The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir

by John Mitchell

  Margueretta let us in and there was a note on the kitchen table for her. I saw it. It said to make risotto for tea for me and Emily. And by the note was a packet of rice and an Oxo cube because those are the ingredients for risotto.

  Emily asked what we were having for tea so I whispered that I thought it was risotto because I had seen the note. I whispered it because I could see that Margueretta was in a very bad mood like teenagers get into sometimes and I didn’t want her to hear me but she did hear me. And she screamed and she said she wasn’t our servant and she threw the bag of rice across the kitchen and it burst and spilled on the black floor.

  “Not risotto! Not risotto! You are eating fucking cat food for tea!”

  Emily screamed when Margueretta grabbed me by the hair and pulled me off the kitchen chair and across the floor by the turds and rice and up to the cat’s bowl. And Emily cried when Margueretta pushed my face into the Kit-e-Kat, what was left of it, dried up and stinking of dead fish. And she told me to lick the plate but I wouldn’t and she said I was filth and should never have been born and she wished I was dead and she screamed for me to lick the plate. But I wouldn’t. So she twisted my hair until my eyeballs popped out and I couldn’t close my eyelids and I couldn’t cry because you have to screw your eyes up to cry.

  Then she let go and I looked at the floor and I could see hair around the cat’s bowl but it wasn’t cat hair. It was my hair in clumps.

  But I never licked the Kit-e-Kat.

  And she ran out of the kitchen and screamed all the way up the stairs and I couldn’t hear everything she said but some of it was about me being vermin and filth and that I should die and she will kill me.

  But all I said was risotto. I think we’re having risotto for tea.

  And Jesus says we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us and he asked God to forgive them when they nailed him to a cross and crucified him. I pray for Margueretta every night. I pray that God will bless her and keep her safe from harm. But I never heard God or Jesus say you should love the Devil and forgive him for his sins because the Devil is the Devil and you can’t change him. He is evil. He is original sin. And I know the Devil has come down from the attic and is inside her head.

  As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil.

  51

  My daddy is losing his hair and he wants some of mine. He always says he wants some of my hair and it makes me laugh because anyone would know that you can’t give your hair away even if you wanted to. My daddy has a moustache and when he kisses me it’s prickly and spiky and it hurts so he always kisses me gently on the cheek.

  “Come here, wee Johnny, come here. Come and sit on my knee, wee laddie. My Lord, you are looking so big now and so grown up! And all that hair! Can I have some of that hair?”

  He shaves every morning in the kitchen and I sit on the chair and watch him and when he is done, he wipes his face with the towel and buttons up his shirt. He always smiles, especially at me, and he winks his eye and puts his head to one side and winks again. One day, he says, I will be a man like him and I will shave with my own boy sitting beside me.

  He has to see a man about a dog a lot and that’s alright because it is something that I will understand when I’m all grown up and have a little boy of my own, don’t you know. And Margueretta never dares to touch me when Daddy is here because I am the apple of his eye and I have the same name as him. He will slap her if she so much as touches me.

  He is going to teach me to play the piano one of these days and when his boat comes in he will buy me a bike and it won’t even be a second hand bike. And at Christmas he will put up a tree as tall as the ceiling and sing “White Christmas” like Bing Crosby and everyone will join in.

  “Do you love your daddy? Do you?”

  “I do! I do!”

  “But how do you know you love me?”

  “Because I do!”

  “And have you missed me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I said I would come back. Didn’t you believe me?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s good! And I love you! Let’s sing a song shall we? Would you like that?”

  “Yes!”

  Would you like to swing on a star?

  Carry moonbeams home in a jar?

  And be better off than you are?

  Or would you rather be a pig?

  He touches my nose when he says pig but he doesn’t think I am a pig because he knows I am his little boy and he smiles when he touches my nose. Then he swings me by my arms high up in the air and around and around because I am swinging on a star and I am still small enough for him to swing me above his head.

  “What do you want to play?”

  “Cops and robbers! I want to play cops and robbers, Daddy!”

  “Then we shall play cops and robbers!”

  “Can I go for a ride in your new car?”

  “Yes! And we shall pretend it is a police car!”

  “Yes!”

  Margueretta leaves me alone now. She’s scared of my dad. There are five kisses on the postcard. Five. That’s a lot. One, two, three, four, five. Yes!

  My daddy kisses me and tucks me in every night.

  It’s dark in my room but the moon is shining through the window and I can just about read the words on my postcard. And I have the picture of him in his bus conductor’s uniform because Mum doesn’t want it anymore.

  I like to make up stories in my head about my daddy. Pretending he’s here.

  I know he’s not really here but he will come back for me very soon. Very soon, I hope.

  52

  I don’t think it’s just the black floors that make my mum cry. She cried a lot yesterday. Mum always tries to find something at the butcher’s on Saturday so that she can make a Sunday dinner. We don’t have money for beef or chicken or anything fancy like that because everyone knows you have to be rich to eat chicken every week. Our butcher knows we always come in at the end of Saturday when he’s getting ready to close the shop because you can find all manner of bargains at the end of the day in a butcher’s, which is especially helpful if you have a dog to feed. Mum never tells the butcher that we don’t have a dog.

