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

by Godley, Janey

  ‘Mij,’ I told him. ‘She is too young to be on her own. Tell me whit the fuck is going on or I will tell my Dad about all this.’ I stood watching his face twitch. He slowly put both hands up to his mouth and mumbled something. I grabbed at his fingers and prised them off his mouth. ‘Whit the fuck are you saying?’

  ‘I huv been taking smack, Janey.’ He buckled to the floor and started crying like a small child at my knees. ‘I am sorry, Janey, I let everybody doon; just get me put away. I am no fit to be a da.’

  His self-pity made me so angry I just walked out of the house swearing and shouting to myself. I raged as I walked quickly through Glasgow Green towards the Weavers. I spat and swore at the junkies I passed. They just staggered on, ignoring my rage. When I got back home, I made phone calls and arranged for Debbie to go stay with her mammy’s sister but, eventually, she went back home to Mij and spent time living between them all. I was horrified. I was worried in case someone abused her. Eventually, I called Social Services. I knew they would call Debbie’s mother’s family and there would be some arrangement to get her better looked after. She eventually went to stay with her aunt, which worked out for a while although later she did end up in care. At the time, Mij was upset and angry. He came over to the Weavers one night and stood crying: ‘Why did ye do that, Janey? That wean is my life.’

  ‘She needs protecting, Mij, and ye cannae provide that if ye are fucked on smack, can ye?’

  He walked out crying. I could deal with Mij’s anger. I could not deal with her being abused.

  And it was not just my own brother I was having problems with. Sean’s brothers were becoming ever more difficult to deal with. Dick would come into the Weavers and antagonise me whenever he got a chance. One of his friends would sit at the bar and Dick would talk loudly to him: ‘My dad George hates Janey an’ we all hate her and she cannae huv kids!’

  ‘Dick,’ I would snap back. ‘Just shut up. I don’t fucking care if you like me. The minute you like me, I will change my personality … And another thing – I just don’t want kids right noo. I know it must confuse you – two people being together and one of ’em not pregnant, but I like having sex an’ no kids, OK?’

  Mentioning sex always shut him up. Mentioning sex was always the best defence in the Storrie family. If in doubt, talk about sex. For a bunch of so-called hard men they were easily embarrassed. There was always a strange undertone to Sean’s family. I was never sure what it was and Sean always made sure I never asked. But, one night, he and I were woken up by a loud banging. A man whom I had never seen before stood at our door. He was tall, with very dark hair. He said something to Sean, then walked straight into our living room like he had been in the house all his life, leaving Sean and me behind in the hall.

  ‘Who the fuck is that guy?’ I asked.

  Sean put a finger to his lips and went in to join the man. I watched the two of them climb up the hideous, bull-fronted, fake-wood, devil-worshipping fireplace I had always hated so much. Sean reached down into the gap behind the fake panelling and pulled out three long objects wrapped in cloth and tied up with string. I knew by the shape that they were rifles or shotguns.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ I shouted as they walked past me in the hall.

  ‘Keep her quiet, Sean,’ the man told him in an English accent.

  Sean carried the gun-shaped cloth-covered objects down the long hall, then downstairs and into the man’s waiting car. I was shocked. Sean came back to bed as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Sean, why did you not tell me there were guns behind that fireplace? Was it built just to hide guns?’

  Sean lay quiet as I badgered him and then said: ‘You never asked. So why do I have to tell ye everything?’

  ‘Don’t be fucking sleekit, Sean!’ I shouted. ‘Ye know whit I mean. Who the fuck wiz that Englishman an’ why did ye give him guns an’ why the fuck were they in oor house?’

  He said nothing.

  I lay in bed fuming.

  ‘I want to fucking know! And I want to know now!’

  So Sean explained to me how it worked. ‘If you don’t know, ye can never tell. And you can never be even suspected by my dad of being a grass.’

  In the morning Sean left the pub without warning.

  He was away for one whole day.

  He was away for a second whole day.

  I called his dad continually. Old George just kept telling me, ‘Stay quiet, Janey. Sean will be home soon.’

  I thought he had left me or had had one of his freaky moods and just disappeared. But, after two days away, he just turned up early on the morning of the third day to open the Weavers. I hugged him for a long time.

