Mary’s hand rested on the living room doorknob, and she chivvied herself for an increasing absent-mindedness and also for leaving the lamp on in the kitchen. She scanned the telly and fireplace. In her head she calculated whether the mess she had left behind when she went to bed was the same mess she now faced. The kit and caboodle seemed stacked the same, but a tapping noise came through the wall from the kitchen. A faint smell of cigar smoke made her want to gag and a low-pitched moaning made the downy hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Not a murmur was coming from the bedroom nearest her; the girls were safe. Her son John was in the back bedroom. Fireworks exploding under his bed would fizzle and die before waking him. Then the moaning sound started again, quicker and louder, with a slapping sound. She bent away from the gamy smell, knowing what it was. Her right hand raised in defence, she edged forward, mouth pursed and ready to scream for Joey.
Mary pushed the kitchen door open. The faulty hinge Joey had been meaning to fix squeaked. She squawked in fright, but there was no answering cry from the other rooms, which was just as well. Lamplight illuminated her son. His sketchbook was on the kitchen table, a nude drawing of a prepubescent girl on the top page, the lips of her hairless vagina shaped to resemble an open eye, the pupil a smudged slash. His pencils were strewn across the floor. Her legs went wonky and bile gathered in the back of her throat. She clamped both hands over her mouth like a mask, breathing through her nose, her eyes watering, willing herself not to be sick. The stink of cigar smoke grew acrid. John was there and not there. He stood, head lolling like a question mark, one finger resting on the stem of a soup spoon, rapping metal against the flat ceramic surface of a plate. The tap, tap, tapping followed some kind of pattern, but only he seemed wired to understand the Morse. His eyes were closed, his face animated, chewing over the nuances of speech. She rested her hand on his arm.
The life-like drawings were something, but sleepwalking was nothing new. She had to be strapped to the bed when she was younger. Even then she ended up in some strange places and with some strange faces gawking at her. Auntie Teresa hooted with laughter when she recounted nightly conversations that she had with Mary answering in what sounded like Chinese. It reminded her of her own frustrations of being alien and not understood. Having no control over what happened. She considered slipping away, leaving him the dignity of the unobserved. She was sure the embarrassment of waking up naked with a hard-on – obviously he had been wanking – and his mum standing beside him on the cold stone floor, well that would make her weep for him. The noises he was making as he struck the spoon came to a sudden stop; a snap in the landscape of silence. But with no physical contact between the stem of the spoon and John’s fingers the dispatch kept tapping out. Mary looked for an explanation, some optical trick.
His eyelids flickered and opened, the same heavy-lidded eyes, the same wash of green around the iris, looking into and mirroring her eyes. The silent stare – childlike. His hands dropped and netted his loins.
‘Mum?’ He gazed over her shoulder, tracing an arc around the ceiling, lingering on the plate and spoon on the table, darting away from his drawings, anywhere but at her. ‘I must have—’ His head shuttled from side to side, face aged by indecision and his mouth hanging open, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I get these terrible dreams. Nightmares about little girls. And I’m standing in our Jo’s room, watching and waiting.’ He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand, the slapping sound echoing round the kitchen. ‘I think I’m going crazy. Then when I think it was just a dream, I see what I’ve drawn and know it’s no’.’ He sniffed, choking, trying to swallow his tears.
His penis had shrunk to a hooded mushroom, a small boy’s toy. Mary slipped her hand round his smooth back and drew him in, letting him rest his head on her shoulder as she cuddled him. ‘Shush,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘It’s going to be alright. Shush. I know. I know. These kinds of things pass. You’ll get yourself a wee girlfriend, settle down, and you’ll no’ have time for all this kind of malarkey. The important thing is no’ to think too much about it. We used to have an Uncle Paddy that did just that. Thought about things too much. He was good to us when we were younger and had nothing. But he ended up so far up his own arse he would only come out on public holidays. And he ended up in one of those places.’
John wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. Shifting his feet, sliding away from her touch. ‘Whit places?’
‘Never you mind what places! The kind of places you see in black-and-white photographs. The kind of places you don’t want to go to . . . And when did you start smoking cigars?’
‘Whit?’ He looked perplexed. ‘Don’t know whit you’re talkin’ about.’
Day 9
‘He’s no’ fuckin’ coming.’ Sergeant Collins yawned, cupping his mouth with a fist and covering distended teeth discoloured by fag smoke. ‘Fuckin’ perv,’ he spat out, mangling words with sour breath. Collins’ bulk overflowed the passenger seat in the panda car and his presence sucked up all the air.
Constable Lodge was wedged into the driver’s seat next to him. Lodge’s cap sat on the dashboard. The engine was running and the fan heater was on full because his superior did not like the cold. He rested the side of his head on the cool glass windowpane to keep from falling asleep, the school bell clanging nearby. Lodge grunted a reply which might have been yes and might have been no. They were parked half on and half off the pavement, sheltered behind the ten-foot trunk of an oak tree creaking in the wind. The control panel of the Bakelite police handset between them crackled – a possible housebreaking on Boquanharan Road. He sat up straighter in his seat and looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘That’s not far from here.’
Collins coughed, sniffed, and reached into his inside jacket pocket for another twenty pack of Regal. Both of their uniforms were saturated by smoke. The pull-out ashtrays overflowing, he wound the window down, and dropped his dout into the gutter to be carried away by rainwater. Ahead of them the lollipop man glowed unhealthily in his luminous coat and leaned his bum against St Stephen’s school gate. A stop sign was tilted against the metal railings and the peak of his cap was low on his head, slanted against the rainstorm, cutting his face in two and leaving only the suggestion of a faint grey moustache. ‘Let’s give it another five minutes.’ Collins used the plug-in lighter from the dashboard to spark another cigarette. ‘You know what it’s like. I was like you, keen as mustard to get up and get on with things.’ He puffed on his fag and grew philosophical. ‘One of the first cases soon cured me of that. Not far from here. Had to guard a house in which a guy went crazy and killed his wife and two little kids. Always remember them taking the wee wans out on a stretcher. You don’t appreciate how small and fragile they are. Just dods of blonde hair. I’ll never forget it.’
Collins took a drag on his fag, before adding, ‘Funnily enough, Chief Inspector Allan wasn’t so high and mighty then. Open and shut case. But he was a bright boy. Had a way about him. Always destined for bigger and better things. Soon he was in charge of the investigation and promoted to Inspector.’
Lodge sagged back in his seat, elbow on the armrest, kneading his temple with one hand. He had heard a variation of the same story a number of times. Knew how it ended, with some old fart, a butcher, a baker, or candlestick maker hanging himself in custody. Good riddance to bad rubbish. And how that had saved them the bother and the expense of a trial. He studied the same desolate stretch of tarmac pavement, the same red-brick side of the chapel and its grounds, the same railings that could do with a fresh dab of paint. ‘Sarge.’ His voice was jagged. He leaned forward, ducking his head to check the wing mirror.
Collins sat up straight and angled his head to check the rear-view mirror. ‘Whit the fuck’s he daeing?’
‘Dunno. But he’s walking hell of a funny.’ Lodge reached for his cap.
‘Hang on.’ Collins’ voice was sharp, stopping Lodge from pushing open the door. ‘The janny’s an old Masonic buddy with Chief Inspector Al
lan. They can dress up funny in yon robes and bay at the moon for all I care, but you know what that means, them with their special handshakes? Masonic with a capital M. Muggins here’s got to do the dirty work. Says he comes every day and stands outside the school gates, fuckin’ perving at the kids in the playground. Keep an eye on him.’ Their heads swivelled in unison as the boy passed them on the other side of the road.
‘Are you sure that’s him?’ Lodge’s Adam’s apple bobbled up and down. ‘He looks kinda harmless.’
