How's Your Father

by Rose Boyt

Genres: City Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Sometimes there is just not enough love to go round... With compassion and dark humour, this gripping novel celebrates life and death in the London borough of Hackney - and everything in between

Release date: July 3, 2014

Publisher: Octopus

Print pages: 288

Sample

An unidentified young woman was found dead of gunshot wounds to the head on Saturday afternoon in a derelict basement premises well-known locally as a so-called “shooting gallery” or drug den situated adjacent to St. Anne’s Church, Dalston.


Police fear the body of the girl will never be identified because of the circumstances of the crime and the extensive nature of wounds to the head and face. No reports of missing persons that could be linked to the victim have been received.


Detective Inspector Whitman, in charge of the investigation, expressed sorrow for the waste of a young life.


“In cases of this sort the family does not always miss the young person right away,” he said. “Even if a name was suggested, a check on dental records would not be possible because the victim had no teeth.” Detective Sergeant McMann, second in command, was not surprised by the lack of co-operation in the local community. “As is usual in these cases no witnesses have come forward,” he said.


As well as gunshot wounds to the head the girl had sustained a deep yet well-healed slash from the corner of her mouth to her ear, probably inflicted by a Stanley knife in a previous attack.


Detective Sergeant Mc-Mann admitted when pressed that on the streets this distinctive and time-honoured wound is still meted out on occasion as the mark of the “grass” or police informer, although he was keen to stress that he himself was not able to recognise the victim, nor was she known to other officers at Dalston Vale.


Rev. Brandon, vicar of St. Anne’s, was deeply saddened by the circumstances of the death. “The filthy cellar where the body was found is used only by those who have sunk to the very lowest level of squalor to satisfy their drug cravings,” he said.


Kevin Hall, a support worker at the Hackney Chemical Dependency Unit, and himself a self-confessed former drug addict of heroin and crack cocaine, emphasised that lessons must be learnt from this tragic loss. “The crime was probably a punishment killing carried out by a ruthless dealer anxious to protect his business,” he said.


Mr. Hall pointed out that he himself is confined to a wheelchair as a direct result of his drug use. He lost both legs to gangrene through the collapse of veins and infection caused by dirty needles. “That’s what happens,” he stated. Contact the CDU if YOU need help.


St. Anne’s Dalston offers a range of services to local people including one-to-one counselling free of charge and yoga for relaxation. Each Tuesday evening a non-denominational narcotics dependency self-help group meets in the crypt for those who have decided to change the way they live. Everybody welcome.


Kyprious Kypriou, proprietor of Kip’s Kebabs, an all-night cafe grill located near the scene of the shooting, said that people regard addicts as filth but the dead girl must have been somebody’s daughter.





 

My mum got three months because some cunt left a pound weight of drugs on top of her kitchen cabinet. Everyone knew the drugs was nothing to do with her otherwise they would of thrown away the key but the judge reckoned she needed to be taught a little lesson. In other words that will learn you, you silly old cow. – Take her down, he said, flap flapping his white hands like he was shooing her away.


She bowed her head in silence, waiting for someone to come for her. A court official touched her gently on the arm. The judge was shuffling his papers without even looking up as my mother was led towards the cells.

I couldn’t see her face but from where they stuck me up in the public gallery I could see scalp through the sparse hair on top of her head. Her thin shoulders shook inside the brown coat she borrowed off of our Linda for her big day. The coat was too big and she was shaking with the effort not to show herself up in the court. She raised a hand to pat the hair at the back of her head. The ends of her fingers was stained orange brown and you could see a red tide-mark round the back of her neck where she put a rinse through her hair the night before her court case, to cover the grey.

Where was the cunt what hid the drugs when the old woman needed help? Nowhere. I thought my brother Alan might pop up at the back of the court like in church when the bride and groom are just about to tie the knot and the vicar goes like just impediment or whatever and someone at the back shouts IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME.

Afterwards I popped in the Macbeth to pick up my fags from the fag man. My sister Linda was playing darts with Shirley Irons and Julie and Julie’s mum and who do you think was celebrating at the bar only our Alan with Alan’s Sandra and that ex-copper what used to go with Sandra’s sister and a couple of Alan’s mates and his mate’s cousin what was friendly with one of them from the social club over Green Lanes where they get the stuff off of lorries bringing boxes of tomatoes and coriander and those long hot green pickle peppers they put in kebabs.


