Cherokee

by Creina Mansfield

  ‘Gene! Stop! She is as appalled as I am. Horrified that my ... that I ...’ She stopped to gather strength. ‘And to involve Wesley in something like this – he would never have been so vulgar!’

  I was considering saying, ‘Most people can’t wait to get in front of the camera,’ when I remembered that she’d hardly been in front of it.

  It had seemed a brilliant idea at the time, but now, looking at Moan’s crumpled and flaming face, I began to reconsider.

  I was a second away from apologising when she said something that changed my mind.

  ‘Typical of your grandfather!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, it was him singing, wasn’t it?’ Of course, I’d chosen Cherokee’s version of ‘All That Meat And No Potatoes’. It was the best, but she made it sound as if he’d been there in the kitchen when I’d been doing the filming. I wasn’t going to apologise now.

  I stood glaring at her.

  ‘You – you’re all the same!’

  ‘And you –’ I thought of the worst insult that I could deliver. ‘You’re a tone-deaf idiot!’ I yelled.

  ‘Right,’ said Moan, suddenly quiet and grim. ‘Right, now you’re going to do some real work, my lad. You obviously have far too much time to idle away. Follow me.’

  I followed her into the garden, leaving Wes opening and shutting his mouth like a goldfish. There in front of the garden shed stood a mountain of old blackened saucepans.

  ‘Now I want you to scrub these until they’re sparkling,’ Moan instructed me.

  ‘But how’ll I do it?’ I gasped.

  ‘Plunge each one into concentrated bleach and scrub it with wire wool,’ she ordered me.

  ‘But my hands –’

  ‘Nonsense, boy! Do a bit of work for a change. What do you think hands are for?’ She held up her own pink leathery hands with fingers like uncooked sausages.

  ‘These hands know what work is,’ she said proudly as she strode away. ‘And don’t come in until you’re finished.’

  I set to work. A large bottle of extra strong bleach sat next to the saucepans. I squeezed some into a bucket. As soon as I put my hands into the bleach, they started to sting. After five minutes they were as white as chalk; after ten they were mauve. I kept on scrubbing even when my skin began to split. I was getting through the pile of saucepans more and more slowly as the bleach soaked into my fingers.

  Wesley came out into the garden and picked up some wire wool.

  ‘Wesley!’ came a screech from the kitchen. ‘Don’t you help him. Come back in here.’

  ‘Coming!’ called Wesley dutifully, but he lingered in the garden.

  ‘Hard luck,’ he said sympathetically.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Where did this lot come from?’ I said into the bucket. I was too ashamed to meet his eye. I was waiting for him to accuse me of tricking him, but he didn’t.

  ‘Wesley! Come in here instantly,’ came Moan’s voice.

  Wesley edged towards the back door, still hesitating.

  ‘Why do you put up with it?’ I asked indignantly. ‘She’s mad, round the twist!’

  Moan stormed out into the garden. ‘Wesley, do as I say!’ she shouted.

  I turned one of the grimiest pots over. There was a label stuck underneath saying, ‘Church’s Recycling Appeal’.

  ‘Recycling!’ I said indignantly. ‘Are all these things going to be recycled?’ I asked. ‘Melted down and recycled?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Moan. ‘They’re going to be recycled.’

  ‘So they don’t need cleaning!’ I shouted, flinging down the wire wool. ‘They’ll do that at the factory.’

  My hands were stinging, my fingernails felt as if they were falling off. ‘Well, you know where you can stick your pots!’ I shouted.

  Then I ran!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Destruction

  Iran out of the house, horrified at what I had done. When Cherokee heard about it, I would be in real trouble. Moan was wrong in thinking that Cherokee allowed me to behave any way I wanted. He insisted on politeness and he was always telling me that my Aunt Joan was a good woman. He wouldn’t punish me but when you live with someone like Cherokee, just knowing he’s disappointed with you is punishment enough.

