by Gavin Bishop
Boy knocked on a pane of bubble-glass in the door.
It opened quickly, as if the elderly woman drying her hands on her apron was expecting them. ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling. ‘Have you come to see me?’
‘Mrs Scandret?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Mrs Scandret, my grandmother’s friend?’
‘Granny MacKay?’ asked the woman. ‘I thought you had a MacKay look about you.’
She came through the door and gave Boy a hug.
‘This is my family,’ he said.
‘Well, well. This is a nice surprise. Come on in. Make yourselves at home.’
We followed Mrs Scandret inside. She led us to her good front room and went in first to switch on the electric heater with artificial coals. The room was musty and cold.
The view of the bay and distant mountains was obscured by drapes, a venetian blind and scalloped net curtains. A small watercolour painting of the same scene hung on the wall above the electric fire.
Boy introduced everyone. Last of all he said, ‘And you probably remember Teddy, Teddy One-eye?’
The girls looked at their father. They didn’t like that name.
‘Your teddy bear!’ said Mrs Scandret. ‘Your grandmother used to talk about him often. You boys were pretty rough on him, though. It used to upset your grandmother when you didn’t take better care of him.’
Boy went red.
‘But we still have him. The girls play with him now.’
‘Let me see him.’
The middle girl took the backpack off and lifted me out.
‘That’s a pretty frock he’s wearing,’ said the old lady.
I was embarrassed. Couldn’t those girls see I was a boy-bear?
‘She needs that dress to keep her together,’ said the oldest girl.
‘Yeah, she’s falling apart,’ added the little girl.
‘I see he — I mean she — still has the button eye your granny gave him.’
‘How do you know about that?’ asked Boy.
‘You swallowed the real one,’ said Mrs Scandret.
Once again, Boy blushed brighter than the electric coal fire.
‘Granny MacKay had a button tin,’ she said. ‘She let me look through it whenever she babysat me. She took it everywhere with her, just in case.’
‘I remember it too,’ said Boy.
Mrs Scandret left the room and returned with a small biscuit tin with a sailing ship embossed on the lid. She placed it on a small table near Boy.
‘Your granny gave me this not long before she died. She knew I had always liked it.’ She opened the lid. Buttons, plain and fancy, black, brown, maroon, green, red and clear, glistened like the jewels in a pirate’s treasure chest.
‘Here’s another one just like Teddy’s.’ Mrs Scandret picked up a small black button and held it up to my button eye. ‘That was a lovely jacket. When she had finished with it, your grandmother kept the buttons to remind her of it.’
‘Can I have a look, please?’ asked the middle girl.
‘Yes, dear, of course you can.’
I watched as the girl plunged her hands into buttons and let them fall through her fingers like Scrooge McDuck enjoying his money.
‘Look, there’s some paper here. Is it a letter?’
She handed it to Mrs Scandret.
‘Funny, I’ve never noticed it before.’ She unfolded the paper and began to read silently. She stopped and said, ‘Listen to this:
Dundee House
Riverton
11th December 1940
Dear Granny Mac,
It is with an extremely heavy heart that I write on the eve of our departure for Scotland. We can no longer stay here in a country where we lost our darling wee Jamie to that unforgiving disease.
Angus and I will leave in only the cloth es we stand up in. We fear the belongings we had h ere might, if taken back to our home in Dumfries, forever remind us of the sorrowful time we had in Riverton.
As a mark of our deep affection and to say thank you for your support, we would like you to go to our house after we have gone and take something of Jamie’s that will remind you of the time you spent with him.
Farewell and God bless,
Your affectionate friend,
Ruth Kincaid.
Mrs Scandret slowly folded the letter in two.
‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘There’s a note on the back in pencil. It says:
I collected the teddy bear still in its box.
I will keep him for someone special.
