Blood Relatives

by Stevan Alcock

  I got stopped twice by coppers that month. The first time wor on my way home from an FK Club gig. A panda car pulled up alongside me and two coppers got out. They asked me where I’d been and where I wor heading. They wanted proof of my address, but I didn’t have none on me. They asked me if I went wi’ prozzies. I said not, and then pointed out that I wor only fourteen when Wilma McCann wor topped, and anyways I didn’t drive and HE had a car. Coppers don’t like you getting clever wi’ them, as it shows them up for t’ numbskulls they are, so they frisked me. Sus law. Search Under Suspicion. They said they’d seen me behaving suspiciously.

  ‘In what way?’

  The one copper glared at me like he wor set to punch my lights out. ‘We ask the questions, sonny. You just answer them.’

  They looked disappointed not to find any hash on me. I wor plain relieved they didn’t plant none. If I’d been black they probably would have. Black guys wor always getting stopped even though t’ Ripper wor plainly a white man. The panda car CB radio garbled summat and they said they had to go and that I wor a lucky young man to get away wi’ it. It being?

  The second time I’d just left the Gay Lib disco at the Guildford Hotel on t’ Headrow together wi’ this bloke who said between dancefloor snogs that he wor a rugby coach. This time it wor two coppers out on t’ beat. The rugby coach wor frighted out his wits at being questioned. His chin wor wobbling and he could barely speak. I said we’d just left a straight club I knew of in t’ shopping precinct. The cops seemed satisfied wi’ that and let us go. As soon as we turned the corner t’ rugby bloke pelted off like a witless hare.

  Women wor warned to stay indoors after dusk.

  Hospitals, unis and factories organised door-to-door transport for their women employees.

  Bingo-session attendances plummeted.

  In t’ run-up to Christmas, the streets wor all but deserted.

  It had been ten month since Mitch had drowned. Sometimes it would replay in my head like flashbulbs going off, stick-dog-reach-fall-look-ice-running, wi’ me always on t’ outside looking in, hovering above or alongside. These nightmares wor always soundless, Mitch’s ‘No–o–o–’ as the stick somersaulted through t’ air an agonised, mute howl. At least I didn’t wake up on cold wet sheets no more.

  If Mother had blamed Mitch’s drowning on me I might have understood – after all, I reckon every other bugger did. Instead, she painted Mitch as a friggin’ saint ’til I lost my rag and yelled at her to shut the fuck up about Mitch for once, and launched an ornament at the wall behind her head. How wor I supposed to know the friggin’ thing had belonged to Mitch’s mother? It wor only a honeypot shaped like a beehive.

  Mandy wor another story. She never said owt outright, just scowled or snubbed her nose up at me. Dipping into her diary, I read that she blamed me. This riled me up. She had no right to go blaming me at all. I might have chucked the stick, but it wor t’ dog that went scarpering after it, and it wor Mitch who went out on t’ ice, worn’t it? What could I have done?

  When she worn’t holed up in her room, playing her records, she spent all her time out of t’ house. She’d discovered goth music, and wor hanging out nights wi’ her new mates at the Phono in t’ Merrion Centre, and in various pubs and cafs. She wor piling on t’ pounds. Her small red lips looked like a bullseye in t’ middle of her chubby cheeks. Her baggy black clothes hid her flabby body. She’d had her ears pierced three more times, and had dyed her hair an inky dead black wi’ a single purple streak on one side. Mother didn’t know these new mates, and wor fretting all t’ time about Mand being out and about somewhere HE might be lurking. Like he’d be preying on goths mooching about late nights in a friggin’ Leeds shopping centre. Anyway, sis didn’t seem to care.

  Mother’s way of dealing wi’ it wor to let sis have her way and then sit up late, fretting, ’til she rolled in, usually khalied and reeking of old smoke. Sometimes there’d be a row, wi’ full-on screaming and shouting, then sis would clomp up the stairs and slam her bedroom door. Sometimes, on nights when she didn’t come home at all, I’d come down for brekkie and find Mother asleep, her head resting on t’ kitchen table.

  The late nights and sis’s new look had cost her the job at Schofield’s, so now she wor working two days a week in a small goth fashion stall in Leeds market that never opened before 11 a.m.

  ‘We are letting you go,’ her manageress at Schofield’s had said, ‘because you are letting yourself go.’

