His mother was Irish. That was why she had a name like Skelly. That was why she talked funny. But she was proud of the way she talked and nothing angered her more than to hear Nelson saying ‘Ah ken’ and ‘What like is it?’ She kept telling him that someday they were going back, when she had enough ha’pence scraped together. ‘Until then I’ll not let them make a Scotchman out of you.’ But Nelson talked the way he talked.
His mother had called him Nelson because she said she thought that his father had been a seafaring man. The day the boy was born she had read an article in the Reader’s Digest about Nelson Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world. It seemed only right to give the boy a good start. She thought it also had the advantage that it couldn’t be shortened, but she was wrong. Most of the boys in the scheme called him Nelly Skelly.
He wondered if he should sneak back to school for dinner then skive off again in the afternoon. They had good dinners at school – like a hotel, with choices. Chips and magic things like rhubarb crumble. There was one big dinner-woman who gave him extra every time she saw him. She told him he needed fattening. The only drawback to the whole system was that he was on free dinners. Other people in his class were given their dinner money and it was up to them whether they went without a dinner and bought Coke and sweets and stuff with the money. It was a choice Nelson didn’t have, so he had to invent other things to get the money out of his mother. In Lent there were the Black Babies; library fines were worth the odd 10p, although, as yet, he had not taken a book from the school library – and anyway they didn’t have to pay fines, even if they were late; the Home Economics Department asked them to bring in money to buy their ingredients and Nelson would always add 20p to it.
‘What the hell are they teaching you to cook – sides of beef?’ his mother would yell. Outdoor pursuits required extra money. But even though they had ended after the second term, Nelson went on asking for the 50p on a Friday – ‘to go horse riding’. His mother would never part with money without a speech of some sort.
‘Horse riding? Horse riding! Jesus, I don’t know what sort of a school I’ve sent you to. Is Princess Anne in your class or something? Holy God, horse riding.’
Outdoor pursuits was mostly walking round museums on wet days and, when it was dry, the occasional trip to Portobello beach to write on a flapping piece of foolscap the signs of pollution you could see. Nelson felt that the best outdoor pursuit of the lot was what he was doing now. Skiving. At least that way you could do what you liked.
He groped in his pocket for the change out of his 50p and went into a shop. He bought a giant thing of bubble-gum and crammed it into his mouth. It was hard and dry at first and he couldn’t answer the woman when she spoke to him.
‘Whaaungh?’
‘Pick the paper off the floor, son! Use the basket.’
He picked the paper up and screwed it into a ball. He aimed to miss the basket, just to spite her, but it went in. By the time he reached the bottom of the street the gum was chewy. He thrust his tongue into the middle of it and blew. A small disappointing bubble burst with a plip. It was not until the far end of Princes Street that he managed to blow big ones, pink and wobbling, that he could see at the end of his nose, which burst well and had to be gathered in shreds from his chin.
Then suddenly the crowds of shoppers parted and he saw his mother. In the same instant she saw him. She was on him before he could even think of running. She grabbed him by the fur of his parka and began screaming into his face.
‘In the name of God, Nelson, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school?’ She began shaking him. ‘Do you realise what this means? They’ll put me in bloody jail. It’ll be bloody Saughton for me, and no mistake.’ She had her teeth gritted together and her mouth was slanting in her face. Then Nelson started to shout.
‘Help! Help!’ he yelled.
A woman with an enormous chest like a pigeon stopped. ‘What’s happening?’ she said.
Nelson’s mother turned on her. ‘It’s none of your bloody business.’
‘I’m being kidnapped,’ yelled Nelson.
‘Young woman. Young woman . . .’ said the lady with the large chest, trying to tap Nelson’s mother on the shoulder with her umbrella, but Mrs Skelly turned with such a snarl that the woman edged away hesitatingly and looked over her shoulder and tut-tutted just loudly enough for the passing crowd to hear her.
‘Help! I’m being kidnapped,’ screamed Nelson, but everybody walked past looking the other way. His mother squatted down in front of him, still holding on to his jacket. She lowered her voice and tried to make it sound reasonable.
