Coco Pinchard's Must-Have Toy Story

by Robert Bryndza

  “Mum came up to town to get her ears syringed,” he explained.

  “Was it a success? Has it improved your eavesdropping skills?” I asked.

  “Thought I’d pop in see my favourite boys… An’ you, love, of course,” said Ethel.

  We gave each other an insincere smile.

  “How was your day?” I asked Daniel, putting my arm round him.

  “I got the final version of the music score sent off to the pantomime company for Dick Whittington. I hope they like it,” he said.

  “They’ll love it,” I told him.

  “Oh Coco, you got another rejection letter fer one of yer stories,” said Ethel, banging down the teapot on the worktop.

  “Sorry Cokes, I opened it by mistake,” said Daniel. He searched through a pile of bills on the kitchen table and handed me a letter from The People’s Friend magazine. I quickly scanned it, noting it said the short story I’d submitted wasn’t suitable for publication. I’d almost got used to the rejection letters these days. I sighed and tucked it back amongst the pile of bills.

  “What is it they say? Don’t give up yer day job?” asked Ethel.

  ‘Now Mum, Coco’s a wonderful writer, she just hasn’t had her break yet,” said Daniel.

  I pulled the kitchen door shut and fished The Sun out of my bag.

  “Look, forget about that. We need to talk. Have you seen the paper?” I said, smoothing it out on the kitchen table.

  “I know. Poor Princess Diane, splitting up with that Charles,” said Ethel, spooning fresh tealeaves into the pot. “She won’t leave the Royal Family and come out alive.”

  Why is Ethel the only person in the world who calls her Princess Diane?

  “Who’d want to hurt Princess Diana?” I asked.

  “She gave the Queen an Anus Horribilis,” explained Ethel.

  “It’s Annus Horribilis,” I corrected.

  “Well, whatever it is, it sounds painful,” said Ethel. “That Diane should watch ‘er back, tha’s all I’m saying.”

  The kettle clicked off and she poured hot water into the pot. I resisted the urge to press the Diana/Diane debate.

  “Anyway, I’m not talking about Diana. Look!” I said.

  I opened the newspaper and flicked through to the page about Tracy Island. Ethel came over to the table and she and Daniel both peered at the article in silence. Ethel’s lips moved as she read.

  “Blimey,” said Daniel, sitting back and reaching for a cigarette.

  “Coco, iss only a week or so till Christmas! What ‘ave you bin doing for the past two months?” exclaimed Ethel.

  “I’ve been at work! You’ve spent the past two months on the bus up here and back to Catford. You could have jumped off at Hamley’s, Ethel,” I retorted.

  “I’ve been up and down to the ‘ospital with all sorts, Coco. I’ve got a bad back, bad hips…”

  “And there’s all that earwax,” I said.

  “Okay you two,” said Daniel. “Let’s go outside and have a cigarette.”

  “The door’s shut, Danny, the smoke won’t reach little Rosencrantz,” said Ethel.

  “No. We smoke outside, Ethel,” I said.

  We grabbed our coats and reconvened on the terrace. The moon was now up and the lawn had frozen and was glistening in the moonlight.

  “Maybe we can persuade Rosencrantz to like another toy. What about Action Man?” suggested Daniel.

  “We could make a Tracy Island? They were just on Blue Peter, using toilet rolls and margarine tubs,” I began.

  “You can’t give ‘im something made up of all the old shit you’d throw away!’ said Ethel. She had a point.

  There was a knock on the door and Rosencrantz pressed his nose against the glass.

  “Everybody, I just thought up a funny Thunderbirds joke!” he shrilled.

  We stubbed out our cigarettes and came back inside, relishing the warmth from the kitchen.

  “Go on, tell us yer joke, love,” said Ethel.

  Rosencrantz took a deep breath.

  “Why is Parker called Parker?”

  “I don’t know, why is Parker called Parker?” I asked.

  “Cos he’s a good parker!” Rosencrantz cried, grinning with his little row of milk teeth. Ethel and I laughed.

  “Oooh! Tha’s funny!” she said, scooping him up for a cuddle.

  Only Daniel remained confused.

  “Who’s Parker?” he asked.

