Nana pulled two bottles of Harvey’s Bristol Cream from her bag.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Margueretta said and poured herself a glass of sherry.
“You shouldn’t be drinking with the Valium!” Mum insisted.
“Och, leave the lassie alone. It’s just a wee drop. Takes after her old Nana, don’t you lassie?”
“Thank you, Nana, I do.”
“Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. I went to see ma sister Wilma last week. It’s nae good. She’ll be the next one to go—you mark ma words. She’s carrying all her valuables around with her in her handbag. That’s what I’ve always said would happen. Possessions imprison you. They’ll be ripping that bag from her cold dead fingers, don’t you know? Eh, Georgie?”
“Right enough, Scottie. Right enough.”
“She has a man in to do the dahlias. He stands in her back yard. That house in Peckham is far too big for her. She’s covered all the furniture with newspapers. She thinks she’s got the decorators in. She’s no more got the decorators in than I’m the Flying Scotsman. Have another drink, Margueretta.”
“Thanks.”
“She shouldn’t be doing that. She’s hearing voices in her head,” Mum protested.
“Och, I’ve been hearing voices in ma head all ma life. Bonny Prince Charlie, mostly. Will you not credit it! Those voices run in the family. If they can put a man on the moon, and who’d believe that I ask you, then I’m sure we will all be hearing voices in our heads. A man on the moon, is it? And I’m Mary, Queen of Scots! Here, have a top up, Margueretta.”
“Thank you, Nana. They did put a man on the moon. But Mum wouldn’t let us watch it in case the old Ferguson blew a valve. She really thinks that!”
“You know we can’t take chances with that old telly,” said Mum.
“Try to concentrate, woman. I’m tellin’ you about ma poor sister. So this is it. There was a terrible smell,” said Nana.
“Smell?” asked Margueretta.
“Aye. A terrible smell. It was the lodger, poor wee beggar.”
“The lodger?”
“Aye. Wilma was wondering why she hadn’t seen him in a good few days. She went into his bedroom, and there he was. In his bed. Dead.”
“Dead?”
“Dead. And do you know what else?”
“What?”
“When she pulled back the sheets his belly came away with them, for the love of God. Squelch! Had his guts out, stuck to those sheets like sausages. And maggots filling up the man’s stomach like a barrel of rice. She thought the curtains were closed. But no. It was the flies buzzing at the window. It was the lodger trying to fly away!”
“That’s not true!” Margueretta laughed.
“Mark ma words, lassie. It’s as true as those voices in yer head. And that’s why she thinks she’s got the decorators in. To get rid of that terrible smell. Och, imagine that! A lodger rotting away in his bed, and you downstairs watching Coronation Street and having a nice cup o’ tea.”
“That’s gruesome!”
“Albert. That was the lodger’s name when he was alive. Smelled like dead chickens, apparently. Have another drink, lassie. You never know when it’s your turn to go.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“You could be hit by a flying piano! ‘There was a young man from Peru. Who bent down to buckle his shoe. He found half a crown, lying there on the ground…’ Ha, ha! I never could remember the last line. Have you thought about something?”
“What? Margueretta asked.
“There’s nothing left when it’s all gone, lassie. And what you had, you never will keep. Bagpipes. Now they’ll make me cry. I’d like that song at ma funeral.”
Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen and down the mountainside…
“She’s off!”
“Voices in yer head, is it? Just don’t start an argument with them…you could end up giving yerself a good thumping…”
“It’s not a laughing matter, Mother!” Mum interrupted.
“Och, no. Of course not. It’s nae a laughing matter. Voices in yer head, is it? At least you’ll never be lonely!”
83
I found out that I should not be going to grammar school. People who go to grammar school have wall-to-wall carpet and vinyl wallpaper. They do not have front rooms— it’s called a lounge. And it’s not tea—it’s dinner. And they eat Black Forest gateaux if they are having tea, which would be in the middle of the afternoon. They also have a clean pair of underpants for almost every day and do not wear shiny metallic jumpers knitted by their mums from a faux, chainmail tunic she picked up from the Methodist Church jumble sale.
Mrs. Middleton, who teaches science, said we could do an experiment with some iron filings to see if my jumper is magnetic. She also said that with a diode and some copper wire, I could receive Radio Caroline. Or detect low-flying Russian spy planes. The whole class laughed at that.
She told me to tell my father to buy me a regulation school uniform jumper. I told her I do not have a father, and she said that’s no surprise coming from a council estate, and even though it could help with some science experiments, she does not want to be offended by the sight of my jumper again.
Not having a jumper wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the accident I had in metalwork class. I was cleaning up some steel swath from a lathe, and when I swiveled round, I caught my bum on the sharp point of a turning tool. This put a precise three-inch cut straight through my trousers and underpants and left my bum slightly exposed but luckily did not break the skin. I only have one pair of trousers, which Mum bought from the Littlewoods Catalog on a twenty-four month installment plan.
