Thirty Four

I was always a dab hand at Happy Families... - Don recalls family life as a child and his love of a card game he never actually played. He describes how the game promoted his acquisition of mimicry skills. Later, he uses these skills to make telephone calls. He learns something he did not expect.

I was always a dab hand at Happy Families. I could surely have turned professional. I never actually played the game, of course, since none of my so-called friends would ever stoop so low. What I used to enjoy was dealing out the cards and slowly, methodically, matching up the families. After that, what I enjoyed even more was mixing them up.

I used to set them out across the oil-cloth that covered the kitchen table to protect it from spills. In cold weather the cards used to stick and you couldn’t easily gather them in after a game. My mother and grandma would be busy around the house and would pause on their way past to glance over my progress. Invariably, they would share a joke about the grocer looking just like Ernie at the Coop, about Mrs Cod the fishmonger’s wife looking like what’s her name from down in the council houses, how the policeman’s boy was the spitting image of that Joey Stokes and how my portrait of the doctor’s wife had the same smirk as the stuck-up lah-di-dah from the top of West Lane always wore. Just a few years later they did precisely the same thing with moving images when they matched newly-emergent Coronation Street happy families with local reality.

It was this habit of my maternal lineage that developed another facet of my abilities, a facet I retained, indeed cultivated. Inadvertently, it taught me how to listen. I listened not only to my mother’s and my grandma’s likening of my Happy Families to real Kiddington characters, I listened also to the people they identified. Whenever I encountered them around the village, and whenever I heard a name I could match with memory, I used to concentrate on what was said. I used to watch for mannerisms, analyse, remember and then try to copy. I noticed patterns in the words that some people used. There was one woman, for instance, who would avoid saying anything remotely coarse, preferring to ask the butcher for stomach pork when she meant belly. There was a man who always used the word ‘presently’ correctly, which, of course, sounded wrong, as it still does. My grandmother’s inability to say the word cemetery was legendary throughout the village. It always came out as symmetry. I wasn’t very old and I had problems of my own. I remember not being able to say ‘shoulder’, it always emerging as ‘soldier’.

But I did more than note linguistics. I also remembered what people talked about, their favourite subjects and their pet hates. I noted opinion at an age when most don’t realise there’s anything other than fact issued by adults. I noted timbre, intonation, animation and crescendo, sensing rhythm and style even in the whispers that women used to use when they wanted to talk about something that should not be ‘in front of the children’. My aim was to mimic, so I could play my Happy Families at the kitchen table and then add suitable commentary in an appropriate voice whenever a comment on likeness arose.

So, quite soon, I had learned to place a card and wait for the comment that habitually it generated. “That’s just like Elsie Wotsit,” my grandma would say and thus, on cue, I would become Elsie Wotsit, not only aping manner and voice, but also recalling the content of her last conversation with my mother. The reactions this provoked were, of course, ones of hilarity and this merely reinforced the habit. And it never ceases to amaze me how, once learned, these little skills can prove so eternally useful.

Mr Bun The Baker was always my favourite, because I was really into sweets. He was a portly soul. His pin-striped trousers had bunched folds above the ankle, suggesting that they might be falling down, a fact that could not be established because they emerged from under a vast white wrap-around apron. He wore a chef’s hat, far too big for him, and cocked to one side on a head that was surely bald underneath. An opera singer’s moustache cut across a pair of rosy cheeks, whose colour was clearly exaggerated by the exertion of supporting, one-handed, a vast tray of sweets. Now sweets, of course, I liked.

But it wasn’t the coloured, sugar-frosted garish rocks that adorned the matrix of clear glass bottles at the back of the grocer’s counter that interested me. Neither was it chocolate whirls, pre-wrapped bars or toffee that made my heart run. It was real sweets that interested me.

Since my dad worked in Bromaton on Saturday mornings, the three of us, him, me and mam, took to going into town together. If you were early you could always park easily in the cobbled streets behind the Springs. Dad would go off to work and mother and I would tramp around the market buying bits and pieces, vegetables, meat and fish, and occasional pairs of shoes, or sweets for me. I have fond memories of being pinned like a crucified Christ to the front of a market stall, arms outstretched, while mother selected shirts off the pile and then hung them in front of my arms to see if they might fit. The Market Hall seemed so vast to a child, its hanging tungsten filament lights providing about enough light for a living room, nowhere near enough to brighten the cavernous interior.

