The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir

by John Mitchell

  And that’s when things went badly downhill. I can keep my job, but I will not be getting next Saturday’s introduction to the full details of the quim. Carl was fired. And I was forced to agree that in no way did that woman’s husband deserve to get hit on the head by a flying Maris Piper. It also broke his glasses.

  “And before he was so cruelly struck, it was raining brussels sprouts like the fucking Plagues of Egypt!”

  Mrs. McWilliams handled the situation very well, I thought. She gave the fat lady two-dozen, fresh farm eggs and a small bunch of freesias.

  “Here,” said Mrs. McWilliams, handing her the eggs. “You get zwei-dozen. Datz gut. Zehr gut, eh? Everyone else only got one! Ein!”

  “Not fucking good enough! I’m getting the police!”

  The fat lady wouldn’t leave until she had claimed two pounds of Granny Smith apples, a pound of first-class Jersey tomatoes, half a pound of button mushrooms, six cans of Coke, and a bag of unshelled peanuts.

  “I’ll make him a mushroom and tomato omelet for his dinner tonight,” she said, leading her husband out of the store. “Come on, Cyril. Let’s go. You’ve had a difficult evening.”

  “Look vat zat cost me, Carl! You blithering dum-kopf! You’re fired!”

  Still, it’s Friday night, and maybe Mrs. McWilliams will forgive him tomorrow. He says she’s fired him before for pissing in the corner of the storeroom even though she couldn’t prove it was him. He said a dog must have got in there. But she always hires him back in the morning when the potatoes need to be brought up from the store. I hope she does hire him back because I was really looking forward to doing it with a real-life quim.

  Hopefully, next Saturday.

  98

  The police brought her back tonight. She was at her group therapy session this afternoon, and then she didn’t come home—but that’s nothing new. They found her trying to jump out of the ninth floor window of a block of flats. She was sitting on the window ledge.

  “Do you know what happened?” Constable Ferguson asked.

  Constable Ferguson is here again with a policewoman called Theresa. Margueretta just screamed and ran up to her bedroom.

  “Nothing would surprise me,” Mum replied.

  She went drinking with her group therapy friends and they suggested she drink Tia Maria because she said she likes coffee and wanted to try something different to Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. She’s not under arrest because it’s not illegal to dangle your legs out of a ninth-floor window and attempting suicide is no longer a crime.

  “Did you know she was missing?” Constable Ferguson asked.

  “She’s not missing. It’s only nine o’clock at night.”

  “Well, did you know where she was?”

  “Yes, she went to her group therapy session.”

  “We found her trying to climb out of a window.”

  “Really? Huh.”

  “On the ninth floor. She said she was going to jump. We’ve spent most of the last hour talking her off the ledge of the window, Mrs. Mitchell.”

  “She won’t jump,” said Mum.

  “Why? How do you know that?”

  “Because if she was going to jump, she would just do it. She wouldn’t wait for someone to call the police and then spend an hour talking to you, would she? She would just jump.”

  “I don’t like the way this conversation is going, Mrs. Mitchell. Is Mr. Mitchell at home?” asked Theresa.

  “Ha! If he was at home I would like a word with him first. He’s been missing for six years! In fact, you should be out looking for him instead of messing around with her. He owes me six years back maintenance for these children. He hasn’t paid a damned penny towards their upbringing!”

  “This is serious.”

  “Oh, I’m deadly serious. How am I supposed to survive bringing up three kids on my own in this day and age?”

  “We’re not here for that. You need to have tighter control over your daughter. This isn’t the first time. We’ve got a file an inch thick on her.”

  “Tighter control? And, tell me, do—how exactly do I do that? Ask Constable Ferguson. He knows.”

  “She should have a curfew,” Theresa replied.

  “A curfew? Oh, don’t make me laugh, young lady. Try putting a curfew on a cat!”

  “It may not be such a good outcome next time!”

  “Well, why don’t you give me those handcuffs?”

  “What?”

  “I will take them upstairs and handcuff her to her bed. Will that satisfy you?”

