by Cj Flood
Dad held out his money, and Poll took it but didn’t go to get change. She was thinking about her story. The queue was getting restless.
Dad took the package.
‘Put the change in the charity box, eh Poll?’ he said, looking grim.
I pushed through people to the door, keen to get out of there before Donna said anything else.
Outside, the air felt cold after the steaming chip shop, and I shivered, relief tingling down my spine. The bell dinged behind us, and my stomach settled, and we were almost inside the pick-up when a car door slammed. Matty stepped out.
‘Shouldn’t dump your mates first time you get a boyfriend, you know, Iris,’ she called. ‘You’ll have no friends left when the gypsies move on.’
Dad stopped, his hand on the pick-up door handle. I squeezed the chips to me and the vinegar stung my nose.
Matty had her mouth fixed so her cheekbones were pushed upwards, her lips stretched in the worst kind of smile. I hated her.
The chip shop doorbell rang again, and Donna stepped out, brown paper package in her arms.
‘What’s all this?’ she said, taking in mine and Matty’s stand-off.
‘In,’ Dad barked, ignoring her.
Matty skipped off. From the car in front, she smirked back at me.
Fourteen
The journey home was silent. Dad didn’t look at me. His hands fed the steering wheel left to right, his knees lifted as he switched between accelerator, clutch and brake. I felt sick.
It was cloudy for once, and getting dark outside, and Dad put his lights on. He always put them on early, not like Mum who only remembered when she saw someone else’s. I leaned back against my seat, and thought about what I was going to say. That Matty had got it wrong? That Trick wasn’t my boyfriend? That I’d made it up to impress her? How much difference would the all-important boyfriend distinction make to my dad?
We were on Ashbourne Road now, and the next right turn was ours. Soon it would be over, I told myself. But Dad’s mouth was firm, like a decision, and I knew this was different. This wasn’t getting a letter sent home for wearing trainers to school or losing the form book for the third time.
He clipped the indicator as we approached our lane and cut the engine, letting the pick-up roll home, controlling it with the brakes. We lurched in and out of potholes, and I remembered how carefully Dad used to drive when I was little and would sit on his knee, holding the wheel.
He swung onto the drive, yanking the handbrake and footbrake at the same time, and I glared at him because the seatbelt had cut into my neck, but he wouldn’t look at me.
I concentrated on the patch of heat coming from the bag of chips onto my lap and belly, watching as he stared out the window. His hands gripped the steering wheel as if the whole thing might leap suddenly into the sky. The engine pinged and clicked as it cooled. Outside, a pigeon cooed.
‘Come on then,’ he said, and his voice was quiet. ‘Let’s have it.’
‘What?’ I said, and I sounded stupid. I knew what.
He turned to look at me, but it was my turn to stare out the windscreen now. A green lacewing had got splattered in the top left corner, and I noticed how the wipers kept missing it. One of its wings was pressed against the glass, and I looked at the intricate turquoise webbing.
The end of the ladder loomed over the cabin we sat in. I could see it at the top of the windscreen, and I imagined sitting up there, feeling the warm air on my cheeks, the cold metal rungs underneath me.
‘Well?’
My heartbeat filled the cabin.
I opened my mouth then closed it again.
I tried to think of something that wouldn’t make things worse.
‘Fine.’ He shouldered the door open. ‘Keep your dirty secrets. You won’t be seeing him again. That’s for sure.’
I was shocked, and I couldn’t think.
‘What you waiting for? Get out. I’ve got to lock the pick-up. Don’t know who you can flaming trust round here.’
He slammed his door and I jumped down, slamming my own. Dad locked up with his enormous set of keys, then jammed his hands in his pockets and stalked along the path.
The chips stank of vinegar and the dead fish that was wrapped inside, going soggy and grey. I wasn’t hungry. I watched the cracked paving stones pass beneath my feet. The walk down the path took forever.
‘It’s not as if I had sex with him or anything,’ I muttered.
