by Gary Mulgrew
‘Can you come down here, Scotland?’ the shorter skinhead asked, with something that could almost have been a smile, if he’d had enough teeth. ‘It’s kinda awkward speaking to you when you’re up there,’ he continued, craning his scrawny red neck for good effect.
I hesitated. ‘Naw. I like it fine up here,’ I replied, allowing my Scottish accent its full range as I always did when I felt threatened.
‘OK,’ the smaller guy mumbled, sounding irritated, before switching tack and asking, ‘You did time in Pollock?’ They were both so edgy. The taller one with the tattooed bonce barely ever raised his head to look at me, simply staring straight in front, seemingly at the wall, as if he wanted me to focus entirely on the message on his head – what we might have termed in management terms as his personal ‘USP’, or unique selling point. He kept rubbing or flexing his hands as if he was preparing them for combat, and this set me on edge even more. Both wore sleeveless vests, worn and stained, giving the shorter one the look of Rab C. Nesbitt on a crash diet. He had foregone the skull-branding option, and instead had a large tattoo right across his chest, in bold writing, which was partially obscured by his vest. I could make out that it was three words, the second one of which said HATES in some kind of elaborate gothic font, and I kept trying to catch the other two words. Sometimes it looked like the third word might be ME. HATES ME. Something or someone HATES ME. What a sentiment to have on your chest, I thought, as my discourse with the two hillbillies continued.
‘You did time in Pollock, Scotland?’ he asked again.
‘Erm . . .’ I pondered, genuinely wondering how to answer that one. ‘I lived in Pollok, Scotland, but I didn’t do time in Pollock, no,’ I responded, instantly wondering if anyone had understood what I just said. The skinheads looked at each other as if I had just spoken in Farsi.
‘I lived in a place called Pollok, in a town called Glasgow, in a country called Scotland,’ I offered carefully, thinking a more detailed explanation might help. ‘So yes, I come from Pollok, but I’ve never been to Louisiana.’ Tattoo Head started scratching it, while Tattoo Chest looked as if he had just had a quick explanation of the mechanics of nuclear physics. Silence ensued. A couple of times, the shorter one positioned himself as if to speak, but each time thought better of it. The silence continued. I couldn’t think of anything to add to my detailed and thorough explanation, so I didn’t bother and focused instead on trying to figure out what the first word of the HATES ME tattoo was. Tattoo Head just kept staring ahead at the wall and as they seemed much more uncomfortable with the silence than I was, I let it ride. Suddenly I got it – BOB! BOB HATES ME. The tattoo was partially obscured, but that first word was clearly three letters with the ‘O’ fully visible in the middle and the tops of the first and third letters cut off by his vest, but they definitely looked like a couple of Bs.
BOB HATES ME! I thought, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ The silence was starting to make me uncomfortable too. Who the hell was Bob? Why would you tattoo that on your chest? I could imagine a lot of people hated this guy, but what made Bob so special?
After a moment or two, Tattoo Chest nudged his taller accomplice, who grunted and suddenly proffered something up to me.
‘This is sum shower shoes an’ shit to git you started,’ he drawled, handing me some heavy plastic flip-flops and what looked like some coffee, some biscuits and a bar of chocolate. Suddenly my mood changed, as I realised too late what was happening. These guys were recruiting for the Brotherhood. That’s what all that bullshit preamble was about. Without thinking of anything but the chocolate, my hands had been on the package, but I withdrew them just as quickly.
‘I don’t want that shit!’ I said, fast and loud. I hoped everyone heard it.
The shorter one put his hand on Tattoo Head’s arm to stop him from withdrawing the offer.
‘Now lookie here, Scotland. Don’t go misunderstandin’ nuthin’. We like to look after our own here. Ain’t nun of these other fuckers,’ – he looked around directly at the Blacks in the corner, before drawing closer to me – ‘ain’t none of these other fuckers gonna take care of nuthin’ but their own. You know what ah’m sayin’? Us white boys got to stick together, you hearin’ me?’
I was hearing him alright. He had taken on a much nastier demeanour and I felt the tension rise between the three of us.
