by Aoife Walsh
He was all elbows, he didn’t look at ease in the summer. His T-shirt was dark blue with a fractured-looking logo that Minny could see had been melted with an iron; there were little yellow smudges around it. Her granny was a champion T-shirt melter. She had stayed with them once for a few days when their parents went to Paris and ruined all their wardrobes zealously. ‘All right,’ he said when they got up close.
‘Yes,’ Aisling said, hopping from foot to foot. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah.’ He looked bony, he looked dazed. Minny had seen where he lived, at least where he had lived when he was eight. This looked different, any park would have, but especially this one rammed full of people who could afford lots of sun. Franklin was winter-pale. His hair was good though. ‘I just came to have a look,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been here since I was a kid.’
‘How’s it going at Granny’s?’
‘Fine. She’s OK, she’s nice.’ He grinned. ‘Washed all my clothes already.’
‘I can tell. And ironed.’ They laughed. Aisling stood beside them, smiling.
‘I don’t mind. It’s nice. No one’s ironed anything of mine in years.’
‘Me neither,’ Minny said, looking down at her crumpled shirt. Her mother said that if you put things in the tumble dryer they didn’t need ironing.
‘You could iron them yourself,’ Ash pointed out. Minny wasn’t sure which of them she was talking to.
‘Do you know anyone round here?’ she asked Franklin suddenly. She wouldn’t have been that blunt, only he seemed so pleased to be talking to them she felt sorry for him.
‘No.’
‘You know us,’ Aisling said.
‘True. But no, no one else, not really.’
‘Not at Raleigh?’
‘No.’
‘Starting Monday?’
‘Yeah.’
Minny couldn’t imagine. Starting a new school at eleven had been bad enough, but at least Penny was there and a bunch of other people from her primary school. And even if you hadn’t known anyone, there would have been others in the same boat. But to move right at the end of a school year, of Year 10 – and when you didn’t even have your own home to go to afterwards – her stomach ached thinking about it. Maybe he would have to talk to her, and Aisling, to stop himself going mad.
Aisling was obviously affected as well because she started humming. In a moment it would be squeaks, probably. Of course it wasn’t as if Franklin didn’t know about her – that was one good thing about meeting people from your past. ‘What were you listening to?’ she asked. He had headphones dangling from the neck of his T-shirt, as if he might have pulled them from his ears when he saw them coming. It was blatant that she was asking to cover Ash’s sound effects, but the alternative was listening to them.
He looked away, over the park. She decided it had probably been the world’s most boring question. ‘Guy Clark.’
Minny took a moment to make sure her brain had computed that right, so Aisling was the first to say, ‘Guy Clark? Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I like Guy Clark.’ Ash beamed.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’ Minny was amazed.
‘OK, I didn’t know. But I could have guessed.’ A smile flashed across his face like a shooting star; you wouldn’t be sure you’d seen it. ‘Your mum used to like him.’
‘She still does,’ Ash assured him.
Minny felt her own face twitching, uncertainly but with an odd flicker of joy. ‘I don’t understand this conversation,’ she declared. ‘How on earth do you know about my mother liking Guy Clark of all people?’
‘I used to come round your house, remember? Your flat,’ he amended. ‘And your mum always had music on.’ She hadn’t remembered him being there all that often, maybe three or four times, mainly with his aunt. ‘I used to ask her, “What’s this?” and “What’s that?” And she told me a bit about them.’ He shrugged. ‘Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. And Emmylou Harris.’
Her mother would go nuts for this. Minny didn’t think she’d tell her. She remembered now, remembered sitting on the black-and-white tiles of the old flat near the table, because that’s where the cake was, watching Franklin through her fringe as he sat listening to Emmylou Harris. ‘Boulder to Birmingham’, she was sure. He had sat so still, like the fox in the headlights they’d seen that holiday they went down to Dorset. He was never normally still, back then. And of course the reason why Dad had said he wasn’t to come round any more – shouted it – was because he’d broken the stereo. A different visit. She’d known at the time: he’d only been trying to put a CD on.
