Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival (45 page)

She smiled, nodded and ran into the kitchen to join her father. I went upstairs, ran a hot bath, poured luxurious and expensive perfumed bath gel under the gushing taps, stripped quickly, slipped under the warm, clean water and let the smell of the bathsalts drift up into my nose. I had dreamed of this all night in the cell and now I could get clean.

‘Janey, you in there?’ Sean called through the door.

‘Aye, I’m in the bath.’

‘Let me in.’

I sighed and slowly dripped my way on tiptoes to the door, foam slipping down my legs. Whisky the cat slipped in first. Sean pulled off his shirt and threw his clothes onto the heap of mine on the floor.

‘Fuck, I feel so dirty!’ he told me.

The bath was big enough for us both. Without saying anything, I lay in it, feeling the warm plastic against my back, Sean lying with his back against my chest. My legs went around his sides and I hugged him beneath the hot foamy water. I really wanted to fight with him. I wanted the answer to so many questions. But, right now, I also needed to feel him close. Whisky leapt up on the side of the marble bath surround, tucked his paws under his chin and sat staring at us through slitty eyes, as if asking
So what happens next?

Much later, Sean, Patsy Paton and I sat in the living room, trying to make sense of the whole situation. One thing was clear. Young George could no longer stick up for Sandra. It was one thing being a mad woman within the Storrie family, but it was something else entirely grassing us to the police.

* * *

A few days later, a wee, almost toothless, one-eyed man called Erchie, who wore old-fashioned trousers with braces over a stripy collarless shirt, arrived at Toad Hall and wandered about the back garden. He pointed up to the roof of the big, silver-skinned trailer by the wall and hobbled into the car pit. Sean and Erchie clambered and scurried under and over cars, all around the backyard. I stood as they walked back and stopped again by the trailer. The three of us stepped inside and the two of them tentatively rubbed their hands over the walls. A panel was pulled back and there, underneath, I saw slabs of a dark, plasticine-like material, perhaps one inch thick. I went to press my finger into it.

‘Fucking don’t do that, Janey!’ Erchie’s husky voice whistled through his gappy teeth as he grabbed my hand. He put his old, wrinkled face up so close to the plasticine I thought he was going to lick it, but he merely smelled the material.

‘Whit is it?’ I repeated.

‘Explosive putty, hen. Don’t touch it. I’ll need to freeze ma hands to get it aw off.’ Old Erchie held up both his gnarled, veiny hands and looked at them, then walked out of the trailer and headed for the back kitchen. I stood and stared at the dark stuff inside the wall, the same wall I had bounced a ball off, the same wall I had done handstands against with Ashley.

‘I huv played in here with your daughter and you said nothing!’ I snapped at Sean. ‘Honest to fucking God, I huv no idea who you are any more. Why did ye let me stay here when all this stuff wiz here? Do ye really no’ care at all? An’ whit the fuck did yer da need all this stuff fur, anyway?’

Erchie came back with his hands stretched in front of him. He was carrying frozen plastic ice chillers that we kept in the freezer for picnics and cool boxes: ‘This will keep ma hands cold till I pick it aw off,’ he said, more to himself than to us. ‘Noo, stand back an’ I’ll get tae work. Don’t let the sunlight get on it. We don’t want it too hot.’ The old man started to ease the stuff off, but it was taking too long and the sun started shining through the top skylight of the trailer to point sharply into the trailer and its open wall. I worried what effect the heat of the sun might have. ‘Get yer hands cold and help me,’ Erchie hissed as he picked away at the stuff. ‘Just dae it aw very slowly, hen. Just imagine,’ he winked at me, ‘that yer dealing wi’ a wee baby.’

That panicked me. I was not good with ‘wee babies’ but I held my hands in the freezer of our fridge till they hurt and helped slowly pick off the hard, greasy putty. It kept breaking off in my hand, smelled of petrol and occasionally started to sweat as I manipulated the chunks until they broke off. It was like handling dangerous, hard fudge. Erchie supervised Sean and me and occasionally held frozen plastic ice chillers against the explosives until he was sure it was safe to carry on. It took us about an hour or more to clear the wall of the dark putty and Erchie wrapped it all up in a sheet and put it into a brown canvas duffel bag, then simply walked out the front gate of Toad Hall holding it in his hands.

