The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir

by John Mitchell

  So I was really glad when Dad came out of the back door into the garden with Mum right there, running after him.

  “Don’t talk to me about responsibility!” Mum shouted at him.

  “Och, don’t be like that Emily,” said Dad.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” Mum replied.

  And Uncle Jack came over and looked at me.

  “John. Do yoush want your father back home?” he said.

  But I just stared down at my empty hubbly-bubbly bottle.

  “Of course he want’sh me back, don’t you Johnny?”

  “Don’t bring the children into this argument!” Mum shouted.

  “But Johnny need shis daddy, don’t you Johnny?”

  “A real man wouldn’t beg to come home,” said Uncle Jack.

  “Whatsh that? And whatsh d’you know about being a real man?” Dad shouted back.

  “You kilty! Don’t tell me sh’about being a real man! Fucking bagpipes, that’s what shou are!”

  “Ha! You cockney piece of shite!” Dad yelled.

  That’s when Uncle Jack broke his beer bottle on the wooden trestle table and held the ragged end up in the air.

  “Come on! Come on! I’ll put this in yer Scottish face!”

  Emily grabbed my arm, and then she bit off the rim of her glass. And she gripped that piece of glass between her top teeth and her tongue.

  “Oh, for the love of God!” Mum screamed. “Now look what you’ve made her do!”

  Dad said he was sorry and Uncle Jack put the broken bottle down and said he didn’t mean to frighten the children and he was sorry too. So we all looked at Emily and she still had the broken glass in her mouth and little bubbles of purple blood seeped out of the corners of her lips and ran down her chin.

  And I noticed the smell and I looked down at my shoes—all covered in dog shit.

  That’s why the black Hillman Minx has gone, and I’m back in my room. I’ve left my shoes at the back door. I will have to use a stick in the morning to get the shit off. But I can still smell the dog shit because I think it is on my socks.

  At least Emily didn’t swallow any glass.

  32

  I heard the screams again last night—just as I was falling asleep. Mum says it’s just a dream but I know when I am awake and I am awake when I hear the screams. And I know where the screams are coming from. Anyone would know if they had to sleep right under the attic door. I still can’t stop myself from staring at it. Something is trying to get out.

  Mum says I tell too many stories, just like my dad. She says I will grow up exactly like him. Well, I don’t want to grow up like my mum because she is losing her mind. She says it’s the black floors but I think there’s something else that she’s not telling any of us. I’ve seen someone standing behind me—someone who should not be there. I don’t know who he is and when I turn around he’s always gone. Maybe he stands behind my mum too. And maybe Mum has told Margueretta what it is but no one would just sit on the sofa and cry for no reason the way Mum does. And I don’t know why black floors would make her cry even if they are very black and we don’t have money to cover them up.

  That’s why Mum has to get out of the house. Mum leaves me and Emily to be looked after by Margueretta. It makes her so angry. When people get angry their faces go all red and sometimes they hit people. Margueretta hits me. She throws me down on the floor and sits on me and she digs her long nails into my neck and screws up bunches of my hair in her fists and pulls until it comes out by the roots. Her favorite thing to do when she is angry is to slap my face because that’s how girls fight and she says I am a girl.

  She also likes to give me Chinese burns, which you can do by twisting the skin on someone’s wrist in opposite directions until they scream for you to stop. And even if they scream for you to stop, you don’t have to. That’s the thing with Chinese burns. You can twist and twist while they scream and scream and you don’t stop because you’re having so much fun.

  Twist, twist, twist.

  Sometimes she holds her hand over my nose and mouth because when you do that the person can’t breathe and it makes their eyes pop out like marbles. You have to take your hand away eventually or the person will die from suffocation and you will be a murderer. So she always takes her hand away just in time and that means I can gulp in the air but then she puts her hand back just when I’m starting to breathe because that is not expected and just when I think I can breathe again, I can’t. That makes her laugh. It makes me feel like there is boiling water in my stomach.

  But Margueretta says I’m right. There is something dead in our house: it is a ghost of someone who is stuck in this world because they should not have died. It is God who should decide when you die. Then he sends the Angel of Death to come and get you and there’s no point in refusing to go because it’s the way of all things mortal. When it’s nearly your time, the Angel of Death knocks inside the walls and whispers your name and then when you die it stops. But if someone murders you then it is against the Ten Commandments and is not God’s intention and so the angel won’t be there to take you home. And you could wander around for years waiting for the angel to come for you. That’s what Margueretta says.

  And she says there is a child entombed in our attic. Entombed alive up there. I wouldn’t want to be entombed alive because I’m scared of tiny spaces. But I’m also scared of really big spaces like the inside of a cathedral because they reach up so high and I feel too small for the space, which is the same feeling as being crushed into a small space, even though it’s so big. You shouldn’t have really big spaces on the inside. They should be outside. The worst thing would be if I was locked up in a pipe that was only just wide enough for my body but reached up into a black space where I could not see the end. A black space that goes on forever.

  I think that is what it must feel like to be entombed alive in the wall of an attic.