  ‘Sean, I was so fucking worried, where were ye?’ I begged.

  ‘Don’t ask me anything, Janey. Look, I got ye a wee present.’

  He smiled as he produced a box of paints and some new brushes.

  ‘Great! You are away for two fucking days an’ ye bring me back paints? If I see on the telly about some big jewellery robbery an’ all I got wiz these paints, you’re dead!’

  ‘Don’t ever talk like that, Janey,’ he snapped. ‘I’m no’ involved in anything dodgy. I am no’ some fucking robber. Don’t even start that shite! I might be George Storrie’s son, but I’m no’ a thief, OK?’

  ‘Well, I think guns are dodgy an’ you hid them in this hoose. So don’t you start being all the perfect fucking citizen with me, Sean.’

  He just laughed and held me tight.

  ‘I was only at a sale for my dad. I’m sorry I never called,’ he said.

  * * *

  Occasionally, some old customers would come into the Weavers and start talking about Sean’s dad and his criminal connections but Sean would simply ignore or deny their claims. Sometimes, a local gangster would come in, resplendent in camel-hair coat and shiny coiffed hair. Most gangsters seemed to me to be failed actors and all the older, better-known thugs dressed like something out of The Maltese Falcon. I used to laugh under my breath and think, They can’t ALL pretend to be Humphrey Bogart. They were smart and extremely polite in the kind of menacing way those dangerous men like to behave when around their viewing public. One gangster was a regular. He would order his Glenmorangie with ice and smile as his hand pushed several notes into mine, displaying a fine array of gold sovereigns on his fingers.

  ‘Keep the change, sweetness,’ he would slide out of the side of his mouth.

  He was known locally as a ‘drug baron’, the aristocratic title now bestowed on lowlife dealers by the press.

  One afternoon, Old George and I stood outside the Weavers watching other local drug barons drive around in their flashy BMWs.

  ‘They are fucking bad luck, Janey,’ Old George said venomously. ‘Every penny earned from drugs is dirty money. Their kids will die. They will die. And bad luck will fucking land on all their families.’

  It felt like a biblical prophecy …

  15

  Sweet dreams are made of this

  MY DAD HAD been making great progress, was still off the booze and had found a nice girlfriend. He brought her into the Weavers one day to introduce us. She was called Mary and was everything my Mammy wasn’t: blonde, well spoken and totally honest. She was a lovely woman with warm brown eyes and hair which framed an amazingly sensitive face; she was always well dressed and made sure she spent lots of time getting to know me. Her own husband had died a couple of years previously, after she had nursed him through a long illness. She had two grown-up kids of her own and worked as a care assistant dealing with people who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease. She was very much into crafts and I liked her instantly. But it was still weird to imagine my Dad loving another woman.

  Mary would constantly ask Sean questions about his life, but he would hardly talk to her and merely grunted inaudible answers. I would sometimes go up to Dad’s home to have tea with him and Mary, but Sean would never come and would go into one of his legendary huffs if I stayed away too long. After a few months, Dad
and Mary decided to marry and sold their flat; they bought a great wee house up in Maryhill, near Dad’s work, and were a very happy couple.

  * * *

  Sean and I went off on holiday alone for two weeks discovering Newquay and the surrounding area in Cornwall. The beaches were clean and surfers came from all over the world to take part in the Fistral Beach competitions. Sean and I sat in rose-covered garden cafés eating clotted cream teas, holding hands and being just us; it was great. Sean was amazing at times: his generosity could floor me. We spent mornings eating breakfast in bed from a big silver tea trolley that was wheeled into our room. Every day he brought me flowers. Every night he took me out to dinner. Laughing, kissing, holding me close to his face, he told me how much he loved me.

  But the journey back from Newquay was tiring and Sean got more and more restless and argumentative as each mile dragged us closer to Glasgow. When we hit home, we found so many problems at the Weavers. Sean had left Young George in charge. Not only had he upset the regulars by smoking dope but he had screwed up Sean’s uniquely weird but effective cash system. There was only one way to insert the cash takings into the ledger and that was Sean’s way. He always got very upset if I dared to use a blue pen instead of a black one – or if I wrote too big – or if my figures strayed over the neat lines – or if I accidentally had to erase a figure and it looked messy … To Sean’s horror, when we got back, it looked as if Young George had taken a chunky crayon and drawn a dead zebra across the whole page.