Sandra was smiling up at Alan like he was god. Alan popped the cork on a bottle of fizzy wine and sprayed foam over Sandra. Sandra screamed and wiped her eyes. Alan’s mates was back-slapping and hugging all over the shop and Alan started to sway with his arms in the air like we are the champions and the new landlord what’s his name Ronnie something put in by the brewery after Mick and Maggie flitted back to Ireland wasn’t he smiling and smiling behind the bar with his arms folded across his chest where he was waiting for it all to go off.

The fag man dipped in his bag for my change. Alan waved the empty wine bottle at Ronnie and was like same again my good man and make sure it’s very and then he saw me.

– What you celebrating, Alan? I went.

– Maureeeen! he goes, opening his arms wide. – Another glass for our Maureen.

I put my fags in my bag. I slung my bag over my shoulder.

– I don’t wanna celebrate with you,  I said.

Alan moved towards me across the pub. He punched me in the upper arm. I rubbed my arm. He laughed.

– Have a drink, he shouted. – Relax. She’ll only do six weeks.

– Only six weeks? Is that all? Oh that’s all right then, I said.

– Don’t be like that, Reen, he said. – Do her good to put  her feet up I reckon. You can keep an eye on the old man for her. Reckon I done her a favour. The poor cow could use a break.


– I knew it was your gear, I said.

– You only just worked that out?

His mates was laughing. He dug me in the arm again.

– Gotta laugh, he said.

I was like ha ha and poked him back, not as hard as all that but hard enough.

– That fucking hurt, he said.

– Good.

– Don’t start, Reen, said Linda.

I looked at Linda.

– It’s your fucking funeral, she went.

I turned back to my brother.

– Cunt, I said.

– You what? he said.

– I said YOU CUNT, I roared.

   His mates stopped laughing. I thought he was going to nut me but he was like think about it Maureen, better for us all she spends a few weeks in Holloway than I do the best part of a ten stretch for possession with intent. Think all the mouths I got to feed. Think how she’d worry. The worry’d be a sentence for her in itself. She’d make herself ill over it. You know what she’s like Maureen. She’s better off inside.

– Better off? I said. – In Holloway? You sure?

– Whatever, he went, turning away from me.

I got my hands round his throat. His skin smelt bad.

– Fuck sake, Maureen, said Linda.

I let go and tried to shake his smell off of my hands. I tried to swallow my tears squeezing out before I mean I fucking hate myself sometimes I always let myself down like crying when I want to kill somebody I stop myself but I can’t stop myself crying.

– Maureen? he said, in a different voice.


I looked up at him. I wiped my hands on my trousers. I thought he was going to say sorry but I was wrong wasn’t I? I looked up and he nutted me. I leant against the bar and Linda fetched some bog roll and helped me to clean up the mess. The landlord was whistling, polishing glasses. Alan sipped his drink and lit up and blew smoke-rings at me.

– Nice one, Alan, I said, dabbing at myself.

– You want some more? he said.

– Alan, said Sandra, pulling at him.

– Fuck off, you. You want some more, Maureen?

– No.

– Well then don’t start.

I swallowed blood and tears. Alan’s Sandra tried to give me a sovereign pendant but I told her to sod off. I bowed my head and pressed the sides of my nose between my index and middle fingers to straighten it. The bone crunched, then clicked. My fingers smelt of Alan, of his skin problem and the skin cream like bad eggs he dabbed on to hide it and heal it. The front of my white top was splattered. I went in the bog to have a wash. When I lifted my head up to check myself in the mirror our Linda was standing behind me. She started to sing.

– Two lovely black eyes, ooh what a surprise…

On the steps of the court before my mother’s case come up she got ten minutes to talk to her brief. He said if she gave a name to the crown prosecutor all charges against her would be dropped.

– I know who it belongs to, I said. – It belongs to our Alan.

Doesn’t it Mum? Tell him.

– Do you have proof? Asked the brief.

– No, I said.

I looked at my mum.

– Tell him, I said. – Tell him or they’ll put you away.


– Steady on, said the brief. – That is hardly likely.

– No? I said.

– No no, said the man.

– Really? I asked.

– Really. Very little chance of a custodial sentence for such a small quantity.

– Good, my mum said. – Thank you. I don’t feel so scared now.

– And yet, said the barrister.

– What do you mean and yet? said my mum.

– And yet let’s not gamble, what? he said. – If you do know the identity of the perpetrator…

– I don’t get you, I said. – I thought you said…

And then he was like well my dear the thing is I do understand family loyalty and I am conversant with the concept of honour amongst thieves but in a case like this I feel that a woman in your mother’s position is unable to afford the luxury of such fine feelings.

– Fucking cheek, said my mum.

