Maggie & Me

by Damian Barr

  A head full of curlers appears around the door. ‘In yees come,’ she says. ‘Come and see how it’s done.’

  I take Teenie’s felt tips and put the lids on so they don’t stain the new carpet and drag her into the scullery. A purple satin bag with a gold butterfly clasp spills tiny jars and bottles and brushes on to the breakfast bar. I reach out to touch what looks like a tiny light sabre and Mary smacks my hand.

  ‘Don’t touch! They’re curling tongs, son.’

  My cheeks burn. I’m not her son. She’s not my mum. But still, she’s trying and maybe I could like her then I hate myself for even having that thought.

  ‘Shall we glam up those lovely blonde locks?’ She advances towards Teenie with the tongs.

  Having said nothing to Mary beyond ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ my sister now just opens her mouth and screams – screams like Mary had burnt her with the tongs. Mary jumps back and goes white under her foundation.

  I just laugh. ‘It’s all right,’ I say, addressing her adult-to-adult. ‘She’s funny with strangers.’

  Teenie’s almost white-blonde hair is always bobbed and shoved behind an ear. She’s better at being a boy than me. My mum’s given up buying her dresses, stopped presenting her with dollies.

  ‘She’s like that Jodie Foster,’ says Mary disapprovingly. ‘In Taxi Driver. That Robert De Niro?’

  I nod and smile. Who?

  Mary lifts a tickly-looking make-up brush. ‘Mibbe some blusher?’ Teenie shakes her head tightly. Mary looks disappointed and I feel bad for her.

  ‘Do me,’ I say, jumping up on the stool.

  ‘Aaaaalrighty,’ drawls Mary in a fake but really good fake American accent.

  I sit still like one of Teenie’s long-abandoned dolls and try not to flinch as she stabs a sharp black pencil at my eyes.

  ‘They’re the windaes of the soul,’ says Mary. ‘And windaes need dressin’.’

  My eyelids are pulled towards her as she drags the mascara brush through my lashes then I make a kissing pout as she puts my lipstick on. A wrinkled nose and a sneeze as the big blusher brush dusts my face. My hair is not as naturally blond as Teenie’s or as unnaturally blonde as Mary’s but it’s page-boy long and thick. Dry heat scorches my scalp but Mary is careful not to burn me as she works her way round my head. I cough and wheeze as she sprays what must be a whole can of Elnett and I think of Granny Mac blasting flies in her scullery.

  ‘Done,’ she says, spinning the stool round to the mirror.

  I am not me. I turn my head from side to side. I look just like her. Even Teenie is a bit impressed. Maybe now my dad will want to see me more! FLASH! Mary snaps a Polaroid of her and me looking in the mirror. She shakes the picture into life and our ghost clown faces loom out. I love the attention Mary has brushed, tonged and smoothed on to me.

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Yees better have yer bath before yer daddy gets home fae the Craig.’

  I touch my face. All that work gone to waste.

  Me and Teenie share a bath and it feels a shame to wash it all off. We stand on the mat – also new and also scarlet – waiting for Mary to dry us. She handles us at arm’s length like fragile, or dangerous, objects.

  As she’s towelling me she lets out another of her small laughs. ‘Somebody takes after ees daddy,’ she giggles, puffs talcum powder between my legs.

  We’re sat in our jammies and Mary is putting another lasagne on the table when the back door opens and cold air rushes in with my dad. We run to him and jump up and there’s no mum to stop us getting dirty from his work clothes as he cuddles us both at the same time. Mary waits her turn, her face painted on.

  ‘Honey, I’m home,’ sing-songs my dad in a bad fake American accent and I notice make-up on the ends of his stubble where she kisses him.

  Dad sits at the table wolfing his dinner down while Mary eats him with her eyes and I’m scared there’ll be none left for us.

  When he’s done he drops on the puffy leather couch and it lets out a little fart. Mary clicks the telly on then kicks her helter-skelters off and curls up next to him. The skin on the soles of her feet is hard and thick and yellow. She reaches down the side of couch and fishes out something that looks like a hairbrush and hands it to my dad who starts rubbing it on her feet without taking his eyes off the telly. Each stroke shaves a small heap off. Parmesan. Me and Teenie share an armchair. My dad smiles at us as the telly warms up.

