Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (17 page)

He pushed me roughly off and yelled, ‘Don’t you
ever
fucking pull me off anyone again! Don’t you
ever
hold my arms when I am fighting! Don’t you
ever
fucking come near me when I am dealing with any of that!’ As he screamed at me, spittle and blood were splattered over my face. ‘Don’t you
ever
fucking do any of that unless
you
want to fight him instead of me! Never –
ever
– be a witness! Do you fucking hear me?
Never
be a witness!’

He grabbed me by the neck and stared at me for what seemed like hours, his ‘mad’ eyes searing into mine, his fingers not moving but tightly pressing into my throat. I felt my breath slip away; I felt a pulse behind my eyes; I felt I was trying to scream but I couldn’t. He let go slowly, then grabbed me round the shoulders and held me tight.

‘Janey, I am sorry, I’m sorry, babes. But don’t come near me when aw that happens, please.’

I stood there in our dirty back shop staring at the wallpaper, not breathing aloud or speaking, just looking at the floral pattern blur and magnify as the tears bloated over my eyes. Sean sat on the floor, looked up at me and then dropped his head onto his knees. I could hear him crying softly.

‘I hate this, Janey. I hate this place. I hate fighting and I hate hurting you. You should just go home to your Mammy, hen, I am fucked …’

But I wouldn’t give up on him. He was only 19 and I realised it was hard trying to be a man in that world. The pressure I came under was different. To be married in the
East
End and not have kids before you were 18 was seen as a sure sign of infertility. You were expected to get married, get pregnant (not necessarily in that order), get several children, then get depressed and practise putting make-up on black eyes.

‘You no’ pregnant yet?’ Sean’s aunt would regularly bark at me, like I had a defiant Protestant womb.

‘I’m no’ ready for weans,’ I kept telling the many people who asked. Sean never wanted babies either; he reckoned we had to make some cash and live a wee bit first. I did get to be a surrogate mammy because we always had Sean’s wee brother Paul Storrie, now a cheeky, funny young 13-year-old. We even took him on our first holiday together. We hired a boat and chugged up and down the River Thames. Paul loved getting to ‘drive’ the boat all the way up to Windsor. Seeing his smiling wee face as he fed the ducks and played on the banks of the Thames made my heart leap. At home, he never really got to be a wee boy much – he was driving cars and shifting big lorries for Old George.

When we got back to Glasgow, Paul was pulled in by the police as a witness in the trial of a Glasgow shopkeeper who was selling solvents to young kids. Paul had bought the glue for a glue- sniffing friend. The police insisted Old George attend a meeting at the local Police Office to discuss his son’s upcoming court appearance. I had to be there too as Paul was staying with me and that legally made me involved. But I was really there to support Paul as he was terrified of what Old George would do to him for the trouble he had got himself into. We all sat crammed into an extremely small room at the London Road Police Office. Old George was dressed in his full formal suit with cashmere coat on top. It was stiflingly hot and he looked stressed. The atmosphere was dreadful. Four detectives came into the room; Paul shrank behind me and gripped my hand. I held fast. Old George stood up, refusing to shake hands or exchange any pleasantries with the detectives, who tried but failed to introduce themselves.

‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ George shouted at them. ‘He is not goin’ to fucking court!’

‘Maybe you should sit down and shut up,’ a detective replied.

The room became oppressive; it was like trying to suck in air as you were being buried alive. The four policemen and Old George all stood their ground aggressively. Paul and I clenched each other’s hands. One large detective sniggered as Old George dropped his shoulders. Then George turned to me, slipped off his big coat and, as soon as the warm woollen garment dropped onto my lap, he turned and punched the large detective square in the face. The five men fell over each other in the cramped room as Old George thrashed around punching anyone and anything that came near him.

‘Calm down, for fucksake, George!’ shouted one of the older detectives. ‘It’s OK, George! George! Calm down!’

It was over.

The fighting stopped.

The room was almost quiet.

Almost.

Two of the detectives stood holding their bloodied faces, swearing quietly.

Old George was standing in the middle of the room, his fists up high, jaw clenched and growling like a caged animal. He pushed his way past the men, walked to the door and almost wrenched it off its hinges, thumbing to us to follow him. Outside in the hallway, two startled young uniformed coppers tried to peer into the room but walked quickly off as soon as they saw the fierce look on Old George’s face.