  33

  Some people have bacon and eggs and bread in their kitchen cupboards the whole time and they can just make a dinner whenever they want—even if they aren’t hungry or it’s not even dinnertime. I think that’s why Joan Housecoat is such a big woman. She has a lot of food in her house and she’s always cooking, when she’s not looking out of her front room window.

  I’ve seen all the food. I saw it today. Her cupboard is actually full of food.

  I was sitting on the front doorstep with Emily after school because we don’t have a key. If we had a key, we would only lose it and then where would we be? Someone would find it and break into our house and steal everything and we wouldn’t be able to complain to the police because they used our key, so don’t ask again.

  So we were sitting on the doorstep in the rain and the next thing we knew, Joan Housecoat was standing there saying we looked half-starved and she should know a thing or two about being half-starved because she grew up between the wars and once had to eat turnips for dinner for a whole week and she doesn’t mind if she never sees another turnip as long as she lives. That’s all behind her now that she has a fully stocked larder.

  And just like that, we were sitting in her warm kitchen with magnolia walls and spider webs and a big paraffin heater and lots of jugs and kettles and pots and steam. And she was frying bacon and eggs and buttering thick slices of white bread and pouring mugs of tea, all for me and Emily and we didn’t even have to ask. And she told me to slow down and not to eat so fast, but I couldn’t, and she laughed and said that anyone would think it was the first meal we’d had in days. And after the bacon and eggs, she gave us more bread and butter and jam and a chocolate McVities biscuit and Emily scraped her fingernail on the chocolate and licked it and looked at me and smiled and licked it again. I ate mine in two bites.

  “Where’s your mum?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “When’s she coming home?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Seven.”

  “You should not be sitting on the doors
tep in the dark and rain at age seven. Where’s your big sister?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Would you like another chocolate biscuit?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Well. If your mother doesn’t come home soon I will have to fetch the police. It’s not right. Ooo-er.”

  That’s why we are in disgrace. It is completely wrong to go off with some woman and eat her bacon and eggs and bread and tea and chocolate biscuits when our sister was already on her way home with a packet of rice and an Oxo cube for tea. And our mother was simply at the Methodist Church Young Wives Club.

  “I need my time too, you know. I need my time with adult Christian company. And some solace with God. I need to get away too. And now I have to come home to this disgrace.”

  And the time flies when you are enjoying yourself with the Gospels. She would have been home soon enough after our sister was here with the rice and the Oxo cube for our tea.

  “And what if a total stranger came and took you away? If Old Man Dumby came over here right now and offered you a sweet would you go off with a man who has drowned innocent baby rabbits with his bare hands until their eyes bulged out? I sincerely hope not! I could be sitting here weeping in the desperation of a mother’s grief because her two children have been strangled and drowned and murdered by some madman and now my children are sitting at the feet of God. And God only knows what I have done to deserve this.”

  Mum is right. It’s not like we were even getting wet because the front door has a porch. Granted, it is leaning to one side because the wood is all rotted and it could collapse with the next gust of wind, but that’s not the point. And it may have been really cold with the howling wind and rain but we could quite easily have huddled together for warmth. So we must never let this happen again or we may not be so lucky the next time and we could be strangled and drowned and murdered.

  And quite rightly, we should be sent to bed without any tea but that is not possible because we have already gorged our gluttonous selves on the greasy excesses of some nosy, interfering woman who should not be kidnapping someone else’s children and definitely should not be calling the police to say that we had been abandoned on our own doorstep. Now the whole street will know.

  And if we want to go and live with Joan Housecoat in that hot steamy kitchen of hers and feast ourselves on bacon and eggs and bread and tea and chocolate biscuits for dinner every night then we should go now and knock on her door and tell her. But we should not expect to see our loving mother or sister ever again. We might want to think long and hard about what we have done.

  Gluttony is a deadly sin.

  Enough said. We are forgiven.

  I’m in bed now. We now have a paraffin heater but only for the front room, so it is freezing in my bedroom. I can scratch the ice on the inside of the window if I want to but I never lick it because it is black. I have to get undressed really quickly and then dressed again before I freeze. Tonight, I put on pajamas, woolen bed-socks, a sweater, scarf, and two sheets of the Daily Mirror. Mum gave me a hot water bottle but mine leaks, which is fine at first but in the morning it’s cold and clammy and I get the horrible feeling I have pissed myself.

  With all of those clothes on, I mostly have to roll into bed. And it is a good thing that Mum does not tuck my blankets in cozily around me at night or I would never be able to get out in the morning.

  34

  Now that we have been forgiven for our disgraceful gluttony we can focus our thoughts on the Harvest Festival, which is a time to give thanks to God for providing us with a plentiful harvest so that we will not starve to death in the winter. It is also a time for us to stop and think of people who are worse off than we are and to make donations in church for the poor people of our parish so that they may feel the blessed love of Jesus and the righteous gift of the Almighty’s charity.