That, and the explosives we removed from under the wallpaper of an upstairs room.

‘Where will he put it all?’ I asked Sean.

He looked at me and just shrugged his shoulders: ‘I don’t fucking care as long as it’s out of here.’

* * *

After that, life went on as before at Toad Hall. The police incident was never discussed again; Sean became distant and agitated every time I tried to talk about what had happened. There was no point complaining about the house being full of his brothers; it was now accepted that we all had to live together; I hated every minute. Almost even worse was that I was not used to Sean being around so much with nothing to do. With the Weavers closed for refurbishment, he and I were in each other’s face all the time, so we argued, shouted and threatened each other with divorce. We tried to keep cool in front of Ashley but even that deteriorated and soon we openly threw things at each other. Once, I stood in the kitchen, looking at the filthy mess left by some Storrie brother who had attempted a fry-up. Pans were all over the units and greasy cutlery lay in the sink.

‘Fucksake, can your poxy family no’ wash their own plates?’ I snapped at Sean as soon as he came in.

‘Fuck up, ya moany cow!’ he shot back at me with a dark look. Before, I would have been scared but now I was ready to use any excuse to fight him.

‘Fuck you, ya useless bastard!’ I shouted as I threw a greasy frying pan straight at his head. He ducked and it clattered off the wall, sending the clock crashing down to the floor. Ashley came running in from the hallway and screamed, ‘Stop fighting, Daddy, please! You are all
horrible
in here! Mummy, stop shouting! Everybody shouts in this house. Stop it!’ She stood there looking at us, her face still angry but now looking tired and worn out. I had never seen that look on her face before. She was only eight. I walked over and tried to put my arms around her. She started to push me away and began crying. ‘I
hate
it here. I want to go
home
!’ She looked up at me, pushed my arms away and walked out of the room.

Sean and I called a truce. We agreed I would stop whingeing and he would get on the case of the builders and confirm a date when we could move back into our flat above the Weavers. If our flat was not ready by January – in five weeks’ time – we would move to a rented flat until we got a date to go home. It was settled. He promised and we tried to focus on getting the pub and the flats organised for redecoration.

* * *

At Toad Hall, the brothers still came and went as they wanted.

They ate our food from the fridge. I ignored it.

They used my clean towels and left the bathroom in a state. I ignored it.

They kicked Whisky the cat and spat at Ashley on the stairs. I ignored it.

In particular, I tried hard to avoid rising to Young George’s baiting. I knew he was spoiling for a fight. I tried my best to avoid him.
It will not be long before we get out of here
, I kept telling myself. I retreated into our bedroom. We had a television in there. I moved Whisky the cat’s box in beside us. I kept Ashley occupied near me when she was at home from school. I only ventured downstairs to get food and hot drinks. We ate on the bed. Ashley did her homework on the bed. The cat slept on the bed. We all cuddled up together on the bed. Downstairs stank of tobacco, cannabis and alcohol and there was no way I was going down to clean up after them. By now, I didn’t even know how many people actually lived in the house. Sean and I left early in the morning to take Ashley to school and stayed out all day. We would go down to the Weavers building to check the progress of the refurbishment, chat to the workers, and liaise with the architect on the plans. We would only go back to Toad Hall when we had to.

The week before Christmas, we planned to leave the house and stay at the Hilton for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We knew there was no way we could make Ashley happy stuck in that bedroom in that house over the holidays. We never bothered to discuss it with the brothers: even Paul Storrie was becoming distant now. One day, he watched Young George spray bleach over my coat as it hung on the stair post.

‘Stop it George, ya bastard!’ I screamed as I tried to rush through into the kitchen to wash it. ‘You are fucking evil! That’s my good heavy winter coat!’

Paul just stood sniggering as I pushed past him.

‘Whit ye laughing at, Paul?’

He smiled and looked at Young George. There was a new coldness in his eyes. I had never known Paul like this. Before, he would have shouted at Young George and defended me; now it seemed I had six enemies to look out for.