  I slowed down as I passed Grimaldi’s. When I reached the seafront, I breathed in the ozone-filled air. It made me feel better. The sea was washing fiercely against the sea wall, spraying me as I passed. I shivered. It was quite cold for July. I wished I’d stopped long enough to grab my jacket.

  I headed for Wesley’s hideaway. The line of beach huts stretched in front of me, but one door was open, hammering against the side of the hut in the wind.

  I recognised the yellow painted floor of Wesley’s hut and began running again. He never left his hut unlocked, there were too many valuables inside. My clarinet was inside!

  I reached the hut and stared in disbelief at the devastation. A heap of tangled tapes lay on the floor. Each cassette had been pulled from its holder and then twisted and snapped; books were torn from their covers. The wooden chairs were no more than firewood. And my beloved clarinet had been crushed and mutilated; each piece had been ground into the floor.

  Nothing had been taken; everything had been destroyed.

  How could anyone could do such a thing?

  Then a chilling thought came to me: Moan had done this! And I began to run once more – back to Zig Zag Road as if Wesley’s life depended on it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Discovery

  I’m not sure what I expected to find back at 17 Zig Zag Road. But I came through the back door into an eerie quiet. Then I heard an unfamiliar sound. Wesley’s voice was raised in anger.

  ‘Mum, you can’t read that! It’s Gene’s private diary!’

  I felt grateful to Wes, although I was surprised. Surely he realised his mum sneaked a look at Diary A whenever she checked my room for dust particles.

  Then I went cold with fear – supposing she was reading Diary B, not Diary A? My jacket was hanging in the hall. I checked the concealed inner pocket. Diary B was gone!

  All those remarks I’d made about Moan! ‘Moan’ – how could I explain that away? I was in big trouble.

  I rushed into the sittingroom. Moan and Wallaby were standing there like two finalists in a Purse Your Lips competition.

  Moan was holding Diary B. ‘This proves he’s been determined to cause trouble from the start,’ she was complaining to the social worker.

  ‘Certainly sending that video was a shocking thing to do,’ agreed Wallaby.

  ‘It sort of got out of hand,’ I explained, looking at Wes. If I should apologise to anyone, I thought, it was to him. Until I knew he wasn’t angry about ‘Life’s a Laf ‘, I couldn’t bear to tell him about the beach hut.

  He gave me a look back that was half smile, half wonderment. ‘That was an incredible clarinet solo,’ he said, ‘sort of wailing. How does he do it?’

  I grinned. He was talking about Cherokee’s solo in ‘All That Meat And No Potatoes’. With Wes, the music came first now.

  ‘You should hear him in “If I Had You”,’ I answered. ‘That’s –’

  ‘This is what I have to put up with!’ snapped Moan to Wallaby. ‘This sort of talk! And such ingratitude!’

  But Wallaby had seen a ray of hope. ‘Well, Joan, there does seem to be signs of positive peer group bonding here,’ she said. ‘That second diary shows it too. And it also reveals a developing sense of personal identity.’

  This didn’t suit Moan, ‘But sending that video shows the boy’s been influenced in a most unsavoury way. He is quite wild.’

  Wild! She was calling me wild after what she’d done to the beach hut?

  Mrs Walmsley’s face was a mass of worry lines. ‘Well, we must certainly review his position. May I see that?’ Moan handed Diary B over as if it was an explosive device.

  ‘Let me see ...’ She read out my entry for J
uly 9th.

  I’m beginning to wonder where all this will end. Although it’s fun here with Wes, I don’t want to miss the Calumets’ tour of Ireland. Cherokee’s playing in Dublin and then he said we’d have time for a fishing holiday in Dingle with Seamus.

  PS Remember to practise ‘Danny Boy’.

  ‘Well, we can’t have that,’ said Wallaby decisively. ‘In the circumstances it would be better if you stayed here.’

  ‘What circumstances?’ I yelled. It didn’t make any sense. She knew Zig Zag Road was driving me crazy so she was making me stay there longer.

  Moan scowled. ‘All this galavanting in foreign countries has got to stop,’ she added.

