Lets Start Again

As a six-and-a-half-year old I knew certainty. When I grew up I was going to be Spider Man. Mum made a costume with a red swirly cape and drew a spider on it with the black pencil she did her tear-stained eyes with. It came from the lining of old granny Mary’s best sixty-bob black Co-op coat and smelled the same as her of mothballs and lavender. She lived in the fancy houses around the corner. But it was ok, because granny grew too fat and bloated for her thin coat. Then she was too thin for her fat coat. Then she died of the disease old people get, which was like moving away, but further. We got her black and white telly, but not the inside toilet.

Rome was the capital of Italy and that was where the Pope stayed in the Vatican. Paris was the capital of France and snooty Charles de Gaulle was President, which was like the king. London was capital of England and that’s where the Queen stayed in a palace, far too big for her, with millions of servants. Clydebank in all my classroom drawings, however, was centre of the world, the universe and the Solar System and, at the centre of the centre, was my house, which was a little black dot and inside it was a laughing-boy, with a red cape never to be rubbed out.

We were normal. We were. By the time primary school was ending my twisting liquorice coloured legs had shot up like jumping beans and they had conquered every clapped out brick backcourt wall within spitting distance and the highest branches of every tree had fallen to the rubber soles of my black sannies. There were no longer any new heights to subjugate. The thread attached to my boyish self in the drawings loosened and it was my misfortune to become more mannish than spidery. Everyone else in Old Kilpatrick had more brothers and sisters in their houses than you could get frogspawn in a jam- jar. Mum said we kept ourselves to ourselves. I tried my darnest not to, but everyone seemed to just slip away from us, except for the Curleys, who called me a black bastard and flung stones at me. Of course, I was too quick for them; nipping in and out of the grassy slopes like a greased weasel. They could never get me.

Life changed one hot summer day when cow dung set as hard as pebbles on the beaches of Mars and the frogs retreated to the witches' pond where they bass croaked: ‘come and get me,’ ‘come and get me’, ‘come and get me’. Then they shut up and went invisible. I wasn't going to let them away with that. I started building a dam, so that the pool would drain and that would sort out those croaking tadpoley bastards. But it was no use. I would need a tractor, or 1000 Arabian slaves. A shadow appeared, as if by magic, by my side.

I remembered my manners. My ten bob sannies were perched like city claws in the squelching mud slobber and mucky hands first dabbed in the stream. The sleeves on my shirt acted as a makeshift towel, before sticking my hand out, as mum had taught me to do and said: ‘I'm Billy’.

He chuckled like adults do, for no reason. ‘Yesss’, he searched his greatcoat pockets for a light.

He must be fuckin’ sweltering I thought as he patted me on the head as if I was some kind of goat that was ready to butt him. He was probably out of that hospital were they kept the dafties. He was probably dangerous. Too late. I wished I'd brought my Swiss army knife.

‘Yes, Will--iam,’ I'm Iskander, Iskander Deski, a very good friend of your mother’s.’

He talked as if that meant anything to me. But he was daft right enough. Everybody knew there was only me and mum. That was it. Everybody knew that. No brothers or sisters. I didn't want to tell him this in case it unsettled him and he started frothing at the mouth and bolted right into the pond where he could drown. He would drown. He'd never be able to swim with that big fuckin’ piece of carpet on him. I casually picked up a stick.

He laughed again at nothing in particular, but not like a daftie. It was more the kind of laugh you do through your nose. The kind of laugh that my mum did when she said I'd be the death or her.

‘Will--iam’, his tongue tasted and teased the no-nothing mystery of my name and, meeting my eyes, flashed a farewell smile. In a fluid movement he reached down and flung the great burlap pea-green punch-bag, which smelled of salt and the sea, onto his unbowed back and turned turtle onto the dirt path through the Tankie. I followed at a safe distance; curious to know which way he would go. He turned right at the marshland of The Old Mill pond, where dragon- flies and spotted butterflies duelled and bulrushes poked up to show where other kids had lost their nerves and their shiny new summer shoes and out through the secret hole in the fence that only I knew about. He waddled from side to side like a duck, but walked straight ahead towards our house. I used the secret whistle to warn mum that somebody was coming, the one that she didn't know about, because nobody ever came, but I was practising it anyway, for just such an occasion as this.

My sannies were Pegasus winged and barely touched the turf as they flew past him. He waddled relentlessly on, a clockwork toy of a man, winding down. I would have barred the front door. But, of course, we had no lock on it. How were we to know that we were going to get invaded by dafties? I shouted, ‘mum, mumm mummmm’, and nearly swore, but that would have meant three Hail Marys and a Glory Be. Mum wasn’t in. She was at mass, where I was meant to be, before the frogs had shouted at me.

Only four men with a giant squid net could stop a man of his size. He peered at the meter in the hall, like an old hand, where every penny was a prisoner, before sticking the kettle on to whistle its worth. The tea caddy was opened up and pilfered first. He did not notice the hairline crack in the cup my lips avoided. Then he made easy with the sugar. I watched to see if he’d edge the spoon into his Greatcoat pocket. He wasn’t to know it wasn’t real silver, but he just let it drop into the wrong sink, the bigger of the two, where mum slopped out our clothes. He took his tea through to the big room, his brown eyes pretending not to notice me standing guard with a stick at the door. He was hesitant at first, a stranger edging himself into mum’s chair at the unlit hearth, but the muscles in his face relaxed as he sipped hot tea.