  “But you’re her mother!”

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that. Well aware.”

  “She’s just a girl,” said Theresa.

  “A girl? Are you kidding me? She’s seventeen years old. It’s her life now, and if this is what she wants to do with it, then so be it. I’ve tried everything I can to be a good mother after their father left them. And this is the result.”

  “Look. We don’t want to have to enforce it. But you need to give her a curfew. And no more alcohol. She’s been drinking, you know.”

  “Drinking? They shouldn’t serve her. She’s underage. Of course she looks old enough to drink with all that makeup on and those clothes of hers. How do I stop her? Eh? I’m sure they like a pretty girl in a short skirt in the pubs around here.”

  “Please try.”

  “Oh, I’ll try, right enough.”

  Constable Ferguson and Theresa left, and Margueretta put her record player on in her room, but she doesn’t play “Snowbird” anymore. Now she plays a song about a rose garden, over and over and over again. And she sings along.

  So smile for a while and let’s be jolly,

  Love shouldn’t be so melancholy,

  Come along and share the good times while we can…

  And Mum cried when the police left. Tears and the rose garden. Over and over. So I laid the last of the tiles in the kitchen and showed her. That seemed to make her happier.

  But she didn’t stop crying even though the black floor in the kitchen is gone forever.

  99

  We knew there was a problem as soon as we got there this morning. An angry mob was waiting outside the greengrocers, and the shop wasn’t even open. Mrs. McWilliams was standing by the Radio Rentals shop, nervously watching the crowd.

  “Go round zee back of the shop. I vill call ze politz if it gets violent!”

  We all gathered in the dark at the back of the shop.

  “You, Carl! You stand at zee front when I open zee door. You’re the biggest. Hold them back if you have to! Vee vill let in only one at a time.”

  I think this means she’s hired him back.

  “Don’t worry,” Carl said, cracking his knuckles loudly, “I’ll thump the first person who tries to push past.”

  “Zat iz zee spirit, Carl!”

  “Dunkirk spirit.”

  “Vat?”

  “Nothing.”

  “OK. To zee door!”

  They all burst in at once when we opened the shop door. Carl ran behind the counter.

  “Look at this!” a woman shouted. “It’s a green egg!”

  “And this one is just a lump of mold inside!”

  “How old are these eggs?”

  “Vat did you expect? I mean, it vas a vee bit o’ a bargain.”

  “But there were no good eggs,” a woman shouted. “It can’t be a bargain if all the eggs are rotten.”

  And then there was a familiar face. A familiar face and a familiar faux-fur coat. And a man with glasses stuck together with sticking plaster.

  “Look at this! That was supposed to be Cyril’s dinner!”

  She threw the dozen eggs on the counter. He was really looking forward to that mushroom and tomato omelet. She probably had a bit of sharp cheddar in the pantry to give it some extra zest.

  “Och! Werden Sie zurück! Stand back! Everyone getzen compensation.”

  Despite several remarks from the angry mob involving Hitler’s testicles, which I thought were t
otally uncalled for, Mrs. McWilliams negotiated a truce. Everyone gets a bag of slightly bruised fruit, a jar of pickled onions, and a savoy cabbage. It was quiet after that.

  But the fat lady wasn’t leaving. She said the eggs were a penalty for hitting Cyril on the head with a Maris Piper.

  “Ha! Und zwei bottles of Lucozade. It aids recovery!”

  So Mrs. McWilliams sent me and Carl to fetch a crate of Lucozade from the downstairs storeroom. We stood in the store and lit up a Camel and each took a long drag.

  “Can you believe that?” I asked. “Two bottles of Lucozade!”

  “That’s what she thinks!” Carl replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Carl carefully pulled down the yellow cellophane wrapper from one of the bottles and unscrewed the cap. He guzzled down the warm fizzy juice, spraying it all around his mouth and onto his shirt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Blurrrrrp! Blurrrrrp! I’ll get them for blurrrrrp this fucking blurrrrrp mess. Fucking blurrrrrp fuckers! Glad he got that spud on the blurrrrrp fucking head! Now he blurrrrrp will get more than he fucking blurrrrrp is expecting! Blurrrrrp.”

