Once in a house on fire

by Ashworth, Andrea, 1969-

  Loaded with coppers, we forgot about our mother and him and the rest of the world. Laurie, Sarah and I stationed ourselves around a penny cascade, where we slid in coin after coin and pressed our foreheads against glass, willing the copper shelf to collapse and crash out a fortune. No more than five or six pennies ever clattered into the silver jaw.

  'I think some of them are glued down.' Laurie gave up and started on the one-armed bandits, which spat coins back at her although she didn't understand the spinning symbols. She yanked down the knob, waited for oranges, cherries and horseshoes to whirl into line, then stooped to scrape up her winnings. Clutching her last handful of coins, Sarah took off to the shooting gallery, to watch Terry teaching our mother how to hit moving targets. He spent the night hugging her from behind, training the barrel and pressing her finger against the trigger, blasting holes through a cardboard heart.

  I stuck to my place on the cascades, besotted. My coins clanged down the metal chutes along the side. Five whole pounds, frittered into pennies, washed down the drain. I looked at my empty money bag, which had been bulging to start with. My mother would be shocked. But it had been worth it for the rollercoaster in my chest.

  After Blackpool, Terry stayed at our house more and more often. Breakfast became a party. When he wasn't there, our mother looked at the world through grey glasses, seeing only things to gripe about. We had to wait for him to roll up in the evenings before her softer side would come out. He sometimes stayed for no time at all, rushing away in the dark, leaving her

  with a twitchy face. Other times, he came round loaded with groceries to show off his cooking skills, calling himself Gordon Blur. Amazing things simmered in our pans. We lifted the lid on pork curry, spaghetti bolognaise a la Tez, or his own special concoction called pepper pot, then came away wearing the flavoured steam on our faces. Tea-time came later and lasted longer on Terry nights. He wrenched the cork out of a bottle of purply wine, while our mother played his favourite album, by Barry White. We enjoyed songs stuffed with sexy groans, women dribbling harmonies over the man's meaty voice.

  Later, approaching midnight, he would often rush off after a shot of whisky and a round of kisses from us all. He never mentioned where he was going, but our mother crinkled her forehead, hugging him as if it might be the last time. Other nights, he told her there was nothing doing, eased off his Cuban boots and cracked open a can of lager to play cards. Gambling matchsticks, he instructed Laurie, Sarah and me to keep our mugs straight if we wanted to be poker sharks.

  'There's someone cheating in this here game, and it don't do to name the guy,' Terry drawled through loose lips, swigging lager in loud glugs. 'But if I catch him cheatin 'just one more time -cocking the trigger of an imaginary gun - 'I'll close his other eye'

  Real milk crept into our tea. Ketchup and jam turned up in the cupboard, along with Salad Cream and Branston pickle. Our mother was no longer afraid to treat herself to half a pound of White Cheshire cheese when she had the urge. Along the window ledge in her bedroom, botdes bloomed: Chanel No. 5, Chanel No. 19, Fenjal bath oil, almond body lotion, a rainbow of nail varnishes.

  But, better than all the perfume in the world, Laurie, Sarah and I were blessed with a colour TV.

  'I don't like it.' Our mother tried to stop Terry from hauling it out of his Jag. *It doesn't feel right.'

  'It's for the kids.' He plugged it in, then rubbed the small of her back. 'Where's the harm, eh?! •

  'I just don't like it.' She gnawed the pad of her thumb.

  'What does Tez actually do?' I asked, when my mother and I were cruising, alone, in the gold Jag. It was my honour to help her with the shopping while he was having a lie-in and Laurie and Sarah were at Auntie Tamara's.

  'You could say he's in the oil business.' She kept her gaze on the traffic.

  'What, as in Dallas and J.R.?'

  My mother gave a bitter chuckle. 'As in filling motors at a gas station, more like.'

  I pictured Terry pulling petrol in one of his wing-collared or ruffly shirts. 'He makes all that money as a petrol pump attendant?'

  'Not quite.' My mother's face tightened into a sneer as she wresded with the gear stick. 'He's got a few' - the gears crunched - 'private sidelines.'

  Backing into a space, she parked like a dream, although she trembled to twist the wheel.

  'All those years not driving,' she muttered, and flexed her fingers to stop them from shaking.

