Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ed waited, flitting from room to room, and, when he could stand it no longer, he took to pacing the walkway outside the apartment. The twins were sleeping soundly, a rare and miraculous occasion, and his mother was catching a well-earned lull. He’d come in silently as always, knowing there could be sleeping infants at any time, and found her slumped in her arm chair with a beauty magazine, trying to let as much light into the cramped room as possible, but the window just wasn’t big or bright enough. Amy had been shipped off to a friend’s house and wasn’t due back for an hour or so, a rare moment of bliss for her. He hadn’t the heart to charge in there and play his new punk record; he probably wouldn’t be able to hear it over the bawling.

Instead he reeled right back out the door again, with a mind to listen to it as soon as the twins were awake and had their gobs plugged with bottles.

 

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Mark was blaring New Rose for all the neighbourhood to hear, his glasses, which he didn’t like wearing out of lessons, had been thrown aside once they’d allowed him to drop the needle just right and he leapt like a wild thing on the bed almost braining himself on the ceiling. He loved this music, like he loved a lot of music, but this was happening and he was enjoying happening along with it.

“Turn that down! We can hear you down in the bloody shop!” His father roared up the stairs, and probably to the customers, one thin plaster wall away.

 

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Pete sidled in through the front door, hoping to make it up the stairs so he could get his clothes off and his earring covered before anyone spotted him. Jess caught him on the stairs as he scurried up to his room and halted him.

“Pete, what on earth happened to your jeans?”

Pete blanched and tried to pull his duffel coat down to cover his knees, pushing past her on the stairs.

“Fell out a tree,” He grunted, but she grabbed his hood and swung him back round.

“How could you have done that falling out of a tree? You’ve ruined them, that’s for sure,”

“Never mind, I need the loo, Jess, let go of me,” Jess, unwilling to relinquish her scrawny little brother now she had him by the hood of his jacket, all wound up, hesitated, then caught sight of his earring.

“Oh my goodness did you get an ear piercing!?” She exclaimed, grabbing his ear, and he issued another yelp like the one he’d done in Boots.

“Get off me!” He shoved her, but to little avail “You’re hurting me! Get off!” Jess let go at that, and stared at him, stunned into silence for once.

“Dad’s going to kill you, what on earth were you thinking?”

Pete glared at her, and trooped up into his room with her dogging his heels every step until he slammed the door. Jess pointedly refused to blaspheme, replacing ‘god’ with ‘goodness’, ‘heavens’, ‘grief’ or, the one he found most irksome of all ‘golly’. Conversing with her, when she was in a state of shock, made him feel all the worse about the hiding he knew was coming to him.

“Did Pete come in and slam that door?” His mother’s voice floated in from the landing, while he swivelled ‘New Rose’ between his hands and first glimpsed the liquorice wheel of the vinyl inside.

“Yeah, he’s torn his trousers to pieces and got an earring, can you even believe it?”

Pete could have snapped the record in two, but managed to lay it gently on top of the Hi-fi before his mother came barging in.

 

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Ed knew his Mum might be cross about the jeans, they were very old, so the rips didn’t look manufactured, like Pete’s did, and they were hand-me-downs from that creep cousin of his, Anthony, anyway. This somehow tainted the clothes and he’d never really liked those his Aunt sent in the post. Now, having sat with his friends and cut holes in them, he felt the demon had been exorcised and they weren’t someone else’s hand-me-down jeans anymore, they were his punk jeans. The first of many statements, he hoped.

He poked his head round the living room door when he got fed up of waiting and offered to collect Amy from her friend’s house. He thought he could at least give his mother a little longer to rest, and he hoped to dispel his impatience. She thanked him, gave him the address and heard him go out without looking up from her magazine.

Ed had written where he was going on the back of an envelope, and knew the street; it was in Moss-side quite near Mark’s shop. Ed had never tried anything from the specialist grocery shop, but loved hanging out in there when he dropped by, it smelled wonderfully exotic, wild with Caribbean spices.

On his way, he caught his tattered figure in the wide panels of a passing bus’s windows; a thrill of delight came from the sight. He looked like a wild thing, hair like a dirty haystack and goose-flesh stripes through the rips in his clothes. He had a plain-looking sweater �" but he could change that soon enough, he was satisfied.

He knocked on the door of what he felt sure was the right house; he could hear children whooping within. Another parent pulled up on the curb and joined him on the step, staring, while a flustered mother made it to the door.

“Hello, hello, come in,” She spread her arm into the hall, where a tot thundered along on stout little legs. It was someone’s birthday and there had been a picnic on the living room carpet, blankets and all, and party games all afternoon.

When she looked twice at Ed her openness shrank back like an enenemy pulled out the ocean. Now guarded at his dishevelled appearance, he asked if Amy was here

“Are you her...”

“Brother” He confirmed, and she nodded mutely, as though she suspected he was trying to abduct her. 

“Please, do come in, I’ll just tell the children you’re here,” She spoke upwards, over Ed’s head, to the adult behind him. The other parent came into the hallway too, the door clocked shut and the heat of the house pouring back into the space. He shuffled his feet in the uncomfortable silence, then caught sight of Amy dashing across the hallway.

“Hey, Amy, time to go home!” He called out to her, as the hostess returned with another kid holding her hand. She delivered them to their parent, waved them politely back to their car with the appropriate small talk. Amy’s face slackened with horror, however, and she shrank back against the floral wallpaper.

