Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (35 page)

‘It’s aboot nothing, Janey. I just feel like a wee change, ye know?’

He moved out the following week. It was all too fast for my liking; Sarah, too, was very evasive on details of where they were going; neither would tell us the actual address. Within weeks, Sammy’s payments on the loan had become sporadic. It was unlike him and alarm bells immediately rang in my head. There was only one thing that would stop Sammy keeping up with his loan repayments and that was heroin.

One night, soon afterwards, he stood in my kitchen. He had always been skinny, but now he looked like every bone in his body could rattle against the others. His hands shook; his face looked in pain; he could not make eye contact with me; he stood shivering and uncharacteristically shouting. I had never heard Sammy shout in my life.

‘I have no fucking money to eat!’ he shouted at me. ‘I am skint! I can’t afford this fucking car!’

His hand clutched a wad of 30 £10 notes. He kept moving forward with the cash, as if to give it to me, but not actually letting go of it. His thin hand would hover over my pine kitchen table but never once did his bony fingers open enough to scatter the money onto the table top. He paced up and down the kitchen, shouting, ‘Janey! I cannae pay ye!’

He suddenly stuffed the money into the pocket of his blue denim jeans. I reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders. He looked straight into my face. His eyes were cloudy, not the clear bright blue they used to be. I knew then. For certain.

‘You are on smack, ya cunt!’ I shouted. ‘Fucking hell, Sammy! You! Why?’

‘No I am no’ Janey!’ he spat out, wildly throwing his arms up and releasing himself from my grip. ‘Ah promise, Janey. Fucking hell, I’m no’ a junkie!’

‘Ye fucking are, Sammy!’ I shouted. ‘Jesus! Fuck! Why? After everything you fucking know,
you
took smack?’ I sat at the table and put my head in my hands. Sammy stood there, shivering, looking down at me. ‘Take it, Sammy,’ I told him, exhausted. ‘Keep the money, but you will huv to explain to Sean why he will need to pay £300 this month oot of his own pocket for a car you own, not fucking him.’

Sammy did not move.

He slowly pulled the 30 £10 notes out of his pocket. I watched him as he held the bundle in his grip and then put it on the table. His eyes did not leave the brown notes. He turned his back on me, then actually ran out the door. My stomach lurched like a leapfrog game had taken place inside it.
Sammy was on smack
. I felt so fucking angry. His own denials, his anger and the look on his face as he screamed at me confirmed it all.

Sean took Sammy’s fall from grace very well, considering he would now have to pay a lot of money for a car he didn’t own and couldn’t sell – Sammy had already done that the week before without telling us.

‘Well,’ Sean said. ‘That’s my fault for giving a loan to a junkie.’

‘Fucksake,’ I told him. ‘You slapped me for not defrosting the fridge, ya weird bastard! Sammy fucks you for a couple of grand and you just shake yer head?’

Sean looked at me through narrowed eyes, reading a newspaper. I didn’t really want him to hit Sammy, of course, but I never could understand why I always got the shit and no one else did even when they clearly deserved it. I felt overwhelmed by everything and deliberately started a fight with him.

‘Sammy fucks us both for cash and you accept it! Your fucking family slag me off and you accept it! If
my
family hurt
you
that would be a different story, wouldn’t it, ya fucker?’ I ripped the newspaper from his hands and threw it on the floor.

Sean always ignored me when I went into a rant. He just picked up the newspaper, resumed reading it and smiled quietly, saying: ‘Sammy
is
your family.’ This calm pedantry really annoyed me. Sammy had taken Sean’s side in so many arguments and situations that I had almost forgotten he was my cousin.

‘Well, he has been here so long he behaves like a fucking Storrie!’ I yelled. ‘And you never asked me if we could lend him the cash! You just did it! You make all the decisions! I never get any say!’ I grabbed the newspaper off him again and this time I ripped it up to make sure he couldn’t read it. I grabbed his hair and pulled him off the chair onto the floor. I was so angry that he was just smiling and ignoring me. I needed a reaction. My left foot came up and kicked him in the head. I heard the thud as my foot made contact with his skull, breaking his spectacles which went flying off. He lay there, motionless, for a few seconds. I watched him move to get up and kicked him in the head again. Sean lunged forward and grabbed my leg as I threw another kick. He pulled it so hard I fell backwards onto the floor. He jumped over me and pinned me down with both his hands on my wrists. I was petrified; my heart thumped so loudly I could hardly hear him speak.

