Disappearing Home

by Deborah Morgan

  19

  ‘He fell on his arse outside the Stanley last night,’ Nellie says. ‘A couple of the lads tried to help him up, but he was swinging punches at them. In the end they stopped trying.’

  Mum touches her face, squints her eyes with the pain.

  ‘You need to get the Bobbies involved, Babs, in case he tries it again. The likes of him will try it again. Next time, you might not be so lucky.’

  Mum nods. ‘I’ll sort it.’ She opens her fags and lights one, leans her head back on the settee and blows the smoke high; it touches the ceiling.

  ‘It looks bad,’ Nellie says.

  ‘I’ll put make-up on now. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘A bucket of panstick wouldn’t hide that lot.’

  Nellie’s right. Mum’s eyes, cheeks and one side of her lip are swollen. Nellie fusses around in the kitchen making Mum a cup of tea. She comes back into the living room. ‘Mark my words, by the time that kettle boils, the whole of Tommy Whites will know.’

  ‘Let them know, nosy fuckers. I’ll announce it on the landing so there’s no need for talk.’

  Nellie goes back into the kitchen.

  Mum turns to me. ‘We’ll find our own place, just me and you. A little flat somewhere, maybe in the South end, where he won’t find us.’

  I nod. Everything is going to be all right.

  Nellie comes in the living room with the hot tea. She takes something from her pinny pocket. ‘Here, Babs, take this couple of quid and go out for the day. New Brighton’s nice on a Sunday.’

  ‘Ahh, thanks, love. You sure?’ Mum says. ‘At least somebody’s being nice to me on my birthday.’

  Nellie smiles at me. ‘Get yourself washed and dressed, Robyn. You and your mum are going out.’

  Nellie nods at Mum. ‘Give yourself time to think.’

  Mum takes me to New Brighton on the ferry. We have to queue for ages to get on board. Mum walks slow, rubs her side, her belly, catches her breath. People are all dressed up; babies gleam inside blue prams, some with Silver Cross written on the side. The wind out on the river whips up hair, skirts have to be kept down with both hands. A man holds down a flat cap, tries to light his cigarette against the wind. He ends up sliding a door across and going inside a room with benches.

  With her make-up spread on too thick, Mum’s skin looks like a smudged chalk drawing hung on the wall in Miss Fennel’s class. Two women pushing prams nudge each other, give Mum sideways glances, crinkle their noses and say ahhh. I look away, hope Mum doesn’t see or she’ll go for them.

  We walk along the front. The sun makes the top of the water sparkle. I’d like to cut out a piece of it, make a twinkly tablecloth to cover the dark holes.

  Men with yellow and red buckets and spades at their feet hold up pinwheels, which spin and whirr in the wind. I can smell onions and fish and chips and it makes me hungry. Mum is quiet. She smokes more and more fags, asks me if I want something to eat. We queue for curry and chips. Mum takes out another fag while I eat, flicks ash to the ground everywhere we walk, like a trail for somebody to follow. She picks one or two chips out of my tray, dips them in the curry and blows on them before she eases them in to the good side of her mouth.

  ‘Take another,’ I say.

  She shakes her head, takes out her fags.

  She pays for me to go on the bumper cars and the carousel. I watch Mum sit on a bench and smoke. A couple walk by holding hands and Mum’s head goes down so I can’t see her eyes. On the way back to the ferry she buys me an ice cream with raspberry sauce. It drips down the inside of my wrist like blood. I lick it away before Mum sees. On the ferry home she catches a woman arm in arm with a man staring over at her. ‘Want a fucking picture?’ Mum says. We glare at them until they look away.

  After school the next day Mum is waiting at the gate. She has two Kwik Save carrier bags full of clothes. ‘I’ve found somewhere for us to stay,’ she says. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

  She takes me on the number 25 bus. When we get off we walk for ages. There are no flats like Tommy Whites here, just tall houses with massive windows and doors. Some of the windows have no net curtains, so you can see right in. I have already seen a man through one of the windows, sitting at a piano.

  There are lots and lots of trees, rising up out of the concrete in a line along the streets, as well as front gardens. Around here, even on the streets, it smells different, like Stanley Park.

