Blood Relatives (8 page)

‘Yeuchh!’

I gobbed onto t’ floor, threw t’ spoon into t’ pot, slammed on t’ cold tap and sluiced out my mouth. Julia hadn’t stirred. I dropped a knife into t’ sink. She slept on. She must have been totally out of it. I picked up the pan and let it clatter onto t’ flagstone floor. Stew splattered and oozed away like fresh cow shit. Julia didn’t move. Friggin’ junkies. Waking the dead would have been easier. I left Julia to her druggie dreams and cut down t’ stairs and out through t’ steel door, letting it slam shut behind me.

Outside, the breeze wor blowing an early-dawn chill and some ravens wor making a racket. I headed down t’ steep hill toward t’ junction. Just then, all t’ street lights went out.

I’d expected to find ’em all still tucked up. I wor miffed to find Mother seated at the kitchen table in her nightgown. She’d been pasting Green Shield stamps into books. She didn’t lick the stamps, cos Granddad Frank once told her that the glue wor made from boiled horse bones. Rather, she dipped them in a shallow saucer of water. Her jaw wor set, her cheeks pale, her lips colourless.

‘So, the wanderer returns.’

I set my key down on t’ table.

‘You look a sight,’ she said, to my back. I didn’t reply.

I woke late, fuzzy-headed, daylight beaming through t’ ciggie burn in t’ curtains. I lay there a while going over yesterday in my mind, thinking about t’ skinhead, Tad, or whatever he called himsen. Short for what? Tadpole? Not unless that wor a nickname from when he wor a nipper. Outside, I could hear Mitch hammering in t’ garage. Sis wor in her room, hoofing it to Heatwave’s ‘Boogie Nights’ and singing along tunelessly.

I got dressed and took in my new look in t’ wardrobe mirror. My hair had flattened, and it stuck out in all t’ wrong places from where I’d slept on it. I spat into my palms and teased it back into shape.

Downstairs, I found Mother daydreaming out t’ kitchen window. She mustn’t have slept, cos the washing wor done and already flapping on t’ line. I opened the bread bin quietly, then slid two slices into t’ toaster.

Mother said, ‘I’ve got Social Services coming round later today to talk about Gran. If they see you looking like that you’ll get sectioned.’

Social Services sent a hard-faced little woman wi’ her hair scraped up in a tight bun. She perched bolt upright on t’ settee, her box jacket still buttoned, her eyes flirting wi’ t’ decor. When she worn’t trying to weigh the dust on t’ picture rail, she wor examining her teacup as if she worn’t sure if it wor clean. Mother kept patting her own hair uneasily. Mistrust hung there between ’em like a pane of glass onto which each exhaled icily.

‘A place has been found for your mother,’ the SS woman said.

I said, ‘Does that mean that I get my old room back?’

Mother eyed me stonily. The SS woman pursed her lips together like she wor sucking on a sour boiled sweet. She said glassily, ‘Yes, I suppose it will.’

Mother’s expression dithered between pleased and mortified. The SS woman rummaged in her bag and muttered summat about formalities. I excused mesen and left them to it.

A week after Gran had gone into t’ nursing home I went wi’ Mother on a visit. The home wor a grim red-brick mansion of turrets and towers, wi’ deep bay windows on t’ ground floor that reflected the trees and the gardens. It reminded me of t’ loony bin.

Mother popped her head into t’ office door by t’ entrance lobby and a perky young girl wi’ a plate of Mr Kipling cakes on her desk told us where we’d find Gran that day. Parked beside t’ desk wor a bearded bloke in a wheelchair. The girl said that his name wor Bobby and that he’d been abandoned there as a child.

Bobby had a book propped before him on a music stand. As he read he turned the pages wi’ a long, thin metal hook that he waggled between his teeth. When he saw us, Bobby’s head wobbled enthusiastically, the hook batoning about. He emitted a strangled ‘Nnnnhhhh.’ The girl reached across and wiped away t’ dribble that ran down his chin.

