We would often catch her chatting to Americans, Canadians, anyone and everyone about the various exhibits. We kept warning her about talking to strangers but she would tell people firmly, if they got a bit too close, ‘I’m not allowed to be picked up or touched!’
The area around the Weavers was dangerous, full of drug dealers and kerb crawlers looking for hookers. I had complained to the local community police about young schoolgirls aged 14 or 15 being allowed to stand outside the bar selling themselves as Ashley played in her wee sandpit by the side of the pub. I would only send her out to play if one of our boys – our tenants – sat out there with her and she hated having a minder:
‘I can watch myself, Mummy – I can!’
Then she would sulk as she dug holes in the sand and would insist her minder stand away from her or sit on the low fence at the side of the pub as she played on her own. She was incredibly independent. She hated anyone tying her shoes or helping her over the fence between the pub and the sandpit at the side of the building.
‘Do it myself! Do it myself!’ she would repeat so often that it became her catchphrase with the regulars.
Sean and I decided she would not eat sweets as our own teeth had become rotten to the core like many Scottish kids raised from cradle to grave on a diet of sugar and fizzy drinks. This proved a hard exercise as almost every customer in the bar started bringing Ashley sweets as a gift. We eventually took the deceitful step of telling everyone she was a diabetic and, as Sean’s dad had diabetes, the scam worked. She knew she was not ill, but learned to refuse sugary snacks, never really complained about it and ate loads of fruit instead. Sean was very strict about this sugar thing but inevitably Old George always felt he knew better and hated Sean making any of his own rules, so Ashley’s diabetic grandad vehemently insisted that she would eat sweets when she was with him.
‘Grandad Storrie tried to give me chocolate again,’ Ashley would explain to me afterwards with her ‘serious’ face. ‘I told him no, but he said it was allowed. I never ate it, Mummy – look – I hid it safely in my pocket.’
Gay Gordon also adored Ashley and was always there to keep her happy. Through him, she developed an early love of musicals. A gay man in the Calton was relatively rare, so he relished his role as her personal tutor of Doris Day hits. She would often run into the crowded Weavers bar, climb on a stool and belt out ‘Que Sera Sera’.
Gay Gordon would stand behind her like some crazed Mrs Worthington, as she sang her heart out, copied dance moves she had seen on TV, then bowed to her always-appreciative audience. Up in our living room, she would sing and dance along even more uninhibitedly with ‘The Deadwood Stage’ and every other song in her favourite VHS musicals.
It reminded me of my Mammy, clearing back the furniture so she could be Judy Garland for at least one rainy afternoon.
* * *
One day, when Sean and I were out walking with her and had almost got back home, Ashley ran ahead of us towards the Weavers. She was wearing a wee waxed blue shooting jacket and a pair of dungarees. She turned the final corner before we did and, as soon as we got round the corner, we saw she was standing up against the white fence with her hands tucked behind her back, looking straight ahead at a stranger parked in his car by the nearby kerb.
‘That man asked me the time, Daddy!’ she shouted, her wee finger pointing at the guy. ‘I don’t know him, Daddy!’
Sean immediately ran to the car and wrenched the door open as the man frantically tried to hold it shut and start the engine at the same time.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Sean screamed. ‘She can’t tell the fucking time! She’s only three!’ He rammed his fist into the man’s face through the open window.
‘I thought I knew her,’ the man spluttered from his bloodied mouth.
I ran after Ashley, who was by now climbing over the wee fence and running up the grass incline away from the Weavers with her coat over her head.
‘Daddy! No, no! No, Daddy!’ she was crying.
‘Ashley,’ I said, grabbing her. ‘It’s OK, baby, come here.’ I held her close. She buried her head into my shoulder, crying for her daddy, but looking back at what he was doing. She didn’t want to look but couldn’t stop herself. Sean had now dragged the guy from the car and was kicking him in the head and body. Our new barman had seen all the commotion through the window of the Weavers and he now came running out to join Sean in his attack on the stranger.
‘I’m sorry … I only spoke to her!’ the man was trying to shout between blows and kicks. He tried to clamber back into his car.