  But yesterday he didn’t have the ox heart that Mum usually buys and I must admit I was a bit relieved because last week I ended up with a mouthful of arteries and they are very rubbery and difficult to chew and if you swallow one whole it can get stuck from your mouth to your throat and choke you. And he didn’t have half a sheep’s head because Mrs. Arnold, that Irish woman with the nine kids who claims she is a Catholic even though she never goes to church, bought the last one. And the pork belly was far too much money, thank you very much.

  “That’s a pity,” the butcher said. “That pork crackling is a wonderful thing with some delicious applesauce.”

  And when we got home with the rag end of the mince, which was more suet and sawdust than meat, Mum threw it down on the kitchen table and sat in the chair and wept. I watched the butcher’s paper as the purple blood from the mince soaked its way through. I waved the flies away but they kept coming back the way flies do.

  I put my arms around her shoulders as best I could and she said, “Oh, Johnny, oh Johnny, oh Johnny,” in between sobs and I don’t like it when she does that because it makes me want to cry too. And everyone knows, for the love of God, I am the man of the house now but I’m only nine years old and I just don’t know how to make money so my mum will be able to afford pork belly.

  I think Mum is ashamed. She’s ashamed that the butcher thinks we are shopping for food for our dog. I know I feel ashamed.

  But she found a recipe where you make the mince into flat pancakes and fry them in the pan and they are called rissoles and we ate one each with roast potatoes and turnips. I didn’t tell Mum that I was still hungry because I knew there was no more food left and she would give me that sad look.

  We don’t have a fridge so I looked in the larder with Emily and we foun
d the same vanilla essence and the packet of Ritz Crackers but they are still waiting for a special occasion. And there is a box of cornflakes but we’ve run out of milk because we only get one pint a day and there’s just not enough to go round.

  There’s another reason we always run out of milk and it’s not because Akanni drinks it. Teenagers drink coffee but we can’t afford real coffee, so Margueretta drinks something called Camp Coffee. It’s a brown liquid in a tall bottle and it has a picture on the label of a Scottish soldier in a kilt sitting with his coffee cup outside his tent. And beside him is an Indian soldier in a turban with a tray with a bottle of Camp Coffee and it says, “Ready, Aye, Ready!” because it’s very easy to make if you have hot water or milk. So Margueretta takes all the milk that’s left in the evening and makes a cup of Camp Coffee with it. And no one even stops her and she laughs when she sees me watching her drain the last of the milk into the pan because she knows that in the morning when we get up for school there will be no milk for our cornflakes and that’s that so stop moaning and groaning and get to school or you will be late.

  So I prayed to Jesus to help us. And Jesus answered my prayers. Right there and then he spoke to me. He told me to sell my stamp collection.

  Not just my stamp collection but anything else we can find to sell. So I searched the house and found some things that someone might want to buy. There is the five-shilling piece, called a crown and dated 1888, which my Grandpa left me, but Mum said it would be a terrible sin to sell it because he loved me even though I was only two when he died and he is now looking down on me from Heaven and will know if I sell it. There is also a pocket-watch chain but no pocket-watch because Dad pawned it and now it’s gone, like everything else we owned, down his throat.

  We also have two oil paintings painted by my Great-Uncle William—they are of Scottish Highland scenes. And I looked at all of Grandpa’s and Pop’s war medals but Mum says they are all common medals because no one was brave enough on our side of the family to win the George Cross or anything that would be very valuable to a collector. I asked Mum how come we still have Pop’s war medals because they were on his chest when I saw him in the coffin. Mum said that was just for display purposes and Nana took them off him before they closed up the lid and buried him with Grandpa for all Eternity. I do not understand why she didn’t leave them on his chest if they aren’t worth anything. No one else wants them.

  But we will sell my stamp collection and the oil paintings and we will be eating pork belly every Sunday.

  53

  Mum said it was a disgrace, the way that woman spoke to us. How does she know anything about fine bloody art anyway, working in a junk shop in Portsmouth? And to say that the frames were worth more than the pictures, even though the frames were badly damaged in several places, was very insulting to the memory of my Great-Uncle William, God rest his soul, who must have spent hours and hours painting those Highland scenes. And what if they were painted on boards and not canvas? All artists have to start somewhere.

  So that woman offered us ten shillings for the two frames and said we could keep the paintings.

  At least the man at the stamp shop knew about stamps even if he did look at Mum and me as though we did not belong in his shop.

  “We’ve got a Penny Red!” I told the man.

  “There were more than twenty billion Penny Red stamps issued,” he said.

  “What if it was a Penny Black?” Mum asked.

  “It would be worth a fortune. But it’s not black. It’s red. Absolutely worthless.”

  He said that the whole collection was damp and smelled moldy and we would be well advised to keep it in a place of constant temperature and low humidity and in about fifty- to a hundred-years’ time it might be worth something, which it certainly is not right now. No, not even my complete page of British Honduras stamps arranged in order of value.

  We are therefore worse off now than when we started as Mum refused to sell the frames and we had to pay our bus fares. It also rained on the way back and the stamp collection is even more damp.

