Tarnished (8 page)

‘What does that mean?’

Carleen ignored Peg’s question. ‘Look. I got to get on. And you need to help me with them shutters.’ She printed off the email and handed it to Peg. ‘Don’t whatever you do let him know it was me gave you the address.’

Peg nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘I got enough trouble without you landing me in it with him.’

‘I won’t say a word.’

‘I hope it turns out all right,’ Carleen said. ‘I hope he gets back in touch with your nan, and everything’s OK.’

‘I’m sure it will be,’ Peg said. ‘This is completely the right thing to do!’

Carleen fixed her with her dark brown eyes.

Peg wasn’t sure – it was almost imperceptible – but she thought she saw her shake her head.

Then

I’m six years old here. Very young indeed. This is good progress.

We’re whizzing along the front, bombing down the slopey paths towards the sea, charging down, down, down to the promenade below. The wind whips my hair and tears stream down my cheeks, brought on by the cold air and the fact that I’m laughing like a wild thing, wedged up between Aunty Jean and the steering column of her trolley.

‘Faster, Aunty Jean! Faster!’

She ramps up the throttle so the trolley makes a high-pitched, juddering sound, and we bump and jump and fly over those lumps in the tarmac that look like giant, armour-plated moles tried to push their way up.

‘Hold on, Meggy,’ Aunty Jean says, and she makes a perfect, high-speed turn at the bottom of the slope. The trolley’s side wheels lift up and thump down and we’re hurtling along, the sea on our right, to Whitstable.

This was the first day of my regular holiday visit. It’s the Easter holidays before the summer I went to live full-time with Nan and Aunty Jean, but of course I didn’t know it at this point.

I had no idea what was coming for me.

Old bags and silly bitches tut as we pass them. I know they’re old bags and silly bitches because that’s what Aunty Jean calls them. She says they don’t like the handicapped having fun, and she’s out to prove them wrong.

When we get to our café, I go in and get the boy and, as usual, he makes out like it’s a big problem to open the double doors to let Aunty Jean and her trolley in. The first time we went there he said it couldn’t be done and she argued with him and said that he had to because it’s against the law to discriminate against the handicapped.

‘We’ll have our usual, darling,’ she says to me, handing me a tenner. I go up to the counter to get our fish and chips.

She has large with lots of vinegar and I have normal with no vinegar, but she always helps me out because I can never finish my chips and I don’t like the skin part of the batter. Aunty Jean does. She says it’s the best bit. I also get her a can of lager and me a can of shandy, which has real beer in it, she says. It makes me feel a little bit squiffy.

‘So, how’s Mummy doing, darling?’ Aunty Jean asks me as I bring the food over to our table. We’re right in front, in the window, because it’s the only place you can fit the trolley in. The tide is out, far, far out, and there are old twits milling around the sandbanks with their metal detectors. The smell of mud, a bit like river mixed with stink bombs, is everywhere.

‘She’s all right,’ I say. ‘I think.’

‘She looked a bit peaky when she dropped you off. A bit thin.’

‘Perhaps she’s been on a diet,’ I say.

‘Doesn’t suit her. Fellas prefer a bit of meat on a woman,’ Aunty Jean says, slapping the ketchup bottle so that a big dollop of red lands on her chips. ‘Look at that.’ She points at a lady walking past with big bosoms wobbling under a tight white T-shirt. ‘Lovely.’

I agree even though she just looks chilly to me. It’s a day when you should be wearing an anorak. ‘I do prefer Mummy when she’s more cuddly.’

I dip my chip into Aunty Jean’s ketchup.

‘Oy, get your own!’ She reaches over and tickles me with her greasy, salty fingers.

Later, we trundle along the front to the far end of Whitstable, me walking alongside the trolley and Aunty Jean leaning back, steering with one hand and smoking a ciggy with the other so that she looks like the bad guy in a Western. We reach the point where we can’t go any further because the flood defences are up – big bits of wood they slot into the gaps in the sea wall when there’s storms or big high tides. Sometimes, Aunty Jean brings her crutches and we struggle up and over the steps and go to this old wooden pub on the beach, where they let me buy the drinks at the bar like a grown-up because Aunty Jean has to sit down. I always get a lemonade for me and a port for her and we sit outside at the old tables and chat about this and that. My favourite things Aunty Jean tells me are about when she and Daddy were little, and the naughty things they did.

