by Agnes Owens
It was rotten for me when Albie came home. He lay in bed all the time smoking or snorting dope. Worse still it was my bed, so I had to sleep on the big-room couch until one day he got up early, washed and shaved without saying a word, then left the house and was never seen again. At the evening meal mother started laying out a plate for him, though before that he had never come to the table. When the plate was emptied into the bin my Da said, ‘A waste of good food,’ though none of us would have eaten it anyway. I had never liked my older brother but became so bored that I wished he’d come home and liven things up. When he was here you never knew when the cops would come to the door because he’d done something. At school I had written a story about him for a composition, making him out to be wrongly accused of stealing money by a spiteful old-age pensioner. The teacher said this was not the kind of story she wanted and put a big cross through it. I was so angry I stayed off until the school board came to the door threatening Da with a fine. Between one thing and another we at last forgot all about Albie except my mother, who sometimes said he might have gone to Australia to live with a cousin of hers who had a sheep farm. Da said that was unlikely, since Australia would not let in a boy who could hardly write his own name.
Our house was in a long terrace built a century ago and owned by the council because the landlord had abandoned it. The roof leaked into the big room, as we called it, and the toilet needed fixing, but we couldn’t get the council to do repairs as my mother hardly ever paid the rent. But I liked living here because the terrace had big green fields behind where cows roamed at leisure and we had tons of room to play. My young brother would lie flat on his stomach and pretend to shoot at the animals with a toy gun he got for Christmas, while I played at peever on the cobblestone side lane with my trashy friends who seldom washed or went to school either. But gradually they all left for the new council flats and we were the last to go. After Albie left, the big snag in our lives was our Da. When drunk on Fridays he became increasingly violent so we took to hiding in the old washhouses. This was fine in summer after we dragged in mattresses to sleep on but we dreaded the coming of winter when it would be too cold to do that. But by a great stroke of luck Da snuffed it from drinking too much. Mind you, I cried about that. His violent nature was worsened by alcohol but still, he was our Da and not too bad to us when sober. Then next thing was mother taking to her bed with a bottle of Graham’s port that she kept under the pillow. She would say, ‘Your poor Da, how I miss him,’ and give me and my young brother a sip of it, after which he’d be sick on the carpet and I’d have to clean it up.
‘Don’t hit that child,’ my mother would say when I made to slap him. ‘He’s an orphan and the more to be pitied.’
This infuriated me for I was the only one who missed Da so I was even more to be pitied. Then one day, as if by a miracle, my mother got out of bed and poured the Graham’s port down the sink, tidied herself up and said she was going to look for a job because she was fed up with living on the dole and being the talk of the street.
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘What time will you be home at? I’ll have the dinner ready.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, and that’s when I began to worry.
‘You’re not leaving us?’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know how to take care of things.’
‘You’ll learn,’ she said and we never heard of her again. I might have cried my eyes out if I’d known she wasn’t coming back. It dawned on us gradually, though it was a terrible thing to happen. Luckily she had left the Family Allowance Book on the mantelpiece which got us food for the week if I was careful. On Saturdays me and my young brother would go for a walk round the duck pond and throw them crusts we didn’t want from our bread, especially the black crusts. I believe we were quite happy then, though it’s hard to imagine that now.
But things never went smoothly for us. Not long after that a social worker came to the door, the one who’d come about Albie, and asked why I was not at school. I don’t think she believed me when I said mother had gone off to find work and I had to look after my younger brother.
‘When was that?’ she said, maybe thinking I was talking about that morning. When I said two months her face took on an ominous look.
‘Two months?’ she shrieked. ‘I’ve never heard of anything so disgraceful. Get your coats on. You’re coming with me.’
We both kicked and struggled and I believe I would have got the better of her if a strange man hadn’t come in, got hold of us and pushed us into a van as if we were dogs being taken to the dog pound. My younger brother was yelling for my mother but I said nothing. I knew when I was beat. I never saw him again. All my family had gone and I was left on my own.
They put me in a hostel for wayward children and after a few months of that I was fostered by a very nice middle-aged couple who gave me everything I wanted. The snag was, I had to be obedient, well mannered, and speak with a proper accent which was the hardest thing to do. Also I was allowed only to befriend nice well-mannered girls, which I did without too much bother, but I swore to myself I would run away at the first opportunity to find my young brother. Once I came past our old home, half of it still standing, and it struck me it would be near impossible to find him. He could be anywhere in the wide world, maybe even dead, so I held my peace and turned my head away but not before thinking I saw his face staring at me from a cracked window pane. I knew it was my imagination, and deep in my heart by then I didn’t want to find him, because I had changed so much, and the chances were he wouldn’t have changed at all.
A Note on the Author
Agnes Owens was born in 1926 and has worked in a factory, as a typist and as a school cleaner among other things. She has been married twice and has seven children. She lives in Balloch.
Agnes is the author of Gentlemen of the West, Lean Tales (with Alasdair Gray and James Kelman), Like Birds in the Wilderness, A Working Mother, For the Love of Willie, Bad Attitudes, Jen’s Party and People Like That.