He was watching her, and she wondered if he’d seen the memories roll through her eyes. She laughed. ‘I remember.’
‘When we were having our brother,’ Aisling said informatively, ‘before we knew he was a boy, Mum said if it was a girl she’d call her Emmylou.’
‘What did she call him?’
‘Raymond,’ Minny said. Granny didn’t talk about Raymond then. She’d suspected as much. Granny had been so shocked when Nita turned up pregnant. ‘Jaysus, Minny, what? Well, you wouldn’t read about it.’ Granny never normally criticised their mother. She had lost it a bit over Dad leaving.
Now Minny wondered. ‘Does Granny know about our dad coming back?’ she asked Franklin. ‘Has she said anything?’
He had his hand in his pocket – his jeans weren’t as tight as some, but still he had to concentrate to get his hand in – and looked up, surprised. ‘What?’
‘We just found out our dad has come to live in London again,’ Ash explained. ‘We’re upset.’
‘I’m not upset,’ Minny snapped.
‘She hasn’t said anything,’ Franklin said.
Minny found her chin trembling. She was horrified. Franklin didn’t look at her; he extracted something from his pocket and held it out, wriggling to put his other hand in his other pocket. They looked at it. It was a pack of cigarettes, brown with silvery stripes. He seemed to be pointing it at Aisling. ‘When did he come back?’ he asked her.
‘Last Tuesday.’ Ash hesitated and raised her hand. ‘I’m sorry, are you offering that to me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t smoke.’
He angled the packet towards Minny.
She might have said yes. To save him feeling awkward or something. She had tried a cigarette before, a year or more ago at a sleepover when everyone did, and she hadn’t been sick or anything. But she couldn’t now, not because Ash would tell at home – she could tell her not to, after – but right now she would be bound to say, ‘But Minny, you never smoke cigarettes.’ And then Minny would look like a perfect loser. ‘No, I don’t smoke.’
He lowered his arm and took one out of the packet himself. He had a lighter, from his other pocket, out now. The sun was low enough that they could see the flame flare.
‘I’m surprised you do smoke,’ Aisling said conversationally.
‘I don’t,’ he said, drawing on it. Minny watched his chest contract within the smudged T-shirt.
Aisling couldn’t deal with humour-by-contradiction, especially not from people she didn’t know well. ‘But you are smoking.’
‘I know.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’m meant to be giving up. I can’t afford it. Why are you surprised?’
‘Mrs Seigel, my health studies teacher—’ Aisling began.
‘Mrs Seagull?’
‘Seigel,’ Aisling corrected, though Minny had seen her eyes flash. Later she would find that very funny, Minny knew. ‘Mrs Siegel said that when a person has lived with addiction, I mean lived with someone else who has an addiction, they’re likely to react against addiction really strongly.’
Minny avoided looking at Franklin. Not that he was looking at her.
‘So I thought because of your mum being an addict you wouldn’t have smoked.’
Their eyes did meet for a split second then. She was red; she could feel it.
‘Al
though Mrs Siegel did also say that if someone has had a tough childhood they might turn to substance abuse themselves, though I don’t know if smoking—’
‘Aisling. Shut up.’ It wasn’t subtle but she had to make her stop. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Franklin. ‘My mum always tells Aisling she has to try to remember everything from lessons because otherwise she doesn’t listen, and sometimes it comes out … in weird ways.’ Health studies – who would have thought that Ash would actually concentrate in that?
‘It’s OK,’ Franklin said to Aisling. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said to Minny.
She didn’t feel as if she could ask, ‘How is your mother?’ but it seemed so logically the next question that she couldn’t think what else to say either. The conversation was rather at a close. She managed to get both herself and Aisling away quickly, since they were going to see him tomorrow at Granny’s house anyway.
‘You can’t talk to people about their parents being addicts,’ she hissed at Aisling along the way home.
‘Can’t you?’