But Aunty Jean hasn’t brought her crutches with her today, and, in any case, the weather’s looking a bit iffy to sit outside the pub. You can see the clouds getting together over the sea and I spit on my finger and hold it up to the wind. A storm’s coming. I’m quite pleased because I’m pretty pooped. I only stopped school yesterday and Mummy got me up really early to drive me down here because she’s got somewhere she’s got to be in London today.

‘That’s a nasty bruise she’s got,’ Aunty Jean says, as we reach the harbour and draw up in front of an ice-cream van.

‘Where?’ I say, looking round. I’m only half listening because I can’t make up my mind between a Screwball, a Nobbly Bobbly or a Double Ninety-Nine. I’m thinking I’ll go for the Double Ninety-Nine because, even though it’s probably more than I can manage – Aunty Jean says my eyes are bigger than my tummy when it comes to ice cream – it
is
the first day at Tankerton.

‘Your Mummy, silly. On her face.’ Aunty Jean points to her own forehead. ‘You’d think it wouldn’t show on her skin, but it’s all purple, isn’t it?’

There’s one thing about Nan and Aunty Jean that’s boring: if they get a chance, they’ll get in something about Mummy’s skin. I’m glad mine is more like Daddy’s. ‘You’d hardly know,’ Aunty Jean always says when she rubs in my sunblock, ‘if you remember to stay out of the sun.’

‘Oh that,’ I say, meaning the bruise. ‘She walked into a door, she said.’

‘They all say that.’ Aunty Jean hands me a tenner out of her purse. ‘I’ll have a treble Ninety-Nine today, darling. Celebrate your arrival. Get yourself whatever you want.’

‘Two treble Ninety-Nines, please,’ I say, standing on tiptoe so I can see into the van. The ice-cream man looks a bit dirty to me, so I watch him carefully. He touches the flakes and I have to pretend I don’t see it so that I can eat them. I decide, though, that I’ll leave the bottom bit of the cone, because his hand has been on there for ages.

‘Looks like your daddy duffed her up,’ Jean says as I carry our ice creams to a seat where she can park alongside me and we can watch the seagulls peck at the bits in the fisherman’s nets.

I look up at her, shocked. Daddy doesn’t hit anyone, not even me when I’ve tried his patience beyond all limits. But Aunty Jean is laughing. It’s a joke. I feel this massive relief.

‘Raymond hasn’t got it in him to hurt a fly, you silly!’ Aunty Jean slurps the top off her ice cream, just before it tumbles down onto her hand. Then she leans over and whispers in my ear so that I can feel the cold on her breath. ‘It’s the treatment, isn’t it?’

‘Treatment?’ I say, looking round at her.

‘For the cancer,’ she says, pulling one of the flakes out of her cone and sucking the big blob of ice cream off it.

‘Cancer?’ I say.

‘I thought as much.’ Aunty Jean sighs and looks sadly at me. ‘They haven’t told you, have they? That’s no way to treat a child, keeping it in the dark.’ She draws another deep breath and takes my hand in hers. ‘Your mummy’s having radiotherapy, darling. For the lymphoma.’

I don’t know these words. I frown and look at the horizon, which is a silver line between a grey sea and a grey sky. The clouds have rolled right in now, all the way from Essex, I suppose. Essex is what’s on the other side, beyond the sea forts that look like little trees out in the middle of the water. I looked it up in Gramps’s atlas. A spot of rain hits my nose and my ice cream suddenly seems too cold to eat.

Back at the bungalow, we’re in Nan and Gramps’s front room and the gas fire is lit and it’s
EastEnders
and they’re all watching it and drinking Nan’s elderberry wine. They sometimes let me have a tiny glass, but not tonight, because Nan says it’s a strong batch.

I’m on a cushion on the floor, in my favourite place near the fire and the sliding-glass bookcase, which I open up. Inside are all Nan’s medical books. I pull out the big one called
Diseases and Symptoms
, open it up on my knee and look up lymphoma. Then I have to drag out the big
Collins Dictionary
to find out what lymph nodes are and what a prognosis is.

And then I am filled with dread.

Eight

PARTYBOYZ was ready and willing, so Peg zoomed in on Raymond’s address in Google maps.

‘Massive,’ Loz whistled from her position peering over Peg’s shoulder. ‘Out in the middle of nowhere. And look at the size of that pool. Daddy’s loaded.’

‘I hope his new family’s OK with me showing up.’

‘Jesus Christ, Peg.’

‘I wonder what he’s going to say, me turning up out of the blue.’

‘It’d better be “sorry”,’ Loz said, moving over to the fridge and pulling out a cling-film-covered bowl. ‘Fucking off and leaving you just when you needed him most.’

