school photos 71

Exhaustion penetrated the pores of John’s face, slackened his jaw, and dulled the light in his pale-green eyes to cataract grey. He cocked his head, as if listening. ‘Well, to be honest I’ve not got a clue.’ His lips parted in a slow-burn smile. ‘Let’s have some fresh tea and we’ll work something out.’

‘You still see ghosts?’ Jack felt more at ease.

‘Nah, the living haunt me in the way the dead cannae. That’s enough for me.’ John took the mugs over to the sink. He swilled them under the taps, absentmindedly splashing water on his hands, looking out at the bright spring weather and the brush of trees growing shoulders against the rain-soaked Old Kilpatrick hills. ‘You grab for something, searching your whole life and you find it’s behind you. It’s a hungry kind of knowing that burns your flesh from the inside out. That’s probably why all those Saints have got a big burning bush round their heid and that startled look on their face that they’ve seen too much.’ ‘Or,’ he added, ‘they need a good shite and it’s just a bad portrait with too much flecks of gold paint left over’. He fussed with finding the milk, spoon and sugar.  

Jack giggled. A mug of tea was plonked in front of him. He warmed the palms of his hands and fingers on the cup.  John padded a few steps and settled his body into the seat across from him. He studied the older man’s face. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not a Catholic. I’m not much of a Christian either.’ He brooded, whilst sipping tea, concluding, ‘I’m more an agnostic’.

‘Ah, well, believe me, if you’re no’ a Catholic, then you’re a Proddy. That’s the way the world works. Agnostic mean Proddy, unless you’re a Catholic agnostic, which means you’re simply misguided.’

‘I’m neither Catholic or Proddy.’

‘Well, in my Da’s day there was a simple solution to that.’ He took a gulp of tea. ‘Whit team do you support?’

‘I don’t support any team.’ A sour smell from the sink made him glance over John’s shoulder then looked surreptitiously at the damp patch under the older man’s shirt. ‘I’m not interested in football.’   

‘Nah, you’re no’ allowed to say that.’ He joshed the boy. It had been a while since he’d laughed. ‘That’s like saying you support Partick Thistle. Which team would you support if you had to support a team that was not Partick Thistle?’

‘Brazil. I quite like their strip. Gold and green shorts. And their fans always seem to be having such a great time.’

‘Ah, well,’ he admitted, ‘you got me there.’ Growing more serious, his tone flattened. ‘Whit happened to you?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve always been,’ and he curled his index finger into antennae to put the word ‘different’ in hypothetical quotation marks. ‘I thought it was normal to have an old woman sitting beside my bed every night, watching over me.’  

‘Whit was she like? Did she ever speak to you?’

‘No she seemed content to just sit. She was old fashioned, like something you’d see on the telly, reddish hair and a bluish dress made out of dowdy candlewick material, shaped like a sleeping bag that had swallowed her legs. She smelt of cigarettes.’ He leaned across the table, as if to speak in confidence. ‘I liked her. She made me feel safe.’

‘Whit about the little girls then?’ John asked, ducking his head down slightly and lowering his tone.

Jack hesitated, his Adam’s apple bobbling up and down, before he spoke. ‘When I was wee I didn’t bother. I’d my trusty teddy. Nothing scared me.  Nightmares about spiders or snakes or falling I found could be faced up if I thought about it for a bit before I nodded off. Then, later, the girls invaded my dreams and took them over so that it seemed I’d never dreamt of anything but them. Broad hands pressed down squeezing me, faces loomed out of nowhere, dark and sudden.  As I said they were part of my dreams. But they scared me. I wanted them to go away.’ His head dropped and he looked down at his lap. ‘I even prayed that God would take them away, would save me.’

‘I did that too.’

‘You did?’ Jack perked up. ‘And what happened?’

‘Disaster after disaster.’ John tried to keep it light and jocular. He didn’t want to scare the boy. ‘Mum said we were cursed.’ He swirled his tea, and chewed it like a razor blade, making contented tutting noises as he drank. Placing the mug carefully back on the table, he sighed, ‘we probably were’.

‘So praying wasn’t much use?’

John cocked his head to the side, puckered his lips and he hummed and hawed as he considered.  ‘I’m no’ sure. It doesnae dae any harm. Probably at some level it does some good.  Essentially a question and no answer. Like one of those childhood origami-fortune-telling games.   “I am here God,” and you shuffle about the petals of paper hand-written responses in your hands to get an answer to the question, “where are you?”’ He laughed. ‘And the answer always comes out flush as the same one: “I am here, where are you?”’ He scratched the back of his head. ‘So apart from dreams and prayers, we’re sorted?’

Jack’s tea was cold, but he sipped at it. ‘We would be if they didn’t start to bleed into my everyday life. I’d be going to my first class and, I’d see out of the corner of my eyes, a little girl in a school uniform trailing behind me. I knew it wasn't right. I recognised her from my dreams, but when I turned and went chasing after her she’d disappear, behind a parked car, or another person, or a bush. Like your childhood game, I’m not sure how she did it.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Which was a relief, but when that happened my dreams were even more vivid and intense. I was tortured, raped and buried. It got so bad I was terrified to go to sleep. I’d try and stay up all night, but I’d fall asleep at my desk at school. My school work suffered. But it didn’t take my mum long to figure it out. She pads about at night like a cat and never sleeps either. So after a few nights she started drifting into my room and asking me questions. Giving me the third degree.’ He grew more subdued. ‘Dad said I should go and see a doctor, or a psychologist, or something. Mum said I should come and see you. And she always gets her own way.’