The Birthday Gift

I don't usually write extended pieces - I don't have the staying power, but I wrote this some years ago thinking it might be the start of something longer.  Looking at it now I think it says all it needs to say and so stands better on its own.

            - Anthony!

My grandmother alone pronounced the ‘th’ in my name.  To my immediate family and friends I was Tony or Tone, but with Gran staying I was becoming accustomed to the full word.  

I looked up from my colouring book - a cowboy leaned on a gatepost smoking a cigar, while a smiling pony bucked its back legs unnecessarily in the compound behind the fence.  It was too young for me really but I enjoyed the sensation of the crayons, greasy in my fingers.

            - My glass is on the mantelpiece.

It wasn’t.  But I knew what she meant.  She had me trained to take the empty glass into the kitchen and fill it half full of gin, add an ice cube, a slice of lemon, and a splash of tonic - not too much - do you know the price of tonic?  She would not mind, the quick sip I stole.  My third.  I avoided the lipstick mark on the glass.  The oily liquid singed my lips and throat.  I wiped away the trace of my own spit from the rim as I felt my nose clear.

I carried the glass carefully and handed it to her then sank back to the floor.

The wrestling was just finishing.

            - Turn it off, there’s a dear.

Her soft Scottish accent and, to my mind, extreme old age gave her an authority that no other adult I knew could muster.  Uncomplaining, I scrambled across on my hands and knees and turned the television off. The image shrank instantly to a brilliant white pea.  I peered closely into it trying to make out if the pictures were still visible through this tiny, reducing keyhole of light.

            - Do you want to play pairs, Gran?

            - Go on then.  Spread them out.

The clock struck a quarter to.  Daddy would be home in an hour or so.

I fetched the pack of cards from the sideboard, carefully shuffled them, spreading them out on the floor and pushing them roughly around.  I gazed at the familiar picture on the reverse of the playing cards:  a man with no clothes on riding a horse, with a wreath of leaves around his head and a spear piercing a dragon’s throat at the horse’s galloping feet - and then the whole picture repeated upside down underneath but in reverse so that from whichever side you looked at it the man at the top was always facing to the right.

The cards shuffled, I started to lay them face down.  Five rows on the floor.  Two cards over - these went in the middle below the final row.  Gran let herself topple from sitting to lying, stretched out on the sofa.  Her slippers dropped to the floor as her feet went up onto the lumpy cushion.

            - Eldest starts, she said.  A 1 and E 10.

Her favourite opening move. I turned the appropriate cards for her - but no pair.  Her toes wriggled in the brown tips of her stockings.

I turned up two cards.  No match.

            - A 10, odd 1.

The last card in the top row and the first of the two extras.  I turned them for her again as she sipped at her gin.  Still no match for her but she had revealed a seven which I snapped up with one I had turned on my previous go.

The knocker mumbled against the letterbox.  A surreptitious knock, it felt like it was aimed at somebody - as if someone needed to be let in but did not want to disturb the whole house.  I pictured that someone standing on the doorstep looking around at the street while they waited impatiently to be admitted.  Gran did not seem to register it.  Maybe with a dark raincoat, collar turned up - I was about to rise and go to the door - maybe a trilby like Dad's - when I heard the surge of volume from the wireless as the kitchen door swung open.  I heard my mother in the hallway - she must have taken her shoes off: there was no clicking of heels.  She padded to the door quietly, quickly.  There were quiet voices and I heard the front door close softly.  I watched Gran glance at the sitting room door as she lit a cigarette, distracted from my second go.

After a few moments my mother’s head appeared in the doorway.  She looked as if she had no intention of speaking but, now, as I looked up she changed her mind.  Her eyes sparkled.

            - Are you two all right?  You looking after Gran?

            - Yes, we’re fine, I said.  Who was it?

Gran pulled the slice of lemon from her glass and sucked it between puckered lips.  She glanced at my mother but said nothing.

            - Oh, no-one.  Uncle Saul.  There’s something I want to show him upstairs.  We won’t be a minute and then tea will be ready.

Gran turned back to her magazine.

            - Great, I’m starved.

            - Won’t be long.  Come and shout if you hear Daddy coming, would you?

She winked at me carefully, inveigling me into some joke conspiracy.

I puzzled for a second then caught the intended thought.  It was my father’s birthday in three days time - she must be planning some surprise.

I wondered ...

Gran and I returned to our game,

- Black Knave, Queen of Hearts.  No pair there.

Gran sipped her gin.

I paired two fives, but now Gran was distracted trying to read an article in her magazine.  She took no notice of what I turned up and frustrated me with her clumsy playing.  There seemed little point in playing on.  She was tired and muddled from the gin.

            - You play for me, dear.

I went through the motions of playing, taking go after go and gradually learning the position of each card so that within a few minutes I was pairing at every turn.

            - Tone!

My mother called softly from the top of the stairs.  Gran sat back, her eyes shut, her hand still on the magazine.

            - Be a love, would you, and bring up my handbag.  It’s on the kitchen table.

