She stood at the window again trying to see into the black January night, only to be met by her own melancholy face. She hooded her eyes with her bony hand, but could see no further than the kitchen behind her. I don't know why she ever bothers. It's always the same – fight, tears, bed banging and the next day everything hunky dory.
I scraped the remnants of my coagulated semolina pudding from the bowl. 'Is there any more semolina, mam?'
'There's some in the pan but it's his. By rights it's his. If you're still hungry you'll have to have bread and jam.'
'He'll not want his semolina when he's had a drink. He just chucks it in the bin. Says it's like wallpaper paste.'
She turned from the window and looked daggers.
'Will you shut up ? If you were hungry you wouldn't have left your cabbage. You're never satisfied. Better to keep a week than a fortnight.'
She was about to start weeping, so I shut up. She picked up a bread knife and began sawing through what was left of the stale loaf. She slapped a thick, hard slice down on my plate.
'Be thankful for small mercies,' she said.
She started playing about with her pinny, straightening it, tying it tighter, looser, smoothing out the wrinkles. Then she went to the oven and looked inside.
‘It'll be burnt to a cinder if he's much longer.' She slammed the oven door and resumed her vigil. And then she mumbled 'I have to put an end to it' or something like that.
I spread some marge on the chunk of bread and sprinkled sugar on top before folding it into a sandwich. I could understand why my dad stayed out of the house on dark January nights after the brief glimmer of Christmas was gone. At the little table with the wobbly legs you could feel the shivering draft from the back door more than the fluctuating heat from the solid fuel stove which had to be kept low because coke was so expensive.
Because he boozed, the money was tight and because the money was tight everything had to be economised. He drank because the house was miserable and the house was miserable because he drank; but I do not blame him, for as soon as I'm old enough I'll be off to the pub myself for a bit of a laugh and a game of darts. Anything to get out of the house.
'About bloody time,' said mam, turning from the window. She hadn't seen him, but she'd heard him. It was hard to tell which was worse, the tension waiting for him to appear or the tension waiting for the explosion once he had appeared.
'You can't keep a horse in a lighthouse
It isn't a home for old Ned.
A horse's place is on dry land
He'll never keep healthy
On sea foam or sand, dah dah...'
He had a good voice my dad and he knew some unusual songs. He tumbled in through the back door, face flushed, hair spreadeagled, breath beerstained.
'And how are things in my little homestead in the west?'
He blinked and surveyed what passed for a family.
'Oh dear, a little solemn I fear. So what's new?' And he sang again. 'Home home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard a discouraging word...' He grabbed mam awkwardly and tried to dance with her.
'Your dinner was ready an hour and half ago. It'll be burnt to a cinder,' she said as she broke from his grasp, grabbed a tea towel and opened the oven. He stiffened.
'How very precise of you, my darling wife. One hour and a half eh? Ninety minutes. But at least we're spared extra time eh? Thankful for small mercies as you so frequently say.' He let his coat slip from his shoulders onto the floor.
'I hope you're not going to leave that there,' said mam. She could never just leave things.
‘Well I just might. I might even wipe my boots on it.' And he did. Meticulously. Fire started in mam's eyes.
'An Englishman's home is his castle. Isn't that right my little brainy wonderchild?' He turned to me and gave a sardonic smile. 'My little brainbox. I can hear your little brain ticking now thinking what a drunken bugger you've got for a father, clever clarts, but you're no better than me, sunshine.'
He turned to mam. 'My house, my coat, my boots. My prerogative. Prerogative. You see, there's more than one intellectual in the house.'
'Leave him be. Don't start on him already, Sit down and eat your dinner, what's left of it.'
She thrust a plate of shrivelled meat and veg onto the table. He belched and farted.
'And what may I ask is this, chef? I don't see it on the menu. Some kind of sacrificial offering?'
'It was cooked for you supposedly coming home from work, two hours ago.'
'Oh it's two hours now? Time expands to fill a vacuum. I didn't ask for a lecture, I asked what it was. Right?'
'Stuffed heart.'
He laughed. 'Stuffed fucking heart is it? Stuffed fucking heart. Well I never. Well you know where you can stuff it.'
He hurled the plate at the wall where it smashed and spread its contents down and onto the cold lino floor like a traffic accident. He stood and booted his coat across the room, smashed his fist into the pantry door before turning to leave. Mam leaped across to him and spun him round with her right hand.
'You're going nowhere,' she said. It was as dad turned towards her that I noticed the bread knife in her left hand, the hand that had been caned so often at school, the hand that she had learned to be ashamed of but which now she trusted with her anger and pent up frustration. She stabbed the blade into his chest.
'Ungrateful bastard,' she screamed, 'I don't deserve all this.'
I expected to see a spurt of blood, to hear a groan of pain. But there was silence, a suspended silence that lasted and lasted but filled just a second and then the blade bent and the knife sprang from her hand and catapulted across the room, clattering on the metal stove. Dad grabbed her frantic wrists and tried to still her flailing arms. Her sudden strength allowed her fingers to reach his flushed face and she scratched him deeply with her nails. Now blood came, but in a trickle, not a flow.
'Mad bitch,' he cried as he tried to control her. But she was fighting like a wildcat, spitting, scratching, biting. They staggered about the room locked in a demented embrace until she tumbled backwards and cracked her head on the iron stove. Everything was suddenly silent and still.
He stood astride her crumpled body. Her eyes were closed. 'Oh Christ,' he said as he knelt and tenderly moved her head away from the hot stove. 'Oh Christ.'
I waited a few seconds.
‘Will you be wanting the semolina in the pan or can I have it?'
© John Price 2008