White Goods

by Guy Johnson

  Tony looked a little taken aback and glanced over at Ian and Della. They were equally alarmed. This time, I decided I would push for an answer; push them into a corner they couldn’t easily squirm out of.

  ‘I know something happened to him. I think it happened here. I think it was linked to drugs and money. You were here,’ I accused Ian directly, turning to him. ‘Della said so. You’re all covering something up.’

  More bellow-like breaths from Tony preceded the next instalment of the truth. But he wasn’t the one that delivered it.

  This admission came from Ian, in a garbled rush of tears and words, falling out of his mouth and head like conkers tumbling across a playground. He came home to find them here, in the kitchen, he confessed. Jackie was already dead, swimming in a lake of his own blood. Mum – Theresa – was dazed, confused, but she too was covered in blood. Some of it was her own, some of it her son’s. My dad’s.

  ‘When Dad came home, we covered it up. To protect her. There was no saving him, Scot. I’m sorry. The damage was too much. So, we saved her instead. At least, we thought we had. But…’ Ian’s voice trailed off, his sentence ending itself silently.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s gone, Scot.’ Tony.

  ‘I want to know-.’

  ‘I know, but it won’t help. It won’t change anything.’

  I thought of the body from the night before: the one in Adrian Tankard’s arms, dripping blood in our alleyway. The one Auntie Stella had directed he put in the chest freezer; directing with such ease I recalled. I would check there, I told myself. If they wouldn’t tell me now, I would check in the freezer later.

  ‘Would you like me to tell you about your mother, about Emma?’

  Accepting my previous inquiry would not be satisfied, I nodded. I was ready to hear about her: Emma, my birth mother. Emma. When Tony said it, there was warmth in his voice; with warmth came hope. Would you like me to tell you about your mother, about Emma? Yes, there was hope; his warmth suggested affection, indicated a connection. But that was all it was, a hope, a false one at that; once these final links with my true ancestry were forged, the ones with the man who had been Dad for thirteen years were severed.

  And, like the rest of my re-written history, Emma came with more surprises and even more loss.

  Later, in the middle of the night, I did something I hadn’t done for years, not since as long I could remember. I snuck into my parents’ room – their room, Tony and Theresa’s – got under the covers and snuggled up. Tony moved about, half-waking and put an arm around me. With the lies stripped away, despite the fact they cut every familial tie between us, I felt very close to him and that feeling reassured me: everything had changed and yet nothing had changed too.

  Oddly satisfied, I fell back asleep within minutes.

  Two weeks later and my journey was at an end: I had reached my destination, the Tankard house. My five-minute walk had taken me from one set of grandparents to another. The time was 10:30am; I was half an hour early. Both Chrissie and Adrian’s cars were missing from the front. I considered sitting on the step, waiting there for them to return from wherever they had gone. But I had an urge: an urge to find their hidden back-door key, let myself in and have a look around this family dwelling. My family dwelling. I wanted to look on it with my new perspective: I was no longer Justin’s oddball friend in the silly coat. I was someone else entirely.

  So, I slipped down the side of the house, let myself in and explored.

  As I went through their kitchen, through the hall, nosing in the lounge, nosing quickly in Chrissie’s downstairs bedroom – the existence of which we were still not to acknowledge – I had no fear of being disturbed. If I was, I knew I wouldn’t be punished. People were giving me a lot of slack, in particular long-lost relatives. Besides, the Tankards didn’t want to upset or fall out with me – they needed me; I was all they had now.

  Auntie Sharon and Uncle Stevie-the-little-shit were still in custody. I didn’t know where. I hadn’t asked Adrian directly – I was still calling him Adrian – but Tony had mentioned this to Ian - Uncle Ian – and he in turn had updated me.

  ‘Will they be coming back?’ I had asked him.

  ‘I don’t think so. They admitted what they did, so there won’t be a trial or anything.’

  ‘What about Justin?’ Uncle Justin; I could finally ask about him.

  ‘No news. He’s still missing,’ Ian confirmed, looking directly at me, searching beyond my eyes, looking for something else. ‘They haven’t mentioned him, you know. They haven’t said he was involved.’

