Back in the kitchen, I decide to wash the crockery piled up in the sink, although quite how you remove encrusted food from a plate without resorting to a hammer and chisel is beyond me. Also beyond my particular area of domestic expertise is how you remove tea and coffee stains from mugs. Those stains is so engrained no amount of wiping with a dishcloth can shift them. Carmel must have a special cleaning procedure she inherited from her mother. Women have these skills they pass down through the generations, like secret rites, like how to give birth to children and how to give men grief.
I look in bewilderment at the dishwasher Carmel bought in 1998, but, seeing as she’s never bothered to show me how to operate it, it’s no flaming use, ehn?
My stomach tells me I not filled it yet, so I reheat the porridge again in the microwave and, when it’s done, try to eat what looks like congealed sick and tastes like glue paste. I bring down the coffee jar for my morning coffee and see it’s empty, but luckily I do spy a half-full cup of black coffee from a few days ago hiding behind the kettle, just waiting to be discovered at this very opportune moment. As there’s no mold on it, I stick it in the microwave.
I have to say, it don’t taste too bad.
Right, Barrington will have to make an expedition to Sainsbury’s to stock up on provisions for a growing lad, because Mother Hubbard’s cupboards are bare. Can’t remember when I last wandered down the hallowed aisles of a supermarket for a major shop. Maybe ten years ago? Surely it wasn’t in the ’90s or even the ’80s. To be quite frank, I suffer from an allergy to them. Supermarkets are for the ladies. They love them, talk about them, even dress up to go to them. Carmel always makes sure she puts on her second-best wig when she goes shopping. One time she even went to Waitrose up at Stamford Hill but came back moaning about how everyone looked down they noses at her because she wasn’t dressed to go to a Buckingham Palace tea party.
But Sainsbury’s now. Carmel makes a weekly trip Friday morning to avoid the weekend crowds and gets a taxi home because she don’t drive. Says I’m the reason she don’t drive on account of me telling her years ago she’d never be able to because she don’t know her right from her left, which she still don’t. Women are wired differently than men. Oh yes, they can put on an emotional performance when it suits them, but they’re not so hot when it comes to technical things. She usually comes back from Sainsbury’s with six boxes of chocolates saying that, as they’re part of some three-for-the-price-of-two deal, she saving money rather than spending it. I nod my head in agreement. How many times she pinged the elastic waistband on her nylon trousers and blamed her metabolism or a thyroid problem? Those chocolates are escorted under her armed guard to the front room, where she hides them. She’ll get through the whole lot in the week while listening to Jim Reeves.
I methodically compile a comprehensive shopping list for my imminent “houseguest.”
1.Rum (for Daniel to experience his cultural traditions)
2.Whiskey (I running out)
3.Soda water, Coke & ginger ale (mixers)
4.Salted peanuts & cashews (to go with the drinks)
5.Maxwell House coffee x 2 (forward planning)
6.Cakes (children like them)
7.Curly Wurlys (my girls used to love those)
8.Jumbo multipack of crisps (Walkers, of course!)
9.Coco Pops (his breakfast)
10.Hot chocolate drink (his bedtime)
11.Biscuit assortment (snacks)
12.Jam donuts (for me, he can keep his flaming hands off of them)
13.Milk (essential protein for growing bones)
14.Nice loaf of sliced white bread (none of this rip-off wholemeal la-di-da)
15.Orange juice (vitamin C—one of his “5-a-day”)
16.Frozen pizza x 7 (carbs, protein, several “5-a-days,” etc.)
17.Tinned baked beans (Emergency Supplies No. 1)
18.Tinned spaghetti Bolognese (Emergency Supplies No. 2)
19.Tinned tomato soup (Emergency Supplies No. 3 & another of his “5-a-day”)
20.Ribena (vitamins—last one of his “5-a-day”)
21.Guinness (to fortify the blood)
I drive to the aircraft hangar masquerading as a supermarket and wander through the maze of aisles, fighting the soporific music trying to manipulate me into an overspending trance.
