Swallowing Grandma (18 page)

‘Wrong shape,’ said Miss Dragon. ‘The abdomen’s too narrow. And the bands of black are too wide.’

‘Oh, have it your own way. It’s two against one. Clearly I’m in the wrong.’

Miss Dragon gave him a searching look, then went away to deal with the queue at the desk.

‘God, I wouldn’t like to be late returning a book here, I tell you. Scaree. Anyway, these photos, I thought you might like to see them too.’ Callum nudged the envelope over towards me. ‘It’s written on the back who they are.’

The first was a blurry picture of what looked like a horrid red doll with an oversize head. Its legs stuck out like a frog’s.

‘That’s me,’ said Callum proudly. ‘I was really premature. Mum was so ill before I was born, they thought she might die. She had pre-eclampsia and the doctors had to get me out before I died too. She wasn’t allowed to move for weeks. She just had to lie flat all the time.’

There were four others of Callum; one as a toddler in a hooded suit with ears; one in his school uniform, aged about four (‘I only went for two or three years, it was rubbish’); one where he was sitting on a motorbike dressed as a Cavalier and one with him standing in front of a huge unframed painting. ‘I did that,’ he said. ‘It’s in oils. It was exhibited in Nantwich museum for a couple of months ’cause it won a competition. Mum’s got it in her bedroom now. It’s clouds.’

‘Yeah, I can see that,’ I lied. ‘Wow. Really good.’

‘And this one’s Mum.’ He pointed to a photograph of a middle-aged woman with longish dull blonde hair and a round, friendly face. She was wearing a black top with an embroidered neckline, and dangly earrings. ‘One of her would-be boyfriends took that last year. She doesn’t like it because you can see some wrinkles, but I think it’s a good likeness.’

‘She has a look of her sister.’

‘Yeah, I thought so. Now this one, this is the first cloud picture I ever took. No filters or anything fancy, I just pointed the lens and snapped. But the strange thing is, I took the photo because I thought it looked like a dolphin leaping out of the water, only when I got it developed, it had changed and now, can you see, it’s a face. Look. Turn it round. The eyes there, and that’s the mouth. A sad face.’

His finger traced the outline for me.

‘Then there’s this one I took at Avebury, which is through an orange filter. It’s as though there’s a giant finger pointing to the tallest standing stone. Like the finger of God, except it was really an aeroplane trail.

‘This next one’s a place called Mow Cop, a sort of folly, and when you stand on the top you can see for miles. What I did here was to frame the section of cloud I wanted to highlight inside the stone arch, can you see? And I used a filter to give a kind of subtle rainbow effect.’

‘Like petrol in a puddle.’

‘Yeah, exactly. And these last two, I took them over water, Lake Coniston, so you got the light reflecting back up to the clouds and kind of illuminating them from underneath. The filters here add some depth to the shadows, that’s all.’

He changes when he talks about his photographs, I thought.

‘I like this one the best.’ I put my fingertips on the Mow Cop one.

‘Do you? I’ll make you a copy. You know, you could come down some time and see the place for yourself, bring your own camera. I might even be able to drive by then.’

‘Yeah, that’d be good,’ I said, knowing it would never happen but really pleased he’d asked. I could imagine us up there, staring out across the fields and towns under a lowering sky. Suddenly my empty stomach dipped, gathered itself up, then let out the most enormous whine. I froze, mid-cringe.

Callum turned his head from side to side, brows furrowed in confusion. ‘That’s strange. I could’ve sworn I heard a cat. Did you hear a cat mew?’ He bent to look under the table. ‘Here, puss puss. Tch-tch-tch. Nope, can’t see anything.’ He sat upright again and his grin started me giggling.

‘Stop it.’

‘It must have nipped behind the desk. Probably after a vole. Oh, wait, did you see its tail poking out then?’

‘
Stop
it.’

‘I think we’d better get some lunch before we both starve to death. Any minute now our intestines are going to break out into a duet, and I tell you, mine sings a lot louder than yours.’

I nodded gratefully. ‘Right, well, we could get a sandwich at . . . ’ My fingers touched the pendant’s leather thong and I drew my wasp towards me. I would wear this. ‘We could go home. Poll’s not in.’ I felt myself blush, but carried on. ‘So she can’t get cross, she needn’t know. Come and see our house.’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he said.