  After a while Mum stops at a house. I put my fingers on the tall metal gate and it feels rough; there is dark orange stuff inside the twists. Mum puts the carrier bags down, lights a cigarette. For a long time we just stand at the gate. Mum picks the bags up again and pushes open the gate.

  The front door looks like a gigantic bar of chocolate. It has a gold knocker and a gold knob on the middle. The woman who opens the door has a baby in her arms. She takes us through a huge hallway with black and white tiles on the floor. Some of the tiles have cracks in them and edges missing. If I’d been born in a house like this I’d never go out.

  The staircase is directly opposite us; it’s like something out of a film on the telly. She leads us to the kitchen where there’s an oblong table made of wood. Light wood. The table’s in the middle of the room; you can walk all the way around it. We sit down. The lady puts the baby in a pram and fills the kettle. She turns to me and smiles.

  ‘You must be Robyn?’

  I nod.

  ‘I’m Carmel.’

  She pours me a glass of lemonade, puts three jaffa cakes on a plate. Gives Mum a cup of tea. ‘There you go. I’ll show you your room in a minute. We’re full to bursting, but there’s one small room, at the back of the house.’ Carmel leaves the kitchen.

  Carmel doesn’t talk like us. Mum says she came here from London to get away from a man. Mum says you can tell from the way she talks she was born with money, and people like her can’t survive in the real world. And if the whole world was full of the likes of her it would be a scary place and to top it all off her name sounds like a fucking sweet. When Carmel comes back into the kitchen I wonder what it must be like to be born in London with loads of money and not have to live in the real world.

  Women with babies come in and out of the kitchen all the time. Stand a bottle of milk inside a pan of boiling water. Test it on a wrist or a tongue before nudging the teat between a baby’s gums. Little kids run in and out of the kitchen, sneak a biscuit from the tin, take a sly look at me and Mum while they’re at it, walk away giggling.

  We follow Carmel up three flights of stairs to our room, last door on the left. It has a high ceiling not even Dad could reach and a big window with no curtains on it. I walk over and look out. I can see more trees and grass and people walking dogs and pushing prams. I try to lift open the window to stick my head out. It won’t move. Then I see the nails. The window is nailed shut. I look around at Carmel. She’s showing Mum the bathroom. It’s outside our room on the landing. I hear Carmel tell Mum, ‘You have to share it with everybody on this floor.’ She shows her a small cupboard where we can put our clothes. Then she leaves us alone.

  We sit on two single beds opposite each other. ‘This is just temporary,’ Mum says. ‘We’ll get a place of our own faster if we stay here.’

  She takes out her fags, strikes the match then goes over to the window. She tries to open it. ‘It’s nailed,’ I say.

  Mum shakes her head. ‘It’s not us that should be locked away in a fucking hostel, it should be that bastard.’ She finishes her fag, taps it out in the ashtray. ‘It’s a fucking man’s world all right.’

  I lie on my bed and think about how it is a man’s world. A man can take money from you, beat you, stay out all night, call you names, say he’ll stab you, walk the streets without pushing a pram, look at you with soft eyes, sing to you, slow dance you, pin you against a wall by the neck until your face nearly bursts, kick you in the face, run away from your blood to the pub.

  *

  We get up early next morning. Every seat around the
kitchen table is full. Kids sit elbow to elbow, eating breakfast. Carmel is at the oven cooking eggs and bacon. There’s a kid about my age buttering toast: thick brown hair all over the place, a green T-shirt and faded blue jeans.

  Carmel sees us in the doorway. ‘Ah, morning, Babs, Robyn, help yourself to toast.’

  Mum looks around the table. ‘We’re not hungry.’ She turns away. ‘See you later.’

  Carmel turns back to the oven.

  ‘Babs, is that you, love?’

  Mum turns back around. It’s the lady from Greaty Market. The one who looked shattered, with the twins and two other kids either side of the pram. I don’t recognize her at first. She has no front teeth and her hair is cut short now. She wears rosary beads around her neck.

  ‘Margy? What the fuck happened to you?’

