by Damian Barr
‘Wit the fuck?’ Logan shakes me like a piggybank. ‘Wit the fuck?!’ He’s shouting now and staring at his feet, disgusted at what he’s stood in. ‘Bastard!’ he shouts, shaking me so hard my eyes rattle in my head. ‘Clean this fuckin’ mess up!’ He shakes me even harder and I can’t stop the lumps rising and as I spew at him he drops me in the cooling mess that now has a school-custard skin. ‘Ten minutes, clean it up,’ he says. ‘Wi yer fuckin’ hands.’ And he goes into the bathroom and closes the door and I hear the bath start running.
With my hands? I look down at them. Then what? Put it where? He’s in the bathroom so I can’t flush it and I can’t trail it through the living room to the scullery bin. Time is running out. I will Teenie’s door to stay closed. She can’t see this. I feel empty now but the smell and the taste in my mouth make me gag. All I can think to do is what I do. I start scooping with my hands and filling my pockets. I retch as my trouser pockets brim and bulge. My pyjama jacket is covered anyway so I pull it off and make a sort of bag, tying the sleeves together like Dick Whittington did when he left for London. This works and I’ve almost filled it when the bathroom door opens.
‘Leave it,’ commands Logan, steam curling round him.
I put it down, noting proudly that it does not leak.
‘Strip,’ he says.
I peel the clammy trousers off, leg by leg, and step out of them. I’m covered in my own sick and freezing.
‘In,’ he says, pointing at the steaming bath, white cast-iron like all the baths in all the flats in Magdalene Drive but boxed in with plywood, not claw-footed like in the Flake advert. ‘In,’ he repeats, grabbing one of my arms, dangling me up over the edge before dropping me.
It’s boiling and I leap right up gasping but he pushes me back. He sits on the toilet lid staring at me. I look down at myself. My skin is now as red as his face. I see my bald willy which refuses to catch up with the other boys. He catches me looking and laughs.
‘Wash,’ he says quietly, rhyming it harshly with ‘ash’. He’s no longer shouting.
I stare at him and try standing up again. I jump up, sloshing water over the sides. Logan stays sitting but lowers his eyes slowly and I find myself sitting down again, under a spell.
Chunks float in an oily scum and the steam carries their stench. I start focusing on details, noticing lumps of carrot and wondering why there’s always carrot in sick, then realise there must have been some in the soup. The soup. The soup he made for me but did not eat. The soup he gave me a whole bowl of. The soup I’m now sitting in.
When we moved in Logan polished an empty paint tin left over from decorating till it shone like brass and this is where our bath soaps are. It sits on the bath filled with brightly coloured bars that look fruity but just smell soapy. They don’t make bubbles either. I select an apple green bar and lift it, surprised as ever by how heavy it is. I stand up to rub it on my body and turn my back on Logan so he can’t see my willy.
‘Turn round,’ he says coaxingly, as if trying to photograph a shy girl at her birthday party. ‘Ah bet yer wee brother’s bigger than that awready.’
I wash my face just so I can close my eyes for a second and not see him. I feel for the bath edges and carefully lower myself to rinse my face. When I open them he’s standing right over me smiling. How did he get from sitting down to standing right there without me hearing? I don’t have time to work it out.
‘Ye forgot to rinse yer hair,’ he says, putting both hands on my head and plunging me down.
I gulp in hot soapy water and try not to swallow. I’m tall for my age but still my feet don’t touch the other end of the bath. I thrash and kick but I’ve nothing to push against. I windmill my skinny pointless arms but they just slide down. I start to swallow when I feel myself pulled up and out into the air by my hair. I spit the water out and gasp, gulping in hot steamy air, then he pushes me under again. This time I swallow so much water I retch when he pulls me out and I think now he’ll stop because he can see it’s not a game any more and I really can’t breathe but no . . . He pushes me down and under again and this time I stop kicking my feet and stop waving my arms. I let air and some small vital part of myself bubble out from my lips and play dead like in films. Only I can’t for very long. Panic tingles in my fingers and toes which I know will betray me. If I move he’ll know I’m alive and then he’ll really kill me but if he thinks I am dead he might let me go and then I can come up for air and . . . He twists my hair in both hands and hauls me right up and out and drops me on the pink bathroom mat. He takes clean pressed jammies, Spider Man ones, off the towel rail and tosses them on top of me. I stay stiller than the saints in chapel. The vinyl floor is soaking and the mat squelches with sucked-up water.
