Blood Relatives Read online

  The first test of t’ water quality in Eric’s marriage would be t’ sprog that wor due in a couple of months. The way I saw it, Eric wor so taken up wi’ the idea of becoming a dad that he hadn’t given much thought to being a dad. Lourdes wor doling out some unwanted advice on motherhood along wi’ her horse-piss tea. Anyone could see this riled him.

  ‘As if she knows owt about being a parent,’ he fumed as we rearranged the van load. He paused, wi’ a bottle of lemon barley water in his hand, seeking out the right crate for it, and said, ‘You’ve got all this coming one day.’

  ‘Not me, mate. I’m not getting spliced. No friggin’ way.’

  Eric chortled and shook his head.

  It wor on t’ edge of my tongue to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. As we worked, shifting empties to t’ bottom and centre of t’ van and moving full crates to t’ open sides where they’d be easily reachable for t’ coming hour or so, I blathered on to Eric about Mother and Gerald, and Mitch being my stepdad. I said it felt as if summat wor broke and summat else repaired.

  He said it wor a good thing that the truth had come out, and from what he’d heard, Mitch worn’t such a bad bloke neither. That’s as may be, I said, but I’d always felt there wor a distance between mesen and Mitch. We wor chalk and cheese, as the saying went.

  ‘Makes sense,’ I said, ‘learning we worn’t common blood.’

  ‘No,’ said Eric. ‘But he brought you up, all t’ same.’

  He made it sound like I’d been t’ lucky one.

  ‘I wish it had been Gerald. If it had been Gerald I would have had a better life, that’s for sure. He wor rich. Or he wor before he died. You know, Eric, he didn’t even know about me. If he had, he might have left me some dosh.’

  ‘If he’d made a will. If he didn’t, the tax man will have gobbled it up.’

  For t’ rest of that day I walked around feeling lighter than t’ air, and seeing t’ world in a wholly different light.

  Vera Millward

  16/05/1978

  Ah. Diary sneak-read opportunity. I had to be quick though. Just summat about getting her ears pierced and complaining that neither Mother nor Mitch had noticed. So that’s why you keep pulling your hair down one minute and then flicking it back the next. They’re not going to notice, sis, cos that’s what you want. Nowt comes of throwing petrol on a dead fire, does it? What’s done is done. Or maybe they don’t care. You tell me, sis.

  Vera Millward had been done over in Manchester. She wor found in a sitting position, propped against t’ fence in a car park by t’ hospital.

  While Eric and I sipped horse piss, Lourdes wor blathering on about t’ undercover officers all over Chapeltown at night, and even a few during the day, pretending to be courting in strategically parked cars.

  They wor doing t’ same at other red-light districts in t’ North too – I heard it on a Radio Pennine late-night phone-in show. One woman said, ‘They’ve got it coming to them, haven’t they, luv?’ The next caller said it wor God’s work – cleansing the streets of sin. There wor a discussion about God and the Devil. The man wor saying that God wor taking his revenge for all t’ sin in t’ world. The presenter suggested that the Ripper might be of t’ same opinion. God man worn’t sold on t’ idea. There followed a radio barney about whether the Yorkshire Ripper was some Godfearing nutter or not, and then t’ caller wor cut off and the next one wor on t’ line. Some addled old biddy. ‘I don’t know … it’s terrible … all these killings … I don’t know what to think.’

  So t’ presenter told her what to think, and moved on.

  Camp David had invited me to a Saturday-afternoon barbecue in t’ back yard of Radclyffe Hall. I cadged the day off work by swapping shifts wi’ one of t’other van lads.

  The barbecue itsen wor one of them cheap camping jobs that hold two chops and a porker if you’re lucky. On t’ kitchen table wor two big bowls of salad: yellow rice and nuts in one, and in t’other grated raw carrot, sultanas and grapes. A bit of lettuce, a tom and a blob of salad cream would have done me.

  All t’other Radclyffe Hall inmates wor there: Fizzy, Fazel, plus a tall, shy Irishman called Gary who I’d seen at Gay Lib. The old dear I’d seen rattling the dustbin lid that one time wor there too – her name wor Hilda – as wor Spider, Fazel’s new boyfriend, who he’d met in t’ waiting room of a clap clinic. As always when there wor a crowd, Terry wor holed up in his room.

