He smiled. ‘Yeah, dad’s busy. He asked me to pick up some cash.’
‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid not every boy and girl these days could be trusted with a job like that.’
Nerves made him chatter on. ‘I’ll have to be careful I don’t lose it when I go back to school.’
‘You certainly will.’ She glanced at the cash machine. ‘Have you finished?’
‘Not quite. But you go ahead, Mrs McKendrick.’
‘Well thank you.’ She liked Peter, he was one of those straightforward boys. Always polite. You knew where you were with Peter. ‘Here, you left your card in the machine.’
He took it from her. ‘Thanks, Mrs McKendrick.’
She was soon finished and put the money away in her bag. ‘Bye-bye, then, Peter. Give my regards to your father.’
‘Yes, I will. Bye, Mrs McKendrick.’
When she had gone, he checked up and down the road and withdrew the whole three hundred pounds: fourteen twenty-pound notes and two tens. Carefully he folded everything together, money, cash card and statement, and buttoned them away in the back pocket of his grey school trousers.
During the afternoon, as he carried out a chemistry experiment and wrote up the results, then went to the hall for rehearsals of A Christmas Carol, he felt the wad of money pressing against his bottom. Having lost his part as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Peter had been asked to play Mr Fezziwig, Scrooge’s kind-hearted employer, which meant he had to dance a polka all round the stage. It was embarrassing at first, dancing with the Goose and then one of the girls, but once he’d got used to it he enjoyed it.
Valerie was in the house when he got home. She had had a busy day. First she had been to the ante-natal clinic in Clashbay where the nurse had given her a thorough examination and pronounced her fit as a flea. Then she had gone for lunch and afterwards visited a store to look at cots, clothes, nappies, bottles, sterilisers and all the other things she was going to need for the baby.
‘A woman at Oxfam said she knows where she can get us a pram cheap,’ she told Peter, ‘you know, with one of them detachable carrycots. It’s all going to cost a fortune. I looked for dad’s credit cards but you must have taken them. Did you find out how much he’s got?’
‘Didn’t have a chance,’ he said. ‘The Goose kept us in all lunchtime rehearsing. I’ll go tomorrow.’
‘No need, I can go myself.’ She held out a hand. ‘Let’s have the card. What’s his PIN number?’
Peter made a pretence of searching through his pockets. ‘Give us a minute, I’ve got it here somewhere.’ The card wasn’t to be found.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost it.’
‘No, I … Oh, I remember, I hid it in my desk in case it fell out when we were playing.’
‘You mean it’s at school?’
‘Yeah, don’t worry though. It’s quite safe.’
‘And here’s me thinking you were the careful one.’ She poured boiling water on a couple of teabags and opened a packet of Jaffa Cakes. ‘Well don’t forget tomorrow, our Peter. I’m needing that money. There’s a lot to do before the baby arrives.’
‘OK.’ He went to the fridge for milk.
‘Hey, come here.’ She pushed her hair back and turned her neck for him to smell. ‘Blue Grotto, they had a special offer, eight quid off. Maureen give us a loan. What do you think?’
22
The Christmas Tree
IN TARRIDALE HIGH School there was so much excitement about Christmas that even Peter was affected by it. Several times, during those last few days before the holiday, he forgot the lie he was living for a whole hour at a time.
On the Wednesday, he withdrew another three hundred pounds and spent ten pounds of it on presents for school friends and a cake to take to the party. He had dressed in his best trousers and shirt because the party was that same afternoon.
On the Thursday, the school kitchen produced a delicious Christmas lunch with turkey, plum pudding and crackers. In the afternoon Peter’s class performed their play before the whole school and were cheered to the ceiling.
On the Friday, lessons were abandoned in favour of games and in the late morning, class by class, they walked to the ancient village church of St Andrew’s. Streamers hung across the windows. A tall tree glowed with lights and shimmered with tinsel in the draughts. There were carols and readings. Accompanied by the organ instead of the school piano, the choir sang their pieces. And during the prayers Peter shut his eyes tight and thought about his father.
