school photos 47

I was laid out like a fish-supper, in the recovery position, on the floor beside William’s desk.  His chair and mine have been yanked sideways up against the wall, in the long corridor of his room, to give me breathing space. Head pounding. Light darted from wall to wall. William’s face hovered bright and close, burning with knowing, with Karen and Jocky’s bunching behind his. Faces full of fattening foods and satisfaction and eyes that weren’t scared.  

    ‘You fainted.’ William’s accent grated, but I was grateful for him standing upright, not breathing all over me with smoky breath, and ushering the others out of the room.

He was brusquer when he returned to stand guard over me. ‘Can you sit up?’

    ‘Yeh.’ I bent forward conscious of his eyes tracking me and sat up. I got up bent, like an old crone, reaching across and scraping the chair across the floor to sit on. A thought stepped up into consciousness, ripping through my body so I had to splutter it out. ‘Da’s dead?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.     His diminutive size, the straggle of facial hair reminded me a child playing  doctors in a baggy white coat, but his eyes narrowed and he reached for his fags sitting on the desk. He took his time pulling his chair in to face me and lighting up. ‘You want one? He held his packet of twenty Regal out.

    ‘Na.’ Then inwardly cursed. I could have taken one, stuck it behind my ear and later on given it to Janine.

    He took a long puff. ‘Who told you about your father’s death?’

    ‘You did.’

    His thin pink lips went all prim in his beard and he shook his head that he hadn’t.

    ‘It must have been Karen then.’

    A shake of his head.

    ‘Or Jocky?’

    He poked around the inside of his ear as he mulled this over. ‘No I don’t think he’d been made aware of your father’s sad demise.’

    ‘Dunno.’ It was my turn to shrug. ‘You know what this place is like.’

    He briefly leaned forward as he considered this. ‘Indeed I do,’ he said. ‘Indeed I do.’

    ‘You need to let me out now.’ I spoke as if the idea had just occurred to me.

He studied me as if he was trying to solve an algebra problem.

‘My mum’ll need me.’ My voice had risen and had that wheedling tone Da always hated. I could almost hear him saying for fuck sake, be a man. I bit back tears and spoke more matter of factly. ‘The girl’s ‘ll need me.’  

He pulled open the top drawer in his desk, and flicked his ash into an ashtray he’d secreted there for that purpose. ‘Yes, I appreciate that, but what worries me is the girls.’

‘Whit dae yeh mean?’

‘Well,’ he took a final draw, stabbed the fag out in the ashtray and pushed the drawer shut, leaving behind the smouldering cordite of cigarette smoke, ‘you have these fugue states when you’re sleeping and they seem to have become part of your more conscious experience’. He looked over at me to see if I knew what he was talking about and in a way I did. ‘And you’ve got to remember you admitted to violent fantasies of rape and incest. It would be remiss of me, with the added stress of bereavement, to let you go home at this stage.’

‘Fuck off,’ I spluttered, half rising out of the wooden chair.

The tired sullen droop of his eyelids, the sceptical and scornful curl of her  mouth had me bouncing backwards onto the seat of my pants. We sat eyeing each other.

‘I’ll try to arrange an escort for the funeral,’ he offered.

I bit my lip to keep from sobbing, my head wilting onto my chest. I stood up and he stood up too, sticking his hand out for me to shake. ‘Fuck off,’ I spat, brushing past him and out into the brighter lights of the hospital corridors.

Patients stole past me. Smoke a ghostly presence in their wake. Limbs that had run their race. I spotted Jocky coming out of Janine’s room. He swivelled his big neck and grinned as he passed me. I gazed at my feet and kept walking, elbowing the door and barging into Janine’s room. She was sitting on top of her bed, her bare feet curled beneath her like a cat’s tail, reading a girl’s magazine The Jackie.

‘Whit did he want?’

She let the magazine drop onto the bed.  ‘He wanted to ravish me because I’m so gorgeous.’ She tipped her chin up, throwing her arms behind her head, so that her wee tits stuck out like a Hollywood film stars.

‘I’m sorry.’ My head dropped to hide my tears.

She scrambled off the bed and reached for my hand, holding it gently in her own, until I could find it in myself to look  at her.  Her eyes were a paler blue in the early light. I thought she was as incapable of crying as a house-brick, but there were tears in her eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘My Da’s deid.’

I put my arms around her. She leant her head on my shoulders. Outside, a fine silver rain, like cobwebs was falling against the window and I knew I needed to stop playing at getting out and really escape. Sobbing silently then with great clean gulps of air, her mascara was overwhelmed and rivulets of foundation washed clean on her face. Her thin fingers latched more firmly onto my shoulder to keep her balance. Her sobbing slowed to a stain on my green Adidas top and her neck  a tender broken stalk as she looked up at me.

‘Love you.’ She bit her bottom lip. ‘Really love you.’

We stood apart, lost for a few seconds. I put my arm round her and leant my head on her shoulder. I stroked her hair. It was as if we’re floating about on a row- boat on the nearby duck-pond. There was even a slight breeze from the open window. For once she didn’t know what to do with her hands.

‘Ah don’t know if Ah even liked my Da much,’ I said.

She started to cry in the anxious bitten-off way of someone who was crying with no one to hear them. Our faces collided like a pile-up on the M8. Crooked tongues finding space, becoming everything unsaid. Warmth flooded through me and I realised I’d been shivering. The locked sadness of Da’s face is unpacked in my mind, opened, allowed out. I sucked in the warmth of her breath, but we disengaged, became lighter, floating away from each other. Our lips remained the only place we touched. She was crying my tears for me.

We stood facing each other, shaken. ‘I’m sorry.’ She sniffed, pawing at her tears with the back of her hand.  

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘ No Ah’m sorry, giving you all my problems.’

Her eyes were unspent silver and what she was going to say passed over her face. She pushed me back against the wall. Her hungry tongue in my mouth. Her hands at the back of my neck. My hands slid down her back. I pressed in close, but never close enough. She bit my lips and disengaged, whispered, ‘there’s only us,’ and took my hand, guiding me towards her bed.