Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (11 page)

‘This is Janey Currie from Glasgow – she works in my guest- house,’ she said to the man. ‘Janey, this is James Callaghan, the Prime Minister.’

I looked at him and thought
Fuck! So it is! I recognise you off the telly
. I didn’t know if he was Labour or Conservative. I shook hands with him and thought he looked clean and shiny though a bit worn out. He said, ‘Hello, Janey,’ did that smiley thing that politicians do and moved on. Bessie spent the rest of the night dancing; I sat at the side of the dance floor drinking Coca-Cola and thinking
I just met the Prime Minister – how weird is that?

On the train back to Redcar I decided that Maggie and I could no longer live like this and figured it was time to move out of Bessie’s but, when I talked to Maggie about it the next day, we both realised it would be too difficult trying to get a flat when we were on Benefit.

Later, I was out shopping for our dinner in the town centre when I walked past a betting shop and a voice behind me rang out, ‘How are you, Sweet Pea?’

I turned and there stood Uncle David Percy, in the doorway of the shop.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him, shocked.

He just looked at me, laughed and asked: ‘Where are you staying?’

I mumbled something and ran off back to the guest-house where I gibbered to Maggie: ‘You’ll never gue– You’ll never guess who’s here. David Percy’s here. My Uncle David. David Percy. I don’t like him. I don’t like him.’

Maggie could not understand why I was shaking or how seeing my Uncle could be such a problem.

‘I hate him,’ I told her. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Maggie, typically, just sat quietly and accepted my answer without further probing.

I was terrified.
Was he after me? Was he expecting me to let him rape me again?
My emotions were everywhere. I felt I had grown up a bit in Redcar and had became more mature, but seeing him really set me back and made me feel like a small child who could not find her own way in the world. I tried hard to pick myself up and kept my focus on trying to get a flat for Maggie and myself. We scoured Redcar and, before long, secured a nice wee room of our own near the chip shop for £6 a week.

Maggie had no real idea who my Uncle was, but she chatted to the Shettleston family we had gone to visit in Redcar and they told her that, yes, he had been to see them and that he was here in Redcar, on his own, looking for work. I knew this was untrue, as he had never really worked in his life. My nightmares became worse and I became more and more paranoid and would wake up in our new flat sticky and sweating, scared to breathe loud in case the terror was there in my bedroom. I decided to go back home to Glasgow. Maggie was upset and made me promise that I would come back to Redcar to see her occasionally; I tried hard to reassure her but felt within myself that, as long as my Uncle was there, I was not going back. We had come to Redcar in March; it was now October.

Leaving Maggie behind was awful because I still felt very responsible for her, but she had grown in confidence, was now making friends of her own and I could not face meeting my Uncle again. I packed my clothes into plastic bags and got on the last train to Glasgow. The city looked like home as I drew into the Central Station. It felt odd coming back, as if I had failed, but I could not wait to get on the bus and find my Mammy and let her know I was home: none of us had phones. Inevitably, she was in the local pub, but she was happy to see me and we both went back to Kenmore Street.

‘I’ve got something bad to tell you,’ she said. ‘That wee lassie that went oot with Barra – Lizzy – she crossed the road wi’ him over to the bus stop one night and she was killed by a hit-and-run driver. That could’ve been fucking you!’

I did manage to see Barra later that week and he looked awful; he would not talk to me about what had happened and we never really spoke again.

* * *

So much had changed in my family in the eight months I had been away: Debbie, my brother Mij’s wee daughter, was getting taller and chattier; my sister Ann was again pregnant; Charlie had moved into his own flat; my brother Vid had left home to work in England; Mammy and Peter were ‘keeping company’ more often. The house seemed empty and strange – there were only five people living in it – my Mammy, Mij, Cathy, Debbie and me.

Mij had settled down a bit since I had been gone. He had been hanging around the Palaceum – the local bar where I had met Barra. It had been taken over by a new family; it had always been a big bar with a separate function room but now the new owners had converted the function room into a disco.

Wow!
I thought.
A disco in Shettleston!

I was desperate to go!