  I sensed something was up when I saw that it wasn't Kwik Save. Breath snagged in my windpipe: my first step inside Asda.

  'Even the air smells posh,' I found myself whispering to my mother in the aisles. Kwik Save smelled of the weather, tramped in off the streets by tired and sweaty human beings.

  'Shh.' She didn't want to be distracted. I watched her lifting boxes, packets and tins, contemplating the picture on the package, not bothering to look for the price.

  Do I want this? her face seemed to be asking itself, instead of the usual: Can we afford it?

  It was as if we were shopping for another family. Tins of tuna, frozen steak and kidney pies, Jaffa Cakes, Colgate toothpaste, grainy brown bread, Weetabix, Country Life butter, ice-cream. Even yoghurt, which my sisters and I had never tried. What looked like a lifetime's supply of Tampax and Kleenex toilet rolls piled up on top of the food. By the time we wheeled the trolley to the check-out, my fingers were trembling as much as my mother's. I tucked them in fists under my jumper and put on the poker face Terry had taught me, determined to look like someone born to trundle out with a mountain of luxuries.

  My mother bent to write in a green cheque book. Beneath her clear lacquered nails, a signature swirled. Whatever name it was, it wasn't hers.

  We filled the boot and the back seat with Asda bags. The sight of them, brimming with food that would last for ages, set off laughter in my belly. My mother slammed into the front seat, blinking back tears as she looked into the rearview mirror. For a moment I thought she was going to say something. I crossed my fingers. Don't tell me. I wanted to enjoy the stuff in the bags.

  My mother breathed out, got a grip on the steering wheel, and turned to look me in the eye: 'Don't ask.'

  Blaupunkt. I inspected the logo on our wide-screened, colour TV, while Coronation Street washed over us all.

  'It's German' - Terry lay along the settee, our mother wrapped in his arms - 'for blue spot.' This made me feel much happier about our new television. If, just if, there was something dodgy about how it found its wly into our front room, there was no need to feel guilty. The Germans had done horrendous things in the past; history was evening itself out.

  History was cast aside when Terry turned up with a video machine and buckets of Butterkist popcorn to go with Raiders of the Lost Ark, E. T., Police Academy or Airplane. Films and tasty food made us feel like a real family. So what, if it involved cutting a few corners behind the world's back? All the ladies who dropped round for tea or coffee, whisky or rum seemed to believe the same: it was downright daft, they assured our mother when she expressed her qualms about the good life, to worry too much. Everyone was on the fiddle, one way or another, weren't they? Adjusting the mileage, spraying used cars to sell them; fibbing about tax; buying clothes, tellies and stereos off the back of a lorry; signing on the dole and working at the same time.

  'Mug's game, fretting is.' Auntie Livia, hardened by years of Uncle Max's wheeling and dealing, seemed to have it all worked out: 'You've got to rob Peter to pay Paul, these days. And why not fly by the seat of your pants, eh? At least you'll get somewhere that way.'

  On Friday nights, I slathered on lipstick and eyeshadow to fetch our tea from the chippy, next to the bus stop where lads lurked in padded anoraks that swallowed them up but seemed to make them feel big. I teetered in my winklepickers

  through a tunnel of whistles and stares, suffering the odd pinch. Often, Wendy was there, lapping up filthy compliments, even letting lads fondle the curves under her own Michelin Man anorak.

  'It's only the lips tha
t mean owt,' she informed me, when I wondered why she let them touch her up: 'The other bits don't count.'

  'So why d'you kiss the real dogfaces, then, like Martin or that scuzzy one, Darren?'

  'I do it, missy prissy' - Wendy thought I was too squeamish for my own good - 'for the snog, not the lad. I'm getting in practice, like, for Mr Right, and you should do the same, if you don't want to be left on the shelf.'

  I had chosen not to go beyond my first toothy collision. The lad I had snogged was fresh out of Borstal, as I discovered when he landed himself back inside by trying to steal yet another car. Now I was determined to wait until I found a mouth attached to somebody nice.

  Wendy rolled her eyes. 'Coming out after?' she asked, when we emerged from the chippy.

  'Not sure.' I looked at her, surrounded by lads with haircuts like accidents, smoking under the bus shelter to protect gelled fringes from drizzle. Battered cod, scampi and chips steamed through newspaper in my hands. 'I will if I can, like.'

