Birdy Flynn

by Helen Donohoe

  ‘Please, Murphy, stop fighting,’ I begged her.

  With my tired arms I held her down and kept the water from taking her off. Then she stopped moving and the bubbles stopped rising and I couldn’t get my breath so I had to stand up.

  I closed my eyes and did a prayer for her. For her safe delivery to be with Nan in Heaven, for the boys to rot in Hell and for me to be forgiven. It was the first prayer I made up myself.

  I crouched down to fetch her body out. I thought I could bury her under the blackberry bushes and get some twigs to make a cross. But, when I put my hands in, she was gone. I felt around in the water. Some mud gave way and my leg slipped and I got a sharp slice across my ankle bone. I thought I would be dragged along with all the floating litter, through the sewage tunnels, into the dark, and I would drown and rot and never be found and that would finish Mum off. But I heaved my foot free, sucking it out of the mud, and I fell on my hands and knees.

  Long grass tickled my face as I pulled away and dragged myself up, and I saw Liam standing at the top.

  He was blubbering, shaking his head. ‘How could you?’ he said.

  ‘Liam –’ I tried to say, but he turned away and ran.

  I put my hand to my ankle and felt my own blood. I straightened up. When I put my right foot down, my nerve ends flashed with a sharp painful shock.

  I ran through the pain. To my right was the army firing range, a wire fence taller than a horse with miles of twisted barbed wire. I hobbled and stumbled as fast as I could. There were overgrown brambles and nettles and on the fence were yellow signs shouting, Danger of Death and MoD property and KEEP OUT. Bits of broken glass crunched under my foot and I begged them not to slice through my monkey boots.

  When I got to the end of the fence I grabbed at my breath, but before I could breathe I was sick. All my tubes got confused and sick got sucked up and blew out my nose. My throat burnt. I had sick on my fingers; I wiped them on the grass. I dug deep to find my hanky and rubbed my lips hard. With my sleeves I wiped my eyes. I slapped myself and without thinking I kept on hitting. My face got sore and my nose, but again and again I hit, and harder, and then the pain went and it felt good, so I kept going like I was boxing myself and I cheered myself on, until blood started dripping and my nose started throbbing, and when I looked down at my torn clothes, I thought, Oh jeepers, my mum is going to explode.

  Chapter 2

  I felt thrown into outer space. With no spaceship or rope, and no gravity and no planet where I could go.

  I was on a street I didn’t know – which was wrong, because I knew every street in the town I was from. Curtains were being closed. Porch lights were flickering. Mum would be worrying. Her nerves would be gone.

  I turned into a road of bungalows, Chaucer Close. The breath in my chest was hot as a kettle, my ankle skin scorched, so I slowed. I looked back. I walked forward. Little fake people with little fake wheelbarrows looked up at me from shiny green lawns that had fake windmills and fake mice and birds. I limped into a road that was curved, with houses that were apart and gravel-covered driveways and nice-looking cars.

  I felt lost. My foot screamed at me to stop. But my brain said I could not.

  I walked through a gap and across a proper busy road. The King’s Head was in front of me, the pub where my uncles drank Guinness and Mild. Two pink-haired glue sniffers leant against a wall. National Front was sprayed in white paint behind them. Their heads were buried in white plastic bags and they didn’t look up.

  The road got flat so I tried to run. I untucked my shirt and pulled off my tie.

  Up ahead I saw my Aunty Margaret coming out of Londis. I spun around. More pain. I ran through the Wellington Estate. I went after an invisible target, certain that something was following me, chasing me, just about to catch me. I weaved through blocks of little square houses connected together like mine, in lines like Lego, and I found an alleyway that I recognised. It twisted left and right and came out to a low flat building with thumping music and multicoloured beams flashing off parked cars. It was the Churchill Army Social Club.

  My head was full of dirty swirling water and Liam’s eyes and Murphy’s yelping, so although I heard someone shout, ‘Oi oi’, it didn’t seem like my sister Eileen’s voice.

  ‘How’s my favourite weirdo?’ she carried on. ‘You gone quiet, Birdy?’ she shouted louder, as if I hadn’t heard.

