'Dad!' We hollered when the Queen's face rippled in the suds.
'Laundered money!' Tickled by his own joke, he called our mother to come and see.
She offered to iron the notes dry, but our dad had a better idea. Our mother shook her head when he pegged the notes along the washing line in the back yard. 'You're not all there, yer daft ignoramus!'
We told him that things were often nabbed off the line, even knickers and bras.
'San Fairy Anne,' he shrugged.
Laurie and Sarah were awestruck; they stood next to the kitchen window, eyes pinned on the money, waiting for robbers in balaclavas to leap over our back wall. For a while, my tummy fluttered too, watching the notes on the breeze. Eventually, I had to go outside, to be ready in case any blew
loose. I saw a twitch in the bedroom curtains, where our dad was keeping his own eye out.
'Dad's a cheat!'
The notes were unpegged and laid on top of the gas fire, leaving us giggling, trying to hide our disappointment. Our dad might act like a daredevil, biit he was only human aft:er all.
'It's A Man's World'. Dad was wiggling at the stove, steak sizzling in the pan. 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag'.
Word of mouth had won him some red-hot contracts. When people wanted a porch or a new fi-ont door, they knew that our dad was the man for the job. The sky - he looked up each time he said it - was the limit.
'Get On the Good Foot'. He did a fancy shuffle in his new cowboy boots, grabbing our mother to spin her under his arm. 'I Got You (I Feel Good)'.
The doorbell rang. My mother passed me a five-pound note and the slip fiill of crosses for the man who came to collect the money for the Football Pools.
'Your dad in?' Four blokes stood outside the door. Leather jackets, donkey coats, jeans.
'I couldn't stop them,' I told my dad, when they strolled into the kitchen, showing off badges, waving a warrant. The needle scratched to shut up James Brown. My mother snuffed the gas under the fiying pan.
'All right, Terry?' The most handsome of the men laid his walkie-talkie on the table and sat down. 'Time to talk.'
When they had searched our bedroom, Laurie, Sarah and I were sent upstairs. We locked ourselves in the bathroom, where we fastened our ears to the floor to keep up with what was going on in the kitchen. The man's voice droned. Dates, names of blokes that we recognized, lists of expensive, plug-in
things. Spare the bullshit — words leapt through the floorboards here and there, as if he were speaking to us - you know the score.
Our mother knocked on the bathroom door.
'Come and say goodbye to your dad.'
Sweat had mushroomed under his arms. The silver threads on his shirt looked grey.
'See you later.' He ruffled each of our crowns. Someone read him his rights.
'You don't need those.' He looked ready to cry when handcuffs came out. 'You can't do this to me. Not in front of me kids.'
'Should've thought of them before,' one of the officers sneered.
The handcuffs meant that he couldn't wave. We tried to catch his eye through the window of the red Volvo, but his face had fallen off.
The car skimmed down the street.
His neck shrank to a pink dot.
Our mother let out a shriek like a firework, bursting sobs that exploded sobs, finally quietening into tears.
7'm' not a bluddy animmaU he wrote in his first letter fi-om Strangeways Prison. Our mother read bits out to Auntie Livia, chuckling on the verge of tears at his Technicolor spelling, which made him sound too innocent to be in jail. There were too other fellers squoshed in his sell. One coud'nt stop hiting the other. He got a black eye him self, becos it was hard not to get in the way, like. They strech saifty nets, to catch any bloak throne over the rales. Rainie. . . The rest she kept to herself.
We were supposed to be looked after by our dad's mates. Eddie dropped round with a frozen chicken; Jack brought a bottle of wine that he drained himself; they sometimes slipped a note, tightly rolled, into our mother's hands. Too polite to inspect it under their noses, she kept it clenched in her fist until she had closed the door behind them, securing the chain, sliding every bolt across.
'Five quid!' Our mother let off steam on the phone to Auntie Livia: 'Five flamin' quid, afi:er everything he risked, and not grassing them up!'
