Love Story 12

Mum had a cup of tea on the go and the chip pan on to make Da’s tea. Animal fat and incinerated starch creating a sticky vapour that clung to every surface within spitting range of the cooker. Mum’s fag smoke added to the cloud to give the kitchen a homely warm feeling like coming home to lung cancer.

I stood pressed against the sinks looking out the window into the back garden. Mum has a washing blowing about on the nylon rope between the four metallic clothes poles. Some of Da’s workstuff was getting an airing.  I’d on my black sandshoes and football shorts since it was summer. And a thick wool jersey since it was a Scottish summer.

I turned on the cold water tap and let it run. Yanking open the cupboard door I took out a green glazed mug and put it on the work surface between the two sinks.

Mum was sitting at the table, an ashtray at her elbow. ‘Yer wasting water,’ she reminded me. 

‘I’m letting it run cold.’

‘Well, it doesnae run hot itself.’

‘Well, I’ll just gie it another minute.’

She sighed. ‘Suit yerself. Yer yer father’s double.’

I put the cup under the water and took a gulp. ‘Whit dae yae mean by that?’ I asked her.

‘It’s obvious.’

She ventured over to the cooker with the cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. Taking the lid off the chip pan, she rattled the metal cage and waited until the chips settled back into the boiling fat before she stood on tiptoes to check if they were cooked and had turned brown. She put the chip pan lid back on and stepped back, whipping the dishtowel out from the metal handles where it hung next to the cooker. Taking a quick drag on her fag, she stubbed it out in the ashtray.

‘No to me,’ I replied. ‘I’m no as stupid as him.’

‘Och, away wae yeh.’

I scooted over when he pushed her hips in beside me. She started wiping dishes with the cloth and clattering them down, making the back of the cupboard ring. With a dishtowel and a set of knives and forks in her hand she stopped suddenly shuffling them clean. Clapped together the dry and the wet in a clanking metallic fist and banged on the window with her other hand.

Sandy, the Labrador, had wandered through the hole in the privet hedge. It peed against the clothes pole, marking its territory.

‘Away wae yeh,’ Mum shrieked.

Sandy payed as much attention to her as Da. It wagged its tail when it looked up to our kitchen window and squatted down to do a shit.

‘Ya dirty bugger.’

Mum checked the chip pan wasn’t on fire before she shot out the backdoor. I loped behind her. The dishcloth in her fist. Vaulting from the top stair she tried hitting Sandy with the cloth. The dog barked, chasing it, trying to unravel it with its warm tongue, thinking it was a game. Mrs Connolly was watching us through the window and laughing too.

Mum rubbed the Labrador under the chin and petted its side when it squeezed in beside her leg. ‘The chip pan!’ She rushed past me on the stairs.

‘Phew,’ Mum giggled, ‘That was a close call.’ The cooker was turned off. The chip pan pulled from the back ring. Golden brown chips were in their cage, hooked over the chip pan. Excess fat draining back into the pot.

She glanced at her cigarette packet. Wandered over and tapped one out as a reward. She squinted at me through fag smoke. ‘I’ve got a good mind to pick up that dog shit and post it through their door. That would teach them.’

My shoulders slumped. ‘You wouldn’t mum?’

She took another drag on her fag. ‘No, maybe not.’

The relief must have shown in my face.  

But she wasn’t for letting it go. ‘Get the wee shovel fae the coal cellar. Goin pick it up and fling it intae their garden. See how they like it.’  

I shook my head. ‘I’m no doing it, Mum.’

‘We need tae dae something.’

‘It’s a dog, Mum. We don’t need to do anything.’

‘Jist let them shite aw o’er yeh, then?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll need to dae it myself.’

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘Jist watch me.’

‘The embarrassment would kill me.’

She muttered my name in a long drawn-out chuckle. ‘A-d-a-m! Whit we gonnae dae wae you? she asked. ‘Jist like yer da.’    

Two bits of haddock were already coated in breadcrumbs and sitting in oil in the frying pan. She turned on the ring and poked at them with spatula.

‘Whit did you marry him for, then?’

She batted her pale eyelashes in mock surprise. ‘Cause he asked me.’ She shook the handle of the blackened pan and smiled into it like a wishing well. ‘And he’d lovely hair.’ She turned and included me in the glow. ‘Like yours.’  

I was pleased to be included. ‘And did he talk funny, like me?’