He spun round.
‘What? I didn’t,’ I said, louder now, because I wanted him to know he was overreacting, that nothing that bad had happened.
He moved towards me, his face screwed up, and I stepped back to get away from him. ‘If that thug dared touch you . . .’
‘He didn’t,’ I said, and it took all my courage to get the words out, quiet as they were. ‘And he isn’t a thug.’
He shook his head at me in wonder, and I pulled my shoulders back, trying to hold my head up.
‘Swaggering about the place with that black eye. Have you noticed anything that’s been going on round here?’
The chips were burning my chest, and I realised I was crushing them. I realised I was shaking my head.
‘Jesus, Iris. How thick can you be?’
‘Don’t call me thick! You don’t know anything about it, you’re the one that’s—’
‘What?’ he shouted, so sharply that I jumped. ‘I’m the one that’s what?’ His eyes flashed, daring me to finish.
I felt my chest thudding. I swallowed. I didn’t know where to start.
‘He didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘And you know that, do you?’
I nodded.
‘Because that’s what he’s told you?’
I wasn’t daft enough to nod again.
‘Know it all, don’t you? And not even fourteen!’
I stared at the floor, at the silverweed growing up through a crack in the pavement. I could feel him looking at me, could hear the dislike in his voice, and I wished I could shrink down to the size of that tiny yellow flower.
‘I’ve not lost so much as a bag of nails in fifteen years down here. That rabble move in, and within weeks there’s a break-in. And you’re telling me that’s a coincidence? They move in, ruin a place or rob it silly, then leave it for the next bugger to clean up. Well, not me. I’m not going to be made a fool of again. I’ve had it! And I don’t know what your lad out there’s been filling your head with, but I wouldn’t believe it if I were you.’
‘What you going to do?’ I said, and I meant to sound mature, like it didn’t much matter to me, but it came out like a wail, and then the words came whining out of me again. I couldn’t stop them.
‘What are you going to do?’
Dad put his hands out, pushing the air between us away. ‘What am I going to do? It’s not your bleeding business what I’m going to do. I’m going to do what it’s my right to do. What I should have done a long time back.’
He rubbed his face, scraped his hair back from his forehead, and walked towards the kitchen.
At the door, he turned and faced me.
‘Tell you one thing they have got, your lot; something sadly missing from this family. Loyalty.’
Fifteen
The next morning, Dad made me go to work with him. He poached eggs and toasted crumpets, and we ate in silence. Sam was still in bed. I got into the pick-up without a fuss. Austin assumed I was poorly, and let me choose the radio station. As soon as I settled on one, Dad turned it off.
They were finishing their job in the Peaks, getting rid of the last few dying elms. As soon as we arrived, I jumped from the lorry and said I was going for a walk.
Dad looked like he was about to stop me, and I stared at him, my whole face shouting, And who do you think I’m going to meet out there?
Austin unloaded the chainsaws, oblivious, and eventually Dad waved a hand, as if I wasn’t worth bothering about. He unhooked the back end of the pick-up, let it drop, carelessly. The metal twa
ng reverberated around the hills.
‘Back for dinner,’ he barked after me. ‘Half twelve latest.’
I stamped my walking boots into the dried-out grass, trampling the pretty marsh flowers that so many other times I had stopped to identify.
He didn’t have any faith in me.
We used to walk here every Saturday. If it was really sunny, Mum and Sam would come too, but generally they preferred shopping. Dad would test me on the names of trees, and I’d try to impress him with my knowledge.
‘Turkey oak, defo.’
‘Nah, Cecil.’
‘Turkey. The lobes are way too pointy for a Cecil!’
‘Could be a hybrid,’ he’d say, letting me have it.
We’d stop at the White Hart and look through his pocket books about wildflowers and insects, talk about what we’d seen. He’d let me have half a pint of bitter shandy with my dinner.
