White Goods (46 page)

Halfway along St James
Road, there was a red telephone box. I didn’t have any change, but
I wouldn’t need any for the call I had to make. I didn’t leave my
name – just a location and a vague reference to what might have
occurred: a beating at the derelict house, just across from the
crematorium, people screaming. Then I hung up and walked along St
James Road, turning into Victoria Avenue.

The extent
and nature of my loss would take a while to hit me. Mum, Nan
Buckley, Sylvie, even Jackie, who I would never meet: all gone,
more or less. But it didn’t stop there: Justin, Sharon and
Stevie-the-little-shit,
Uncle
Gary, too; all gone away and all affecting me and
my life. Rory and Jim: more loss, but complex loss. For now, it was
just numbers: a body count. But eventually, when the numbness
lessened, when the consequences and the feelings took their place
at the front of things, the loss would strike me.
Sorry for your loss.
The
loss, despite its very nature, would be for keeps.

Once home, I went up to
my room and took off my parka. I never wore it again. It hadn’t
protected me at all. It was full of false promise; as false as the
lies I had woven around Mum’s whereabouts, as false as pretending I
didn’t understand the way adults spoke to me. A false skin, easily
shed. Like all the other white lies I had surrounded myself with,
it no longer served a purpose.

With my parka off, I
perched on the edge of my bed and waited.

In the distance, I heard
the sound of sirens.

25.

A fortnight later and I
was setting out on a journey: physically and mentally. Walking a
path from 45 Victoria Avenue to a destination I knew very well.
Only, on this occasion, things were different. Some things had been
lost; other things were gained.

And everything had
changed.

‘You want me to come with
you?’ Tony had asked, as I set out on my quest.

Tony,
that was new. Not
Dad,
but
Tony.

‘Should I still call you
Dad?’ I asked him, the night he told me the truth.

‘Scotty, I’ll always be
your dad. Nothing has changed.’

But that wasn’t true. And
I’d tried pretending that nothing had changed before, when Mum left
us, but that hadn’t worked out. It hadn’t helped with anything.
Best to be honest.

‘Think I’ll call you
Tony, though,’ I said to him, and if he was hurt at all, he hid it
well.

‘You have to do what
feels right, Scotty. I understand that.’

And calling him Tony felt
right.

‘You definitely okay to
do this on your own?’ he asked again, on the day of my mission. ‘I
could walk there with you.’

‘I know the way,’ I
reminded him, and he finally ceased fussing. It occurred to me at
the last minute what his real concern might be. ‘I’m definitely
coming back,’ I told him and his shoulders relaxed, a soft
half-smile semi-circled on his face.

‘Okay. See you
later.’

The truth finally came
out the night the Tankard kids were arrested. At least, the night
two of them were. I’d been waiting for something to happen for
hours. Waiting on my own, wondering if making that call to the
police had been the right thing. It wasn’t the Tankard way, after
all. But I wasn’t a Tankard, was I? At least, I wasn’t yet; that
would come a bit later.

Della was the first to
return home that day. Skulked in and took herself off to her room;
there was a whiff of boyfriend trouble about her demeanour, so I
left her be. Ian was next. He looked stressed and flustered, as if
he had lost something, which he had. He had lost the boy. And it
turned out he wasn’t just any boy. More loss that I would have to
deal with. Ian kept it all in, though. There was no mention of the
boy or visiting Mum that evening. All that came out another
time.

Tony was the last one
home and there was pain in his face, pulling down his skin, making
it appear to hang off his jaw-frame.

Me and Ian
were in the back room, watching TV in silence, both waiting
for
something
to
happen. Della was still in her room, a boom of music marking her
territory.

‘Get your sister,’ Tony
said to Ian, sitting in one of the arm chairs, putting his head in
his hands, exhaling in bulk, squeezing all the air from his lungs
with one, mighty push. ‘There’s something we need to talk
about.’

When Della was back in
the room, Tony switched off the television and said a line that
would begin a long night of revelations:

‘Steven and Sharon
Tankard have been arrested,’ he told us, looking at me most of the
time, guessing I would be the one most affected. ‘They’ve killed
some boys, Scotty. I’m really sorry.’ Looking right back into his
eyes, I could see they were rimmed with red and the skin
surrounding them was patchy, sore. ‘A terrible thing, I
know.’

‘Who?’ Della asked, the
only one of us who appeared curious for this fact. If he noticed,
Tony didn’t say.

‘They’ve been identified
as two boys from Ian’s year. Not at school any more. They attacked
Justin a few months ago. Scot, Adrian thinks you might have seen
this. The police might want to speak to you, but we’re not saying
anything. We’re not involving you, okay?’

I nodded, accepting his
words, but my mind was elsewhere.

Steven and
Sharon Tankard have been arrested,
he had
said. Just two of them. What about Justin? Why hadn’t Justin been
arrested? I wanted to ask the question, but I couldn’t, could I? It
would reveal my role as voyeur of their crime. So, I kept back my
questions and hoped they would be answered in time.

Tony took in another
abrupt breath and held it for a few seconds, before letting it rush
out. He was stalling; there was something else coming.

‘Dad?’ Ian asked; there
was panic in that tone. I thought about the boy I’d seen with Ian.
Had something happened to him? Was Ian expecting to hear something
about that? ‘What is it?’

When he spoke, Tony
didn’t look at Ian; he looked at me.