Our mother resolved not to tell our dad that his so-called pals were taking us for a ride; it would only rattle him, and there was precious little he could do while he was behind bars. We were back on baked beans, went without jam and ketchup, and got used to powdered milk again. Our mother scraped together every spare penny to buy pouches of Old Holborn
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tobacco for Dad. She loaded her head with heated rollers each morning, rehearsing her hairdo for her first prison visit, then sat down to write her daily letter to him, borrowing Sarah's felt tips to make the most of the margins, where she swirled love stuff in yellow and purple and pink. By the time we got home from school in the evenings, the letter had been posted and the curls had sagged with her mood.
Sarah, who had only just turned eight, was too young to visit prison, but Laurie and I, being twelve and fourteen, were allowed to bunk off school to join our mother in the cab of the truck. Dad had been transferred from Strangeways to Kirkham, near Preston, where there was something called an open prison. It was a long drive, but the dashboard radio and the spring day made the miles breeze by. Our mother frowned at the petrol gauge, watching the engine guzzle our food money.
'It's gorgeous!' Laurie and I could not believe the greenery unfurling in front of our eyes. We wound down the windows and breathed as if we were gulping water. Chugging through the village of Kirkham, our mother cooed over tiny shops clustered around an old square.
Only two minutes' drive from this quaintness, the prison belonged to another world. Our mother made us comb our hair while she livened up her own in the rear-view mirror. We had to line up in a concrete yard with women clutching kids, slapping them across the head, giving them an earful in flat accents. Some of the younger ones had done themselves up: hairspray and high heels. Stares made me look down at my chest, covered in lemon lambswool. My tank top, like Laurie's jumper, was from the Save the Children charity shop, but nobody would have guessed. These people thought we were posh.
A buzzer went ofiF. We dribbled out of the sunshine into the waiting room, tight and airless as an armpit.
'Hawkins, Lorraine.' The warden left his scowl on his clipboard and came up with a greasy smile when he looked over and saw the face that went with the name. Laurie and I were 'plus two'.
We didn't need to be told that it was table 23; our dad's eyes were blue beacons. Wading into a sea of fellas and their families or lady friends, we took care not to brush the backs of chairs where kisses or arguments were in ftill swing. Some of the tables let off sparks: nasty electricity crackling between stormy-faced women and caged-looking men.
'Hiya, Dad.' He was wearing a shirt and workpants, made of dull and duller blues rather than jailhouse grey. No stripes or arrows. Our eyes raked his: if he had been to hell and back, they were not about to tell the tale. He fiddled in his trouser pockets to unloose a trickle of copper, then grinned at the odd flash of silver. Although it was only enough to buy toothpaste and a few cigs, he was paid a sort of wage for his labour as a carpenter, sanding new front doors all day. He laughed at the joke of his job: 'It'll teach me to enter people's houses the proper way, eh?'
Our mother wrestled the clasp of her purse and came up with a fifty pence piece. 'Why don't you fetch us all a brew?' She sent Laurie and me across the room to the boiler. We took our time filling the cups - knowing she was really thirsty not for tea, but for a few moments alone with our dad - then balanced the tray back across the dim hall. Light broke in dribs and drabs through bars across the windows.
'I've signed up to take the trumpet,' I told him when he asked what was new at school.
In the truck on the way, my head had ratded ftill of th
ings I was dying to say to my dad. Now I was finding it hard to
talk at all; my thoughts kept sliding back to the hole he had left behind him at home.
'And our Laurie's won yet another trophy for gymnastics,' Our mother chattered to keep things cheery. 'Haven't you, Laurie, love?'
The two of us sat behind cups of stewed tea, turning slimy on the surface, stale coconut biscuits abandoned in the saucers. We tried drinking, but it tasted of prison.
'You've not drank your tea.' Dad looked hurt.
So we sipped again, swallowing cold tea, and spent the rest of the hour peering over the rims of our cups at other kids. As soon as the bell rang, I wished I'd spent more time memorizing our dad's face.
'Don't be giving your mam grief, now, will yer?'