Maybe I’d stop seeing Trick. It wouldn’t be that hard. I’d only known him for a few weeks. I’d make up with Matty and things would go back to how they used to be. The travellers would be evicted and I’d never see Trick again. I’d forget all about him. I’d show Dad that I was loyal, that I could be trusted.
But why? When I’d done nothing wrong?
And how could I make up with Matty? She made me feel stupid just for being myself.
Dad was so certain about everything, but sometimes he didn’t have a clue. I kicked at the dry floor. A cardinal beetle crept, bright red, along a piece of rotting bark. As if it could ever be inconspicuous!
I lifted my eyes, and focused straight ahead.
I would identify nothing.
Dad only liked me if I was doing what he wanted. If I was walking beside him, calling out the names of plants he’d taught me, I was okay, but if I was doing what I thought was right, he had no time for me at all. He hadn’t asked me a question for months. He hadn’t even listened when I told him about spotting the azure blue damselfly.
The hill was steep, and I started to run, half tripping over the frazzled tufts of grass, feeling the burn in my thighs. I filled and refilled my lungs with fresh air. I felt like I was learning something I didn’t like, a hard truth, as Mum would say.
‘Some people can’t fit the mould that’s made for them, Iris,’ she’d said to me before she left. ‘They get squashed in. And it’s hard for them to leave, but it’s harder for them to stay. They have to find other ways to be. D’you understand that?’
I’d said no, I didn’t understand, because I hated it when she got like that, using annoying metaphors and talking about people who were obviously her. I’d wanted to make things harder for her, and who knows? Maybe I didn’t understand then, not really.
From the hill’s peak, I looked at the clouds that banked to the east. There was a wind building, and it blew my hair into knots. The branches of the rowan trees overhead crashed into each other, and the wind caught in my ears, howling at me. I thought about Dad down there, taking the elms down branch by branch, so sure he was right about everything, and I knew in my heart that he was wrong about this.
I made a silent promise to go and see Trick as soon as I could.
Sixteen
Whenever I got the chance, I still crept up to Dad’s window to watch Trick’s family. Now we were friends, I was interested in a different way. I wanted to hear how they talked to each other, and what they laughed about. I wanted to know what they said about us, the country people who were trying to get rid of them.
Trick’s mum was always saying things that made him turn away, smiling, and I imagined her doing the same to me, saying things like, ‘And look at you with your curly hair, a fine figure of a girl,’ or pointing out that my boobs were finally growing, that I’d soon be needing to borrow one of her bras.
She was that kind of mum, I could tell. Like mine. She wanted to make people laugh.
And then one morning, when I was sitting at the table eating a cheese toastie, she walked past the kitchen window. The baby, Ileen, was wrapped in a blanket in her arms. Dad was in the outside loo, which was next to the back door. He still used it sometimes, even though there’d been plumbing inside for decades.
She knocked three times, and I froze. What if she’d come to tell me to stay away from Trick? Dad was right there, behind the chipped green paint of the outside toilet door. He’d think I’d been sneaking out before I’d even had chance. I’d never be allowed out by myself again.
She knocked harder, and I opened the door.
She was even more beautiful up close. She had a freckled nose and smooth tanned skin like Trick’s, but her eyes were a melting brown, and her mouth curled up at the sides, not quite in a smile.
‘So sorry to bother you . . .’ she said, and her voice was hoarse like Trick’s, but her accent was different. Messier and more Irish. Her words crumpled into each other like kids impatient to go down a slide. They got squashed at the end.
‘Who’s that?’ Dad called. ‘Iris?’
‘It’s Nan Delaney . . .’ she answered for me. She spoke as though this wasn’t the first time they’d met, and I realised it wasn’t.
‘Nan De—? Hold on.’
The toilet roll holder swivelled, and I felt my cheeks burn. The chain flushed, and Dad stepped out of the loo, tucking his T-shirt into his jeans.
Nan took a step back so that she was on the path. Dad was on the doorstep, and I was behind them both, in the house. He was as thrown as I was, and I could feel him bristling.
