So me and Maggie hatched a plan. The next day after P.E. we retreated to the changing room and pulled off our stretchy navy-blue shorts and black plimsolls. The whole school had to wear those black plimsolls with the stretchy panel in the front and Susan, well she was so fragile, so small, so brainy, she couldn’t have the black school plimsolls like the rest of us. She had to have pretty pink slipperettes with the non-slip soles in case she hurt herself in the big nasty gymnasium. As if it wasn’t bad enough she got special treatment in the classroom for being brainier than the rest of us, now she got special treatment in P.E. ’cause she was so fragile.
Maggie and I changed quickly out of our P.E. gear and into our school uniforms and our hearts were racing at the thought of our plan and the excitement made us shriek with laughter as we waited to get it under way. Eventually, Susan arrived, last back to the changing room as usual. Poor Susan, so fragile, so small, so brainy, that she had to take her time coming from the gymnasium lest she should hurt herself on the way. And as Susan busied herself getting out of her navy-blue stretchy shorts and pink slipperettes, Maggie and I pretended we weren’t paying any attention to her at all and talked between ourselves about this and that, boys mostly, boys who fancied Maggie with her big tits and fat arse, and we racked our brains trying to come up with at least one boy who might fancy me in this lifetime, but none came to mind. And we watched Susan as she headed to the shower, then we made our move. We raced across to her open locker and there they were, those little pink fucking slipperettes with their non-slip soles and I looked at Maggie and Maggie looked at me.
‘Right, grab them,’ I said in a loud whisper.
‘No, you grab them,’ she loudly whispered back.
‘No, you grab them. It was your fuckin’ idea,’ I said, the whisper no longer a whisper.
‘No, you fuckin’ grab them, we’re in this together,’ she almost shouted.
‘Keep your voice down, for Chrissake. Right, let’s both of us grab one each at the same time, that way I can’t blame you and you can’t blame me!’ I whispered back.
So we did. We put our right hands into the locker and Maggie took one pink slipperette by the toe and I took the other pink slipperette by the heel and we ran together screaming like banshees down the corridor and crashed through the swing doors, nearly taking them off their hinges and out into the playground and we kept on running and screeching all the way to the other side of the school to the garbage-bin compound and once we were there we stopped, each of us holding our pink slipperettes and laughing so hard that it hurt.
‘Right, what now?’ I panted.
‘Let’s throw them into that big bin there at the back, that way she’ll never get them back,’ Maggie said.
‘Aye, good idea,’ I said. ‘Okay, I’ll say one two three, then we’ll throw them into the bin at the same time, then it’s both our faults, right?’ I said.
‘Aye, right,’ Maggie said, and just as we were about to count to three, Maggie looked at me and her eyes twinkled with badness. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘Before we put them in the bin, why don’t we rub them in that dog shite that’s over there in the corner? That way, even if she does find them, she’ll never want them back again with dog shite all over them.’
Quietly, I didn’t think the dog shite was such a good idea, but if I ever wanted to get a boyfriend I’d have to hang around with Maggie with her big tits and fat arse so I agreed with her and told her I thought it was a brilliant idea.
‘Okay, let’s do it,’ I said and a strange sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, the fun suddenly gone from it all. We made our way to that dog shite, each of us still holding our slipperettes, and we did what Maggie suggested. When we were done, we threw them into the big bin at the back and ran all the way back to the main school playground and neither of us was laughing anymore.
The plan that had seemed so much fun, so hilarious as we were hatching it, was no longer funny and I felt sick in my stomach. What harm had her slipperettes done us anyway? What harm did her braininess do us? It felt like a horrible mistake and when we saw her come out of the gym building carrying her little gym bag with tears in her eyes, I felt sick. She came up to us, ’cause we were her friends, and asked if we’d seen her slipperettes anywhere, that she’d lost them and if she went home without them her da would take the belt to her. I looked at her and wanted to cry with shame. So what if she was brainier than me? So what if her nostrils did flare in and out when she got her homework back from the teacher with another fucking gold star on it? So what if she was so fragile and her feet so small that she couldn’t wear the black plimsolls like the rest of us?