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed Wallaby. ‘Stay here where you are safe. Then we’ll see about organising a sensible lifestyle for you.’

  ‘Sensible lifestyle’ – the words sounded like a prison sentence.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Prisoner

  Moan began behaving like a prison warder as soon as Wallaby left. ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight,’ she threatened. ‘You’ll be off doing something silly if I don’t do my duty.’

  Being imprisoned without trial, I had plenty of time for my diary. Diary B, that is. There didn’t seem much point writing Diary A any more, although Wallaby had returned both. ‘They are, after all, your own personal property,’ she’d told me, through tight lips.

  ‘So was my clarinet,’ I could have said, but it wouldn’t have done any good. People like Mrs Walmsley and Moan are only fair about trivial matters.

  DIARY B

  July 7th, Wednesday

  (view of weather conditions

  obstructed by prison bars)

  I know what it’s like to be related to someone famous. Soon, I’m going to know what it’s like to be related to someone notorious. The tabloids will probably hound me for my story as the nephew of the woman who massacred the entire population of Clifftown. Anybody who can break open a beach hut, smash a valuable clarinet and then go berserk with someone else’s music collection is capable of anything. Moan’ll stride out onto the pier and blast them all. The terminator in a floral apron. ‘Hasta La Vista, baby!’

  It wasn’t until a few hours later that I had a chance to speak to Wes. Moan was in the garden venting her anger by scrubbing out a dustbin. I was trying to creep up on the subject of the beach hut. It isn’t easy giving bad news.

  ‘She’s really gone too far this time,’ I said.

  ‘I know. She just can’t see she’s never going to control you like she does the dust!’ Wes turned to me. ‘You realise it’s a neurotic condition?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘All this cleaning. What she doesn’t understand, she sweeps away.’

  ‘Well, she can sweep me away any time she likes. I want to get out of here!’ But it was hopeless. As usual Cherokee had left no address. I knew he was touring Germany, but that was all.

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Wes thoughtfully. But I hardly noticed. I was angry.

  ‘She’s completely round the bend, you realise that?’ I went on, warming to my subject. ‘She’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic.’

  ‘A few connections short of a full circuit?’ suggested Wes, getting the idea.

  ‘Not playing with a full pack of cards,’ I continued. ‘I mean, look what she did to your beach hut! Was that the behaviour of a sane person?’ I asked.

  A look of horror spread over Wes’s face. ‘What did you say?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘She’s been to the beach hut,’ I told him. ‘She must have been watching us. She followed us down to the seafront, saw your hut and returned later to destroy everything.’

  ‘Everything? Your clarinet?’

  ‘Everything.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A Turning Point

  Wesley sat quite still. I kept on talking because I couldn’t bear the silence. ‘The clarinet’s in bits,’ I told him, ‘and sort of mangled.’

  He shook his head in disbelief. Just then Moan came in from the garden. She was wiping her hands dry from scrubbing out the dustbin. They were large strong hands, powerful hands. Wesley stared at them as if he was seeing them for the first time.

  ‘What are you two up to?’ asked Moan.

  I thought indignantly of the lies she had told about Cherokee. How she had told Wes he’d jumped ship. She made me so angry!

  Cherokee was fond of quoting some poet who said that music had ‘Charms to soothe the savage breast’. Well, I felt extremely savage at that moment. I wanted to grab hold of my clarinet and play a few numbers that would make me feel less angry. But of course I couldn’t. The only clarinet in the neighbourhood was now a mass of mangled wood. And I couldn’t even listen to music at 17 Zig Zag Road. The only sounds were of Moan thumping her way around the house and nagging me. She’d banned me from leaving the house. She would have liked to keep Wesley in as well, but he had to go to school, he had exams coming up. He sneaked out the next morning without saying a word to either of us.

  DIARY B

  July 15th, Thursday

  How can anyone as clever as Wesley be taken in by this idea that Moan is good? I know Cherokee believes it too, but that’s understandable because he rarely sees her. A quick ‘hello’ on the doorstep when he’s leaving me at Zig Zag Road and he’s off.

