Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival

by Godley, Janey

  One Friday, when my brother was helping and The Gow was hanging over the bath washing out some paint-brushes, Vid saw a waistline of blue satin material peeping out of the top of The Gow’s trousers. It was obvious he was wearing women’s knickers and it was obvious where he had got them. Ever since Sammy’s mammy Crazy Katie Wallace had killed herself about two years before, bags of her clothing had been stored in our flat.

  ‘This is weird as fuck,’ Vid told me. ‘The Gow is wearing Crazy Katie’s clothes!’

  ‘You’re fuckin’ jokin’!’ I told him. ‘How d’ye know they’re Katie’s knickers?’

  ‘Well, they’re no’ fuckin’ yours,’ he replied, ‘and there’s a big bag of Crazy Katie’s clothes lying there.’

  Every Friday evening, The Gow came down to the bar to get his pay from me. This particular evening, he’d washed and brushed himself up because he thought it would make him irresistible to the opposite sex. Sometimes he’d wear a cravat and an acrylic sweater and stand, skinny and bald with bits of red hair sticking out, leaning against the Weavers’ bar to attract girls. But, this particular night, when the door opened, Vid and I saw he was wearing a woman’s grey jumper with a butterfly design. He either didn’t know it was a woman’s jumper or he knew but didn’t care. Vid just laughed out loud: ‘What the fuck are you wearing, Gow? That’s Aunt Katie’s top and you’ve got her knickers on too, ya weirdo! Get those fuckin’ clothes off!’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong wi’ it,’ The Gow replied.

  ‘Except,’ I pointed out, ‘they’re Sammy’s mammy’s clothes and she killed herself with gas and pills. Do you really think he wants to be reminded of his dead mammy by looking at you wearing her clothes? Get them off, ye psycho.’

  ‘I’m no’ wearin’ her knickers!’ he insisted.

  ‘C’mere,’ Vid said and pulled down the waistband of The Gow’s trousers to reveal the top of some blue satin knickers.

  ‘Ya weirdo!’ I screamed. ‘Get them clothes off!’

  We had to strip him and throw all Katie’s clothes out or he would have kept walking about in them and reminding Sammy of his dead mammy.

  * * *

  I had a strange and difficult pregnancy.

  Patsy Paton gave birth to a lovely wee girl just eight weeks before my due date. It was her second child; her first son Andrew was already a teenager.

  ‘It’s scary, but you just get through it,’ Patsy tried to reassure me. ‘After all the fucking illness you’ve had, the birth itself will be a relief.’

  But I was still petrified.

  I used to stay working late in the bar, lugging my huge vomit-inducing foetus around inside me as I poured beers. The smell of Guinness brought on sickness every time. My nausea, occasional hospital visits and the ongoing building work had worn Sean thin.

  In a way, I still didn’t really believe I was actually going to have a baby. I thought I might just remain a huge vomit machine until I was ancient and die years from now, huge and still pregnant. But I really was looking forward to having a boy for Sean; I would talk to the bump and call him ‘ma wee boy’ in the hope, if I repeated it enough, that any female genes would immediately transform into male ones. When the baby finally came, I was lying in a hospital bed praying that, whatever the hell it was, it would bloody well come out quicker.

  I was three days in labour.

  Doctors fretted.

  Sean paced.

  My Dad cried.

  I screamed.

  My baby decided to stay put.

  The pain was unbearable.

  I hated this baby now. I’d been dangerously ill during the pregnancy and now it was trying to kill me again.

  Eventually I was given drugs and a large, very manly doctor from Australia decided to pull the stubborn child out with forceps. I was trussed like a chicken and watched sharp blades and big metal tongs being passed around as if I were the meal at some scary picnic. Sean and Paul sat outside. The baby arrived silent but with a very angry face as if annoyed we had interrupted its mission to kill me.

  It was – of course – a girl.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I whispered as they lay her on my chest. She stared at me as if she knew who I was. She looked so alert it scared me a bit. Then Paul suddenly burst into the room with Sean right behind him.

  ‘Mr Storrie,’ the nurse told Paul, ‘you have a daughter!’ and gave the baby to him.

  ‘Actually,’ Sean laughed with relief, ‘she’s my baby,’ and scooped her out of Paul’s arms.