Oh my days, I can’t believe my eyes because the place stuffed with so many permutations of every kind of food and drink it’s confusing. I count thirty-two different brands, types, and sizes of frozen pizzas and fifteen types of so-called fresh pizza. I no lie. Ten different tins and packets of tomato soup. As for biscuits? Two rows of them, hundreds of different varieties. I get dizzy trying to second-guess what Daniel would and wouldn’t like. How does he like his milk, par exemple? Whole milk, full fat with cream, full fat without cream, skimmed, semiskimmed, fat-free, organic? Oat milk? Almond milk? Jesus, when did folk get so faddish?
I spend at least ninety minutes traipsing through the maze, and by the time I get home I am well and truly ready for my siesta. But it is not to be. Soon as I put everything away, the doorbell rings.
Daniel’s on the doorstep, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with Puma written across the front in gold. He stands there taller than last Sunday. Must-a grown an inch, at least. Get a whiff of pungent aftershave too, pretending he’s shaving in spite of his baby cheeks saying otherwise. I see Donna peering from her car to make sure I open the door, but she drives off without so much as a hello-goodbye-and-I-hate-you (by-the-way) wave.
A whole week with Daniel? Just me and him? A whole week filled with awkwardity? Or maybe it’s my last chance for me and him to get to know each other again before I upset his mother and grandmother so much they turn him against me and forbid him ever to see his evil grandfather again.
“Hello, Grandy,” he says, all big smiles and showing off his strong, masculine, toothpaste-advert Walker teeth. He walks inside laden with sports bags strapped over his broad Walker shoulders.
“Hello, Danny-boy,” I reply, all smiles too, slapping his back hard in the male version of a hug that is actually an assertion of masculine prowess.
I notice the pile of shoes and clothes by the front door and surreptitiously kick them to one side, but Lord, he’s sharp.
“The bachelor life, is it, Grandy?” he says in his uptown Queen’s. I notice he’s got my chuckle, somewhat spiced with derision. Funny how things pass down, until one day you realize we all morphed into each other. His voice is deeper than I thought, a classy baritone. “Mum said you’d turn this place into a dump within a week.” He raises one bemused eyebrow in a manner much too snide for his years.
Don’t hold back, boy . . .
“Really?” I reply, emitting a mischievous, grandfatherly twinkle. “And what else did my delightful daughter say about me?”
He gives me a looks that says, I don’t think you really want to know, do you?
“I tell you what. You go upstairs and offload your stuff, and then we can have a natter about what slanderous things are being said about innocent people. Which room you want? Your mother’s or your auntie’s?”
“Eurgh, not Mum’s. I’ll have nightmares.”
I can see me and him is goin’ bond.
“Fine, I’ll put the kettle on, or would you prefer something a little stronger?”
“Grandy, it’s only, like, half eleven in the morning.”
God knows why I just invited my grandson to a prelunch booze-up. Must be nerves. Nonetheless, it’s a proven fact that drink breaks down barriers. A little drink or two won’t harm the boy.
“You’re right, laddie. Maybe you ain’t had no breakfast yet? Can’t drink on an empty stomach. I got some Coco Pops for you.”
He gives me a funny look that I can’t quite deconstruct and takes the stairs, leapfrogging over several steps with his long, springy legs.
By the time he’s hurdled back down, I got the bar set up.
A bottle of Chivas Regal scotch,
Captain Morgan, English Harbour three-year-old rum, Bacardi Gold. Glengoyne, Jack Daniel’s, Wild Turkey, mixers, ice bucket, cut-crystal spirit tumblers.
“Welcome to Barry’s Bar,” I announce, rubbing my hands together, as he bounds into the kitchen all sprinter-just-off-the-blocks-high-voltage.
“I’m not sure I should,” he says, faltering, startled at the party-style display on the table, yet gulping in front of all of that mouth-watering temptation. “Wow, Mum would be livid.”
“You’re right. Maybe you should stick to Ribena.”
That does the trick.
