Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (16 page)

Being married didn’t change our relationship much. We just went back to the Nationalist Bar and carried on as normal. Sean took his role as pub manager seriously, although it didn’t really need a manager – it needed customers who actually drank enough to pay the bills. But I liked the down-at-heel regulars, in particular the prostitutes – middle-aged women dressed in bri-nylon dresses with brightly painted red lips and a determination to face one more blow job before teatime. The hookers amazed me and ignited my imagination: they would often bring me gifts from the nearby Brigaitt flea market. These included a small glass vinegar bottle, ornaments and books. I may have left school at 16 but I loved reading and Dolly brought me a great selection including classics like
Moonfleet
, Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary
and Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Treasure Island
– I liked Stevenson’s vivid descriptions.
Madame Bovary
also held a particular resonance for me: proof that bad marriages don’t end happily – instead, you just die. Doris gave me stapled, A4 scripts of plays sold off by impoverished actors – including
The Threepenny Opera
. The world of the Calton was small and inward-looking but, in these books and plays, I could be part of a wider world out there. My horizons were widened by prostitutes. I had always assumed hookers were tall, blonde, young Hollywood babes – not short, dark, middle-aged women who smelled of cheap talcum powder and stale whisky.

‘Men are all bastards, hen,’ Doris would tell me as she stripped in the bar’s toilet to change into a fresh flowery blouse. ‘You gotta take whit ye can and then fuck off from them the first chance ye get!’ The whiff of urine and wet armpits would hit me and Doris’s black dyed hair and aspiring moustache made me wonder why men would pay her for sex.

‘They want something that makes them feel naughty,’ she would explain. ‘I mean, I could look the spittin’ image o’ their own mammy but that widnae stop ‘em!’ She never seemed to mind me constantly quizzing her.
Why did men go to prostitutes? Why did men need sex so much they would go to such lengths?
I could never comprehend it.

Four of our customers – young guys from nearby Barrowfield – raped a prostitute and slashed her to shreds with the traditional Glasgow weapons of open razors; she almost bled to death, with so many gaping slits on her face it was hard to see any unslashed flesh. But she was ‘only a prostitute’, so the police made no effort to prosecute. When the full horror of the woman’s injuries emerged in the press, a lawyer privately prosecuted the four guys. Our customers in the Nationalist Bar talked about nothing else, but it was difficult and uncomfortable for me to read about the trial daily in the paper. I had laughed with one of the guys, played cards with him in the bar; I had been his friend and here he was being charged with raping and slashing a woman to pieces. The general opinion was: ‘She was a tart. She deserved it. How can ye be charged with raping a hooker?’ The four young men were given long sentences but each had grassed on the other three, so this led to the killings of various brothers and friends as bloody revenge was taken by all four families – slashings and stabbings on the streets of Barrowfield which inevitably spilled over into arguments and fights in the pubs of the East End.

Sean and I were relatively safe from serious violence in the Nationalist Bar because of Old George’s reputation. Everyone knew that, if you messed with any of the Storrie sons, you were in real trouble with George. But it wasn’t the local hard men we were scared of – it was the daft drunk who had nothing left to lose who might hit you in the face with a pool cue or the random nutter who might lob a half brick at your head coz he was hearing voices. And, though we were mostly protected from serious crime, petty crime was rampant, with every other addict coming in and trying any trick to get cash for heroin. One ginger-haired man tried, ‘Janey, Sean told me to tell you to give me £20 till he comes back. His car broke doon and he needs petrol, hen.’

‘Fuck off!’ I told him. ‘That makes no sense and he doesn’t even drive, ye dick!’

The bar had always been a one-stop shop for petty criminals and illegal goods, mostly stolen to order, but this increased as heroin took hold of the area and the amount of nicked electrical goods could have restocked Dixons anew almost every week. One benefit, though, was that I could forget about Sean’s tight-fistedness because I was now being dressed by Glasgow’s finest shoplifters. I remember snuggling up inside my first ever black leather coat, smelling the expensive hide and sliding my hand over the luxurious soft nap; the only downside was the size – it was on the large side and when I stropped around I looked like a cross between a Dalek and a member of the Gestapo. I didn’t care, though: it was still very trendy.