  ‘Glenn, we’ll need to get wan wae a remote control,’ says Mary, fluffing herself up.

  Mansions and helicopters and trilling flutes and dah-dah-dahs and men in bow ties and women dripping with diamonds and Blake and Krystle and that bitch Alexis all announce Dynasty.

  ‘Dad, Dad.’ I start asking the questions I always ask when he gets in from work. ‘How many tons?’

  And he starts giving me the answers he always gives: how much coal he fed into the furnaces and how much steel he made and I nod, seeing him riding on top of a giant JCB with a cabin big enough for him to sit up straight. He’s still worried about the miners and people saying the Craig will go next and I nod along.

  ‘Shsssht!’ hisses Mary, pointing at the telly. She pushes her foot harder against the grater and the pile of shavings mounts up. ‘Dynasty!’

  ‘So wit did yous two get up to the day, eh?’ asks Dad and Mary pokes him with her painted toes.

  Teenie starts telling him about colouring in and shows him a picture that he agrees looks just like him. More nodding from me.

  ‘And wit about you eh, Professor Plum? Mair books?’

  Mary moans. ‘Glenn, it’s Dynasty!’ He gives her a look I don’t understand and she changes her face and says, ‘Oh we had a lovely time, didn’t we, son?’ Again with the ‘son’.

  I smile but need her to get her eyes off me. I head into the scullery for a glass of water I don’t need. Walking past the bin I spy a packet sticking out. I pull it out and read ‘Findus Lasagne’.

  ‘It’s home-cooked, not home-made,’ says Mary behind me as she takes the packet out my hands and stuffs it back in the bin, deeper this time. ‘Now let’s make yer daddy a wee coffee and then we’ll all watch Dynasty in peace,’ she says and as she reaches up to get the jar from the cupboard her top falls open and spilling over her lacy pink bra are things my mum definitely doesn’t have. Here’s Dolly.

  Mary catches me looking and I blush. Between the pink of her bra and the peach of her skin a small white triangle peeks out. I angle my head and move closer so I can see. She’s taking an awful long time getting the jar down and as she leans forward the triangle gets bigger. It’s that Polaroid. She pats it gently. I can’t let my dad see it. She looks down at me. Her make-up is smiling.

  That night I’m woken up by banging. I don’t have to strain to hear Mary’s chorus through the wall: ‘Oh Glenn! Oh Glenn!’

  I cry bitter, jealous tears into my pillow.

  Chapter 5

  ‘I cannot offer you an easy road; you would not expect that of me.’

  Margaret Thatcher, first Speech to Conservative Central Council, 15 March 1975

  The sippy is a powdery patch of the moon down here on earth. The old cement works is the short cut from Carfin to Newarthill and because I never, ever want to go back to that flat I never, ever take it. Instead I walk back from Keir Hardie Memorial Primary School in baby-steps heel-to-toe and for every three forward I take one back. This way I’m always the last one left on the road. I feel the looks from passing cars. Don’t you have a home to go to?

  The Sippy made the giant hour-glass cooling towers for the Craig, where my dad says clouds are made. Like the Bing and the Craig, the Sippy is totally man-made but where the Bing is sparkling black mountains the Sippy is a chalky tundra the size of however many football pitches. All that remains is the sign saying SIPAREX CEMENT WORKS, the chain-link fence round the site that lets you see in and the rust-sealed padlock on the spiky front gates. There’s nothing else. It’s as if the workers took their factory away brick by brick at the
end of their last shift.

  All the action here is underground.

  Take the deepest breath you can and pinch your nose hard so you don’t smell the pish when you run down the deep, dark stairs with the slippery chalky walls that leave the tips of your fingers damp white. Keep your eyes closed if you want because you won’t see a thing unless you’re starting a fire or somebody stole a torch. Blink as fast as you can, your eyes won’t suck in more light. You’re inside the world now and all you can smell is broken rocks and something else, something musty and exciting. These forgotten cellars are perfect for doing the things you don’t want to get caught doing. This is where girls come to get poked off and watch boys smoke. It’s not for good boys like me, boys with a geeky galaxy of gold stars.

