First Love

by Gwendoline Riley

  The past was before us. The Mulqueens gathered and here were faces, characters from long ago.

  Leaning forward on the lectern, confidentially, our uncle Peter gave the eulogy:

  ‘Now, Barry lived life to the full. He was the first of the O’Donnell grandkids, and he was spoiled rotten. And he continued to spoil himself rotten, I think it’s fair to say.’

  —

  I’d been to the house. I made a dash for it, four days after I heard the news. Christine met me at Lime Street.

  I said some strange things to her, seeing those rooms again. I wept, and sobbed. I clenched my fists in terror. Poor woman. And what a nice woman. She always was nice to us.

  ‘It’s like he’s just stepped out, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘When I came back I noticed there was a cup of tea made, by the kettle…’

  I nodded.

  Christine had found him. She’d been coming once a week, she told me, cleaning from the ground floor up. He was on the second flight of stairs.

  The house felt very lonely. Like a lonely child’s lair, really. The brave business of self-solace everywhere in evidence (to my eyes, anyway). His comforts. His acquisitions. Stores of treats. Discarded novelties.

  The little kitchen was crowded with equipment, but all of it dusty, greasy. Here was a rice cooker. A meat slicer. A SodaStream. And so much food. Family-size tubs of sweets, stacked up. Italian biscuits in cellophane sacks tied with thin gold cord. There were bags and bags of fancy pasta, half a dozen tins of confit de canard. I opened the fridge.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Oh, yes, your dad was a demon for cheese!’

  ‘It looks like a cheese counter.’

  ‘I know, I know. Barry was not going to be told what he couldn’t have. No way. Look at this: goose fat. Mayonnaise. Custard…’

  The living room had changed. A huge red sofa filled half of the space now.

  ‘This was his centre of operations, really,’ Christine said. ‘Once he had his iPad. That was his window on the world. He was ordering food from the four corners of the globe then.’

  ‘He got much bigger.’

  ‘He did. To be honest, Neve, I don’t know that you would have recognized him, at the end.’

  —

  After the reception, my uncle Patrick drove us back to the station, with poor Edwyn folded in the back, knees by his chin, watching Liverpool go by, the spread of estates near town.

  ‘There must have been a lot of bombs, I suppose, around here,’ he said.

  It was a wet evening, the air tinted purple. Rain trembled across the window. At my feet I had a Bag for Life, containing the iPad, and the few papers that had turned up. (My father had burnt most of them, Patrick thought.) There was no will.

  ‘God, he’d be sick, you know, to think you had all that power!’ Patrick said. ‘All that info!’

  —

  It was ten days, from that first phone call to seeing his boat-size coffin slide away. The mind scrambles. At one point I cried to Edwyn that my father had been ‘the sensitive one’! (Not untrue, from a certain angle.) The tears would keep coming: pity, dread, succeeding each other relentlessly. Extraordinary, really. When had I last had a tender feeling towards my father? I think I was six. He turned forty when I was six, and I remember getting terribly upset then, worried for him, because he was ‘old.’ He would have scoffed at that, I’m sure. My mother did. Once, I tried to kiss him, again when I was about that age, only he wiped it off, pulled a face at my brother. A gratified face, a sort of ‘get her’ face. After that—nothing. Extreme inhibition, that was all. Ceding slowly to a dull sense of waiting it out. And that contempt, perhaps, that Edwyn has noted (and he isn’t wrong); I suppose that must have started to make itself at home in me then, during those weekends. How horrible. What a legacy. Something in me balked, thinking of that, but it was no good, I felt that rank and creaky old outrage, getting to its feet again at the back of the room, ready to pour out whatever was still pooling in its cup.

  It was his whetted look, I found, that I remembered most vividly. His stout expectation. How had that endured: life, knocks? But it had. He was ‘Just a big kid, really,’ Christine said. Well, quite. Somehow he was. A greedy child. A tyrant child. And for fifteen years, every Saturday, my brother and I were laid on to service him. To listen to him. To be frightened by him, should he feel like it. As a child with his toys, he exercised a capricious rule, and as with any little imperator, his rage was hellish were his schemes not reverenced. One wrong word unlatched a sort of chaos. The look in his eyes then! Licensed hatred. The keenest hunger. As the plates were swept off the counter, kicked around the floor. As the sofa was upended, pictures torn from the walls. He had to triumph. And how he’d triumph, having no resource but his shamelessness.

