Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (13 page)

‘Mmm, these are the best sprouts ever!'

But Gran was already walking through to the kitchen so I spat them onto my plate again and waited for the telling-off that never came because Ma was staring at Doug's back and sawing through her chicken thigh.

*

The communal bin area right outside Balfour Court was called the Bin House but was just a rectangular low-roofed shed full of giant iron bins, holding rank sacks of shitty nappies, leftover dinners and whatever else no one wanted.

Ma said by the summer the stench would be lethal and Doug said, ‘Happy New Year,' in a flat, hard voice. I looked at the dark cloud of flies buzzing above the bins, felt itchy and went to wait outside.

Craigneuk was one of the worst parts of Airdrie, full of ‘crims, junkies an' neds', and Balfour Court the worst high-rise because it was so close to the Bin House. Our flat, on the top floor, was the worst in any tower block because even if the lift was working, and it usually wasn't, you had to get into the piss-stinking metal box full of shattered glass and baggy, milky condoms, trying to hold your breath until the nineteenth floor.

The flat had no furniture except for a cooker, two beds and a sofa. Ma said we'd need to ask for a community grant or some vouchers from the social to make it homely.

Like Ma said, the kitchen was brand new but you could still see the pale brown scorch on the ceiling where a chip-pan fire had started, and that scared Ma so much Doug went out and got a thick coil of orange rope from a skip.

‘What'll we do with that then? Tie the fire up?'

‘I'll tie yis to it and I'll lower yeh down.'

‘Twenty fuckin' floors with a fire raging behind.
Really
?'

‘Aye,
really
. Unless yeh'd rather depend on the lift?'

But from our balcony you could see the other blocks, grey-gloved fingers stretching for the winter sky, and when it snowed, a few days after New Year's, I tilted my face, stuck out my tongue and truly believed I was getting every snowflake first.

*

In Craigneuk you had to be Catholic or a Proddy. The first time someone asked me I didn't know what to say. Ma said I should say I was waiting till I was a grown-up to decide, but Doug had a word later.

‘Tell them yer a Catholic, Janie, an' a Celtic supporter, an' so is all yer family who're here in Airdrie.'

The next time I was standing watching a group of girls play and they asked me, I did as he said. In no time we were running about the estate shouting, ‘Yeh're all just Huns an' yeh can lick our bums. Celtic fer champions – that's right! Rangers and Proddies go eat shite!' Then climbing into skips and bringing home sodden teddies and one-eyed dolls.

Ma was raging. ‘I'm not having my daughter turn into some bigot just tae fit in. Some things are more important than fitting in.'

Doug took a sip of Buckfast. ‘On this estate there's nothin' more important than not standin' out. An' you're the one that landed us here, 'member.'

Ma could never bear to admit she'd been wrong about Craignuek so let me run around shouting that Proddies could eat shite until one morning, when my pals had gone to Mass and I was bent over a rusty bike Doug had ‘found' for me, getting my fingers blackened with chain oil trying to get it back on, a boy, maybe fourteen or so, picked up half a paving slab and dropped it on my head.

Later Ma said I must have a strong head because I heard the thud but didn't cry until I felt the blood trickling into my ear, sticky as golden syrup. I left my bike where it fell and ran home crying while the boy laughed behind me.

‘That'll teach yeh, yeh fuckin' wee Fenian.'

Ma washed the cut, said I didn't need stitches but I'd have a big bump, and made me tea with sugar in. News must have spread from one of the glinting square windows because the boy's ma came to the door and I heard her from the sofa saying, out of breath from climbing the nineteen flights of stairs, how embarrassed she was by her Peter, and that he'd have a hot arse when he got home that night. And Ma replied, ‘Embarrassed, are yeh? Well, yeh should be – yer boy's a wee fuckin' animal!' and slammed the door.