‘Now why don’t you just take a little time to consider what you’d like to do, Scotland?’ he said, taking the goodies away from Tattoo Head and placing them carefully on my bunk. ‘You really don’t want to be walkin’ alone in this Yard, and if you ain’t runnin’ with us, we will see you as agin us, you know what I’m sayin’, Scotland? You feelin’ me, Scotland?’
I was feeling him.
He moved back and smiled at me, a menacing, toothless and graceless grin. He patted my knee.
‘Take yer crap off my bunk,’ I said calmly, ‘and fuck off.’ Inside I was shit-scared, but I just kept focusing on the two messenger boys in front of me. I didn’t have a strategy or a plan, even though I’d always known I would face a recruitment drive sooner or later. I just hadn’t expected it this early and with so few corporate benefits.
Tattoo Head was twitching uncontrollably and kept looking from the shorter one to the floor. Itching to get started on me, I thought.
‘Scotland, I’m going cut you some slack and ask you once again to reconsider ma offer,’ the shorter one began again, slowly. ‘You really don’t want to be pissin’ us off and havin’ to walk that Yard on your own now, do ya? You ain’t gonna git no help from the Negros or the Paises or the Injuns now, are ya? All you’ve got is your own kind,’ he went on. So this was melting-pot America, then.
He stopped talking. In the silence, I started to re-examine my logic. I don’t want to be sucked into their turf wars and battles, and I knew that in joining them there would always be a price to pay – probably a messy job like beating up some poor guy that had pissed them off in some way; maybe even doing something worse. But then again, I couldn’t ‘walk that Yard alone’ as the skinhead had put it, or – worse still – with the might of the Aryan Brotherhood coming after me. Surely not everyone must be affiliated to a gang? If I could just get rid of them and show I wasn’t interested, maybe everyone else would leave me alone?
‘Look,’ I said, leaning towards them and speaking more quietly. ‘I’m not from around here, and I’m not your kind. I don’t want to cause any trouble with you guys and I ain’t trying to be disrespectful. But I’m a Scot, from Scotland. I’m British. I play football and eat chips.’ I found myself immediately regretting that these were the only examples of British credentials I could summon at that moment, but I don’t suppose my interlocutors minded. ‘I’m not part of your battles, and I won’t be part of your Brotherhood. You know what I’m sayin?’ Tattoo Head involuntarily nodded and my confidence grew.
‘So why don’t you take this shit . . .’ I said, gradually raising my voice as I picked up the package of stuff, ‘ . . . and ask Bob to forgive you!’
The Bob jibe seemed to have confused them somewhat as they both looked at each other in a bemused fashion. Eventually the shorter guy said, ‘OK, Scotland, OK. If that’s how you wanna play it. Just don’t come cryin’ to us when the shit hits the fan. And the shit hits the fan most every day in Big Spring,’ he added with a mischievous grin, as if all the shit emanated from him. ‘C’mon, SlumDawg,’ he said, as he turned to walk away, the ‘dawg’ part extending to well over three syllables.
SlumDawg looked like he wanted to stay and drag me off the bed. ‘SlumDawg!’ Tattoo Chest said again, this time more forcefully. SlumDawg looked up at me fully for the first time with the confidence of a true enforcer and instantly my own confidence evaporated. He smirked at me and began to walk off, grinning at all the other inmates who had watched this unfold. Suddenly the shorter one turned around and walked swiftly back towards me. Not bothering to look up at me, he put out his hand and said, ‘Chocolate . . .’
‘O
h yeah!’ I exclaimed in mock surprise. ‘Here, here you go.’ I handed it over, regretting the loss of that little luxury. ‘Man, I’m hungry,’ I thought as I lay back and wondered if I’d already cooked my own goose. For the next ten minutes my heart was racing as I replayed the scene over and over again in my mind and I tried to work out if I had played it right. I could sense everyone in the room was watching me, discussing me.