  “Oh Daddy, you’re a ding-dong dilly noodle,” said Rosencrantz. “Don’t you know anything? Parker is Lady Penelope’s chauffeur in Thunderbirds!”

  Rosencrantz jumped down from Ethel’s arms and started to swan round the kitchen, doing a rather brilliant Lady Penelope voice and jigging gently as if he were suspended from strings.

  “Parker, we appear to have intruders. I think they are going to take my jewels,” he said. “Yes, M’lady, but h’I fink we might be unable to stop ‘em,” he said, switching to an equally good impression of Parker. “EVERYONE! I can’t wait for Christmas Day! Thunderbirds are go, go, GO!” he shouted and ran round the kitchen and back through to the living room.

  Ethel looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Right I’ve gotta be orf,” she said picking up her bag. She saw my despondent face. “Don’t worry Coco, love, we’ll sort something out.”

  “Yeah Cokes, there’s still a few shopping days to go till Christmas,” added Daniel.

  “Danny, be a good lad and walk yer old Mum round to the bus stop,” said Ethel.

  When they’d gone, I cleared away all the bills. Then, pulling out a big pile of marking, I sat down at the kitchen table. When Daniel returned he brought fish and chips, and we ate them on our knees in front of the telly. Every time a silly Christmas advert came on Rosencrantz laughed with his little open mouth half full of chips, and me and Daniel looked at each other nervously.

  “We should sort out the tree and the decorations too,” said Daniel quietly.

  Later on, I’d just put Rosencrantz to bed when the phone rang. It was Ethel.

  “Coco!” she whispered down the line. “I’ve ‘ad a tip-off… About this Tracy Island…”

  I wasn’t sure why she was whispering. She lives alone, and her next-door neighbor, Mrs Roberts, is deaf.

  “Ask Danny if ‘e remembers old Bert ‘oo was in the pidgin fanciers with ‘is dad?” she went on.

  Daniel was coming out of the downstairs toilet with a magazine. I relayed the message and he leant into the receiver.

  “Yeah Mum, I remember Bert,” he said.

  “Well, Bert works for Conway’s Lorries,” continued Ethel. “‘E’s driving a load of them Tracy Islands up from Dover tomorrow morning fer the toyshops. And ‘e’s gonna stop in a lay-by an’ a few are gonna fall off the back of ‘is lorry… You know, cash. No questions.”

  “That sounds illegal, Ethel,” I sniffed.

  “Oh gawd, Coco. Do you want this Tracy Island for Rosencrantz or not?”

  “Of course I do,” I said.

  “Then this is ‘ow we get it.”

  “That’s great, Mum!” said Daniel. “Coco, you can drive, I’ll read the map.”

  “An’ I’ll be the go-between, me an’ Bert go way back,” said Ethel.

  “Hang on. I can’t go to Dover tomorrow,” I protested. “I’ve got to be at work! There’s a special Christingle assembly… We’re on pain of death if we don’t show up.”

  “You know I can’t drive, Coco,” said Daniel.

  ‘You should put yer son first, Coco. Before some bloody school assembly,” added Ethel.

  I suddenly had a vision of Rosencrantz crying on Christmas Day under a presentless Christmas tree.

  “Okay, I’ll sort something out,” I sighed. “What time should we leave tomorrow?”

  “Bert said ‘e’ll be in the lay-by at ‘alf ten, and iss first come first served, so we better make it early,” said Ethel.

  Tuesday 15th December

  I still had some marking to do after we
’d eaten our fish and chips. I took it up to bed to do and it was gone midnight when I finished, but I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about phoning in sick for work, the repercussions of missing The Ripper’s Christingle assembly, and Rosencrantz being without a present on Christmas Day. When I finally did sleep, I had a dream he was under the Christmas tree, tearing Christmas paper off a large present with a bow, which turned out to be an empty cornflakes box. He turned it upside down and a lone cornflake fell out onto the carpet. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Mummy, don’t you love me?”

  I woke suddenly. My heart was pounding and I saw by the glowing digital clock that it was three in the morning. I got up to go to the bathroom, slipped on the pile of exercise books I’d left by the bed, and went crashing forward, hitting my left eye on the brass doorknob. My howl of pain woke Daniel, and he leapt out of bed to find me squatting on the floor, clutching my eye.

