White Goods

by Guy Johnson

  ‘I did see her,’ he whispered, his words almost lost in the quiet, winter darkness. ‘I did, Scotty.’

  Then I felt my body take a plunge, like I’d been asleep and suddenly woken. A sleep-twitch, I think. And he was snoring. Ian was snoring. So, I’d been dreaming. It was still only me that could see her.

  A week before the school holidays began, the last pre-Christmas visit to Nan Buckley’s occurred. As had become habit, Della and Ian left me at the top of her road and went off on their own.

  ‘You sure you don’t wanna come with us?’ they asked me, but I shook my head. Who would visit Red Nanny?

  ‘Meet here in an hour, ok?’ was Ian’s final word, before he and Della disappeared, in the direction of the crematorium.

  ‘Alright Scotty?’

  It was Justin. He was waiting for me when I came out of the sweet shop next to Beverly Courts.

  His left eye was still a bit brown from where his Dad had hit him a week or so before, following the incident in Woollies. Turns out, Justin and Steve had stolen a radio-alarm-clock and a stack of blank cassettes, stuffed up their coats. The security guards had cornered them in a back street, marched them back to Woollies and then called Adrian Tankard. One of the guards was a drinking pal of Adrian’s and so he had called him direct, side-stepping any police intervention. Which was unfortunate for Justin and Stevie, as, contrary to popular belief, the police didn’t actually beat you up. But Adrian Tankard did.

  ‘You allowed out again now?’ I asked Justin, surprised to see him in public. After smashing up his face, Adrian Tankard had locked him away, supposedly so Justin’s social worker couldn’t see the damage his dad had done. All of Justin’s family had social workers. They were that-kind-of-family, Mum had told me. Doing that face. The one she used whenever the Tankards were mentioned, in particular Chrissie.

  ‘No, sneaked out,’ said Justin, like it was no deal, like he was a bit hard, but brittle hard. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Nan Buckley’s,’ I said, opening my mouth before I’d really thought it through.

  He’d want to come, wouldn’t he? He’d want to see? But I didn’t want him to. This wasn’t something I was used to sharing. Not with anyone.

  ‘Alright then,’ he said, like I’d made him an invite, but I hadn’t; he’d just assumed. I’d been to see his nan before, so I guess it wasn’t a big deal for him. But it was for me.

  Geoff wasn’t about today, so that was a relief. Last time he’d seen Justin it was when Roy Fallick had hit me with that branch and he’d have had something to say about him joining me on the visit.

  Nan Buckley opened the door cautiously today – her safety chain meaning it only moved a bit and gave her a limited view.

  ‘Two of you?’ she said in a question and I sheepishly introduced Justin.

  ‘My best friend,’ I said by way of announcement and giving him a bit of status, making him more family than not.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ she said, taking off the chain, letting us in.

  I noticed she had the big photograph of Mum I’d brought last time sitting on top of her television and she smiled when she caught me looking.

  ‘I put it out as I thought you might be coming,’ she said, her face dropping when she realised she’d said the wrong thing.

  ‘Don’t you keep it out all the time?’ Justin asked, voicing what I was thinking, doubling-up my disappointment.

  We were seated next to each other on her two-seater sofa.

  I kicked him a shut-up, whilst Nan Buckley popped out to her kitchenette and switched on the kettle.

  ‘Chocolate digestives?’ she called out.

  ‘Yes please, Nan,’ Justin replied, a grin on his face and in his voice.

  ‘Stop it,’ I hissed, quietly, glaring at him, up close.

  ‘What?’ All innocence. Like he didn’t know what he was doing.

  ‘Just-.’ I struggled to find the words amongst my frustration. ‘Be respectful,’ I finally managed.

  And then he gave me a look that said it all: he knew. He knew my daft little secret.

  So I was quiet. I accepted the sweet, milky tea and chocolate biscuits and suffered in silence. Wishing I hadn’t opened my mouth. Wishing that Justin was still mates with Roy Fallick. Wishing I’d just been more truthful in the first place.

  At the time, the visit seemed fine. I felt uncomfortable having Justin there, but he didn’t make the fuss or trouble I was expecting. I didn’t even think anything of it when he offered to make another pot of tea, insisting he did it by himself. He kept me a bit on edge, but other than that, all seemed normal. We stayed for about an hour and then suddenly Justin announced we were going.