When she came in she threw a box of jelly babies to me and suddenly it all seemed worth the headache and bump. Doug looked up from the
Daily Record
crossword. ‘Iris, yeh've no idea how tae deal with people here. Yeh can't just slam doors in faces, especially well-meaning ones like hers.'

Ma clanked dishes in the sink. ‘Well, I survived Monarch Aveue by myself so I'll have no bother taking on Balfour Court without your help thank you very fuckin' much.'

I felt a row brewing. ‘Ma? Did that boy's ma bring me these then? That was nice.'

‘Oh, jelly babies, big fuckin' deal! They only cost her a pound.'

I looked at the shiny yellow box. ‘Maybe she didnae have much money, an' it's a Sunday an' all.'

‘Janie –' Ma came through wiping her wet hands on her jeans – ‘when will you learn when it's a good time tae shut up!' She slammed the door and I looked over at Doug who kept on chewing his betting-shop pen and filling in the little squares with all the answers.

*

Nearly everyone was school dinners at my new school, so I was just one of the gang who jealously watched the few packed-lunch kids sit at their separate table with their Penguins, KitKats and bags of crisps with little blue sachets of salt to shake in.

I hung around with the same girls from the estate, practising dance routines from
Grease
and doing each other's hair. The school was Roman Catholic but Ma told the teacher we weren't Catholic and had no intention of converting. The teacher said I'd still have to do my prayers with the rest of the class. And so I did my Hail Marys and Our Fathers in the morning, before and after playtime, lunchtime and hometime, and more if we were naughty or talked back. By the second week they tripped from my lips as easily as ‘Humpty Dumpty' while I wondered what the pudding would be at lunchtime.

Ma let me walk home with my pals after school if I promised not to climb into any skips or go to the garages where the glue sniffers went. One evening, when I was almost at the door and hurrying to try and see
Simon and the Witch
, I heard shouts coming from the Bin House. I poked my head into the thick dark air and I saw four boys, three with planks of wood and the fourth, the boy who had dropped the slab on my head, holding a taped-up tennis racket. The littlest boy's job was to bang the bin with his stick and drive out all the brown birds who, for want of nooks and crannies on tower blocks or any trees, had built their nests in the rafters of the Bin House.

As the birds raced from their hiding places with panicked wings, the boys swung their weapons through the air. Sometimes they'd get lucky and there'd be a sickening thud against the side of a wall or bin and a bird would fall to the floor fluttering its wings pointlessly. Judging from the floor they'd been at it for a while.

My lungs burned by the time I'd run up the stairs and because every lungful of air brought a fresh sob it took a while to get the story out. I kept thinking of the bird's shadowy outline stuttering away on the filthy floor.

‘What if they're the ma birds an' they have chicks? How will the babies get worms? You've got tae stop them.'

I didn't even try Doug, halfway down his nightly bottle of Buckfast, and bent over the Betamax video player Sammy had got him off the back of a lorry. He turned to me. ‘Janie, yer too sensitive. Toughen up, they're just birds.'

But Ma was already pulling her trainers on, smoothing a jumper over her little bump.

By the time we got downstairs the boys were gone, probably to feed their nicely built-up appetites, and all that was left was seven or eight flickering shadows on the floor.

‘Janie, go outside an' wait.'

I watched from the door as Ma, her face grim and turned away, pushed her foot against every bird until there was a crunch under her trainer. She came out breathing hard through her nose, an oily sheen of sweat on her face.

‘Janie, always put a dumb animal out of its misery; even if it hurts you more than them.'

Upstairs, Doug was in his armchair and all that was left of the yellow-labelled green bottle were black sticky dregs. He popped a can of lager open – ‘Too soft, the both of yeh' – then turned back to his
Rambo
video. The sound buzzed and the screen fizzed with white but after a bottle of Buckfast and his four cans he'd barely notice.

