Blood Relatives Read online

  ‘But,’ I wor told, ‘make sure you watch ’em, don’t let any of ’em run off.’

  I looked on uneasily as these middle-aged blokes ran about and hid in t’ undergrowth. It wor more hide and seek than cowboys and injuns. No one went ‘Bang bang’ or hollered or whooped or lay on t’ grass pretending to be dead ’til they got bored and got up again.

  For a brief while this wor brill. I just had to keep an eye out. When I wor a nipper I’d always played cowboys and injuns wi’ my best friend, Mickey. Mickey always played the cowboy and I wor t’ injun. Except one time Mickey undressed me down to my undies (injuns always wore very little) and tied me to a tree (injuns always got tied up). Then he went home and forgot about me. Not long after, these two older boys came along on their bikes. They cycled round and round the tree, laughing, but they refused to untie me. Then they chucked their bikes aside, took out their willies and pissed all over me.

  I looked about for my grown-up cowboys and injuns.

  I formed my fingers into a pistol and sighted one of ’em. Pow! Pow! (Silencer on.) The man’s face crumpled and he started to blubber.

  I counted the men. One, two, three. Four. Only four. Where wor t’other one?

  I spied him nipping into a greenhouse. I followed him in, creeping around t’ ragged tomato plants and whatnot. He wor ducked behind t’ seed tables, sniggering. He wouldn’t come out, but just kept running about t’ friggin’ greenhouse and giggling. For a baldy wi’ a paunch he wor fair nimble.

  I’d soon had enough. I strode out of t’ greenhouse, turned the rusting key, locking the blighter in, and looked about for t’ others.

  I shouted out, ‘Hey, cowboys! Injuns!’ cos I worn’t told their names.

  Silence. No one popped up from behind a tree or stone wall or any of t’ bushes.

  Behind me, the bugger in t’ greenhouse wor freaking out, tugging at the door and bawling. I quickened my step, heading out, telling the man on t’ gate I wor just nipping out for a paper.

  A month later I wor standing in Craner’s office, wishing I wor still in t’ loony bin.

  On t’ Wednesday following Tina Atkinson’s murder, Gran toddled over, as she often did, for a meal. She arrived early evening and sat at the kitchen table, fingers interlocked, pride dented, like she wor in a doctor’s waiting room.

  Sis flounced into t’ kitchen and greeted Gran breezily. She wor chewing chuddy gum. She only chewed chuddy when she’d been smoking, so God friggin’ knows why she bothered trying to mask it. Mother frowned. Gran rooted out a bag of mints from her handbag. She handed Mandy the bag and said, ‘Now these are to share,’ like it wor a reward for being brave cos your pet hamster just pegged it.

  ‘Oooh, thank you Gran,’ sis had simpered. She spat out her chuddy into her hand and stuck it to t’ underside of t’ table. I puckered my face in disgust, so she stuck her tongue out at me, popped a mint onto t’ end, closed her mouth and began sucking noisily.

  ‘Don’t I get one?’

  She pushed the bag toward me.

  ‘No ta. I just wanted to see if you would.’

  Gran rose from t’ table, supporting hersen by t’ edge, sloughed over to t’ sink and began rinsing a plate under t’ cold tap. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I wor once stuck in a lift.’

  Mother wor stirring some cheese sauce to pour over macaroni. I saw her neck vein bloop. ‘Yes,’ she sighed heavily. ‘I know.’

  We all knew. Barely had Gran doled out the words ‘stuck in a lift’ before we’d collectively arrived at the end of t’ tale. Stuck in a lift. Stuck on repeat. Made me appreciate Mrs Husk the more. Mrs Husk never said owt twice, never mind fifty trillion friggin’ times.

  I mouthed at sis, ‘Two hours.’ Sis sniggered. Mother replied dutifully, taking the rinsed plate from Gran, ‘When you were visiting Florrie. Quarry Hill flats.’

  ‘I wor stuck in that lift for a good two hour. How it stank. People had peed in it. I never thought I’d get out.’

  Mother said, ‘Like being entombed in a metal box.’ I watched her lifting bikkies from a Tupperware container and arranging them on t’ rinsed plate.

  ‘I really should go and see Florrie,’ Gran wor saying, ‘but what wi’ t’ lift breaking down and them stairs being such a climb …’ Her voice trailed off.

  Mother’s face turned concrete. Mandy and I stared at each other. The story had veered from its usual course and pitched into a ditch. Mother pressed down t’ Tupperware box lid firmly wi’ t’ flat of her hand. Florrie had been dead these three year.