As we walked the mile down the village to Poll’s end, I pointed out Bank Top’s invisible highlights. ‘That’s the site of a Tudor tithe barn.’

‘What, that hardware shop?’

‘Yeah. They bulldozed the barn in the Fifties. And across the road, all down that side, there used to be a row of stone cottages that dated from 1585. The walls were two feet thick and they had flagstones on the roof instead of slates.’

‘Where those Sixties bungalows are? God, what a waste. How do you know all this?’

‘School projects, and also they have some pictures in the library, have a look next time. Miss Dragon’s a big fan of local history. Now, coming up, on our side, there used to be a pub called the Brickman’s Arms, and when they demolished that in the early Seventies they found a wattle-and-daub wall which dated from the end of the twelfth century. And there used to be a cock-fighting pit at the back too, although I’m glad that’s gone. Oh, mind that sick on the pavement.’

As we pulled level with the big council estate, I nodded towards the road leading onto it. ‘That used to be called Four Lanes, but it’s been renamed School Road because they built a new primary school at the end.’

Callum crossed over and walked a few paces along the pavement, trying to make out the detail of the grey Eighties building with its red tarmac playground.

I followed him across the road, even though I didn’t want to, and stood next to him. ‘It still makes me feel ill, just looking at the place. The number of times I’ve willed a bomb to drop on it.’

There was dog shit and fag ends mixed in with the grass at the edge of the pavement, just as there had been nine years ago, when some girls had bent me over this metal street sign one afternoon, and told me I was in the stocks. Then they’d pulled up my skirt so everyone could see my knickers and Julie Berry shouted out that they were dirty, which wasn’t true. Then Clare Greenhalgh had whacked me on the backside with a tennis racquet, really hard, so it left a bruise along the top of my legs. When they’d got me crying, they ran off. Obviously I wasn’t going to tell Callum about that.

He turned back, and we walked slowly on. ‘So is that where your dad – and your mum went?’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t know where my mother went. Somewhere in Bolton, I think. And Dad was at the old Victorian school, we passed where it used to be a while back. Do you remember that cluster of orange semis near the church?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, that’s where it stood, originally, I should’ve said while we were walking past. It was stone, with a nice gable in the middle of the roof. I’ve seen it in the background of Dad’s Year 6 photograph. I can show you, if you’re interested.’

It was a bright day and warm; above us, cumulus clouds lay on their backs like dogs waiting to be tickled. I felt so confident I was doing the right thing, taking him home. ‘There’s the cemetery. I’ll take you in there one day.’

‘Is it where your dad’s buried?’

‘No, but it’s a good place, quiet. There are these fantastic red-hot pokers all along the front in June but they’ve gone over now.’

We reached the bottom end of the village, the top of the Brow. ‘Nearly there,’ I told him. ‘The council put a Christmas tree up every year, on that traffic island. Then there’s this village tradition called Stoning the Lights. All the youngsters from miles around join in. The bulbs last, oh, three days maximum. Last year some of the kids got ambitious and stoned the Rotary Santa as he went round the council estate. He’s said he’s not coming next time.’

And I could swap all this soon for Gothic quadrangles and spires, if I wanted, I thought.

I couldn’t read Callum’s expression as we finally stopped outside Poll’s house. I tried to see it through his eyes; the low wall and the tiny patch of grass too small for a mower, that Dogman has to clipper into a rectangle for us; the stone windowsill marked streaky green; the peeling black door.

‘Nice fanlight,’ he said, looking up at the last piece of leaded light above the door frame. ‘I notice next door’s have had theirs taken out. Big mistake. Some people have no soul.’

I hurried him through the front room with its nasty wallpaper and swirly carpet, and into the back where Poll and I eat, watch TV, argue and sulk.

‘You’ve a lot of lamps,’ he said, looking round. ‘It’s like a lighting shop in here.’

‘Has to be,’ I replied, thinking of Poll squinting through her super-magnifier at her large-print thrillers. ‘They could probably spot this house glowing from outer space.’ I saw, now, the sheen on the walls where Poll trails her hand as she navigates the room. I’d never spotted it before. Ditto the cobwebs up above the picture rail, and the layer of grey fluff on the carpet underneath the gas fire. I do clean, but there’s no point in running yourself ragged when Poll can’t make out the dirt and Dogman doesn’t care. Suddenly the house looked a tip.