  There wor also two Asian lads. One wor about eighteen, and his name wor Ali. T’other couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Camp David said he wor Ali’s cousin, fresh out of Pakistan, and that he didn’t speak much English. The cousin wor dressed in brushed-cotton brown flares and a thick cable sweater, even though t’ sun wor beating down. The clothes looked borrowed, cos they didn’t fit proper.

  Fazel whispered in my ear that Camp David had a thing about Asian youths. He wor always chatting to t’ ones who hung about outside the Hyde Park cinema, or them that kicked a footie about in t’ park, or sat on walls talking among themsens. They cadged his ciggies and knew what he wanted in return.

  We all stood about or sat on t’ yard wall. I wor supping from a can of Red Stripe and watching Camp David prod the porkers that wor already charred along one side and still raw on t’other. Some of them wor made of some veggie gunge. Fizzy had moved his stereo speakers by t’ open window so that the sounds of Jimmy Cliff’s The Harder They Come LP wor carried out into t’ yard and up the back street.

  In between t’ banter about sex and sausages, the talk wor of Gay Lib and Rock Against Racism and whether RAR supported us queers or not, and about t’ NF and all that. Camp David wor nattering wi’ Hilda and batting his eyelids at Ali. Hilda wor saying that she’d never married. Camp David asked her straight out if she wor a lesbian, and she roared wi’ laughter. She said during t’ First World War she’d had a young fancy man she wor set to marry, but he’d never come back from t’ front. Then her father died in t’ flu epidemic and she had to look after her mother.

  Ali wor looking a bit awkward and aloof, so I asked him if he wanted any sausage, but he declined my offer wi’ an embarrassed smile that showed off his nice teeth. He wor a slim lad, wi’ high cheekbones and dangerous, playful eyes. His jeans wor tight about t’ crotch and showed his dick line perfectly. I let him see me eyeing him over while I wor piling my paper plate wi’ rice salad. As he moved away from t’ table, Fazel sidled over.

  ‘If you want that one, you have to wear the kit.’

  ‘The kit?’

  ‘He drops in on David that often you’d think he’s practically moved in. Only active, mind you, strictly no kissing, and David has to wear a dress, stockings and heels. Otherwise it’s no go.’

  I ploughed my fork through t’ yellow rice and kidney beans.

  ‘You’re having me on.’

  ‘And David’s taken to shaving his whole body. The bath plughole’s always clogged up with his body hair. I mean, all that stuff about gay liberation and radical drag, and then as soon as some randy Asian lad tells him he has to be as smooth as a baby’s backside to get a shag he’s at the razor and Immac before you can say “Heels over head in lust.”’

  ‘So, you’re not joining the club?’

  ‘Me? Look at me, dear. You’d need a machete. Either they take me as they find me, or they can fuck off.’ Fazel placed his left hand on my lower ribcage. ‘So what’s the story I hear about some man you’re shagging?’

  ‘What man?’

  The hand lingered there, the fingers dancing against me like he wor playing a piano.

  ‘The skinhead you had in my room on the night of the party. You see, there are rumours flying about. Rumours about you. Some people don’t trust you. Because of the types it’s said you hang out with.’

  I pulled away from him and put my plate down on t’ table. I wor fumed up at Fazel for even mentioning Tad. It had been months now, I’d buried him in a dusty corner of my mind, but wi’ one flicker I wor lit, and I could see him, smell him, al
most taste him.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Some are saying it wor you who put the NF on to attacking the Fenton.’

  I took a large sup from my beer can. ‘Honest to God, Fazel, I haven’t seen that bloke since t’ party. It wor a one-night stand, and that’s that. He wor gone before I woke up in t’ morning. I don’t know owt about him.’

  ‘So I guess you won’t know that after the Fenton attack that fascist bitch Gina was arrested for GBH?’

  ‘You’re having me on. Gina? She wor in on it? Really? That surprises me, truly it does. She’s no bigger than a pint of milk.’

  ‘You really didn’t know?’

  ‘Like I said, I haven’t seen any of them since that night. She don’t even come to t’ FK Club no more.’

  Fazel grunted. ‘She glassed this old woman in the face. And she threw a chair across the bar. There were two GLF people in there that night, having a quiet drink. One of them got a broken nose. They both recognised her.’

  ‘Fazel, I promise you, I don’t know owt about it. I’ve never even been in t’ Fenton.’

