Jack O’Donnell is from Dalmuir, Scotland. Over the years he’s tried his hand at just about everything, from washing dishes to mental health care, monitoring elections to joining floorboards, editing to surveying traffic, care work to lugging bricks.
And while accumulating all that life experience Jack has also been pursuing a love for the written word on ABCtales.com, where he’s a generous contributor to the community, a competition-winner and a prized editor.
Lily Poole
Jack O’Donnell
6th Floor Mutual House 70 Conduit Street London W1S 2GF
www.unbound.co.uk
All rights reserved
© Jack O’Donnell, 2016
The right of Jack O’Donnell to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be copied,
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein, the publisher would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgments in any further editions.
Text Design by Ellipsis Digital Limited, Glasgow
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78352-235-4 (trade ppb)
ISBN 978-1-78352-267-5 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-78352-300-9 (limited edition)
Printed in Great Britain
To those who buy into the dream
Dear Reader,
The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.
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Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.
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Lily Poole
Day 1
The wee girl went down in the slush, not hard in an adult way, but in that childish way, soft-boned and sprawling. Her clear grey eyes, close to tears, rested on John’s.
Snowflakes clung like porridge to the leather uppers of his Doc Martens, blanketing his progress. Biting cold nipped at his feet through mismatched football socks. He scanned parked cars, luminous shells of white on light, and looked up towards Shakespeare Avenue, searching for the lumbering presence of an adult, or even the bundled-up spectre of an older brother or sister hurrying along to catch up with the wee girl. She tottered. He dashed the last few yards to help her and found himself lying on his back at her feet, snowflakes drifting down on his face. He laughed, which made her giggle.
He tried standing, but toppled forward. The wee girl squealed, her fingers, scrambling to help, grabbed at the coat-tails of his Crombie. He hooked her wrist, gripped her cold hand, holding her upright and keeping them both safe. She was barely up to his hip. He hunched down to her level, feet sliding sideways.
‘You waiting for your mum?’
A shake of her head. No. Eyes downcast, chin tucked into her quilted anorak, she whispered something through chittering lips.
‘You goin’ to school?’ he asked.
A nod of her head. Yes.
‘Okey-dokey,’ he said, standing up slowly, keeping her close, stopping her from falling.
Her black, shiny shoes were broad and flat-soled leather, which irked him – she might as well have been wearing skis. They slid towards a terraced house used as a dental practice on one side of the road. Then shaving the snow, uncovering the pavement and letting gravity do the work of walking, they worked their way towards a garage and high wall he used to kick a ball against on his way to school. She giggled as he made a game of it.
They got safely to the corner of Duntocher Road, which made it easier to shuffle forward and reclaim their feet. Kids sloshed in close beside them in weatherproof nylon. They were careless of their bodies, faces sunk inside igloos of duffle coat hoods. Adults bowled along behind them, collars pulled high and heads bowed in prayer to the elements. A Ford Capri stuttered and skittered, scattering mush towards the side of the road. It juddered forward, slipping and crunching gears, windscreen wipers shuttling backwards and forwards to expose a pasty face leaning forward in the driver’s seat. Parents glowered at the car, resentment shaping blank faces, as if machinery was alien and a form of cheating.
‘You must be new to the school.’ John spoke to her in the milky-adult tone he adopted when talking to bairns or pets. He kept her small hand warm in his and helped her cross the road and find the lip of pavement. ‘What primary are you in? Primary One?’
She nodded in a shy way, neck bent and exposed, face hiding in her hair, as if even that small exertion had been too much.
They shuffled onward without slipping. A wrought-iron fence separated them from the playground. The school children penned inside were delirious with the crop of falling sky, screaming and squealing in an ecstasy of stamping and running and jumping and hustling away patches of virgin snow. John let go of her hand as the school bell rang. But she didn’t let go of his. She grasped at his fingers and held tight.
He leaned over her. ‘It’s OK darlin’. I won’t leave you.’
She sheltered behind his legs.
‘You scared?’
She nodded. ‘Sometimes big people don’t understand,’ she lisped.
‘I know darlin’. I know. But you better hurry up or you’ll be late.’
She tugged at his hand, a signal to get them moving. They were only a hundred yards from the gates. He stood among the other bystanders when they got to the entrance to the school, watching her solemn face as she trudged across the playground. As she passed the school kitchen, he lost sight of her in a gaggle of other kids.
‘You lost something?’
John whirled round, a daft smile still coating his face.
Mrs Cunningham’s sing-song voice was unusually harsh. She religiously took her children to school and lived five blocks down from him. He had never spoken to her much because she had proper breasts and was way too pretty to attempt anything more than a rudimentary, grunting hi-ya. She wore a long black leather coat and thigh-high boots. Snowflakes dampened her dark swept-back hair. Her back was against the railing that separa
ted playground from pavement and she was fisheyeing him.
