White Goods (7 page)

Back at the
crematorium, when we were supposed to be getting into the car,
something happened to me. Something happened to my legs, like an
impulse; a trigger had set them going. And, before I realised it, I
was running.
Scot! Scotty! Where are you
going?
Running without thinking, automatic
pilot, running out of the car park.
Somebody go after that boy! Ian, after him!
Running, running, running, the world a blur, like
the view of the countryside when you look out of a car window; a
whirr of blue, green, grey and brown. Beyond the car park, there
was the main road and across from that a derelict house that led to
wasteland behind that. That’s where I headed, without a mind for
the road or the traffic on it. Not hearing the beeps of cars, or
Ian’s voice calling, or Ian’s voice fading, as he lost
me.

The wasteland was an
unofficial dump. Overgrown with short trees and brambles and
populated with broken fridges and dirty mattresses. At least,
that’s what I recall with my memory. Places to hide. Places to be
held. I remember going there with Justin, and his older sister,
Sharon, and finding a damp pile of dirty mags dumped in an
abandoned bath and being teased. But on that day, there was nobody
there. Not to start with. Not until I stopped running, caught my
breath. That’s when I noticed her. It took me a few minutes to
figure out who she was.

‘
It’s Scot,
isn’t it?’ she said, smiling a bit, but looking sad, and then it
came back to me. A name on the back of an old photograph, ripped in
two; a name occasionally whispered.

Shirley White.

‘
You remember
me?’ she added, and I nodded: yes, I did, I was certain of it, but
it was a vague memory. Just fragments really.

I kept looking at her.
Long navy skirt, black flat shoes, with a small bow at the front,
white plain blouse. Big curly red hair, tucked behind her ear on
the left side. The sight of her had somehow sobered my feelings;
stopped me running, made me think about what I was
doing.

‘
You gonna
head back?’ she asked after a bit, her head bobbing in the
direction I had come.

I nodded, turned away and
made my way back: through the dump, past the derelict house and
onto the pavement, ready to cross the road to the car park
opposite, where Dad would be about to lose his rag - his way of
showing his feelings.

Ian met me at the
pavement, bent slightly, hands on his knees, breath ragged, like
he’d been running too. Shirley had disappeared by then; Ian didn’t
get to see her at all.

‘
Don’t do that
again,’ he said, taking my hand, but not saying another word. We
crossed the road, dodging cars as we went. Once across, Dad grabbed
me in a sudden but short hug.

The small drama was
over.

‘
You better
now?’ Ian asked me later, back at the house, at the
wake.

‘
Yeah, bit,’ I
said.

Feeling my stomach rumble,
I decided to get something to eat.

In the back
room, a selection of food had been out on our dining table.
A spread,
Mum would have
said. Quiche, savoury biscuits, cheese, pickled onions still in the
jar, fish paste and ham sandwiches, prawn cocktail crisps, peanuts,
cheese and pineapple and sausages on sticks. A fruitcake sat in the
middle of it all. Like a party. A celebration.

‘
Of life!’
someone had slurred, raising a bottle of beer, but it wasn’t true.
More lies being told. A death had occurred, not a life. She’d died;
was dead. Gone. Not alive or lost or any of those other things.
Just ended.

I picked up a sandwich,
but it was already curling at the edges, so I put it back. My
stomach could rumble on.

The Tankards had come back
to our house, minus the controversial Tina.

‘
She’s not
house trained,’ Adrian Tankard had said, his dirty belly laugh in
tow. Adrian was Justin’s dad. Chrissie Tankard – his mum - gave her
husband
a look
. A
look that could have been Mum looking at Dad; one of her silences
that said it all. Which was funny, because Mum didn’t like
Chrissie; hadn’t approved of her.

You’re no
different from us, Theresa Buckley!
A
snippet of a conversation that came back to me; one of many
conversations
not-for-little-ears.

