Lily Poole

by Jack O'Donnell

  The post office assistant peered through the top of the metal cage at the rectangle of Janine’s face. With a practised movement she uncurled the pen from the bird’s nest of elastic bands and scrawled her name on three green-printed Giros. She pushed them together through the box gap between screen and counter. The assistant’s fingers flew to circular metal trays, divvied up the sum she was due and pushed it through the wicket to her. He leered at her with teeth like slag heaps and eyes filled with inky blackness. She did not bother checking, hurry­ing away, stuffing notes and coins into her coat pocket.

  Gentleman John held the door open for her. She slipped her arm through his, dipping her hand into the pocket of his coat to keep warm. The pavements were slippy. Black bags and bins dotted the shop fronts and spilled into the gutters of Dumbarton Road. An elderly couple, arm in arm, weaved grey-sludge trails and jostled for space on the pavement. Janine and John crossed the road, wobbling as if they were half-cut, and faced down a hackney whose horn had them giggling and sprinting the last ten yards to the safety of the pavement.

  ‘I’ll need to go in here for ciggies.’ Janine dragged him towards the chippy. Two mophead schoolkids pushed through the door, unwrapping newspaper, joshing and howling laughter. The smell of vinegar and chips made her suddenly ravenous. ‘You want chips?’

  ‘You payin’?’ he said.

  ‘Course. I’m loaded.’ She coughed, leaning into his body for support. Her eyes watered and she held up a hand, flapping it in a shallow wave to show that she would be better in a minute. ‘Jesus. Something went down the wrong way.’

  The chip shop doubled as a café. They found an empty table near the plate-glass window and ordered. Janine sparked a fag and offered advice. ‘You’ll need to see the social worker in the hospital so that you can get your money sorted.’

  John rubbed condensation off the window to peer out. ‘I’m no’ that bothered. I don’t plan to be there that long.’ He repositioned the place mats and the red and brown sauce bottles.

  ‘But it makes sense. Doesn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Yeh,’ he conceded, leaning back in his chair, so the frizzy-haired woman serving them could push in and plonk their order down.

  Janine did more smoking than eating, leaving half a plate of chip fat congealing round the tomato sauce.

  He finished his pie supper and started spearing her plate with his fork. ‘Whit you want to see Lily for?’

  ‘Who?’ Janine was caught with her fag halfway between her mouth and the ashtray. Then she caught herself. ‘The little girl? It’s just,’ she explained, but her eyes drifted away from his face to a hurt inside herself and she could not vocalise it.

  From outside the window came the plaintive toll of a train horn. The vibrations of the train arriving into the station above played on the plates and cups. There was no more to be said. Janine paid the bill, and they caught the next train.

  They camped snug inside a smokers’ compartment. Cigar smoke filtered in from the corridor from a man standing with his back to them. Two sisters with the same blue-wash perm sat across from them, and went to war over who could best set the world to rights. Miners were lazy good-for-nothings. Always on strike. Paid more than astronauts. Their droning voices and the shuggling of the train, made John dopey and he shut his eyes. And who would have believed it? Her a teacher. Him a lawyer. From Bearsden. Bearsden! Their wee lassie found buried in an old air-raid shelter at the bottom of the garden. Shame on them. Bearsden! What about those wee lassies from Dalmuir that went missing? Everywhere you look there are perverts. Everywhere! Would make you give up on humanity.

  Snow lay piebald on the ground outside Dalmuir ­Station.

  A companionable smog of fag smoke trailed behind ­passengers as they eased themselves into the cold and wandered off to find a place to stand sentry on Platform Two. The dented bottom plates of Dalmuir Station’s waiting-room doors flapped open and shut, the rubber chamfers making shushing noises. A man with a ­boozer’s nose the colour of a turnip rattled through one set of double doors and, avoiding the beagle eyes of the ticket collector behind the screen, shot through the others, onto the concourse.