Nan looked at Dad with hard, flat eyes, and I wondered what they’d said to each other when they’d talked before.
‘I’m embarrassed to bother you, I am, but I thought it must be worth a try . . .’ She let out a nervous laugh that didn’t suit her. She pronounced thought as taught, like Trick. ‘It’s me second youngest, Patsy. The moment we’ve run out of water she’s taken ill. Men are both at work, you see, and I can’t go far because of the babies.’
She said babies to rhyme with tabbies, and can’t with ant. And she wasn’t here because of me.
It was obvious what she wanted, but Dad wouldn’t make it easy. A look of annoyance crossed her face then disappeared just as quickly.
‘I wondered if you could sell me some water, a bucket’d do. For me babby, so I can give her a bath, make her some soup . . .’ She trailed off. Her green eyeliner shimmered as it caught the sunlight, and I wondered how she’d learned to apply it so perfectly.
I used to watch Mum sometimes, at the bathroom mirror. She would widen her pale blue eyes and blink onto her mascara wand. Her eyes would roll into her head for a second as she did it, then be there again, staring at themselves in the mirror. She was relaxed when she did her make-up. It was like she was in a trance.
‘A mother has to swallow her pride,’ Nan Delaney said, and she looked at me then, as if I might understand that, and I might have, but it was too unexpected. I couldn’t smile back in time, and then her bright, hard eyes were gone, gleaming again at my dad.
He breathed in slow through his nostrils, and I tensed my stomach. I couldn’t bear it if he was rude when she was asking for help. I held my breath.
‘You want amenities,’ he said finally, ‘get to a camp site.’
Nan winced, but her eyes didn’t leave his. ‘Easier said than done,’ she said. ‘Travellers not welcome at the sites these days, ruin people’s holidays they say . . . Don’t like us when we travel, don’t like us when we stop,’ she said, and I remembered Trick saying the same thing.
She reminded me so much of him. She was beautiful and tanned and freckled, but she looked hard too.
‘I’m not getting into that with you. I want you gone. And you can tell your lad to stop sniffing around my daughter and all.’
He said it as an afterthought, but Nan’s face changed for a second.
The sky was blue behind her, and I could hear the traffic sweeping past on Ashbourne Road, and everything seemed to slow down for a minute as she examined me, puzzling over something. When she spok
e it was as though she was clapping her hands.
‘Well! That’s that, then!’ she said. ‘I’ll go back to me daughter, see if I can magic her up something out of the woodwork.’
‘Got me own litter to sort,’ Dad said, and he turned around and walked into the house.
‘Cold man,’ Nan said, then muttered something else I couldn’t make out. She took a step back, then changed her mind. Her eyes were soft again.
‘Say,’ she called into the kitchen, ‘is the brook water right for drinking?’
Dad came back to the door. He laughed out of his nose. ‘Sheep fall in. Rot, you know . . . But it’s your call,’ he said, shaking his head at her.
‘Thank you very kindly!’ Nan said, and she wasn’t exactly polite, but as she walked off, I thought she looked dignified, with her back ironing board straight, and her baby wrapped in a blanket.
Dad filled the kettle noisily. He was trying to avoid me.
I watched from the living room window. Nan took the road round our yard to get to the paddock.
‘Oh, she respects that’s mine at least!’ Dad called from the doorway. ‘Bloody woman.’
I went into the kitchen.
‘Don’t start,’ Dad said, before I’d even opened my mouth. ‘Who goes off in the morning, and leaves four kids without water?’
‘Maybe he didn’t realise.’
‘Iris.’
His beard was so bushy now, it was all wispy at the edges, and it made him look old. I wished he’d shave it off.
‘I mean it, don’t start. Not my fault if her husband is a careless pillock. And I don’t trust a word she says anyway.’
‘Why would she lie?’
There was amazement in Dad’s eyes as he looked at me. My cheeks prickled.
‘You really do believe everything everyone tells you, don’t you?’
