Dregs

"Go and wake Grandad, Maureen."

"Do I have to?"

I don't like going into Grandad's room: it's a mess and stinks of his pipe and whiskey.

"Yes, you do," Mum says and hands me a scalding mug of tea.  It's in his special mug, which is covered in sooty thumb marks like all of Grandad's things.  He is a chimney sweep, but is in semi-retirement now:  mostly he's asked to turn up at weddings as a good luck charm.  His ancient pushbike stands propped against the outside lav, with his chimney sweep's brushes strapped to it.  I always try to avoid scraping myself against their spiky heads, but have ruined many an outfit on my way to the loo in the dark.

I knock on Grandad’s door and hastily leave his brew on the bedside table.  He’s still asleep and snoring, a cloud of whiskey fumes hanging over him.  I retrieve the plate of half-eaten sandwiches from last night that's on the floor next to his bed.  The white bread scraps bear the black marks of his fingerprints.  It makes my stomach heave.

Downstairs, I tip the crusts into the bin and hand the plate to Mum who is washing up her breakfast things in the sink.  She has a bacon sandwich every morning, fried in lard, and the bread wiped round the pan to mop up the grease.  She doesn’t wash the pan, but leaves it for the next day.  I’ve sometimes seen Grandad steal a smear of bacon fat to slick his hair with, when he’s run out of Brylcreem.

I watch Mum waddling round the kitchen and I feel too nauseous to eat my cornflakes.  She is fully made up and her hair is done, but she’s still wearing her bright flowery nylon housecoat.  Her peroxide blonde locks have been in a permanent beehive, since the 1960s.  She doesn’t wash or comb it, but goes to the hairdresser’s once a fortnight to have it styled and set.  When I was little, the older girls next door used to tease me, with tales of women who found insects nesting in their bouffant hairdos, and I would get nervous every time a wasp or a bee flew too close to Mum’s hair.

I stir my cereal with a spoon and then hear the familiar “rat-tat-tat” on the kitchen wall.  In my mind’s eye I can see Mrs Boyle next door, tapping out her signal with her knuckles or a wooden spoon.  Ever since I can remember it has been her summons: her signal to Mum that she’s ready for visitors.

……

A short while later, we let ourselves in through Mrs Boyle’s front door, which she always leaves on the latch for us.  She’s a widow now and her girls have grown up and left home.  Everything in her house is stained nicotine yellow and the air is heavy with cigarette smoke.  I follow Mum into the back room, where Mrs Boyle is settled in her high-backed green leather armchair.  A glass ashtray is balanced on the arm and she is puffing away on a Silk Cut.

“Hello Molly, shall I put the kettle on?” Mum asks Mrs Boyle.

She nods and then turns her attention towards me.

“No school today, Maureen?”

“Not today, Mrs B – I’m feeling a bit sick,” I answer nervously.

Mrs Boyle looks at me as though she knows my every innermost thought and then smiles to herself.  Her eyes settle on my breasts and I cross my arms protectively over them, noticing how tender they’re feeling.

“Are you going to the bingo tonight, Pauline?”

“Yeah – tonight’s my lucky night,” Mum answers from the kitchen, over the clink of crockery and the roar of the kettle.

Mrs Boyle stubs out her fag and rises from her seat with a grin.

“Let’s see if you’ll strike it lucky, shall we?” she cackles as she shuffles into the kitchen.

They gossip in the kitchen and then Mrs Boyles leads the way, carrying a tray laden with china teacups and a large brown teapot with a crocheted cosy.  She sets it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

I’m slightly taken aback as we have tea in mugs as a rule.  Mrs Boyle usually has a steaming mug of tea with two sugars and sterilised milk, or ‘sterra’ as she calls it, which she pours from a tall glass bottle.  Today, though, she pours the golden liquid, flecked with real tea leaves, into delicate white cups, with small pink roses round the rim.

“Is it a special occasion?” I ask.

“Molly’s going to read our tea leaves,” Mum replies excitedly.

I remember how Mum used to say Mrs Boyle was a witch when I was a child, but I thought it was just to frighten me.  She looks like every other old woman round here, with her hair in pink rollers, a crimplene dress, thick American Tan tights in wrinkles round her ankles and slippers trodden down at the heel.  Mum says Mrs Boyle read her cards the week before she met my dad and she even predicted that he’d drive a purple car.  She won’t tell me any more about him though: she just purses her lips and changes the subject.

“Savor it and think of a question while you’re drinking,” Mrs Boyle says to me.

I sip my tea and at first my mind goes blank.  Then I think about Winston: the gleam of his skin, the coconut smell of his hair and its springy softness under my fingers.  My crotch tingles and then I feel a pang of sadness as I remember Mum and Mrs Boyle discussing “that tart Mrs Siddaway who ran off with a darkie”.  “Fur coat, no knickers,” they’d laughed and Mrs Boyle had said she would disown her daughters if they went with a black man.

“Are you finished?” Mrs Boyle asks and I look up with a start.  She is swirling the dregs of her tea in the cup.  I look at Mum and she is doing the same, so I follow suit.

“Now – saucer on top and tip it over,” Mrs Boyle instructs.

We wait for the liquid to drain away and Mrs Boyle goes off to the outside loo to “spend a penny”. 

When Mum gets up to turn the gas fire down, I quickly swap our cups.

.......

That night, Mum sprays her hair with lacquer and then applies a coat of pale pink lipstick.  She still does her eyes with thick black wings of eyeliner and I realise, looking at her, that she is stuck at the age when she was prettiest.  Her dated hair and make-up are from fifteen years ago, when she fell pregnant with me.

“You should get your hair flicked Mum - that’s the fashion now,” I say, but she’s still thinking about the tea leaves, as she fastens her coat over her wobbling expanse of boobs and belly.

“A baby!  Molly must be losing her touch,” she gasps.  “I’d need to get a fella first – chance would be a fine thing!”

And I feel sick to my stomach as she rushes out of the door and heads off for a night of bingo.