the thing

The ball bounces off the wall at the back of our house and back into play. I trap it with my right foot, spin away like Jimmy Johnstone and hit it against our heavy steel bin. The round lid rattles and threatens to topple off and hit the red brick wall we share with our next door neighbour Mrs Bell. A privet hedge divides our garden from theirs, but the fans don’t know this. They’ve went absolutely wild. ‘It’s a gooooal!’ They scream and chant my name. ‘Jack…Jack…Jack.’ I give in and wave to them, but quickly glance up at the back window of the kitchen to see if anybody’s looking out. There isnae. I dribble the ball away to the bottom of the garden. It almost rolls off the raised path. A crop of rhubarb threatens to tackle me, but I do a drag back and flick it to the bottom of the wire fence. It’s another great ‘goooooal’. The fans have went wild again, but I’m sweating and sick of them always wanting me to be the best player in the world. I toe poke the ball against the privet hedge we share with Daft Rab. It’s a rubbish hedge. It starts alright banging through the fence at the bottom of the slope then it stops, practically before it’s begun. It doesnae even make it a third of the way up the grass slope. There are a few spindly wee hedge hairs and like a bald man’s head it finishes with a flourish, with a good stretch near the flat. It’s boxed off like a short-back- and- sides up to the slabs. They run horizontal like a thin penalty box to our back door, up and over the stair and all away around Douglas’s and into Dicken’s Avenue. But there’s not enough hedge to keep the ball in and make a proper stadium. I chip the ball up towards the wall, but I’ve got to be careful, because the goal now is the vertical band of concrete that runs round our prefab steel house. If I overchip, miss concrete and hit the red mottled surface below the windows there’s a percussion effect and it booms through the house and everybody will come to the window and look out. Even Daft Rab upstairs, in his kitchen, will snort in that daft way he does and bend his wobbly neck over the sink to peer out at me through the dense fogged lenses of his black framed NHS spec. The worse thing I could do would be to break a window.

My brother Stephen did that when he was playing a match against my big cousin Jim McFadden. It was 10-10 and Stephen powered a shot from the bottom of the garden up and it flew over Jim’s head and smashed the toilet window. I was standing on the back steps at the time. We all stood as if the sun had stopped in the sky. Then Jim giggled. He side-footed the ball a bit away from him, as if he was getting rid of the evidence, and the ball picked up momentum and rolled all of the way down the slope. Stephen didn’t even try and save it, though it might have counted as goal. It nestled safely against the back fence. Mum still with an Embassy Regal smoking in her hand, Da’, Auntie Phyllis, Uncle Jim, and my older cousins too came flying out the back door like wasps. They gawped at the broken window and looked from my cousin Jim to Stephen. It was obvious whose fault it was. It was always Stephen’s fault. I thought Da’ would have just plum killed him there and then, but he didnae. He just growled. ‘Whit did ah tell you about playin’ fitba?’

Stephen’s head hung lower than a cat’s. ‘Don’t know,’ he mumbled.

Da’s face was puce. ‘There’s a big school down there.’ Da waved in the general direction of our school St.Stephen’s which we could see from our back step. ‘It’s full of playgrounds and fitba parks.’ He shook his head and he spat out, ‘nothing but playgrounds and fitba parks.’ I was sure Stephen was in for a tankin’ now. Mum grabbed at his arm.

Uncle Jim thin faced with Brylcreemed black hair slapped to his head shrugged. ‘Och, boys will be boys Dessy. It’ll give the council something to dae in the morning.’ He headed back into the house. My auntie and her daughters followed. John, who was my age did a snider of a jump off the back step, up onto the wall, pulled himself up and sat with his white legs dangling down. Dessy looked back towards Stephen, but didn’t say anything else, just glowered with his caterpillar eyebrows.

I didn’t want that happening. So I don’t hit the ball very hard and it sneaks up and sits against the corner of the two steps and the hedge on Daft Rab’s side. It didn’t even make the path and the goals. I shake my head in frustration. The fans are boo-booing me now. My lip begins to curl up like a cabbage leaf at the side. It wasn’t my fault. The ball has lost most of the air in it and is pure rubbish, but they don’t listen and keep booing. I’ll need to score a hat-trick to make up for it. I rush up the hill to make amends. Out of the corner of my eye I see Mum looking out of the back window. I stop before I get to the ball, smile and wave. She waves back at me. Mum’s a smiley person. I pick the ball up. I hear somebody going into the toilet.