‘Bobby says hi,’ she said, swallowing some cake.

‘Hello, Bobby,’ Mother said in a tone she usually reserved for owt mildly cute. I nodded my ‘Hello’, and Bobby made another excitable ‘Nnnnnhhhh.’

‘You’ll find Betty in t’ lounge at the end of t’ corridor,’ the girl said.

We clopped along t’ dully-lit corridor of mushroom gloss walls and the sharp tang of bleach over stale piss. Mother blathered on about t’ sour-faced staff and the girl in reception being t’ only cheery one.

‘Nice-looking girl. Don’t you think so?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Mother gave me an assessing look.

We entered a cavernous lounge area, empty save for a semi-circle of armchairs at the far end. Gran wor buried in one, her head bowed forward slightly, and smiling oddly, as if taken up by some pleasant scene on t’ rug before her, such as a frolicking kitten. Except that there wor nowt.

We’d been told that Gran’s mind wor steadily disintegrating, like cabbage boiling down to mush. But as we neared her, we saw that she’d stopped caring for hersen – or being cared for. Her cardie had a dried egg stain on it, her hair wor all matted, and without make-up, her face looked sallow.

Mother crouched alongside Gran’s chair and spoke loudly and slowly.

‘Hello, Mum. How are you today?’

Gran’s head lolled. Mother took a hairbrush from her handbag and began tidying Gran up a bit. I walked over to t’ window. In spite of t’ drought, the lawns wor well watered, the flowerbeds wor flourishing. An exhausted wasp wor crawling along t’ sill. I tried to lift the sash, but it wouldn’t budge. The windows had been nailed shut. Mother came over to t’ window, still holding the hairbrush. Together we took in t’ blooms.

‘They do a nice job on t’ gardens.’

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘On t’ gardens they do.’

Mother’s face twitched. ‘What were we supposed to do?’

‘Did I say owt?’

‘Oh, spare me. We might not have seen eye to eye, and my God your gran could be a troublesome old goat, but that don’t stop the guilt sitting in me like a stone.’ She touched her stomach wi’ t’ back of t’ hairbrush. ‘We couldn’t have cared for her at home, Rick.’ She looked across at Gran wi’ a regretful half-smile. ‘I do wish we’d talked more. Before t’ gate started closing.’

Gran raised her head slowly and her face opened into a wondrous, trusting smile that wor never part of her when she had all of her cups in t’ cupboard. Her fingertips quivered anxiously. Mother went over and crouched beside her. Then Gran’s expression darkened, as if she wor seized by a worrisome thought, and she grabbed Mother’s wrist very tightly.

‘Ow, Mum! Let go. Mum, let go, you’re hurting me!’

But her grip wor so tight that Mother couldn’t wrench hersen free. Gran’s eyes widened, the whites like crazed china, her damp mouth agape as she screamed into Mother’s face, ‘He’ll be t’ death of us, child!’

‘Who? Who will?’ Mother cried, yanking her wrist free. ‘Who?’

‘Him! Frank! Frank, and that man!’

‘What man?’

‘That man! Him! HIM!’

On t’ way home I said, ‘What man?’

Mother flapped a hand. ‘There wor a man who used to go to t’ races wi’ your granddad. Your gran hated him. Wouldn’t have his name breathed across t’ doorstep.’

‘Why?’

‘Search me.’

‘Did you ever meet him?’

She rooted in her shit-brown handbag for a tissue, blew her nose and sorted out her eyes.

‘A couple of times. They once took me to a race meet at Wetherby. I can’t have been more than six or seven …’

‘Granddad always did love the horses.’

Mother chortled. ‘I used to get sent to t’ bookies’ to fetch him home for his dinner. I wouldn’t go in, cos the bookies’ wor like the pub, a smoke-filled den of men where little girls shouldn’t be seen. So I’d wait outside ’til someone noticed me, and then someone else would shout, “Frank! Frank, yer wanted!” and Dad would appear in t’ doorway and tell me to run back home and say he’d be there in a jiffy. It wor what he always said.’

