by Damian Barr
Sudden and total silence. Then, they’re on me.
Kicking and punching from all directions and I really do see Scooby-Doo stars. Instinctively I roll into a ball, making myself as small a target as possible, choking on the coal dust sucking into my asthmatic lungs. I squeeze my eyelids closed and will them to get bored and stop. They’re always calling me ‘Damien Omen’ – Danny says he’s seen a pirate video – so maybe I’ve got secret powers. They’re not working now. When my nose bursts Danny calls them off. It reminds me of when Granny Mac pulled three dogs off this really harassed-looking dog in the park one day, a finger raised warning me not to ask what they were all doing.
Danny looks me over in a glance only I see. Punishment for your sins – that’s the Catholic way. He helps me to my feet then kicks them straight out from under me and I fall to my knees winded. That hurts more than anything.
The hills of the Bing were bulldozed into being by the big yellow JCB diggers that came for the last of the coal before I was born. There’s still a wee bit of coal. When the News is full of strikes and the coal man stops coming round with his big lorry some older boys burrow into the Bing with the shovels for cleaning ashes out the fireplace. They go round the doors of the Coal Scheme selling what they dig up. More than one boy dies, suffocating in a collapsed tunnel. Maybe they turn to coal. Sometimes a whole field falls back into the ground, leaving a perfect circle like a hot mug on a table. The Bing has one really scary cliff – a sheer drop of about thirty feet we’ve dared each other to jump off for years. Nobody ever has. Not even Danny. We imagine doing wheelies off it. Only one of us has a BMX – me, an eighth birthday present from my dad. I love riding it but I’m too scared to be a bandit like the ones on Saturday Swap Shop. I’m happy to let everybody else do stunts. They like me more then.
The boy who pulls the biggest wheelies and hates me the most pins my hands behind my back. Paddy’s lips are jagged like they were cut out of his face with the pinking shears you need to ask the teacher’s permission to use. He nods towards the cliff edge. My heart falls.
‘You or yer bike. Pick wan.’
If my BMX is mangled I might as well be dead because my dad will kill me even though he’s never actually hit me for anything. I’ve never been hit even when I deserved it. Last summer he left his shed unlocked and not thinking it was a funny place to find a bottle of Barr’s Cola and not wondering why it didn’t fizz when I managed to open it and not wondering why it smelled, I took a big gulp. It was creosote. Burning, spewing up my stomach and trying to run away because I didn’t want to get in trouble, flashing blue lights, stomach pump, weeks of sympathy and no punishment. If Paddy makes me jump I’ll end up one of those pissy-smelling kids in a wheelchair that everybody hates. On the upside, I’ll get loads of sympathy and I’ll never have to do gym again.
I start crying, thinking maybe they’ll find this so embarrassing they’ll stop. WRONG! They all laugh.
‘Aww, he’s greeting,’ laughs Paddy, rubbing his eyes. ‘Want yer mammy?’
Danny grips my hands behind my back less tightly but not so’s anybody can see. His hard body is pressing against mine and he breathes in to speak, to set me free.
‘How about this, boys, how about we make him jump?’
JUMP?! Some pal! I can’t believe this – my best pal in the whole world is offering me up to them. I feel like Aslan on the stone table.
‘Let’s make it more interestin’,’ he says and goes over to them and whispers.
For a second I’m free so I run. I run and I run and I run until Paddy tackles me to the ground and drags me back kicking and screaming and coughing up enough coal for a fire. Danny leads a bunch of them back towards the houses where our mothers sit in ignorance.
They’re away for ever but probably only half an hour. I chat with the others like nothing’s happened. Paddy ignores me. Without a leader there’s no one to be cruel in front of but we all know they can’t let me go. In the distance the others return carrying something on their shoulders.
It’s a coffin.
I start struggling. Fuck, they’re going to bury me alive. It’s Tales of the Unexpected only nobody’s going to rescue me just before the air runs out. I’m going to be buried in the black ground for ever with those other boys. My bones will turn to coal. Oh God, oh God . . . they’re getting closer. I try shaking them off but they’re stuck. The coffin comes closer and I can see it properly. It’s not a coffin. It’s, it’s a great big wardrobe, the dark old-fashioned ones that are getting chucked out as MDF gets trendy up here. My mum’s thrilled with her newly fitted bedroom suite. This must be the wardrobe that Maggie the Magpie lived in.
