by Guy Johnson
‘Do you think they’ll ever let her home?’ I asked, as we approached the crematorium gates, preparing to make our shortcut through the rear. No one answered, not even with a shrug; Mum’s return to home was our great uncertainty.
However, the overriding reason for our sullen conduct was the aftermath of a row between my siblings a few days before. Not about Russell for a change, their argument had been about me.
‘We need to tell Dad. Can’t keep this a secret from him.’ Della.
‘It’s sorted. Just leave it. Adrian’s sorted it.’ Ian.
‘Ian, what if they had...’ A pause. ‘Dad needs to know. I can’t believe you haven’t told him.’
‘Adrian has-.’
‘Who cares what Adrian Tankard has done. Dad should know! And why the hell are these boys after him? What has he done?’
Della had looked at me at that point, as if I had the answer. I’d simply looked at Ian, wondering if he would finally elaborate. Wondering if he’d finally confess what was going on. But it remained another unanswered question, another great uncertainty. Instead, Ian changed the subject and switched the blame, took it from himself and gave it to Della.
‘Maybe if you hadn’t spent so much time with lover boy, you could have hung around with Scot, kept an eye on him. Had you thought about that?’
‘What? That’s not fair!’
‘No? Neither is thinking you’re gonna be strung up by your neck. Neither is walking around in fear that it’s going to happen again. It’s alright for you, swanning off with your head in the clouds. I’m the one that’s had to look out for Scotty.’
You’re the one they’re after, though, I thought. Tell Ian we want the money, they had said to Justin.
Their bickering match batted back and forth for another five minutes, the blame ping-ponging from one side to the other – You’re the one that left him there on his own! Oh, like you’ve been queuing up to lend a hand! – until Ian delivered his set-winning one-liner – Why don’t you just move in with Russell and abandon us like all the other bloody women in this family! – and Della had stormed off to her room in teary defeat.
Days later, they were still sulky with each other. Furthermore, once our dutiful visit was complete, Della simply handed him even more ammunition by announcing she wasn’t coming home; she was meeting up with Russell in town.
‘Who’s gonna see Scot home then?’ he pounced, when she turned to leave us. ‘I can’t, I’m busy. Ever thought of checking the needs of others?’
‘I didn’t think-.’
‘No, you didn’t. Come on, Scotty, let’s get you home.’
I didn’t think to protest; I didn’t want to be left to walk back on my own. Since the attack at the Barley Mow, I still avoided going out on my own. True to his word, Ian had started walking with me to school. So, despite what Della had argued the night before, he was looking out for me.
I was still nervous of a reprisal, despite the fact Adrian Tankard appeared to have sorted Roy and his cronies out.
‘What did he do?’ I’d asked Ian several times, but a real answer hadn’t been forthcoming.
‘Had a word with them,’ was the best I ever got, but you could imagine that would be enough. This was big, scary, hairy Adrian Tankard after all.
Once we got home, it was clear Ian wasn’t staying there with me.
‘Where you off to?’ I asked him, as he checked himself for his house key and wallet.
‘Out,’ he’d replied, not looking at me, his mind distracted.
‘Can I come with you?’ I requested, wondering just how safe I’d be in the house, by myself. See, as well as not venturing outside on my own, I hadn’t been in on my own, either. Not since.
‘No, you can’t.’
There was something in his voice, in the look he finally gave me, too; an instant shot of impatience and fear that quickly dissipated.
‘Just going out on my own. You’re to stay here, okay? You’ll be fine. You will be. Okay? Okay?’
The repetition made me realise he was waiting for an answer. Waiting for reassurance.
Yes, I nodded.
‘Good. You just stay here. Safe. No following me, yeah?’
The last sentence was an unnecessary addition; it also confirmed something I was already certain of - Ian was definitely up-to-something.
You-kids-up-to-something? A favourite accusation of Mum’s; one that left my face guilty-pink, even when completely innocent. Ian wasn’t innocent, though; I’d overheard proof of his guilt just the night before.