John felt glad of the swirling snow that kept his cheeks from flaming. He patted the plastic bag he had rolled up and wore as a hat to keep the snow off his hair. He thought maybe that had upset her in some way. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was just taking that wee lassie to school.’
‘Whit wee lassie?’ Mrs Cunningham’s raspberry-coloured lipstick was a jigsaw of splinters on her mouth. The lollipop man knocked the cleats of his wellington boots off the bottom of the fence beside her. ‘Charlie, you see him with any wee lassie?’ she asked him.
Some mothers slipped away. Others dawdled, patterned-nylon scarves covering their hair, heads turning one way then the other, waiting to pick over the bones of gossip.
The lollipop man battered his cap on the top bar of the railing and examined John through the smudged lenses of black NHS specs. ‘Drugs or drink,’ he said. ‘They’re all on it. I was watchin’ him.’ He put his cap back on, pulling the brim low so his eyes were shaded. ‘Or glue,’ he added.
Mrs Cunningham tugged together the lapels of her leather coat making her breasts jump. ‘That’s whit I thought. I’ve got two daughters at that school.’
‘But the wee lassie—’ John said.
Mrs Cunningham took a step towards him. ‘Look, son, I don’t like it when you keep harping on about wee lassies.’
‘Or wee boys,’ said the lollipop man.
They looked at each other and shook their heads. She tugged at her earlobe and a gold bubble earring. ‘Look, son,’ she said, in a more placatory tone, ‘just don’t let me see you back here again. I know your Ma. You come from a good family. Let that be the end of it.’
‘But the wee lassie—’John said.
‘Let that be the end of it!’
Day 2
John’s feet skidded as he tried to run on thawing snow outside his house. Deskbound clerks at the Social Security office on Kilbowie Road made signing on the dole hard work when people were late. He scurried down the shortcut at the dump, slush splashing from the branches of the rowan bush in great gobbets. Long grass wept snowfall and wind cat-pawed rain against his face. His gaze followed a memory of the dirt path, shuffling sideways and ducking down, throwing his body through the familiar gap in the chain-link fence.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
His Wrangler jacket pulled and snagged on the frayed edges of rusting wire. He dropped off the retaining wall, feet punching holes into the grass, and made up for lost time by galloping down the small incline onto the pavement on Shakespeare Avenue. Rubbing his right shoulder to check for bobbled edges and tears in the denim, he thanked God that there was nothing but a biro-type scratch. But the soles of his feet felt squidgy and waterlogged. He heard the spindrift of the car behind him as it followed the curve of the road. He stepped onto the pavement as water sprayed and sopped through his jacket, gluing one leg of denim onto his thigh.
‘Fucking cunt,’ he shouted at the metallic tail-end of a purple Escort, the red brake light dotting and dashing as the car slowed. A blond head and doughy face turned, briefly, observing him through the back windscreen. The car skidded to the left at the intersection of the hill where Shakespeare met Wells Street, and he hoped the frosty-faced cow would crash and burn.
Then he saw the wee girl again, clinging to Kerr’s privet hedge, too scared to move. Hurrying, in case she would fall, he slid and slipped downhill, following the geography of the pavement to meet her. Her eyes shone bright as ball bearings. She was shivering, biting colour into the wobbly line of her thin bottom lip, the school blazer wrapped around her bony shoulders, little more than a prop against the biting wind. Her coltish feet skidded, babyish fingers grabbed at his denim jacket and clutched onto his side pocket.
He latched onto her reedy wrist and peered at her forlorn face. ‘It’s OK pet, you won’t fall.’ She made a present of her other hand for him to unmelt. He hunkered down and kneaded her fingers and palms in his own until he felt them stir and grow warmer.
‘That’s better,’ he said. He stood up slowly, clutching her right hand, and kept her firmly in tow.
‘You’ll be awful late again,’ he said, alluding to a feather-brained mum, but immediately regretted being so snide. She didn’t seem to notice.
She had the same black shoes on as the day they met: smooth soles, useless for snow, and more useless in slippery sludge. He thought his feet cold, but hers must be ice-water. She slipped when he least expected it, when they reached the apparent safety of the flatter ground at the dentist’s. He grabbed onto her hand, swinging, jumping her up into the safety of the air. ‘Whee,’ he said, laughing to balance out the fright the fall caused her.
Teeny fingers gripped his more firmly. He felt her elfin body relax, but noticed her thick socks had slipped around her ankles, making her shiver more. He patted the top of her head and she leaned into his thigh.
‘Won’t your mummy and daddy be worried about you?’ He crouched down to her eye level, the eddying fog of their breath mingling. A woman stinking of stale fag smoke and wearing a fawn trench coat passed them. She glanced at John. When he looked back at her, her head whiplashed away. She cracked on, slowing to batter the heels of her green wellington boots on the salted ground where grey snow was piled against the wall of the dentist’s.