  I excused mesen, pushed past him and bounded upstairs to t’ bathroom. My skin wor crawling, the demons bursting out of their burrows, spreading like a bracken fire up my arms and ’cross my stomach. I tore off my shirt, opened the tap and doused my chest wi’ t’ cold water. I stared at mesen in t’ mirror. Breathe in, breathe out, steady, steady now. In–out, in–out. Dora, poor, poor Dora. What harm had she done anyone? Next time I saw that bitch Gina she’d get it from me, no messing. I dried my face and body wi’ t’ grubby hand towel, put on my shirt and stepped out.

  Ali wor coming up the stairs. He grinned at me wolfishly, but I let him pass wi’ just a nod.

  Since t’ ruckus in t’ garage Mitch and I had been keeping each other at arm’s length. He wor spending more and more time wi’ t’ dog. It gave him a reason not to be in t’ house and to be somewhere other than in the Marquis or t’ local working men’s club.

  Sometimes he wor out ’til late at night, walking Max out on t’ tops above Bradford, he said. Other times he just let him loose in t’ park and threw him a rubber ball again and again. Even Mother fussed over t’ dog these days. Seemed that all conversation between us had to pass via t’ dog. Mandy wor less forthcoming, especially after Max chewed up her fave gonk.

  But wi’ me, Mitch just eyed me quietly, as if he wor waiting for me to say summat. So one day while he wor putting up a key rack in t’ hallway, I said, ‘I know. She told me.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on t’ job before him. When I didn’t say anything more, he apologised to t’ key rack for keeping it waiting and then drove a rawl-plug into t’ plasterboard.

  Eric pulled onto t’ grass verge and killed the engine. My ears popped, and in poured the squeals of kids playing on distant swings and the buzz of a light aircraft hanging in t’ sky. For t’ past two hours we’d been working this estate, circling, criss-crossing, backing up cul-de-sacs and inching along t’ avenues and crescents of pebble-dashed semis and terraces, following the numbers (no number 13!) ’til we passed t’ same abandoned pram I’d clocked earlier.

  Eric said, ‘Do you want to see where Jimmy Savile lives?’

  I shrugged. ‘He lives around here?’

  ‘No, just over t’ way. On t’other side of Roundhay Road. Come on, it’s only a couple of minutes from here.’

  He restarted the van and we drove out of t’ housing estate and across t’ Roundhay Road. Eric followed the edge of Roundhay Park, then pulled over and nodded at a block of posh flats opposite.

  ‘He lives right there, in t’ one at the very top. His old mum lived wi’ him too, ’til she died a few year back. He called her “the Duchess”.’

  I screwed my face up at the block. ‘Does anyone deliver to him?’

  ‘Nah. Not that I’ve heard. Keeps to himsen.’

  Mother had spotted Savile one time at Leeds General Infirmary, where he sometimes worked as a volunteer porter. He wor wheeling this teenage girl along t’ corridor on a hospital trolley and chortling away to her in that way he had.

  We climbed onto t’ back of t’ van to rebuild the load. I kicked a crate into place and said, ‘My mother lived in a posh house once. When she wor married to that rich bloke before I wor born.’

  This sounded, even as I wor saying it, like make-believe. Eric looked at me out of t’ corner of his eye.

  I said, ‘Wouldn’t you put your mum in a posh house? If you wor Jimmy Savile?’

  Eric shrugged his shoulders. ‘Aye, if I knew where to find her I would. But I wor brought up by t’ grandfolks. Mum left us when I wor a nipper. She just walked.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Not that I remember owt.’

  ‘I can remember stuff from when I wor two year old. I can remember the colour of my pram. Mother wor gobsmacked, cos all t’ photos she has of me when I wor a baby are black and white.’

  Eric mulled on this. ‘Maybe somebody once mentioned it, and you just think you remember. I mean, I saw a photo of my mother once, and now I don’t know if it’s her that I remember, or if having seen t’ photo makes me think I remember.’ He banged a crate of cherryade into place wi’ his foot. The bottles jiggled and protested. ‘But I’ve never stopped looking for her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s like she’s fallen off t’ face of t’ earth.’

  I dropped an empty bottle of Tango lemon and lime into a crate slot. We could still hear t’ aircraft buzzing overhead. Eric looked out across t’ open ground, deep in private thought. I didn’t like that. When people wor thinking in my presence, visibly thinking summat, I felt shut out. Useless.

  A breeze had picked up, ruffling the hairs on t’ back of my neck.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Eric said eventually, ‘I think I’m goin’ to see her. When we’re out on t’ rounds. I knock on a door and then I’m waiting and I get this queer sensation, like I’m going to pass out. But then t’ door opens and it’s not her. It’s never her.’