Ian and Dad were in the front room, checking through the last of the Basils, counting the remainders, stacking them up ready for Beery-Dave to collect.
‘Put the ones you damaged at the bottom,’ Dad instructed Ian. ‘Dave’ll only check the top few before he loads them into his van.’
I was passing the door, on my way up to bed. The door was ajar about a thumb’s thickness: I could see in, but I doubt they could see me.
‘I’ve seen her,’ Ian said, changing the direction of their conversation from business to personal. ‘At the hospital, Dad. Shirley.’
‘Shirley?’ It stopped Dad in his tracks; was enough to take his mind from Dontask and put home first. Oh, you do remember you have a wife and kids, Anthony Buckley? Mum. ‘Shirley White?’
‘Yes.’
Moving several white boxes onto the stack they had created, Dad cleared a space on the bottle-green velvet sofa and sat down.
‘What does she want?’ It was a rhetorical question, I realised, afterwards. He was thinking aloud. But Ian answered him.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t asked her yet.’
Dad’s response was abrupt; a sudden fist that immediately bruised their easy way with each other.
‘And you’re not going to, either! Jesus, Ian!’ Dad instantly rose to his feet, an instinctive, defensive reaction that added to the drama. ‘You understand me? You are to stay away from her! You are not to go near her, you understand, boy?’
‘Yes,’ Ian had replied, a conceding mumble, as if he only half meant it.
If Dad wasn’t convinced of Ian’s compliance, he didn’t let it show, and they spent the rest of their time together in awkward silence, sorting through the last of the returns for Beery-Dave.
But the following day, putting the previous night’s conversation and Ian’s insistence I stay at home together – No following me, yeah? – I was convinced of his defiance. He was going out to see Shirley; I was certain of this. It was one of the few things I was certain of regarding the whole Shirley White mystery. I didn’t really know who she was, or why she was connected to us. I definitely didn’t understand the fear that surrounded her: the look that shadowed Ian’s face when he’d seen her; Dad’s aggressive response. But there was definitely a link with Ian – there was no doubting that – and the road to the truth lay with him.
So, when he left on his secret, solo trip out, I had to follow. In defiance of his insistence that I stay behind, and in spite of my own fear of venturing out alone.
I gave him a small head start: long enough that he could look back a few times to check I wasn’t tailing. Short enough that I could keep him in sight; short enough that I could still cry out and get his attention if I attracted unwanted attention.
Of course, no one will notice you in that great disguise, will they? Della: absented through love, but still talking opposite mode in my head. She would have been right; the roomy navy parka wasn’t great for incognito missions, but venturing out without its protection was unthinkable to me.
‘I’ll be as safe as houses,’ I told myself, zipping it up, although that phrase always made me think: it depended on the circumstances, didn’t it? What if you were only as-safe-as-houses in an earthquake? That wouldn’t be very safe at all. Or safe-as-houses in World War II, during the Blitz.
Putting the thought from my head, reminding myself that Adrian had sorted out my foes and that Ian would be within shouting distance, I went through the front room
, out into the porch, then out into the street. Ian was by then an exclamation mark at the top of our road, but I knew it was him.
He did exactly as I suspected: broke his word to Dad and went to see Shirley White. He made his way to where she lived with such confidence that it suggested he already knew the route. He’d been there before.
He took the route we had taken the time we had followed Della: left at the top of St James Road, down the alleyway just before Beverley Courts, across a main road, through another alley and then into the centre of the Sheffield Road Estate. I followed Ian along alleyways and round corners, until he stepped into Hay Road. Then I stopped. Hay Road was a big square road, with a huge green right in the middle and there was a great risk my clandestine operation would be exposed. If Ian decided it was time to check over his shoulder or scan his surroundings, that would be it. Apart from crouching behind cars and vans, I had nowhere to hide. I simply had to follow him in the open.
