The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir (30 page)

It makes sense. But they’re not just thoughts. The thing is getting into her head.

“Your sister is also suffering from depression. We doctors call it
manic-depressive disorder
. But don’t worry about that! Just take it that she’s sad a lot. Do you get sad, John?”

“Not really.”

More lies.

“Well, we all get sad. And sometimes Margueretta will seem perfectly normal. Then she might get some more bad thoughts, which make her sad. And she’s having difficulty in knowing the truth about where the thoughts come from. OK?”

“That’s all well and good,” Mum added, “but how do mothers cope with this? It’s been going on for years now. And it’s driving me up the wall! Dr. Wilmot said it was her periods.”

“I think we can safely say it is not her periods, Mrs. Mitchell.”

Which is a pity because Margueretta was getting free supplies of tampons before she got fired. There’s a whole box of them in the scullery.

We went home after that and Mum had a good cry and said she was going mad with it all, and the house makes her depressed, and she needs help as much as Margueretta, perhaps more. I think it is the black floors. Yes, it’s the black floors.

But the good news is the scars have mostly healed up on my face, and I am going to grammar school and will not be called Scarface when I get there. According to Mr. Hudson, I am not nearly as stupid as I look and through some bloody miracle managed to come top of my year in our final exams. What is more, twins should not be separated, so Emily is going too.
The other 142 kids in my year will go to an open prison, according to Mr. Hudson.

We will need school uniforms, but we don’t have any money for those sorts of luxuries. So Mum has got out her needles to knit me a uniform. She is a dab hand at knitting, but we don’t have any money for wool either so she has retrieved a faux chainmail tunic she picked up from the Methodist Church jumble sale. It was used for the part of a knight in an amateur dramatics performance of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Mum has ripped the wool back down to balls ready for re-knitting. It is very shiny wool.

Things are worse for Emily. In the summer, girls have the option of wearing dresses to school. The School Bursar runs a second-hand uniform store from her office, and that’s where Mum found Emily a dress that she could grow into. It is a very large dress. Emily has to wrap it around herself three times and pray that it won’t be a windy day. A couple of good gusts, and she will be blown halfway to Portsmouth. And in the thirty years that it will take for her to grow into it, assuming she gets very fat, Emily will be able to throw small tea parties using the dress as a marquis tent.

Mum is knitting along to Gustav Holst’s “The Planets Suite.” We are up to the track “Mars, the Bringer of War.” I can feel the tension, and I expect her cable stitches will be a lot tighter than usual. She has knitted a sleeve already. It is very metallic.

I will look like a Brillo pad.

82

W
oolworth’s has a sale on. Dunlop Superior Self-adhesive Floor Tiles are half price. Those bastards may have confiscated the Sweet Shop and my Fry’s Turkish Delight bars, but they never confiscated the profits. I have also saved my pocket money for months. The tiles come in red, white, green, and blue. I like the blue best. It will remind Mum of the ocean.

Unfortunately, there were only three packets of blue tiles in the sale, which is very misleading if you ask me. I have, therefore, had to compromise on the color scheme, and it will now be blue and green. This is not ideal, but it is better than black. I shall start with the kitchen and create a contrasting pattern of blue and green to create an effect that is durable and yet decorative. But for now, I am keeping the tiles under my bed because Nana is coming to stay for a few days, and she’s bringing a surprise guest.

“Och, ma wee Johnny, ma wee Johnny, ma Scottish soldier! How I’ve missed you so. God knows I’ve missed my wee boy. My, but you’ve grown. And bonnie like your grandfather!”

I love my Nana. But it makes me sad that she’s starting to smell like other old ladies—of onions and perfume and pee. And always the same sweet smell on her breath from the wee dram to keep out the cold, morning, noon and night.

Mum thought the surprise guest might be my dad but it turned out to be a man called George who happens to be married, and Nana is having an affair with him. But she is sixty-nine, and he is only sixty, which Mum says is not right at any age. They met in The Hope on Acre Lane when he was telling a wee joke at the bar.

“A Scotsman is leaving a pub with a bottle of whisky in his back trouser pocket. He’s trying to board a bus but he falls backwards and lands on the bottle. Feeling a wet patch he shouts: My God—I hope that’s blood!”

