In the café it’s early. Edna turns on the radio, blows tiny cream bubbles that won’t grow, gathers up her cigarettes and lighter, tells Jimmy she’s going the toilet. Jimmy spoons two sugars into a cup for the only customer in the place. He sits down opposite the woman and hands her a cup of tea. She has blond hair that falls down in curls to her shoulders. Her skin is almost see-through, scrubbed clean and shiny.
I grab a dishcloth, wipe blobs of hard red and brown sauce off the plastic tablecloths. I tip ashtrays overflowing with cigarette stumps into the bin, slide a brush over the floor. Scoop crumbs, a few chips and cigarette stumps up onto a shovel and bin them. Jimmy talks to the woman in a low voice; I can’t hear what he’s saying. A swingy trumpet song plays over the radio. Something about Blueberry Hill. Jimmy jiggles his shoulders up and down in time with the music. ‘Daft sod,’ the woman says. Jimmy stands up, opens the glass box on the counter, brings her a chocolate éclair on a plate. Edna is back; she watches them.
‘I’ll get fat.’
‘So?’
She breaks it in two, leans forward and pushes one half between Jimmy’s lips. Edna lets out, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ too loud and there’s nowhere for it to go.
Jimmy turns to face the counter. ‘What’s wrong, Edna?’
‘Nothing, dropped something that’s all.’ She busies herself, lifting packs of bacon and trays of eggs out of the fridge, slaps the streaky bacon down on the counter. Unwraps a fresh stick of Juicy Fruit, drops it on the floor, says shit ’n’ hell under her breath. ‘What are you gawping at?’ she says to me. ‘Take table five’s order.’ I turn around and see that we have our next customer. I take out my pad, walk over to the table.
It gets busy so Jimmy goes behind the counter to help Edna. The woman at the table takes a magazine out of her bag and reads.
It’s so busy that we don’t stop all morning. At one point people are standing outside waiting for a table. I can feel the thick strap on my ski pants twisted inside my shoe. It stabs into the arch of my foot. I walk on my toes around the café to ease the pain. They used to fit, but now, when I walk in them, the elastic waistband rolls too far down. I have to scrunch at the sides of my overall to pull the stirrup back up. Edna said it gets on her nerves. She said if she catches me doing it one more time she’ll cut my water off. I want to take them out of my shoes but Mum says they look daft like that.
A few minutes ago they ended up around my ankles. Everyone laughed. Jimmy gave me a large safety pin, told me to go to the toilet and sort myself out. I thought about everyone laughing and how I must have looked, like gormless Gail. I thought about not going back. I thought about Mum on the stall opposite and how she might have seen me mess up. I thought about how easy it would be for me to walk home to Dad in bed sick, or sitting in his chair reading the paper, and that’s when I went back to the cafe.
It’s past lunchtime and I haven’t had a break. Jimmy asks me what I want and sets my plate down opposite his woman. ‘Sit down, then,’ Jimmy says. ‘She won’t bite.’
I sit.
‘Hello, Robyn, I’m Sue, Jimmy’s wife.’ She looks at my plate. ‘Tuck in, love, before it gets cold.’
Her eyes are a warm grey colour. She pulls a magazine out of her bag, wets her fingers, flicks through the pages. She looks like some of the women on the pages, only better. ‘You work hard, Robyn,’ she says, without looking up. ‘I’ve been watching.’
I put down my knife and fork.
‘Sorry. Me rabbiting on. Eat your dinner.’
Sue carries on flicking through the pages.
When I’ve finished my dinner I feel better. Jimmy brings me a glass of orange juice and says I’ve got ten more minutes.
‘You like it here?’ Sue asks.
I can see a black polo neck, sleeves rolled up past the elbow: Dad, in Mum’s queue at the Nut Centre.
‘Robyn?’
‘Yes, yes I do.’
‘Better than being at home?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have nice eyes, Robyn, nice bright eyes.’
My face burns.
‘Jimmy loves this place. He works like a dog here.’
I watch Dad move to the front. Mum turns to the scales with a scoop full of peanuts.
‘Stop looking so serious. For a young girl you need to laugh more. You seen this?’
Sue shows me a picture of a woman in her magazine. She is dressed in a white blouse and blue jeans.
‘You’d look smart in this outfit. And her hair, the feather cut. You’d suit that style, it’d make you look older, more with it.’
Edna shouts shit ’n’ hell louder than usual. I look over at her, she’s running her hand under the tap.
‘Edna giving you a bad time?’
‘No,’ I lie.
I watch Mum hand him the bag.
Sue closes the magazine. ‘Maybe she’s giving herself a bad time, depends how you choose to look at it.’
I don’t understand.
Dad takes the change from Mum’s hand, pushes it into his pocket. I think about Dad’s all-dolled-up box and how he doesn’t know it’s lying in a bin at the bottom of the chute.
‘Edna lost her little lad. He choked on a sweet. She blames herself.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know.’ And I think about Sylvia, and how sad she’d be if that happened to Johnny.
‘She hates everybody right now. Edna needs somebody to blame for how bad things are for her. It matters to Jimmy that you know about Edna and why Jimmy lets her get her own way. It helps, I think, to know?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It does.’