  ‘It’s a fucking mess!’ Sean screamed at me. ‘He can’t fucking count! He’s upset everyone! I shouldn’t huv gone on a fucking holiday!’ He never confronted Young George. Instead, he shouted at me.

  We were soon back in the old routine of veering towards complete disaster and/or divorce. There would be another night of silence; then a night of shouting, threats and me walking the night-time streets in the rain. It always happened, yet I was never prepared for my night-time flight. I always managed to take a jacket but never the shoes. I used to think I should prepare a packed bag with shoes, bra and some cash and hide it somewhere outside in the streets. Then I could run out, safe from prowling thieves and junkies, knowing I had shoes and cash to get me out of that street somehow. But I never did find the perfect hiding place so, on frequent nights, I would run from our home screaming, fear making me pound down all the steps in my bare feet, run through the wet puddles and feel every sharp stone cut into my feet, while Sean ran after me, hurriedly dressed in his jogging bottoms and a T-shirt, never able to catch me in time. Some nights, he’d only run down the stairs but not come right out the door because it was too wet outside. I would stay out freezing in the rain, in the orange-grey shadows of the sodium street lights, and I would walk around the streets and look through people’s windows, watching them watching television in the warmth. I wondered Do any of them ever run in the night?

  Eventually, I would huddle in some strange hallway or alleyway far away from my own street in case someone recognised me. I didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t want to be found. When daylight came, I would run on the balls of my feet straight back to the pub in time for opening. I would look up at the first-floor window to see if Sean was looking for me but he never was; he was sleeping. Eventually I would go up our stairway and knock on the door and hope he was missing me and was not still angry with me. Inside I was pleading Please don’t be angry with me. I’m really tired. Often, when Sean opened the door, he was sleepy and staggered around trying to make sense of why I was out there. Then it would all come back to him.

  ‘I am sorry, Janey,’ he would say. ‘Come to bed, babes.’ Then he would hold me in his warm nakedness – he’d be naked at the door and wouldn’t care – and even the pain in my feet would disappear. But I realised his mood swings were becoming more erratic. He was under pressure.

  * * *

  The Weavers was going great; we were making decent cash; but our success with the bar had only incited jealousy among the other Storrie brothers. They insisted Sean must be stealing from Old George. If Sean wasn’t, then I was stealing; or Sammy was stealing. Old George had always made sure each son was at all the others’ throats. He would spread whispered gossip from son to son, then sit back and watch the consequences. I once phoned him to complain about one of my sisters-in-law: when she came into the Weavers, she had argued with me in front of customers about leaving my big bin in the close. I rambled on and on to Old George about her as he encouraged me to get it all out of my system. Later, I discovered he had taped the whole conversation on his answering machine and had played it straight back to the woman. She came storming into the bar the next day, repeating the cruel and careless comments I had blabbed to Old George. That night, Sean spent an age screaming at me for talking about people behind their backs and told me to never ever trust his father.

  Sean was trying to talk him into repurchasing all the flats above the Weavers and turning them into bed and breakfast rooms. Old George owned most of the flats but we needed to own all nine outright to make the plan more financially viable. Sean explained that each bed could house an unemployed homeless person and the government would pay us £40 a week to house each of them.

  ‘Multiply that £40 per week by the 34 beds we would accommodate between all the flats,’ he explained.

  Old George’s elderly business cronies advised him that Sean’s idea was ingenious but this only served to make him oppose the idea; none of his sons was allowed to be smarter than him. Still, the idea was sensible and the plan did start moving along.

