Dentist

Black plastic bags come to the long grass to die. I rattle down the short-cut stairs in front of Mum. Blackthorn blossoms enamel white and brightens Douglas’s overgrown hedge that slopes onto the tar treads that cut into the hill. Catkin hangs silver from a litter bush, humming with bumble-bees, heavy with perfume plunder and weaving a drunken path between the tar-black path, the wild green-leaved celandine sprouting feet of gold and the nimbus of cloud shunting and shape shifting in the high winds. Anemone shine with a luminosity, clean as the newly brushed teeth in my mouth, before my annual pilgrimage to the dental hospital to match up my snaggle teeth with a Donny Osmond, Mormon vision, of how they should be.

The short-cut takes us to Shakespeare Avenue. Mum’s long acrylic fawn coat flaps against her knees as she keeps to the pavement, even though there’s no traffic, and I walk down the middle of the road. We cross over at Park Road and she lowers her head and dots her forehead in the sign of the cross-Father, Son and Holy Ghost- as we pass the black wrought-iron gates of St. Stephen’s church -- bolted shut against sinners and the saved. She looks at me to see if I do the same, but I’m an atheist on Mondays and in understanding of my atheistic beliefs, she smiles and pats me on the back of my shoulder and pulls my duffle coat hood up to protect me from the rain that has started. After all, she knows I hate the dentist, even when it means a day off school. God understands.

Heads down against the wind and buffeting rain we pass the gin-gan-gooly-gooly Scout Hut for Proddy boys. The trains thud and rattle below us in the subterranean tunnels as we stand on the pavement waiting to cross the road. Traffic is busier on Duntocher Road, but fumes are windblown, as we nip smartish across to the shops beside the Cressie stairs. I stand outside the plate-glass window of the hairdressers and sneak a look inside at shrivelled old woman sitting flicking through mags as they are tortured by perming, or dyeing grey hair a more natural shade of blue. Two fossils sit under a stand while a young pretty girl, with long black curls cascading to her bum, puts a mechanical egg shaped device from Space 1999 on their heads to heat their brains up and make them younger. Mum comes out of the shop next door, unwrapping the cellophane from her twenty Regal. We watch the wind swirling the plastic away. Mum dangles a fag on her lower lip, lights it and, as she takes in a lungful of life giving smoke, the muscles around her cheeks and mouth relax.

‘We’ll need to hurry or we’ll miss the train.’ She hands me a bar of McDouglas Highland toffee and pats me on the bum to push me along.

I hurry along behind her, my fingers ripping at the horns and Highland cow wrapper, snatching my first bite, chewing, my mouth filled with sugar and a gob of chewy-brown delight, so that I need to breathe through my nose and my ear pops because as I’ve got a bit of a head cold. We slalom down the Cressie stairs, her on one side of the barrier, me on the other. I beat her to the bottom and gurn a toffee grin as I wait for her. She hooks me through the arm and we’re off, walking fast in the shadows of the redbrick wall and spiked cast-iron fence of Dalmuir station.

‘Remember when you used to be scared of trains? Mum pulls me in closer to her and I can feel the vibrations of laughter coming from her chest.

I gulp down the last of my toffee so I can speak and let the wrapper drop and watch it blowing away towards the snobby high flats. I’m a man now, the best fighter in Primary Seven, so there’s outrage in my voice. ‘Ah wisnae scared of trains. Ah was just scared of gettin’ dragged under their big wheels.’

Mum chuckles at this too and takes a last gasper before letting her fag end drop as we hurry on. There’s a quivering in our feet as a train passes below us we climb the metallic stairs that bridge our side of the station and the ticket office and our train into the town. We hurry-scurry across. Mum gets the tickets, gasping for breath, sweat shining her forehead and slicking her red hair. We hear the squeal of metal on metal as the Springburn train slows and comes into the station. I hold the door open as Mum jiggles with her bag with everything in the world in it, but her purse. Then when she finds her purse, with change, the tickets and her packet of twenty Regal.

‘Hurry Mum.’

The train doors slide open with a sucking sound and the passengers step down onto the platform and the passengers waiting to get on. I run across and stand beside the open door nearest us. The guard looks down the line of the train and blows his whistle. I jump on the train and then panic, jump back off.

‘Hurry!’

Mum’s out of breath, but makes that final effort and steps onto the train, and I vault the steps on behind her, the doors shut and there’s a jolt as the train moves and we begin to sway. There’s loads of free seats and I bags one near the window with a heater that warms the air and your legs with a smell like a packet of cheese and onion crisps. But Mum makes a face and shakes her head. It’s a non-smoking carriage. We’ve lucked out and sway with the carriage as we make our way through to a smoking compartment.

We sit toe to toe, my brown brogues almost touching her black sensible shoes with little cube-heels. Mum lights up and swats the smoke away from me with one hand and natters on about mum things as I nod and glance out the window at the world flashing past. More and more people get on the train. When we reach Partick it’s quite busy. Passengers are standing. We get off at the town and I step onto the platform as other people shove on. I’m thinking about the dentist and not really concentrating on where I’m going, but when I gaze up and along the echoey cavernous mouth of a station, all I can see are long coats and backs of heads going away from me. My head swivels as I watch the train chugging and pulling away from the station. I wonder if Mum is still on it. I wonder if she got off. I stand tight, tears pooling in my eye, wondering how I’m going to get home or what I’m going to do next, of if I’ll ever find my way out of here. I start breathing again when I see Mum’s fawn coat barrelling along, heels clicking on the platform.

‘Where have you been? Silly!’ She’s smiling.

I smile back at her with my imperfect teeth.