The smell is disgusting. The mixture of piss and decaying meat is how I imagine a month-old corpse to smell. A corpse that’s been left to bloat and fester undiscovered, like that chap in Brixton I read about last week. The police only found him when someone reported seeing a cat playing with a gnawed-off finger. When they got inside his flat, he was just a nameless lump of rotting flesh, his eye sockets writhing with maggots.
I stare at my father slumped in his faded Queen Anne chair. A bottle of Bells lies abandoned by his side, its backwashed contents seeping into the carpet, staining old stains. I paid twelve pounds for the whiskey at the Polish shop down the road (it’s cheaper at Tesco, but the walk is too dangerous; it’s not worth getting dog shit on your shoes just to save one pound fifty).
How easy it would be for me to hold my hand over his mouth, to pinch his nose and watch him struggle with his alcohol-numbed limbs. That would put us both out of our misery. But it would mean I’d have to touch him, and I’d only do that if armed with a gas mask and industrial Marigolds.
He barely eats, preferring to glug his poison before pissing it out into his trousers. When the cirrhosis does finally finish him off, I wonder if his body will decay like a normal corpse. I’m sure all the booze he’s drunk will embalm him from the inside out, preserving him forevermore. I could keep him then. I’d wash and shave him and dress him in his smartest suit-the one he wore to Mum’s funeral. I’d play his Bobby Darin LPs on Grandma’s old gramophone whilst we played dominoes. Just like we used to.
Joan Collins winks at us from the TV screen. The foam pads in her gold Lamé make her look deformed. Her lips are stained with L’Oreal’s Cherry Passion; she looks like a whore. My Dad’s had a soft spot for Joan ever since he saw her on the cover of Tit-Bits back in ‘51. That’s why he married my mother; he always said that with her hair up, Mum looked like Joan (only with chunkier ankles).
I’ve laddered Mum’s stockings again. She wouldn’t be happy with me. As a child, I would sit on the floor and watch her as she put her tiptoe up on her dressing table stool. The stocking would be crumpled around her ankle, like a snake discarding its skin. She’d pull on baby blue cotton gloves and delicately slide the silk up her leg, securing it with straps at her thigh. I loved how these stockings changed her skin. All of her blemishes vanished under an illusion of perfection.
I always try to be as careful as she was when I put on stockings, but I guess men’s hands will never have the delicate touch of a woman’s. My fingers are calloused and rough from years of picking litter and cleaning the cobbled streets. I’ve got an old pot of Mum’s Ponds Cold Cream locked in my bedside drawer that I put on my hands every Friday. There’s hardly any left now, so I use it sparingly.
Dad saw me once, dressed in Mum’s Sunday best. It was a blue viscose tea dress, sprinkled with small white flowers. I remember her wearing it the Easter before she died. All the men stared at her as we walked to church. I didn’t like them looking at her like that and spat at them when her back was turned. I wonder if I look as beautiful in it as she did.
I was taking the shepherd’s pie out of the oven when I felt Dad’s hands on me. He cupped the curve of my buttocks as I bent over, murmuring Mum’s name. I’m not sure if he knew it was me and not her. Either way, he didn’t seem to care. I heard him fumbling with his zip. I stayed bent over and clung tightly to the hob. Maybe my plan would work after all. If he thought Mum was still alive, perhaps he’d stop drinking. Maybe he’d get better.
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