Stickers
We were on the back seat of my uncle’s Ford Cortina. Outside there was a storm and
my Dad had run inside the hospital to see if Nanny Cuckoo was awake. It was a
strange hospital, very quiet. No flashing ambulances, no orderlies running about like they did on the
telly. Nanny Cuckoo had been awake when we’d seen her the week before and I’d sat on
her bed and asked about her eye and when she was coming home and we talked
about school. We ate loads of grapes and my Granddad insisted on driving us
back. It was a quiet journey.
Now I was telling my Mum about my day at school. She’d
asked me but she was worried about something else. I could tell that much.
“Here’s your Dad”.
I glanced outside and saw my Dad and his brother
running towards us. They
clambered breathlessly into the front of the car.
“Nana’s not up to visitors today mate. We’re just, you
know, going to drive home and we’ll sort something out. Ok?”
My Dad was turned towards us from the front seat and
trying to address each of us at the same time. I was upset; I wanted to see my
nana. We drove home, the windscreen wipers struggling all the way with the
weather.
Dad was gone all the next day. He’d left pretty early
even though he didn’t work Saturdays. Mum didn’t seem to know where he was,
just out. But he’d left a present for me and one for my sister. My sister had a
doll and I had a sticker book.
I didn’t know anything about football except it was
what my friends now did at playtime. We didn’t play superheroes or Top Trumps
anymore, all my mates played with a bright orange ball initialled GB that belonged
to Graham Broad who hated losing. I
used to read comics in the corner instead. I liked Hulk and The Fantastic Four best because they were on telly and I could read the speech bubbles in the voices I knew they had.
Occasionally the ball would ping its
way towards me and I’d try to join in but I was rubbish.
If it was raining and we had to stay inside then
football still dominated proceedings – all the boys bar me had a sticker book
and spoke dementedly of swapsies and gots and needs.
Now I had a sticker book with loads of teams in it and
ten packets of stickers to start me off. When I’d finished putting all the
stickers in, my Mum sat us down on the sofa and said she had something to tell
us. I knew what she was going to say because she was crying. It was the first
time I’d ever seen her upset. People only cried on telly when people died.
It was my first dead person and it was Nanny Cuckoo. She was called Alice really and had gained this nickname because of a ritual conducted between us when I was a toddler. We'd visit her flat and I'd knock on the door and she'd call out Cuckoo. I'd call Cuckoo back before being let in. My Nan
who looked after me at weekends and gave me 10p to spend on sweets every time
she came to visit. My Nan who said “Presently” instead of “In a minute” and who had a
plastic chair in her bath. I cried for as long as it takes a seven year old to
cry themselves to sleep.
We didn’t see my Dad till the next day and we didn’t
get the chance to say goodbye. We had a couple of days after the weekend off
school and then when we went to school on the Wednesday my mum spoke to my
teacher, Miss Hope.
I’d been quiet, quieter than normal. I could see the
teacher and my mum looking at me in that way that parents sometimes look at
children when they’re ill.
I had my sticker book and my swapsies in my little
Gola bag ready for playtime. Graham Broad had forgotten to bring his football
and so the two of us and some other boys formed a circle like Chinese gamblers
did in films. The names being read in solemn incantation as the swapsies
were announced.
Joe Jordan. Ray Wilkins. Bristol City. John Wile.
A mumbling chorus of
declarations from the marketplace.
Got. Got. Need. Need.
My eyes stung as I looked down at my stickers and
realised I was speaking the mantra too.
Got. Got. Need. Need. Need.
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