‘Eighteen thousand tons of stinking shit! Fuck and damnation!’
He hurls himself onto the bonnet, pummelling it with his fists. He whimpers and farts with the exertion, hugging the silver lady, shimmering, acres of gossamer . . . He kisses her and licks at her wings, her drapery, silver, dignified, always serene, glimmering in the moonlight. He goes all romantic on her, sucking at her toes, her little feet. He whispers sweet nothings, blows kisses, baby talk.
Suddenly he sits bolt upright and stares back at the darkened house. His eyes travelling from window to window, ’til finally they come to rest on my room, my little night light flickering . . . I stand back behind the curtain. I see him climb down off the bonnet, he adjusts his bow-tie, and reins in his temper. He tunes it like a motor, finely, with care. He rewinds it, he stamps and curses, he wipes the drool onto his cuff — that makes him wince. That’s funny, his cufflink must have scratched his nose. He checks for blood, pawing at his face in the wing mirror, bent, drunk, skyward . . . He has to stand funny to do that, at a jaunty angle, to check his nose. He scratched it on either his signet ring or his cufflink, one of the two. He gives his hair a cat-lick, re-straightens the wing mirror, then studies himself in the glass. Buttons his waistcoat, pulls out his onion and has a time check.
I see him from the top window, my little bedside lamp burning. I have to have the light on, a reassurance, otherwise I see things - there are vampires, real. No kidding, I need the light, something to keep my spirits up.
Just as we think he’s passed his vortex he starts drumming again, hammering the doors, he huffs and puffs. He blusters round the garden, does a couple of little circuits then comes in through the back way.
‘Juny! Darling! I’m home! I had to work late! The office! Is there any food in the house? Are the children in bed? Steven? Nichollas? Children! Juny, was that a light I saw burning? Answer me, woman!’
He grabs at her, he pulls at her arms and drags her out into the night, her in her night dress.
‘Look at it woman, look at what you’ve done to me! Feast your eyes on that and don’t forget a single scratch!’
His Roller lies wrecked before them. The panels hopelessly bent.
‘Now are you satisfied? Something to cheer you up. My complete and utter downfall! Something for you to smile about! Look at it, it’s a wreck woman! A man was killed! It’s a write-off! A complete fucking write-off!’
He spits it out through his beard, brandy flavoured.
He wrote off four cars in three years, ripping down miles of crash barrier, re-moulding them into weird and wonderful art forms . . . He had the intellectuals guessing. ‘Could it really be art? And if so expressionist or romantic?’ ‘Anarchic Realism’, was one school of thought, ‘Auto Dadaism’, pronounced a second.
Drunk and disorderly he would emerge from amongst the wreckage, a slight scratch on his left wrist and two bruised knees. He dusts himself off and replaces his titfer . . . He has to go back in to fetch his brolly from the parcel shelf, he opens it up and checks the ribbing, there seems to be a slight nick out of the handle . . . Then the old bill roll up and he gives them the special handshake. They help him to sit on the curb, he’s hurt his shin but otherwise he’s completely unscathed.
The old girl lets out a scream and runs howling into the drive, her arms flailing, the old man socks her one right in the eye, and drags her back into the house . . . He jams his mitt into the fuse box.
‘My fucking electricity!’
The house goes black, there’s a frothing noise, then everything goes black. He’s illuminated in the sparks, his teeth glint, all his pearls, every last one a cap. Then darkness, it rushes in and surrounds me! My little light goes off, that’s how I know he’s home. He must have ripped out the fuse box, that was the noise I heard, and the bang. It goes black! I call out for my mother, the old man screaming down the driveway. We can just make out his peroxide hair floating in the moonlight, and his bloodshot eyes.
‘You’re abusing my facilities! Squandering my fucking electricity!’
He dances, elfin-like under the boughs of the trees, moonlit, a cloud, nothing . . .
I’m telling it to you like this because it’s a serious business. That’s why I smile as I write. After all, a little humour never hurt nobody . . .
He took the fuses, that’s why it went black, he pockets them and runs . . .
