by Cj Flood
One summer, Matty pointed out that my house didn’t have family photographs. Hers was like a museum: the lot of them at Disney World and dressed up in Victorian costumes and Matty every year at school.
Soon after, Mum said she couldn’t afford our latest school pictures. ‘We only just got the last one. You don’t look any different,’ she said, and she was trying to joke, but I got upset. I told her she had to get it. It would be embarrassing to be the only kid at school not buying one, and why didn’t she take any pictures of us anyway? Why didn’t she put some up?
‘Where’s this coming from?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ever bother your dad about this stuff?’
But the next morning she gave us money for the pictures, and a few weeks later, a collage of our last visit to Skegness appeared in the kitchen.
We didn’t talk about anything like that on the phone. Instead, I told her how the two men and Trick were away from the paddock all day while Trick’s mum cleaned the trailers inside and out, and how the little girls pretended to help, but mostly got in the way, and how the fire was sometimes left to go out and sometimes kept burning through the night. We spent longer on the phone every week, and I started to look forward to Monday nights.
The Monday after the break-in though, I wasn’t in the mood. It was hard to be enthusiastic about the travellers with Dad walking around the way he was. He’d even let the bird feeders go empty, which was unheard of. His robin kept popping up at the kitchen window and pecking at the glass as if to say, What did I do?
I listened half-heartedly to Mum’s description of the souks in Tunis, and the people she’d met there, and I answered Yes, and I don’t know, and Probably, to her questions about whether I’d got the bracelet she’d sent, and whether Sam had read her postcard, and whether Trick was okay, until eventually she gave up and let me go.
It was hours later, when I was learning the names for wildflowers in bed, when a pounding on my door almost gave me a heart attack. Sam burst in on the third bang. In the past he would have waited, but these days he thought a warning was sufficient.
‘No, please, come in . . .’ I started, and then I saw his face.
‘What does she say?’ he slurred, and he put too much weight on the door handle, so it looked like it might swing away at any moment, taking him with it. His shaved head made his brown eyes look enormous.
‘What?’ I put my book down.
‘What does she say?’ he said, louder now. He stepped into my room, without letting go of the door. One of his eyes was closed. He stank of booze.
I didn’t know what to say, and so I said, ‘Not much.’
‘Not much?’
‘She tells me about where she’s been, like Beni Khiar . . .’
‘Beni Khiar?’
‘And she asks how we are, says she loves us. That she’s sorry—’
‘Ha!’ he said, as if that was the stupidest thing he’d heard in his life. ‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘What does she say? When’s she coming back? What does she say?’
‘I . . . She didn’t . . . She didn’t say any of that.’
‘Don’t you ask her?’
I swallowed.
‘You don’t . . . ?’ He was incredulous, and his mouth opened. He dropped his head back and made this terrible noise, the sort a baby rhinoceros might make if it had three legs broken, but was still about to charge.
His eyes glittered and he stared at me, swaying along with the door, one side of his lip raised in disgust.
‘Why don’t you speak to her? If you’re so desperate to find out. Why don’t you speak to her yourself?’
‘Doesn’t matter to you, does it?’ he sneered. ‘You don’t care, do you?’
He’d let go of the door handle now, and was halfway into my room, his face a mess of rage and tears and drunkenness, and I got out of bed, ready to fight him if he wouldn’t shut his mouth.
‘You don’t, do you?’ he said. ‘You’ve got Dad.’
‘How would you know what I care about?’
I wished Dad would hurry up and get back from the pub.
‘I hate you, Iris,’ he slurred, pointing at me. ‘You shouldn’t talk to her. I hate you. And I hate Dad. And I hate her as well.’
He turned and slammed the door so hard that I felt the air sucked out from around me.
‘Why don’t you speak to her?’ I shouted after him. ‘If you’re so bothered! Why don’t you speak to her when she rings?’
‘Shut up!’ he shouted, and his voice broke, and he ran upstairs.