The night she got arrested it was the Lottery thing Midweek Draw with Dale Winton. She had her ticket in her lap and was squinting over the top of her big glasses at the telly and flicking through the pages of her weekly magazine. The balls spun out of the machine. My mum was acting casual to make out she was not all that bothered like she believed if she ignored the balls spinning across the screen her pretend lack of interest might shorten the odds of her numbers dropping. But she was on and on if her numbers did come up should she move out over by her cousin at Hainault or Epping’s nice or Spain our Dolly and Butch got a marble pool out there on the coast with a gold dolphin fountain what the water squirts out of the dolphin’s laughing mouth. Dolly sent  me a photo, she said. I could lie by the pool all day in the sunshine and do fuck all. I just can’t make up my mind.


Glancing at the screen out of the corner of her eye like when we was kids that time at the pictures eating sweets and glugging Tizer out of a big glass bottle in the front row of the Rex because no one clocked she found somebody’s wage packet on the floor of the launderette and slid it in her coat pocket. We got ice-creams in the interval and after that I watched her watching through a chink in her fingers through mist in the graveyard the antics of the living dead. She made us promise not to tell the old man. She was hiding behind her hands. I nudged her with my elbow and she uncovered her face in the moonlight and said if you just peek at the bad bits round the edges a little bit at a time oh my god I can’t look. She shut her eyes and was hugging herself in the darkness. I watched the living dead in their ragged nighties rising up out of coffins of mildewed stone in the moonlight what was terrifying in them days if you just peek through your fingers she said you don’t feel so frightened.

The old woman looked away from the telly and pressed the mute button.

– Where would you go if you win? she said.

– Nobody wins, I said.

– I don’t know where I’d go, she said.

– Don’t worry about it, I said.

– But one thing I do know, Maureen, she said.

– What?

– I know that wherever I do go I won’t be taking nobody with me.

– No Mum.

– I’ll leave you all behind, she said.

– Yes Mum.

She took off her glasses and blinked and rubbed the lenses on the welt of her cardigan.

– I will, she said. – I’ll leave you all behind.


– I know, Mum, I said, my voice sort of there there you poor thing like some people talk in a special soft voice to a child.

Not that what she said never hurt me whether she was trying to or not even trying but I was used to how she went on. The old man never heard nothing. He was sleeping in his chair, his bad leg propped up on a nest of occasional tables. He had not been out of the front door since my Dawn’s Natalie got christened and the old woman had to wheel him out on the landing and half the flats come out to help us carry his wheel-chair down the stairs. Mother’s boiled tea-towels and white swabs was blinding on the string in the sunshine and the old man flinched and covered his eyes. He was complaining because he wanted to stay indoors. She was trying to explain to him what was happening why he had to go out because our Maureen’s Dawn’s Natalie is getting christened over St. Anne’s she said like he was too stupid to remember his own daughter’s daughter’s daughter. The old man flinched and hid his eyes because he was not used to such brightness. Also I thought he was like a little kid, shutting his eyes so that no one could see him. Half the flats come out even Aggie’s Mick as a rule what won’t do nothing for nobody.

My mum was turning the pages of her book. The old man coughed in his sleep. His circulation was bad. You could smell the black toes on the foot of his bad leg poking out of his dressing. It must of been at least two years ago now since we got him downstairs on the morning of the christening and I helped my mum load him in a cab. Then I shot round Dawn’s to take her and her girls to the church what they hardly fitted in the car with the baby in her car-seat and all the net petticoats and that where Dawn’s Barry was collecting his mum.

I got Dawn and the girls inside the church with Rev Brandon his name was some new bloke in a cardigan who took over from that Australian woman what went on maternity leave and never come back. Dawn was carrying Natalie on her hip. Bella and little Jess was giggling round the font, all of our Dawn’s kids in a froth of apricot satin and white lace out of that bridal shop down Roman Road where Barry’s cousin used to work Saturdays and give Dawn a discount. I kissed Dawn and the baby and went outside to help my mum unload my dad. His legs was wrapped in a tartan blanket and he was clutching his tins on his lap in a carrier bag to keep his self going. As she lowered the chair out of the cab to me his face was in shadow. My mum said the new cabs was a godsend where it was ever-so easy these days to take a cripple out for a airing.


I hadn’t thought of my dad like that. Mum patted him on the head and said he don’t half scrub up. Dawn in the church with Natalie in her arms the spit and the other two playing round the font and another one on the way I cried she looked so proud and so happy. I was so proud. But afterwards when my mum pushed my dad down the ramp out of the church into the sunshine on the crowded pavement his yellow face was red raw round the mouth where she tried too hard to scrub the dirt off of him and the kids screamed and ran when they saw him I mean talk about the living dead.

