PLAYPITS PARK

Extracts

Aunt Rosie, Graham and I stood silently while six men in black drew Dad's coffin expertly out of the hearse and hefted it on to their shoulders. They went astern a few paces the way a ferry backs away from a dock, then commenced a snails-pace trek up the cobbles. When they reached the small chapel they turned sharply to the left and made their way solemnly down a narrow path between rows of graves. Shiny shoes crunched on gravel.

The three of us followed, Aunt Rosie with her hand on my arm and Graham strolling behind. A handful of additional mourners, none of whom I recognised, took up the rear. Compared to this little gathering, Uncle Ron's funeral had been a state occasion.

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Graham nodded as if he understood. Pressure wasn't the reason. It was, as my law school professor was so fond of saying, a valid reason but not the correct one. If the correct one ever came out, then at a single stroke my career would be dead in the water. The recent openness in Britain's Security Service had done me no favours; once we were shadows and now we were floodlit. I had been hunted down by the press. My life wasn’t exactly an open book, it was more like a two page spread in the weekend supplements. The leader in one article had asked 'Who is David Fraser?' Our press office had done a good job. I came over as an ordinary, hard-working guy. As expected, the press had searched for skeletons. Luckily for me they hadn’t opened the right cupboards. 

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Fate, or some geometry of coincidence, had placed Dad next to Uncle Ron, not in adjacent graves but in adjacent rows a wide stride apart. If Aunt Rosie had noticed the juxtaposition she said nothing about it. Graham did notice, and he pointed. I fixed him with a stare so that he, too, said nothing.

Graham was wearing the same suit he wore when I'd picked him up from the station, a shiny lightweight job of indeterminate colour, a pale puke mix of mid-grey and cream. Dad had been a stickler for appropriate dress on such formal occasions and would not have approved. At least Graham had the decency to wear a dark tie, in sombre charcoal. It would have been perfect had it not been for the diagonal yellow stripes.

The duty vicar was saying the words. Aunt Rosie was dabbing her eyes.

'All bullshit,' Graham said in his alien voice. 'It fair pisses me off when these Jonahs say folks have gone to a far better place.'

He swivelled on his heel so he was facing away from me, plucked a dead head from a rose and flung it expertly towards a distant compost heap. Its dry petals scattered in flight and he reached for another. Got blocked on delivery by a steely glare from the man in the clerical collar.

'Shan't be flying over here when Rose pops off,' Graham said. Mercifully he said it quietly and Aunt Rosie didn't hear. 'Had a gut full of travelling lately. You don't think she'll mind?' The vicar looked away and Graham snapped off and hurled another rose head.

'She won't be here to mind.'

'You think her folks'll mind, I mean.'

The rose head swung wide, struck the war memorial and whined off into the distance. I heard a dull metallic whang from the general direction of the hearse.

'She's a tough old bird,' I said. 'She's got a few years to go yet. And when she goes there will only be her son Kevin and he doesn't know who the hell you are anyway. Do you have to do that?'

'What?'

'The rose heads.'

To keep his hands under control he put them into his pockets and looked serious; pivoted on his heel in the damp grass. Then, looking at Aunt Rosie and the vicar he said, out loud,

'How much longer will this bloody thing take, do you reckon?'

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The ladder was home-made, the kind of thing Tarzan might have used had he been unable to reach treetops by swinging on vines. Dad had made it back in the fifties out of two lengths of floor joist, cutting notches in each length for rungs made of the same stuff and fastening them in position with six-inch nails. Carrying a ladder like that more than a few yards would make strong men cry.      

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I didn't know what to think. Monica was a lot smaller than I remembered her. Her cheeks, once blushing red, had faded to dull brown. Her skin, once pastel pink and silky-smooth, now had small wounds, dusty white plaster showing through the pink paint. Her blue eyes were as bright as ever, gazing out at me from beneath eyelashes hand-painted with fine brushstrokes. Time hadn't been kind to her hair. Most of it had either rotted away or been stolen by mice to make nests. Her scalp was a scurvy of grimy-grey glue. Her knickers, which for modesty's sake had been stitched in place, were not crafted from fine cotton or silk but constructed from something the colour of sacking and which resembled thin canvas. The word cambric surfaced from a little-used corner of my brain. 

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Dad gave her a strange look. Muttered again.

'The blouse I'm making,' Mum continued. 'It's the collar. Some stitches have pulled. It's the second time it's happened.'