‘You fucking bastards! If you want more, fucking come here right now!’ George screamed, pointing to the floor in front of him. Paul and I just shuffled behind him as he made his way through the hall. ‘My son is not going to court! That’s the fucking end of it, OK?’ he spat towards the men gathered in the hallway. No one moved, they just stood and watched us all march towards the outer door of the Police Office. As he reached the door, Old George turned, pointed at the desk officer and shouted: ‘Tell those cunts no’ to come near me again!’

Paul and I shuffled like mice behind him, terrified to speak. We both breathed quietly in case the noise of our exhaled nervousness upset him. When we reached the car park in front of the Police Office, Old George stopped and looked at the door of his big silver car. The window had been broken; inside, the radio had been ripped out.

‘Oh my God. Please God, no!’ I whispered to Paul. He just looked like a white-faced corpse. I held onto his hand even tighter and we stared at his father.

‘
Aaagh!
That’s fucking
it
!
No
fucking
way
!’ Old George screamed at the top of his voice. He strode quickly back towards the Police Office.

Paul and I followed nervously. I don’t know why we didn’t just run for the hills at this point, but something made us stay with the old man. By the time Paul and I reached the front desk, Old George was already screaming at the desk officer:

‘Who the fuck smashed my car, ye
bastards
?’ The veins were jutting out in his neck and sweat was running down the side of his almost bald head. The young desk officer stood there docilely and asked politely ‘What is your problem?’ then said more firmly: ‘And don’t raise your voice to me.’

Old George pulled back his right arm and drove his fist straight into the young man’s face. Blood spurted from his nose. I felt sick. Stinging bile forced its way up my throat. I grabbed Paul’s shoulders, turned him round and we both fled back to the car park. We sat on a low wall and watched through the sliding glass front door of the Police Office as Old George flailed his arms about, pointing to his car as three policemen held their palms up towards him and shook their heads. We could hear his swearing and shouting, sometimes clearly, sometimes muffled, as the glass doors kept sliding open and shut whenever he paced too near the sensor as he ranted and swore.

Eventually, he was walked to the door by an elderly man wearing a suit.

Old George strode towards us, then shouted: ‘Get in the fucking car!’ We drove home in total silence. Old George stopped at the Nationalist Bar and spoke through gritted teeth to Paul as we were trying to manoeuvre ourselves out from the back seats: ‘If you get into any more trouble, ya stupid wee bastard, I will fucking kick yer ass.’

Paul dropped his head and nodded. We walked away towards the bar and he finally let go of my hand. Paul needed help with his education and loads of comforting hugs. He did better at school once he was staying with us rather than at Toad Hall. We gave him some security and stability and Sean tried hard to keep him occupied during weekends. Paul’s biggest problem was that he had a natural gift for getting caught; he was just innately unlucky. If anyone at school broke a window – even if Paul didn’t do it – witnesses would remember seeing Paul among the crowd who
might
have done it.

* * *

That Christmas, Paul, Sean and I had great fun decorating the pub, putting up a tree and stringing lights all round the walls. We hoped for better business, but that allegedly festive week was abysmal. We fed Christmas dinner to the few punters who came, then sat silently round the pub’s telly watching old films and eating hot chicken, occasionally pouring the odd pint for a desolate customer.

The New Year, though, held great promise. The Calton had been designated a ‘regeneration area’ – the wasteland across the London Road from the pub, barren and bleak with frost, had been designated for private homes. The blurb in the proposal described this heroin- and prostitute-infested stretch of road within the seedy, rundown Calton area as
Historic, set facing Glasgow’s oldest park, central to the city centre. The area is fast becoming one of Glasgow’s most sought-after residential communities
.

It was great news for us. The Nationalist Bar was soon bustling with burly workmen who liked a drink before, during and after work. The pool table started doing brisk business and our newly arrived
Space Invader
machine happily bleeped and gulped 10p pieces by the dozen. Sean and I were now getting on very well and planned a boating holiday. Paul chose the Norfolk Broads and we began saving hard for the trip.

