Maggie & Me

by Damian Barr

  Past the shops we power up Carfin brae past the Craig where the giant cooling towers puff less and less. Banners sag on the gates and here are the picket lines I’ve seen on the news. Dozens of men in identical yellow hats and navy donkey jackets: they look happier than they do on the telly. I look for my dad but my mum pulls us on and we all ignore 1 Magdalene Drive as we hurry past. The empty windows have been Windolened which means new tenants will move in soon. Teenie’s legs struggle so I give her a piggy-back. We pass the Grotto and I want to go in and see Jane and explain where I’ve disappeared to but we’ve got no time. My mum’s lips move like she’s praying. We make it as the bell rings. Every day she walks us there and every day she’s there at 3. p.m. to take us back and I don’t think once about how hard it is for her to walk all that way. On the journey home, even though there’s no money, we all stop at Onesti’s Fish and Chips and somehow we’re all given a bag to share and my mum smiles at Mr Onesti and we all say thank you. ‘Ah worked here when I was a lassie,’ she says and I’m shocked to learn she has a past.

  Friday comes and my mum isn’t there. Three o’clock stretches to four and me and Teenie wait at the gates and everybody else gets picked up and to stop people talking I walk us to the bus shelter. The Number 44 stops for us but we’ve not got the fare and I’m too ashamed to ask for tick. I think about taking Teenie down the hill to Dad’s. It’s only five minutes and his house will be warm and there will be things in the fridge but then he’ll know my mum wasn’t there. Mary the Canary will answer the door and sigh when she sees us and keep us on the top step and toss her hair over her shoulder and shout, ‘Glenn, it’s yer weans . . .’ So I start walking us back to Forgewood.

  As we pass the Grotto the gift shop is already closed. We ignore 1 Magdalene Drive and rush down the brae past the Craig, which shows no signs of lighting up tonight. It’s getting dark and Teenie says she’s hungry. I don’t want anyone to stop us but really that’s what I want more than anything. Someone to take us away. I go for the short cut through the golf course which leads into the back of Forgy. I’ve never done it but Joe uses it. He never said it went through a graveyard.

  It’s not dark but it’s not light so we’re still safe from vampires but there’s no such thing as vampires and even if there is this graveyard is full of crucifix-shaped gravestones. In fact aren’t all graveyards? You’d think Dracula would choose a less stressful place to sleep. We keep going through the glowing blue not-quite-day-not-quite-night. Teenie says we should go back but what does she know? So far there are no dead hands grabbing at our ankles from the graves or bat wings flapping round our heads. There’s nothing and no one and it’s quiet and I think we’re going to be OK.

  Then I see it. Teenie sees it too. We stop.

  Something is lying on the ground a couple of graves away. I squint through the losing light. It’s lying face down like it’s trying to kiss the body in the coffin below through six feet of soil. I see no fangs, no cloak but I know monsters don’t always look the part. Closer up, the body belongs to a man in blue jeans and denim jacket. He’s about Dodger’s age and height and he’s not moving.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ I shoosh Teenie.

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she says and she’s not.

  I realise I’m talking to myself. I take my rosary off and hold it out in front of me with the beads wrapped round my wrist and, brandishing the tiny plastic cross, I walk towards the body.

  ‘Wait here,’ I say. ‘Guard my bag.’ For once she does as she’s told. ‘I have faith,’ I say out loud to any vampire listening because you’ve got to believe for the cross to work. I think of all the reasons why Jesus might not have faith in me. I need to pee. I turn round to check on Teenie whose outline I can still just about see.

  Standing over him the first thing I see is money. Clutched in his fist is a bunch of tenners. Notes and coins spill from his pockets. His jeans are muddy where he fell and his zip is down and I feel my cock twinge. His hair is matted on one side and I see clumps of something in the curls. A bubble of something dark, blood – his own or someone else’s – is frozen for ever on his lips. It’s the black of Buckie spew. As I watch it and wonder whether to take some money and run, run, run away with Teenie, the bubble pops. Another forms and I realise he’s breathing. Without thinking I kneel down and attempt to clear an airway like in Casualty. I slide my fingers in his open mouth – still no fangs, not yet. Stringy gobbets slip out and I gag. Teenie appears without asking and helps me roll him on his side. His undead limbs flop about and I think if we took just a few notes we could get the Number 44 for ever and as I think this his hand grabs the hem of my school trousers and I kick it off and scream and Teenie screams and I grab her hand and run and we mustn’t fall because that’s when they get you and we don’t look back and we get to the road and Teenie shakes my hand away and we run the rest of the way. When we burst into the flat in Forgy there’s nobody there to notice us missing. Over the road at Clare the Bear’s ‘Danny Boy’ is belting out.

