Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell (10 page)

23
The day my da took our ponies to the glue factory

Even though I had a scar from the time Dandy threw me from the saddle, I desperately wanted a pony of my own. One day I asked Mum if I could and she said we'd hardly enough money to feed ourselves never mind a bloody pony. That same week my Uncle Jack told my da his pal Hughie had two flea-bitten ponies he wanted to get rid of and so my da said he would take them. He went to Hughie's place with Uncle Jack that very day and they put the ponies into Uncle Jack's horsebox and brought the ponies home. One of the ponies was a rusty colour and the other was silver and so we called them Rusty and Silver. Mum made a bed for them that night in the greenhouses on the land at the back of our house with the four bales of straw that Hughie had sent and Rusty and Silver had to share those greenhouses with Annie the donkey and Ducky and Drakey, the duck and drake who mysteriously appeared in our driveway one Sunday afternoon and decided to stay.

Me and Izzy and Andrew mucked out Rusty and Silver's greenhouse every morning and brushed them every night with the wire brush Mum kept under the sink and they ran around happily all day long on our big block of land. We picked fresh grass and chicken weed for them every day from the field across the road and sometimes we wished we could get hay for them, but my da said there was no way he was spending good money on hay for those useless fucking animals, so they ate what they got and they didn't seem to mind at all.

Some nights after we said good night to the ponies, Mum struggled to breathe. And one night when she could hardly breathe at all my da had to phone the doctor. While we waited for the doctor to come I looked at Mum wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the orange vinyl swivel chair she'd got at Big Sheena's and she didn't look well. Even though the doctor was on his way I was still worried and I told myself over and over that things would be okay. When the doctor finally arrived my da told me I should get out of the room to give Mum peace so I moved outside into the hallway and peered through the dimpled-glass door and I looked at a hundred reflections of her and begged God to not let her die. I watched the doctor as he brought out his stethoscope and listened to Mum's chest and lungs and I feared the worst when he shook his head and announced it was no good. The doctor said she had to go to the hospital and before I knew what was happening the ambulance had arrived and Mum was wrapped up in another blanket and carted out of the house. I stood behind the safety of my dimpled-glass door and watched a hundred blue lights flash their way into the distance, until I couldn't see anything anymore, and then I stared back at the empty orange swivel chair where Mum had sat just a moment before and I bit my lip and promised myself I wouldn't cry. ‘Behave yersel!' That's what Mum used to say when she saw we were about to cry. And I tried to behave myself right there and then, but it was no good and the tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.

When Nanny got the news that Mum was in the ­hospital she raced to our place to make sure we'd get fed while Mum was gone. She arrived wearing her knitted beanie and Grampa's leather slippers and she'd run all the way from 9 Maitland Avenue, pulling her two-wheeled tartan ­shopping trolley behind her.

‘Awright, Nanny!' Andrew called out, excited to see her as he always was.

‘Awright, son. Come on, gie yir Nanny a wee hand with the trolley now.' Andrew raced over and lifted the top of the trolley and looked inside.

‘Any goodies for us, Nanny?' Andrew asked.

‘There's nae goodies in there for you today, just some dinner. When I heard about your mum, I just ran and ran to get here. I woulda got a lift but your Uncle Bruce is still in the Swiss Alps skiing with Father Frances.' And Nanny paused for breath and looked down at her feet in surprise and went on, ‘Just look at me, will you, I'm still wearing yer Grampa's slippers.'

‘You always wear Grampa's slippers, Nanny,' I said.

‘Aye, true enough. Right, let's get the tea on,' she said and made her way to the kitchen.

Nanny had brought a pound of mince and a three-pound bag of Maris Piper potatoes and she got the pots onto the gas stove straightaway. When the dinner was ready she called us to come to the kitchen and pick up our plates and then we took them to the living room and sat on the couch with our plates on our knees. I didn't like the look of the colour of nanny's mince and the first mouthful ­confirmed the worst. It tasted like shite. Of course I didn't want to upset Nanny and so I said nothing and just played with it for a while, pushing the morsels of mince this way and that around the plate and mixing it in with the potatoes, all the while looking around the room for somewhere to hide it.

