by Terry Ronald
I’m about to say something sarky and vile, but I suddenly notice that Frances looks unbelievably sad, so I keep shtum.
‘I remember when we were about seven or eight, Toby turned up on our doorstep on Christmas morning on his new Chopper, and he handed me a screwed-up paper Christmas hat with something stuffed inside it. It was a little silver ring with a purple stone – out of a cracker, I expect. He said, “Frances, we’re engaged now, and I’ve got to come in and ask your dad for your arm in marriage …”’
‘Your arm?’ I say, and we both giggle, but then I spot tears. They don’t fall, they just sit there in her eyes.
‘He was such a smart little boy,’ Frances says. ‘Always had the tidiest haircut, and nattiest clothes. His family moved out of our street to Camberwell a bit after that, and we moved to the flats, but I always remembered him even though I never saw him again … until the other week.’
‘Really? Where did you see him?’ I ask.
‘At a party,’ she says in a near-whisper. ‘I just turned round and there he was … pulling my hair, and punching me in the back … calling me a black bastard.’
‘Oh no, Fran.’
Frances is nodding, and the tears come down. I put my hand over hers.
‘But that was Squirrel that did that,’ I say. ‘Chrissy’s boyfriend, Squirrel.’
Frances nods, and looks up at me.
‘I’ve heard you talk about your sister’s boyfriend Squirrel,’ she says, ‘but I’d never met him, had I? I didn’t know Squirrel was Toby. And I never fucking imagined that lovely little boy could ever say those wicked things to me.’
I feel just bloody awful, and I wrench an angry fistful of grass out of the ground by the roots. I knew it had been Squirrel I’d seen that day in the car full of NF boys outside my house, but I just didn’t want to believe that it had been him shouting evil out of its window.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ I say gently as Frances rests her head on my shoulder.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ she says. ‘I really wasn’t bloody sure. It was dark out on that balcony at the party, and there were so many people. And don’t forget, I haven’t seen him for eight or nine years. I thought it was him, but I couldn’t be certain then.’
‘And you are now?’
Frances nods with absolute resolve, and then she wipes the tears away with the back of her hand.
‘Oh, yes,’ she says, ‘cos I saw him again today – sitting in a Ford Escort minivan outside the school.’
‘What, our school?’ I semi-shriek.
‘Yes,’ Frances whispers, leaning forward and swiftly becoming tremendously conspiratorial. ‘Outside my sixth-form block – parked there for ages. And do you know who he was with? Do you know who was in the driver’s seat?’
It suddenly dawns on me who I know that drives a Ford Escort minivan.
‘I think I might,’ I say.
‘Yes. That bird that does your mum’s cleaning,’ Frances says.
‘Moira,’ I say. ‘I knew there was something going on with them, but what? What would she want with him?’
‘I dunno,’ Frances says. ‘But I was sure it was him then. I was positive it was little Toby, and do you know what the worst part is, David? The worst part is that I feel like he’s taken a little bit of my childhood – a lovely, cosy, special bit of my childhood … and shat all over it.’
And then she goes quiet for a while, and I don’t know what to say. God, I’ve been so wrapped up in my own romantic drama since the night of that party that I haven’t even noticed what my very best friend has been going through. What a prick!
‘Look, why don’t I tell Maxie that we’ll have to hang out at my house together another time? Then me and you can go over to your place and ask your little sister if she’ll let us comb her hair out into an Afro and dress her up as Diana Ross again.’
Frances laughs.
‘Are you nuts, bwoy? This could be the start of ya big love affair.’
Then she plants a great big teary, pickled-onion-flavoured kiss on my cheek.
‘I’ll be all right, really,’ she says. ‘I just wanted you to know about Toby so you can tell your Chrissy, and find out why the fuck your mum’s cleaner is knocking around with a little Nazi.’
We pull ourselves up from the grass, which is damper than I thought it was when I sat down, and start back towards the main road.
‘Will you be OK?’ I ask her.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she smiles. ‘Just don’t forget to ring me up later and tell me all the gory details about your date!’