M. MacKay Jan. 1941.
‘I remember Granny MacKay telling me about that dear wee boy.’ Mrs Scandret clasped the letter to her chest with both hands. She looked up into the face of Boy. ‘She spent a lot of time sitting with Jamie when he was sick, right until the end. She loved him very much. That is obviously why she took something really special like his teddy bear and gave him to you.’
I watched as Boy and his family became as pale and still as a group of plaster casts. The room was silent except for the whirring of the fan in the electric coal fire. Boy’s eyes were sparkling, wet. He blinked a couple of times and bent forward to listen to something the littlest girl whispered to him. She wanted a drink of water.
Mrs Scandret moved too. She put the letter back in the button tin and closed the lid.
‘That’s a gloomy old subject. It’s too nice a day for that. Let’s all have a nice cup of tea. Would you girls like some lemonade?’
My glass eye sparkled brighter that it had ever done before. In my mind, the moth sat still. The window was no longer misty. I could see right through it, back into the past. I hadn’t been a new bear when I was given to Boy after all. I had been part of another child’s life. And I could now remember that boy clearly. He was Jamie, my little Jamie.
24
TWO BOXES
1940
THE SOUND OF WEEPING in the cold house was echoed by the sigh of the sea somewhere off in the dark. My best friend, little Jamie, had died.
When he was born, he was as pale as a twig that had never seen the sun. As he grew from a fragile baby into a sickly boy, we were always together. He had a little wicker chair to sit on beside the big sofa in the living room, and I had mine. At the long wooden table in the kitchen, my high chair sat next to his. Both chairs were painted sky blue to match. At bedtime Jamie got into bed first to lie next to the wall. Then he lifted me into place along the outside edge. He knew I would protect him from the monsters that might rush through the door or sneak from under the bed when the light went out. I was his guardian and his friend, and he loved me. And even though life was quiet and uneventful, I did not mind. I didn’t know about adventures full of excitement and fear.
Because Jamie got tired easily, we spent most of our days indoors. There were rare times on warm days when his mum or dad carried him out to the bench made of twisted manuka branches on the sheltered side of the house. Propped up against a stack of pillows, as the westerly sprung off the roof and roared overhead, we watched the butterflies in the buddleia or the bees in the foxgloves just long enough to get a little colour in his cheeks. Back inside, he brushed my fur and polished my glass eyes with his sleeve.
Some nights, if the blinds on his bedroom window were left up, the light from the Southern Cross would reflect in my eyes. Little Jamie would say, ‘I can see some diamonds. Hold still, I’ll catch them and make a crown for your head.’
I never left his side as Jamie grew older and a little stronger. During the day, I listened as he recited his times tables with Ruth, his mother, or watched as he played pick-up-sticks on the mat in front of the fire.
And every night without fail I lay like the Great Wall of China along the edge of his bed to protect him from the monsters and the goblins. And, except for an occasional nightmare, I managed to keep those creatures at bay.
But the diphtheria goblins were cunning. They made themselves invisible, and one night with the sky leaking like a rusted cauldron
they slid silently under the door, right before my ever-watchful eyes. From their slimy sacks they sprinkled seeds of sickness over Jamie’s chest. As he slept, he sucked them down into his lungs where they germinated and set root, spreading their twisting tendrils throughout his body.
That winter, when Jamie became ill, his mother hovered angel-like above his bed, seeing to his every need. My sparkly eyes watched her hold his hand and stroke his forehead, or gently lift a spoon to his mouth with some thin soup or warm milk. Jamie’s father would call the cows in early to hurry through the milking so he could go to his boy’s bedside too.
The westerlies brought the rain every afternoon. And when they were calm, cold rain came from the south.