Mother laughed again. ‘At first I used to think a jiffy wor a small car, or a horse-drawn carriage or summat, so I’d wait by t’ window for his jiffy to appear.’

I looked out the bus window at passing suburban houses.

Mother then recollected how Frank’s friend drove a grand old car – well, she remembered it as a grand old car. She recalled the wonderful patterns of t’ jockeys’ shirts and how t’ horses seemed to steam and how far away they seemed when they wor racing and then how near suddenly as they charged into t’ home straight and Granddad and this other man wor screaming crazily for their horse, only she didn’t know which wor their horse, and she’d tingled excitedly as the thundering of t’ hooves grew closer and louder ’til t’ horses blurred past t’ winning post right in front of her, but she felt safe cos Granddad wor holding her hand tightly and then he whisked her up and kissed her on t’ nose and said, ‘We’ve won, did you see, we’ve won!’ and the two men threw their hats in t’ air and their arms around each other and they all went to collect the winnings and Granddad bought her a toffee apple.

She remembered how on t’ way home she wor soothed by t’ measured talk of t’ men, while she sank into t’ rear seat, stroking the ribbed leather, catching the faint whiff of t’ ashtrays in t’ car doors. She wor their shiny little girl, they’d said, and they would take her to t’ races for always and they would always win and throw their hats toward t’ sky and she would smear toffee apple around her lips and suck boiled sweets for evermore.

I smirked. ‘And did you go again?’

‘No. I kicked up a right fuss ’til Gran clipped me around t’ ear and said, “Frank only took you cos I had to visit a sick relative.” But I knew that wor a fib, in the way all children know when their parents fib. Still, I worn’t going to poke that fire again.’

She gave me a long look. I took in t’ scenery outside t’ window. I wor thinking that wor t’ way Mother and I differed. If there wor an ember, I had to poke it into life.

Now that I wor not welcome at Blandford Gardens for some reason that might have summat to do wi’ mashing up that little runt in t’ car park, Gay Lib meetings wor t’ only way to meet anyone likeminded. The measly gay pubs – the New Penny, the Wellesley Hotel side bar in Leeds, the Junction in Bradford – didn’t seem to offer up owt much, and I didn’t fancy sitting on my tod waiting to get chatted up by some lecherous old codger.

Thank friggin’ Christ this next Gay Lib meet wor shorter. That butt-clenching politico stuff had been doing my nut. Afterward, in t’ bar downstairs, some baldy, moon-faced boy-lover wor plying me wi’ drinks and rubber-tongued talk. He cooed into my ear, ‘Sadly, your age leaves you on the upper cusp of unsuitability. If only we’d met five years ago.’

‘I wor twelve.’

‘A delicious age.’

I slung mesen into an armchair and took in t’ room. This lot worn’t t’ freshest display of farm produce neither. As for me, it seemed I wor too old for t’ paedo, and jailbait for t’ rest. Even here some old bloke wi’ doughy cheeks and specs wor leering at me like a bladdered uncle at a wedding. Every time I looked his way he wor still eyeballing me. Suddenly he wor bee-lining my way.

‘May I sit here?’

Before I could say owt he’d parked himsen on a buffet stool. He smiled, displaying his crooked, stained gnashers, and set his pint of Guinness on t’ polished copper tabletop. A butt-end waggled off his meaty lower lip when he spoke.

‘Gordon,’ he said, sticking out a hand. The palm wor thick and callused, the finger ends nicotine-stained. I shook it briefly.

‘I think I should start,’ Gordon started, ‘by saying that I realise perfectly well that you are young and handsome as all young men are handsome, and what is more I’m perfectly aware I’m not, that I’m certainly no beauty, indeed it is doubtful in my case that I ever was, although I have had my moments along the way, and that I fully recognise that I haven’t the slightest chance of any carnal relations with you whatsoever, so I have expunged utterly any such notion from my mind. Indeed, that’s not why I chose to come and introduce myself to your good self.’