Danny winks at me. What? What joke am I missing? This isn’t funny. I think about shitting myself to gross them out so much they’ll have to let me go but I’d never live it down so I watch them walk the wardrobe to the edge of the cliff, inching forward corner-to-corner cos the slag heaps are crumbly and they don’t want to fall before I do. It stands with its back to the drop. Then, like hotel bellboys in the black-and-white films Granny Mac loves, they swing the door open and invite me to step in. As if I have a choice.
An exploding wardrobe is great fun to watch but it’s even better knowing a boy is inside. I have to admit that – I’d played frog tennis.
Danny smiles as he gently closes the door on me and I realise this is an act of love. The wardrobe will break my fall. Paddy would have made me jump without it. Inside smells of mothballs and I think of Narnia, sure I won’t find it in this wardrobe, when something soft brushes my face. Dangling on the clothes rail is a mess of cloth – sheets, maybe, or curtains. They stink of old people but I wrap them round me. Danny did this. ‘10, 9, 8, 7, 6 . . .’ They count down outside, muffled by the door. ‘5, 4, 3, 2 . . . ONE!’
I feel them all round me pushing. For a second nothing happens. Then there is only air above and below. We don’t spin or topple, the wardrobe and me. In total darkness we drop like a stone . . . straight down for what seems like for ever and I brace myself, careful not to put my tongue between my teeth because I remember Mr Baker telling us not to in gym. Cool calm floods my veins like the antifreeze in my dad’s Escort. I take deep breaths and think of my mum and my wee sister and my dad and hope they all cry for me. I hold the rail above me like the yuppies on London trains on the News and surely I must hit the ground soon and right then a light so bright bursts in as the wardrobe explodes around me.
It is a million matchsticks.
I’m in one piece.
I’m not dead. I’ve survived. I’m a hero! They lift me on to Danny’s shoulders and everybody’s whooping and singing and dancing around us high on destruction. I’m still not dead. Not just not dead but fucking brilliant. I feel amazing! I AM POPULAR! I’ve not broken a single bone, not even got a small cut on my cheek to show for it. I’m shaking so much I fall off Danny’s shoulders and they crowd round me again only now they’re slapping me on the back chanting ‘Barr! Barr! Barr!’ Everybody except Paddy. He stands apart and stares at me like he’ll never blink again and I don’t look back because I don’t want to see what he sees.
I run home more alive than I’ve ever been and burst through the back gate, reaching the steps before it’s even clicked closed. On the top step I hear shouting and inside the house is suitcases and tears. My mum’s trying to pull the rings from her fingers but she can’t get them off and my dad’s saying she’s brought it all on herself. Teenie is three already but can’t find the words to make them stop so she’s just bawling and I run to her and cuddle her and tell her it’ll all be OK.
‘Ah’m leavin’ and ah’m taking them wae me!’ shouts my mum and I think she means her rings then I see she means us. ‘C’mon, Damian!’ she shouts, grabbing at my hand.
She never shouts and she never ever shouts at me. There’s never been a row in this house, not that I’ve heard. I throw her hand down and run past her upstairs and she shouts, ‘Damian Leighton Barr!’ I keep trying to think what I’ve done wrong and run into t
heir room, which I’m not allowed in, heading straight for the fitted wardrobe my mum begged for.
I’ve only just got behind her best coat and the rabbit fur’s tickling my nose as I wheeze in and out when the floorboards creak their special Dad creak. Downstairs the back door slams.
‘Damian, son,’ he says from outside the wardrobe. I say nothing and try to breathe as quietly as I can. ‘Damian, son,’ he repeats right outside the door.
We both know where I am and we both know he won’t open the door. Slowly I push the coat out the way and the MDF sags under my feet as I reach for the door. Light floods in and I blink at my dad sitting on the already empty bed.
I glance at the bedroom door.
‘They’re away already,’ he says and I start towards it but he catches my trouser loop with one finger and I run in the air like Roadrunner off a cliff. ‘They’re only away tae yer Granny Mac’s,’ he says but I don’t believe him. ‘They’ll be back.’ He looks away and I don’t think he believes himself either.
I don’t understand any of this. My dad sits me on his knee and we both sit staring into the wardrobe through the open door.
‘Yer mammy,’ he starts. ‘She’s. Ah. We. Ah.’