She looked at Graham and then they both looked at me. I rubbed my neck and wondered how old I had to be before I stopped blushing. It was a dead give-away.

'Broken stitches?' Dad asked, frowning, peering over his glasses.

Mum wasn't much of a one for tact. She could have taken us aside and asked us individually. If she had spent two seconds thinking about it she would have known it couldn't have been Graham, because the first time it happened he hadn't been home. If Dad had done it, then to expose him as the vandal in our presence wouldn't have been the brightest thing to have done. It just had to be me.

Besides, my face had just handed me over. I was now on trial.

'Not broken,' she said. 'They've been pulled. The collar's all loose.'

I avoided Graham's eyes. A curl of grey smoke rose from the grill behind him. I pointed to it, yelling and feigning excitement.

'Gray! Your toast's burning!'

'Never mind my toast. Hadn't you better admit it?'

Graham was an informer. Maybe it was an elder brother thing, a belief that he had to help our parents keep me under control. Dad looked from him to me with a darting, accusative stare.

'So, David? What do you know about it?'

I shook my head vigorously. Graham had extinguished the toast and was nodding, equally vigorously.

'Better tell them,' he said.

I had done it of course. On Wednesday morning I opened the airing cupboard to get my school games kit and Monica fell on me. I must have damaged the collar tugging her back up. Then yesterday, after coming home from school and changing out of my uniform, I went to the cupboard and inspected her more closely. Felt her various bits. Discovered that her pants were sewn on. I didn't know Graham had been in his bedroom. Nor did I know how long he'd been standing behind me, or what he had seen.  

'Well?' Dad asked, loudly.

'He was holding the dummy,' Graham said. 'He was right up against it with his arm around its neck. He was dancing around the landing with it.'

I detected the trace of a grin. He was enjoying it. Mum seemed to realise that she might have unleashed devils and she turned away and busied herself with the teapot.

She murmured, 'I think I've heard enough.'

'No you haven't,' Graham said. His grin broadened. 'He was talking to it: I am ze commandant here and from Colditz there vill be no escapes. You vill tell zat to ze uzzers.'

I had been holding my breath. On hearing his words I relaxed, exhaling more noisily than I meant to. My deception had worked. As soon as I'd realised Graham was on the landing I had concocted the Colditz thing. He had fallen for it.

'And he had his other hand on her crotch,' he added. 'And he was - '

He never finished. Mum froze. A rose red blush rose from her neck to her cheeks as if applied by a paint spray and I knew straight away who I'd inherited my blushing from. She slammed down the teapot, turned on her heel and walked from the room. Dad stayed remarkably calm for at least three seconds before he coloured up too. He lifted, then wagged, a threatening finger, not at me as expected but at Graham. He stood up close to him, eye to eye, wagging the finger between them.

'I'll not have that kind of talk in this house,' he hissed through his teeth. 'Don't you bring any of your army filth home here!'

Graham reacted by stalking out of the kitchen. Dad followed, leaving me with my cocoa, three mugs of tea and a slice of black toast. Lights went off. Doors slammed. Nobody returned.

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Dad came in without knocking and I grabbed my pyjamas and covered my bits. He was holding something up with both hands. It unfurled on its own like a flag on a battleship. At first I thought it was Todd's sister's knickers but it was my soot-stained underpants, the elastic waistband stretched tight between his thumbs. I swallowed hard. Swallowed again. I hadn't got round to dumping them.

'What are these? he asked.

'My underpants.'

'I know they are your underpants. What are these black handprints?'

Until that moment I'd always thought my underpants were my own business, passing out of my possession only temporarily to be washed, dried and ironed, not things to be held up for inspection like part of a tribal initiation ceremony. I felt the warmth of a blush creeping up from my neck. 

'It's coal dust. And soot. From the boiler room at school.'

The angle of Dad's pipe changed abruptly as he bit on its stem.   

'Whose handprints, David?'

'Whose, Dad?’'

'And the girls' knickers you've been wearing,' he said quietly. 'Perhaps you'd like to talk to me about it….'

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The lights changed to green and she wobbled away. She put out her hand to turn right and then suddenly she was airborne, tossed like a rag doll. A car swerved to avoid her, skidded across the road and crashed into a van. Glass from smashed lights and windscreens fell in the road and a car horn howled constantly, jammed on. I stood up on my pedals and cycled fast, staring and shaking my head.