Maggie thought the whole business was a hoot and she said later that if Susan’s mother replaced the slipperettes then we should do the same next time we were in the gym. I laughed and told Maggie that was a brilliant idea but started to wonder if I was really that desperate to find a boyfriend. I was ashamed of myself and what I’d done and I vowed to myself right there and then that no matter how desperately I wanted a boyfriend, I’d never rub anybody else’s pink slipperettes in dog shite again.
And Susan never found out what we’d done to her pink slipperettes and she went on getting the gold stars that made her nostrils flare and my best pal Maggie and me, well, we went on getting the red pen, and the terrible shame of the pink slipperettes would stay with us our whole lives long.
A few years later, just like I always knew she would, my best pal Maggie got herself a new best pal and her new best pal’s name was Linda Hodgekiss. Linda had long, shiny chestnut hair and big tits too, just like Maggie, and one day in the playground they sang ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘Nothing Could Be Finer Than To Be In Carolina In The Morning’ and that’s when I went to the tuck shop and got myself a Curly Wurly.
I sat in the playground by myself at playtimes after that and I didn’t care ’cause if I couldn’t have Maggie as my best pal, then I didn’t want anybody. And nobody asked me why Maggie wasn’t my best pal anymore and why we weren’t singing our songs together anymore and why we weren’t going to each other’s houses at lunchtime anymore. Nobody cared, ’cause Maggie and Linda just looked so right together, so shiny and chestnutty together, that everybody soon forgot that it was me and Maggie who played with the blue crayons that first day at school; that it was me who was Maggie’s best pal first; that it was me and Maggie who sang ‘You are my sunshine’ and ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning’; and that it was me and Maggie who were going to sing on a real stage one day and make so much money we’d have all the tinned macaroni and cheese that money could buy.
20
Buster’s weekend by the sea
We had a caravan by the sea at Lendalfoot and my da used to let us go there sometimes with Mum on the weekends, so long as we’d collected all the milk money on the Friday night before. There was no sand there, just gravel and rocks and rock pools and crabs, and the waves would crash up hard against the rocks and if we were on the beach we’d have to run for cover. Mum bought us some fishing line once and we sat by the rock pools with our lines in the water forever and a day but we didn’t catch anything and Mum said that didn’t matter ’cause at least we were out getting the fresh air about our arses. The Irish Sea washed up dark-brown seaweed every day and if the sun came out the seaweed attracted millions of flies. Sometimes if we poked it with a stick a terrible smell would escape and we played a game of seeing who could run away from the smell the fastest.
We loved going to the caravan ’cause my da never came with us. It was brilliant. But even though he never came Mum would be sad knowing he was up to no good with all those filthy whores at the pub while we were down by the sea getting the fresh air about our arses.
My da had bought our caravan cheap and we felt like royalty that first weekend we went there. Our caravan was number 15b and we made a rock garden at the front of it and planted nasturtiums and pansies that Mum had bought from the garden centre. There w
asn’t any electricity and when the sun went down we used to light up the gas mantles and sing songs and sometimes we’d go for long walks in the dark with Mum. We’d look across the sea to Paddy’s Milestone where a solitary light flashed every night and we’d wonder who would be standing there with a torch like that flashing away and Mum told us it wasn’t a torch but a lighthouse and its flashing light warned sailors not to come too close.