‘Let him go! Let him go!’ I yelled.
Sean booted the man in the face and his nose burst – blood went everywhere – and the stunned stranger half-sat, half-fell back into the driver’s seat. He drove away frantically, semi-conscious, blood spattered all over his wind-screen.
I stayed with Ashley at the top of the grassy incline. Sean sat on the fence with his head in his hands trying to get his breath back. As he looked up, two community police came running over.
‘Sean,’ one asked. ‘What the fuck happened?’
‘That guy asked Ashley the time, for fucksake,’ Sean told them. ‘There’s no way a child of that age can tell the time …’
‘He was a fucking pervert!’ I told them.
‘Fucking jail me!’ Sean snapped at the policemen. ‘I hope you got his number. Find him and get him to charge me! I’ll go to court.’
‘No, Sean,’ said the other policeman gently. ‘You did the right thing. I would have done the same.’
Sean broke down in tears.
Ashley was still sitting on the wee grassy hill, with her coat pulled over her head, her eyes peeking out and watching, her knees hugged up to her chin. Sean and I walked up the slope to her.
‘I am sorry, Ashley,’ Sean said softly, ‘I hate you seeing that, but he was a bad man; I was so scared he would hurt you.’ He didn’t pick her up or hold her because he had the man’s blood on his hands and all over his clothes. But Ashley hugged his neck. She had her wee serious face on:
‘I think he was bad too, Daddy, but you kicked him in the head and he was all blood. If you kill him, the policemen will take you away. That’s what happens if you kill people.’
‘Ashley,’ he tried to explain, ‘I will never kill anyone. But bad people can hurt wee children. You need to know that there are bad men and women who take wee kids away from their parents. I was very angry at him.’
* * *
Ashley loved living in the Calton; so did I. But we had to accept there was danger everywhere and children went missing all over the UK, not just in the East End of Glasgow.
The building we lived in was safe as Ashley knew everyone there and it was a great commune for her to grow up in. On the rooftop, which we used as our private garden, she had a paddling pool and all her outdoor toys. The views were still awesome and I could still see the high flats which dominated the Gorbals’ shopping centre across the river, but I knew the area was now awash with heroin addicts hanging around dealing at The Railings right outside the main Police Office.
That roof was our sanctuary from the city, but the whole building did need an overhaul and we had been trying desperately to get a council grant to renovate it. Glasgow City Council was a Labour Party stronghold but, when we begged for help through their much-publicised regeneration scheme, they never even replied to our letters. Sean was an out-and-proud Tory and the Labour Council’s attitude got right up his nose. Two of our local district councillors regularly drank in the Weavers but, no matter how many times we tried to raise the issue with them, they just turned the argument around to blame the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for everything from light bulbs not working in the street to Celtic getting beaten in the Scottish Cup Final. We even housed a Labour councillor upstairs – eventually, he screwed us for the rent and had to be evicted. He left the place so dirty we had to get an agency in to clean it.
After several months, we did final
ly get a letter from the city council informing us that not only would our building not get an improvement grant but they wanted to demolish it. It was too old and they had decided they wanted to put up new housing on the surrounding land. We were devastated. We argued our case in person but the council sent out an engineer to do a ‘core test’ in our pub cellar to prove the building was sinking and needed to be demolished. The Storrie family lawyer, a Lithuanian called Mr Bovey, told us we had no choice but to let them go ahead.
Monday morning saw a funny wee man called Nick the Greek and his entourage appear with huge yellow machines to dig up the floor of our dark, damp beer cellar. He couldn’t pronounce the name ‘Storrie’ – he kept calling me ‘Mrs String’ – but he kept me updated on all the stuff that was going on downstairs:
‘Mrs String, we are now dig this much …’
He never took one drink and his team spent the whole week digging and drilling and driving us mental with the noise and inconvenience. Eventually they got the core test they wanted – a huge cylindrical hulk of earth of various colours. They cleaned up the insect-infested Victorian cellar and went away to do an investigation on the core back at the council laboratory. The results came back within the week. Our building was one of the most solid, safe, well-built tenements they had ever come across.