The clackety-clack-clack of resoled leather heals, with silver tacks from Guthrie’s shoe repair, tattooed the air and told me better than any Morse code that mum was at the corner of Dempsey’s close. Bunions made it a Sunday penance for her to wear those tight fitting shoes, so there was almost a gap, with an aoow, aoow, aoow, between every step. If God hadn’t told her where I was, somebody else was sure to have filled in for Him. Her puffed out pale cheeks give her a cherubic air. But me standing guard at the door to our house was a visible reminder of a Massless and therefore Godless existence. She looked ready to clatter into me like a heathen and pinched at my elbow like a fiddler crab to hold me still so that she could get a good whack at my head.

‘I wondered where you where,’ mum whispered, licking her lips, vengeance on her tongue.

‘Hallo Daisy,’ the daftie said, knowing nothing, because mum’s name was Dorothy.

‘Izzy!’ Mum let go of my arm. It wasn’t good manners to hit somebody when we had a guest. ‘Why are you here?’

He stood up, and looked away as if afraid to meet mum’s eyes and picked up the burlap sack, he’d left guarding his feet. ‘I’ve brought you something.’ His big hands untied the string and he poked about like a Sunday Santa in Woolies; a jewellery box, with gold lettering emerged and rested in the palm of his hand. Our eyes were drawn to it and my mouth fell open. ‘It’s jade. And its eyes are emeralds, the same colour as yours. I had it with me always.’ He held the figurine of the lazy cat, carefully in one hand like a ladybird ready to open its wings and fly away, its silver whiskers catching the light.

‘I wrote…’ mum’s voice hovered and fell.

‘I have your letters here.’ He started fumbling with his sack again.

‘Go out and play.’ Mum pushed me towards the door; her voice sandpaper and eyes hard as gemstone.

I wandered the Godless landscape, swishing my stick, marking the ferns and nettles until it was time to return. A place had been made for Iskander at the dinner table across from mum so that I had to sit with a plate on my knees. They talked about me, as if I was a deaf ghost; a knife or fork paused between jacket potatoes, cutting up my past and future.

‘He’s wild like you.’ Iskander stuffed a carrot in his mouth.

‘He’s a good boy.’ Mum reached for the salt.

‘And smart.’ He speared a potato. ‘You wrote he was Dux of the school.’

Mum shifted in her seat. ‘He passed some big exam and had the best marks in Dumbartonshire. The best marks in Scotland, or maybe even…’ She flicked at her ginger hair. ‘I don’t know who he takes after.’

Iskander leaned back in his chair and his laughter filled the room. ‘He takes after you. You…You were always the smartest, the quickest, the best.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ Mum put down her knife and fork and took a sip of cold tap water. The warmth of such praise had brought a red blush to her cheeks.

My plate was crammed with creamed white potato flicked over, like a bald pate, to disguise a dark meat deficiency. I chewed over the probability mum had been like me. Exams in the school hall were time apart from the name calling and the pushing and the shoving, when the great Victorian clock shush, shush, shushed our shared world and the pristine white papers were lined up in front of the desk like battle orders. When they were turned over, that was the best time, when answers jumped up like unmasked Jack in the Boxes and it was difficult to keep up with the scribbling black HB pencil in my hand. There was always a kind of sorrow when it finished; the sudden cacophony of pulled back chairs and stampeding figures once more blinked into existence.

Mr Connelly, the headmaster, sent for me weeks later when all notions of exams had blown away. The school playground had only the cry of the gulls to remind me that it had been so full of life just fifteen minutes before. The rap on his door with my knuckles seemed unnaturally loud.

‘Come.’ Mr Connelly’s command gave no hope of retreat.

He stood up when I entered his office and surveyed me from the unnatural height of his bushy eyebrows. For a moment I thought he was going to shake my hand, or ask me to sit down. Instead he scratched at his clean-shaven chin and reached for a brown envelope sitting propped up for quick despatch on his desk. ‘Give this to your mother.’ Although she too was listed as Dux of the school in gold lettering, on the honour’s wall outside his office, he gave no hint of knowing her. His eyes glared at me one last time before bending his angular frame into seat that seemed Lilliputian, and scrutinised the papers on his desk, to render me invisible. A flick of his wrist waved me away, back to the safety of Mrs Dobbey’s classroom.

Mum gave a squeal of delight when she opened the envelope and gave me a quick hug. We had to get a bus to Balloch and walk about a mile. Mum had to ask people for directions, but I thought that was just a way of telling them that we were going to see a Bishop. His house was a mansion with turrets. Two gleaming black limousines stood guard in the gravel driveway like over-fed beetles

Monsignor Whisper-Whisper took us through to Bishop Mone’s study and left us perched on two identical ornate hardback chairs. Mum curtsied and went all pious-eyed on me when the Bishop made his entrance and kissed the ring on his soft hand. I took my cue from her and did the same and he laughed.

I waited outside with a glass of milk and a biscuit while he interviewed mum. Then it was my turn to sit with a straight back. There seemed to be some kind of rule that Bishop Mone was the only one allowed to talk in a normal tone in his house, and I wasn’t sure if it extended to not talking at all, like at Mass. He yattered like a Natterjack Toad, jumping from subject to subject: about impure thoughts and how poor my mum was and how much of an educational opportunity it would be for a half-breed like me. At one point he stopped and asked if I was mute. I nodded my head to show that I wasn’t; then he was off again, talking about prosperity, chewing over God’s plans and how I might be home-sick, but that it would be good for me and make me a man.

On the bus home mum took my hand in hers, cradling it, as if I were a child again and gently asked: ‘What do you think?’

I rested my head on her shoulder and watched the canal winding gently on its way. I’d never be home-sick, I said, because I could never be sick of home and would never-ever-leave. She squeezed my hand. And I told her that bishops should not be staying in castles with more flunkies than the Queen. They should stay up on stained glass windows looking down at us ordinary people with their staffs pointing towards the crooked hearts of heathens or heaven. And I told her I didn’t care if I didn’t have a dad, that I was the man of the family now.