school photos 70

Potential buyers were coming to view the house. Fastmoves, the estate agents, planted a wooden flag in the front garden. A sign of progress.  Jo had the money, the get-up-and-go and bought their old-style Council house. They’d agreed he’d have to find somewhere else to live. Well, she’d agreed. It needed far too much work to rent out. The fixtures and fitting were shambolic, still the same telly in the living room, screen like a fishbowl. Tan couch and chairs. Plastic tat Jo had called them, forgetting the reverence they were held in when new. Da had barely allowed Jo, Ally or him to sit in them. Mum had glowed and kept the plastic covers on for a week, nearly two.  They were supposed to hover above the seats like some kind of Star Trek teleport on the toilet pan.  And don’t get Jo started on what needed to be done to the kitchen. It needed a bomb in it, she’d said. It just wouldn’t do. Crossed arms over her breasts for a tour of their childhood bedrooms and heirlooms. The old wardrobes filled with photographs and clothes nobody would ever wear. It just wouldn’t do. The windows and doors needed replacing. It was hellish. She wondered aloud how anyone could live like that for almost seventeen years.

   John wasn’t surprised to hear someone chapping at the door. He took his time getting up from the armchair, sloping down the hall before answering.

 He hadn’t bothered overmuch with snazzing up, pulling on an old brown cardigan, denims, his toes poking out of Jesus-sandals, figuring whoever it was hadn’t come to view him, but the rooms and fixtures and fittings. But he wasn’t sure. Over the years the press had turned up in droves. Camped themselves outside, pointing cameras through the windows, so he was reduced to hiding in the shadows of his own home. Graffiti appearing like ectoplasm on the external walls and doors telling him what he was and what was to become of him.  He couldn’t really blame them. The police, after a formal review of their conduct by an outside force, had let it be known that although there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute they weren’t looking at any other suspects. He knew what that meant. It was written on his body. When he’d been on remand in Barlinnie, a waste of good sugar they’d called it when a pot of boiling water was tipped over his head, the sweet stuff acting as an adhesive. Slashed and burned with cigarettes. Sucker-punched and kicked. Fair game for anybody with a grudge and a reputation. He’d been an easy target until he started to stand up for himself. What he wanted was to be left alone.

‘Can I help you pal?’ John’s voice was full of rock splinters. But the youthful features of the boy, standing at the door, threw him a bit. He’d grown wary of folk trying to make friends with him, trying to drill him for information, but he looked gormless enough not to be a rabid homebuyer on the make.  The boy’s face clean as cotton and he smelled of talc and worn leather. John speculated it was some new tactic Mormons missionaries were using, that included not dressing in Marks and Spencer suits and shiny shoes, not turning up like identikit two-by-two clones, and going undercover in brown leather jackets, creased like cardboard at the elbows and denims faded at the knees and suede sannies.

‘Mum said there was only one person dafter in the world than her and that was you.’ A cheeky grin took over the pink hams of his smooth face. His dark eyes crinkled, moist and good-natured, sharing a joke in which they both knew the punch-line. ‘I’m Jack.’ He stuck his hand out for him to shake, nails brushed clean, pearl-white as the husk of cowry shells.

At first John didn’t respond. He watched Jack’s hand wavering and slipping, brushed and hidden against his leg and the boy’s grin becoming mute. ‘I think you’ve got the wrang house pal.’

‘No,’ Jack shifted from foot to foot, unsure, balanced on his heels for a quick getaway, but stuck with his mission and upbeat persona. ‘I recognise you from news’ clips from The Daily Record mum showed me. She said you lived here. She said you two were really close once and you’d be able to tell me what to do.’

‘I don’t think so pal.’ John lowered his voice. He took a step back, away from the neediness lurking in the younger man’s eyes, and shoved the door, clicking it shut, putting the sneck on the Yale and turning the iron key in the mortise. The boy’s head drooped, reminding him of the broken stems of tramped down bluebells, which punctuated the side-beds beneath the window, and for a few seconds he’d felt sorry for him. He was half way up the hall before he realised his mistake. Fingers and thumbs playing funny buggers on the locks slowed him down. Then he was outside, his sandals slipping off his feet as he ran down the hill. He caught the boy at the huts. ‘Whit’s your mum’s name?’

‘Janine Whitehead.’

Jack’s reply snapped back. The grin was stitched back onto his face, a permanent feature so unlike his mother, but the lips and eyes were certainly Janine’s.  The hair and the way he stood, however, reminded him of a younger self. ‘You better come up the house for a cup of tea then.’ He walked ahead of the boy up the hill.

