by Rob Ewing
Nobody wants to say and get it wrong.
‘All right, so short-term’s the thought you just had. It doesn’t last, unless you remember it again. Long-term lasts, but sometimes you need to remember it to keep it strong. Otherwise it can fade, and you forget.’
She waits for us to understand. I try to remember what I had for dinner – no, it’s gone. I should’ve practised.
Elizabeth: ‘Who’ll go first?’
No one answers. Calum Ian looks up at the cracks on the ceiling, then stretches out his arms and collects back like he’s years after being bored.
‘Will you try, Duncan?’
Duncan pretends to be reading his jotter. But then, to surprise us all, he stands. He stands for the longest time, even past the point of my being nervous for him.
‘Dad used to have a game where he pretended he was a robot,’ he says in a hurry. ‘You’d control him, except he might attack.’
He waits for us to say anything. When nobody does he goes on: ‘I remember he was friendly after the pub. If he’d gotten drunk he had a joke about people annoying him to give him a trophy. He didn’t want it. They’d run up the street after him, chasing him. It was sort of stupid …’
He looks out at us, seeing if we’re still listening, looking like he’s sure we’ll be bored.
‘I thought he was trying to make himself out to be important … I thought he was worried about being too ordinary as a dad. That’s why I always practise my fiddle: so he can see how good I am when he comes back. So I can make him proud.’
He stops. Elizabeth makes a go-on face. We’re meant to be writing it all down for Duncan to keep in his diary, but I mostly prefer just to be listening.
‘Mam, she played I spy. She said it in the Gaelic. Said it with sounds, as well: I hear with my little ear. You could hear the kettle, or the wind. Or the fridge. Once she did it for her stomach rumbling. Then for her baby.’ He stops for a while, picks at some fluff on the edge of his sleeve. I can see all his face now. There’s new scabs on his chin.
‘Dad didn’t play the robot game when everything went bad. There wasn’t much I spy then either.’
After a long time and with a quiet voice he asks: ‘If a baby isn’t born, does it still get up to heaven?’
Calum Ian stops writing. He leans across and raps Duncan hard on the arm.
‘That’s you finished. You’ve done your bit. I don’t want you talking about them, all right? So, you’re done, suidh sìos. Now get your arse in and sit.’
Duncan wants to stay standing – but when Calum Ian gets up and folds his arms, he sits. His big brother looks annoyed, or maybe sad, I can’t tell. He gives Elizabeth a look like she did a stupid thing for encouraging Duncan.
‘Know what I think?’ he says. ‘There’s just as much stuff we need to forget. So get on, Big Brains, answer that: how do we stop ourselves from remembering?’
We wait on Elizabeth.
‘Remembering is all we’ve got,’ she says.
It feels like the right time to change topic. Elizabeth writes down Duncan’s memories then gives them to him.
‘Let’s move on to sums,’ she tells us.
It’s my job to hand out the workbooks. We all know the pages, but I say them anyway because that’s what happens in a class. My lesson is counting money. I have to count picture-bundles of spending money in under a minute. I use the clock on the wall. It takes me two minutes, but only forty seconds if I cheat.
Alex, who’s young, has to read Kipper’s Birthday, which he’s done before but this time with feeling. Duncan’s the same age as me, yet he won’t be encouraged. He mostly lies head-down until it’s time to go. Calum Ian is one year below Elizabeth, so he copies her mostly.
I turn the pages and stare at the sums I know I did last year. The book is very good – giving examples, sums that are worked through, but even so, it’s not enough. I don’t want to tell the boys that I don’t know. The last time I did that they called me Gloic, which means brainless idiot, not even anything to do with the truth.
Then the sun starts to shine on my desk, and now I want to be outside. I think of the gardens we saw on the way here, with flowers I haven’t the name for, either in the Gaelic or English. I recognised some very big daisies, but the rest I didn’t know. Daffodils? Roses, maybe? There might be a book in one of the houses, or the library. For learning there can’t be a better place to start than there.
‘This is dumb,’ Calum Ian says.