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘I’m talking to you.’ She staggered towards me in her yellow pointy shoes and her stacked-up-high hair that sparkled in the green light pumping through the window. Her lips were drastic red, like she’d been snogging a postbox with a fresh coat of paint. Her breath smelt plastic from her drinking.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said as I tried to walk on.

  ‘Where you been?’ She stood in front of me. Her mate Clare stood back from her, chewing like a horse, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘It’s selfish, Birdy, that’s all I’m saying. It’s like you don’t care.’

  ‘Care about what?’

  ‘You should be home more.’ She prodded me. ‘Helping out.’ She took some of my jacket in her hand. ‘Jesus, Birdy, have you got Dad’s aftershave on?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. She made me lie. That was when the lies took off.

  ‘Are you wearing Brut?’ She sniffed around my neck. ‘That is Dad’s Brut.’

  ‘Get off.’ I pushed her. I tried to walk past. She put her arm in my way.

  ‘You can’t stay like that for ever, Birdy. You do know that?’ She waited. ‘Birdy, hello?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Look at you. Aren’t you embarrassed?’ Since she’d left school she was drinking loads and was always showing off. ‘No way are you coming to my party.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘The state of you! No wonder Mum’s losing weight.’

  ‘She isn’t –’

  ‘A pipe cleaner has more fat,’ Eileen cut in, her face twisted and angry.

  Clare tugged at her arm and grunted some words.

  ‘I wash up,’ I said, ‘and carry her bags home from work.’

  Eileen shook her head as she stepped around me. I stared back at her. She looked me up and down. I looked down at the mud and blood on my shoes and she walked off in her clip-cloppy moves.

  ‘You shouldn’t lie to Mum,’ she shouted from the doorway of the club.

  I looked up. She stood still. Behind the smoke from Clare’s cigarette, Eileen looked like something from Doctor Who.

  ‘You shouldn’t lie to her, Birdy.’

  I haven’t, I thought. I wouldn’t do that to Mum. Then I tried to remember everything I’d ever said, and everything that I had done.

  Every Friday, Uncle Timmy came round for his tea and to make our house smell, so I closed my eyes when I turned into our road. I wished his rubbish bike away, but there it was, leaning against the wobbly wall built by Dad and me. There were two bikes, one with a basket. Double trouble, that would be – him and Aunty Peggy. She once told me, ‘You have a sensitive wee sniffer, so you do.’ I could easily sniff out them two.

  Our back door was always stuck; I used my shoulder to barge it open.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ Mum shouted. ‘Will you kick that bloody door shut.’

  I did, and the pain was so bad I covered my mouth to make my scream stop. The dirty swirling tobacco smoke crackled my eyes like they were dipped in Space Dust. I flapped my hands to clear the air and Mum thought I was waving, so she flapped her yellow gloves back.

  She was matchstick thin, I saw it then. But she didn’t look forty-five. She had no double chins and although her skin was grey, none of it was sagging. She was standing at the oven, boiling vests and pants. I loved the soapy fog that came off the silver pot when Mum was doing washing. I stood by her side. She was her usual busy. Her eyes were watery. I looked close. They were happy watery and she smiled.

  ‘Look at you,’ Aunty Peggy said. ‘You’re as cute as a choirboy with that hair.�
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  ‘We all blossom in time,’ Mum said, stirring the vests so hard that her face dripped with sweat. The lady from the Sugar Shack was called Blossom. A big woman with massive boobs and blue permed hair. Her brown-toothed smile came into my head and I didn’t want it there.

  ‘Has the cat got your tongue?’ Aunty Peggy said, and my belly sucked my insides up.

  ‘What cat?’ I said.

  ‘There’s no cat.’ Aunty Peggy frowned.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Where’s my dad?’ I turned to Mum.

  ‘Not a clue.’ She reached to turn Dolly Parton down. ‘What time is this to be home?’ Mum said, but in a calm and not-yelling way. Not telling me I might have been kidnapped or mass-murdered or dumped in a bush by the side of the motorway.

  ‘Well now,’ Uncle Timmy mumbled while licking a ciggy and dribbling spit down his chin. His hands were too big for making roll-ups – they were made for carrying bricks.