‘It’s alright, Steven, it’s alright!’
That’s my mother calling out to me, through the blackness, from way downstairs, trying to be reassuring. I have to be brave, the dark is everything . . .
19. YOU’LL NEVER KNOW IF IT'S DARK
Wednesday nights, Nana Lewis comes over on the bus and we have sausage and mash. She turns up, her hair piled up on top of her head, loads of it, brown, not a bit grey. And this soft skin, and two types of scarf, a blue net one and a coloured silky one, flowers and stuff and she holds our faces and kisses us . . . ‘My angels.’
That’s how she speaks. She puts her hold-all down, rummages about in it and pulls out a bag of apples. I go out to play . . . She hands me one . . . hard and shiny . . .
‘Rub it on your jumper. Take it with you, you can eat it outside.’
I turn and walk out into the night.
‘What if it’s magotty, nan?
‘You’ll never know, if it’s dark.’
She shouldn’t have told me that. . . I look at her and me mum through the kitchen window, the steam builds up . . . She walks over to the sink, rolls up her sleeves and starts right in mashing the spuds.
Nana Lewis: our saviour. That was true enough — an apple here, the odd half-crown there, it kept us ticking over. She could see what was going on, alright. The old scoundrel’s absconded? Fine, Nana Lewis steps into the breech, and not a regular grandmother either: young, radiant, with brown hair, all her own, great piles of the stuff. Style! Something from the 1920s, a flapper, that’s what she told us. She used to wear men’s trousers, and that was way back in the 1930s! Then war was declared and she had to learn to drive a truck. That was her alright: wistful, exuberant. She took charge, she exercised her will. A fag, a pint of Guinness, and she was ready for anything!
‘It’s plain as the nose on your face what that scallywag’s up to, Juny! He comes and goes just as he pleases, then clears off leaving you with the kids, the bills and I don’t know what! He takes the biscuit, he really does! The boys are listless, look at the poor angels. They’re sickening for something, that’s for sure . . . What they need is a change of air!’
She stubs out her cigarette for emphasis, that’s the way she talked. In her eyes we were always ‘her angels’. As far as grandparents are concerned, grandchildren can do no wrong. The old and the young talk the same language: ga-ga!
‘You need a break my girl, if not for your sake, then for the children’s! You don’t always have to jump to his tune you know, Juny . . . Why, you don’t know where that scallywag is from one month to the next! He says he was working late and sleeping at the office! Sleeping at the office? Heavens above, he’ll say he was in church next! He disappears, he reappears . . . he doesn’t pay the bills! And then before you know it he’s off again! Where to? Heaven only knows! And when will you see him next? Will he ever show his face again? Who can say? Take a look at yourself in the mirror sometime, love-a-duck! You’re running yourself ragged, Juny — take my advice, get out and enjoy yourself whilst you still can! You’re still young!’
She got through three whole packets of Guards trying to talk the old girl round. The air was blue with fag ash. The dinner would have to wait, that was for sure. Us kids couldn’t get a word in edgeways. I pull at the table cloth, I nick three dog-ends out the ashtray right in front of them. I could of lit up there and then for all the notice they took of me. In the end we eat out the pans, nan still trying to talk the old girl round.
A fact is a fact, and there isn’t anyone more stubborn and belligerent than my mother. If she says that there’s no such thing as pure new
wool, then that’s that! And it doesn’t matter how hard you try and cajole her, she’ll have none of it. You march right up to her and plunk it down in her lap, ‘100 per cent pure new wool’, in writing. No dice! She’ll take her opinions to the grave.
‘I know, I know, I know.’ She nods and repeats herself. ‘But the costs! the costs!’
That’s another of my mother’s great watch-words, ‘think of the costs!’ coupled with ‘we’ll have to economise!’ I spent my whole childhood on one of her ‘economy drives’, limping through school in one pair of busted boots and a cheese sandwich in my brother’s old blazer pocket.
‘We’re living beyond our means!’ That was always ringing in my ears, through the power cuts and the black-outs.
