Disappearing Home (13 page)

Dad is waiting for me around the corner. He takes the money and takes me home on the bus without saying another word.

Once we are home I watch him take out his old shoebox from the cupboard under the kitchen sink. Usually he plugs in the record player, puts on his favourite song,
Hey, Good Lookin'.
But the men took the record player away in the van, so he whistles the tune. Inside the shoebox he keeps shoe polish, an old grey towel full of holes, a polish brush, a razor blade, soap, a jar of Brylcreem and a bottle of Old Spice. I call it his Saturday all-dolled-up box; that's when he uses it. He gets a clean shirt from his bedroom and irons it
on a towel in the kitchen, hangs it up on a wire hanger on the kitchen door.

At the sink he'll wet his chin first, soap it all the way up to his black sideburns, then slice through it with the razor blade. If he cuts his skin he'll say,
bastard,
patch it up with a bit of toilet paper. Hair next; he'll scoop out the Brylcreem with his fingers, rub it into his palms and flick his quiff into place, smooth the sides back with what's left on his palm. His shoes are polished and buffed before he goes near the shirt. Trousers on, shoes on, shirt tucked in, belt tightened, there's only one thing left to do: tap the Old Spice onto his chin.

He's at the living-room door, jiggling into his jacket. From the mantelpiece, key, cigarettes, matches into the jacket pocket, money from the paper bag pushed into his trouser pocket. He leaves the paper bag on the mantelpiece. Checks the time on the clock, rubs his hands together and heads for the front door. ‘Don't open the door to anyone, especially that Wainwright prick.'

I don't tell him that Mr Wainwright came to see me in school. He told me he's taking time out from being a social worker to travel on a boat with his brother. Somebody else will be taking over, he said. In the meantime Mr Merryville's the one I'm to talk to.

‘You hear me?' he says. ‘You hear what I said about Wainwright?'

‘I heard you.'

‘He been bothering you?'

‘He's always in school. I see him every day, nearly.'

He presses a finger to my lips. ‘He tries to talk to you, make sure you keep that shut.'

I hear the front door slam. I like being home on my own. He won't be back for hours. I check the paper bag on the mantelpiece next to Nan's photograph. He hasn't left a penny for Mum. She'll go
mad. Maybe she'll go to Eileen's house and take me with her this time. I think about Eileen's house and just me and Mum together. I hope he spends the lot. Once Mum gets angry, though, it's like she's been saving it all up in her head. She shouts and screams at him until he loses his temper as well.

And then he'll hit her again like he has done a couple of times now, since Nan moved. He doesn't say sorry. He lights two cigarettes at once and gives one to her, sits up at the table to eat his tea with us. I feel like shaking her, screaming at her, can't you see what he's doing? He's no good. Instead, I say nothing because I'm just a kid and what do I know?

‘I
f anyone asks, you're fourteen. And for fuck's sake, don't drop anything.'

I've got a Saturday job, opposite Mum's stall in St Michael's Market. I collect empty plates at Jimmy's Café.

Everybody takes two sugars in their tea and plenty of brown sauce on their bacon. The last Saturday girl got the sack for dropping things. ‘A bag of nerves, she was,' Jimmy the owner tells me. ‘So, be careful. Don't mess up.' He shouts across the café to a woman. ‘Edna, this is the new girl, Robyn, so be nice.'

I look across at Edna; watch the slow way she looks me up and down. Edna has hair the colour of tomato sauce. It is pinned up high on top of her head. Her face is wide around the cheeks and when she talks her small mouth looks like it's sinking. Jimmy asks me if I can write, hands me a little pad and a pencil so that I can take down the orders. He lifts a yellow overall off a hook behind the counter. ‘Here, might be a bit big, but it'll do. Oh, and you get to choose your dinner for free.'

Jimmy lifts the flap open on a little glass box. Slides chocolate éclairs, custard pies and ring doughnuts inside. Music plays on
the radio, there's the smell of bacon frying, and me, in the middle of a world with nothing but grown-ups that aren't Mum or Dad. I look around the café and feel a lovely flutter in my belly. This is all mine.

As soon as a plate is empty I clear it away, to where Edna waits behind the counter. I'm not allowed behind the counter. If my cloth needs rinsing, I hand it to Edna. Only Jimmy is allowed to use the till. I watch him spread his fingers wide across the buttons; the price pops up in a window at the top. Two white tickets with numbers printed in black ink. ‘That's just seven and a half pence,' he says to a lady. He counts out the change in his own hand before he gives it to her.