  Paul was sent outside to wait, but he was so excited he kept popping his head back in to watch us. Sean came round to my bedside holding the baby. He leaned over.

  ‘Janey, you should see the blood on the floor. I feel faint.’

  The nurse – a friendly dark-haired lassie – immediately leaned over and, with one hand, scooped the baby out of Sean’s arms while putting her knee behind Sean’s back and easing him down onto the floor where he lost consciousness.

  ‘Sean!’ I shouted out. ‘You only held her for a minute and you almost killed her! Ye big idiot!’

  After that, things got a bit hazy and I too passed out. My blood pressure had dropped severely; I was rushed to intensive care and spent the night unconscious. But I had managed to get the evil baby out of my body.

  * * *

  The next three days passed quickly and it was wonderful to get home. On my first day free from the hospital, I went back to work. Sean and Paul took the baby upstairs and I served behind the bar. It really was good to get my body back. I could eat and not be sick; I could drink and keep it all down. It had been like having car sickness for nine months. The male customers were amazed to see me back at work while Sean looked after our daughter; they didn’t believe a man could look after a tiny baby. Their women had spent years convincing them they didn’t know where their own shirts were and raising their eyes heavenwards at men’s inability to work a washing machine. But Sean was better at domesticity than me every time. I was good with the baby but equally desperate to get my own life back. The women in the Weavers poured scorn on my attitude.

  ‘A baby needs its mother!’ I was told over and over again.

  Sean was looked on as a freak; this man who fed and washed his own baby. But he was obsessed by our wee child. We would both lie awake and occasionally get up and go into the next room to lie on the floor and stare at her as she slept in her lace-fringed crib. She had a shock of black sticky-up hair and a fat wee face. In fact, she looked the spitting image of Paul. I had no breast milk because of my illness and watched her guzzle from the array of bottles that now cluttered up our kitchen. Sean could feed and change her better than me. He showed me how to sterilise all her stuff and how to dress her easily without being scared to snap her fragile, twig-like arms. It worried me that she slept loads. But Sean would laugh and assure me that, when she wanted feeding, she would let me know. I did go in every half hour, convinced she was lying dead in the cot.

  We needed a name for her. Whenever Gay Gordon took her for a walk in the new pram, Sean and I sat in the back shop thinking up possibilities.

  One day, with the big deep fryer behind me, Sean stood up and pointed to the electric socket: ‘Ashley Electronics. That’s it!’

  I looked at him. I looked at the electric socket. I looked back at him.

  ‘Ashley Electronics,’ he explained. ‘I like that name. Ashley Jane Storrie. That’s it … I love it … What about you?’

  ‘Ashley is good,’ I agreed. ‘But not Electronics.’

  Meanwhile, the new bed and breakfast system was in full swing. The tenants all registered as being there but mostly lived elsewhere and screwed the DHSS for cash; we had no responsibility for any of them, as we could not force 34 men to come home to their flats. Every week, the tenants came to pick up the unemployment cheques that had arrived for them and their rent was paid to us monthly by the Government. I was kept busy not only with Ashley but with overseeing the laundry rota – towels, sheets and bed linen for the
boys who did live upstairs. We employed a cleaner to tidy the rooms weekly. The entire building was a hive of activity; rooms were still being cleared out and painted as young guys dragged their possessions up the ancient staircase in black council rubbish sacks. These new ‘real’ tenants were a mixed bunch. Sammy took one room himself; Sean’s cousin Stephen moved in. The Gow took a room up the top. And there was Old Wullie Kerr whom I had never met before and who, in typical Storrie fashion, was introduced to me on the stairs by Sean with a curt, ‘Janey! Old Wullie – he’s living here now.’

  Old Wullie was a retired safe-cracker who had done time in prison with Old George. He later became a blacksmith for Glasgow Council; he didn’t shoe horses, he fixed the metal fences all round Glasgow and used to make things for Old George – like garage gates and ‘specialist’ welding jobs. He was very tall – about six foot – and I named him The Ribena Man because he had a purple face from drinking so much. He didn’t talk much; he just used to mutter, ‘Ttt … ttt … ttt … shush, ya cunt!’ under his breath, like a verbal tick.

