Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (13 page)

He liked to control people. He liked to play his seven sons off against each other. But I rather liked him. Although he was a very hard man, he did not have a cruel mouth; he had a smiley, happy-looking mouth. When he smiled, his mouth made you feel you had to smile as well because it was so infectious. I used to go round to Toad Hall a lot with Sean. One night, Old George was sitting in his dressing gown and I noticed his lower legs were mottled blue and severely bruised.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘The fucking Polis,’ he told me, rubbing his legs. ‘It happened years ago.’

‘And they’re still sore?’

‘Aye.’

The Storries were almost as dysfunctional as my own family. Around the same time that I started going out with Sean, his brother Michael Storrie started going out with a girl called Mags. She was from the north side of Glasgow; I tried hard to make friends but we never hit it off. We had absolutely nothing in common to talk about. I had more in common with Old George’s new girlfriend Patsy Paton who was 25, blonde and real fun. Old George was 55 and Patsy was younger than some of his sons – in fact, Patsy’s older sister Mary was going out with Old George’s son Philip. The older sister went with the son; the younger sister went with the dad. But young Patsy and Old George were a good match. Mouthy, opinionated and very much the dominant female, she was from Bridgeton, near where my Dad was living.

One night, she and I were swapping family stories and trading backgrounds. I explained about my Mammy and Dad being separated and told her, ‘Mammy has a boyfriend called Peter, but he beats her up and I fucking hate him.’

‘Oh ah fucking hate that too,’ she replied. ‘My mammy had a man called Peter as well an’ he fucking nearly killed her. All us kids got put in foster homes coz o’ that wee cunt and he got put in the jail for the beating he gave my ma – he nearly killed her. Thank fuck he’s still inside.’

I looked at her and said quietly: ‘My Mammy’s Peter is not long out of jail.’

Her face froze. ‘What’s his surname?’

‘Greenshields,’ I said quietly.

‘Fucksake!’

She was inconsolable for about two or three minutes, then told me, ‘My mammy was petrified of him and she was a fucking fighting fishwife of a woman!’

Patsy’s mammy had a scar that ran from the corner of her right eye down to the right side of her top lip, where Peter had cut her with a Yale key, dragging it down into the flesh of her face. Then he had chased her through Bridgeton with a gun, and a taxi driver who intercepted him got the Queen’s Award for Bravery. Peter was imprisoned. Patsy persuaded me to get my Mammy to bring Peter down to
the
Palaceum so she could see face to face if this really was the man who had screwed up her life.

That Saturday afternoon, Mammy and Peter sat in the lounge bar. Patsy told me to take Mammy into the toilets and, as we shut the door, she picked up a full bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, calmly walked towards Peter and, before he could recognise her, swung the bottle up high in the air, then brought it down on the top of his head. It did not break.

‘That’s for every fucking punch you gave my mother!’ she screamed, as he slumped off his seat, stunned. Her arm raised the bottle up again:
Thud!
She whacked him on the side of the head. It did not break.

‘That’s for getting my family put into care!’

Then she attacked with
real
violence. She had to be dragged off him. By this time, my Mammy had heard the commotion, come out of the toilet and stood horrified as Peter lay on the floor and Patsy screamed at her, ‘Ye need tae get away from him! He will fucking kill you! You have nae idea what he did to my mammy!’ All the emotions Patsy had held at bay with alcohol and men came out as she carried on screaming at my Mammy: ‘You have nae idea! Ye need tae get away from him!’ Peter was literally thrown out of the bar into the street in a heap. Back home, Mammy helped patch Peter’s wounds and ignored everything Patsy had tried to tell her. That was my Mammy’s way.

AROUND THIS TIME
, Mammy acquired a big smelly new dog called Major 2. I had never before heard of anyone buying a dog because, in Glasgow, they adopt you. The new dog was an Alsatian like the first Major, but he looked like a scabby lion. He loved my Mammy, but she grew to hate him. Major 2 would use his head to open the toilet door as she sat peeing. He would not leave her side. He would look at her with big doe eyes even as she took her shoe off to hit him on the head.

