Rona came to our house every weekend after that and once she brought her youngest sister Diane and another time she brought her sister Jo, and once she even brought her brother Stewart. As Rona became a part of our family she taught us stuff we never knew—and I don’t mean how to pull whelks off the rocks and how to eat them from the jar with a pin if you’ve a mind to. She taught us that we were lucky to have a mammy who made us chicken noodle soup out of the packet when the sun went down at night, and that my da, although he spent every minute of every day making our lives miserable, at least hadn’t put us in a children’s home where there’s no mammy to make you feel safe and all you’ve got to look forward to are strangers coming on the weekend to show you what a normal family environment is like.
On Sunday nights we’d take Rona back to the children’s home where she shared a room with twenty others and we’d say goodbye to her at the door and we’d tell her we’d see her the following Friday. And then we’d get back into the car and Rona would stand at the door by herself and wave until we’d disappeared out of sight, and we’d ask Mum why Rona couldn’t just stay with us all the time and Mum said it wasn’t that simple, ’cause some day Rona’s real mammy might show up to take Rona back again and Rona had to be there in case she did. But Rona’s real mammy wasn’t able to take her back and years later, when Rona was old enough, the day came for her to leave the children’s home. She packed her blue vinyl suitcase and took the bus to our place to say goodbye ’cause she was leaving Scotland for good to go and live in England. We asked her what was wrong with Scotland and she said there was nothing wrong with Scotland, just that she needed to get as far away from the ghosts of her past as she could and we could understand that, I mean, who couldn’t?
So we hugged and said goodbye to Rona and our hearts were heavy ’cause we didn’t want to imagine our lives without her. And as we shared our last few moments together she took my hand, ’cause we were sisters, and she told me she would miss me and I said I would miss her, too. Then she kissed me on the forehead and she told me all we had to do was think of Al-Ron Bay and we’d always be together. I tried to smile instead of crying and when I looked at her through my watery eyes, I saw that her cheeks were pink and her eyes were sparkling and I watched her as she walked away towards her new life in England and her black hair flapped in the wind and I never saw her again.
22
Dandy the pony and the blue rosette
Our cousin David lived on the other side of our town and his da was called Jack. Jack was our da’s brother so that made him our Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack was married to Georgina and they had stables on their land and a fat white pony called Dandy and a tall shiny chestnut horse called Sorrito. David used to ride Sorrito at the local gymkhana and sometimes he won blue rosettes with ‘First’ on them. He used to stick them on his bedroom wall, right next to his bed, and when he went to his bed at night the moon would come in through the window and shine on his blue rosettes and David would fall asleep contented. And one day I told David I wished I had a pony so I could get blue rosettes at the local gymkhana and he said, ‘How can you get the blue rosettes if I’m gettin’ them?’
Sometimes after school I would go to David’s place and we would go out riding together and David always rode Sorrito and I was only ever allowed to ride Dandy. When we went riding David wore beige stretchy trousers with patches on the inside thighs that went right down to his knees and a proper velvet riding hat and I used to wear my polyester trewsers that chafed the inside of my thighs and the crash helmet that my Uncle Bruce got me that time he worked on the building site in Spain.
One day after school, David and I saddled up Dandy and Sorrito and we trotted out of the stables and on to Bardykes Road that would lead us to the fields where we’d ride like the wind. The air was icy cold that day and a thick frost covered the road and as I sat in the saddle I watched the warm steam rise from Dandy’s nostrils and the sparks as they flew from Sorrito’s hooves as she tried to grip the icy road in front of me. I called out to David to tell him about the sparks and David turned around and called out above Sorrito’s snorting and tail swishing that her hooves were sparking ’cause she was getting ready to fly, that she was a flying machine and she could fly him anywhere in the world he wanted to go. And that’s when I thought back to Maggie when she was still my best pal and how she told me she had a golden eagle that used to visit her all the way from Africa. Her golden eagle would come to her house in the middle of the night and pick her up in its wings and take her all over the world and then it would bring her back home again and drop her back in the safety of her own bed. After that her golden eagle would disappear into thin air and Maggie told me she was never sad ’cause she knew that her golden eagle would always come back. And years later, when Maggie’s mum died, Maggie said her golden eagle came and took her mum to Africa, to Madagascar in fact, and Maggie said her mum was happier there than she’d ever been in her hometown where all she’d had to look forward to was Friday nights at the bingo and the occasional Bacardi and Coke at the Miners’ Welfare Club.