  Janine perched on the end of a wooden bench. Cold wind whipped against her face, reddening the tip of her nose. She searched her coat pockets for the outline of her fag packet and lighter, sighing with pleasure as she lit one and inhaled. Smoke hiccupped from her nose and mouth, choked her recollection of the expression on John’s face when he realised that the little girl, Lily, was not waiting for him. He had peered into gardens and examined privet hedges as if she was playing hide-and-seek among bare branches. And he thought he wasn’t mad. He didn’t know what to do.

  She explained how the world worked to him and fashioned a plan. They had to go back to the ward. At least he had to go back to the ward. As a voluntary patient, she could do what she liked – which was to go back to the ward with him. She took a long drag of her fag. Leaning forward and favouring her right foot, she turned her face sideways into the wind and studied the broad, square back of a black gabardine trench coat. The frumpy woman standing a few feet from her could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty, but Janine would have swapped places with her in a heartbeat. She was normal. Her brooding revolted her and it was getting worse, pterodactyls nipping each other as they circled around her head, ready to rip apart the cardboard props of equanimity and leave her bawling. Gartnavel was the only place where she could be herself and feel safe.

  Tracks squealed as the points unfroze and rail moved against rail. Forged and flanged metal wheels turned heated axles and the Airdrie train clanged into the ­station, each carriage lit with a cosy glow.

  The sound of the train caught John flat-footed. His head was buried tortoise-deep in the fur collar of his Afghan coat, his hands slugs in his pockets, while he kicked over the crowns of sludge. Other passengers made their way to the edge of the platform, waiting for the train to come to a stop. He weaved his way through them and stood facing Janine, hopping from foot to foot as he fashioned his lips into a wan smile. She flicked her dout into the salted bank of piss-yellow snow and got to her feet, clutching at his coat, straightening up and sliding her arm through his.

  When they got on the Airdrie train, Janine slipped into an empty window seat in the carriage to the right of the door, her head resting against the No Smoking sign. Coorie in together, they were content with silence and holding hands as they passed through the first few stations. The conductress at Westerton clipped their tickets, but forgot to ask Janine, or the elderly man sitting behind them, to put their fags out. Hyndland was the next stop. The battlements of Gartnavel came into view, framed in the train window like a still life of a mediaeval castle on a frosted hill.

  Few other passengers got off the train and those who did hurried away. Janine and John stood isolated beneath the vandalised hands of time on the station clock, watching the back of the train bend away from them, the wind hunting for weak spots in their clothing, scouring their faces. With a jerky movement, Janine gripped his wrist, holding him back as he made to trudge forward, but her voice was soft and cajoling. ‘Give me a ten-minute start to get into the ward and have a word with the staff.’

  ‘You mean I should wait here?’ His tone was petulant and his bottom lip curled like day-old lettuce.

  She pecked him on the lips. ‘Aye, it’s for the best. Probably best no’ to mention you spent the night with me, or even you spent much time with me. Some folk in there get awful jealous. If they ask you just say we split up outside the hospital.’

  ‘But I’m wearing your coat,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry, they’re a bit daft. They wouldnae blink if you walked up wearing bright red lipstick, a Doris Day wig, false boobs and a pair of size twelve high heels. They’re all mental in there.’ She snorted at her own joke and crossed her eyes trying to humour him.

  Before leaving, she forewarned him again. ‘Just remember to say how sorry you are for causing them all that trouble. You
know the script. It’ll never happen again and you’ll live happily ever after.’ Her fist opened in a wave. She disappeared down the steps and into the darkness of the pedestrian underpass.

  ‘I’ll get you in there,’ he shouted, but he wasn’t sure she had heard him.

  He retreated to the shelter of the waiting room. A Helensburgh train came in one side of the platform, and he pondered jumping on it and returning home, but he dallied too long, the doors slid shut and the vibrations of its departure travelled through the brick island of the concourse. He squatted on the wooden bench, positioned himself underneath the orange glow of the two-bar heater in the waiting room, his body growing slack and his eyes closing.

  John recognised himself in his dream as older than at present, but also much younger. The boy he once was ran pell-mell with his classmates into St Stephen’s dinner hall. The wooden floor allowed it to double as the school gym. Mr Galloway, in his thick tweed suit, stood timeless as an unsmiling Buddha, in his usual spot. Because he’d only one leg, he propped his backside against the stage to supervise the class.