  His big dog Sara was the palest, blondest Alsatian I had ever seen – more the colour of a Golden Retriever – and she had had her tail cut off, but Old Wullie would never tell anyone why. Old Wullie and Sara took over one bedroom in the three-roomed flat on the same floor as us.

  All these incoming tenants meant Ashley now had a huge group of new people to fuss over her and Old Wullie expanded his conversational repertoire when Ashley was around to include: ‘Ttt … ttt … ttt … Hello …’ Sammy had been a father to two kids and he was a great help to have round, but young Paul was much more confident in handling her; and my Dad and stepmum Mary were always free to take her round to their place when we got too busy at the Weavers. Ashley was an easy baby; slept loads, ate well and would sit staring in amusement at Twinkles the cat.

  The cat became very protective of Ashley and it worried me in case she might get smothered in her bed. But there was no chance of that – whenever Ashley cried or even moved in her cot, Twinkles would trot into my bedroom, bat her damp leathery paws into my face and miaow loudly. She was the ultimate baby alarm.

  One night I sat preparing to bath Ashley myself without Sean there to supervise me. I was very nervous and opened our baby book to read the instructions. The pink plastic baby bath was sitting on the floor with towels spread around. Wee Ashley sat naked on my knee. The book said Close all doors to keep out draughts. So I got up quickly, still holding Ashley, and slammed the living-room door. There was an ear-piercing miaooow! I had jammed Twinkles’ tail in the door. I dropped Ashley into the bath and dragged the cat from the door, trying to comfort her. Then I heard a splashing sound and realised what I’d done. I turned and looked down into the bath to see Ashley flailing her chubby wee arms around, trying to understand why she had been dropped into water and no one was holding her. She wasn’t crying, just startled. I was horrified. I had dropped my own daughter into a bath so I could tend to a cat.

  Once I went to the local supermarket. Trying to manoeuvre the pram round the cramped wee store was too difficult, so I parked it beside the tall Asian storekeeper at the till as I hurriedly got my groceries. It was not until I was halfway home carrying the heavy bags that I realised I’d left Ashley behind. When I walked back in, the Asian man was still standing by the till, looking slightly confused, holding Ashley.

  Motherhood did not come naturally to me. Sean was a calming influence and much better at dealing with this curious wee creature than me. I was scared of everything. If Ashley was crawling around behind Twinkles on the floor, I would be busy hoovering and bleaching every surface, convinced she would get a disease. The dirt of my own childhood still haunted me.

  ‘Janey,’ Sean would reassure me as I wiped the floors with disinfectant yet again, ‘she needs to catch some germs to build up resistance.’ But Twinkles had started to pee all over the corners of Ashley’s bedroom; it was getting too much and we sadly had to give the cat away. Ashley was upset but accepted it had to go.

  She loved life in the Weavers. All that constant attention. Every man and woman in the bar wanted to sit and chat to her. She could talk from a really early age, I guess due to the level of stimulation she received. As she approached her first birthday, she would mumble, ‘Daddy look, me sing.’ A little later, she would reach up with her arms to Sammy. ‘Ups-a-daisy,’ she would say. We were all amazed by her chatter but she absolutely refused to walk or even attempt it. She was carried upstairs like a wee princess by all the boys and maybe she assumed that she would never have to walk.

  We were a close-knit group – the tenants and us. Stephen was Sean’s cousin. Paul and Sammy were Ashley’s ‘uncles’. One of the other lads, Andy, was great friends with Sammy, so Ashley grew up believing she owned the whole building and everyone was related to her. When she decided to walk, she would run upstairs and demand that one of the boys read to her or play dolls or dance and sing with her. They were great with her and I trusted them all. I didn’t worry about men being with her; I didn’t think every man was a child-abuser. My Dad wasn’t; my brothers weren’t. One man was – my Uncle David Percy. And my Granda Davy Percy was a bit dodgy. But my Uncle John had been lovely; I had adored being with him; he had a lively sparkly character, was the coolest old dude in the world and never once looked at me weirdly. So why should every man be the sort of man who would look at children and want to have sex with them?