Its sounds are etched into my memory: the hollow, clipped rattle of hard sweets being poured loose from jars into the brass pans of scales; the gravel in the voice of the man who bulk-sold boxes of chocolates from a van that parked just outside - “and I’ll throw in a box of Maltesers, one of Cream Whirls and how about a tin of Quality Street as well? I’ll ask not five, not four, not three, not two, not even one... Not ten bob - give me five bob the lot! Just two half crowns for all this! Thank you ... one over here, one over there, one for the gentleman in the raincoat...” he would say as assistants in brown coats (his was white) struggled through the apparently permanent crowd with armfuls of boxed sweets. His patter was sublime, his sound near evil. And it was always to the ladies that these invitations to buy were addressed, despite the fact that the money was always handed over by a man. Up and down the ranks of stalls we shuffled, my face at asinine height, my hand firmly grasped by my mother’s fingers.

And when I could see beyond the trousers and skirts, I would notice something brightly coloured and plastic-wrapped, such as a new Lone Ranger mask and gun, complete with six silver bullets, a Davy Crocket cap, a Laramie marshal’s badge, a pair of Rawhide leggings, a Dan Dare suit or some other traditional toy, and I would point and plead, laugh and jump, only to be told we couldn’t afford it as my mother tugged me back into the flow. I would cry, of course, prompting my mother to slap me hard to make me stop. Minutes later, the inevitable comparative exercise would be used to generate pressure for social conformity. “Look,” my mother would say, “there’s another little boy and he’s not crying.”

“He’s already got his William Tell crossbow,” I might say, before continuing to moan, getting another slap and then wailing even louder.

My world would spontaneously shatter, as free-flowing tears fell, still bemoaning my mother’s denial of my access to a new Hawkeye suit. And then round the corner there appeared the cake stall. Premeditated motive was suddenly forgotten, superseded by the proximity of a more pressing, immediate and sublime prospect. She would lift me up to her height for a better view of the confectionary paradise, and my tears would stop as quickly as they had started, as soon as the wonderful prospect of chocolate, cream, custard, cake and pastry registered.

There were cream horns dusted with icing sugar, sponge cakes, sandwich cakes, chocolate cakes, coffee cakes with butter icing, Bakewell tarts, custard slices, apple pies, angel cakes, cream buns with butterfly wings, jam doughnuts, cream doughnuts, fruit flans, candied nuts and the ultimate gooey experience, treacle tarts. “Now which one will little Donald have today?” would prompt a determined raising of my finger in the direction of the treacle tart. A piece about the size of my mother’s handbag would be passed my way and I would be blissfully quiet for the next half hour. I then generally cried again because my mother would wipe the debris from around my mouth with a spit-wetted hankie, her determined strokes just a bit too strong for my infant dimensions.

But Mr Bun the Baker had noted qualities in addition to his tray of my beloved sweets. “He looks like Cliff Watson,” my mother would say as she passed by en route, no doubt, from boiling tub to mangle, or on some other suitably stereotypical journey.

Cliff Watson was the rather slow-witted, rather flabby, habitually grunting father of Geoff and Mick. He used to come with my dad and I in the car to watch Bromaton Quartet play on a Saturday afternoon so, more than most of Kiddington’s inhabitants, he presented me with ample opportunity to perfect my mimicry. On the other hand, like most Kiddington males, he was a man of few words, the silences in between often conveying most of the intended meaning, and that still implicitly.

So when Cliff Watson was habitually likened to Mr Bun the Baker on washday, baking day, ironing day, brass polishing day or whatever day of the week it might have been, I was able to reduce both mother and grandmother to weeping paroxysms of laughter by doing my perfected impersonation. And, given this lead, others followed. Learning how to do Johnny Squibb, George Jones and Pedro the Mayor, however, proved more difficult than the ones I perfected in childhood. But then, in this, my later life, my efforts could be helped by blaming the quality of my reproduction on the poor mobile phone coverage in the area.

Trust, you see, is a precious commodity. It’s not to be invested anywhere. It should only be placed where one knows it is safe, because without it families are rarely happy. Equally, if it is misplaced, taken for granted or, worse, abused, then conflict usually ensues. In my book, this is to be avoided. And, if for whatever reason, trust has broken down, the only way to resurrect it is to put it to some test, a trial by ordeal to see if it can endure. Assisting me in this task was the list of contact details from the second sheet I had photographed that evening in Paradise.

