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

by Godley, Janey

  Every community group in the area had decorated lorries, small cars and even ice-cream vans to enter the parade. Music blared, dancers boogied the length of several streets, kiddies for miles around had brightly painted faces, the atmosphere was great. The parade took three hours to make it out of the Green and a mile up to the Gallowgate. As the parade passed along Duke Street, only a few blocks from the Weavers, Wild Bill Hickok and Sioux started yelling and whooping and pulled out their Wild West revolvers, firing them wildly into the air.

  Bang! Bang!

  Bang!

  Bang bang!

  They couldn’t have chosen a worse place. It was right outside Mills’ Bar which was a known haunt of nutters, a place where real bullets had been flying recently. At the sound of gunfire, local kids started screaming and ducking in fear as their parents tried to shove them down onto the pavement; dogs started barking, babies were picked up out of prams and policemen desperately started running over, yelling through their megaphones, ‘Stop the parade! Stop the parade!’

  Then two police horses bolted and ran amok into the crowds. Policemen tried to calm their whinnying beasts. Miraculously, there were no injuries, but the parade was halted and Wild Bill Hickok and Sioux were removed from the float by pissed-off police.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ a white-shirted officer shouted at my Minnie Mouse face. ‘Are you in charge of this fucking float?’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Minnie Mouse screamed back at the man in the flat police cap. ‘How wiz I to know he had a fucking gun wi’ blanks in it? I never knew he wiz gonna fire his pistols. He thinks he’s a real fucking cowboy!’

  The copper stood and looked in disbelief as Wild Bill Hickok took his revolver back and simply put it into his holster saying, ‘Sorry,’ rather sheepishly. Sioux took her gun back, put it under her squaw costume and smiled sweetly while telling the policeman, ‘He’s a real cowboy, ye know.’

  The man just looked at her in stunned silence, turned to look at me and raised a single eyebrow. I stepped back up on the lorry then turned and shouted down: ‘He’s hardly fucking Arthur Thompson! He’s wearing a cowboy hat and she’s dressed as a squaw!’

  The float moved on and the rest of the parade went without a hitch: Wild Bill Hickok and Sioux clapped their hands instead of firing their guns. They looked a little disappointed. Later that day, the Weavers won second prize for best float; we lost out to a West Indian Calypso theme lorry from the Gorbals Community Centre. Sammy accepted the trophy for us but was too embarrassed to say anything. He was often very shy, though he always seemed to hit it off spectacularly with women.

  * * *

  Later that summer, Sammy had visits from some of the many children he had had by various women, particularly one woman called Betty. He was very affectionate with his kids, but none of us was sure exactly how many he had; he was very private about his various relationships. We guessed he had about seven kids by three different mothers but none of the women had ever stayed very long with him though obviously long enough to procreate. He, of course, paid no financial support to the mothers, though if he had some spare money, he would buy them bits and pieces. Betty seemed resigned to the fact Sammy was not up to committing to their relationship or to any of the wee kids he fathered.

  ‘The weans annoy him when they cry,’ she tried to explain to me. ‘He’s no’ very good at changing nappies and stuff– an’ to be honest, Janey, I like it this way. He can be a real bastard to live with.’

  All this baffled me: Sammy was great with Ashley. He was placid, happy, easy-going and never seemed to throw a temper. Sarah, his then-current girlfriend, accepted that he had other women and kids outside their relationship; it never seemed to faze her. They never had any kids together because she was too busy making money as a prostitute and he was too busy smoking dope or working in the bar. He did tell me once that he wished he had made more of an effort to be with his own kids because he seemed to have more of a bond with Ashley than with any of them. He was just innately very secretive and shortly after my conversation with Betty I discovered another of his secrets.

