Mummy Knew (6 page)

After dinner, Jenny would run me a lovely warm bubble bath. The carpet was pink and so soft I could wiggle my toes into it, in contrast to the slimy ripped lino at home. Soft clean towels hung on the rail. The spare toilet roll was covered by a dolly with a long skirt, whose name was Amanda. Jenny offered to let me take her home once but I refused because I couldn’t bear to think of her sitting in our grimy toilet with the spiders. Besides, we never ever had a spare toilet roll; most of the time we had to use old pages from
The Sun
.

I wouldn’t get out of the sweet-smelling bath until my fingers and toes were wrinkled like pink little prunes. At bedtime I’d squeeze in next to Jenny because I was bigger now and might hurt Nanny’s legs in my sleep. I liked sleeping with Jenny. She was soft and fat, perfect for cuddling, and her made-up stories were just as magical as the ones Nanny used to tell me when I was younger.

On Saturday mornings Jenny would take me for a walk up to the High Street where we’d do some shopping.
The Generation Game
with Bruce Forsyth was on the television at the time and I’d make her laugh by doing an impression of Brucie’s pose and saying ‘Nice to see you, to see you nice.’

Nanny would be sitting out on the balcony when we got back. She was virtually housebound now, and the only fresh
air she got was when she sat out on the balcony tending her geraniums and watching the world pass by. I’d go out and sit beside her. Sometimes we’d see Mummy and Dad walking in or out of our block but they didn’t wave, and nor did we.

Sunday would start off nicely enough. Jenny was always trying to lose weight and had bought a yoga book so we’d clear a space in the front room and practise the Plough and the Cobra, the Bridge and the Bow. Usually we’d be in fits of giggles because neither of us could balance and we’d end up in all sorts of tangles, as if we were playing a game of Twister.

Sunday lunch would be delicious. Sometimes Davie and Cheryl would turn up to pile their plates with Nanny’s special roast potatoes. But as the day wore on, my stomach would start to do little flips as I realised it would soon be time to go home. Home to the dirt, the disorganisation, the empty food cupboards, but worst of all, home to Mummy and Dad. Mummy who seemed to look straight through me most of the time when she wasn’t complaining that I was in her way and driving her crazy, and Dad, who alternated between his special brand of hot and cold treatment–friendly one minute, hostile and violent the next.

At about seven o’clock the tears would start as I kissed Nanny goodbye. I’d lay my head against her chest and remember the times I used to fall asleep listening to her heart in the rocking chair when I was small. I revelled in her familiar warmth. I clung to her, not wanting to say goodbye because I never knew when I would see her again. It might be tomorrow or the day after, but Dad kept changing the rules and sometimes I wouldn’t be allowed to visit for weeks.

‘Now, now, pet,’ she said. ‘Don’t you cry. We’ll see you again soon and you can help me make a cake.’

With a last kiss, Jenny led me back over the road. She would wait outside our block until I ran upstairs and waved to her out of Davie’s bedroom window to let her know I was safe. Except I never was, really. Not with Dad around.

A
fter a few weeks without Mummy bringing in a salary, the tension in the flat rose to pressure-cooker levels. At first Dad had relished having her at his beck and call twenty-four hours a day, but soon the reality of life without a steady income began to bite. He seemed stuck in permanent Mr Hyde mode because he could no longer indulge quite so freely in his three main hobbies of smoking, drinking and gambling.

Dad was obsessed with horseracing. He studied the form in
The Sun
and
The Sporting Life
and made sure to watch every televised race meeting. The only problem was that he wasn’t very good at picking winners.

At the start of every race he’d perch on the edge of the sofa, restlessly shifting from side to side just like the horses that jostled for position behind the starting line. If he had placed a bet he would hold the ticket in front of him and begin to murmur under his breath. The small blue betting-shop pen would be lodged firmly behind one ear, a spare fag behind the other. As the horses galloped closer and closer to the finishing line, Dad would slide down onto his knees and edge closer and closer to the television, thrashing an imaginary
whip and roaring encouragement: ‘Come on, my son. That’s it, come on, you bastard.’