  It made no difference: I knew the truth and everyone else had assumed it. When the police had turned up at the derelict house, Auntie Sharon and Uncle Stevie-the-little-shit were still there, but Uncle Justin had fled. I later wondered if he had come after me, to check what I’d seen, or even to shut me up. Maybe he had gone looking for Roy and Clint. Neither had said a word about being there, as far as I knew. I’d never get the answer to my questions. The moment he had looked back at me, finally realising I had witnessed the killing, just before I fled the scene of the bloodbath; that was it - our final moment together. I would never see Uncle Justin again. None of us would.

  At the Tankard family home – in my Tankard family home, I kept reminding myself – I felt myself drawn to his room. The memories it would hold for me. I thought about him bringing Tina along on all those trips into town and the swimming pool; thought about the trip to Nan Buckley’s replacement, the money he stole; thought about the attack in Jubilee Park. I recalled his insistence that we compared our whatsits and the embarrassment it caused that last Christmas. The latter made me laugh, but then I made another connection that left me sad again: the trip to Crinky’s on Boxing Day.

  ‘I had no idea,’ I thought, turning up the stairs, heading to Uncle Justin’s room, mulling over more loss. Sorry for your loss. It was a phrase I just couldn’t escape, no matter what happened to me.

  Once inside Uncle Justin’s room, I took a good look about.

  Nothing had changed. It was as neat as ever: the two single beds were hospital-tidy; his collection of shoplifted tapes sat in a perfect tower on top of his chest of drawers, next to his mini tape recorder; everything was politely in its place. Pam and Bobby were still on the wall, Pam with her black marker moustache affliction. Everything had changed and yet nothing had changed.

  I looked about in the other bedrooms. Auntie Sharon’s was a jumble of clothes, magazines, make-up and toiletries. Uncle Stevie-the-little-shit’s was a disaster of bedclothes, empty crisp packets, stinky trainers, crumpled tissues and skiddy pants. Adrian’s was relatively sparse and tidy, an echo of Uncle Justin’s. There was an unpleasant smell in there, however, the source of which was an old-fashioned chamber pot. Poking out from under his bed, I could see it had something in it. My stomach churned, and I think I got a bit of a glimpse of what Mum – Theresa - had been protecting me from. A glimpse of the shame she was avoiding.

  Adrian’s room afforded a view of the garden and, before I left, I checked it out. It was like a small scrap-yard of abandoned white goods. Fridges, freezers, washing machines sat there in silence. Stout, proud monuments of yesterday: respected, but no longer functioning. Scattered around this were other, smaller relics: kettles, hair-driers, toasters, hoovers, music centres, speakers, TV sets, radios. Exposed to the elements, gathering dirt and bleeding rust; abandoned, forgotten, replaced by newer models that served their purpose better. Looking at it all, awash in a sea of metal, glass and plastic, an amusing thought crossed my mind: Adrian Tankard was hoarding. But that made me instantly think of Crinky Crunkle and I felt a sense of loss again. Sorry for your loss.

  Hearing a car crunch on the drive at the front of the house, I began to turn away from the scene, but something caught my eye. To the side of the small landfill site, on the right, was a patch of freshly dug earth; it had a slight mound, like a small grave.

  ‘So, they moved you here?’ I thought to
myself, seeing the lifeless body draped across Adrian’s arms. He hadn’t meant to kill her; she ran out into the road and Adrian hadn’t had a chance to brake. In a panic, Adrian had come to us, not really thinking it through. I felt some comfort in the thought that she was no longer in our chest freezer.

  Chrissie’s voice broke my thoughts. She was crying out and charging up the stairs at the same time.

  ‘Justin! Justin, is that you?’ There was a twist of grief and agony in her voice; a tone that unravelled when she came upon me at Adrian’s window, leaving her with just the sound of pain. ‘Scot,’ she uttered, recovering, trying to hide her aching.

  Chrissie was greyer than the last time I’d seen her, turning monochrome with anguish, I guessed. She was looking less like Auntie Stella and a lot more like someone else I knew.

  ‘I let myself in,’ I said, feeling the need to explain.

  Chrissie didn’t comment, but we were soon joined by Adrian, as he came upstairs to-find-out-what-the-fuss-was-all-about.