  ‘Thought you’d got one over on me, didn’t you!’ Digging his fingers in, showing his top teeth. ‘Didn’t you, hey?’

  His hair was black then, just threaded with white. After a rage it hung in pieces over his dark, panting face.

  —

  Not that he confined himself to us. There were all sorts of satisfactions to be had, for the restless bully about town. My father used to lay into shop assistants. People behind the counters in fast-food restaurants. I think he went to those places to shout: that low guile among his many atavisms, for here were young people without authority or status. He jutted his head forward, his face darkened, and he poured forth a scalding fury. (His chips weren’t crispy enough!) Peremptory enquiries were repeated with a jab of his finger. The answers were as dirt. (‘You want to find whoever told you that, and kick them, hard.’) Insults came last, about weight or brain power. And then we’d have to leave with him. All eyes on us in a space gone quiet.

  So he proceeded, unchecked, more or less. (Runaway wife aside.) His antics surely dismayed people: his family, wouldn’t you think? But what could you do? He was aggressive, not bright, none of which makes for a person you want to engage with if you can help it. Instead—I did it myself when I was older—you smiled, tried to meet him halfway, just as you might encourage a baby, and give all your warm attention to a baby, to get it to behave. He was like a baby. There was that appalling, babyish, naming-triumph to his pronouncements. He liked to point, and he liked to bark what he saw. Out and about, sampling life, he’d shout zealously: ‘Big bum!’ ‘Bleach blonde!’ ‘Pop socks!’

  ‘What about pop socks?’ I’d say, my voice level, friendly, curious.

  At which he’d beam and chomp the air a little, snorting like a bull, and then he’d point again, with his fat freckled hand, at some poor woman doing her shopping:

  ‘Pop socks!’

  ‘Big bum!’

  He had a waddling walk, being toddler-shaped: short legs, his stomach a full sail. Walking ahead, he’d lift his leg to fart and then turn to look at us with dog-like surprise. This was our father in a carnival spirit, but I do hope I’m giving credit to his range…When the mood took him, he was also a great explainer of the world. A bold scheme for someone as thick as him but, with a chuckling authority, he would confide his considered assessments to, let’s say, the eight- and ten-year-old children in the back of his car:

  ‘Women like your mother. They are a particular breed. You will find that. You will notice that.’

  ‘Your grandmother really is filthy. That house of hers. She’s very sluttish. Just look at her cuffs sometime, or the collars of her shirts or her jerseys. They are black with grease. We all noticed it. Thatcherites like her are really creepy people. You’ll find that. They don’t know how to keep themselves clean.’

  My brother stopped going to see him when he was fifteen, after my father punched him in the face. I had to keep at it. ‘Just one more year,’ as my mother said, ‘just keep the peace, please.’ And I was the one he wanted, that became clear. There were no threats when my brother didn’t show up, no triumphant withdrawals of maintenance or accusations of sexual abuse. (He’d fingered my grandfather and a teacher at different times, when
I tried to get my weekends back. He wrote lurid letters to my mother, with a swashbuckling tone, and speechified to his brothers and sisters, in their kitchens every Saturday, or so my brother said.)

  Still, things did go badly for him that last year, when I was showing up alone. He lost his job, lost his driving licence, for good this time. He wasn’t shopping at M&S anymore. I was peacefully incurious about all of this. I said nothing. When he brought it up, in his wounded, blustery way, I didn’t respond. His friend Frank had brought him some food, he said.

  ‘Frank’s a Christian, you know. He called it a tithe. I said I’ll accept it in the spirit of wealth redistribution!’

  Frank was a large Chinese man who used to work with my father at AB Foods. I hadn’t met him, only heard about him. They often went for ‘banquets’ together at the Yang Sing. Later Frank worked in the council office with my mother. She was unaware of the connection, at first. One Saturday, she saw Frank in town and said hello. Cunningly, Frank said, ‘Er…Who are you again?’