  It’s about a mile from Flat 1, 1 Magdalene Drive, Carfin, to the gates of Keir Hardie Memorial Primary School, Newarthill. The two villages are linked by a long road that goes on down the brae to the Craig and then to Motherwell town centre. This is my dad’s road to work and I imagine his car hitting me and me bouncing over the bonnet and tears trickling down his nose on to my face keeping me alive like a fairy-tale princess till the ambulance comes.

  My mum worries about me and Teenie getting run over on the dark mornings – she says Maggie’s trying to put the clocks backwards or forwards or something so the English can all have a lie-in and all the mums are raging because it means we’re all going to get splatted walking to school. To stop this happening we must all learn the Green Cross Code. We file on to the school stage which doubles as the television room and the curtains are pulled and the hinged doors of the TV cabinet fold back. We sit cross-legged in rows, shortest at the front and tallest, me, at the back. The telly is gigantic and it takes a minute to warm up while Miss Wills rewinds the video. When the Green Giant comes on I imagine sleeping on his big broad chest in the tight white vest with the big green cross on, rising and falling as he breathes in and out. That afternoon a policeman comes to class and we all consider our crimes quietly. Officer Leighton – my middle name, maybe we’re related – is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, the hairs on his arms are like Weetabix covered in golden syrup. When he smashes one fist into the other to demonstrate the impact of a car on a child the muscles and tendons flex and dance and the hairs sparkle in the sun.

  We’re each allocated an older boy or girl to walk with us and keep us off the roads. Teenie gets one of the six more or less identical Cullen sisters, all with the long black hair that their mum, the Bonny Tress, spends all Sunday after chapel washing and brushing till it shines. I get dumped on Kevin McAdam two years above me. His hair is the colour of hay in a Ladybird book about farms. Kev probably didn’t read that book or any book. He sits like lead at the bottom of his class. He does boxing and judo because he’s too big to be a karate kid. I hate fighting, can’t fight, but I can nearly do the standing-crane thing, arms outstretched, if I don’t look down. I dream of taking off. I’ve got the right build for karate but the wrong lungs. Because judo is really just throwing your weight it’s perfect for Kev. I stick to reading whatever I can find and wheezing and taking the Brer Rabbit route out of trouble. Kev is always surrounded by boys and I’m always running away from them. When the big yellow Library Bus comes round once a fortnight I sit on the corrugated-rubber floor reading until it’s time for it to go somewhere else and when it rolls off Kev and his pals egg it. I’m scared it won’t come back but it does. I think about hiding on it and running away.

  The McAdams stay on the second floor in the block of flats opposite. Me and my mum and Teenie and Baby Billy and Logan stay at Flat 1, 1 Magdalene Drive, which makes us number one in all the flats. Baby Billy has blond hair and blue eyes and smiles for everybody. He has a sterling silver teething ring and everybody who visits brings him christening money. Me and Teenie aren’t really sure what to do with him. Logan likes to remind us he’s only our half-brother. We’re never allowed to pick him up and Logan keeps him near. Billy gets disposable nappies – no danger of a pinprick for him, less work for my mum. Billy is a quiet baby, ‘Quieter than both of yours,’ we’re reminded. Sometimes I read him stories. I try to see my face in his.

  Because we’re on the ground floor I really do look up to Kev and wish his bedroom was at the front so I could watch him do his judo practice. He harrumphs across the road and sulks at the bottom of our front steps.

  My mum’s reading the Daily Record.

  ‘Och, wit a waste of a man,’ she wails. She breathes in a confidential way. ‘Me and yer daddy went tae see him at the pictures when we were courtin’. You’d never have guessed.’

  Guessed what? The offending paper is binned as if contagious. I snatch it out the bin when she’s busy with the toast. Rock Hudson is dead. I’ve learnt to decode the signals in the papers: ‘flamboyant’, ‘confirmed bachelor’, ‘troubled’. They all mean one thing.

  When it’s time to leave my mum’s fussing over me like it’s my first day again, spitting on her hand and rubbing it over my cow’s lick, trying to make my hair stay down. I shake her off but Kev’s already seen. I’m nine and nearly as tall as her. Kev’s face says he’s not thrilled about being stuck with me but our mums are best pals so he’ll have to do as he’s told.