Heroin was taking an ever-increasing toll all over the Calton; young guys were starting to look like walking skeletons, with those tell-tale gaunt jaws and that just-too-quick jiggy walk when they came back across the bridge from the Gorbals. Young girls who used to come into our bar for crisps and cola were now doing quick tricks and blow jobs to get money for their habit, taking over from the older prostitutes on Glasgow Green. There were prostitutes everywhere. I started being hassled by guys in cars even when I walked to the shops. While the outside world disintegrated, Sean and I just spent that whole year trying to keep the bar in profit, cleaning the toilets and painting our new flat.

My brother Mij and his family had now settled in the Gorbals and he became a frequent visitor to the Nationalist Bar. He was looking forward to his little daughter starting primary school and had settled down slightly, but he was still a great fantasist. If there was someone in the news who had been bitten by a shark, then he recalled how he had fought off that monstrous shark at the beach in Largs. He lived in a wee world of his own – one that protected him – but his partner Cathy was outgrowing his fantasy dreams and by now realised Mij might never get a real job.

Mammy was still fighting with Peter and one Monday teatime she arrived at our bar with a black bin bag that contained all her clothes. We only had one bedroom, but we let her sleep in the kitchen, which was quite big and contained the TV: it already had a pull-down bed in there for when young Paul stayed over.

‘I need a break, Janey,’ Mammy explained. ‘Peter’s being a right bastard but he won’t come doon here in case you fucking tell him to beat it.’

After a few days with us, her mood brightened and she started to enjoy helping out behind the bar, meeting new people. I taught her how to pour a pint and top up the bottles; it felt weird, me showing my Mammy stuff about alcohol, but she loved it. She even managed to stay off the booze. I took her round all the local shops and introduced her to the neighbours; she in turn cooked me soup and then sat quietly and smoked, watching anything and everything on TV.

‘Janey,’ she asked one morning, ‘can ye cut ma hair?’

‘Are ye mad?’ I laughed.

‘Just do yer best.’

Her thick white hair was going yellow at the front, as if each cigarette had left a stain on her fringe; I stood there and cropped inch after inch off and, as the hair spun down to the ground, I started getting cocky and began to chop into it, making layers. The end result was amazing – she looked great! I went to the local chemist and bought a cheap dark brown hair dye and tinted the short hairdo I had created. She looked years younger. We both laughed as she pretended to be Judy Garland in my kitchen and danced around singing ‘Easter Bonnet’ into my soup ladle.

I was hoping that Dad would visit us and then maybe he and Mammy could get back together: I still had that same childish fantasy in my head. But, this time, Dad
did
arrive the following day and he took me aside. ‘I need to tell you something. It’s important.’ He looked different and edgy. ‘I’ve stopped drinking, Janey. I had such a bad time last week I felt I was going mad. I ended up in the Police Office screaming mad. It was the DTs. I have stopped drinking.’

‘That’s great, Da,’ I shot back, pretending to believe him. I knew he would be drinking again at the weekend, though I had never heard him say those actual words before.
I’ve stopped drinking
. Not ever.

‘
No
,’ he insisted. ‘I really
mean
I
huv
stopped. I am never gonnae drink again.’

I looked at him and saw his eyes were clear and he looked happy: ‘That’s really good, Dad, I hope you do it.’

Mammy and Dad decided to go out for a day in town. I dressed her in a fresh blouse, fixed her hair and wrapped her in my new black leather coat. She looked lovely but it felt strange. Here I was getting my Mammy ready for a date with my Dad. They set off around midday. I sat in the bar, playing my favourite Steely Dan songs on the jukebox and secretly smiled at the thought of them having a good day with each other. Around teatime, the bar door slammed open, banging off the wall. Mammy stood there glaring and angry.

‘I hud to drink fuckin
coffee
!’ she shouted at me. ‘We sat an’ talked in a
café
an’ he didnae let me drink!’ The leather coat was whipped off and she climbed up onto a bar stool demanding a half of lager. ‘No drinking? He’s no’ my man
any
mare – he’s a fucking weirdo. Janey, he talked aboot the meaning of life and shitey regrets and stuff. Fuck knows whit has happened tae him.’