  So t’ last Christmas of t’ decade wor to be a muted affair. Mother made it known that she wor spending Christmas Day wi’ Don and Mavis, and that Mand and I wor welcome to join, but she’d understand, she said, stressing ‘understand’, if we’d made other plans. She wor feeling a bit sorry for Don, cos he’d been fired from Clark’s last month. He’d been accused by Willie Clark of fiddling the books on his loads. He worn’t t’ only one – Clark’s had got shot of all their drivers bar one. Don protested blue in t’ face to anyone who’d listen that it wor just admin errors, but he had form in that department, so we all knew it wor a load of baloney. Mother had seen t’ evidence lying about in Clark’s offices.

  ‘Only one driver,’ Mother said, ‘worn’t given his marching orders. He’s Clark’s shining light. Never no trouble, keeps his cab and lorry spotless, and never complains,’ she blathered on. ‘He’s even had his picture taken and put up in t’ office foyer for all to see. Peter, his name is. Peter Sutcliffe. Lovely chap.’

  So Christmas morn wor a day like any other – no Christmas-tree lights or tinsel. They stayed packed away in a Jubilee biscuit tin in t’ garage. But we did have more cards than usual that year. I hung them on string lines draped over t’ fireplace.

  Mand opted to spend her Christmas wi’ her goth friends. God knows how a bunch of wrist-slitting, pill-munching goths celebrated Christmas. Droning doom-laden carols and charring a turkey on an upended cross? So Christmas Day I found mesen alone in t’ house. I took a walk, just to be out doing summat. Just to be walking. I headed the couple of mile toward Radclyffe Hall cos it wor somewhere to aim for. If no one wor home, as wor likely, then I’d walk back and spend the evening watching telly.

  I found Christmas in full flow. All t’ waifs and strays – all t’ gay men who couldn’t or wouldn’t go home for whatever reason – had gathered there. There must have been about a dozen in all, some who I knew, others I’d never seen before. Camp David and Fizzy had been, as Camp David put it, ‘stoving over a hot slave all day’, and there wor two large roast chickens wi’ all t’ trimmings. It had been assumed, Camp David said, that I’d be spending Christmas wi’ my family.

  Terry gave me a paper hat and set an extra place at the corner of t’ extended dining table. Even he wor a smidgen less glum than usual. I wor squeezed in next to Ali, who said he had nowt better to do, as his folk didn’t celebrate Christmas. We wor all bunched up like at a school dinner, Ali’s leg pressed hard against mine. I didn’t complain. Turned out that Ali wor living half the time rent-free in Fazel’s old room. Camp David’s arms, I clocked, wor smoother than any plucked chicken.

  By late afternoon, stuffed and wrecked by drink, I flopped on t’ sofa between two men, drinking whisky. Only Ali wor sober, cos he didn’t drink. For a moment I wondered how Mother wor coping wi’ Mavis and Don, or what Mandy and her morose mates were getting up to. Whatever, it couldn’t be as good as this. We wor all one big gay family, and this wor t’ happiest Christmas of my friggin’ short life so far.

  Mother and I wor watching t’ news when t’ telephone rang. Mother stubbed her ciggie into t’ ashtray on t’ chair armrest and went to answer it. Through t’ open lounge door I could see and hear all. Mavis wor having one of her legendary meltdowns. Only this one wor nuclear.

  ‘Mavis, I’m sure … Of course it’s terrible, Mavis … Don? Don? Mavis, no, come now, whatever he might have done … I mean … now Mavis, please.’

  She wor holding the receiver a little away from her ear, as if Mavis’s hysterical sobbing might le
ave a damp patch on her. Likely as not Mavis had stopped taking her Valium. That wor t’ usual cause.

  ‘Mavis, he can’t be. Are you sure?’ Pause. ‘Well, that don’t mean …’ Interrupted pause. ‘And what did the police say?’ Longer pause. The word ‘police’ lobbed into t’ conversation made me feel like my ears had just popped.

  Mavis wor obsessed wi’ Don’s whereabouts. She wanted him under her thumb, but out of sight. Don had built a life entirely outside t’ home – the pub, the working men’s club, the fishing trips (not that I ever heard of him catching owt), the rugby matches (supporting, not playing), the grafting. And now he wor out of a job, thanks to his dodgy dealings.

  ‘Oh, Mavis … surely, I’m sure that … Don isn’t … he was?’

