The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir (7 page)

“There will be no supper for you! You need to learn your lesson, stealing ma eggs!” she said.

“He was just trying to help,” said Dad.

“And what would you know about that?”

“Well, I know enough to know that a five-year-old boy was just trying to put food on the table!”

“Aye! And that’s something that his forty-year-old father cannee do!”

“And now you’re going to make him go to bed hungry? That’s heartless.”

“He needs to learn his lesson.”

And Dad turned away and grabbed his coat from the chair. I ran after him as he walked up the black passageway to the front door.

“Stay and play with me, Daddy!”

“I can’t.”

“Please stay! Stay and play with me, Daddy!”

“I can’t.”

He opened the front door and pushed me back but I sprang forward and held onto his leg. He peeled my fingers off his leg and pushed me back again.

“Your daddy has to go. You’ll understand one day. One day you will be a man. Then you will understand.”

“But I want you to stay with me!”

“I have to go, wee Johnny. Be a good boy and go back to your nana. Go back now.”

He’s gone.

And I’m going too. I’m leaving home. And I am taking my cowboy hat with me. But not Nana’s tartan scarf.

I am going to live in the backyard but I only have two planks of wood and five nails. I cannot build a shelter. I also do not have a hammer out here with me. There is only one answer because it’s cold and dark and I am hungry. I will have to sleep in the garden shed and eat worms for the rest of my life.

I have never been inside our shed because Nana said that Pop spent a lot of time in there when he first came to this house and that is why he now
thinks he is a train. I need to stop asking questions because the shed is full of things a little boy should not know. I think that’s where Pop keeps his playing cards with the pictures of naked women. But I don’t know what that has to do with my Auntie Beryl or if she has ever been inside our shed. Anyway Pop does not go into our shed anymore because he is not allowed out on his own now that his tongue hangs out all the time.

I almost jumped out of my bedroom window onto the shed roof once. I was trying to escape from Tommy who was a screaming, bloodthirsty Comanche Indian. I was a cowboy but I don’t like heights so I just ducked when he tried to scalp me with our coal shovel.

It’s very dark inside our shed. That is why I keep my secret box of matches in my pocket at all times. I’ve never lit a match before and I’ve never lit a candle. It glows and makes lots of shadows in the dark. Bad things and shadows in the dark.

I don’t like those shadows. I don’t like those bad things.

16

I
am never going in that bloody shed again. It is full of terrible things. Pop probably killed someone in there. God knows it was much better being back in the warm with Nana, singing along to Freddie and the Dreamers on
Ready, Steady, Go!

You were made for me,
Everybody tells me so.
You were made for me,
Don’t pretend that you don’t know…

And Margueretta was dancing with Sam and he was twirling her around and we could all see her knickers again. And they were smiling at each other like they knew a secret.

The telly was really loud and that is why we never heard those people banging on our front door. And we never lock our front door, which is why those people didn’t wait for us to hear them and they came bursting in and ran down our passageway. That was the end of Freddie and the Dreamers singing “You Were Made For Me.”

“What in God’s name is going on?” Nana shouted.

“Did you know your shed is on fire?” they shouted back.

Now that is a stupid question, if you ask me, because if we knew our shed was on fire we would not be dancing and singing along with Freddie and the Dreamers. No, we would be outside throwing a bucket of water on it.

But no one seemed to care because everyone was running down the passageway to the kitchen and out through the scullery and the backdoor and into the backyard.

“How in God’s name did our shed catch on fire?” Nana yelled.

The fire engine was bright red and shiny and made a fantastic clanging sound when it came down the street. And they ran their hoses all the way through our house to the backyard. I really wanted Tommy to see it but he’s still not my best friend anymore.

“Quick! For God’s sake, it will burn down the whole bloomin’ street!” shouted the woman from next door.

Nana ignored her because she is spying on us. But the fire was quite big and the flames were reaching up to my bedroom window and that’s the problem with a shed that’s on fire when the shed is built against the back of your house. And our house is in a row with all the other houses so the woman from next door was right because it could burn down the whole bloody street. And that’s why they had to get another fire engine.