  ‘Hello there, Scotty,’ he said, seeing me there, a small puzzle creasing his brow, as he momentarily questioned why I was in his room. ‘Shall we go then?’

  The next part of my journey was just with Adrian, but it was similar to the previous one – it involved a short walk over familiar territory and I was going from one grandparent to yet another. From the Tankards’ house, we walked along Church Lane, past Crinky’s and the dump, keeping our eyes averted when we came to the derelict house. We crossed the road to the crematorium and went into the grounds.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Adrian said, every now and then, as if I needed that reassurance.

  Entering the crematorium, I thought about the shortcut it provided to the mental hospital beyond. I thought of Mum, of Theresa, Nan. She was missing again. Hadn’t been seen since the day of the killing. Ian eventually confessed what he knew: he had taken Shirley White’s son from her flat and taken him to see Mum – Nan – at the hospital. It was his way of punishing Shirley: she had taken Jackie from us and this was his first step towards taking her son away from her. Her son; my half-brother. He was called Jackie too. Ian had only left them together for a moment – sent off on a false errand by Mum – but on his return both grandmother and grandson had vanished.

  At first, Ian said nothing, fearing the trouble he would be in for taking the boy in the first place. But when he saw a report on the local news regarding the missing boy, he confessed to Tony and they went to the police. Mum had written a little note for Ian, which he had initially slipped in his pocket. We’ve gone to put things right, it said. We didn’t know what it meant and it didn’t provide any help or clues. Shirley White insisted that there were no charges pressed against Ian. I thought this was nice of her, but when I said this to Ian, he was cross with me.

  ‘It’s the very least she can do,’ he had snarled, but he didn’t explain his anger and I didn’t ask him to. Whatever it was, it could wait.

  Mum was still missing. Mum, Theresa, Nan. Whoever she was to me. So was little Jackie; my little half-brother. If Shirley White was mad with grief and sorrow, I didn’t know. We had all kept away from her and I hadn’t seen her about, either.

  Visiting my final grandparent – Emma’s father – was an odd occurrence. We sat on him; at least, we sat on a wooden bench that had recently been placed in the crematorium, in memory of him. Crinky Crunkle. I thought about the visit to his place on Boxing Day and the long looks he had given me. Long, lingering looks I had thought were creepy, were somehow wrong; they were just love and admiration. I hadn’t realised, but taking me there, that had been the Tankards’ Christmas present to him. I thought about how he had died – partly at my hands, my story-telling having planted the seed in Roy Fallick’s head – and I felt heavy with sorrow once again.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to the plaque that simply said In memory of Richard Arthur Crunch. I wish it had said In memory of Crinky Crunkle, because that was the man I knew, if only briefly. That was who he was, in spite of what was written on his birth certificate, on the old passport Uncle Justin and I had found in his house. He was who he had become, not who he had started out as.

  ‘Crinky was the only one of us who would have Jackie in his house, after he got in with Shirley and the drugs,’ Tony had explained to me. ‘He missed Emma so much and the connection with Jackie was his connection with the past. He did ask to see you, but, well, we had made a decision on that. But eventually, even he had enough. Jackie did something very bad and Crinky wouldn’t have him back. That’s when he started hoarding. Keeping hold of everything, unable to let anything else go.’

  ‘Is she in here too?’ I asked Adrian, still sat upon Crinky’s bench, scanning the memorial flowerbeds that were before us, row after row after row of rose bushes.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Emma,’ I replied. I wasn’t calling her Mum. Just because Dad had gone back to being Tony didn’t mean I had to do the opposite to the others. I was only doing what felt right.

  ‘Not sure where she is, but we might have some photos, back at the house. Chrissie kept some of his things. I know she would have thought of you. Just in case. You know.’

  He took a breath; a Tony-like breath, one that built up to something.

  ‘Should’ve finished them off myself, you know. After that day at the Barley Mow. I warned them off, threatened them, thought that would be enough. If I’d known that old Crinky-.’ A pause; a well-deep sigh. I wasn’t sure who he was speaking to: me or Crinky. ‘Jesus. I should’ve finished them off. Should’ve broken their necks and had done with it.’