‘Look, son.’ Collins’ nicotine-stained fingers lightly slapped a warning on Lodge’s hand resting near the gear stick. ‘The quiet, gormless fuckers are the ones that you need to be watching. If you’ve seen what I’ve fuckin’ seen then you’d fuckin’ know that.’ He squinted through the windscreen and shook his head as the boy stopped outside the school gate. ‘Must admit though, he’s not the fuckin’ smartest. You’d think he’d fuckin’ mix it up a bit. Go to the other schools roundabout here to fuckin’ suss out other potential victims.’
Collins stubbed his fag out in the ashtray and pushed the door open on the pavement side of the road. The door slammed on the driver’s side.
A sickly yellow Datsun slowed and then sped up, a hole in the exhaust making Lodge wince as it passed them. They crossed diagonally, falling into quick swishing step with one another until they reached the pave-ment on the other side. The lollipop man sidled to the side of the boy, holding his pole upright, his peaked cap nodding towards him as if to say plainly – that’s him; that’s the nutter.
Collins was a big man, but he moved quickly. His hands slipped round the boy’s waist and flipped his wrist so that his arm locked. He wrenched his arm up his back and kicked at his right foot, using the weight of his body to butt them forward. The boy’s nose clattered the railing, his forehead ringing and his head jerking back in recoil. His hair was fashionably long and gave a good handhold; Collins battered his face against wrought-iron poles.
‘Seen enough?’ Collins taunted him, only stopping when he felt his colleague’s hand grab his shoulder and pull him backwards. Collins had almost no eyelids. The black rims around his irises blazed with a vivid light.
It took a few seconds for Lodge’s words to reach him. ‘Sarge. Sarge.’
The button brown of Lodge’s irises had never looked darker. They darted sideways to indicate the perimeter fence and massed blanched faces of little boys and girls behind it, magnetised by the thrilling sight of policemen’s uniforms. Now the school children were hiding behind each other and one or two of them were sobbing.
John lurched sideways; his head tilted and he vomited blood. His eyes were empty egg cups, but he made straight towards Lodge, arms out in appeal before he slumped to the pavement.
Shaking his head slowly, the lollipop man cleared his throat before speaking. ‘You better get an ambulance.’
‘No, we’ll be alright!’ Sergeant Collins spoke with authority, staring the old man down. ‘Get an arm.’ He signalled to Lodge, reaching down and pulling at the boy’s denim jacket until he got a good hold under his oxter. ‘And we’ll get him back to the station.’
The school bell sounded behind them, playtime was finished. Lodge helped carry the boy across the road. ‘Whit we goin’ to charge him with?’ the constable asked.
‘Fuck sake,’ Collins snorted. ‘The janny said he was in the school last week and goin’ on about searchin’ for something or other. That’s trespass in anybody’s language. Don’t worry. Just wait until we get him in the cells.’ The boy struggled upright into consciousness and Collins tripped on the kerb. ‘Whoops-a-daisy! See that? All that blood on my jacket. Police assault.’
Day 12
Because it was a Friday, John was locked up in Hall Street Station over the weekend. It was still dark when the police released him on Monday. He was cautioned, but let off with a warning. The Town Hall clock clanged seven a.m. and the pavements clattered with the tramp of shipyard workers on early shift. John was fuzzy on his feet. A few bleary-eyed drunks held overnight filed soberly out of the side entrance of the police station. The tang of chlorine in the air from the swimming baths across the road hung like a bath towel draped over a warm radiator. Even though rain battered down, he was glad of the walk home.
Mary fussed and made him cups of tea that stretched day into night. His sisters cried when they saw his face, but when they came back from school they tried to make him laugh because they knew when he laughed he couldn’t stretch his face properly – his head ached and his ears echoed sound like the inside of a Lambeg drum – and his facial contortions made them giggle. Then Joey came back from work, had his dinner and, saying nothing, retired into the cubbyhole of his room. Later, using the living-room door as a shield, he stood squinting at John for a long time. John warmed his stockinged feet off one bar of the electric fire, pretending Valerie Singleton on Nationwide was naked and he was the only person in the room that noticed, but it wasn’t any fun.