*

When Ma got really big, and she said the stairs were killing her back, they started rowing every day again. They started because Doug was in charge of getting the shopping, and because he wouldn't wander around the supermarket once a week with a trolley and a list, ‘like a woman', he had to go each day to the local Spar. He'd return three hours later covering the smell of beer with a Polo mint like a teenager at a school disco.

The rows would've come sooner if that van hadn't come round the estate. Two men with grim faces stood in the back, giving out free slabs of orange cheese, blocks of finger-dented butter and cans with white labels that just said Stewed Meat. Ma said it was from the farmers' mountains. Doug complained he'd had to queue with our benefit books for half an hour to get it when I spat out the stew as soon as it was in my mouth then took a bite of rubbery cheese to take away the taste.

The afternoon the big rows really started was when he brought back two dented tins with 20p written in marker pen on their tops, a roll of
Woman's Own
magazines from 1981 for Ma and a placepot betting slip. Ma heaved herself from the sofa and stared at the tins.

‘What am I meant tae do with these? Where's the wee bit of mince or the cheese? I can't make a spag bol with one tin of tomatoes an' another of peas.'

Doug grinned and waved the placepot slip. ‘This ship'll come in an' then we won't need the spag bol. Sure thing, it'll be a takeaways an' piss-ups fer the next week.'

But Doug's ship got lost on the way, so he drank, smoked and watched his fuzzy videos and Ma veered between rattling the dishes in the sink in a fury and crying in the bedroom when she thought I was out playing. When Doug saw Ma crying he would stub out his roll-up and pause his video patiently and go and rub Ma's back telling her everything was going to be fine and that this was just her hormones. But it never was fine because on his way to the Spar he could never resist the off-licence, pub or betting shop.

‘Food out of mine, Janie's an' yer unborn child's mouths, yeh selfish fuckin' fuck!'

I couldn't make it better for Ma, she didn't seem to even want to see me, and I thought that once the baby and hormones came out she'd get back to normal. I stayed out as late as I could with my pals and we'd go ‘Skip Hunting' or spy on the glue sniffers at the burnt-out garages giggling at their druggy rantings and scabby faces.

A few weeks before Ma's due date she started cleaning and said she was ‘nesting'. Money was tighter than ever and she thought of new ways to save a few pounds; bulk-buying bargain washing-up liquid to wash our bodies, hair, dishes and clothes with and making big soup pans of potato curry or vegetable chilli for the week.

One night I got back from Skip Hunting with a few scraps of teddy-bear fur and one brown plastic eye to make something for the baby. As soon as I stepped in the hall I could smell the curry; in the kitchen the huge soup pan was on its side on the green lino, a gash of yellow curry reaching across the carpet and right up the wall.

Ma sat slumped on the floor with her back to the cooker having a cry. I tried to cuddle her but she shrugged me away. There was nothing to do but put down my scraps of fur and start picking up the still hot pieces of potato from the floor until Ma spoke through her gulps of breath.

‘Janie, just put them beside the sink. They'll be fine with a wash.'

The week of the curry Grandma came down on the National Express and as soon as she was inside the door, complaining about how her ankles had swelled to the size of grapefruits in the heat, Ma clung to her like she was the single piece of driftwood in a wild sea.

After a special dinner of pork chops that Ma had braved the stairs to go and buy, we settled back on the sofa and waited for Grandma to dish out some pearls of wisdom, but she just brought a bottle of sherry out of Aggie's wheelie suitcase and spent the night giggling with Doug and giving him playful smacks on his knee.

When they had finished the bottle and Doug said he'd run out to the ‘offie' if someone had some cash, Ma and I went through to the bedroom where I sewed my skip fur into a blob with an eye and Ma paced the room bow-legged and furious.

The next day Grandma was sent back to Aberdeen with a hangover and a put-upon face and Doug spent the whole day at Sammy's. ‘Helping him with a job.' Which was the truth if the job was a full bottle of whisky and games of gin rummy.

