Nothing left unsaid, p.13
Nothing Left Unsaid, page 13
The school tortoise has gone missing and we think Janet has hidden it somewhere but she refuses to be drawn on the subject. I can do without this shite this week. I think I’ll drop her off at Dirty Donna’s house and tell her father to sort it out. I won’t . . . but I am thinking about it.
Got a visit from Sandra, Bunty and Isa this evening. So, Isa is single again as her Dunoon Yankee Boy apparently did have a wife the whole time and another girlfriend from Dundee. She lost it when she found out. I heard she got the ferry down there with a wee can of paint-thinner and threw it all over his fancy car. Hell hath no fury like a Glasgow woman with a tin of Nitromors in her handbag. The security guys threw her off the base, not before she gave them a mouthful.
She was in my flat in bits, drinking a few cans. Bunty sang some good, sad, angry songs, Sandra held her tight and my Sharon emptied the ashtrays and gave us all a big speech about feminism and how men are the patriarchy and rule our lives. Janet came in dressed as Gary Glitter covered in tin foil and John tap-danced on the linoleum – it fair cheered us all up.
Laddie tried to hump Sandra’s new leather handbag and the kids screamed the house down.
The Queen became a granny as Princess Anne has had a wee boy and called him Peter. Anne’s husband Mark is really handsome and you can tell he loves her. ‘Mull of Kintyre’ is number one in the charts, and on Crossroads Sandy has a new girlfriend.
CHAPTER 19
2019
Day thirteen
Sharon
Janet had finally come home for the night and she looked fabulous. It was just her on her own; her husband stayed behind with her stepson as he had school to go to. Janet had never been a pretty child but she’d grown into her very striking looks. After a fleeting flirtation with speed and some other hard drugs in the late eighties, she’d found her own place in the world. She was shorter than me, with blonde cropped hair that made her huge eyes look less Boris Karloff. The play she’d been directing had had brilliant advance reviews (‘dark, disturbing and compelling’ – sounded about right for Janet) and was about to be opened to the public. She looked every inch the Soho artist with her Afghan coat, leather hat and wooden clogs that clattered about the floor and faintly reminded me of Mum’s Scholl’s from the seventies.
‘So, the old bird is hanging on, good for her. I thought I’d never get here, Sharon – I’m so sorry, things kept happening. I would never have forgiven myself if I had missed her,’ she said as she sipped water in the foyer of the city hotel near the hospital. She didn’t want to stay overnight at Mum’s and there was no second bedroom anyway. John had said he would be happy to take the sofa at Mum’s when he finally arrived, hopefully soon.
I watched her closely and picked my moment.
‘Remember that big red book I mentioned? It’s very revealing,’ I told her.
‘Ha! I bet it is!’ Her eyes lit up excitedly.
‘You were a creepy child who choked people with a skipping rope and stole the school tortoise.’ I laughed.
‘I simply set it free.’ Janet smiled broadly. ‘Can I see the diary?’
‘Sure, it’s in the car. I’m trying to make sense of it all myself. Mum hasn’t really spoken much since she told me to read it. Honestly, Janet, it’s funny, scary, and really bloody sad. What a hard, fucked-up life she had,’ I replied.
‘Yeah, I was there Sharon. You left just before she started to get really depressed and moody,’ she replied. A shadow of something I couldn’t quite make out passed over her face.
That shook me. Guilt sat in my stomach like a bad dinner. I’d been so caught up in my own life, in getting away. I should have come home more often from university; I shouldn’t have left Janet and John to shoulder that burden alone. What had happened to Mum?
Janet told me how she’d seemed to cut herself off, not going out as she used to, and her pals hadn’t come around as much. She’d stopped singing to Top of the Pops, stopped laughing as loud, and had become old really quickly. It was no surprise that we’d all left the tenements and created new lives for ourselves. We were all running away from something, but I’d never thought Mum might have been too.
I sat quietly, trying to recall what Senga had looked like on my visits back home in the eighties. I clearly hadn’t been paying enough attention.
We left the hotel and got into my car. We set off up through the Clydeside expressway to the hospital and Janet flicked through the diary as I drove. ‘There are pages missing,’ she said.
‘I know. I don’t know why, or where they are. I haven’t got to the end yet,’ I replied.
‘You haven’t read the whole thing yet? Why not?’ she asked, staring at me.
‘I’m just processing it all as I go,’ I said.
I parked and climbed the stairs, walking through the big sliding doors to the hospital with the weary confidence of someone who had been there too many times. Janet followed on behind, her clogs drumming a beat on the Victorian concrete stairs.