  I hurried home, before too much of the vinegary heat could escape.

  Boys were fine to read about in magazines Viktjust Seventeen. Sometimes, in the bath or in bed at night, the thought of them would give me a terrific ache in my middle, prickling up to my chest and oozing down towards my legs. Face to face, however, they were never worth the sweat. Not the ones I had bumped into in the park, at school, or on the back of the bus with Wendy. Besides - the Rocky theme tune was revving up

  as I stepped through our front door - you didn't need boys if you had a video.

  Evenings melted into weeks and months: I soaked up movies, sitcoms and soap operas; played rummy and Scrabble with my sisters; and devoured the dirtiest, most shocking bits out of well-thumbed and stained paperbacks. The spotty male assistant let me take them from the crime-and-thriller rack at Fallowfield library, although I was well under the required age of sixteen. I picked out books with more and more outrageous covers - women's legs in lacy garters and high heels; rope in the shape of a hangman's noose; blood trickling between a pair of breasts, a hunting knife gleaming in the background; finally axes and chainsaws - always bracing myself for some alarm to go off. But the lad would just smile at me, glance down to stamp the books, then look up and smile again, lips quivering slightly while his eyes gunned straight into mine.

  Homework was the only blot on the horizon. I would get the urge to do it while I was crashed out on my stomach in front of the telly - when it was impossible to peel myself up and do something about it, no matter how boring the programme. In the middle of The A Team, for example, or when Miami Vice was crawling with greasy-haired guys instead of gorgeous girls. Cars zoomed and exploded, trucks toppled over cliffs, men hurded from skyscraper windows, while sticky maths problems or bits of biology floated behind my eyes. Chlorophyll, stomata, sunlight: I anticipated the smiles I would win fi-om my biology teacher if only I could drag myself away fi-om the telly to draw the diagrams properly, upstairs on my bed, instead of rushing them oyer breakfast and on the top deck of the bus. And yet I could see no reason to pull up my socks, since answers seemed to come out sharper at the last

  minute, while my scruffy pages kept me cool in the eyes of kids who ruled the roost from the back rows.

  Terry moved in with his Spanish guitar, which loitered about like another person: dressed up with pearly tuning keys, carved wooden flourishes across its belly, it leaned against the wall, just waiting for the right moment to strut its stuff-. He spent hours playing Latiny love music for our mother, his fingers plucking and stroking a wordless serenade.

  Life was one long smiling honeymoon. The two of them radiated a happiness that felt hot. A disagreement might bubble up, a squirt of jealousy could sour the air, but then the phone or doorbell would ring and they would dissolve their diff^erences in other people. Ladies caked in glittery make-up or drooping sad eyes under stale perms, men with fantastic tattoos beneath overalls or pinstriped suits: the whole world seemed drawn to our door, turning up with dramatic news, heartbreaking problems or some sale-of-the-century deal. It was hard to remember the nights when my sisters and I had been left alone until dawn, sometimes missing our mother for days on end. Now our house was brimming with drink and smoky, loud-mouthed opinions that clashed with common sense when you stopped to think, but sounded colourfiil and brilliant while they were being spurted over a lager by one or another of Tez's mates.

  I was sprawled on my bed, steaming through my fourth Stephen King book, Carrie, lapping up all the gore and shuddery, headbending stuffy when my mother and Terry came in from a ride in the car and stormed upstairs to their bedroom. Instead of the usual honeybee buzzing behind the door, their voices were waspy and stinging.

  'Relax,' I heard Terry muttering, before resorting to the phrase he had picked up from a posh bloke he met in prison, where - he let spill while he was boozing with Uncle Lenny - he had made a brief visit years ago, for breaking and entering.

  ' Carpy diem^ »

  Laurie and I squeezed it into any sentence that would take it. It was Latin for 'seize the day', Terry told us.

  'Carpy diem,' my mother lectured him as if he were one of us kids, 'is not the same as carpy other people's gear.'

  There was a tight moment of quiet, before Terry carried on:

  'Look, Jimmy and me, we never do anyone who's got nowt. These geezers are insured up to their eyeballs.' You could hear nerves twanging in the flow: 'Nobody loses out, that's the beauty of it. What do you take me for, Rainie?'