I look up at Elizabeth, who pretends not to hear, at least not until he says it for a second time.
‘Why is it dumb?’
Calum Ian scratches his pen across the lid of his desk. ‘It’s the same page, over and over. Plus I never cared about sums in the before. How can they help us now?’
Elizabeth lines up her jotter and pencils. Then says, ‘Sums are needed for lots of things.’
‘Say some.’
She tries to think of examples. In the long run she says, ‘Sums can tell you what the date is.’
‘No they don’t. All you need for that is a calendar. And there’s plenty of those in the post office.’
Me: ‘People used to tell the time by the sun. True. There was a shortest day and a longest. The olden-times people used sums to work it out.’
Calum Ian: ‘We’ve got calendars.’
Elizabeth: ‘Which nobody can agree the date with.’
Calum Ian: ‘Because you got your count wrong.’
He takes out his can opener – twirls the head of it, squinting his eyes at Elizabeth.
‘Why’d you get to be teacher? It could just as easy be me, or Duncan. Or Alex sitting quiet there. Or her. But it’s forever you.’
Elizabeth puts her pencils back in her satchel.
‘It’s not even as if we learn anything. We’ve been at this same page for days. Weeks.’
Elizabeth leaves the teacher’s seat and goes to sit beside Alex. Then she takes out her things and looks patient.
I know Duncan will never get up to replace her: he’s too shy. Alex is both shy and too young: he’s only six.
We hear Calum Ian’s chair screeching. He scrumples his pages then goes to the teacher’s desk.
On the whiteboard he writes his name, then underneath:
I AM A BOY NOT A FUCKING TEACHER
‘There’s no point pretending to be a teacher, because I’m not,’ he says. ‘There’s no point in any of us pretending because none of us are. The – bloody – end.’
After this he draws an arse on the whiteboard, and I have to admit this is kind of funny.
But when we start to laugh he gets furious; he rubs off what he’s written then shouts: ‘Shut your traps! Sguir dheth sin! That means you as well, Ugly-face!’
He’s talking to his brother, Duncan.
Duncan hides as deep as he can in his jacket, to match the quietness of the rest of us.
Now Calum Ian looks worried to have said what he did. He goes back to his seat, rolls down his sleeves – but they’re clarty, so he rolls them back up again.
‘Duncan could teach us the fiddle,’ Elizabeth says in a quiet voice. ‘We could get them out of the music cupboard?’
‘I’m going home.’
Calum Ian begins to pack his bag. Duncan begins to collect his things, too.
Elizabeth: ‘We could do messages?’
‘Another crap idea. Who’s looking out for them, tell me that? We send and send but we never get any back.’
‘And never will if we don’t keep sending.’
‘Fine, you do it then. See if I care.’
‘But we have to stick together. Remember the saying: “What’s going to work?”’
This is Elizabeth’s saying. She always does it when we’re struggling, or disagreeing, or needing a boost up.
When nobody adds on the next bit, she has to add it herself: ‘Teamwork! That’s what’s going to work, right? We’re all going to be a team. Right?’
‘Do your stupid sums for the tea
m, then.’
After this Calum Ian gets up, scraping his chair, and leaves, with Duncan hurrying behind.
I look across at the drawing Duncan left on his desk.
It’s the same drawing he always does: of a face with black scored-out holes for eyes.
Elizabeth goes into one of her quiet moods. She walks me and Alex to the swing park, then leaves us.
‘See you at home,’ she says, her voice sounding like we’ve not to follow too soon.
Sometimes if I’m not concentrating I still think we’re living in our last house. We’ve moved twice now, usually when the mess gets too much. Elizabeth isn’t sure if this means we live like kings – having a new house when it suits us – or like orphans. I prefer the king choice.
It’s only Calum Ian and Duncan who’ve stayed true to their old home. This gets me the big envy sometimes, when I think of my old home, abandoned.
Alex and I sit on the swings for a bit, eating rice crackers with mango chutney spread on top.
