The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir

by John Mitchell

  It was a girl.

  Screaming in the attic.

  There was just the rain and the screaming. The rain on the window and the screaming in the attic. And even though I knew I shouldn’t do it—I couldn’t stop myself. I pulled the blankets down away from my face and stared up at the ceiling, up at the attic door right above my bed.

  I stared at the door and waited. Mum told me not to stare at that attic door. Sooner or later, something would happen. The screaming stopped. And right at that moment, I saw it.

  The attic door jumped up.

  It jumped up and came back down with a thump.

  29

  This morning, I told Mum about the screaming and the attic door and she said it was all nonsense and I am a boy with a very vivid imagination and it’s no wonder I heard things, being woken up in the middle of the night with all that thunder and lightning.

  “Anyway,” Mum said, “you need a hobby. So I’ve enrolled you in the Cub Scouts.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve enrolled you in the Second Garden City Cub Scouts. It will be good for you. They do things like make knots and go camping.”

  “I don’t want to make knots. Or go camping.”

  “You don’t know until you try it. You will be an Owl.”

  “An Owl?”

  “Yes. They have packs. You’re in the Owl Pack. I think it was owls. Or it may be the Hawk Pack. Anyway, it’s birds of prey. They have a motto and everything.”

  “You can make camp fires,” Margueretta said, jabbing me in the stomach. “And perhaps you’ll burn the tent down!”

  “Well, it’s tonight. You have to be sworn in, and they said to polish your shoes and take a clean handkerchief.”

  “We haven’t got any shoe polish. And I haven’t got a handkerchief!”

  “We’ll have to improvise. I’ve got one of your nana’s old hankies. You can take that.”

  Cub Scouts did not start well. I knew this would happen because Mum just doesn’t listen to me and when I said we did not have any shoe polish, she completely ignored me and gave me one of Nana’s old hankies. I am a disgrace to the whole history of scouting and an insult to the memory of Baden-Powell. He’s the man who invented the scouts. Things will have to improve dramatically if I ever expect to become a Leaping Wolf.

  And it wasn’t just my shoes. I had to show my clean hanky to Akela, who is our leader and a symbol of wisdom and authority. He asked me if I thought it was a joke. It might well be a clean hanky but the lace around the edges and a pink A embroidered on the corner was a further insult to the good name of scouting. I told Akela that my nana’s name is Alice. He said this is not the Brownies.

  I was therefore lucky to be sworn in with another new boy who just happens to be a spastic. I don’t know exactly what is wrong with him but his eyes dart about in different directions and he rolls his head around and his tongue hangs out. It doesn’t lash around but there are a lot of similarities to Pop. Akela is only letting the spastic into the Cub Scouts on a trial basis because a spastic can be very disruptive to knot practice and could not be trusted to make a campfire. Also, he was not able to repeat the Cub Scouts Promise due to a severe speech impediment and the problem with his tongue.

  As a new member of the Owl Pack, I need to start at the bottom and learn the difference between a granny knot and a reef knot.

  Right over left, left over right makes a knot both tidy and tight.

  The more experienced Cubs will be doing the bowline knot because they are on B of the A to Z of Knots. I should expect to catch up somewhere around F.

  Our Owl Pack has a leader, and we are required to hoot for him whenever he sees a need for bonding. One hoot is not enough, and we should all try to hoot in unison, which helps to build a team spirit. Obviously, the spastic is not able to hoot either on his own or in unison because he does not understand the idea of bonding. He therefore shrieks after each hoot.

  “Hoot, hoot! Hoot, hoot!”

  “Aieeee! Aieeee!”

  “Hoot, hoot! Hoot, hoot!”

  “Aieeee! Aieeee!”

  “We have to initiate the two new boys!” shouted our leader.

  “Hoot, hoot! Hoot, hoot!”

  “Aieeee! Aieeee!”

  “Who do we want to go first?”

  “Spastic! Spastic! Spastic!”