Goldie, our goldfish, was swimming around in his tank on top of Mum's walnut sideboard enjoying himself in his nice clean tank, and so I picked up my plate and moved across to the sideboard and had a chat to Goldie, all the while still pushing the morsels of mince and mashed tatties around my plate. And as we chatted I kept one eye on Goldie and the other on Nanny who was busying herself in the kitchen with this and that and when she wasn't looking, I took huge forkfuls of that mince and tatties and shovelled them into Goldie's tank, and I kept on shovelling and shovelling until nothing on my plate remained. And then, when there was nothing left to shovel, I held the plate above the tank and scraped in the gravy with my fork. When it was all gone I placed my cutlery on my empty plate and sat back in my chair relieved.

Of course, I thought the mince and tatties would just land at the bottom of the tank in amongst the gravel and nobody would be any the wiser and then when Mum got out of hospital she could just clean out the tank like she always did. But when I looked into the tank I saw that Goldie's once-clear tank was now a gravy-filled swamp and through the swamp I could see Goldie trying to swim, his little fins flapping furiously. His tank had become a quagmire and no matter how hard he tried Goldie couldn't move. I pressed my nose on the side of the cold tank and looked at him in horror and he looked back at me, in pain and unable to breathe. But he knew I hadn't meant to hurt him and he knew that I loved him and looking into his closing eyes, I knew that he loved me, too. As he hovered in the gravy with no energy left, Goldie gave up the fight to live and flipped himself onto his side and floated to the top of his once-clear tank.

Weeping for Goldie and my stupidity I got a tartan tea towel out from the tea-towel drawer and placed it over his tank as a mark of respect and decided if anybody asked me what had happened I would cry and hold my breath till my face went blue, 'cause when I did that nobody bothered me with questions I didn't want to answer.

When we went to visit Mum at the hospital the next day they had hooked her up to a machine and put a mask on her face so she could breathe the oxygen from the big tanks at the side of her bed. We made her get-well-soon cards and Andrew made the best one. It was huge and he drew roses on the front with the big red crayon he stole from Mrs MacAlpine's desk at school. On the front of the card he wrote:
Dear Mum I love you 'cause you are like a rose
, and inside he wrote,
and you have a smile too
. Mum cried when she read that card and she folded it and kept it in her handbag for the next seventeen years.

We drew pictures of the animals for Mum and we told her that the animals missed her just like we did. We wanted to take them to the hospital with us and hold them up at the window next to Mum's bed so she could wave to them, but my da said no. So the animals stayed behind and they, too, counted the days until Mum came back.

The doctors said Mum had had an asthma attack and it was brought on by an allergy to our ponies, so not long after Mum got out of hospital my da told us he was taking Rusty and Silver to the glue factory after all the trouble they'd caused. As if it wasn't bad enough that Goldie the goldfish died when Mum got sick, now Rusty and Silver were going to die too.

And so the day came when we had to say goodbye to them. Me and Mum and Izzy and Andrew went down to the greenhouse that morning and fed them the grass and the chicken weed we'd picked for them from the field across the road, and I put my arms around Rusty's big head and stroked his mane and he nudged his nose into my side and nearly knocked me off my feet and I laughed and held his big head closer. Silver watched on from the other side of the greenhouse and when she saw Rusty getting all the attention she raced across and nudged her nose into my other side and swished her tail and snorted through those big nostrils of hers.

And I held their big heads in my arms and I kissed them both on the soft skin of their noses and they looked at me with their big brown eyes as if to say, Don't forget about us.

And I whispered into both their ears, ‘As if I could.'

24
The houses that Bruce built

Many years after Chick died, Nanny and Grampa and Bruce still lived together in their council house at 9 Maitland Avenue. Their house was close to the graveyard where Chick was buried and every Sunday we went to the graveyard and put flowers on Chick's grave and sometimes Grampa planted white snowdrops and blue forget-me-nots around the headstone.

