Porky Read Free Page B

contact she had was to empty the peelings into an orange plastic bucket which she wouldn’t allow in the kitchen – she had to carry the damp handfuls right out to the back porch. She set herself these tasks, you see.
    She must have loved him once. I tried to believe that I was the result of passion – that tenderness had made me – though it was hard to credit it later. He must have been a fine figure in his younger days, and her so shy, and petite as a deer. She must have gazed at his balancing act on the dodgems and known, with a pang, that he wouldn’t be there next week. Our bungalow showed some signs of their early married bliss: curtains she’d rigged up below the kitchen sink, matching the window ones, and cones of plastic flowers on the wall. Above their bed hung a framed photo of a woodland glade with sunlight slanting through the branches. Those trees must have blessed them once. It was made of wood, our bungalow, and stained by the rain, but two wire baskets hung outside the front veranda. I’m sure I remember, when I was a toddler, blooms trailing down from them. I saw them. Later the veranda was just the place where things were dumped – mostly Dad’s empties, the bottles cobwebbed together.
    She’d expected something better from life, no doubt about that. I felt included in the general dissatisfaction, I suppose because I was big and clumsy, like my Dad, and content with our lot – I mean you are when you’re a child, aren’t you? She wasn’t. She gave up with the house; she tidied it, with sighs, but there weren’t the little touches. But she still put her hair in rollers. They weren’t for us, her faded blonde curls, but I’m sure they weren’t for some fancy man at work either; that wasn’t her temperament. They were for something that nobody could supply.
    They had their rows, her and Dad, but most of the time they just didn’t talk, except for where did you leave this or that, or when are you going to do something about the lounge ceiling (our roof was always leaking). That was parents, I thought. It was only later that I realized what an outsider would see, after one glance: that they didn’t get on. I don’t suppose they ever admitted that they weren’t happy; neither of them thought in those words. If they’d admitted it they would have to start making decisions and neither of them was used to that. Anything was better than a choice.
    And, really, it’s remarkable how seldom two people meet each other, even when they’re living under the same roof. Either she was out at work, or she was home and he was off on some job. She didn’t drive; she preferred the bus and she knew the timetable by heart. She’d be off to the supermarket in West Drayton; or she’d be in the kitchen and he’d be fiddling about outside. Days at a time she’d be out each evening on the late shift; and then he had his deals to negotiate down at the Two Magpies or the Spread Eagle.
    Then, when they were together, there was the telly. They could both watch it for hours; they looked quite content then. They even made the odd remark; they both knew the programmes so well that these remarks sounded quite intimate, for them. And their cigarettes made them look companionable; my Mum was a surprisingly careless smoker, she was always leaving them lying around, smouldering in ashtrays, something my Dad never did even though she considered him such a slob. Although she smoked Embassy and he smoked Weights they were always running out – they never bought more than one packet at a time – so, eyes on the screen, they’d fumble around for each other’s and he’d light hers. A man looks tender doing that, doesn’t he? Although I knew it was bad for their health it made me happy, seeing them at that moment.
    What happened in their bedroom is something I still don’t want to know. He tried to tell me