Blood Relatives

by Stevan Alcock

  ‘Eh?’ Over Gordon’s shoulder I caught the pitying glances of others.

  ‘No indeedy, young sir. Quite simply, I haven’t had the chance to make myself acquainted, so I thought I would do the decent thing, and … well, I’ve done that bit, haven’t I?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘So now we’ve dispensed with my name, why don’t you enlighten me as to yours?’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your name. But that’s all right, I believe I overheard. It’s Rick, isn’t it? Brusque and to the point. Very apt. Cigarette?’

  ‘Don’t smoke.’

  ‘Good for you, my boy. There are prettier vices. Dr Choudhury says I should stop.’

  He blathered on, all t’ while sucking one ciggie down then lighting another. He coughed ’til his eyes watered.

  The gist of what I got, when I tuned in, wor that Gordon had lived alone since his mother had ‘crossed the great divide’, that he wor now ‘a man of leisure’, but he used to have his own radio and TV repair business. That he’d always been gay, although in his day one didn’t use the word, that he’d never married, that he’d had two long and secretive relationships wi’ other men, and that he only came out – ‘as they now say’ – to his sister when he wor fifty-two, and she hasn’t spoken one word to him since.

  I watched his fingers mess wi’ a match. Exhaled smoke hung about his wide mouth. I leaned back in my chair. Gordon leaned toward me.

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly sent a ripple around the room.’

  ‘Is that why no one’s talking to me?’

  ‘That, and perhaps that you give off such an air of unapproachability.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Utter aloofness, my boy. It’s an alluring defence mechanism in one so young. You think that anyone who talks to you wants to get their hands on you. They don’t. You’re not really standoffish at all, are you? In fact, the moment I saw you I detected a certain crackle across the airwaves. I thought, now there’s a young man who won’t think I’m trying to seduce him just because I say hello.’ Gordon smiled crookedly. ‘I accept that I repulse you.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘The young are repulsed by everything. It’s what makes being young so unbearable.’

  I wor feeling cornered. I stood up. ‘I’m going for a refill.’

  Gordon emptied the dregs of his glass in one gulp.

  ‘You want another?’ I said, feeling obligated.

  ‘A Guinness would go down a treat.’

  While I wor waiting at the bar to be served a voice murmured into my ear, ‘One-way traffic, that one.’

  The voice had a foreign note. It belonged to a man wi’ a long, angular face, curly black hair and what Mitch always called ‘an unwashed complexion’.

  ‘Sorry?’

  I felt a hand rest on t’ small of my back.

  ‘Isn’t it always the way with the old ones? They pretend to be your friend, and then before you know it their hands are all over your deck. Trust me, dear, we’ve all suffered.’

  I looked across at Gordon, who waved at me like a man on board a departing ferry.

  ‘He means no harm.’

  ‘Oh, please. He’s always cadging free fags and drinks. Heavens, my dear, if I look like that at his age I’ll shoot myself.’

  The foreigner wor still kneading my lower back wi’ a worrying expectancy.

  ‘You’re new to GLF, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You’ve heard no doubt about the protest this Friday in Bradford? I mean, fancy someone getting fired from British Home Stores just for being gay? Scandalous. So we’re picketing BHS. It should be fun. Afterward we’re going for a curry and then on to the Nash.’

  ‘The Nash?’

  ‘The International Club on Lumb Lane. Hard-core basement reggae club. Us pouftas are the only non-blacks allowed in. And the prostitutes, of course. As far as the world’s concerned, we’re on about the same social level as the whores.’

  ‘Prozzies don’t bother me none.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know any.’

  He told me his name, and spelt it for me. Fazel. F.A.Z.E.L. He made me guess where he wor from, a game I knew he must play wi’ everyone. The only places I could recall from t’ school atlas wor Egypt, Arabia and Tunisia. He said wi’ a curl of his lip that he worn’t an Arab.

  ‘Israel?’

  ‘Iran! I don’t suppose you even know where that is?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it. So how come you speak such good English?’

  ‘Daddy works for an oil company. We’ve moved around a lot.’

  ‘I nearly went to Rotterdam on t’ North Sea Ferries one February, but it wor cancelled cos t’ sea wor too rough.’

