The Tin-Kin (11 page)

She turned it off and thought about fetching Maeve, then changed her mind. She could hear the children playing, enjoying themselves. Dawn was fidgeting, biting her nails. She’d always been a bag of nerves. A fidget-fodget-foo! Shirley used to call her that. It was true. You could always tell when something was getting to her because she’d have to start pulling her split-ends, chewing her cuticles, biting the inside of her mouth, the fleshy seam where the top and bottom teeth press together. Those were her bad habits, her wee things. You could always catch her at them when she couldn’t settle to something.

She loved flicking through her music collection, the tapping sound, the way the cassette boxes clung to each other, fitted into place. They stood each one identical to the next. She could run a finger along the top of the smooth black edge and the pattern was regular as a railroad track. Clickety clack, clickety clack.

Clickety clack, don’t look back.

Her house with Warren had been near the railway track. She used to lie next to him at night and listen for the goods trains pulling themselves through the night. She would close her eyes, feel the rhythm of the wheels in the empty space that was growing inside. Clacking and rolling. CLACKING AND
ROLLING. There were words in the noise of the carriages clattering by.

GETTOUTFROMMUNDERIM

GETTOUTFROMMUNDERIM

GETTOUTFROMMUNDERIM

GETTOUTFROMMUNDERIM

GETTOUTFROMMUNDERIM

The day Dawn left, Shirley pressed a handful of notes in her palm and said exactly the same thing. You’ve waited a long time for that baby. You fly away, if you know what’s good for you both.

   BURNS   

Wee Betsy, 1954

Some heelabalow! Mammy mutters that she’s not waiting up for that drunken lout. She has a sore head.

‘Why can yer daddy nae be mair like yer uncle Jock?’ she sighs.

His dinner’s left out, though, like always, and the fire’s still hissing in the grate when we go to bed. Rachel and me curl together at the bottom end, under our own itchy blanket. Mammy and Nancy sleep the normal way. I lie wide awake, listening to the rain. It’s soft except when the wind blows, and then it’s like seeds scattering. It leaves long spitty droplets on the window – posh ladies’ earrings. I’ve a pain in my stomach, wishing I could eat some biscuits, but I don’t know where Mammy put them, and I’d be in bad trouble if I ate someone else’s share. There’s a dry crust wired into the mousetrap, but I’ll not go near that. That’s dirty. I roll over and stare at the ceiling.

You hear the mice scrabbling as soon as everyone shuts up and stops rumbling about. So the trap’s set in front of the fire each night, and usually it’s been tripped by morning. You’d think they’d learn, wouldn’t you? They never do.

We’re studying a poem by Robert Burns at school called ‘To a Mouse’. I’m reading a couple of verses at the public speaking contest. I’m sure Miss Webster thinks I’m the best in the class, cause she keeps saying it sounds like I really care about the wee mouse, but I’d rather do a different poem. When I read this one out, all I can think of is Daddy setting the trap. And I think of the mornings, him wiping mouse guts off the wire.

The trap goes SNAP! Almost cuts the mousey in two. Other mornings it’s still wriggling when we get up. Sometimes you think it’s dead and then it moves its tongue or a paw, sad-looking, like it knows. Daddy beats the live ones with the poker and I have to turn away. When I look back he’s swinging them by the tails, lifeless as bootlaces. He slings the dead bodies on the fire and the flames dart up and eat them, like in Hell, where the Hornie lives.

Daddy’s boots come pounding up the stairs, back from the McPhees’. I know there’s a mouse already caught. The spring released just now. CRACK. Same sound as the heidie’s belt spitting down on Bertie Topp’s palm.

We don’t get hit at home. Granny says the men can pummel their fists and mar with each other all they like, but they’ll no put a hand on a bairn while she’s still got a breath in her body. Daddy tries to get me when I’m cheeky, mind, if Granny’s not looking. He can catch Rachel, but I’m too fast.