The people in the farms and cottages sprinkled across the green hills edging the sea were aware of the family’s plight. A pot of soup, a basket of scones or a large mutton pie were often left at the kitchen door. Others offered to help with cleaning or washing and ironing, but they were kindly thanked and sent away. Only one person was welcomed in. Granny MacKay would bike out from the town and, after hanging up her sodden scarf and coat by the coal range, slip quietly into Jamie’s bedroom. She would wave the boy’s parents off to bed, settle into a chair in the shadows by the door and turn up the night-light so she could see her crocheting. If I had fallen out of Jamie’s bed, she tucked me back in. And there she stayed until Ruth came back from a few hours of sleep to bring the old lady a cup of tea.
The doctor came every day. His car skidded on the muddy drive up to the gate by the hawthorn tree in front of the house. Some days he had to give up and walk to check on his tiny patient, leaving the old Holden slouched against the black forest of flax. But the doctor could do little to stop the growth of the goblins’ evil forest filling every corner of Jamie’s body with its twisted branches, its thorns and its dark greasy flowers.
And now Jamie’s tiny, wasted body, dressed in a white nightshirt, lay in a white coffin lined with pale-blue satin. The box had been placed on his bed. His fingers were interwoven on his chest and his blond hair was brushed forward to soften the gauntness of his face.
His mother stood hunched like a small black bird. Her hands, trembling in front of her stomach, were woven like her son’s. A brooch of three entwined hearts glowed with a dull sheen at her throat, and the winter roses on the bedside table shook with her sobs. She pulled her fingers apart and bent forward. From under the boy’s bed, she pulled out a cardboard box. It was the one from the toy shop, with the Southern Cross on the lid, the one I came in. She slid it onto the bed next to her little boy’s coffin. She took off the lid and put me inside.
For two days we lay there, little Jamie in his box, me in mine. Neighbours came with flowers, cards and tears, and sometimes things to eat. And day and night Ruth, the boy’s mother, sat by the bed and wept.
On the third day it was time for the little boy to take his last journey down the muddy drive and along the road with the sea lashing the rocks to the little church by the cemetery near the racecourse. Two men in sombre coats and pinstriped trousers came, heads bowed, into the boy’s bedroom. The boy’s mother and father moved back to allow them to do their work. One of the men placed the lid on the boy’s box. The boy’s parents were holding each other, too distraught to watch. Then he put the lid on my box.
I was plunged into darkness. I felt my box move as someone lifted it. A flood of fear rushed from my feet to my ears. Every hair on my body was standing to attention. My silent scream for help filled my dark prison. I was to be buried with little Jamie. But I was still alive!
Then I heard them — the words of my salvation.
‘Not that one, Chas. Just the boy’s.’
I felt my box settle back down on the bed. Then I listened as the muffled voices and the sound of weeping got gradually quieter. I relaxed. My arms and legs went limp, my eyes clouded over and I fell into a coma-like sleep. I was so saddened at the death of my friend, I stayed like that for a very long time. Even my rescue by Granny MacKay from the house of sadness did not wake me.
During those long, dark years in the box, fragments of memory or a name drifted through my head without making sense. Like the sleeping princess who could be woken only by someone who would love her, I lay in my cardboard casket, waiting, without knowing it, to be released by a new playmate. I was waiting for another boy or girl to make me their friend — waiting to be reborn.
And when it happened on that winter’s afternoon in 1950, I opened my eyes to a new life, the sad memories of little Jamie cemented to the bottom of a deep well somewhere inside my furry chest.
25
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
1982
ON OUR RETURN FROM RIVERTON, I was taken out of my dress. The booties were given to a baby doll and my bonnet was put into a bag for the Salvation Army. Now that some of my story was known, I was treated with more respect. The untidy patches on my arms and legs remained the same, and so did the white cotton in my ear, but now I was dressed in a smart sailor’s suit and allowed to sleep in a little wooden cot with a painted boat at my head and a shell at my feet.
But still I saw little of Boy. He always seemed to be busy writing and drawing. He would brush me aside when the girls suggested he look at my new suit. He barely looked up from his drawing board if someone commented on how smart I looked. I suspected that my battle-scarred body was an embarrassment to him, a reminder of his childhood days. I had been rescued from the house of sorrows and placed in his care. But he had treated me roughly sometimes, and did not always care that his baby brother did the same. I wanted him to see we could be good friends again.