I had been to Hay Road before. I didn’t have any friends who lived there, but I’d been there with Dad before: sat in the car, whilst he went into someone’s house to-do-business. I’d watched a group of boys playing football. They’d noticed and eventually stopped kicking about and watched me instead. One of the boys had begun to stride towards the car, his lips moving at the same time: what you staring at? That’s what he had said, but then he’d turned around and he and his mates had scarpered off. Dad had returned: I guess they’d seen him approach the car.
On the morning I followed Ian, there were kids out playing, but none particularly bothered me. Someone shouted aren’t-you-hot-in-that-coat, but I just ignored them and kept going. I couldn’t afford to stop and I was too frightened, in any case. For all I knew, this was Fallick territory.
Ian was ahead enough not to hear the jibes and too focussed on his end goal to look back. Had he checked his tail, he’d have seen me for sure. Having completed two sides of the Hay Road playing green, he turned off into an alleyway, taking me back into the safer territory of small roads and alleyways, where hiding was an altogether easier task. Five minutes later, I had followed Ian across a key border in the Sheffield Road Estate geography: from the old houses to the new builds.
The new houses were a recent extension to the Sheffield Road Estate. Between the original estate and the crematorium grounds, there had been a wide stretch of grassland, with just a road running through it. That was until about three years back when a new development went up on part of it. You could tell the new houses from the old: the old were made from red bricks and had decent sized gardens; the new were made of beige stone, and were smaller and squashed together, with small square yards at their rear.
To get to the new buildings, we had to go right through the middle of the estate, past the line of shops that Russell and his mum lived above, past the roughest area that was at the core of the estate – Pound Farm Road, Charles Avenue, Davis Court – past a post-office and newsagent and then through an adventure playground, which was littered with empty cans and takeaway papers. The latter served as a link between the old and new parts of the estate.
Ian’s destination turned out to be Chelsea Gardens, a block of flats in the new part of the estate. By the time Ian reached it, I’d been following him for over half an hour.
Opposite the main entrance was a bus stop. I waited there, obscured by a glass-fronted shelter that had been sprayed with graffiti, and watched Ian going inside, working out which flat he entered. They were stacked in three storeys, and the building had six windows on each floor, three either side of the entrance. From my view, I could see a staircase climbing up through the middle. Ian didn’t appear on the stairs, suggesting he had picked one of the ground floor apartments.
Cautiously, I ventured across the road, wondering if I could see anything from the rear. With Ian out of sight, I was finally on my own, with only my navy nylon shield and the omnipresent terror of Adrian Tankard to protect me.
At the back of the flats, there was a fenced-off communal garden. There was a gate to one side. I pushed this gently and it gave instantly; the latch was missing or broken. The garden area was just patchy grass, no plants, with a rotary washing line as its central and only feature. There a was door leading into the building, a bright blue skateboard with red wheels and an empty plant pot at its step. Either side of the door was a large window affording a clear view inside both ground-floor flats.
Even as I stood in the frame of the gateway, I could see Ian in the flat to the right. He was sitting in an armchair, at an angle, with his back to me. I inched in a little nearer, wanting a close-up glimpse of what he had come for. As I slowly zoomed in, I saw a friendly tableau. A young man, Ian, seated in the armchair by the window; mug of coffee in his hand, nodding his head occasionally in recognition of something, someone. A woman, Shirley White, was perched on the edge of a low couch, chatting away, nervously ringing her hands, her face serious, a little worried-looking. Then there was the child: a boy, approximately four years old. He was on the floor, playing with an array of toys. As I watched, he came to his feet and wandered over to Ian, handed him something: a small red toy car. Ian took it and I could see the corner of his mouth curl with pleasure. My brain took in the scene again - a man, a woman and a boy – and it reassessed what I was looking at. I was looking at a small family, it told me. You are to stay away from her, Dad had angrily instructed. Was this why? Before I could consider their connections further, the boy’s mouth moved and he pointed, and Ian’s head turned round to see what he was pointing at: me.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’ Ian spat at me, catching up with me at the front of the flats.