  When he wor arrested for fencing stolen goods, Mavis hersen had fly-tipped the friggin’ evidence onto waste ground in t’ middle of t’ night. The next night, after t’ charges had been dropped, she went back for it, but it had all gone. The story goes that Don went ape and wor pulling her by t’ hair and she kicked him on t’ shins so hard he wor hobbling for days after and telling everyone he’d fallen off a ladder.

  ‘Oh God, Mavis. No, I’m here, luv, I’m still here … Yes, course I will, I’ll be over in a jiffy.’

  A jiffy! Still, it wor an age before Mother reset the receiver on its cradle. Her face wor as pale as milk.

  ‘They’ve taken Don in for questioning. They think he might be t’ Ripper.’

  She gathered up her keys, ciggies and handbag, pulled on her anorak. ‘You get yersen summat to eat, hear me? I’ll be back later.’ And wi’ that, the front door slammed and she wor gone.

  A few minutes later Mand came downstairs, sauntered into t’ kitchen and opened the fridge door. She prodded the cheese, peered at the haslet under clingfilm. ‘Where wor Mum off to?’ she said, head still half in t’ fridge. The fridge light gave her face a fierce and sickly glow.

  ‘Mavis.’

  ‘Does that mean we’re having cheese on toast again?’

  ‘Don’s been arrested.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mand, closing the fridge empty-handed. ‘Maybe she’ll get them new wardrobes after all.’

  ‘Cos of Don being the Ripper?’

  Mand’s mouth changed shape. ‘You don’t think …?’

  ‘Nah, course not. I mean, look at him. He hasn’t seen his own todger in decades.’

  Mandy sniggered. She took an apple from t’ fruit basket, examined the sticker on it, then put it back. ‘I’ve told Mum not to buy Cape apples.’ She pulled a pack of ciggies from her pocket and lit up. ‘She shouldn’t be out there on her own. It’s not safe. You should have gone wi’ her.’

  ‘Mum don’t like you smoking.’

  ‘She knows. Just pretends she don’t. This house is full of people pretending.’ Sis exhaled like a seasoned smoker, the smoke drifting beneath t’ kitchen striplight. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You don’t know what I mean? I hate that you won’t admit it to me, your own sister. I don’t care who you go wi’, Rick, but you must think I’m daft, and I’m not.’

  ‘I’ve never thought you wor daft.’

  Sis pursed her lips. Goth pout.

  ‘Then don’t treat me like I am.’

  I had the shakes and my legs felt like they wouldn’t hold me, so I plonked mesen down on a kitchen chair. I wor fumed up at sis, and worried that she’d open her gob to Mother.

  ‘How did you know? I mean, it’s not as if I go round wi’ “I’m a pouf” tattooed on my forehead, is it?’

  ‘Friend of mine saw you going into a gay pub. Then there’s that little badge you wear, the pink triangle one. Mum might not know what it means, but I do.’

  ‘You won’t say owt, will you? Especially to Mum.’

  ‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.’

  ‘You say one word and I’ll half flay you, I will.’

  Sis gave out a short, cold smile and said she wor going to take a bath.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ I shouted up the stairs after her. ‘Not one friggin’ word!’

  After sis went to bed I stayed up, fretting about her knowing and whether I should say owt to Mother. I turned on t’ telly and nodded off in front of some late-night rubbish film wi’ Glenda Jackson in it. It wor nigh on midnight when t’ phone jolted me awake. I almost fell against t’ hallway table as I snatched up the receiver. It wor Mother, asking me to meet her off t’ night bus and walk her back to t’ house. It wor only half a block from t’ bus stop to our door.

  The bus wor late, and I had to wait an age at the stop. I would tell her, I said to mesen, but not yet. She’d enough on her plate, what wi’ all this latest Mavis and Don business. As if anyone could think someone of Don’s bulk wor t’ Ripper. Having sex wi’ Don must be like having a beer barrel roll onto you wi’ t’ tap jutting out.

  As we walked up our road Mother wor saying that the cops had interviewed Mavis an’ all, wanting to know if she wor covering up for Don. They’d nosed about t’ house and inspected his clothes. They wanted to know about his habits, his sexual behaviour.

  ‘They even asked her,’ Mother said, ‘if Don had any sexual deviances.’ She uttered the words ‘sexual deviances’ like she’d bitten into summat spicy and foreign. ‘Then,’ she went on, ‘they asked if Don had any hammers or screwdrivers, and of course he has, cos that’s what men have. So they took some of his hammers away. Can you believe they even took some of his clothes for forensic examination?’

