An Unnecessary List

An Unnecessary List

By Graham

I need to bring you in halfway through I’m afraid. I didn’t really have the old ‘recorder’ on before then. You know how it is; you must have the same problem yourself. And in my case, well, the memory is a bit flakey at the best of times, let alone when I’m not really listening.

But from halfway through, well, I am as a reliable as a solid-state chip. Spot on. No question.

It was in the lounge. I think. No, no, let me take that back. It was the kitchen. I know it was the kitchen because it was bolognaise night, and we weren’t having bolognaise. That’s what stuck a chord you see. I mean, if we’d had bolognaise on a bolognaise night, or for that matter not had bolognaise on a non-bolognaise night, I probably couldn’t be so sure. But it was, and we weren’t – and it has stuck in my mind.

        

So there we were, in the kitchen, sitting at the table. The cooker, I mean the cooker. Standing by the cooker. Waiting for the pizza to ping. Pizza in lieu of… you know.

        

‘Fifth, or sixth, possibly seventh.’ 

Audrey. That was Audrey. That’s what she said: possibly seventh. I mean, possibly seventh? Jesus. That hit home. That stuck in my mind. That switched the recorder on all right; I remember every word, syllable by syllable after that. I listened after that all right.

‘Ah.’ That was me. Not in a shocked way you understand, not even with a tiny little exhalation of surprise. No, I was proud of myself, proud of my control, the containment. Just a soft, gentle, almost disinterested little, ‘Ah.’

The timer gave its ding cum ping. The bolognaise surrogate was ready for extraction. I handed Audrey the glove and went in search of the cutter. I would carve. It was the least I could do, being responsible for the missing mince. The bolognaise mince.

We ate. Quietly. Not in silence, that would indicate tension. There was no tension; I was not tense. Audrey may have been, I don’t know, but I certainly was not. If she was content not to talk, so was I.

But I counted. In my head of course, but I counted. I couldn’t help it.

Her mother. Her mother must come into it, obviously. I mean they always do don’t they, girls and their mothers; at some point or other. And her father, he must be a candidate. There was the car on her twenty-first, and when he told her he would pay for university; he was always pretty generous. Still is. But does that count. I suppose it does. Well, right, that’s two then. Two. I had accounted for two.

Grandparents. Obviously, you must think. Not so. Granny Mavis, I’ll give you that, she is a kindly old stick. Nutty as a fruitcake ever since I’ve known her, but I bet she was a right lovely gran when Audrey was growing up. But that’s it there you see, because her old man has always been a grumpy sod. Even Audrey says that, as far back as she can remember. So that was him out of the count, as were the paternal pair. They both got killed in a freak crown-green bowling accident before Audrey hardly had her eyes open.

So. Three. Up to that point I just had three. No brothers or sisters, no favourite cousins that I knew about. Although there was her Auntie Vi. Yes, Aunt Vi. She took her somewhere. Disneyland? Paris? Somewhere or other, yes, I was pretty sure that could be one. Four.

But that was it. That was the best I could do. No, of course, Angela. There was Angela, her best friend. Nothing like that you understand, but they were close. Must have been. I mean, there were the camps, the sleepovers; lots, there must be lots. Not that I was particularly pleased about that you understand. After all, it’s still a hierarchical thing. But well, better that than…

That was when I realised. That was when it set in. Hard. Fast. Piercing. Oh shit. It was, I knew it. It had to be. I mean, five. I got to five. At best five. So that would leave… sixth. But only if I had the five. Only if the five were, well, legitimate. But what about the ‘possibly seventh’? Eh, what about that then? In that case, sixth means diddly squat. The fact that I had five, if that even, meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.

So, it all came blurting out. My resolve fell apart. All the Mum, and Dad, and Gran.  All that stuff came rolling out. Was this it? Had I got them all? Was it sixth, or was it… was it… was it seventh? I wanted to know. I just wanted to know. At all costs, I wanted to know.

And from then, as I said, I remember her every word. Every single word from that point on.

‘You,’ she said, ‘You, to be brutally honest.’ (I remember the brutally honest bit most of all) ‘You, barely make me happy at all. You may have made me happy once; but at best, at the very best, you were seventh. Out of all the people that have ever made me happy you were seventh.’

I had to ask. I just had to ask. Stupid.

‘But, who was the sixth. I only had five, who was the sixth?’

‘Five? You don’t have five.’

This was when she drove in the blade. This was when my little recorder in my head really kicked in. Oh for a delete key. How sweet would that be.

‘John, Rodger, Roger, Gerald, David, Richard.’

There was the briefest pause. The cat leapt up on to my lap, grabbed my last piece of pizza and ran off.

‘Actually, my mistake, I forgot Nigel. You rank eighth