Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival

by Godley, Janey

  My family never really formed much of an opinion of Sean as he was very quiet and never made any effort to impress them; he also disliked my father as he felt Dad had never protected me from Uncle David Percy. I had been very embarrassed taking Sean to my home for the first time, because of the graffiti, the dirty smelly toilet and the general poverty it revealed. But it never bothered Sean and he seemed to accept all the wacky ways of the Curries. His own family was hardly perfect. Early on in our relationship, he told me, ‘People will do things, but you’ve got to ignore them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘My brothers. People will do and say things. Ignore them. In this family, trust naebody.’

  Young George in particular would sneer at me. When I persuaded Sean to get the spectacles he’d needed for a while, Young George told him: ‘Now you know what she really looks like, you’ll fucking want your ring back,’ and, in the Palaceum one night, Young George shouted out at me, in front of all his mates:

  ‘Your ma is a daft old cow, your brothers are arseholes an’ you are a begging bastard. Everyone in Shettleston has fucked ye!’

  ‘Well,’ I shouted back, ‘at least I havnae fucked you, coz I’m allergic to pork an’ you’re a pig’s arse and if ye think my brothers are cunts ye should see my Sean’s brothers – he has six daft bastards in his family!’

  It was a never-ending battle. All of the other six Storrie brothers would make sniping remarks at me. I was either too loud, too mouthy or too giggly. I was not good enough. Sean was too young. I was too poor. Sean had a great future in front of him. I would only hold him back. I would only get pregnant to snare the rich boy. The objections went on and on. In actual fact, the one thing we were very careful about was birth control. I was determined not to get pregnant. Sean felt the same. But his family put so much pressure on us both that, after about six weeks, he left Toad Hall and we both moved in with my maternal grandfather Granda Davy Percy – the father of my abuser – who was a friendly if slightly strange man. He had talked openly about sex to me when I was younger. When I was around 16, he had told me, ‘You should go on the pill and get oot and enjoy yourself.’

  What grandfather says that to his granddaughter? When I was younger, he had often sat by the fireplace with the zip of his trousers down and, inside, I could glimpse his floppy old penis as he chatted to me. I used to think he never knew his flies were undone; I just put it down to sloppiness on his part.

  This was the house in which Sean and I were going to live. We were desperate to be together and I knew my Uncle David Percy would not come near his father’s house when Sean and I were there together. In fact, David Percy had not been heard of in ages. Sean knew of the abuse, so I felt if my Uncle did show his face, it would be OK. Sean would protect me. And, for once, things happened as I wanted them to. Uncle David Percy never did once visit my grandfather while we lived with him in Shettleston. And Granda Davy Percy’s strangeness did not reoccur.

  It was a small flat with Granda sleeping in the living room and Sean and I taking over his bedroom. We created our own wee home within Granda Davy’s house. For the first time in my life I owned a fridge and we spent that summer lying in the garden enjoying the sun and making love every spare moment we had. Sean was very shy and, by nature and family upbringing, ever so quiet but my Granda was good company and he could get Sean chatting.

  Granda Davy was a Protestant – his son David was still a very active member of the Orange Order – and Sean was Catholic, though not a practising one. They debated religion and politics vigorously and I liked that side to Sean. I had been brought up in a home where my father always expressed strong political views. But I did feel sorry for Sean at times. He had never really got an education and had a lot of literacy problems – those were the days when dyslexia wasn’t recognised – but he was intelligent. I felt he could have done anything he wanted, but he had never even got to choose a job; his father had decided he would work in the Palaceum … and he also had very bad migraine headaches. One night when I went over to see him at Toad Hall, I found Sean lying on his bed alone in the dark.

  ‘It’s the headaches,’ he told me.

  He told me he had tablets for them.

  Meanwhile, I carried on working alongside him at the Palaceum. The previous owner had been forced to hand over weekly protection money to a local gang who were friends of my brother Mij. When they tried this on the Storrie family, a ‘heavy’ came in and said to Old George, ‘You gie us 50 quid every week and yer bar will be safe – there’ll be nae fights in here.’