The caravan site had a shop where you could buy stuff like crisps and milk and Fairy Liquid and it was owned by Doogie who owned the caravan site. We used to call him, ‘Doogie Woogie wi’ the hairy nose’ ’cause he had long hairs growing out of his nostrils and Mum said she wondered why Doogie’s wife didn’t just pluck the bloody hairs out or cut them off at least. One night after our dinner and once we’d sung all the songs we knew, we went to Doogie’s shop and Mum bought us a packet of crisps each. I had pickled onion flavour ’cause they’re my favourite and the four of us ran back to the caravan and huddled around the gas fire and ate them and Andrew invented a game. It was brilliant. You had to take your empty crisp bag and hold it up to the gas fire as close as you could get it and the heat from the fire would shrink the bag before your very eyes and whoever got their packet the smallest, so long as you could still read the writing, won the game. Andrew was the best at it ’cause he wasn’t scared to burn his fingers, but I won the game once and you should have seen the size of the writing on my packet of pickled onion, it was tiny. That night Andrew got mad and said I was cheating, that his packet was the smallest, and Mum gave Andrew a crack on the arse and told him if he didn’t sit down and behave himself then he could go outside and look at the flashing light on Paddy’s Milestone for the rest of the night and we’d soon see how he liked that.
Once we took Buster with us to the caravan for the weekend and we had to be careful, ’cause Buster didn’t like anybody else except us and we were always getting into trouble with the police at home ’cause he kept biting people who dared to come to our front door. We arrived at the caravan late that Friday night after we’d collected all the milk money in for my da. When we got up the next morning we took Buster to the sandy beach at the other end of the caravan park. The sandy beach was always deserted, except for this day, when there was another dog there. We knew this dog from the caravan park. Mum used to call him ‘Auld Man McGuiness’ and he was old and had a white beard and walked around minding his own business all day long. When Buster saw him that day he raced straight across the beach, grabbed Auld Man McGuiness by the throat, and shook him like a rag doll right there in front of us. When Buster finally released his grip Auld Man McGuiness lay dead in front of us and his white beard was stained red with his own blood. Me and Andrew just stood there screaming and Izzy, well she ran up and grabbed Buster by his tartan collar and we all ran back to the caravan with Buster to tell Mum what had happened. When Mum heard she told us to get our belongings into the tartan holdall and fifteen minutes later we were in the car and hightailing it out of town and Mum kept looking in her rear-view mirror for flashing blue lights.
When we got home my da wanted to know why we were back so early and Mum told him Buster had been bad and that this time he’d killed a dog on the beach and my da was that happy he sent Mum to the butcher to get Buster the biggest bone that money could buy. He even let Buster sit up on the couch that night. My da loved Buster and years later when Buster died of old age, my da had an oil painting done of him and hung it on the wall above his leather armchair in the good room.
We didn’t go back to the caravan at Lendalfoot for a long, long time after that and when finally we did, it was winter and the nasturtiums and the pansies had all died for the want of a drink and Mum said she’d get new ones from the garden centre and we’d plant them next time we came down.
And none of us went to that sandy beach again for fear of seeing Auld Man McGuinness still lying there dead. So we played on the gravely beach with its rock pools and crabs and as we played, the wind blew the rain horizontally and the Irish sea washed up its dark-brown seaweed, though none of us had the mind for poking it with a stick and running away from the smell.
21
Rona fills her lungs at the caravan
My da came home one day and told us we were getting a new sister. And then he told us he was going to the children’s home at Cathkin to pick up Rona and she was going to stay with us on the weekends from now on and he told us we’d better all be on our best behaviour and not be showing him up, else there’d be trouble. I asked my da why she was coming to stay with us and where was her own da and my da said I was to never fucking mind where her own da was, that her own da had put her in a children’s home and that’s why she was coming to spend time with us, in a normal family environment.
And so I asked my da what a normal family environment was when it was at home and that’s when he told me, ‘Less of your fuckin’ cheek mi’ lady.’ He told me to go and get my room tidied up and that he’d better not see me back out till it was done. And I walked off to my room and all the while I was thinking about this Rona and wondering who she thinks she is and why should we have to put up with somebody we don’t even know just so she can spend time in a normal family environment. I tidied my room and by the time I’d finished my da had already left to go and get this Rona. I asked Mum what was going on and she said my da had taken it into his head to befriend a child from the children’s home ’cause Jimmy at the pub was doing the same thing—as if we didn’t have enough problems with my da’s drinking and his womanising, now we had another mouth to feed.
