Agnes Owens

by Agnes Owens

  ‘I heard Donald’s back,’ I said when she opened the door.

  ‘Yes, and in some state too. He says his arm’s broken. I told him to go to a doctor but –’

  ‘Will it be all right if I go up and see him?’ I asked. ‘Do you think he’d mind?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘You go up anyway. I know he’s fond of you.’

  ‘Is he?’ I said, wondering what made her think that when he’d never given me any hint of it. I ran up the stairs joyfully.

  Donald sat on the edge of his bed strumming the guitar, with no sign of a bandage even.

  ‘I thought you had a broken arm,’ I said. He stopped strumming and sighed as if I had interrupted him in the middle of some composing.

  ‘No, but it felt like it. I got kicked, you know.’ He put his guitar down and asked what I wanted.

  ‘I only came to see if you were OK but if you want me to go –’

  He sighed again. ‘Actually, I was thinking of topping myself.’

  ‘You were?’ I said, not really surprised.

  ‘I might as well do it and save Fat Harry the bother.’

  ‘What about Granny?’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t she lend you something?’

  ‘How could she? She’s only got her pension.’

  ‘True,’ I said.

  We sat for a while, thinking. Then I got an idea so good I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I know for a fact she’s paying up an insurance policy for her funeral. Why don’t you ask her to cash it in and tell her if she doesn’t it could be your funeral.’

  He stared at me thoughtfully through narrowed eyes.

  ‘That’s a great idea. I’ll ask her as soon as she comes up with the tea. But maybe it’s best you should go. She might not want to discuss it in front of anybody. You know what women are like, very secretive.’

  The following evening the gang were all there, including Marian. She gave me a hostile glance which I returned with an equally hostile one. Donald told me to hurry up and close the door: did I want the whole world to know his business? I didn’t like the way he spoke but before I could dwell on it he was calling for everyone’s attention. I waited, thinking he was going to explain how he’d soon be able to pay Fat Harry. Instead, he was saying that Fat Harry was willing to reduce the debt if they all did a bit of collecting for him. Apparently there were so many people owing him money he couldn’t keep up with it. There was a silence until Marian declared it was OK with her. I thought that was pretty stupid, considering nobody would expect her to collect. However, that seemed to do the trick. They all agreed that it was OK by them. When I asked Donald later on if this was a wise move he said maybe not but it was the only way he could pay off the debt.

  ‘What about Granny’s insurance policy? I thought you were going to ask her –’

  ‘I was, but then I thought she’ll need it for her funeral so I didn’t bother.’

  He turned away then began to talk to Marian as if he’d suddenly found her totally interesting. I thought it was time to leave. No one was speaking to me anyway.

  A few days later my mother told me Granny had cashed in her insurance policy to pay for Donald’s debt. I was eating cornflakes at the time and I could feel my face flushing, but she didn’t seem to notice for she went on, ‘To think she’s been paying it up all these years and now she’ll have nothing for her funeral. I don’t know who’s going to pay.’

  ‘Maybe the social will pay,’ I said, with my head bent low over the plate.

  ‘Maybe they will and maybe they won’t,’ she snapped. ‘All I know is that I can’t.’

  After that she became so angry about the whole affair that she stopped visiting Granny. She said she was liable to do something drastic to Donald if she ever ran into him.

  ‘So where have you been lately?’ asked Morton as we were about to watch Ghostbusters on video once again.

  ‘Nowhere special. Just hanging around.’

  He offered me a cigarette from a silver case containing five. I was quite impressed with it, then he said, ‘Watch out for my ma coming in. She always likes to check up on me every so often.’

  I smoked the cigarette hurriedly though I suspected it wasn’t the smoking that bothered her. It was likely me. She’d a habit of staring at me very suspiciously as if I was up to something. Perhaps she thought I was gay, or we were both gay. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Morton was gay by the way he carried on.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you came.’

  Then a good thing happened to us for a change. We joined up with a bunch of boys a year or so younger than us. They were right into breaking windows and wrecking fences, things like that, nothing drastic except may be for the time we set the bins alight and all the old folk were out in their shirt-tails. Not that I’d call that drastic. Nobody was burned and anyway some of these old folk had it coming, the way they went on about us playing ball in the street. Though sometimes I felt all this vandalising was a bit beneath us. I told this to Morton and he said at least we weren’t into mugging anybody.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said with a laugh.

  ‘I hope you’re not in with that lot that’s pestering all the neighbours,’ my mother was saying when I was on my way out the door. I turned to her indignantly.

  ‘You know I only go round to Morton’s to watch videos, but if you like, I’ll bring him round here and then you’ll know where I am.’

  I knew my mother couldn’t be bothered having anyone in the house. The effort of trying to put on a pleasant face in front of strangers was always too much for her.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she said. ‘This place is too big a mess to bring anyone into.’

  Then Donald was the main topic with my mother once again. She’d heard in the Co-operative that he’d been arrested for being in possession of drugs.

  ‘I knew it would come to this,’ she moaned. ‘It was the company he kept. They were a bad influence.’

