‘This will be good for Shirley,’ Dad announced. ‘It won’t soak up her piss and we can just wipe it.’
My sister Shirley was incontinent and the house always stank of urine, although it wasn’t all hers. The smell of urine, dogs and fags pervaded everything. The grown-ups were always having to change poor Shirley because there was nothing she could do about it herself. The trouble with the plastic material on the new suite was that it stuck to the backs of our bare legs after we had been sat on it for a while, and it would hurt to tear ourselves away, like ripping plasters off cuts.
I never realized when I was tiny that we were washed less often than most kids, that we were always dirty and covered in dog hairs. It was only when other kids started to take the mickey that the penny dropped. We always wore shorts, swapped between me and Christina, and Mum would only ever buy us new stuff from jumble sales, or nick it off the washing lines of the better-off areas.
We were always being sent out to scrounge things off the neighbours. Once I’d been given whatever I’d been sent to ask for I would walk back home slowly. If it were margarine it would be wrapped in a bit of foil and would start to melt, giving me a chance to lick the sweetness from my dirty hands. Mostly we ate jam and sugar butties, or sometimes lard or dripping. Anything we could get hold of we crammed into our mouths to stave off the continuous pangs of hunger.
The ice cream man hated coming up our street because he always got hassled for broken lollies and wafers; twenty kids all milling round the van shouting at him at once. Sometimes he would feel sorry for me if he found me on my own and would give me a chocolate flake. ‘Don’t tell the others,’ he’d warn, and I never did.
Mum always seemed to owe people money and we would have to hide behind the sofa if men came knocking at the door. Because I was the youngest in the family and most innocent looking, she would send me to the chip shop most days, usually with no money. ‘Tell them you’ve forgotten it,’ she would say.
I hated doing it, but I hated being hungry even more. When the lady behind the counter asked for the money I would burst into tears. She would then feel embarrassed in front of the other customers and tell me to bring it later. After a while she started asking for the money before she served me. In those days you could take your own plate to the chip shop to be filled up. Mum would send me with a bowl, which the lady would fill up with gravy, giving us more to go round. Even when I was only two or three years old I would lurk outside the chip shop late in the evening asking customers for a chip as they came out with their dinners, having spent the evening in the pub. If they were in a really good mood they would buy me a whole portion of my own.
Shirley’s spina bifida meant she had a hole in the middle of her back and this caused a deformity of the spine. She was paralysed from the waist down and didn’t have any control or any mobility or any feeling in her legs. She was also hydrocephalous, a condition creating fluid around the brain. There was nothing wrong with her mind, but she had to be constantly lifted and cared for and had a shunt to drain the excess fluid from around her brain. She had a hump on her back as well, which was the result of an operation to stitch over the hole in her spine. Life had been cruel to her from the moment she was born.
To make matters worse, she also had epileptic fits from time to time. She always knew when they were coming because her mouth would get dry and she would start smacking her lips together. The first time I saw it happen I was about five years old. Mum and Dad had gone out for the night, leaving us on our own. It didn’t bother us. As a small kid Shirley was always in and out of hospital with Mum, which meant Christina and I were often left to fend for ourselves.
‘I don’t feel well,’ Shirley told us that evening. ‘I think I might be about to have a fit.’
The next thing she was shaking in her wheelchair and there was white foam coming out of her mouth. I remembered Mum saying we had to get her tongue out so she didn’t swallow it, but we didn’t really understand what that meant. Christina ran to the kitchen and came back with a big dessert spoon and I tried to prise her teeth open with it, screaming and crying: ‘She’s dying, she’s dying!’
Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer and ran to get my aunt from a few doors away, who came and laid Shirley out in the recovery position on the floor.
Christina and I loved Shirley and felt sorry for her; there were so many things you couldn’t do in a wheelchair at the beginning of the Seventies. All the local cinemas and theatres, and a lot of the shops, had steep steps and no access for wheelchairs. We were always trying to find things to do that would cheer her up. One day, when Mum was outside hanging up the washing, we were sitting on Shirley’s bed. I had found a box of Swan Vesta matches and had beckoned Christina to come to Shirley’s room with me. Perching on the bed beside her I started to strike them, one by one, letting her blow each one out like a candle on a birthday cake, which made her laugh. Match after match flared and was snuffed. It felt good to be able to make her happy.
‘Let me do one,’ Christina demanded.
‘No.’ I turned away. ‘I’m doing it. I found them.’
Christina made a lunge for the matches so I stretched my arms out at full length to keep them away from her and struck another.
Christina grabbed my arm and shook it. The match fell and the nylon bedclothes seemed to ignite instantly, the flames leaping to the curtains and spreading within seconds. Christina and I jumped up, screaming for Mum, wanting to run away, but Shirley couldn’t move, and the flames were spreading over her lifeless, motionless legs as we desperately tried to wave them away. Mum ran in and ripped away the curtains and sheets, smothering the flames. But it was too late; Shirley’s legs had ballooned up, red and blistered, and then blackened like charcoal. She couldn’t feel any pain, but she could smell the charred flesh just as we could. Mum picked her up, cradling her in her arms, shouting furiously at us, and we watched in horror and bewilderment as she carried Shirley out of the smoke-blackened room. We were sure we’d killed her, and although she survived she was horribly burned and had scars that never really healed.
Having a dad who brought home stuff made us better than everyone else in the street, that’s how I saw it. All the others used to come round our house to watch the telly, when it was working, sometimes as many as twenty people at a time all crammed into our front room, with Mum at the centre of it all. We didn’t own a kettle so there were always people in the kitchen boiling up pans of water to make themselves hot drinks. Mum was only in her early twenties and liked having friends around her. She always loved a party. We would often wake up and find that other people were sharing our beds, having crashed out after too much drink, empty cans and bottles everywhere. The thing Christina and I hated the most was the way the grown-ups all smoked so much. We used to get up early while they were all still unconscious and go round the house collecting up all the packets of cigarettes we could find and then hiding or destroying them.
One day Dad brought home a washing machine, and from then on all the neighbours would bring their washing round for Mum to do. There were always bags of dirty clothes everywhere, adding to the chaos and the smell.
There was always a lot of thieving going on around Smallshaw because it was the only way some families could survive. The women would bring back the stuff they had lifted from the shops, whether it was margarine or tins of coffee, and would share it all out. It sounds like everyone was getting on with one another when I put it like that, but there was always a current of jealousy and resentment bubbling below the surface, waiting for an excuse to surface.
‘It’s all right for Maureen,’ the other women would mutter to one another behind Mum’s back, ‘with all her things.’
Dad even had a van and used to take us out on drives, which made the other families even more resentful. We came back one day to find the house had been broken into and robbed. Everyone knew it had been people from the street but there was nothing we could do about it and Mum said she wanted to move to a better area. Our gas and electricity meters were always being broken into for coins, food was stolen from our cupboards, and nothing was ever safe.