I finish my drink and take out my pad. It gets quiet in the afternoon. Jimmy sits with Sue. I’ve never seen a person look at someone the way he looks at her. Seeing it makes me feel warm inside, like a little bit of that feeling has accidentally sprinkled onto me. I hope I find somebody (a boyfriend or a husband I haven’t met yet), somebody who will look at me that way. I feel pleased I’ve found myself something to look for when I’m older, something that will make me a chooser.
Edna gets in close to me. ‘What’s runaround Sue been saying?’
‘She say anything about me?’
‘No.’
‘Ask anything about me?’
‘No.’
‘You berra not be lying.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Clear table nine now. Don’t mess up.’
The last thing I want is to mess up. I have a dishcloth I’m in charge of, tables to clean, a floor to brush and I have Sue who thinks I have nice eyes.
I worry about things before they happen. Sometimes I worry and things never happen. This worry does happen. And it happens fast. After work, Mum says we’re not going home because it’s her birthday tomorrow, so we’re getting the bus to my nan’s flat.
Nan opens the door, not surprised to see Mum and me standing there. ‘Long time no see,’ Mum says. She sits down on Nan’s settee and looks around the living room. Nan sits in her straight-backed chair by the radio.
‘I can guess what you want,’ she says.
‘Who says I want anything?’
‘There’s a drop of lemonade, Robyn, in the kitchen if you want some.’
I get up and pour myself half a glass of lemonade. Nan buys it in for her port. It must have been there a while; without the fizz it tastes like sugar and water. From the living room I hear Mum’s voice. ‘Don’t bite my head off.’ More words from Mum that I can’t make out and Nan says, ‘Oh, is that right?’ I root around in Nan’s kitchen drawers. The stirrup pain is worse now, but Mum says I’ve got to keep them in because they look a disgrace hanging out. I find a pair of scissors, roll off my leggings and cut the tab in half. I’ll tell Mum they ripped. I put them back on. The tabs flap either side of my ankles like ears. I put the scissors back in the drawer on top of a pink envelope with Babs written on it.
Nan shouts. ‘Don’t start this malarkey with me, coming in here on your high horse. You should be ashamed of yourself, supporting a lazy good-for-nothing like him. He should be shot.’
‘You don’t have to say I disappoint you. I can hear the sting in your voice.’
‘You’re not disappointing me, you’re disappointing yourself. Giving money over, paying him, for what? It’s backwards …’
‘You’d rather I stayed on the shelf, damaged goods.’
‘You’re on a shelf, not the one you jumped off, but a shelf all the same. You just couldn’t wait, could you? The problem was Jack spoiled you. You got everything you wanted at the click of a finger and it’s done you no good.’
‘Nothing I ever did was any good. Picking at the way I did my hair, when I see the way you are with Robyn … I only did my hair so you’d say I looked nice. You didn’t have the time. My dad always made time for me.’
‘Robyn needs to know the truth about her dad.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything? I’ll tell her, when she’s old enough.’
I can hear the shish of a match being struck. Smell Mum’s smoke drift into the kitchen. Mum turns on Nan.
‘You’ve got a cheek. What about your own daughter? It’s once a year a birthday, you tight cow.’
I move closer to the door.
‘And rearing a child’s for life. I told you that when you chose to keep her, told you what it’d be like for a bastard.’
I sit down on a chair in Nan’s kitchen. Mum had a choice about whether or not to keep me. Mum chose to keep me even though I was born a bastard. I remember she told that woman in the flat I was a bastard just before she threw up. I thought it was just a swear word, but it’s more than that. It must be. When I was born, they saw me and saw that I was a bastard. They saw something about me that every bastard has.
Nan has a mirror on her windowsill. I look carefully at my face. Two eyes, a nose and a mouth, all in the right place. A few freckles on my nose, dark hair, lots of people have dark hair, a pink tongue. I’m tall for my age, but so are plenty of people. I take off my shoes and socks and look at my toes. My second toe is much longer than my first. Am I different because of my toes? Bastards have freaky toes. I didn’t know you could give babies away just because of the size of their second toes. Nan said it means I’m going to be a ballet dancer; she must’ve said that so I wouldn’t find out what it really means.
‘You’d have been happy to let me stay on my own; a reject on a shelf. And Robyn would have had a dog’s life from the other kids, skitting her. Yes, you can call him a lazy good-for-nothing, but at least he didn’t run away once he found out I had a kid.’
‘That man only wanted a bit of time to think things over, but no, that was too much for you, wasn’t it?’
‘A bit of time? When it really mattered, he didn’t wanna know. He made his choice and I had to act fast. I had to put Robyn first. No other fucker did. They weren’t exactly queuing up to marry me. I was lucky to get him. If it was up to you I’d never have married. You just wanted me to live with you, be on my own like you, look after you, you jealous cow. Wear a keeper’s ring. Have every nosy fucker in Tommy Whites feel sorry for me because I couldn’t keep a man. Well, I showed you, showed the lot of you. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I know what it’s like to be on your own. When Jack was away in the army …’
‘That’s different. My dad had to leave.’
