Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (20 page)

Sean, Sammy and I continued to work hard in the Weavers. At lunchtime, new customers were coming in from the old Templeton’s Carpet Factory, which had been renovated and was now a ‘Business Centre’ for new Thatcherite entrepreneurs. Computers were the future and all these healthy young shirt-and-tie men would stride into our bar to get cheap lager and fried foods. Yuppies were coming into the Weavers bar but, outside, the heroin deaths continued. It was sad to see grannies and grandads pushing prams and raising babies that their dead children had left behind. Our smartly dressed new customers who had moved into their fancy new flats in
one of Glasgow’s most sought-after residential communities
were now fully aware of the area’s problems: their houses and cars had been broken into; their valuables stolen; prostitution was everywhere; young girls were trawling the streets, bringing weird kerb crawlers with them; men in cars were slowing down, staring at any woman walking alone.

‘You lookin’ for business?’ they’d shout out.

* * *

That New Year’s Eve we got a call from Crazy Katie Wallace:

‘Sean, is that you?’ she croaked down the line.

‘Aye, Katie, it’s me. Ye want to speak to Sammy?’

‘Naw, I just want tae die, Sean. I hate ma life. Will ye look after Sammy fur me?’ she mumbled. ‘I am really gonnae do it this time, Sean.’

Sammy had had a least four suicide calls from Crazy Katie that year.

‘Look, Katie,’ Sean replied quietly, hoping Sammy could not hear the conversation, ‘you’re only upsetting everybody with all this shite.’

She hung up.

Sean told Sammy about the call and Sammy got into a state about his mum. Crazy Katie had never been a supportive mother, always falling apart, always drifting; Sammy was more worried for his younger sister Jackie,
who
already had problems. She had had some learning difficulties but was now settling into a routine through a social-work programme.

The next day, Sammy went up to Shettleston to see his mum but, while he was still on his way, we got a call from the police. Katie Wallace had killed herself with sleeping tablets and gas in her boyfriend’s flat.

Two days later, Sammy and I had to go and identify the body. We walked into town through the cold, slushy streets. New Year had just passed but Christmas decorations still hung forlornly from Glasgow’s street lamps. Sammy sat on the steps of the City Morgue and hugged his knees, crying, his huge blue eyes spilling tears.

‘Janey, I cannae go in there and look at her,’ he wept.

‘We will do it together,’ I whispered.

Crazy Katie’s body lay dead on the table, its waxy face looking very old, the hair bushy around its head. It really didn’t look like her at all. At first, I thought it might not actually be her. But then I recognised her eyes and mouth. It was the first time I had seen a dead human body. Sammy collapsed. My heart broke. We were both really still kids and here we were both remembering dead mothers. We clung to each other in grief; I knew how hard it had hit him. She had never been the perfect mother but she was the only one he had.

We all rallied round and tried to help him through the funeral. We suggested bringing Jackie to stay with us but she did not want to. Sammy spoke to her social workers and the next month she was put into a social care home. Sammy told me he wanted to go home, but he had never had a single, stable home, so he just went back to Shettleston, where his friends were, and he stayed there while still working at the Weavers. But his mother’s death set him back. His time-keeping became more erratic. A cupboard in our flat was filled entirely with bags and bags of Crazy Katie’s clothing because Sammy didn’t want to get rid of them but had no space to keep them at his new place in Shettleston.

It was inconvenient, but I had more personal worries. My brother Mij, who was living in the Gorbals, came over to see me more and more and I was worried about the weight he was visibly losing.

‘Mij, what the fuck is going on?’ I would ask. ‘You are getting really skinny and looking ill.’

Eventually, I did scream at him the one obvious, scary question: ‘Are you on smack, ya big arse? Are you fucking hitting up?’

He denied it.

But, without warning, I went to his home.

His flat was worse than our old home in Kenmore Street. There were clothes and pieces of food scattered around. My wee niece Debbie was sitting in by herself, when she should have been at school.

‘Where is yer dad?’ I asked her.

She smiled happily at me. ‘He is over at his pal’s hoose, Aunty Janey.’

I opened a drawer.

The first thing I found was needles.

Fucking needles.