  Old George calmly walked round from behind the bar, coshed the heavy then battered the fuck out of him. ‘I like fights in my bar!’ George said as he kicked him. ‘I start most of them!’ Old George was very well ‘connected’; these local boys were small potatoes in comparison. His philosophy of life, which he had inbred in his children was: If ever anybody fucks you about, face up to them. Never show weakness. If you do, then they will get you.

  The Palaceum was safe under Old George’s management, although accidents did happen. A regular called Jonah McKenzie had his left eye knocked out in a freak accident when a heavy glass ashtray – not intended for him – was thrown across the dance floor and struck him on the eyeball.

  Not long before I met him, Old George’s nephew Harry was taken into police custody for dealing with a trouble-maker at the Palaceum; both Harry and the bloodied hatchet he had used were taken to Tobago Street Police Office. Old George walked into the building and insisted his young nephew was released. They refused. He then walked into the chief investigating detective’s office and, after a short discussion, left with both the bloodied hatchet under his coat and with his nephew. It was rumoured locally that Old George had been carrying a gun during the discussion. Harry later had to pay a small fine. It was sometimes easier even for the police to let Old George do what he needed to do, as he could be extremely vengeful.

  He liked to control people. He liked to play his seven sons off against each other. But I rather liked him. Although he was a very hard man, he did not have a cruel mouth; he had a smiley, happy-looking mouth. When he smiled, his mouth made you feel you had to smile as well because it was so infectious. I used to go round to Toad Hall a lot with Sean. One night, Old George was sitting in his dressing gown and I noticed his lower legs were mottled blue and severely bruised.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘The fucking Polis,’ he told me, rubbing his legs. ‘It happened years ago.’

  ‘And they’re still sore?’

  ‘Aye.’

  The Storries were almost as dysfunctional as my own family. Around the same time that I started going out with Sean, his brother Michael Storrie started going out with a girl called Mags. She was from the north side of Glasgow; I tried hard to make friends but we never hit it off. We had absolutely nothing in common to talk about. I had more in common with Old George’s new girlfriend Patsy Paton who was 25, blonde and real fun. Old George was 55 and Patsy was younger than some of his sons – in fact, Patsy’s older sister Mary was going out with Old George’s son Philip. The older sister went with the son; the younger sister went with the dad. But young Patsy and Old George were a good match. Mouthy, opinionated and very much the dominant female, she was from Bridgeton, near where my Dad was living.

  One night, she and I were swapping family stories and trading backgrounds. I explained about my Mammy and Dad being separated and told her, ‘Mammy has a boyfriend called Peter, but he beats her up and I fucking hate him.’

  ‘Oh ah fucking hate that too,’ she replied. ‘My mammy had a man called Peter as well an’ he fucking nearly killed her. All us kids got put in foster homes coz o’ that wee cunt and he got put in the jail for the beating he gave my ma – he nearly killed her. Thank fuck he’s still inside.’

  I looked at her and said quietly: ‘My Mammy’s Peter is not long out of jail.’

  Her face froze. ‘What’s his surname?’

  �
��Greenshields,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Fucksake!’

  She was inconsolable for about two or three minutes, then told me, ‘My mammy was petrified of him and she was a fucking fighting fishwife of a woman!’

  Patsy’s mammy had a scar that ran from the corner of her right eye down to the right side of her top lip, where Peter had cut her with a Yale key, dragging it down into the flesh of her face. Then he had chased her through Bridgeton with a gun, and a taxi driver who intercepted him got the Queen’s Award for Bravery. Peter was imprisoned. Patsy persuaded me to get my Mammy to bring Peter down to the Palaceum so she could see face to face if this really was the man who had screwed up her life.

  That Saturday afternoon, Mammy and Peter sat in the lounge bar. Patsy told me to take Mammy into the toilets and, as we shut the door, she picked up a full bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, calmly walked towards Peter and, before he could recognise her, swung the bottle up high in the air, then brought it down on the top of his head. It did not break.