  A few weeks later Gran failed to show for dinner. Her phone wor just ringing out. Mother wor having an anxiety attack, her face and neck turning all blotchy. She wor all set to call t’ cops, fire brigade, even the friggin’ army. Barely had she had set the receiver on its cradle and Mitch wor putting on his jacket to drive over there, when t’ phone rang. Gran had got on t’ wrong bus.

  ‘So where are you?’ we heard Mother say.

  Pause.

  ‘Pontefract?’

  Gran hadn’t clocked where she wor ’til t’ bus pulled into Pontefract bus station and the driver announced it. Mitch had to drive over there and collect her. He found her sitting in t’ station office, chatting wi’ t’ off-duty drivers. When he said he’d come to take her home, she asked him if he wor a taxi driver.

  Over t’ next few months our worries about Gran grew. She kept buying milk, even though she had it delivered. She started to forget what she wor saying before she got to t’ end of her sentences. She forgot which flat wor hers, and surprised a neighbour in whose door she wor twisting her key and swearing under her breath.

  One evening Mitch came into t’ lounge and turned off the telly midway through Columbo.

  ‘Oi! We wor watching that!’

  Mand and I wor parked side by side on t’ sofa. Mother came in and perched hersen on t’ armchair, winding a manky tissue round her thumb. Mitch rocked on his heels before t’ gas fire, puffed out his chest a little, then said, ‘Your gran ain’t getting any younger. And maybe you’ve clocked that she’s been behaving a little queer of late.’

  I winced when he said ‘queer’.

  ‘Could say that again,’ Mandy blathered. ‘Why, only …’

  Mitch held up a silencing forefinger. ‘Think,’ he said, taking one of t’ fake plastic coals from t’ gas fire and placing it on his open palm like it wor a frog or summat, ‘of yer gran’s brain as a fire that once burned bright, but is now just dying embers. Or,’ he added, setting the plastic coal lump back on t’ fire, ‘like a set of Christmas-tree lights that have short-circuited and you don’t know which one’s blown without trying the lot.’

  I imagined a set of short-circuiting Christmas lights in t’ shape of a brain.

  ‘Well, that’s what happening to your gran, and so that’s why … that’s why … she’s coming to live here.’

  ‘Here? Wi’ us?’ Mandy squeaked. Mother shuffled her legs, her stockings making a static rustle.

  ‘It’s just ’til they find a place for her in a home.’

  ‘What kind of a home?’

  Jeez, sis wor a sack full of gormless questions.

  ‘A cats’ home,’ I said.

  Mitch eyeballed me to shut it.

  Mother said, ‘A nursing home, where she’ll be cared for proper. She’ll like it there. She’ll make new friends, and we’ll be able to go and visit whenever we want.’

  Mand glared at us all, then ran from t’ room. Then we heard her bedroom door slam.

  What wor she so upset about? Gran wor getting my room. Not that I had any say in it. I’d be on a friggin’ blow-up lilo in t’ lounge.

  At Blandford Gardens there wor a shaft of light in t’ hallway. I stabbed the bell and waited on t’ porch. Overhead, a sash creaked. Stepping back in t’ road and looking up, I saw someone who worn’t Jim leaning out of t’ bedroom window, someone I’d never clapped eyes on before.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the man said, pushing strands of wispy hair behind one e
ar. He wor wearing Jim’s Chinese dressing gown.

  ‘Jim home?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘Tell him it’s Rick.’

  ‘Rick? Ah, yes. I have a message for you. Fuck off, sweetie. Show your face around here again and you’ll get it mashed into next week.’

  The man slammed t’ window down and yanked the curtains across. I stood looking up at the window, stung wi’ disbelief, waiting for Jim to appear, telling me in his sweet Scottish brogue that it wor all a mistake. But the window stayed stubbornly shut. I slumped down onto t’ low front wall, welled up inside wi’ anger, and bashed mesen repeatedly on t’ upper leg like a self-hating Mr Punch.

  I headed for t’ Fenton. Maybe Jim wor there, and maybe I could explain. Instead, I found Dora, parked on her usual stool like she wor glued to it.

  ‘Hello,’ she cooed. ‘You’re not going to run off again, are you?’

  ‘Jim about?’

  ‘Scots Jim? Haven’t seen him, luv.’

  I ordered a lager and lime and hiked mesen onto t’ stool next to hers. The pub reeked of old beer and cold smoke. Dora wor harping on about some other old crone who’d been bitching about her and how this other old crone wor jealous cos she – Dora – could still get the attention of men. Like I gave a rat’s behind. Dora paused only to suck on her ciggie. She left a lipstick print on t’ butt end. I drank, letting Dora buzz in my ear like a faulty fridge while t’ evening seeped away and the place became crowded and boisterous.

