Skittles

I recognised it immediately. Nine small skittles hung limply down, dangling on their strings. I pulled it out from behind the cardboard box and the skittles swung backwards and forward in unison. I set it down and looked at it, remembering. A square wooden board about six hundred millimetres on a side, or two feet in the old measure. Strings emerged from the nine holes arranged in a diamond shape and were threaded through the hollow skittles and tied off at the top. Each skittle was around one hundred millimetres tall, or around four to five inches, the size of a big sausage. The board had a single larger hole, and a brass scoring plate with movable pointers.

“Now where is it?” I said to myself as I scrabbled behind the box. “Ahh!”

I drew out a wooden post with a wooden ball attached to it by a chain, and I fitted it into the large hole on the baseboard. I pulled on the red button, which in turn pulled all the strings attached to the skittles, causing them to stand up. One of them, as usual, failed to stand up, and I had to stand it up by hand.

“There.” I sat back and looked at the bar skittles set. It had been years. I took the ball in my hand and swung it around the post and it swung back towards the skittles and, as usual, missed most of them.

I picked it up and carried it to the loft hatch.

“Look what I found.”

My bother-in-law stuck his head up through the hatch. “What the hell is that?”

***

My father brought out the skittles set after Christmas lunch, one year when I was still a child.

“What’s that, Des?” asked my mother. My Aunts and Uncles peered at the game with mild after-lunch interest.

“It’s a game, dear. I thought the kids would like it.”

He put it on the table and the ball on a chain swung wildly, and the skittles rolled and rattled. He pulled the red button and the skittles stood up. Except for the one that never did. We played the game for a while, laughing and giggling, until the adults got bored. My cousins drifted off one by one to play with their Christmas presents until I was the only one left, idly swinging the ball round the post, trying hit the elusive skittles. Eventually one of the uncles became fed up with the constant clatter and rattle of the ball and skittles, and the game was put away.

***

The board had a slight stain on it, which reminded me of another Christmas lunch when my Aunts and Uncles came over. I was playing with the skittles set on the floor because all the adults were chatting around the table.

“Can you imagine how I felt when I found out?” That was my cousin Pam’s mum.

“I can imagine. But you weren’t much older than her when you had David, were you?”

“What? I was at least two years older! How can you say such things when your so-called premmie was full-term weight! At least I was married!”

“Only just,” muttered Granny Silver, sipping her sherry.

“Now look here—“

I tuned out the adults and watched my cousin Pam’s baby crawl up to me. Crawling seemed to be the most difficult thing in the world. He changed direction and found his way to the skittles game and bashed it with his chubby hands and the skittles all fell over.

“Aww! Stupid baby,” I said.

As I struggled to lift him, he lost his nappy and peed. All over me, the carpet, and the skittles game.

“Mu-um!” I yelled in distress.

Mum took a quick look. “Pam, sort your baby out, please!”

***

One of the strings that raised the skittles broke and Dad took the back off the baseboard to fix it. I dimly recall that one of my cousins broke the string somehow, but I don’t remember how it happened. It wasn’t at a family Christmas gathering.

“It shouldn’t be too hard to fix, son.” His breath smelled of beer.

Uncle Paul nodded. “Yeah. It’s just strings. It should be easy.”

Inside the baseboard the strings ran in channels from the red button to the holes in baseboard. At one or two places the strings ran under staples. My Dad and his brother looked at the strings, the staples and the channels. Then they looked at each other.

“I can’t be that hard,” said my Dad, and Uncle Paul nodded.

They worked on it for several hours without success. The beer that they drank probably didn’t help. Every time that they thought that they had it fixed, they turned it over and one or more skittles would not rise or wouldn’t fall all the way over.

I took the game to the father of one of my friends, and he fixed for me in minutes.

“There you go,” he said. “All fixed. Erm, except for that one skittle. It will never work properly.”

***

We were having Christmas alone one year. Mum was crying. Dad was angry. My siblings and I were keeping quiet and out of the way. Neither Mum nor Dad ever hit us, but still...

“I can’t help it if they are getting bigger! We need at least one school shirt. John needs new shoes. His old ones are too small and they are splitting! We can’t pass them down! And there are other things that they need too. Stationery! School trips!”

Dad thumped the table. “It never ends! It’s driving me mad! Money for this, money for that, money for something else!”

“Of course it doesn’t end! Not until they can get jobs! And what are they going to do? Work at dead-end jobs because they didn’t go to college?”

Dad sighed. He understood. “I’ll see if I can get more shifts. Ah, I’m going out for a walk!”

The door slammed.

“What’s going on, Mum?” I was distressed.

Mum wiped away her tears. “Don’t worry, John. Just adult stuff. Just play with the skittles while I cook the chicken.”