*

I was out playing the day that the baby started hammering on Ma's womb. I came back to find Doug's ma, hair wilder than usual, sitting in silence on the sofa. She hadn't even made herself a cup of tea.

‘Gran, what are yeh doing here? Where's Ma?'

‘Yer wee brother or sister's come, so they've gone off in the ambulance.'

I stomped to the TV and switched it on. How could they just leave me with Gran who wouldn't even turn on the TV or boil a kettle for a cup of tea herself? Who'd make my dinner?

After a while Gran said she would give me 50p for the ice-cream van if I'd make her a cup of tea and say a few Hail Marys with her for the new baby. We sat side by side on the sofa with heads bowed, muttering, and I wondered whether the baby liked lolly pops or Wham bars. It would have to be something it could suck on.

Coming back up the stairs with my Monster Munch and a cherry lolly I saw Mrs Mac on her knees bleaching her landing. She probably spent half her pension and most of her life trying to get rid of the piss smell outside her door and I wished I'd used my Hail Mary to ask for people to hold it. At least until they got to their own floor.

*

We called her Tiny until a name was given. I stopped thinking I'd have to plant a poo in a corner because even though she was a ‘good baby' and had soft, dark hair like fur, she couldn't talk and her face scrunched up when she cried.

Ma was tired when she came back from the hospital and for weeks she said she couldn't think about moving from bed. I would go in and see her and she'd show me Tiny's soft pulsing spot on her head that I should never touch and the way to hold the feeding bottle so she wouldn't get wind.

Because Ma slept a lot Tiny became my little doll. I ran home to feed her and Doug said that I was the nappy-changing monitor. I didn't mind, it made me feel important, running and telling Ma whether the nappy contents were yellow and greasy or more brown, that they smelt like popcorn.

Doug made the dinners, a roll-up sticking out of one side of his mouth while the other side muttered about women's work. Dinner was always egg, chips and beans when he cooked.

Sometimes Ma came through and ate with us in front of the telly and on the nights she didn't Doug would shrug and say, ‘She's just tired. Having a baby's hard work, no need tae worry.'

But when Ma did come out, Doug would stare hard at her over his egg, chips and beans and ask, ‘Have yeh any idea when yeh might be up tae getting out of your dressing gown?'

‘No, I don't actually. Why? Is deep-frying whatever's in the larder too much trouble fer yeh?'

He speared the yolk of his egg. ‘Naw, course not, I'm just wondering. I know Janie misses seeing her ma up and dressed.'

Ma gave me a sharp look. ‘What have you been saying?'

‘Nothing, Ma, honest, I like visiting you an' Tiny in bed.'

Doug slammed the HP bottle down. ‘Fer God's sake, woman, yeh've had a rest but it's time tae get up. I'll have yeh know my mammy had four of us and there was never this kind o' carry-on. My da wouldnae have had it.'

Ma pulled her dressing gown around her. ‘Don't think I can't see what yer doing. Both of yeh. Just leave me be an' eat yer fuckin' egg, chips an' beans.

*

That night Doug caught me hanging out of the window with Tiny squeezed under one arm and puffing talcum powder into the air with my other hand. I felt the hard slap on the back of my legs before I saw him and then he grabbed Tiny.

‘Yeh little madam. Have I no' enough tae worry about without you playin' up?'

The talc misted my eyelashes and left a silky layer on my cheeks but all I felt was the burn on the backs of my legs and my temper battering to get out.

‘It's snow! I wanted tae show Tiny but it's not snow time fer ages.'

Tiny started bawling in his arms, flailing her arms.

‘You stupid wee girl! If it's no' you it's yer bloody lunatic ma.'

He walked towards the kitchen and I followed, fists clenched at my sides. ‘Don't you speak about my ma! I hate you. You made Ma sick an' now she won't talk tae me an' yeh can't even change Tiny's nappy.'

‘Go to yer room.'