  ‘Is that right? Well then, you mustn’t go to Iran first, because then the rest of the world will disappoint you. Iran has beautiful ancient cities, warm weather, great food, gorgeous men …’

  ‘So what made you leave all that for Yorkshire then?’

  ‘I’m a student at the uni. Do you like it here? This septic isle? Ah, well, I suppose if that’s all you’ve known – the cold, the grey, the damp. As for myself, I’m always trying to find interesting ways to keep warm. You know, like crawling under the covers with some willing young man.’

  ‘I’d better take Gordon his pint.’

  ‘All yours,’ Fazel said, lifting his hand off my back like it wor scalding him.

  I set the pint before Gordon.

  ‘Here.’

  Outside, it had started to sile it down. We listened to t’ rain drumming on t’ pavement.

  ‘Gordon, what’s wi’ this demo business? Are you going?’

  He sipped the head of his Guinness, leaving a froth moustache on his upper lip. His tongue licked it clean, shooting out like a chameleon’s.

  ‘I might. I’m having lunch with my good friend Charles, so it depends greatly. You should go, though. These things are important.’

  The rain wor battering at the windows like it wor wanting to be let in.

  Gordon said, ‘Are you planning on going home in this?’

  ‘No choice.’

  ‘I could give you a lift.’

  ‘What will it cost me?’

  Gordon smiled his yellow, toothy smile. ‘A lot less than you might be thinking.’

  As it happened, the day of t’ demo wor my day off work. I thought I’d go take a gander first and then decide whether I’d join in or not. I wanted to see how many wor going to pitch up, and what they looked like. I didn’t want to be the only young’un amongst a bunch of oldies, uglies and lesbos.

  I staked my place at a street corner across t’ square. At first, it didn’t look like owt wor happening. The man wi’ t’ badge-vomit jacket wor there, as wor t’other one in t’ platforms and bell-bottoms. He had a long patchwork scarf snaking round his neck that looked like summat knitted by t’ blind, and a pale orange cotton bag hanging from his shoulder. They all just stood around, blathering on at each other, judging by t’ positions of their heads.

  In t’ end there wor about ten folk. There wor two women portering a furled-up banner between them. Not the women I’d first seen at the GLF meeting. A sandy-haired bloke pitched up, pushing a chunky bicycle. No sign of Fazel.

  No Gordon neither, but then he’d said as much. When he dropped me off after t’ GLF meet he’d asked me for my phone number, but that wor a no-no. He tore out a page from his pocket diary and scribbled his own number on it.

  ‘Otherwise,’ he’d said, ‘most Thursday evenings I am usually in the Dog in the Pound on the Leeds Road. Do you know it?’

  I said I’d been past it. Which I had. On t’ way to Paradise Buildings.

  Across t’ square, the women unfurled the banner, which had holes cut in it to let the wind through, and ‘BRADFORD G.L.F.’ sewed onto it. They started shouting summat about Gay Lib and jobs and discrimination. At first they seemed a little unsure, like schoolgirls carrying out a dare, but then they egged each other on and the shou
ting became more forceful. Only it wor carried up on t’ breeze and grew small – like a lost balloon.

  I wor gobsmacked that anyone would do that. Stand out there in t’ wind and rain for someone else, risking all that abuse. I pondered what the bloke who’d got fired thought of it all. Wor he one of t’ ones who wor wi’ them?

  While t’ women shouted, the men wor trying to leaflet folk who wor entering or leaving the department store. Some went over to see what it wor all about, taking the leaflets, maybe thinking it wor a freebie promo of a chance to win a car. If it had been, Mother would have been in there like a shot. Others read the leaflets briefly then tossed them away. Some just dropped them, but a fair few screwed them up and made a disgusted show of tossing them aside. One or two handed them back. Most folk just pushed on by, heads bowed, not looking.

  Then a woman in a bobble hat came over, dragging a toddler by t’ hand, and started yelling about God and the Bible and all that baloney. This set the toddler bawling.

  Nowt much else happened for a while apart from t’ shouting and the leaflets being blown about t’ square, ’til someone from t’ department store came out to talk to them. The lone cowboy sent out to face the enemy. He seemed all riled up. He wor flapping his arms about and pointing at the leaflets on t’ ground and seemed to be vexed about summat, although I wor too far away to hear. Then he strode back into t’ store.