  When I reminded her how she’d once said Donald was the bad influence, she replied that she didn’t remember saying anything of the kind but anyway I’d better not turn out like him or she’d put me out.

  ‘Give us break. I’ve not done anything.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said darkly, then she went on, ‘Why don’t you go round to see Granny? She’s bound to be taking this badly.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ I said, for I didn’t fancy listening to all that moaning and groaning that would go on about Donald. I could see myself slipping up to his room and strumming his guitar just to get away from it all, and that would be quite a depressing thing to do under the circumstances.

  Donald did two months in jail. He came home one day and told Granny he was going to get a job down south as there was nothing doing up here and he would only get into more trouble if he stayed. Granny was quite upset at that. She said she would rather he got into trouble up here because if he got into trouble down south she wouldn’t know anything about it. I was sorry to see him go. Having been in jail, he’d become something of a hero to the young lads in the street and I’d hoped some of the glory would rub onto me if we were seen together. Only my mother was pleased. Out of sight, out of mind, she said to Granny, who’d never stopped crying about him for days. It turned out that he never went south after all. We discovered he was living in another part of town with a guy who had a character as bad as Fat Harry’s, if not worse.

  ‘I might have known,’ said my mother. ‘We should be seeing him back any day now to upset us all.’

  But he never came and things were altering for me again. It started with the weather becoming colder and some of the young guys not showing up in the evenings. They said they were staying in to study for their exams, which I could hardly believe. Then Morton said he was going to stay in for a spell as his mother didn’t want him going out in the fog in case he got done in. What fog, I wondered.

  Aloud I said, ‘Maybe she’s got a point there. I might as well stay in myself and do a
bit of studying. It’s the only way to get on, I’m thinking.’

  I stayed in but I didn’t do any studying. Mainly I sat in front of the television hoping to see something of a sexual nature. I liked when my mother went out to the bingo so that I could watch whatever I wanted to without her switching it off.

  ‘You’re a funny one,’ she would say. ‘First you’re never in and then you’re never out. There’s no happy medium with you.’

  When I told her that I’d go out in the summer, she said we could all be dead and buried by that time and I said I hoped so.

  It’s April now and the nights are much clearer, which gives me this feeling that I want to go out and kick a ball straight through somebody’s window. Still, I’ve heard some good news today. My mother told me that Donald was seen in the street driving a car. She thinks it’s stolen. I asked her if he’d been to see Granny yet and she said she wouldn’t be surprised as he’s got the cheek for anything.

  ‘And I don’t want you going round there,’ she added. ‘He’s a bad influence. I’ve always maintained that.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said.

  As soon as she leaves for the bingo I’m going round to Granny’s. Who knows, Donald might be up in his room strumming his guitar. And if he’s not there I’ll check on the street corner. He’s bound to be somewhere near at hand and he might even be glad to see me now I’m a lot older.

  People Like That

  Mary sat on a bench at the top end of the central station, panicking. Her mind had gone blank again. She knew this was part of her problem, but it was a horrible feeling, as if a brick wall had shut out half her brain. For a minute she couldn’t think why she was here then thankfully it came back to her. She was waiting for her son Brian to arrive on the Manchester train due in at platform 10, according to the chap in the ticket-office. It was terrible the way her memory kept going. She was not old enough to have senile dementia. She was only forty-six and it had been like that for two years now. A woman joined her on the seat, keeping to the farther end of it. Mary thought she would ask her about the train in case the chap in the ticket-office had got it wrong.

  ‘Do you happen to know if the Manchester train is running on time? I didnae see it up on the board.’

  The woman looked around. ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ she said, her fat face quite petulant. She had on a pale-blue shiny coat, the kind that Mary associated with those worn by older women at weddings. She didn’t like the look of this woman at all but being so nervous and jumpy and alone, she felt compelled to tell the woman that she was meeting her son off the Manchester train and though he had a good job down there, he always liked to come up for a holiday whenever he got the chance because, she added appealingly, ‘There’s no place like home, is there?’

  ‘Really,’ said the woman, looking straight ahead. Mary coughed and settled back on the bench, staring at her wrist and surprised to see no watch on it. She must have left it behind in her hurry to get away. It had been a present from one of the staff too. Well, they could keep it for all she cared, and anyway there was a clock hanging from a pole facing platform 10, so there was no need to worry about the time. All the same, she began to get a bit uptight when she noticed the woman put on a pair of grey kid gloves then begin stroking the backs of them, one hand with another, as though they were pet mice.

  ‘Do you mind not doing that,’ said Mary.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said the woman, her eyes bulging with indignation as she stared hard at Mary.

  ‘Well, you see it reminds me of the time Brian had his gerbils. He used to stroke them like the way you’re doing. Then one day he squashed them, accidentally, mind you. He wouldn’t do it deliberately. My Brian was always good with animals –’

  The woman broke in. ‘If you don’t mind, I don’t want to hear any more about your Brian.’ Then she looked behind her as if expecting to see someone she knew.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ said Mary. ‘It’s just that Brian cried so hard about his gerbils.’