  ‘Right, get the mats out,’ he said in a gravelly voice.

  The gym mats were piled in the dusty nook between the end of the stage and windows. John was in a race with Matt Gibbons and Sammy Doak, pushing and hauling at each other to get to them first. He squealed in delight, diving and getting his hands on the top mat. The losers stood aside, dejected. Sammy Doak and him hauled it away to the far end of the hall, near the entrance to the kitchen. That was the signal. Unleashed, the boys in his class tumbled their wilkies and did all kinds of tricks that had never in human history been performed. Cloth beanbags – red, yellow, blue, green – enough for everyone to head, kick or fling, enough for everyone except the girls in their class. Sneaking a look at the stupid girls, he saw them playing with their stupid skipping ropes. He checked who among them paid him no mind, and who was watching him, following how good he proved at bucking and jumping. He would show them.

  But a moan escaped from his throat and froze in his mouth from the frost-binding chill. He held the palms of his hands out, they were blackened to the wrist and stunk of cigar smoke.

  The rasp of his breathing caught in his throat and filled the brooding silence of an empty hall in which he could not move. Dirt and dust from underneath the crawl space of the stage swirled and gathered around him, became filled with darting lights and the rhythmic beat of skipping ropes. Lily gradually took shape, holding one end of the skipping rope. Another, older, girl with darker hair, who he didn’t recognise, held the other end. Girls with blondish hair similar to Lily’s eddied from beneath the stage and formed a human chain, skipping to a quickening beat, and fusing into a blinding light that hurt his eyes. They clapped their hands singing:

  Not last night but the night before,

  Four rapists came knocking at my door

  I asked them what they wanted, and this is what they said:

  Dancer do the splits, the twist

  Then turn around and touch the ground, and out the back door

  Dancer please come back, back, sit on a tack, and do not look,

  Jump with eyes closed, everyone counting out loud: 1, 2, 3, 4 . . .

  until you’re missed.

  Ally took a turn in the middle. She skipped and jumped between the ropes, squealing in delight at not being caught out. He watched as the skipping rope beat faster and faster. He felt his heart racing in time to the rhythm. There was a buzzing in his ears as the girls rose into the air and condensed into a ball of light that shot through the roof leaving behind the choir of their voices and a temporary darkness. The stink of cigar smoke grew stronger. He recognised his mum by the way she angled her body, slightly tip-toe, though she wore widows’ weeds and a black lace mantilla covered her face. Mother hen to the girls, she stood guard in Mr Galloway’s pos­ition at the edge of the stage, staring directly at him. She pulled the veil aside and opened her mouth to bawl a warning. But the inky blackness of a crow flew out of her mouth and straight at him. His head jolted backwards as it smashed though his body and pierced his heart.

  He jerked awake and gazed at the retreating heads of the passengers from a train leaving the station. Taking a deep breath like a man that had been under water too long, he went outside into the bracing, clean, cold air.

  The damp tunnel beneath the station echoed with his steps and led into the grounds of Gartnavel Hospital. He avoided the thicker patches of snow, but his socks grew wet. It took about five minutes to reach the stuffy discomfort of the wards and the sentry smells of fags and bleach fogging over pissy ammonia. His coat hung ragged like a sack over his arm, bending down he stared through the reinforced glass, hoping he would spot Janine. Eventually he rang the bell to be let in. It was near lunchtime and he was hungry. His body readjusted to hospital time even in the way he stood and then slouched, morphing into patient mode, slowing down to the pace of hospital life. He waited a minute and rang the bell again. A white snail-like shape loomed opaque on the ward side, the key jangled in the lock and the door jerked opened.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ There was no surprise in the psychiatric nurse’s gruff voice. ‘We were wondering when you’d get back here.’