  After that, we just sat there for ages, in silence. Thinking I guess. Thinking about all the loss. Thinking about all the missing people: the ones we had a hope of getting back, and the ones we had no chance of at all.

  The ones who were lost from us for good.

  Adrian’s words make me realise something too: I wasn’t that connected to him after all. Yes, there was a bloodline link; there was no denying he was my grandfather. But his lifestyle, his approach to things – should’ve broken their necks and had done with it – they couldn’t have been further away from where I belonged. That was a comforting revelation. There was a certain sense of feeling safer about it; a sense that not everything had to begin again, had to be rewritten. After everything, I knew what I was connected to; I knew where I truly belonged.

  And we stayed like that until it was about teatime, when Adrian suggested we headed back. So, I retraced the steps of my journey, first leaving Crinky Crunkle behind, then dropping off Adrian at his house, before completing the last bit on my own, until I was back with Tony.

  Tony, Uncle Ian and Auntie Della, at 45 Victoria Avenue.

  Where I belonged.

  Where I connected.

  Back home.

  Ending.

  On the day that I finally understood the truth of things, I took the boy by the hand and made him face it with me.

  It’s strange the places where you find it, the truth. People like to say that it’s staring you in the face, or that it’s right under your nose. I’ve never found it in either place, though. And on this day, it wasn’t obvious – it wasn’t going to leap out at you, not unless you knew where to look. Luckily, I had quite a good idea. I’m not sure if I found it, or whether it found me. But we got there, the boy and me.

  ‘There’s someone I think you should meet, little Jackie,’ I told him, before we left the confines of my little clinical room. I knew how to get out. I’d done it before. If the nurses knew, they never said or did anything. Besides, I wasn’t considered a danger to the public, just to myself.

  ‘What about Uncle Ian?’ he enquired, with his little voice and big eyes. Jackie’s eyes.

  I stopped, looked at him, my mind muddling. This was Jackie. Jackie. My son. But I was too old.

  ‘Nan?’

  A question from the little mouth.

  I was Nan, not Mum. This was a different Jackie.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about Uncle Ian
. I’ll leave him a note. He’s all grown up now. He’s forgiven you, I’m certain,’ I told him, mixing my Jackies up again. But it didn’t matter; the little one hadn’t noticed. ‘Now, if we’re to get out of this horrid place alive, you’ll have to keep quiet and do as I say…’

  I didn’t take him straight there. There was a risk Ian had already raised the alarm, had people looking for us, or would come looking for us himself. We stayed in the crematorium till it was darker, shrouded by trees and shrubs. I could tell Jackie didn’t really like it in there, but I reassured him there were no bodies, just flowers.

  ‘What about ghosts?’ he asked, eyes wide with the potential of this.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure there are lots of those,’ I said, encouraged by the thought of company. Little Jackie didn’t look reassured though. ‘You always used to like things like that. Being frightened. You thought it was funny. Wasn’t funny when you frightened Ian, though.’

  ‘Uncle Ian?’

  The question brought me back again. I was Nan, not Mum. I would have to keep up.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, once it was dark enough to move unseen. ‘Let’s go. I’ve someone special for you to meet.’

  All the way, he kept asking me questions. Where were we going? What time would we be back? Could we go back now? Wouldn’t people be worried, now it was night? What was this all about? Was this an adventure?

  I liked the last question. Made what we were doing sound fun, so I went along with it.

  ‘An adventure, yes,’ I confirmed.

  From the crematorium, we crossed the road and headed towards the dump. From there, we went past old Crinky Crunkle’s fat, short bungalow, along Church Lane, across the green next to the Tankards’ place, past the Chequers public house, turning right into the alleyway that led to the new housing estate, through that and then onto my road – Victoria Avenue – with its multi-coloured terraced rows. All the way, the boy was at my side, keeping up with my hearty pace. He glanced back a few times, as if looking for a way out, or keeping note of the route we had taken, but I kept him on track with a few instructions – ‘Keep up,’ ‘Left here,’ ‘Straight over.’ I said little else, but it wasn’t needed. He had stopped asking questions and was just doing as instructed.