Once in a house on fire

by Ashworth, Andrea, 1969-

  'Ten out of ten.' Laurie and Sarah set to with salt and vinegar, and stopped whining for our mother instead of me.

  I broke the rule about keeping the door locked after dark, the night Wendy came to call. •

  'Thought you might feel like coming out.' The nose of one winklepicker twisted to nuzzle the other. 'Seeing's it's Saturday night.'

  'Where to?'

  'Piatt Fields Park.'

  'Can I bring my sisters?' It seemed cruel to abandon them to 3-2-1 and the soul-sinking dread of Dusty Bin.

  'Forgerrit.' She took squeaking puffs at her cigarette, which seemed to have gone out.

  'Okay,' I said. 'Wait there.'

  To keep warm, I put on both of my vests under my school jumper: my ancient anorak and home-made cardigans were out of the question.

  'Don't open the door to anyone.' I found myself using my mother's words on Laurie and Sarah: 'Not a soul. Promise?'

  We hung on swings and trudged miles around and around the pond. When the rain threatened to make Wendy's spiky hair droop, we huddled beneath the burnt-out bandstand or in the huge concrete drains that tunnelled under the grass. The shadows were alive down there: young lads doing stuff with drugs; older men loitering alone; couples letting off gurgly moans and gasps. I could sense Wendy's excitement as we moved around in the murk, while I was trying not to get my socks splashed by the filthy gloop underfoot. I didn't tell her how frightened I felt: part of me was thrilled, but a much bi^er part was terrified by the underground drains, whose

  darkness made you free to do anything - absolutely anything at all. I was glad when the rain cleared up and we took to the paths above ground, where there were more people about, and nobody seemed so strange.

  Two girls alone: it was as if we were smeared in a kind of glue that made lads stick to us wherever we went.

  'What's yer name?' the ugly ones leered.

  The ones with decent faces didn't want to know when they saw that I was quite flat-chested, while Wendy had a horrid gap between her two front teeth. 'Giz a cig,' they pestered her, pinching her bum until she giggled and gave in. Then they scooted off into the shadows of the trees.

  'At this rate,' she despaired over her empty fag packet, 'we'll get our pensions before we get our first snogs.'

  I spotted the boathouse clock in the dark. 'I'd better be getting back,' I said.

  I had a habit of making up rules and pretending (even to myself) that they had been imposed on me. I didn't like the idea that the night could go on and on, with nothing to make me go home.

  'My mum'll kill me if I'm not back when she gets in at half ten,' I told Wendy, My heart turned over, in love with my own lie.

  'Aw.' Wendy was itching to stay out until midnight, when her parents came home blinded by whisky, deafened by singing and bawling at the Irish Catholic club. 'But we were just about to cop off; I could feel it in my bones.'

  It was a Wednesday night, afi:er nine o'clock, when my teeth clashed with a lad's.

  'What was yours like?' Wendy was eager to get out of the park afterwards to swap grisly details. We sauntered down

  Withington Road, past Indian restaurants and shop windows piled high with gHstening, sickly-sweet treats.

  'I wish I'd stuck to snogging pillows.' I couldn't believe I had wasted my lips on someone shorter than me, and that our teeth had actually gone clunk. 'It was like trying to kiss a washing machine, tongues sloshing and everything.'

  'It's supposed to be like that.' Wendy put another match to her cigarette, which was forever dying on her.

  'And he stank like an ashtray.' I wondered how I was going to snog any more boys, since they would all have smoky breath. We came to the croft littered with bottles and cans, needles and condoms. No streedights to show up faces: you were invisible, even to yourself

  'Here.' After weeks of saying no, I took a cigarette from Wendy's pack and propped it between my lips: 'Light us up, will you?'

  I puckered to suck with all my might the moment the flame tickled the tobacco. Something smacked inside my forehead. The sky breathed in and out: a huge, dark purple lung.

  'Wicked!' Wendy shook her head as I let smoke cruise out through my nose. 'You can really inhale.' She looked at her own cigarette, as if to blame it for her shallow puffs.

  A party started in my heart, lungs and head.