I heard Sam throw himself down on his bed in the room above me. I got up. The door handle was still warm from where he’d been gripping it. My hands shook. I couldn’t hear anything out in the hall.
He wouldn’t want me; he’d tell me to go away, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t knock, just pushed the door open gently.
‘Get out,’ he said.
He was lying exactly as I knew he would be: diagonal across his bed with his face shoved into his pillow. His Adidas Stripes had got pushed up, and I could see the ribbed ankles of his white sports socks. Their dirty soles confronted me; two sad eyes. Mum’s postcard was in pieces on the floor by his bed. I’d memorised what it said.
Think of you both every day. Can’t wait to see you.
Won’t be long now. All my love.
I remembered coming in here when Mum and Dad were arguing. When I was small enough to climb in next to him and not care that we were squashed together.
There wasn’t enough room, and he wouldn’t budge over, and it took some effort to balance, but I made it onto the bed beside him. His breath was jagged and sad, and it hurt the piece inside me that felt just the same as it.
On the wall behind him was the outline of a king that he’d drawn in black marker pen. He’d pestered Mum and Dad to be able to do it for ages. Finally Mum had convinced Dad to let him. As long as he drew a practice picture first, and showed it to them, she said, why shouldn’t kids be allowed to express themselves in their own rooms?
The king’s long hair curled outwards as though he stood in the middle of a great wind. Beyond the king a medieval castle was in the process of falling down. The drawing wasn’t finished.
There was a new box of pens on the floor Sam still hadn’t opened. Him and Benjy both loved drawing. Benjy did these brilliant cartoons that made everyone laugh, and Sam did intricate pictures of nature and magic. He hadn’t done any art stuff for weeks.
‘Sorry,’ I whispered, not knowing what I had to be sorry for but meaning it completely.
Sam’s throat made a weird noise.
‘I didn’t. I didn’t . . .’ I stopped, not sure exactly what I didn’t.
Sam lifted his arm up, and I ducked my head under, and we lay there like that, him face down, me tucked under his arm, until the world outside disappeared, and only the drawings that covered his bedroom walls could be seen in the window.
Ten
Mum left on a weekend in the middle of May. Summer hadn’t started, and it had been raining for weeks. She said she would come back. Not to Silverweed, but to Derby. She was just going away for a bit, to work things out, she said.
She’d packed the van overnight while we were sleeping.
She only took three boxes with her: one of clothes, one of cooking stuff, one of books.
‘What on earth is the point of having all this crap?’ I’d overheard her asking Tess on the phone.
I didn’t understand why she’d started calling everything ‘crap’, like it had all just appeared one day to annoy her. Like she hadn’t picked all the items herself.
Sam wanted to keep all the stuff she was leaving behind, or to put it at Tess’s if it would upset Dad, but Mum wouldn’t let him.
‘It’ll only weigh you down,’ she said. ‘You’ll see one day.’
And all the time she spoke in this maddening, soothing way because she didn’t want us to be sad about what was happening. Like that was even possible.
In the morning we had breakfast together, the three of us. Dad stayed out of the way, chopping wood. Pouring out the tea, Mum pressed her lips into a white line. She didn’t look at us.
After she’d washed our plates, she crouched down and put her head against Fiasco’s.
‘Be a good girl now, won’t you? I’ll be back before you know it.’
Fiasco licked her nose.
I couldn’t stop crying. I was scared we’d never see her again. She’d talked about travelling for as long as I could remember and now she was actually going. Sam just stood there and stared, and it was weird because they were the closest.
They used to mock me and Dad when we went out looking for rare insects or wildflowers. They preferred shopping and singing. It was always the two of them, making loads of noise. It had been that way since forever.
Mum had on her denim shorts and a thin beige shirt I hadn’t seen before and a pair of sturdy walking sandals she’d bought from a catalogue recently. We followed her out. I stood on the drive while she looked quickly around at the yard and the flowerbeds and the pebbledash walls of Silverweed, and I thought, Why don’t you look at us?