The only way we got to take that holiday was through Nana Lewis digging into her nest egg. She drew the money out and didn’t even consult my grandad. My mother had to he cajoled. She budgeted to the last halfpenny. I needed a fishing rod, that much was for sure. All those hard laid plans of economy and then we had to fork out another thirty quid on taxi fares. You see we didn’t have a car and my mother couldn’t drive. The taxi had a sun-roof, so I get to stand on the front seat with my shoes and socks off and stick my head out the roof. It helped me from getting car sick. It meant I managed not to puke.
‘The air’s good for him! If it cured Knut Hamsun, it won’t do him any harm! If I had my time again!’
That’s Nana Lewis’s opinion.
I shoot my cap-gun at the passing traffic. That’s what you need if you feel like you’re going to chuck up, lungfuls of air! I open my trap and stare straight into the wind, both eyes streaming.
‘Norm and Sue are coming as well . . . You’ll like the Broads, there’s a lot of water there so you can go fishing.’ My mother announces it to me and my brother over tea and my mouth turns to dust. ‘You’ll like that, won’t you? And Susan’s bringing Joanne with her. So you’ll have a little friend to play with as well, Steven, you like Joanne, don’t you?’
I swallow and manage a half-smile. ‘I’m going over the back,’ I tell her. I walk out, I exit, her eyes follow me, wondering . . .
‘I thought you’d like a holiday . . .’
I keep my eyes to the ground, I give nothing away.
‘We’ve built a camp. Can I have a tin of beans for the fire?’ She looks at me, disappointed, and hands it over. I get my hat and spear, and exit.
In bed I try to imagine Joanne lying on top of me, us doing what me and Norman did, but with her, with a girl, small, my size, and no willy, just a slit . . . The weight of her, the trees bowed over us, just kid’s stuff, imaginings, poetry.
The taxi drops us off, chucks our suitcases on the verge and leaves us to it. My grandad holds the map upside down and scratches his head. Even after we find the right stretch of river it still takes us half the night to find the moorings. It’s black on those broads, no street lights to destroy the night sky, and plenty of water. You have to watch out for that, especially the mooring ropes. We dilly-dallied about on that river bank ’til we didn’t know our port from our starboard.
‘Over here!’
We hear a voice off in the distance.
‘That’s your grandad,’ says Nana Lewis.
We peer through the bulrushes, his ears and nose sticking out like a totem-pole, hawkish, blustering, snoring his big head off.
‘Over here! I’ve found it, is this it? The right one? What do you think?’
A moor hen goes by, and a dead bream, revolving on its side, its eye missing . . . Me and Nick chuck rocks at it.
‘Pack it in, you two!’
We look up and giggle . . .
‘It’s empty, I think it’s this one . . . What’s it supposed to be called again?’
The shouts and counter-shouts echo out across the still waters. The mist settling in, it starts off in the reed banks, then all of a sudden it takes over. First it’s just a harmless effect, next pea-soup! The voices grow more and more muffled. You have to watch your footing, those mooring ropes, treacherous. It seems we’re hopelessly lost and we’ll have to re-trace our steps, it’s the only chance of getting off that marsh alive. Re-find Grandad Lewis and start out all over again, but this time be methodical!
He was last seen heading towards the swamp. That doesn’t bode well. We put our noses to the ground and take one step at a time, that’s the only way not to come unstuck, on all fours, Red Indian-style. We zig-zag around like snakes, fog-bound, blundering through the bulrushes.
Then I run into a nest of swans — two of them, they come out honking, wings outstretched, six foot of them, going on seven. I stagger back, then I trip. They turn round and jump in the drink. I lay there ’til my heart goes normal . . . I check my sheaf-knife, a real bone handle, and dead sharp . . . I cut some bulrushes and stick them round my bush hat, for camouflage. Then I notice it, a little will-o’-the-wisp, flickering in the twilight, dancing on the opposite bank. It sits just above the water, a minute goes by and then it’s joined by another. Two of the little fellows, a little ballet of the lanterns.