We still didn’t feel comfortable as we suspected the council would come back with a new strategy to get us out. One of Sean’s uncles dealt in property; he told us that our land was ear-marked for very profitable development and Glasgow City Council was completely corrupt. One of our regular customers, Archie the Architect, worked for the council and he confirmed that people within the council had decided we were going to be harassed until we agreed to the demolition.
‘Sean,’ he explained. ‘You need to keep on your toes, pal. They will try everything to get you out, believe you me.’
So Sean came up with an idea.
‘Why deal with the corrupt Labour politicians in Glasgow?’ he said. ‘Let’s deal with the people we voted in at Westminster.’ He held a meeting at the Weavers for all the tenants in our threatened building. ‘OK,’ he explained to them, ‘this is what we need to do. If you want to stay here in this building, you have to join the Conservative Party Association.’
The place fell silent. This was like asking Catholics to dress up as Orangemen.
‘The Labour Party won’t listen to us, so let’s try to get beyond them. I will pay your subscriptions, we will go to some meetings and Janey will do the talking.’
‘Fuck off, Sean!’ one of the young guys shouted out. ‘I’m no’ becomin’ a Tory. My da would turn in his grave!’
‘Look,’ explained Sean. ‘It’s just political prostitution. You don’t huv to like them to fuck them. There’s corruption everywhere and this is a long shot, but it’s worth a try. If we can take this issue all the way to London, then we can bypass Glasgow City Council.’
Unfortunately, it turned out there was no local Conservative Association to join. Almost no one apart from Sean had ever voted for the Tories in the Calton. We had to join the Cathcart Conservative Association away on the other side of the city. But we recruited 25 members in one week and at least another 18 the following week. We attended all the Conservative Association functions we could. There were Burns Suppers, raffle nights, charity balls and even days out for the Young Tories which we effectively were. All those elderly middle-class people making tea and sandwiches in the Cathcart must have been horrified to see a bunch of slang-jabbering, dope-smelling, totally mad East Enders sitting in on their meetings. They could make no sense of it at all; but they knew we were recruiting lots of new fee-paying members for them.
Four months after joining, I was invited to the 1989 Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Perth. I was so excited and the people I met were so genuinely nice to me and actually listened to what I told them about my area, that I got caught up in it all and became very vocal about the drug problem, the prostitution and general issues surrounding my community. I even got to meet the head honcho. I was nervous as hell beforehand and felt I should at least look the part, so I dressed from head to toe in shoplifted clothes and smart shoes with a matching handbag. Most people there had stylists; I had thieves with attitude and all my sizes written on the back of their hands when they stole for me. The Conservative Party leader, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, spoke to me with very intense eyes and said she was informed that I had recruited all these East End Glaswegians to the Conservative Party.
‘You should represent the Calton area, Mrs Storrie,’ she told me. ‘Politics needs more women like you.’
I thought: Fuck that! I couldn’t be a politician. I want to be liked too much.
By the end of that year, we received a phone call from a Scottish Conservative MP at Westminster assuring us our building would not be demolished. Our tenants were happy they no longer had to eat cucumber sandwiches and I threw away my floral dresses. The MP later turned out to be homosexual and got thrown out of the Party.
17
Glasgow smiles
AT NIGHT, MY bad dreams were still there. Some nights I had to stay awake because I was frightened the nightmares could actually take me straight to my death. The worst dreams, though, were not the ones where I was attacked, chased and slashed by demons but the ones where I met my Mammy and she was laughing, chatting and stroking my head. I got to chat with her and tell her how much I missed her. I hugged her and even Major my dog came into these dreams and let me stroke his wiry coat. When I awoke, the grief was horrendous. I had to confront the pain of separation all over again and that pain would stay with me all day. I would stomp around the Weavers, my head all foggy with images of my Mammy, her eyes twinkling, laughing with me. I didn’t want ‘glimpses’ of her, I hated smelling her near me in my dreams, touching her soft face, hearing her grainy voice and then, in the morning, having to face the fact she was dead. I preferred no contact. I didn’t want to feel that terrible emptiness and pain anew again. I wanted to sleep like Ashley.
