I didn’t like my Uncle Fred. I didn’t like the way he talked to my daddy; it made me feel bad inside. He was always telling him to get a job. He gave me and Brenda pennies for sweets but I knew it wasn’t because he liked us, it was because he knew that Daddy didn’t have any spare pennies to give us himself. I gave my pennies to Daddy for his Senior Service.
Aunty Vera was my mum’s sister and she was married to Uncle Fred. I didn’t like her much either. She was always moaning and gossiping about the neighbours, saying this one or that one were no better than they should be.
She said my mum was a saint for putting up with my dad. Sometimes I’d overhear them talking in the kitchen.
‘You should leave him behind, Kate,’ she was telling my mum. ‘You should move into that new house on your own with the kids. That man of yours is neither use nor ornament.’
‘He’s the children’s father,’ Mum had said.
‘Pity he doesn’t provide for them then.’
‘He’s not able to, Vera.’
‘According to him.’
‘He’s tried, he has tried.’
‘Well, my Fred says he’s a disgrace.’
‘Sorry, Vera, but according to your Fred, half the people in Brighton are a disgrace, so give it a rest, eh?’
I went to bed that night with a bad feeling in my tummy. I didn’t want to leave my daddy behind. If my daddy didn’t move to the new house then I wouldn’t bloody move either.
I loved my daddy. He was the best daddy in the whole world but sometimes being around him made me feel sad and I didn’t know why. It was just a feeling in my tummy, like I needed to run to the lavvy. Sometimes it felt like I was grown-up and he was the child, especially when Uncle Fred and Aunty Vera came round. Uncle Fred would get all puffed up with self-importance and tell Aunty Vera to show Mum the new necklace he’d bought her or the new coat, or the new shoes or the new bloody country, and Mum would smile and say, ‘Very nice, Fred.’
Then Daddy would walk out of the room and I would be sad again because my daddy was sad, because he couldn’t buy nice things for my mum. I knew that if he had money he’d buy her beautiful things and she’d look better in them than Aunty Vera, because even though Aunty Vera was my mum’s sister she was lumpy-looking with horrible thin hair and thin lips. But my mum was pretty, everyone said she was pretty and that she could have picked any man she wanted, and she wanted my dad. So stick that where the sun don’t shine. ‘Bugger Uncle Fred, bloody, bloody bugger! Sorry, dear Lord Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary, but bugger Uncle Fred.’
I thought my Uncle Fred looked like an under-ripe tomato, sort of yellow and red and patchy. I decided that even when Uncle Fred died, hopefully of something awful and painful and lingering, I would never light a candle for him in the church and I made Brenda promise she wouldn’t either. Even though I always lit a candle for two-doors down’s dog who got stood on by the milkman’s horse. I always lit a candle for that poor dog even though we weren’t that well acquainted, because I’d laughed when I was told he’d got stood on by the milkman’s horse and I’d been filled with guilt ever since. I mean, whichever way you look at it, it’s not a great way to end your days, is it?
Aunty Marge was Mum’s other sister. She was married to Uncle John and I loved them both very much. They didn’t have any children of their own so they spoiled me and Brenda something rotten. Aunty Vera said that Aunty Marge was barren, whatever that meant. Mum said better to be barren than to produce the fat lump of humanity that Vera had managed to push out. I guessed she was talking about my cousin Malcolm, who was a horrible boy and best avoided at all costs. Mum said it amazed her that Malcolm had been the best swimmer, which amazed me because I knew for a fact that he couldn’t swim. Someone pushed him into the canal at Shoreham once and a passing boat had to fish him out and Aunty Vera had kept him in bed for a week.
Aunty Marge and Uncle John ran a fruit stall near Brighton station and sometimes when they were busy, like Easter and Christmas, Daddy would help out and Uncle John would give him some money and a pouch of baccy. Every Sunday evening they would bring round a wooden crate filled with the fruit and veg that was about to go off. Mum said we would likely all starve to death if it wasn’t for Marge and John. Dad had said, ‘I would never let that happen, Maureen,’ and Mum had slammed the larder door.
One day, when Mum was crashing and banging round the kitchen she said, ‘You’ve got three fathers, Maureen, and none of ’em bloody work.’
I didn’t ask her to explain because when my mum was crashing and banging around the kitchen it was better to keep your trap shut. But if I had three fathers, where were the other two? I didn’t know anyone who had three fathers.
I used to think about it when I was in bed and try to figure out who they might be. I liked the coalman who always pinched my cheek and left a black smudge on my face. Sometimes he gave me a Fisherman’s Friend that tasted rotten, but it was kind of him to give it to me. He said it helped to get the phlegm off his chest. I didn’t fancy having a father with phlegm on his chest. The other possibility was Mr Chu the tallyman but I think my skin would have a more Oriental sheen to it. I discounted the rag and bone man who smelled something awful and the milkman who had sticky-out ears.
I worried about it a lot but I didn’t share my worries with anyone, not even Brenda, because if I had three fathers, God only knew how many Brenda might have had and I didn’t want her to have to worry about it. And then I realised that my mum had been telling me the truth: I really did have three fathers.
There was the one who was gentle and kind and wise and took me and Brenda to the park. Who held our hands at the water’s edge and showed us how to skim stones over the water, who made up stories at bedtime, who played silly games with us and let us ride on his back. Then there was the daddy who shut himself in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out. The one we heard screaming out in the night, making me and Brenda cling to each other under the covers. Then there was the one who scared me. The one who laughed too loud and walked too fast so that we couldn’t keep up with him. The one who threw Brenda up in the air and caught her but didn’t realise how frightened she was and wouldn’t stop throwing her even though I was yelling at him. The one whose laughter turned to tears and who hugged us too tight and cried like a baby and kept saying, ‘Sorry, I’m sorry.’
I had three fathers and none of ’em bloody worked.