“At least we’ll get free school dinners now,” an unusual thing to say given the circumstances.
I was twelve and my friend, Mark Algacs, of Hungarian origin, was thirteen. He gave me a sideways glance, but didn’t comment. Mark had come round to ask if I was coming out to play. I told him that I couldn’t – that it didn’t seem right – given the circumstances.
I’m amazed as I look back on that day, the sixth of April 1977 at how calm everything and everyone seemed to be.
I’d got up at around eight o’clock and had found dad with his head in his hands sitting in his favourite chair next to the fire. He spoke a few words to me and asked me to go and pass them on to my brother, John, my elder by a year, who was still in bed.
John had been awake when I walked back into our room. He and I had shared a big double bed for as long as I could remember. To be honest I’d been protected from the fears of solitary sleeping - as long as I went to sleep with my hand on another human, I knew everything would be ok. It was alright, I’d grow out of it.
****
This particular episode of my life had begun about nine months earlier. Our holiday to see our family in Wick at the northernmost tip of Scotland had been truncated for some reason or another. We’d all returned home, me, mum, dad and John to our home in the middle of England.
“What about our summer holiday?” I’d asked. Not terribly tactful, but I didn’t know. I was only eleven and, being the baby of the family, I was protected from this sort of thing.
“It’s ok,” mum had assured me, “We’ve booked a caravan in Lowestoft for a week,”
Brilliant! Lowestoft was at the seaside with a beach and fairground and everything. The wonderful thing was that we wouldn’t have to endure our crusty relatives while we were there. It would just be the four of us.
It was fabulous. It was a scorcher. Mum, to protect us from the heat of the sun, had daubed us with butter. Sun protection hadn’t really been thought of back in those days – I think mum was probably planning to eat us afterwards.
****
“Mum, mum, help!!” I’d laughed as John chased me into the living room promising my untimely demise – I’d probably done something horrible to him in that typical nasty little brother way and was hoping that mum was going to bail me out.
Mum laughed too, “John, who’s your friend?”
Mum had been discharged from hospital the previous month with untreatable cervical cancer. The metastases had clearly spread to her brain. She didn’t recognise me. Me, her darling baby boy.
I said nothing.
****
“Mum’s dead,” I said. Being twelve, I hadn’t yet been blessed with the talent of softening the blow, “She died at 6.30 this morning.”
“You’re joking!” John blurted.
I wasn’t – and he knew I wasn’t.
We both went downstairs again to see dad, unmoved from his vigil next to mum’s bed.
“I thought he was joking…” no he didn’t.
Dad looked up wearily, “We’ll keep the curtains closed today – it’s a mark of respect.”
****
“Don’t drink any more whiskey Dad, you’ve had enough,” brave words for a thirteen year old.
“Right then,” Dad went to take off his jacket – both John and I knew that was Glasgow speak for “Take my whiskey from me and suffer the consequences”.
We both thought better of it.
“I won’t drink it all if you have a drink with me,”
“Ok Dad,”
“Ok Dad,”
We both believed that this was the only avenue open to us. He couldn’t drink any more – we had to help him. I went into the kitchen and I came back with two Tupperware beakers – a blue one for John and a pink one for me.
As I lay pissed on the sofa that afternoon I thought, “There has to be another way.”
****
“Go and wank your mum,” Kevin Simms was not the most genteel of children. He’d been expelled from two schools and it had been my misfortune to be sitting next to him on my return to school after mum’s death.
“My mum’s dead,” I was getting pretty good at saying that.
Hard man Kev cried.
****
“Hutch, you’re a wanker!” life had been getting a little tricky for me. John and I had been told by countless adults that we were to be ‘Strong for Dad’. Dad, in the meantime was spending all his time and money getting shitfaced on Bells whiskey.
We’d gone from a life of relative affluence to being two of the smelly kids at school. We didn’t have toothpaste, or shampoo, or new clothes, or food for that matter. I’d learned the art of arriving at friends’ houses just as tea was going on the table. I’d exchange friendly flannel for a meal.
“Oh, Mrs Irvine, no-one fries an egg quite like you…”
“Is that a new dress Mrs Mc Lachlan? It really shows off your eyes…”
I couldn’t sustain my happy-go-lucky demeanour all the time. At times I found anger welling inside me for seemingly no reason.
When I shouted, “Hutch, you’re a wanker,” I’ll admit it was ill-conceived. Hutch was the hardest guy in our year - a notorious nutter who’d been through a number of schools because of management problems.
No matter, I was only a hundred yards or so from home – I had at least a twenty-five yard head start on him – there’s no way he’d catch me.
Unfortunately, Hutch was also the fastest runner in our year. He caught me with little trouble. He rapidly wished he hadn’t. I don’t think he managed to hit me once as I exploded with the fury of a boy whose mum had died and whose life had turned to shit.
“Chris Young beat up Hutch,” flew around school.
Marvellous – I was the smelly kid and now I was a nutter.
****
“What did you have for breakfast?” Mr Booth, our woodwork teacher, stood over me in his office next to the craft room.
I hadn’t eaten for about a week. I couldn’t believe I’d actually fainted in his class. I couldn’t believe I’d vomited bile all over his feet when I woke up.
This could have been a turning point. I could have told him everything. The thing was, I was terrified of me and John being put into care.
“Cornflakes,” I lied.
****
“Just die you cunt, die…” I was lying in my bed having heard the clatter and crunch as dad had fallen downstairs following yet another drunken binge. I lay there for two hours praying that he’d die soon. He groaned incoherently for all that time. John eventually woke up, saw him at the foot of the stairs and did the right thing. The ambulance arrived and took him to hospital. He’d fractured his neck. With time and rehabilitation he regained his ability to walk and talk. The pins and needles in his right hand never went away.
****
“Linda, we can’t do this ever again,” I was fifteen when I told my sister Linda, sixteen years my senior, that I wouldn’t sleep with her any more.
“But I love you,”
“We can’t,”
“But I’m pregnant,”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve had two children Christopher. A woman knows.”
She and my older brother David had vanished from the scene shortly after mum had died. They’d had family commitments. I’d finally cracked and gone to Linda’s in search of help. It was lovely – she and her husband Tom had welcomed me in when I visited. We’d listen to music from the ‘60’s. She’d welcome my friends round. She groomed me and abused me.
For three months I sat on that terrible piece of information until one day I could stand it no more, “Linda, are you still pregnant?”
“No, I never was, it was a false alarm,”
****
“What does the C and A stand for on your jacket?”
I was fifteen when I was approached by a guy in the queue for the chip shop. I had an old army surplus jacket on – me and my friends had had a bit of fun with those initials, “Captain America,” I smiled.
The guy mumbled something and wandered off. I purchased my mandatory potato fritters and wandered off into the night.
“Captain America’s a wanker!” a voice shouted behind me.
I turned to be met with the full force of a bottle cracking me on the skull. Roy Tait, my assailant, proceeded to beat me unconscious, ultimately by stamping on my head.
****
Don’t kids just say the darnedest things?