  “An excellent choice, Owl Pack. The spastic did not repeat the Scout’s Promise. He must therefore have what?”

  “Sandwich! Sandwich! Sandwich!”

  “Another excellent choice!”

  Owl Pack Leader produced a sandwich from behind his back.

  “Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!”

  At first it did not seem to be much of an initiation ceremony to have to eat a cheese and lettuce sandwich made with medium sliced white bread. But then the spastic bit into the big fat slimy slug that the Owl Pack Leader had hidden in the lettuce. I think the spastic was enjoying the attention because he never spat it out.

  “Hoot, hoot! Hoot, hoot!”

  “Aieeee! Aieeee!”

  “You! Poor boy with a girl’s hanky! Do you have a sister?”

  “I’ve got two sisters,” I replied.

  “Have you ever seen them naked?”

  “Nope.”

  “Useless! We will initiate you next week. Right. Owl Pack, who’s got a story for me?”

  “I have, Owl Pack Leader!”

  “Go on! Go on!”

  “I saw my brother wanking!”

  “No! About girls. Only girls! How many times do I have to tell you, moron! Naked sisters. I am not a homo! I am not a homo! Is that clear? No homo stories! I am not a homo.”

  “I saw my sister in the bath, Leader!” shouted another Cub Scout.

  “That’s better! Detail. Tell me detail! I need detail!”

  “There’s a hole in our bathroom door.”

  “A hole in the door! Outstanding! Why didn’t you tell me before? Now that’s a detail. A hole in the door! More! Tell me more! More! More!”

  “I saw her getting undressed.”

  Owl Pack Leader was rubbing the front of his shorts very quickly, up and down.

  “Then she took off her knickers!”

  Rub, rub, rub.

  “And? More! More! Detail! Detail! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!”

  “I saw everything. She had hair down there. A black triangle of hair!”

  “Pubic hair! Outstanding! More! More! Pubic hair! More! Old Henry is getting really hard now!”

  “And big pink nipples! She had big pink nipples!”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Rub, rub, rub.

  “And then she bent right over!”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “And I saw her bum!”

  “Oh, yes! Her bum! Her naked bum! Was it a big round bum?”

  Rub, rub, rub.

  “Yes. A very big, white, round bum. Completely naked. Bent over!”

  “Arhhh! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Arhhh! Arhhh!”

  Rub, rub, rub.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yessssssss!”

  Leader was sweating, and his face was very red.

  “Leader?” asked another scout.

  “Yes?” Leader replied, panting.

  “Can we fart into the hurricane lamp like we did last week?”

  “Yes. But take your pants down and bend over so that it makes flames! I want to see blue flames coming from your naked arses!”

  “What shall we do with the spastic, Owl Pack Leader?”

  “That’s right. I forgot about him. Bring him to me!”

  “Aieeee! Aieeee!”

  “Tie him up! Use him for knot practice! Now get going with those bowlines!”

  Next week we will be doing the clove hitch. With twenty-four letters to go, the spastic is going to be tied up a lot. And our Owl Pack Leader is looking forward to H when we can do the hangman’s knot.

  “Hoot, hoot! Hoot, hoot!”

  “Aieeee! Aieeee!”

  30

  Mum will
absolutely not tolerate me dropping out of Cub Scouts just because the spastic ate a slug sandwich and was tied up with seventeen bowlines and one granny knot. It was therefore pointless to mention the Cub Scout who told us about spying on his naked sister through a hole in the bathroom door while Owl Pack Leader rubbed his shorts until he hooted. Cub Scouts will teach me the importance of bonding and how to work with other boys in a team and if that means I have to have a new hanky then Mum will get me a new hanky. There is also a special fund for poor boys to get their green Cub Scouts pullover, a scarf, and a woggle. I will thank Mum when I am older.

  I will also thank Mum for bringing me up in a good God-fearing Christian household and sending me every week to the Methodist Church Sunday School with Miss Peabody. Miss Peabody is a spinster, which means she has never been married and is now too old to find a husband and has therefore devoted her life to the Women’s Institute and saving our souls for Jesus. And Jesus wants me for a sunbeam. He also wants Emily.