  Carl whipped out his cock and pissed into the half-empty bottle, neatly filling it back to the top. It is helpful that Lucozade is the color of piss.

  “That should do it!” Carl said, screwing the top back on the bottle and squeezing the cellophane back in place.

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Ha! Watch me! ‘Lucozade Aids Recovery!’ Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  It’s not going to be a good day for Cyril. He will be sitting down to a fresh bowl of fruit tonight for desert. And he will wash it down with a tasty glass of Carl’s piss.

  But at least Carl is back. And Saturday is only a week away. Only one week until the quim.

  100

  Carl is a liar. He is also a virgin and has not done it, as he claimed, with seventeen different girls, including the girl who serves behind the Pick ’n Mix counter in Woolworth’s. And his girlfriend is not a slut because she is also a virgin, and you can’t be a slut if you are a virgin. He said he will make it up to me, but I have been anticipating the quim all week and thoughts of the serpent and Eve have been keeping me awake for days. So nothing will make up for this. Nothing.

  I have also been thinking about suicide. I just realized that Margueretta has tried all the different ways I can think of to kill herself, and quite honestly, I can’t think of another way except drowning. We do live near water, and I think if you want to be sure of killing yourself, you have to jump off a bridge so that you are dragged deep under the water by strong currents. Even if you fight it, you will still be drowned. You could also bind your hands and legs together or put really heavy rocks in your pockets.

  According to A History of Mental Illness, drowning is a popular way to kill yourself because the body is not marked or disfigured in any way, and you can therefore look perfect and peaceful when displayed in your open coffin for your grieving relatives. This is, of course, dependent on being found quickly, or your body will become swollen and sallow, the skin will become soapy, and it will slowly detach from your bones in slimy strips. Also, your head becomes floppy when you are dead, and it bounces around in the water and runs the risk of hitting a rock or a post or something that could lead to some quite disturbing damage. Sea spiders or other carnivorous crustaceans could also eat you. It might therefore be better to drown yourself in a bathtub or a swimming pool.

  Ruling that out, she will have to try one of the other methods a second time. Or she could shoot herself. But I discounted that because we don’t have a gun.

  Mum says Margueretta needs to get a job or her mind will constantly dwell on dark, depressing thoughts of death and despair, and things will only get worse from there. She only lasted a week as a chambermaid at the Queens Hotel. She found a used tampon on a bathroom floor, and that was that. She also said that one of the male guests tried it on with her when she was trying to tuck in his eiderdown. But I think it was the tampon. No one would want to pick up a used tampon with their bare hands.

  Mum has also said that without a wage coming in from Margueretta, I will have to make a weekly contribution to the household budget from my wages. This is completely unfair, as I don’t think she realizes that I am using the money to buy floor tiles to cover the black floors to stop her from going completely bloody bonkers. Floors don’t cover themselves. And if I am going to make a contribution to the household budget, I want an actual Sunday roast dinner and not a hairy purple heart-udder that has to be boiled all night. If not, I will starve to death, as I will have to go back to selling my lunch tickets to make more money.

  Anyway, Carl has brought a bottle of VSOP sherry into the shop this afternoon as a peace offering. Once we get this new load of vegetables off the lorry and into the storeroom, we will open the sherry and have a nice drink with our Camel unfiltered cigs.

  If things work out around here, Mrs. McWilliams says she will let me serve behind the counter, the same as Emily. But I prefer working down in the storeroom with Carl. We can smoke and talk about quims in private.

  “I get completely pissed down the pub every Saturday night. Sixteen pints of mild, mate! Have you ever drunk VSOP?”

  “No. My sister drinks Harvey’s Bristol Cream. I’ve tasted that…”

  “Tasted? Tasted? We’re not going to taste it! We’re going to have a serious drink here. I’ll show you. Gulp it down like this. We’re gonna get hammered.”

  “OK.”