The wind mushes the water in the bay, and the sun makes the mush glittery. The wrecked trawler out on the rocks of Snuasamul looks like the world’s biggest whale. I hold it between finger and thumb. It’s tiny.
Alex: ‘Do you think there’s a ghost on that ship?’
Me: ‘As usual – too much imagination.’
Alex goes back to nibbling his cracker. He frowns at his chutney then says, ‘Don’t want more of this. If you eat the same thing over and over you get a heart attack.’
‘Who says?’
‘No one. I just think it.’
‘Well you shouldn’t think it. It’s crazy! That’s only if you eat too many chips and you get a fat arse and you smoke. If this isn’t you, don’t worry.’
He still looks worried, though, so I decide we need to do something brave, just the two of us.
First of all, I command us in getting an offering. We pick some of the flowers we don’t know the names of, plus dandelions from the grass strip by the History Centre.
Then we go bit by bit closer to the side entrance of the big kids’ school.
No one likes going here. They made it different to the little kids’ school because of who they put in it.
It takes a while to get our confidence up: so we kick the rainbow-painted stones along the pathway, then run up and down the slopey concrete.
After that we go in.
The wind goes in first, fluttering leaves and bits of paper by the door. There’s broken glass outside one room. Dirty black stuff in spots trailing up along the corridor. On both walls are the message boards. Some of the paper displays have come down. I hold one up: there’s a bit at the top called ‘Our Wall of Achievement’, but the bit underneath has fallen away, so there’s nothing. I think this is kind of funny in a dark way, but Alex doesn’t.
He walks ahead of me, trying not to step on the black spots, or the rubbish.
He’s looking at me for braveness, but I don’t feel massively brave without Elizabeth.
Going through double doors, there’s another corridor. Skylights making it go bright, dark, bright. A broken window inside one classroom: maybe a bird hit it, or the MacNeil brothers throwing stones again? Rows of posters about bullying, some about road safety, some about littering. Along the corridor on brightly-coloured card, with a wiggly blue border, are the pictures of all the kids who went to school last year.
I’m there, in P4, alongside Duncan. Elizabeth is in P7. Calum Ian’s in P6. Alex, only in P2. We didn’t really know each other then, but we do now, for sure.
There’s a short bit outdoors between our school and the big school. We get to the playground. It’s marked up and ready for games: basket-and netball. The hill rising away behind, the rocks going silver with sun.
It’s like going underwater. We put on our nose-clips, wait behind the door. Then I count to ten and go in.
Top corridor, heading to the gallery above the gym.
We put our perfume-hankies over our faces.
Going inside we hear a noise like the world’s biggest bee. Millions of the world’s biggest bees.
I run forward, and throw our flowers onto the dried and drying pile of old flowers – then we get out fast.
As the door slams I hear the flies buzzing up into the air. They’re down in the gym. The noise is giant.
Back outside I smell myself for the stink that stays. It feels like we got away with it, just.
Elizabeth started the offerings. But she doesn’t always like us doing it on our own, in case the dead down there make us sick. Still, I figure as long as we stay up in the gallery, run in and out, we’ll be fine.
Alex doesn’t look too much happier now that we’ve done a brave thing. His hands shake, only this time I don’t think he needs food, or medicine, just fresh air.
Leaving him outside on his own I take a minute to go back to my old real classroom.
Its windows are broken, and the floor’s wet; there’s a shelf swollen from water. Some birds must have come in, because there are new trails of bird shit everywhere.
There’s a rack with books on it. New books on it, neatly placed. ‘Can I have a book for reading practice, miss? And for Alex? He’s just started out.’
When I relax into it the teacher is there. She’s sitting down, reading her own book. She takes off her glasses.
‘Go on,’ she says.
I sit in my old seat. Beside me is Anne-Marie. On the other side is David. In front is Margaret-Anne, and behind, Kieran. We take it in turns to read a bit of story. The teacher says, ‘Very good: now it’s Anne-Marie.’ Then it’s my turn to read, which I do while everyone else listens. I’ve always been a good reader in English, so it’s easy, and I enjoy it and probably read longer than I should because the teacher forgets to ask me to stop.
