I stood there straining my ears for the sound of distressed dog and he told me to get down and put my face right up to the pipe. ‘Call his name. Go on.’ So there I am, down on my hands and knees, shouting, Beaver, Beaver, all the time peering into the dark anticipating the scrabble of tiny claws. When nothing happened I turned my head to ask what he thought we should do next and blow me, he had his tackle out. It looked exactly like he was yanking a plucked chicken head-first out of his flies. ‘’Ave a shufti at this, Katherine,’ he leered. I was out of that yard like a pinball off a spring. I still can’t go into a butcher’s round Christmas time.
I ran straight back home in tears, and Poll was the nicest she’s ever been to me. She made hot chocolate and got the biscuit barrel down and we cleared the whole stack of Dogman’s Kit-Kat misshapes between us. I didn’t even have to go back to school that day, which was a major coup.
‘I keep telling you it’s a dangerous world out there,’ said Poll through a mouthful of wafer. ‘Let’s get that packet of Jammy Dodgers open an’ all.’
One time we had someone keep ringing up then putting the phone down. You’d go, Who is it? Who is it? And there’d be silence, it was dead eerie. Then a few weeks later the nasty language started; I never heard it myself but Poll told me bits and pieces, stuff to do with underwear mainly. She’s not one to bother normally, hard as nails our Poll, but it did shake her up. She used to tense when the phone rang. A few times she said, Don’t answer it, so I didn’t. But one time she picked up and went white, must have been more than knickers. She put the receiver to my mouth but with her fingers over the earpiece, and told me what to say: I had to shout, ‘Leave us alone and get a life!’ I enjoyed that. Most excitement I’d had in ages. And the best thing was, the calls stopped.
So Bank Top becomes the world in miniature, except it’s even worse Outside with serial killers and exploding skylines and famine and anthrax-in-a-bottle.
‘Yes, it’s a sad world,’ Maggie, Poll’s bingo-friend, was saying last week over dinner. ‘All our age are dropping like flies. I went to three funerals last month. And May Powell died last week, it was in t’ paper.’
‘May Powell? May Powell as we were at school with?’ Poll looked up from her soup.
‘That’s the one. Th’ undertaker’s daughter. She was right snooty at school, do you remember? Not that I’d wish her dead. Does anyone want that last crumpet?’
Poll shoved the plate across the cloth towards her. ‘She used say her father put her in one of his coffins if she’d been nowty, and closed the lid on top of her.’
Dogman snorted his tea, as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
‘Eeh, and they’d go complaining to Social Services these days for summat like that.’ Poll shook her head despairingly. ‘You’re not allowed to punish your child at all without somebody poking their nose in. Then they wonder why the kids are running wild. In them days, a parent had some authority. And really, it didn’t do the children any lasting harm, did it?’
‘No, said Maggie. ‘Of course it didn’t.’
‘So how did May die?’
‘Committed suicide.’
‘My life’s been full of tragedy too,’ Dogman piped up. ‘Hang about.’ He pulled out a hanky and blew his nose hard to clear out all the tea, deliberately making a trumpet noise.
‘Has it, love?’
‘Oh, aye.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘I lost my father really young, in an accident.’
Maggie looked at Poll in surprise. ‘What happened, Dickie?’
‘It was terrible. You know he used to work at the brewery?’
‘I didn’t, no.’
‘Well, he did. He were in charge of one of t’ vats. Any-road, the big paddle they use for stirring got stuck, so he climbed up to see if he could free it. And he fell in.’
Poll put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, Dickie. I never knew that.’
Dogman nodded glumly. ‘My mother was distraught. She said to t’ foreman, “Were it at least a quick death?” And the foreman said, “Well it would have been, but he got out three times to go to t’ toilet.” ’
‘Ooh, Dickie,’ chuckled Poll. ‘You’re a caution.’
I tell you, we have some hilarious times in this house.
Life seems to be particularly dangerous for our family around the time of our coming of age. We get the key of the door and the hammer of doom at the same time.
The week after his twenty-first birthday, Poll’s father lost his arm up to the elbow in a nasty bleach-works accident. We have the photographic evidence; a mild-looking man with sunken eyes and one flat sleeve stuffed into his pocket. The hand he still has is resting on a little table and there’s a roll of paper poking out of his fist. ‘His Certificate in Textile Technology,’ Poll pronounces as if it were a Nobel Prize.