‘It’s not a date,’ I laugh, and we head for home.
When we get to the corner of Chesterfield Street we part ways, as Frances decides she can’t go another five minutes without a bag of chips from Elvis’.
‘Don’t get pregnant!’ she screams up the road after me.
Maxie is outside my house on his racing bike when I get there, still in his uniform.
‘You’re early,’ I shout on approach. ‘I’ve not hoovered.’
Maxie laughs.
‘You don’t have to hoover for me, just make me a cup of tea and a sarnie – I’m bloody starving.’
And we head up the front path.
‘Mum’s done Scotch eggs,’ I say, opening the heavy green front door. ‘I’ve got to warm them through, but I’m sure I can manage a cup of Rosie Lee if Chrissy hasn’t guzzled all the milk.’
Maxie follows me into the house and leans his bike up against the passage wall. He has a ridiculously toothy smile plastered across his face.
‘What are you grinning at?’ I enquire, making quite sure Maxie’s handlebars haven’t marked the Anaglypta.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I just like Scotch eggs. Mum says they’re ever so common, but I like ‘em. She was opening a tin of salmon for her snooty sewing-circle friends when I left – I can’t bloody stand that stuff.’
‘Tinned salmon,’ I laugh. ‘She obviously knows how to push the boat out, your mother.’
Then there’s a minute or two’s awkward silence as we go into the kitchen and I switch on the oven and put the kettle on the gas ring. Maxie sits down at the kitchen table and starts idly leafing through a copy of The Racing Pigeon as I turn on the transistor for the tail end of Newsbeat.
‘What time are your mum and dad getting in … and Chrissy?’ Maxie finally asks as I hover over the sink with a baking tray of Scotch eggs.
‘About half five with Mum, usually,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure about Chrissy, but I’ve got an idea my dad might go straight round to the club from work: him and Mum had yet another barney last night. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, no reason, I just wondered,’ he says, and I note that he’s slightly jittery.
‘To be honest,’ I go on, ‘they’ve been at one another’s throats almost every night lately. It gets on my wick.’
‘What do they row about?’ Maxie asks.
‘Oh, you know,’ I say distantly.
‘I don’t,’ he says. ‘My mum and dad never row, and if they do they’ve never done it in front of me and my sister.’
‘You’re lucky,’ I say. ‘Mine barely stop.’
Last Wednesday’s row, I think it was, had been a real doozy. Eddie had come stomping in at around six and with a face like thunder had skulked straight into the living room, where ten or so minutes later Mum had presented him with a roast chicken dinner – which was a bit of a turn-up for the books midweek, but there it was.
‘I don’t fancy that, Kath,’ I’d heard Eddie snort from the lounge. ‘We don’t usually have chicken of a Wednesday.’
He was clearly in a foul mood, but not in the mood for fowl.
‘Well, we’ve got it tonight,’ Mum said, rather too defiantly for my liking.
She’d got in an hour and a half early and decided to throw prudence to the wind, menu-wise, it seemed; but any sort of culinary spontaneity was, without exception, lost on Eddie, in fact it positively enraged him. Mum well knew this, but had re
grettably stumbled on an open bottle of Black Tower when she’d opened the fridge and had, perhaps, let herself get carried away a little. Then, before one knew it, Wednesday’s time-honoured shepherd’s pie or – at a push – sausage-and-mash option were out of the window, and in went an oven-ready pre-stuffed bird from the Co-op. I’m not sure she’d even defrosted it properly.
‘And what’s with this fucking gravy?’ Dad had gone on, and I crept up the passage to the door of the lounge to see what was what. Eddie was lying flat out on the couch with his boots off, facing the telly, Mum standing over him practically brandishing the plate of food like it was an offensive weapon.
‘What’s the fucking matter with it?’ she said, and I noticed her sway almost a full circle.
‘It’s thick,’ Eddie said. ‘You know I only like a couple of Oxo in a bit of hot water; I don’t like thick gravy.’
He was seething by this point.
‘Well, you do ’ave a choice, dear,’ Mum said in a dangerously sardonic tone.