  'I just don't want to lose you.' My mother's words turned soggy, sliding into a kiss: 'I don't want to lose you, yer daft bugger.'

  We thought he was teasing when he talked about selling his car. Tez wouldn't be Tez without his gold Jag to go with the ring on his litde finger and the gold filling in his broken tooth. We hung our heads and climbed in for one last cruise around the block, before the new owner came to take it away.

  'She sounded dead posh on the phone,' I told Laurie and Sarah. Our jaws sagged when she turned up: a tiny old lady, shaky patches of rouge, lipstick that hadn't stayed within the lines of her lips.

  'Are you sure you'll be able to manage the gears, love?' Terry had to crank the seat forward, until it was practically touching the steering wheel.

  She clicked the press studs on black leather gloves. The bonnet of gold glided away, not a sputter or clank.

  'That cannot be our new motor.' Laurie and I stood on the doorstep, staring darkly at a blue Mazda pick-up truck. Our mother had put her finger on it in the Exchange and Mart.

  'Start of a new era,' she declared. Terry was going to make use of his building skills, from bricklaying to carpentry and window glazing; she would be his mate on the bigger jobs. There wasn't a tool he could ask for, without our mother plucking it straight out of his oily crate.

  We peered into the cabin, big enough for only one extra person, two at a push, beside the driver.

  'Where are us kids supposed to sit?' Laurie asked Terry, when he came out to look at the truck, as if he were trying to get used to it too.

  'Right here.' He pointed to the open-air back. 'I'm going to stick up a metal frame and strap on a hood of tarpaulin, like. Bit of foam wrapped in placky to keep your bums dry, stop your bones from rattling: Bob's your uncle.'

  Terry chose the night of our first trip to make an announcement: 'Your mam thought you might want to start calling me Dad.' A blush, the colour of raspberry jam, spread over his face. 'It's all right with me, like, either way. What d'you reckon?'

  Any sulks about the new travel arrangements were washed away in a tide of Dads.

  Our mother buckled up in the cabin, while we clung to the frame at the back. Rain lashed the tarpaulin; not a drop got in. We could see our mother through the glass, smoking with Terry. Our Dad. Occasionally, she would twiddle the knob of the radio on the dashboard, then turn round to give us a grin.

  The two of them raised their eyebrows and pointed, acting surprised to find us still there, while we made faces as if we were h
anging on for dear life.

  It was ten o'clock at night. Sale Water Park. The gates had been locked at nine, according to the sign.

  'Where's your blummin' imaginations?' Terry wanted to know, when the four of us groaned and got ready to pile back into the truck.

  He hoisted us over the railings.

  'Mum?' Sarah's voice wobbled in the dark.

  A croak came from something not human, followed by a magnificent plop. Laurie and I strangled giggles. Creeping along the edge of the lake, we followed our new dad, who kept scurrying ahead, disappearing in the shadow of reeds.

  'Terry?' Our mother's voice turned as shaky as Sarah's: 'Terry, love, where are you?'

  I squealed when my shoe squelched off in the mud, sparking a chorus of yelps as the others panicked and ran away. My purple winklepicker was left: behind in the rush to get to the gates, where Terry was flashing the truck's headlights and making the engine growl.

  'What kept you?' He laughed over our fiirious faces: 'I was just about to take off.'

  The summer holidays zipped by, propelled by midnight jaunts that brought us home muddy and breathless and no longer afraid of the world, the way we used to feel when it was just our mother and us.

  'Who's for a spot of pointing?' During the day, Terry sometimes took us on one of his jobs. We swelled with pride, watching him mend walls and put up fences.

  He rolled the song 'Chain Gang' around in his chest, while Laurie, Sarah and I made clinking-clanking noises under our tongues.

  On the way home, he would drive slowly past certain houses, to let us admire a porch he had helped to build or a wall he had pointed.

  Dad. I looked at the bricks, held together with mortar scraped in painstaking lines, and thought. Dad.

  It was always cash in hand. Our dad's nails were dirty now that he had turned to his spanners, hammer and trowel, but the money seemed fresher when he pulled it out of his back pocket. Once, he forgot to empty his jeans before shoving them into the wash, giving Laurie and me the thrill of our lives. We stood over our twin tub, plucking clothes out of the bubbles to shove them in for a rinse and spin. Tens and twenties mingled with socks.