  Margy stands, puts a twin boy in the pram next to the other one. She gives Mum a sideways nod to follow her into the hall. Mum takes her fags out, hands one to Margy. ‘Get yourself some toast, Robyn, sit in Margy’s place, won’t be a minute.’ They step outside. Carmel gives me a plate with fried eggs, bacon and two slices of toast. The girl who was helping Carmel sits down opposite me.

  ‘I’m Lizzie,’ she says. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Robyn.’

  ‘Just you and your mum?’

  ‘Yes, you?’

  ‘Just me.’

  ‘Where’s your mum?’

  ‘Who knows? We came together five days ago. She left, hasn’t come back.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘Left us years ago.’

  I look up at Carmel.

  Carmel rubs Lizzie’s shoulders. ‘She’ll be back soon. You wait.’

  ‘When she sobers up,’ Lizzie says.

  Mum is back in the kitchen with Margy. I finish my breakfast and she takes me on the number 25 bus to school. ‘We’ll have to find you a new school,’ Mum says. ‘This one’s too far now.’ Mum tells me a neighbour told Margy that her husband was in the pub with another woman. Margy went around and saw them together. She went for the woman with a glass. Margy’s husband dragged her home by the hair and kicked out her teeth. I feel sorry for Margy.

  I like Mum telling me things, grown-up things. It makes me feel like somebody. Mum lights a cigarette. ‘Men,’ she says. ‘Bastards, all of them, fucking bastards. Especially that drunken bastard I married.’

  20

  I sit on the front step with Lizzie. The gates are locked. The rain stopped an hour ago and the little ones have got the toys out. There’s a circle of grass in the front garden, over by the fence, with a tree in the middle. A concrete path takes up the rest of the space. We’re in charge Carmel said, me and Lizzie. Mum is in Margy’s room, having a little chat.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘No. She hasn’t turned up. They want to put me into care,’ Lizzie says.

  ‘Care?’

  ‘In a big house in Formby called St Theresa’s.’

  ‘Like this place?’

  ‘No. No parents, just kids. I went to visit.’

  ‘Do you still have to go to school?’

  ‘You get taught stuff there, go to a class.’

  ‘Do you have your own room?’

  ‘Dorms, ten girls in each, the younger ones are together in a different dorm.’

  Two of the kids are fighting over a bike, legs sprawled half on half off. I wriggle the little bike up high away from them. ‘Share it. Ten minutes for you, then ten for you,’ I say.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ the smallest lad says, milk teeth wet with crying.

  ‘It is,’ the other one says. I give him first go.

  ‘You’re good with kids,’ Lizzie says. ‘They get on my nerves. I’ve got a brother, well a step-brother. Mum’s first boyfriend. His name’s Michael. He lives with his dad, Mike.’

  ‘Can’t Mike take you?’

  ‘My social worker asked. He’s with a new woman now. She said no chance. She’s already taken on one, that’s enough. What about you and your mum, what’s happening?’

  ‘Mum said we’ll get a place away from Dad faster if we stay here.’

  ‘Did he do that to her face?’

  ‘Where’s Formby?’ I say, not wanting to answer.

  ‘Dunno. I went in my social worker’s car. On the way to Southport she said. Why?’

  ‘I was just wondering.’

  ‘You planning to visit?’

  ‘I’ll visit, if you want.’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘Anyway, your mum could still turn up. There’s time.’

  The lad who said it wasn’t fair is back at the bike. I stand up.

  ‘I’ll go and ask Carmel for the proper address, if you like. Get her to write it down.’

  ‘Okay.’ I pick the little lad up off the bike. The other lad grabs the handlebars and sits down. ‘Want a swing?’ I say. He nods. I press his back into my belly, swing him through my legs. What’s the time, Mr Wolf? One o’clock, two o’clock. He giggles. The lad on the bike watches. ‘That’s not fair,’ he says.

  Lizzie is back outside. ‘You giving out free sweets or what?’

  I look down and see a queue. They all talk at once. I want a swing. So do I. Me next.

  ‘Come on, Lizzie; give us a hand with this lot.’

  And she does. We swing them, one at a time between our legs until our backs ache, around and around in circles until we fall down dizzy on the bit of grass. We take an arm and a leg each and give them shake the beds. Lizzie’s cheeks are red. ‘I can’t remember the last time I felt this great,’ she says.