  ‘Taken a beamer, Barr.’ He laughs at my blushes as my mum kisses me at the front door.

  ‘Yous two are not too old to hold hands,’ she shouts from the top step.

  Now Kev turns red. He crushes my hand into his, throwing it down as soon as we’re round the corner. My hand tingles as blood flows back into my fingers as he storms ahead and I delight in the trouble he’ll be in if I do get run over. After ten minutes he stops at the Sippy gates and folds his arms waiting for me to catch up.

  Just as I reach him he disappears behind a tree whose fuzzy grey buds are breaking into dangling yellow catkins. They sway like Mary’s earrings. I stare at the branchy place where Kev was and his head reappears.

  ‘Pish!’ he says, rubbing his crotch. ‘Move!’

  I carefully push the branches out of my face, wary of twangings back and scratchings. I’m so busy trying to escape the tree I nearly walk straight into Kevin’s hot, steaming jet. He laughs then focuses on arcing through the fence mixing with the grey powdery cement dust that covers the whole Sippy to make a minging yellow paste. He aims like a soldier and I wonder what enemy he sees. I try not to look or look like I’m not looking. Effortlessly, he chucks his bag over the fence past his pish. I worry about his books before clicking that he’s not got any. Now no one can see us from the road. I panic. Kev isn’t rushing to school, he’s just trying to fit in fun on the way. He doesn’t care that we’ll get in trouble if we’re caught. I’ve never dogged school or smoked a fag. I’ve never even been late. ‘He’s for the uni,’ my mum tells women up the high street. ‘He’ll be Dr Barr one day, you wait and see.’ Every certificate of excellence or – gasp, mere merit – is framed. Every report card is read aloud to any neighbour with five minutes to spare or not. This year it said, ‘Damian tends towards the talkative.’ I’ve started talking back, not a lot but a bit – I’m bored, there’s never enough to read and if I make everybody laugh then I’m not Gaymian for that minute. Now I’m in the Sippy with a judo black belt two years above me. I can’t talk my way out of whatever we’re up to and for the first time I’m not sure I want to.

  With two hands Kev pulls up the bottom of the chain-link fence and it folds in a familiar way. ‘Through!’

  I drop down and wriggle under commando-style, not thinking about the stains on my uniform – the charcoal-grey trousers, white shirt and burgundy blazer with burgundy and sky-blue diagonally striped tie. He boots my bum as I make it through but not hard.

  Grey world, grey half-light of a see-your-breath morning in early March. The Council daffodils are still sleeping in their buds. It’s half past eight and orange streetlights burn filthily on the road we just left. The Sippy has not one light, not one in the whole place. Somehow Kev knows where he’s going and I blind
ly follow, fitting my feet into the prints he leaves in the grey dust. One small step.

  ‘Watch it!’ He swerve-jumps left and I only just follow and we both miss a hole that goes down how far nobody knows. A hole made for falling into.

  Dust swirls the surface of the Sippy, camouflaging these staircases with no stairs and these shafts that have lost their lifts. Luke falls into the ice cave in The Empire Strikes Back and defeats the razor-clawed Hoth Wampa. I’d probably find a pissy tramp, if I was lucky.

  Just because he can, Kev sprints ahead and I follow him as fast as I can, diving under the fence at the other side and dusting myself down as I run huffing and puffing through the school gates shouting ‘Thanks’ but I’m not sure what for. Kev doesn’t look back. He ignores me at playtime and he ignores me at dinnertime and only when everybody else has been picked up after the last bell does he come and get me for our walk home through the Sippy.

  My mum’s delighted I’ve not been run over so from now on Kev has to walk me to and from school. Suits me. Nobody slags me off with Kev there because if I go home crying or bleeding he’ll get in trouble. Teenie’s stuck with one of the Cullen girls who’s learned the hard way she’s not interested in having her hair plaited.

  Every day before and after school, when Logan’s out in his British Gas van, I beg my mum to get back with my dad. I start politely but it always ends with tears and why, why, why.

  She turns away. ‘Yer daddy’s got Mary the Canary now anyway.’

  On custody weekends I beg my dad when Mary’s in the bath but he warns off the waterworks: ‘She’s made her bed and she can lie in it and that’s that.’ He turns the telly up.