool. He hates being sent to Liverpool. It’s like being deported, he reckons. Like being forced into exile or extradited. Dad says it’s not like being extradited at all; you’d have to commit a crime in Liverpool first, in order to be extradited there. Uncle Jim says that could be arranged.
When he is himself, Uncle Jim does armpit farts, impressions, Mexican waves with his eyebrows, volunteering in the charity shop and dead hard jigsaws. He sleeps at night-time, remembers to eat, and sometimes pops round for a cup of tea or a beer with Dad while they watch old films like Top Gun and Indiana Jones.
When he is not himself, Uncle Jim stops taking his medicine and believes everything he thinks. He responds to volunteer opportunities in the paper, like massage therapist for the Liverpool Marathon or van driver for the British Heart Foundation, even though he’s got no massage qualifications and he can’t drive; he starts up conversations with people he doesn’t know and tells them all the stuff he wishes was true, like he owns a pet shop and he could have been a professional footballer if he hadn’t busted his knee when he was younger. Once, he decided there was no reason why he couldn’t get a proper job, so he filled out a form to say his circumstances had changed and he didn’t need his benefits any more. Dad spent a whole afternoon on the phone trying to sort it out. When he is not himself, Uncle Jim gets fizzy on the inside – literally – and the fizz makes him walk really fast for hours at a time, even in bad weather.
It rained a lot last December and Uncle Jim walked so much that he wore holes into his shoes. He came round on the evening of the 23rd, all muddled up, thinking it was Christmas Eve when there’s always a special tea with him, Grandad and Mrs Mackerel, and all the best bits from the frozen Christmas buffet section of Lidl: sausage rolls, bite-size pizzas, prawn vol-au-vents and mini chocolate éclairs. He was wet from the rain and limping, scared because he thought someone had been following him. Dad made him come in and sit down. He cooked cheese on toast and brought it in on a tray. As soon as the tray was balanced on Uncle Jim’s knees and he wasn’t going anywhere, Dad knelt on the floor, unfastened Uncle Jim’s trainers and peeled off his socks. The bottoms of his feet looked like strawberry crumble. Dad said he would take him to the walk-in centre as soon as he finished his toast, but Uncle Jim didn’t want to go and they had a big argument. She doesn’t like it when they shout at each other. There’s no sparks – they’re firing blanks, but still. Uncle Jim called Dad a nutsack-wiper and Dad called him a royal pain in the arse. She had to go next door and sit with Mrs Mackerel because she wasn’t allowed in the house by herself back then. Mrs Mackerel held her rosary, said a Hail Mary for Uncle Jim – God help him. Then she did some prayers to St Dymphna, light of those in mental darkness. Dad got back from the hospital late, by himself. The doctor at the walk-in centre had sent them over to Accident and Emergency, where Uncle Jim had been sectioned.
When Uncle Jim is not himself she isn’t allowed to visit on her own. Dad says it’s in everyone’s best interests; that way, no one will get upset. But Dad and Uncle Jim are more likely to upset each other than she and Uncle Jim are. This afternoon, when she has finished at the allotment, she’ll cycle to Grandad’s with a load of vegetables, and then she might pop to Uncle Jim’s, just to say hello – he won’t want any vegetables, he only likes brown or yellow ones, like potatoes and baked beans.
Outside, the sun is drumming on the path. She locks the front door behind her, slips the key into her pocket and w
ipes greasy hands on her shorts. The suncream smells of coconut. When she was small, Uncle Jim told her that coconuts were bear eggs. He bought one from the supermarket and told her to keep it somewhere warm and light. Such an exciting wait, tipping the bristly ball from hand to hand, holding it up to her ear, listening for the bear. Dad told her in the end, said Uncle Jim was being unfair. But she didn’t mind, it had been like listening to an especially exciting story, it didn’t matter that it hadn’t been real.
She fastens her helmet and ties a couple of carrier bags and the bike lock around the handlebars. All ready. She pedals to the end of The Grove and then back on herself, passing the house as she plugs up the hill of the bridge, bucket swinging with the effort. Once she has crossed the road at the top she takes her feet off the pedals and coasts down the other side, past Jewson’s, past Jo Kelly’s News and the post office. She’s pedalling again, just approaching the roundabout where she’ll turn off on to Moss Lane, when she notices Dagmar sitting outside the corner shop at the foot of the wheelchair ramp, a red and black tartan trolley beside her, the kind old ladies drag around. There’s an instant during which she could pedal on, pretending she hasn’t seen her, but she misses it – her timing is all wrong, her feet don’t move fast enough. Dagmar looks up and Clover freezes, like a statue when the music has stopped. She squeezes the brakes and her tyres skid on the scatter of stones that dust the pavement.
‘Hi.’ She glances at the shop door, checking for the owner of the shopping trolley, Dagmar’s nan, perhaps. ‘Who are you waiting for?’
‘I am waiting for no one.’
‘So that’s your trolley?’
‘Yes.’
Clover can see how the trolley might come in handy if you had a lot of things to carry. It is also a bit strange – if Abbie Higham saw it she would declare it ridiculous and die laughing, literally. That is enough to make Clover decide to like it. ‘It looks very useful,’ she says. ‘What’re you doing here, then?
‘I am watching the men with the dog.’
On the other side of the roundabout, in the empty parking spaces beside the hairdresser’s and the bakery, two men are talking. One of them is holding a small dog.