My heart starts to beat heavy in time with Daddy’s footsteps. I know there’s going to be trouble. We had the tobies round after him. Granny whispered
shaness!
She had to lie. She said he was out of town, and no, we hadnae a clue where he was. Of course,
I
knew, but I kept my gob shut tight. Not a squeak when that lot come a-sniffing.

I snuck round the back. Daddy was there with the McPhee men. We cry them ‘Spotty McPhees’, and they cry us Whytes ‘Plugs’. I don’t know why, it’s an old thing from the days when they all lived in tents. The men were chortling and snorting and pink with laughing, like a sty of spotty, pot-belly pigs right enough. I never talk to the McPhees. Daddy was taking a swig from a bottle, and no one even noticed me in the doorway till twice I said, ‘It’s the tobies, Daddy,’ and one of they McPhees said, ‘Aw, fuckin Hell,’ and another told me to ‘Get away back.’

Maybe they hid him after I was away, but they needn’t have bothered. The stupid tobies only searched Granny’s room,
emp-tied the contents of her press onto the floor as she watched, wringing her hands on a shirt she was mending. They tipped the table and broke a mug that was set there. Warm tea splashed onto the floor, and like Granny said, there was no need for that. There was no need at all. Not when you could see fine that Daddy wasn’t under the table. Not even a cloth on it. They smashed a bowl against the wall and it shattered right by Big Ellen’s head. Granny said it could have brought her baby early with the fright.

His footsteps are uneven, like he’s planting his feet in a snowdrift. That means only one thing. He’s drunk. I pray, please! Let him just collapse onto the wee sofa! Sometimes he gets fired up at Mammy for no reason at all and sends her out to the landing, where it’s freezing, no letting her in and crying her bad names.

The door slams. Mammy sits up. She must’ve been lying awake too.

‘Duncan, keep it doun! You’re makin a hell ae a noise.’

I close my eyes till I’m just peeking through the lashes and keep as still as I can, playing dead lions. Mammy gets to her feet and the two of them pace round and round the table where the Tilley lamp’s set, glowering like they’re in the ring, each eyeing the other, sizing for a fight. Can Mammy no see he’s in a bad mood? Why can’t she leave it till morning?

‘We’ve had the tobies here again, that cursed Munro family that’s aie on our backs. Are you proud ae yersel? The bairns have barely tasted food and you’re out gettin peevie. I can smell it on you.’

Daddy struggles to rip his coat off, and when he gets his arms free he throws it. The coat scoots over the floor and I hear a button skiting, a noise like a rolling marble. The coat hits the door and crumples, the cloth ruching up, as if it’s run away from Daddy and now he’s got it cornered. There’s nowhere for it to go, except press itself into the wall. That’s how Mammy stands when he scares her.

He shouts now, but Mammy shouts back, things that I don’t understand. It’s questions Daddy asks mostly. No one ever gives the answers.

‘Think you can gie me the lick ae your tongue?’ Mammy snaps at him. ‘You’re no better than the bloody racheries.’

‘Yer an auld bitch tae me, Curly,’ he growls at her, and I almost start greetin.

‘Drunk the bairns’ dinner money, haven’t you?’

‘Shut yer fff . . . or ah’ll fuckin murder you!’ Daddy slethers.

But Mammy’s still horn-mad and shouting, so he raises his voice above hers. ‘Ah’m nae deif! you want the hale bloody world tae be listenin?’

This makes Mammy even wilder. She slams the table and Rachel jumps. I hold tight onto her in the bed so she won’t get up and make things worse.

‘The hale bloody world can put their lip in my stummel!’ Mammy screams.

It goes quiet for a while, like Daddy doesn’t know what to do. She must have said a really bad, dirty thing. Big Ellen said my Mammy’s got a filthy mouth on her, terrible bad and typical of her breed, and that Daddy could have done better if he’d just waited. Mammy and Big Ellen don’t like each other much.