‘That’s better,’ he says, matter-of-fact as my mum finishing the dishes.
I am breathing again. Sitting on the wet mat I pull one leg into the jammies and then the other. I stand up to pull them past my bum. I put the jacket on and button it up leaving the top button undone so I can breathe. He steps forward and I flinch, closing my eyes. Tenderly he does that button up.
‘Wan word,’ he whispers, ‘an yer wee sister’s next for a bath.’
Chapter 4
‘Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.’
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years
Mary the canary lives in a cloud of perfume and colours. She’s an auxiliary nurse by day and a country and western singer by night: bed pans and power ballads. She’s so glamorous she makes Mrs Hart look plain. She is the other woman and I’m being trained to hate her even though I’ve never met her.
My mum, my auntie Louisa and Granny Mac can’t stop talking about Rosemary Murray: ‘Mary the Canary’. She’s been spotted coming and going from 25 Ardgour Place by Leena next door and new furniture has been delivered. She’s the lipsticked cat-nailed everything my mum is not. My mum’s never worn a skirt but Mary is never seen in trousers, never mind the tight snow-wash jeans my mum loves. Her feet are always crammed into what Granny Mac calls ‘helter-skelters’ – five-inch heels that boost her to all of five foot five. It’s like her legs were made for standing on and being admired. Her ash-blonde curls, glistening with Elnett, hover a further five inches above her head. I am dying to meet this ‘dolly bird’, gripped by her glamour, but I can’t let on.
The flat is full of bottles and nappies for Baby Billy, who is always dressed in the red, white and blue of Rangers, Logan’s football team. Teenie has just started at Keir Hardie so I walk her to and from school every day holding her hand, which she hates more than me. All we talk about is our dad and how our mum still loves him even if she can’t show it because of Logan. We refuse to believe she doesn’t love him any more. We can’t comprehend this betrayal so we smother her with reports of all the lovely things we do on custody weekends: the Strawberry Mivvis, the trips to the video shop to pick whatever we want, the going to bed without a bath. ‘He’ll spoil you,’ she warns. But we’ve yet to lay eyes on Mary the Canary.
‘Bottle blonde,’ she huffs, furiously bleaching the inside of a teapot that we’ll all taste later. ‘Pound Shop Dolly Parton. Midden. Hoor’s handbag,’ she curses into the suds before shooshing me for asking what a ‘hoor’ is.
My dad has custody every second Friday from 4 p.m. and the court says he’s got to return us by 4 p.m. on the Sunday. I feel like a prized library book. Friday is the only day I run home from school because I know Logan won’t be there – like Jesus and God, my dad and him can’t be in the same place at the same time. With every step my book-filled schoolbag bounces up and down, bruising my hip, but I don’t mind because I’m going to see my dad tonight! I’m going to see my dad! I sing the words out loud, trailing Teenie behind me; I run along the road I know he’ll be driving down soon and imagine him racing beside me and letting me win.
I arrive back at 1 Magdalene Drive, Carfin, panting. Teenie is right behind me. My mum thinks I’m having an asthma a
ttack and runs for my ‘puffer’. My inhaler is the very latest in weedy boy technology: it’s a rigid see-through plastic bottle like the cocktail shaker in the James Bond films I watch with my dad at Christmas. Obediently I wheeze all the way out till I feel empty and dizzy then my mum makes it puff and I suck in the swimming-baths cloud, trying not to cough. I can’t open my mouth or the medicine will escape like a genie so I roll my eyes up and down to show I’m OK. Sometimes I sneak a puff and pretend I’m blowing smoke rings. Still holding my breath I turn and run to my bedroom, empty my schoolbag and stuff it with pants, socks and jammies.
‘It’s not a holiday, Damy,’ my mum shouts from the scullery.
All the kids in the flats and at school call me ‘Gaymian’ and ‘Dame Barr’ and ‘Barbie’. I don’t know what all the words mean but I know how they’re said, know they’re meant to hurt me and they do. I run and tell her and she says ignore them, they’re cruel, they’re stupid. She never says they’re wrong. She’s the only person in the world who calls me ‘Damy’ and I love her for that.
‘Ye’ve still got some things at yer daddy’s.’
Maybe she’s left some things there too? I smile triumphantly.