My mum sighed and took her lottery ticket off of her lap and placed it on the arm of the chair. She looked over at the old man and tutted.

– He don’t look well, Mum, I said.

– He won’t take no solid food, she said.

– Since when?

– Since last week.

– Have you seen the doctor?

– We’re waiting for another appointment.

– Take him up the hospital, Mum.


– My Tommy won’t go near no hospital, Maureen. You know that.

– You gotta make him, Mum.

– Make him? She said. – Don’t make me laugh. Doctor Patel come up and give him the once over a couple of weeks ago and after that the silly sod said he don’t want no more quacks poking him about.

– What did Doctor Patel say?

– He said he wants the old man’s leg off.

– Jesus.

– But Tommy said there ain’t no point.

– He said what?

– Well, said my mum. – Where he don’t feel no pain no more? Doctor Patel give him some tablets for the infection. He’s gonna take another look at him after clinic next week.

The old man was snoring. I felt angry. A pair of slippers was tucked side by side under the nest of occasional tables, the worn hairy toes nudge nudging together so I had to look away. I’d only popped over to sort out my mum’s catalogue money.

The slippers belonged to Victor what she let him move in after our Susan never wanted to sleep over home no more. Where he was always welcome over my mum’s to keep her company or keep an eye on the kids if she popped out and she was so grateful to him when we was kids looking out for our Alan over the Scouts and the Territorial Army and he was her friend. And helped her out with his board and lodging what was a miracle she even give him a bit of dinner since my dad never ate no dinners no more and Raymond fended for his self she reckoned it weren’t worth her while to put herself out. But she sighed and tore her lottery ticket in half. I watched her shred the torn halves into the ashtray. How she buys jeans  and boots and that for our Billy what is the third youngest of her kids above Susan and Raymond she is always getting herself in a state over her catalogue payments. And bits for Billy’s kids what he takes off of them and sells in the pub because them kids is her own flesh and blood she can’t stand to see them go without. So she skints herself over Billy and the old man’s tins even though Victor bungs her for his room and that and our Raymond pays her wages every fortnight out of his giro on top of her cleaning money on earlies over Shoreditch School off of the cards and the rent paid and what she gets off of her book for her and the old man.


So I had to clear her debt for her didn’t I? Where my Tony had lifted that bit of plain Wilton out of the warehouse for his mum when she had a small windfall after her aunt passed away, a sort of reddish brown chestnut colour looks lovely in her front room what I seen the self-same colour in the window of that shop on Kingsland Road they wanted twenty-seven fifty not including underlay if my Tone done out his mum’s front room a ton all told with fitting or so he told me and I had the money off of him because I knew he must of charged her at least double what he owned up to with her windfall and her brother left her a few bob over that cold spell he got a cold on his chest what done for him what my Tony is like.

Although he did do me the off-cut for my stairs and passage with those shining brass stair-rods out of Homebase I always wanted what finished the job beautiful I don’t care what nobody says. With an abstract border and heavy paper embossed caramel below and above the lovely soft colour of that whippet pup my sister Maggie lavished so much love on that dog some toe-rag had it away outside the Co-op where the silly cow only went and left it tied to a tree when she popped in for a pint of milk. I don’t care what nobody says my Tony done out my stairs and passage lovely with the abstract border although when you run up the stairs the rods rattle and you bang your toes how things turn out sometimes if you ain’t careful what you wish for.


I can hardly believe when I think how we used to live in Dunstan Court in arrears so bad we didn’t even have a telly. A pair of crates on the bare floor to sit down before we got that black leatherette three piece Pakis dumped in a skip the spicy smell coming off of it once we got it indoors after dark hoping no one wouldn’t notice that woman upstairs thought she was better than us because her daughter worked in a bank. The floor in the front room worn in patches to the bare concrete underneath what was breaking up to small stones and grit and baby Dawn and Craig perched on the table screwing winkles out of the shell with a couple of bent pins even the nutter what had the flat before us never wanted that table. Although she lugged the stove out of the kitchen and sold it to the Pakis for ten bob what she didn’t need no stove no more where they was taking her. And left me with a dirty great gap. And I do mean dirty. If she’d only of said I would of bunged her a quid and saved her the trouble.

The winkles on the yellow and black table in one of them white enamel bowls with the dark blue rim all chipped to fuck makes me feel sad. One of them memories I don’t even know if it’s a real memory because I got a photo of it to remind me as if I wanted reminding. And it couldn’t be helped the fumes of the glue of my outdoor work to make a few bob sticking shoes for a shoe factory where some bubble from Old Street dropped off cartons of uppers and soles once a week even the kids was out of it. Our Craig in his unde. . .