My instinct had been to run, but coming back out onto the road, the speed and veracity of my brother’s anger stopped me. He grabbed my right arm and, even through the nylon padding, I could feel the squeeze of his wrath leave its mark.
‘I told you to stay at home, so why the hell did you follow me? Can’t you do what you’re told for once? Can’t you stay out of other people’s business? Eh?’
His glare was feral with rage, his mouth foaming with spit and fury, and I felt sick with fear. Something tightened around my neck. If Ian sensed this, he ignored it, intent on punishing me.
‘No wonder you’re always getting into trouble! Just can’t keep your nose out!’
As Ian dragged me home, questions whirled inside my worried head. Who was this Shirley White? Why did I remember her? I knew her name from the back of an old photograph, torn in two, and I recalled her that day at Jubilee Park, sitting next to Mum on the bench. But none of that made her important, significant to us. But Ian’s visit, his reaction, Dad’s reaction, that made her a little more important. And the boy; the boy felt like he made a difference. He felt significant.
As we turned into the Victoria Avenue, just minutes from our front door, I finally found my voice and the courage to put a question to Ian.
‘Who was that boy?’ I asked and his instantaneous, blazing reaction was confirmation in itself: the boy was important to us, to Ian.
‘You mention none of this when we get home, okay? You don’t mention a word of it to Dad, okay?’ He had me by both arms, gripping tight, his hold like wound-round elastic bands, restricting my circulation. ‘You understand me? Not one fucking mention, Scot, or I’ll-.’
He stopped himself at the last minute, but his intention wasn’t lost on me. Not one fucking mention or I’ll-. Or you’ll what, I wanted to ask. Hit me? Teach me a lesson I’ll never forget? Can’t promise we won’t hurt you, little boy. It remained there – his unfinished threat – just in the air. It was enough to calm Ian, though, and he released my arms from his harsh grasp.
‘Let’s get back,’ he said simply, giving me no further instructions.
Why are you so angry? I wanted to ask, to understand. It wasn’t just that day, either. It wasn’t just me he seemed to be angry with. Della and Russell - they were also in receipt of his ire. But I was too shocked and frightened to ask any
further questions.
Instead, we walked the last few yards home in prickly silence.
The rest of the day was uneventful. Ian went out with Dad in the afternoon and I spent a bit of time on my own. I kept wishing that Justin would call by, that everything could go back to how it was before the incident at the Jubilee Park toilets. But he never did; inside, I was certain that our friendship had ended for good. There was a knock at our door around 4pm, and from the blurred wiry outline through the glass, I could see it was only Uncle Gary. He had a delivery for Dontask, which he stacked next to the goods Beery-Dave would be collecting later. As he kept bringing the boxes in, I wondered if he’d take the opportunity to ask me about the letter I’d stolen from him, seeing as I was on my own. But in the end he didn’t get the chance: Della’s arrival – accompanied by Russell – was hot on the heels of his.
‘Alright Scot?’ Russell asked, cheerily, as Uncle Gary skulked away.
‘Yeah,’ I said, suppressing a grin. I liked Russell; apart from Ian, everybody liked Russell. He was solid; he had that strong, protective, brotherly feel about him. That thought made me sad. That was Ian’s role – that’s how he’d been at Nan Buckley’s funeral: protective, brotherly; full of words of wisdom. Now, he’d become secretive.
‘And angry,’ I mused, on my own again, as Della had dragged Russell up to her room to listen-to-some-music-on-our-own.
They stayed up there until Dad’s white work van brummed out the front around six-ish; within seconds they were back downstairs with me again, acting as if they’d been keeping me company the whole time.
‘You been dancing?’ I asked, noticing a few pips of sweat on Russell’s forehead.