I had never been in a bar before as I was still only 17 and licensed premises were only for people 18 or over, but all my pals had been and, at weekends, Mij’s girlfriend Cathy worked at the Palaceum as a waitress. So, that Friday night, my friends and I all got dressed up and rolled up at the door – a big bunch of 17-year-old girls covered in eye shadow and lip gloss except me. I did not wear make-up because I didn’t know how to put it on.

We could hear the disco music booming from inside the club and came face to face with a doorman who looked even younger than me, all dressed up in a suit, his eyes staring short-sightedly at everyone. He passed them all
through
but took one look at me and mumbled, ‘You’re too young. Ye cannae come in.’

I was devastated. All my mates went in and left me alone on those cold steps outside the disco. I wasn’t confident enough to try and blag my way in, but I vowed to hate that stupid doorman for the rest of my life. I turned and walked away in the dark, sat at home alone – everyone else was out on a Friday night – and played my cassette tape while drinking a Coca-Cola. The end of 1978 was quite a sad time for me. I spent a miserable Christmas with Mammy and Peter. Mammy had no cash and I sat in my bedroom and watched
The Sound of Music
thinking maybe if I ran away to Austria and became a nun my life would all come together.

Uncle David Percy was far away in Redcar. Granda Davy Percy had moved closer to us in Shettleston. Ann’s marriage seemed to be going well. Everyone seemed to be moving on with their lives, but I was still being treated as the baby of the family one minute and expected to be a big adult the next.

Dad came over to see me at the New Year; he told me I had to start thinking about getting a steady job.
I was old enough to hold down a job but too young to get into bars!
I was confused and in a rut, but I had a plan in my head. Everything would change on Saturday, 20 January, my eighteenth birthday. Then I would be able to vote, drink and even finally make it as the first female to reach 18 in our family without being pregnant. I would get a job, save the cash, go back to Maggie in Redcar and we could then move on to Scarborough, the next big seaside town down the coast in Yorkshire. I decided I had definitely finished with Glasgow and would move on again after Saturday, 20 January 1979.

THE NIGHT OF
Friday, 5 January 1979 was cold, the snow was thick on the ground and the Scottish winter bit into the flesh of my feet. Yet again the shoe problem was with me. My shoes had holes in the toes and the only solution was to pack them with red teddy-bear fur from a teddy that belonged to my niece Debbie. How odd I must have looked with the red fur peeping through my shoes, but at least I was warm. I had a new friend called Marion who was gorgeous and slim and had boobs and was everything I wasn’t. She lived with her gran and grandad in a small flat, in the next street. She had boys falling over her and I was so envious of her clothes and style and obvious beauty. We were good mates and, on Friday, 5 January, we got dressed up in cheap shiny tops and jeans, covered our hair in clips and boogied on down to the Palaceum. My nemesis doorman was there on guard, but this time he could not stop me. I had made 18 … well, two weeks to go, but that was just a technicality
surely
? I kept my head down and shuffled forward; the doorman squinted at me, lifted up my chin and smiled as he mumbled, ‘Have a good night.’

Hurrah!
Finally
I had made it into glittery disco heaven! I quickly learned the etiquette of publand: you drank three vodka lemonades and danced energetically to every song that hit the turntables.
I was made to dance!

It was weird being there among my older brothers and their mates, but I felt I had finally arrived; I belonged here.

Every weekend another mate had a house to herself as her parents left her home alone. We had amazing parties and I was quickly introduced to the adult world of passionate kissing and men. I got to snog at least 15 men in my first three weeks of arrival in the adult pub world. One big problem, though. The kissing thing was fun and a great teenage pastime, but I was scared of sex. Every boy I kissed (and I kissed loads) left me feeling odd and detached. I had still not physically developed, with little to no breasts and definitely no period. I felt totally weird; all my mates were sexually active and gossiping about it. When boys tried to touch me, I would go away to a place in my head. Very soon after starting, I could see no point in kissing.
Maybe I was a lesbian? Is that what happens? If you don’t fancy men do you automatically become a lesbian?
These questions whirled inside my head until I was driven to distraction.