  I wor expecting that any moment a couple of bobbies would put in an appearance, or even a panda car, but nowt of t’ sort happened. After an hour or so they gradually dispersed, looking undecided what to do next. Eventually three of them headed Lumb Lane direction, presumably for t’ curry. I wor peckish mesen, but it might have looked a bit odd to suddenly pitch up for t’ curry, so I headed into Bradford market in search of a sausage roll or a samosa, but it wor just stalls of brightly coloured sari cloth or cheap toiletries, plastic buckets, curtain net and whatnot.

  I left the market at the far end where it came out near a small roundabout. I toyed wi’ t’ notion of taking a wander up Paradise Buildings way. It had been yonks since I last saw Tad or Gina or Jeremy at the FK Club. So much for that ‘You’re ours now’ guff. I stood there for an age, leaning on t’ safety barrier, watching t’ traffic whizzing about. Then I went home.

  As summer approached, folk wor getting worked up about t’ Queen’s Silver Jubilee. There wor to be a chain of bonfires across t’ country. There wor to be street parties, wi’ Jubilee streamers, Union Jacks flapping from bedroom windows, flags and windmills to wave, wi’ trestle tables lined wi’ Jubilee teas the lengths of entire streets, great mounds of sandwiches and cake and Jubilee iced buns, and endless cups of Jubilee tea poured from giant Jubilee tea urns, and Jubilee Coca-Cola for t’ kids, and Jubilee music and dancing and much toasting and cheering for Her Majesty and all that lot. And all anyone seemed to want to know wor: would it rain? Would it rain? Of course it wouldn’t rain – it never rained on Her Majesty. The sky would be a cloudless blue block wi’ t’ smiling, happy sun beaming down from on high.

  Mother baked two whole Jubilee parkins for t’ big day, wi’ Union Jacks forked across t’ top. Mand and I looked on in awe and befuddlement as she measured out the ounces of butter and flour, counted out teaspoons of ginger and tablespoons of syrup. Neither of us had ever seen her bake before. She said it wor cos she had no love of baking, but parkin she said she could do cos as a child she loved to sit at the kitchen table, watching Gran stir t’ mixture.

  ‘I used to beg to lick the spoon, even though eating the raw mixture gave me stomach ache. When it wor finally ready and your gran opened t’ oven door, the heat and the baking smells would fill up the kitchen.’

  She waved a table spoon at us. ‘Then Gran would put the parkin on a wire tray by t’ window, and we’d have to wait ’til it wor cool. I’d always imagine them smells escaping on t’ breeze through t’ kitchen curtains.’

  She shook her head, shaking the memory loose, and lifting a dollop from t’ mixture bowl, she sucked on her finger like a newborn lamb. She offered some to Mand, who screwed up her face.

  ‘No, ta. I don’t want no stomach ache, do I?’

  I stuck my finger into t’ bowl and tasted the raw mixture. Uncooked, the ginger kicked through sharply.

  ‘Why have I never seen Gran bake owt?’ I said.

  ‘She just stopped one day. Stopped and never baked another. S’pose she couldn’t see t’ point. She still made her trifle every Christmas.’

  ‘Way too much sherry in it,’ said Mand.

  Mother laughed heartily. It wor good to see her in such a happy mood. ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘always too much sherry.’

  An hour or so later she lifted the parkins from t’ oven. Her face clouded. The parkins had burnt at the edges, and in t’ centre, where they should have risen to a gentle mound, a fissure had opened up through t’ Union Jack.

  ‘Smells great,’ Mand said encouragingly.

  Mother hunched over t’ parkins, running a knife round t’ edges of t’ tins, then upended them onto a metal grid. She set the grid on t’ draining board and we all looked on, waiting for some sort of transformation.

  ‘Don’t we get to try a bit, then?’ I said, reaching out for a corner. Mother slapped my hand.

  ‘Hands off! They’re not for you.’

  ‘They’re for t’ Queen,’ Mand said.

  Freshly baked smells teased the air. I suggested opening the window.

  ‘No,’ Mother said, ‘it will only bring in t’ wasps.’