  ‘Gotta see a man about a dog, Nan,’ he said, being cheeky, using words like his dad.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ Nan Buckley said, a bit confused, like she’d been when we arrived, still wondering why I’d bought this other boy along. And as we left, she grabbed my arm and said quietly. ‘Just you next time, Sean.’

  ‘Scot,’ I reminded her, and she smiled.

  ‘Scot. Of course.’

  She closed the door and that was it.

  I didn’t know it at that moment, but that was the last time I’d be allowed back.

  After that day, Nan Buckley would be gone forever.

  ‘Come on, Sean,’ Justin laughed, almost running along the road home, like he wanted to get as far away as possible. ‘Keep up.’

  Christmas Day was soon with us. The first without Mum. The first without Nan Buckley too. I didn’t say a thing about that. Not to anyone and Dad made no reference to it at all. Not even about visiting.

  After my trip there with Justin, I was still nervous. Still waiting for some kind of fallout. It was coming soon; I just didn’t know it for certain at that point.

  Dad continued to get things wrong. It had started earlier in the month when Advent calendars hadn’t appeared on the first day of December.

  ‘You don’t want that at your age,’ was his standard response to us all, as if all of a sudden we were in the same year, like triplets. But eventually, on the 10th of December, one turned up for each of us. They were all the same: a big Santa shape, covered in glitter, with a foldout stand at the back. They were a bit crinkly in the bottom left corner, so we knew they were rejects he’d got hold of for free, but at least we had one.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ had been Della’s response.

  Getting it wrong hadn’t stopped at that, though.

  I came home from school one evening to find an argument in full flow.

  ‘What do you mean no tree?’ Della was yelling, as I came in through the back door. She had her arms crossed, glaring into Dad’s back. He was facing the cooker, stirring something brown in a pot. He dropped eight white lumps into the mix and I was able to identify it as stew and dumplings. Again. It had become a regular dish now he had taken over the cooking. I still had trouble keeping it down.

  ‘No tree?’ I asked, almost instinctively.

  ‘Not you as well.’ Dad sighed, but didn’t turn round to face us. ‘We’ve got plenty of decs and it only stays up for a couple of days. We haven’t got company this year, so I don’t see the point.’

  ‘Auntie Stella and Gary are coming,’ Della reminded him.

  ‘Like I said,’ Dad stressed.

  ‘We’ll get it,’ Ian chipped in, but Dad’s mind was set in stone. He wasn’t going to give in.

  ‘No,’ he said and we were silent.

  After pushing our food around our plates at dinnertime, hardly touching it in silent protest, we retreated to Della’s room to refocus-our-efforts, as Ian put it.

  ‘We need to get reinforcements in,’ he told us, like it was the war, only the silly grin stretching out his face told us he knew it wasn’t.

  ‘Reinforcements?’ Della questioned, raising an eyebrow, dubious.

  ‘What do you mean, no tree, Tony?’ Auntie Stella was yelling, almost 24 hours to the moment after I’d walked in on Della shouting at Dad. ‘I don’t think so. I’
m not coming here without a tree!’

  ‘Don’t come th-,’ Dad began to strike back, but she wasn’t listening. For once, Auntie Stella was going to come up trumps. She held her left hand out to him, like an upturned iron: flat, hard, potentially deadly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Twenty,’ she said, left hand still palm-side up. ‘That should do it.’

  ‘Twenty? You can-.’

  ‘I don’t think you could bear the shame of your kids going without a proper Christmas, what with their mother not here and the rest they’ve gone through. And what will people say? Tony? Do you hear me? I’m happy to make this private matter public knowledge. People like nothing better than to gossip. Know what I mean, Tony?’

  And the twenty was handed over.

  Uncle Gary arrived two nights later with a six-foot twig that was remarkably similar in shape to the man himself.

  ‘Where are the pine needles, Santa?’ Ian asked.

  ‘In the back of my car,’ Gary announced, clearly irritated. ‘If you can pick the buggers up, you can stick ‘em back on.’

