Grace Dent - Hungry

Mudlark

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First published by Mudlark 2020

FIRST EDITION

Grace Dent 2020

Cover layout design by Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph Author (girl), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Grace Dent asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008333171

Ebook Edition October 2020 ISBN: 9780008333195

Version: 2020-10-01

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• Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008333171

For David Dent.

The funniest person I know.

This is a sort of memoir.

Its about my memories.

Other peoples memories of how my life happened may differ.

Names have been changed in order to give privacy to people who never imagined their secrets would end up in a book published by HarperCollins.

Some places, events, dates and times have also been changed for that reason.

The past is a foreign country; they eat chips differently there.

Grace Dent, 2020

When I was a little lass, the world was half a dozen streets, an a bit o waste land, an the rest was all talk.

Ena Sharples, Coronation Street, 1965

Carlisle, 2017

Where would you say Carlisle is, George?

I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

Wheres Carlisle? the nurse repeats.

My dad does not answer.

Have you heard of it?

I look at my phone, merely to self-soothe.

Instead, an email from a Guardian editor arrives, begging for the incredibly late 800-word restaurant column that I had promised to write on the 10.03 out of Euston. I did not write the piece. Instead, I placed my face against the cold window and drifted off, letting Milton Keynes become Wigan North Western become Shap become home.

Can you have a guess? she says. He looks at her and says nothing. His silence wounds me.

The nurse marks something down in her notes.

I look at her and maintain my gaze. She believes me, doesnt she? She looks away, sharply.

Carlisle, summer 1980

My dad is making sketty for our tea. And I am helping, because Im seven years old and nothing goes on in this house that I dont have my nose in.

Any rustlings of supermarket carrier bags, any raised voices, any arrival at the front door of 21 Harold Street, Ill know about them. Tonight my dads in charge, as my mother is out doing the job that she doesnt like mentioned. My dads childcare regime, like that of most Seventies dads, is a rudimentary affair. As long as weve had food, were allowed to play out until its dark. Sometimes later. We roam free over two square miles of back-to-back terraced streets and fields. Were warned to mind the busier roads. Me, my little brother David and the eleven or so kids from along Harold Street play out for hours and hours, chucking tennis balls at the sides of the houses and hurtling ourselves on roller skates down the cement slope from the nearby Bishop Goodwin C of E Primary School car park. Or well break off in splinter groups into different kids bedrooms. Im often found loitering around Tracey Scalebys house at Number 17, sending Sindy dolls on a sexy caravan holiday with her brother Scotts Action Men, a burly gang with eagle eyes and clasping hands. On Sundays we go to the Currock Villa Youth Club and dance in long formation lines to Freedom by Wham!, throwing our arms in the air to once, twice, forever, and then well play dodge-the-local-shady-grown-up-helper-who-wants-to-wrestle-you-for-a-little-bit-too-long.

On warmer nights well take the bags of misshapen mint Viscounts our aunties buy us from the factory shop inside Carrs biscuit factory down to the abandoned allotments near the West Coast mainline railway track, which takes you the 317 miles into Euston, London a terrible dirty place where everyone is unfriendly. Its not like here. If you got attacked in the street in London, no one would help you. Theyd pretend not to see. Not like in Carlisle where folk would shout and scream at bad people and think it was wrong.

We take our biscuits down to where the gypsies keep their horses and feed the tamer ones bread crusts from our mams bread bins. Or well play houses or make grass cuttings into the boundaries of princess castles. Well hurtle through hedges playing Japs and Commanders. Well sit in our favourite den inside an enormous overgrown bush, sharing bottles of Barrs Scotch Cola and leafing curiously through tattered copies of Fiesta, gawping at women in no knickers holding their knees apart. Sometimes well roam beyond our boundary of Currock, wantonly searching out the dens that belong to rival gangs of kids from nearby Carlisle districts like Upperby, Harraby or Botcherby. We howl with glee as we stomp all over their leafy hideouts.

But I am equally happy when Im indoors just kicking about with my dad, and tonight were making sketty the more complex of his two-recipe artillery. His other stock standard is baked beans on fried bread. At a push he could open a tin of corned beef. Sometimes and this is the very best possible turn of events well get a bag of Salt n Shake crisps and fifty pence to buy us all chocolate at Cellar Five, the off-licence at the end of Harold Street. My little brother David likes a Curly Wurly and my dad, always, a bar of Cadburys Fruit & Nut. My big brother Bob doesnt stay in with us anymore. He lives at Grans house sometimes. Now seventeen, he comes and he goes, always with hair that antagonises my mother too long, too short, too dyed, too spikey; the neighbours must be having a field day often off out to one of the many pubs in Carlisle that serve the underage unblinkingly.

My dad sits in his chair and skims his thumbnail through the foil on his chocolate. I will never see Cadburys purple without thinking of my father. Cadburys purple is love. Cadburys purple is me and him toddling slowly back from the NAAFI shop before he left the forces. My first memories of Dad are him in his REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) uniform in 1976. Me holding one finger of his big hand, examining the puddles, dawdling; both of us laughing together. Me carrying a bag of Cadburys Buttons with a nursery rhyme of Little Jack Horner on the side. Cadburys purple is two identical Dairy Milk Easter eggs from Gran. One for me, one for David, perched on the top shelf of the living-room dresser. We are forbidden to touch them before Good Friday when Jesus gets on his cross. The waiting is agony. Cadburys means being sent down the offy. That said, Im also partial to a Rowntrees Lion Bar, as it lasts longer than other chocolate. It is the best thing ever when David wolfs down his Curly Wurly in two minutes and Im still sat watching