by Damian Barr
Me and Brian Southlands are the last two learners left at the shallow end. Even spazzy Leeanne Smith and fatty Moira Gardner have mastered the required single width of breaststroke. They’re all down the deep end throwing their arm-bands at us making chicken noises so I attempt a Mark-style dive from the side. Right on top of Brian. A klaxon sounds but we don’t hear it and red-shorted lifeguards fish us out with long-handled nets and I wish the mouth-to-mouth would go on for ever. When I wake up I see Mark looking anxiously at me.
Within weeks we discover heavy petting. It’s like what I did down the Sippy with Kev only Mark admits he enjoys it too and doesn’t put me in a headlock after. Primary Five is soon over and summer is here. For the first time since my mum and dad divorced I’m excited about the holidays. I’ve got a pal.
Mark stays with his dad, Big Mark, who’s only about five foot eight, in the Gas Scheme two minutes from my dad. Big Mark’s live-in girlfriend is Tracey who we hate. Her ankles are as thick as her knees and we call her ‘Grotbags’ because she’s such a big fat witch. She makes Mark do all her chores – washing dishes, hoovering up, cutting the grass. I help him so we can get away faster. We hate Grotbags more than Mary the Canary because at least Mary’s good-looking, though she’s not as fancy as she was. Her blonde curls have brown roots these days and I’ve yet to see her put a washing through that brand-new automatic machine. There’s no lasagne now. It’s like she’s bored of being nice to me and Teenie. We call them ‘the hoors’. We don’t talk about Logan.
We can’t go to Mark’s cos Grotbags is always bursting into his room like she suspects something. The Bing is off-limits because they’re building a big new estate of what Granny Mac calls ‘bought hooses’ there, promising ‘two-, three- and four-bedroom family luxury from Brosley Homes’. The shimmering black mountains are being flattened by yellow JCBs, perhaps the same ones that made them, and the massive pond is being drained. I imagine the frogs coming back year after year looking for the place they were spawned. We could brave the Sippy but we don’t know who’ll be there. In desperation we sneak into Joseph’s cave at the Grotto and start to kiss but it’s like we’re being watched. Mark says he doesn’t care about Jesus. He’s thrillingly Godless and says he knows there’s no afterlife and I wonder how he can be so sure. He doesn’t believe that Mary was a virgin either. I cross my fingers and hope he won’t burn in hell. I decide to pray for him then get on my knees anyway.
We need to find somewhere else, a place where nobody will find us. Then it clicks: the Craig.
‘Craig Under Threat!’ screams the Daily Record. The Motherwell Times mounts a campaign to ‘Save the Craig’. On the increasingly rare occasions he makes his custody weekends it’s all my dad talks about. They all blame Maggie like she’s personally going to come and flick a big switch to OFF. I don’t think she will. I don’t think she’s as bad as they say and if she knew how hard my dad worked she’d keep it open for ever. At school we sign petitions and write letters to our local MP. ‘They can’t put all those men out a job,’ says Jane in the gift shop at the Grotto. I feel guilty about not visiting her so much but I’ve got Mark now. My dad says the Craig makes more steel than any other plant in the world so it will never shut. We will always have two sunsets, maybe if Maggie saw them? If it did close I wouldn’t have to worry about my dad any more – a boy at school told me his uncle pulled a man with no legs left out the furnace and he kept burning away even in the hospital until there was nothing left to bury but his screaming mouth. Better to be pushed under.
The Craig is a futuristic machine-city: an orderly Mad Max. Dozens of factories serviced by thousands of men (the only women here dish out dinner in the canteen and they always give my dad extra). Giant cooling towers puff away together like old biddies at a bus stop. Centipede vehicles built with just one purpose carry tons of this or crush tons of that. Here and there are great mountains of raw material – ore and coal. White sparks dance from rivers of molten metal. Dwarfed by machinery, the men scuttle about in bright orange hard hats – white for the gaffers. Stretching into the sky, spaghetti stacks breathe green and orange fire. Everybody and everything is rusty brown-black. Only the girders leave here gleaming. Steelopolis.
