Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (25 page)

‘My fault?’ I tried to reason with him. ‘Why? All I did was go to get stock for the bar. You know I’ve signed your cheque book for years, George. You’ve even been there in the cash and carry with me when I signed it. I don’t understand the problem.’

There was a moment of total silence, then …

‘Tell him to come back doon here!’ Old George commanded.

I walked slowly towards the door but, as I opened it, I turned and said to him, ‘No, tell him yourself.’ I slammed the door dramatically behind me then leapt, terrified, and ran upstairs, glancing over my shoulder to see if he was chasing me. Sean was sitting quietly in our living room.

He was entirely calm.

He said nothing.

I said nothing.

I paced the floor, worried. Ashley was in her room playing with her toys.

Downstairs, customers were waiting to be served, but I could hear nothing, separated from them by the concrete floor.

There was a knock at the door. Ashley ran out of her room into the hallway to answer it.

‘It’s Grandad!’ she shouted, excited at seeing him. ‘Lift me up, Grandad! Lift me up!’

George lifted her up into his arms as he came towards us through the hall. Sean stood up as his father entered the living room and pulled Ashley out of George’s arms into his own.

‘Grandad was holding me, Daddy!’ she shouted angrily.

George stood there filling up the living room with his brooding presence. He very rarely came into our living room but, when he did, it was as if he filled up the whole room with … George-ness. He was about six foot tall and very broad. Toad Hall had big rooms; our rooms were small. I had rarely seen him in small rooms, so he seemed even more imposing now. There was silence. Neither Sean nor Old George was going to raise his voice in front of Ashley. Both were distracted by her persistent chatter as she ran around her beloved Granda’s legs wittering. She was totally unaware of any antagonism in the air. Old George spoke first.

‘Sean, I am sorry,’ he said quietly.

‘Don’t apologise to
me
,’ Sean answered. ‘I wasn’t the one you called a thief.’

‘What’s a thief?’ Ashley asked, turning her face up to look at her granda.

‘Come on, chatty girl,’ I interrupted nervously. ‘Go into your room, Ashley, and get some drawings to show Grandad.’ And off she happily trotted.

Old George smiled his best big charming grin at me. ‘Janey, I shouldn’t huv said any of that. Now, you both go down and run the bar for me, eh?’

‘Janey will go down if she wants,’ Sean said firmly. ‘But I am staying here. I am ill.’ He turned his back on his father as Ashley came through the door with a big piece of paper.

‘I drew a dead rainbow. It fell into the street.’ She had seen diesel spill from a taxi on the wet street, its spectrum of colours spreading and shimmering in the daylight.

The drama was over – for the moment.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Sean went back to work slowly. He had recovered as well as he could but had been told that, for the rest of his life, he would need to take tablets for sarcoidosis (a disease which causes inflammation of the body’s tissues) and a nasal spray for diabetes insipidus (an inability to recycle the water in the kidneys). He was very subdued and overly anxious at the same time, which made his temper even worse. He had always had an inner need for small details to be perfect, but now it got totally out of control.

We used to have a company who delivered all the laundry and tea towels for the Weavers and the flats; they would hand me a small receipt which I had to punch two holes in and put into Sean’s laundry accounts folder. One day, I punched the slip and clipped it in as normal, Sean
arrived
, opened the laundry ringbinder – and immediately rammed it flat, full force into my face.

‘Look! It’s all out of fucking line!’ he started screaming at me. ‘They’re all up and doon! The receipts have tae line up perfectly! You have tae punch the holes in exactly the right place or they don’t look neat! It’s a fucking mess!’

I looked at the bundle of receipts and one or two were indeed sticking out ever so slightly. I watched Sean unclip the receipts and trim them with the very sharp blade of a Stanley knife and a ruler so they all sat perfectly in line in the folder. He did it in total silence.

In the bar, he also started to shout at staff if the beer bottles in the chiller cabinet were not all standing with the labels facing front-out in a regimented fashion. Even if I had made sure they all faced front, he would pull the chiller out and make tiny adjustments to ensure they looked 100 per cent perfect. Tiny pedantic issues started to dominate his life. In the bar, the glass-cleaning cloths had to be folded in a very particular way. In our bedroom, the sash windows had to be raised to a certain level and no more – he marked the wood with a pencil to show how high it should be. I had no idea what had made him get so picky, but I worried more and more about his health and how he would cope on our forthcoming holiday.

