grimms29

After a while Tony and Angela get sick of hiding from a giant dinosaur under the bed and crawl out dusty and uneaten, which is just as well, because Angela, despite the danger, and despite it being her idea, had closed her eyes and almost fell asleep. They hear the front door closing and Dermot chiming ‘Cheerio,’ and they know the nice lady is away.

‘I guess that’s it, and I’ll need to go back to school now,’ says Tony, grinning. Da had kept him off school to make a point, but he wasn’t sure what the point was.

Angela coughs as she stands beside the window looking out into the driving rain. ‘I’ll have naebody to play with.’ There’s a sulk on her face and pursed lips and in her tone.

Tony goes over and pats her on the shoulder, but she shrugs off his touch. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be at school yourself soon.’

‘Don’t want to go to school. It’s just stupid.’

‘Too bad. You’ll just huv tae.’ Darkness sweeps in with overcast clouds like the tails of a pantomime villain’s cloak. He looks down at the grey stone on backcourts turning shiny pebble blue. The sound of rainwater rushing in gutters and drains cleans the air and makes everything new.  

‘Read me a story.’ When she turns and looks at him her nose is snotty, eyes red with coughing and wiping, but there’s something more. A need he recognises to lose yourself in the pages of a book, the made-up world being better than the real world.

‘Okay-dokey.’

The book of Grimm’s fairy stories is where he left it beside his bed. He picks it up and she lies across him, her finger scrolling along the page as he reads, her mouth forming the highs and lows of words, trailing after him. He stops reading when they get to the bit about the wicked witch and the poison apple, but she continues on pointing and reading.

‘See, you can read,’ he says. ‘School is goinae be really easy for you. And everybody will love you. The teacher is goinae think you’re just the bees-knees.’

She wipes her nose on the stripes his pyjamas, but perks up, chuffed. ‘See the wicked witch, I mean, I know she doesnae really like Snow White, but she doesnae really want to kill her, does she?’

‘Aye, she does. She poisons her with an apple.’  There’s a sense of outrage in Tony’s voice. He taps the page as evidence.

Angela’s jaw clenches and she leans forward, although their legs are touching on the bed, away from him, as she thinks about it. ‘You cannae get a real poison apple, can you?’

Tony shakes his head. ‘Nah.’ But reconsiders. ‘Aye, you can get a poison, though.’ He pats Angela’s back as her barking cough flings her head and shoulders about and makes his spiel of little interest to her. He carries on talking, reformulating his ideas. ‘But it’s nae use, because you always get caught. It’s like Sherlock Holmes with the Hound of the Baskervilles. I mean they dogs werenae even real dogs, and Sherlock Holmes just knew that.’

Her coughing stops and she wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Who’s Sherlock Holmes?’

‘He’s like a guy that wears a funny hat, a deerstalker, and smokes a big pipe and he just needs to look at yeh. And he know everything. He’ll point his finger at yeh, and say, “You had egg and toast for breakfast” this morning. And he’s always right.’

‘I never had anything for breakfast this morning.’ Angela scrambles from the bed. ‘And I’m starving. You got any biscuits?’

‘Nah, don’t think so. We could go through and see.’  

Dermot sits in the chair listening to the radio, legs and feet stretched in front of the fire, smoking the last of a pack of Senior Service, which he flicks into the coals. His slow smile is more for Angela than Tony. ‘Hello pet, whit you been up to?’

She stands a handbreadth away from the side of his chair and her pale blue eyes impale him. ‘You got any biscuits?’ Her coughing bout doesn’t last long but there’s concern in his expression.

He stands up, ‘Nah, I wouldnae think so. Biscuits don’t last that long in here.’ He swoops down and picks her up, holding her in his arms, looks across at Tony and winks, ‘especially of the chocolate variety. But I’ll show you a wee trick’. Placing her in his warm seat he saunters into the kitchen, with Ernie, The Fastest Milkman in the West blaring from the radio at his back.