But, on the exact day of my eighteenth birthday, finally, after much praying and pondering, my first period arrived.
I was not physically distorted! I had a vagina that worked! I had a womb! I was a woman!
I had worried my Uncle had damaged me internally, but here I was now, a fully grown female adult. I celebrated by quietly but proudly marching into the local chemist to buy sanitary goods, although I found inserting a tampon only halfway and trying to sit down had its drawbacks.
Yaagh!
It seemed I still had much to learn.

* * *

Life at home had not changed much. Mammy would gush, ‘Oh, Peter’s a great man. See me and Peter? Peter’s lovely! Peter makes great soup. I love Peter! He’s a great wee man.’

She came home from Peter’s one day, her hand wrapped in a white dishcloth with blood seeping through it. She told us she had fallen in the back court but it was the back of her hand that was cut.
Who falls on the back of their hand?
I realised it was a razor or knife slash and she must have put up her hand to protect herself. But the whole incident passed without questions; she had covered up for her brother and for her son; now she was covering up for yet another abusive man.
God help her
. I left her to it. I could do nothing to stop her.

One late night soon afterwards I came home and Mammy wasn’t in, so I walked across the road to Peter’s to see if she was there. The lights were on in his ground-floor flat, but there was no answer when I knocked and shouted, ‘Mammy?’ and this annoyed me. I knew they had to be there because they rarely went out. I went round the back of the flat and pulled myself up onto the window and peered through. My Mammy was lying on the floor naked and Peter was holding her down. For a moment, I was horrified that I had just seen them having sex and was about to drop down from the window ledge when Peter raised his right hand and I saw he was holding a short-handled axe and he whacked her on the head with the sharp edge of the blade. The blood went everywhere. I screamed and ran to the door shouting. No one came out.

Mammy had looked terrified, so I stayed quiet in case my shouting made him do it more. I really don’t know what happened next. I think I was in shock. I stood in the street and just stared at the house, waiting for her to come out. I don’t know how long it was, but the police eventually arrived; maybe someone else in the blockhouse had called them. Mammy came out and there was smoke everywhere. Peter had tried to kill them both by setting fire to the house. She was taken to hospital. He was charged with attacking her and with attempted arson.

After Mammy was let home, she had to keep going back into hospital, but didn’t talk to us kids about it and made it clear we should not ask her. She had no burns, recovered well, had a big cut on her arm and axe wounds in the back of her head which were stitched. I never told her, the police or anyone else that I had seen what had happened and, within a week, she and Peter were back in love. She gave evidence for his defence in court – we were never told the verdict, but he was released – and they both spent her Victim’s Compensation money together. I thought:
That must be what love does to you
.

Peter made sure Mammy slowly alienated herself from her friends and family: she stopped seeing her Valium Pals and members of her family who lived any distance away. She had had quite a big circle of friends but, as time went on, she just had Peter. Even with us children, she no longer sat and chatted or asked us questions as she used to. She became less and less involved in my life. One night I really laid into her about Peter and his violence. She had come into my room as I was taping Radio Luxembourg. As we started to speak, Kate Bush was singing ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’. I left the tape running as I told her, ‘Mammy, you’ll need tae get away from him. You just need tae get away from him. I swear to God, all these cuts and bruises—’

‘Och, Janey,’ she interrupted, ‘he’s no’ that bad. Peter isnae that bad. C’mon, I mean he’s had his problems, we’ve had wur fights, but I’m as bad as him.’

‘You’re no’,’ I told her. ‘You’re no’ as bad as him. He’s never had any cuts and bruises. Every time I see you, you’ve got a bandage or a black eye.’

‘No, no, no. You don’t like Peter. You’ve never liked Peter. That’s it. You always upset him,’ she started shouting at me. ‘You upset Peter!’

‘You’re going to end up fucking deed!’ I shouted back at her. ‘You’re going to end up fucking deed lying in your fucking coffin, because you’re going to let him fucking kill ye!’

‘Don’t swear,’ she told me. ‘Don’t get upset.’

‘You’re going to end up fucking deed, Mammy—’