Porky Read Free

kept the bathroom door shut. I never saw him or my Mum bare, they were both modest about that. When he’d been sitting out the front, watching his car park, then, when he took me on his knee, his skin smelt baked and biscuity. His face was reddish-brown but it stopped at his neck. Below that, when he opened a button of his shirt, his skin was white and quite smooth. He was a big, fleshy man. I thought he was really handsome, but you’d say he’d gone a bit soft. His hair was brown but his moustache had all these colours mixed in it, I used to point them out to him and count the red ones. He said I was the only person who’d noticed; he hadn’t, for a start.
    Let me get one thing straight, though you might not believe me. He was an innocent kind of man. In the paper, he never paused at the busty brunettes, he turned straight to the cartoons. My Mum didn’t really understand us children, but he did. He said he was just a kid at heart. He liked the sort of games we did, though I could never quite trust him. He would suddenly get impatient, or the romps would get too boisterous. He liked tickling us breathless; he liked hiding our toys.
    Just an edge of me used to feel wary. He could get violent, you see. It hardly ever happened with us, though; he was much nicer with us. It happened with my Mum. Our bungalow had thin walls. One night I remember lying curled, all clenched, the pillow pressed on my head so I wouldn’t hear the words being shouted in their bedroom.
‘Bitch, bitch!’
The morning after that, my Mum went to stay with her friend Oonagh in West Drayton, a couple of miles away, and didn’t come back until the Monday, when she returned from work as if nothing had happened. He’d fed us sweets all weekend.
    When I was little I adored him, even though he sometimes let me down. I always forgave him. You do, when you’re small; you have to. For instance, there was my Kanga house. I didn’t have any dolls, I don’t think I wanted any, but I had a grey knitted kangaroo. I held Kanga wherever I went and I told her everything. In her pouch she had a small Roo made of tighter knitting. Dad had promised me he’d make them a house. He was the one who suggested it; there were lots of planks around. When I reminded him he kept saying he’d do it tomorrow, he had a lot on his plate at present.
    That autumn, I must have been eight, they were building a petrol station at the end of our drive, right beside the main road. I used to watch the workmen for hours; they were my friends. One evening, when I’d given up asking him in case he lost his temper, he came into the kitchen looking ever so pleased, with some plastic panelling under his arm. It was fancy, hinged panelling, punched with holes. I recognized it.
    â€˜But Dad, did you get that from the garage?’
    He stopped in his tracks. ‘Me?’ His eyes wide. ‘Little me? Oh no.’ Then he winked. ‘It came by special delivery.’
    I knew he’d pinched it after the workmen had gone home. I minded a lot, of course, but what I minded more was that he’d lied to me.
    After a week or so he did build a sort of house, a sort of lean-to. I made sure that I was popping Kanga in and out of its gap whenever he was around. But from then on I didn’t talk to the workmen in case they became too friendly and dropped in for a cup of tea and saw it. They thought I was sulking. Soon they even stopped calling out, ‘Give us a smile, ducks’ or ‘It might never happen’. It took all winter before the petrol station was built and they left.
    Something else I remember. When he had a short job on, he would take me with him. He loved me looking nice, to show me off to his mates, so I’d wear my best dress. I’d sit up in the cab, lording it over the dual carriageway. By the time I was nine he’d let me steer, if he was in the mood, and I’d sit pressed next to him, the