  We had a few press photographers regularly drinking in the Weavers; they would sit and drink too much while their drivers tried to encourage them to get on to the next job. Sometimes they had glamorous young model girls with them who used to sit dead bored at the side of the bar with big pouting lips waiting for the guy to drink up and get his arse moving to the shoot at the Winter Gardens or the People’s Palace. I became really friendly with these photographers and one of them – Ray Beltrami, the brother of Arthur Thompson’s long-time lawyer, Joe Beltrami – used to come to the Weavers before opening hours to get a drink. I would go down from our flat and let him in, then go back upstairs to our flat to get ready for opening. When I came back down, Ray would always have listed every single drink he had taken and he paid before he set off for his first assignment. Before long, Ray and a few of the other photographers would ask me to let them use Ashley as the token child in whichever particular ‘photo opportunity’ picture they had to take that day. So she ended up in newspapers quite a lot as the wee girl who sat in the police car as the mascot for Glasgow Fair … or the child who met Desperate Dan at the launch of some new Marks & Spencer food range … or the wee girl who met Wet Wet Wet as they prepared for their free concert on Glasgow Green. Before the year was out, she was offered professional modelling jobs through an agency and appeared as a bridesmaid in live bridalwear shows and children’s clothing adverts in the newspapers. Ashley loved it, enjoyed the work and we kept her money in trust for her until she would be 14 or 15 and big enough to spend it. One day, Ray Beltrami showed me some of his latest shots.

  ‘They’re going to be on the front page of the Daily Record tomorrow!’ he told me with justified pride.

  One picture showed a young woman stretching her arm into the open passenger window of a car while a man injected her with heroin. The picture was particularly evocative as it was taken at The Railings right outside the Gorbals Police Office, in full view of passers-by walking to the shops. It was a shocking photo that highlighted the problems of drug dealers operating under the police’s nose in broad daylight. But it was another of Ray’s pictures that caught my attention. The photo showed a guy called Big Danny, a well-known heroin dealer, chatting to another young man in a black puffer jacket and blue jeans, his face hidden in shadow. From the way the guy in the black jacket stood, I knew it was Sammy.

  The man not only looked like Sammy and had Sammy’s hair, he also stood with his left hand in his back pocket, which was a distinctive Sammy trait. And he wore the gold sovereign ring I had given Sammy – in its very distinctive crown setting – on the recognisable skinny middle finger of his right hand, which was pointing out, making the ring clearly visible. I felt cold fear grip me. What was Sammy doing chatting with this drug-dealing bastard? He knew I hated Big Danny and he had never in any conversation with me mentioned he had been meeting him. Sammy never went over to the Gorbals – he had no reason to. He bought his hash from a guy in Parkhead, near Celtic Park football ground, in the opposite direction.

  Ray Beltrami did not recognise Sammy because he had snatched his wide shot from the side, at a distance and the face was obscured; there were also lots of other people and details in the shot. He realised I had recognised the man in the photo but just accepted that I naturally would, as it was taken in the Gorbals and I lived in the Calton.

  ‘When did you take the photo?’ I asked.

  ‘Yesterday.’

  When Sammy arrived to take me shopping in his car later that day, I sat in the front seat quietly.

  ‘Sammy,’ I asked nonchalantly, ‘where were you at lunchtime yesterday?’

  ‘Errmm … sleeping, I think,’ he replied casually. ‘Why? Was the pub busy?’

  ‘So you were nowhere near the fucking dealers in the Gorbals then?’ I blurted out.

  ‘Oh, aye!’ he said, still casually. ‘I wiz talking to Big Danny over at The Railings.
’ Then he added, ‘How the fuck did you know that?’

  ‘My brother Mij saw you,’ I lied.

  ‘Well, he should huv came and spoke to me, the big bastard,’ Sammy snapped at me as he turned the car into the main road. ‘Coz it was Mij I was looking fur – he owes me £20. I asked Big Danny if he had seen him, coz he would see him before anybody wid, bein’ a dealer an’ all.’

  I sat quiet for a while.

  Sammy was silent, too.

  Finally he spoke. ‘I lent Mij cash last week, when you told him you couldn’t.’

  ‘Why, Sammy?’ I asked, my mind genuinely confused. ‘Why lend him money? He is a fucking junkie, Sammy; he never pays me back, he won’t pay you back and it all goes up his arm!’

  We sat next to each other in silence all the way to the supermarket, as I tried hard to believe his story. But I knew the one certainty in life is that junkies lie.

  Later, I tried to talk to Sean about it, but he was not really listening.