  The next night is Saturday and Clare the Bear’s Kerry-Marie is supposed to come and stay with Tricia. Kerry-Marie is going to be a nurse and I’m going to be a doctor, everybody says I’ve got the height for it. We do our homework together while Tricia waits to do the hair on her nearly bald Girl’s World.

  Cat is supposed to fetch Kerry-Marie from Clare’s and walk her across the road. Tonight she forgets so Kerry-Marie rushes over on her own without looking and gets stuck in the middle of the road like Frogger not knowing which way to go. She bolts forwards and Cat runs to the window when she hears the tyres screaming and we’re not allowed to look and then Cat’s screaming all the way into the ambulance that comes after Kerry-Marie goes to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow. Cat’s ambulance goes the fastest.

  My mum knows all about the Southern General – that’s where she went after ‘taking the haemorrhage’ but she tells us no more about it, won’t talk about that time. And look, here she is. All right she’s not got back to her Mills & Boons and only she can read her message lists and her balance is off but it’s all getting better and it doesn’t, no matter what Logan’s lawyers say, make her an unfit mother. If my mum can get better so can Kerry-Marie and for a while we all hope and pray. Granny Mac appears with medals from the Grotto.

  Clare the Bear refuses to leave the hospital. Somehow she fits on a tiny single bed by Kerry-Marie. Hour after hour she waits and as she waits she brushes her daughter’s grotesquely swollen head. After a month of this the Wee Man tries convincing her to go home for a rest so she batters him and the nurse who pulls her off says surely there’s enough of your family in here. Clare collapses. Next day she wakes up in hospital and goes to Kerry-Marie’s bed and brushes hair from eyes that are closed for ever and tells the doctors to take what they need. She says she knows it’s not the Catholic thing to do but it’s what Kerry-Marie would’ve wanted and her heart breaks at the past tense.

  It’s a good turnout, nods Granny Mac at the funeral. I take the day off school for my first funeral. It’s weirdly exciting. Kerry-Marie is dead, I write it over and over in a jotter at school then rub it out. She’s the first dead person I know and I think she would have made a good nurse. Everybody’s here, the whole of Forgy and half of Newarthill. There’s a special coach laid on at the graveyard gate. All the women are crying and the headstones are more expressive than the men. Kerry-Marie’s brothers and sisters are as smart as they’ll ever be. They’re allowed to stand up front but I’m at the back with the other weans. I’m tall so I see it all. The Wee Man is trying to hold Clare up as she sags towards the grief-shaped hole in the ground. All the male relatives are given a cord each to lower the white coffin. Clare demands the first cord even though it’s not a woman’s place. ‘Ah brought her into the world and I’ll see her out,’ she declares. Nobody disagrees. As the coffin goes deeper Clare cries louder and when it finally finds the bottom she’s screaming, ‘Ma lassie, ma wee lassie,’ and the Wee Man clings to her arm and she shak
es him off and the women surge to her side. Too late.

  She’s falling, falling into her daughter’s grave, and everybody is just staring and the priest raises his eyes for help when Granny Mac grabs her from behind.

  Silence. Nobody moves. Soil crumbles from the edge, pitter-pattering on the coffin. The priest orders everybody back. I know it’s not funny but I have to I bite the inside of my mouth to stop laughing. Clare’s stopped wailing. She’s sobbing now or is she laughing?

  ‘The mortification,’ mutters Granny Mac syllable by syllable. She takes Clare’s hand and leads her back to the bus and everybody starts clapping because what else can you do.

  The one person missing from the funeral is Auntie Cat. She’s locked in the loony bin, blaming herself. ‘Her nerves,’ my mum says, wincing.

  Joe visits every day and my mum run the house for Shawn, Tricia, Aidan, Teenie and me. Billy is still being fought over so he’s with Logan’s mother. Joe gives my mum his half-empty double bed and takes the couch and I start seeing Dodger in the mornings and my mum gives me a look which says ‘Don’t ask’.