As Christmas approached, Ashley became more and more excited and, just before we dropped the cat off at my sister’s house (I no longer left it unattended at Toad Hall), Dick Storrie barged into our bedroom and said to me, ‘Yer old pal Jonah is dead.’

He smiled and walked back out of the room thinking he had shocked me, but I already knew; I had been there when Jonah died. He was in hospital and I had gone up with a card Ashley had made. Jonah always had such a great sense of humour and we had many laughs, but he must have been so sad inside.

I did not attend the funeral. I wanted to step back from it all. I knew that people at the funeral would talk about the guns incident. I did not want to be paraded as a gangster’s moll for ever. That would all be put behind me.

We packed up on Christmas Eve and left without explaining to anyone in the house where we were going. I just smiled at Young George as I went past him and slammed the door, hurried down the three wee stairs that led to the gate and got into the car. We had booked a beautiful room with a balcony up on the penthouse floor of the Glasgow Hilton, facing west. It was lovely, but it was not home. I wanted to be back in our flat above the Weavers. I wanted my familiar things around me. But I knew I would never be safe again. Old George had been acutely intelligent in his own way and had built up a big business, but these six sons were different. I knew that, back at Toad Hall or in a local pub, a bunch of uneducated thugs who could not even count the number of fingers on their hands was debating our future and now they thought they were businessmen. I was worried to the core of my soul, but I smiled over Christmas dinner. Sean tried hard to placate me. We waited until Ashley was asleep and then chatted into the night.

‘Janey, I know ye are worried, but I promise ye … They will no’ take the pub; they cannae. I huv all the paperwork and stuff. Anyhow, none of them know how to run it.’ He held me close, then got to his feet: ‘Come onto the balcony. Look, it’s Christmas Day.’ He pointed to the cold blue sky outside. We stepped out onto the balcony, into the cold Scottish night. Glasgow was a glittering landscape of frost and sharp electric lights, twinkling in the dark. The view was breathtaking, I could see all the way down the River Clyde and, in the far west, I could see the spires of Glasgow University on the skyline. I could not see the East End at all. Something somehow made me glad that I couldn’t see ‘my’ part of the city; I did not want to see it tonight; I wanted to see the nice side of Glasgow.

‘Merry Christmas, Janey.’ Sean smiled and kissed me.

‘I am going to give myself a New Year present,’ I told him quietly.

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t want to be Janey Storrie any more, because your family let me down. I don’t want to be Janey Currie, because my family let me down. I’m going to use my middle name and legally become Janey Godley. The only family who haven’t let me doon are the Godleys because I don’t know them. Happy Christmas.’

ASHLEY LOVED STAYING
at the Hilton, enjoyed her Christmas dinner, loved the tree in her room, the presents placed underneath it, revelled in all the attention from the staff. She ran around showing them all her Christmas gifts and then got dressed for her Nana and Grandad Currie coming to visit. Dad was looking better, but I knew he was very worried about us. Newspaper reports of the gun incident had omitted our names and they also changed my age by ten years which made identifying us even more difficult, but some of Dad’s relatives had heard gossip and told him. He kept asking me to go live with him and Mary. I refused because I needed to keep focused on getting back into our flat above the Weavers. I was determined not to let the Storrie brothers get me down; I had been through bigger fights than this in my life. I knew Sean was going over every possibility in his head about what his brothers could do to us, but whenever we talked about it he refused to believe his family could or would take his pub and flats from him.

‘Janey, how can they? Why would they? I think you are worrying too much over fuck all.’ I could see in fact that he was trying to convince himself as much as me.

After Christmas at the Hilton, we picked up the cat on the way home, then drove back to Toad Hall, went through the big oak door and straight upstairs. Ashley was happy to be back and couldn’t wait to unpack and show Whisky all the toys she had got. As I unpacked our cases, Sean was called downstairs. There was definitely something going on as, when we arrived, all six brothers had been in the main sitting room. After Sean went down to join them, I heard shouting and mumbled, angry voices.

‘Mummy, why are they all here? Why are they talking to Daddy?’ Ashley whispered. Ashley always whispered when the brothers were at home. She became subdued and never left my side.

‘Never mind them, babes, Daddy will sort it out.’ I smiled at her.