Pie Factory

I miss the smell of the pie factory.   I used to skip home from school, wafting on a cloud of gravy, like a Bisto kid.  It was homely and comforting; even when my own tea was a packet of Walkers’ cheese and onion crisps, it made me feel like I had a proper cooked meal inside me.  It’s closed now, but the building’s still there, looming like a huge brick monster on the brow of the hill.  Some of the windows are smashed; Clayton Corby and his mates go up there on their bikes and throw stones at them. 

No one cares.  First, there was the boiler accident, and then a few years later, they switched the ovens off; stopped making sausages and baking pies.  The town’s air was no longer warm and savoury; the people who worked there had to find new jobs and the children in my class started talking about ghosts and a curse.  The ghosts of the men who died there, burned by the hot water.  When I think of them, I can’t help but imagine them pink and scalded like boiled bacon.

Mum says I have hollow legs.  I’m always hungry, but there’s never anything in the house.  Not like my friend Sharon’s house, where there’s a whole cupboard full of crisps and biscuits.  I get free school dinners, so don’t be worrying that I’m deprived or something.  I’m table monitor, which means that I get to hold the metal jug, pouring thick, brown meaty puddles onto the children’s plates, then scraping the leftovers into the bin for the pigs.  If it’s fish fingers or pizza, I pour out glasses of water instead.

Today it was ‘car accident’.  That’s what I call ravioli.  It looks like what they might scrape up out of the road afterwards.  I couldn’t eat it, but I’m table monitor, so I just pushed it onto the other kids’ plates with the back of a knife and the dinner ladies didn’t notice. 

I had twelve pence of my pocket money left from the weekend, so I bought a Yorkie from the corner shop.  Ted behind the counter said, “hello Smiler – how’s your mum?” and I shrugged and said, “same as usual.”  He’s started selling videos in there and one of them is called Debbie Does Dallas.  “I don’t think that’s your cup of tea,” Ted said, when he caught me looking at the blonde lady on the front of the box.  “Is it a travel film?” I asked and he laughed and nodded.

My mum won’t be home for ages, but I’m allowed to let myself in now.  At first I used to sit on the wall outside until she came home, but the old lady opposite started asking me to go in her house and wait, which is really boring.  My mum got cross and asked why I didn’t just sit in the entry, but that’s even worse; it’s dark and full of spiders.  Nancy is quite nice, but she never stops talking and it makes my head hurt.  Her husband’s had a stroke and I don’t think he can say much, “she’s probably starved of conversation” mum says.  Anyway, I’m not trusted with a key, but mum leaves the back door key under a flowerpot up the garden and so I can go in and wait.  I can even light the gas fire myself.  You have to fold paper up so it makes a taper, light it with a match and then turn the knob on the side of the fire, so the gas comes out.  You can hear it hissing.  Sometimes I leave it too long and the flames shoot out with a bang as I light it.  Sometimes I drop the burning paper on the carpet and have to rub the soot in with my shoe.

Mum’s boyfriend, Neil, is coming round for his tea tonight, so we’ll have a proper meal.  Chops or something.  I don’t like the fat on a chop, it reminds me of slugs.  I cut it off and give it to the dog.  Then Neil says it’s the best bit and I shouldn’t waste it.  I don’t like Neil.  He stinks of aftershave and wears silky shirts, like an old lady, only with his chest hair showing.  His face is too red and his nose has purple veins on it.  He’s always borrowing money from mum to go to the pub or put bets on.  I don’t like the way he says it, not asking but telling; with an extra big smile, like it’s a treat for her to do it.

“He’s got his feet under the table,” my Nan says.  Only we never use the table, it’s always covered with newspapers.  I know what she means though.  Neil makes himself right at home and mum runs round after him like she’s his servant.

Mum used to work at the pie factory, but now she’s a receptionist at the School of Motoring on the High Street.  That’s how she met Neil - he was one of the driving instructors.  I don’t know what he does now; he used to have one of those cars with the sign on top, but now he doesn’t.  I used to see his orange Cortina around town and duck my head down in case he spotted me.  I don’t like him to keep tabs on me; he’d always ask where I was going, so I said the library, because it sounds like the sort of place where you don’t get into trouble.  I never said I was going to Woolworths to shoplift make-up with Sharon.  I’m not that stupid.

I’m bored with poking things into the flames of the gas fire, so I think I’ll make a start on tea.  I’ve watched mum peel potatoes so many times, it should come natural to me.  She’s always telling me I should “earn my keep”, but I’m only eleven, so I’m not sure what I should do.  When I said that Ted had a paper round going, she nearly wet herself laughing.  “Name one street round here, other than the one we live in,” she said.  And she was right – I couldn’t.  “Might, be a good thing,” Neil had said, looking at me through narrow eyes.  “She’ll get lost and we’ll never see her miserable face again.”  My neck went shivery then, like ants were walking up it. 

So, as my Nan would say, “I knocked that idea right on the head.”