  Then, not long before ten, this young’un came waltzing in like he owned the friggin’ joint, passing right by us and making straight for t’ lounge bar. A lanky, wire-haired lad wi’ his chin set a smidgen too high. Dora beckoned me close. I tipped my stool toward her and caught a full blast of her market-stall scent.

  ‘That one, who just sailed past us without so much as a how’s-yer-father, he’s one of Jim’s. I’ve seen them in here together. Jake, his name is.’

  She pursed her powdered lids across t’ open bar toward t’ lounge-side bar stool where Jake had parked himsen. I kept my gaze fixed on him, waiting on him to look across our way. When he did, his eyes widened and flickered wi’ wary curiosity, like a startled deer. Then he turned away.

  Dora wor saying, ‘I thought you knew?’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That Jim picks up boys from t’ railway station. He picks them up, pays them. Takes them in sometimes. But then they move on, or get bored, or they steal from him.’

  Her mouth fell open, showing her lipstick-stained dentures.

  ‘Well, I’ve never been taken in!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise … I thought …’

  I slid off my stool and pushed through t’ double doors and out into t’ street. I launched my boot into a waste bin. Then I picked it up and tossed it out into t’ road. A car driver parped his horn as he dodged around it.

  The driver stopped and wound down his window and wor effin’ at me, so I gave him a V-sign and stomped off. I walked on, the city lights squinting through t’ knifing rain, passing the Poly where they used to have punk gigs, on past the Empress pub and Leeds Town Hall wi’ its dome imprinted against t’ sickly green sky, on through t’ precinct shopping zone and down Briggate toward t’ Corn Exchange. I wor all fumed up, wi’ no notion of where I wor going, no aim. I just walked.

  It wor then that I spied her, striding along in a shiny black PVC coat, black fishnets and Doc Marts. Vaulting a pedestrian safety barrier and dodging the traffic, I called out, ‘Gina, hey, Gina!’ but she couldn’t or wouldn’t hear me. I skimmed along t’ gutter ’til I wor almost level wi’ her.

  ‘Gina! It’s me. Rick.’

  She stopped, turned and eyed me haughtily. She’d changed her look again. Her hair wor back to black and all spiked up like a yucca plant. Her eyes wor two smudged coal-black holes in a white-powdered face, her lips and lids a bruised purple. She wor wearing a single glove, a studded dog collar and a small crucifix earring in her right ear.

  ‘Don’t you remember me? You wrote your number on my chest and …’

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  Her gloved hand wor holding a dog lead. At the end of t’ lead, cowering in a shop doorway on his haunches, wor a man.

  ‘That’s Jeremy. You’re not to acknowledge him.’

  ‘Hi, Jeremy.’

  Jeremy scowled skywards and whimpered.

  I said, ‘Ain’t seen you at the FK Club lately.’

  She snorted at the mention of t’ FK Club, then strode on, wi’ me dancing alongside, trying to keep up, ’til she suddenly stopped and frowned. Jeremy stopped also. She pointed at him and he made a couple of small monkey hops into t’ corner of a nearby bus shelter.

  ‘Who the fuck does your hair?’

  I sifted two fingers through my locks. ‘My hair?’

  ‘If you want to be with us you can’t look like that. Like a nothing. Jeremy’s a hairdresser, or he’s trying to be. He could do something with that mop.’ She cast her pitiless gaze over me. ‘Something … radical.’

  ‘Sure, sometime … I’ve been meaning to …’

  She pressed a gloved finger to my lips and then smiled, a blackberry-lipped smile that opened and shut like a poacher’s trap.

  ‘We’re going to Paradise,’ she said. ‘Coming?’

  I tossed a coin in my head. It landed on ‘yes’.

  Paradise Buildings wor a three-storey sooted brick warehouse on Bradford’s Sunbridge Road. There wor no windows at ground level, and those on t’ upper storeys wor recessed behind iron grilles. Opposite, more warehouse blocks descended steeply down t’ hill. Next to it wor t’ Paradise Chapel, now home, so said a sign, to Patel’s Electrical Repairs.

  We came to a steel side door. Gina pressed two loose wires together, sparking a bell ring. I looked about while we waited. Beyond Patel’s, where t’ waste ground widened out, stood a discarded fridge-freezer and an old wicker chair. On t’ far edge of this rubble wasteland, where you came to t’ road junction wi’ t’ lower end of Lumb Lane and Bradford’s red-light area, stood a lone shack Indian takeaway.