‘No. Maybe if they start the conversation.’ Unlikely that someone would do that with Aisling. ‘That was so embarrassing.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ Aisling thought. ‘Was he embarrassed?’
‘Yes!’
‘Oh.’
She looked more crushed than usual and Minny felt bad, so they stopped to get some sweets. ‘Though I’m not supposed to.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I want to be thinner. Maybe I’ll just get something small.’
‘Like a Walnut Whip?’
‘No, they give me toothache.’
‘Shall we get one for Mum?’ Ash suggested, handing Minny her tube of Fruit Pastilles to buy. Walnut Whips were their mother’s favourite.
‘No, she’ll think we’re feeling guilty about something.’
She paid for the sweets and they left. Minny put six Maltesers into her mouth, lining them up inside her cheeks. ‘Do you like Franklin?’ Aisling asked, unwrapping the first pastille.
Minny nearly spat out her Maltesers, because normally she and Ash didn’t go in for heart to hearts. She had never asked a question like that before. ‘He’s OK.’
‘You think he is?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you think he likes me?’
Minny saw where she was coming from now. It had sometimes happened in the past that people had been nice to Ash and she had assumed, like a normal person, that they wanted to be friends with her and then it turned out they just wanted her to think that so they could make her do stupid things and get her into trouble. Because they thought that was funny. Or, in the case of two girls a couple of terms before, so that she would try to chat with them in front of everyone and they could laugh at her for thinking anyone would want to be friends with a freak like her.
‘He seems all right,’ Minny said. ‘I always thought he was all right. And he’s friendly to both of us.’ Although it was odd that he might think she and Ash hung around together, outside home. Nice, really, that he was in Ash’s year; it would be good for her to have someone she could say a few words to sometimes. ‘Maybe he’ll be in your form,’ she said.
Aisling smiled. For a moment it felt like a real conversation, even though Minny, who was after all the younger sister, was on the wrong end of it.
When they got home Nita came out of the kitchen, carrying Raymond and looking relieved. ‘Can you look after him in the front room? I’ve got to keep stirring the stew and Selena’s on the phone in the back room and he keeps pressing the buttons.’
‘Who’s she on the phone to?’ Ash asked immediately.
‘Your father,’ Nita said, looking away. ‘I said she could ring him.’
‘Do I have to talk to him?’
‘Of course not, Aisling, not if you don’t want to.’
‘What’s she ringing him for?’ Minny burst out, so that Raymond, in her arms, looked at her in alarm and shoved a Lego block in her mouth.
‘She wants to talk to him. She’s only a little girl and she wants to talk to her father. I don’t want you taking this out on her, Minny, is that clear? Selena’s relationship with him has got nothing to do with either of you.’
‘All right,’ Minny muttered, spitting out Lego. ‘You should have got her to ring him while we were in the park, then we wouldn’t have had to think about it.’
‘I couldn’t. Victoria’s mother only just brought her back. Anyway, your grandmother was here.’
The call didn’t go on for much longer, which wasn’t surprising because talking to Sel on the phone was like torture; she would recite a long list of everything she wanted to say at top speed and bat-pitched, and then dry up completely and say nothing at all for minutes on end. She came bouncing into the front room only a few moments later.
‘Dad wants to talk to you!’ she sang out.
‘No way.’
‘I don’t want to,’ Ash said in alarm.
‘He wants to talk to you! Go on, you have to.’
‘No, we don’t, Selena.’
‘Of course you have to talk to people if they want you to. To your father. I can’t tell him you don’t want to.’ Her big eyes started to fill up. ‘Please.’
Minny wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to be polited into this; she would not be bullied into pretending everything was OK and she wasn’t angry. That was why she didn’t want to see him: she wasn’t good at being angry face to face, especially with strangers. If he actually came round she was afraid it would all end up just getting swept under the carpet. She put a Jenga piece on top of the tower she’d built, and the baby bellowed and swept the whole thing down.
‘You’ve got to honour your father,’ Selena said, bursting into proper tears.
Their mother came running. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Selena’s got Dad hanging on the phone waiting to talk to me or Ash,’ Minny said. ‘I’m not doing it, Mum.’