Sam stayed where he was, at the midpoint of the path.
Dad put his axe down, and came to wait behind Sam. Fiasco ran up and down the path with her head low, like she was in trouble.
‘I’ll ring every week, and write,’ Mum said. ‘And as soon as I’ve worked out a proper plan, we’ll talk about what’s going to happen next. This is nothing to do with you. Remember that.’
She pulled me to her and kissed the side of my head, and told me not to worry. I was a teenager now, and I had my dad and my brother, and we were to look after each other. She said she needed to do something for herself, but she’d be back, and she’d be happy.
‘I’m not leaving you, I love you,’ she whispered, but it didn’t make me feel better, because Dad was standing right there and she couldn’t say the same to him.
She went to hold Sam but he shrank away. She looked at the ground where rain had pooled in the dips of our wonky paving stones. She nudged at the water with her toe.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay.’
Her van was painted sky blue, and it was the only patch of colour in the yard, and I thought that if it had been sunny she wouldn’t be able to leave because it was so beautiful here then.
She opened the door and got in, and it creaked like any other car door on any other day and I wanted to jump in the back and throw her stuff out onto the drive, but instead I watched as she got the engine going, and struggled with her seatbelt, and waved very seriously, like she was taking the dog off to the vet’s to be given a lethal injection. And then she went.
Sam’s face was grey when I looked at him, and he was trembling, but his eyes were dry. The sound of her tyres passing over the rocks and stones on the lane was really loud for a few seconds, maybe because we were all so stunned and then Sam ran onto the lane. He ran after her for a few seconds, then stopped and picked up a stone. He threw it, and it crashed against the van. She didn’t stop.
‘Bitch!’ he shouted.
Dad had put his arm around me at some point, and he was trying not to let me know he was crying, and it was making my breathing so uneven that my whole diaphragm got out of synch. I couldn’t believe she’d done it. She’d gone. I couldn’t understand what was happening.
‘Breathe,’ Dad said. ‘That’s it, breathe.’ And I thought I’d breathe a bit easier if Sam would stop acting so mental.
He crouched in the middle of the lane, his hands running over the stones like he was feeling the surface of the sea, and he had this awful expression on his face, like he didn’t even know what he was doing.
I’d heard him shouting at her, the night before. The two of them had been sitting in his room, and out of nowhere I’d heard his voice.
‘If you aren’t leaving us, why can’t I come? If you’re coming back, why can’t I come too?’
When his door slammed, I went to have a look, and she was just standing outside his room, staring at the door.
‘Sam. Sam, come on, listen. Sam! Let me . . . Let me . . .’ she said, but he wouldn’t let her anything. He turned his music up.
She’d stared at the floor, and I could see from the way her shoulders moved that she was doing her breathing exercises. She did them every morning, cross-legged in the living room if it was raining, in the garden if it was dry. It was another one of her new things.
After she’d driven off, we drank sweet tea at the kitchen table, but it felt wrong being together. We couldn’t look at each other. We ended up in our own rooms.
I re-read The Darling Buds of May because after a while it always stops me from crying. Later on, Dad bought chips for tea.
The next day came, and the next week, and we went on with our lives, which were just the same except for being messier and less organised and much, much quieter.
Eleven
When I woke the morning after Sam’s outburst, I had a plan. It was as clear as if I’d dreamed it. I was going to make him feel better. I rooted through the pantry. We had flour and milk. I took some change out of the dusty fruit bowl and walked to the shop with Fiasco. The sun was in the middle of burning off a layer of cloud. It was going to be another boiling day. I bought lemon, bananas, eggs and two kinds of chocolate.
I looked through our ancient cookbook, and got out all the apparatus I needed. It was still only eight o’clock so I wiped the kitchen table down and swept the floor and put the pots away. I even stood on Dad’s armchair to get rid of the tomato sauce on the ceiling.