But she discovered he liked picking up tin cans, so she taught him to follow her into the local Asian corner shop in Darleith Street. While she chatted to the shopkeeper, Major 2 would steal his own food. It took her a week to get him to recognise the yellow label of the dog food brand he preferred then, as always, Mammy took it further. Major 2 was taught how to lift triangular tins because they contained her favourite:
Ye Olde Oak Ham
.

Often the shop owner, wee Aslim, would shout, ‘Your dog is stealing from my shelves!’

But my Mammy would reply: ‘It’s not my dog, Asylum. I don’t own a dog. You should call the Polis and have it arrested.’

‘My name’s Aslim,’ the shopkeeper would reply limply.

I hated Mammy coming into the Palaceum but she would regularly ignore all my protests and march in for a drink with smelly Major 2. And sometimes Biff the cat trotting behind her. I suppose I was ashamed of her appearance. Gone was the bright-eyed, dark-haired, smiley woman I remembered from my childhood. Instead, standing there was a grey-haired, sometimes toothless woman. She only wore her false teeth if she happened to find them. She looked like what she was: an old, shabby, scarred, broken housewife; but she still kept her sense of humour.

One day, she came running into the Palaceum with Major 2 behind her. She pointed to the dog and shouted at me in front of the whole bar, ‘Your dog has a light bulb stuck in its mouth and I cannae get it oot!’

I was about to shout back that it was
not my dog
when I realised the whole bar had fallen silent and was looking in amazement at Major 2. I looked over and, sure enough, that idiot shoplifting dog was standing there with, lodged tightly in its mouth, a big light bulb.

Glaswegians love nothing more than a bizarre problem to solve, so everyone tried, but the dog refused to let go of the light bulb. I was terrified it would burst in his mouth. Worse still, the stupid animal adored the attention and decided to play a game of chase round the pool table. I felt so embarrassed and wished my Mammy would just take Major 2 away but, of course, she did nothing of the kind. She took off one of her socks and dropped a snooker ball into it. She grabbed Major 2, turned him round, raised her arm and whacked him right on the bollocks with her weighted sock. The light bulb shot like a cannon from the howling dog’s jaws and smashed on the toilet door. Almost every man in the room held his crotch in sympathy as the big dog howled in ear-piercing agony.

‘See,’ my Mammy said triumphantly, ‘the daft bastard won’t bite a light bulb again now, will he!’

She placed the snooker ball back on the baize table, turned on her heels and left Major 2 licking his wounds very publicly.

* * *

Things were going no better for me with the Storries. They still disapproved of me. By now, even the brothers’ girlfriends were having a go.

‘You don’t have any eyelashes,’ one of them declared to me in the Palaceum. ‘If you put on some make-up and stop looking like a boy, maybe we would all take you more serious.’

I could never understand why black rings around my eyes would have made me look more intelligent and, anyway, Sean never once suggested I wear different clothes or make-up or wore longer hair: he liked me as I was. He and I were walking home one night, holding hands and kissing all the way up the road when Old George slowed his car down alongside us and stuck his head out the window:

‘Fucking stop that kissing!’ he screamed at Sean. ‘Stop walking around holding hands! People will think you’re a poof!’

I assumed maybe Old George saw any sort of expression of love as a sign of weakness. Eventually, though, the pressure became too much for us. Sean was still only 16 and I was only 18. We needed to escape the stifling Storrie family and just be together, so we decided to move down to Redcar. This made Old George so angry that he tried to bribe me.

‘Have a wee holiday, hen, go see your pal then come home,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you £30.’

I refused the cash.

I caught a train to Redcar one Saturday morning and Sean was due down the next day as he had promised to work the late shift at the Palaceum. When Maggie opened the door, we hugged like we had never been separated. I showed off my wee diamond ring and explained all about Sean. She told me that Uncle David Percy had been in contact with her after I left.

‘He tried to get off with me, Janey; he tried to touch me and kiss my neck. I told him to fuck off and he ran out of the flat.’

I was horrified and desperate to tell her the whole story, but I didn’t feel ready to tell anyone other than Sean. I think I was embarrassed.

‘I hear,’ she continued, ‘that he’s fucked off down to London.’