‘Stop this, Janey! Don’t become me! Don’t fucking do this.’ His eyes were pleading and full of tears.

I didn’t understand what was happening; I wanted him to hit me then so I could run and he would feel bad and want me back, then we could all live like this till next time.
Isn’t this how it works?
I thought. He let go of my wrists and lay on top of me on the floor and wrapped his arms around me. He was crying, his tears sticking to my neck.

‘Don’t, Janey. I love you. If you need to hit me, then we are both fucked.’

I lay there holding him.

We eventually got up and he sat holding my hands on the sofa.

‘You were never the bitter and angry one, Janey; don’t hate Sammy; he fucked up. I will pay for the loan, don’t be like this.’ He stroked my hands on his knee.

‘Sean,’ I blurted through tears, ‘I feel so mental. All we do is fight or shout or have sex or scream then I leave and you plead then I come home and it all goes fucking round and round in circles …’

Sean looked into my eyes and wiped my tears with his thumbs and said: ‘I thought about us going for marriage guidance, what do you think?’

‘Well, if it stops you hitting me, then I would be happy about it.’ I tried to sound enthusiastic. I was worried Sean would never really open up with a stranger but, if he was the one to suggest it … So Sean called the Marriage Guidance Council place in the city and we had an appointment set for the following week.

* * *

It turned out to be at Glasgow’s Catholic Cathedral, an awesome Gothic spiral affair of a building that stands right beside the River Clyde. It made me feel that I had no right being grumpy with my husband in such a place. On the other hand, I felt it was all wrong to have marriage guidance there. As all Catholic priests are single, what the hell would they know about marriage? I felt they might even say my marriage was in tatters because I was not a Catholic – that if Sean had married a lovely Catholic girl, everything would have been fine. But, despite this constant nagging in my head, we walked together into a cosy wee room with cushions and sofas all arranged at what seemed like erratic angles. I stumbled and tripped over a footstool, landing on my palms. It was not a good start.

The walls were all rainbows, doves and hearts. This immediately set off warning bells. Anywhere that displayed a rainbow and a dove shouted shitey tokenism to me. Never in my entire marriage had the thought of a fucking rainbow or a white bird salved my pain. I was totally defensive. I decided I hated the marriage guidance man sitting there and hated Sean even more for suggesting coming to see some nutty Catholic who painted doves on the wall. I had wished a brain haemorrhage on this bastard and had actually got one to strike him down.

‘Hello, my name is Harry,’ the marriage guidance man said, smiling, friendly, patronising, reaching out and shaking my hand. It was a very soft grip and his palm was very dry and warm.

‘I know you both need to do some talking, so I will sit here until you are comfortable enough to tell me what you feel.’

He spoke like a man who normally tells people they have cancer. His voice was immediately annoying. I sat there staring at my shoes. I gripped both hands together very tightly and felt the blood pulsating through my knuckles, trying hard to get some form of circulation going back into my fingertips. Sean did not speak. The man did not speak. Eventually, I felt it was up to me to fill the dead air and give Harry the juice he needed to get this show on the road. Without even knowing it was happening, my mouth went into full throttle.

‘I married him when I was really young. I tried hard to be a good wife. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I don’t fuck other men. He shouts at me, he makes me feel scared, he hits me, he never praises me, I work in his pub, yes it is
his
pub, I never even got asked if that was a job I wanted, I just did what I was told, I wanted to be an actress or an artist but, no, I wasn’t given a choice, he told me to work in the bar and I did, I try hard to be patient but he makes me feel like shit, I was abused as a child and he made me feel bad about it as well, even though he was kind of supportive, I felt as though my family and my past were an inconvenience to him …’

By this time I was on a roll. I took a deep breath and launched into what I can only describe as my ‘Freedom’ speech:

‘I hate his family, they make me feel like I am some sort of freak, he lets them put me down, I would never let my family say a bad word about him, we have a daughter and she loves him and I would never turn her against him, but he can frighten her when he gets angry, she knows when to walk out of a room and occupy herself and keep out of his way and she is only six years old, he is like a petulant child and demands attention a lot and gets grumpy if he doesn’t get sex on demand, I am tired and I have to work a lot, I starve myself coz he hates fat people, I wear the clothes he likes and I fucking hate myself for being what he likes and what I hate.’