David and I trotted along the last stretch of frosty road and as we neared the open fields, David guided Sorrito into a gentle canter and my little fat Dandy followed suit. Before I knew it, David and I were cantering through green field after green field and the rhythm was comforting and my crash helmet from the building site in Spain fell from my head and bounced along in the grass behind me and I didn’t care. With the wind in my hair I stood up in my stirrups and breathed in the freedom and I didn’t want it to end. Just then a big black bat flew out from an old oak tree and gave Dandy such a fright he reared up on his back legs, just like Black Beauty did on the telly on a Tuesday night, and I started to slide backwards out of my saddle. But I held on tight to Dandy’s neck and next thing I knew Dandy was jumping forward onto his front legs and that’s when I felt my feet lose their grip in the stirrups and I left the saddle and flew through the air and landed on my chin on the only rock to be found right there in the green grassy fields.
I seemed to lie on the ground for a long, long time and when I stood up I touched my face and blood leaked from the gash the rock had made under my chin, staining my T-shirt and the green grass bright red. Once David realised I wasn’t cantering behind him he came galloping back and Dandy reared up on his back legs again and David jumped off Sorrito’s back and quickly took Dandy by the reins and told him, ‘Whoa boy! Whoa boy!’ like you hear sometimes on those cowboy movies you get on telly on a Saturday afternoon. David told me he won a blue rosette once for something called horsemanship and that he knew exactly what to do to make Dandy calm again and he stroked that part of Dandy’s head between his eyes that ponies love to have stroked. All the while he whispered into Dandy’s ear that he was a good boy and eventually Dandy did calm down and the fast steam coming out of his nostrils slowed until finally Dandy was still and calm and not wanting to do his Tuesday night Black Beauty impressions any more.
With Dandy calm David turned to look at me and when he saw the blood streaming down my throat and saturating my T-shirt, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. He told me to stay where I was and to hold Dandy’s reins, that he was going back home to get some help, and then he jumped onto Sorrito’s back and took off into the sunset just like in those movies again. I stayed behind with Dandy and the bats and the soft orange glow from the sun as it disappeared down behind the green grassy fields.
The darkness came quickly and I kept on stroking Dandy in that bit between his eyes that ponies love to have stroked and I listened to the owls make that ‘too-wit too-woo’ sound you hear in scary movies sometimes. Then, for a moment, I stopped stroking Dandy and turned to see the owls, and I stared at the moon and I thought about David’s blue rosettes on his bedroom wall. I watched the bats as they came and went from their old oak tree until Dandy nudged me in the waist and nearly knocked me off my feet. He put his head down by my hand as if to say, stroke me again, right there in that bit between my eyes, and I smiled
and cuddled him and my bloodied T-shirt left a red stain on his soft white coat. Then I told him he was a naughty boy and I said, ‘Whoa boy!’ a few times just to see what it felt like and it felt stupid standing there in the dark talking like a cowboy from one of those movies on a Saturday afternoon and I was glad there was nobody around to hear me.
Twenty minutes later, I saw the headlights of a car approaching and as it got nearer I could see it was David and his mum, Georgina, in their green Volvo estate. Georgina got out of the car first and she took one look at me and said, ‘Hospital for you mi’ lady,’ ’cause I might have something called concussion and then she said I might even need to get some stitches in my chin by the look of that cut. When I thought about the stitches, secretly I was pleased, ’cause I knew I wouldn’t have to go to school the next day and I’d probably get to eat biscuits in bed that night.
