White Goods

by Guy Johnson

‘How big is big?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends,’ Stevie-the-little-shit added, joining us at that moment.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how lucky we get.’ Sharon Tankard answered the last bit, as she completed the Tankard sibling line-up.

  ‘Lucky?’

  And then Chrissie was with us, standing in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Right. All ready to go? Yes? Good. And Scot, like I said, it’s just a bit of shopping. Nothing special. Nothing really to see. So, you don’t have to come along, not if you don’t want to.’

  The Tankards might not have had all the latest gadgets we had in our house. No dishwasher. No teasmade. No Marilyn, either.

  ‘Marilyn?’ Justin asked, when I referred to our microwave by her first name. ‘You call it Marilyn?

  But they did have some things we didn’t, like their own shopping trollies, for instance.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to take them back to the shops?’ I asked, when Stevie-the-little-shit wheeled one out from the side of their house. It had the word Beejam on the bar at the front.

  ‘We do,’ Justin explained. ‘Then we fill it up again and bring it home.’

  Then Sharon asked a question that set the tone for the whole journey:

  ‘Right - who’s getting in it first?’

  There was always a sense of worry when you went anywhere with the Tankards. A guarantee of excitement and adventure, for certain, but often the fear and anticipation could take the fun out of it. Justin and Stevie-the-little-shit’s little escapade at Christmas had been typical; the police or, at the very least, shop keepers would usually be part of the drama. And there was always something free at the end of it – pens, blank cassettes, scented rubbers, make-up items; whatever was easy to pick up and slip in their pockets.

  I thought it would be different with Chrissie there. Thought there would be some just-behave-yourselves! and no-funny-business-boys! And it was different: it was organised.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Chrissie explained, as we approached the supermarket, accepting that there was no getting of rid of me. I was in for the-long-game, as Stevie-the-little-shit grinningly referred to it, like we were gangsters or something. ‘Think of it as a bit like bingo,’ she reassured me, searching for words.

  ‘Bingo?’

  ‘Yes, bingo. Always costs you the same, but sometimes you win a big prize for your efforts. And other times you just get what you paid for.’

  ‘And we go for chips afterwards, too,’ Sharon added, giving the whole event a holiday feel, like a trip to the seaside.

  ‘Only Scotty, there’s one other thing you need to know,’ Chrissie concluded, dropping her voice, sounding a little more serious. ‘It’s a secret.’

  This translated as don’t-tell-your-mum-or-dad-cos-it’s-dodgy-as-hell.

  ‘You still coming then?’ Sharon asked, as the Tankards ploughed through the automatic doors of the shop.

  After a moment’s hesitation, I followed on, wondering just how this unique brand of gambling was going to play itself out.

  Initially, the rules seemed to be quite simple. We split into two groups: Chrissie kept Stevie-the-little-shit on her team, where-I-can-see-you; that left me, Justin and Sharon in team two. We each had a list of what to get, a playing card, if you want to follow the theme, and we had exactly forty-five minutes to fill our trollies up. Chrissie had the Beejam trolley and we borrowed the second one from the shop itself, like normal customers. There were a few other essential and more baffling rules we had to remember: once inside, we didn’t know each other and there was no talking to the other team at all; if Chrissie accidently nudged her trolley into ours that was our signal to abandon Operation Discount, as Justin was calling it; and, no-matter-what, we had to queue up at the same till, specified by Chrissie using a series of winks, coughs and nods.

  ‘You got that?’ Sharon inquired, moving jerkily down the cake and biscuit aisle, the wheels of her trolley sticky, causing her to skid a bit.

  Justin had the list, and me and him were responsible for finding the items and getting our full house before the others.

  Despite a feeling that any minute we were going to be caught out (without really having a definite sense of what we were actually doing wrong), it was quite good fun. The Tankards had good taste in food, it seemed; they were allowed to have the things you saw on the telly, not just the things you could get during the war. That summed up the diet at our house – war food. Meat and two veg; bangers and mash; hard, pan-fried chips and cold, fatty lamb; the final remains of any Sunday roast regurgitated as a stew; and boiled potatoes with everything. Plain biscuits and heavy, homemade cakes were our treats – at least when Mum was about. Artic Roll, if we were very lucky. The Tankards were quite the opposite: frozen pizzas, crinkle-cut chips and onion rings for the deep fat fryer, anything you liked from the Bernard Matthews range.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Anything!’

