school photos 25

The girls’ bedroom door hushed slowly open. Jean had been sleeping as soundly as Joey’s snores allowed her to. Her body, however, was attuned to the bracing noises of their house at night as any captain had been to a barquentine sailing in the darkness. She sat up, straight as a main brace, and listened for what was on the other side of the wall—the scrape of footsteps. She scrambled out of bed, her feet flying to their bedroom door. Standing in the empty hall, her breathe a puffy cloud, the linoleum was icy cold underfoot and the street light filtering through the window above the front door stretched the darkness into long blocks, leaving gaps for an active  imagination to fill. The click of someone sneaking the sneck up on the front door, opening the Yale lock, scattered her thoughts, and made her scurry round the corner to catch the culprit. Her eyes seemed to be playing tricks. Little Ally stood with her back to her pulling the door open. She’d on her royal-blue school blazer, her grey skirt and her white socks were pulled up almost to her knees. This was something she never did. One sock would be up, the other down. Some kind of sock-semaphore signal that the effort of equilibrium was too much for a little body to take on board. Ally’s hair was in tight bunches. She couldn’t imagine her being able to do them herself. Then the pink baubles that tied her hair were a mystery. Jean hadn’t seen them before. She reasoned Jo must have brought them home and helped Ally tie hair. Yet, it went against reason. Jo couldn’t have helped her, wouldn’t have helped her, because she was too sensible, a granny in a twelve-year-old’s body, to get involved in such trickery. Jean caught a flash of Little Ally’s face. Her eyes were closed as she pulled the door shut. She hadn’t seen her. She hadn’t seen anything. Little Ally was sleep-walking in the same way her son had. Jean thanked God that her daughter was fully clothed, not least because of the thick fog and the frost outside. She wasn’t sure her threadbare slippers would be up to such conditions, but even barefoot, with flesh floating through the flimsy rayon of her nightie, she’d have followed her daughter outside.

            ‘Chooks. Chooks.’ She called after her daughter as if she were a little bird cornered in a cage, so as not to frighten her awake. But here little legs were already up and around the path and she could just make out her hair on the other side of the privet hedge.

            Jean wrapped her arms round her chest as protection against the cold and began to run. The cold bit into her feet, the streetlight at the shortcut cast an orange glow that extended little beyond the bulb. Everything shrank into itself. She cocked her head to listen. Sound carried like sonar muffled by the wet blanket of fog and night. The fence at the bottom of the shortcut rattled and there was a thump as something fell. She slipped on the steepest gradient of the path, banging her knee and rolling into a jaggy bush, her nightdress snagging and ripping. There was no time for decency or pain. Her eyes picked out the soft glow of the streetlight on Shakespeare Avenue. Her legs regained the vigour of the school girl she’d once been and her feet picked out the path. But her lungs cried out for the mercy of the final whistle, her shoulders heaved and great gasps of air escaped from her mouth like a steamboat. The chain-link fence had she knew a gap in it, but the fog grew thicker and her fingers found only connected threads. In her desperation, her hand banged against the diamond-shapes imprinting them on her soft flesh and she could have wept. Only the thought of her young daughter waking up out there cold and alone kept her moving, kept her searching. The gap was there and she fell against it, twisting her ankle as she landed.

 Limping on, a car crept downhill, its lights on full beam, picking out the road and pavement, she wanted to cry out, to warn the driver to be careful of her little girl, but knew her voice would be like the ghost of a foghorn, coming too little and too late. The car turned in slow-motion at the corner, the arc of light picking out a flash of blue. That was enough for Jean to work out her Little Ally was not far ahead of her, just up the road from the dentists. Her hand traced the line of the privet, helped her trace the path of the gardens bordering Shakespeare Avenue. The edge of the pavement came as a surprise and she almost slipped crossing the road. The strained ankle would take its toll the next morning, but she was willing to pay any price. She whispered into the gloom. ‘Ally, little Ally are you there? Mummy’s here. Mummy’s here. I love you very much darhling, please, please wait for me.’

            ‘Here Mummy. Here.’ The voice came from near Kerr’s gate.

            She blundered across, arms waving about like an octopus searching for its prey. Her hand found a head, and hair, and she drew little Ally into the snug of her torso. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘You’re ice cold.’ Hoisting her up onto her hip and shoulder, the little girl’s arms were flung around her shoulder and her fingers made a necklace of  her neck.

Jean shuffled back up the hill, as fast as her ankle would let her, fighting the fog every step of the way. Ally’s breathing was soft and regular on her cheek and neck. She seemed to have immediately sunk back into a deep sleep, a coma even. Jean’s thought turned to hypothermia and whether she should dial 999 at the phone box or make the short journey up the road and warm her up with hot toddies, hot water bottles and plenty of blankets. Ally stirred some as she carried her up the shortcut, her head banging against her cheekbone and a trick of the orange light from the streetlight her hair seemed dark rather than blonde.  

            Although no heating was on, the house after the cold of outside the house felt like the inside of a coal box. There was no time to waste. The electric boiler would take about two hours before it would heat enough hot water to fill a tea cup. Little Ally hadn’t heated up any. She would need to put in her own bed and covered with every available sheet, blanket and towel. Jean shoulder barged the girls’ room door open.  Little Ally sprung down dextrously from her arms like a cat.

At the same time, Joey came stumbling out of the room. ‘Whit the hell,’ he said, his trousers snaring his leg, snagging his ankles, as he tried to pull them on and banged against the doorframe, almost falling, but finding his feet in the hall. His hand felt about for the light switch for the hall, beside the door, flicking it on. His look told Jean everything she needed to know about her appearance. One breast was bare and from the waist down her body was blue with bruises and the cold.

            ‘It’s Little Ally,’ she explained.

            ‘What about Little Ally mum?’ Jo was standing barefoot in the door of the girl’s room, her voice weighed down with sleep and her tousled mane covering some of the distrust and disgust in her eyes about her mum’s appearance.

            Jean snapped the light on in the girl’s room. Ally’s blonde head was tucked up in bed. Her clothes for school were neatly laid out in the chair, as they had been the night before. Joey patted her on the shoulder as he leaned over her, checking out the room.

            ‘Whit about Little Ally?’ he asked.