She stabbed at the sizzling fish with her spatula. Not meeting my eyes. ‘Not that, again?’

I noticed she didn’t say I didn’t talk funny as she’d done the first time. I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice and took a deep breath. My tone more manly. ‘So, you married Da cause he asked you and he’d nice hair?’

The spatula was used to turn one fish in the frying pan around and poked at the other to tenderise it. ‘Ali’s not got very nice hair…’ she closed her mouth before she reminded me what else Ali had that wasn’t very nice. ‘And you got her pregnant.’

I felt the tears in the corners of my eyes. ‘Sorry,’ I stuttered.

‘Shit,’ she said.

The sizzling fish begun to break up in the pan. She took it personally as if a rogue and gutted slice of haddock had set out one-eyed across the Atlantic, been hauled up inside the hold of a factory fishing boat and held out until it was inside our kitchen and climbed inside out pan so it could show what really thought of her by thwarting her and showing up her lack of cooking skills.

 But she turned the ring down low and placed the spatula across the rim of the pan. She patted and briefly hugged my shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ she said, before scrambling away and searching for her cigarettes. Lighting up and closing her eyes. Sucking in fag smoke as if her life depended on it.

She fluttered her fingers to show a truce was on and she tried to explain their relationship. ‘Yer da was funny.’

I shook my head. ‘He’s never funny.’

She was quick to correct me. ‘But you don’t know him.’

I waved my hands in front of her face. ‘Mum, I’m here…I’ve known him my whole life.’

She slapped her chest as she coughed, looking at the cigarette in her hand, and putting it into the ashtray still smouldering. ‘It’s different. You don’t really understand. He used to be funny.’

It seemed plausible. Ali used to be skinny before she got fat as fuck, I reminded myself. ‘Tell me one funny thing, Da said?’

She blew out her cheeks and shook her head. ‘I cannae.’

‘Well then.’

‘Gie me a minute,’ she said. ‘And butter the bread.’

She took a chip out of the basket and stuck it in her mouth, and nodded to show it was good. Turned the rings on with her back to me and started pushing the fish about.

I got the Mothers Pride out of the cupboard with the tub of Stork and put it on the table with plates. Margarine spread easily and evenly on the bread. But we kept the outsiders for toast.

‘When I first met yer da he told me about the soup.’

‘The soup?’ I replied echoing back what she said. I didn’t find that funny.

‘I’ll no be able to tell it right.’

I knew she was right about that so I said nothing.

‘Well, they were Catholics,’ she said, ‘Big family.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘There’s lots yeh don’t know. Well, anyway, cause they were Catholics they werenae allowed to eat meat on a Friday. They couldnae afford fish. So they had soup.’

‘Why did they have to have fish?’

‘Shut up,’ she replied. ‘I’m trying to tell a story.’

‘Ok,’ I said. ‘Knock yourself out. They couldn’t afford anything, so they had soup.’

She sighed. ‘That’s yer whole problem. Yeh don’t listen. They couldn’t afford fish, so they had soup.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘OK, so they were pretty poor, fifteen of a family and mum and dad. And a granny who was blind.’

‘Wow!’

‘Shut up. They’re sitting in front of the range.’ She tried to explain what that was with her hand. ‘It’s like a big fireplace where they dae their cooking.’

‘I know what a range is Mum. I’m no daft.’

‘Well, anyway, sometimes you act like it. Everything goes into the soup.’ She rhymes them off. ‘Tattie skins. Bits of cabbage and syboes. Cauliflower and turnip. Barley. Everything that wasn’t nailed down. They’re all standing with their soup tins in hand, starving. Waiting to get stuck in.’

She titters with laughter. I know this bit is meant to be the funny bit. So I laugh too.

‘And then they notice Tootsie is missing. And they lean off the pot and their cat is drowned, waving a paw at them. It’s a great mouser. So it’s got a big rat stuck in its jaws, nearly the same size as him. And yer Da turned to me and said, “Obviously, we couldnae eat the soup”.

I sucked in my cheeks. ‘Mum that isn’t anywhere near funny.’

She empties the chips out into a bowl and puts the fish on a plate. ‘I know. That’s whit I told yer Da, back then. But then he said, “We couldnae eat the soup on a Friday. Cause we couldnae eat meat. We had to wait tae the Saturday morning.”’.   

I laughed. ‘And Da made that up?’

Mum flung the bowl of chips down on the table in front of me. ‘I think he made it up,’ she said.