There was no lunch that day and at one o’clock, after Mrs Harle had wished everyone a happy Christmas and reminded them what day to come back, the buses whisked them away home to start the holiday.
The children chattered like magpies. A friend had given Peter a tin kaleidoscope. As the bus descended to the dunes and started up the long Sandy Brae, he shook it and looked happily at the bright patterns. But as they drew closer to the point where he must dismount, his happiness began to ebb.
Valerie had not forgiven him for lying to her, drawing out the six hundred pounds and hiding it away – behind a roof beam in the byre, to be precise, folded into an old tobacco tin to keep it safe from the mice.
‘But I’m your sister, for God’s sake!’ she had cried. ‘How are we going to get along if we can’t trust each other?’
‘Well are you going to stay on here?’ Peter had shouted back. ‘How long for? You’ve always hated it. What am I supposed to live on if you suddenly push off again – assuming they haven’t found dad by that time? What if I come back one day and find there’s no one here but me and the dogs?’
‘Leave you by yourself? What do you think I am? I’d never do that to you.’
‘You did to dad. And never wrote to him once.’
‘But I wouldn’t to you.’
‘Maybe not without telling me, but you’ll go when you get fed up.’ His face was red. ‘And you’re so extravagant.’
‘Extravagant!’
‘You know you are. You’ve only got to see something and you want it, you’ve got to have it. How long’s the money going to last the way you go on? I mean, look at your hair for a start. How much did that cost? Twenty quid? More?’
Tired of her blonde locks and dark roots, Valerie had indulged herself at the hairdresser. Her thick hair, now glossy red with two-tone highlights, curled fashionably about her neck and forehead. It had, in fact, cost sixty-five pounds, a figure she would never admit to Peter. A manicure and facial – work in the chip shop had not been kind to her hands and complexion – had cost another forty-five. In addition Valerie had treated herself to a silk scarf, a maternity top and new shoes. As if to demonstrate that she was being practical, two giant packets of disposable nappies (two for the price of one) stood on the floor at the end of the settee.
‘Oh, you!’ she said, for she had wanted Peter to admire the new Valerie. ‘What do you know about it anyway? Bloody men! You’re as bad as dad.’
In the end they had formed an uneasy truce, but of all the Tarridale pupils heading home that afternoon, Peter was the most troubled.
‘See ya, Winnie … Merry Christmas! … Give you a ring.’ Voices pursued him down the aisle. ‘Coming to the match tomorrow?’
‘Not sure. I might.’
‘Come on, man, there’s teas after. Tell your dad we’re all looking for you. Give him a kick up the jacksie.’
The bus crunched to a halt. The doors hissed open.
‘Tell your dad Happy Christmas, Peter.’
Startled, he looked round and met the driver’s big smiling face. ‘Thanks, Robbie, I’ll tell him. You too.’ His heart was thudding.
A black bin bag was tucked into a space behind the driver’s seat. The top had come open revealing a corner of red Santa costume and curl of white whiskers. Robbie saw Peter’s glance and turned. ‘Oh-oh!’ He tucked them out of sight. ‘Don’t tell the little ones, eh?’
He had been distributing presents to the children in the primary school. Ev
eryone knew that Robbie Duncan played Santa Claus. He had been Santa for the last twenty years, it was a village tradition. ‘I won’t,’ Peter assured him and stepped down.
The bus drew away. He stood at the roadside.
The Christmas holiday had begun.
Snow had been forecast. The sky was leaden grey. As Peter bucked and bumped his way home on the tractor, his cheeks stung and his eyes watered with the cold.
The dogs gave him a big welcome, circling the tractor as it roared into the yard. The van wasn’t there. The house was empty. Valerie, who didn’t like being on her own, had left him a note:
Don’t worry Iv’e not gone shopping. I am not being EXTRAVAGENT! I’m going to visit Maureen. Back around five. I’ll make dinner.
Luv, Val xxxxx
PS We’ll go shopping tomorrow for the baby. Then you can see for yourself how much it cost’s.
He missed her in a way but it was nice having the house to himself. He threw his school clothes on his bed and pulled on the jeans and sweater he wore round the house.