I showed my trousers to Mum, and she said a repair was the only answer, being that they are almost new. Somehow she managed to turn a precise three-inch cut into a massive square patch using a piece of offcut quilting material. I would understand if she was making an actual quilt because then it could tell the history, in patchwork embroidery, of our ancestors from the early seventeenth century to the current day. No doubt other relatives would offer to add their own quilted patches over time, and the whole thing could be handed down for generations. But these are trousers. She is better at knitting. Anyway, I have been stretching my metallic jumper down to cover the patch. Now everyone will see the green rayon quilting. They will think I am a homo.
Things are bad enough, so I have decided not to tell anyone at the grammar school about how Mum started a refuge-for-troubled-children and the mix up with the warring tribes. I am also not going to tell them that the police come to our house every night because my sister is expecting to be murdered in her bed by the incarnation of Satan and there’s a dead child screaming in our attic. It is one thing for someone to have to sit next to some riff-raff from a council estate who only has two pairs of underpants and gets free school lunches because he lives below the poverty line and would otherwise starve to death. But knowing that I live with Lucifer in a haunted lunatic asylum could push them over the edge and want to expel me.
It is therefore extremely important that I stay out of trouble. This is very difficult because a couple of boys have already tried to start a fight with me after catching a glimpse of the quilting and blanket stitches on my bum, and I had to give them a good thumping.
I have also had one visit to the headmaster’s office for throwing a plastic cocoa pod during the study of equatorial South America. It was our geography lesson, and we were told by Miss Sanders, who is a student teacher and wears distractingly short dresses and white knickers, to pass the pod from person to person. But I was at the end of the row, and it looked like a rugby ball to me, so I threw it at Peter Turner, and he is a rotten catch and it went through the window. Well, the window was closed at the time so it broke the window.
Now not only do I have to find the money for a regulation school jumper, but I have to pay for a new window, which is on the second floor and may also involve some scaffolding. This
will therefore put a severe dent in my budget for Dunlop Superior Self-adhesive Floor Tiles.
Mum said there is no stipulation in the school’s uniform regulations about shininess, and she would therefore complain to my form teacher about the obvious injustice. It was a short discussion, and the ruling stands. I cannot wear a metallic jumper to school. Unfortunately, Mum told my teacher that we are very poor, and there’s no money for a Sunday roast let alone a regulation school jumper. This has confirmed that I should not be in a grammar school, and I am now very concerned that Mrs. Middleton will be offended by the rayon quilting and blanket stitches on my arse, even though she has made no mention of it up to this point. Either way, I need money.
And there is an answer.
We get tickets for our school lunches, and mine are free because of my state of extreme poverty and malnutrition. All the other kids have to pay for theirs because they are from middle-class homes. They bring money to school every Monday morning and get in a queue at the bursar’s office. It’s obvious really. I sell them my free lunch tickets for half the price that they would have to pay for their own. That way, they have money to spend on sweets, and I have money to spend on a regulation school jumper, a new window with some scaffolding, and Dunlop Superior Self-adhesive Floor Tiles.
Unfortunately, this means that I will have no lunch and will have to survive on a bowl of cornflakes all day, assuming that Margueretta has not used up all the milk for a cup of Camp coffee.
Another way to save money is by walking to school and back. Mum gives us the bus fare every morning, and I have been saving the money—but I will not add it to the jumper, window, and tile budget because that would be mean to my mum. She needs new knickers because hers are all worn out, and she is now wearing my dad’s old underpants, which I had completely forgotten we had kept. And since we have not seen my dad for more than four years, it is possible that he now has no need for them, and I am glad my mum had the forethought to keep them. So I have given her all the money I have been saving on bus fares, and she now has the money to buy new knickers. For some reason, this made her cry.
Unfortunately, walking to school and back in what is left of my school uniform, marks me out as a target for the kids who go to the secondary modern school and think I am an upper-class snob for going to a grammar school. It would be completely pointless trying to explain that I am not really welcome at the grammar school because I am council estate riff-raff. I get free school lunches, and we do not have wall-to-wall carpet in our lounge. In fact, we have bare, black floors with a scattering of dried-up cat turds. We do not have a washing machine, fridge, bedroom heaters, enough milk, Sunday dinner, or a shilling for the electric meter. And my mum is wearing my dad’s underpants. So I am not an upper-class snob. But they still want to thump me.
I found that walking down by the stream next to the woods usually throws them off the scent. But earlier this week, they were waiting for me in the bushes, and they jumped me and took my school tie for a trophy and threw my homework books into the stream. They also held my arms behind my back so that the smallest boy could punch me in the face a few times, and he landed a really good punch on my mouth that split my lip.
Now I also have to find a way to immediately pay for a new school tie and copies of Huckleberry Finn, Basic Algebra, and French Verb Conjugation (Regular and Irregular). But that is not why I am so worried and why Mum has not stopped crying.
Today, there was a terrible, terrible accident.
84
Our front door was open. There’s nothing particularly strange about that because Margueretta still doesn’t have a job, and she sits around all day listening to Radio One on her transistor. But Emily knew the same as I did that something was wrong because Joan Housecoat was there, blocking our way in.
“Ooo-er! You kids just home from school?”
I nodded.