  She’s managed to brain-wash everyone with this idea that she’s good. It’s a wonder she hasn’t tried to extract our brains and put them in the washing machine, just to make sure they’re ‘nice and clean’.

  I’m going to write Diary A too, but now Moan and Mrs Walmsley will have to recognise it for what it is –what I am supposed to think.

  DIARY A

  July 15th, Thursday

  Because they are concerned about my welfare, my Aunt Joan and Mrs Walmsley are keeping me away from everything I like and enjoy – the Calumets, my clarinet, music, Cherokee. I am very fortunate to have two such good people dedicated to worrying about me all the time.

  I’m worried about Wesley. I keep picturing the beach hut and I know how he must feel about it. But he hasn’t mentioned it to me again nor said a word to Moan.

  Since I think Moan deserves to be sliced into pieces as thin as clarinet reed, then stuffed down a tuba, I’m a bit worried. If Wes is thinking the same way, what’s he going to do next?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Escape

  I knew as soon as Wes walked through the door that he’d been planning something.

  He came in as quietly as ever, shutting the door gently behind him and saying simply, ‘It’s me.’ But something had changed in him. Gone was that shocked, hurt expression that he’d worn since he learnt about the beach hut. There was an almost-smile on his face and he looked quietly pleased with himself.

  Moan sensed it too. ‘Why are you grinning like that?’ she asked.

  ‘No reason,’ answered Wesley, walking stiffly round the kitchen. Then he did something quite amazing – he started whistling! He began very softly, but even so Moan jumped back in surprise and I just stared at him in wonder. If he had strangled Moan with a piano wire, I wouldn’t have been more amazed. And still he went on whistling.

  I soon recognised the tune – ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.’ It was a clue. Somehow, Wes was making sure that I would get to Ireland. Luckily Moan couldn’t possibly guess what was going on because she’d never listened to any music.

  I kept close to Wes after that but so did Moan, so the three of us followed each other around the small house.

  Still smiling, Wesley sat down and turned the television on. I sat down.

  Moan sat down between us.

  ‘And now,’ came a wildly excited voice from the television. ‘It’s “Top of the Pops”!’

  ‘Turn that nonsense off!’ ordered Moan.

  Wesley rose slowly and turned the television set off. He stood by the window and stared out through the dazzling white net curtains. I went and stood next to him. He turned towards me, about to sp
eak, but as he opened his mouth, Moan shoved herself in between us.

  The house seemed to have shrunk. Wherever I was, there was Moan. I’m sure that if I’d sat in the airing cupboard, she would have too. And all the time, Wesley was trying to tell me something ...

  Moan didn’t dare leave us to go shopping, so we sat down to a meal of left-overs.

  ‘There’s some of last Friday’s battered plaice, beetroot and cold custard,’ Moan announced, sawing the custard into three thick slices.

  In more cheerful times I might have risked a joke about the plaice, but not now. The three of us sat dumbly, until the cheerful sound of Wesley’s whistling broke the silence.

  Even I was surprised at him whistling while eating. After all, you don’t want bits of beetroot shooting over the table, do you? Wesley wasn’t just trying to annoy Moan or take his mind off the cold fish and beetroot. He was sending me another message. I heard two lines of ‘Button Up Your Overcoat’ before Moan snapped ‘Quiet!’

  I grinned. I didn’t mind Moan now. I wasn’t going to have to listen to her much longer. Wesley was telling me that it was time to get my things and go.

  I asked for permission to leave the table and went upstairs. I looked at my possessions spread around the guest bedroom – clothes, a few books, a football – none of these was worth taking with me.

  One thing that travelling teaches you is that everyday possessions aren’t very important. When you’re in Rome and your suitcases have been sent to New York by mistake, you have to do without them and start again. And it’s not so difficult to do.

  I had only one object with me that I valued – my clarinet. Moan had destroyed that and she was welcome to everything else.

  I bounded down the stairs into the kitchen where Wesley was making a cup of tea.