When we reached Mum’s ward, I said hello to Shirley at the nurses’ reception station. Janet was right behind me, holding my hand.
Janet looked visibly shocked to see how frail Mum was. I heard her gasp and she let out a wee sob, her hand now at her mouth. I had forgotten how disturbing it was seeing Senga like this. She was asleep, propped up between all the wires and machines. Janet and I sat on either side of her bed and took turns holding her hand as she slept. Janet stroked her face and we sat for a good while in silence. Then the doctor came in to give us an update: an upping of medication; more blood tests.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner, Mum,’ Janet said quietly after he’d gone. Her face was drained of colour and she looked like a wee girl sitting there in the plastic chair.
I left her with Mum and went off to get us some coffees, just to give her some alone time to gather herself.
When I came back, we drank the weak, tinny-tasting, lukewarm coffee and laughed as I told Janet and Mum about Steven and how he’s now into wild swimming and wearing cargo pants with crocs. Janet sighed dramatically, throwing her hands up as she rolled her eyes. ‘He’s a wanker. He always thought he was too good for you. You should shag someone else soon and enjoy your life.’
I giggled. ‘Shh, Janet, Mum will hear you.’
Senga moved under the covers, squeezed our hands and opened her eyes. ‘You’re here,’ she said with a smile to Janet. ‘Good to see you, my wee lassie.’ Her voice once more sounded dry and husky.
‘Yes, I’m here, Mammy. It’s so good to see your face,’ Janet said. She bent and kissed Mum’s head. ‘I was just giving our Sharon some advice about that idiot she married. I think she should sell the house, take the cash and go travelling; it’s all she ever wanted. She’s still young. She needs to make sure she takes lots of selfies and puts them up on Instagram,’ she added as she whipped out her vape and huffed out a cloud of blueberry-scented steam. ‘And she needs to write a diary, like you did.’
Senga laughed quietly and nodded.
‘Stop that now,’ said a passing nurse as she popped her head into Mum’s room and pointed at the vapour.
Janet slipped her vape between her knees. ‘I’m bringing my skipping rope back with me next time,’ she said to us after the nurse had gone.
Janet was quiet as we walked towards the hospital café for lunch. Then she turned to me and I could see she was crying.
‘She said hello to me, Sharon,’ Janet wept as she fumbled for her vape machine. ‘The specialist said that sometimes cancer patients get stronger and . . . ’
I passed her a tissue from my bag and she wiped under both eyes.
‘Janet, I know, and I hear you, but it’s like they get better before they get worse,’ I said to her gently. ‘I don’t want you getting your hopes up. Mum is not coming out of here to resume her bingo nights with Maggie and wee Betty. She’s comfortable, and that’s the best we can hope for.’
Janet nodded silently and we hugged. The emotional strain of watching Mum waiting to die, never quite making it out of the murky depths of her medication fog to have a decent chat or say goodbye, was exhausting and terrifying. How did you make up for lost time? How did people do this?
I left after lunch and Janet stayed with Mum for a few more hours. I had things to do.
1977
December
Got up at eight in the morning, let Laddie out. Then I heated up the soup from yesterday, put the oven on to heat the kitchen and felt all the clothes on the pulley. They were still damp. This house is freezing.
I tried to give wee John a lie-in. He’s been getting bullied at school again. I swear to fucking God, if anyone calls him a sissy once more I am going round to knock them out with the dog’s leash. Lots of boys are good at tap dancing.
John keeps asking to see his dad. I came home from the shops one teatime last week and Billy was there, decked out in his platform shoes and Rod Stewart T-shirt playing Action Man on my hall carpet. I hadn’t the heart to throw him out, wee John looked so happy. I just wish Billy was more consistent with his parenting – my heart is roasted with him. And who let him in? I want to know when he is going to turn up, not have him sneak in when my back is turned.
My Janet tried again to ‘accidentally’ strangle one of Bunty’s twins with her skipping rope, but got caught by the school monitor. That’s another lecture for me about Janet and her ‘macabre sense of self’.
The lassies met again last night and there’s a lot going on.
Sandra got a loan of my Leichner make-up to cover another new/old black eye. Jim doesn’t like her wearing make-up but she needs to go to the housing corporation about the complaints she got with her screaming at all hours and them fighting. They might get evicted – her neighbours are churchgoing old people who weren’t prepared for the hell that Jim unleashes on a regular basis. He’s been dragged out by the cops twice for selling stolen goods but his mum keeps bailing him out and he escapes jail every time it goes to court. Am hoping he serves a long sentence soon to give Sandra a break, as he’s convinced she has something wrong with her womb. If he finds out she’s using my birth control pills I’m sure he will be up here in a flash, kicking me about the street as well. Sandra is like a deranged hostage – one minute she’s showing us the lovely necklace Jim bought her, the next she’s hiding the purple bruises on her body.