‘Come upstairs,’ I said quickly, before I got too shy to say the words.

He was still gazing round like he was at some sort of an exhibition. ‘OK. Great. Lead on.’

*

That last night, Poll hit Vince. There’d been shouting, but that was normal. I’d gone downstairs for some milk and I saw it happen. I don’t know what the lead-up had been, she just went for him with the iron. He grabbed her hand and shoved her over so she fell against the sofa. The iron dropped out of her hand, hit the wall, and the base came away from the plastic casing.

She scrambled straight up again and ran at him. It was like watching a dog or something, she was wild. He got hold of one of her wrists but she clapped the other down hard over his ear. I could see it hurt from the expression on his face.

She started slapping him repeatedly round his head and he was trying to hold her off. I’d have belted her back. After a minute, she stopped struggling and threw herself face down on the sofa. She pulled a cushion over her head and held it there. I tiptoed back up the stairs. Katherine was screaming so I sat on the landing for a while.

Later that night, it must have been around two, I woke up and Vince was in my room. He came over to the bed and looked at me. It was too late to pretend I was still asleep. I thought, this is it, he’s going to rape me.

He leaned over and touched the covers. ‘I don’t know about you, lass, but I’ve hed enough. I’m flittin’,’ he said. ‘Are you comin’?’

Winston was snoring on my candlewick bedspread, so I scooped him up, carried him across the landing and dropped him on Poll’s. ‘Pee there, if you want,’ I told him.

Then I nipped back down to the kitchen and stuck the kettle on. While the water was boiling I made some inelegant cheese butties, but trimming off the blue-mould edges which is more than I do for Poll. I shoved the sandwiches on two Royal Albert side plates, brewed up, and plonked everything on a tray to take upstairs.

When I returned, Callum had taken his jacket off and was fiddling with something in the inside pocket. I’d have thought nothing of it but for the way he jerked his head up guiltily as I came through the door.

‘Dinner is served,’ I said, pretending not to notice. ‘I’ve had to sack the butler.’

‘Oh, excellent.’ He left his jacket alone and took the tea off me. ‘I am so ready for this.’

I settled myself on the floor with my back against the wardrobe, because there was obviously no way I could sit next to him on the bed, but he got up then, sandwich in hand, and started wandering round the room touching things. He traced the diamond shapes on the bed frame with his fingers, set the little drop-handles on the chest of drawers quivering, bent sideways to check out more book spines. Then he stopped near the photos and stood for ages, while I tried to wipe some dust surreptitiously off the bookcase with my sleeve.

‘Are all these your dad?’

‘Yeah. Can you see the school in that one? Wasn’t it a nice building? Poll went there too, when she was young. She says there were stuffed birds in cases on the wall, and a platform for the teacher’s desk. And she got the cane for being naughty, although when Dad was there the Head just used a slipper.’

‘He hit the pupils with a slipper? Sicko.’

‘Weapon of choice for Primary headmasters in the Seventies. Dad got the slipper every other week.’ Cissie had told me that, not Poll. ‘He used to make a lot of stuff up, and they didn’t like it. Nowadays you’d say he was being creative, using his imagination.’

‘That’s school for you, bunch of Fascists,’ said Callum, kneeling to flick through Dad’s old LPs. ‘I more or less got chucked out in the end. They could have slippered me into oblivion and it wouldn’t have made any difference. I wouldn’t do what the others were doing. I didn’t see why there had to be set times for painting, and set times for maths, set times for Plasticine play and sand expression. I mean, why not let the kids follow their impulses? That way, you’ll get real impetus behind each individual child’s work.’

‘You told them all that when you were seven?’

‘Oh yeah. Well, my mum did. They kept calling her in, for “interviews”. She got more and more defensive, ’cause basically they were calling her a bad parent, inadequate single mother, till one day she marched me out of the building and said, “You’re not going back there again.” And I never did. It was great.’ He eased out a record spine with his finger nail. ‘Hey, here’s that Human League album you were telling me about.’ He rose, walked backwards to the bed and sat down, still holding the LP. ‘And Mum was such a great teacher. She made learning fun, and if it was sunny we’d go outside, or take the day off. My dad sent us some money so she didn’t have to work, although we were always a bit strapped for cash. It didn’t matter, though, because we got by.’