Love Story 22

 The Constable looked too small to be a cop even on his tiptoes. A parvenu in uniform just out of the wrapper did little to disguise his weedy build. A fag dangled from the corner of his lip to make him look gallus. The up-and-downer look he gave me before he looked away wasn’t of empathy but malice, evil’s queer cousin more than twice denied until his cock crowed. and his head low. ‘Just coming, Sir,’ he said. He flung out his hip as he walked and his voice was ratcheted that bit too high. I recognised a fellow sufferer. He lifted the hatch in the station and was the driver, with the Chief Constable beside him that took me home in the back of a Black Maria. 

Mum howled, of course, she did. Straightening her back, making eye contact. Her chest axed by fear and sorrow. Pulse so erratic she grabbed her throat to stop it flying out of her mouth like moths after the wardrobe door had been opened.

She let the Chief Constable and his driver outside with a wave of her arm.  We watched them driving away, standing together. I reached for her hand and she pulled away. 

Too much to think about but one thought: He’s dead.

No way to move forward. No way to move back in time. She rubbed her eyes and mouth. Da’s death created a hell in which it was reasonable to ignore ongoing existence. Getting out of bed was like the moon landing. Pointless as travelling millions of miles, picking up a few rocks, sticking them in your pocket and taking them home.

They’d obviously never spoken about death. Death was something that happened in the Bible, a long time ago that could be squeezed between sheet of paper, people would argue about for generations to come. It was on the telly on some far off place. Death was a stranger to them that had come in and lay on our beds, sat in our chairs, and carefully listened as we spoke about things that were not death. 

Mum was mostly mute about what happened or how it happened. She just wanted Dad home. I wasn’t sure if she believed in heaven. She was already in hell.

Words caught in her throat, choked her. She had to put an arm out and hang onto the wall. Stumbling over important questions and tending to hide behind a formal politeness, which showed the pointlessness of what she was doing and saying.

A relief that things had got so bad there was a funeral to look forward to. Da’s funeral to look forward to. Our solitude was ringfenced by strangers making banal remarks and sipping Mum’s tea and eating her biscuits.

The repetitive misery of house work, cleaning carpets, doing washings, cleaning shelves let her shed her thinking head in unscheduled work and maintenance that sometimes took place in the middle of the night.

I sat by the window flicking through the Bible. Television on.  She watched television and let the programmes roll on without her. She shut her eyes and when she opened them again, she was still there. Sitting with insane chatter bubbling up from a box in the corner in which characters kept on insisting on laughing. Mum laughed too as if she was practising like a parrot repeating again and again a new phrase it learned. Polly got a cracker. Mum got a laughter.

‘What’s that?’ she asked. Nodding at the Bible in my hand.

I smiled back, slapping the Bible shut, as if it was the centrefold of Playboy and someone was gawking over my shoulder.

‘It’s a Bible, Mum,’ I raised the Good Book in salute.

‘First time for everything,’ she said. And drifted off. ‘Don’t suppose I’ve read one since we were forced to at school.’ She stared into the distance, as if it were her school assembly.

‘A time to live and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to gather. Something like that. Amen and aw that crap.’

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ she said.

‘I’ll make you a cuppa, Mum,’ waving the Bible. ‘It’s tried and tested. Da’s—’

Mum was quick to cut me off. ‘Don’t start me. Yer addicted tae it, which is fine. Yer no daeing anybody any harm. I was gonnae say yer no oot robbing houses.’

On the telly, Parkinson had another guest. John Hurt was playing the poofter called Quentin Crisp with exquisite ease. The audience were lapping up and hooting with laughter at his mannerisms and accent. He was so exotic as to be different species to most folk but not to me.

‘Mrs Connolly said the money doesnae matter, but she wants her wedding ring back.’ She stared at the telly. ‘It’s probably good yer da died or he’d died of the shame… Hell or highwater, I’ll pay her back every penny. 

‘I know how the Bible works,’ she said. ‘Yeh know what makes it worse?’

‘You can’t make the Bible worse Mum. It’s the word of God. Not just The Good Book, but the only book you’ll ever need.’

She holds her hand up. ‘OK, if we accept that. Whit about the photos?’

‘What photo’s Mum? It was 2000 years ago. They didn’t have photos. The best they could do was smudged rock paintings done by a ten-thousand-year old man with a stick.’

‘I’m no talking about then. I’m talking about noo. You know whit it’s like. Photos of people on holiday. Not on the beach showing their burnt bits, but some loony sprawled over somebody’s Tomb. Or even they cute photos of me and the kids showing yeh were a man was tortured to death. We didn’t go to Auschwitz in our beach wear and make videos of ourselves laughing in the barracks, sunbathing in the death pits, moaning cause the weather was terrible and the food was rotten. Yeh’d thing they’d be better organised than the plague—being German.’

‘That’s no the point Mum. Your just being rotten. Christ is risen.’

‘If yeh choose tae believe that. That’s fine. If it makes yeh a better person. That’s great. But I think that wee nyaff Colin has got his claws intae yeh for aw the wrang reasons. I can see it in yer face. It’s as if yeh’re running uphill aw the time, torturing yerself for some God known reason and trying to convince yerself it makes yeh more virtuous. And better than everybody else. But it’s just a mask. We’re aw Jock Tamson’s bairns. E’en the arseholes. Especially the arseholes.’

‘Being eternally vigilant isn’t a bad think Mum.’

‘Goin raffle yerself.’ She shuddered, it’s like the bad penny. ‘If God told yeh tae take a right turn and yeh took a left, which is fine. Yeh just need tae know where yeh are and how yeh got there. Yeh can retrace yer steps. If God is doing his job you’ll end up in the right place. Why aw the waffle in between? It’s depressing and gies me a sore heid. If he’s recovered fae rising fae the deid. Why can’t we?’

‘I’m going to church to pray for you, Mum. To pray for Da. I know he’s in heaven.’ I was going to say because Wormwood said he wasn’t in hell, and then it left only one alternative.  

‘That’s good. It’ll keep yeh oot of mair trouble.’

‘But I’m never any trouble.’

‘I know,’ mum said. ‘That’s the trouble. Yeh get a wee lassie pregnant and kill yer Da, then yeh decide to go straight. Thanks be tae God.’

I couldn’t speak. When I did, I mumbled that Pastor Colin wanted to say a few words at the funeral.     

Mum sucked in her breath. ‘Yer Da was Catholic. Aw his relatives are coming. Altar boys are the only wans that get on the altar.  Priests run the show. Discreetly huving a conversation wae somebody that’s no really there. And everybody but the half-wits that believe in Santa, believe in Holy Ghosts play along. They know if God does exist he’s likely to breenge in at any time, checking on everybody like a drunk on his night aff checking the toilets.’