‘I don’t know everything
that has gone on today. I don’t know who’s involved with what. But
there’s been a lot of things said over the last couple of days. A
lot of anger and tears. And some lies. Some covering up.’ All the
time, he was looking at me with those reddened eyes and they began
to magnify. He was crying. ‘Scot, we need to tell you the truth.
Need to tell you what happened to Theresa. What happened to
Jackie.’

Referring to
her as
Theresa
should have been the first clue; it wasn’t. I just thought it
was odd, but nothing more. But saying the other name –
saying
Jackie
–
that made me alert. It was the first time it was volunteered to me;
the first time he’d said it with the intention I’d hear.

‘Dad-.’ Ian cut in, but
Tony held up a flat hand, silencing him instantly.

‘Just remember, that
whatever I tell you, whatever is said here tonight, that we all
love you very much. Always have. Nothing has changed,
okay?’

I nodded, very slowly,
fearful of what was to come. I looked at Della and Ian. Ian was
looking into his lap. Della smiled, flatly. There were tears in her
eyes too.

‘Is Mum dead?’ I asked,
thinking it had to be that. The answer I got wasn’t quite what I
expected.

‘Yes. Your mum is dead,
Scot,’ Tony began, leaning towards me, his features and his voice
softening in tandem. ‘But she died a long time ago. You see,
Theresa isn’t your mother. At least, she’s not your birth
mother.’

As this
revelation made its way from Tony’s mouth to my ears, and from my
ears across to my brain, I looked around and tried to take in what
I now saw. Looked at my
no-longer
family
.
I saw a father, a brother and a sister who were
no longer that to me at all. Who were they then? Who were these
people I had been living with for the last thirteen
years?

‘Who am I?’ I asked, a
simple question that was repaid with a complex answer.

Within an hour, I knew it
all. My mother – my birth mother, as Tony kept referring to her, as
if giving birth was her sole contribution to my life – had died
just after I was born. Killed by a hit-and-run just outside the
Chequers public house. Emma, that was her name. Emma.

So why had I
come to live with
them?
What relation was I to my
no-longer
family?

‘Theresa is
your grandmother,’ Tony said, answering several other questions in
the process. If Mum was my grandmother then… ‘Jackie was your
father.’
Was.
He
said
was,
not
is.
We
would come back to that. Still taking in the news of my parentage,
I looked around the room again and reassessed the familial
connections. In place of siblings, I saw an aunt and an uncle. I
remembered something
Uncle
Gary had said: Jackie was Mum’s first born, but
not Dad’s. Not Tony’s. ‘Who is my grandfather?’ I asked.

I so wanted it to be Dad,
to be Tony. And I knew from the pain in his eyes, the strain in his
features that he wanted it too. His not being my dad or granddad
had another consequence: Nan Buckley wasn’t mine, either. I’d felt
all that sorrow and loss for something that wasn’t mine after
all.

‘Theresa was very young
when she had Jackie. Too young to marry. Her own parents were
furious and ashamed, didn’t want her to keep him, but she insisted.
Was headstrong. She did keep Jackie, but they didn’t stay together.
Her and-.’

‘Adrian.’ I interrupted,
said it for him. Adrian Tankard was my grandfather. Fragments over
the last few days were piecing together, making a fuller
picture.

‘Yes,’ Tony conceded.
‘Yes, Adrian is your grandfather, Scot.’

‘And you? Who are
you?’

He didn’t have an answer;
just a shrug and a face creased with years and sorrow.

My mind had
to work quickly, re-thinking my history. One family was lost,
changed, another gained and yet also lost. Justin,
Stevie-the-little-shit and Sharon: two uncles and an aunt. All lost
to me, though; their violent actions from earlier that day
guaranteeing that.
Uncle
Stevie-the-little-shit and
Auntie
Sharon arrested; the fate
of
Uncle
Justin
still undisclosed.

‘I know this
is a lot to take in. I know we should have told you, but we thought
we were protecting you.’ Tony didn’t say from
what
but I knew: they were
protecting me from Jackie. And maybe Mum had been protecting me
from the Tankards, from their trashiness, from a past she was
ashamed of.

Mum; not Mum anymore, but
Nan.

‘
Scot, do you
want to take a break?’

I shook my head at
him.

‘No, I don’t
want to stop. I want you to keep telling me,’ I insisted, feeling
shaky, feeling a little sick, too. It
was
a lot to take in, Tony was right
on that. It was too much, far too much and my mind was awash with
so many different fragments from so many different conversations,
events and memories. Nothing had changed and yet everything had
changed; again. But I couldn’t let it stop; not until it had all
been laid out before me. They might reconvene and change their
minds; or worse, change the story of my life again.

I had so many
questions, so many recollections to unravel, to re-take, to
re-think. Families to re-name and families to discover, too. I
needed to know who my mother was. So far, she was just a
hit-and-run victim called Emma. But this wasn’t my first concern.
It wasn’t the question burning away most urgently. My most pressing
need was regarding
him.

‘
Why didn’t I
live with him? Why did I live with you guys?’

Tony and Ian shared a
brief look; a look that said there was history to tell.

‘
He just
agreed it was best, Scot. Best for everyone. Best for
you.’

‘
Didn’t he
want me?’

Another look between
father and son.

‘
Trust me,
Scot, it really was best,’ Tony said, doing his utmost to reassure
me, but not answering my question. I decided to move on to another
one instead.

‘What happened to
him?’

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.