Please don't let it be her… I'll do anything if it's not her…

A woman screamed. A man ran to a house and another man ran to the phone box. People were everywhere, panicking silently, gathering in the wet road like wasps around jam. The traffic lights changed but the cars stayed motionless, doors open, engines running. Drivers talked and pointed and sorted out blame. A woman with a blanket ran from a house and the crowd let her through. I turned to the bike lying smashed in the road, its front wheel rotating slowly, turning and ticking. I knew it was Wendy's.

The bike's back wheel was crushed flat. The pedals were just as they should be, the spindle hadn't broken. I felt ashamed that I, like the car drivers, should be thinking of blame. People moved aside for the woman and I saw Wendy. She didn't look damaged. Her eyes were closed and there was blood near her mouth, just a bit. Her blonde hair was dirty, it fanned out on the wet road. The woman with the blanket eased it under Wendy's head like a cushion, then straightened Wendy's clothes. The crowd parted again for a policeman. He knelt down in the wet, put his face close to Wendy's, then took off his cape and covered her.

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'You not worry 'bout it,' she said, turning away and busying with the boiler controls. 'I seen all before.'

Not mine you haven't, I told myself, trying not to blush.

She watched like a hovering hawk as lowered myself into the water. It was scalding hot and I winced, wondering if she had asbestos elbows and feeling sorry for any babies she had bathed in the past. She took a flannel from the sink, spread it with soap, bent over me and washed me gently, first my face, then my neck, then each of my ears as if scraping potatoes. She shampooed my hair with pink stuff from a bottle, gathered warm water in her cupped hands and poured it over me. I no longer cared that I was naked. It reminded me of the way Mum washed my hair when I was small, anointing me, spilling warm water on my hair and my face. My eyes ran with tears. Anna thought I'd got soap in them and poured clean water over my face.

Or perhaps she knew. 'You a big boy now,' she said.

I nodded solemnly. Held back more tears.

She took the flannel again and with it she washed my back and my chest. She lifted each arm in turn, flannelling my armpits as if washing dishes. She moved to my calves, my ankles and my feet. Then between each of my toes.

'You stand now,' she said.

I stood up obediently. Then looked up at the ceiling while she washed private places.

'Lift leg.'

I lifted it and felt the warm flannel. I reminded myself that she had been a nurse and that unlike me she was used to such things. At last I heard the chink of the plug chain and then gurgling water. She laid a towel on the floor and I stepped out, stood on it, felt dizzy and toppled forwards. She grabbed me with gorilla-like arms, setting me down on the edge of the bath.

'You ill,' she said seriously. 'Is bed!. I bring tea and cake. You like?'

I nodded.

'And I bring something for sneezings, and cold.'

She stood me up again and towelled me vigorously, even down there. It must have been the rough towelling that did it, it certainly wasn't Mrs Sikorski. It happened suddenly and unexpectedly and I tried to cover myself with my hands. She noticed, of course. And she tutted.

'Is not behave…' she said, looking straight at it. Then she reached for my toothbrush and gave it a sharp thwack.

It behave again suddenly. Made my eyes water.

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When he recovered he jumped on both wheels of the bike. I heard the unmistakeable musical twang of breaking spokes.

I had never seen Todd cry. When he did, the girls taunted him with 'baby baby bunting, daddy's gone a-hunting…' squawking the rhyme out of tune.

They stopped suddenly. Todd pulled up his cycling cape and stood in the middle of the gasworks yard looking like Gary Cooper in High Noon, the Smith and Wesson revolver in his hand. He was waving it, pointing it at all of us. Including me. Everyone froze. Love-hate stood gesturing with two fingers.  

'Play-time for kiddies? Got caps for it then, you little creep?'

The blast from the gun stung my ears. A bullet ricocheted off the coke oven doors, hit an iron pipe and stopped with a thud in a sleeper. A girl screamed. Love-Hate stared at Todd for a good five seconds before taking off for the gap in the railings. All but the tall girl followed him. She stayed still, glancing from Todd to me and whimpering like a scared dog. She looked at me pleadingly, then hid her face in her hands as Todd lifted the gun again. I was powerless. I was shaking worse than her.

As he slowly lowered the gun she turned and ran. Tripping on the clinker she lost one shoe, then the other, keeping going, reaching the railings and clambering through. All the time Todd watched her, taking aim. I could hear her crying as she ran out of sight.

'Bastards!' he yelled.

END OF EXTRACTS