  ‘Where’s my change?’ Dad asked.

  ‘It was 25. She’s bought new decs as well, so you owe me.’

  ‘Waste of money,’ Dad grumbled, fumbling in his pockets and pulling out a crumpled fiver, and I felt tears come into my eyes. Ian gave me a tap on the shoulder.

  ‘He just misses her, too,’ he said later, softly sticking up for Dad. ‘And it’s just coming out all wrong. That’s all.’

  ‘He’s mean,’ Della corrected.

  ‘Yes, he’s mean too,’ Ian agreed and I found myself smiling.

  ‘It’ll get better, won’t it?’ I said and Ian nodded, like Dad should have nodded, but I was getting used to Ian taking his place. I preferred Ian, too.

  Auntie Stella came back the day after, tutted at our festive stick, which looked even more pitiful once Dad had stuck it in a bucket of mud and propped it up in the corner of the front room. Dad was about to dive in with his didn’t-I-tell-you-it-was-a-waste-of-money speech, but Auntie Stella was too quick for him.

  ‘Good job I got those new decorations, eh? Some baubles and tinsel will soon liven it up.’

  And with that, she took over. Not just the tree, but the whole of Christmas. Somehow we didn’t seem to mind, either. It wasn’t like she was showing any signs of moving back in – although Uncle Gary was looking older under the strain of the impending nuptials, so I was a bit nervous. And she wasn’t trying to take over where Mum had left off. She was simply giving us the Christmas that Dad couldn’t be bothered to.

  On Christmas Day, Dad somehow seemed to make up for it. He had actually bought us some presents. Mainly bits and bobs. Ian got a Brut boxing glove soap-on-a-rope (suspiciously similar to the one Mum had bought Dad the year before) and pants; I got pens, a colouring pad, a Rubix Cube and pants too; much to her mortification, Della found a bra in with her presents, opening it in between a chocolate orange and a Love Is compact mirror. We got bigger stuff too – I got the latest Blondie LP and a navy towelling dressing gown; Ian got a Walkman and some vouchers for Fosters; and Della got a flat square box, inside which was a silver heart on a chain. You could tell she didn’t really like it, but he’d tried, and she liked that bit of it.

  Dinner was lovely, too. Cooked by Uncle Gary, who was surprisingly good and took all the poof and Delia Smith comments from Dad in good spirit. It was all the usual stuff – turkey, roast potatoes, vegetables we only saw once a year, followed by Christmas pudding. Then, after a couple of hours, we had cold meats and mashed spuds – courtesy of Auntie Stella. And even though the mash was a bit lumpy in places and we were stuffed to the point of popping, we tucked in. And it wasn’t just the-three-of-us for once – it was the-six-of-us, which didn’t sit quite right, because it included Uncle Gary. But for a while, as I tucked into pickles and ham, I lived with it. I felt okay. Yeah, it felt like a proper Christmas.

  ‘Not so bad, eh?’ Auntie Stella later slurred, giving me an affectionate nudge. She seemed to have completely forgotten about the incident in Uncle Gary’s red bedroom; another Christmas surprise I was grateful to receive.

  By then, we were all sat together in the lounge, fulfilling yet another Buckley festive tradition – watching the TV.

  The fallout from taking Justin along to meet Nan Buckley finally manifested itself on Boxing Day.

  It announced itself with a hard rap on our front door in the afternoon.

  With the TV on loud and voices notched up due to the influence of alcohol, we might not have heard it. But the rapping was angry, intense – like someone trying to knock it down, so you couldn’t ignore it.

  ‘Hang on, hang on,’ Dad eventually blustered, a bit narked, but a bit concerned too. Our house was clear of boxes from Dontask for once, so we didn’t have to scramble about and get rid of anything. But Dad was still on edge, habitually.

  I knew the knock would be about me. Felt it instinctively. I guess I’d been waiting for something to happen. For someone to find out what I’d been up to.

  I kept my distance, but I could see it all unfold, slower than it was actually happening. Dragging itself out to punish me for longer.

  Dad opening the door.

  The man outside – Dad’s age, but thinner, smarter looking, a red tie poking through the top of his winter mac. Angry eyes behind clear rimmed glasses.