  After stopping off at Wendy's, stealing a squirt of her big brother's aftershave to douse the smell of smoke in my mouth, I hurried home to catch the last bit of Dynasty. Tonight, instead of glazing my face in front of the telly, watching the stations close down one by one, waiting, in case my mother should turn up, I went to bed at the same time as my sisters.

  'Night, Andy.' Sarah was getting used to sleeping in her own bed, rather than cuddling in my bunk.

  'Night.' In the dark, the air was alive with lips, tongues, teeth and smoke.

  The boy's face wavered inside my eyelids. Narrow, no-colour eyes under brows knitting together in the middle, blackheads nestling in the hairs. I swayed into sleep, and dreamed of fish in the sea.

  On Tuesday morning, Wendy and I met at the bus stop opposite the Manchester City training ground, where we treated ourselves to a good gander at the famous legs while we waited for the 47. Muscles bulged in unexpected places as the players squatted and jumped, thrusting hands and feet, making starfish in the air.

  'Got your civvies?' Wendy wasn't shy about changing out of her school uniform in front of strangers on the top deck of the bus.

  Instead of schoolbooks, my bag was stuffed with jeans and a green polo-neck from the Save the Children charity shop. The jeans had been flares when I bought them for 3op, but now they were do-it-yourself drainpipes, gnawing my skin when I walked. They forced me to sit down like an invalid, legs sticking out as if they were in plaster. Every night, while the late film droned, I attacked the denim with a needle, stitching over and over where my home-made seams had popped open afi:er some unavoidable movement around the knee.

  'Jesus, Mary and cunt-faced Joseph!' Wendy sweated into her own skintight cords, letting off words that had led to her suspension fi-om Saint Mary's School, where her behaviour turned the nuns blue. 'Ah, fuck it.' She pulled down her jumper to cover the zip when it refiised to fasten over her belly. Exploding at every swerve in the road, she glared at the

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  grown-ups who turned round to frown at her language: 'Want a bleedin' picture?'

  We got off in Piccadilly Square and passed through the doors of Lewis's, where Wendy's curses dissolved in the perfumed air. She told me to wait in the lingerie department while she wandered around the make-up counters. In five minutes she was back, ushering me out, back on to Piccadilly Square, where she shoved me to belt it for the bus.

  'Is that it?' I had wagged it to come all the way into town, risking being spotted by someone who knew me, only to step in and out of Lewis's. And, in the run for the bus, the seams of my drainpipes had burst again.

  'Shurrup, I've got you a prezzie.' Wendy grinned, fidgeting on the front seat of the top deck.

  'Cop a load of that!' Three lipsticks, two eyeshadows and a tube of foundation appeared from up her sleeves and out of her knickers. 'Not bad, eh? Here, that one's for you.'

  My fingers closed around a golden bullet. Lipstick; magenta.

  'You should keep it.' I dropped it back into her palm. 'It's yours.'

  'Look.' She held it up. 'D'you want it or don't you?'

  My fingertips strayed to my lips. I saw my mother's face, twisted with disgust because I had done something dirty. But by the time we reached Rusholme, my cheeks and eyes were glowing to match my mouth. Lipstick wasn't just for lips, Wendy insisted. Instead of kicking around the park, I went straight home to make the most of my face before Laurie and Sarah came in fi'om school. I buzzed between the bathroom, my mother's bedroom and the kitchen, examining myself in different mirrors and lights, before rubbing it all off and burying the lipstick in a sock in my drawer.

  Our mother came home with a face
that had been crying. She hung her fur jacket under plastic and spent the day knocking back coffee by the pint.

  'What's up, Mum?' I fetched the ashtray, then boiled the ketde time and time again.

  'Men.' My mother started on her cigarettts, stubbing them out with a passion: 'Men.'

  'What about them?' I asked.

  She hung her head in her hands: 'They're all the bloody same.'

  That night, the Jag didn't come to pick her up. I thought I spotted a tiny mark under my mother's eyebrow, cherry-coloured and almost pretty, while I sat next to her in her bedroom, watching her put on her face to go round to Auntie Tamara's for a tipple. I gave her a meaningfiil look in the mirror.

  'I walked into a door.' She dusted her eyelids with pearly grey shadow: 'I don't know how I could have been so stupid.'