  At the dinner table Lizzie sits down next to me. Carmel’s made egg and chips with baked beans. There’s a mountain of bread buttered in the middle of the table. We make chip butties, dip bread into the runny egg yolk. It tastes delicious. Carmel tells us to leave some room, there’s cake to shift yet. Before bed, Lizzie gives me the address of St Theresa’s in Formby. I fold the piece of paper up and put it in my pocket. ‘I’ll visit.’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ she says.

  In Jimmy’s Café Edna’s got the radio turned up loud. She says it makes the day go faster listening to music. I love the songs. Learn words by heart for when they play them again in the early afternoon. Sing along in my head to ‘Waterloo’.

  Edna still moans and screams at me but I just nod and hum along with the radio. Now I know she’s angry with herself and it’s not about me, I play little games with her like hide and seek. If I see a table that needs clearing, I save it for her to catch. Let her say, ‘Table five, Robyn,’ see her shake her head at Jimmy. Jimmy looks across at me and grins. I might even let them pile up if we’re busy; give her a whole list of tables to scream about.

  Mum is serving people on her stall. It’s been a month now since we’ve seen him, but Mum says he’s bound to turn up sooner or later. She says she’s gonna tell him straight, she wants nothing to do with him.

  Saturday is mad in St Michael’s Market. People jammed together shoulder to shoulder, at Jimmy’s Café it’s non-stop food, and he loves it. It’s late in the afternoon before I get a break today. People saying how warm the weather’s getting now. The heat brings people out, Jimmy says. The till’s full three times over. Jimmy puts the notes into a blue cloth bag, hides it in the bread bin.

  I sit at a table, eating a cheese sandwich when I see him in Mum’s queue. Black polo neck jumper, sleeves rolled up past the elbows. I put down my sandwich and watch. Mum doesn’t see him at first. When she does she looks like something has been flung in her face. He holds his hand out towards her. She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak.

  He reaches over the counter and presses something into her hand. There’s nobody behind him in the queue. She can tell him to fuck off if she likes. Tell him all men are bastards. Choose not to live in a man’s world. Start screaming out loud how he tried to kill us both. Scream out loud that he still can. She turns, picks up the scoop, fills it with peanuts and takes it to the scales. I push the plate away, my face and ears fee
l hot. She hands him the white paper bag and turns to the till. Counts the notes out into his hand: That’s one pound, and four ones make five. Thank you.

  When we finish work, he’s outside on the street. He walks with us to the bus stop and waits, pops peanuts into his mouth from the white paper bag. I look at Mum and think if she looks at me I’ll scream at her, what the fuck are you doing? But she looks away. We’re at the wrong bus stop, I want to say, this bus will take us back to Tommy Whites. The bus is full and I have to sit at the back away from them. I watch him talk and talk at her all the way back to the flat, saying stuff into her ear. Her face stays straight ahead.

  Once we’re inside I go to my room, open the window and stick my head out. My throat is hot and the tears come fast and I can’t stop them. I wipe them away but they just keep coming. I can hear them talk in the living room. That’s all it is, talk. Mum isn’t shouting or throwing stuff at him. She talks, and all I can do is wait.

  When it’s dark, Mum comes into my room. ‘Robyn, we’re just going around the Stanley for the last hour. You can watch the new telly if you like. Your dad got us it off a man in the pub. The picture on it’s a bit fuzzy, better than nothing though. I’ll bring curry and chips in later.’

  Her words suck the air out of me. She chose to keep me. Why keep what you want just to throw it away? She sits down on my bed. ‘Robyn, you know your dad had a bad time when he was a kid. His mum put him in a home and he got battered there every day by the adults. He’s sick, love, needs help. He’s said sorry and he’s going to try harder and I believe him. When I think of the way Margy’s been treated, left with all of them kids on her own. At least he hasn’t gone off and left us. I’m giving him another chance.’

  I hear the click of the latch then push my head out of the window. I hate this flat; the tiny kitchen with no space to turn around. The three-sided table pressed tight against the wall, and the tablecloth full of holes.