  Akela is prepared to overlook the incident with Nana’s hanky, as he is aware that I am a good Christian boy and go to Sunday School every week and say my prayers every night. I could teach some of the other boys a thing or two about religion and the Bible and the importance of keeping God in your heart. And the Ten Commandments.

  Akela thinks the most important commandment is to honor thy mother and father. He asked me if I honor my mother and father and I said I do but no one knows where my father is because he hasn’t been seen since Churchill’s funeral. He said I should focus on the other commandments for now.

  When you are religious, it helps to memorize the Bible, as you never know when you might be in need of a scripture and you can’t always expect to have the Bible to hand. We have been learning the Twenty-third Psalm in Sunday School as Miss Peabody says it can comfort you, particularly in times of betrayal, agony, and death.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

  I shall fear no evil.

  For Thou art with me,

  Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

  We also sing it because that helps you remember the words. It lifts our joyous hearts up to Jesus to sing together. And Miss Peabody plays the piano, which she cannot do in church because she is not note perfect, and that shouldn’t be a surprise for a woman of her age and eyesight, and anyway, that old piano is out of tune.

  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

  He maketh me down to lie.

  In pastures green, He leadeth me,

  The quiet waters by.

  Miss Peabody has memorized everything in the Bible, and she can quote from it without even opening it. She can also sing hundreds of hymns without a hymnbook.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

  She is passing on her love of the scriptures to us so that we might also see the glory of the coming of the Lord. For instance, this week she told us all about the Last Supper and the Twelve Apostles and how one of them betrayed Jesus. His name was Judas Iscariot and he betrayed Jesus to the Romans for thirty pieces of silver, which was a lot of money back in those days. And Peter, he was another apostle, denied Jesus three times as the cock crowed and that’s also a betrayal because he must have known that they would crucify Jesus and he only did it to save his own life. Betrayal is the worst thing.

  “Would any of you betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver?” Miss Peabody asked us.

  “No!” we all shouted back, and Emily even jumped to her feet when she said it, so I know she meant it. Emily loves Jesus as much as I do.

  Raymond Jones did not say no like the rest of us. In fact, he didn’t say anything. But I know he would have betrayed Jesus because he told me he wants a new bike. He didn’t look so sure when he heard what happened to Judas. Judas bought a field with his thirty pieces of silver and then he tripped and fell into a ditch and his guts burst and spilled out and he died. And that’s what you get for betraying Jesus. I don’t know what happened to Peter.

  And it’s because they betrayed him that Jesus died on the cross. They nailed his hands and feet onto the wood instead of tying them on with rope. That is a very cruel thing to do because it’s painful enough just being crucified, especially when you haven’t even done anything wrong. King Herod made them do that to Jesus because people said he was King of the Jews and King Herod was jealous because he was the king and you can’t have two kings or there’s no point in being a king. And they crucified Jesus along with two thieves but they tied their hands and feet onto their crosses with rope and did not nail them on. They also broke their legs so that they would die quicker. I’m not sure why you die quicker if your legs are broken. And it took Jesus quite a long time to die because they did not break his legs so one of the Roman soldiers stuck a spear in his side to make him bleed to death. Now that we know all the details of how Jesus died, we should not discuss it with anyone. We should just focus on the Holy Spirit.

  Once, I hit my finger with a hammer in the garden trying to put a nail in a piece of wood, not in my hand. And I screamed and cried and Nana rocked me on her lap and sang Danny Boy quietly to me.

  But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow…

  And I shall hear though soft you tread above me,

  And then my grave shall warmer, sweeter be.

  For you will bend and tell me that you love me,

  And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

  My wee Johnny boy.

  Nana said you have to have the Gaelic melancholia to appreciate the sadness of that song. Mum said a four-year-old should not have been given a hammer and nails to play with in the garden. Nana said I was just trying to build a wee hoose for her. Mum said I’m lucky I didn’t lose a finger or worse.