  Day 35

  Ally was inured to the lingering presence of cigarette smoke on the cold night air. She heard, without really listening, canned laughter from the telly in the living room, reminders of a brightly-lit world outside sleep. Wind blew through gaps in the window frame, nudging the crayon-yellow curtains, and the lampshade swayed in sympathy, spilling light onto the worn linoleum of their room.

  The sisters’ beds shared a dark narrow corridor between them, and these were the life rafts Jo used, jumping from her own bed onto Ally’s to lean across and flick the light switch off. Ally’s job was to say the Lord’s Prayer as quickly as she could so that the monsters didn’t reach their bony fingers up, grab her by the ankle and pull her down underneath the floor to the great pit. It was a weighty responsibility. Once, Ally got stuck at ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. She kept repeating it, her voice fragile, near to tears, but God was waiting. The room light was out and Jo wasn’t safely tucked up in bed. Monsters piled out of the darkness, jumped from the clothes cupboard beside her bed and sneaked out of the dressing table drawers to attack Jo. She had to squeal and fight, kicking them all to hell, bouncing up and onto Ally’s bed to put the light back on. Mum had shouted at them to keep the noise down or they’d get what for.

  The only thing worse than forgetting the last bit, Jo had told her, was saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards. Then the devil would swoop down straightaway with his big claws and all that would be left would be the sound of your last cry. Ally didn’t want to think about saying it backwards, forwards was bad enough, but found herself asking, ‘What if you made a mistake? Would the devil understand?’

  ‘As long as you said God kissed it and the devil missed it,’ Jo told her.

  Ally snuggled up with her dolly and went straight from praying to sleep. Jo took a bit longer, blankets drum-tight, the faint light from the streetlight outside enough for her to see her breath. Sometimes a car would run round the bend of the hill and the headlights would dip and run across the space between the top of the cupboard and the wall. What if, she asked herself, there was a crash and a husband and his pretty wife were flung bleeding from the car, screaming for somebody to save their baby who was trapped inside? A few of their neighbours would mope about not quite sure what to do. They would try and hold her back because of the stink of petrol and the flickering flame under the bonnet. But she’d escape their grasp. The baby’s mewing would be coming from the back seat. She’d burn her hand on the locked door. A fire engine’s siren would be heard in the distance. There’d be no time for that malarkey. She’d rip the car door from its hinges and toss it to one side – God was always good for helping with things like that – and she’d pluck the baby from the back seat and, sheltering it in her arms as the car exploded behind her, run towards
its mum and dad. She’d be modest, of course, and not want any kind of reward or anything.

  The flickering light of a Clipper lighter woke Jo. Ally was waving it from side to side like a sparkler, illuminating her blonde bubble of hair and the deep pit of pas-sageway between their beds. The light went out and Ally giggled, a foreign sound in the darkness.

  Jo sat up in bed, her eyes nippy with sleep. The light sparked again. She swiped at Ally’s arm, hissing through her teeth, phrases running together, ‘Where did you get that? Mum’ll plum kill you. Gie me that. Get to sleep or I’ll kill you as well.’

  Ally’s head moved left to right, the flame a shield held out in front of her, hair glowing in a nimbus, her face in shadow. ‘I’m cold, so cold.’ Her voice rose and fell with the flame flickering and dying.

  The chill in the room caught Jo like a slap. Her fingers gripped onto the flounces at the arms of her nightie and her body slipped under the blankets for heat. Her sister’s low voice filled her head with worms. She couldn’t think, didn’t want to take her eyes off Ally, but a feeling in her stomach told her not to stare. The lighter blinked on and off. That gave her courage. ‘You better stop that.’

  ‘I’m cold. So cold.’ Ally’s voice see-sawed in a whine. ‘Can I come in beside you?’

  ‘We’re too old for that now.’

  ‘Just tonight. Just once. Big people don’t understand.’

  Jo snorted. She tugged a handful of blankets with her and shuttled over facing the window. She rapped on the other side of the bed.

  The mattress creaked as the weight of her sister’s body slotted in beside her. Jo recoiled from a casually flung foot resting against her bare leg and the arm flung over her midriff to cuddle in. Limbs that were arctic extremities.