Without really realising it, I’d been ignoring the need to go to the bathroom, the playground for so many of my darkest fears. Switching to autopilot, I swung round on my bunk and leapt down in one movement, landing on my feet with a loud smack from my Coco the Clown boating shoes. Everyone around me looked up at this sudden sound. I stood rooted to the spot as if I had just executed a perfect triple axel with pike at the Texas Olympics. My feet stung from the six-foot leap, and I saw Chief wince then chuckle to himself. Pulling my trousers tightly round my waist, I hesitated about moving towards the bathroom, but my need quickly superseded my fears. With as much dignity as I could muster, I ambled along, my feet stinging and my bladder bursting. I felt like everyone was watching; that a path was clearing for me as I stepped awkwardly towards the bathroom with the gait of sixty-year-old with chronic piles – not the cool confident persona I had imagined myself conveying.
The toilet room had four urinals on the right followed by three stalls, with the sinks lined up on the wall opposite. Each of the stalls had a door, but no lock, and these doors only covered about two feet of the middle section, so you could easily see the inhabitant’s head and feet. There were two Hispanics in there already, seated, and casually talking to each other like they were sitting side by side at a football match. They stopped talking when I shuffled in, and stared at me, adding further to my sense of unease. At the farthest end of the bathroom were some shower stalls. The shower stalls afforded at least a degree of privacy, with separate stalls and shower curtains covering the fronts. Most of the action would take place in there, I figured.
Standing by a middle urinal, I fumbled around for my zipper, before realising it was pointless as I could just pull my trousers straight down. As I did this, two Hispanics appeared either side of me, their skin briefly touching my skin as I froze and stood staring rigidly ahead. They were talking jovially but I didn’t initially even glance at them, just kept staring ahead, panic enveloping me.
I couldn’t pee.
I looked down at my willie then involuntarily to my left where my new roomie was smiling at me.
‘Hola,’ he said.
‘Hola, hola, fucking hola!!’ my mind screamed, convinced he’d got me at ‘hola’. I thought of simply pulling my trousers back up and leaving, but I realised that would look even worse, so I willed myself to pee once more. I looked to the other side of me, keeping my eyes firmly at head height, only for the second Hispanic man to smile, then, without a hint of embarrassment, to stare directly down at my willie. This was all getting too much and I swivelled around to the left again to see that the first Hispanic was now eyeing my backside which I had inadvertently exposed by lowering my clown pants halfway down my bottom. One hour in and I was already parading my big white arse – at this rate I was in danger of becoming known as ‘Scotland the slut’.
Fortunately this momentary distraction seemed to have eased the mind–bladder deadlock, and the relief I felt as I faced straight ahead again was magical. Confidence restored, I felt like I was reasserting my masculinity and I smiled and gasped, ‘Aaaahhhhhhh!!’ – ridiculously proud of the strong flow I was producing. My two comrades seemed happy as well, so we all stood there smiling, me still looking straight ahead. Yanking my trousers back up to cover my bottom, I turned away from both the Hispanics and began to wash my hands. There were no hand towels or soap, so I quickly rinsed one hand and rubbed it on my trousers instead.
The relief I’d felt after finally relieving myself was dissipating now, and I was getting anxious of making a mistake again, any kind of mistake, so I shuffled out of the bathroom as quickly as I could, ignoring some mumbled entreaties from the two Hispanics to join an altogether different kind of gang. A gang with more bang, I guessed, as I shuffled back to my bunk, relieved at least that I had survived my first visit to the toilets.
7
POLLOK, SCOTLAND
IF ANY INMATES WERE STILL STARING at me, I barely noticed. I felt tired and drained as I pulled myself awkwardly back up onto my bunk and started looking out of my little window.
Beyond the bars, I could see the Yard and then the bird house. I watched the birds flying in and out for a while, feeling a little bit less hopeless. The two, bleak slabs of building, Sunrise and Sunset, reminded me of the rows of tenements I’d grown up around in Dormanside Road in Pollok. Dormanside stretched for nearly two miles top to bottom, only occasionally interrupted by side streets. This was where my best friend Joe and I, and my brothers Mark and Michael, would hang out come rain or shine, playing football, or a game called ‘kerby’ which involved throwing the ball against the opposite kerb and trying to catch it on the rebound. The parallels with the landscapes of my childhood made this feel like a designer-made nightmare, full of subtle comparisons and metaphors that even in those first few moments perturbed me.