  “Here. You take a good swig. We can stay down here the rest of the afternoon and get pissed out of our fucking skulls. So what’s your experience with the quim?”

  “I saw one in the park. It was a bet.”

  “What color was it?”

  “Black.”

  “I like red ones best. Mind you, hic, there aren’t too many red ones about. Hic.”

  “This tastes good. It’s sweet.”

  “Yeh. It’s not really a man’s drink. Hic. We’re gonna polish off the whole fucking bottle. Just you and me. We’re mates. Drinking mates. They’re the best kind. Let’s have another cig.”

  “Yeh. Hic. Glug. Glug.”

  “Yeh. We need to get some quim. My girlfriend is gonna give it up. She says I have to get a jonnie. Hic.”

  “Jonnie?”

  “Yeh. A Durex. Condom. Don’t want her getting fucking up the spout. Bun in the oven? Fucking bitch.”

  “Carl! Carl! Vere zee bloomin heck are you? I turn my back und zis is vat happens! You disappear!”

  It was simple really. Carl had already put a coin in the light bulb socket, and when she flicked the light switch—that was it. Zap. Kaboom. Sparks. Storeroom in darkness. Carl is a genius like that.

  “Carl! Who turned out zee fucking lights? Carl! Are you in there? Carl! Carl!”

  We’re hiding behind the cabbages.

  “Carl! Do you hear me? Sie sind gefeuert! You’re fired!”

  101

  Firstly, the reason Mum is so upset this morning is not because I puked all over my bed in my sleep last night and then puked out of my bedroom window. Or because it was quite a windy night and the vomit blew back and landed on the outside of our kitchen window, where it still is.

  I admit that this was very upsetting for my mum to find when she came downstairs for her morning cup of tea, with her initial thought being that a massive bird had been pulverized against the glass in some freak accident. And yes, I could have died by inhaling my own vomit, in which case, Mum would now be grieving over the cold, lifeless body of her thirteen-year-old son who is covered in dried up sick and stuck to the sheets and will never see the benefit of his good Christian upbringing and five years of piano lessons.

  I can understand that this episode alone would be enough for any mother to consider abandoning her children forever to an orphanage, especially as she has worked her fingers to the bone scrimping and saving to bring them up without
that lazy good-for-nothing father of mine.

  But that is not why she is so upset and has spent the entire morning crying and smoking. She does not know that I smoke as well as drink, so I did not offer her one of my unfiltered Camels when her Kensitas ran out.

  The reason Mum is really upset is because Margueretta was kidnapped. This explains why my older sister has been missing for two days.

  I have only caught a few of the facts from the conversations this morning in between episodes of being voluntarily locked in the toilet. I am never drinking VSOP sherry again. Carl also lied about drinking sixteen pints of mild in the pub every Saturday night because if he really was that experienced with drinking, we would not be in this mess. And Mrs. McWilliams has really fired him this time because it’s one thing to fuse all the lights by putting a coin in the socket, but he puked into the gypsophila vase and that is just unforgiveable even if there were no customers in the store at the time.

  I still have a job because I was lead astray by an older boy. And I am now supporting a poor, widowed mother who has hungry mouths to feed.

  I have to take all my bedclothes to the launderette later, but now I have to take the mop and bucket and clean that bloody mess off the kitchen window so that it will not continually remind my mum of what a thoughtless, ungrateful, and uncaring child she has for a son.

  “This is not Tom Brown’s School Days you know!”

  I’m not sure, but I think Mum is referring to the book that has been serialized on the BBC on Sunday night. It’s about schoolboy bullying and juvenile drinking in 1830s England. And I am not Tom Brown.

  “You’re your father’s son, all right. Just like him. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Out drinking when you should be working. Irresponsible. I know how all of this will end, mark my words, young man! And how old are you?”

  “Thirteen. I said I was sorry.”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry. I’ve heard it all before. All my life. Sorry. Until the next time. And then where will I be? Weeping at your grave, that’s where. And you still haven’t told me why you did it. Are you hiding something from me? Did you drink to prove something? Eh?”