TUESDAY three

Mo chained her bike to a lamp-post and slung her helmet over one arm. Some kids were kicking an empty Coke can against a nearby wall. A tubby runt of a girl with carroty hair stopped and stared as Mo walked over and started up the stairs. Then she put on a Hilda Ogden accent and called out,

‘Any more of them flaming bikers round these parts and I’m writing to Council, I’ll give yer that straight!’

Mo climbed on through the peals of laughter. Kids gave her the creeps. She had slapped one once in a supermarket and the mother had screamed blue murder.

Suffolk House was one of the older blocks, probably from the late Forties, before they started doing towers. It was red brick and long and six storeys high. The staircase ran up one side, giving on to a balcony corridor at each floor. You knew which was your floor by the colour of the doors. Green, yellow, blue, violet, red and brown. Mumsy’s was a brown one: sixth floor. There was litter everywhere and a strong smell of piss. No lift, so Mo did most of her shopping for her. Mumsy said her friend had a lift and it was always breaking down and anyway, six floors were easier to climb than sixteen. A clatter of dance music and a couple of black kids with a ghetto-blaster ran out of the red balcony and passed Mo on the stairs. Off to beat the living daylights out of Carrot-Head. Mo grinned fleetingly.

She swung off the staircase on to the brown balcony and walked past the strings of gaily coloured washing to number twenty-nine. She rang the bell and waited. She rang it again. Still no-one. She pushed open the letter-box and called out,

‘Mumsy? Here! Mum?’ The old love must be asleep. Mo pulled out her spare key and let herself in. There was a tiny hall, then a lounge, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Mo set down her helmet and walked into the lounge on the left.

‘Hello, Mumsy.’

She had dozed off in her chair without even taking off her scarf and coat. A bag of shopping was at her feet. Mo touched her gently on the hand. In the window, Sandra let out a chirrup. Sandra the budgie. They’d been together now for so long that Mumsy wanted to get her stuffed. For the sake of the bird’s dignity, Mo hoped that Mistress might go first.

Mumsy’s eyes opened, blearily pink with strain. A broad smile dawned across her face.

‘What? Oh, hello, lovie. Happy birthday for Saturday! Had I nodded off? How awful. Must be getting old. I must … oh gawd, look – I hadn’t even taken off my coat!’ She stood and gave her daughter a kiss. ‘Hello, love,’ she said.

‘Hello, Mum. Ta ever so for the card.’

‘Did you get it on time?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh good. I can never remember about Saturdays. Post goes queer at weekends. Did you get any nice presents?’

Mo thought of Hope.

‘Yeah,’ she said with a smile, ‘one or two.’

‘Well? What did you get?’ asked her foster-mother, after a short wait.

‘Come on. Let’s make some tea and I’ll tell you when we’ve sat down again.’

‘No you don’t. It’s your special day. I’ll make the tea and you sit here and put your feet up.’ She pushed Mo into the settee and shuffled, humming, into the kitchen with her bags. Mo obliged, it was quicker.

‘How’s work?’ called out Mumsy.

‘OK.’

‘Nothing exciting at the moment?’

‘Not much. Just burglaries and that. I’m going to get my picture in the Standard, though.’

‘Really?’ There was genuine delight in the voice. ‘When?’

‘Later this week, maybe. Some stupid photographer of theirs following me about. Right pain.’

‘But why are they photographing you?’

‘I dunno. Got to photograph something, I suppose.’

‘You’re as bad as your father was. Too modest by half.’

Mo sat and stared at Sandra who sat and stared in her mirror. Mo tapped the cage so that the mirror swung slightly, and smiled to watch the bird move her ugly head to keep up with her image. Mumsy set down the cups and saucers, and a pink frosted cake. One candle in the middle.

‘Now don’t go teasing Sandra. You’ll make her sick again.’

‘How d’you mean “again”?’

‘Well she took weeks to get over that Birdie-Chew thing you gave her,’ said Mumsy, walking back to the kitchen. ‘I think it was meant for mynahs or something. Didn’t agree with her at all.’

The kettle started to whistle. Mumsy let it reach its highest pitch before she turned off the gas. Strict beliefs about the properties of tea and water.

Mo knew that she ought to suggest to her mother that she come to live with her in Hackney, but she could never bring herself to do it. It felt like giving up. They’d been much older than all her mates’ parents at school. That was probably why they’d adopted in the first place; too old for kids of their own. They’d married late. It must have been for love because it certainly wasn’t a shot-gun job. Dad had been a brikky, and trained the lads down at the gym at nights. Even at sixty his coffin had been enormous. Mumsy had always sworn he could tear a shirt-sleeve with his biceps, and Mo had boasted about this to kids at school. It made up for having only one skirt if your dad could tear a shirt-sleeve like that. Mumsy had worked nights as an usherette at the Empire, so it was always Dad who got Mo up in the mornings and saw she had enough breakfast. School was just down the road so he always walked her to the gates and then went on to his site. No boy trouble, of course, and she’d worked hard and never complained; the perfect kid. She looked at the sugar rosettes and decided that she hadn’t got to know Mumsy properly until her teens.