The Craig borders the whole south side of Carfin. To get in you just cross the road at the back of the swing-park behind the flats and probe the chain-link fence until you find a gap – probably the same one used by a workman who can’t be bothered to walk the mile down the road to the official gate with its barriers and security booth. Most men walk, swinging their sandwiches in a plastic bag from the Asda that took over the Fine Fayre, white on the way in, black on the way out. Granny Mac still mourns the Fine Fayre with its superior fish counter, good for a Friday. ‘It’s a right dear hole, that Asda, a scandal! They’d have the blood out your veins!’ Pure black affronted, so she was.
In the first week of the holidays me and Mark find a gap and slip through sucking our ribs so we don’t get caught on the wire. Straight ahead falls a break-neck slope of scree that makes the Bing look like an anthill. Mark has brought his schoolbag which he tosses down. It bounces heavily which tells us we’ll only fall if we try climbing. So we slip-and-slide down on our arses, landing so hard I finally do a forward roll. Thousands of men work here but they’re all spread out and there are plenty of places to hide. If we do get caught I’ll demand to be taken to my dad. All the buildings, from the smallest shed to the hugest warehouse, are unlocked. Mark pulls at a door five times his height and squeezes in through the crack. I follow. Somewhere in the massive darkness a transformer whirr-crunks awake, thumping louder and louder till we run out, fingers in ears!
In a cosy shed with a kettle and some chipped cups on a dainty mug tree we find luminous orange hazard-vests that are too big for us. We put them on anyway. They smell of tobacco and oil and man. We toss stones into an eerily round pond glistening with black rainbows so soupy it takes a second to swallow knowing they will never reach the bottom. We imagine the Lady of the Lake raising an oil-streaked sword in a dripping black fist. We stop to share a can of Irn-Bru that Mark stole from his dad’s and we imagine it makes us stronger even though we know it’s not really made from girders. Maybe I’m related to the Barrs who brew it? Maybe I’m really a rich orphan?
We balance on big steel barrels and finish the can. Mark crushes it with his foot and feeds it to the pond but it just sits there. Somehow he’s managed to smuggle new horror books out of Newarthill Library – our Junior Green Cards don’t permit Stephen King, James Herbert or Dean Koontz. But here they all are. I’d never dare but Mark would. We take turns reading out loud. Particularly gory bits get read at least twice. Pennywise the Clown smiles his big red gash and boils our blood for candyfloss. Cujo is off the leash. Red-eyed rats swarm round our feet, their filthy fur tickling our ankles before they shred our shins. We open a practical-looking book by someone called Aleister Crowley that Mark says he got for 5p at the chapel jumble sale. It’s full of swearing and makes little sense but we piece together some spells to kill Grotbags and Logan. We hold hands and utter the incantations, hoping for the worst. Then we hang upside down from a beam and pretend to be vampires from Salem’s Lot. Mark kiss-bites my neck then we run around screaming. No one can hear us.
When we’ve scared ourselves stupid we do sci-fi. We are gripped by V: The Mini Series, which is like Dynasty but with bigger shoulder pads and badder baddies and spaceships (not counting the stupid flying saucer that abducted Fallon Colby). We run round schn-schning laser noises and bicker over who gets to be Mike Donovan – the handsome journalist who reveals that the Visitors are really lizards beneath their human skin. Bright blue laser bolts miss us by millimetres and we take cover on a giant rubber conveyor belt that’s easily sixty feet high but barely two feet wide. We run at it and clamber up on all fours, single file, up and up, and it’s bouncing beneath us and a Visitor grabs at my ankle and we can’t look down or we’ll fall and die. There’s no safety barrier, there aren’t even any s
ides. Mark slides back and I catch his feet. We’ve got to go higher! They’re gaining! Rubber slips and squeaks on our black plimsolls. Finally we reach the top and sit panting on a platform. From here we can see the whole world and somehow we’ve shaken them off. Up was a scary and exhausting half-hour. Down is a terrifyingly fast sixty seconds as we slip and slide and finally fly off the bottom.
Tired, we find a low steel bin and sardine ourselves in the conversion chamber from the alien Mothership.
‘Maybe it’ll make us normal,’ I say and we judder like we’re being electrocuted and secretly hope it will.