This year, we had long planned to take Ashley for a visit to Disney World in Florida. It was to be our holiday of a lifetime. Sean assured me he would be fit enough to go and the doctor gave him the all-clear. Ashley became increasingly excited about her big visit to meet Mickey Mouse but I was even more excited. I had dreamt about Disneyland ever since I was a wee girl. I had seen that big magic castle and those flying Dumbo elephants on television in the early 1960s and the anticipation of seeing them for real burned inside me. I had always dreamt of escaping to Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

When the ferry finally took me across to the Magic Kingdom and that beautiful pink castle appeared on the horizon, I had tears in my eyes. I completely forgot about Ashley as I stood there holding onto the boat rail, transfixed by the image. I was 28. Ashley was three. We went into Mickey’s home and walked around with all the other tourists. As we entered Mickey’s bright bedroom, Ashley shouted loudly, ‘Look, Mickey and Minnie sleep together here!’

An overweight American man leaned over and drawled: ‘No, honey, we would know if they were married. They would have had a wedding.’

Ashley smiled innocently up at the man: ‘But they must sleep here like boyfriend and girlfriend,’ she explained, ‘coz Minnie’s shoes are there on the floor …’ And, sure enough, there on the floor beside Mickey’s big red bed were, indeed, a pair of Minnie’s black high-heel shoes. The fat American stood with his hands outstretched towards the bed and a
What can I say?
expression on his face.

* * *

When we returned to Glasgow, I would stand at the bar of the Weavers and look out through the front window at the glamorous Doges’ Palace tiling on the side of the old Carpet Factory – bright glinting tiles, Venetian turrets and scooped windows – which bore no relation to the seediness into which the Calton had fallen. Ashley loved that exotic building almost as much as the People’s Palace behind it. She knew every single exhibit at the People’s Palace and would wander round chatting to people about the Glasgow tobacco barons, Billy Connolly’s big banana boots, the wee 1950s newsagents that was recreated within the museum and she would play with Smudge the Cat, the only card-carrying trade union membershipped cat in Britain, who always followed her around. Ashley became so well known to the staff that she was allowed to walk around as though she owned the place.

‘I am the Princess of the Palace,’ she told me. ‘Tommy Security Man told me so!’

We would often catch her chatting to Americans, Canadians, anyone and everyone about the various exhibits. We kept warning her about talking to strangers but she would tell people firmly, if they got a bit too close, ‘I’m not allowed to be picked up or touched!’

The area around the Weavers was dangerous, full of drug dealers and kerb crawlers looking for hookers. I had complained to the local community police about young schoolgirls aged 14 or 15 being allowed to stand outside the bar selling themselves as Ashley played in her wee sandpit by the side of the pub. I would only send her out to play if one of our boys – our tenants – sat out there with her and she hated having a minder:

‘I can watch myself, Mummy – I can!’

Then she would sulk as she dug holes in the sand and would insist her minder stand away from her or sit on the low fence at the side of the pub as she played on her own. She was incredibly independent. She hated anyone tying her shoes or helping her over the fence between the pub and the sandpit at the side of the building.

‘Do it myself! Do it myself!’ she would repeat so often that it became her catchphrase with the regulars.

Sean and I decided she would not eat sweets as our own teeth had become rotten to the core like many Scottish kids raised from cradle to grave on a diet of sugar and fizzy drinks. This proved a hard exercise as almost every customer in the bar started bringing Ashley sweets as a gift. We eventually took the deceitful step of telling everyone she was a diabetic and, as Sean’s dad had diabetes, the scam worked. She knew she was not ill, but learned to refuse sugary snacks, never really complained about it and ate loads of fruit instead. Sean was very strict about this sugar thing but inevitably Old George always felt he knew better and hated Sean making any of his own rules, so Ashley’s diabetic grandad vehemently insisted that she would eat sweets when she was with him.

‘Grandad Storrie tried to give me chocolate again,’ Ashley would explain to me afterwards with her ‘serious’ face. ‘I told him
no
, but he said it was allowed. I never ate it, Mummy – look – I hid it safely in my pocket.’