She giggled in her sleep; she was beautiful to watch; she snuggled into her teddy bear and would whisper a breath that blew the fur gently on her wee soft toy. Maybe she was dreaming of being in Hollywood because, at three years of age, she told me, ‘Mummy, I am going to be a movie star.’
Watching all those musicals with Gay Gordon and having my Mammy’s DNA must have given her the notion. My own hopes of acting had not waned. There was an advert in a local newspaper for extras to appear in a small independent Glasgow film called Alabama. I went to the auditions. Sean could not look after Ashley that day – he was off at a car auction with Old George. So, on a horrible rainy Glasgow day, Ashley and I took a bus to the city centre and entered a spacious West End flat. The young director bent down to Ashley and shook her hand.
‘Hello, what’s your name then?’
‘I am Ashley Storrie. I am three and I can talk really well, don’t you think? I am going to be a film star when I grow up.’
I was embarrassed and smiled down at her. ‘Ashley,’ I said gently, pointing to the bright red sofas across the office, ‘can you sit over there till I talk to this man, please?’
‘What’s your name, sir?’ she quickly asked the director.
‘I am Thomas.’
‘Mum, please, can I sit with Thomas and look through that camera when he films you?’ She was putting on the charm.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘we need a wee girl for a speaking part, Janey. Can Ashley audition for it?’
Great! I thought. I’m being upstaged by my own toddler!
‘Mum, can I please?’ she pleaded. ‘Please?’
Within minutes, she was standing in front of the camera, confidently delivering the words Thomas had asked her to say.
‘I am stuck!’ she shouted, with a cardboard box on her head. ‘Help me! I am stuck!’ The scene was set in a hospital emergency ward and Ashley was supposed to have a tea urn stuck on her head.
She got a spea
king part. I was not cast. She couldn’t wait to get back to the pub to tell all the boys she was in a real movie.
‘Daddy! I got a part in a movie and I get to talk!’ she yelled as she ran into the bar.
I had to escort her to the film set the following Saturday. Her movie debut went very well; she let the director place a huge metal tea urn over her head; she held the bottom; she shouted out her lines in one take.
After that, in the Weavers, she would come down on Saturday evenings, grab the mike and sing karaoke songs for the customers. My wee girl would belt out the words to ‘Pearl’s A Singer’ in her pyjamas and, later, plead to be allowed to sing one more song before Sammy took her up for bedtime.
The bar was always full now and Sean and I were busier than ever with the run-up to Christmas but the tension between us was increasing. I just wished my Mammy was around. Would she have helped me or just insisted men needed special treatment? She gave her man so many concessions that it ended with her being found dead in the Clyde.
My sister Ann had finally found a good new man and got married that year. She looked radiant walking down the aisle with Big Brian, a lovely young guy who clearly adored her. Brian was a kind and happy soul; I would watch him cuddle Ann and laugh with her and, within months, she was expecting their first child. Her two kids from her first marriage were very excited. In some ways, I was jealous of her happiness. I wondered if she knew what a bastard Sean could be when I was alone with him. Were all men bastards behind closed doors? I secretly believed they were. I would stand behind the bar, play loud music and stare out of the window, pondering who I might have been if I had not become his wife.
* * *
One day, I had a great idea while pondering; I decided to write a nativity play for the pub. I set it in the Calton today – 1989. The Virgin Mary would be working as a counter assistant in the local Fine Fare supermarket and Joseph would be a woodworker on a Youth Training Scheme. Mary’s family would be Catholic and Joseph’s family would be Protestants. I sat and wrote a script for the short play, included a few funny lines, appointed Archie the Architect as narrator, cast a few customers as actors and set the performance for the evening of Christmas Day. The Glasgow Evening Times heard about my plans and asked the opinion of Pastor Jack Glass, who declared my play was ‘the Devil’s work’ and slated me for bringing divisive sectarianism into the beauty of the nativity story. I just laughed and told the Evening Times: ‘How many Glasgow pubs do you know that, on Christmas night, will be discussing the birth of Christ?’
Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival Page 20