We couldn’t afford a turkey, and it was only a small chicken. We couldn’t afford to go to our grandparents. Our Aunties and Uncles would not be coming around. They were in the same boat as we were.

We ate our Christmas chicken and Mum saved some for Dad. We kids had a mince pie each, but I remember that Mum didn’t have one.

Dad came home a couple of hours later, and he didn’t say a word. He just kissed and hugged Mum. They shared the few beers that they could afford. Dad put his bottle on the skittles board and it left a ring.

“Jeez, I’m sorry, John. That was stupid of me!“ He was horrified but I wasn’t upset. “We’ll see if can fix it tomorrow.”

We never did.

***

Things became better in some ways, and worse in others. Dad was paid well now, and we lived in a nice house. We had furniture, a TV, and a washing machine, and all us kids had our own bed.

Mum and Dad argued all the time. Mum was always one for keeping up with the Joneses, but Dad remembered the bad times, and was tight with his money.

That Christmas we had a big turkey which probably lasted us well into January. Mum and Dad had a couple of bottles of wine in the fridge. We kids had presents encased in plastic and wrapped in gaudy paper and enough chocolate and sugar treats to ensure that we would be hyperactive all day. There was a Christmas tree with baubles starting half way up, because of the cat.

I brought out the bar skittles game.

“That old thing,” observed Dad. “It’s almost a Christmas tradition.”

He swung the ball at the skittles and missed. He sighed. I played with it until Mum decided that we should open our presents, and then it got shoved to one side. The cat decided that the skittles would make a comfortable bed and lay on it.

Later in the afternoon, Mum and Dad started to argue as they steadily emptied the wine bottles, and we kids kept out of the way. I played with the skittles with my sister, even though I was too old to have much interest in it. Then we watched a movie on the TV in the lounge, while Mum and Dad grumbled at each other, sitting around the kitchen table, drinking the wine.

***

All our Aunts and Uncles came round one Christmas. Mum and Dad were barely talking to each other by then and Mum was mostly in the kitchen with the women, tending to the turkey and steadily drinking wine. Dad was in the lounge with the men, handing out whisky, ginger ale and cigarettes. All the Aunts and Uncles knew about their problems, but everything was cordial.

I had brought out the skittles game and my younger cousins and the older cousins’ kids were playing with it, while I was drinking sodas and occasionally stopping fights over the game.

After lunch all the adults sat around drinking and eating nuts and raisins and Christmas chocolate, avoiding talking about the elephant in the room, which was unlike them. All of a sudden Mum and Dad started to shout at one another across the room and everyone just fell quiet. We kids paused, shocked by what was happening. Mum and Dad were screaming in each other’s face, and Dad suddenly turned away.

“I can’t do this. I’m leaving.”

He brushed past the table and this knocked all the skittles down.

“Sorry,” he said.

One of the small kids started to cry, everyone started talking, and my Dad disappeared out of the door. I saw him a few times after that, when he came to pick up his stuff, and then didn’t see him for several years. I never ever got the skittles game out again, or so I thought. But, according to my sister, I was wrong.

***

“She kept it all this time!” my sister said.

“She probably put it away and forgot about it,” I suggested.

“It’s a game,” guessed Jake, my brother-in-law.

“You remember it, Jake! We played with it one Christmas, when you came over, well before we were married,” said my sister. She looked to me for confirmation.

“I don’t remember that, Sal,” I said. “I don’t remember getting it out after Dad left.”

“Well, you did,” insisted my sister.

I showed Jake how it worked. “You pull the string and all the skittles stand up. Except that one which has never worked properly. Then you swing the ball around the post and try to knock the skittles down.”

I demonstrated, but missed completely, and we all laughed. Jake had a go and knocked one skittle down. My sister had a turn and got three down, and we played with the game for a while.

“What are we going to do with it?” asked my sister.

“Your kids?” I suggested, gesturing at her bulging midriff. The older one was napping.

She put her hand on her bulge, and thought. “Er, no. Rather not. What about you?”

“My kids are too old.” I sighed. “But I’ll take it.”

Dad had remarried and I see his step-family now and then. They’re nice people. He’d died pretty young, of cancer. I had been sad when he left, of course, but I never hated him. His split with Mum was just something unpleasant that had happened to us.

Mum had never remarried, but had a late baby with her partner. I gained a half-brother. I’d become close to Mum’s partner and his family, and was devastated when he had collapsed and died a year or so ago. Mum had never got over his death.

I took the game home and my kids marvelled at it and then went back to their electronic devices, so I stuck it in the attic, and if the mice and the wood-boring insects haven’t destroyed it by now it is still there, gathering dust, to this day.