  “What is it, love? What did you do?” he asked, flicking on the light.

  “I slipped over on those bloody stupid school books!”

  He peered at my face and tilted my throbbing eye up to the light.

  “The skin isn’t broken, but you might have a shiner come morning,” he said. “Let me get you some ice to put on your eye, and then you should come back to bed.”

  He padded off downstairs and returned with some ice wrapped in a tea towel and two tumblers of whiskey. We climbed into bed and he put his arm round me.

  “Christmas wasn’t like this in the old days, was it?” I asked, leaning my head on his chest. I pressed the ice pack to my throbbing eye and grimaced.

  “What do you mean?” said Daniel.

  “There never used to be this one Christmas toy that everyone HAD to have. I remember getting a doll’s pram, and another year I got a pretend iron and ironing board.”

  “One year I got an Action Man, and everyone went bonkers over the fact his eyes could move from side to side,” said Daniel.

  “Tracy Island apparently plays electronic sounds too. We’ll have to remember batteries… Do you think we’ll get one?”

  “Course we will, Cokes. Mum’s known this Bert bloke for years – he’ll come through tomorrow, don’t you worry,” said Daniel. “And I can organise Christmas,” he added.

  “You will? You’ll do everything this year?”

  “I promise. You don’t need to lift a finger. I’ll get the beds ready for when Meryl and Tony come to stay, and sort the tree, the decorations, the turkey. And I’ll buy frozen. It won’t be a live one,” he said. Despite everything, I laughed.

  “That was the strangest Christmas, when Ethel brought a live turkey. I wish I’d taken a picture of my father’s face,” I said.

  “Mum couldn’t face killing it…”

  “She could quite happily kill me though,” I said, adding, “She thinks I’m a bad mother, for going back to work.”

  “Well, I know that you’re doing it for us,” said Daniel. He pulled me close and gave me a kiss. “You know, Cokes, Mum does love you too, deep down,” he added.

  “It must be very deep down,” I sighed, taking a big gulp of whiskey. “Daniel, could you have a word with her, nicely, and maybe suggest she doesn’t have to be here every evening when I get home? Of course you should see your mother, but she’s been here most days for the past four months and…”

  There was the soft sound of snoring: Daniel had fallen asleep.

  “You have perfect timing,” I said. I drank the last of my whiskey and tried to get comfortable, balancing the ice pack on my throbbing eye.

  * * *

  I woke at six the next morning with the alarm screaming and me soaking wet. The ice in the tea towel had melted. The only upside of all this was that I sounded suitably groggy when I phoned Miss Marks to say I wouldn’t be at school.

  “Mrs Pinchard, you do know it’s the Christingle assembly?” said Miss Marks incredulously. I said I did. She asked me again what was wrong, and I repeated that I had been concussed.

  “How exactly, Mrs Pinchard?” she asked sharply.

  “It’s none of your business how,” I snapped, losing my temper. “I have a concussion, and I have been advised not to come in to work.”

  Miss Marks never quite believes when a teacher is ill, so they tend to over-explain their symptoms. On several occasions a note has come through to the staffroom saying that someone will be off ‘because they’ve been on the toilet all night’. I can’t imagine this happens in a bank.

  “The Headmaster won’t be pleased,” she said. I caught sight of my reflection in the hall mirror and saw that I had a black eye coming up where I’d struck the doorknob. I had a sudden surge of confidence.

  “I’m not pleased either that I’ve had a nasty accident, Miss Marks, and I have been advised on medical grounds to stay at home. If you have a problem with that you can take it up with… with…” I scrambled around in my mind for the name of the teacher’s union I was paying to be a member of.

  “The NUT? AHDS? ASCL? The UTU?” asked Miss Marks sarcastically.

  “Yes. Them,” I said and put the phone down. I hoped my black eye would turn into a right shiner before I went back to school tomorrow.

  * * *

  We got Rosencrantz ready for school, and I kissed him goodbye at the front door.

  “Mummy, why is your eye all black? Did you look through one of those joke telescopes?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did,” I lied.

  “Wow! Can I try it? Where is it?”

  “It’s Mr Cohen’s from next door. He popped round earlier to play a joke on Mummy,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t think Mr Cohen is into jokes, he always looks such a bloody misery guts!” said Rosencrantz.