‘I don’t care what you say; he’s no man, taking a kid’s deposit for a school trip.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Never mind how I know, but I know you’re not happy.’
‘I’m happy enough now you’ve left. Robyn, get in here, now,’ Mum shouts.
Nan shouts back at her. ‘Liar, you’re not happy. I’d rather have a thief than a liar. Any woman with half a brain would leave.’
‘I won’t give up and run away, not without trying.’
I walk in from the kitchen.
Mum stands. ‘We’re going. And if I ever find out you’ve been down here, I’ll kill you, understand? You had no right.’
Nan stands up. ‘No, he had no right,’ she says, pointing her stick at Mum, ‘and you letting him. Get out. It wouldn’t bother me if I never set eyes on you again.’
We leave. Mum looks back, sees Nan on the step, shouts at her. ‘Nice mother you are, not even a fucking birthday card, you tight cow.’
Nan is in the street shouting after us. ‘Robyn, you’re welcome down here any time, love. Any time at all.’
I have to run to keep up, stirrups flapping up and down like wings at my ankles. ‘What the fuck have you done to them?’ Mum says when she sees them.
‘They’re all the go, them, Babs,’ I want to say, but don’t. We walk home without saying another word. Mum lights one cigarette after the other, stabs me with her sideways glances. I don’t care. She can bounce me off every lamp post on Scotland Road if she likes. She could have given me away, but she never. That’s all that matters now.
Mum buys a bag of chips and a loaf. We get back home, but Dad isn’t in. Mum checks the mantelpiece for money; it’s empty. I go to the toilet. When I get back in the room Mum has Nan’s picture outside the gilt frame, cuts it in half with the scissors. ‘I’ll show her.’ I hear the front door slam and I know she’s gone to throw it down the chute.
Mum dishes up the chips with two slices of thin bread and margarine. We eat at the table with a knife and fork. Top the chips with a blob of Daddies brown sauce. We’re halfway through when the front door slams. Mum’s face lights up. It’s Dad, drunk. Not wobbly can’t-stand-up drunk; just drunk. He sits in his chair. ‘Want some chips?’ Mum says.
No answer.
Mum looks at me. Eyes tell me to leave the room.
I stay where I am. Pretend I haven’t seen.
He sits in his chair, strums the wooden arms with LOVE HATE fingers, dark eyes on Mum. ‘Where’s my fucking box gone from under the sink?’
Mum shakes her head. ‘Don’t ask me.’
‘What about her?’ he asks Mum, nodding at me.
‘Robyn, you know anything about the box?’
‘No.’
He stands up.
Mum puts down her bread.
He walks towards her.
Mum stands, picks up the knife from her plate.
He grabs her wrist, twists it hard; bangs it again and again against the table.
I jump up from my seat and run at him.
I punch him in the mouth, feel his teeth scrape my knuckles. I scream at him to leave her alone. He gets me in the face with his elbow. My eyes fill with water. I can’t see properly. He forces Mum to the floor by the hair. She still has hold of the knife. Mum is screaming at him, ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard.’ I jump on his back, pound my fist into his neck. He pushes me off. I fall back against the table, grab hold of the cloth. Everything falls to the floor. I get back up but he’s got the knife. I step towards him. He points the knife too close to my face. ‘Try it, you little bastard,’ he says, ‘I’ll slice right through you.’ Mum is back up. She twists his face in her fingers. He bites her hand, she screams; he knees her in the stomach; she falls to the floor and that’s when he kicks her in the face. Blood seeps from her nose, mouth. Seeing the blood is what makes him stop. He throws the knife on the floor and runs out of the room, slams the front door shut.
I help her up. There’s blood all over her clothes. She’s still bleeding from her nose. It won’t stop. Dots of red all over the brown lino, they splat out around the edges like tiny explosions. She holds her stomach and cries out with the pain. I run to the bathroom, wet a towel; she dabs away the blood. ‘Get my fags, girl,’ she says. ‘And put the latch on the front door and the bolt. That bastard’s not getting back in.’
I lock and bolt the front door. Give Mum her fags and matches. Her hands shake. I take the matches off her, strike one and light her cigarette. ‘You all right, Mum?’
She nods.
I pick the mess up from the floor. Take everything out into the kitchen. I spread the tablecloth back over the table. I don’t cover the holes. Some of them have torn so bad they’ve become part of another hole, a much bigger one that’s difficult to cover. Through it I can see dark wood. It looks like a dirty pool of water inside the white of the cloth. It looks like something that shouldn’t be seen.
‘Leave that, Robyn, go to bed,’ Mum says. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
I slide the knife that Dad dropped under my pillow. I open the bedroom window and stick my head outside, feel sweat cool on my skin, take in a deep breath and blink away the tears I don’t want to come. I feel them burn hot down my face. When it gets cold I close the window, unhook all of the coats in the hall, lie on top of the bed and cover myself up. In the dark, shadows play tricks by the window. I think I see Chris, tap, tapping the side of his nose. Come on now, Robyn. It’s all right, you’re made of strong stuff, strong, like Granddad Jack. And I wish my dad could have died instead of Chris.