The Pre-War House and Other Stories

Wink Wink

My father meets me off the train, takes my bag and guides me to the car.

‘How long have we got you for?’ he asks.

‘A couple of weeks,’ I say. ‘Then I have to get back.’

‘How’s everything?’ he asks. ‘How’s the new house?’

‘Oh fine,’ I say, ‘except for the window. We’ve boarded it up for now.’

‘The window?’ he says. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh,’ I say, ‘we just had a bit of trouble. Some lads on their way back from the pub broke a window. I told Mum on the phone last night — did she not tell you?’

Of course my mother has not told him. She even said, ‘I don’t think I’ll tell your father. It would upset him, to think of you having trouble like that.’

It is like they are playing a game, seeing how many secrets they can stack up against one another. They both do it: Don’t tell your father, it will only worry him. Your mother doesn’t need to know; it’s our little secret.

One Saturday afternoon when my mother was at work and my father was looking after me, he drove me to the cinema and bought me a ticket to see Grease, a film my mother did not want me to see. He gave me money for sweets, counting the coins into my hand, just as he used to give me a little bit extra when the fair was on, putting it into my pocket as I headed out of the back door. ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ he said, and went wink wink. After the film, he collected me from the foyer and we went home. He looked a bit guilty — worried, I assumed, that I would tell my mother about his treat, but I didn’t.

We pull into the driveway of my parents’ house. My mother is already in the doorway, waiting for us. I get out of the car and give her a hug and am surprised by her grey hairs and the smallness of her body in my arms.

‘Look,’ she says, ushering me into the house and pushing a carrier bag at me. ‘I got you something in the sales.’

I peer into the bag and see pink bulging up at me. I pull it out, a shocking pink dress which my mother takes and holds up against me and says, ‘There.’

She goes to hang it up in my room.

‘Will you wear it?’ asks my father, quietly in the hallway. ‘Just while you’re here?’

I pull a face.

‘I know,’ he says, laughing, ‘but do it for your mother.’

I accept my assignment.

He says, ‘Good chap,’ and goes wink wink.

I take my bag and go up to my room.

‘Maybe it’s a bit bright,’ says my mother, ‘but your father likes to see you in a dress.’

I remember her, brown-haired and not so little, stopping me on the landing and giving me a fiver for a few more rides at the fair. ‘Don’t tell your father,’ she said, wink wink, and I carried our little secret down to the kitchen and found my father waiting there with pound coins. Wink wink.

When I was little, my father let me creep downstairs after my mother had gone to sleep. I sat on his knee watching late-night telly and he whispered, ‘For God’s sake, don’t tell your mother.’ And on his club nights, when my father was out having a few drinks with his old workmates, my mother gave me sips of her gin and orange before bed, and said, ‘You don’t need to tell your father.’ Wink wink.

When I’ve been home for a few days, I am sitting up late in the lounge reading a magazine and eating toast. I hear my father returning home from the social club. His key slips into the lock without any fumbling, and he lets himself in with none of the usual noise and buffoonery made when drunk and trying to be quiet. He closes the front door gently behind him and I hear him taking off his coat and shoes. Then, following the lamplight and the sound of page-turning and toast-munching, he comes into the lounge, looking surprised and saying, ‘Oh!’ when he sees me sitting there.

‘Hi Dad,’ I say.

‘I’ve just been at the club,’ he says, glancing down at himself.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Are you stopping up? Do you want to watch something?’

‘No,’ he says, shaking his head and putting his hands in his pockets. He looks like a reluctant little boy. ‘No, I’m going to bed.’

But still he stands there until I say, ‘Night then.’

‘Night, love,’ he says, and he comes over to give me a goodnight kiss. He leans over and I wait for the smell of drink and cigarette smoke to hit me — the club has always made him reek of both — but he smells very nice. When he kisses me, he kisses a small furrow of query in my forehead. He says again, ‘Night, love,’ and as he turns to leave the room he smiles down at me and winks.

Over breakfast, we listen to the news on the radio. There is an item about a young man who made a lot of money for his company through illegal means, and at his trial it emerged that his company had been well aware of his activities but pretended not to know as he was making them so much money.

‘How ridiculous,’ says my mother. ‘Fancy letting someone get up to no good right under your nose and not saying a word.’

I whack my spoon down on the shell of my boiled egg and set about peeling it off.

‘I’m going through to watch Country File,’ my mother says, taking her cup of tea with her.

I eat my egg, watching my father, who rubs his nose and reads his paper. Then I get up and follow my mother through to the lounge where I find her in front of the drinks cabinet adding a nip of gin to her tea.

‘Just a dash,’ she says gaily when she sees me out of the corner of her eye. She tests her tea and closes the cabinet. ‘Don’t tell your father.’ Wink wink. She switches the telly on and stares sadly at John Craven. ‘He’s a lovely man,’ she says.

‘… pioneering a social change… ’ says John.

‘A good man.’

‘… that will transform the landscape… ’

‘But he needs his Saturdays out.’

‘Well,’ I say, ‘he’s always gone to the club.’

My mother sips at her tea.

‘Coming up next… ’ says John.

I am in town on market day, squinting through the autumn sun as I browse, rubbing fabrics between my fingers, picking up cheap paperbacks, the end-of-day shouts repeating like poetry in my ears:

Five pound bag for a pound bananas

Two pound a pound on your seedless grapes

Four cauliflower for a pound now ladies

Two pound o’ mushroom for a quid.

I am eye to dead eye with a rabbit strung up on the butcher’s stall when I catch sight of my father. I make my way through the market crowd, my father dipping in and out of view until he is close enough to hear me say, ‘Hi Dad.’ Panic flits across his face.

He says, ‘Cathy!’ as if he has not seen me in years. He is with another man but does not introduce me.

‘I thought you were going to the club.’

‘I’m just on my way there now,’ he says, like a boy found dawdling to school.

‘I’ll see you later then.’ I head home and my father goes in the other direction, taking a long way round to the club.

My mother is lying on the sofa. The television is on but she is asleep. Half a cup of tea is on the table in front of her and the bottle of gin is empty. I switch the television off and my mother wakes up with a start.

‘John?’ she says.

‘It’s me, Mum,’ I say.

‘Oh, hello, love. I was just having a little lie down. What time is it?’

‘It’s about six. I’ve just got back from town. I saw Dad.’

‘Did you? Who was he with?’

‘No one I know. A man with a ginger beard.’

My mother nods.

‘He said he was just off to the club.’

‘It’s not there any more, you know,’ she says as I sit down next to her. ‘The club’s gone. They knocked it down. It’s a car park now. He still goes,’ she adds, and starts to laugh and laughs until she says, ‘Oh dear.’ I notice then that the sofa cushions are warm and wet beneath us, and there is a weak smell of urine in the air. ‘Don’t tell your father,’ she says, looking at me and slowly closing and opening one eye, red-rimmed from the gin-soaked nap and maybe crying.

Wink wink.