“Och, that’s a good one, isn’t it just? He takes a meat pie with his pint, don’t you, Georgie?”

Squeeelch!

“Och, it’s the pickled egg, excuse me.

Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away!

“Och, here’s a couple of bottles of something to keep out the cold.”

Nana pulled two bottles of Harvey’s Bristol Cream from her bag.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Margueretta said and poured herself a glass of sherry.

“You shouldn’t be drinking with the Valium!” Mum insisted.

“Och, leave the lassie alone. It’s just a wee drop. Takes after her old Nana, don’t you lassie?”

“Thank you, Nana, I do.”

“Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. I went to see ma sister Wilma last week. It’s nae good. She’ll be the next one to go—you mark ma words. She’s carrying all her valuables around with her in her handbag. That’s what I’ve always said would happen. Possessions imprison you. They’ll be ripping that bag from her cold dead fingers, don’t you know? Eh, Georgie?”

“Right enough, Scottie. Right enough.”

“She has a man in to do the dahlias. He stands in her back yard. That house in Peckham is far too big for her. She’s covered all the furniture with newspapers. She thinks she’s got the decorators in. She’s no more got the decorators in than I’m the Flying Scotsman. Have another drink, Margueretta.”

“Thanks.”

“She shouldn’t be doing that. She’s hearing voices in her head,” Mum protested.

“Och, I’ve been hearing voices in ma head all ma life. Bonny Prince Charlie, mostly. Will you not credit it! Those voices run in the family. If they can put a man on the moon, and who’d believe that I ask you, then I’m sure we will all be hearing voices in our heads. A man on the moon, is it? And I’m Mary, Queen of Scots! Here, have a top up, Margueretta.”

“Thank you, Nana. They did put a man on the moon. But Mum wouldn’t let us watch it in case the old Ferguson blew a valve. She really thinks that!”

“You know we can’t take chances with that old telly,” said Mum.

“Try to concentrate, woman. I’m tellin’ you about ma poor sister. So this is it. There was a terrible smell,” said Nana.

“Smell?” asked Margueretta.

“Aye. A terrible smell. It was the lodger, poor wee beggar.”

“The lodger?”

“Aye. Wilma was wondering why she hadn’t seen him in a good few days. She went into his bedroom, and there he was. In his bed. Dead.”

“Dead?”

“Dead. And do you know what else?”

“What?”

“When she pulled back the sheets his belly came away with them, for the love of God. Squelch! Had his guts out, stuck to those sheets like sausages. And maggots filling up the man’s stomach like a barrel of rice. She thought the curtains were closed. But no. It was the flies buzzing at the window. It was the lodger trying to fly away!”

“That’s not true!” Margueretta laughed.

“Mark ma words, lassie. It’s as true as those voices in yer head. And that’s why she thinks she’s got the decorators in. To get rid of that terrible smell. Och, imagine that! A lodger rotting away in his bed, and you downstairs watching
Coronation Street
and having a nice cup o’ tea.”

“That’s gruesome!”

“Albert. That was the lodger’s name when he was alive. Smelled like dead chickens, apparently. Have another drink, lassie. You never know when it’s your turn to go.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“You could be hit by a flying piano! ‘There was a young man from Peru. Who bent down to buckle his shoe. He found half a crown, lying there on the ground…’ Ha, ha! I never could remember the last line. Have you thought about something?”

“What? Margueretta asked.

“There’s nothing left when it’s all gone, lassie. And what you had, you never will keep. Bagpipes. Now they’ll make me cry. I’d like that song at ma funeral.”

Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen and down the mountainside…

“She’s off!”

“Voices in yer head, is it? Just don’t start an argument with them…you could end up giving yerself a good thumping…”

“It’s not a laughing matter, Mother!” Mum interrupted.

“Och, no. Of course not. It’s nae a laughing matter. Voices in yer head, is it? At least you’ll never be lonely!”