I turn round to cuddle him and my arms still don’t go all the way round. ‘Ah’m not going anywhere, Daddy,’ I say, angry at my mum and Teenie for leaving us and planning a proper tantrum for when they get back even though I’m a bit old for that at eight.
Our tea that night is a casserole delivered over the back fence by Leena. She smiles at me but she’s got nothing but dirty looks for my dad, who mumbles thanks and takes the dish back himself, the first time I’ve ever seen him wash up. I listen at the fence.
‘Glenn Barr, you’ve only yersel tae blame,’ says Leena before Gerry tells her to can it because it’s none of her business.
‘She’s made her bed,’ says my dad.
Who has? What bed?
‘And do you blame her? She lost that wee lassie and where’ve you been?’ shouts Leena. ‘It wisnae the Craig that needed ye!’
Gerry says, ‘enough’s enough,’ and their gate clicks as my dad comes back.
Gerry and Leena keep arguing and I run upstairs to brush my teeth as if my mum was here to check. Doors are slamming over and over as I fall asleep. A massive smash in the night and I sit up. Can I hear birds singing? Back to sleep. When I get up my dad’s sleeping next to me, a giant teddy in Y-fronts. His eyes are closed but I know they’re the blue of my favourite marble, the one I won’t play with in case I lose it. He’s like Mr Hart only he doesn’t really talk. ‘Yer daddy’s a man of few words,’ says my mum, ‘that’s how come he’s got me.’ I climb over him and go downstairs to make his breakfast as a surprise.
In the scullery I stand on the bunker to get to the cupboard where the tea bags live. I look out the scullery window. A miracle. All the Browns’ roses have come out overnight. It’s October. I rub the sleep from my eyes with one hand and hold on to the cupboard door with the other so I don’t fall. I squint through the net curtains that my mum’s always bleaching whiter than white. Some of the roses are yellow but some look red and I don’t remember any red ones and it must be really windy outside because they look like they’re moving. Charlie is flapping madly in his cage in the living room. My dad appears behind me and lifts me off the bunker folding my scream into his chest as I realise that the flowers have feathers.
Chapter 3
‘It was a lovely morning. We have not had many lovely days. And the sun was just coming through the stained- glass windows and falling on some flowers right across the church and it just occurred to me that this was the day I was meant not to see.’
Margaret Thatcher, interview for Channel 4, 15 October 1984
My mum, my wee sister and me are now living with Logan in Flat 1, 1 Magdalene Drive, Carfin. Everything is unpacked but I still don’t really believe I’ll have to stay here with this red-faced man who makes the air shake. It’s a mistake – we’ll move back in with my dad any day now. It’s nearly Christmas already and we can’t have Christmas without him. I’m now in Primary Four and Teenie is starting playschool.
Primary Four is heady with hyacinths. Because of them I’ve sneezed about a hundred times and both my sleeves are wet with watery snot. I’m worried the snot will ruin the effect of my carefully ironed-on transfers of roses which came with a Woman’s Own I snaffled from my auntie Louisa. The roses are biro blue and totally unnatural but I love them.
At the start of term each of the twenty-six members of Primary Four planted a papery bulb in an individual terracotta-coloured plastic pot labelled with their name. It’s now December and the unpromising bulbs are blooming. Every. Single. One. For reasons only he knows, Mr Baker has lined them all up on the boiling cast-iron radiators. It’s nearly playtime and the flowers, like the pupils, are drooping. We all need watering.
We’re doing decimals and they’re so boring I want to die. They seem pointless. The blackboard has been rolled round from the bit with lines on, which promises letters and words, to the bit with squares on, which threatens numbers and sums. The week we went from familiar fractions to decimals I was off with an asthma attack. Everybody else is thrilled with a sneeze but I would do anything to stay in school, not to be in that flat with that man. If I could I’d sleep on the narrow single bed in the school clinic with clean white sheets and comfortingly tight hospital corners. I’d lie there with my arms by my sides reading Little Women again. I wouldn’t be any trouble.
For the first time ever I don’t understand what Mr Baker is blethering about and I won’t ask because everybody in the class will look at me and laugh which isn’t unusual but I always know everything and won’t admit I can’t do decimals. I’m used to feeling embarrassed about being the tallest and the skinniest and my ‘broken home’ but I’m not used to feeling stupid so I stay quiet.