I finally shut up. I kept my head down and stared intently at my shoes. They were black, leather and low heeled because Sean liked my shoes to be flat. I decided that, first thing tomorrow, I was going to buy my first pair of stiletto-heeled shoes. Then I remembered that I could not walk in high heels. Sean was going to be angry with me for saying all that stuff; I could feel his presence beside me. He was very still and quiet.

No one spoke.

The room felt very small.

Harry looked at me and finally said quietly, ‘You do talk a lot, don’t you?’

‘Yes, well sometimes I get a bit carried away,’ I replied. I spotted a wee scuff mark on my shoes where my big toes had been pressing against the leather from the inside. Then I thought,
Cheeky bastard! How dare he judge me? I was just trying to get it all out!

‘Maybe Sean would like to say something?’ the cancer announcer intoned.

Sean looked at me and silently shook his head.

‘He just shook his head at me,’ I told Harry. ‘That means I have to tell you he is not going to speak. He even gets me to communicate with other people for him.’

I sat back smugly now. Sean just looked at me. He slowly took off his glasses and put them on his knee and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. I thought he was going to explode.

‘Maybe you should stop speaking for him.’ The patronising cardigan-wearing Catholic smiled at me. ‘Maybe you overwhelm Sean; don’t you think that may be a possibility?’

Sean leaned forward and looked Harry straight in the eyes.

‘Actually, everything she says is right. I am a bastard. I make her sad and fuck up her life and maybe the best thing is to accept I did a lot of things wrong here?’

‘Well, this is a good start,’ said Harry. He was happy he had two puppets to play with now. He nodded and smiled and started to write stuff down in his wee book. This really annoyed me because he had never written down anything
I
said!

Then our appointment was over.

Sean and I walked straight out into the cold dark night.

‘Fucking hell,’ Sean laughed as he took my hand and walked me to the car park. ‘That was weird, Janey. He was nutty, eh?’

‘Sean, I meant all that stuff: you are so hard to live with an’ I get scared you will just lose your temper and kill me.’ I kept looking down at my feet as I walked; I was scared to break the spell. Sean was being so co-operative and honest.

‘Janey, I would never kill you. I don’t know why you think this.’ He pulled me towards him and lifted my chin up as he spoke.

‘My Mammy was killed,’ I said. ‘Killed by a man who frightened her, so it can happen, Sean.’ I felt tears choking in my throat.

‘Janey, I’m not him; I can’t believe you think I would really hurt you. I don’t mean to scare you like that; if
you
scream at
me
I don’t get scared, so just laugh at me when you feel I am scaring you: it’s your fault for letting me mean that much to you and getting into your head.’ He cocked his head to the side and smiled.

‘
My
fucking fault? It’s
my
fucking fault
you
scare me? I
let
you scare me?’ I was now shouting at him in the cathedral car park. ‘How the fuck did
that
happen, Sean? I let you scare me? Fuck you, ya arse! Take yer holy fucking Catholic weird therapy and your blame theory and stick it up yer retarded arse!’ I stomped off into the dark. I started to run. Now I remembered why I always wore flat shoes: it was because I could run faster in them. I ran all the way down to the side of the Clyde.
MY fault? Everything MY fault?
Thoughts and anger just ran out of control inside my head.
I must be stupid and shite at everything … I let him scare me … I did all this
. I was out of breath and my breathing was clouding up in front of me in the cold air, as I walked fast along the grass verge that ran alongside the wall that stopped people from falling into the river. Wee drunk men sat on the ornate benches that were built for tourists back in the City of Culture year. I was muttering under my breath, swearing and grinding my teeth.

A voice shouted out: ‘Men are all cunts!’

I looked round. An old drunk man wearing a black coat over at least three jackets, smiled at me and held up his can of lager. His smile was wide; he had teeth that looked like a row of condemned buildings.