83

I
found out that I should not be going to grammar school. People who go to grammar school have wall-to-wall carpet and vinyl wallpaper. They do not have front rooms— it’s called a lounge. And it’s not tea—it’s dinner. And they eat Black Forest gateaux if they are having tea, which would be in the middle of the afternoon. They also have a clean pair of underpants for almost every day and do not wear shiny metallic jumpers knitted by their mums from a faux, chainmail tunic she picked up from the Methodist Church jumble sale.

Mrs. Middleton, who teaches science, said we could do an experiment with some iron filings to see if my jumper is magnetic. She also said that with a diode and some copper wire, I could receive Radio Caroline. Or detect low-flying Russian spy planes. The whole class laughed at that.

She told me to tell my father to buy me a regulation school uniform jumper. I told her I do not have a father, and she said that’s no surprise coming from a council estate, and even though it could help with some science experiments, she does not want to be offended by the sight of my jumper again.

Not having a jumper wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the accident I had in metalwork class. I was cleaning up some steel swath from a lathe, and when I swiveled round, I caught my bum on the sharp point of a turning tool. This put a precise three-inch cut straight through my trousers and underpants and left my bum slightly exposed but luckily did not break the skin. I only have one pair of trousers, which Mum bought from the Littlewoods Catalog on a twenty-four month installment plan.

I showed my trousers to Mum, and she said a repair was the only answer, being that they are almost new. Somehow she managed to turn a precise three-inch cut into a massive square patch using a piece of offcut quilting material. I would understand if she was making an actual quilt because then it could tell the history, in patchwork embroidery, of our ancestors from the early seventeenth century to the current day. No doubt other relatives would offer to add their own quilted patches over time, and the whole thing could be handed down for generations. But these are trousers. She is better at knitting. Anyway, I have been stretching my metallic jumper down to cover the patch. Now everyone will see the green rayon quilting. They will think I am a homo.

Things are bad enough, so I have decided not to tell anyone at the grammar school about how Mum started a refuge-for-troubled-children and the mix up with the warring tribes. I am also not going to tell them that the police come to our house every night because my sister is expecting to be murdered in her bed by the incarnation of Satan and there’s a dead child screaming in our attic. It is one thing for someone to have to sit next to some riff-raff from a council estate who only has two pairs of underpants and gets free school lunches because he lives below the poverty line and would otherwise starve to death. But knowing that I live with Lucifer in a haunted lunatic asylum could push them over the edge and want to expel me.

It is therefore extremely important that I stay out of trouble. This is very difficult because a couple of boys have already tried to start a fight with me after catching a glimpse of the quilting and blanket stitches on my bum, and I had to give them a good thumping.

I have also had one visit to the headmaster’s office for throwing a plastic cocoa pod during the study of equatorial South America. It was our geography lesson, and we were told by Miss Sanders, who is a student teacher and wears distractingly short dresses and white knickers, to pass the pod from person to person. But I was at the end of the row, and it looked like a rugby ball to me, so I threw it at Peter Turner, and he is a rotten catch and it went
through the window. Well, the window was closed at the time so it broke the window.

Now not only do I have to find the money for a regulation school jumper, but I have to pay for a new window, which is on the second floor and may also involve some scaffolding. This will therefore put a severe dent in my budget for Dunlop Superior Self-adhesive Floor Tiles.

Mum said there is no stipulation in the school’s uniform regulations about shininess, and she would therefore complain to my form teacher about the obvious injustice. It was a short discussion, and the ruling stands. I cannot wear a metallic jumper to school. Unfortunately, Mum told my teacher that we are very poor, and there’s no money for a Sunday roast let alone a regulation school jumper. This has confirmed that I should not be in a grammar school, and I am now very concerned that Mrs. Middleton will be offended by the rayon quilting and blanket stitches on my arse, even though she has made no mention of it up to this point. Either way, I need money.

And there is an answer.

We get tickets for our school lunches, and mine are free because of my state of extreme poverty and malnutrition. All the other kids have to pay for theirs because they are from middle-class homes. They bring money to school every Monday morning and get in a queue at the bursar’s office. It’s obvious really. I sell them my free lunch tickets for half the price that they would have to pay for their own. That way, they have money to spend on sweets, and I have money to spend on a regulation school jumper, a new window with some scaffolding, and Dunlop Superior Self-adhesive Floor Tiles.