‘Look Nelson, love. Listen. If you’re skiving school, do you realise what’ll happen to me? In Primary the Children’s Panel threatened to send me to court. You’re only at that Secondary and already that Sub-Attendance Committee thing wanted to fine me. Jesus, if you’re caught again . . .’
Nelson stopped struggling. The change in her tone had quietened him down. She straightened up and looked wildly about her, wondering what to do.
‘You’ve got to go straight back to school, do you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Promise me you’ll go.’ The boy looked down at the ground. ‘Promise?’ The boy made no answer.
‘I’ll kill you if you don’t go back. I’d take you myself only I’ve my work to go to. I’m late as it is.’
Again she looked around as if she would see someone who would suddenly help her. Still she held on to his jacket. She was biting her lip.
‘Oh God, Nelson.’
The boy blew a flesh-pink bubble and snapped it between his teeth. She shook him.
‘That bloody bubble-gum.’
There was a loud explosion as the one o’clock gun went off. They both leapt.
‘Oh Jesus, that gun puts the heart sideways in me every time it goes off. Come on, son, you’ll have to come with me. I’m late. I don’t know what they’ll say when they see you but I’m bloody taking you to school by the ear. You hear me?’
She began rushing along the street, Nelson’s sleeve in one hand, her carrier bag in the other. The boy had to run to keep from being dragged.
‘Don’t you dare try a trick like that again. Kidnapped, my arse. Nelson, if I knew somebody who would kidnap you – I’d pay him the money. Embarrassing me on the street like that.’
They turned off the main road and went into a hallway and up carpeted stairs which had full-length mirrors along one side. Nelson stopped to make faces at himself but his mother chugged at his arm. At the head of the stairs stood a fat man in his shirtsleeves.
‘What the hell is this?’ he said. ‘You’re late, and what the hell is that?’ He looked down from over his stomach at Nelson.
‘I’ll explain later,’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure he stays in the room.’
‘You should be on now,’ said the fat man and turned and walked away through the swing doors. They followed him and Nelson saw, before his mother pushed him into the room, that it was a bar, plush and carpeted with crowds of men standing drinking.
‘You sit here, Nelson, until I’m finished and then I’m taking you back to that school. You’ll get nowhere if you don’t do your lessons. I have to get changed now.’
She set her carrier bag on the floor and kicked off her shoes. Nelson sat down, watching her. She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him, biting her lip.
‘Where’s that bloody eyepatch you should be wearing?’ Nelson indicated his pocket.
‘Well, wear it then.’ Nelson took the crumpled patch from his pocket, tugging bits of it unstuck to get it flat before he stuck it over his bad eye. His mother took out her handbag and began rooting about at the bottom of it. Nelson heard the rattle of her bottles of scent and tubes of lipstick.
‘Ah,’ she said and produced another eyepatch, flicking it clean. ‘Put another one on till I get changed. I don’t want you noseying at me.’ She came to him, pulling away the white backing to the patch, and stuck it
over his remaining eye. He imagined her concentrating, the tip of her tongue stuck out. She pressed his eyebrows with her thumbs, making sure that the patches were stuck.
‘Now don’t move, or you’ll bump into something.’
Nelson heard the slither of her clothes and her small grunts as she hurriedly got changed. Then he heard her rustle in her bag, the soft pop and rattle as she opened her capsules. Her ‘tantalisers’ she called them, small black and red torpedoes. Then he heard her voice.
‘Just you stay like that till I come back. That way you’ll come to no harm. You hear me, Nelson? If I come back in here and you have those things off, I’ll kill you. I’ll not be long.’
Nelson nodded from his darkness.
‘The door will be locked, so there’s no running away.’
‘Ah ken.’
Suddenly his darkness exploded with lights as he felt her bony hand strike his ear.
‘You don’t ken things, Nelson. You know them.’
