2003 - A Jarful of Angels (23 page)

He wasn’t twp though like his mam. He had a clever head on him and was good with figures. He did the books for shops.

“Yoooooo hooooooo,” called Auntie Mary as she came in over the step.

“Mary! Come in, love,” Nan said. “There’s a nice surprise! Smelled the tea, did you? Come on in and sit yourself down.”

Auntie Mary sat down at the table and the chair creaked noisily under her weight. Her legs came under the table towards Iffy, who had to squeeze up tight against the wall. Auntie Mary had huge flabby legs and the skin hung down in pink flaps over her shoes.

“Oh, damn, I’m weary,” she said. “My arse is making buttons from sitting on that bus so long.”

Iffy bit her lips so as not to laugh. She wished Fatty was under the table with her. Fatty always went into fits when he heard Auntie Mary talking.

He was really good at taking people off. He could do all the teachers in school, and Father Flaherty. When he mimicked Auntie Mary he sounded just like her.

Nan poured tea. Cow’s milk and three sugars for Auntie Mary Meredith.

“I’ve just seen that Hilary Tranter’s daughter, coming up the hill behind that big fat piece from the Old Bake House,” Auntie Mary said.

“Oh, that’s Lally.”

“Good God!” said Auntie Mary Meredith. “There’s a pair of tits on her.”

Iffy rammed her fist in her mouth so as not to laugh and bit her knuckles hard.

“Mary,” Nan chuckled, “you mustn’t say things like that.”

“Well, she have! Huge they are. Like bloody big pumpkins,” said Auntie Mary.

“I know she have,” Nan said, “but you mustn’t say so.”

It was no good telling Auntie Mary though because she said things like that all the time, the first thing that came into her head.

Iffy wondered what Hilary Tranter’s daughter was doing with Lally. Hilary Tranter never came near Bessie’s house because her mam had disowned her after she ran away from home, dyed her hair and changed her name to Dolores. And Auntie Mary must have got it wrong anyway because Hilary Tranter didn’t have a daughter she had two boys. Iffy and Bessie had seen them. It was a secret because Bessie wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with her sister.

One day they’d seen Dolores coming out of Morrissey’s shop and they’d followed her. She wore high heels that clicked as she walked and her skirt was so tight she had to take very small steps. She was pushing two sleeping babies in a battered old pushchair with buckled wheels. Bessie said the babies were twins and were called Cliff and Adam.

They followed her down over the bridge, past Carmel Chapel, along a lane that led to a farm where the farmer had a gun and a bad temper. She’d turned a bend in the road and as they rounded the corner she was standing facing them, hands on her hips.

They’d stopped dead in their tracks.

“You’d never make a pair of bloody spies!”

They shuffled their feet and looked down at the ground.

“You want to come in or what?”

Bessie shook her head.

“Don’t worry, Bessie, I won’t tell mam you’ve been. I don’t speak to her, remember?”

Hilary Tranter’s house was wedged in between two wrecked ones. There were still fireplaces in the upstairs walls and scraps of flowery wallpaper flapped in the breeze.

Hilary went into the house and the girls followed. There were clothes thrown all over the floor and a brassiere hung over the banisters. Hilary stepped through all the mess as if it wasn’t there.

The kitchen was worse than the hall. There were boxes on the floor full of empty tins and beer bottles. White flour spilled out of a paper bag onto a pile of dirty socks. There were knickers with brown marks on and, on a newspaper in one corner, there was a piece of half-eaten fish that buzzed with flies. There were fag ends and burn marks on every surface. Greasy plates were piled high on the kitchen table.

“We can’t stay long, Lurry,” Bessie squeaked.

“I’m Dolores now not bloody Lurry.”

Bessie began to wheeze.

Iffy wondered if she was putting it on to get out of there but there was a mangy-looking cat asleep on top of the draining board. Cats always made Bessie wheeze. So did maths.

Dolores said, “Please your sodding selves. Don’t wake the bloody babies up on the way out.”

But she smiled kindly at Bessie and she stood on the step and watched them as they walked back down the lane.

On the way home Bessie said Hilary must have been burgled, but she hadn’t been else she’d have called for the police. Bessie only said that because she was embarrassed.

She’d made Iffy swear not to tell her mam.

Auntie Mary Meredith said, “Wasn’t it that queer-faced little man in the sweet shop, that Morrissey fellow who put Hilary Tranter in the family way in the first place?”

“Well, that was all the talk at the time,” Nan said.

“Only fourteen, wasn’t she, when she had the baby?”

“Ay, fourteen or fifteen. Hot in the knickers she was, that Hilary. Calls herself Dolores now. Soft cow. She got a couple of dark babies off a sailor from Newport.”

“Mrs Tranter took on the one she had by Morrissey, didn’t she?”

“Oh ay, been rearing her as if she was her own. Mind you, I don’t think Mrs Tranter has a clue about who the father is, so don’t go opening your trap, Mary. Bessie, the girl is called, she plays with our Iffy. Nice enough little girl but mollycoddled.”

Bessie! Nan meant Bessie Tranter!

Iffy sat very still under the table trying to make sense of what she’d heard. She rolled the words round in her head. She still didn’t understand. Then she did. It couldn’t be true!

She wished she hadn’t heard. Perhaps they’d made a mistake, but she’d heard them.