‘Eh?’ Over Gordon’s shoulder I caught the pitying glances of others.

‘No indeedy, young sir. Quite simply, I haven’t had the chance to make myself acquainted, so I thought I would do the decent thing, and … well, I’ve done that bit, haven’t I?’

‘Aye.’

‘So now we’ve dispensed with my name, why don’t you enlighten me as to yours?’

‘My what?’

‘Your name. But that’s all right, I believe I overheard. It’s Rick, isn’t it? Brusque and to the point. Very apt. Cigarette?’

‘Don’t smoke.’

‘Good for you, my boy. There are prettier vices. Dr Choudhury says I should stop.’

He blathered on, all t’ while sucking one ciggie down then lighting another. He coughed ’til his eyes watered.

The gist of what I got, when I tuned in, wor that Gordon had lived alone since his mother had ‘crossed the great divide’, that he wor now ‘a man of leisure’, but he used to have his own radio and TV repair business. That he’d always been gay, although in his day one didn’t use the word, that he’d never married, that he’d had two long and secretive relationships wi’ other men, and that he only came out – ‘as they now say’ – to his sister when he wor fifty-two, and she hasn’t spoken one word to him since.

I watched his fingers mess wi’ a match. Exhaled smoke hung about his wide mouth. I leaned back in my chair. Gordon leaned toward me.

‘Well, you’ve certainly sent a ripple around the room.’

‘Is that why no one’s talking to me?’

‘That, and perhaps that you give off such an air of unapproachability.’

‘I do?’

‘Utter aloofness, my boy. It’s an alluring defence mechanism in one so young. You think that anyone who talks to you wants to get their hands on you. They don’t. You’re not really standoffish at all, are you? In fact, the moment I saw you I detected a certain crackle across the airwaves. I thought, now there’s a young man who won’t think I’m trying to seduce him just because I say hello.’ Gordon smiled crookedly. ‘I accept that I repulse you.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The young are repulsed by everything. It’s what makes being young so unbearable.’

I wor feeling cornered. I stood up. ‘I’m going for a refill.’

Gordon emptied the dregs of his glass in one gulp.

‘You want another?’ I said, feeling obligated.

‘A Guinness would go down a treat.’

While I wor waiting at the bar to be served a voice murmured into my ear, ‘One-way traffic, that one.’

The voice had a foreign note. It belonged to a man wi’ a long, angular face, curly black hair and what Mitch always called ‘an unwashed complexion’.

‘Sorry?’

I felt a hand rest on t’ small of my back.

‘Isn’t it always the way with the old ones? They pretend to be your friend, and then before you know it their hands are all over your deck. Trust me, dear, we’ve all suffered.’

I looked across at Gordon, who waved at me like a man on board a departing ferry.

‘He means no harm.’

‘Oh, please. He’s always cadging free fags and drinks. Heavens, my dear, if I look like that at his age I’ll shoot myself.’

The foreigner wor still kneading my lower back wi’ a worrying expectancy.

‘You’re new to GLF, aren’t you?’

‘Aye.’

‘You’ve heard no doubt about the protest this Friday in Bradford? I mean, fancy someone getting fired from British Home Stores just for being gay? Scandalous. So we’re picketing BHS. It should be fun. Afterward we’re going for a curry and then on to the Nash.’

‘The Nash?’

‘The International Club on Lumb Lane. Hard-core basement reggae club. Us pouftas are the only non-blacks allowed in. And the prostitutes, of course. As far as the world’s concerned, we’re on about the same social level as the whores.’

‘Prozzies don’t bother me none.’

‘I wouldn’t know any.’