  ‘That’s for every fucking punch you gave my mother!’ she screamed, as he slumped off his seat, stunned. Her arm raised the bottle up again: Thud! She whacked him on the side of the head. It did not break.

  ‘That’s for getting my family put into care!’

  Then she attacked with real violence. She had to be dragged off him. By this time, my Mammy had heard the commotion, come out of the toilet and stood horrified as Peter lay on the floor and Patsy screamed at her, ‘Ye need tae get away from him! He will fucking kill you! You have nae idea what he did to my mammy!’ All the emotions Patsy had held at bay with alcohol and men came out as she carried on screaming at my Mammy: ‘You have nae idea! Ye need tae get away from him!’ Peter was literally thrown out of the bar into the street in a heap. Back home, Mammy helped patch Peter’s wounds and ignored everything Patsy had tried to tell her. That was my Mammy’s way.

  8

  Training

  AROUND THIS TIME, Mammy acquired a big smelly new dog called Major 2. I had never before heard of anyone buying a dog because, in Glasgow, they adopt you. The new dog was an Alsatian like the first Major, but he looked like a scabby lion. He loved my Mammy, but she grew to hate him. Major 2 would use his head to open the toilet door as she sat peeing. He would not leave her side. He would look at her with big doe eyes even as she took her shoe off to hit him on the head.

  But she discovered he liked picking up tin cans, so she taught him to follow her into the local Asian corner shop in Darleith Street. While she chatted to the shopkeeper, Major 2 would steal his own food. It took her a week to get him to recognise the yellow label of the dog food brand he preferred then, as always, Mammy took it further. Major 2 was taught how to lift triangular tins because they contained her favourite: Ye Olde Oak Ham.

  Often the shop owner, wee Aslim, would shout, ‘Your dog is stealing from my shelves!’

  But my Mammy would reply: ‘It’s not my dog, Asylum. I don’t own a dog. You should call the Polis and have it arrested.’

  ‘My name’s Aslim,’ the shopkeeper would reply limply.

  I hated Mammy coming into the Palaceum but she would regularly ignore all my protests and march in for a drink with smelly Major 2. And sometimes Biff the cat trotting behind her. I suppose I was ashamed of her appearance. Gone was the bright-eyed, dark-haired, smiley woman I remembered from my childhood. Instead, standing there was a grey-haired, sometimes toothless woman. She only wore her false teeth if she happened to find them. She looked like what she was: an old, shabby, scarred, broken housewife; but she still kept her sense of humour.

  One day, she came running into the Palaceum with Major 2 behind her. She pointed to the dog and shouted at me in front of the whole bar, ‘Your dog has a light bulb stuck in its mouth and I cannae get it oot!’

  I was about to shout back that it was not my dog when I realised the whole bar had fallen silent and was looking in amazement at Major 2. I looked over and, sure enough, that idiot shoplifting dog was standing there with, lodged tightly in its mouth, a big light bulb.

  Glaswegians love nothing more than a bizarre problem to solve, so everyone tried, but the dog refused to let go of the light bulb. I was terrified it would burst in his mouth. Worse still, the stupid animal adored the attention and decided to play a game of chase round the pool table. I felt so embarrassed and wished my Mammy would just take Major 2 away but, of course, she did nothing of the kind. She took off one of her socks and dropped a snooker ball into it. She grabbed Major 2, turned him round, raised her arm and whacked him right on the bollocks with her weighted sock. The light bulb shot like a cannon from the howling dog’s jaws and smashed on the toilet door. Almost every man in the room held his crotch in sympathy as the big dog howled in ear-piercing agony.

  ‘See,’ my Mammy said triumphantly, ‘the daft bastard won’t bite a light bulb again now, will he!’

  She placed the snooker ball back on the baize table, turned on her heels and left Major 2 licking his wounds very publicly.

  * * *

  Things were going no better for me with the Storries. They still disapproved of me. By now, even the brothers’ girlfriends were having a go.

  ‘You don’t have any eyelashes,’ one of them declared to me in the Palaceum. ‘If you put on some make-up and stop looking like a boy, maybe we would all take you more serious.’