Teenie is napping by the time my dad pulls up, late again, hunched over his steering wheel; this car, like all cars, too small for him. Once he drove a Mini with his head out the sun-roof. He pips the horn. My mum flicks the scullery light on and off and walks me to the front door, pulling me into my duffel coat. I wonder if they arranged these signals or if they just acted together without talking like they always did before. Teenie is limp with sleep but I’m big enough to carry her now and for once my bigness feels useful as I go carefully down the steps and over to my dad who’s opened the back door for us. I can feel my mum watching us from the dark scullery window so I can’t look too excited because I know this will somehow hurt her feelings. When my back is turned I crack a massive grin at my dad which he shoots right back with a ‘Sssshhht’ so we don’t wake Teenie.
The red Ford Escort with its racy black spoiler streaks up the road to 25 Ardgour Place, Newarthill, in five minutes flat. As we slow down the familiar rhythm wakes my sister who, for once, doesn’t cry. She knows my dad is there and he picks her up as easily as she would a doll if she wasn’t such a tomboy. I bring the videos he’s rented for us, clunking in their cases.
Using his spare hand my dad turns the back-door handle and I expect an annoyed pause as he realises it’s locked and has to fumble in his pocket for the key. But no, the door opens. Strange new smells slip out.
‘There’s somebody I want yous to meet,’ says my dad, standing my sister down.
Like Jack’s magic beanstalk, Teenie tendrils herself around his leg, her head just by his knee. I’m looking around the scullery and it’s cleaner than it’s been since my mum left but not as clean as she likes it. There are new things on the bunker – Parmesan cheese, salad cream and coleslaw, fancy things my mum passes in the Fine Fayre. There’s a big round mirror where the cork board with dentist’s appointments goes. I am taking all this in when she appears.
‘Ah’m Mary,’ she says and it’s like a film just started in my head.
Her hair is the blondest and biggest I’ve ever seen, bigger than Maggie’s even. Teenie is still clinging to my dad’s leg so I extend one hand for both of us. Her nails reach me before the rest of her fingers and I wonder how she peels tatties.
‘Well, aren’t we the little gent,’ she says, flashing Bambi eyes at my dad. From somewhere inside her a tiny laugh escapes and it reaches me on a powerful waft of perfume I’ve never smelled before.
I look down at her feet bulging just slightly from bright yellow high heels pressing into the faux terracotta linoleum my mum chose so carefully. She leaves a strange but familiar footprint.
‘Come on through,’ she says, like we don’t live there any more. And I realise we don’t.
Our living room has gone. All that’s left from before is Charlie sitting on the swing in his cage. I dash over to make sure it’s really him, that he’s not been replaced by another lesser canary, and I know it’s still him because he smiles at me. We’re in this together, I tell him telepathically. Teenie is now standing on my dad’s foot so he swings her through on his leg. She’s not said a word but doesn’t need to.
A tubular chrome dining table with a smoked-glass top and six seats around it gleams where the old wooden fold-out stood. Who is going to sit here? Gone is the brown-and-orange three-piece suite and glowing anew is white leatherette with steel-inlaid arms that promise to feel cold against your arms and legs. The walls are white, white, white! The psychedelic carpet and the orange rug the shape and colour of the sun are nowhere to be seen. We appear to be wading through a pool of blood.
‘It’s American Shadow,’ announces Mary proudly, sweeping her hand. ‘It matches ma nails. Very eighties. Yer daddy loves it, don’t you, Glenn?’
I flinch, hearing my dad’s name used. Mary makes us wash our hands as if our mum didn’t teach us and sits us all down at the table before cramming her nails into oven gloves to rescue a bubbling dish which she plonks on a placemat, another new thing. Strings of cheese stretch from dish to plate as Mary serves my dad, then me, then Teenie. Mary shakes something that smells like feet over my plate.
‘It’s Parmesan,’ she says in a ‘take your medicine’ tone. ‘For your lass-agne.’ ‘Lass’, like a girl, and ‘agne’, like one half of Cagney and Lacey.
After a few mouthfuls she asks if we like ‘nouvelle cuisine’ and we nod because it really does beat watery tatties and greasy mince – my mum loves us but she doesn’t love cooking and cooking really doesn’t love her. Our big colour telly, the only other survivor, stays dark.