  “Rosencrantz, don’t be rude!”

  “I’m only saying what you said the other day,” said Rosencrantz.

  “Well, Mummy shouldn’t have said that…”

  “Come on son, we’ll be late for school,” interrupted Daniel. They both gave me a kiss and I watched them for a moment, Daniel and his little doppelganger walking off, chatting away. My heart was fit to burst with love.

  Whilst Daniel walked Rosencrantz round to school, I dug out the AA Road Atlas and plotted our course to the mysterious lay-by on the route to Dover. We set off in the car just after eight, picking up Ethel in Catford on the way. There were miles and miles of roadworks along the dual carriageway towards Dover. The digging for the Channel Tunnel terminals was causing chaos. Daniel sat in the front with me, reading the map, and Ethel was in the back. Although she didn’t sit back, preferring to peer through the seats and eyeball me in the rearview mirror.

  “Put yer foot down, Coco!” she said. It was ten to ten and the van was due to stop in the lay-by at ten.

  “Ethel, we’re bumper to bumper in this queue,” I said.

  “Ain’t there a back road?”

  “We have to stay on the dual carriageway, because that’s where the lorry is stopping,” I said.

  Ethel leaned through the seats and honked the horn.

  “No, Mum, don’t do that,” chided Daniel, pulling her hand away.

  “They shouldn’t be doin’ this, digging tunnels under the Channel,” muttered Ethel darkly. “They’re openin’ a Pandora’s box. The French will be able to walk to England, an’ the tunnels’ll be flooded with rabid dogs!”

  The cars in front began to move and we inched forward. The dual carriageway was reduced to one lane and we were crawling along beside a row of traffic cones. Daniel poked his head out of the passenger window.

  “It’s okay, it’s just up ahead,” he said, pointing past the rows of cars stretching ahead to a lay-by appearing over the brow of the hill. We inched forward some more, and could make out a stationary lorry. The line of cars began to move quicker.

  “It’s fine, we’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” I said, changing up to second gear.

  “Me an’ Bert go way back, so you let me do the talking,” said Ethel for the fifteenth ti
me that day. “‘E’s a very reliable bloke. So were ‘is homing pidgins, they were always the first back.”

  A roadworks van passed in the blocked-off lane beside us, and came to a stop parallel to the lay-by up ahead.

  “Tha’s Bert! Tha’s ‘im,” yelled Ethel in my ear, as a balding man with a paunch climbed down from the lorry. At the same time, two blokes in hard hats got out of the roadworks van. I was about to turn off the carriageway into the lay-by, when one of them walked into our lane with a huge stop sign on a pole. He planted it on the ground and I applied the brakes. The other bloke was now shifting the road cones, creating a gap through to the empty lane next to us and blocking off the lane in front.

  “Hang on, what’s going on here?” said Daniel. The bloke holding the sign then flipped it round to the green ‘GO’ side, and indicated I drive through the gap into the next lane.

  “We’re being diverted,” I said, not knowing what to do.

  “We can’t go, Coco, we’ll miss the bloody lay-by!” cried Ethel, leaning through the gap in the front seats.

  A car behind honked its horn. The bloke in the hard hat waved at me to move. I wound down my window.

  “Sorry, I need to get to that lay-by!” I said, pointing at the lorry. Bert was now unlocking the back.

  “GO!” he shouted, waving at me. More cars started to honk behind.

  “Don’t go, Coco!” squawked Ethel, grabbing my arm through the gap in the seats.

  “I’ve got to go! I’m blocking the road!” I screeched.

  “But it’s Bert, look, ‘e’s got the bloody lorry open!” cried Ethel.

  There was a muffled clatter as the back door of the lorry whooshed up, and we could see pallets of coloured boxes swathed in shrink wrap. The bloke with the ‘GO’ sign up ahead was now very angry and yelling, waving his arms. A cacophony of honking was coming from behind.

  “Shit!” I shouted.

  I put the car in gear and turned into the next lane. The diversion led us across two lanes and through a gap in the central reservation! We emerged in a lane on the opposite side of the road. We stopped parallel to the lay-by at a set of temporary traffic lights, which were red. A giant truck started to cross, piled high with earth.