Then of course there was Roger, my dad, eighteen and smashed to pieces in the car that was his very special birthday present, a scarlet Mini Metro Vanden Plas. We all know whose fault that was. (Well, actually we don’t, because although it was mostly my mad evil mother having a fit and grabbing the wheel just as a juggernaut was coming in the opposite direction, there’s also the school of thought that if he hadn’t been bought the car in the first place – which was Vince’s bright idea – then the accident could never have happened.) So cars are deadly too and that’s why I can never, ever have driving lessons because I will either kill myself or some other bugger, in fact best to stay off the roads altogether if possible (Poll once saw a schoolboy run over by a Selnec bus).
Poll’s Aunty Cissie lost her fiancé in the war a fortnight before she came of age; she and her sister were actually cutting up old sheets to make streamers when they got the telegram. She’s in her eighties now and she never had another sweetheart, so that was her life over with.
Poll herself got through her twenty-second year unscathed but only, she reckons, because she had a premonition that she’d drown, a recurring dream from childhood that she was stranded on a bare rock with a towering wave about to engulf her. She went to a clairvoyant in Blackpool who confirmed it, so she’s made sure she’s always stayed well away from water, and thus has cheated Fate.
And therefore because I’m almost eighteen now, and I’ve had no helpful dreams about avoiding accidents, I ought to be particularly nervous. I could leave Bank Top if I wanted to, I have somewhere to go. But is it a trick? Maybe Destiny has got something unpleasant lined up for me. Sometimes I lie awake at nights gripped with a fear I can’t put a name to.
I don’t know which is worse; fear or boredom.
Funnily enough Poll thinks she’s going to die this year as well. ‘Threescore and ten I am. Living on Borrowed Time.’
Yes, well, I think. Play your cards right. It could be arranged.
*
There are nights I wake up having dreamed about her and wonder then if maybe in those same hours she dreamed about me too. But the detail is never very positive. I’m always crying. Sometimes I’m covered in blood. Once I had her father’s head in a holdall that I couldn’t put down.
The need to let her know is a physical pull. It’s a constant battle. But I have no substance in her life. I’m useless, as useless as a ghost.
What I really wanted for my eighteenth birthday:
– two parents
– a less stupid-sounding voice
– social aplomb
– the tiny bottom half of Courtney Cox
I don’t look for a card from my mother any more, haven’t done since I was fourteen, in fact I make a conscious effort
not
to. Which is quite mature of me because Poll still checks for one from my dad and he died in 1984.
There were seven cards, plus a small victory, on the table when I came down in the morning.
On Your 18th
from Poll and Winston. Picture of a yacht on the front, a design Hallmark clearly intended for a male, although Poll’s sight being what it is I suppose I should be grateful I didn’t get
With Deepest Sympathy
. The victory was attached to the back of the card by a hinge of Sellotape: two packets of tan tights, reinforced panty, about forty denier by the look of them. ‘Well, now you’re eighteen,’ sighed Poll.
Getting her to admit my real age is an achievement in itself. In Poll’s benighted world, it’s the Fifties and I’ve been eleven for the past seven years. I have a print frock for best that’s like a sack with arm-holes cut in it, and the rest of the time it’s A-line polyester skirts and bargain knitwear. On my legs I’ve been wearing navy knee socks, pulling them up and over my knee-joints trying to make them look like they might be tights, holding them in place with a double elastic band. In the summer it’s white ankle socks which is worse because I’ve got the calves of a rugby player, hairs and all. Some nights when I can’t sleep I’ve sat up snipping the wiriest hairs off with my nail clippers but they only grow back, twice as fierce. I even have a hair that grows out of my belly, and two on my right nipple. Deformed. Sometimes I think I’m too revolting to live.
I’d been asking for tights since I started in the sixth form. ‘What d’you want them things for?’ said Poll the first time I raised the possibility. ‘You’ll only put your fingernails through them, you’ll have them laddered in five minutes. Do you think I’m made of money?’ No, I nearly said, I think you’re made of horse-fly bites and Parazone.
Have a COOL birthday
– Card two was a Winston-type Westie wearing a party hat and sunglasses. Aunty Cissie’s a complete sucker for anthropomorphism. You should see the walls of her room at the Home, doggies and kittens done up in all manner of garb. No children, see. Sad but vomit-inducing nevertheless.
Birthday Girl!