  ‘Apparently she greeted him like he was a long-lost relative!’ my father told me. ‘It was very odd. Frank says they all think she’s weird, at work. Yes, there’s something very off there. Very creepy.’

  There was only one other friend that I ever caught sight of. Con appeared during that last year, came over twice for lunch, then wasn’t mentioned again. He was an ex-colleague of my father’s too, and younger than him, as Frank had been. He was short, slight, sceptical-looking. He was in the early stages of multiple sclerosis, my father revealed, announced, while Con was out of earshot. I don’t know if he ever met Con’s wife, but he liked to make remarks about her. Winking at me and mugging, ‘She who must be obeyed!’ Con was sometimes receptive to these remarks, sometimes not. The notion of a wife was perhaps by then quite fantastical to my father. (I remember my friend Paul Powell telling me how, aged nine or ten, imagining the future with his best friend, they would discuss—place great emphasis on—‘taking camping trips with our wives.’)

  On Con’s second visit, my father came down from the bathroom and said, ‘I think you need to go and clean up, up there.’

  Con looked up, but it was me he was talking to.

  ‘Clean up?’

  Here my father performed a familiar trick: judging my question stupid, he didn’t answer, he just sat down, put his feet up, locked his gaze on the TV.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘You’ll see what I mean.’

  I went upstairs. The bathroom looked clean. The toilet looked clean. (The cistern was still filling up after his flush.) I lifted the seat and saw two drops of dried blood, both tiny, barely more than pinheads. I took a piece of toilet paper and spat on it, rubbed the drops away.

  ‘I couldn’t see anything,’ I said, coming back into the living room.

  ‘Look again!’ he said, not looking up.

  I went back upstairs, stood on the landing for a few moments then came down again, sat down again.

  ‘All gone?’

  At first I didn’t answer.

  ‘All gone?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all gone,’ I said, looking at the TV.

  A few moments later, my father piped up again.

  ‘Women just aren’t naturally clean, are they?’ he said, turning to Con.

  —

  But still the weeks ticked down. On my last Saturday with him my father had looked out a photograph of himself.

  ‘One of the few pictures of me in existence, that!’ he said, nodding at it. ‘You can have that, if you want, take it with you!’

  In grey photo-fog: a small fat child. Thick spectacles. A sad glint of mischief in his smile.

  ‘Why don’t you like having your photo taken?’

  ‘Oh. Don’t know. Never have. Yes, your nana felt very guilty about that picture. I got so upset!’

  I didn’t take it with me. I looked at it from where I stood. Didn’t pick it up.

  —

  That should have been it. My time served. It was quite easy to forget he existed, I found. To leave those rooms to gentle decay. But at the end of my first semester—I was at Manchester University—my mother forwarded a letter to halls. His handwriting. No note. Just a ticket to a concert at the Philharmonic, in a week’s time. Even had I felt inclined to, I couldn’t have gone. I wrote to say so: ‘I’m afraid I have exams that week. I hope you have a good night.’ Soon enough, again without a note, another ticket, for a concert a few weeks later.

  Well, I went. Encouraged by my mother again, the mad old pimp. After the concert we walked over to the Kebab House on Hardman Street, a place he used to take my brother and me after similar evenings at the Phil., which were always a trial: feeling so shut down inside, even to music.

  My father made my brother sick in the Kebab House, once: that was a memory. He was sick at the table. It poured out onto his plate with a hot little burp. This was just after I’d turned vegetarian. My father had had to lump that, but my brother following suit?

  ‘No!’ he’d barked. ‘Lamb! He’s having lamb!’

  And nor did he leave it there. As my poor brother chewed his first mouthful, my father glared at him hungrily, excitedly.

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ he said. ‘You wanted lamb! Wasn’t I right?’

  He kept asking, until my brother nodded. Not enough. My brother had to say, ‘Yes.’ My father watched every mouthful he ate of that meal, with a look on his face that was truly obscene.

  He was in his pomp again tonight. Employed again, apparently.