I fed Fiasco and the cats, and hit the ball as far as I could a hundred times, and then I couldn’t wait any longer. I made two cups of tea and carried them upstairs.
Dad was reading in bed. ‘Good girl,’ he said, sitting up, surprised.
Sam was less grateful. ‘What are you doing in here? Get out.’
He pulled his pillow over his head and turned over.
‘Oi! I’m making pancakes. And chocolate sauce. I’ve been to the shop. I’ve got bananas and everything.’
He lifted his pillow and peered at me.
‘You can’t make pancakes.’
‘I can.’
‘What, and chocolate sauce?’
‘It’s easy!’
He rolled over as if he was going back to sleep, but I’d got him, I knew.
By the time Sam came down, I’d made the batter. It was easy, just cups of flour and milk and a couple of eggs. I don’t know why I hadn’t done it before. The butter had reached the perfect point. It fizzed gold, filling the kitchen with deliciousness. The thing was to get the fat really hot. Everyone knew that. I ladled the mixture in and tilted the frying pan round like Mum did. Sam sat at the kitchen table, flicking his fork between his fingers so it knocked with both ends on the wood. The chocolate melted slowly in bowls on top of the Aga.
The first pancake was perfect. I let Sam have it. He peeled a banana halfway down, sliced it on, then spooned both types of chocolate over. He folded it in half, then half again.
He hummed while he ate it with his hands.
The next one was ready when Dad walked in. ‘Pancakes? What are you after?’ He moved the spoon through the batter, nodding his approval. ‘Here. You have that one. I’ll do mine.’
The pan hissed as Dad ladled in a new pancake. He whisked the mixture, even though I knew for a fact it was lump-free, and put the radio on.
I lemon-and-sugared my pancake. Sam shook his head at me. He had chocolate on his chin.
His scalp was so pale it was almost blue. The sun shining through the windows turned his ears coral.
‘Do you like it?’ I asked, pointing at his head with my fork.
Sam laughed. ‘You obviously don’t.’
He ducked his head, rubbing at it.
‘Yeah. It feels good.’
I reached over and rubbed his scalp. It did feel pretty good, especially when you stroked the hair the wrong way.
>
‘Punky said this would happen. Girls can’t resist a skinhead.’
I pulled a face. ‘Matty’ll cry when she sees it.’
‘Then she’s an idiot. It’s only hair.’
‘That’s a record!’ Dad said from the Aga, after an especially impressive flip. Fiasco watched him, drooling. Sam rolled his eyes.
‘Did Punky do it?’
‘No, Leanne did. She loves it. She’s even got her own clippers.’
‘Weird.’
‘I know.’
He couldn’t stop touching it, and it was so strange how different he looked, just because he’d got rid of his hair.
‘Jesus, Eye! It’ll grow back,’ he said, and I didn’t even feel stupid because he’d used my nickname.
When we’d eaten more pancakes than was okay, and Dad had gone to work, I told Sam my plan.
‘We’re going to finish the drawing. In your room.’
‘We?’
‘Yeah. I’ll help.’
He did one of those raspberry laughs, where you keep your mouth shut and let it explode through your lips. He looked out the window, like maybe he’d had something else planned.
‘You’ve been saying you’ll finish it for ages.’
‘Yeah, I know but . . . I dunno. I’d like to draw something maybe. Don’t think I’m in the mood to finish . . . that.’
‘Oh.’ I made a pattern on the table with some lemon juice.
‘I don’t know if I even like it any more. It’s a bit . . . shit.’
I watched the goldcrests and blue tits on the bird table. They were all so twitchy. They never stopped turning their heads for a second. Everyone thought birds were so free but they must be the least relaxed creatures on the planet.
I realised Sam was looking at me, and tried to smile, but I was disappointed. He was just going to go meet Punky and Leanne like he always did. As if buying two types of chocolate would mean he’d stay in all day drawing with me.
‘Could draw something else though,’ he said. ‘Go and get your bird books.’