  * * *

  He and I had been fine for almost a whole year but then suddenly, one night, ‘You fucking don’t listen to me!’ he screamed into my face. ‘This is not how ye fucking defrost a fridge! Look – there is still ice in there, ya daft cow! There are still little slivers of ice at the back!’

  He pulled me by the shoulder and dragged me from the bar to the back shop, holding the neck of my jumper so tight with his fist that it started to choke me.

  ‘Sean,’ I stammered, ‘I cannae I cannae b-breathe …’

  He stopped, dropped his hands, said nothing and walked out the room.

  I realised Sammy had been standing quietly in the corner watching us.

  ‘I huv had enough, Sammy,’ I said. ‘I cannae do this any more. He’s just a big bastard!’ I cried as I ran out of the door and upstairs. Ashley was sleeping peacefully. I sat on her bed and stroked her wee head.

  When Sean came upstairs that night, he just gave me a dirty look as he came to bed. Next morning, as he slept, I packed a bag and lifted Ashley up quietly, got her dressed, grabbed her folded buggy and left the house as silently as possible. This time I had decided to leave for real and had prepared everything – I had clothes, credit cards and cash. As I pushed her quickly towards the railway station, Ashley swung her legs happily in the buggy: ‘Where are we going, Mummy?’

  ‘Don’t really know, baby,’ I said, more to myself than to her, ‘but I am really gonna go this time.’

  The station was busy. I bought Ashley a doll to play with on the journey and we jumped on the first train I saw. It was bound for Stranraer, a town on the south-west coast of Scotland that was the sailing point for ferries to Northern Ireland. Ashley was dressing and undressing her doll as the train rumbled along. ‘Why are we going without Daddy?’ she asked, looking confused.

  ‘I don’t want us to go back to Daddy, Ashley. I want us to go away for a while and we can see him again maybe in a few weeks. I need to be away from him and I need you to be a big girl about this.’ I tried to explain as best I could. She suddenly stopped playing with the doll, looked up at me and started screaming.

  ‘I want my daddy!’ she howled.

  People started looking over at us.

  ‘This is not my mummy!’ Ashley screamed hysterically. ‘Somebody take me to my daddy! This is not my mummy! My home is the Weavers Inn pub in Glasgow! Help me! I am being taken away!’

  I had to get her off the train at the next stop, trying to shut her up and confused about which town we were in: it turned out we actually were in Stranraer.

  ‘Ashley, stop it,’ I pleaded as I dragged her off with the buggy behind me. ‘It’s OK. I promise I will take you home tomorrow. I promise, now stop that noise. Ashley, stop shouting!’

  She was inconsolable and sat crying on a bench in the station. She wouldn’t get off that bench.

  ‘Mummy, please, I want my Daddy!’ she cried over and over. ‘Mummy, please, I want my Daddy! Mummy, please, I want my Daddy! Mummy, please, please, I want my Daddy!’

  I decided to stay in Stranraer overnight. I was tired and needed to think a bit. We checked into a wee hotel near the station where the owner had a blue, red and green parrot called Sugar sitting on a perch behind the bar. This seemed to take Ashley’s mind off things for a while. She started to chat-chat-chat to the parrot in the lounge while I had a cup of tea and decided to call Sean and let him know we were OK.

  ‘Janey, where are ye?’ he asked as soon as he heard my voice. He sounded frantic. ‘I woke up an’ ye were both gone. Is Ashley OK?’

  ‘We are fine,’ I said flatly. ‘I’m just fucking fed up with you an’ the shit ye put me through. I’m gonna stay here tonight an’ we’ll both be home in the morning.’

  ‘Will ye come home just now?’ he pleaded. ‘I am sorry; please come home.’

  ‘Ah cannae. I’m in Stranraer. We got on a—’

  ‘Whit the fuck are ye doing in Stranraer?’ he interrupted.

  ‘Sean, I just jumped on a train. Listen, I will be home. The wee wean cannae live without ye. I will come home tomorrow. I am fucking tired oot an’ she has been crying fur ye.’ As soon as I said it, I regretted saying that last bit as I knew it would wound him to know she was upset.

  ‘Put her on, please,’ he asked. It sounded as if he was crying.