I put my hand over my mouth – she wasn’t normally this plucky.
‘And what’s that?’ Eddie snapped.
‘Well, you can either eat it or fucking wear it,’ Mum said flatly.
And with that it was merry hell. I turned and headed back down the hall just as the plate smashed against the coffee table and Dad shouted, ‘You’re fuckin’ pissed again, ain’t ya? Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’
When he shot out of the room, he had a couple of peas stuck to the side of his face and thick gravy on his shirt collar. He shoved past me like I wasn’t even there, and I dashed back up to the lounge, where Mum was sprawled on the carpet. There was food all over the shop, and Mum appeared somewhat disorientated.
‘He didn’t hit you, did he?’ I said, striding over and hauling her upright – she, too, was festooned with mixed veg.
‘It was more of a shove,’ Mum smiled, and then we heard the front door bang shut.
‘He’ll be pissed himself when he comes back,’ I warned Mum as we sat down on the couch. ‘And we’ll be up all night with him screaming his head off in a repeat performance of the night before my English O level.’
‘You’re probably right, David,’ Mum had said, brushing a kernel of sweetcorn off her bosom.
And I was.
* * *
‘Actually,’ Maxie says, snapping me back to here and now, ‘I really wanna talk to you about something, so maybe we should have our Scotch eggs later – do you mind?’
He is even more jittery now.
‘I thought you were starving,’ I say.
‘This is more important,’ he says gravely. ‘Can we go up to your room?’
It’s evidently a day for folk feeling the need to inundate me with imperative topics: first Frances’ revelation about Squirrel and now this – whatever this is.
‘OK then.’
Maxie looks nigh-on angelic sitting on my bed beneath my poster of a pouting Kate Bush, his hands tidily in his lap and his head down. I wonder what the matter is with him all of a sudden – he was quite perky when he arrived and now he’s gone all sombre and quiet.
‘What’s up?’ I say, popping a bit of Elvis Costello, loud, on the stereo to lighten the mood.
‘Come and sit over here,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to have to shout.’
I stroll over and sit next to him on the bed, my heart beating about three times its normal speed, and Maxie says, ‘I was wondering what you thought … about what happened.’
Does he mean what I think he means?
‘What happened?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘At Moira’s last week. You’ve not mentioned it.’
‘You’ve not mentioned it either,’ I say, scandalized.
‘You’ve not,’ he insists. ‘I didn’t know what to say, did I?’
‘And I should have?’ I laugh. ‘It’s not something I do every day, ye know. I thought you might be embarrassed, so I kept it buttoned.’
Maxie smiles.
‘Well, you’ve been all lovey-dovey with me ever since – don’t think I’ve not twigged that, David Starr.’
I’m mortified.
‘I have bastard well not been all lovey-dovey with you, I just—’
But he stops me in my tracks.
‘Do you wanna have another crack?’ he says. ‘Do it again?’
‘Do what again?’
‘The fucking Highland fling,’ he laughs. ‘What do you think?’
Then he puts his hand between my thighs, just as Elvis Costello’s ‘Pump It Up’ is dwindling to nothing.
‘I want to know if I liked it as much as I think I did,’ Maxie says. ‘Have you thought about it much?’
I can tell now he’s quite aroused.
‘Some,’ I whisper.
‘When you’re havin’ a wank?’
Oh, I say!
‘Maybe.’
‘I have,’ he says. ‘I’ve tried not to, but then when I’m kind of halfway through, my mind just goes there even though I try not to let it. I think about you touching me … like you did … and I think about what else we could …’
Maxie starts to undo my belt, and when it’s loose I slowly stand up and brazenly let my trousers fall. He follows suit, unbuckling his belt and stepping right out of his trousers.
‘Where?’ he says. ‘On the bed?’
‘No, on the beanbag,’ I say, shuffling over towards it with my trousers around my knees and guiding him along with me.
Maxie falls back on to the oversized flowery cushion, and I kick off my school trousers and move towards him. I can see him hard through his white underpants, his shirt open, stomach exposed, and his face white with nerves.