When Mother’s Day approached, Sean bought my Mammy a fancy big card and gave me an extra £5 to buy her something special. I got the card ready and rode the bus to Shettleston. I was excited to see her; she had never had a phone and I did miss her. I couldn’t wait to catch up on
what
was going on in her life. When I arrived, she was at home, sitting quietly at her new electric fire.

‘Hi, hen,’ she welcomed me. ‘Shut the door quick or that fucking daft dug will want in.’

‘Mammy, the dug lives here; it will bark if ye don’t let it in.’

‘It is not
my
dug!’ she shouted.

‘OK, Mammy, here – Happy Mother’s Day.’ I handed her the card. She smiled at the picture of a big bunch of lilacs and opened the card up to read the words, smiling even wider when she took the £5 note and slipped it in her pocket.

‘If Sean asks, tell him I bought ye chocolates,’ I told her.

‘Fucking chocolates! I don’t eat chocolates. C’moan down to the pub with me and I’ll get a coupla cans,’ she said as she pulled on her woolly coat. I never got to spend the time I wanted with her. After she bought the cans, she turned round and told me, ‘Tell Sean thanks. I’m off to see Peter an’ I know ye don’t want to come, so I’ll maybe see ye next week.’

I felt a bit let down. I had wanted to be with her for a wee while longer. But she was right – I didn’t want to see Peter. I watched her as she walked into the distance, following her red coat with my eyes until it finally disappeared as she turned a corner. Then I went and got the bus back to the Calton. I had only been away an hour.

Sean and Paul were sitting waiting for me; Paul had bought me a lovely card for Mother’s Day. He had even bought me a Hall and Oates music tape. I felt better and decided that Mammy just wanted my cash; she had never even looked back to wave at me. I had my own life here with Sean and it wasn’t that bad.

But, in my nightmares, dead people started floating through windows.

THE WORLD WAS
changing around us. Fresh trees had been planted, grass verges were created and new fencing sprang up seemingly overnight. The Calton was looking better than ever. It made no difference to the locals, though. For each new tree, there were ten new heroin addicts. There was now hardly a building in the Calton that didn’t have a ‘user’ living in it. The Nationalist Bar had at least three users living in the flats upstairs.

On the telly each day, Margaret Thatcher was banging on about Argentina. She was sending troops to the Falklands. The country was on edge. For more than a century, large swathes of the British Army had come from the poorest parts of Scotland. Glasgow was set to send lots of its own boys. I sat in the Nationalist Bar one Saturday afternoon, ignoring the news. I had more frightening thoughts. My sister Ann had just phoned to ask if I had seen our Mammy. No one had seen her for two days. She had told Ann she was going up towards Hamilton to fish with Peter – a two- or three-hour walk – and they were last seen walking along the banks of the River Clyde. I was really worried. Mammy had never spent a night out of her house before, apart from her stay in the asylum. She never stayed overnight with Peter; she always came back to her own home. There was no way she would just stay away and not let us know where she was.

‘Maybe someone should ask Peter,’ Sean suggested.

‘He’s nowhere to be found,’ I explained. ‘He’s not answering the door.’

I spent all that weekend calling my sister for news. I went up to my Mammy’s house and went across the road and banged on Peter’s door for what seemed like hours, but it was no use. Neither of them was anywhere to be found. The police were contacted and they came down to the pub to question me.

‘Fucking Peter will know where she is!’ I snapped at them.

‘Mr Greenshields says he has not seen her since they were up the Clyde,’ the detective explained. ‘He says she walked home in the dark.’

This was the first I knew that Peter had reappeared.

‘Oh for fucksake!’ I screamed at them. ‘Drag the Clyde, coz he will have thrown her in! She would never walk home all the way from Hamilton herself!’ They ignored me and left.

My brother Vid confronted Peter on the Sunday night. Peter stabbed him deep in the side with a six-inch boning knife and left him bleeding, he thought, to death. But Vid was rushed to the hospital and survived. On the Monday morning, I sat in my Mammy’s house in Shettleston – the one I had grown up in, the one I was sexually abused in – and prayed she would walk through that front door. The house looked the same – the same burst couch – the same damp smell – the same filthy toilet. I knew if 9.00 a.m. came and went and she had not come to collect her Benefit Book then she was surely dead. Nothing but death would keep Mammy from her Monday Book.