  I looked at him and his snaky, see-through skin; I found flakes of it everywhere. He always mumbled. I once asked Mum why Uncle Timmy could sing in sentences but only talk in riddles. She said he had a fine voice. I asked if he’d been in the war. Mum said, ‘Oh, he has all right.’ But when I asked which one, she told me not to pry.

  ‘What time is this?’ Mum asked again.

  ‘It’s . . .’ I looked at the clock.

  ‘I know what time it is.’ She stood back with her hands on her hips. ‘What time do you call it to be in?’ Then her eyes caught proper sight of me. ‘Jesus wept, Birdy, look at you. For Heaven’s sake, you’re soaking and you have mud all over you.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Have you been in that brook again? Have you?’ Her eyes looked worn-out worried. ‘For the love of God, your jumper is actually torn there. Birdy, what is that? You’ve even scratches across your face, child. Jesus, what is wrong with you? And your shoes! Is that blood on your shoes?’

  Aunty Peggy leant over to get a peek.

  ‘Have you been fighting again?’ Mum looked me up and down.

  I scraped inside my head for a story that wasn’t proper lying.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, I don’t know what any other mother would do. Take them off, Birdy. Have you blood on your socks?’ She lifted my leg up. ‘Good God, you have too.’

  ‘I fell out of a tree,’ I said.

  Aunty Peggy laughed.

  Mum drilled her serious eyes into me. ‘Was Liam not with you?’

  ‘Why? Would he catch me?’

  ‘Are you having me on?’ Mum’s face turned angry. ‘Go get yourself clean.’

  ‘Were you playing football?’ Aunty Peggy asked.

  ‘Yes.’ The word came out before I knew it.

  ‘Did you win?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said while pulling my jumper off. ‘I mean no. Yes, we lost.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘It was 16–4,’ I said, and Uncle Timmy burst into laughter.

  ‘I need the loo.’ I backed away; my ankle skin ripped again. I knew they were watching while I tried to walk upstairs in a normal way.

  Our bathroom was always still. It was the place that everyone went to be on their own.

  It smelt of fake lemon and pine because Mum cleaned it every day. She hoovered the toilet-seat cover, bleached the plugholes, wiped the soap dishes, polished the taps, changed the towels, adjusted the rugs, stood the toothbrushes up and made sure the bathroom cabinet was ‘as straight as an army locker’. The bottles were lined up like a family photo – tall bubble baths at the back, baby brown bottles of tablets along the front row.

  I climbed into the bath in my pants. Under my fingernails was dirt and grass and dried blood. My knees and shins were grey and brown and purple from old fighting bruises. The bruises Mum told me to keep hidden, or I’d be taken away and she would go to prison.

  The blood around my ankle had turned to a crust. It looked like my foot had gone rusty and seized up but, under the cold tap, it started to soften. I looked down at it, biting my lip through the stinging, my ankle bone almost pushing out. I needed Mum to see it – the size of the cut and the skin flopping off and the blood that was leaking. I reached for toilet paper and pressed hard against the flow. Tissue stuck to the flesh and I couldn’t look as I rinsed it more and it sparked off shots of pain. I got the bottle of TCP from the windowsill and held in my screams while I poured it on and it burnt my flesh like acid. This was bad trouble. Worse than making fires in the woods, or smashing the windows of the old barracks. It was worse than watching Martin’s dad’s videos or drinking his home-brew gin. Doing them things made us all laugh. Doing those things was fun. It was the worst trouble the boys had got me into and I never wanted to see them again.

  In the corner of the bath was Noely’s shaving kit. His sixteenth birthday present that he forgot to take with him. A real silver razor, a shaving brush made from horse’s hair, a tiny bottle of aftershave and a metal comb. Whenever I could, I sat on the side of the bath and got his razor out and practised shaving. My skin tingled from its sharp cold blade as I pressed it against my cheeks and slowly down my neck.

  My return to the kitchen was like a homecoming.

  ‘You’ve changed.’ Mum smiled. ‘Much smarter.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I only had my pyjamas on.

  ‘Jeepers, have you been splashing on the TCP?’

  ‘I got a graze.’

  ‘How big a graze?’ she said. While I wondered what size to tell her, she butted in and said, ‘Sit down, anyway.’

