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 of 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 complexions of angels—like their mother always had. Mind, Joanne spoils hers with all that make-up. 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 meself 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 out 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 eighties to come back round. Probably when she’s fifty.
Andrew is winding the pot up, poking a spoon in to mash the teabags. He’s using all his concentration and the hot mist ruffles through that fringe of his. I reckon he’d get a job with a haircut but you can’t say owt. Not because he’d bite my head off like Joanne would, but because he’s too sensitive. I’ve given up criticising Andrew. His face crumples up like a paper bag and he looks at you like you’ve just said the worst thing in the world. Like he can’t believe how cruel you are.
I think I’ve over-mothered him. I worry he’s not had a proper man’s influence over him. But if he had it would only have been some silly sod making him wear a tracksuit to play football and stuff when he didn’t want to. Who’s going to blame me when I say my heart goes out to sensitive boys? What’s wrong with it if I’ve said it’s all right that he never went out much to play? That he drew pictures or preferred to read? Or that now he watches kids’ TV instead of having a job?
‘It’s a grunge thing,’ Joanne said when I said maybe Andrew could get a job with a haircut. She was on her way out one night—dressed like something out of Bananarama, but I kept me trap shut. ‘And that’s why he cuts holes in his jeans.’
‘He cuts holes in his jeans? I thought they were natural.’
‘Mam, man,’ she said, about to slam the kitchen door. ‘Sometimes you’re so naive.’
Ay, I reckon I am naive. Because Joanne’s definitely up to something these days. Something that’s not just going out with her mates of a night. She’s up to something with someone I don’t know and I haven’t a clue what it is. But I know there must be something wrong with it. Otherwise she’d say.
All the power’s with her now and she’s making me wait to find out. Only Joanne can make this storm break.