“Gimme one glass of Wild Turkey ’cos I is a rude bwoy,” he says, imitating what he thinks is my accent but sounding Jamaican. He picks up the bottle and reads the label, declaring, “An’ mi wan’ it on de rocks, Grampops.”
“What? Yuh making fun of your grandfather, is it?”
“No, not at all,” he grins, switching back to Queen’s. “It’s just I wish I could talk patois like you, but Mum forbade it. She got really pissed off when I used to come back from here sounding like you.”
I’m discovering one thing about my grandson—he can talk. Donna right. Our kids get confused and mash up standard English with patois and cockney without realizing the difference when it counts, like in an exam or at a job interview.
“Danny-boy, lemme tell you something.” He’s had one kind of education and now he needs another. “Speaking one tongue don’t preclude excellence in another. But you got to treat patois as a separate language that you slip into when it’s socially acceptable to do so. I can speak the Queen’s when I feel like it. But most of the time I just do me own thing. Fear thee not, though, I know my syntax from my semiotics, my homographs from my homophones, and don’t even get me started on my dangling participles.”
I stop myself just in time from getting smutty. Is Daniel I talking to here, not Morris.
“Wow, really?” His eyes are wide, impressed.
“Oh yes, back home I’d get beats at school if didn’t know my grammar.”
“I know my grammar too, but we’re in the minority, Grandy. You should see how people write on Facebook, barely literate with an egregious misuse of capitals, apostrophes, and full stops.”
“That’s right,” I agree. “The world-renowned, centuries-old full stop exists for a reason, and it’s all about meaning.”
I can’t believe me and him is actually having a mutually enthusiastic conversation about grammar.
“By the way, what is this Facebook thing that’s bandied about all over the place? Is it part of that silly networking business or one of those book-reading groups?”
He gives me that drop-face “doh” look the youngsters affect these days, so I give him an exaggerated “doh” look back, and he laughs. “It’s part of online social media. I’ll show it to you sometime.” He pauses before adding, “You have heard of the Internet, right?”
“Don’t worry thyself, you can leave me out of all this newfangled-dangled nonsense. I know how to switch on a computer and write a letter or two. That’s enough.”
“You’re missing out, Grandy. The Internet brings the world into your sitting room.”
“I don’t want the whole world making noise in my yard, Danny-boy. I got enough troublemakers in my life a-ready. Man has survived a few hundred thousand years without the Internet thus far, I do believe?”
I hand him a tumbler of whiskey, recalling how not so long ago it would-a been a glass of milk.
“I prefer Courvoisier myself,” he says. “It’s my poison of choice, Grandy.”
Of choice . . .
“Any other secrets you keeping from your mother? You know she thinks you are totally teetotalized?”
“And you think I eat Coco Pops.”
Lord, Daniel-a cocky bugger. Is this the same boy who used to run screaming with joy into my arms when he visited, who held my hand everywhere we went, who believed every single thing I told him?
“What I meant to say,” he goes on, clearing his throat, looking a bit abashed, “is that I’m not the little boy you used to take to the swings in the park.”
“In which case let’s talk, man-to-man,” I say, humoring him, while pouring myself some Wild Turkey, and, to show who the real man is, I go hardball—neat and knocked back in one. “And you don’t have to stand on no ceremony with me,” I add, rather redundantly, because so far he’s not exactly been falling over himself to be respectful. “I want you to be yourself so we can get to know each other. So let’s cut to the chase, ehn? What your mother been saying about me?”
I take my rightful place on the throne while he turns in his seat to face me in the morning light of the kitchen window behind me. I can’t work out which bits of him look like me. He a handsome boy, I think, which is a good start, got my intelligent eyes and good thick, dark eyebrows in the tradition of all Walker men. Folk underestimate eyebrows, they can make or break a face. Even under the ruthless glare of daylight he’s got unblemished skin with no bitter-and-twistedness seeping into his features from a lifetime of disappointment and resentment. Yet I can’t look at youngsters these days without imagining them further down the line of life. What kind of person my grandson goin’ become?
“Do you really want to know?” he asks, like Donna been slagging me off bad-bad.
“What she saying? What’s my dear daughter been saying?”