When we got to the hospital the doctor asked me how many fingers he was holding up and if I felt dizzy and I told him three fingers and that I didn’t feel dizzy at all, although secretly I wished I did. He said I was going to be okay but he’d have to put a few stitches in my chin and give me an injection in the bum for something called lock-jaw. He got the needle out and I was brave like a soldier and didn’t cry, and when he finished I tried to glimpse my reflection in the mirror above the sink to see how sore the stitches looked. When I limped out of the doctor’s room David and Georgina were waiting for me and Georgina gave me a cuddle and told me not to worry, that Mum was on her way.
While we waited for Mum to arrive, Georgina bought me and David a Fry’s Chocolate Cream each from the chocolate machine in the waiting room, and David said I’d handled myself like a true horsewoman out there in the fields that day. He said if I handled myself like that at the gymkhana one day then I’d win a blue rosette for sure. And then Georgina told him he should give me the present now and that’s when David came up to me and shook my hand like they do at the gymkhana when you win a prize and he handed me my first blue rosette. In the middle it said ‘First’ and underneath it said ‘Horsemanship’.
When I got home from the hospital I stuck my blue rosette to my bedroom wall and that night when I went to bed with my packet of biscuits, the moonlight came in through the bedroom window and shone on my blue rosette and I fell asleep contented.
23
The day my da took our ponies to the glue factory
Even though I had a scar from the time Dandy threw me from the saddle, I desperately wanted a pony of my own. One day I asked Mum if I could and she said we’d hardly enough money to feed ourselves never mind a bloody pony. That same week my Uncle Jack told my da his pal Hughie had two flea-bitten ponies he wanted to get rid of and so my da said he would take them. He went to Hughie’s place with Uncle Jack that very day and they put the ponies into Uncle Jack’s horsebox and brought the ponies home. One of the ponies was a rusty colour and the other was silver and so we called them Rusty and Silver. Mum made a bed for them that night in the greenhouses on the land at the back of our house with the four bales of straw that Hughie had sent and Rusty and Silver had to share those greenhouses with Annie the donkey and Ducky and Drakey, the duck and drake who mysteriously appeared in our driveway one Sunday afternoon and decided to stay.
Me and Izzy and Andrew mucked out Rusty and Silver’s greenhouse every morning and brushed them every night with the wire brush Mum kept under the sink and they ran around happily all day long on our big block of land. We picked fresh grass and chicken weed for them every day from the field across the road and sometimes we wished we could get hay for them, but my da said there was no way he was spending good money on hay for those useless fucking animals, so they ate what they got and they didn’t seem to mind at all.
Some nights after we said good night to the ponies, Mum struggled to breathe. And one night when she could hardly breathe at all my da had to phone the doctor. While we waited for the doctor to come I looked at Mum wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the orange vinyl swivel chair she’d got at Big Sheena’s and she didn’t look well. Even though the doctor was on his way I was still worried and I told myself over and over that things would be okay. When the doctor finally arrived my da told me I should get out of the room to give Mum peace so I moved outside into the hallway and peered through the dimpled-glass door and I looked at a hundred reflections of her and begged God to not let her die. I watched the doctor as he brought out his stethoscope and listened to Mum’s chest and lungs and I feared the worst when he shook his head and announced it was no good. The doctor said she had to go to the hospital and before I knew what was happening the ambulance had arrived and Mum was wrapped up in another blanket and carted out of the house. I stood behind the safety of my dimpled-glass door and watched a hundred blue lights flash their way into the distance, until I couldn’t see anything anymore, and then I stared back at the empty orange swivel chair where Mum had sat just a moment before and I bit my lip and promised myself I wouldn’t cry. ‘Behave yersel!’ That’s what Mum used to say when she saw we were about to cry. And I tried to behave myself right there and then, but it was no good and the tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.
When Nanny got the news that Mum was in the hospital she raced to our place to make sure we’d get fed while Mum was gone. She arrived wearing her knitted beanie and Grampa’s leather slippers and she’d run all the way from 9 Maitland Avenue, pulling her two-wheeled tartan shopping trolley behind her.