Mr Baker has a black moustache which grows out of his nose. Maybe it’s all just his nose hair and not an actual moustache made of face hair like my dad’s. When he throws his head back to make a point I see right up his nostrils. His specs grip his nose trying hard to hold on. They have silver metal legs and milk-bottle lenses so thick they make his eyes look small and slightly surprised. Bushy black eyebrows sprout over the top.
The big radiators round the edge of the class are pumping out so much heat I can actually see it. School is always warmer than home so I am not complaining. I sneak a peek at my Timex. It’s 10.30 a.m. Soon the playtime bell will ring. We hear it extra loud in Primary Four because we’re right at the end of the corridor where the red bell clangs high on the wall. I think we get more playtime than other classes because we hear it first. I’d rather we didn’t.
Our desks are arranged in a horseshoe shape, ‘So I can see everybody and everybody can see everybody else,’ said Mr Baker when he made us move them on the first day of Primary Four. There’s no longer a front of the class for me to sit at. To my right is the classroom door. To my left is Amanda Ferguson. She outlines all her drawings in black felt tip so they look like comics. Her dad deals off the back of a lorry so she’s always got great stuff but sometimes it’s dodgy. Instead of PUMA her schoolbag says POMO which sounds like ‘homo’ and we all laugh but don’t really know why. It’s a word we’ve heard the Primary Sevens use. She’s the first girl in our class to boast a full spiral perm in tribute to Kylie off Neighbours and it’s always crispy with mousse. I reach out to touch it and she slaps my hand away. The movement catches Mr Baker’s eye even though he is busy with some 0.5 something and he works himself up to the rare pleasure of shouting at me. I lower my eyes and place my hands flat down in front of me and the brown wood-effect Formica desk feels cool against my instantly sweaty palms. I feel my face go red. I breathe in and out so slowly my chest doesn’t rise or fall. I am learning how to make angry men calm down. Mr Baker turns back to his blackboard.
Mr Baker’s chalk snaps just before his patience and he sends Pete Downie to the supply cupboard
that sits behind foldaway doors in a corner of the classroom. If he’s in a right rage Mr Baker will actually grab you by the scruff of your neck and throw you in it. Pete has been hurled in loads of times and locked in once or twice. Because his head is oddly oval his nickname is ‘Egg’. He’s pure cheek. Egg drags his feet over to the cupboard then speeds up like Benny Hill when Mr Baker shouts. He scurries back with the chalk and Mr Baker cuffs his ear. If you’re a chatterbox like me you get your mouth taped up with Sellotape that tastes like flypaper smells. Eventually it steams up and peels off as you huff and puff through your nostrils.
10.50 a.m and Mr Baker is giving up on decimals about an hour after I did. He walks to his desk at the front of the class and picks up the book he’s been reading aloud to us. When he reads his voice is deeper and more regular than when he shouts. It’s the only time he’s really calm and it’s the only time we really listen to him. The Witches is my favourite Roald Dahl book ever – way better than Fantastic Mr Fox or Danny, the Champion of the World (although I love Danny’s dad). The witches are terrifying because they look like nice ladies who might take you in if you lost your way and offer to make you tea and toast while your mum comes to fetch you. Only the tea will turn you into a frog or worse. While Mr Baker reads on I try to remember what it’s like to want to go home. I try to remember what it’s like to be lost and want to be found.
He looks at his watch because he’s allowed to. Even through his spider-leg arm hairs I can see it’s 10.55 a.m. He should be sending the milk monitor out to fetch the crate. School milk is not like home milk or milk in adverts. For starters it comes in special triangular cardboard cartons with a tiny silver foil dot that you pierce with a red straw so thin you’ve got to suck your cheeks right in to get it going. They’re piled up in sour sick-smelling 50p-shaped crates that magically appear outside the classroom during morning lessons. You can spray someone with the milk if you squeeze the carton hard enough or stab them with the straw if you jab it fast and hard just once holding the straw near the sharp end (any more or from the other end and it snaps). School milk is not rich and cold and creamy. It is watery and slightly grey and too warm. But you have to drink your milk. The older I get the quicker I drain my carton. At the end of the day spare milks, undrunk by absent pupils, are given out as prizes for answering general knowledge questions fired out by Mr Baker. I usually win extra milk this way. Sometimes I take that milk home for my mum’s tea.