He adopts a pensive frown, like I just asked him to explain how the universe was created and he finding the right words. Then he sips some whiskey and swills it rather exaggeratedly around in his mouth, as if he’s having a postdinner drink in an English gentlemen’s club circa 1920.
Take your time, laddie . . .
“She doesn’t hate you. She hates herself and transfers it onto others,” he finally declares with the supreme confidence of the young.
“You know what they call that?” I interject. “Freudian projection. It’s—”
“Yes, of course. I know,” he retorts like a bullish politician being interrogated by Jeremy Paxman. “I studied it for my psychology GCSE. It’s a psychological defense mechanism whereby someone unconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then projected onto others, such as a convenient alternative target.”
Was I ever such a smug know-it-all? Only problem is, he sounds like he’s reciting it from a textbook.
“Mum’s a classic case. Whatever she accuses anyone of, she’s guilty of herself. Take you: selfish, unrea—” He stops himself, but not in time. Is this what he thinks of me too? “Like I . . . said . . .” he starts again, scrutinizing me so carefully I feel microscoped. Most children don’t study adults like this. They too busy looking inward. “It’s not about you; it’s about her. Most of the time she thinks you’re a lovable old rogue. Really, she does . . . really.”
He might be a smart arse, but, yes, he can be a sensitive smart arse.
“Actually, Grandy. Living with Mum is like living in an insane asylum. Auntie Maxine’s mad too but in a creative way, which is allowed. Whereas Mum is noncreatively mad. Not officially diagnosed, but it’s only a matter of time . . .” He takes another swig of his drink and grimaces in a distasteful manner.
“Why you think she mad?” I realize I actually have absolutely no idea what goes on inside this boy’s head.
I help myself to a sizable refill.
“You wouldn’t believe it.” He waves his tumbler at Jeeves for a top-up. “What I have to put up with. For a start, she’s got an altar to herself in her bedroom with candles, incense, photos, and notes scrawled with sayings about how much she loves herself! How sectionable is that? And even though she’s been going to therapy every week since forever, it doesn’t cure her. She still blames Dad for everything, when I know for a fact she was a right bitch to him and forced him to leave.”
“Hey, hold up, that’s my daughter you calling a bitch.”
“And my mother.”
(Well, at least I tried . . .)
“Te
ll me, how you know what went on when he left before you was born?”
“He told me.”
“Yuh mean you see your father? Yuh see Frankie?”
“No, I commune telepathically with him—” He catches himself again, probably because my face is showing what my mouth ain’t saying: that he needs a good slap upside-a his head. “What I mean is . . . I found him on Facebook when I was thirteen. I can really talk to him, you know? We understand each other. He’s had a really hard life, but now he’s got a job doing something with recycling for Haringey Council.”
Euphemism for rubbish collector . . .
“You telling me you been seeing Frankie three years a-ready?”
“Four,” he replies, shaking his head like I am beyond help. “I’m eighteen next birthday.”
Eighteen? Time’s been passing quicker than I thought.
“Your mother don’t know about Frankie, right?”
“She’d go even more mental.”
How can I tell him the night he born I was chasing around London trying to find Frankie, who was Donna’s wutliss live-in boyfriend? When I did, he was partying at his brother’s house and said he was too busy to come to the hospital to witness the birth of his son. His excuse when I pressed him? He couldn’t “handle being a parent.”
Donna knew he was bad news, but, as she confided to Carmel, she “couldn’t help loving him.”
That man must have a dick of supernatural proportions and properties to have reduced my ball-breaking thirty-something daughter to a quivering, love-struck teenager.
It was only when she heard he’d had another son three months before Daniel born that she threatened to kick him out, whereupon he kicked off, literally, right in front of the baby. Donna ended up in Hackney Hospital with a cracked jaw and fractured ribs. Me and Morris paid Frankie a visit he’ll never forget, and one she’ll never know about, unless he wants another knock on his door at midnight.
“Can I have another one?” Daniel’s waving his glass at me again.
Mr. Loverman Page 15