Swallowing Grandma (15 page)

‘What’ll I say if it gets back to Poll? What if she asks who you are?’

‘Say what I did. Friend’s brother. You bumped into me at the library and you were only being polite. You had no idea what my project was about when you agreed to help.’ He put his hands behind his head and looked pleased with himself.

I huffed a bit and ate my cake while he rolled a cigarette for later.

‘So go on, tell us about your dad. He looked like you, you said?’

I gave a hollow laugh. ‘I said he had dark hair like mine. Although he started off blondish in the baby photos. I’ll bring some along next time. My grandma was enthusiastic but terrible when it came to taking photographs, so a lot of the pictures we have are out of focus or too dark, or he’s missing body parts. And a lot of them are from the seventies so he’s got this girly hairdo. But there’s a nice clear close-up of him on the beach when he was ten, in a Cresta T-shirt; it’s good because he doesn’t know it’s being taken, he’s watching a crab die, so he looks serious. In every other photo we have he’s flashing his teeth and striking a pose.’

‘I’d like to see him.’

‘Yeah, well, we’ll sort something out. I wish I could tell you more about your aunt.’

‘Hmm,’ said Callum. ‘Never mind.’ He opened his folder and took a biro out of a side pocket in his backpack. ‘Do you mind if I jot some of what you say down? I’ll forget it otherwise, and it’s important.’

I felt a bit shifty about that, but what could I say? ‘If you really want to. What’s actually in this notorious folder? Apart from prostitutes.’

He held it out across the table and flicked some pages quickly in front of my eyes.

‘Mainly private stuff. Me. Some poems I wrote, my top-ten films and books, fantasy governments, a letter to my MP I once drafted. The start of a novel. A few diary entries. I take this folder around with me in case I have an idea for something. I’m going to stick that photocopy of – your mum into it, and I’d like to make a list of things about your family. Like, say, your mum’s birthday and your dad’s favourite bands; just, you know, trivia.’

I picked up the black ring binder and turned it over to see the front. ‘Oh, wow.’ Callum had covered it with photographs of clouds, some of them really dramatic. There were wispy cirrus, stripy cirrocumulus, glowering cumulonimbus, plus two fantastic sunsets that could have been scenes from heaven, or hell. ‘Did you take these?’

‘Uh-huh. I love skies. Mum does too. She likes the sky at night best though. She reads the stars. She can draw up charts and things; it’s not rubbish. People come to her for readings.’

I was still studying the photos, trying to make them out as picture-messages. ‘Why did you take these particular clouds, though?’

‘Dunno.’ He tipped his chair back onto solid ground. ‘’Cause they’re interesting. No reason, really; sky appreciation. Everyone goes round looking downwards when they should be looking up. Do you ever look at the sky through Polaroid lenses? Fantastic definition of all the light and dark, like an oil painting or something.’ He paused, half-turning the folder on the table, admiring his own work. ‘These ones are all enhanced with filters. You don’t ever get proper lavender skies. That sunset, it wasn’t so amazing in real life. You can do all sorts with filters; every sky can be a sunset, if you want; you can turn a summer day into a thunderstorm just by fitting the right attachment over the lens. You feel like God.’ He pulled the folder back and opened it again, leafing through for a blank page. ‘OK.’ He clicked his biro into action. ‘Hey, I tell you what, though, I’m getting desperate for a fag now. Another five minutes and we’ll make a move, shall we?’

I shrugged.

‘I’ll make these notes first.’ He scribbled for a while and I finished my coffee. I could have taken the cup back to the counter in a helpful way, but I didn’t. ‘What sort of music did your parents like?’ he asked finally.

‘I don’t know anything about my mother, I said. I’m not interested, and Poll wouldn’t tell me if I was. Now Dad liked classic eighties stuff, the Jam, Pretenders, Debbie Harry, Adam Ant. I’ve got all his tapes and LPs; some of them are really good. I reckon one of his favourite albums was
Dare
by The Human League, because the cover’s so scruffy. It looks like it’s been played to death, and he’s given some of the songs on it star ratings in red pen. ‘Love Action’ gets the highest, he’s written ‘I believe in the truth though I lie a lot’ along the top, and ‘You know I believe in love’ on the flyleaf of his chemistry textbook. It’s a great song. Do you know it?’

‘No. But I’d like a copy. Can you get me one?’

There was no way he was borrowing the original. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Give us a list and I’ll download them off the Internet. Do you know what films he liked?’

‘Haven’t a clue. Poll’s keen on Ronald Coleman, Errol Flynn, David Niven, anyone with a tiny ’tache. I quite like some of those old black-and-whites myself, although having to explain to Poll what’s going on all the time’s a pain.’

Callum had stopped taking notes. ‘Listen,’ he said, not meeting my eye properly, ‘I don’t suppose your dad left any letters, did he, in with the photographs?’

‘Letters? Who to?’

He turned in his chair and began lengthening the straps on his backpack. ‘I don’t know; your mum, maybe. Or her letters to him.’ He cleared his throat. ‘All it is, I reckon you find out people’s true personality in letters.’

My heart started to beat fast. ‘I don’t get you. You’re asking me about private letters, to see private letters? Even if there were any, I wouldn’t show you. I wouldn’t read them myself. They’d be love letters.’

He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Sorry, you’re right. Don’t know what I was thinking of.’

No, neither do I, I thought.

‘I need a fag,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

*

We were in a house that was Poll’s, and not Poll’s. The same porch, leaded windows, stairwell, back kitchen, but none of the detail right. Hardly any furniture. I wondered at first if they’d decorated, but this was all old with dirty carpets and marks on the walls. Vince took me up to the bedroom and I thought, aye-aye, but all he did was show me the camp bed with one of Poll’s bedspreads on it. He’d brought some books and a radio. ‘I thowt as you’d want to come reahnd a bit, befoore I fetch y’ ’ome,’ he said.