Daddy stumbles to the fireplace. I wonder what’s coming. I open my eyes wide, and through the shadows I see him pick something up. The mouse dangles by the tail, still alive, still caught in the contraption. Daddy brings it level with his face, fixes it there, laughs. The mouse twitches and its paws race hopelessly at the nothingness of the air. Daddy takes the poker. With each swing, a curse word.

But he doesn’t get the mouse. It’s flying back and forth like a pendulum, and every time the end of the poker comes towards it I think surely it’ll be goodbye, wee sleekit cowrin beastie this time. But Daddy tilts sideways with the motion, off target. Misses every time. He tries a couple of swings again, more
concentrated, making an animal kind of groan. First the poker goes too far to the left, then just below. His whole body’s off kilter.

‘Put that poker doun, Duncan! The bairns are watching.’

Mammy’s begging scared now. She doesn’t like him having the poker in his hands. But I think he looks funny. I’m nearly giggling. Daddy wobbles back, like he’s going to fall over his heels, and the poker drops from his fist. On the uneven floor, the handle starts trying to get away from the pointy end. It turns nearly a whole circle.

Daddy puts the hand that held the poker on the wall. Quietly then, he holds the wee mouse an inch over the hot coals. It takes me a while to stop smiling, like my mouth doesn’t know which way to go. Part of me wants to grin, bare my teeth. My eyelids peel, wider and wider as the mouse hangs in the red glow. It tries to get back from the heat. I hate him then. I hate Daddy for doing that to the wee mouse. I imagine the raw burning on its nose, the fairy thin paws, dry pain in its eyes. And I’ve my own pain, wanting to greet but my eyes too skinned, too watching.

‘This is how ah feel, Curly. Look. DEEK!’

But Mammy’s
not
looking. She covers her eyes, and Daddy finally kills the mouse, swinging it with an eeny meeny clap against the hearth. He prods it with a finger to check it’s dead.

Now there’s nothing except Rachel and Nancy snivelling. Daddy slumps into a chair. That’s it, I think. Mammy will come to us now, and he will stay there a while before crashing onto the sofa. I start greetin. Big tears fall from my cheeks and into Rachel’s hair. She’s tucked her face into my neck and I hold her tight. It’s gone quiet. Why doesn’t Mammy come?

I look. The pair of them are cheekie-for-chowie, him still sitting in the chair, head bowed like we do in assembly, face in his hands. Mammy stands, wrapping her arms round his shoulders, stroking his hair like she does ours.

More tears run down my cheeks. Big raindrops on the win-
dow. I gulp and press my face hard into the mattress while Mammy takes his boots off, undoes his trousers and puts him to bed on the sofa. She sighs as she kisses him goodnight.

You’d think nothing had happened the next morning. No one mentions anything except for the fine we’ve to pay that Munro manny, even though he owed
us
money. Granny says we’ll all pull together. She tells Mammy not to worry. ‘Watch yon daddy of yours,’ she says on the way to school with me. ‘No better than a kinchin hisself, needs someone lookin after him. Pity Duncan’s no got a heid on his shoulders, like Jock. Oh, me!’

At wee break, Sandra comes over. ‘Betsy, are you wanting ma apple core?’ I’ve not eaten a bite since yesterday, except for one of the biscuits I got off the cart, but I swallow and say, ‘No, thank you.’ She shrugs, kicks the apple core, and I watch it bounce and somersault over the ground to near my feet. Gravel sticks into the flesh and it looks like a grazed knee.

I watch Sandra skip back to her friends in her lovely red shoes. They look like the ruby slippers in the
Wizard of Oz
. If I had a pair like that I’d click the heels together three times, just like in the film, and say ‘There’s no place like home’ three times over.

After school I find Rachel sitting at Granny’s table. No one else seems to be around. She wants to play.

‘Okay,’ I say, thinking hard. It’s funny having a wee sister sometimes. She’ll do daft things just cause I tell her to. Once I got her into the shop asking for cinaminaminamin balls.