And I’m wondering now if I screamed as all of this was happening, but I doubt if I did. Maybe if I had screamed then, I wouldn’t be screaming now.
29
Brief encounter
One day Nanny took ill and her back was so sore she couldn’t find comfort no matter which way she lay and the pain was so bad she couldn’t make it down the lane any more. The doctor came and said Nanny would have to have some tests, so Mum took Nanny to the specialist and when the tests were over the specialist phoned Mum and told her he needed to speak to her straightaway.
I was working in my da’s fruit and vegetable shop that day like I had every day since I left school, even though I wished I had a nice job as a secretary putting on high-heeled shoes and Sheer Brazil Nut tights every day of the week. When Mum came back to the shop after speaking with the specialist she had tears in her eyes and she told us that Nanny had cancer in her pancreas, and when I heard that I sat down on the 56-pound sacks of Ayrshire potatoes we’d made up into three-pound bags that morning to sell on the weekend and I held my hands up to my face and wept into them, and just then a customer came into the shop and my da was mad, ’cause it was him who had to go and serve them, while I lay there on the potatoes in tears.
The cancer in Nanny’s pancreas got worse while all the unrest was going on at home between Bruce and my da. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for her and that she’d be better off in her own bed at home rather than staring at the white sterile walls of a hospital ward. When she got home I spent nearly every evening with her in her bedroom with the telly on and some nights we watched our favourite movie, Brief Encounter, and Nanny would send Grampa out to Botterill’s bottle shop to get a bottle of sweet sherry, ‘for the lassies’. Grampa did as he was told and he strolled there slowly, smoking his Embassy Regal as he went, and when he got back with the sherry Mum and I would have a glass but Nanny wouldn’t ’cause Nanny never drank a day in her life. Some nights I’d take Cleo our black mongrel in to see Nanny and she’d jump up on Nanny’s candlewick bedspread and Nanny would laugh and she’d tell me Cleo was ‘skinny like a whippet’ and then she’d laugh all the more and Cleo would settle herself down for the night on the bed right between Nanny and me and she’d lick the bedspread in the hope of finding a crumb.
Nanny ended up in so much pain, a nurse had to come and look after her during the nights and the nurse gave Nanny morphine. She told us it was the morphine and not the cancer that would eventually kill Nanny and I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad, ’cause I couldn’t bear to see Nanny suffer like that and at the same time I couldn’t bear to imagine her dead.
Two weeks passed and we knew that the end was near and the nurse said she would have to call an ambulance to come and take Nanny to the hospital. Before the ambulance came the nurse wrapped what was left of Nanny’s tiny body in a blanket and the ambulance men gently placed Nanny on a stretcher and took her to the waiting ambulance and Cleo jumped at the stretcher and tried to lick Nanny’s hand and Nanny smiled and I knew if she could have, she would have laughed and said that Cleo was ‘skinny like a whippet’.
But Nanny had barely the energy to breathe, never mind laugh. Grampa stood and watched the ambulance carry his wife of 60 years away from him and when the ambulance disappeared into the horizon he put on his jacket, lit up an Embassy Regal and walked down to Botterill’s to get a bottle of sweet sherry in ‘for the lassies’, ’cause he knew that’s what Nanny would have wanted.
The doctor at the hospital put an oxygen mask on Nanny so she could breathe a little easier and they gave her more morphine to try to ease her pain. Bruce and my da joined me and Mum and Grampa at Nanny’s bedside that night during the visiting hour and even though she was weak, she lifted her finger and pointed to each and every one of us and told us that she hoped her suffering meant that none of us would ever have to suffer the same agony in our own lives and of course she included my da in that and why wouldn’t she, she was the kindest, most generous woman I’ve ever known. And she told my da and Bruce to sort out their differences, that she wanted them to make up and to talk again and my da stood there like a wee boy in the headmaster’s office with his head hung low and he agreed he’d make an effort just for her.