  Trios, Penguins, Breakaways, Clubs, Blue Ribbon biscuits, and bags of mini Marathons; they were all piled in. Bottles of Panda Pops and cans of Quatro; Golden Wonder Crips and Nik-naks; the list of what they were allowed seemingly endless. And it was all well-known brands, not the cheap shop versions Dad made us have – Heinz, Kellogg’s, Mr Kipling, Pepsi-Cola, Captain Birdseye, Andrex, Bold.

  ‘Right, now we gotta keep a lookout for Mum,’ Sharon instructed, as the final items – three French stick loaves – were added to our bounty. We weren't allowed anything as nice as that at home; generally Dad didn’t believe in what he called foreign muck. So, I was really hoping I’d get an invite back for lunch. ‘Gotta watch out for Mum’s signal,’ Sharon reiterated, pulling me back from my thoughts.

  When the signal occurred, it wasn’t as subtle as Chrissie might have liked. Having wandered up and down a few aisles, keeping an eye on the checkouts, seeing if Chrissie had joined a queue yet, we eventually encountered the Tankard matriarch whilst we lurked in the dog food section.

  ‘There’s your mum,’ I whispered to Justin and Sharon, who were busy pretending to be interested in dog biscuits. (‘Gotta look natural,’ Justin had said, although I could see nothing natural about studying the full nutritional value of Winnalot.)

  In the split second it took them to abandon their reading matter and pay attention to our next instructions, it was too late. It had been Chrissie's intention to nudge our trolley, subtly, signalling us to abandon Operation Discount. However, the wheels on her trolley had locked, so she’d given it quite a hard shove, the result being she skidded towards us with unexpected velocity.

  What followed was inevitable: our trolley went flying, knocking Sharon back, in turn knocking Justin back, in turn unsettling a six-foot pyramid of tinned Mr Dog.

  Sticking to the rules of not-knowing-each-other, Chrissie apologised politely in her best voice (sounding like a posh Janet Street-Porter for her efforts,) glared sharply and briefly at Justin, who was helped to his feet by a flustered shop assistant, and carried on her way to the tills.

  ‘I just need something from the next aisle,’ Sharon announced, not waiting for either of us. She pushed the trolley forward, turning left into loo rolls and kitchen towels, and we didn’t see her again until we were outside.

  ‘You alright?’ I asked Justin, once the assistant had stopped fussing.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, but I could tell he wasn’t. If nothing else, he felt foolish, and something told me Chrissie would have something to say about the accident.

  The rendezvous point was a park bench, four shops down from the supermarket. Whilst we waited for the others to catch up with us, Justin filled in the remaining gaps regarding Operation Discount.

  ‘Mum’s friend Janice is usually on the tills. We’ve got a bit of a deal going on: she only puts through every other item. Her husband, Donny, is a business associate of Dad’s, so she’s happy to help us out. Think Mum shares some of the goodies with her.’

  Justin checked his surroundings, seeing if anyone was taking an i
nterest, listening in. They weren’t. Up ahead, just leaving the supermarket was Sharon, shaking her head, lighting up a fag.

  ‘We usually split up and have two trollies on the go,’ he continued. ‘One of us fills up with essentials – the other with treats. If anything goes wrong, we just buy the essentials we need and ditch the treats trolley.’

  ‘What happened today then?’ I asked.

  ‘Janice went on her break early,’ Sharon answered, finally reaching us, stressing the Janice like it was all her fault. ‘You break any bones, clumsy boy?’

  When Chrissie and Stevie-the-little-shit eventually joined us, the former was tight lipped and scowling, whilst the latter grinned from ear to ear, giving Justin a look that said you’re-in-the-crap. Justin didn’t say anything, but a quick glare from Chrissie indicated that she indeed intended to place the blame in his direction.

  It turned out that Chrissie Tankard shared a skill with my dad – she had the power to reduce strong individuals to quivering wrecks with the use of just one word.