‘No. Yer not my da. You drink all the shopping money an' you made Ma sick an' now she's in bed all the time. An' Ma said she only ever loved my da and, and, look, even Tiny hates yeh.'

‘Is that so?' He spoke very quietly and handed me Tiny. ‘Take her then.'

I followed him, Tiny wailing in my arms, towards the front door. ‘Aye! Ma says all the time we'd be better of without you cause . . .' I didn't want to finish, I'd gone too far, but I couldn't stop, ‘cause yer a sponger an' a waster, she says.'

Slam.

He didn't come home for three days after that but at least it got Ma out of bed. Even though she did cry a lot.

*

Two weeks later I came home to find Tiny screaming in her cot and Ma shivering in cold, murky bathwater. In the living room Ma's purse lay emptied and open on the floor. There was no sign of Doug.

I left Ma where she was and tried to remember how to make a bottle for Tiny. Eight and a bit months of marriage, four weeks of fatherhood and seventeen plates of egg, chips and beans later, and Doug had left us all alone in Craigneuk, up shit creek without a paddle. And it was all my fault.

*

Ma walked into town the next morning, with Tiny in the buggy that had never lost the bleach stink from Ma's scrubbing after Doug had found it in the Bin House. She went to the social to ask for a crisis loan because of her purse and they said if she was saying it was theft, and she clearly was, she'd need a crime number.

‘As if I'd lie about something like that – bureaucratic fucks!'

At the police station they looked at her and Tiny with pity while she filled out the form.

‘An' the last thing, Janie, I'll ever accept is pity.'

She told me over our Campbell's Mushroom Soup dinner, the words rushing out while her soup got a grey skin on it, and her toast lay without a single set of teeth marks. She told me, Tiny's oblivious sleeping head resting on her shoulder, of the shame of walking into town on a hot day with the reek of bleach chasing them down the road. Of all the buses that passed and the way she smiled and waved the driver on as though she loved walking fifty minutes in the blazing sun with a month-old baby.

‘I've been in some scrapes but I've never, ever had not a soul tae ask a loan off.'

She didn't tell the police about Doug, she just said someone grabbed her purse while she was getting it out at the shops. When I asked why she didn't tell them, so they could find him and put him in prison, she said, ‘There are some things, Janie, yeh've got tae be a grown-up before yeh understand.'

I put my whole spoon into my mouth and bit down on the silvery taste to stop myself from confessing.

‘Janie, stop fuckin' around with yer spoon. Yeh've still half a bowl of soup tae finish.'

‘Was it on purpose, Ma? That he took the money on a Monday?'

Ma said nothing, poked at the skin on her soup with a corner of toast, and I thought maybe I should learn when to shut up but instead I said, ‘I'm sorry. I'll help look after Tiny an' you, Ma, if you need looking after.'

And I meant it.

*

We informed the social of our ‘change in circumstances' and got a few more pounds each week because Ma was now officially a Single Parent like they talked about all the time on TV-am in the mornings.

Two weeks after she reported her change in circumstances, the social sent an inspector to see if Ma was lying about her husband leaving us, because apparently lots of people did for those extra few pounds. The inspector seemed sad Doug wasn't to be found hiding in the toilet or under the bed, that he really had done a runner.

‘And I see here, Mrs –'

‘It's Miss now, Miss Ryan.'

‘Fine. I see, Miss Ryan, you also had to ask for a crisis loan due to yer purse being stolen? Quite a few weeks for you, my love, what with a new baby on top of it all.'

Ma put her hands on her hips and jutted her elbows. ‘Aye, actually it has been. But what can I say? The bairn does nuclear shites and he wasnae man enough fer the nappy-changing.'

They shared a laugh and then the room fell silent until he said he should really be going. At the door Ma said she couldn't manage the stairs with a buggy and somehow that inspector, who liked Ma's joke, got us to the top of the housing list for rehoming.