We promised to behave. Then we watched the wardens, who snatched away their eyes while our mum and dad had a long, chewy kiss. Our mother had folded a ten-pound note as small as it would go, and wrapped it in cling-film, so that she could have a litde cough, pass it into her mouth, then smuggle it on to our dad's tongue.
'Bye!' She made sure to smile at all the guards.
Behind the prison lay fields where inmates tended vegetables and flowers to be sold in the village market. Our mother pulled up and made me jump out of the truck to toss three packets of tobacco over the fence. A lad in blue overalls threw down his hoe and rushed, hopping over cabbages, to pluck the pouches out of the soil.
'I hope they get to him.' She put her foot down: 'That's my catalogue money gone up in smoke.'
'Don't worry, Mum.' I watched men waving, gazing after us out of faces buttered by the sun. 'They'll get to him.'
The prisoners stood rooted in the soil, while we sped away.
My mother made up sick notes so that could keep her company on the long haul to and from prison every other Thursday. Laurie preferred to go to school. My chest hammered every time I chucked baccy over the fence and met the green eyes of the lad who caught it.
Once, when Dad opened his palm to reveal a present, my mother burst into tears. 'Oh, love.'
Filing and filing at a ten pence piece, he had finally come up with a heart-shaped pendant. The sight of it made me feel lonely and in the way. My mother hung it on the gold chain around her neck, while Dad stroked her face with his work-chapped fingers. Then, thinking his hands were too rough, he leaned over to dry up her tears with his kisses.
My mother put on a brave face for her fortnightly visits, but it would usually crumple on the motorway, heading back to Manchester. Sometimes, to keep our spirits up, we would take the Stretford exit on the way home and drop in on Gran. It was lovely to sit with my grandmother in a haze of Woodbines, lapping up her words of wisdom, washed down with Tedey's tea and sterilized milk. Waking at dawn every day, with no television, and only Radio Two to distract her, she had time to work the world out.
If you love something, set it free. A poster above her pillow helped her to sleep in peace: If it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn 't, it never was.
I recited it to my mother, who turned her eyes to her tea, so that I couldn't tell whether it made her feel better or worse.
'You shouldn't miss school.' Gran squeezed my hand fiercely as we were leaving her flat. 'You've a chance to make something decent of yourself- break the mould.' An awesome frown took over her cheeks, blotting out her usual mild smile.
My skin felt like a kebab, roasting on the rack. I imagined my grandmother somehow knew about all the hours lost on buses, down strange streets, even wandering around Manchester airport, watching planes take off.
'It's only one day a fortnight' - my mother came to my rescue, assuming it was our prison Thursdays that were the issue.
'Days add up,' Gran said, while we were waiting for the lift. The doors opened. 'It's your future.'
The future, as far as I could see, was not so much about school as about having the right clothes, being able to keep up with fashion and to actually enjoy it, instead of panicking at how fast it moved. Ra-ra skirts, minis, long pencil skirts that made you shuffle, short, flared ones with braces, horrid puffball things; ski pants, drainpipes, jumbo cords, pedalpushers, baggy jeans that wrinkled like elephant skin around the ankles. I spent hours at jumble sales, rummaging for things that could be altered to fit the bill. My fingers were fiill of scratches where I had slipped and jabbed with the needle, setting off glistening baubles of blood. But no matter how fiiriously I stitched, I was always a step behind.
Records made me hot under the collar, too. We had loads of albums and singles at home, but they were mosdy from the Sixties and Seventies. You had to know all the latest hits and where they were in the charts, if you didn't want to be shown up at school or down the end of the street where the hard kids loitered. It helped to have Wendy as a mate, because her front room was always twanging with songs by whining white boys
like Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Japan and Ultravox. The records were bought by her big sister, Gail, who had a job selling insurance, which she got with only three grade D CSEs. Gail had to spend all day on the phone, saying the same thing over and over and over. But then she could go home wearing fluffy jumpers and tight skirts, with real leather boots that zipped up to her thighs. On weekends she went to Yates's Wine Lodge, then to Friday's, a disco, where men bought her Malibu cocktails faster than she could glug them down. At least three blokes were in love with her at one time. She could get married as soon as she made up her mind. That was the future.