I’d hold my breath and cross my fingers and toes as I willed his horse to win. But my heart would sink and I’d start thinking of somewhere to hide as Dad’s horse was overtaken in the final furlong, and his exhilaration gave way to bitter disappointment as it dawned on him that he’d just thrown more money down the drain.

‘That’s fucking bollocks, that is! Bastard fucking animal.’ He’d rip the betting slip to shreds and let it flutter to the floor. ‘You’re fucking jinxed, you lot,’ he’d yell and whoever was closest would be lucky to escape without a whack round the head.

One day he kicked the television over when the pundit in the pork-pie hat came on to heap praise on the winning horse. It made a loud bang, and smoke came out. We weren’t without a television for long, though. Somehow, even though he didn’t have a job, Dad always managed to get hold of things he wanted. Nobody knew exactly how, but it always seemed to be that he had a mate, who knew some bloke, who was friends with some geezer down the pub, and in exchange for a ‘ton’ or ‘pony’ Dad could get hold of anything.

I asked Davie if Dad had a real pony and he laughed, ‘It’s rhyming slang for twenty-five quid, stupid.’

So we might not have the basics like food and loo paper, but sometimes Dad would manage to get hold of things he needed, like cigarettes or, once, a case of ouzo, which Mummy said was like drinking ‘fucking paint stripper’. The new telly he got was bigger and better than the last one, and it was
colour, too. Me and Davie were so excited. When Dad was out or in an unusually good mood, we would watch our favourite cartoons on it. It was a whole different experience.

Meanwhile, the swearing, shouting and violence gathered pace and Dad was often heard threatening to leave Mummy for someone younger who didn’t have such a ‘baggy fanny’. I wondered long and hard about what that was but couldn’t work it out. All I knew was that it didn’t sound very nice and Mummy got upset whenever he said it.

It wasn’t unusual to see the remnants of Dad’s dinner sliding down the front room wall where he would aim his plate, frisbee-style. I would duck out of the way and Mummy would quickly try to salvage the food before the dog got to it, saying ‘Oh, Frank, what you done that for?’ as if gently chiding a tantrum-prone child who could never really do any wrong in her eyes. This attitude was the complete opposite to the way she would shriek at me if ever I dropped something by accident. ‘For Christ’s sake, Lisa. Why are you so bleedin’ clumsy?’

The trigger for Dad losing his temper could be something as trivial as finding a lump in his gravy or the mere mention of Nanny’s and Jenny’s names, but more often than not the root cause always involved one of three things: his irrational jealousy, alcohol, or having backed the wrong horse at Kempton Park. Without money to keep him in booze, fags and betting slips, the arguments just kept getting worse.

Mummy started looking for a new job, but every classified ad she circled in the paper would meet with Dad’s disapproval. He didn’t want her working in an office because she might meet men and have an affair just like the slags on the
TV. He certainly didn’t want her doing bar work again for much the same reason. Dad suggested cleaning, which was ironic because our flat was always in such a state. Mummy agreed to everything he said, even though I heard her tell Diane that it wasn’t something she wanted to do–‘but at least it’s cash in hand’. So that’s why she started cleaning private houses for posh people in the West End.

While she was out at work, Dad and I got to spend more time together and he came up with a new job for me, which was scrubbing his back for him when he had a bath.

‘You’ve got a lighter touch than your mother,’ he said. ‘She’s like a fucking navvy.’

He used to like me to use my hands instead of a flannel. ‘Get a good lather going,’ he said. ‘You could make a fortune in one of those massage parlours.’

I wasn’t sure what a massage parlour was, but I was glad I seemed to be doing something right at last. One time he had pinched my thigh because I was ‘doing it crap’.

I thought of Nanny and Jenny, and wondered what they would say if they knew Dad made me do things like this? They were both very careful not to let me see them undressed, and if anything rude ever came on the television while I was visiting, they would quickly turn it over. Once when Jenny took me up the high street to buy a Saturday morning custard tart, we saw a tramp in a shop doorway. His flies were undone and he was peeing in a big arc. Jenny was horrified and covered my eyes.

I didn’t like seeing Dad naked but I was getting used to it because he was always parading round the place with no
clothes on and even wiggling his privates in my face for a joke. Once he tried to make me believe his ding-a-ling was alive, like some sort of pet. ‘Go on, give it a little stroke,’ he urged.