Bruce was still working as a builder though not always in Spain. Once he even worked on a building site as far away as Australia and he lived in a house right next door to the beach. But Bruce never went to the beach 'cause he preferred the cold and the snow like you get in Scotland, where icy winds bite you and turn your pale cheeks red and how could the beach ever compete with the likes of that, when all it offers you is sand in your trunks and sea salt in your hair and the promise of a good scorching from the midday sun that leaves you wanting to die? So Bruce built what needed to be built in Australia and then he left that place for good and went back to Scotland where the icy wind bit him and he knew he was alive.

One day Bruce and my da decided what a great idea it would be to build two semi-detached bungalows on the two-and-a-half acres of land behind our little house, so we could all live next door to each other in harmony in our red-brick seventies bungalows, just like one big happy family and everybody agreed. Nanny, Grampa and Bruce would live in one of the bungalows and we would live in the other. The bungalows took a long time to build 'cause we could only buy bricks and cement whenever we had the money. Bruce spent more time away from Scotland skiing in the Swiss Alps than he should have, but when he wasn't skiing he worked hard on getting the bungalows built and all of us helped and finally, with lots of shouting and unreasonable demands, the bungalows got finished, albeit five years later.

Me and Izzy and Andrew worked on the bungalows every day with Bruce after we'd done our homework. I didn't like doing my homework but Mum promised if I did it every night from then until the following year when I went to the high school, she'd tell Bruce to build an extra space in my bedroom to put a desk and a desk lamp, and when Mum told me that, I promised I would do my homework every night in the week.

Building those bungalows was hard work but it was exciting and brilliant. Our favourite bit was when Bruce would call a tea break and we'd all sit down to pork ring sausages (that everybody ate except me) and jars of pickled gherkins and sour-dough bread sandwiches. We felt like real labourers who had earned their tea and we ate our sandwiches with filthy hands, and Bruce always finished his tea break with a cigarette and he drew long and hard on it and said nothing for fear it would spoil the pleasure of the nicotine entering his blood. Sometimes when we looked at him it seemed that his cigarette transported him to another world, maybe the world of lederhosen and après-ski on the piste, and he looked like he savoured those moments alone with his cigarette more than he savoured life itself.

Bruce was a professional builder and he knew everything. That meant that he had to have an assistant every day and if you were chosen to be his assistant for the day you had to spend that day carrying bricks up and down ladders, sweeping up Bruce's mess and putting the kettle on to make his coffee. Bruce took seven sugars in his coffee and sometimes he would say, ‘Put the seven sugars in the cup and don't stir it—I don't like it too sweet,' and we would laugh and think he was mad.

Bruce and my da shared the costs of the bricks and cement and all the other ingredients we needed to build the bungalows and as we built, we dreamed of what it would be like to live in our semi-detached three-bedroom bungalows, with our fitted kitchens and avocado bathroom suites. Even before the walls were built we all knew where our bedrooms were going to be and if I saw Andrew walk across the foundations of my room, I'd tell him, ‘Get out of my fuckin' room right now!' and he'd run and hide and Bruce would laugh and light a cigarette and tell me to put the kettle on. It was going to be a dream come true to live there, all of us together, and all of us were excited.

Finally, the long and arduous task of building the bungalows came to an end and all that was left to do was paint the woodwork with shiny gloss paint and of course it was up to Mum to do the painting 'cause my da, he couldn't even change a light bulb never mind paint a room. Every time Mum finished a room Quackers, our one-eyed cat, would come in and rub himself against the sticky skirting boards and one-eyed or not, Mum would curse him and chase him from the room. Once she had picked every cat hair from every skirting board in the house, we moved ourselves in.

The first few years of living next door to each other passed peacefully and Bruce painted his living-room walls lilac and we laughed at him and Mum said we shouldn't laugh, 'cause Bruce painted his living-room walls lilac 'cause he was artistic and that made us laugh all the more.

Nanny used to come and go happily between the houses, from her own back door straight to our back door and into our kitchen, where me, Izzy, Andrew and Mum spent most of our time. My da spent most of his time in the good room by himself sitting on his leather armchair by the side of the gas fire, with his oil painting of Buster hanging right above his head. When Nanny came to visit she always had goodies for us from the market and it was brilliant. She was the kindest and most generous woman I've ever known and Mum takes after her in every way, except Mum doesn't wear a beanie and Grampa's leather slippers. Nanny would bring everything via those backdoors from pork ring sausages to leather-soled Italian shoes that had only been worn once, if you don't mind, and every day she came was like Christmas Day, the kind of Christmas Days we'd dream about where my da would be somewhere else, preferably dead.