  On t’ big day itsen streets wor closed off all over t’ city, the trestle tables wor decked and Union Jack bunting wor hung from every available pole. All morning Mother, Denise, Mavis and a gaggle of t’ older folk from t’ surrounding streets had been assembled in a former Methodist chapel-cum-function room, threading Union Jack bunting. I wor collared to help collect chairs from t’ chapel storeroom. Outside, two young Asians wi’ a bucket of disinfectant and scrubbing brushes were listlessly trying to wash away t’ graffiti that had appeared overnight:

  GOD SAVE THE FASHIST REGIME

  While I fetched yet more chairs, Nora, portly Mrs Fibak and some other women I’d never clapped eyes on before wor laying out white tablecloths, cutlery, plates, cups and saucers and whatnot. They wor joined by Mother, Mavis and Denise. The women nattered and clattered, telling tales about hubbies, offspring, fancy men, work colleagues – drenching themsens in their own laughter as if all wor right wi’ t’ world.

  A few excitable kiddies wor hiding beneath t’ tables or tearing up the pavements on BMX bikes. Some blond-haired nipper in Union Jack shorts wor jumping up and down on a space hopper ’til he lost control and sideways hopped into a table. His mother clipped him fiercely on t’ side of his head.

  ‘I told you to leave that indoor!’

  The kid just scowled, dragged the space hopper away from her and continued bouncing around.

  As I came back wi’ t’ chairs, Mother wor blathering giddily, ‘Oh, I know. Our Mandy acts like a scalded cat whenever I say owt to her.’

  ‘It’s their age, Pam luv. She’s growing up, that’s all,’ said Mrs Fibak, wi’ a skewed smile. Mrs Fibak had married a Pole who had been stranded here at t’ war end.

  Mother tied another knot in t’ endless stream of bunting, broke it wi’ her teeth, then turned to Mrs Fibak and said, ‘Of course, you know all about raising kids, don’t you?’ It sounded crueller than she’d perhaps meant. Busy hands stilled, voices hushed. Everyone knew how Mrs Fibak fussed mightily over other people’s kids, that the Fibaks had no kids to call their own. Mrs Fibak wor everyone’s babysitter and folk loved her for it.

  Into t’ thickening silence I plonked down t’ chairs and said, ‘We’ll need more than this.’

  I headed back to t’ chapel storeroom. All that remained of t’ graffiti wor a white smear. The Asian cleaners wor packing up. One of ’em nudged t’other and pointed at my hair. Maybe they had me down as the culprit. If only. I grinned and they grinned shyly
back, and one of ’em tousled his own mop.

  ‘Punk? You punk, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, punk.’

  He put up a thumb. ‘Punk! Me like!’

  He laughed, displaying a neat set of impossibly white tombstones. I laughed also. He looked relieved. ‘God save the Queen, eh?’

  ‘God save the Queen,’ I echoed. I picked up four more chairs and made my way back.

  ‘I hear,’ Nora wor saying, her voice like iron filings in syrup, ‘the police wor round at the Graysons’ last week, taking a statement.’

  ‘Nora, luv, the police have been all over t’ place like flies on rotting meat,’ said the woman to her right, sucking on her teeth. ‘Scares me half to death, all this murdering. The only good thing about it … and I’m sorry to say this … but thank God it’s only prostitutes. Not that I’d wish … you know … Even so, my Derek won’t let me out at night, not even to walk to t’ post box at the end of our road. Drives me all over t’ shop.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t mind being chauffeured about. Save my feet,’ said Mrs Fibak. Mrs Fibak’s ankles swelled over her shoes, and her feet looked beyond saving.

  Mavis clattered some plates down. ‘Can’t any of you let this Ripper business drop? It’s all some of you ever talk about … Ripper bloody this … Ripper that … I don’t want to hear it, I … I just want to enjoy this day. That’s all. Just … enjoy … that’s all.’

  She lowered her trembling hands beneath t’ table lip, where only I, standing right behind her, could see her one hand gripping t’other too tightly.

  Craner had arranged for every pop wagon to have plastic Union Jack bunting attached to t’ outside and plastic Union Jack stick-on flags in t’ windows. We wor shifting pop by t’ crateload. Halfway through t’ day we wor sold up and had to go back to t’ depot for a reload. By t’ time we wor cashing up in Reginald Street, Chapeltown, the sun wor setting behind t’ nearby terraces and I wor aching like I’d been stretched on a rack. But the bonus would fatten up my wage packet nicely.