Nanny died the next day while I was having my tooth filled at Dr Dunn’s the dentist on the Glasgow Road. Had I known she would pass away at three o’clock that afternoon, I would have rubbed my tooth with oil of cloves and ignored the pain that had kept me awake for half the night, but I didn’t, and so I missed Nanny’s last moments on earth and my last chance to tell her how much I had loved her.
Later that night me and Cleo went next door to Nanny’s house and into her bedroom and the room felt sad and bare, like when you take down the Christmas tree and the fairy lights twelve days after Christmas. I put the telly on and slotted in Nanny’s copy of Brief Encounter and I played our movie one last time and I thought about Nanny and how I didn’t get to say goodbye to her, not really, not properly, and I wished I could have those days back again, just Nanny, me and Cleo up on the candlewick bedspread with a wee glass of sherry in my hand. As I sat on the bed I stroked Cleo’s head and told her how much I had loved Nanny and how much I learnt from her and Cleo licked the pillow where Nanny’s head had been, ’cause she missed Nanny too.
With Nanny gone the days seemed long and sometimes I made the trip myself down the cobbled laneway to the market where Nanny spent nearly every day, just to listen to the hustle and bustle. Sometimes I imagined Nanny there beside me as I raked through Jessie’s jumpers and cardigans and one day Jessie asked me if I was interested in any bras and briefs she’d just got in at five pounds the set and I thanked her very much and told her I wasn’t in the market for bras and briefs that day. Then I went past Whistling Tommy’s stall and remembered the time Nanny was searching for catering-sized pickled gherkins for Maria the art teacher and I couldn’t remember if she’d ever got them.
I walked around for hours in the lane wearing my beanie and my winter coat and I thought about Nanny all the while and how much I missed her and as I wandered further up the lane I saw a drunk man begging, his trousers in tatters and his shoes with no soles, and as I walked past him I pulled out a couple of coins from the pocket of my winter coat and placed them discreetly in his out-held hand.
Bruce and my da kept the promise they’d made to Nanny to try to get along, but still my da refused to sign over the title deeds to Bruce’s bungalow. Finally, with much to-ing and fro-ing with me as the messenger, my da agreed to sign over the title deeds to the old cottage that we used to live in before we built the bungalows and that title deed included a tiny portion of my da’s two-and-a-half acres and on that tiny portion stood the greenhouses where Rusty and Silver used to live.
The living arrangements for Grampa and Bruce were quite cramped in their new home but it was better than before. Now they owned the house they slept in and they set up a little business in the greenhouses selling plants and herbs. Bruce and Grampa knew everything there was to know about every plant and herb they sold and people came from miles around to ask their advice.
Slowly, Bruce started to feel better about life and he painted his living-room walls lilac again and this time we didn’t laugh ’cause we knew that Bruce wasn’t just artistic, but a man whose heart knew forgiveness and Bruce was Nanny’s son if ever there was one.
So in the end my da got his dream to keep the title deeds to both the semi-detached bungalows and some days he strutted up and down his land just for the pleasure of it, like lord of the fucking manor. And the bastard slept like a baby every night in the week.
30
The longest knife in the cutlery drawer
Andrew was angry. About everything. Angry about being my da’s son; about the way my da treated Mum, me, Izzy, Nanny, Grampa and Bruce; angry about the way he treated our animals; angry about a lifetime of being shouted at morning, noon and night. And the anger ate away at him bit by bit, until there was almost n
othing left of him and he arrived at an anonymous destination, a place where he didn’t know who he was anymore, and by that time, anyway, he didn’t care.
So Andrew went from being a lovely wee laddie baking potatoes in bonfires with Donald next door, to being a dread-locked troubled soul who popped pills, snorted speed, sniffed amyl nitrate and smoked dope night after night after night.
Andrew had no way of supporting himself so he still lived at home under my da’s roof and every morning my da reminded him of that fact when he got up at five o’clock in the morning to get ready for work and he’d start banging on Andrew’s bedroom door, shouting and screaming about how lazy Andrew was and how if he didn’t get up right there and then, there would be hell to pay. But what my da didn’t realise was that Andrew was already in hell, and getting out of bed wasn’t going to change anything.