‘Nor am I,’ Ash said quickly.
‘Right. Don’t worry. Sel, what are you crying about? I’ll sort Dad out. You go and run a bath. I’ll be up in a minute.’
Minny hauled the baby onto her knee and tried to interest him in Jenga, but he was tired and stressed and just whimpered. Ash went up to see Sel after a while to tell her she was going to start the film – Ponyo that night – and there was a lot of shouting, and it turned out Sel didn’t want to watch it after all, and for some reason that threw Aisling into a meltdown and she was crying in her room and kicking the door. In the end Nita got Selena to say she would sit with Ash and read while the film was on, and she came trailing down all sulky and got the Bible down from the shelf and insisted on having the light on. Their mother went off to put the baby to bed, and since Aisling apparently didn’t care whether or not Minny watched the film with her, Minny made the most of having a room to herself, and crawled into bed with her mother’s old Chalet School books.
THREE
On Sunday they got dragged off to church as usual. Aisling hadn’t liked it since she hit twelve and wasn’t allowed to read books any more – Minny hadn’t been allowed since she was nine. Selena pretended to love it, but although she jumped up extravagantly on all the standy-uppy bits, and knelt like a prayer-book angel at the right times, she found it as hard to listen as the rest of them. She was about to start training to be an altar server now that she’d made her First Communion. Minny couldn’t imagine her sitting still up there and picking up her cues, but whatever. Actually the sermon this week was reasonably interesting. It was the crazy missionary priest who only appeared a couple of times a year and thundered at them about charity and Christian love; no comforting your-ticket-to-heaven’s-pretty-much-bought-already from him. Granny wasn’t there. She hadn’t been lately. It wasn’t her nearest Catholic church, but she used to struggle there on the bus most weeks, sit defiantly at the other end of the row from Babi and then mill around afterwards talking to the other old ladies until it was time to go and buy sweets for her granddaughters. Babi never ch
atted with other women; she just stood looking disdainfully at her plastic beaker of coffee – she didn’t actually seem to believe much in God either. Selena had asked her once why she went to church then. She just said, ‘It’s an important part of my heritage.’ When Minny had pressed her, not least because some days she could feel her own heritage, all five nationalities of it, piling up and up and up, Babi said, ‘This is how I honour my parents and my grandparents, and thereby myself.’ Bloody hell, Minny thought.
Anyway Granny wasn’t there. ‘She’s probably cooking,’ Nita said drily. She probably was. Granny had some trouble coordinating a roast dinner.
‘Maybe she didn’t want to leave Franklin on his own,’ Minny speculated.
‘He might have come with her. I think Mr Franklin Conderer has had some fairly avid religious stuff going on himself at times.’ They were back out on the street ambling home, Raymond crowing with relief to be out of the church even though he was confined to the carrier on his mother’s back.
‘Really?’
‘I don’t know the details. You’d have to ask him.’
Minny snorted.
‘Who’s Franklin Conjuror?’ Selena asked, slurping around her fingers. They had ice lollies, it was warm, though never as warm as you thought it was going to be on the shady side of the street. Her mother was going to have to wash her hair before she went anywhere; Raymond had lost most of his lolly on her head.
It had clouded over by the time they’d eaten a sparse lunch (‘You know I’ll never hear the end of it from Granny if you don’t eat your dinner’) and negotiated Aisling’s maths lesson with Nita while Minny actually finished her homework. It was quite pleasant to have got it out of the way this early on a Sunday. They took Babi’s car. Gil arrived just as they were leaving; Minny saw her mother pulling a face in the car mirror.
Their Granny’s house was little, on a quiet street. It hadn’t gentrified as much as Babi’s road had, being further out from town, but it was nice. ‘We haven’t been here for ages,’ Selena said, climbing out. ‘There were crocuses last time, now look at all the roses.’ They didn’t have to wait long after ringing the bell; Granny flung the door open and threw her arms around Ash, who happened to be at the front.