‘He was broken-hearted when Mum died.’

Loz whacked the bowl down on the work surface. ‘And you weren’t?’

Peg closed her eyes and rested her forehead in her hands. ‘Please, Loz. Don’t.’

‘You’ve got to put yourself first sometimes and—’

‘Please? I just need to get him to make whatever it is up with Nan before it’s too late. That’s all. I don’t want to complicate it all with the other stuff. Not now.’

‘I know.’ Loz crossed back to Peg, put her arms round her and kissed her on the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry.’

‘I just want to be practical about this.’

‘Of course. It’s just I don’t know how you
can’t
get involved with all the other stuff as well.’

‘We’re just different people, aren’t we?’

‘You can say that again.’ Loz kissed her a second time. ‘Now, I’ve got to dash. Mouths to feed.’

‘What’s in the bowl?’ Peg said.

Loz fetched the bowl, whipped off the cling film and showed it to Peg.

‘Well now. The tofu’s nicely marinading, and I’ve chopped all the veg for you – so you just whack it in the wok. Do the onions, ginger and garlic first for a few minutes, and stir-fry. Then you throw on Loz’s teriyaki marvel sauce from here,’ she pulled a jam jar full of a dark purple sticky substance out of the fridge, shook it twice and replaced it. ‘And bish bosh, Jean’s your aunty, supper for Saint Margaret.’

‘I don’t deserve you,’ Peg said, looking up at her.

‘You bloody well do, you know.’ Loz bent to kiss her on the nose, then pulled on her jacket, grabbed her backpack and stuffed her sequinned Union Jack purse inside it. ‘Raymond won’t know what hits him when we turn up on his doorstep, expecting him to step up to the mark, Prodigal Son style.’

‘We?’ Peg said, alarmed.

‘Well, I’m not letting you go out there on your own. You’re going to need some support.’

‘No, no, no,’ Peg said, getting up and taking Loz’s hands in her own. ‘I have to do this on my own.’

‘What?’ There was a long silence as Loz bored her green eyes into Peg. ‘
What?
’

‘I need to keep it as simple as possible.’

‘You mean you don’t want him to see you turn up with me,’ Loz said, pulling her hands away. An angry flush spread across her cheeks. ‘You don’t want Daddy to see you’ve got a girlfriend.’

‘Of course it’s not that.’

‘It is, you know. You’re such a coward sometimes, Peg. You’re just so . . .’ Exasperated, Loz shook herself away from Peg. ‘Look. Let him see you for what you are. It’s not that bad, you know, Peg. It’s really not so bad.’

‘I need to see him on my own.’

‘This is why I’ve not met Doll and Jean yet, isn’t it?’

‘That’s rubbish.’ But Peg knew Loz had a very good point.

‘Because you’re scared to let them know. You’re buying into some homophobia you’re imagining for them.’

‘I’m not!’ She wasn’t. She didn’t need to imagine homophobia. It was rife in the Tankerton bungalow – on Jean’s side, at least. Peg had witnessed it in full flow many times, as disgust vented at a TV soap storyline or some tabloid article.

It was all right for Loz, with her right-on Camden parents who loved the fact their fourth daughter was a lesbian, and who had been especially over the moon when they met Peg.

‘Extra kudos for the skin tone,’ Loz had remarked
sotto voce
as Naomi and Richard had danced round her, failing to restrain themselves from asking about her parentage – which, of course, she could do very little to fill them in on, particularly on the more interesting brown side. The only thing Peg knew about her mother was that she had been brought up in care. Jean had told her this once, adding that all she knew was that she had been the unwanted daughter of an ‘Irish good-time girl’ and a ‘Coon jazz musician’. Peg knew where Ireland was. She had looked up Coon in Frank’s atlas, but failed to find it.

The racism in the bungalow wasn’t imagined, either.

‘It’s why you don’t ever hold hands with me,’ Loz said. ‘You’re scared of people seeing and judging.’

‘That’s not true!’

Apart from one month with a girl called Ed, short for Edwina – with whom the only thing she really had in common was being named for a Conservative politician – Peg had not had a proper relationship with anyone before Loz. While she loved the quieter intimacies and sharing that being together offered, she had difficulties with publicly declaring any sort of partnership. For example, whenever they held hands – always instigated by Loz, of course – she felt stiff and awkward. Loz usually picked up on this discomfort. Since letting things lie wasn’t her style, a discussion usually followed which, depending on her mood, took a form somewhere between gentle questioning and the full-on haranguing of the type she was currently dealing out.