the cup

Da bangs the front door shut. I’m crawling along the floor from kitchen to living room pretending to be a snake. His eyes search the living room. It’s a face looking for clues, a body in a hurry. Da steps over me. The plastic basin is waiting for him, placed on top of an old newspaper, filled with boiling water for his feet. A clean but threadbare cream colour towel lies on the back of the chair. Mum’s sitting side-saddle cleaning Bryan’s face with the edge of a red dish cloth imprinted with the map of Africa. He tries to squirm away, but she holds him with one hand on his pudgy little arm and she chuckles at the contortions of his face, the little gasps and the fury, as if he’s being rubbed out. She stands up to give Da the seat. Potatoes, turnip and mince, the same meal we got for our dinner, sit in separate pots on three of the four rings, but unlike us the white, gold and gravy brown that Da gets on his plate are the portions of the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. Da sits down and unties his laces and kicks off gnarled work boots. His wool socks are darned at the heel with blue wool that doesn’t match. He’s a great man for the darning, crouched, head tilted as if listening to the wool and the sock held tight against a circular glint of a Vaseline tin. He scratches at his arm and arches his foot to exercise his witchery-yellow toe nails, before rolling up his trouser legs and splashing fungal white feet breaking the shine of the water. He scrubs at the sole and between his toes with a sliver of hard orange-yellow soap. The carbolic smell fills my nostrils and I can taste it on my tongue. Bryan makes a frog jump towards me and sits on my back as I slither. A creasing of the forehead and beetling bushy eyebrows from Da as he turns to look at us makes me consider growing feet.

‘Enough of your nonsense.’ He warns me. He warns us. ‘Get in there and behave yourself.’

I stand up quickly. Bryan holds onto my legs. I pat him on the head. He’s too wee to understand. ‘Sshh,’ I whisper to him.

‘I went for a quick pint of Guinness with McBride.’ Da tells Mum.

Mum’s got a fag in her mouth now. She’s got the rings turned up full and is heating Da’s dinner, stirring the mince with a spoon.

‘Big game tonight.’ Da dries his feet with the towel. He splays and curls up his toes like an upside down crab. He’s stiff legged on the tiled stone floor, as he carries the basin the few steps along, sloshing the dirty water out into the smaller of the two sinks at the window.

‘I’m sure we’ll win.’ Mum tastes the mince. Sometime she doesn’t bother with dinner.

‘Ah’m no’ so sure.’ Da runs his hands under the cold water and splashes water on his face. He wipes at his mouth and chin and feels round the contours of his face, opening and shutting his mouth like a wooden puppet, working his jawline, as if deciding whether he should shave. Da calls people that don’t shave dirty buggers. But he doesn’t shave. He just rubs up and down his arms with cold water, sniffs under his oxters, and feet planted on the floor turns round and grabs for the towel. He looks at me and I dart into the living room and Bryan follows clutching at the back of my white t-shirt.

Da hovers at the kitchen door. I rush across and sit on the chair close to the window. Bryan trails behind and tries to humph up on the chair beside me, but I pluck his fingers off and he starts girning.

‘Enough! Whit did ah tell you about your carry on?’ Da steps into the living room.

Bryan starts bawling and rushes by him through to the safety of Mum’s skirt. I sit straight backed, my feet over the edge of the cushion, looking at the telly, but there’s nothing much on – a man with a microphone talking about football.

Stephen scuttles from the chair near the fire to the seat on the couch beside the living room door. Da takes a deep breath and sighs before making a bee-line for the telly. He hunkers down and adjusts the dial on the telly. Grey snow flickers with a static sound then the picture flickers back to what it was. He’s not satisfied and makes a grunting noise. He whirls round to Stephen.

‘You been playing with this telly?’

‘Ah’ve no’ touched it. Honest Da.’

Da looks at me, but he knows I’m not interested in the telly. I’d rather be out playing hide and seek, or football, or lining up plastic soldiers and Indians in gigantic battles that involve the rocky mountain rug and the fireplace fortress, with sneaky-deaky soldiers with flame throwers hiding inside Mum’s ashtray, which is kinda cheating, but somehow I always win.

‘Time for your bed.’ Mum shouts through to me.

She’s got Bryan by the hand and she’s pulling his little navy top off, the one with the anchor insignia.

‘Och Mum!’ I shout back, but my heart isn’t really in it.

Mum comes into the living room and goes into the cupboard behind the boiler for Bryan and my pyjamas. ‘Just five more minutes.’ She warns me.

‘Just let the boy watch the game.’ Da picks up a pair of his black rimmed specs and they slide down the edge of his long nose and perch on the bulbs of his hairy nostrils.

‘We’ll see.’ Mum snecks the cupboard door shut. She’s my pyjamas in her hands and Bryan’s.

I stare at the telly, not turning my head, as if that will influence her decision.

Stephen’s bums sliding off the settee. Clutching his fists he groans and smacks himself in the head when the other team scores. Da shuts his eyes and his head twists one way then another, his nostrils flare and he snorts like a runaway horse. He leans forward as if he’s trying to get his head inside the telly.

‘Nighty night.’ Mum stands at the living room door, with Bryan in his pyjamas, waiting for a response.

I look out of the side of my eyes, scared of being captured and roped into going to bed. Da shakes his head and tugs at his ear. Stephen glances around at them and looks back at the telly. He frowns like Da and sneers when John Clarke kicks the ball out of the park.

Mum comes back about ten minutes later. I feel her looking at me. Bryan doesn’t like being in the bedroom himself. He likes to snuggle in beside me. I gawp at the screen. If I was Jimmy Johnstone I’d just get the ball and slalom past everybody and score a great goal. But he doesn’t. He loses the ball to the dark shirts and Da moans.

In the second half we get a penalty. We score. No chair can hold him. Da jumps up his two fists clenched pummelling the air. ‘Yessssssss.’

Stephen jumps about like a loony and I giggle.

Mum brings in Da’s dinner. She puts a dish towel on Da’s lap and hands him the plate. My plan’s working. Give the ball to Jimmy and we’ll score. Da’s frowning. He eats potatoes like a robot, spooning the food from the edge of his knife to plate and his Adam’s apple goes up and down as he swallows. Then it happens. The ball breaks. It’s hit from the edge of the box. Da flings the dinner plate up on the air and potatoes, turnip and mince hits the white Styrofoam tiles on the ceiling and finds gravity. It’s black and white on the telly, but a glorious mess of bouncing colour on the carpet.

‘Goal!’ Da skyrockets up out of the chair.

‘Goal!’ Stephen springs into the air.

‘Goal?’ I smile to myself.

‘There’s not a prouder man on God’s earth than me,’ says Jock Stein in the interview later, but Mum’s lifting me and dragging me to bed, to dream.