I ran away and hid but I could hear him and Mummy laughing about it. She seemed to think it was all quite funny. She obviously didn’t see anything odd in what he was doing.

‘She probably thought it was a baby mouse,’ Mummy joked.

‘Watch it!’ Dad said.

‘Watch it? I can hardly fucking see it?’ chuckled Mummy.

So if she thought it was OK, I supposed it must be. Maybe Nanny and Jenny were just too old-fashioned. That must be it.

One morning soon after Mummy started work, I woke up feeling sick. It was as if my stomach was full of butterflies desperate for a way out. I knew I wasn’t ill in the true sense; it was just that the thought of having to go to school and sit opposite a girl called Susan Jackson was playing havoc with my insides. She had been moved into our class mid-term because she had been bullying a boy called William, who had a stutter. Finally his mother had marched into the head-mistress’s office and demanded action so she’d been shifted from William’s class into ours.

I had once seen Susan in the playground surrounded by a cackling gang of supporters, pressing her mean face into William’s and making him cry. Her nastiness reminded me of Dad so I ran as quickly as I could and told the playground assistant what was happening.

Susan saw me pointing her out, so it was of little surprise that when she joined our class she swiftly targeted me as her
new victim. Within a very short space of time she managed to convince my small circle of friends not to play with me any more because I was ‘smelly’ and a ‘dirty tramp’ and if they liked me, then they must be one, too. I wasn’t frightened of Susan physically. Compared to the slaps, kicks and punches that were a way of life at home, her sly pinches and pokes barely made me flinch. Far worse, though, was her relentless teasing. I knew for a fact that sometimes names could hurt just as much as sticks and stones. I told our teacher about it but she rolled her eyes and said ‘Just ignore her, Lisa.’

The day before, Susan had told everyone on our table that her mum didn’t want her anywhere near the ‘stinky one’ in case she got nits. Everyone screamed in mock horror and screeched their chairs across the floor to get as far away from me as possible. Even Claire Sullivan, who only a few weeks before had linked pinkies with me and sworn we’d be best friends forever, was sucked into the vendetta.

Lying in my damp, urine-soaked bed, I imagined swinging Susan around by her long ginger plait, but I knew I would never do it in reality, no matter how much I wanted to.

My mind was made up. I didn’t care if I had to take my chances at home with Dad, but there was no way I was going to school today. Mummy had been talking about having to go out on a special cleaning job and Dad had been suffering from a hangover all week after bingeing on ouzo, so I knew she would prefer not to leave me alone with him in case I got on his nerves. A plan began to form in my mind. I hadn’t been able to see Nanny for some time because she had sent Mummy a letter begging her to ‘see sense and kick that man out for
everyone’s sake’. Mummy had ripped it to shreds after Dad had demanded she read it aloud, and ceremoniously burnt it in the kitchen sink as he looked on approvingly.

‘If that old bitch thinks she’s seeing the kid again, she’ll have a long fucking wait!’ Dad declared, nodding over towards me where I was sucking my thumb in the corner. And his word was Law.

I hoped that today, Mummy would realise she had no option other than to send me over the road, where I could cuddle Nanny and eat cakes and sweets all day. I began to groan and pretend to be a lot sicker than I felt.

I heard Mummy take a cup of tea into Dad, who was still in bed with a bad headache and a sick bucket by his side. She was mumbling, then I heard his voice, gravelly from sleep, shouting ‘I said no!’

Mummy emerged from the bedroom looking daggers at me. ‘Trust you to be ill today. I’ll have to take you to work with me now.’

It might not be Nanny’s, I thought, but at least it was better than going to school.

Mummy went to quite a bit of trouble that day to find me something to wear that wasn’t too badly crumpled or dirty. She also made me chew a fluffy junior aspirin she’d found at the back of the medicine cabinet. I was feeling much better now that I was no longer worrying about Susan Jackson, but I chewed the bittersweet pill in order to keep up the pretence I was ill.

Then Mummy stood behind me and attempted to sort out my rats’ tails. She dragged the brush through my knotty hair,
making me squeal in pain, and yanked it back into a ponytail so tight that I developed a genuine headache and was pleased she’d given me the aspirin.

She told me to put my anorak on and took a step back to look me up and down.