Maybe alien technology could make my mum better, heal her broken head. Then Mark steps outside and I’m Bea in solitary confinement in Prisoner Cell Block H. Because the whole place is floodlit and it’s summer we don’t really notice it getting late. Mark checks his watch. It’s nearly seven. We were supposed to be home an hour ago. We sprint to the scree slope but it takes longer to climb up than slide down. We cross the road, looking both ways, and run back to the flats. Mark asks if I want him to come in and I say it’s better if I go alone because I just need to get it over with. I look like I’ve done a shift at the Craig but there’s nothing I can do now.
Mark runs home and I miss him already. I trail round to the front door, and down one side of the steps there’s a smooth curvy handrail that wasn’t there this morning. Logan isn’t standing at the scullery window. I brace myself for him in the hall but he’s not there either.
There are voices behind the living-room door but it’s not the telly. It sounds like . . . I open the door and it is . . . it’s my mum!
She doesn’t get up, doesn’t get a chance, I fly to her and Auntie Louisa is saying, ‘Careful, son, watch yer mammy, mind, c’mon.’
My mum lifts the fag she’s smoking so it doesn’t burn me. My arms are Velcroed round her neck and I’m crying and her eyes are bluer and her face looks saggy and she’s looking at me like I looked at the handrail. Like I’m new.
Overnight 1 Magdalene Drive changes. My mum is back. She’s not the same but that’s OK. She’s wobbly on her feet and sometimes uses a stick. She forgets the names of things, like the kettle, and I have to dial phone numbers for her then remind her who she’s talking to. We’ve all got to be patient and careful and help her as much as we can. Big Brenda still gets us ready in the morning cos my mum needs her sleep and we’ve not to make any noise after 7 p.m.
Auntie Louisa comes in to give my mum a bath. ‘She’s had enough nurses,’ she says, testing the water for her sister as she would for Baby Billy.
I’m allowed to stay when Doctor Khan makes his weekly call. I stare at his hands and wonder how his palms are so white when the rest of him is so dark. I’m surprised by the coolness of the stethoscope. ‘He’ll be a doctor one day,’ says my mum but questioningly not confidently. In a rare moment of girliness Teenie brushes my mum’s hair and she winces with every brushstroke but doesn’t stop her.
Logan all but vanishes. He hasn’t lifted a hand to me since my mum returned. Now he’s always at his mother’s, cleaning out the dookit, or taking his pigeons to faraway places in big wicker baskets to set them free so they can race home. He times their progress on a special clock with a brass face and extra numbers that sits in a polished wooden box. I consider pigeon time. When he is home he’s all smiles but they’re his smiles. My mum and Baby Billy are both shaky on their feet, learning to walk.
My mum is keen to catch up, wants to meet my new pal, so Mark’s allowed to come to the flat for Irn-Bru and crisps. My mum has forgotten she was at school with his mum but we fill in the blanks and she tuts about the fancy man down south.
One Sunday, just after my tenth birthday, I tempt my mum to the Grotto to meet Jane, who I’ve told her all about. ‘Jane says yer a miracle. She prayed for you.’
Auntie Louisa is phoned and arrives and we all set off together. We’re not far away when I notice bunting and trestle tables and people dressed too colourfully for Mass.
‘Ooh!’ says my mum, remembering. ‘It’s the Holy Ghost Fathers’ Garden Fête!’
I nod and smile like I’d planned it.
‘Ye know yer mammy loves a jumble sale,’ she says, reaching for her purse.
‘Ah’ll count the money,’ says Auntie Louisa, smiling and putting her hand out.
My mum lets her take it. Slowly, slowly we shuffle there. I want to run ahead but I stay on one side of my mum and Auntie Louisa stays on the other. It’s so warm the tarmac is a bit melty and my mum’s walking stick leaves tiny prints. I wish for an ice pole.
My mum’s not been out much so loads of people are seeing her for the first time. They come over. ‘Och, Lynn, it’s great tae see you out and about, hen,’ they all say. ‘Yer lookin’ well,’ they lie. They tilt their heads like someone’s died. They talk louder than they need to and I feel angry. She’s not stupid. She’s just not well. They stare at her – this wee woman from Newarthill who survived a cerebral haemorrhage, the same thing that killed her younger brother a decade ago. Did you not hear? When she doesn’t recognise them – any of them – they pat their chests and say slowly, ‘It’s me, Lynn,’ then explain exactly how they know each other and how their mothers go to chapel together and on it goes. There’s more than one person she wouldn’t have stopped for normally. We’ve not even looked at the stalls, never mind found Jane, and we’re already tired.