Jimmy says the customer is always right, which means we can't mess up. Edna rolls her eyes. I watch, and if somebody gives him a note, a pound, five or a ten, he sits it on a little shelf above the drawer. After he's given the change, he watches the customer walk away. Then he puts it inside the till. Above his head there's a handwritten sign on the wall.
NO MISTAKES CAN BE RECTIFIED AFTER YOU LEAVE
. Edna isn't allowed to use the till. If Jimmy goes to the toilet and somebody gets up to pay, Edna smiles at them and says, ‘Won't be a minute.'

I've never heard the name Edna before. When we get quiet, I use my pencil and pad to jumble up the letters of her name to see if there's a better one hidden inside. In Edna I find: nead, dane, ande, dean and aden. I like dean best, but that's a boy's name, like Dean Martin the singer.

Edna cracks eggs into a massive black frying pan, chews on a stick of Juicy Fruit. Blows out big bubbles and says
shit 'n' hell
when fat splats at her skin, thickens two pieces of toast in Stork. It doesn't sink in. She picks up my pad. ‘What you writing?'

I snatch it back. ‘Nothing.'

‘Take this to table five,' she says. ‘Don't let Jimmy see you doing nothing. If you can't find anything that needs doing, get the brush out and pretend.'

I feel like I've been here for hours, then I see Mum at the counter. ‘All right, Jimmy, lad, can she take her break with me?'

He nods.

We walk away and Mum lights a cigarette. ‘Don't wait to be told, Robyn, standing there like gormless Gail. Look around, see what needs doing and do it. Once they have to start telling you, it's all over.'

By the time I get back to Jimmy's Café, I'm feeling like I've already messed up. The frying pan lies face down on the draining board. Two pans of scouse bubble on the back oven rings. Six jars of beetroot stand to attention next to a basket full of crusty cobs. The steam from the pans makes Edna's mascara streak down her face. She shoves pies and pasties into a glass-fronted oven, brushes bits of pastry off her hands. Unwraps a fresh stick of chewy and folds it into her mouth, slowly sharpening her tongue.

She sees me watching through the glass. ‘Clear and wipe table five then take table eight's order.' As she speaks, drops of spit fall onto the pasties and pies and I know what I won't be eating for dinner.

Smelly red ashtrays with
TETLEY
written on the sides sit in the middle of every table. I lift one up and it slurps away from the plastic tablecloth. I wipe it clean and take table eight's order. ‘One bacon butty and a cup of tea please, love.' He's got hardly any teeth and wears thick glasses. He hands me the coins and I give them to Jimmy. Edna has a bowl of bacon with a plate on top already cooked. I give her the order and she takes a new tub of Stork out of the fridge. It's rock hard. She tries to spread it across
the bread but the bread curls up in the middle. When she takes the knife away, the bread has a hole in it.

Edna tries again but the same thing happens. She squirts brown sauce over the bread anyway and cuts it in half. ‘Here,' she says to me. ‘Take this over to Mr Magoo.'

The man lifts the bacon butty to his mouth, and it falls to bits. Pieces of bacon drop down onto the plate. He looks over at Edna. Stands up, makes his way to the counter and shoves the plate at her. ‘I can't eat this,' he says. ‘It's fallen apart.'

‘Saves you the problem of chewing then,' Edna says.

‘I'm not here to be insulted.' The man walks away, bumps his leg on a chair. ‘I'll take my custom where it's appreciated.'

Edna tips his tea away down the sink and watches him leave, blows him a tiny goodbye bubble. It bursts on her lips. She looks at his plate then at me. ‘Clear that away.'

I hand her the plate and she grabs my wrist. ‘Say nothing, or I'll cut your water off.'

She doesn't have to scare me. I'd never say a word.

‘You hear me?'

I nod.

Then she goes and says it again. ‘I mean it. Say nothing. Or I'll cut your water off.'

Like I need telling twice, like I don't know how to pretend I see nothing at all. Nothing at all gets bigger, as big as a mountain. Until that's the only thing you can see. Edna makes sure she sees cluttered tables before I do, stands on her tiptoes and shouts across at me. ‘Table two needs clearing soon as.' Cracks her chewy. I wish it would stick her lips together.