He told me his name, and spelt it for me. Fazel. F.A.Z.E.L. He made me guess where he wor from, a game I knew he must play wi’ everyone. The only places I could recall from t’ school atlas wor Egypt, Arabia and Tunisia. He said wi’ a curl of his lip that he worn’t an Arab.

‘Israel?’

‘Iran! I don’t suppose you even know where that is?’

‘I’ve heard of it. So how come you speak such good English?’

‘Daddy works for an oil company. We’ve moved around a lot.’

‘I nearly went to Rotterdam on t’ North Sea Ferries one February, but it wor cancelled cos t’ sea wor too rough.’

‘Is that right? Well then, you mustn’t go to Iran first, because then the rest of the world will disappoint you. Iran has beautiful ancient cities, warm weather, great food, gorgeous men …’

‘So what made you leave all that for Yorkshire then?’

‘I’m a student at the uni. Do you like it here? This septic isle? Ah, well, I suppose if that’s all you’ve known – the cold, the grey, the damp. As for myself, I’m always trying to find interesting ways to keep warm. You know, like crawling under the covers with some willing young man.’

‘I’d better take Gordon his pint.’

‘All yours,’ Fazel said, lifting his hand off my back like it wor scalding him.

I set the pint before Gordon.

‘Here.’

Outside, it had started to sile it down. We listened to t’ rain drumming on t’ pavement.

‘Gordon, what’s wi’ this demo business? Are you going?’

He sipped the head of his Guinness, leaving a froth moustache on his upper lip. His tongue licked it clean, shooting out like a chameleon’s.

‘I might. I’m having lunch with my good friend Charles, so it depends greatly. You should go, though. These things are important.’

The rain wor battering at the windows like it wor wanting to be let in.

Gordon said, ‘Are you planning on going home in this?’

‘No choice.’

‘I could give you a lift.’

‘What will it cost me?’

Gordon smiled his yellow, toothy smile. ‘A lot less than you might be thinking.’

As it happened, the day of t’ demo wor my day off work. I thought I’d go take a gander first and then decide whether I’d join in or not. I wanted to see how many wor going to pitch up, and what they looked like. I didn’t want to be the only young’un amongst a bunch of oldies, uglies and lesbos.

I staked my place at a street corner across t’ square. At first, it didn’t look like owt wor happening. The man wi’ t’ badge-vomit jacket wor there, as wor t’other one in t’ platforms and bell-bottoms. He had a long patchwork scarf snaking round his neck that looked like summat knitted by t’ blind, and a pale orange cotton bag hanging from his shoulder. They all just stood around, blathering on at each other, judging by t’ positions of their heads.

In t’ end there wor about ten folk. There wor two women portering a furled-up banner between them. Not the women I’d first seen at the GLF meeting. A sandy-haired bloke pitched up, pushing a chunky bicycle. No sign of Fazel.

No Gordon neither, but then he’d said as much. When he dropped me off after t’ GLF meet he’d asked me for my phone number, but that wor a no-no. He tore out a page from his pocket diary and scribbled his own number on it.

‘Otherwise,’ he’d said, ‘most Thursday evenings I am usually in the Dog in the Pound on the Leeds Road. Do you know it?’

I said I’d been past it. Which I had. On t’ way to Paradise Buildings.

Across t’ square, the women unfurled the banner, which had holes cut in it to let the wind through, and ‘BRADFORD G.L.F.’ sewed onto it. They started shouting summat about Gay Lib and jobs and discrimination. At first they seemed a little unsure, like schoolgirls carrying out a dare, but then they egged each other on and the shouting became more forceful. Only it wor carried up on t’ breeze and grew small – like a lost balloon.

I wor gobsmacked that anyone would do that. Stand out there in t’ wind and rain for someone else, risking all that abuse. I pondered what the bloke who’d got fired thought of it all. Wor he one of t’ ones who wor wi’ them?