Then there’s an almighty splash and I see him, his beak silhouetted against the setting sun: Grandad Lewis, some profile, Geronimo. I run up to him, perched on deck, sat astride his suitcases . . . I stumble up out of the mud. So, he’s found it after all, it wasn’t just hot air. Here he is, on the bridge, basking in the last few rays of the setting sun. He play-acts a little yawn. He double checks his time piece and shakes his head with a pretend frown.
‘I thought you weren’t coming . . . Did you see the rhinoceros? I winged one of them, but he got away and swam across the river. I thought maybe you’d finish him off?’
He’s talking to me. I look up to my nana.
‘Didn’t grandad tell you he brought his elephant gun?’
They must think I’m nuts.
We climb on board, the lot of us. We go trooping up the gang-plank, I bang my feet as loud as I can, I march, I give him a sideways look but don’t see any elephant guns . . .
‘Which way did it go, grandad?’
‘Which way did who go?’
‘The rhino, the one you shot.’
‘Into the swamp, to the rhinoceros graveyard.’
‘Where’s your elephant gun?’
‘I left it at home.’
‘Nana says you’ve got it in your suitcase.’
‘No, that’s my bazooka.’
‘Let’s see it!’
‘Later . . . after tea.’
So Grandad Lewis was pulling our legs — we thought he was lost in the swamp when he’s been here all along. He even had time to collect some kindling and set the stove, before dark fell. We light the lanterns and mosey around below decks. We check for rats, and I go through all the drawers and cupboards . . . All the doors are inlaid with mystic symbols, crows and dogs, Egyptian style, all one hundred per cent original. Symbols of fair sailing, that’s grandad’s opinion, but I’ve got my own suspicions, ideas not known.
* * *
Then we hear this car pull up. We see the headlights and then the doors go. I peek over the hatch, it’s Norman leading the way up the gang-plank, grinning through his little specks, Himmler-ish, little, false pearls. He pats my arse and treats me like a girl, right in front of my grandad. I have to go out on deck to avoid him. Even then he follows me, he looks at me from beneath his glasses and offers me a toffee.
‘Hello Fred.’
‘My name’s not Fred.’
‘You still keeping our secret?’
I stare at the deck. He looks at me, then looks away and strokes his chin . . .
‘Our little secret.’
He rummages around in his pocket and adjusts his bottle of stout. He talks in loud hot whispers. He looks over his shoulder and feels me up. I step back, then he grabs my arm and tries to pull me behind the wheel house. He snatches at my sleeve, but I shake him off and run back down below decks. I sit right up next to my grandad. I put my fingers in his beer and he tells me o
ff.
Me and Joanne have adjoining berths right up under the bows: a little wash stand each, a triangular bunk and a crow painted on each door . . . I piss into the wash stand, I don’t bother with the toilet, I do it right there, in front of her. A regular little fountain, yellowing, it goes down the plug-hole. I have to stand on my toes and fish it out, it squirts in little jets, in different directions, on account of the damaged end, where the needle went in. And a little red stain, that’s blood. I don’t risk walking to the bog, the gangways, ambushes in the dark. I pee in the little bedside sink instead, right in front of Joanne. I shake off the drips, dab at it, then tuck it back in my jeans. Then I walk over, lift her hair, kiss her cheek and climb in beside her. I hold her near, trembling in her nightie. Then I have to get up and take another piss.
‘I got to go again . . .’
‘Why?’
‘I drunk two bottles of coke today.’
‘Two whole bottles?’
‘Yeah, and I had three on the way up here!’
I take another leak, then jump back in beside her. I try to hold her, to comfort her, but I’m nervy, too. You see, we don’t know how to relax and have a good time, we’re just a couple of buggered kids. All we’ve got to go on are rumours and hearsay, fumblings in the dark, grown ups’ probings.
Then we hear someone outside — we hear the boards go, then someone taps the timber. We duck under the covers, our little hearts frozen. I take a quick peep then climb out her bunk and jump back into my own. We look to each other and try not to giggle. Then the door edges open, I put my head right under the covers. I hold my breath and listen. I hear whisperings, I make a gap and peep through.
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