Just lying there waiting to be found, waiting to be picked up by Debbie.
The big fucking idiot!
I grabbed Debbie and told her to show me where he was. She sang and skipped all the way along the road until we reached a house and a hallway that smelled of piss. She took me to a door. I banged on it until a scruffy man with a big Pit Bull Terrier answered. ‘Whit the fuck do ye want?’ he snarled.

‘Is Mij here? Mij Currie?’ I snarled back

Mij stumbled to the door, squinting his eyes. He looked shocked when he saw me standing there, holding Debbie’s hand: ‘Janey, hen! I, ah, meant to get hame in a minute. Debbie wiz just watching the cartoons, win’t ye Debbie?’ he said, looking pleadingly at his wee girl.

‘Mij,’ I told him. ‘She is too young to be on her own. Tell me whit the fuck is going on or I will tell my Dad about all this.’ I stood watching his face twitch. He slowly put both hands up to his mouth and mumbled something. I grabbed at his fingers and prised them off his mouth. ‘Whit the fuck are you saying?’

‘I huv been taking smack, Janey.’ He buckled to the floor and started crying like a small child at my knees. ‘I am sorry, Janey, I let everybody doon; just get me put away. I am no fit to be a da.’

His self-pity made me so angry I just walked out of the house swearing and shouting to myself. I raged as I walked quickly through Glasgow Green towards the Weavers. I spat and swore at the junkies I passed. They just staggered on, ignoring my rage. When I got back home, I made phone calls and arranged for Debbie to go stay with her mammy’s sister but, eventually, she went back home to Mij and spent time living between them all. I was horrified. I was worried in case someone abused her. Eventually, I called Social Services. I knew they would call Debbie’s mother’s family and there would be some arrangement to get her better looked after. She eventually went to stay with her aunt, which worked out for a while although later she did end up in care. At the time, Mij was upset and angry. He came over to the Weavers one night and stood crying: ‘Why did ye do that, Janey? That wean is my life.’

‘She needs protecting, Mij, and ye cannae provide that if ye are fucked on smack, can ye?’

He walked out crying. I could deal with Mij’s anger. I could not deal with her being abused.

And it was not just my own brother I was having problems with. Sean’s brothers were becoming ever more difficult to deal with. Dick would come into the Weavers and antagonise me whenever he got a chance. One of his friends would sit at the bar and Dick would talk loudly to him: ‘My dad George hates Janey an’ we all hate her and she cannae huv kids!’

‘Dick,’ I would snap back. ‘Just shut up. I don’t fucking care if you like me. The minute you like me, I will change my personality … And another thing – I just don’t want kids right noo. I know it must confuse you – two people being together and one of ’em not pregnant, but I like having sex an’ no kids, OK?’

Mentioning sex always shut him up. Mentioning sex was always the best defence in the Storrie family. If in doubt, talk about sex. For a bunch of so-called hard men they were easily embarrassed. There was always a strange undertone to Sean’s family. I was never sure what it was and Sean always made sure I never asked. But, one night, he and I were woken up by a loud banging. A man whom I had never seen before stood at our door. He was tall, with very dark hair. He said something to Sean, then walked straight into our living room like he had been in the house all his life, leaving Sean and me behind in the hall.

‘Who the fuck is that guy?’ I asked.

Sean put a finger to his lips and went in to join the man. I watched the two of them climb up the hideous, bull-fronted, fake-wood, devil-worshipping fireplace I had always hated so much. Sean reached down into the gap behind the fake panelling and pulled out three long objects wrapped in cloth and tied up with string. I knew by the shape that they were rifles or shotguns.

‘What the fuck is that?’ I shouted as they walked past me in the hall.

‘Keep her quiet, Sean,’ the man told him in an English accent.

Sean carried the gun-shaped cloth-covered objects down the long hall, then downstairs and into the man’s waiting car. I was shocked. Sean came back to bed as if nothing had happened.

‘Sean, why did you not tell me there were guns behind that fireplace? Was it built just to hide guns?’

Sean lay quiet as I badgered him and then said: ‘You never asked. So why do I have to tell ye everything?’

‘Don’t be fucking sleekit, Sean!’ I shouted. ‘Ye know whit I mean. Who the fuck wiz that Englishman an’ why did ye give him guns an’ why the fuck were they in oor house?’