  Walked into a door. It was what she used to mutter, with a grim smile, to her closest friends when things were going wrong in the old days.

  Walked into a door? I felt sure she would tell me more if I pushed it; I even imagined she wanted me to ask, so she could let it all out. But I felt sick at the thought that someone other than our stepfather could hit my mother. It made the batterings seem more scary, as if they were not confined to one horrible man, but had - in some way I didn't want to delve into - more to do with her. I looked away from the mirror while she concentrated on her make-up, putting the finishing touches to her face.

  Christmas was coming and our mother's purse was getting fat: in the run-up to the festive season, her catalogue commissions had rocketed. She let my sisters and me comb through the catalogue to compile wish-lists.

  'I'm not promising anything, don't forget!' She tried to stick a stern face over her playful one, alive with secrets and plans. 'I don't want you kids ending up spoiled.'

  A pair of purple suede winklepickers, a 32A bra, blue legwarmers and a palette of pastel eyeshadows glowed among the tangerines and chocolates scattered across the carpet on Christmas morning. I finally had what it took to be a teenager.

  'Aw, Mum.' The splurge of presents left: Laurie and me stuck for words. Sarah was torn between plastering everyone's cheeks in kisses, and tucking into her selection box.

  'Just some little daft nonsenses.' Our mother tried to hide her pride at having got everything right. She mixed pink wine with lemonade and handed us a glass each, while she sipped her own, stronger version at the stove. Standing by with dishcloths and towels, Laurie and I cleaned pans, spatulas and spoons so that there would be hardly any left to worry about when we sat down to our roast potatoes and chicken. On the record player, Val Doonican's Christmas album was whirling, with spurts of Johnny Matthis and Diana Ross to clear the air in between.

  Our mother wore a red tissue crown, unfolded from the crackers we pulled before clinking glasses: 'All for one, and one for all!'

  My hand shook when I lifted my glass to my mouth. Life was so good, it made me nervous. Elastic dug in around my rib cage; cotton wool nestled inside my first bra. Toes throbbing, my feet were in winklepickers at last. We were going to spend Boxing Day with Gran, whose gallstones had been removed with no complications. To top it all, our mother was floating on air again.

  The gold Jag had finally appeared again one night, and she had agreed to go out for a quick spin, sloping back in the next morning with a big, clumsily wrapped box. Inside was a face-steamer that she plugged in and bowed over for ages, coming up looking dreamy. After that, the man in the car had picked her up for a few more dates, always dropping her back before midnight. She would tiptoe in humming to herself, before settling in to her bed, where I woke her with coffee and toast in the morning.

  'Oh, bloody Nora!' Our mother lifted a lid to find that the Christmas pudding had shrivelled and burnt because the saucepan had boiled dry. For a moment, it looked like she might cry. My sisters and I glanced at each other, afraid of the day being wrecked by one of her mood storms. But then she clanged the top off our tin of fancy biscuits. We had won them in the door-to-door raffle for the blind, she reminded herself aloud, so they had to be a good omen.

  'This is more like it!' We swirled shortbread in the white sauce meant for the pudding, feeling guilty, as if we were cheating.

  On New Year's Eve we had the same chicken dinner, only without the crackers, and with sherry trifle for afters. Val Doonican had been shoved back in the loft for another year; Frank Sinatra was having his turn.

  '1983' - our mother spent the afternoon sipping tea with a whisper of whisky, which made her remember us as babes in arms. She kept sighing the same happy-sad sigh: 'Where have all the years gone, eh?'

  She lay on the settee, stoking herself up for the evening. A few friends had promised to come round with bottles of bubbly to see the new year in with a bang.

  'You'll be meeting someone special tonight,' she murmured

  while she was tickling her lashes with mascara: 'His name's Terry.'

  Our mother carried on with her face while Laurie, Sarah and I nursed mince pies, crammed with questions we didn't dare ask.

  We knew it was him, as soon as he walked through the door, looking more alive than anyone else. Except our mother, whose dimples deepened the moment his hands landed on her waist. Rainie, he called her. She put up her hand to touch one of his strawberry-blond curls. Black nylon flares swished over Cuban heels that made him a shade taller than her. A ruffle of white rippled down his shirt, smelling of Old Spice. On the litde finger of his left: hand, a lump of gold nesded behind the knuckle.

