Ceila4

Auntie Margaret made Celia sit in the straight back chair in the kitchen, take of her slippers and inspected her feet, wiggling each toe separately as if weighing them. Under different circumstances, when she was younger, Celia would have cried out in delight : ‘this little piggy’s going to market’. Auntie Margaret stretched and checked her sock for holes before handing them to her to put on. Her mortuary black school shoes; more boy’s shoes than girls were sitting on a newspaper ready for Celia’s feet. There was no arguments on this occasion about them being ‘granny-shoes’. They had little or no heel and were flat and wide as a tennis bat, but good for kicking. Celia’s sinews stiffened and muscles jerked like a Pinocchio puppet as her blond halo hair was tied up and pinned viciously with steel clasps to prevent grabbing. Auntie Margaret talked all the while, her voice rolling and swelling up and over Celia, kneading and oiling her resolve, making sure that when the time came she was ready. Celia’s soft fingers curled in her palm, tentative fist ready for slapping and punching. She blinked furiously so as not to cry and twittered in a small singsong voice that ‘she’d be all right,’ ‘she’d be all right,’ to Auntie Margaret’s sharp jabs of reassurance. Auntie Margaret walked her down the hallway, the light swinging slightly, from side- to- side with the vibrations of their twin steps. Celia waited as her Auntie fiddled with the sticky sneck on the door, before easing it open. The sounds of other kids playing, doing normal things on bikes and with balls, seemed so far away and no longer part of Celia.

Uncle George stood at the window looking out. Celia stuck her hand up and just as quickly brought it back down again, lowering it and her expectation that she would have the courage to do what she’d set out to do just as quickly. When she looked back he still hadn’t moved, framed by the musty yellow light of an old 30-watt bulb and somehow she was glad of that, imagining him sitting in the room with his books and his Bible. She fingered the cross pushing it underneath her jumper to keep it safe. She changed her mind just as quickly, pulling it out and kissing it for good luck, before tucking it away again. The ball trickled rather than thundered against the wall of the garages and she could feel the Shirley twins watching her. She didn’t look at them; waited for her to say something about the way she looked, but the skip of the ball playing against the wall increased again and she knew that she held as much interest to them as crocodiles that had feasted on fresh antelope.

Ceila’s feet tipped into each other and slowed and one thought curled into another and even when she passed the grass square beside the phone box and was touching the wall that went down the stairs into the White Houses were the Hepburn’s stayed and her breath shortened like a lasso around her neck she still didn’t think she would be able to go through with it. The knocker on the Hepburn’s front door was broken so that she had to chap and chap until she heard a muffled voice.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me.’ Celia recognised Helen’s voice

There was a pause, a baffled hurt-tone of exasperation ‘What do you want?’ she asked, flinging open of the door. Jo, hearing her voice followed her sister and bounced down their stairs.

Helen teased her little sister. ‘Oh, it’s for you. That gypo-slag of a friend of yours, come to play kissy-kissy make-up.’

‘Haven’t you?’ she pushed her chiselled features out into Celia’s face expecting her to spring back.

Helen did not see the clunker that landed on her ear, flowering it giving it an out of season bloom, followed by blows of knuckles and elbows and hands and feet driving her scrambling backwards, the fight lost, up her own stairwell.

Jo tried to push Celia back by grabbing at her hair, but she found no grip and felt the red welts of pain spread evenly across her face like a screen print that brought forth such caterwauling that it was is if she were slain on her own doorstep. The noise brought her mum, dad and all the Hepburn family lumbering down from the corners of couches and kitchen tables and bits of bed and all of the neighbours to fling open their doors and stand, waiting.

‘It’s that little orphan girl friend of Jo’s,’ wheezed Mrs Hepburn looking down from the top of the stairs. ‘Away you and sort it.’ She pushed Kate’s arm, her oldest lassie that worked in the Biscuit Factory and made good money towards the door.

‘I’m no’ goin’’ said Kate, her head moving in a slow arc that took in Auntie Maggie standing at the top of the grassy knoll, with Uncle George beside her and then down to Celia poised unmoving with the bright eyes of a ferret, ‘cause look at her she’s plum-crazy’.

Danny Hepburn sat in the living room watching the end of Dr Who with his mouth open, listening to the voice of the Daleks and the voices of his family, before sliding off his seat.

‘I’ll sort it.’

His da’ wasn’t quite sure. One thing he did know that his son was as daft as a brush and would never amount to much.

‘Don’t worry,’ he smirked. ‘It’s only a wee bitsie lassie.’

‘You cannae… that’s Finbar’s da,’ he whispered to him, grabbing at his arm and motioning towards the watching Uncle George.

He took a fag from behind his ear and running a Swann Vestas match along the woodchip and lighting it he added mockingly ‘Make Love not War’. He sauntered down the last few stairs like a cowboy, his fingers signing out the Churchillian sign of Victory or Peace.

Everything had happened so fast. Celia was shivering with fright and with adrenalin and didn’t know whether she should stay or go, or what she should do. But she couldn’t help smiling when she saw Danny loping down the stairs.

Danny blew a smoke-ring standing at the door looking up at the sky. ‘What’s that you’ve done with you hair?’ He gave a short laugh. That was one of the things she liked about him. He didn’t care if you thought something was funny, just as long as he did. ‘Is it some kind of gargoyle thing. Am I meant to turn to stone or something?’

Although he was bigger than her he dropped down and looked at her from as if she were some kind of artefact. ‘Your nostrils,’ he said ‘they’re pretty big, and they’re opening and shutting like this.’ He posed as some kind of rodent and his nostrils opened and shut and he started laughing.

Celia had a big speech, all sort of things she had to say to Jo and Helen, but it was as if her head had been tipped sideways and all those things had fallen out.

‘Cilly, Cilly, Cilly,’ apart from Auntie Margaret he was the only one that had called her that. ‘Scoot. If you don’t leave now I’m going to start kissing that pretty little face of yours and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop.’ He put his hands behind his back and jerking forward in a dancing movement pecked her on the warm cheek. He checked back and forward again like a square-toed hen and put another smacker on her cheek.

She giggled moving backwards and up the stairs. Auntie Margaret and Uncle George were already away home and she hadn’t seen them.