“Best stay out here. I know it’s chilly. Stay out here and play…”
It is chilly. The winter is creeping in now, and the big oak trees in front of our house look tired and dark—like they don’t want to keep going. So I didn’t want to stay outside and play in the cold, and I pushed past her housecoat and wondered why she gasped and reached for my collar. But I was too quick for her.
The front room was empty, so I dashed down the passageway to the kitchen. And there was Old Man Dumby with a mop and bucket. He glanced at me and mouthed words, the way deaf people do, and held up a hand to say stop at the door. Don’t come in this place.
Never come in here.
For the love of God, never come in here.
There isn’t much color in our house. Just the orange fiberglass curtains in the front room. They’re fireproof but don’t go trying to prove it. And I haven’t started on the floor tiles yet, so the floors are still black. But today the kitchen floor wasn’t just black. It was red and black. And Old Man Dumby was pushing the red around with two cat turds and some potato peelings.
Swirling, swirling, swirling.
“Don’t look in there!”
It was Joan with Emily. She was too late, of course.
By the leg of the kitchen table, I could see a bottle. I focused my eyes on the label. Crabbie’s Green Ginger Wine. It was empty—lying there on its side. Mum will be angry after all that effort for the summer fête with Akanni as the Heinz Chocolate Pudding. Now it’s empty on the kitchen floor when she could have had a fruit basket.
Old Man Dumby started mopping faster. It didn’t matter. I could see the blood on the kitchen table and the wallpaper and the ceiling and the sideboard and the floor and the sink and the cooker and the cat’s bowl. There was blood on the mop, and red water in the bucket. Blood on the pile of rotting food scraps by the sink.
Purple-red like the halo around the dead man’s head. Purple-red everywhere on the black floor.
If it was milk, it would just look like a bit of a mess. But even a tiny spot of blood looks like more than it is. And a huge amount of blood makes your stomach shrink and heave like it’s trying to come out through your mouth. And your mouth is hanging open waiting for it to escape.
There was a pool of blood under the kitchen table, but it didn’t look like a halo around a dead man’s head. It looked like a clown’s face. Yes, a clown’s face, grinning up at me in purple-red and brown. And over by the sink there was a woman’s high-heeled shoe. But the heel was broken off and lying close by.
Blood turns brown when it dries. Brown, like the red roses on the wallpaper after the man sprayed for the lice.
“You shouldn’t be in here. No one should. Your mum will be home soon. I’ll put the kettle on and make you some nice hot tea. Do you know where Mum keeps the milk?”
“It’s in a bucket under the sink. Mum won’t be home soon. She’s going to Local History classes tonight. She goes straight from work,” I replied.
“Not today. She’ll be home soon, and everything will be alright. These are nice dishes.”
“They’re unbreakable. Look.”
I dropped a cup on the floor to prove it. It landed by the purple-red clown’s face so we left it there.
“Ooo-er! Whatever will they think of next! Let’s go into the front room now. Do you know where your mum keeps her shillings for the meter? It’s getting dark.”
“We don’t have any.”
“Ooo-er! That’s not right. You come next door with me, and I’ll fry you up some delicious bacon and eggs and a slice of fried bread for each of you.”
“No, thank you.”
I hadn’t eaten all day, but I wasn’t hungry. Besides, I didn’t want to shame my mum by going next door with Joan and eating her delicious bacon and eggs and a slice in her cozy, warm kitchen with the steam on the windows and the cobwebs that Fred painted over. And maybe a chocolate biscuit afterwards. I didn’t want to shame anyone with my disgusting gluttony.
So we just waited for Mum. And I stared at the purple-red colors on the walls and ceiling, turning slowly into brown.
85
“Can I have a quiet word?” asked Dr. Browning.
Mum and the doctor stood away from the bed and talked softly.
“This is really very serious. She’s a very sick young lady. We’re going to have to try a different approach.”
“Why would she do this?” Mum replied.
“If she hadn’t been found…”
“Oh, she wanted to be found. This is how she gets attention. If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Mum interrupted.
“Look. We have a lot to talk about. I know this has been a terrible shock. But once she gets over this, we need to do something more.”
“What?” Mum asked.
“Something different.”
“What?”
“I’m thinking about ECT.”
“ECT?”
“Electroconvulsive therapy. It works with depression. It may help Margueretta. We should consider it. I’m going to give you some information about it, and I want you to think it over.”
“I’ve heard about it. Isn’t that a bit drastic?”
“It’s more common than you think. It’s a simple procedure. We anesthetize her, and then we put an electrode on each temple. It’s called bilateral electrode placement. Then we pass an electric current, and that induces a seizure.”
“A seizure? That sounds awfully serious.”
“She may get some frontal lobe issues later in life. Here,” he said and pointed to his head, “but for most people their cognitive functions and memory loss return. Perhaps as quickly as an hour after treatment. You can get some memory loss that’s permanent. But that’s very rare.”
“I don’t know,” Mum said.
“It’s explained in this leaflet. We’ll talk about it some more. It’s not a decision for now. I just wanted you to start to think about it. There have been too many incidents, and this was the worst. Very serious. She’s lucky someone found her. Another twenty minutes—and she would have died from the loss of blood.”
The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir Page 24