There were technical considerations, as ever, and those had to be confronted first. There would be no ‘what’ if the ‘how’ could not deliver. Again my beloved internet came to the rescue. You don’t have to be an ape capable of typing Shakespeare to realise that impersonating someone over the telephone requires a phone call. In the old days, you could do that from anywhere. You could even use a public telephone. Nowadays, you can’t even find one! And nowadays, recipients recognise familiar numbers. Their phones register the contacts they receive, their bills itemise them. If you call via the internet, however, no number is displayed. You can, if you wish, have a few minutes of anonymity and, unless the recipient traces you immediately, there’s little chance of revealing who or where you are. Now I won’t claim to have planned this well in advance, but I had taken the trouble to install software that would record the calls. So, with Suzie safely installed in The Castle for her evening shift, I brought my laptop to life and loaded the software we had bought to call Dulcie, a facility that had only been used once, and that abortively. I donned my headset, and from my user area accessed the document I had photographed, the one with all the contact details.

Now Mick Watson was always going to be the easiest to impersonate, so I started with him. I shouldn’t have. I rang Johnny, fully expecting him to answer, and answer he did, but only after I spoke.

“Hello, Johnny.”

“Hi, Mick. How’s things?” The voice was the same squeak I had expected, but its delivery was fluent and without pause, with only a suggestion of the stall he imposed on his more public words.

“Fine, thanks.” I should have waited. I was too impatient. “It’s about the planning application you left here the other day. I just wanted to know if there had been any new developments. Any new kids on the block?” I knew instantly I had transgressed. There was a silence I had not expected.

“Sorry, Mick, you’re not in the loop on this one. It’s all over. You know the system. It’s called need to know, and now you have no need. We’ve had some good years, but there comes a time...”

I decided to leave the silence hanging. It wasn’t a ploy. I couldn’t think of what I might say. I was clearly supposed to know this already. Luckily, he continued.

“Was it Olga who...?”

I tried to think quickly. I was on the spot. “She mentioned something...” I deliberately left the ellipsis hanging as bait, praying he would bite. Something, somewhere, answered my prayers.

“Look, Mick, I am a man of my word and, so, I hope, are you. Let me re-state what we agreed. It’s only been a few days and I fully understand if it has not yet sunk in. You are to stay away from the office. Better still, stay away from Paradise. Don’t even drink at the bar. Stay at home. Go to The Castle, but Paradise is now off limits. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“So back to your question. It seems you have been nosing around in the office. Or maybe you have been doing your fatherly thing again with your poor and vulnerable little girl. If it’s the former, Mick, I have to say that this is a last warning. Paradise is off limits. Don’t go there. If you do, we will have to come to some arrangement. If it’s Olga that’s been blubbing in your ear, then...

“Olga hasn’t ... didn’t...” I was desperately trying to dig my way out of the hole I was now threatening to pull another into.

“Stay out of this, Mick. Understand?”

I nodded. The telephone must have transmitted it, because it was clearly registered at the other end. There was a click as the call ended. I had expected a working relationship between Mick and Johnny and learned only of a dismissal. I was confused.

It took me several minutes to decide what to do next. It wasn’t easy. I had a fraction of a story, a story whose plot was as unacceptable as it could possibly be. It was a piece of a jigsaw that fit with nothing else I had ever seen, nothing that I had hitherto taken for granted. I decided to play safe. I became Mick again. I called Olga. I had to call her now in case Johnny contacted her to accuse her of telling Mick about the proposed redevelopment of The Castle. Again, it was a mistake.

“Olga...” I never even finished her name.

“What the ustulation do you want? Stay away from me, you dirty jetsam. And that hageen of a woman has been nosing around upstairs again. Will you tell her to stay on the bottom floor where she belongs? She comes to clean my place, not sodalistically live in it! I don’t want her nosing around up here. OK? Business is business. It doesn’t mean we have to be friends. And where the quoin are you? You know you are not to go into Paradise. Are you there? If you are, get the ecchymosis out before Johnny finds out.”

The call ended. I had not completed a single word. It was possible to conclude that Mick Watson was not in Olga’s good books. And who was the cleaner nosing around - and thus resented? Was it Maureen? It couldn’t be, because she was usually at The Castle nowadays. Karen Matthews? No, surely she was too big a fish to be just a cleaner, surely...