  ‘Shoes!’ she cried, exercising said talent, storming ahead.

  Stevie-the-little-shit sauntered on behind, pushing the Beejam trolley of boring essentials, his swagger full of gloating; overjoyed he wasn’t the one with his neck on the line.

  ‘Gotta get new school shoes,’ Justin explained, a bit deflated, a bit worried, too, you could tell. ‘You coming?’

  I think he knew the answer before the question left his mouth: the prospect of waiting for three sets of Tankard feet to be measured, with Chrissie in that mood, didn’t hold much appeal. So, when they all headed for Freeman, Hardy and Willis – ‘three hard willies,’ as Justin called it – I decided to call it a day.

  ‘Call what a day exactly?’ the old me would have questioned. But I wasn’t playing word games any more, was I? Someone else was running that department now. Instead, having enjoyed a real sense of family that morning - despite the drama - I decided I needed to see mine. Not the ones that were lying to me; I just wanted to see one that spoke the truth; I went to see Mum.

  ‘See you tomorrow?’ Justin had called after me, but it barely registered; my mind fixed on other matters.

  What I’d really wanted to do was ask Justin a bit more about Crinky. A bit more about his death. Didn’t he think it was odd: Crinky, having a bath? The police, saying it wasn’t suspicious at all, when that’s exactly what it was. And did he remember what I’d said in the playground? What I’d said about Mum, so as not to admit the truth? Did he remember the bath story?

  But I hadn’t had the chance, not properly. There was always another Tankard butting in or hanging around. That’s why I’d wanted to go to the dump that day, to get him by himself.

  As I made my way to see Mum – out of town, past Nan Buckley’s old flat, out towards the crematorium and beyond – I started to think it over myself. It was spooky, that was certain, and, whatever the police had decided, it was suspicious too. But it had to be a coincidence, didn’t it? Even though we had some dodgy people in our school, they wouldn’t have taken my story and re-enacted it on some old, smelly fat guy. Would they?

  Turning these questions over in my mind, I entered the crematorium, taking the short-cut to reach Mum’s place. It was a bit creepy; walking between the beds of memorial rose bushes, heading past the place where Nan Buckley’s remains had been incinerated, and towards the place where Mum’s remains were regularly fried.

  That’s what I’d heard Ian and Della discussing: once a month, Mum had electrodes placed on her head and other places, and electricity was shocked through her body. Frying her alive.

  ‘Like in America?’ I’d asked, surprising them with both my question and my presence.

  ‘No, not like in America,’ Della had said quickly.

  ‘Cos Mum isn’t a murderer,’ Ian had added, defensive.

  ‘Like a lobster, then?’ I’d tried, only that was being boiled alive, so I’d gone off track. They had both simply stared at me, not prepared to elaborate any further on the details of Mum’s treatment.

  ‘Just don’t go and ask her,’ Ian had insisted, catching my arm, gripping it hard enough to make me agree without any more fuss.

  If she really was being fried, boiled or whatever, I didn’t notice. And it didn’t seem to make a difference to how she was. Each visit, she was the same: not quite dead, but not quite alive. Not like she had been. See, whilst Nan Buckley was dead, for absolute certain - her remains concealed in an urn, perched on our front room mantelpiece – Mum’s version of living was the very opposite: vague, blurred. Uncertain.

  Once I’d signed in at reception, I was led further into the building by a nurse, who walked with a determined briskness, pausing only to unlock and then re-lock a couple of security doors. Along the way, there was a large room with a TV, pool table and a circle of chairs, where residents and visitors could sit together. But we never went in there. The manner of our home rental arrangements had continued here for Mum: she had gone-private.

  ‘That’ll cost you a fortune, Tony,’ Uncle Gary had commented, when news of Mum’s hospitalisation status was leaked by Auntie Stella.

  Dad had declined to comment further.

  Going-private, according to Ian, ensured she got only the very best treatment. Only the very best electrocution service.

  ‘And her very own room,’ I reflected, as we’d clip-clacked along the polished wooden floors of the hospital.

  There was something else different about that day – it was my first solo visit. Previous times, I had only ever come with Ian and Della.

