school photos 45

When Jean opened the front door, Little Ally stood two steps behind her in the hall, using her mum’s body as a screen to peek up and see who rattled their letterbox and drummed on the reinforced glass, but it was only her Uncle John. He was one of her favourites, a fat man, always laughing and chuckling and tickling her under the chin, and singing snatches of Al Jolson’s ‘How I love yeh, my dear old mammie’ or ‘Ah’d walk a million miles for wan of your smiles’. That was when he usually did his chooking under the chin. He even did it to our Jo and she was in Secondary school.  Sometimes when he was drunk he’d give her ten pence, but he was always drunk, apart from on Sundays, when he walked up the hill with Da after Mass and the pubs hadn’t yet opened. She nearly always got ten pence for sweets and when she saw him she’d already decided she’d buy Kola Kubes as they lasted longer and she’d be able to share them, give one to her mum (who wouldn’t take it) and one to our Jo, who would. But he wasn’t singing. He stood at the door twisting his hands into sausages, sweat running off his blubbery face. There was no good suit, not today, just a blimp of dark work-worn trousers and long black coat with stains on it that smelled, even from where she was standing, like a goat that had been left outside to nibble on the washing line. That was one of the stories they’d read about at school. A Hackney cab was parked on the hill. Uncle John must have been in an awful hurry because he’d left the door open. Da wouldn’t like that. He thought all taxi drivers were robbers and with the engine running there would be no telling how much he’d take.  

          ‘There’s been an accident,’ Uncle John said.

          Little Ally pushed in beside her mum, her blonde hair and face shining up at him like a snow drop.

          ‘A terrible accident.’

          Then he bent over as if he had been punched in his fat belly and started sobbing. ‘Ah,’m sorry, Ah just cannae believe it. He’s dead.’

          ‘Who’s dead?’ Mum took a step to the front door and gripped his arm and he kinda fell sideways into her, hugging her hip and gripping her shoulder to help himself stand. His jaw worked to say something more, in a weeping lantern of turnip face, but only sobs emerged. ‘Who’s dead?’ Mum repeated herself, face sharpened in the cold wind and her voice high and metallic forcing him to look away from her.

          ‘Joe.’ He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve and looked at Mum for what seemed like the first time. Then he looked at Little Ally and dug into his pockets, which made her think of ten pences and packets of Kola cubes, but he pulled out an oily rag and handed it to Mum.

          Our Jo was sloshing through the slush and the way she walked she meant business. Her squinty eyes missed nothing: the taxi; Uncle John going from being hugged to hanging onto Mum, holding her upright like a telly aerial; Little Ally squawking and greeting because her mum was howling, a noise that seemed to come from outside herself, from some cave-dwelling animal; the upstairs neighbour, Daft Rab, with his nose smeared against the window as he tried to peer down and find out what was happening.   

          ‘Whit’s the matter?’ Our Jo studied faces and folded her arms in an adult-like manner. She bit her top lip, drawing blood, to keep back the fires of trembling, and from sinking into the morass of a contagious wail.

          ‘Your Da’s been in a terrible accident.’ Uncle John peered over the top of Mum’s head. As she sunk into him, he’d grown taller and his tears had dried on his face and he tried to grin to reassure Little Ally.

          Little Ally held her arms up to be held, but her mum, distracted, looked up at Uncle John’s face and pulled away from him. ‘If it was an accident, maybe it wisnae him. Maybe it was somebody else.’  

          ‘No it was him alright.’

          ‘But how do you know?’

          ‘Cause I was beside him when it happened.’ He waved a hand at the taxi driver, a sign telling him to wait as he’d opened the door of his cab and was standing gawping over at them. ‘One of the slings on the cranes snapped, dropped a steel beam.’ He shook his head and took a deep breath. ‘He didn’t stand a chance.’ Then his voice grew angry. ‘Ah’d take they bastards the whole way.’  

          Our Jo started sobbing, her head a lollipop on a stick, jerking from side to side as her body grappled for air to feed the tears spilling down her face. ‘It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s not true.’

          The taxi driver tooted his horn. Uncle John glowered at him and he stomped down the three concrete steps, barging past Mum and our Jo.

          ‘Let’s get inside,’ said Mum, sucking back her tears. She searched inside the side pockets of her blue nylon gown, her hands shaking so much her arm vibrated like a loosened piston. She looked askance at the slopes of the roofs as if marking them off on some internal calendar and snow began gently to pitter-patter down and knit together the darkening sky.  

          Mum gathered her girls in her arms and cloaked with them, stepped into the hall. Shutting the door behind them they heard Uncle John shouting at the taxi driver.

          ‘What am I gonnae dae? What am I gonnae dae?’ Mum’s head fell down onto her chest. The two girls unable to bear her weight stepped aside, loose-limbed as a tabby, sprawling up against the sandy-white emulsion walls and let her body slump down between them. She sniffed tears and snot and looked up at them through bleary eyes, reaching out and drawing them in to her arms, her warmth and the scent of fag smoke and some long forgotten perfume reassuring them everything was going to be as it was.