I jumped up and skidded along the hall to the kitchen, grateful for the activity.  I grabbed the bag by one handle and ran back down the hall.  I started up the stairs two at a time.  The bag swung open as I jumped and two small boxes fell out and landed with a thud on the stair carpet.  One, a packet of Senior Service, slipped down a few steps while the other stayed on the step where it had landed. 

            - Oops!  Sorry!

            -Tony!

My mother was impatient and angrier than I expected.

            - Just get the cigarettes!

I put the handbag down on the stair and stepped down to retrieve them while she hurried down from the top to pick up the other pack.  It was blue, cellophane wrapped, but I could not tell what it was.

She held the top of her blouse together with one hand as she stooped to pick up the box.  I brought the cigarettes up and put them in her outstretched hand.  She was flushed and angry still.  She took the pack and the bag and hurried back to the bedroom.  She pushed the door open and as she did so I caught a glimpse of Uncle Saul naked from the waist up leaning on the window sill looking out.

Uncle Saul was not really my uncle.  He was tall.  A Ghanaian.  He was a mature student, I now know, studying for a PhD, and he lodged next door with Miss Harrison, the librarian.  He was a few years younger than my father - about the same age as Mum.

For half a second his shiny black torso reflected the dull white afternoon light as he looked through the net curtains up the street towards Brasen Road.  His glasses glinted.  One hand on the net curtains.  As the door was swinging shut again I saw his head turn towards my mother.

I stood there a moment - watching. 

Back in the sitting room Gran was dozing.  I turned the television on again and settled down with my back against the sofa.  Crackerjack was  starting.  Gran snored quietly.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck five. 

A few minutes later there was a thud from upstairs as if something had been knocked over.  I thought I heard someone laugh.  Then quiet again.

Another few minutes and I heard footsteps coming down the stairs then the front door opened and closed.  I had the sense of someone trying to be quiet. The knocker banged again as it was released.  The gate catch clicked.

Upstairs the toilet flushed.

My mother came down and went into the kitchen.  The volume of the wireless swooped up again as she opened the door.  I could hear her moving busily around gathering plates and pots, knives and forks, the sound through the open door seemed to be inviting me out there.  The programme credits started to climb up the screen and I stirred myself and wandered through to the kitchen.

            - What are we having?

            - What?  Er ... Macaroni cheese.

            - With bacon.

            - What?  Yes - of course.

Daddy would be home soon.

            - Can we have tomato ketchup?

            - Tony, don’t be tiresome!  If you want tomato ketchup just put it on the table.

            - Can we have tea in the sitting room?

            - No!  Now let me get on!

I went to the cupboard and found the Heinz then wandered through to the dining room and put it on the table.  It was chilly in there even though Mum had put the electric fire on.  Daddy liked sitting at the table for meals.  I looked around at the pictures on the walls.  Daddy’s pictures, from when he was a boy, in old wooden frames.  Mum didn’t like them.  She said they were too old fashioned.  She had bought the abstract painting in the front room after she had won the Christmas crossword competition in the Gazette.

I wandered back through to the kitchen.  Mum was washing cabbage.

            - Sorry, love, I don’t mean to be snappy.  It’s just - well, I’m a bit behind.

            - What did Uncle Saul want?

            - Nothing, really.  I just wanted to show him something, that’s all.

She pushed her hands down her thighs to wipe them dry on her apron.

            - Why did he have his shirt off?

She lifted the steaming pan of macaroni to the sink and poured it into the colander before she answered.

            - What?

            - His shirt?  He didn’t have his shirt on.

            - No, well ... he was trying a shirt on.

            - Trying one on?

            - Yes, I’ve, er, bought one for Daddy and I wanted to see if it would fit him.

            - Oh.

            - Do you want some lemonade?

            - Did it?

            - What?

            - Did it ... you know - fit?

            - It ... maybe ... I ... no ... it fitted Sau - Uncle Saul so, no, I don’t think it will fit Daddy.  Uncle Saul’s … bigger.  Do you want some lemonade or not?

            - You’ll have to change it?

            - What?  The lemonade?

            - No silly, the shirt.  You’ll have to take it back.

            - Oh.  Yes.  Lemonade - yes or no?!

            -Yes, please.

She poured a fizzing glass into my tall plastic tumbler, the one with the clown on the side.

            - What colour was it?

Mum was now grating cheese onto the top of the macaroni, ready to go back under the grill.

-         Hm?

-         What colour was the shirt?

-         Oh it’s blue – blue with tiny checks.

-         Right.  I expect he’d like that.

-         Yes he did… I think he will.

-         I can’t wait for Saturday.

-         No, me neither.  Take these in, would you.

She handed me a bundle of cutlery.

-         Oh, Mum...

-         Yes.

-         You’ve done your buttons up wrong.

-         Oh, so I have.

I carried the cutlery through to the dining room and spent a few moments remembering which side the forks went.  Then I heard my father’s key in the lock and rushed out to greet him.