by Jerard Bretts
The boy is woken from a deep dreamless sleep.
‘Get up,’ Dad says. ‘You’re going to Nana and Grandpa.’
There’s a plate with slices of chocolate Swiss roll on the kitchen table.
‘Eat your breakfast,’ Dad says.
The boy wants to protest, But it’s nighttime! and Mum wouldn’t give me this for breakfast!
But he sits without making a sound.
He shivers as he stands on the pavement in the dark, watching Dad crank the car engine – a firm pull upwards on the handle. The engine starts on the third attempt.
Dad drives fast, headlights cutting through the darkness of South Tottenham and Hackney. By the time they arrive in Bethnal Green the sun has risen. The boy’s heart beats fast with excitement as he slides out of the car.
A dark-stained wood counter runs the length of one side of the shop. The glass display case at the front is full of Cadbury Dairy Milk, Fry’s Chocolate Cream, and Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles.
On shelves behind the counter are rows of glass jars filled with sherbet lemons, aniseed balls, jelly babies.
Mingled scents of sugar, chocolate, a hint of liquorice…
But it’s the rack of comics he wants to devour.
His grandparents appear, wearing identical olive-green aprons, welcoming smiles on their lined faces. A sleek black cat winds around their legs, then scrutinises him.
The boy walks around the end of the counter into a new country.
He spends hours in the sitting room behind the shop reading comics, taking care that they don’t get creased or soiled to put off customers buying them. American comics – Superman and Batman protecting the citizens of Metropolis and Gotham City, USA from Lex Luthor and the Joker.
He’s deaf to the bell’s jangle when customers enter and to Grandpa’s grumbles about kids stealing half-penny chews. The unnamed cat, kept to discourage the mice, can’t get his attention. He’s entranced by bright pages full of vividly drawn characters and the worlds they dominate. Too young to read he ignores the speech bubbles, not needing words to understand what’s going on.
Nana leaves a bottle of Lucozade on the bedside table. One evening she forgets and as he walks down the stairs to fetch it, he overhears them.
‘Harry, how long can we carry on?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grandpa says. ‘A month…. I’ll take another stock count.’
‘You know what we’ve got to do,’ Nana says.
‘Do I?’
‘Yes, you do. We’ve got no choice. We’ve got to accept it.’
That night he dreams that he is on the crowded beach at Clacton.
It is a sunny day, the sky a cloudless blue. Mum and Dad are sitting on deckchairs, dozing as he approaches the advancing tide, the sand smooth and cold under his feet. Mum waves. Under his arm is the lilo Dad inflated for him. It is horse shaped. Ignoring the other children around him, he lets the lilo float on the water, then climbs on it, clinging to the horse’s mane. He rides the horse, buoyant on the lapping waves. He feels the sun’s rays on his back. Mum will have to spread the pink calamine lotion on his skin later. He doesn’t know how much time has passed since he last looked towards the shore but this time he can’t pick out his parents from the mass of holidaymakers crowded on the beach – tiny figures in swimsuits, row upon row of deckchairs, squares of blankets like colourful postage stamps covering the sand. Is it even the same beach?
He wakes up, breathless, heart hammering.
Nana sheds her apron to take him to the cinema, where he’s bored by Norman Wisdom in The Square Peg. Later, he’s allowed to make his own way to the pet shop two doors down, to stroke guinea pigs, rabbits and hamsters. There’s a budgerigar with beautiful green and yellow feathers, which Nana buys for him.
‘Look after him,’ she says.
He calls the bird Joey and keeps him in his bedroom. The cat scratches frantically at the door now and again but he makes sure that it’s always closed firmly.
He remembers once, when they were alone, Mum had said, ‘We were courting, and they invited me for dinner and you know what, there was a cat hair on the roast potatoes.’ Mum made it clear she did not like the squat brick terraces of the East End, with their tiny rectangular concrete yards and outdoor lavatories, a warren of alleyways behind them.
The next day he and Nana come back to a gleaming fruit machine in the shop. A heavy man with a greasy quiff stands over Grandpa, his forefinger stabbing at Grandpa’s chest.
‘You better take this, mate.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘You want another brick through the window?’
‘We’ll have the fruit machine, Harry,’ Grandma says. ‘Take it.’
‘I’ll empty it Fridays,’ the man grins.
Where is Superman when we need him? the boy thinks. Why isn’t he rushing towards us, fists clenched, red cape fluttering?
Joey paces back and forth in his cage and starts to pluck out his own feathers as the black cab takes the boy home one bright sunny morning.
Dad opens the front door of the semi, frowns at the cage.
He follows Dad into the dining room where Mum rocks a crying baby wrapped in a blanket.
‘You’ll take care of your brother, won’t you?’ Dad says, squeezing his shoulder.
The boy stares into the baby’s crinkled pink face and, like the Joker, forces a smile.
Now retired after a career in higher education, Jerard Bretts lives in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. He completed an MA in Creative Writing in 2019. His recent flash fiction has appeared in the MinK anthologies Tales from the City, Dreams for Lammas, Home and Dreams for Beltane.