Some days after we had left the Home and Mum was bringing us up in Dormanside Road, I would hear her crying. She was always so strong for us boys; always giving us a strong moral grounding, making sure we all sat down for a family meal together every evening, no matter how sparse. She worked two jobs and I could see how exhausted she often was, but still she encouraged us and loved us. We had so little money, but what we had she spent on us. She seldom went out on her own and seldom had adult company other than her brothers, my Uncle Martin and Uncle John. Everything was dedicated to keeping us out of trouble and to teaching us to be ‘good boys’. Somewhat ironically, she used to worry that if she didn’t keep a tight rein on us, we would end up in prison like so many others from Dormanside Road. I guess she never envisaged I would take such an exotic route, however.
Mum was a strict disciplinarian and we had a daily rota on the wall to cover all the housework when we came home from school. She would usually be back by 6 p.m., but two or three nights a week she would go straight back out to her ‘second job’, singing at a few clubs in Glasgow. She had a wonderful voice – but she can’t have wanted to head out to perform after a hard day’s work, leaving the warmth of the home to go back into the city.
On those few occasions I found her crying alone in her bedroom, she would quickly gather herself together and say it was nothing. There was no unburdening herself on her youngest son, no attempt to help herself – just a continuation of her role as the ‘strong one’, the glue that kept the family together.
Despite being the brightest of three children, Mum had left school at fifteen to look after her terminally ill mother and to take care of the household. My grandmother had passed away from tuberculosis – a big killer in the smog-filled Glasgow of the late fifties – when my mum was only seventeen. By twenty-one, my mother had already met my father, married, and had her third son. By twenty-two she was separated, and ostracised by a strict Catholic family who believed she should stay with my father no matter how obvious his indiscretions. Only her brothers took her side. Even the local priest tried to advise her that my dad was just being ‘a young man, stretching his wings’. But he had wrapped his wings round one too many birds for my mum’s liking, and when I was just three months old he was gone. I didn’t meet him again until I was a teenager.
We moved to Spain for a few years, then came back to Glasgow when my father’s bankruptcy stopped any maintenance payments. With my Uncle Martin serving in the Navy and Uncle John having moved to London, my Mum began to really struggle with three boys under the age of six. In the early 1960s, particularly in Glasgow, being a single mother was a shameful thing for working-class Catholics. My mother’s parents turned their backs not only on her, but on her children as well.
After staying in a
friend’s spare bedroom – an impossible set-up for one adult and three kids – we were initially separated and placed into foster care. I have a vague memory of that, though I was only three years old. I do remember a taxi ride, my mum anxious and Mark and I crying; Michael (the eldest) was resolute as always. I remember going into an office, then my mum saying goodbye and crying, then a blur of people trying to be kind to me – an older couple with a big gas fire that they let me sit in front of. They kept offering me food, but I had it fixed in my head that if I took it, even though I was hungry, I wouldn’t see Mark and Michael or my mum again. I didn’t take it.
I also didn’t speak, just wrapped my arms round my legs and rocked myself back and forward in front of the fire. Michael was at another house trying to achieve the same result, but by a different method. He had smashed a glass and a plate and thrown his food against the wall. When the man of the house had tried to calm him down, he’d bitten him and tried to punch him, then he told his wife to ‘fuck off’. Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports had Mark at a house nearby tucking into egg and chips with his feet up on the couch and watching Joe 90 on the telly. Mark was always the most pragmatic of the three of us.
With two out of three of us not settling, the decision was made to move us three Catholic boys into the all-Protestant children’s Quarriers Homes – an orphanage ten miles outside of Glasgow, which was a significant decision in a still very sectarian city. The Home had been founded in the 1850s by William Quarrier ‘for the abandoned or orphaned children of Glasgow and beyond’ and even in the 1960s it was enjoying a roaring trade. We were labelled as short-termers, but ended up spending over two years there. I hated it. All my first concrete memories came from that Home, and the enduring recollection was of counting the days until we could get out. But at least it kept the three of us together. Michael continuously ran away – on two occasions he was found only a few miles outside Glasgow – and he would often be in trouble for fighting. I was quiet and insular, talking only to Mark and Michael or Donald, my best friend then, and the only ‘coloured’ boy in a home of 1,500. Mark loved it.