My da banned all of Andrew’s friends from coming to the house to see Andrew, what with them looking like a bunch of lazy bastards with long untidy hair and no jobs, so Andrew just told his pals to come around to the back of the house late at night and climb in his bedroom window if they wanted to see him, which they did. Rory Corr was the only one who didn’t have to come and go by Andrew’s bedroom window. We all liked Rory, even my da tolerated him, which was really saying something ’cause Rory had long hair and a dope habit unsurpassed by anybody else in our town. The difference with Rory was that he had a job. Whenever Rory came to our place he’d just walk in through the front door and he’d shout out, ‘Awright, Betty, are you in?’ And Mum would be in the kitchen and she’d shout back, ‘Aye, I’m in, Rory. I’m in the kitchen! Come on through and I’ll put an egg and a slice of bacon in the pan fur yae!’ And Rory would make his way to the kitchen and slap his egg and slice of bacon between two pieces of white sliced bread and butter, then he’d make himself a cup of tea and chat to Mum for a while before he made his way to Andrew’s room to wake him up, which was no mean feat, ’cause Andrew didn’t even want to be alive, never mind be woken up.
Rory painted buildings for a living. Sometimes he painted in the local banks when they were shut at night and whenever he had a big job like that on he’d ask Andrew to come and help him, ’cause Andrew was big and strong. Rory would come to our place in the afternoon before the job was to start and after he’d had his cup of tea and bacon and eggs on two slices of bread and butter he’d head to Andrew’s room to try to wake him up.
‘Come on, Andy, I’ve got a bank job on tonight. Are you comin’ to help me?’
And Andrew would tell Rory to fuck off and go and paint his own banks, then he’d roll back over and fall asleep.
The years went by and nothing changed, my da still shouted morning, noon and night about everything and nothing, and Andrew, well he was numb to it all by now and he resigned himself to thinking that that’s just how life was and, sadly, he thought he had no means of ever getting out of the situation he was in. So he stayed there, at home under my da’s fucking roof, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if one day Rory went into Andrew’s room and found Andrew dead right there on the polished floor.
But that never happened. In fact, some years later it was Rory who was found dead, not in Andrew’s room, but on the polished floor of a tenement flat in Glasgow’s south side. They say he died of an overdose and that came as no surprise, ’cause Rory had a fierce drug habit that would have put most to shame.
Eventually Andrew stopped snorting speed and popping pills and all he did from time to time was smoke a little dope. He even managed to get his own wee council flat in Garthamlock and sometimes he’d sit in his flat late at night by himself and think of all the wrongs my da had done and one night it all got too much for him and he decided to do something about it. So he armed himself with the longest knife he could find in his cutlery drawer and he made his way to my da’s house, crossing fields in the middle of the black night while the rain blew horizontally and soaked him to the skin and he couldn’t have cared less.
Mum was at the kitchen sink when she looked out the window and saw the shape of something moving through the fields towards the house. She didn’t think much about it until the shape got closer and she could see it was Andrew and that’s when she glanced at the clock and saw it was close to ten o’clock and what was Andrew doing crossing fields at this time of night in the rain? A panic set in her as she raced to the back door. Andrew was already standing there waiting for her to open it and he was clutching his knife, the longest one he could find in his cutlery drawer, and he had a far-away look in his eye.
‘What are you doing, son?’ she said.
‘I’ve come to kill the bastard,’ Andrew said, pushing past Mum to come inside. ‘I cannae fuckin’ take the torment any longer. The way he’s treated you, Ali and Izzy—the way he treated Nanny, Grampa and Bruce. I cannae fuckin’ stand it any longer, do you understand?’
‘Aye, son, of course I understand. But the bastard’s no’ worth swinging for! Do you understand?’
