Porky Read Free Page A

gear-stick digging into my bottom. He’d laugh, urging me on. Actually I steered very carefully, but tense, because just when I wasn’t expecting it he’d put his foot down and we’d shoot forward, too fast.
    Anyway, he often made promises. Like at the end of the delivery he’d take me to the Excelsior Hotel Coffee Shop – that was the newest place – where he’d buy me hot chocolate with sprinkled foam on the top. All the customers could see me in my tartan frock. But before we got there he was detained at the Spread Eagle. I sat in the cab. I knew I was in for a wait when he came out.
    â€˜Won’t be long, Podge.’ He gave me a bag of crisps, pinching my cheek.
    I can’t remember if this episode happened once or several times blurred together. I watched it growing darker and more cars pulling up until the car park was crammed. The street lights flickered on, one by one, red fading to orange. It was so cold that I could easily stay awake. There was a sign over the door, lit up, saying, ‘Tonight: Shaun and the Sounds’. The Spread Eagle was a big place built in a bygone style with pointy roofs and attics. When it was nearly dark the neon light was switched on; it was a thin blue line zig-zagging up and down the eaves. Later, when my eyes started closing, the lines danced and it was a palace out there, far off, and if I reached it something beautiful would happen.
    When I heard the door handle turning I woke up quickly and pretended I hadn’t been asleep. It took him some time to open the door. He had some of his friends with him; they were all very affectionate, their faces crowding in, with fruity breath and cold air. I wanted him to be proud of me so I laughed at their jokes. I never had my chocolate drink. Last thing I remember was falling asleep against his shoulder, lights swinging as we swerved round the roundabout, and his hand rubbing my thighs to warm me up.
    Next day he was full of remorse. In fact, over the next few years, when things became more confusing, his remorse was one of the worst aspects because I didn’t know how to make it better. I tried to think up excuses for him but that made him angry. Sometimes he cried, his big body shuddering, and that was the most terrifying thing of all.
    That was when I was older, when I didn’t want to sit in his cab. In fact, when I had to find any reason not to go.
    I’d always been closer to him than to my Mum. As I said, she wasn’t one for showing affection. I never knew how much she felt, deep down – I wondered about it a lot but I don’t think I wanted to come up with an answer. She never hugged me, but then I never saw her hug my Dad either; she wasn’t the type. The way I remember her best is from the back, walking down our drive to catch the bus. She looked sadder from the back. I wasn’t nervous of her then. The cars would be speeding past, there was always the hum of traffic where we lived. She would be picking her way around the potholes, wearing her headscarf with the polka dots and her ageless turquoise coat with its fitted waist. Then her thin beige legs with the flat shoes. She always carried her plaid shopping bag, with a change of shoes and her purse in it. She’d never been in an aeroplane and yet there they were, slicing up into the sky in front of her, trailing smoke. Watching her go, I felt I should be running down the drive to tell her something that she’d been waiting to hear.
    She made it plain, without saying it in so many words, that she was disappointed. For instance, she never went near the pigs. The usual number was three sows, and piglets when they had them. It was a small field – we didn’t have much land – its tussocks roughed up by the pigs’ rooting, and with pitted mud around the troughs. There was a container crate where they went when it rained. It didn’t look much, but Dad’s sows meant a lot to him. The only