That meant Bessie’s sister was really her mam. And her mam wasn’t her mam at all, she was her nan.

Iffy’s head was spinning just thinking about it.

And Morrissey was the man who had done it with Hilary Tranter. Morrissey and Hilary Tranter had rubbed belly buttons and Bessie hadn’t come out of Mrs Tranter’s bum, but out of her sister’s, well, her sister who was really her mam.

It was awful. And Bessie didn’t know.

Poor Bessie! She couldn’t marry Morrissey now. He was her dad. And who she thought was her real dad was her grancha. And the chocolate babies in the pushchair were her brothers, sort of.

Iffy felt sick. It was the worst secret ever. She knew she must never tell Bessie, even if they argued. Even if she wanted to for spite. Bridgie Thomas had been right about there being secrets in the town.

Iffy was glad there were no secrets about herself, she was sick of secrets.

Auntie Mary Meredith stayed for ages and when Nan went out to the lav, and Iffy could finally crawl out from under the table, her legs would barely move they were so stiff.

Iffy didn’t call for Bessie all the next day and when Bessie came knocking she hid under the bed. She didn’t want to see her now she knew. Things didn’t feel the same any more.

Iffy kept the secret, but knowing it made her feel bad. It was always ready on the tip of her tongue to spill out. Whenever she and Bessie argued, Iffy thought about telling Bessie the truth, but she daren’t.

It was horrible having a secret and she’d always thought it would be nice.

It was too big a secret. It made her afraid and it made her chest hurt. It grew inside her until she was afraid she’d have to let it out. Telling the secret would be like a snowball: small at first but getting bigger as everyone knew. Bigger and bigger, as people whispered it behind their hands, until it was so huge it would roll away and flatten Bessie. Even kill her.

Jack Look Up flew his kite when the moon was full. They called him Jack Look Up because he looked up every couple of seconds. It was a twitch. They used to watch him and count: One, two, three, and Jack’s chin twitched twice. His head jerked up towards the sky and one eye winked. One, two, three, then it happened all over again. Over and over.

The children were watching him from the bridge. The big red kite was like a badge against the darkening sky above Blagdon’s Tump. Jack Look Up held on to the reel of string and danced backwards and forwards across the Tump. Mad as a hatter, Jack was. Nan said he was a gentleman and a scholar. He lost his only son in the pit. He was only sixteen. They were working on the same shift. There was a bad fall and the son got trapped. Jack had to cradle him in his arms and watch him die. He was never right after. There were lots of people in the town who were never right after.

Jack Look Up wouldn’t set foot down the pit again. He said thank Christ the days of coal were nearly over. They’d sucked the valleys dry and spat out the bones. And one day when they’d had all they wanted, they’d shut up shop and leave them to scratch about for a living.

No one believed him, though. It was just daft talk. Grancha said there was tons of coal left in Wales. There’d always be a pit in the town and all the other towns. Like it or not, coal was the lifeblood.

Jack Look Up might have been mad, but he was very clever. He built giant matchstick castles and cathedrals and sold them in the markets in Merthyr and Swansea. Iffy wondered how he managed not to drop all those matchsticks when his chin twitched and his head shot up.

They watched him flying his kite until it was too dark to see him any more. Just a glimpse every now and then of his kite passing across the big milky moon.

Fatty and Billy walked Iffy and Bessie back to the steps of Inkerman. On the way Fatty showed them the little lead and collar he’d bought ready for when he got the puppy. It was tiny and made of red leather, attached to it was a little silver barrel. Carefully Fatty unscrewed it and took out a small piece of folded-up paper. They could just make out the writing in the light of the lamp post: This dog belongs to Lawrence Bevan, Coronation Row.

“What you gonna call the puppy?”

“Yapper!” Fatty said.

Bessie sniffed.

“Why Yapper?” Iffy asked.

“Cos he’s always yapping every time I go down and look through the window.”

As they came level with Inkerman, Fatty pointed up towards the Black Band. “Look, there’s Dai Full Pelt!”

Dai was creeping across the Black Band. He had a sack slung over his shoulders, he was looking all around him as if he was worried about being followed.

Fatty pulled them back into the shadows of the houses, and they watched him. He went past Iffy’s grancha’s chicken coop and on up towards the ponds.

“Probably been out burglaring,” said Fatty.

“No,” said Bessie. “Burglars wear striped jumpers and masks when they’re working.”

“Only in comics, you daft sod,” said Fatty. “Otherwise everybody’d know who they were!”

Bessie sniffed and turned her back on him.

Bessie-O!

Second time of calling.

“G’night.”

The girls ran hell for leather.

Down in the graveyard the Old Bugger hooted and Barny the bulldog howled and rattled his chains like a ghost.

Fatty called for Iffy in the morning, standing on the step red-faced and puffing.

“Iffy, I got something important to tell you!”

“Whafs up! Not about that bloody head again?”

“Shhh! No.”

“Ask him if he wants some toast,” shouted Nan from the kitchen.

“Yes please, Mrs Meredith.”

Fatty always said please and thank you even though he was rough. Bessie didn’t always and Billy couldn’t.

They sat side by side on the step and Nan gave them huge culfs of toast and butter.

“Thank you, Mrs Meredith.”

Fatty ate the toast hungrily and in between bites he said, “You know we seen Dai last night going up the mountain with a sack?”