  Dad more or less silent, as the man explained the reason for his visit.

  Then I realised what Justin had done at Nan Buckley’s. Hanging about in her kitchenette, offering to make that pot of tea, going through her cupboards, opening her tea caddy.

  In the distance, in a car parked across the road, I could see her.

  In her best coat, black handbag with the brass clasp on the top in the centre of her lap, hands on top, like she was going somewhere. I willed her to look my way. To see me. To smile, but she looked straight-ahead.

  Eventually, the man shook Dad’s hand and then turned and walked away.

  The door closed, my view of Nan Buckley reducing to a slit and then nothing.

  Dad turned to me and I walked out of my shadow, towards him, to meet what was coming.

  He was calm. I expected a wallop, but he didn’t raise a hand or even raise his voice. It was like he knew the truth of it. Like he knew I’d been stupid, but not bad. Like he knew the bad bit was someone else’s fault.

  And I didn’t ask him to go back, to open the door and invite her in. Didn’t question his detached approach. Didn’t waste my breath.

  ‘You know what you’ve got to do, don’t you?’

  Yes, I told him.

  ‘And you know where that money went?’

  Yes. And I could get it back.

  ‘Ok, I said I’d take it back once we had it. You want me to come with you? I can talk to-.’

  No. I had to do this on my own. Make it right again.

  ‘And Scotty.’

  Yes?

  ‘Stay away, ok? You must stay away from her.’

  Although it was Boxing Day, you could still take yourself round Justin’s house. Even when it was special days, like Christmas and Easter, the Tankards still welcomed you in, giving you a plate of something or handing you a drink, making you join in whatever was going on.

  ‘Oh look, it’s Bodger the Lodger,’ Stevie-the-little-shit (as Della had started calling him) said, when Chrissie ushered me into their lounge. His family, including his nan (she was called Yellow Nanny behind her back, on account of being a coward ‘and her teeth’, according to Justin) were all in there. A few of them were playing Kerplunk. Sharon and Justin were watching a repeat of Top of The Pops.

  ‘Kenny Everett’s on next,’ Justin said, patting a space next to his on their brown and orange sofa. It had wooden bits on the arms, where you could rest your coffee cup or, in Sharon’s case, your ashtray.

  ‘Couldn’t we go and play?’ I offered, as the Christmas Number One (‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma) finally faded out. ‘You know,
upstairs.’

  I didn’t have to ask him twice.

  It was a while since I’d been on my own with Justin – last time was the funeral, in fact – and I knew a certain subject might make it into conversation. I also knew I might have little choice this time. I needed to get into his room - and then I needed to find an opportunity to have a good look through his stuff.

  Justin had his own room. It was an L-shaped room, with a bed and window view in each section. The walls were covered in brown wallpaper, patterned with big orange flowers, and the floors had dark green shag pile on them and lots of others things I didn’t like to think about, but if you got your head down there, it did smell a bit.

  Stevie-the-little-shit’s room was next door and looked like a typical boy’s room – bed unmade, bits of model airplanes on top of his chest of drawers, skiddy pants on the floor, even a porn mag under his bed that he’d once let me have a look at.

  Justin’s room – on the other hand – was very neat, with both beds made and his dirties in the wash basket. He had a chest of drawers, too, and he kept his mini tape recorder and pile of tapes (mostly nicked) on top of this. On the wall behind his bed, he had a picture of Pam and Bobby from Dallas. Victoria Principal had a black marker moustache, which no one had owned up to, but he’d still insisted it stay up.

  The beds had drawers underneath them, like at Gary’s flat, and that was where I most wanted to look. Pull them open and have a rummage. I had a plan that I would just steam ahead, insist we had a ferret through them and then hopefully I’d just stumble across what I had come for. Justin would have to hand it over – but he’d be all innocence and how-did-it-get-there. Then I’d leave and that would be that. We’d just return the stolen money to Red Nanny and life would carry on nicely.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Justin said, giving me the perfect opportunity.

  ‘Go through your drawers,’ I said in return, not quite believing how bold I’d been, but he wasn’t actually listening.

  ‘We could, you know,’ he said, all suggestive, and I realised we were exactly where I didn’t want to be.