John Harvey - Easy Meat

The last words Norma Snape said to her youngest that Thursday: You let me get my hands on you, you little tripeshanks, and Ill wring your miserable neck! Like so much of Normas life, their memory would haunt her, words like angry fingers down her throat, again and again until she all but choked. And Nicky-its doubtful if, between the slam of the door and the ring of his own high-pitched laughter, Nicky heard a thing.

It had started the way it so often did, the four of them tumbling over one another inside the small, flat-fronted terraced house: Nickys sister, Sheena, out of the bathroom at last and slamming from room to room in search of a clean blouse, her green factory overalls, a right shoe; Nicky, barely fifteen, down the stairs three at a time, chanting along to the Walkman that hung from the belt of his jeans. Mum, you seen my blouse? Sheena called. Mum, wheres all the toast? Mum, I thought you were going to iron these? Only the eldest, Shane, fair hair and slate-gray eyes, eight days short of his eighteenth birthday, was still flush in the center of the worn settee, eating toast and drinking his third mug of tea while he watched The Big Breakfast on TV.

Mum

Norma, hair not combed out, still not properly dressed, opened the back door to let out the gray cat, and the dog, which had been scratching at the outside of the door unheeded, scuttled to its empty bowl and began to bark.

For Christs sake, Norma said. Dont you start.

On the enamel drainer alongside the sink, used tea bags bled orange onto spilled milk; a half-eaten bowl of soggy Coco Pops sat speckled with coffee granules. Shanes best shirt hung drying from the back of a chair; cotton knickers made a patchwork quilt along the radiator top. Norma pulled a can of dog food from the back of the fridge and began to search for the opener.

Nicky, get out of my bloody way! Sheenas voice.

Get out of the way yourself!

From the other room, Norma heard a punch and a slap and then, above the sound of the TV, Shanes warning shout. Norma stubbed out the smoldering end of the cigarette she had lit earlier and forgotten, and fished another from the packet. Unable to find her lighter, she bent her head and lit the cigarette from the stove.

Mum, I thought you were going to iron this blouse? Sheena stood in the doorway, cream blouse in one hand, outline of her ribs visible between her off-white bra and the top of her short black skirt; she still didnt seem to have found her other shoe.

Will you cover yourself up, for Christs sake, Norma said.

Yeh, said Nicky, pushing past her into the kitchen, nobody wants to see your feeble tits anyway.

No? Then how come youre always hanging round outside the bathroom every morning?

Cause Im nearly shitting myself, thats why, waiting for you to plaster your spots with Polyfilla.

Sheena swung out at him with her blouse, flicking it at the kidney-shaped burn mark discoloring the left side of his face. Dancing out of the way, laughing, Nicky collided with the table and then, as he stumbled off-balance, kicked the dogs food all across the floor.

Jesus, Norma thought, whens he ever going to grow up? Right! she shouted. Thats enough. Nicky, you get down there and clean up that mess. And Sheena, get shifting out of here or youll miss your bus. A few more times late and youll be for the sack.

Again, laughed Nicky.

Shut it! Norma said.

I dont suppose, said Shane, stirring himself during a commercial break, theres any more tea in the pot?

Thats right, said Norma, theres not.

As Nicky went to move the dogs bowl, the animal nipped at his hand and Nicky hit it smack on the nose with the bowls edge. Straightening its front legs, the dog showed its teeth and growled but then, thinking better of it, backed off into the corner and whined instead.

Pick on someone your own size, said Shane, fetching his brother a kick in the shin.

Nicky. Norma pointed from the doorway. I want that cleared up by the time Im back down here. And you can sort out that crap by the sink as well.

Why bloody me?

Because I told you to, thats why.

Shane chuckled and went back to watch the TV.

When Norma came back down ten minutes later, wearing an old jumper and sagging stretch pants to do her morning stint of cleaning in the pub, she found Nicky with his hand inside her bag, purse open, the last ten pounds she had about to make their way into his pocket.

You scuttering little bastard! What dyou think youre doing?

They both knew the answer to that.

Fear for a moment brightening his eyes, Nicky squeezed around the back of the table and made a dash for the back door. For a big woman, Norma moved fast, faster than Nicky might have thought. He had the door six inches open when with the flat of one hand she slammed it shut and with the other she slapped the side of his face, where the skin wrinkled liverish up from his neck.

You thieving geck!

Here. Nicky held the two five pound notes towards her, high above his head.

As Norma reached for them, he swiveled fast and left her catching air, the door yanked open wide enough and then pushed shut.

You let me get my hands on you, you little tripeshanks, and Ill wring your miserable neck!

She followed his laughter out into the yard, the bins and the empty rabbit hutch, the rusting trolley that had somehow found its way from Kwik Save and never made its way back. Stepping through the gate into the narrow alley that ran between the rows of houses, she started after her son as he ran, not hurrying now, a lazy jinking step between the dog shit and the broken glass. At the alleys end he stopped and waved the stolen money once in triumph, before disappearing from sight into the street.

Norma shivered and turned back towards the house.

Locking up, thats what he wants. Sheena was standing with her overall buttoned, ready to leave.

Here, Shane said, offering his mother his packet of Silk Cut. How much did he get this time?

Lighting the cigarette, Norma drew in the smoke and slowly exhaled. Only all I had. And then, as she lowered herself onto a chair, Youd think somewhere along the line hed learn his bloody lesson, wouldnt you? But even the petrol bomb, thrown by an angry neighbor whose house Nicky had burgled twice within the same week, hadnt done that. Oh, yes, when hed been laid up in the hospital, sure enough, Nicky had confessed the error of his ways; and those evenings when Norma had patiently tended to the burn marks on his arms and legs, blistering across his chest up to his neck and face, then Nicky had promised her, time and again, that he would change.

From his trouser pocket, Shane took a small fold of tens and twenties and pressed one of the twenties into her hand. Norma looked into the gray of his eyes. Dont ask, a voice told her, if you dont want to know. Thanks, she said. Thanks, love. Thanks.

Norma had grown up in Rotherham, the daughter of a steelworker and a mother who, in the lengthening intervals between six children, had worked behind the counter in the local shop. Norma had been the last born, the one who broke her mothers spirit and finally her heart.

By the time she was three years old, her father had thrown in his lot with a wall-eyed girl of seventeen who had come to the house one evening selling lucky heather; Norma knew him only as a memory, an envelope of curling photographs, an edge of bitterness, sharp on the blade of her mothers tongue.

So Norma had spent her early days in a carry-cot beside the jars of sweets and newspapers on the counter, alternately fussed over or ignored. Whenever she cried, she was passed from one customer to another, the recipient of much chin-chucking and baby talk, a great deal of cupboard love and all of it transitory; her mother was ever the last to pick her up, the first to put her down.