– Dogman’s was a flimsy market-job, cartoon of a blonde with a Barbie waist-span and orange minidress.
On Your Special Day
– Maggie had left a card with a plastic gold key stuck to the front. ‘She’s having one of them cameras up her bum next Tuesday,’ Poll reminded me, ‘so it was good of her to remember.’
Across the Miles I Send to You Happy Thoughts, Good Wishes too –
said Great-Auntie Jean in a fancy embossed affair with a silk tassel down the back. ‘We have a beautiful new granddaughter, a little Sagittarian,’ I read out to Poll.
‘I know. I saw.’ Poll gestured at her magnifier propped up against the mantel clock. ‘And do you know what they’ve called it? Fat Louse. They’ve some daft ideas, these Australians.’
The baby’s actually
FAY LOUISE
but I didn’t reckon it was worth the argument. Jean never forgets my birthday, even though she escaped to another hemisphere before I was born. Far too good for us, says Poll. But I’ve seen an old photo of a plump little girl, cardigan, print frock and sandals, sitting on a stone wall feeding chaffinches. ‘Inverness 1947’ is written on the back. Little Jean has a beaming face, and she doesn’t look stuck-up at all.
Happy Birthday and here’s hoping for a question on Tragic Heroines!!
– Rebecca-my-only-mate-from-school clearly did not want me to forget the Modules next week, as if I would, climbing the walls with fear.
Congratulations on your coming-of-age
– Lastly a postcard of the Brontës, from Miss Dragon and Miss Mouse at the library; I was really touched.
Cissie and Poll had included money in their cards, although I knew that would have to go straight in my savings account, blink and you miss it. Dogman had dropped off a brown-paper bag containing a pair of ‘gold’ heart-shaped earrings, though they were for pierced ears and I’m not allowed those in case I get septicaemia and die. There was a pen set from Maggie, and a book token from the librarians.
But the best present was waiting on the doorstep.
I cleared the torn wrapping paper away and went to get my anorak from the hall.
‘If you’re goin’ out, tek the dog. He’s beside hisself,’ shouted Poll from the living room where she was standing, skirt up, toasting the backs of her legs purple against the gas fire.
So I zipped up my anorak, clipped Winston’s lead onto his collar, opened the door and nearly went sprawling over the black binbag that was on the step.
‘Have you got your scarf?’ Poll again. ‘And you’ll need a hat an’ all. It cuts right through you, that wind.’
‘Good idea,’ I said, thinking fast because I’d spotted the envelope stuck to the side:
FOR KATHERINE
–
A
SECRET
BIRTHDAY SURPRISE
. ‘I’ll get my grey cardi too. Hang on, Winston.’
I grabbed the bag by the ears and shut the door in Winston’s snout. Then I galloped up the stairs before Poll could see me and threw the bag on my bed. I ripped open the plastic and gaped.
Clothes. Not old jumble; freshly laundered by the smell of them, one or two items on hangers even. I drew out a tunic top in maroon, with one of those keyhole necks and a silver border to the sleeves. The label was sticking out at the back: XL. Heart beating, I pulled open the wardrobe door so I could see myself in the full-length mirror, and held the silky fabric against me. It looked amazing. I was a different person.
I laid it carefully on the bed, and pulled out a matching pair of wide-legged trousers. They formed the sort of suit you’d probably wear to, I don’t know, an awards evening, or a posh dinner or something. Next there was a red velvet basque – God, a basque. I’d seen one like it on a poster for
Moulin Rouge
. It wasn’t really underwear, more a party top. (Some party like I’d never been to, obviously.) Then I found a stretchy black tube skirt, very long, very vampish. Lastly there was a sexy purple V-neck sweater, again in my size. I was sweating with excitement by the time the bag was empty, and my fingers left prints on the note as I read it again and turned it over to check the back. No clue. The flap had been stuck down, but when I tore it open, the white envelope was empty.
‘Are you goin’ or what?’ Poll yelled up the stairs. ‘Because this dog’s all set to soil the carpet. I thought you were only gettin’ your cardigan. You could have bloody knitted one by now.’
There was a wheezing scuffling sound as Winston tried to start up the stairs, followed by a choke as Poll dragged him back again.
‘
Coming!
’ I said and scooped the clothes up into a bundle. I threw them to the back of the wardrobe and closed the door on them; I’d see to them later. Poll was waiting by the newel post.