  ‘Where’s your brother today?’ the nurse asked, as we’d continued on our journey. ‘How old are you again?’ she added, and I wondered if this was going to be an issue.

  ‘He’s just five minutes away, at the shop, getting flowers,’ I responded and that seemed to satisfy her, as the brief inquisition ceased.

  Then we had arrived. Two steps ahead of me, the nurse rapped on Mum’s door, gently pushed it open and announced my arrival.

  ‘Just 30 minutes,’ the nurse told me, smiling flatly in Mum’s direction, before leaving us by ourselves. Leaving me to wonder just what I was going to do with 30 whole minutes.

  Yet, I needn’t have worried. It turned out to be a good day for Mum; turned out a little of the old Mum had returned.

  Her room was simple and what Mum would have called tasteful.

  ‘Dull,’ was Della’s interpretation. Yet, I thought its plain colours and modest layout made it peaceful. She had a single bed, covered in a pale green candlewick bedspread, with a painted white table to its left, where she kept a plastic jug of water, plaster beaker and a book. There was also an armchair for visitors to sit in and a wardrobe and chest of drawers. I’d checked through these once and they were empty.

  ‘They’ve kept all her stuff,’ Della had explained, after that particular visit. ‘For her own safety,’ she’d added, like that explained it all. But clothes weren’t dangerous – I knew that. I was the expert; I was the boy with the parka that could protect me from everything. She’d have been better off keeping them all on.

  That afternoon, devoid of her own life-threatening attire, I found Mum dressed in a hospital-issue polyester nighty, looking like she had no life left worth threatening. She sat in bed, three white pillows propping her up and giving her three equally white chins. She wasn’t wearing make-up and she wasn’t smoking a cigarette, two strange comforts I associated with the person she had once been. But, just for once, she was smiling; and she knew me instantly.

  ‘Hello Scotty,’ she said, patting the candlewick bedspread, indicating I was to perch on the bed. ‘Just you?’

  ‘Yes, just me,’ I replied, moving forward gingerly, watching a change in her face. A complete transformation. It wasn’t just her mouth smiling: her eyes lit up and even her dull, pallid complexion seemed to glisten. Joy; her face had been swamped with utter joy.

  ‘Just what I’ve been waiting for,’ she said, and suddenly the joy was a l
ittle too much, the glow of glee about her a little ghostly, creepy.

  As I sat on one side of the bed, she threw back the covers on the other side and swung out her legs. She popped her feet into hospital-issue slippers, stood up and made small, shuffling steps towards her chest of drawers.

  ‘Been waiting for this moment, Scotty,’ she uttered softly, almost in a whisper. ‘Been waiting to get you on your own. Just you and me, like old times.’

  Next, she was bending down, feeling under the chest of drawers, her skinny fingers rattling around.

  ‘You see, I’ve made a friend. Betty. She’s a bit coo-coo in the head, but she’s a good sort. Got me some paper and a pencil. Been good to me, see.’

  Then she was back on her feet. And she was reaching out to me – just you and me like old times – pushing something in my direction: an envelope.

  ‘You’ll give it to him, won’t you Scotty? You’ll give it to him?’

  She was pleading with me: with her voice, her body, and her face, where the spark was fading in anticipation of my answer, fearing a refusal. From where I was seated, I could see the name she’d scrawled on the envelope.

  ‘Just one more secret mission, Scotty?’

  I took the letter.

  When Mum had lived with us, the routine for passing on these notes had been different. She would wait until the moment was right. She would have it written in advance, hidden about herself or in her bag and then it would come out at the last minute. Like in Cornwall: pushing the note in my coat pocket, pushing me into taking a ride in a certain person’s flash new car, on my own. Just between you and me, eh Scotty? But there had been other times, many other times. She would volunteer me for jobs at Dontask, but only when he was on duty, making sure I had access to him. Never approaching him directly herself. Always using me as her go-between, like that made her less involved in whatever was going on.

  ‘I don’t want your Dad to find out,’ she had explained, explaining nothing in the process. ‘He must never find out. And he’ll never suspect you. He’d be suspicious of me. So, it’s our little secret.’