I had thought this was what she had always wanted – a man who didn’t drink and was good to his family. But I had been wrong. She sat there swigging down her lager, sucking on a fag and staring into the distance. As the week progressed, out of the blue, Mammy and Sean started sniping at each other. She had never been rude to Sean before. He mostly ignored her attacks and went downstairs to the bar; the only times he argued back were when she demanded that we watch what she wanted on telly. Sean always got his own way on that because it was important to him. Slowly, Mammy became quieter within herself. The only time she laughed and talked much was when she sat by the window at night and watched the prostitutes in London Road negotiate with men under the stark white street lights.

‘Some of those hookers are as old as fuckin’
me
!’ she’d laugh, then wrap a coat round herself, lift her skirt up and swagger round the living room, pouting: ‘D’ye think I would get a tenner fur it?’ She would howl with laughter. It was good to hear her laugh. Soon, she began talking about going home. I tried to talk to her about Peter, but she wouldn’t. She left the Calton after eight days. She wanted to go home to him.

SEAN AND I
were still trying our best to get customers into the bar, but no matter how many times you hoovered or tried to brush around the pool table, the place still looked like a dump and few new faces came in. The emptiness of the bar meant I played pool incessantly and read constantly – magazines, comics, classic literature, anything – and I organised our meals and washed our clothes and shopped for food to keep the boredom at bay. That summer was unusually hot and I would sit outside on the pavement watching the world go by. Each day, I would see a scattered procession of drug addicts quick-march on their tell-tale jiggy walk off across the Green to score at The Railings. Half an hour later, they would stumble back, dribbling, full of drugs, and meander across the busy London Road making me terrified they would get flattened by a bus or a speeding lorry. It was like the drunken men I had seen staggering up Kenmore Street on Friday and Saturday nights in my childhood, only the drug had changed from alcohol to heroin.

By this time, most of Britain was gripped by Royal Wedding fever: Prince Charles and the virginal Lady Diana Spencer were creating a perfect template of wedded bliss for us all to follow. Five minutes down the London Road, in Bridgeton, there were street parties, cakes, happy children waving flags and balloons and the whole area was draped in red, white and blue Union flags to celebrate our Prince’s wedding. In the Calton, though, there were no street parties, no flags, no festive bunting; people were not throwing themselves into it like other areas because the majority of people in the Calton were Catholics who were not by nature Royalists. The Royal Family were Protestants and one of the Queen’s titles was Defender of the Faith – the Protestant Faith. Down those streets she was disliked as much as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

I, though,
was
excited by the whole thing and sat glued to the Nationalist Bar’s wee telly hanging above the pool table. I watched as the beautiful bride in her big crumpled cream dress headed towards St Paul’s Cathedral in London. I loved it! I was in love with love and hoped they were going to be happy – even if only as happy as Sean and me. The bar only had three old customers that day. Just as Diana got out of her carriage at St Paul’s and I waited to see what her dress looked like full length, one of them yelled out:

‘Turn that fuckin’ Orange bastard Prince off the telly so we can listen to the jukebox! … Give us “Mack The Knife”!’

I ran upstairs and spent the whole rest of the day following the live wedding coverage on our own TV. Sean stayed downstairs and looked after the bar alone. Despite his occasional angry and sometimes violent moods, he was usually loving and affectionate and always stood by me. One night in the bar, Sean told a big, hairy, middle-aged drunk guy he was not getting served any more booze.

‘Ya specky bastard,’ the man screamed at Sean, as he pulled him towards the door. ‘I am gonna punch your fucking heed in!’ I stood terrified by the cellar door. Sean was still only 19 years old. They both went out the side door and I ran out behind them. Sean stood in front of the man, slowly took his spectacles off then, without warning, suddenly kicked him hard in the stomach. The man fell forward and Sean jumped on him, raining blows on the guy’s head. I became hysterical and managed to pull Sean off as other customers dragged the man away. Sean was spattered with the man’s blood and shaking like a leaf. He went into the back shop and washed his hands. I ran in behind and put my arms around him.