9

When Mal returned from hospital the dynamic shifted to where it had always been, with him as the focal point. His absence had yanked a wheel from the cart and we’d all got out to push. With him back, we could all slot neatly into our seats. Things, for a while at least, were normal. Dad was being quiet again.

On the eighth floor of the biggest department store in town we were causing a fuss. Elderly shoppers with a need to concern themselves in matters not of their concern poured scorn from the far end of aisles of soft furnishings. Assistants shuffled shelf stackings and pondered intervening, but none of them ever did. Instead they looked on as Mal and I bounced on brand new beds still wrapped in plastic sheeting. We’d take it in turns to hide deep inside piles made of beanbags and cushions, or to toss crisp white sheets across each other’s heads, snow in make-believe winter ambushes. This is what Saturday morning always felt like when we were young and together.

Dad would drive us into town nice and early, before the crowds arrived. I knew it was a special occasion, despite its regularity, because Mal would always be dressed when it came time to leave. We’d clamber into the back seat and wave at Mum through the rear window as she stood in the kitchen. She only ever came with us once, and it ended in a row about the colour of lino. It didn’t really seem worth it after that. Her presence was replaced by the introduction of the shopping list she had written out the night before. Dad would approach it with military precision to minimise the time spent walking from shop to shop whilst achieving each objective. Once he felt we were suitably trained in this area he’d simply hand the list to Mal, who would take great pride in figuring out what the shortest possible route through town would be, depending upon whether we needed apples, or light bulbs, or flour, or whatever whim constituted a bargain. On the way home he’d try and figure out the longest route possible too.

This routine allowed us more time for Dad to indulge himself in the only thing he appeared to truly enjoy. Well, there was fishing, but no one enjoyed fishing really.

Ellis’s store felt bigger than real life. What it didn’t sell, you didn’t need. It had men stood at the revolving front doors who were resplendent in red overcoats and black peaked caps. They looked like the soldiers that guard the entrance to a cuckoo clock. Once inside, each of its eight vast floors was a trove of goods lit so brightly that it was impossible to cast a shadow in any direction. Purple velvet ropes trimmed with shiny silver buckles formed cordons around anything that wouldn’t survive an errant elbow. I used to think they had been put in place for Mal alone, who often destroyed things of value.

Past the gadgetry and through the food hall we’d march in Dad’s tow until we reached our destination, where a rare smile pulled his face taut. Tucked away in the far corner of the store, between the barbecue sets and the heavy-duty garden tools that we pretended were space weapons from the future, were a small set of brass-covered doors so polished and shiny that they caught all who stared into them as a golden sepia photograph. Behind them was one of the oldest lifts in the country.

We’d edge gently inside once it had obeyed our calling, which it always did immediately because, as Dad would suggest, we were the only ones that knew of it. It was always there to greet us on the ground. Inside it was only big enough for two adults, or one adult and two children, a formula that still resulted in Mal or me being tightly packed against Dad’s legs. Once the doors had closed behind us the light was that of dawn. It bounced from the reflective silver walls and circled the brass that held the big black buttons in place, playing tricks on your eyes, taking them back in time, making them feel sleepy and warm.

‘A feat, boys, of modern engineering,’ Dad would whisper before lifting one of us from the floor, whoever’s turn it happened to be, to the height of the biggest button of all, the one numbered eight. With a clunk and a whirr the levers and ropes would gradually fall into place and our ascent would begin. It was fast enough to feel that we were moving but slow enough so as to never know how far we had left to travel. The slightest movement would rock it from side to side and we’d shuffle our weight across it to test the patience of the machine. I worried that those ropes might give way. I imagined the heavy box they carried slipping from their grasp as easily as one might grip a dead pheasant by its foot and tug the cartilage out from the skin that encased its leg. I’d grasp Dad by the knee until the fear passed and he’d place one of his big, rough hands on the back of my head. I’d hear him say ‘Safest machine in the world, this’, though he hadn’t even moved his mouth.

At the summit the doors would open slowly and we’d burst from our secret capsule out into the store, greyhounds with a whiff of rabbit, and Dad would tell us off again.