  All through the last term of Primary Six, Joe seems to get smaller and quieter with every visit. My cousins wet the bed more, which means more washing for my mum. I start to feel sorry for them then stop myself because I’ve got enough to feel and anyway they smell.

  It’s summer when my mum gets a letter from the Council. She reads it slowly, moving her lips, and I resist the urge to read it faster first.

  ‘We’re top of the list!’ she shouts. ‘Top of the housin’ list for a three-bedroom semi in the Coal Scheme in Newarthill with a front and back door – five minutes from yer dad and Granny Mac!’ she adds, as if she needed to sell leaving Forgy.

  ‘Enough room for us all, eh?’ says Joe, but it’s not really a question.

  Carefully my mum folds the letter back in its envelope. ‘Plenty, Joe, Plenty.’

  The next week we’re sent another letter and told to go and visit the house that’s top of the list: 15 Rannoch Avenue, Newarthill.

  We get off the bus just a stop after my dad’s house and walk over to the house. It’s perfect – five minutes from Keir Hardie Memorial Primary and ten minutes from Brannock High. My dad is down the road, Uncle Sean is round one corner, Great-Auntie Mary with the green eye and the blue eye is round another, Auntie Louisa is two roads away and Granny Mac looks down on us all from the hill by the chapel. Granpa Mac spends more time in the back garden with his tatties than with his children. People agitate him and he’s got a bad heart so he’s left to his veg.

  We go in the gate and the blinds are closed and I think nobody’s in and it’s a joke and we’ll be sent back, when the front door opens and a mascara-stained woman invites us in. In the middle of the living room in her coffin is the outgoing tenant, Mrs Geddes. The top half is open and the bottom closed with Sympathy cards and candles on top. We nod at her. The room is full of relatives of all ages. I’ve never seen a dead person. I’m sure I’m not allowed to touch but I sneak a finger along her cheek. It feels like a frozen Bernard Matthews Turkey Roast covered in Mary’s make-up.

  My mum smiles at the dead Mrs Geddes and chats with her daughter, who she went to school with.

  ‘It’s a lovely wee hoose,’ the woman sobs. ‘This is the only way ye’ll get ma maw oot.’ At that the candles go out and the cards topple softly. ‘All right, Mother,’ sighs the daughter, to thin air. ‘Mind you, it’s affa draughty.’

  So the next week we all leave Forgy: Uncle Joe, Shawn, Tricia, Aidan, my mum, Teenie and me. And Dodger. ‘He makes me happy,’ says my mum, when she tells me. When they’re not fighting he does.

  We’re just about settled. It’s a snow-dome Monday just before Christmas and there’s a ghost on the front steps of 15 Rannoch Avenue, Newarthill. I spot her through the Venetian blinds – I can tell it’s a ‘her’ because she’s wearing a nightie. She’s got no shoes on. Do ghosts feel the cold? Not in Stephen King. But my ghost looks like she’s shivering. She turns her head to the living-room window, sensing me watching because that’s what ghosts do. The steel blind twangs into place as I fall back.

  Caught.

  Still wheezing from this weekend’s asthma attack I sit among the red swirls on the living-room carpet and switch on my nebuliser, taking a few really deep hits of the steam which only makes me cough loudly.

  Definitely caught.

  I pick at the edge of the carpet where my mum Stanley-knifed it round the corner unit she bought from Kay’s catalogue to ‘free some carpet for a rug’. I try inhaling calmness. My chest tightens. I mute the telly which is showing Return to Oz less than two years after it was at the pictures, which means it’s barely worth watching but it’s on anyway because I hate every single person in this house – except my mum and maybe Teenie and Billy but he’s hardly here – but I hate being on my own even more.

  My ghost knocks the front door gently but firmly, like a doctor or teacher.

  Peeking into the hall I see her face twisted by the maths-paper squares of security glass in the front door. Her head is impossibly wide and her Admiral Ackbar eyes point in different directions but somehow they’re staring at me. The letterbox opens and five doll-white fingers reach in.

  ‘Damian, son, open the door. It’s your auntie Cat. Ah’m home.’

  I’ve not seen Cat since we left Forgy. ‘Carted off,’ my mum says. ‘No right. Up tae high-doh. A wee shame, so it is. Don’t tell yer cousins.’ Of course they know – everybody knows – that Cat went mad.