Mary finishes her tiny portion of lasagne and gets up to put an LP on the new stereo unit. ‘My coat of many colours,’ she trills in time with Dolly Parton, and Charlie hops from perch to perch. When we’re sure she’s going to sing the whole song we all stop eating to watch and she takes to a stage only she can see. My dad can’t take his eyes off her. None of us can. She finishes right along with Dolly and while the record crackles round to the next song we cannot help but clap our hands, even Teenie. Next up it’s ‘9 to 5’ and Charlie sings too and Mary grabs my dad and they’re dancing. He never danced with my mum, not even when she threatened to jump on his ‘two left feet’, and here he is dancing with this Mary and he’s rubbish and I’m mortified but I want to dance too and then Teenie gets up and we’re all out of breath and our lasagne must be cold.
When the next song starts Dolly is spelling out a word letter by letter like my mum taught me on the floor of this very room with her Mills & Boons. I’m the best reader in my class and I’ve got my library card already. ‘D-I-V-O’ and my mind is racing to the end of the word Mary and Dolly are singing when my dad shouts ‘MARY!’ and nearly hits her as he lunges at the stereo pushing the arm off the record just as Dolly says ‘R-C-E’.
Aside from the hissing speakers the room is as silent as the glass topping the table. Charlie sits more still than his wee plastic pal.
‘Glenn, ye’ll scratch the record,’ says Mary and my dad says nothing then really cheerfully, ‘Right who’s for a video?’ and me and Teenie cheer because somebody needs to make some noise.
I smile at Mary because nobody likes being in trouble and I don’t know what she’s done wrong but I don’t want her to be sad. She’s pretty and she’s only trying to be nice. ‘I like yer singing,’ I whisper and she kisses me on my lips and I’m sure she’s left a mark.
That night I sleep in a new bed in my old room but the house sounds different. I don’t know where I expected her to sleep but Mary is in my mum’s bed. I can hear her laughing her little laugh next door and my dad is low thunder through the walls. I can’t get to sleep and neither can Teenie cos the door opens and light cracks in from the landing as she sneaks in my bed. Humming a tune from earlier we both fall asleep.
As usual, my dad has started his day shift
long before we’re up so Mary’s taken the day off to look after us. Breakfast is more exotic fare: Ski Yoghurt. I snap up the Black Cherry and the Strawberry and Teenie has Vanilla. There’s no sign of a teapot and I remember my mum taking it when she left.
‘This is a Nescafé household now,’ announces Mary. Sophistication! She unscrews the lid from the coffee jar just like the woman in the advert. It’s like she stepped out the telly.
It’s not even 9 a.m. and she’s in full war paint, as Granny Mac would say. I make a note to report back. Mary is the enemy and I mustn’t forget this. Handing me a teaspoon she invites me to pop the paper seal on the jar. It’s the sound of money. Mary spoons the granules into mugs and pours boiling water over before handing us one each. I worry it might too hot for ‘the wean’ as she hates to be called, reminding us all she’s nearly five. But Mary’s not bothered so I’m not either. We sit at the brand-new breakfast bar sipping coffee and feeling grown-up. When the excitement is over we realise we’re all just swinging our legs waiting for my dad to get home. Saturday suddenly seems longer than Sunday.
My mum never lets us watch videos in the daytime but Mary does. We watch The Care Bears Movie while Mary sits in the hall talking on the phone, which my mum never uses unless it’s an absolute emergency. She’s blethering away and I nip Teenie and she cries and Mary bangs the door shut. It’s nearly lunchtime.
‘Yees’ve just had yer breakfasts,’ she huffs, trotting to the fridge in heels. Light from the fridge bathes her in a spotlight before she gets a can of soup down out the cupboard. ‘Ah’ve got tae watch ma figure,’ she says, patting her waist. Today she’s in a floaty fuchsia skirt with a matching long-sleeved blouse and low, low neckline. ‘I’ll need to git yer daddy to git me wan ae they micrawaves,’ she says. ‘Ah’ve not got time for all this cooking.’
The contents of the can plop can-shaped into a pot which she plonks on to the cooker. She has to look at the front to see which ring to light. The ignition sparks and sparks before catching. After our soup we need something else to do so it’s time for colouring in. Teenie scrawls and I try and fail to stay in the lines. None of my books are here so I can’t read and there are no other books in the house, my mum took all her Mills & Boons. Mary is in the scullery singing away to Dolly Parton who is crying about the coat of many colours that her momma gave to her.