‘Can I turn the telly on?’ ask Tony.

‘Aye, fire in.’

‘Can I turn the radio off?’

‘Aye, that song’s a lot of shite. I’d rather listen to The Sash.’

Tony with practiced ease turns the telly on and squeezes into the seat beside Angela. The two of them watch Jackanory, with such intense concentration they’re almost inside the set. Dermot bumbling in front of the set with a Mothers Pride loaf and bag of potatoes has them leaning sideways and looking round him. Angela’s eyes are first to stray from the telly. The slap and odour of coal hitting and spitting on the fire and Dermot with the metallic short handled shovel in his hand grabbing her attention more than the story of The Wise Owl.  

‘Whit you doin’? she asks, covering her mouth, because she’s going to cough. Tony looks over her shoulder.

Dermot lobs a few potatoes into the flames, using the poker to cover them with coals and ashes. ‘Best meal in the world, potatoes still in their skins, burnt black by the flames.’ He makes smacking noises with his lips. ‘And for the young lady.’ He takes out a slice of white bread and spears it with the poker and hold is over the flames. It begins to singe and brown almost immediately. ‘Home made toast. Emmm. Nothing better.’

‘Can I get a shot?’ Angela slips from the seat.  Tony follows.

With much whooping laughter and slices of white bread as casualties, dropping from the poker, turning black and curling into the flames, Dermot teaches them how to turn white bread and Stork Margarine into a feast. The potatoes take longer. Dermot fishes them out, batting coals away and picking them out with the tongs.

He hands one to Angela and another to Tony. They swish them in hand-to-hand combat and juggle with them to keep them from burning fingers and the palms of their hands.

‘All they need is a bit of salt,’ he says. ‘Wait a minute.’ He nips through to the kitchen and comes back with the salt cellar. He picks up a blackened potato he’s lift lying near the grate. The children watching him so intently makes him smile. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Bite the head off.’ With gusto, he snaps his teeth and munches into the potato, leaving a ring of white flesh.

Tony nips at the skin of his potato with his teeth. Angela licks her potato, undecided.

Dermot taps a little salt onto his and swallows it whole. ‘Lovely,’ he says, when he finishes chewing. ‘Give me that,’ he says to Angela, stooping down as if to steal the potato out of her hand. ‘No,’ she shrieks, pulling away from him. She takes a bite out of it.

Tony does the same. ‘Emm,’ he says, looking up and receiving a pat on the head as benediction. ‘I think it needs a bit more salt.’

When they are finished eating Angela sits tucked into the chair with Dermot. Tony in the chair across from them his eyelids closing.  Nationwide is on the telly, but no one is watching it. She strokes his unshaved chin, and runs a finger over his cheek, a bruise.

‘Whit’s that?’ she asks.

‘Nothing for you to worry about hen. Sometimes you only know there’s trouble, when trouble comes to get yeh.’

Her body slackens and Angela falls asleep.

‘Jesus,’ she hears, but doesn’t understand who it is, where she is, or what he means, until later when she opens her eyes. Dermot springs from the chair and is holding her out like a parcel he doesn’t want. She notes the precision he holds her body away from him and place her away from him on wobbly legs in front the fireplace. She starts screaming and crying and coughing.

Tony bolts up from his seat. ‘Whit’s the matter Da?’

‘Nothin’ to worry about. The wee lassie’s no’ well and just peed herself.’ Tony sees the wet map of it on his Da’s semmit.

‘It’s alright hen, no harm done,’ Dermot says to Angela with a soothing voice. ‘Don’t you worry about it, pet.’

He nods at Tony, ‘better go next door and get her ma’. He watches him go, but before he leaves the living room adds, ‘if that asshole boyfriend of her gives you any snash, you let me know. Gottit?’

‘Aye,’ says Tony.

‘I don’t want to go home,’ Angela screams. ‘I want to stay here with you and for you to be my dad.’