While t’ women shouted, the men wor trying to leaflet folk who wor entering or leaving the department store. Some went over to see what it wor all about, taking the leaflets, maybe thinking it wor a freebie promo of a chance to win a car. If it had been, Mother would have been in there like a shot. Others read the leaflets briefly then tossed them away. Some just dropped them, but a fair few screwed them up and made a disgusted show of tossing them aside. One or two handed them back. Most folk just pushed on by, heads bowed, not looking.

Then a woman in a bobble hat came over, dragging a toddler by t’ hand, and started yelling about God and the Bible and all that baloney. This set the toddler bawling.

Nowt much else happened for a while apart from t’ shouting and the leaflets being blown about t’ square, ’til someone from t’ department store came out to talk to them. The lone cowboy sent out to face the enemy. He seemed all riled up. He wor flapping his arms about and pointing at the leaflets on t’ ground and seemed to be vexed about summat, although I wor too far away to hear. Then he strode back into t’ store.

I wor expecting that any moment a couple of bobbies would put in an appearance, or even a panda car, but nowt of t’ sort happened. After an hour or so they gradually dispersed, looking undecided what to do next. Eventually three of them headed Lumb Lane direction, presumably for t’ curry. I wor peckish mesen, but it might have looked a bit odd to suddenly pitch up for t’ curry, so I headed into Bradford market in search of a sausage roll or a samosa, but it wor just stalls of brightly coloured sari cloth or cheap toiletries, plastic buckets, curtain net and whatnot.

I left the market at the far end where it came out near a small roundabout. I toyed wi’ t’ notion of taking a wander up Paradise Buildings way. It had been yonks since I last saw Tad or Gina or Jeremy at the FK Club. So much for that ‘You’re ours now’ guff. I stood there for an age, leaning on t’ safety barrier, watching t’ traffic whizzing about. Then I went home.

As summer approached, folk wor getting worked up about t’ Queen’s Silver Jubilee. There wor to be a chain of bonfires across t’ country. There wor to be street parties, wi’ Jubilee streamers, Union Jacks flapping from bedroom windows, flags and windmills to wave, wi’ trestle tables lined wi’ Jubilee teas the lengths of entire streets, great mounds of sandwiches and cake and Jubilee iced buns, and endless cups of Jubilee tea poured from giant Jubilee tea urns, and Jubilee Coca-Cola for t’ kids, and Jubilee music and dancing and much toasting and cheering for Her Majesty and all that lot. And all anyone seemed to want to know wor: would it rain? Would it rain? Of course it wouldn’t rain – it never rained on Her Majesty. The sky would be a cloudless blue block wi’ t’ smiling, happy sun beaming down from on high.

Mother baked two whole Jubilee parkins for t’ big day, wi’ Union Jacks forked across t’ top. Mand and I looked on in awe and befuddlement as she measured out the ounces of butter and flour, counted out teaspoons of ginger and tablespoons of syrup. Neither of us had ever seen her bake before. She said it wor cos she had no love of baking, but parkin she said she could do cos as a child she loved to sit at the kitchen table, watching Gran stir t’ mixture.

‘I used to beg to lick the spoon, even though eating the raw mixture gave me stomach ache. When it wor finally ready and your gran opened t’ oven door, the heat and the baking smells would fill up the kitchen.’

She waved a table spoon at us. ‘Then Gran would put the parkin on a wire tray by t’ window, and we’d have to wait ’til it wor cool. I’d always imagine them smells escaping on t’ breeze through t’ kitchen curtains.’

She shook her head, shaking the memory loose, and lifting a dollop from t’ mixture bowl, she sucked on her finger like a new-born lamb. She offered some to Mand, who screwed up her face.

‘No, ta. I don’t want no stomach ache, do I?’

I stuck my finger into t’ bowl and tasted the raw mixture. Uncooked, the ginger kicked through sharply.

‘Why have I never seen Gran bake owt?’ I said.

‘She just stopped one day. Stopped and never baked another. S’pose she couldn’t see t’ point. She still made her trifle every Christmas.’