‘Awright, Nanny!’ Andrew called out, excited to see her as he always was.
‘Awright, son. Come on, gie yir Nanny a wee hand with the trolley now.’ Andrew raced over and lifted the top of the trolley and looked inside.
‘Any goodies for us, Nanny?’ Andrew asked.
‘There’s nae goodies in there for you today, just some dinner. When I heard about your mum, I just ran and ran to get here. I woulda got a lift but your Uncle Bruce is still in the Swiss Alps skiing with Father Frances.’ And Nanny paused for breath and looked down at her feet in surprise and went on, ‘Just look at me, will you, I’m still wearing yer Grampa’s slippers.’
‘You always wear Grampa’s slippers, Nanny,’ I said.
‘Aye, true enough. Right, let’s get the tea on,’ she said and made her way to the kitchen.
Nanny had brought a pound of mince and a three-pound bag of Maris Piper potatoes and she got the pots onto the gas stove straightaway. When the dinner was ready she called us to come to the kitchen and pick up our plates and then we took them to the living room and sat on the couch with our plates on our knees. I didn’t like the look of the colour of nanny’s mince and the first mouthful confirmed the worst. It tasted like shite. Of course I didn’t want to upset Nanny and so I said nothing and just played with it for a while, pushing the morsels of mince this way and that around the plate and mixing it in with the potatoes, all the while looking around the room for somewhere to hide it.
Goldie, our goldfish, was swimming around in his tank on top of Mum’s walnut sideboard enjoying himself in his nice clean tank, and so I picked up my plate and moved across to the sideboard and had a chat to Goldie, all the while still pushing the morsels of mince and mashed tatties around my plate. And as we chatted I kept one eye on Goldie and the other on Nanny who was busying herself in the kitchen with this and that and when she wasn’t looking, I took huge forkfuls of that mince and tatties and shovelled them into Goldie’s tank, and I kept on shovelling and shovelling until nothing on my plate remained. And then, when there was nothing left to shovel, I held the plate above the tank and scraped in the gravy with my fork. When it was all gone I placed my cutlery on my empty plate and sat back in my chair relieved.
Of course, I thought the mince and tatties would just land at the bottom of the tank in amongst the gravel and nobody would be any the wiser and then when Mum got out of hospital she could just clean out the tank like she always did. But when I looked into the tank I saw that Goldie’s once-clear tank was now a gravy-filled swamp and through the s
wamp I could see Goldie trying to swim, his little fins flapping furiously. His tank had become a quagmire and no matter how hard he tried Goldie couldn’t move. I pressed my nose on the side of the cold tank and looked at him in horror and he looked back at me, in pain and unable to breathe. But he knew I hadn’t meant to hurt him and he knew that I loved him and looking into his closing eyes, I knew that he loved me, too. As he hovered in the gravy with no energy left, Goldie gave up the fight to live and flipped himself onto his side and floated to the top of his once-clear tank.
Weeping for Goldie and my stupidity I got a tartan tea towel out from the tea-towel drawer and placed it over his tank as a mark of respect and decided if anybody asked me what had happened I would cry and hold my breath till my face went blue, ’cause when I did that nobody bothered me with questions I didn’t want to answer.
When we went to visit Mum at the hospital the next day they had hooked her up to a machine and put a mask on her face so she could breathe the oxygen from the big tanks at the side of her bed. We made her get-well-soon cards and Andrew made the best one. It was huge and he drew roses on the front with the big red crayon he stole from Mrs MacAlpine’s desk at school. On the front of the card he wrote: Dear Mum I love you ’cause you are like a rose, and inside he wrote, and you have a smile too. Mum cried when she read that card and she folded it and kept it in her handbag for the next seventeen years.
We drew pictures of the animals for Mum and we told her that the animals missed her just like we did. We wanted to take them to the hospital with us and hold them up at the window next to Mum’s bed so she could wave to them, but my da said no. So the animals stayed behind and they, too, counted the days until Mum came back.
Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell Page 9