I get to sit down at an empty table for my dinner. I choose scouse with beetroot and a crusty cob with butter. Jimmy dishes it up for me and brings it to my table.

While I eat I watch Dad in Mum's queue. He buys two ounces of salted peanuts, pockets the change. When he turns to leave he looks straight through me; he doesn't even wave. I carry on eating, act like it doesn't matter. Mum looks across at me, throws me a smile. I look away, carry on eating like I haven't seen.

I don't want to clear tables. I want a go at using the spatula, at sliding it under the white of an egg and lowering it onto a plate. I want a go at stabbing sausages with a fork; stand over them while they change, from a sickly pink colour to a rich golden brown, the smoky smell of them cooking. I want to feel hot fat on my skin and say
shit'n hell.
I want to stir beans with a wooden spoon, roll the spoon around in the pan until it changes to orange. I want to make things change. Once the heat's turned up, everything changes.

Jimmy has the reddest face and reddest nose I've ever seen, like his body is cooking his face. The purple and red cracks across his cheeks make him look like a volcano about to erupt. Jimmy twiddles with the dial on the radio. He shouts, ‘
Come on you reds.'
Edna rolls her eyes, says she's going to the toilet. Looks back at me and shouts, ‘Floor.'

I finish wiping the tables, get out the brush. The backs of my legs are hurting, my hands are red and blotchy from the soapy cloth and my shoes pinch. The man with no teeth is back at the counter talking to Jimmy. ‘I'm not paying for something I didn't eat,' he's saying. ‘And that puffed-up cow insulted me.'

Jimmy looks at me. ‘What puffed-up cow?'

‘Not her, the one cracking chewy. Bread falling apart it was, disgusting. Nobody would eat that.'

Jimmy points to the sign above his till, reads it to the man.
NO MISTAKES CAN BE RECTIFIED AFTER YOU LEAVE.

‘Sorry, mate, nothing I can do after you've left.'

The man throws Jimmy a filthy look, walks away.

Edna comes back from the toilet, reeking of perfume. ‘For Christ's sake, Edna,' Jimmy says. ‘You smell like poison.'

‘You smell like shit. Hear me complainin'?'

Jimmy picks up a dishcloth and swipes it at her. He laughs a big belly laugh that makes me decide to like him. Jimmy explains about the man coming back, and how he wasn't pleased with his bacon butty. ‘Robyn dropped it,' Edna whispers. ‘I saw her, clumsy sod, but pretended I never, to give her a chance, like.'

M
um and Dad are in the pub. They won't be long, Mum said. ‘I'll fetch you curry and chips back as a treat.' Outside, it's staying lighter for longer. We've had a week of April showers, fat drops of rain that soaked everything. But now the weather's dry there's a new smell in the air that makes my skin fizz, makes everything feel wrong and swollen on the inside. I open the front door even though I'm not supposed to. I climb up the landing wall a bit and stretch out my fingers towards the washing line. I can almost reach it now.

I hear my name being called. Bernie is in our square riding a bike. It has a white basket on the front. He looks up and sees me. ‘Look what somebody threw away.'

I laugh. ‘That's a woman's bike.'

‘So? A bike's a bike. Want a takey?'

‘Can't.'

‘Want me to come up?'

I shake my head.

He rides off.

I strum a tune with my fingers on the warm wall. It tickles.
Before long my palms are chalky white. Mrs Naylor is at the chute. My palms are tingling and I wipe them down my dark blue dress.

‘Look at the state,' Mrs Naylor says to me. I look where she's looking. My dress is covered in chalk. ‘If your father could see you, he'd give you a crack.'

I toss my head away, look over the landing. Bernie is back in the square without the bike. In no time he stands next to me on the landing and I shiver.

‘Cold?' he asks.

I nod.

‘Coming out?'

Mrs Naylor is looking. I stoop so Bernie's face hides mine. ‘Can't, got to wait for my mum and dad to get back.'

‘Where are they?'

Mrs Naylor leans her head to the side like she's playing peek-a-boo.

‘On a message,' I whisper.

Bernie nods at the open door. He whispers back.

‘They'll be ages.'

Mrs Naylor is next to Bernie. ‘A proper little street girl, aren't you? Talking to lads in broad daylight at your age, you'll be sorry. I suppose it's only to be expected with the likes of you lot.' She walks away.