‘C’mon, Lynn, time for a wee cuppa and a strawberry tart.’
Auntie Louisa leads us to the purvey where tiny old ladies guard giant teapots. As we sit in the sun with all the saints around us, everything feels OK. Then I spot Mary the Canary wafting towards us through the crowds. Auntie Louisa follows my gaze and nearly spits out her tea. Mary and my mum have only met in gossip. Pastry crumbs stick to the inside of my mouth. My mum smiles at me then looks over my shoulder. I don’t need to turn to know that Mary’s there. I can smell her – lipstick and Elnett and got-it-all.
‘Damy,’ she says, surprised. I flinch at the overfamiliarity. My mum’s smile slips off her face.
‘You’ve a cheek, Rosemary Murray, standing there like butter wouldn’t melt,’ hisses Auntie Louisa, not loud enough to draw attention. ‘And this a house of God.’
At ‘Rosemary’ my mum’s smile returns.
‘That’s enough, Louisa.’ She shooshes her wee sister and inclines her head to Mary, pointing apologetically at her legs which look painfully thin even in the child-sized jeans she’s wearing.
‘Ah cannae get up, hen.’
Mary nods. No doubt thinking how innocent and pleasing she looks in a pleated yellow chiffon two-piece, she floats round the table and leans towards my mum. Ever dainty, she tucks her curls behind her ear. Waiting for my mum to speak, she leans closer. Louisa tuts at the unholy cleavage.
My mum is smiling now, really smiling. ‘Hoor!’ she shouts.
Mary looks puzzled. Her frosted fuchsia mouth falls open. My mum’s hand shoots out and slaps it closed. I didn’t know she could move that fast any more. Mary is stiller than her Virgin namesake for a second then turns round and walks away without a word, struggling on the gravel in her heels. Black affronted, as Granny Mac would say. Everybody saw but everybody knows Lynn Barr is in the right so nobody says a word.
‘Have ye got a serviette, Louisa, hen? Ma hand’s awful dirty.’
This is the highlight of the summer my mum comes home. Now she’s back my dad pays us more attention. He makes every custody weekend and talks to her when he picks us up and drops us off and me and Teenie think this means they’ll get back together. Mary probably didn’t tell my dad about the slap and I won’t grass but he knows. Everybody knows. They’re less lovey-dovey and he makes her practise her singing upstairs. I notice my dad’s work shirts aren’t ironed. She grates her own feet now. Sometimes she smells of Lambrusco. We don’t get smiles any more. I consider telling my dad where she hides her bottles then I remember that Polaroid of me with all the make-up on and keep quiet. Another secret.
Baby Billy is walking now and mum has got rid of her stick. The first day of Primary Six she comes with me all the way to the gates at Keir Hardie without it. Me and Teenie grab a hand each in case she disappears. Every day we rush home expecting her to be gone again but there she is. My mum enters Baby Billy and his blond curls and big blue eyes in a bonny baby competition and Granny Mac calls it vanity. Logan spends more and more time at his pigeon dookit. The first term of Primary Six flies by and nothing bad happens.
Star Wars is the only game to play now. Me and Mark take turns being Luke Skywalker and rename his stepmum Jabba. Mark hopes for a light sabre at Christmas. I make it very clear I need a Millennium Falcon. The one bonus of divorce is two Christmases, two lots of presents from guilty parents. Add to this my mum’s guilt about being away in the hospital and you’re talking a Millennium Falcon with an en suite and staff. Me and Teenie save up the pocket money we get from our dad and go with Auntie Louisa to the Cooperative in Motherwell and buy my mum a bottle of Opium. We sneak a sniff and it’s nothing like the perfume I made her with the Browns’ roses in a jam-jar but we hope she’ll like it anyway.
The calendar from the New Lotus Chinese Takeaway that hangs by the phone finally gives up Christmas Eve.
Me and Teenie are ‘up to high do’ on sugar because Mum let us raid our selection boxes but we’ve got to go to bed now or Santa won’t come. I know fine well Santa has nothing to do with it but Teenie doesn’t so I play along.