It was time to put up the Christmas decorations. They were stored in a cardboard box at the back of the cupboard under the stairs. He tipped them onto the carpet and added a bag of paper chains the class had made and were being thrown out. Now he needed to find a tree.
The moors were carpeted with moss, grasses, heather, bracken, wildflowers and bog cotton, nothing bigger than gorse bushes and a few stunted alders. A mile beyond Scar Hill, however, there was a stand of Scots pines. Many of these noble trees were over twenty metres tall and when the gales blew they swayed and roared like an ocean storm. Around them, particularly on the more sheltered slope, grew a profusion of saplings. This was where Jim had always cut the Christmas tree and Peter planned to do the same.
After some beans on toast and a mug of hot chocolate, he collected the bushman saw and a pair of loppers, called the dogs and set off with the trailer.
The stand of trees was a few hundred metres above the track. Peter crossed a boggy ditch and was starting up the hillside when he spotted a group of stags, several with fine antlers. They had stopped feeding and stood with raised heads, watching the intruders. Ben froze, staring towards them intently, then decided they were too far off to be worth chasing and resumed his zigzag path through the heather.
The traditional Christmas tree is a spruce. These were pines with tufty branches like bottle brushes. Jim thought the young trees were prettier than spruce and that is what he had taken home for as long as Peter could remember.
After a brief search he selected a tree a bit less than two metres tall and kicked back the undergrowth. Branches grew close to the ground. He lopped them off, ignoring the needles that pricked his hands and poked him in the face. Half a metre of trunk was exposed. He was sorry to destroy such a fine young tree even though dozens were growing around it. A minute’s sawing brought it toppling sideways, bouncing on the springy branches.
As he worked it began to snow. He blinked up at the dancing flakes, dark overhead and white against the pine trees. Small and unmelting, they settled on his shoulders.
It was awkward to carry the tree and tools at the same time. He half-dragged, half-carried the tree down to the track and heaved it on to the trailer then returned for the loppers and saw.
‘Meg, Ben, come on.’ The dogs jumped aboard.
The snow had thickened, tickling his eyelashes and turning the folds of his jacket white. A ghostly half-white was settling over the landscape.
Cutting the tree was always a great thing to do, one of the fixed moments of Christmas. As he drove home, exposed on the high seat of the tractor, Peter was quite proud of himself because he thought his dad would have been pleased.
The tyres left tracks but by the time he drove into the yard the snow had stopped. Daylight was fading. Cracks of cold sky appeared between the clouds.
Valerie had phoned and left a message:
‘Hello, Peter, love. Val here. Look, I’m not going to be back in time to make dinner. Sorry. But listen, there’s a pizza in the deep freeze and a sticky toffee pudding in the fridge. You can heat them up OK, yeah? I’ll not be late, promise.
Lots of love. Bye.’
Peter knew about the pizza and the pudding. He had put them there.
The cold had penetrated to his skin. He shovelled out yesterday’s ash and lit the fire, then helped himself to a couple of chocolates from the box in Valerie’s bedroom.
By mid-evening the house had taken on a festive air. Multicoloured streamers crossed the walls. Trails of ivy from the back of the byre were coiled round the beams. Ropes of glitter hung over the pictures. In pride of place the pine tree, clamped in its blue bucket and smelling of resin, sparkled like fairyland with the big Christmas star at the top.
A few cans of beer were gathering dust on top of the fridge. Peter didn’t like beer much but was pleased when Jim gave him a mouthful in the bottom of a glass. By way of celebration, he popped one open and took it to the fire with a packet of crisps.
It was a nice thing to do and there was a good cartoon on TV, but the beer tasted even worse than usual. By the time it was half drunk he felt his head start to spin. With a belch he tipped the rest down the sink. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ he said and filled a glass to the brim with water. Ice-cold and brown from the peaty stream which was its source, it tasted much better than the beer.
By ten, when Valerie returned, the alcohol hadn’t left his system and Peter was grumpy. His head ached. She had seen the decorations through the window and came straight into the living room.
