The Hiding Place(7)

I remained unconvinced after Annie was born. A strange shrunken pink blob, her face all kind of squished and alien-looking. All she seemed to do was sleep, shit or cry. Her high-pitched wails kept me awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wishing my parents had bought me a dog or even a goldfish.

I continued in a state of apathy for the first few months, neither loving nor disliking my baby sister that much. When she gurgled at me or clutched my finger until it felt like it was turning blue, I remained unmoved—even as my mum cooed in delight and screeched at my dad to “get the bloody camera, Sean.”

If Annie crawled after me or touched my stuff, I would walk faster or snatch my things back. I wasn’t unkind, just disinterested. I hadn’t asked for her so I didn’t see why I had to pay her any attention.

This continued until she was about twelve months old. Just before her first birthday she started to walk and babble things that almost sounded like words. Suddenly she seemed more like a small person rather than a baby. More interesting. Amusing even, with her foreign-sounding gibberish and wobbly old-man steps.

I began to play with her and talk to her a little. When she began to mimic me back an odd feeling swelled in my chest. When she gazed at me and gabbled, “Joe-ee, Joe-ee,” my stomach glowed with warmth.

She started to follow me everywhere, copy everything I did; laugh at my silly faces, listen intently when I told her things she couldn’t possibly understand. When she was crying, one touch from me and she would stop, so eager to please her big brother that all her other woes were instantly forgotten.

I had never been loved in such a way before. Not even by Mum and Dad. They loved me, of course. But they didn’t look at me with the same unabashed adoration as my little sister did. No one did. I was more used to being looked at with pity or scorn.

I wasn’t a little boy with many friends. I wasn’t shy, exactly. One teacher at my junior school told my parents I was “standoffish.” I guess I just found other little boys, with their dull pursuits like climbing trees and fighting, a bit boring and stupid. Besides, I was perfectly happy being on my own. Until Annie came along.

For my sister’s third birthday I saved up my pocket money and bought her a doll. It wasn’t one of the expensive ones you could buy in the toy store, the ones that made noises and peed themselves. It was what my dad would call a “knockoff” from the market. It was actually a bit ugly and creepy with its hard, blue-eyed stare and odd pursed lips. But Annie loved that doll. She took it everywhere with her and cuddled it to sleep every night. For some reason (probably a name misheard) she called it “Abbie-Eyes.”

By the time Annie was five Abbie-Eyes had become consigned to a shelf in Annie’s room, replaced in favor by Barbie and My Little Pony. But if Mum ever suggested taking her to the rummage sale, Annie would snatch her back with a cry of horror and hold her so tight I was surprised those blue plastic eyes didn’t pop right out of their sockets.


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Annie and I remained close as we grew older. We read together, played cards or computer games on my secondhand Sega Genesis. On rainy Sunday afternoons when Dad was at the pub and Mum was busy ironing, the air full of static warmth and the smell of fabric softener, we’d curl up on a beanbag and watch old videos together—E.T., Ghostbusters, Raiders of the Lost Ark; sometimes a few newer, more grown-up ones Annie probably shouldn’t have been watching, like Terminator 2 and Total Recall.

Dad had a mate who pirated them and sold them for 50p. The picture was a bit fuzzy and sometimes you couldn’t always make out the actors’ words, but as Dad was fond of saying, “Beggars can’t be choosers” and “You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

I knew Mum and Dad didn’t have a lot of money. Dad used to work down the pit but, after the strike, even though they didn’t close our pit right away, he left.

He’d been one of the miners who didn’t walk out. He never spoke about it, but I knew the bad feeling, the tension and fights—coworker against coworker, neighbor against neighbor—had been too much. I was pretty young when it all happened but I remember Mum scrubbing the word “SCAB” off our front door. Once, someone threw a brick through our window when we were inside watching TV. The next night Dad went out with some of his mates. When he came back he had a cut on his lip and looked all messed up. “It’s taken care of,” he said to Mum in a hard, grim voice I’d never heard before.

Dad changed after the strike. He had always been, in my eyes, a giant of a man, burly and tall, with a shock of thick, curly dark hair. Afterward, he seemed to shrink, become thinner, more stooped. When he smiled, which he did less and less often, the lines at the corners of his eyes sliced deeper into his skin. Gray started to shoot through his hair at the temples.

He decided to leave the pit and retrain as a bus driver. I don’t think he really liked his new job. It paid a decent enough wage, but not as much as he had earned down the pit. He and Mum argued more, usually about how much she was spending or how he didn’t realize what a growing family cost to feed and clothe. That was when he’d go down to the pub. He only drank at one in the village. The same one the other miners who’d gone into work drank in. The Arnhill Arms. The miners who’d downed tools drank in the Bull. The Running Fox was the only place that was kind of neutral ground. None of the miners drank in there. But I knew some of the older kids did, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t run into their dad or their grandad.