school photos 28

On the train home, Jean thought she’d have been able to shut her eyes and get a quick nap, but her chesty- coughing cold scuttled that idea. She couldn’t even enjoy a fag because of it. Enough was enough. She was determined to book an appointment with her General Practioner. Like most doctors she realised Dr Fleming’s head was up his own arse, but she could talk to him. She could mention John being in the hospital and ask for his help in getting him out. The argument was framed in her mind and made her fume. All those people crying out for a hospital bed and he was taking up one—and there was nothing wrong with him.

The train jolted forward as it left Drumry Station making her focus on more practical matters. Jean started fussing in the open mouth of her handbag for the train ticket she’d bought. But the bag was a fly trap. Her fingers snared on her frayed leather purse, her cigarettes, lighter, box of Bluebell matches, another lighter in case the first one didn’t work properly, a cloth hanky for emergencies, an unopened packet of paper hankies, Polo mints with two left, one of which had been half chewed, the other in the corner of her bag, a packet of Swizzles, a bent sixpence, a cloth badge with a pin at the back and a picture of the Virgin Mary on the front, which had worked its way loose and hung like a button on its last thread, a opened packet of PK chewing gum that Joey had asked her to keep, a cardboard- backed photograph of Little Ally and all her classmates sitting smugly on gym benches wearing their school uniforms, in a three- tiered rows, with Mrs McGonagle, their teacher, as a bookend.

The older gentleman sitting in the seat across from her, in recognition she was looking at a school photograph they’d all suffered sitting through when younger, mirrored her smile. The train slowed, coming into Singers Station, and her fingers grew frantic, running through the different compartments of her purse. Her pockets were checked again. She felt a tear in the lining of her coat and bunched it up and onto her lap, feeding it through her fingers like an accordion until she picked out the outline of the missing ticket.

‘Jesus,’ she said, to the man opposite. ‘That was close.’

He puckered his lips as he nodded in acknowledgement and stared out the window at those leaving the train and the new passengers pushing on through the crowd.

The doors closed, the guard’s window at the back of the train banged shut and he blew his whistle. The train pulled out of the station. Jean clutched the train ticket, her hands resting on her lap. Through the perimeter fence the building of Singers sewing- machine factory, a congregation of brick buildings, appeared and disappeared. She’d once hoped to get a job in there, even as a cleaner, because it was regular well-paid work and that was you sorted for life. The heat off the seat, hot air blowing under her legs, made her feel suddenly drowsy, but less than a five- minute journey to Dalmuir Station. Her handbag was wedged in, safely beside her, below the low frame of the train window. The old man tucked his feet under the chair as she stood up. Lifting her bag, body rolling with the passageway sway and tilt of the train, she anchored her feet. She wavered, yet rooted, as if the railway stops had been shuffled and came out in the wrong places and spaces. Her searching look took in the other passengers in their compartment and then those sliding past on Platform 2, waiting for the Balloch train, as if they too knew something she didn’t.

As the train pulled away, Jean sat alone on the damp slats of the wooden benches in the shed on Platform 2. The ticket collector, a small man, stood shivering, his cap peek pulled low over the neutral expression on his rain-dashed face. He watched her closely, moving his feet, blocking access to the stairs and the exit onto the flats. Her bag was plopped on the bench beside her. She stirred through the contents, pulling out the class photograph.  Running her index finger along the rows of banked, smiling children, her finger stopped on a little girl’s face, front row, three along from Little Ally. A blackened circular burn mark obscured the face. But it looked too precise as if somebody had held the pin prick of a lit match or cigarette to the colour picture. It had been smoothed out, little more than a grainy blip, little to see. Wind whipped through the shelter lifting her skirt. A drip of rain water fell from the end of the ticket collector’s nose, but he didn’t move. Jean traced the pink bauble in the photograph that tied the little girl’s hair.

Light faded early in the winter months and the streetlights were on as Jean hurried up the hill and into her house. The front door was open. She’d joked if anybody broke in they’d end up leaving them something, but it was more than that, it was a trust that nothing bad could happen to her family. God was in every room, hanging from every wall. His Saints fought with each other to find an inch on the mantelpiece. It was as cold inside the house as it was outside. She dropped her bag at the door, but kept her coat on.

The two beds side by side in the girl’s bedroom were tidy enough, the blankets having the sharp edges of hospital corners. Oak-veneer chest of drawers with an oval swing mirror reflected back the puzzle of a wooden school ruler lying sideways, two bright scraps of a colourful angel, a faded silver locket. Jean picked through a jewellery-box tangle that held no real jewellery.  Kerbies that had lost their grip sprung out at her. A red and pink plastic headband. A frayed yellow ribbon, tied to a green ribbon.  She began to breathe a bit more easily. The electric light was switched on to help her search. The folds of every piece of clothing in the drawers checked. She found one dead spider in the bottom drawer, but no red elastic bauble. The wall cupboard near the window was flung open. Anorak pockets, duffle coats and jackets they hadn’t been worn since they were knee-high, were turned inside out. She thanked God and all the angels in heaven the room was clear. Before she flicked the light off, she knelt down to check under the beds. In the far corner, where the two walls met perpendicular, underneath Little Ally’s bed lay the red-pinky bauble that was lost, but now was found.