“Stand back! Stand back!” shouted the Fire Chief because all the windows were exploding.

“Stand back! Stand back! Choo-choo! Choo-choo goes the train!” shouted Pop.

Then all the other neighbors came into our backyard because they heard the fire engines and that’s how the whole street knew our shed was on fire and they would rather watch our shed burning down than watch Freddie and the Dreamers. And the women and children screamed each time one of the windows exploded but I didn’t scream. I just stayed quiet and watched the sparks floating up into the dark sky over the roof of our house.

Everyone cheered when the firemen put out the last of the flames and Nana made them all cups of tea.

“How in the world did our shed catch on fire?” asked Nana.

“Sheds don’t just burst into flame on their own,” said the Fire Chief.

“Och, that’s right enough!”

“I think it’s reasonably certain that someone left a candle burning in there.”

“A candle? But no one was in the shed.”

“Well, someone was in there and that person left a candle burning on the shelf.”

“It was me!” I shouted.

So I deserved to be locked in the cellar. And they took away my matches. The Fire Chief said that he should really call the police and have me arrested and I would go to jail. I don’t want to go to jail and never see my mum and dad again so it is better that I am locked in the cellar in the dark.

And it’s here with me. It’s whispering.

Drip, drip, drip.

But I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it whisper. I want it to kill my sister. Not me. Go into her bedroom again and kill her. Go inside her head like all those other voices.

Sometimes I think I can feel it. It feels like something is touching my arm in the dark. I can’t scream because then it will hear me and know where I am. Even though it has eyes bulging out of its head, I don’t think it can see. Nana says we would all go blind if we lived in the dark. That thing has been living in the dark for a long time. Blind in the dark.

Dear Jesus, save me. Please, Jesus.

17

I
must apologize to everyone for burning down the shed—and I must pay for it. Nana has given me a pair of her bloomers and one of Pop’s shirts. It’s the one he spilt his tomato soup on last week and the stain won’t come out. He can only eat soup now because Nana has taken away his teeth because his tongue no longer fits in his mouth and he kept biting it.

She has also given me a Woolworth’s paper bag, six pairs of my dad’s socks, and all of last week’s copies of the
Daily Mirror
. I have to screw up all the newspaper and stuff it down her bloomers. And Nana has taken her lipstick out and she has drawn a face on the paper bag, which makes it look a little bit like a clown.

Emily is helping me and Nana says we have to make a gruesome tortured Guy, which we will then take out and ask for a, “Penny for the Guy!” A long time ago, a man called Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament but they caught him and tortured him and hanged him. Nana said they were supposed to cut out his guts while he was still alive but he jumped off the scaffold and broke his neck. I would not want someone to cut out my guts while I was still alive but I would also not like to be hanged. Nor do I know why someone would want to take off his shoes and hang himself in the toilet with his tie until his eyes bulged out like marbles when he was just supposed to be going for a wee. And then stay in the corner of our cellar waiting for a chance to kill us all in our beds.

Nana said we have to make our Guy look very realistic if we want to get a lot of pennies for the Guy but this is hard to do when he is wearing her knickers
and has a face that looks like a clown. However, Pop has started talking to the Guy so it must be quite realistic. Mind you, Pop also talks to the kettle.

I would like Mum and Dad to see our Guy but they are both in bed asleep. Mum is working the night shift and Dad spends most of the day in bed because he is up half the night playing funeral music on his organ to annoy that woman next door who is spying on us.

But I really want Mum and Dad to see our Guy.

“Och, that’s nae bother,” Nana said. “Go and wake them up! They’ll not mind. Show them your Guy!”

The Guy is actually bigger than me but I dragged it up the stairs with Emily and I was careful not to step in the hole because that would mean I would have to stay there with my foot caught for the rest of my life. Emily pushed the bedroom door open and it was not quite dark inside.