  ‘What would you do if it wor her?’

  ‘Dunno. I dunno what I’d do. I guess I’d grab her and never let her go.’

  ‘Maybe she moved away? Remarried?’

  Eric shook his head. ‘We’re Catholics. Mum would never get a divorce. Call it a hunch, call it what you like, but I think she’s somewhere close by. She’s my mum, after all. She’d want to stay close to her kid, don’t you think?’

  He wiped his nose on t’ sleeve of his blue nylon Corona coat.

  ‘Can I tell you summat?’ I said.

  Eric rubbed the sleeve against t’ hip of his keks.

  ‘All that stuff wi’ Lourdes and the dancing and that, well, it’s not who I am. Thing is, Eric, I prefer fellas. I’m gay.’

  Eric jerked his head, as if avoiding a wasp. There wor a long pause. Then he said, ‘I didn’t need to know that. None of my business what you do. That’s a game changer. That changes everything.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘I thought you, of all people …’

  ‘Well you thought wrong. I’m a Catholic, remember? And what you’re telling me is wrong. It’s against nature and against t’ teachings in t’ Bible.’

  ‘The what?’

  I’d been sure that Eric wor on my side. I knew now, wi’ a cold and clammy certainty, that it would be gossiped around t’ depot. But that Bible spouting got me fair riled.

  ‘That’s good, coming from you,’ I snapped. ‘What wi’ Karen pregnant before t’ wedding, and you knobbing other men’s wives on t’ round. I know …’

  I glimpsed the left hook an instant before I felt it. I dodged, and he caught me on t’ side of my cheek, sending me staggering backward, catching a crate as I tried to stay upright, before falling off t’ side of t’ van and slamming onto t’ tarmac and rolling over. I cried out, more in surprise than pain. His wedding ring had caught my cheekbone, and I could feel a warm trickle of blood running down my face.

  When I looked
up, Eric wor stood on t’ edge of t’ open van back, looking down at me, wide-eyed wi’ hate. Using the wheel arch, I pulled mesen to my feet. My forearm wor grazed, my elbow wor bleeding and my nylon Corona coat wor ripped. Beneath my jeans my right leg wor stinging.

  ‘All them times!’ Eric shouted. ‘All them times when I dropped you in town and I thought you wor giving some bird a seeing to, it worn’t?’

  ‘No,’ I spat, tasting the blood that wor trickling into t’ side of my mouth. ‘It wor a bloke. A dead sexy bloke. The Matterhorn Man.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Blandford Gardens. The Matterhorn Man. One bottle of Coke and a tonic water.’

  I wiped my face and spat onto t’ ground. Eric’s face had more creases than an unironed shirt.

  ‘You mean it wor someone you met on t’ round? On our round?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned. But you’ve stopped seeing him?’

  ‘He skedaddled back to Scotland. But not cos of owt to do wi’ me. At least, I don’t think so.’

  ‘So that’s why you scratched his name out of t’ round-book t’ way you did that time?’

  ‘Aye. I wor riled up.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t told me. It’s disgusting, that. I wish I didn’t know. Cos once I know summat, I can’t unknow it, can I? And I don’t like what I know now. I tell you, it ain’t natural. I can’t believe it. I thought I knew you. I thought I knew who Rick Thorpe is.’

  ‘This is who I am.’

  We pushed on wi’ t’ deliveries. Cos of t’ bruised hip and grazed leg I wor walking wi’ a limp. A few of t’ customers remarked on my cut face, which I fibbed about, saying I hadn’t been looking where I wor going, and one kindly young woman gave me an elastoplast. She insisted on dabbing on some Dettol and putting the plaster on my cheek hersen, letting her finger rest there a moment. I thanked her and made my excuses.

  I wor feeling like my innards wor hanging out and I couldn’t push ’em back in. I wor so cut up inside that I dropped a full bottle of Coca-Cola onto a garden path. What I’d wanted above all, I thought miserably, using a piece of wood to shovel the jagged pieces of glass onto some newspaper, wor approval. Eric’s approval. After all, hadn’t Eric shared shedloads of stuff about himsen which I then had to carry wi’ me, stuff I could have spilled to Craner, Karen, Lourdes, anyone I wor minded to? What wor Eric always blathering on about friendship? Real friendship is cemented in secrets. Some secrets bind you together, and some tear you apart. Tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine. Prick our thumbs and press them together. What shite.