  So I sat and I stared at my aunty and uncle, who ate our food and relaxed in our house but weren’t real relatives of ours. They were people from Ireland. Nan had a long list of people we should take care of, no matter what happens to the world. It was Sellotaped to the fridge and new people were added every day. But I wished Peggy and Timmy away, back to their flat and its smell of old teabags and cabbage.

  Mum fetched over plates of pork pies and tomato quarters and red potatoes. The plates wobbled in her hands so I reached across to help them land. ‘Now, Tim. I’ve cut ham in the fridge for you,’ she said. That was his reward, just for being a man. Bread was placed on the table, then hard-boiled eggs and kippers.

  ‘This is summer food,’ I said, and Mum clipped the back of my head.

  ‘Be grateful,’ she said. ‘It is May anyway.’

  Uncle Timmy looked at his watch.

  ‘Sure a starving African would lap that up,’ Mum went on, tucking the tea towel into her apron’s waistband.

  ‘It’s hot where they live.’

  ‘Just eat.’ Mum shifted the plate closer to me.

  Uncle Timmy shook the jar of mustard over his potatoes. Mum took it off him and handed him the salt.

  I nibbled on pork pie. Aunty Peggy hummed an Irish song, Uncle Timmy tapped his fingers and Mum started singing along. Mum sounded more Irish when we had visitors and I wanted to as well, so I could be like them and properly belong. But I always decided not to try, in case I got it wrong.

  When our outside light flickered, trying to switch on, Mum pulled across the net curtain. ‘That’ll be the Pools man.’ But then she said, ‘No, no, it’s your pal.’ She gave me a prod.

  My eyes flicked towards the window and saw Edna shuffling along. They waved at her, like people on the deck of a ship, sailing away for ever.

  ‘She’s blind,’ I reminded them, and they all tutted and muttered and told themselves off.

  Mum gave me the look to get up and open the door.

  Edna was over from Ireland as well. Her home was Ennis in County Clare. ‘Ennis is Irish for island,’ she told me many times, every time thinking it was pure hilarious. ‘You know, it’s where Cassius Clay is from.’

  When I was little she would tell me the story of how, one minute, her father was working and shouting his head off down the market, the next Edna and her brothers and sisters were packed up on a train, heading for a big ship near Dublin. She moved to our town from Earls Court in London b
ecause she wanted fresh air and to be away from all the shouting. She never had her own husband or children, so Nan looked out for her. She gave her Murphy for company. Nan’s precious, special cat. Nan told Edna the cat would bring her luck, then Nan died two weeks after that.

  Edna loved telling me magical stories and teaching me rebel songs. As I got older, they got more fierce and wild and her language got more strong. Fearsome stories of the banshee, the pookas, the faeries and the real Black and Tans. They were the fiercest stories and all true, Edna said. An undeniable part of history that we should never forget, no matter what anyone says. Nan agreed because when she was a baby they tipped her from her crib into bog water, set her house on fire and left them all for dead. Would anyone forgive and forget that? ‘No,’ Edna said, ‘’twas pure wrong.’ I wanted to go to Ireland and explore that world and see what was in it. Edna told me to get a bag ready. Nan said she’d buy me the ticket.

  I liked Edna. I loved her, I suppose. Not like I loved my nan, but still loads. But, as I opened the door, the pork pie in my mouth turned to dust and I begged in my head that she would not come in, that she was only dropping off rock cakes or offering us some spare boiled bacon.

  She knew it was me. She hugged me so tight it was hard to breathe.

  ‘Hello, Edna, love,’ Mum shouted.

  Mum would usually say, ‘Sure you don’t need to knock – use the back door. Come in, come in. Have you had your tea?’ Then Edna would say, ‘Oh, but I couldn’t – you know how I am, Martha.’ And she would sit down and eat everything, even stuff saved for treats. But this time she didn’t. Edna spoke first, stumbling into the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, Martha,’ she said, like a lost little girl.

  ‘Whatever’s wrong?’ Mum put her arm around her, sat her down and wiped her eyes with the tea towel.

  ‘Oh, Ma,’ Edna said more tuney, as if starting a sad song.