Sharon Tankard
– their daughter – was attracting attention as she tried to scab
cigarettes off other guests. Her parents said nothing. Adrian
Tankard was too busy forcing down drinks and forcing out big hearty
laughs. Chrissie, when she wasn’t giving the latter
looks
, was taking in our
house – the house of the woman who thought she was better than her.
You could tell that Chrissie was wondering where Mum got her ideas
from.

‘
Above her
station,’ she’d muttered at one point, I’m certain.

I thought of
saying something, of blurting out that she was disrespectful, but I
didn’t. Adrian Tankard was a big scary man, even Dad thought that,
despite being
in business
together. And Justin was my best friend and I
didn’t have that many friends full stop – so I couldn’t just attack
his mum and get away with it. In any case, Justin had suddenly
appeared at my side, trying to distract me.

‘
Shall we do
something?’ he asked, hands in his pockets.

‘
Like
what?’

He shrugged.

In mine and
Ian’s bedroom, Justin went through Ian’s record collection, whilst
I sat on the edge of my bed, near the door. Listening out. Ian
wouldn’t be happy
‘having that poof go
through my stuff,’
as he would have put
it.

Justin hadn’t been in
there before – a first. He wasn’t normally allowed in our house,
just like I wasn’t allowed in his, according to Mum’s rules. I
watched him taking in the grey carpet and green and brown curtains.
Debbie Harry was on the wall, but he hardly gave her a glance. Then
he saw Ian’s 45s and he was lost in them.

‘
Be careful,’
I said, knowing how precious Ian was about them, knowing he really
wouldn’t want Justin in there, touching them. Not sure even Dad
would, let alone Mum and her rules.

‘
Let’s put one
on,’ Justin said, holding up one in a black paper sleeve, no
picture cover.

Ian had a mono
record player that packed up like a small briefcase. It even had a
handle so you could carry it around. I did that once, pretending I
was important, a bank manager or something, but I hadn’t done it up
properly and the lid fell off, the arm swinging back and the needle
had to be replaced.
Leave it alone, right?
Just don’t touch my stuff.

Ian’s singles
were in two fake-leather boxes, with a lid, a clasp and a lock. A-N
in one box, O-Z in the other. I was allowed to keep mine in there
too, but I only had a few and, after the bank manager incident, I
was only allowed to play them
under-supervision.

Justin had
picked out ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ - one of mine. Mum had liked
that one; it was one of the reasons I bought it – to win a bit of
favour, get on side. And to piss Della off a bit.
‘Oh, not that one! Mum! Muuuuum! Tell him to turn
it off.’
The day I bought it, I just
played it over and over, just as Della had with
Gimme Gimme Gimme.

‘
Give her a
taste of her own medicine,’ I’d said to Ian.

‘
Just don’t
ruin the needle,’ was all he’d said in return.

I’d managed to scratch it
quite a bit by over-playing it and it jumped a bit in the middle,
messing up the part where the kids sing. Justin took it off, played
the b-side, but you could see he wasn’t interested any more. And it
wasn’t as good – the b-side.

‘
Where’s Tina
then?’ I asked, thinking a conversation was necessary.

‘
Dad left her
in the truck,’ Justin said, working his way through O-Z again. All
of Ian’s single covers were in little plastic sleeves that
protected them, so there was a flicking sound as Justin scanned
them again.

The Tankards had a white
flatbed that the family travelled in. I’d been in it a few times.
With Tina too. And Mum had something to say about the marks she’d
left on my trousers.

It was weird
being upstairs, with the wake below, bubbling away like homemade
brew, about to spill over; explode into the rest of our house. (I
knew about home-brew because Dad had made some bitter one year and
it ruined the front room carpet.
‘Why you
had to do it in there, Tony…’)
I felt it
all getting bigger, spilling out of our small house, like that
story where the porridge keeps on coming, making its unstoppable
way down the street. The smells made their way upstairs, too:
smoke, drink, perfumes, sweat. And there were conversations too,
just snatches - ‘To a grand lady!’ ‘The price you pay for that,
though…’ ‘A quick clip, that’s all they need…’ – leaking through
the doors, creeping up and up.