I slept and slept.

Next day when he came he stood and looked at me for a long time, then he hauled me up and steered me through to the bathroom. He started taking my sweater off, lifting my arms up like a child. I remember my heart plummeting, but not being able to resist.

‘Can you wesh yoursen?’ he said. I didn’t say a word. So he went back to the bedroom and brought a sponge bag. First he cleaned my teeth. Then he wet a flannel. ‘Tek your blouse off, love. Come on.’ I unbuttoned slowly. ‘Now, lass, what hev you bin doin’ to your arms?’ he said when he saw the marks. He shook his head as though it was very heavy on his shoulders, and went out of the room. I heard his steps on the stairs, and the front door shut, but I didn’t move.

‘I don’t know,’ he muttered when he returned. He smeared the little oval wounds with Savlon and then papered me over with plasters. ‘This’ll hev to stop.’

He left me alone to wash my bottom half and when I came out of the bathroom, he’d gone. There were some jam sandwiches on the floor and a flask of tea. He’d left some of my clothes too, clean. The nail clippers had disappeared, though.

Poll was swanning about covered in fence mould. I didn’t enlighten her. It was right down the back of her blouse, a great green smear on the white polyester. I saw from the kitchen window, first thing, but I didn’t say anything. Her bed sheets are often marked all over from the washing line. So what, I say. She’s damn lucky I launder them at all.

I was in her bad books already that day because she reckoned I’d broken her toe with a packet of fish fingers. It was true I had stacked the freezer in a rush, but it was her own fault for going in there, especially in her stockinged feet. Unluckily, you can’t die from a squashed toe. ‘What did you think you were after?’ I said. ‘You can’t see the labels.’

‘I just wanted summat cowd to put on my head where I bumped it,’ she snapped.

Now that was my fault; I had left the kitchen cupboard open. I’d been selecting goodies for a binge later on, because the thing about bulimia is that you can actually plan round it. This is what bulimia looks like as a mathematical model:

So it’s easy to fit into even a busy lifestyle. I felt in total control, for once, and as a bonus, my teeth were the cleanest they’d ever been. Poll shouted of me one evening in a panic. ‘What’s Winston got fast round his mouth?’ We watched as the dog did a good imitation of a rabies victim, rolling around on the carpet and spitting. I bent down to peer between his black lips.

‘Hell, it’s my dental floss,’ I said, holding his head while he wriggled insanely. ‘You get his back end.’ So Poll got his haunches in a wrestler’s grip while I unwrapped his muzzle. It’s just as well he’s a nice nature. ‘Christ knows how he got hold of it,’ I said as the last length came free. I traced the line back. ‘Look, he’s trailed it down the stairs like the Andrex puppy. Yuk. You wouldn’t think he’d like the minty taste.’

‘He eats the bread we put out for the birds even when it’s gone blue,’ Poll reminded me. ‘And cowpats.’

For a moment there, grandmother and granddaughter were nearly getting on, but by bedtime it had all gone sour again. The same mathematical model can also be used to demonstrate why Poll and I will always essentially be at war.

This time the argument had been about hair. I’d happened to say a woman on a TV news report looked a sight with short spiky hair. Poll had said she’d been in an earthquake so that was the least of her worries and at least you could see this woman’s face when she talked. I said the reason my hair was so bushy at the moment was because it had been raining, so whatever else evil I was responsible for, Poll couldn’t hold me accountable for that. Poll said, ‘Yes, but you could wear a rain-hood. Why don’t you wear a rain-hood? Maggie’s given you dozens over the years. Slip one in your purse. You carry on like you’re still seven. Why can’t you act like a grown-up?’ So I’d gone to the top drawer of the sideboard and got a rain-hood out and made as if I was going to garrotte Poll with it, but she turned and saw me, and twigged what I was doing. ‘You’re going all wrong, you are,’ she shouted. ‘You’re going twisted like your mother.’ Then she snatched the rain-hood off me and told me it was too good for me, and I grabbed it back off her and shredded the plastic in front of her face. I threw it on the floor and she screamed, ‘Pick that up. Pick that up, lady!’ But I just walked off and slammed the door.

Afterwards I sat in my room and thought about Callum. I didn’t even know whether I was going to see him again. Being with him was like a sort of dance; when we met up I’d start off cool and awkward, then he’d say something which would make me feel as if he really understood me and I could tell him anything; then there’d be a split second when I suddenly lost confidence in him and became uncomfortable. Because who was he? What did I know about him, actually?

‘I still feel terrible about Miss Dragon having a go at us,’ I’d said as we walked towards the station. ‘I don’t even know what we did that was so wrong. Did Miss Mouse seem angry too?’

Callum took a drag of his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs, then breathed it out smoothly through his nose. ‘Forget about it. You want to stop worrying about that pair. Couple of old lesbos.’

‘What?’

‘Lezzies. Ladies of the Sapphic persuasion.’

‘My God, do you think so?’

‘For definite. They’re neither of them married. That Miss Mouse never wears make-up, has her hair short like a boy. And Miss Dragon’s your archetypal bull-dyke.’

Behind him, a bank of rosebay willowherb waved in the breeze; far off I heard the hoot of a train.

‘I’m surprised you never noticed,’ he said.

*

We sat in rows and you could smell the polish. I wanted to lean forward and bite the wooden back of the seat in front; instead I chewed at the inside of my cheek. I thought there’d be a jury like you see on Crown Court, but there was only a handful of us and the coroner in his dark blue gown.