  ‘And like I say, don’t worry about cost, at all,’ he said, ‘order what you like, because…’

  Here, grimacing, he half-stood to pull his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. Then he held his wallet up, and in a tick-tick of unsticking plastic, four sheathed credit cards unfolded and hung there. He went from top to bottom.

  ‘Credit limit: five K. Credit limit: two K. Five hundred pounds on this one. This one has gone up to two thousand. I don’t ask for it, they just write and tell you it’s increased!’

  He ordered lamb. I had two of the vegetable side dishes. Looking after the waiter as he left, then turning to look at the owner at the back, and to take in the other diners, my father said, ‘They all think you’re my fancy piece! My secretary!’ (Pronounced ‘secutary.’)

  He asked about my course next, but pulled a face when I told him.

  ‘Sounds like posing to me!’ He turned again to the waiters, the owner.

  ‘Does it? That’s a shame. I’m not posing.’

  ‘You’re going to alienate a lot of people with all this posing!’ he said.

  ‘Ah, well…’

  From his jacket’s inside pocket, he pulled out a programme for the coming season at the Phil. He’d marked the concerts we were going to see together. Every fortnight.

  ‘Oh. I work on Saturdays, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘You haven’t bought tickets, have you?’

  He didn’t answer that. Instead came that wounded huff-puff, harrumph. His eyes narrowed. Just then, our food arrived; his huge grey hump of meat, his chunky chips, so that distracted him, he set to it. We ate in silence for a while, and in my mind, then, I left the scene: out into the bracing cold, down the hill to Lime Street. I could call Bridie from the train, go out when I got back.

  ‘Where’s your brother living these days?’

  ‘Still at home. He’s only seventeen.’

  My father frowned, lifted his chin. His expression was one of supreme indifference.

  ‘He wants to do History at Leeds, I think. Last I heard, that’s what Mum said.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Because we were all quite concerned about him, you know. The organizations he was joining.’

  ‘Organizations?’

  ‘He’s a follower, Neve. He’s always been a follower.’

  ‘What organizations are you talking about?’

  He chewed a bit of his dead animal, swallowed. Then he took another mouthful. Was he going t
o answer me?

  ‘Dad?’ I said. He took his time, then wiped his mouth with the napkin he’d tucked in to his collar.

  ‘Oh, just a nasty group of people. Group of friends. We all noticed it. I mean, real NF stuff.’

  ‘NF stuff? Last I heard he was going to SWP meetings. What are you talking about?’

  The look he gave me then was a threatening look. A thuggish look. I felt the familiar quickening, inside: something being slit open, gone through. But I continued.

  ‘I mean, is there still an NF?’ I said, smiling, interested. ‘Perhaps you don’t know, but his girlfriend’s Pakistani. Sara? They’ve been together two years now. They want to go to Leeds together. But that aside, I’m not sure where you’ve got the NF from.’

  ‘Oh—well. Is she?’ he said, and he pushed out his lips, looked over my shoulder. ‘Hm…Well…that’s encouraging.’

  I didn’t order any dessert. He got ice cream. Three scoops. I watched him tuck into the chocolate-flavoured scoop. Trying to be conciliatory, I said,

  ‘That ice cream looks vegan to me. That’s thoughtful of them.’

  I picked up my coffee spoon and smiled. I thought he’d like that. To share something. To conspire. I was wrong. His expression then was of alarm, and then of hatred. That I’d take his ice cream from him.

  ‘Oh. Sorry,’ I said.

  He scowled, looked down, took another soft spoonful.

  —

  A month passed, then another ticket arrived: rattling in its envelope, again, merrily forwarded by my mother, again. (‘The NF?’ she’d said. ‘How strange.’) I returned it with a letter saying I didn’t want to stay in touch. ‘I’m not interested,’ I wrote. ‘This isn’t working and I want to get on with my life.’ Stupid letter. Wrongheaded. How did my father read it? As a challenge, of course. A ‘spicing up,’ even. What followed was a struggle. There was nowhere he wasn’t, suddenly, and his efforts only drew strength from each refusal. It was like trying to deny an excited octopus. Repeated un-hookings. It took a sort of disappearing act on my part, in the end, to get away. After which, he started sending my brother tickets. (My mother told me.) But six months in, with no reply, those letters stopped.