  Mum said to keep my chin up as we always have the refuge-for-troubled-children even if the reality is that we would need to foster at least six more children to have any hope of getting out of living from hand-to-mouth and Jesus knows there’s nowhere to put that many troubled children even if we could find them.

  At least it’s warmer now that the summer is almost here and we don’t have to pay for paraffin so that’s helping with the food budget. But we are going to have to buy some extra food because the tea party at the refuge-for-troubled-children is on Saturday and we have to put on a good show for all the Nigerians, Mollie Midget, Robert, and Folami—and Joan from next door even though she is not family. Well, none of them are family, but according to Mum, it will seem like one great big happy family under the eyes of God.

  We do not have any china for the tea party but fortunately Ready Brek cereal had a coupon on each packet, which could be exchanged for a melamine plate or bowl or a cup and saucer. We collected a complete set during the winter. You can also eat Ready Brek with hot water if you don’t have any milk, which is very helpful when your big sister has drunk all the milk. The good thing about melamine is that you can drop a dish and it will not break—ever. This is very useful in our house, especially today.

  I knew there was going to be trouble this morning when Margueretta came into the kitchen wearing lots of eye make-up and a ribbon tied around her head, singing a song about going to San Francisco with flowers in her hair.

  “It’s the Summer of Love! But you wouldn’t know anything about love, would you?”

  “Watch your mouth! And get that muck off your face!” Mum replied.

  “Oh, don’t be so aggressive. Don’t you know there’s a place in San Francisco where you can get free food, free drugs, and free love? We’re not your generation. We’re renouncing the material world…”

  “Och! That’s a good one. Material world, is it? We’re as poor as church mice, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “You start wars. We make love. Everything is free in our world. I would go to that place in the Golden Gate Park if I could…”

  “Well, you can start by going back upstairs and taking that ridiculous makeup off your face, young lady. You are thirteen years old, and while you are under my roof, you will not be dressing up like a common tart!”

  “I’m a woman! In less than two years, I will be free from this filthy midden—free from you and the stench you leave behind you! You vile woman!”

  “You foul-mouthed, ungrateful little madam…you’ve got a lot to learn, and you will—the hard way. You want to try feeding and clothing five kids without…”

  “Without a man? Well, you’ll never get a man, dressed like a tramp! And when did you last take a bath?”

  “What did you say? What did you say?”

  “I said…oh, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have time for these petty arguments anymore. I only have time for love.”

  “Well, I can assure you that I don’t have time to talk to you. I’ve got a tea party to get ready for…”

  “Oh, yes…the warring tribes. I suppose it is the Summer of Love after all. So you’re brokering peace while a war rages thousands of miles away. Are you expecting to win a Nobel Prize? I’ll have to call the Portsmouth Evening News…”

  “Shut your mouth, Margueretta! Shut your bloody mouth and get up those damn stairs, or I’ll take that dish cloth and wipe that muck off your face myself right now!”

  Mum started to move towards the sink where the dishcloth was lying and I know I wouldn’t put that thing anywhere near my face because it’s a dirty gray color and has been used to wipe up everything that anyone could spill in this kitchen for as long as I can remember. That includes the nappy bucket and the cat’s bowl. Which is probably why Margueretta picked up the Ready Brek cup from the draining board and held it over her head like a weapon.

  “Throw that cup, and it will be the last thing you do in this
house!” Mum shouted.

  That’s how we found that you can also throw a Ready Brek melamine cup at someone and when they duck, it can hit the wall and bounce on the floor—and still it will not break.

  54

  I absolutely did not mention the leprosy. Mum is of the opinion that it’s just dry skin. Dry skin is white and therefore shows up more on black people than on white people and it’s nothing that some Pond’s cream couldn’t cure. This may make sense to her but I think she is just covering up for them. They’ve got leprosy.

  Mum said she thought the tea party went really well, all things considered. I admit that I did ask Mum why it is that black people have such white teeth and she said that it’s just a contrast with their dark skin and their teeth are no whiter than ours and I should not embarrass her by asking questions like that so loudly in front of them. But I absolutely did not mention the leprosy even though it has now spread to that woman’s arms.

  Mum put the Ritz Crackers in the center of the kitchen table. Their time has come, in the name of peace and the Summer of Love. She surrounded them with two plates of cucumber sandwiches, a packet of McVitie’s digestive biscuits to have with the tea, and a Swiss Roll.

  Mum had already chosen the music for the tea party. I think her choice of the Jim Reeves LP, “Distant Drums,” was good because we only have three other LPs, and Mum didn’t think Gustav Holst’s “Planet Suite” would be very appropriate to warring tribes because Mars is the god of war. And the sound track from South Pacific is too racy with all those men trapped on an island thinking about women. And we all agreed that “Puff the Magic Dragon” is really only for children.

  The Igbo arrived first and then Mollie Midget and Robert with Folami. And Mollie said that Mum must be a mind reader because Jim Reeves is her absolute favorite and it’s very sad that he’s dead now, God rest his soul, and she knows all the words to most of the songs on that record, and especially to “Distant Drums.” So she sang along to the whole LP.