Justin picked
out more singles:
Tragedy, Video Killed
the Radio Star, Twelfth of Never
– for a
second I was back on that caravan holiday again. Ian was singing on
the stage, dappled by mirrorball reflections; Mum in her pale blue
wedding two-piece. And later: what I saw later. I didn’t mean to
start crying. Didn’t realise it was gonna happen until it did. Just
a few sobs and I didn’t really hear myself until the record
stopped. The needle slid right across the middle of the 45 and made
me sober up. I jumped up to lift up the arm and to save the single
getting scratched any further. It was one of Ian’s: he’d kill
me.

Justin looked up at me,
concentrating a bit, like he was searching for comforting words.
Thinking he’d found them, he opened his mouth.

‘
Shall we get
our whatsits out?’ he said.

Back downstairs, the
celebrations were overwhelming. Dad or someone got the stereo going
and it was Elvis booming through the speakers. Someone else had
raided the sideboard in the front room and bottles of whiskey,
sherry and even advocat had been dragged through to the back, all
dished out in glasses of varying sizes. Ashtrays were overflowing
and crisps and peanuts were being crushed into the carpet tiles as
people started dancing.

‘
You ok?’ Ian
asked me yet again, once I was back downstairs, and I instantly
blushed. ‘Sure?’

Ian had come looking for
me, coming through our bedroom door just seconds after Justin had
made his suggestion; saving me from having to submit a
response.

We were squashed in the
corner of the back room, by the cupboard under the
stairs.

‘
Yeah, fine,’
I said.

He didn’t mention the
singles that Justin had left across the floor, but I was certain it
would come later.

Justin had put
his peculiar request in a few times before and I was close to
running out of reasons not to join in. Thing is, Justin wasn’t easy
to say ‘no’ to, but I’d viewed the whole thing as a game and so far
I had come up with good excuses.
‘My mum’s
coming in any second now.’ ‘Your sister’s in the house.’ ‘I think I
heard a gun.’ ‘There’s a man in the bushes, watching.’

I wasn’t worried about
Justin being pervy. (Being one of the greatly misunderstood myself,
I rarely made these assumptions about others, even when I should
have.) It was just that he was so eager to get his out, I knew he’d
have a big one. And I was certain I didn’t.

‘
You sure
you’re ok?’ Ian was double-triple checking, not sure how to read
me
on-this-momentous-day.
He was still coming out with all this grown up,
wordy stuff.

‘
Yep.’

‘
Ok. But after
today, yeah?’ he said, just half a sentence that told me there was
more to come. ‘After today, your mate keeps off my stuff,
yeah?’

I knew it would come, that
he’d have something to say, but his voice was softer.
Understanding, I guess. We were changing. Maybe it was just for
today, but something told me it was for good. Things were different
after all.

Sorry for your
loss.

But some things were
better lost, I reckoned.

The
party
in-memory-of-that-lovely-woman
kept
on going; neighbours and friends who’d been at work popped in,
bringing cans of beer. Someone brought a bunch of daffodils: Mrs
Winters, an old lady with a gammy leg, who somehow did a
house-cleaning round and lived six doors down.

‘
Picked them
from the crematorium,’ she said, handing them to Della with a
smile. ‘Ain’t they beautiful?’

Cherryade appeared from
somewhere and then someone handed me a tenner, suggesting I got
some chips or something, as the buffet was running a bit low. One
of Dad’s mates. I took the money. It seemed an odd request, but
suddenly I felt like chips, the smell of fat and vinegar, and a
breather from all the smoke and sweat.

I sneaked away, wanting
the time alone, the freedom. Ian was busy being slapped on the back
by Dad, his turn to be in favour. Della had the attention of some
chap who had his back to me; I wasn’t sure who. But, no one was
going to miss me for a bit, so I just slipped away to do my
errand.