  ‘This is too much,’ said the woman. She stood up and stamped off down the terrazzo-tiled floor of the station, her heels clicking like castanets. Perplexed, Mary watched her go, wondering what she’d said to annoy this woman with a face like a pig and legs as thick as tree trunks. Likely she was off her head. You were bound to meet people like that in a railway station. That pale-blue coat she had was a ridiculous colour for a woman of her age. Thinking about clothes made Mary wonder if Brian would be ashamed when he saw how she was dressed. Her coat was warm and comfortable but she’d had it for ages, and as for her boots (she reflected, stretching her legs out), the tops were as wrinkled as concertinas, even though she had bought them only two years ago. She frowned. Something else had happened two years ago – something of importance. She was sure it would come to her sometime. She asked a passing porter if the Manchester train was due soon. ‘Any minute now,’ he said, giving her a suspicious glance. When the train arrived at platform 10 she was standing in front of it, calm and smiling. People came spilling out through the doors but no one who looked like Brian. On the other hand he might have altered a lot since he’d left home, grown taller or fatter, maybe. Her heart leapt when she noticed one young man coming towards her who might possibly be him. He had the same longish chin and colour of hair, though his was worn shorter than Brian’s but it was quite possible he’d had it cut by now.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, standing in front of him. ‘Are you Brian McGuire?’

  ‘Shove off,’ he said, his face red and indignant.

  She stared after him, humiliated. It was terrible the way she got everything wrong nowadays. Come to think of it, that fellow had been nothing near as good-looking as Brian, even allowing for slight changes. Within minutes the people had dispersed and she was left standing on the empty platform. The driver pulled down his window to look at her curiously.

  ‘Can you tell me when the next train arrives in from Manchester?’ she asked him. ‘You see, I expected my son to be on the one that just came in, but he must have missed it.’

  ‘It’s not due for another three hours,’ said the driver, ‘and it won’t come into this platform. As a matter of fact, this one is now going to Greenock.’

  ‘Greenock,’ said Mary, her face brightening. ‘I believe I’ve been there once. It’s rather a nice place as far as I can remember.’

  ‘Is it?’ said the driver, pulling his window back up while she suddenly remembered it was Ayr that she was thinking of. She’d taken Brian there on his twelfth birthday. She remembered how he’d sat tight-lipped and sullen on the journey because she’d snatched the packet of cigarettes out of his hand before they’d stepped onto the train.

  ‘It doesn’t look right smoking in front of your mother at your age,’ she’d told him. ‘You’ll get them back when we get there.’

  ‘Aye, and that’s a whole two fuckin’ hours away,’ he’d said.

  On looking back she saw it as a good day. Brian had spent all his time in the amusements when he wasn’t lighting up fags, while she had sat on a seat on the esplanade looking out on a stormy sea. After that she’d taken a walk along the beach where the sand blew into her eyes. Still, it had been May, so what could she expect. Anyway, the cold wind had made her all the more appreciative of the warm café where she ordered tea and scones. Brian had stood outside eating a fish supper. He wouldn’t be seen dead in a dump like that, he’d explained. She sighed with regret that he was too old to take anywhere now and even apart from that she knew he preferred being with his pals. She began to wonder what she could do to pass the time. Perhaps she should go for a cup of tea if Wimpy’s was still open. Her hand searched inside her coat pocket for the pound coin she had amongst some change. She might even manage to buy herself a cake. It was such a nuisance that she had lost track of what things cost nowadays. She was walking in what she hoped was the right direction for Wimpy’s when she saw in the distance the woman in the pale-blue coat talking to
a porter and pointing in her direction. Mary panicked. Was the woman complaining about something, saying she’d been sworn at, or worse still, assaulted? This had happened to her before on a chance encounter with another crazy bitch who’d said Mary had tried to steal her purse, which was a downright lie; nevertheless she had ended up in court charged with attempted theft, and fined. Don’t let it happen again, she prayed. Luckily the Ladies was only a few yards away. She nipped into it quickly down a few stairs then through a turnstile marked OUT OF ORDER.

  ‘Ten pence, please,’ called the attendant.

  Mary turned back and threw a few coins on the counter which she was sure was more than enough but she had no time to count them in case the woman in the blue coat was following her. Inside the cubicle she waited for at least ten minutes. By the time she came back up into the station there was no sign of the woman. The place was strangely deserted except for a few people sitting or standing here and there. Perhaps they’d nowhere else to go, thought Mary. At least she had a reason to be here. She began to wander down past the shops on the left-hand side of the station, all closed but their windows displaying articles which Mary considered were trash. Imagine paying five pounds for a tie and worse, forty pounds for a thick, ugly string of beads no better than the ones her mother used to keep in a chest. The coffee house, still open, was more interesting in its own way with its delicious smell of coffee wafting through the door. But she would never have gone in there even if she could have afforded it. It was much too snobbish-looking. She would have been very much out of place. The Wimpy bar was closed when she came to it so she went back up to the kiosk that sold newspapers and chocolate, thinking a Milky Way would do her fine, and discovering it was closed too. She saw a man standing at the side of the kiosk wearing a long fawn raincoat and drinking out of a dark bottle. She glanced at him without meaning to as she walked past but something about him made her stop and turn back. The man took the bottle away from his mouth.