  As she grew to understand what she was being told, I taught Ashley to be careful of being near and speaking to strangers but she had little concept of ‘stranger’ as she knew everyone who came into her world of the Weavers and the building above it. She became very confident telling wee drunk but affectionate men that she didn’t want a kiss or a hug; she would explain very clearly that she only kissed her Daddy and her family. There was more danger of her being picked up by a stranger in the street than being molested by a relative or a Weavers regular.

  She loved her grandad Old George. When he came down to see us, she would climb all over him, hug him and say right into his face, ‘I love you, Grandad!’ as she squashed her chubby wee fists into his cheeks. ‘Now,’ she would add, ‘now you have to say you love me too, Grandad!’ then her wee face would frown as Old George looked very uncomfortable. He would just hug her close. This was not a man who spoke of love in public. He would hug her close and try to avoid saying the three words.

  ‘Ashley,’ I would interrupt before she demanded his love out loud again, ‘you know Grandad loves you. Now come on and get ready for bed …’

  ‘I love you too, Ashley,’ Old George would sometimes say in a gentle, low voice as he put her onto the floor.

  ‘See,’ Ashley would squeal, ‘I knew you could say it, Grandad!’ and she would jump back up to hug him tight.

  I tried to bring her up speaking politely. I hated my own East End dialect and accent. So Ashley was taught to pronounce the words ‘head’ and ‘bread’ instead of the local Glaswegian ‘heed’ and ‘breed’. But this just ended up confusing her totally. One afternoon, I held her in my arms as we looked out of our window at the rain – it was Glasgow, after all – and I asked without thinking: ‘Can ye see whit’s oot the windae?’ Then I immediately corrected myself: ‘Sorry, Ashley, the word is window not windae. Mummy was silly talking like that.’

  The next day, as I carried her down the street, her wee woolly hat blew off and I said to her: ‘It’s very windy today.’

  ‘No, Mummy,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s very window.’

  Sean adored her, but his behaviour was still erratic. When Ashley was out of the way, he would start picking on me, even throwing an occasional slap at me. I would sit quietly wishing him dead because then I thought all my problems would be solved. When he got angry, he would tell me, ‘Don’t ever take my baby! If you want to leave me, then you go alone! I am telling you, Janey, if you take my daughter away from me, I will hunt you down. Take the money – you can fucking take the lot of it – but don’t you ever t
ake Ashley!’

  I knew I could never take her away from him. Not because I was scared, but because she adored him as much as he loved her. I accepted Sean would never be the husband I needed but I knew he would always be the father she wanted. I never wanted to separate them; I remembered vividly being separated from my own father when I was a child. It had broken my heart.

  * * *

  Locally, I had friends who came round for tea with their own chubby wee kids. Donna was one of them. Her daughter Kara was only a bit older than Ashley. Donna was a heroin addict but a great mother to that wee blonde girl she carried everywhere. She and I would sit just like any other two mothers, chatting and watching their babies play on the floor.

  ‘Ashley is getting big, Janey,’ Donna told me, smiling happily once as Ashley climbed onto her knee. ‘I’m gonnae get off the smack and be there more for my ain wee wean.’

  Soon afterwards, Donna’s mother came round to the Weavers to beg me not to buy any children’s clothes from Donna. ‘I buy everything for wee Kara but Donna tries to sell all the good stuff to buy drugs.’

  ‘She has never tried to sell me anything,’ I replied honestly.

  It didn’t surprise me that Donna sold her child’s clothes to feed her heroin habit, nor that Donna’s mother had come round to plead with me. It was a sad fact of life in the area that, increasingly, young mothers were selling clothes off their own children’s backs and sometimes even selling themselves.

  George’s prophecy was coming true: Drug dealers are fucking bad luck, Janey. Their kids will die, they will die and bad luck will fucking land on all their families.

  One local drug dealer’s wee boy climbed into an abandoned car, which somehow caught fire; he couldn’t get out and was burnt to death. Locals shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘That’s what happens when you sell drugs to weans.’

  Two brothers of another local drug dealer died and then his child was killed in a car accident. A third dealer who, unlike most, never took drugs himself, lost his daughter and mother to cancer within weeks of each other. It was as if a vengeful God were striking down the entire families of wrongdoers, as if a list had been kept somewhere by Fate and names were slowly being ticked off one by one.