I used to blow and shout with an echoy voice up the outlet pipe of the toilet when I knew it was my sisters going in -- to scare them. But I stopped doing it when something like a jobby ran down right into my mouth and I spat and spat it out on the grass and made retching noise and was almost sick. Even when I ran in the back and rinsed and rinsed my mouth out with water it didn’t make any difference. I could taste it for hours afterwards. I wasn’t going to do that again. I just bang on the wall instead now, to let them know I knew they were doing a pee-pee.

I pick the ball up and play a bit of keepy-up. I’m trying to get to ten, but my left foot is too floppy and I can only get to six, then seven. I get an eight that could be a nine, but the ball runs away from and rolls down the slope. I’m out of breath and sit on the back step. I hear a Jumbo-jet and put my hand up to screen my eyes and watch it banking over the Clyde. I know if it crashed right down into the gardens below ours I’d be first there and could help people out of the burning fuselage. I might get killed, but it would be worth it, because I’d get a medal. I can’t quite decide whether I should help myself to people’s luggage, because obviously they’ll not be needing it and there’d be money in it and I could nip out and buy sweets out of Johnnie Graham’s. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if I saved them.

I go into the house cause it’s dinner-time and I’m starving. Usually, on Friday mum makes a big pot of soup and there’s so much white bread that even a blind man would be able to see it. Da takes the outsider and another few slice and slopes off to his room. He keeps coming back to top up. Our Jo and Phyllis sit in the living room with their plates on their knee watching telly. Stephen takes about half a plate then disappears out the door. He doesn’t even stay for the creamed rice with carnation milk, which is my favourite. I stay in the kitchen with Mum—in case she needs me--as she smokes and coaxes my little brother to eat his soup like a big boy.

Later, mum puts Bryan to bed. Then it’s my turn. It’s still light outside, but I don’t make too much of a fuss. I yawn as I walk along the hall to our room. Mum’s carefully placed my jammies on the bottom of the bed. Bryan’s already sleeping. With the Venetian blinds closed the room feels as if it’s underwater and smells musty. I scramble out of my round-necked t-shirt, which has red-horizontal bars and a thinner blue bar below it, and then kick off my grey short trousers. Clothes get folded by flinging them towards the shape of the hard wooden chair that sits beside the window. I’m snug in my own bed with my jammies on and make sure I’m turned away from the clothes cupboard beside my bed. I don’t want to see it if there’s anything lurking inside, ready to squeak the door and creep out. I soon fall asleep.

The room’s dark when I waken up and for a second I wonder where I am. Bryan’s face in the next bed pushing up out of the blankets reassures me. There’s no traffic. The only sound I can hear is the deep rumble of Stephen’s breathing. I raise my head and look over Bryan’s bed. Stephen’s face is turned the other way towards the window, but I can make out his bushy hair. Above his bed are all the posters and cut-out pictures of the Celtic teams tacked to the wall. I’m careful not to look up and into the winged-mirror of the chest of drawers in case something looks back at me. I lie back down and pull the bedclothes up round my neck, but I need to pee. I know if I don’t think about it I’ll not need to pee, but I can’t stop thinking about it because I’m not meant to. I’m bursting.

I turn over to make sure the cupboard is still snecked shut. Then I jump out of bed and run along the hall as if the diamond pattern of the linoleum’s on fire. There’s no sounds from Mum’s room or the girls’ room. I flick the toilet light on. The sound of me peeing in the toilet pan fills the night. I don’t bother flushing or washing my hands because nobody’s looking. I just flick the switch out. As I come out of the bathroom door I look towards our front door. It’s made up of three panels of opaque glass reinforced with wire. There’s a white metal shelf above the door the width of a bookshelf with clear glass to allow in light. My breathing slows and my feet stall. There’s something hovering above it. I’m not sure if it is looking in at me, because I’m not sure it has eyes. I did know, it knows, I can see it and wants into our house, but it has to be invited in. I keep my eye on it, ready to scream out for Mum, but I don’t. I turn the corner and can no longer see it. I walk up the hall towards our room, but then I turn back. I trace my fingers along the wall on the girls’ side. I’m going to fling myself against it if anything happens and get everybody up. I put my hand on their room door and lean sideways so that I can look at the thing. It’s still there waiting. It’s good at waiting. It knows everything I know. I know whenever I'm passing my neck will always whip round so that I can look up at that window.