from under the bonnet.
‘Where you bin?’ whined Tracey, who started to gather up her spilled blackberries from the dirt.
‘Shopping.’
‘What you got us?’ asked Anita.
Deirdre glanced at her empty hands and patted her hair again. ‘Window shopping. You want fishfingers for tea?’
‘Yeah!’ yelled Tracey, happy again, all those hours of anguish and abandonment instantly forgotten.
I was happy, too. I loved fishfingers, we hardly ever had them at home, mum somehow found it quicker to make a fresh vegetable sabzi than fling something from a packet into a frying pan. And of course I would be invited in for tea because that’s what all the yard mums did, if you’d been playing with their offspring and you happened to be nearby when the call to the table came.
Of course, you didn’t always strike it lucky; once I’d been at Kevin and Karl, the mad twins’ house, and their mum had put what looked like an ordinary white bread sandwich in front of me. I took a huge bite and promptly threw up all over her fortunately wipe-clean vinyl tablecloth.
‘What’s up with yow?’ asked Karl. ‘Don’t yow like lard sandwiches?’
When I told my mother what I’d eaten, she made me drinka cup of warm milk and ordered me to sit on the toilet for fifteen minutes, all the time muttering, ‘ Bakwas lok! ’, which roughly translated means ‘Bloody weird people …’
But actually, the food you ate was less important than being asked, the chance to sit in someone else’s house and feel grown up and special, knowing you weren’t just playing together, you were now officially socialising.
Deirdre unlocked the back gate of her house and handed the bunch of keys to Tracey who ran up to the back door and fumbled for the lock. Anita stood behind Deirdre and smiled at me, so I took a step forward. Deirdre looked at me for the first time. I had forgotten how scary the bottom half of her face was. The top bit was like everyone else’s mum’s face, soft eyes, enquiring nose, eyebrows asking a million questions. But the mouth was not right, not at all; those huge bee-stung lips always on the edge of a sneer and grandma, those big teeth, far too many and far too sharp, which gave what could have been a beautiful face an expression of dark, knowing hunger. Deirdre looked me up and down as if making a decision, then turned on her heel and tip-tapped into her yard. Anita let her pass, pressing her body away from her mother to avoid contact, then whispered, ‘See you tomorrow’ before closing the gate in my face.
I wandered slowly back through the yard towards my house, wondering what I had done wrong. The sun was just beginning its slow lazy descent and I could see the glittering sliver of a fingernail moon hanging over the rooftops near my house. I passed Sam Lowbridge’s back gate. There was an accusing space where his moped usually stood, a flattened oval of pressed dank earth.
Sam Lowbridge was generally considered the Yard’s Bad Boy. He’d managed to acquire a criminal record by the age of sixteen and supplemented it with wearing black leather and an obligatory sneer. Most of the littl’uns were scared of him and gave him a wide berth when he came out for one of his wheelie sessions in the adjoining park, but for some reason,he’d always been polite, even kind, to me. His mother, Glenys, had the distinction of being our oldest single parent (followed by Sandy, our most desperate, and Mrs Keithley, the youngest and most fertile with three children under the age of eight). None of us had ever seen Sam’s father, whoever he was he never visited, but the general opinion was good riddance to bad rubbish, ‘cos he must have been full of bad seed to spawn a sprog like Sam.
Glenys was standing on her stoop, wringing her hands, with her characteristic expression of someone who has sniffed impending doom and knows no one is going to believe her. I’d seen a similar moue on the face of the mad soothsayer in Frankie
‘Where you bin?’ whined Tracey, who started to gather up her spilled blackberries from the dirt.
‘Shopping.’
‘What you got us?’ asked Anita.
Deirdre glanced at her empty hands and patted her hair again. ‘Window shopping. You want fishfingers for tea?’
‘Yeah!’ yelled Tracey, happy again, all those hours of anguish and abandonment instantly forgotten.
I was happy, too. I loved fishfingers, we hardly ever had them at home, mum somehow found it quicker to make a fresh vegetable sabzi than fling something from a packet into a frying pan. And of course I would be invited in for tea because that’s what all the yard mums did, if you’d been playing with their offspring and you happened to be nearby when the call to the table came.
Of course, you didn’t always strike it lucky; once I’d been at Kevin and Karl, the mad twins’ house, and their mum had put what looked like an ordinary white bread sandwich in front of me. I took a huge bite and promptly threw up all over her fortunately wipe-clean vinyl tablecloth.
‘What’s up with yow?’ asked Karl. ‘Don’t yow like lard sandwiches?’
When I told my mother what I’d eaten, she made me drinka cup of warm milk and ordered me to sit on the toilet for fifteen minutes, all the time muttering, ‘ Bakwas lok! ’, which roughly translated means ‘Bloody weird people …’
But actually, the food you ate was less important than being asked, the chance to sit in someone else’s house and feel grown up and special, knowing you weren’t just playing together, you were now officially socialising.
Deirdre unlocked the back gate of her house and handed the bunch of keys to Tracey who ran up to the back door and fumbled for the lock. Anita stood behind Deirdre and smiled at me, so I took a step forward. Deirdre looked at me for the first time. I had forgotten how scary the bottom half of her face was. The top bit was like everyone else’s mum’s face, soft eyes, enquiring nose, eyebrows asking a million questions. But the mouth was not right, not at all; those huge bee-stung lips always on the edge of a sneer and grandma, those big teeth, far too many and far too sharp, which gave what could have been a beautiful face an expression of dark, knowing hunger. Deirdre looked me up and down as if making a decision, then turned on her heel and tip-tapped into her yard. Anita let her pass, pressing her body away from her mother to avoid contact, then whispered, ‘See you tomorrow’ before closing the gate in my face.
I wandered slowly back through the yard towards my house, wondering what I had done wrong. The sun was just beginning its slow lazy descent and I could see the glittering sliver of a fingernail moon hanging over the rooftops near my house. I passed Sam Lowbridge’s back gate. There was an accusing space where his moped usually stood, a flattened oval of pressed dank earth.
Sam Lowbridge was generally considered the Yard’s Bad Boy. He’d managed to acquire a criminal record by the age of sixteen and supplemented it with wearing black leather and an obligatory sneer. Most of the littl’uns were scared of him and gave him a wide berth when he came out for one of his wheelie sessions in the adjoining park, but for some reason,he’d always been polite, even kind, to me. His mother, Glenys, had the distinction of being our oldest single parent (followed by Sandy, our most desperate, and Mrs Keithley, the youngest and most fertile with three children under the age of eight). None of us had ever seen Sam’s father, whoever he was he never visited, but the general opinion was good riddance to bad rubbish, ‘cos he must have been full of bad seed to spawn a sprog like Sam.
Glenys was standing on her stoop, wringing her hands, with her characteristic expression of someone who has sniffed impending doom and knows no one is going to believe her. I’d seen a similar moue on the face of the mad soothsayer in Frankie
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