It was quarter to one when John sloped off to bed, leaving his mum chain-smoking in the kitchen. The trickiest part of getting undressed was getting his jumper over an oversized head. Standing in his Y-fronts, waiting to jump into the welcoming warmth of bed, his bust nose presented a new challenge. It felt like under-cooked egg yolk ready to spill and spoil the whites of the clean blankets.
Usually he would have hauled the bedclothes up and over his ears to keep the heat in, but now he lay like a cocked rifle, with cold patches left and right of his body ready to catch him out whichever way he shuffled. The house susurrated and settled into closing doors and silences as those around him found sleep.
At first the sound seemed faint and hallucinatory, impossible to pinpoint in the darkness. The streetlight outside showed a meagre light. He eased himself up against the headboard to a sitting position to help him hear. The sound seemed to be coming through the walls. He wondered if his mum had left the telly on – there was something familiar about the sound – but he also knew nothing would be on but the Test Card girl. Dragging himself out of bed, his fingers felt in the space between bed and built-in wardrobe for the shirt and denims he had dropped onto the linoleum. They felt damp with cold, but he was glad to pull them on. He shuffled towards the door, listening to the drone of what seemed to be a nursery rhyme. As he approached the living room the chant was barely perceptible – Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques – and seemed, in his sluggish state, a strange choice for the BBC. It sank away into the lull of the wind pushing and creaking Murdoch’s locked garage gates. He poked his head into the living room. The telly stood small and lopsided on its rickety legs in a way it would never have seemed in daylight, and the room had the late-night chill of the unoccupied. The faint smell of cigar smoke came from one of the ashtrays dotting the room, and he briefly wondered if one of his da’s mates was visiting. He turned to go into the toilet, convinced it could just as easily have been Daft Rab’s telly he’d heard – his living room was directly above theirs – or it could have been Douglas’s telly through the wall, or Mrs Bell’s, next door.
The shock of the swelling music made him spin round. Blood seeped from his nose. It was Frère Jacques, but with tonal distortions that sped it up and slowed it down, a spinning carousel that seemed to come from a great distance across the pin-light of blue stars and seeping through the thin spaces between tin walls to reach him. His head cocked to one side, frozen and numb with listening, the spattering of crimson blotches dripping onto the floor made him bolt. He held his nostrils shut and his eyes watered as he dashed to the bathroom for bog roll to staunch the bleeding.
Mary traipsed up the hall and stood guard outside the toilet. ‘You alright in there?’ The door was unlocked. She pushed it open and peered into the darkness, looking in over his shoulder as he crouched down near the toilet roll holder.
His voice sounded funny with paper up his hooter and blood running down his throat. ‘That noise get you up?’ He tried to make a joke of it.
She flicked the light
on and stood him under the bare thirty-watt bulb, pushing his head back and forward, tilting his chin, assessing his first-aid work. ‘What noise?’
‘The noise. Jesus Christ. You must have heard it. Daft Rab must have hooked a set of stereo speakers up against the living room floor and turned them on full blast.’
Mary stroked his face and seemed satisfied with the job he had done plugging his nose. ‘I only got up because I heard you moving about.’
‘You never heard Frère Jacques played at fifty decibels?’
She pursed her lips, eyes briefly squeezed shut, as she shook her head in denial. ‘C’mon I’ll make us a nice cuppa.’
The kitchen smelled of damp washing, but it was a little warmer than the living room. John balanced with practised ease on the wooden chair with three-and-a-bit legs. Mary put the kettle on and turned on the grill to throw out heat, but the room filled with the aroma of frazzled bacon rind with little increase in temperature.
‘You not sleep?’ She yawned, and snatched up her packet of Embassy Mild King Size, while they waited for the kettle to boil.
Lily Poole Page 2