He tried cajoling the little girl, pursing his lips and screwing up his eyes to indicate he was being adult and serious. ‘Won’t they?’
Her pale eyes studied his. ‘No!’
He felt groggy and slack-footed. For a moment, her face seemed far away as if he was studying it through the eyepiece of a telescope flung out of focus. Then the image sharpened. He stumbled away from her, almost falling. Her chest bobbed up and down as if she was at sea, her mouth open and drunk on howling, calling him back, but she made no noise. Tears made her cheeks shiny and her face crabby.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
Rain pelted down, making rivulets on his forehead and cheeks. He looked up and down Shakespeare and along Dickens Avenue for help, some divine intervention, but even the snowmen were looking the other way. She clutched onto his thigh and he felt her rubbing her snottery nose on eighteen-quid worth of precious Sta-Prest denim.
‘Yah little besom,’ he said.
John picked her up and she locked her arms round his neck. The kirby from her hair scratched his cheek as she buried her slobbering head on his shoulder and her stubby feet scrambled for a foot-hold. He pulled her close enough to whiff breath warm as new-cut hay. Taking the plastic bag off his head and working it over her soft wet hair and icy ears, he tamped it down and created a makeshift crown. Pregnant with his charge he tramped towards the intersection at Duntocher Road, towards St Stephen’s School. She settled, sniffling on his chest. Her head lifted and he squinted sideways, watching her studying the houses and gardens they passed. She squirmed as they crossed the road, a signal she no longer wanted to be carried. He placed her down on the pavement as if she was made of rippled glass. The school bell rang for playtime.
Ahead of them the janny shovelled pockmarked snow from the gateway onto a discoloured mound in the gutter. John grabbed her hand and tugged her into a slow, forward jig, stopping for a breather on the strip of pavement beside the school railing that had been cleared and salted.
Children’s voices splashed into the air. Funeral browns and deep blues of duffels and coats ebbed out of closed doors, splurging into playground and puddles. She hiccupped a laugh as a walk became a run, and they raced against each other, matching each other foot for foot. The janny leaned on his shovel watching as they slowed and stopped at the school gate and John pantomimed being out of breath. He bowed over and his index finger chooked gently under the winner’s chin.
‘You want me to come in with you?’ John asked her.
‘Whit’s wrang with you hinging about school playgrounds?’ said the janny, eyeballing him from beneath the black plastic peak of his cap.
‘Whit’s wrang with you?’ John replied, bo
uncing backwards, straightening up and eyeballing him back. ‘Who are you anyway?’ The janny looked levelly back at John, making him splutter. ‘For your information I went to this school. Where’s the real janny, Mr Barlow?’
‘He died last week. The Big C.’ The new janny shook his head at John as if it was his fault. ‘I’ve been working this school on and aff for at least ten years and I don’t
remember you’ ‘Well, I’m just taking a wee lassie to school,’ John said.
‘Whit wee lassie?’
John followed the orbit of her path, looked for her among a scattering of boys’ heads, and gazed all around the playground. ‘Ah – she must have nipped inside.’
The janny scraped at the ice and snow with his shovel. ‘Aye, right,’ the tone of his voice a sneer. ‘Your card’s marked pal. I know your sort. Fuck off. Don’t let me see you back here again.’
Day 4
High winds pushed and pulled at the metallic frame of the lamppost. Creaking back and forth, it sent foot-soldiers of shadows sniping up and down the ill-fitting windows of the ground-floor, four-in-a-block flat. Inside, Mary swung her legs out of bed. As usual, her husband Joey lay in a diagonal heap, snoring his face off and rucking most of the blankets to his side of the bed. He flinched as the gap between husband and wife widened. In the inky blackness she tugged at the bedclothes, pulling them back and creating a space to sit up. The misshapen corns on the balls of her feet cold-stepped against linoleum, finding the worn pair of old leather sandals she used for slippers under the bed. She peered at the clock, but the luminous hands slanted behind the oval of the ashtray. Light seeped through the venetian blinds and it was better not knowing how early – or late – it was. Her fingers flapped around the curve of the hardwood footboard of the bed for the ragged old coat she used as a nightgown. She shivered as her hands and arms wormed their way through the static of acrylic sleeves. She stood for a second, eyes growing into the darkness, the shape of her breath misting in the frigid air. The hubbub of pulling the bedroom door open and shut behind her blended with the creaking of prefabricated-metal sheets on the outside walls. She brushed her fingertips against the trim of the anaglyphic wallpaper in the hall, feeling her way in the dark by the rough sleepers and uniform lines. Ahead of her, the living room door was lying athwart with a thin triangle of light visible. She dunted the door open, but took a sharp left into the toilet, not finding enough time to flick the light switch, before she was squatting over the pan emptying her bladder. She ran her fingers under the cold tap before going back to bed, but fretted about leaving the light on.
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