  ‘Hello, Daddy, I miss you lots and Mummy said you were not nice today and I have made friends with a parrot called Sugar …’ She felt she had to give out every piece of information she could in one sentence. ‘I am coming home in the morning time and I love you too. Here’s Mummy to talk to you and be nice to her then she will come back, Daddy. Say you are sorry to her and she will come back.’ She held her hand over the mouthpiece and said to me: ‘Daddy says he is sorry he was angry and please go home in the morning.’ Her wee face looked up at me with Sean’s soft brown eyes staring into mine. Ashley had Sean’s eyes when they were reassuring but, in her eyes, I had never seen anger, madness and death. Sean could look at me and make me feel I was safe, but he could also turn his head slightly and look at me with eyes I knew had seen things that frightened me. Ashley held the phone out to me. As she stood behind me, I heard her whispering to herself: ‘He is sorry; he is sorry; he is sorry.’

  My heart felt like it would crumble.

  ‘Janey,’ Sean spoke between tears. ‘Please, I am sorry. Tell me you will be home, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Sean, tomorrow, I promise.’ I hung up while he was still talking.

  Ashley slept badly that night; she woke up about three times asking for Sean and falling back asleep in a sweat. That was when I knew that, whatever happened, I could never take her away from him and knew I could never live without her. I sat up in that damp, floral-wallpapered hotel room in Stranraer, watching the daylight slowly creep between a gap in the floral curtains and realised this was going to be my life until Ashley was at least 16. Only another twelve years to go. I smiled sadly to myself as I made another pot of musty tea and ate damp shortbread from the hospitality tray on the bedside table. Ashley would be going to school next year and I needed to get myself together.

  20

  Ashley’s education

  WE LOOKED AT local state schools, but Sean was adamant Ashley would be privately educated. We left it to the family lawyer, Mr Bovey, to investigate which school would suit her, as neither Sean nor I knew anything about private education at all. Mr Bovey was a Lithuanian with glassy blue eyes who dressed in a fine black woollen suit, carried a thin wooden cane with an L-shaped gold handle at the top and wore a black bowler hat. He was like someone from a Dickensian novel. You only noticed his Lithuanian accent when he swore, which was rare. He was very smart and I had always found him to be very intense and a bit stand-offish, but Ashley was fond of him: she would hug him and sit on his knee. She even called her toy panda bear after him – Mr Bovey the Bear.

  He was a bit pompous and overblown for my taste, so I could never get my head round how this very prim, proper, formal man with a bowler hat and a cane go
t on so well with this little girl who kept hugging him. ‘Mr Bovey! Up! Up! Up!’ she’d command and he’d lift her up on his knee and they’d chat away. She just loved him and he chatted away to her oblivious of everyone else.

  One morning, the phone rang and Mr Bovey was on the other end. ‘I have found the perfect school for Ashley, Mrs Storrie,’ he said in his clipped, fast-talking tone. ‘Laurel Bank all-girls school in the West End of Glasgow. I know the headmistress and can vouch for Ashley myself and be her sponsor. We will set up a meet-and-greet with the school to let you see all the facilities.’

  ‘OK then, Mr Bovey,’ I mumbled. ‘You know best.’ I was annoyed. I suppose what bothered me was that I never looked for a school myself. But, on the other hand, the West End was posh and not the normal drug-fucked, alcoholic, crazy, single-parent, piss-poor place. It had higher property prices and was quite middle class and what the hell did I know about private education?

  ‘Other private schools,’ he told me, ‘just turn out girls who are good wives. Laurel Bank actually educates them.’

  But Ashley was growing up among other types of girls. Our customers had enjoyed a whole year of late-night ‘City of Culture’ drinking and, by this time, we had a regular late-night crowd of five ‘masseuses’ – all ‘working girls’. Sammy’s girlfriend Sarah introduced them to us. They would arrive just as we were closing at 3.00 in the morning, the Year of Culture having increased their sex trade, and Sean would grant them a lock-in. It was strictly no customers, just ‘The Girls’. Sean would put on the back kitchen grill and make them a fry-up: sausage, bacon, eggs, potato scones and black puddings. I would watch them slowly wipe off their make-up, kick off their high heels and drag long and hard on cigarettes while they figuratively and literally let their hair down, bitched, drank and laughed away the day’s hard work.