  ‘Worn’t that last Ripper murder round here?’

  ‘Poppet, the area is crawling with the filth,’ said Gina. ‘If I had my way, I’d castrate the bugger. Cut his balls off. Very slowly. With a very blunt razor.’

  She swore and pressed the wires again, making ’em fizzle. Suddenly the door opened, swinging outwards.

  ‘Heard you the fuckin’ first time,’ said a man’s voice, his Manchester accent ironing every word flat. We followed him up a cold, unlit stairwell. He wore a leather jacket wi’ t’ words ‘Hell and Back’ studded onto it. His hair wor long and greasy and wi’ greying strands, reminding me of an unwashed collie.

  We passed by a room of shoe lasts. A cascading heap of wooden clogs heaped against t’ wall like the piles of suitcases and glasses I’d seen on World at War docs. We climbed another floor, on past the frosted yellow panes of some disused offices, ’til we came out onto a large factory floor. The far end wor lit by a naked bulb hanging from a ceiling hook and a fire that raged in an immense fireplace.

  ‘Welcome to Paradise, poppet.’

  ‘Brill place!’

  Our footsteps echoed across t’ concrete floor.

  ‘Used to be a shoe factory,’ said the Hell’s Angel, ‘but, hey, nothing lasts … Geddit … Shoes? … Lasts?’

  ‘We’re all tired of that old joke, Victor,’ Gina snapped. She unhooked Jeremy from his lead and he monkey-hopped over to t’ fire. The flames wor fierce on his face, giving him edges and hollows.

  ‘This is ace,’ I said. ‘Must cost a bit to rent.’

  ‘Rent!?’ squealed Gina. ‘Rent? Hah! No, my little capitalist poppet, we squat it. You know – occupy … liberate?’

  I bit my lip, feeling friggin’ gormless.

  ‘We call this place Hotel California,’ said Victor.

  ‘No we don’t!’ Gina flashed. ‘Well, you do, but no one else does.
Cali-fucking-fornia! Fuck Hotel fuckin’ California! And fuck The Eagles! Hippy has-beens! Fuckin’ Yanks!’

  ‘I like ’em,’ muttered Victor smally.

  Jeremy sprawled himsen across an old armchair and opened a can of Red Stripe, tossing the ring-pull into t’ fire, then passed the can to me. I took a sup and then handed it back. I sat on t’ floor wi’ my back against t’ same armchair. Gina sat cross-legged opposite me.

  ‘So,’ said Jeremy, sounding both menacing and superior, ‘where wor you heading, hmm? Or rather, where had you been?’

  ‘Nowhere much. I wor in t’ Fenton earlier on.’

  ‘The Fenton? Hear that Gina, wonder boy here wor in the Fenton.’

  ‘The Fenton, poppet?’

  ‘On Woodhouse Lane. That bleedin’ leftie-student-commie pub – you know the one.’

  ‘Oh, that one. Maybe we should pay it a visit.’

  Victor, who had vanished into t’ inky vastness, returned carrying a bikkie tin. Mooching along behind him wor three other Paradise inmates: two long-haired men and a mousy little woman. They had, I saw as they neared, the dead-eyed look of junkies.

  The men slumped onto an old leather sofa and the woman sprawled before t’ fire on a dirty sheepskin rug. She wor humming to hersen and fiddling wi’ an unlit roll-up. I grimaced and one of t’ men, one wi’ mutton-chops, nodded at me warily. We sat around like circus performers waiting backstage, supping beer and passing a spliff.

  Then mutton-chops man opened the tin and took out a syringe. He signalled to t’other one beside him to roll up his shirt sleeve. He held the syringe at eye level and tapped it. I pretended not to be watching, like it all wor summat and nowt. I’d seen my share of discarded syringes on t’ pop round, in t’ tower-block stairwells and walkways and what have you. I’d idled in t’ doorways of stinking flats wi’ t’ thin curtains drawn against t’ daylight, wi’ broken toys or shite-filled nappies strewn over t’ bare floors; the gaunt faces and yellowed eyes pleading wi’ me for a week’s credit on their pop. But I’d never seen no one inject before.

  The man wi’ t’ rolled-up sleeve pumped his fist a few times to raise up a vein, and t’ other one kneaded his skin, searching for an entry point. As the needle slid in the man’s eyelids shuttered over and he sank back into t’ sofa wi’ a soft sigh.