We crept across the bare floorboards and I said to Emily that she should wake Mum first and I will hold up the Guy for her to see. But Emily didn’t need to wake Mum because the floorboard creaked really loudly and Mum opened her eyes just as I was standing there behind the Guy.

“Aieeee! Aieeee! Aieeee!”

That’s when I knew that our Guy was very realistic. It’s one thing for Pop to talk to it but it must look very realistic to make my mum scream like that.

And although Dad never wakes up when you want him to, the screaming was so loud that he turned over to see what was going on and when he opened his eyes he started shouting.

“My God! Your bloody mother is in the room!”

By which he meant that he thought our Guy looked like Nana. He actually thought it
was
Nana, which is not very nice because it has a face made from a Woolworth’s paper bag and it looks like a clown. I will not tell Nana that Dad thought our Guy looked like her.

And then Dad tried to get out of bed really quickly but his leg was caught on the blanket and that made him fall halfway out of the bed and knock his piss pot flying and Mum turned over and hit him.

“How dare you say that thing looks like my mother!”

“Och, come out of there, wee ones. I told you not to wake them up,” Nana said from the bedroom door.

Nana said it was for the best to leave Mum and Dad to their fighting. So we dragged our Guy back down the stairs.

“I want you to stand on the steps outside the Conservative Club,” Nana said. “There’s a better class of people there. It’s dark now, but Pop will go with you. I told him to wave his arms when he sees someone coming.”

Margueretta flicked the back of my ear when Nana told her that she had to go too. And Nana gave me an empty cocoa tin and put two pennies in it and told me to rattle the can when people come by. She also said she wanted the two pennies back when we get home.

Pop is waving his arms already and we haven’t even left the kitchen. He looks like a windmill. With a tongue.

“Choo-choo goes the train! Stand back! Stand back!”

So here we are now on the steps of the Conservative Club and it’s dark and windy tonight. Pop is waving his arms like a lunatic and his tongue is lashing from side to side in the moonlight. But just as we got here, a gust of wind took our Guy’s head off and it sailed up into the air and over a wall into someone’s backyard. They will be really scared when they find that head, all gruesome and tortured. They will probably think it’s a real head and call the police. It will be a relief for them when they find out that it is just a Woolworth’s paper bag stuffed with my dad’s socks.

Margueretta has given Pop the Guy to hold. She never wanted to come here in the first place and she doesn’t want to hold the Guy. Besides, it means Pop can’t wave his arms around anymore, which is a blessing. So he’s holding the Guy up in front of him, without its head.

Someone is coming. It’s an old lady with glasses and a fur coat. She looks like she’s got a lot of money.

“Penny for the Guy, Missus!”

“My, what a realistic Guy.”

I knew it!

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

“Penny for the Guy, Missus!”

She’s moving up close to our Guy now and looking at Pop’s face, which looks a bit like he is the Guy because our Guy has no head.

“It is realistic! Yes, a very realistic Guy.”

She’s reaching into her purse for money. Nana’s plan is working very well. I will be able to pay for the shed and still have money left over, maybe for a bike.

“Stand back! Stand back! Choo-choo goes the train!”

It wasn’t Pop’s fault that the old lady thought he was the Guy. Still, she did give us a whole sixpence just before she screamed and ran into the Conservative Club.

A man is coming.

“Penny for the…”

“Fuck off!”

Margueretta thought that was funny but I thought it was very rude. I am absolutely not allowed to use that word and Nana washed my mouth out with carbolic soap the last time I said that word so I don’t even say that word inside my head now because God can even hear what you are thinking and He doesn’t want to hear someone saying that terrible word.

Margueretta has grabbed me by the hair because it’s all grown back now. And she’s swinging me around and my feet are off the ground.

“Choo-choo! Choo-choo goes the train!”

“Leave him alone! Leave him alone!” Emily is shouting.

“Stand back! Stand back!”

“Let him go!”

Around and around with my feet off the ground. Around and around we go. Spinning faster and faster by my hair.

“Wee! Wee!” Margueretta is shrieking with delight. “Wee! Wee!”