*

My memory of Ma in those weeks, just before we got our new flat, is of her under the heavy duvet, though it was August and scorching. The duvet fell over her limp body like drifted sand. The only way I knew it was my ma was because of the dark dimple at the corner of her mouth and a scribble of black eyelashes on the pale peace of her face. The room always smelt sweet and thick and I would open the window a crack, reach under the duvet and take off her socks so her feet wouldn't get too hot.

When I started back at school and she still didn't get up, I wanted to jump on the bed and throw the duvet out the window to watch it sail down to the filth below. I wanted to drag her out of bed by the hair.

One night she wouldn't take even one bite of the cornflake cake I'd made at school though I'd carried them home in my empty Flora tub as carefully as if they had been baby animals.

I pressed one to her clenched lips and when she swatted my hand away I told her she was a rubbish, lazy ma and I wanted to go back to Nell's house where everyone got dressed and no one slept all day but just at night-times.

‘You want tae go back to care, do yeh?' She was up then, jabbing a finger at my shoulder, speaking in a fierce, hissing whisper. ‘Well, fine, because I'm fuckin' sick of yeh, yeh ungrateful brat. I'll take yeh to social services in the morning an' Tiny too though they'll split yeh up and then I'll finally, FINALLY, get some fuckin' peace!'

I bit my top lip with my bottom teeth and stared at my cornflake cakes looking innocent in the Flora tub, as though they hadn't caused all this, then I looked up at Ma and she grabbed the tub and threw it against the wall.

‘In fact, no! I'll take yeh tonight. Go on! Pack yer things . . . I said fuckin' go.'

Tiny had started to cry in her crib and I walked over to her.

‘Don't you touch her! I'm warning yeh, I'm the grown-up here. I'm the ma!'

Her lips were white at the edges; she had flecks of spit down her dressing gown.

I ran to my room and stuffed things into my school bag with shaky hands: books, pants, a jumper for when it was winter, the furry one-eyed blob I'd sewn for Tiny. Then I sat on the bed and waited for her to come and take me back to Nell or somewhere else at least.

She knocked on the door, three hard taps, and came and sat next to me.

‘Yer all packed then?'

Her voice was soft, jokey even. I said nothing.

‘Well, I think they'll have closed now. We'll have tae wait until tomorrow if yeh want to go, though I'd like yeh tae stay. Listen, Janie, I went to the doctor last Monday and he says I'm very depressed. Do yeh know what that means?'

I imagined Ma being squeezed, pressed down by some invisible force, her legs crumpling like paper.

‘It means I get really sad an' the doctor gave me some tablets but they take a wee while tae work an' until they do I'm just trying tae get through as best I can fer you an' fer Tiny.' I looked up, saw her take a big gulp. ‘In the meantime, will yeh forgive yer sad auld ma?'

Then I saw. Like peeling back sunburned skin I saw the raw red underneath and once I'd started peeling I couldn't stop, even when it started to hurt. I saw the dark smudges under her eyes, the nervous fidgeting fingers and the white sweat rings on her T-shirt.

I kissed her in the space between her hair and the top of her ear and gave her hot back a rub. ‘I love yeh, ma, and Tiny too, she loves yeh.'

She gave a small smile then her face turned hard again. ‘An', Janie? Not a word about this tae anyone outside these four walls, do yeh understand? This is private. We're fuckin' lambs to the slaughter without Doug here an' they'd have a field day with us.'

I nodded and cold, white prickles filled my arms and legs. Not because I was scared of what was outside, but because Ma looked filled with horrors and I was scared of what was inside those four walls.

*

They moved us to the next estate; a straight ten-minute walk away from Craigneuk and there weren't tower blocks but tenements. Outside our ground-floor flat we had a scrap of grass and a concrete square where kids swung from the single, bent goalpost bar.

Ma made me go out and invite those kids to my birthday the following week. She even made me invite the boy with the harelip and when he pulled a box of Roses chocolates from behind his back with a big smile I felt shamed she'd had to force me at all.