school photos 42

The little girl was standing beside Jean’s side of the bed. Her mum’s eyes flickered open, as she became aware of her presence. She’d been in the bubble phase of a dream in which she was driving an articulated lorry and reversing the trailer backwards through St Stephen’s church gates and into the closed double-doors, and waiting for the crash of wood, glass and the grinding of facing brick. It was an impossible fit and the reality that she’d never been behind the wheel of a car, never mind a Heavy Goods Vehicle, was no different than the feeling of being able to fly. Silver moonlight leaked through the Venetian blinds, her daughter’s face luminescent and her blonde hair and breathe a sky of billowing clouds.  She inspected her daughter’s appearance for clues as to whether she was Little Ally or Lily. Her eyes glittered and were unblinking as a distant star.  She reached out and touched her hand. It too was cold.

          ‘Lily?’ whispered Jean.

          ‘Yes mum?’ replied the little girl, in a voice Jean had come to recognise.

          Joey stirred next to her, but was soon snoring again. He harrumphed now when she mentioned anything about Lily.  Lying in bed drunk beside her he was useless. She shook her head and watched her breath bloom above her, her thoughts a kaleidoscope. Sober he was also useless. Using her bum and elbows to snake up from under the weight of blankets she hunkered her back up against the backboard and the creased pillow that still smelled of her hairspray. The little girl turned and darted into the hall. Jean stared into the stygian darkness, half wondering if she was still dreaming, hands patting for her fags, almost toppling the bow-legged circular table pushed sharp against the wall and bed to keep it steady.  The spark of a match and smoke in her lungs were proof to her that small pleasures were sometimes all she had.

 She’d played hide and seek with Lily the last couple of nights and didn’t reckon it would be any different. The wind was bending the trees outside and the branches creaked and groaned. Plucking her housecoat from the bottom of the bed she put it on, tucking her packet of Silk Cut into the side pocket. Closing her room door behind her she turned the light on in the hall and listened to the creak and groans of the sleeping house.

          She checked Ally was not in her bed. When that was established the hunt for Lily began. She searched every room, even going so far as to go down on her knees and search underneath John’s bed. Standing in the rectangle of carpet in the living room between couches and chairs with her eyes closed to help her think she tried to figure where Lily would be. Logically, she had to be inside the house, the doors were still locked and although it was easy for kids playing a game to step outside the window, onto the metal ledge and jump down onto the grey concrete two-by-two slabs, the sneck of the window handles remained in the locked position.  Think. Think. Think, she told herself. But the gorge began to rise in the back of her throat and she rushed into the bathroom to hover over the toilet bowl waiting and willing herself to be sick.

          Outside she heard a childish voice singing ‘Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, Tommy Vous, Tommy Vous’. She opened the window and let the wind wash the sweat from her body. Leaning across, she bridged the gap between sink and the cross of the metallic window frame, to peer outside. Her mind shrieked that it wasn’t possible—Ally, in her thin nightdress, had got outside and was running barefoot in the street below.

Jean’s slippers slapped against the linoleum as she ran to find the keys and open the front door. Rain washed her face and wind tugged her hair. She slopped along in her damp house-shoes, up towards the Old Folk’s Home at the top of the street, her nightgown falling open and her breasts showing through her nightdress like  wobbling trifles falling out of the mould.  Part of the building was in darkness, other windows lit up, like a war-time ship sailing through the night. Bending the heals in her slippers back into shape and up and over her Achilles allowed her to run down the steps and flee down the path onto Shakespeare Avenue.  Panting, she stopped and looked up and down the road. A shape, it was difficult to tell what or who, with arc of the smoky sodium street lights, moved behind the shop opposite, and onto Overtoun Road.  Then she heard the chime of ‘Frere Jacques’ again and mocking laughter.

          There was no traffic on the roads and the houses running parallel were penned in darkness. Her head jerked right and left searching front and side gardens and looking for a crouching body hiding behind a Volkswagen, old Fords and a work van with a cement mixer lying in the back. In an upstairs room a dog began to growl and bark, the sound amplified, wolf like, taken up by another dog, in the uninhabited streets.  She hurried on, up and past the golf course, with the oaks, elms and birch trees inside Dalmuir Park, a spectral presence, swishing back and forth, dancing in the wind, not really sure why she was going left and not right.

          ‘Mum! Mum!’ A little girl’s voice squealed from golf course somewhere below her.

          She scampered along the sides of the hedges that ran up and along Park Road and were fifteen-foot high, holly married to hawthorn, boxed battlements that she couldn’t look through or over. A Datsun’s headlights dipped and picked out her washed out nightdress and make-do overcoat as it passed. She waved her arms and hands, semaphoring it to stop. She couldn’t see if it was a man or woman driver, it braked sharply, before picking up speed going down the steep hill at Risk Street.  

          ‘Mum! Mum!’ The voice came from further away.

          Bending low at the branching base of the hedge, rain arrowed into her eyes as she peered into the night and picked out a figure framed by the reflected lights of the high flats are Littleholm.  Thorns snagged her clothes and scratched her face, ripped her arms and legs, and for a moment she didn’t think she’d be able to force her hips through the gap below the pavement and between the bowers of branches. She plopped out, a still birth, wet and bloodied onto the terraced pasture and rough long grass of the golf course.  

Her knees were blotchy and shaky, but it was all downhill on the short-drop of the fairways. The silhouette of the little girl, bobbed up and down, in front of her as she barrelled forward. She was close to the bridge and the tumbling swell and bruising rush of the burn, hidden from the road by the windbreak of another monster hedge. But she wasn’t alone. A naked man was with her daughter and her nightie was hitched up around her waist. She clung onto him her arms round his neck and they shrieked with laughter.

Jean’s shoe worked loose and she fell, skidded along the turf, twisting her ankle. Dazed, she got up and hobbled down to the dirt and stone path that ran along the first green. They’d gone. She’d recognised the man’s hair, and the way he stood and laughed, but she forced away the thought like she’d spat out a floret of broccoli as a wilful child. Her son was locked up in Gartnavel Hospital and she was sure when she got back home little Ally would have come out of her hiding place and would be sleeping snuggly in bed.