Gay Gordon also adored Ashley and was always there to keep her happy. Through him, she developed an early love of musicals. A gay man in the Calton was relatively rare, so he relished his role as her personal tutor of Doris Day hits. She would often run into the crowded Weavers bar, climb on a stool and belt out ‘Que Sera Sera’.

Gay Gordon would stand behind her like some crazed Mrs Worthington, as she sang her heart out, copied dance moves she had seen on TV, then bowed to her always-appreciative audience. Up in our living room, she would sing and dance along even more uninhibitedly with ‘The Deadwood Stage’ and every other song in her favourite VHS musicals.

It reminded me of my Mammy, clearing back the furniture so she could be Judy Garland for at least one rainy afternoon.

* * *

One day, when Sean and I were out walking with her and had almost got back home, Ashley ran ahead of us towards the Weavers. She was wearing a wee waxed blue shooting jacket and a pair of dungarees. She turned the final corner before we did and, as soon as we got round the corner, we saw she was standing up against the white fence with her hands tucked behind her back, looking straight ahead at a stranger parked in his car by the nearby kerb.

‘That man asked me the time, Daddy!’ she shouted, her wee finger pointing at the guy. ‘I don’t know him, Daddy!’

Sean immediately ran to the car and wrenched the door open as the man frantically tried to hold it shut and start the engine at the same time.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Sean screamed. ‘She can’t tell the fucking time! She’s only three!’ He rammed his fist into the man’s face through the open window.

‘I thought I knew her,’ the man spluttered from his bloodied mouth.

I ran after Ashley, who was by now climbing over the wee fence and running up the grass incline away from the Weavers with her coat over her head.

‘Daddy! No, no! No, Daddy!’ she was crying.

‘Ashley,’ I said, grabbing her. ‘It’s OK, baby, come here.’ I held her close. She buried her head into my shoulder, crying for her daddy, but looking back at what he was doing. She didn’t want to look but couldn’t stop herself. Sean had now dragged the guy from the car and was kicking him in the head and body. Our new barman had seen all the commotion through the window of the Weavers and he now came running out to join Sean in his attack on the stranger.

‘I’m sorry … I only spoke to her!’ the man was trying to shout between blows and kicks. He tried to clamber back into his car.

‘Let him go! Let him go!’ I yelled.

Sean booted the man in the face and his nose burst – blood went everywhere – and the stunned stranger half-sat, half-fell back into the driver’s seat. He drove away frantically, semi-conscious, blood spattered all over his wind-screen.

I stayed with Ashley at the top of the grassy incline. Sean sat on the fence with his head in his hands trying to get his breath back. As he looked up, two community police came running over.

‘Sean,’ one asked. ‘What the fuck happened?’

‘That guy asked Ashley the time, for fucksake,’ Sean told them. ‘There’s no way a child of that age can tell the time …’

‘He was a fucking pervert!’ I told them.

‘Fucking jail me!’ Sean snapped at the policemen. ‘I hope you got his number. Find him and get him to charge me! I’ll go to court.’

‘No, Sean,’ said the other policeman gently. ‘You did the right thing. I would have done the same.’

Sean broke down in tears.

Ashley was still sitting on the wee grassy hill, with her coat pulled over her head, her eyes peeking out and watching, her knees hugged up to her chin. Sean and I walked up the slope to her.

‘I am sorry, Ashley,’ Sean said softly, ‘I hate you seeing that, but he was a bad man; I was so scared he would hurt you.’ He didn’t pick her up or hold her because he had the man’s blood on his hands and all over his clothes. But Ashley hugged his neck. She had her wee serious face on:

‘I think he was bad too, Daddy, but you kicked him in the head and he was all blood. If you kill him, the policemen will take you away. That’s what happens if you kill people.’

‘Ashley,’ he tried to explain, ‘I will never kill anyone. But bad people can hurt wee children. You need to know that there are bad men and women who take wee kids away from their parents. I was very angry at him.’

* * *

Ashley loved living in the Calton; so did I. But we had to accept there was danger everywhere and children went missing all over the UK, not just in the East End of Glasgow.

The building we lived in was safe as Ashley knew everyone there and it was a great commune for her to grow up in. On the rooftop, which we used as our private garden, she had a paddling pool and all her outdoor toys. The views were still awesome and I could still see the high flats which dominated the Gorbals’ shopping centre across the river, but I knew the area was now awash with heroin addicts hanging around dealing at The Railings right outside the main Police Office.