Love Story 10

Mum floated about smoking between the kitchen and living room. Da ruffled the sports’ pages of the Daily Record to show he was reading and didn’t want to be interrupted. I supped at tea and munched at toast dripping with margarine, and since there was nothing on the telly on a Sunday, looked out the window.

Tarmac pavements shone with rain. Carla, her chocolate brown wool coat drookit, leaned into the rain, laughing as her brolly pulled her up the hill and flew away. With her high cheek bones, all the boys thought she was pretty and that meant gagging for it. I liked her too, because she always so clean she glowed, smiled politely and said ‘Hello,’ even when she was in a hurry, which she always was.

I wasn’t sure I’d get to the prayer meeting. It wasn’t as if I had to or was going to get any thanks for going.

Wormwood jumped into my head. He reminded me that Pastor Colin always thanked Jesus for everything, even the shitty weather. Even cancer. He would argue it would make you a better, humbler, person.

Dropping an atomic bomb was God’s work. You couldn’t get much humbler than human goo. But it was all part of God’s great plan.

Even if you did, miraculously, recover and rise again, you’d give your children some nasty genetic mutation for seven generations or more. The kind of thing God cursed people with in the Old Testament and told them it was their fault. Not everything was Sodom and Gomorrah.

You had to get down on your knees and light a candle and thank Jesus for being Jesus.

Wormwood reminded me that there was no sex unless I was in his thrall.

Mum and dad had been married for about fifteen years. I glanced over Da, sneaked a look at Ma and knew Wormwood was telling the truth about the worldwide drouth.

Married sex was too little. Too late. God made sure it was a box locked by faithful old men with long beards. My parents had the key, but they’d forget the combination. Even if they remembered it, odd on, they couldn’t be fucked.

God didn’t take a day off from being God or want less than five-star reviews that claimed poofs and pansies were any less than of a pain in the arse that should be burned at the stake like witches. All part of God’s great plan.

That’s the whole problem with God’s democracy—Jesus, it’s not as if like us he knows what it likes to being human like us—you can’t challenge him or he’ll tell you to go to hell and bounce you out the door. But it’s not all bad. At least you’re barred from the most godawful Sunday service and you don’t need to watch Songs of Praise. Besides, Wormwood reminded me, don’t be a hypocrite and a coward.  I know about the purse.

It was freezing outside. There was little harm in missing one service. I glanced over at my Da, who was absentmindedly scratching his balls. ‘Did you go to church when you were younger?’

His hand wormed out of his trousers and his paper ruffled as he lowered his guard to speak to me. ‘Ach no,’ he said and held a hand up to his mouth as he coughed, rubbed his fingers on his belly and reached up the mantelpiece for his Woodbine. It gave him time to reconsider. ‘Well, aye, everybody did. You had to go.’

‘What if you never went?’

He patted his pockets for matches and looked for a lighter on the fireplace. ‘Stop blethering,’ he replied.

But he was a in a good mood since he was getting ready to go to the Station Bar for a couple of pints with my Uncle Willie. ‘You’re full of questions this morning.’ He lit his fag, pushing a smidgen of tobacco leaf aside with the tip of his tongue. ‘Well, you jist go on wae it.’

I searched underneath the table at the window for something to read. I picked up a People’s Friend and Oor Wullie Christmas annual. When Da went out, I’d nip over and get a shot of reading his Sunday Post and Sunday Mail. I wondered if I should go to the shops for our next-door neighbour, one-up. God would be pleased because she was very old and had ran out of sinful things to do. Being a fossil was her occupation.

I sucked in my breath as I thought about it. She probably wouldn’t need anything, because I’d been to the shops for her last week. And she’d given me thruppence for myself. New money confused her. Dark furniture and dust swallowed her up as she worked things out. I stood patiently waiting. My nose crinkling from things falling apart and stealing my breath.  

She had a piano. I’d once lifted the lid and tinkled a few notes.

‘Don’t do that.’ Her voice had a wheezy urgency it didn’t usually have. ‘It’s bad luck.’

Everything was bad luck when you got to her age. Especially, when her dog died. It was a nice wee collie. Hit by a bus. That was unexpected. Not like her husband, who’d died of cancer. Everybody knew that was going to happen with Charlie. I guess it was part of God’s plan, because there was nobody left to walk the dog. 

She loved music. Her wireless was solid mahogany. It had a yellow dial. The cursor bounced a red light. Like the one we followed in the ABCminors when we sung along ‘That every Saturday we come’—until Pastor Colin told me it was Satan’s work and I shouldn’t go or sing along—but the radio light went to Oslo and Prague and Vienna. All the stations that had crappy old stuff nobody listened to.

When she got bored with sitting listening to it, she’s bake dumpling in her oven. When it was my birthdays, she’d put sixpences wrapped in silver paper in with the mix.

Mum always reminded me to go and thank Mrs Connolly the next day, when I had to take the tray back.

‘And to say it like I meant it,’ even though I preferred chocolate and Kit Kats. I did mean it when Mrs Connolly baked scones with homemade jam. Even Da said they were alright.

Ali couldn’t get enough of her scones, but she didn’t like Mrs Connolly. ‘She’s ready to croak it,’ she reminded me. ‘And it’ll aw go tae waste.’

She was talking about the money Mrs Connolly kept stashed in her bag at the side of the chair, I’d mentioned it when I told her about the sixpences.

‘Yeh should take something, she’s never notice.’

‘I couldn’t cause I’d be too scared.’

Flat feet, head bobbing, as she peeked at me like a one-eyed bird. Spittle gathering at the corner of her lips, she wailed into the crook of her arm. ‘It’s for our baby…Yeh would dae it if yeh loved me. Jist take enough for a wee engagement ring. She’ll no even notice.’