N5(7henever I was tempted to truant, Gran's face steered me to school.
I had a strange crush, mingled with a lazy sort of hatred, on the snooty girls Susannah Maxwell and Charlotte Cox, whose parents had sent them to our school because, although they were well-off^ they were socialists and wanted to show that they believed in comprehensive education. Tamsyn Lee seemed just as posh, though her mother was a dinner lady and would rather have sent her daughter to a grammar school or a private one if she had been able to afford it. All three girls knew about politics and history, and were never afraid to speak their minds. Mrs Arnold staged debates in the English class: everyone else fell silent while they thrashed it out. Their voices started off haughty and smooth, as sure as the politicians you might hear on the news, but ended up grating like nails on a blackboard. Charlotte believed in communism, revolution and something she called The People; Tamsyn swore by Margaret Thatcher and had her sights set on gathering enough O levels to make her middle-class; Susannah called herself a Liberal and poured energy into disagreeing with the others, at the same time
hammering on about how much she valued their points of view.
Miners. Taxes. The IRA. Butter mountains. Brezhnev. Strikes. Arthur Scargill. Nuclear disarmament. Colonel Gad-affi. The Falklands.
It wasn't the subjects that were so fascinating. It was the way long words spurted out, while their cheeks throbbed red, each one throwing herself into the argument heart and soul.
The only paper we always bought was the News of the World on a Sunday; sometimes our dad got the Sun. If the news happened to come on the telly at home, someone would switch like lightning to another channel, afraid of being bored to death. So it was hard to scrape together enough facts and figures to transform my gut instincts about the world into hard-edged opinions for school. I shuddered at the prospect of a nuclear holocaust; I wondered how I would ever get a job if the recession was still so deep when I turned sixteen; but most of my energy went into worrying about the hairs on my face, arms and legs.
'Immac,' lads called me, plucking at my shins. 'Your name Andrew?' they shouted, when light caught me at an angle, giving me a moustache.
'Don't put yourself in line for misery.' My mother exposed her own prickly legs to warn me against shaving. 'It's a never-ending batde.'
'You're a bloody fool!' she flared once, after I braved the razor behind her back. 'Now you've started you'll never be able to stop.'
I tried to explain that I couldn't go on living with hairy legs. My mother shook h
er head at the bits of tissue stuck to
my ankles, where I had taken off slivers of skin in the rush to be feminine.
'It's your life,' she sighed.
'Zoom!' My heart went boom along with Fat Larry's Band.
Within a week of acquiring smooth legs, I fell head over heels.
Neil Kirby hung around the chippy, but he wasn't like the other lads. For one thing, he didn't swear, he didn't thrust out his tongue to wiggle it, and he had never tried to pinch my bum. For another, his face was delicious, with honey-coloured eyes and lips that broke into a smile of straight white teeth whenever I walked by. I had explored every bit of his mouth in my imagination. It didn't matter that he smoked. It did matter that Wendy fancied him.
'Hands off,' she warned, noticing that he had kept me chatting under the bus stop three nights in a row: 'He's mine.'
I made a real effort to steer clear. Somehow, that made it harder to resist.
Neil Kirby invited me to his house to watch a film with his friends. The movie turned out to be full of bouncing, sweaty breasts. I was the only girl in the room; my nipples burned as if they were blushing.
'Fancy coming up to my room for a bit?' Neil's fingers hovered near mine.
I forced down a sip of Skol lager. 'Don't you want to watch the rest of the film?' I stalled.
When he took my hand to pull me upstairs, our palms were oozing the same sticky heat.
'I hope you're being sensible, young lady!' My mother was torn between nagging me to be careful and congratulating me on finding a boyfriend. Such a nice lad, too, she boasted to Auntie Livia and Auntie Pauline and Gran. Seventeen, he was, working at the butcher's on Yew Tree Road, until his papers came through for the army. In raptures over his neat hair and clipped fingernails, which showed that he came from a good family, my mother was already dressing me in white in her mind, ready to scoot me down the aisle as soon as the time was right.
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