‘Tea’s up,’ said Mum, lighting the candle. ‘Only one, I’m afraid, love, but then …’

‘Yes, I know. I’m a blooming dinosaur.’

‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ she went on, pouring the tea. ‘It’s just that, well, birthdays aren’t so important once you’ve grown up.’

‘It’s a lovely cake, Mum. You are clever.’

‘It’s a pleasure to do,’ she laughed. ‘Well go on. Blow it out.’ Mo smiled up at her as she obeyed. Mumsy clapped then said cryptically, ‘You stay here. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’

Mo cut two slices of cake while she was gone. The cake-slice and stand only came out for birthdays. Mumsy’d gone to cake decorating classes once.

‘Happy Birthday, dear Mo-oh. Happy Birthday to you!’ Mum sang, returning with a large parcle. It stood about a foot high and was nearly twice as wide. ‘Now,’ she said, sitting down and taking a mouthful of cake, ‘bet you can’t guess.’

Mo’s heart sank, but she kept up a smile as she undid the ribbon and pulled back the happy paper. Baring her teeth she lifted the cage on to her lap.

‘Oh Mum!’ she produced.

‘Well, I know you’re not very partial to budgies, even though I think they’re much better pets, but then Bren across the way’s got a hen canary as well as a boy one, and it laid a load of eggs and she let me have this fellow. Isn’t he sweet? He’s a boy, so he’ll sing.’

The bird was enchanting; yellow, with a bright green cap of feathers on his head. He hopped from perch to perch then, as she put her head nearer the cage, he hung his head on one side and let out an inquisitive ‘cheep’. Mo laughed.

‘Oh Mum, he’s a duck! He looks just like a little school kid with a cap on.’

‘Now d’you really like him? I worried so much after I’d brought him back. You see I’d forgotten all about your Andy.’

‘Oh heck, Andy.’

‘Well, I gave it a bit of thought, and I realized how as you could hang him up in the kitchen. It’s good and warm, and if he had a hook from the ceiling, Andy couldn’t get up and frighten him. Bren says they like being where there’s lots to see.’

‘Like a bit of action, do you, lovie?’ Mo asked. He chirruped back.

‘There. He’s talking to you. What’ll you call him, love?’

‘I’ll have to think about it. How about Dennis – short for Dennis the Menace?’

‘Oh yes. Suits him.’

‘Better stay with you till I can come over in a car to pick him up, mind. He’d be blown to bits on my bike.’

‘OK. Sandra’ll be pleased of the company.’

‘Delicious cake, Mum,’ said Mo, grateful that Dennis wasn’t a budgie.

‘Not bad, is it? Hey, do you remember that time I made one for that nice friend of yours, Molly?’

‘Maggie.’

‘That’s the one. And Dad said you’d said how as her parents never remembered her birthday and so why didn’t we remember it for them, like as if she was one of our own?’

‘I remember. You made her very happy.’

Mo remembered Maggie singing with glee as she danced round the flat in Earls Court afterwards in the shocking pink jersey dress Mumsy had knitted for her on her machine. Mo had bought her a car radio.

‘Such a pity about her accident, and that,’ said Mum, ‘she was really nice. I remember Dad saying that he’d felt happier having you living with her for company than if you’d got married to Prince Charles.’

‘Did he really say that?’ laughed Mo, wanting Hope to hear.

‘Something like. Here. Have some more cake. I can’t eat it all myself.’

‘No, honest. I had a big lunch.’

‘Oh go on. Just a bit.’

‘No. You’ll make me fat.’

‘I’d never. You’ve got a lovely figure. I’ve always said so.’

‘Oh give over. I’m a barrel!’

‘Stuff. You should have seen me at your age. Now that was a sight. Fat as Arbuckle I was and your dad wasn’t slim. Your Nan used to say she worried how the bed could cope with the two of us at once.’ Mum laughed. Then, more serious, she said, ‘You know I wish you’d settle down, though. Find yourself a good upstanding man to take care of you. I don’t want you getting lonely after I’m gone.’

‘Mum, please. We’ve been through this before. I’m not lonely. I’ve got friends.’

‘Yeah, well, friends aren’t always enough. And you know it.’

‘Well, they’re enough for me. Now don’t worry. You’re the one I worry about. How’s that leg? Have you been down the clinic again, like I said?’

‘Well,’ the old woman paused, then looked pleading. ‘Well, no. You know I don’t like it down there. It’s so noisy and you have to sit for hours.’ She rubbed the greying bandage under her knee. ‘Besides, he’d only put me on some pills and they cost money.’

‘I’ve told you, the Health Service will pay as you’re an OAP.’

‘Well I don’t like the doctor.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Well he’s … he’s one of them Asian ones.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Mum …’

Once again the fond heckling of the one gave way to the tender bullying of the other. The mother was meekly led, but the daughter knew her sway would pass with the visit. In her cage, Sandra had discovered how to swing her mirror without the ugly lady.