“I don’t want to go!” She told them both, unwavering honesty in her little face.

“Sorry Amy, but the party’s finished now, so you have to come home, but I’m sure there’ll be another birthday soon,” Ed tried to coax her closer to the door, but her cheeks reddened, and her features screwed themselves up. Christ, don’t cry, please don’t cry.  Ed, quite frankly, did feel rather sorry for her having to traipse back a mile and a half in the cold.

“Come on, Amy, you need to tell your host thank you very much for having you, and then be polite and leave on time,”

She shook her head “I like the party, I don’t want to leave!” The woman stood utterly dumbstruck as Ed knelt down to Amy’s level and scooped her into a coddling, one-armed hold. This alone unknotted her face and she paused her snivelling long enough to listen to him.

“There’ll be another party really soon, promise. You remember your manners and people remember you were a good guest, and they’ll invite you again,”

Her lower lip trembled, wavering on the boarder of decision. “I’ll make you a hot chocolate when we get in, with chocolate buttons on top.”

Amy’s eyes widened and she turned sunnily to the birthday child’s mother

“Thank you for having me,”

Somewhat aghast, she told Amy she was quite welcome

“Cheers” Ed threw over his shoulder as they stepped out into the bracing wind; he set Amy down on the pavement and took her sticky hand for the walk home.

 

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They got in to find the twins Hugo and Louisa were, mercifully, awake and plugged with bottles of milk. The only sound they made was of sucking and the occasional gurgle. His mother had one on each leg, leaning them up against her so they could sit, little starfish hands clamped clumsily around their bottles.

“Oh, how was your party, Amy?” His mum asked her as she stormed into the living room and nestled into the sofa beside her.

“Good. Ed promised he’d make me hot chocolate, with buttons in it.”She’s quick on the chase he thought wearily, wondering if they even had chocolate buttons in the corner shop, there certainly weren’t any in the house. He sighed heavily, knowing he’d have to go out again.

“You can have it after tea,” She reminded Amy, who pouted but let it lie for now. His mum had a good look at Ed for the first time, her eyes finally taking in the state of his jeans. Ed was just about to slope off to his room to at last get his teeth into the un-played LP when she called him back in shock.

“Ed, what the hell have you done to your jeans?” He stiffened and back peddled into the room, hoping she’d understand.

“They’re supposed to be like that,” He explained, “I did them with my friends, it’s the fashion.” He gestured to the frayed denim and stray threads criss-crossing his knees.

“You’ve ruined a perfectly good pair of trousers; do you think I’m going to buy you more if you do that? Do you?”

“No! I don’t want more, I like these how they are,” She paused, almost tearful, at the sight of her boy looking like just another one of the wasters in the crescent stairwells. “What’s happened to you Ed? I thought you were a good lad, what are you turning into?” This comment pierced him, but he didn’t show it.

“They were Anthony’s anyway!” He cried, but this only served fuel the flames.

“Oh! Only Anthony’s, that he gave you when I had no cash for any clothes, and you show your thanks by wreaking them!”

“I haven’t wreaked them!” He slammed his fist on the door, then saw the twins beginning to crumple and wished he hadn’t. His mother’s ability to scream was hampered by the child clasped in each arm, but she roared him right out of the room.

“I know what this is, you just want new things, well, I’m sorry, I can’t give them to you. Happy now? You’ve just lost a pair of trousers and don’t even think you’re getting more until those are halfway up your bloody shins!”

Ed strode off into his room, slammed the door hard enough to shake the whole flimsy apartment and threw himself down on the bed breathing hard and furious.

How dare she call him a bad son? She was a bad mother if anything, never even looking at him, never talking to him unless there was something she wanted doing. If he was such a bad son when why the hell had he walked three miles in the bitter winter streets to pick up his little sister? Just so she could have a lazy afternoon with her feet up �" reading those brain dead, expensive women’s magazines. He felt as righteous as a saint, and his blood boiled to know he didn’t get the slightest jot of credit. To diffuse the anger, he gently arranged the needle on his new LP and sat pattering his feet on the floor, waiting for New Rose to start.

 

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His mother stood anxiously outside his bedroom door, hearing the screeching guitars, the buzz, the rage and thought of Julia’s son. How her friend had to keep her purse under her pillow and kept washing the curtains and carpets over and over to take out the reek of cigarettes. He’d been Ed’s age, hadn’t he? She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and got back to the children.

 

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As promised, later that Evening Ed crept out of his room and silently made Amy her coca, he didn’t have any chocolate buttons, but found a couple of slightly softened bourbons in the cupboard and put them on the plate with the drink. He made sure his mother was occupied, having put the children to bed; she was locked away in her own room with her reading. He pushed the door open a crack, to check Amy was still awake and, sure enough; she stirred and sat up in bed. There was a pinched and hollow look on her face, and his stomach churned, he knew how much she hated fights.

“Here,” He hissed, mindful not to wake the twins in their top-and-tail cribs and set the plate down on her bedside table. She inspected the offering by the glow of the nightlight and seemed chuffed to bits with it.

“Don’t wake the twins up, but make sure you clean your teeth before you go to sleep,” Ed reminded her gently, stealing out of the room.