He heard her go out and the key turn in the lock. His ear sang and he felt it was hot. He turned his face up to the ceiling. She had left the light on because he could see pinkish through the patches. He smelt the beer and stale smoke. Outside the room pop music had started up, very loudly. He heard the deep notes pound through to where he sat. He felt his ear with his hand and it was hot.
Making small aww sounds of excruciating pain, he slowly detached both eyepatches from the bridge of the nose outwards. In case his mother should come back he did not take them off completely, but left them hinged to the sides of his eyes. When he turned to look around him they flapped like blinkers.
It wasn’t really a room, more a broom cupboard. Crates were stacked against one wall; brushes and mops and buckets stood near a very low sink; on a row of coat-hooks hung some limp raincoats and stained white jackets; his mother’s stuff hung on the last hook. The floor was covered with tramped-flat cork tips. Nelson got up to look at what he was sitting on. It was a crate of empties. He went to the keyhole and looked out, but all he could see was a patch of wallpaper opposite. Above the door was a narrow window. He looked up at it, his eyepatches falling back to touch his ears. He went over to the sink and had a drink of water from the low tap, sucking noisily at the column of water as it splashed into the sink. He stopped and wiped his mouth. The water felt cold after the mint of the bubble-gum. He looked up at his mother’s things, hanging on the hook; her tights and drawers were as she wore them, but inside out and hanging knock-kneed on top of everything. In her bag he found her blonde wig and tried it on, smelling the perfume of it as he did so. At home he liked noseying in his mother’s room; smelling all her bottles of make-up; seeing her spangled things. He had to stand on the crate to see himself but the mirror was all brown measles under its surface and the eyepatches ruined the effect. He sat down again and began pulling at the bubble-gum, seeing how long he could make it stretch before it broke. Still the music pounded outside. It was so loud the vibrations tickled his feet. He sighed and looked up at the window again.
If his mother took him back to school, he could see problems. For starting St John the Baptist’s she had bought him a brand new Adidas bag for his books. Over five pounds it had cost her, she said. On his first real skive he had dumped the bag in the bin at the bottom of his stair, every morning for a week, and travelled light into town. On the Friday he came home just in time to see the bin lorry driving away in a cloud of bluish smoke. He had told his mother that the bag had been stolen from the playground during break. She had threatened to phone the school about it but Nelson had hastily assured her that the whole matter was being investigated by none other than the Headmaster himself. This threat put the notion out of his head of asking her for the money to replace the books. At that point he had not decided on a figure. He could maybe try it again some time when all the fuss had died down. But now it was all going to be stirred if his mother took him to school.
He pulled two crates to the door and climbed up but they were not high enough. He put a third one on top, climbed on again, and gingerly straightened, balancing on its rim. On tip-toe he could see out. He couldn’t see his mother anywhere. He saw a crowd of men standing in a semicircle. Behind them were some very bright lights, red, yellow and blue. They all had pints in their hands which they didn’t seem to be drinking. They were all watching something which Nelson couldn’t see. Suddenly the music stopped and the men all began drinking and talking. Standing on tip-toe for so long, Nelson’s legs began to shake and he heard the bottles in the crate rattle. He rested for a moment. Then the music started again. He looked to see. The men now just stood looking. It was as if they were seeing a ghost. Then they all cheered louder than the music.
Nelson climbed down and put the crates away from the door so that his mother could get in. He closed his eyepatches over for a while, but still she didn’t come. He listened to another record, this time a slow one. He decided to travel blind to get another drink of water. As he did so the music changed to fast. He heard the men cheering again, then the rattle of the key in the lock. Nelson, his arms rotating in front of him, tried to make his way back to the crate. His mother’s voice said,
‘Don’t you dare take those eyepatches off.’ Her voice was panting. Then his hand hit up against her. It was her bare stomach, hot and damp with sweat. She guided him to sit down, breathing heavily through her nose.
‘I’ll just get changed and then you’re for school right away, boy.’ Nelson nodded. He heard her light a cigarette as she dressed. When she had finished she ripped off his right eyepatch.
‘There now, we’re ready to go,’ she said, ignoring Nelson’s anguished yells.