When I can’t read any more I close my eyes. I put my ear on the desk, ignoring the floor-noise, and try to hear them. I listen hard. Usually someone sniffing, or making a cough, or the sound when they move, a chair grating, a book opening, a pencil-scritch, anything.
But there’s just the wind.
Sometimes the quiet gets on your nerves. You can hear the whistle in your ears. The dogs and sheep are turned to dinosaurs. When it gets bad we turn on the CD player and listen to music. It’s one reason we collect batteries. The MacNeil brothers I’ve heard tooting car horns for the same reason, and once I stood beside the War Memorial above Nasg and screamed just to be rid of it.
I get up, walk around the class. Some of my art is still on the wall from last autumn. Paintings of what our summer holidays were going to be this year. We were going to Glasgow, me and Mum, then on to a big water park in England which had blue and red slides, and a kids’ club and face-painting, and bikes and lakes and all sorts of fun.
So this is what my painting shows: a water park in a forest. Except I never saw it in the end.
Alex looks fed up with me when I get back outside.
Alex: ‘You leaved me alone.’
Me: ‘You look like you’re facing your worst enemy.’
Alex: ‘A dog came and sniffed me. At least the dogs remembered to be my friend.’
Me: ‘Was it in a pack? Was it a collie? Remember Elizabeth told us to stay back from them.’
Alex: ‘Wasn’t.’
We walk along for a bit, but he won’t be encouraged. Soon he wants to just sit and stare at nothing. Knowing the warning signs I take four pink wafer biscuits from my emergency supply and stuff them in his gob.
After ten minutes he’s less grumpy. I take a wet wipe and wipe a window in his dirty face.
He says, ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I get scared. I know I’ve got an illness, but it can’t always be that, right? If I’m scared that’s when I start thinking about zombies.’
Me: ‘Well you shouldn’t, because there aren’t any.’
Alex: ‘Not even new ones?’
Me: ‘Not even.’
Alex: ‘Not even of people?’
Me: ‘Stop asking the sa
me question differently.’
To cheer him up I show him the book I got in the library: it’s called Dr Dog, and it’s about a dog who’s a doctor and who has to cure the Gumboyle family. The book is good, and makes him laugh. Job done.
Elizabeth is nowhere around. But anyway, we don’t want to meet her because she’ll just take us New Shopping, which nobody likes.
Instead we go Old Shopping, normal shopping, this time to the post office. I decide it’s a mission, so we have to take out her list of rules to remind ourselves:
Stay together, and do not wander far.
Keep warm.
Put out something bright.
Look bigger.
Use the whistle for emergencies.
Don’t eat anything you’re suspicious of.
Stay away from deep water.
She always has rules, which I don’t mind, though Calum Ian got fed up with it, and anyway said he was too wise for instructions coming from her.
The post office door is blue, with peeling paint. For old time’s sake we knock on it. It’s open anyway, like all the doors around here; even the doctor’s surgery is open, though someone smashed the door for that.
Being in the post office gives me sad memories. Alex, however, likes playing with the ink stamps behind the counter, so I put up with it for him.
I borrow a sheet of first class stamps to take home for when we’re drawing. Meanwhile Alex stamps his hands, his cheeks where I wiped, his knees, his nose. Now he’s covered in POSTAGE PAID and looks chuffed.
Me: ‘You’re a weird kid.’
We leave the post office and go to the butcher’s, which sells butcher’s meat yes but also everything else. I mostly preferred the sweets. Mum likes the papers and rolls.
Each time you look at an empty shelf something new comes out. This is a skill I’ve learned. At first we didn’t see the batteries – but then we did. Next came the tin of stew. Next came the big sausage of dog food (for befriending, not eating, Elizabeth claims). Next came the serviettes and cup-cake papers (spare toilet paper). We used food colouring to mark the water we’d sterilised: that was Elizabeth’s good idea. Drinking red water isn’t so bad when you’re used to drinking juice. But Alex thinks too much colouring makes it look like blood.