  I could never understand why black rings around my eyes would have made me look more intelligent and, anyway, Sean never once suggested I wear different clothes or make-up or wore longer hair: he liked me as I was. He and I were walking home one night, holding hands and kissing all the way up the road when Old George slowed his car down alongside us and stuck his head out the window:

  ‘Fucking stop that kissing!’ he screamed at Sean. ‘Stop walking around holding hands! People will think you’re a poof!’

  I assumed maybe Old George saw any sort of expression of love as a sign of weakness. Eventually, though, the pressure became too much for us. Sean was still only 16 and I was only 18. We needed to escape the stifling Storrie family and just be together, so we decided to move down to Redcar. This made Old George so angry that he tried to bribe me.

  ‘Have a wee holiday, hen, go see your pal then come home,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you £30.’

  I refused the cash.

  I caught a train to Redcar one Saturday morning and Sean was due down the next day as he had promised to work the late shift at the Palaceum. When Maggie opened the door, we hugged like we had never been separated. I showed off my wee diamond ring and explained all about Sean. She told me that Uncle David Percy had been in contact with her after I left.

  ‘He tried to get off with me, Janey; he tried to touch me and kiss my neck. I told him to fuck off and he ran out of the flat.’

  I was horrified and desperate to tell her the whole story, but I didn’t feel ready to tell anyone other than Sean. I think I was embarrassed.

  ‘I hear,’ she continued, ‘that he’s fucked off down to London.’

  Thank God, I thought. I could look forward to Sean arriving tomorrow and Maggie meeting him for the first time. My two best pals in the world! We had arranged that Sean would get the train down but he wasn’t sure when he could get away and I had no phone in Redcar, so it was a bit of a vague arrangement. I timed the connections from Glasgow and there were only two trains due in that day. So I sat on a bench, excited, at 3.00 p.m., waiting for the first train into Redcar’s big Victorian railway station and watching every single passenger leave the old maroon and black carriages.

  Sean wasn’t there.

  I waited for the next train and slowly my heart began to feel the creeping fear of rejection and desperation. He wasn’t going to come; it had all been a plan to get me out of his life. I sat in my flowery dress – the only dress I owned – swinging my legs in my one pair of cheap plastic sandals, hoping against hope he would appear from that second train. Any fucking train. Just be here!

  He wasn’t on the second trai
n.

  I waited and waited. I finally gave up at 8.00 p.m.

  I had been sitting there for five hours, slowly getting colder and more desperate. Maggie said nothing as I came back alone into her wee flat. It was as if she had never expected him to come either. I thought, Is disappointment just mandatory in my life? I cried myself to sleep that night, clutching my wee diamond ring.

  At about eleven the next morning, I called the Palaceum from a public call box on Redcar seafront. It was pot luck who answered the phone. I knew if I got Young George, he would either lie to me or just shout, ‘Fuck off!’ and hang up. If I got Michael, then he would possibly tell me if Sean had left Glasgow and on what train – depending on his mood. As luck would have it, Old George picked up the receiver.

  ‘George,’ I said, trying not to let him hear the fear in my voice. ‘It’s Janey here. What time did Sean leave? … Is he coming?’

  ‘Shuggie is driving him doon – he should be there at two this afternoon,’ George replied. ‘Make sure you bring him home, Janey,’ he added. ‘I’ve gave him some money so youse two can have a wee holiday.’

  I didn’t hear anything more he said. My heart was too busy leaping in the air. Sean was coming to me!

  And he did arrive that afternoon at two o’clock exactly. We hugged on the pavement and laughed all the way up to Maggie’s flat. She was very much at ease in Sean’s company and the three of us had a ball all the way through the summer of 1979, which was hot and sticky. We sat on the beach, swam in the cold grey sea under blue skies and just got to be ‘us’. No one was judging or arguing with us any more. Sean and I were kissing in the street and staying out all night without worrying about getting up for work and Sean did not want to go home. But, after much deliberation and promising each other never to let anyone get in the way of our relationship, we did head back to Granda Davy Percy’s flat in Glasgow.