‘That’s the wrong eye,’ he said.
‘Oh shit,’ said his mother and ripped off the other one, turned it upside down and stuck it over his right eye. The smoke from the cigarette in her mouth trickled up into her eye and she held it half shut. Nelson could see the bright points of sweat shining through her make-up. She still hadn’t got her breath back fully yet. She smelt of drink.
On the way out, the fat man with the rolled-up sleeves held out two fivers and Nelson’s mother put them into her purse.
‘The boy – never again,’ he said, looking down at Nelson.
They took the Number Twelve to St John the Baptist’s. It was the worst possible time because, just as they were going in, the bell rang for the end of a period and suddenly the quad was full of pupils, all looking at Nelson and his mother. Some sixth-year boys wolf-whistled after her and others stopped to stare. Nelson felt a flush of pride that she was causing a stir. She was dressed in black satiny jeans, very tight, and her pink blouse was knotted, leaving her tanned midriff bare. They went into the office and a secretary came to the window.
‘Yes?’ she said, looking Mrs Skelly up and down.
‘I’d like to see the Head,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid he’s at a meeting. What is it about?’
‘About him.’ She waved her thumb over her shoulder at Nelson.
‘What year is he?’
‘What year are you, son?’ His mother turned to him.
‘First.’
‘First Year. Oh, then you’d best see Mr MacDermot, the First Year Housemaster.’ The secretary directed them to Mr MacDermot’s office. It was at the other side of the school and they had to walk what seemed miles of corridors before they found it. Mrs Skelly’s stiletto heels clicked along the tiles.
‘It’s a wonder you don’t get lost in here, son,’ she said as she knocked on the Housemaster’s door. Mr MacDermot opened it and invited them in. Nelson could see that he too was looking at her, his eyes wide and his face smiley.
‘What can I do for you?’ he said when they were seated.
‘It’s him,’ said Mrs Skelly. ‘He’s been skiving again. I caught him this morning.’
‘I see,’ said Mr MacDermot. He was very young to be a Housemaster. He had a black moustache which he began to stroke with the back of his hand. He paused for a
long time. Then he said,
‘Remind me of your name, son.’
‘– Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Skelly. ‘My name is Skelly and this is my boy Nelson.’
‘Ah, yes, Skelly.’ The Housemaster got up and produced a yellow file from the filing cabinet. ‘You must forgive me, but we haven’t seen a great deal of Nelson lately.’
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ asked Mrs Skelly.
‘Not at all,’ said the Housemaster, getting up to open the window.
‘The trouble is, that the last time we were at that Sub-Attendance Committee thing they said they would take court action if it happened again. And it has.’
‘Well, it may not come to that with the Attendance Sub-Committee. If we nip it in the bud. If Nelson makes an effort, isn’t that right, Nelson?’ Nelson sat silent.
‘Speak when the master’s speaking to you,’ yelled Mrs Skelly.
‘Yes,’ said Nelson, making it barely audible.
‘You’re Irish too,’ said Mrs Skelly to the Housemaster, smiling.
‘That’s right,’ said Mr MacDermot. ‘I thought your accent was familiar. Where do you come from?’
‘My family come from just outside Derry. And you?’
‘Oh, that’s funny. I’m just across the border from you. Donegal.’ As they talked, Nelson stared out the window. He had never heard his mother so polite. He could just see a corner of the playing fields and a class coming out with the Gym teacher. Nelson hated Gym more than anything. It was crap. He loathed the changing rooms, the getting stripped in front of others, the stupidity he felt when he missed the ball. The smoke from his mother’s cigarette went in an arc towards the open window. Distantly he could hear the class shouting as they started a game of football.
‘Nelson! Isn’t that right?’ said Mr MacDermot loudly.
‘What?’
‘That even when you are here you don’t work hard enough.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Nelson.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said his mother. ‘It’s not just his eye that’s lazy. If you ask me the whole bloody lot of him is. I’ve never seen him washing a dish in his life and he leaves everything at his backside.’
Collected Stories Page 13