‘I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life locked up, Mum. I’ll happily do the time. I just want the pleasure of cutting his fuckin’ throat and making him pay the price, so get out of my way, I’m going through to do it now!’
‘But he’s in the good room watching the telly, son. Please don’t do it, Andrew, please I beg you. Go home and think about what it is you’re about to do and think about what it’ll do to me if you go through with it.’
Mum stood in the doorway to the red carpeted hallway that would lead Andrew to my da in the good room, barricading his way with her body. Andrew tried to push past her and through her tears Mum begged him again not to do it and asked him wasn’t it already bad enough that we’d all gone through this hell with the bastard, without one of us ending up in jail? Andrew was still clutching his knife as Mum begged and his hands were shaking and Mum looked him in the eye and begged him some more and in the end his own eyes filled with tears and he dropped his knife, the longest one he could find in his cutlery drawer, and it landed on the floor. Mum bent down slowly and picked it up.
‘Mum, I love you,’ Andrew sobbed, ‘and I don’t want to hurt you any more than you’ve already been hurt. But my anger won’t go away. It’s just there all the time, burning a hole in my gut while that prick sits in his good room watching his fuckin’ game shows none the wiser, and it’s all of us who carry the burden.’
‘I know, son, I know,’ Mum said gently, pushing the wet dreadlocks from his forehead and in behind his ears, ‘but it’s us who have the bigger shoulders and we can afford to carry that burden. Some day, Andrew, we’ll sort everything out and we’ll look back on these times and we’ll laugh ’cause we’ll be free. Free from him and the pain he’s put us through and your anger’ll disappear son, I promise you.’
While Andrew sobbed some more Mum rocked him in her arms like he was still her wee boy, and he told her again that he loved her then he turned and left and made his way in the dark through the fields again and he took his time, for he was in no rush. And he was sorry he didn’t cut my da’s throat that night, but there would be other nights, and the thought of that consoled him. Just then the black sky opened up again and the rain came lashing down harder than before and Andrew was soaked through to the skin again and still he didn’t care.
All the while my da sat in his good room watching his game show and when the adverts came on, he walked down the red carpeted hallway that led him to the kitchen and he opened the door and stood in the doorway, the same doorway that Mum had barricaded only moments before to save his life, and demanded she pour him another fucking whisky. And Mum went to the fridge and poured his whisky, more whisky than water, just the way he liked it, and she wondered why she’d stopped Andrew after all.
31
Swinging in the gentle breeze
My da’s mother, Helen, had just come home from picking up the weekly groceries from the village store and as she pulled into the driveway she could see that stupid dog Rex sitting outside the barn door whim
pering and fidgeting, unable to sit at peace, and she thought that maybe it was worms that were causing him to fidget like that. She got out of the car and lifted all the bags of groceries out of the boot with one hand and headed to the house and called to Rex, ‘Come away from that barn door ya stupit wee bastard! Come and get your bone.’ Rex looked towards her, but he didn’t budge, just sat there with one ear sat straight up in the wind and one ear folded forward covering half his right eye.
She took the shopping into the house and reappeared a few minutes later with Rex’s bone in her hand. ‘What the fuck are you doing up there at that barn door?’ she yelled. ‘Come down here now and get your fuckin’ bone!’ But still Rex didn’t move. Stubborn wee bastard, she thought as she walked up the slope to the front of the barn door and put the bone down in front of him.
‘Right, here’s your fuckin’ bone.’ She placed it at his feet and Rex wouldn’t even look at it. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ she said as she bent down to stroke him behind the ear that was standing up in the wind and all the while she thought it was weird ’cause normally he’d knock her over in the rush to get his weekly bone. Rex started to bark and jump at the barn door. Helen had never seen him behave like this. ‘What wrong wi’ you Rex?’ she said, ‘you want inside the barn now, is that it?’ So with all her might Helen slid the door wide open and the daylight rushed in, chasing out the darkness, and particles of hay hung effortlessly in the beams of sunlight that shone on a sight she would rather not have seen.
Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell Page 12