  I looked with Mum in the larder this morning to find something to donate to the poor people of our parish so that they will not starve to death in the winter. But there was only a bottle of vanilla essence and an old tin of Tate and Lyle’s treacle with the lid rusted shut. There was also a small jar of those silver balls for decorating fairy cakes but Mum said we would have to make a sacrifice. We will donate the Ritz Crackers. She was hoping to keep them for a special occasion but it was the Ritz Crackers or a tin of baked beans and we need that for Sunday tea. Nana bought those crackers two years ago and Mum is very sorry to see them go but the needy must be fed.

  As the man of the house, I will be going to the front of the congregation to donate our Ritz Crackers to the poor people of our parish. I asked Mum where all the poor people of our parish are and she said they’re out there somewhere and I asked her why they weren’t in church praying to God for food because Jesus will feed them like he did with the five loaves and two fishes. But apparently that is just symbolic and I should realize that even Jesus could not feed five thousand people with five loafs and two fishes. Our donations for the Harvest Festival are the physical representation of God’s charity and thus a clear indication that His work is being done on Earth by we, His loyal servants.

  But if the poor people are in the congregation that means they will be making donations for themselves, which does not make any sense at all. And if they’re not in church, they should be ashamed of themselves. I don’t see why they should receive God’s righteous charity if they can’t even be bothered to go to His holy house of worship and pray for salvation like the rest of us.

  Mum says I am making this far too complicated and I should pay attention to the service. I have therefore decided to watch all the people who are making donations to see if they look poor and are therefore making donations to themselves.

  We will sing, “We Plough the Fields and Scatter,” as everyone goes up to make their donations. It is only right that Belinda should go up first because she is the reverend’s daughter. She’s in my class at school and I am in love with her and I am prepared to overlook the fact that she has blue veins showing through her skin, because she also wears a clean dress to school almost every day.

  She has placed a tin of Jolly Green Giant corn by the potatoes and cabbages that were already on the table. Belinda can’t be poor because she is the reverend’s daughter, and the tin still has its label on it. Poor people buy tins with the labels missing because they are half price but they don’t know what’s inside them until they open them up for their tea and find they’ve got a tin of black prunes, which is completely disgusting but what can you expect for half price.

  Next up is a bony-looking girl who is carrying two potatoes. I think she could be poor because two potatoes are not a very generous donation for the poor people of our parish. Her dress is too small for her and she also looks hungry and she is eyeing up that tin of corn. Yes, she could be poor.

  Now we’re all leaning forward because an old lady in a purple hat with a feather is putting a basket of fruit on the table. Bananas, oranges, apples, and grapes. She is definitely not poor. We only get one orange a year and that’s as a treat at Christmas. And I have never even tasted grapes.

  An old man in a tweed jacket is making his way to the table. The congregation is gasping but I can’t see what’s in his hand because it’s hidden by his jacket. There, he’s putting it down. My God! It’s a tin of Fray Bentos braised beef! He’s turning around and smirking. No one could top that. Even the reverend has raised his eyebrows.

  There’s a whole family that the usher has missed. He deliberately ignored them and they stared down at the floor. They haven’t even got a donation so they either forgot or they are the poor ones and they can’t afford to make a donation in which case it all makes sense. If you are the poor of the parish you should go to the Harvest Festival and thank God for his charity but not make a donation to yourself.

  It’s my turn. My heart is thumping because Belinda will be watching me. I can feel my cheeks turning red. Now where do I put the Ritz Crackers? There. Right beside the Jolly Green Giant corn. They look goo
d together. I even touched the tin that Belinda touched.

  Belinda is smiling. She is in love with me.

  The reverend says that the strongest liquor that should touch our lips is the wine of the Holy Sacrament. Those vile public houses are dens of iniquity and the abuse of alcohol has ruined many fine men and destroyed their families. Jesus weeps for those sinners who would sooner drink than see their own children fed. It is in this time of need, this time when need is felt the most, that we should feel the pain and sorrow of others who suffer the unnecessary hunger in their bellies whilst others feast. God provides enough food for us all but he cannot change the wicked ways of man where gluttony takes the place of sharing.

  “Mark my words! We will all be equal in the end. We are all equal in the eyes of God! And to Him we shall return. Thank you all for your generous donations. The hungry bellies of our parish will be fed tonight. Yes, there will be no hunger tonight. God Bless them. Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  Our church sermon will end later than usual today, at half-past one. Some of the congregation will have to run across the road to the pub because last orders are at two o’clock.

  35

  I could not believe that she was kissing me. Then she spoiled it by putting her tongue in my mouth but I pushed it back out with my tongue. She smells like soap and I’ve heard a rumor that she has a bath more than once a week. If I marry Belinda, I will change my underpants every Sunday, even if they aren’t dirty.

  I wish I had known she was going to come round to our house this evening with the reverend. Surely Mum must have known but she said it was a big surprise when the reverend was at the door. It was after we finished our beans on toast and Mum was having a cigarette and saying she hoped the Ritz Crackers are going to a good home, disappointed as she was to see them go. And we were just sitting down for a good sing-along to Songs of Praise when they knocked.