I wandered around Rosie’s interior for some time. It’s not extensive, so I probably did a couple of dozen circuits. I went out and took a stroll through the site, noted who was in and who was out along our row. It’s a habit now. Call me nosey, call me interested in life. I smelt, for instance, who was having fish for dinner, and who was having a ready meal in the microwave, the ping at the end of cooking time resonating like a siren across our tranquil camp. I was trying to buy time, but not because I was waiting for something. I was merely confused.

Back in the van I powered up the laptop again. This time I ran all the high memory usage software I could dig up, started up the radio player on audio, and tried, at the same time, to display the mid-week English football on internet television, placing both broadcasts on mute, but still running. The last thing I wanted was pristine, high bandwidth transmission. For this task, I needed the poorest, most broken transmission I could manage, because this voice was going to be a tough challenge. I did, as usual, make sure I had the recording software running. Again I called Olga.

“Olga,” I said.

“Pedro,” she answered. Immediately there was a lilt, a lift in her voice, but it also spoke of arrangement rather than willingness, accommodation not excitement.”¿Cómo estás?”

“Bien,” I said, pausing. It was a lucky move.

“Er... Lo has hecho? Has hecho que lo que hemos pedido?” I wanted to answer, but I had no idea what she had said. I could hear no trace of Russian accent in their words. “Pedro, cariño, is that you? ¿Dónde estas?”

I thought quickly. I risked English on the assumption that it was the most appropriate language in which to express depravity. “Olga, little Olga, prod, prod...” I had overheard him say that just once when I stood on the Paradise landing outside his treatment room, just after Olga had loosened his gag. I hoped it might loosen the tension.

“Mira, amigo,” she said, “no more sweeties for you if you no deliver. ¿Entiendes? No more sweeties. We say Thursday, jueves. ¿Entiendes? Pedro do his job. Then more sweeties. OK?”

I offered silence.

“Then Olga give sweetie, pequeño bonbon, si?

“Si.” I ended the call. I had never realised that my Olga, my personal goal, my Eastern European cutie, would speak such unaccented Spanish.

Now the next one was obvious. In for a penny, in for a pound. When you are up to your neck in proverbial, start swimming and be sure to swallow as much as you can. I called Mick.

“Good evening, Mick,” I said, placing a pin stripe through my voice.

“George!” The relief was palpable. “You have reconsidered?”

“Well...”

“George, I can still do anything you ask. I can still be useful. I can still deliver. Without me you wouldn’t have half the options. I made some of them happen. Please do accept that. I set all of this up. It’s my baby. I’m your baby now, your baby now, your baby now...”

The singing faded, jaded. “Mick...”

“Look, I know I was wrong. I’ll undo it. I never expected she’d make a success of the deleterious place! The idea was that it would fail all the quicker. I’ll arrange something. Leave it to me. Can I go ahead? George, please let me try...”

“We were thinking...”

“Great! You’ve been talking about what I suggested! I’ll set something up. Just give me a few days, maybe until this time next week. I’ll deliver. Don’t worry. Give me a few days.”

I could have spoken, but it was unnecessary. The gentle, barely audible grunt I offered was, in context, a clear signal of assent.

“Thanks, George,” said Mick before ending the call. I suddenly wished I was more confused than I was.

As I said at the start, I always was a dab hand at Happy Families. What I can’t cope with is unhappy ones. And, over the years, I have had my fair share of them. My origins, as any careful reader of my blog will already know, were close to bliss. My wonderful mother and father, bless them, were idyllic parents. In modern terms, he would have been condemned for subjecting me to passive smoking and my mother would have been castigated for never asserting her own woman’s identity and probably incarcerated for feeding me saturated fats. He, of course, succumbed to the smoke and left us early and she followed, heartbroken, within the year. They each have their little plaques next to the path by the rose garden in the grounds of the crematorium in Ribthwaite, at the other end of town from The Castle. It wasn’t their fault they were who they were.

If only my own family could have been as happy. I worship my wife, but she has always harboured an only-partially suppressed indifference towards me. She left me twice, only to return because I was the better long-term bet financially. I can’t be fooled. I have a difficult daughter who won’t speak to me, or to her mother. I do not need to be told when families are not happy. I do not need a bang on the head with a railway sleeper to identify a piece of wood, even when it’s made of concrete. And I know a happy family when I see one. Alternatively...