‘Silly bugger!’ Elsie slurped her tea.
‘Elsie,’ he warned.
He’d stopped her swearing, smoking, drinking. These past few years since she’s known Tom and the peace Jesus brings her she’s been a different person and a very different Elsie to the one I remember. And I remember Elsie from 1976, when my first husband worked down the icing-sugar factory with her husband and she worked in the canteen. There was nowt pious about Elsie then because 90 per cent of the time she was a prossy and pissed out of her head. That’s why sometimes it gets me back up to hear about My Lord this and My Lord that and My Lord the other from Elsie. They’re not even married, the pair of them. Yet they wouldn’t hurt a soul. It’s just that sometimes I can’t face another night sitting hour after hour, listening to their same old crap. So, like tonight, I decide to put something right in their holy bloody path. I decide to throw me glad rags on.
These’ll do.
First off it’s Fran and Jane and daft Nesta turning up, on the dot of six o’clock. Fran wants to help with any sandwich-making or table-laying. Jane makes a beeline for our Andrew, who talks to her politely and takes the ladies’ coats, and Nesta starts helping herself to the cider.
The lasses are all dead glad to be here the night. It takes a lot of planning for them to get away from their kids. Luckily nearby we’ve got Liz’s old house. She was a neighbour who moved away, but her way-out daughter Penny has set up a kind of squat for all her weirdo friends. Penny’s good with the bairns, so odd nights like this, their squat becomes a creche. It’s ever so handy, really, and I’ve had a look in—even though I’ve got no young bairns—and I must admit, for a squat it’s immaculate inside.
Fran’s having trouble with her husband who’s drinking still and she’s telling us all about it as she looks for something to be of help with. But I’m distracted ’cause there’s banging at the back door again. I yell to Andrew to put some music on the hi-fi and then there’s more guests arriving—the Wrights. They’re a dirty, smelly family from by the garage but, as I say, it takes all sorts and this is a party and they’re friendly enough. Then it’s the Kellys from over the flats, back of us. Jane was reckoning on they were heading for divorce and she had her beady eye on the husband, Mark. He’s a skinhead, tattooed head to foot, arse to elbow, by all accounts. Jane doesn’t have a man. She went a bit doolally last summer and ended up doing a nude fan dance on her roof one Saturday morning, but she’s all right now. I dunno how she climbed up there without owt on.
Anyway, the Kellys seem happy enough tonight, coming in with her mother Peggy and some young bloke she says she lives with, across town. I’d bet money it’s her toyboy, although she cracks on he’s her houseboy. Ay, right.
Andrew’s put on Elton John in the living room and when the place is filling up nicely, ‘Don’t Go Breaking Me Heart’ comes on. It could be 1976 all over again. When I was getting me divorce and every now and then I was going proper wild. Everyone’s getting a canny bit to drink and having sausage rolls and that. That tattooed bloke even grabs me for a bit dancin’! Whey, everyone knows me round here, working in the shop, like.
Then there’s Jane’s mam and stepdad, Rose and Ethan, this old bloke with a wooden leg, coming in, and then our Joanne, back early for my do, from wherever it is she’s been. She gives us a peck on the cheek as that tattooed Mark whirls me round and then she goes over to get Andrew to pour her a drink. High-class, our Joanne, she likes her drinks mixed proper. Won’t touch a can.
And then at half past seven there’s a knock at the door I recognise. Bang bang bloody bang. Just when, ordinarily, I’d be settling down happily to Coronation Street. You’d think they were doing it for badness. Someone I don’t even recognise is opening the back door to them. By now the house is heaving with invited and uninvited company and Elsie and Tom shuffle in looking mortified.
‘Is it someone’s birthday?’ asks Elsie when they eventually find me.
‘Get some cake and some drinking in,’ is all I say and scarper elsewhere, leaving them to it. Someone’s blowing one of them party kazoos and streamers have appeared from bloody nowhere. Honestly, round here they don’t need any excuse to get arseholed.
‘Mam, it’s the phone!’ Andrew tugging on me arm. ‘The police are asking us to quieten down.’
‘Tell them to haddaway and shite. They never get on to the Forsyths over the road when they’re up all night ravin’ and stuff. They can bugger off.’
Andrew looked sick at this. He hates confrontations, even over the phone, bless him. He’s never been one to stand up for his rights. I grab the receiver off him.
‘Is it the desk sergeant you’ve been talking to?’
Glumly he nods.
‘Right.’ Andrew winces just before I yell into the phone. ‘I don’t care who’s phoned in to complain, you toerag, but you can fuck off! It’s only ’cause you’re not invited.’ And I slam the phone down. I had to shout louder even than I meant to, because of all the noise of the party. Good! Deafen the bastard.
Andrew looks scandalised. ‘Mam!’ Behind him Tom is returning from the toilet, and he looks sick. ‘Mam, you can’t…’
‘Ah, shurrup, man, Andrew. It’s only yer dad.’
‘But Mam, he was tellin us—the neighbours had been phonin’ to complain.’
‘But all the neighbours are here now.’
‘Except the Forsyths.’
‘They’d never… !’
But I’d not put owt past the Forsyths. Last month one of them was up for biting