  ‘Friggin’ ’ell,’ I said, trying to sound both shocked and mildly impressed. I’d never really understood what that meant, ‘forensic examination’. Did they run a magnifying glass over his keks looking for stains? No man, it had been said over and over by t’ cops, in t’ papers, on t’ telly, could top that many women unless someone wor shielding him. By ‘someone’ they meant a woman – a wife, girlfriend, daughter or mother.

  I said, ‘But any idiot could see that Don don’t fit the description. And won’t his job sheet show he wor at t’other end of t’ country when some of t’ women wor done over? By tomorrow they’ll have just thrown him back in t’ water.’

  ‘There’s more,’ Mother said.

  ‘More?’

  ‘His car’s been clocked kerb crawling around Lumb Lane.’

  ‘Oh. No wonder they pulled him in.’

  ‘The worst of it,’ Mother said, ‘is Mavis finding out he goes wi’ prozzies. She could stand owt but that. She said it made her feel worthless and unclean. That wor t’ word she used, “unclean”.’

  We passed a neighbour’s house just as the bay-window curtains wor being drawn a tad too forcefully.

  ‘So what you’re saying is that it’s OK for Don to knock Mavis about, it’s OK for him to threaten to kill her, or to ogle strippers in t’ pub, but it’s not OK for him to go wi’ a prozzie from time to time?’

  I wor sounding like I wor defending prozzies, or even Don. Mother had no notion about Vanessa or Lourdes or t’ rest of them. It didn’t seem like owt that a woman should know.

  ‘It wor t’ final straw,’ she said quietly, adding as we reached the front door, ‘Mavis is wanting a divorce.’

  By mid-April it felt like t’ cold snap would never end. I wor flabbered to learn that Mavis had kicked Don out on his ear. Mother said that Mavis worn’t for t’ life of her going to give up a house that had cost her bruises and black eyes to get into such decorative order.

  Sis wor another problem. From peeking in t’ diary to see what she wor writing about me, I found out that she’d finished wi’ Marcus, so when she blubbered it out over dinner I had to pretend that I wor dead shocked. He’d shoved her up against t’ rehearsal-room wall and threatened to hit her, although she didn’t let on about that bit. That bit I’d read in t’ diary. All she said wor, ‘Marcus is history.’ A week or so later sis wor back together wi’ him.

  On my next day off work, Mother roped me in as muscle to help Mavis rearrange furni
ture and cart boxes of Don’s stuff out into t’ garage.

  The house had been stripped bare of Don. There wor dust circles on t’ shelves where his footie and fishing stuff had once been. There wor pinholes and picture-frame shapes on t’ empty walls. The hallway wor lined wi’ boxes of clothes and shoes and other stuff.

  We padded gingerly along t’ plastic runner in t’ hallway and into t’ lounge. I stood on t’ darker bits of t’ swirly carpet in case there wor mud on my boots. The plastic coverings were still on t’ cream leather sofa and armchairs. The air whiffed of lemon-scent aerosol and the faintest trace of cold ash from t’ fancy ciggie-butt stands next to t’ armchairs.

  The kitchen units looked like they’d been varnished yesterday. The cooker top gleamed, and the rotisserie above it wor spotless. Nowt looked as if it had just been put down casually, nowt had been allowed to pile up in t’ corners, nowt pinned to a cork noticeboard or sellotaped to a cupboard door. Not a friggin’ fridge magnet in sight. God knows how they’d celebrated Christmas. They must have sat there, all wrapped up in clingfilm and furs, picking at cocktail sausages.

  I could tell that Mavis had been blubbing a bit, even though she wor brazening it out when we showed. She didn’t want to talk much, ’cept to tell us what we should take. I wor to cart the packed boxes into t’ garage. While I wor portering I tried to keep to t’ plastic pathways that led through t’ house. I didn’t want my boots imprinting the shag pile.

  I thought I should conversationalise wi’ Mavis to cheer her up a bit, so I asked her what she wor going to do wi’ Don’s fishing tackle. I wor thinking it might be worth a few bob.

  Then this couple pitched up, ‘answering t’ ad in t’ paper’, and nosed about, picking over things, holding them and setting them back down again, prodding and poking about and murmuring to themsens. He had a mottled, bulbous nose and she had a letterbox smile. Eventually they drove off wi’ t’ fishing tackle and some other boxes in t’ back of their Volvo estate.