  The not-a-ghost on the front step is pleading with me now. Her teeth are chittering. ‘Damian, son, it’s c-c-c-old.’

  It’s easy to unlock the door and let her in now I know she can’t just float right through like something from Salem’s Lot. I open the door and she steps into the hall wiping her non-existent shoes on the non-existent mat.

  Her fringe is cut really high like she’s a five-year-old who’s been at the scissors and her nipples are tenting her nightie. I look away, ashamed for her. Her skin is white, almost green.

  ‘D’you want a cup of tea, Auntie Cat?’ I ask, as much to break the silence as anything.

  ‘Aye, son,’ she replies, looking through me. ‘Cup o’ tea would be lovely.’

  Cat goes into the living room and I go into the scullery. Who should I tell about this unexpected visitor? My mum’s at the shops in Motherwell with Big Letty from next door – they’ve become fast friends. Joe and Dodger will be humphing the bags back on the Number 44 unless it’s their Big Monthly Mobility Day and they’ll get a taxi. Granny Mac would know what to do but my mum’s told me I’m not allowed to tell her a single thing that happens in this house. Of course, Granny Mac knows everything anyway and she’ll hear about this soon enough. We’ve run out of milk but I put four sugars in because I remember Cat likes her tea sweet.

  Cat is standing staring at the telly.

  ‘Here’s your tea, Auntie Cat.’ I step towards her and she doesn’t move.

  ‘You always were that well-spoken,’ she smiles.

  I sit down with my cup and unmute the TV to hear how Dorothy is getting on in Oz.

  ‘NOOOOOOOOO! NO! NO! NO!’ screams Cat, spinning round, clamping one hand over one ear and sloshing scalding tea with the other. She rushes at me, tea everywhere, and I dance away. She chases me round the living room.

  ‘What? What is it?’ I shout and she points at the telly and I turn round and aim the remote control and you’d think I was pointing a gun. She stops mid-stride, nightie see-through with tea, and her shoulders slacken as the telly mutes. Instantly she’s calm.

  ‘Thanks, son,’ she says. ‘I can hear them.’

  ‘Who?’ I ask, already not wanting to know the answer.

  ‘Them,’ she says, pointing at the screen.

  ‘But the sound’s off,’ I explain, adopting the tone of a doctor delivering bad news on Casualty.

  ‘Och no, son,’ she says sadly, as if I just found my first pet goldfish floating upside
down. ‘Them,’ she says, gesturing all around with both hands. ‘What have you got to eat?’

  I know without looking that the cupboards are bare – this house runs down to the last tatty. My mum went on benefits when she left Logan and the night before she gets her money from the post office I carefully fold out the foil butter wrapper and scrape it without ripping so I don’t end up with shreds of foil on my toast. The last of the loaf is rubbed with the almost exhausted foil. A suggestion of butter. Like medieval witches, tea bags get ducked repeatedly and the milk carton is rinsed so your tea gets stronger and weaker. But it’s Christmas so there are six Cadbury’s Selection Boxes under the tree – one for each child. She’s never been to this house. How did she find us? I wonder if she knows her husband and children live here now. What will happen if she sees them? We’ve all raided them, filleting our favourites, leaving only the Crunchie. We know we’re only cheating ourselves and in the chaos of Christmas morning no one will notice. The only one truly untouched is Teenie’s because she saved it. Reluctantly I open it for Auntie Cat who takes out a Marathon. She smiles for the first time and all her teeth are black.

  ‘Are ye sure?’ she asks as if I might take it away.

  I nod and feel my face go red.

  She nips into the scullery returning with cutlery and her Marathon on a plate. She sits with her back to me facing the now-dumb telly and with great precision slices the chocolate bar into bite-size morsels. Her elbows move like a violinist. She forks each bit into her mouth, chewing daintily, finishing one before starting the next with her mouth tightly closed. I think of Dodger and Joe slurping and burping and wish all adults had such fine manners. When the Marathon is over Cat dabs delicately at each corner of her mouth with the hem of her nightie.

  ‘Thanks, son.’ She eases her bones into the couch. ‘That was lovely.’ You’d think I’d fed her caviar.

  I take her plate to the scullery and it’s only when I put it in the sink that I notice the Marathon wrapper is missing. She’s eaten it.