Free White Goods by Guy Johnson Page B

my head. ‘I was
trying to wake you. To tell you something. Thought it would
work.’
    She stared at me,
thinking, putting it together, seeing if it made sense.
‘Why?’
    ‘Can’t tell you
now.’
    She gave me
another look: she only half-believed me, it said. Still I couldn’t
tell her all I had seen. I’d sworn to Ian I wouldn’t tell a soul.
And what if she didn’t believe me? What if she just laughed and,
worse, thought I was simply making up sick, twisted stories. I couldn’t risk it. We would just be back where
we’d started, like the secret we shared about Dad didn’t exist. And
anyway, once I’d told someone else what I’d seen, it would have to
be true, no going back; whilst I kept it to myself, there was still
a chance it was just me - that I’d got it wrong; that it hadn’t
happened. It struck me as a good way of dealing with the things you
didn’t like: pretend they hadn’t happened. At least, that’s how I
saw it then.
    ‘I can’t tell you.
Sorry.’
    ‘Okay.’
    That was it.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was better. She still didn’t entirely
believe me, but it felt like her not-believing-me had lessened a
little – that’s the nearest it got.
    Back then, it was more
than enough.
     
    ‘Are you ready
then?’
    Dad; a week after the
funeral, his bashing forgotten – or so he thought – standing in the
back room, with a pair of scissors in his hands. The big white box
had been moved onto the dining table, which had been dragged out
from the corner of the room; both its wooden leaves up, like it was
a big occasion. The box had strips of white, brittle plastic round
the outside and Dad began to cut through these.
    ‘ Here we
go!’
    We had been speculating
about it all week.
    ‘Reckon it’s a new
stereo, a stack system.’
    ‘A new TV.’
    ‘What if it’s a dog?’ Ian
and Della had reverted to their usual partnership of sniggering
when I said this.
    ‘A dog ?’
    ‘Right!’ said Dad, the
plastic white strips cut away, the brown sticky-tape ripped off and
the box open. He reached inside and pulled out a big black metal
box.
    ‘Another TV,’ Ian said,
but he was wrong.
    ‘It’s your new
mother!’
    I’ll swear that’s what Dad
said.
    ‘ Someone to
help us get by!’
    Della
corrected me later: ‘He said microwave
oven, and ‘something’, not ‘someone’.’ She’d been quite cross at the time, not sure who with. But I
reckon she knew I was right - whatever he’d actually said, it’s
what he meant: your new mother.
    ‘Oh, Tony. Very nice.
They’re new, aren’t they?’ Auntie Stella.
    ‘She’ll help
us get by,’ Dad added, nodding a ‘yes’ at Auntie Stella,
tapping her on
the top, like he was proud. ‘What do you think of her,
kids?’
    We all said
we liked her very
much and then our Dad carried her through to the kitchen, where
Auntie Stella fussed, helping him to find a place and plug her in.
     
    It was Della
who starting calling her Marilyn.
    Dad didn’t know and
neither did Auntie Stella, who kept having nights over and started
wearing Mum’s dressing gown regularly.
    ‘That’s Mum’s,’ Della
told her one morning, in case she’d forgotten.
    Her tone was
a bit cold, leaving a frosty crust over the atmosphere. Auntie
Stella cracked it with a quiet, verbal ice-pick:
‘ Was, Della.’ Her
voice a subtle, metallic tap. ‘But your daddy gave it to
me.’
    Della said nothing else,
like she’d gone dumb for a bit, struck mute, what she wanted to
stay trapped behind sewn-up lips. She didn’t like it, though. Not
one bit.
    None of us
did.
    Carry-On-Auntie , so it seemed, had
joined the unspoken competition to replace our Mum. Marilyn was the only
other contender and, despite initial misgivings from me, was
clearly the favourite for the three-of-us. The three-of-us: down from the four-of-us , as Dad
appeared to be backing Auntie Stella. She still slept on the sofa
when she stayed, but we were just
waiting. Well, Ian and Della were, so they
said.
    ‘But