  We are too young to have known betrayal. You can’t really know betrayal until you are a grown-up and have first experienced what is called loyalty. You have to be loyal first and then you can betray someone because if you weren’t loyal to them in the first place and you say bad things about them behind their back then you’re just being nasty to someone and not betraying them. We are too young to understand loyalty and therefore cannot have known betrayal.

  Miss Peabody, on the other hand, says she knows betrayal all too well, and that is why she has never found Mr. Right.

  31

  The first thing we saw was that black Hillman Minx coming up the road to our house. We didn’t know who the two men were inside it, but Joan had already met them while we were at the Co-op. She asked them why they were knocking on our door because she saw them from her front room window. But they never told her, and they laughed and said they would come back soon enough. And Joan said it wouldn’t be long because we’ve only gone up the road to the Co-op to get a tin of baked beans and a bag of sugar. Joan knows everything we do. I’m beginning to think she is spying on us and not just nosy.

  And we had just finished our beans on toast for tea when I was looking out the front room window and I saw the car coming back like Joan said it would. And the two men got out and they were laughing and they had their arms around each other’s shoulders like they were trying to hold each other up.

  Mum sent us to our rooms at first. And then she called for us to come downstairs when she let the men into our house. She called my name, over and over, and I grabbed my postcard from under my pillow and I ran down the stairs, two at a time. I took my postcard with me to show to Uncle Jack. But mostly I took it with me to show my dad, even though he knew about it because he wrote it.

  Uncle Jack and Dad were both really happy and laughing and making jokes to each other and Dad rubbed my hair and asked me if he could have some of it because he is losing his. He always says that. And he bent down and kissed me and his moustache is very prickly and I thought it might even have cut my lip but it didn’t. And he had tears in his eyes when he said he loved me and missed me and did I miss him? Yes! He knew I did.

  Mum said he’s a fine one to talk, leaving his children like th
at, without a word. But he ignored her and lifted Emily up in his arms and hugged her and she cried and she held on to him and wouldn’t let go. And Margueretta seemed shy, like she didn’t even know him, but she still kissed him. And then she cried too.

  Dad suggested we should all go out together because this is supposed to be a happy time and we shouldn’t be crying like that when we should be so happy, together again. But Mum said no at first and certainly she wasn’t going to let Dad take us out on our own in that Hillman Minx, wherever he might take us, and maybe never see us again. And especially not when he’s been drinking with Uncle Jack and can hardly say his words or stand up. Then Mum agreed to go with us.

  So we all went to the pub together in the black Hillman Minx, but we didn’t pretend we were in a police car.

  I played on the swings in the pub garden with Emily and God knows you have to be careful where you step because the landlord’s got a bloody big dog and it shits like an elephant all over that garden. And Dad brought us each a bottle of hubbly-bubbly and some cheese and onion crisps. He even brought Margueretta a shandy, which is made from beer and lemonade, because she is almost twelve and one of these days she will be a teenager and before you know it she will be a woman with her long blonde hair and pretty green eyes and it’s amazing how quickly they grow up. So she could have a shandy. But I just had a bottle of lemon-lime hubbly-bubbly, the same as Emily, even though I am the man of the house.

  Margueretta wouldn’t let me have a sip of her shandy. When I am almost a teenager, I will drink shandy. And when I’m a grown-up, I will drink beer and whisky like my dad. And I will go to see a man about a dog and never come back.

  We stayed out in the garden until all the hubbly-bubbly was gone and it was dark and freezing cold and there was one light in the garden on the back of the pub—just a single light bulb, making long, thin shadows across the garden.

  Margueretta always gets angry when she has to be a babysitter because we’re not her bloody brats. And that’s always dangerous because she already flicked the back of my ear four times and pulled the side of my hair and said I was a pig. She also said she was going to get some dog shit on a stick and wipe it on me.