  Our mother nudged us to say hello.

  'Are you Terry?' I felt myself drowning in waves of shyness.

  Above a too-big nose, his eyes twinkled, blue kaleidoscopes.

  'Aye. But why don't you kids call me Tez?'

  'Tez.' We tried it out between ourselves in the kitchen, passing it over our tongues until we could say it without giggling.

  By midnight, watching him swivel his hips to James Brown, dancing brilliandy for a man, we were ready to say it to his face. Someone turned up the telly while Big Ben chimed and everyone cheered. Our mother had tears in her eyes. We clustered to kiss her before the bells stopped clanging, but she turned to kiss Terry first. A real, film-style kiss, that took up their whole faces.

  'Happy New Year, girls,' Terry said, aft:er the bells rang out.

  Our mother stole a moment fi"om smooching to hug us and send us to bed: 'Time to let the grown-ups get on with the show.'

  We sank into our pillows, knocked out t>y the scent of Old Spice mingling with Chanel No.5.

  When Terry turned up for breakfast in his ruffly shirt, nobody batted an eyelid. His face looked puffy, but we liked him as much as the night before. More, because he fried French toast to start ofF the new year. Our mother wanted to help out in the kitchen, but Terry was having none of it.

  'Sit tight, Rainie.' He flourished elbows and fingers over the frying pan, like a chef off the telly.

  'Can you fix our tape recorder?' Sarah asked him after breakfast.

  'Shh!' Our mother gave the back of her hand a light slap. 'Don't be mithering Terry now.' But he insisted on looking at the tape recorder, unscrewing the case to peer at the chaos inside.

  'Scalpel.' He stuck out his hand for a screwdriver, then fastened the box back together. Opening the plug, he winked at our mother, then fiddled with the wires.

  'I think you'll find the patient's fully recovered.'

  Sarah pressed play and our home-recorded songs crackled back to life. She beamed, while Laurie and I blushed. A little loving, a little giving — the three of us had wailed to make a tape for our mother, Laurie strumming on a guitar borrowed from school - to build a dream for the world we live in.

  Our mother tried to switch it off, but Terry persuaded her to let the song play to the end while he stroked her hands. When it had finished, Sarah smacked his face with a wet kiss. He looked at his watch, gave his gold ring a quick twizzle, then reached for his double-breasted jacket. Our mother went out for a goodbye hug in his car.

  'H
e's not very tall, is he?' Laurie voiced my own misgiving.

  Our mother caught us discussing him when she came back in to wash the plates.

  'Diamonds don't come as big as bricks.' She smiled to herself over the sink.

  We were actually inside the gold Jag, stroking the leather seats, sticking our fingers down foamy holes where they were falling apart. The engine sputtered and cut out.

  'Only the umpteenth time,' our mother muttered. We hadn't moved from outside our house. She wound down the window to shout to Terry, whose head was under the bonnet: 'We can always go another time, love.'

  He emerged, a warstripe of oil smeared across his nose: 'We're off!'

  'Okay, darling.' Terry carressed the steering wheel, sliding the key into the ignition: 'Do it for me, Sugar.'

  The engine sputtered again, then purred.

  'Yes!' He kissed the middle of the steering wheel, then grabbed our mother's hand to kiss that too, springing her smile back into place.

  The seats finally vibrated beneath us. Our street melted away.

  The Jag chugged and coughed more than we had expected from its golden outsides. It broke down on the motorway, where we were happy to sit in the layby, nibbling salmon paste butties, making moo-noises at the cows on the grassy slope, while Terry got out to sweet-talk the engine.

  It was pitch black by the time we hit the main road of Blackpool, strung with necklaces of light. Terry made us pelt along the beach, where the waves heaved like beasts in the dark. Tasting the sea on our faces, we came back to the

  promenade. Lights pummelled, arcades buzzed, hooted and rang.

  'Here.' Terry changed fifteen pounds into tuppennies and pennies: 'Go mad, why don't you?'