Hi all, I’m back with another piece of slightly weirder fiction. I think this might be what the experts refer to as a “mood piece.” (They’re wrong, of course. This is exactly what happened, exactly the way I remember it.) Enjoy!
Ma hated it when Da went to the allotment. It meant she had no one to fight with. He’d sneak in, swap flat-caps at the hall stand and, with a soft click of the front door, he’d be gone again.
Me and Ma would have tea together, with the radio filling in for Da’s silent place. Her head twitched every time someone walked past the front door.
I wanted to have my own allotment when I left school. A patch of land, the cosy, tobacco-ey shed, a kettle, and glossy magazines of ladies in their knickers. Then Ma said she wanted a baby, and they’d disappear up to the bedroom, creaking the old bedsprings for hours.
Ma would come down to potter around for a while, angry in a happy way, which is as happy as she ever got, poor thing. I started going to the allotment. Took my homework with me, but mostly I just sat in the shed, smoking cigarettes. Eventually, I took to looking after Da’s vegetables. I’d bring them back in a crate and leave them in the hall. Ma would keep the vegetables with tattered leaves, or bruised or soft spots for us, and sell, or swap the rest.
It stayed like that even after Ma got pregnant. I’d thought Da would want to get back to his vegetables as soon as he’d done the business, but he stayed in the bedroom. The springs creaked all day and all night, even when Ma was downstairs. I got his old job at the factory and went to the allotment in the evenings.
It was a baby girl, plump as a potato. Me and Ma buried Da in the allotment one night. I buried his magazines with him, and a packet of cigarettes. Ma thought I should be around the house again for the young one. But I worried Da would get back up if I didn’t keep an eye on him.
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