He said nothing.

I lay in bed fuming.

‘I want to fucking know! And I want to know
now!
’

So Sean explained to me how it worked. ‘If you don’t know, ye can never tell. And you can never be even suspected by my dad of being a grass.’

In the morning Sean left the pub without warning.

He was away for one whole day.

He was away for a second whole day.

I called his dad continually. Old George just kept telling me, ‘Stay quiet, Janey. Sean will be home soon.’

I thought he had left me or had had one of his freaky moods and just disappeared. But, after two days away, he just turned up early on the morning of the third day to open the Weavers. I hugged him for a long time.

‘Sean, I was so fucking worried, where were ye?’ I begged.

‘Don’t ask me anything, Janey. Look, I got ye a wee present.’

He smiled as he produced a box of paints and some new brushes.

‘Great! You are away for two fucking days an’ ye bring me back paints? If I see on the telly about some big jewellery robbery an’ all I got wiz these paints, you’re dead!’

‘Don’t ever talk like that, Janey,’ he snapped. ‘I’m no’ involved in anything dodgy. I am no’ some fucking robber. Don’t even start that shite! I might be George Storrie’s son, but I’m no’ a thief, OK?’

‘Well, I think guns are dodgy an’ you hid them in this hoose. So don’t you start being all the perfect fucking citizen with me, Sean.’

He just laughed and held me tight.

‘I was only at a sale for my dad. I’m sorry I never called,’ he said.

* * *

Occasionally, some old customers would come into the Weavers and start talking about Sean’s dad and his criminal connections but Sean would simply ignore or deny their claims. Sometimes, a local gangster would come in, resplendent in camel-hair coat and shiny coiffed hair. Most gangsters seemed to me to be failed actors and all the older, better-known thugs dressed like something out of
The Maltese Falcon
. I used to laugh under my breath and think,
They can’t ALL pretend to be Humphrey Bogart
. They were smart and extremely polite in the kind of menacing way those dangerous men like to behave when around their viewing public. One gangster was a regular. He would
order
his Glenmorangie with ice and smile as his hand pushed several notes into mine, displaying a fine array of gold sovereigns on his fingers.

‘Keep the change, sweetness,’ he would slide out of the side of his mouth.

He was known locally as a ‘drug baron’, the aristocratic title now bestowed on lowlife dealers by the press.

One afternoon, Old George and I stood outside the Weavers watching other local drug barons drive around in their flashy BMWs.

‘They are fucking bad luck, Janey,’ Old George said venomously. ‘Every penny earned from drugs is dirty money. Their kids will die. They will die. And bad luck will fucking land on all their families.’

It felt like a biblical prophecy …

MY DAD HAD
been making great progress, was still off the booze and had found a nice girlfriend. He brought her into the Weavers one day to introduce us. She was called Mary and was everything my Mammy wasn’t: blonde, well spoken and totally honest. She was a lovely woman with warm brown eyes and hair which framed an amazingly sensitive face; she was always well dressed and made sure she spent lots of time getting to know me. Her own husband had died a couple of years previously, after she had nursed him through a long illness. She had two grown-up kids of her own and worked as a care assistant dealing with people who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease. She was very much into crafts and I liked her instantly. But it was still weird to imagine my Dad loving another woman.

Mary would constantly ask Sean questions about his life, but he would hardly talk to her and merely grunted inaudible answers. I would sometimes go up to Dad’s home to have tea with him and Mary, but Sean would never come and would go into one of his legendary huffs if I stayed away too long. After a few months, Dad and Mary decided to marry and sold their flat; they bought a great wee house up in Maryhill, near Dad’s work, and were a very happy couple.

* * *

Sean and I went off on holiday alone for two weeks discovering Newquay and the surrounding area in Cornwall. The beaches were clean and surfers came from all over the world to take part in the Fistral Beach competitions. Sean and I sat in rose-covered garden cafés eating clotted cream teas, holding hands and being just us; it was great. Sean was amazing at times: his generosity could floor me. We spent mornings eating breakfast in bed from a big silver tea trolley that was wheeled into our room. Every day he brought me flowers. Every night he took me out to dinner. Laughing, kissing, holding me close to his face, he told me how much he loved me.