In the kitchen he flicked the button for the kettle on and realised he’d felt a fluttering in his stomach, and he’d forgotten how to do small-talk. Jack sat at the corner, smug and impervious in the way that young people were, waiting for him to say something. He ran two mugs, both chipped at the rim, underneath the taps at the sink, found the T-bags. ‘Whit do you take in your tea?’ He bridged awkwardness with an innocuous question. How’s your mum keeping?

He showed his good breeding. ‘Just milk, please.’ And dipping into that smile again. ‘Grand. She’s grand. An accountant. Doing really well.’  

‘An accountant?’ John tried to keep the surprise out of his voice, the shock off his face. Behind him the kettle clicked, allowing him to turn away, swill the cups out at the sink and make tea.

‘Well, she’s always been good with numbers and computers and spreadsheets and stuff.’ Jack spoke in such a way that indicated that those were the areas where he wasn’t gifted.    

A rueful smirk was bitten back and John passed Jack his mug of tea. He sipped at his own, glancing through the steam, keeping his voice neutral. ‘Whit about your da?’

‘Oh, he’s an accountant too.’ His untamed cow’s lick and his earnest face made it easy to believe that the normal world was chock full of accountants and it was as sign of rebellion not being one.

‘Any brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’

‘Just you then?’

‘Aye, Mum had trouble with her pipes and things.’ Jack made it sound like a blocked connection to a spin-dryer. He tucked his chin in, covered his mouth with his hand, to hide his pink cheeks.

John gnawed at the edge of the jagged red skin round his thumbnail. ‘And whit does your mum think I can help you with?’

Jack’s eyes grazed the weaved-straw placemats on the table and he wouldn’t meet John’s eyes. ‘At first I’d nightmares, strange dreams, in which I’m getting ready for school. It’s snowing outside and I keep slipping and I’m scared. A policeman comes to help me and he’s joined by the friendly face of a school janitor, but I run and run and run, because they’re wearing masks. They aren’t really human. They’re wolves. They easily catch up with me and put me in a dark room. Then they take their masks off and I scream and scream and scream. But they laugh and that only makes them hungrier and me more frightened. In a way, it’s hard for adults, bigger people to understand. They like me being small and feed on my fear.  And I close my eyes and hear a tune: brother Jack, Jack, where are you, where are you?’ His back was hunched like an old man’s and he glanced up with that haunted look of those that need to be understood. ‘I see what is happening and I’m there, but I’m also not a part of it. I can escape and then I waken up safe in bed.’  

‘Drink your tea,’ John urged. The cup lay in front of him untouched. ‘So in a nutshell, you have a bad dream and then you waken up.’

Jack curled his fingers round the mug and sipped. ‘I’ve had the same dream for as long as I remember.’

John coughed, slapping his chest, and sniffed, clearing his throat. ‘So you’ve had the same bad dream.’ He slurped at his tea, chewing it, making an ahh sound when he swallowed. ‘Did you mum ever talk about me?’ He hurried on, ‘you’ve seen bits and pieces in the papers. Whit I mean is, did your mum?’ He swallowed, finding it difficult to say her name, ‘did Janine put you up to this?’

‘Aye, she did.’ He brushed that aside with a flick of his wrist and he became more earnest, leaning forward, ‘but it was the little girl Ally. She said she loved you. I was to come to you because you’d understand.’   

The front door chapped, saving John from tears. ‘I better goin’ and get that.’ He stood up slapping Jack’s arm on the way out. ‘I’ll no’ be a minute. Make yourself at home.’

Jack looked about him. The kitchen walls and ceiling retained the veneer of fag smoke and the linoleum floor, torn and worn with pitted holes smelt like an old oil rag, but the worn diamond pattern was somehow familiar. He stood up and shut his eyes. He felt sure he’d be able to find his way in and out the living room and three bedrooms. He felt as if he’d been in the house before, and he was comfortable with that, it felt like home from home. The front door banging shut made him sit down again and sip at his tea, his face screwing up because it was cold.

‘Sorry about that.’ John slapped his hands together and laughed. ‘Someone tryin’ to buy my hoose.’ He’d a renewed energy in him, telling them where to get off. ‘Where were we?’ He filled the kettle.  

‘I was telling you...’

‘I know,’ John cut in, coughing, holding a hand over his mouth. ‘Whit dae you want me to dae?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jack’s voice was strained. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.’