Thank God
, I thought. I could look forward to Sean arriving tomorrow and Maggie meeting him for the first time. My two best pals in the world! We had arranged that Sean would get the train down but he wasn’t sure when he could get away and I had no phone in Redcar, so it was a bit of a vague arrangement. I timed the connections from Glasgow and there were only two trains due in that day. So I sat on a bench, excited, at 3.00 p.m., waiting for the first train into Redcar’s big Victorian railway station and watching every single passenger leave the old maroon and black carriages.

Sean wasn’t there.

I waited for the next train and slowly my heart began to feel the creeping fear of rejection and desperation.
He wasn’t going to come; it had all been a plan to get me out of his life
. I sat in my flowery dress – the only dress I owned – swinging my legs in my one pair of cheap plastic sandals, hoping against hope he would appear from that second train.
Any
fucking train. Just be here!

He wasn’t on the second train.

I waited and waited. I finally gave up at 8.00 p.m.

I had been sitting there for five hours, slowly getting colder and more desperate. Maggie said nothing as I came back alone into her wee flat. It was as if she had never expected him to come either. I thought,
Is disappointment just mandatory in my life?
I cried myself to sleep that night, clutching my wee diamond ring.

At about eleven the next morning, I called the Palaceum from a public call box on Redcar seafront. It was pot luck who answered the phone. I knew if I got Young George, he would either lie to me or just shout, ‘Fuck off!’ and hang up. If I got Michael, then he would possibly tell me if Sean had left Glasgow and on what train – depending on his mood. As luck would have it, Old George picked up the receiver.

‘George,’ I said, trying not to let him hear the fear in my voice. ‘It’s Janey here. What time did Sean leave? … Is he coming?’

‘Shuggie is driving him doon – he should be there at two this afternoon,’ George replied. ‘Make sure you bring him home, Janey,’ he added. ‘I’ve gave him some money so youse two can have a wee holiday.’

I didn’t hear anything more he said. My heart was too busy leaping in the air.
Sean was coming to me!

And he did arrive that afternoon at two o’clock exactly. We hugged on the pavement and laughed all the way up to Maggie’s flat. She was very much at ease in Sean’s company and the three of us had a ball all the way through the summer of 1979, which was hot and sticky. We sat on the beach, swam in the cold grey sea under blue skies and just got to be ‘us’. No one was judging or arguing with us any more. Sean and I were kissing in the street and staying
out
all night without worrying about getting up for work and Sean did not want to go home. But, after much deliberation and promising each other never to let anyone get in the way of our relationship, we did head back to Granda Davy Percy’s flat in Glasgow.

I loved Sean so much, but his behaviour baffled me at times. I accepted he was very quiet, but he would sometimes just switch off and leave me feeling cold and unwanted. One night, he came home from the Palaceum and totally ignored me from the moment he came in.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Leave me alone,’ he muttered.

He sat at the end of our bed and never uttered a word for about an hour.

I was babbling on and on, asking him if everything went OK at the bar. He eventually stood up and told me, ‘I want this to end,’ and left the flat.

I sat there crying my heart out; I had no idea what had just happened. Eventually, I fell asleep.

The next morning he arrived at the door and pleaded with me: ‘I am sorry, Janey, I was just confused. I love you.’

Of course we fell into each other’s arms. But he wouldn’t talk about it or tell me what had happened. I was just happy he was back.

BACK AT MY
Mammy’s home in Kenmore Street, Charlie had moved out, Uncle John had moved on and Uncle James had moved in again with his wife Crazy Katie Wallace and their kids Sammy and Jackie. They had been living on and off at our house for years, never able to keep their own home due to debt and Crazy Katie’s penchant for Valium overdoses and general breakdowns. Sammy, whom I adored, was now getting into trouble glue-sniffing and staying off school. Jackie had learning difficulties and was just plodding along.

My sister Ann had just given birth to a baby girl Ann Margaret, who was very cute. Sean and I would baby-sit and loved looking after the wee girl, but Sean was always better at it than me because he had helped raise his own brother Paul who was now ten years old. Paul often stayed over with us at Granda Davy’s, because he was not getting the attention he craved and needed at Toad Hall – Old George had no idea how to look after a wee boy who was too young to work in a bar.