dafties

The sun squatted on the rooftops over towards Dalmuir and in the triangular shadow of the staircase we were bent to mischief. I rung the bell for about ten seconds, then ten more and glancing behind me, from face to face, hiccuped a giggle. Cammy caught a chuckle in the back of his throat, Jim smirked and Summy laughed through his nose and crouched down with one sannie on the bottom step and one sannie next step up. Upstairs and inside the house we heard him bounding on the landing, the vibrations echoing through the red metal walls and his flat feet bouncing like a moonman down the stairs. We edged silently forward. Summy tip-toed up one concrete step, then another. We were primed, waiting for the whistley snort, waiting for the anxious way he always cleared his throat as he got to the bottom steps inside his house. Through the reinforced glass with squares of metal running through it we saw the outline of Daft Rab standing on the doormat, fiddling with the sneck of the Yale. We waited for the turn of the key before he flung open the door.

Black NHS frames squatted higgledy-piggledy on his ears and thick nose, giving his broad face an uneven tilt, which he corrected by croaking one shoulder and creaking pigeon-necked, staring at us through lenses thick and murky as a telly that had been switched off. I was at the front and rushed at the door, but he flung out a knee and blocked me. Cammy dropped from his sitting position on the stuccoed wall and tried to worm his way past me and past Daft Rab. 'Ya wee bugger,' he grunted, the muscles in his jaw cording and tightening, and through the stumps of donkey teeth saliva slebbering and sparking all over the place. Summy tried to squeeze though an impossible gap in his brown flannelled legs. Jim, the fly-man, pushed me into his square catcher's hands and created enough light in the rectangle at the bottom of the hall for flight. He was in, on the first stairs of the landing, scrambling on all fours like a dog on heat, as Daft Rab caught the back of his grey school shorts and pulled him backwards. I wiggle-waggled past Daft Rab as he pulled Jim backwards and Cammy ghosted in on the other side, but was caught by blunted fingers and propelled backwards. 'I'm warning you...' Daft Rab screeched. Summy tried to use the same trick as me, but Daft Rab, although outnumbered had used one of his clown black shoes to edge the door towards him and he squeezed my three mates into a smaller and smaller space of wriggling arms and legs before banging the door and the Yale lock clicking into place.

Daft Rab doo-necked head settled on the slant of his shoulders. He gasped for breath as he looked up at me standing on the red worn out carpet at the top of the stairs. My eyes flickered along the hall, weighing up possibilities. 'Freddy, you there Freddy,' Daft Rab brayed before stumping up the stairs. I was off, running along the hall to find a hiding place. Daft Freddy worked in Singers, a job for life and was daft in his own way. He liked to hide behind the nylon orange-yellow curtain in the living room, a can of Tennents's lager in his hand, squint-eyeing up and down the hill, looking for god knows what. By the time he'd trudged out of the living room I planned to be well hidden. To my right was their old Mum's room. That's where Daft Rab kept the reels and projector for the films and cartoons he'd shown us that morning.

Although their house stunk of old folk and cabbage the way we'd clattered up the stairs it was as if it was the highlight of our day. My brothers, sister and my mates, and all the kids that stayed nearby, would be chattering and pushing into each other, pulling thin elbows backwards for the best seats. I always seemed to end up sitting on the floor with my back against the couch waiting for someone to fart and make a joke about it. Daft Rab would shut the living room curtains and snort that daft way he did; then we'd hear the whir of the projector and it would throw a magical beam of light onto the screen he'd set up beside the kitchen door. He always showed one Laurel and Hardy film. Stan and Ollie were my favourite. Being on the floor made a certain kind of sense then, because I'd been bent sideways laughing and would have fell off the settee. But the Road Runner and Daffie Duck cartoons were great too. After the last reel Daft Rab would open the curtains and we'd file out slowly, stunned that it was sunny outside and we were no longer in a black and white world of fat and thin, bowler hatted, thin tied, suited and booted funny men.

I heard Daft Rab crashing up the stairs and darted along the hall past Daft Rab's room and past Daft Freddy's room my head turning one way then the other. I took a sharp left and hid in the toilet, with the door pulled over and my bum against the bath panel. I tried not to laugh out loud. Daft Rab's feet thumped their way though one room then another. Sometimes we hid under the musty smelling beds, or in cupboards hung heavy with clothes that would never be worn, but this was the best hiding place yet. The toilet stunk of a number two and, unlike the other rooms, there was only the drip, drip of one of the sink taps for entertainment. I held my breath as his heavy breathing progressed along the hall. He stopped and I felt that bubble of laughter working its way up my throat. Through the crack in the door I could see his childlike red braces that held his lumpy body together and heard the wooden floor groaning as he adjusted the weight in his feet and stepped heavily, almost stumbled, into the in-shot beside the toilet. He sprung the latch of the double cupboard near the linoleum of the toilet. Static from his stripy nylon shirt signalled to me to be extra quiet and made me push in closer behind the door as he bent down My feet were standing on one another and then stork- like I suddenly felt the need to use the toilet, but held it in. But I tried not to think of him peering and breathing life into the rabbit fur trim of his mum's old coats.

I heard him easing his bones as he stood up. The smaller cupboard door, near the light switch was flung open. My eyes squinted at him through the gap and he clawed flaky skin from the back of his neck and peered into the toilet.

'Hallooooo,' he shouted, 'I know you're in there.' He looked about him, up and down the hall. He turned his Frankenstein square-head sideways as if he was listening. 'That's it. If you don't come out now, I'm phoning the police.'

He waited. The phone box was down the street at the huts.

I waited.

'I'll need to go downstairs and tell Des that you've been pestering me again.'

I stepped out from behind the door, clutching my hands. His feet slid a little as he turned to face me.

'I was only kiddin'. Don't tell my Da.' My face is flushed. There was a pleading tone in my voice.

He waited until I was safely in view and shadowed me along the hall and down the stairs. But he brushed past and loped ahead of me the last few steps and opened the door just a crack, just enough to let me slither through. Outside the last of daylight was given over to darkness.

Cammy, Jim and Summy watched me trotting through the gap in the privet hedge.

'Told you I'd make it,' I said.

'Fuck off,' said Jim, 'you were hardly in their five minutes, you betted you'd stay in there for half-an-hour.'

'I was in a lot longer than that smarty-knickers,' I said.