  * * *

  We had good fun in the Weavers in between the shouting. We already had chess nights and now we started a five-a-side football team – ladies included. I made good friends with some of the new regulars and started to employ some of them part-time to help with our increasing workload. One was Gordon. He had just moved into one of the smaller one-bedroom flats on the other side of the London Road; it was quite characterless, but Gordon did a lot to make it homely because he was gay and therefore knew how to use soft furnishings. He was enormous fun. At last, I had someone to share my love of 1970s music! He had a huge collection of everything from Steely Dan to Supertramp to early David Bowie and T Rex. I loved it! He was also good with Sean; he understood his quirky ways and was happy to have found friendly faces in this new part of town he had moved to. Gay Gordon loved to throw parties and, when he heard our fourth wedding anniversary was imminent, suggested:

  ‘You should throw a fancy dress party!’

  Sean dressed as a Mississippi Gambler in a dandy waistcoat and cowboy hat while I got to be Cinderella in a silver sticky-out dress and a silver bodice. Our regulars took the party to heart and everyone turned out in awesome costumes. Archie The Architect came dressed as a priest, Sandra The Social Worker dressed as Little Bo-Peep, Jack The Janitor and his wife dressed as a Frenchman and his French maid. And even Old George turned up dressed as Fidel Castro in a green military uniform with a beret and black beard, sucking on a big cigar. He surprised us all by bringing along Sandra, an ex-girlfriend of his son Michael – the same Sandra who had grown up at the bottom of Kenmore Street – the wee, blonde girl with the cute dimples and Children of the Damned blond brothers. Sandra had by now fucked virtually the entire Storrie family including Michael, Young George and now Old George. She was still very blonde and very pretty but was also very clearly trouble. She came dressed as a hooker but I didn’t realise this immediately, as she often wore similar clothing around the streets in her everyday life.

  Despite this strange reappearance by Sandra, the night was magical. Sean and I cut a big fourth anniversary cake that our customers had bought and we all danced to the sounds of Madonna, Tears For Fears and U2. It was good to see Sean enjoy himself. He had never really made an effort to make friends with anyone before. The next day, he rounded up 40 of our hungover partygoers and loaded them onto a bus bound for Germany on a pre-arranged trip to the Munich Beer Festival. While he was away, my sister Ann, Gay Gordon and
I ran the Weavers. Finally, I could count the cash, do the books and lock the door – all by myself. It was the most peaceful five days I had had for ages and I loved it.

  ‘For all his faults, though,’ I told my sister Ann, ‘it’s good when Sean’s with me because I can help him through his demons. When he feels down or he has a migraine, I can understand him.’

  ‘Just enjoy him being away,’ Ann replied.

  A couple of days later, Old George popped in with Sandra again in tow – to check I was OK, he said. Sandra sat and purred over him like a cat, which made me feel very uncomfortable. She was the ex-girlfriend of two of his sons and was quite childlike in her manner and speech. She had broken up Michael’s relationship with his long-time girlfriend Mags and I thought Sandra was just a gold-digger. I had preferred Patsy Paton – she was great fun and had been more than a match for Old George. It soon became clear my antagonism to Sandra caused problems for Old George. Whenever we met, I would be snide to Sandra. In return, Sandra would complain to Old George that I was not showing her the respect she was due as his girlfriend and insisted he told me off. Old George would try to keep the peace.

  ‘Get off Sandra’s back,’ he once told me. ‘She’s only got the intelligence of a wee girl.’

  ‘Then,’ I snapped back, ‘you shouldnae be sleeping with her, George!’

  Sandra had by now started calling herself ‘Mrs Sandra Storrie’.

  Eventually, after five days away, the Munich tour bus arrived back. I waited patiently for the hiss as the doors swung open, then ran out and hugged Sean so tightly in the street. He had made new friends on the trip and, after that, started enjoying his job more. He was sure his dad would be well proud of his progress. He was still only 23 years old and desperately trying to prove himself worthy of being the son Old George wanted. He never drank alcohol, never smoked and hated drugs. He never got into trouble with the police. He was always working, always making progress with the pub. Yet, still, Old George never gave him any praise. That was the way he was. If you got anything wrong, then all your mistakes were told in great detail to all the other family members, with the intent of making you look the fool you were; but your successes were never mentioned. Sean wanted a pat on the back, he wanted his dad to be proud. The irony was that I was not even recognised as existing. I worked all the hours God sent and Sean never bothered to praise me either. We both worked hard. We worked every day including Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. We only closed on New Year’s Day and then only because it was illegal to open.