It makes no difference, really, though, who’s in charge when I’m behind the till. Alex won’t usually order me around unless his tarty little girlfriend is down to visit. They drive around in this big car of his. The roof comes off like they think they’re in America. Sometimes all I can wonder is whether he’s got owt in his trousers like Eric did back then, and I bet he has. He’s the same sort of good-looking short-arse like his dad.
But I shouldn’t even be thinking about the boss’s son’s trousers. The lad’s over four years younger than our Andrew. Doing well for hisel’, mind, whatever you say about him. My Andrew doesn’t drive. He’s had no one to teach him, no one around to do that, no dad. I don’t drive. I think he’d be... not timid, but too careful behind the wheel of a car.
There’s so many things to watch for. With your gear stick changing and mirrors and looking at the road ahead and stuff. He’d be letting every other bugger get past first. You have to dig your heels in, push your nose in, get in there. I’ve told him. His mam knows that much. Our Andrew’s not one to push hisel’.
WHEN I GET IN THE HOUSE ANDREW’S ALREADY THERE. HE KNOWS THAT when I finish work I need to sit down a while and relax. Its a full day on your feet and it takes it out of you. I’ve started getting palpitations in the night in me heart. When you push your thumbnail through the skin of an orange to start peeling it—that’s what it feels like sometimes.
Andrew jumps up straight away when he hears the garden gate rattle and he’s opening the kitchen door, ushering me in like an old woman, and whipping the kettle on, gabbling on.
He’s a good lad and I can tell by the way he goes on when I come in that he’s pleased to see me. He’s had no one to talk to all day and this stuff comes pouring out as he picks our mugs off the tree, wipes them quick with the tea towel and pops the bags in the teapot. He doesn’t work. I can barely get a word in edgeways.
I sit at the kitchen table and pull the ashtray towards me, smiling, listening. I can hear the telly’s on in the front room, playing to no one, burning up pounds. The telly’s on all day long in our house. It’s dear but it’s not just for the programmes. It’s for the psychological glow.
It’s children’s BBC, all thumping music and excitable presenters. Andrew’s turned the sound down before running to open the door to me, I can tell. He doesn’t like me to know he watches the kids’ telly. I can see why, a twenty-four-year-old young man. He’d feel daft, I reckon. But I can’t see why he shouldn’t watch it if that’s what he wants.
It’s all very sophisticated these days. As far as I can tell, it’s all sex. And kids today learn all they need to about life and the facts of life from Neighbours. They cover every issue and more. Everyone on Neighbours has been married to everyone else, one time or another. That’s why I get confused with it. Miss one episode and you’ve missed all-sorts. You’ll have to struggle to catch up. Sometimes I think it’s very true to life.
When I used to watch kids’ TV with the twins when they were small, it was all puppets and animals. They wouldn’t have that now. Now it’s virtual reality and what have you.
Coming in from work, then, I smoke and rest mesel’ and let Andrew make me tea. I can’t smoke at work. Not even in the staff room because we have what Eric calls our delicatessen counter. He means the fridge unit with the cheese and that in.
Eric wants our place to work to be a healthy environment and that son of his is even more fanatical. Alex is a bit of an albino, he looks like someone’s gone over him with a potato scrubber. Those pink eyelashes. If I’ve had a fag on the way to work and Alex can smell it on me breath, he’s turning his nose up straight away like I’ve farted or summat. Little bastard. I wouldn’t care, but he’s lathered in great big red spots. I wouldn’t buy cheese off him if you paid me to.
My bairns never had spots while they were teenagers. Haven’t got them now. They’ve the complexious of angels—like their mother always had. Mind, Joanne spoils hers with all that makeup. She errs a little on the orange side, does Joanne, yet she won’t be told.
“Mam, man,” she’ll shout at us, and she gets dead riled at owt like this. “Mam, man, your day is over and gone! Fashions have changed, and nothing you can offer me in the way of beauty tips is any use. If I painted mesel’ like you say I’d be laughed out of town! Face it—you’ve got an old woman’s face and I’ve got a young’un. I have to follow young women’s fashions!”
And that’s how our rows about make-up end. But on my mornings off I watch This Morning. I know how today’s young women get themselves up to go on the town and that. Not to mention all the magazine articles I’ve flicked through. You can’t tell Joanne, though. She doesn’t realise how much the seventies are back now. Why, I was in my thirties in the seventies. Pale lipsticks and blue eyeshadow—I couldn’t have been trendier, then or now.
What our Joanne doesn’t see is that she’s still in the eighties. What with her frizzy highlights, her tangerine face. And God, but that makes me feel old! My own daughter in a fashion time warp already at the age of twenty-four. She’s peaked her peak and all she can do is wait for the
