know about “our heads”, Dad,’ I hear myself saying. ‘It’s certainly a shame about your head. The rest of you isn’t so good either.’ The minute I close my mouth I know that I have spoken foolishly but, somehow, with Dad, I don’t seem to be able to restrain myself. He really does know how to get up my bracket to beyond the hair line.
‘You cheeky little basket!’ he snarls. ‘No sooner inside the door than you’re at it. I don’t know how you have the gall to come back here. This isn’t the Prisoners’ Aid Society.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I say, controlling myself with difficulty. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to be rude. The words just jumped into my mouth.’
‘Well, next time, swallow them before they jump out again. If you’re going to stay around here you’d better learn a bit of respect.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘You nearly broke your old mother’s heart, you know.’
‘Yes, Dad. She was hinting at it.’
‘She was a blooming sight more than hinting at it to me, I can tell you. I had to put up with her day and night. It nearly drove me round the bend.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Talk about paying a debt to society. I reckon I footed your bill while you were in there. My taxes subsidised you. All that and your mother going on the whole time.’
‘Yes, Dad.’ He does make a meal of it, doesn’t he? It must be like a holiday down at the Lost Property Office when he doesn’t show up. I don’t know how Mum puts up with it.
‘I hear you’ve been having a bit of your old trouble,’ I say, deciding the time has come to change the subject and demonstrate a bit of concern for the miserable old git.
Dad looks at the bog paper. ‘I think it was the sausages we had last night. I don’t know what they put in them these days.’
‘I didn’t mean that, Dad,’ I say, patiently. ‘Mum was saying your wound had been playing up.’
‘I’ve had a few twinges,’ says Dad, putting on his ‘I fought through Hell and lived’ face.
‘You want to take it easy, Dad.’
Nature’s greatest argument for compulsory patricide looks up sharply.
‘Are you trying to take the mickey?’
‘No, Dad. I—’
‘I do my bit. I always have done. Not like some people. Some people don’t know what I’ve been through. The doctor said he’d never seen anything like it. He didn’t know how I kept it up. “You’re a walking miracle” that’s what he said to me. He’d never met anyone with my willpower, you see. I don’t talk about it much but me and pain are not strangers. Oh, dear me, no. I don’t let on much but–’
‘Yes, Dad,’ I say, trying to halt the flow before he really gets going. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Not again, I must have heard it a hundred times.
Luckily Mum announces that tea is up and I am spared any more details of how Dad is going to romp away with the Martyr Of The Year Award. Not that the alternative is all that great. Mum’s Rosie Lee certainly brings out the gypsy in me and what can you say for a woman who cannot even make a decent cup of tea? I can remember when she used to open the tea bags and pour them into the pot. What with one thing and another it does not take me long to get the feeling that 17 Scraggs Lane has not got a lot to recommend it over the nick.
‘Have you got a job lined up?’ asks Dad.
‘Give us a chance, I only got – I only came home this morning. I didn’t call in at the Labour on the way.’
‘You don’t even know where it is,’ says Dad scornfully. ‘I think I’ll buy you a street map so you don’t get lost.’
‘Perhaps Sidney can find something for him,’ says Mum.
I am swift to shake my head. ‘No. I’m going to stand on my own two legs. Nothing Sidney has lined up for me has ever worked out. Not in the long term, anyway.’
‘That’s not all Sidney’s fault,’ says Mum, wagging a finger at me. ‘I have to speak as I find even if blood is thicker than water.’
‘I don’t care if it’s thicker than melted nougat,’ I say. ‘I don’t reckon that it’s an accident that Wonder Sid has cleaned up the ackers while I’ve been cleaning out the “D” Block khasi.’
It is at this propitious moment that there is a quick ‘We are the champions’ on the door bell and I prepare to greet my poxy brother-in-law as Mum goes off to do a recce through the lace curtains.
‘Hello, Timmo!’ says Sid a few moments later. ‘I didn’t know you were coming out today.’
‘Didn’t you get a telegram from Buckingham Palace?’
‘I didn’t bother to read it. I thought it must be another bleeding garden party.’
‘Sidney!’ says Mum, shocked. As far as she is concerned there is nothing to choose between God and the Duke of Edinburgh. Probably not a lot to choose as far as the Duke of Edinburgh is concerned. I am not really taking a lot of notice because I am drinking in Sid’s clobber. He is wearing a black serge safari jacket and matching trousers with a raised seam. It is all very trendy and makes him look a bit of a poofter. Not at all the Sid I remember back in his faded denim days.
‘He’s not looking too bad, is he, Mum?’ says Sid. ‘He needs a bit of your home cooking to fatten him up.’ Sid winks at me and I give him my ‘do us a favour’ look. Mum cooks like she has a pathological hatred of food and is trying to pay it back for some injury it has done her in the past.
‘I’ve got a nice bread pudding planned for this evening,’ she says, proudly, as I wince. I make a better bread pudding when I’m mixing paste to go fishing.
‘How’s the family?’ I ask.
‘Smashing. Rosie should be over with the kids in a few minutes. Tell you what. Why don’t you and I slip out for a couple of jars and then we can look in later. There’s not room for us all in here. You fancy a beer, do you?’
‘Great idea, Sid. Let’s go up The Highwayman.’
‘Don’t go drinking too much,’ warns Mum.
‘There’s no danger of that. Not with those two buying!’ says Dad who is about as tight as a gnome’s foreskin when it comes to lashing out for a round of drinks.
When we get to The Highwayman I hardly recognise the place. There is piped muzak, a snack bar and everything tarted up with the most diabolical wall paper. It quite puts you off your ale. Not that this commodity is very easy to come by anyway, and when I ask for a packet of crisps the geezer behind the bar looks at me as if I have been trying to force my hampton through the slit in the Doctor Barnado box.
‘We don’t do crisps,’ he says witheringly. ‘You can have a toasted sandwich.’ He indicates a fish tank bearing the word ‘Toastimat’,