Then the joy of living in close proximity to those we loved suddenly stopped and it stopped on precisely the day that Bruce asked my da for the title deeds to his own semi-detached bungalow, the semi-detached bungalow Bruce had built with his own hands and paid for with his own money, the semi-detached bungalow that Nanny and Grampa were to live out the rest of their lives in.

And my da told Bruce he couldn't have those deeds. He said no because Bruce's semi-detached bungalow was sitting on
my da's
two-and-a-half acres of land and according to my da that meant Bruce's semi-detached bungalow really belonged to him and if Bruce wanted the title deeds then he was going to have to take my da to court to get them.

And of course Bruce was never going to take his ­sister's husband to court and he hoped instead that he could appeal to my da's reason. But my da's a stranger to reason so all attempts at trying to resolve the matter between them failed and in the end relations broke down and my da stopped talking to Bruce and Nanny and Grampa. That's when my da decided he wanted fucking rid of them from the bungalow next door and so he started on a campaign to make their lives unbearable so they'd end up desperate to move and my da would get to keep both properties for himself.

With my da now refusing to speak directly with Bruce he made me the messenger of his unreasonable demands and offensive orders and whenever he wanted to get a message to Bruce about him vacating the property my da would send me next door with strict instructions on what to tell ‘that bastard Bruce'. Sometimes when I went next door to deliver those messages I'd find Bruce in front of the fire eating a huge plate of spaghetti bolognese that Nanny had made him and he would give me a fork and I'd sit down in front of the fire too and I'd share that big plate of spaghetti with him and one night he showed me how to twist the spaghetti using just my fork and he gave me a glass of red wine with a spoonful of sugar in it and we sat there slurping and sucking up strands of spaghetti together until eventually I'd forgotten what I had gone in there for. But once the spaghetti was finished I remembered again and so I'd give Bruce the message from my da and then I'd leave Bruce's place ashamed and go back next door and give my da Bruce's answer, which was always that he wasn't going anywhere until he got the title deeds to his house. And my da would get right fucking mad and start shouting like a loony and banging on the walls so loud that Bruce and Nanny and Grampa had no choice but to hear.

After some time I was too ashamed to deliver the messages from my da so whenever he sent me next door again to give a message to that bastard Bruce, I'd just go and see Bruce and have some spaghetti and a glass of red wine with a spoonful of sugar in it and we'd sit in front of the fire and I'd tell Bruce nothing and instead I'd listen to him tell me tales about skiing down icy slopes and through snowy pine forests in Switzerland. Then when the spaghetti and the stories were over I'd go back home with no reply to my da's message and then the screaming and shouting would start again.

Bruce stayed put with Nanny and Grampa as long as he could and my da's shouting and screaming made life unbearable for them. One day my da's pal, Peter the undertaker, needed to park his hearse somewhere for a few days and my da said it would be okay to park it on our two-and-a-half acres and he told Peter to park it right outside Nanny and Grampa's lounge-room window. And Nanny and Grampa had to look at that car night and day and their hearts were heavier than before and they wondered if they'd ever see an end to the pain and trauma of living in close proximity to those they loved with their fitted kitchens and avocado bathroom suites.

Throughout all the unrest Nanny still came to visit us via the back doors and sometimes when she arrived she'd run into my da in the kitchen and she didn't know what to say. But it didn't stop her coming and still she brought goodies for all of us including woollen socks for my da's sensitive feet, the only sensitive part about him, and her kindness and generosity never faltered during the most stressful time of her life, when she was nearly 80 years old and should have been living in peace in close proximity to those she loved. This was the time in Nanny's life when we should have been listening to her tell stories about her life around the table in front of the open fire eating spaghetti bolognese and drinking red wine with a spoonful of sugar in it. Instead, all of us lived in fear and dreamed of how life could have been and my da continued to shout and scream and Nanny and Grampa sat together next door in their lilac living room with heavy hearts and stared out of their window into the waiting hearse.