The girls treated me well, but they now looked beyond the toy box for friends and companions. An old teddy bear, even one with a long history, was of little interest to children who were growing up.
So it was off to the back bedroom. Stuff went in there but nothing came out. It was a storage place for jigsaw puzzles with large pieces, junior card games, and dolls with their tiny tea sets in boxes secured with rubber bands. I knew this kind of place well. First there had been The Trunk, then the suitcase in the wardrobes, and now the back bedroom.
My little cot was pushed between a brocade tub chair with a torn cover and a bookcase. With my glass eye, I scanned the titles on the spines of the books over and over again, and could recite them all in correct order without looking. Peter Pan, Revolting Rhymes, The Lion in the Meadow, My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes, and on and on.
I wondered whatever had happened to Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies. My mind wandered back to the brave mother, also called Ruth, who sat for all those weeks beside the bed of her sick boy, my friend little Jamie. Would he have set me aside when he grew up? Would his mother have stored me away in a suitcase at the top of a wardrobe? Would my life have been any different living with them?
With my button eye, I watched a spider across the room build a nest under a Formica table. In the spring, I counted the hundreds of spider babies as they hatched. The leaves on the sycamore I could see through the window above the bookcase burst forth with a green so vibrant it almost hurt my glass eye to look at it. Summer. Autumn. The sycamore leaves turned brown and fell. Winter. Southerly rain beat against the window. I lay in my cot, not completely forgotten but simply overlooked.
26
THE BACK BEDROOM
1986–1996
27
THE JUNK OF AGES
1997
THE DOOR TO THE back bedroom had remained closed for years, then one day it opened and Boy came in.
‘Wow, there’s a lot of junk in here,’ he said, calling over his shoulder to his wife. ‘I think we should throw it all out. Make this room into a really nice guest room.’
He walked over to the bookcase and pulled the tub chair away to look at the books. He was obviously surprised to see me lying there in my cot. He must have forgotten that I had been left there years before. Perhaps he never even knew?
He stood still. Not moving. Barely breathing. Hi
s mother, his father, his baby brother, Granny MacKay, Frankie Gibbs, Len Hume and all his friends from childhood danced like a procession through his head. Then he blinked a couple of times and reached into the cot. He picked me up and said, ‘The rest of this stuff can go to the Sallies, but I had better keep you, old Teddy One-eye. I’d never hear the end of it if I tossed you out.’
Boy carried me out to the kitchen and took a fresh black plastic rubbish bag from the drawer near the stove. He dropped me in, tied the bag at the top, and took it down to the basement where all unwanted things that perhaps shouldn’t be thrown away just yet were stored. Boy hung the bag on a nail. He switched off the light and closed the door, leaving me to darkness.
Above the hum of the deep freeze and the clicks and gurgles of the washing machine I listened to footsteps, loud then soft, as they crossed overhead. From the living room above, the television kept me in touch with the rest of the world.
28
THE BASEMENT
1997–2011
THROUGH A GASH TORN in the rubbish bag by a hungry cat that was trapped in the basement for a week, I watched Boy and his wife do the laundry, add food to the deep freeze, or store away unwanted household items. Mice came out at night and raced along the floor joists. Sometimes a rat would scurry in, looking for a warm spot to nest for the winter. Straw flowers crackled and popped as they hung drying next to my black bag. At Christmas time, the plastic Christmas tree, already dressed, was taken upstairs and brought back again eight days later.
In its own way, the basement offered more life than the spare room. The passing of time shown in the greening and browning of the sycamore had been stopped when the tree was cut down. Even the spider under the table seemed to catch something and die. Its cobweb hung forlornly until it collapsed into tatters, lifting and falling in the slightest movement of air.