‘Peter, love, that’s beautiful!’ She leaned over the settee and planted a kiss on his hair. ‘Did you go out and cut the tree all by yourself?’
‘No,’ he said, making her pay for being late. ‘Santa Claus come over and give me a hand. Who d’you think cut it? I’m not a baby, you know.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that, darling. But if you’d left it till tomorrow we could have done it together.’
‘You’d have to get out of bed first,’ he said. ‘And up the hill? I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe not up the hill, no, but here in the house.’ She looked round, unbuttoning her coat. ‘It’s really beautiful anyway.’
‘I’m glad you like it.’
‘What do you have to be so cross for? Like I said, if you’d waited I would have helped you.’
‘Wait for you, I’d be waiting till doomsday.’
‘Is it ’cause I wasn’t here to make the dinner? I left a message, I did say sorry.’
‘Yeah, sorry, big deal. You never do what you say you will. You’ve been back four days now an’ you’re never even here, you’re always out shopping an’ drinking an’ visiting people.’
‘Well, if you’re determined to be disagreeable there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s no mystery who you get that from.’ She threw her coat on the settee and went into the kitchen. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow night, anyway, ‘cause I’ve invited Maureen and some of the others over.’ Her head appeared round the door. ‘An’ I’d say it’s going to be really nice, you having the house all decorated and everything, but you’d only snap my head off so I’ll not bother.’ She disappeared again and there was a sound of cups clattering. ‘Do you want a coffee?’
‘No,’ he said. Then, ‘Yes, tea.’ He pursued her to the kitchen doorway. ‘But if they come tomorrow they’ll see dad’s not here.’
‘Ee, so they will,’ she said as if she wasn’t quite the full quid. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘Well they’re going to start asking questions and – ’
‘Oh, give us credit for a bit of nous, our Peter. Of course they’re going to see dad’s not here. We’d hardly be having a party if he was. I’ve told them he’s gone down to visit his brother in Newcastle. Just had a heart bypass. I’ll be looking after you for a few days.’
Peter thought about this imaginary relative. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Who?’
‘Uncle – whoever h
e is.’
‘Never thought about it. What do you fancy? Jimmy?’
‘Don’t be stupid, that’s dad’s name. What about … Frank? Uncle Frank.’
‘If you like.’
‘Uncle Frank,’ he said again. ‘Yeah.’
It had a nice ring to it. To a boy with no relations apart from an absent mother and a pregnant sister he hadn’t seen for years, Uncle Frank was a welcome addition to the family.
23
The Party
PETER HATED IT. From the early afternoon people had been arriving. Cars filled the yard and lined the side of the track. The house was full of bodies – living room, kitchen, hall, stairs. Only Peter’s bedroom was unoccupied. Football was on the TV and a few boys tried to watch, even though heavy rock drowned out the commentary. The air was thick with the smells of beer, sweat, perfume and cigarette smoke.
Some of the cigarettes had a funny smell. Peter watched a girl rolling one, crumbling something from a scrap of paper into the tobacco. He’d seen her somewhere before, her name was Julie – a thin, dark girl with purple lipstick. She lit up and drew the smoke deeply into her lungs, tilting her head back and shutting her eyes. When she saw him watching she laughed and held out the skinny cigarette.
‘Come on, you’ll never know if you don’t give it a try.’
Peter gave her a look of disgust and moved away.
‘Ah, mama’s baby,’ she called after him.
Food and spills were being trodden into the carpet. People were kissing, eating, drinking from bottles, cans, glasses, paper cups. Trailing arms around shoulders. Shouting to make themselves heard. A new smell, burning burgers, came from the crowded kitchen.
Deirdre and Malcolm, school friends Valerie hadn’t seen for years, lay glued together on the settee, jammed in by others. Malcolm rolled aside for a moment. ‘Hey, Valerie. Val!’ He raised questioning eyes to the ceiling, meaning upstairs. She saw Peter watching and shook her head. Malcolm followed her glance and scowled. ‘Why don’t you just piss off,’ he said to the tense, thirteen-year-old boy whose home this was.
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