‘Are you scared?’ I say, and he nods.
‘Me too.’
Then I move a step nearer, and I lower myself to kneel … to lean over him … to …
WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?
‘DAVID!’
Eddie’s voice booms from the landing. Not from the passage downstairs, no. Not even from the first landing, but from the landing outside his bedroom, which is only five short stairs away from my room. Oh my fucking God! How?
We scramble up, horror-struck, Maxie and me, tearing our discarded trousers from the floor and clumsily hauling them over our feet and up to our knees.
‘Yes, Dad, I’m coming down now,’ I yell frenziedly.
Maybe he won’t come in – trousers up – maybe he’ll just head downstairs and wait for me – one button – maybe he won’t get up here in time – another damn button. Jesus Christ! I hear his feet, fast on the stairs: one, two, three, four … and then the door swings open. Eddie just stands there. Doesn’t say a word. Not a dicky bird. My entire body, meanwhile, is frozen, as if it were the last moments of Pompeii and I had been engulfed by the lava of Vesuvius while buttoning my flies. My belt is hanging, gracelessly, out of its loops and is dragging on the floor; and I glance up at Maxie, who is in even worse disarray than me, his shirt tucked comically into his Y-fronts, his zipper gaping open. I’m fucking dead, aren’t I? But no: Eddie leaves the room and shuts the door quietly behind him.
Oh my God. Oh … my … God. Maxie is staring at me, open-mouthed.
‘What shall I do?’ he whispers, utter panic in his eyes.
‘Just go,’ I say firmly. ‘Just get your bike and go.’
By the time I step into the kitchen, I’ve managed to splash on some semblance of a smile. Eddie is sitting at the glass table staring into an empty coffee mug, and I head to the sink for a glass of water.
‘Marty rang for you this morning, Dad,’ I say with as much brazen abandon as I can muster. ‘He didn’t say what he wanted, but I told him that I thought you’d probably be going to the club tonight as it was committee night. It is Monday, committee night, isn’t it? I know it was on a Tuesday for a while, but you changed it, didn’t you, because of the ladies’ darts matches being on a Tuesday?’
Eddie says nothing, so I chance a peek in his
direction. As I do, he lifts his head gradually – almost in slow motion – until his eyes lock murderously with mine. I swallow hard, and Eddie says, ‘Don’t you ever let me catch you doing that again.’
And then he walks out.
Thirteen
A Meringue in the Offing
Today is my birthday. Sixteen. Mum, Nan and Aunt Val have decided that a ‘nice family dinner’ is in order to celebrate the fact, though I’m not altogether sure to which nice family they might be referring: surely not ours at the present time?
‘Who do you want to invite? You can invite anyone you like,’ Mum had said last week, a few days after the appalling debacle with Maxie in my bedroom. I’d thought about it for a moment.
‘I’d like to invite Judith Chalmers, and Anni-Frid from Abba,’ I said, ‘and that’s about the sum of it.’
Aunt Val had whacked me playfully about the ear with a tea towel, and then she chased me into Nan’s scullery, giggling and flicking me with it as she went. Nan was loitering purposefully around her gas cooker with a variety of pans and cooking apparatus. She was trying out a recipe for jugged lamb that she’d seen on a rerun of The Galloping Gourmet – with a queen of puddings to follow – so me and Mum had been summoned in for the result.
‘Be serious,’ Aunt Val said, leaning against the sink. ‘It’ll be nice getting the whole family together for your sixteenth, won’t it, Kath?’
Mum nodded eagerly, but all I could think about was my dad, who apart from one miserable and brief conversation, had barely spoken a word to me during the entire week. I didn’t imagine for one solitary moment that he would be in the slightest bit interested in celebrating my birthday, or anything else, come to that.
‘Come and sit at the table, and we’ll write down a party plan: guest list, grub, et cetera,’ Mum enthused, waving a rather down-at-heel Basildon Bond notepad. ‘It doesn’t have to be a sit-down; I could do a running buffet if you like, Dave.’