Well, we’ll see. She’ll tell me in her own sweet time. Or maybe I’ll get it out of Andrew in the meantime. I know the twins share everything and for some things they keep their mam out. That’s only natural. Children need their own spaces.
He’s poured the tea and he’s holding out my cup, giving me a look. That’s ’cause I’ve lit me second fag and I’m enjoying even more than me first. Andrew doesn’t like me smoking. When he was five he said I should stop because otherwise I’d die. I think he’d seen summat on the telly. Joanne thought that was funny.
‘When you die, do you want burying or cremating?’
She asked me this again and again. I didn’t want to say anything because I thought it was morbid and it would give them nightmares. Eventually, I was ironing, and she asked me once too often.
‘Look, Joanne,’ I snapped, ‘when I drop you can bloody well eat me if you like.’
Her jaw dropped in delight. But behind her, Andrew was horrified. Then he wailed and wailed and we couldn’t get him to stop for hours.
In those days Andrew would always be standing just behind Joanne. He shuffled round after her like she had him on a string. They were like that till she left school, at fifteen. She went to work, learned how to be a receptionist. She’s been in hotels, motels, the equestrian centre.
Andrew did O levels and went on to do his As but he finished early and just stayed home. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do them. He’s got the brains. More brains than anyone I know. More than anyone round here. I reckon it was the competition that got to him. It was all competition and he’s not that sort. He’s too good for that. He doesn’t have to compete, Andrew.
I take me tea and curl me fingers about the mug. It’s warming. April and it’s freezing out; still looking like snow.
Eric won’t turn the shop’s heating up beyond the legal requirement. Have it too warm, he says, and we’ll have every dosser, every scruffy old bastard in off the streets, keeping warm. He’s probably right but I still curse him when I’m freezin’ me tits off on me pins.
I blow on the tea and take another drag.
‘I wish you’d try again, Mam,’ says Andrew.
He’s got an almost girlish voice. A soothing sound, chalk drawing on soft stone. I can’t be angry or irritated with him. Not often, anyway. His voice broke early when he still looked like a little boy. One morning he came downstairs and said something and the sound shocked us both. We both thought it was his dad asking for clean socks, although I don’t suppose Andrew even remembers his dad. Since then, he’s changed that booming voice, made hiseP sound softer, on purpose.
‘Try again?’ I ask. But I know what he’s on about.
‘The patches.’
‘Bugger them.’
‘You could get used to them.’
‘Oh, yeh.’
‘They say they work.’
‘So do fags. Those bloody things don’t cost any less and when you pull them off they hurt'
‘But I don’t want you to die, Mam.’
‘I won’t die.’
‘Yes, you will.’
‘Look, man, Andrew, will you stop interfering? It was all right saying this when you were five, but you’re twenty-bloody-four now, pet! Look, I won't die!’
He looks at me. We sip our tea for a bit. Then he starts up again, flinching as if he thinks I’m gonna smack him one.
‘I don’t want you to die early. I don’t want you to die before you can say you’ve had a nice time. I don’t want you to die thinking it’s all been hard work. I want it to get better for you first.’
Sometimes…
Sometimes he can say the nicest things. And that’s the pay-off with having sensitive sons.
And maybe some time soon I’ll give the patches another whirl, just for Andrew. It might make me live longer. I might get to see Andrew’s children, my grandchildren. When they come along. I can change my habits. Showbiz stars do. That Roseanne lost loads of weight. They printed a photo of a pile of pats of lard, the equivalent of all she lost. She says she feels much better on it. I don’t know if she smokes, though.
The next thing for me usually at that time of night is wondering what we should have for tea. I’ve never liked cooking much and by the time I get in on nights I can’t really be bothered.
I remember frying up chips for the kids, winter nights after school. These were the years before oven chips, which only started in 1980. My home-made chips were always either too limp or too hard. A pale yellow and they sat in puddles of grease on your plate. The kids ate them slowly, dutifully, doused in tomato sauce. Which separated out into floating red blobs in the cooling fat. Like I imagine blood cells to look. Or a lava lamp working.
I wished then that I could cook better for the bairns and I wished that I could learn. But who is there to teach you? On a limited budget, not much time. Where do you go for perfect chips? And I’d sit and watch the bairns be good, forcing every last bit down. Then one night Joanne got a burnt one stuck in her throat and great fat tears came rolling down. Her face was all puffed up.
‘I’m sorry, Mam. This is horrible. I can’t eat it.’
And she looked so ugly and sad that I started crying too.
The 1980s began with oven chips being invented and we’d wrap them in newspaper to make them taste even more real. Also in the eighties there were other things, making mams’ jobs easier. Pot Noodles—they came along and you could pretend, in