So my da went to the children’s home at Cathkin that day and brought back Rona and Rona had nine brothers and sisters and they were all in the home, too. Rona was twelve years old, one year older than me, and she had pale white skin and long black hair and she was skinny like a long drink of water, at least that’s what Nanny used to say.
Rona arrived with a blue vinyl suitcase. My da told her she’d be sharing my bedroom and so I showed Rona my tidy bedroom and her side of the bed and then we all sat in the living room and had a cup of tea and a toasted soda scone from Joe Black’s bakery on the Glasgow Road.
Mum made us a mince and onion curry that night for our tea and it was our way of making Rona feel special, ’cause it’s not every day you get a mince and onion curry. When we finished eating I told Mum I hoped the electricity would get cut off again like that last time when we couldn’t pay the bill so we could light the candles and show Rona how to make a crocodile or maybe even a rabbit in the shadows on the wall. And that’s when Mum kicked me under the table and told me to stop talking rubbish about electricity bills that couldn’t be paid indeed.
The next day, my da said we should take Rona down to the caravan at Lendalfoot to get some sea air into her lungs. I asked Mum why he was so concerned with Rona’s lungs when he’d never once mentioned my lungs before, and Mum said he must have been listening to Jimmy at the pub again. So we packed up the tartan holdall and headed off to the caravan like he said. Me and Andrew sat in the back of the car on either side of Rona, and Izzy sat in the front with Mum. Once we were on the road Andrew started to sing that song I had made up for the school competition that time, trying to embarrass me in front of Rona, and I told him if he didn’t shut up I was going to kill him when I got to the caravan and he just kept on singing. Then he said, ‘Why wait till you get to the caravan? Why don’t you kill me right now?’ And so I leaned across Rona and tried to batter him in the face and Mum shouted from the front to bloody well behave ourselves or she’d turn the car around and we’d head back home. So I sat back in my seat and gave Andrew a look and he knew he was getting it when we got to the caravan.
I ignored Andrew for the rest of the journey after that and spoke to Rona in a quiet voice so that Andrew couldn’t hear me. I told Rona about the rocky beach at the caravan and the seaweed that gets washed in all the way from Ireland and how it stinks in the summer if you poke it with a stick. And I told her about the flashing light on
Paddy’s Milestone and the green hills dotted with sheep and Auld Snib, the local tramp who used to eat dead seagulls, and then I told her about Sawney Bean, the cannibal who ate a thousand people in his lifetime and who lived in a cave not far from where our own caravan stood. And I told Rona about Doogie Woogie with the hairy nose and the crisp packets we would shrink in front of the gas fire and the chicken noodle soup Mum would make us out of the packet when the sun went down that night.
Once we got to the caravan Rona’s eyes were wide with excitement and she didn’t know which way to turn first. While Izzy and Andrew helped Mum to unload the car, me and Rona pulled off our socks and shoes and raced to the beach and the two of us ran barefoot across the rocks like we’d known each other forever and our lungs were filled with the salty sea air. As we ran I could see Rona’s long black hair flapping in the wind in front of me and when she turned around her cheeks were pink and her eyes were sparkling, and that’s when I knew what Jimmy at the pub had meant about getting the sea air into her lungs. As we scrambled over the rocks we came across a rock pool and I lifted a rock to show Rona where the crabs sometimes hide and just then a tiny crab raced out sideways. I picked it up to show Rona and the tiny crab scurried up and down my thumb and I wasn’t scared one bit. Then Rona bent down and pulled a shell off the side of the rock and she told me the creature inside was called a whelk. Then she told me she had seen them in a jar in Vladimir’s deli at the Gorbals once, the same deli Mum used to buy our pork ring sausages from, and that people eat those whelks with a pin, and I said that was disgusting, that I’d never eat a whelk no matter how hungry I was, and Rona said she’d never eat one either. When we’d finished with the whelks and the crabs, the wind started to blow in all the way from Ireland and we huddled up close together against the rocks and looked across the deserted beach. We gave a name to our deserted beach that day and we called it Al-Ron Bay, our secret code for Ali and Rona Bay.
Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell Page 8