She said he got her a Goblin Teasmade, it’s like an alarm clock with a kettle and cups that pours your tea two minutes before you wake up. That’s all she needs, boiling hot water right beside her pillow. A walk to the kitchen would at least give her a five-minute break from him.
Isa has a new boyfriend, Andrew, who works beside Davie Dunsmore on the coal vans. She doesn’t hang around with a broken heart for long. She’s much more resilient than I am, I think. She likes them tall, dark and handsome but when he’s scrubbed clean he’s the shiniest, blondest, bluest-eyed young man you ever saw. My mammy says he looks like one of the Hitler Youth, and all that’s missing is Lederhosen and a yodelling voice. Andrew plays the accordion, so that’ll cheer all the neighbours up when he whips that out for the party. It’s good to see Isa happy. That Tallahassee cowboy still doesn’t know it was her who went crazy on the base with paint thinners.
But the biggest news came from Bunty.
First, she got a letter from the twins’ dad, big Jackie MacNamara, in Spain. She says he owns a pub there and he wants to see his boys. Bunty said, ‘Eleven years it’s taken the bastard to want to see his sons, so he can run up my hump.’
We all agreed that she should tell the twins and let them see their daddy. There’s enough weans round here without a father in their life and he wasn’t a bad guy, just a big idiot who was good at singing Shirley Bassey songs. So hopefully in the New Year he’ll see the boys. Sharon told Bunty not to come across as a man-hater. She said she’s been reading all about an American feminist called Gloria Steinem and explained that women’s anger can frighten men. I jokingly told her to have a word with Sandra, but Sandra didn’t find that funny. Sharon said Jim is terrified of strong women and wants to ‘uphold the patriarchy’, whatever that means. She said he’s nothing but a wife-beater.
I can’t believe my Sharon used those words – ‘wife-beater’. You think you can protect your kids from all that is happening, but it must be obvious to everyone that Jim is going to be the death of Sandra. Sandra looked shocked as well. ‘Is that what you all think?’ she asked.
‘We’re worried to death about you,’ I said, truthfully.
Sharon is so grown-up, she will be applying to university one day, she says. I can’t imagine anyone in my family could make it to university, but she is bright enough. I hope she does leave here and gets to see the world. There must be more out there for the next generation. My heart is fit to burst with pride.
Bunty is also in big trouble. The Devlins have sussed that she’s been helping herself to her cousins’ loot and selling it on. She’s been stealing from the thieves and that’s a bold move for a wee woman, but they’ve also now beaten up her cousins as well. To be honest, I don’t care about her shitty cousins but it’s getting dangerous now. She’s worried it will escalate and they’ll end up at her door again, this time with weapons, and you don’t want the kids seeing that. What a fucking mess. A trip to see Jackie might be good to get her away.
I heard on the radio that another woman has been attacked in Leeds. So I switched the station over and had a dance to some Abba to try and take my mind off it.
CHAPTER 20
2019
Day thirteen
Sharon
After leaving Janet at the ward with Mum, I headed back to the flat to have a quick read of the diary, do some emails and find Janine’s care home.
God, Mum was talking about the Yorkshire Ripper! I remembered the day they finally caught him; we sat and watched it on the TV. I was seventeen, it was the year before I left to go to uni, and in the year or so before that, when Janet and I were starting to grow up, it had felt as though Mum became paranoid about our every move. Now, with a girl of my own, I know she must have been beside herself. Even after they caught him, she still seemed on edge, scared for us to go anywhere alone.
There had been a documentary about it all on the telly earlier in the year, I remembered watching it with Steven – or rather, I watched, while he sat and looked at his phone. Apparently, the police had questioned Sutcliffe nine times over five years, and they’d let him go each time. Whenever Mum’s diary mentioned the abuse Sandra suffered at the hands of her prick of a husband, I was in disbelief that he wasn’t locked up. But if they couldn’t put away that bloody psychopath it was no wonder Jim got away with what he did to Sandra. It felt as though we women lived our lives being dismissed, not listened to, ignored – even ones as loud and brash as my wee mum.
Janet would be packing up to fly back to London on the red eye tomorrow morning from Glasgow airport. She was coming back up again in a couple of days, and hopefully John will have his new passport by then and be on his way too.
Time to go see Janine. The home she was living in was about twenty minutes from Mum’s flat.
The nurse on duty looked surprised to see me. Apparently, Janine didn’t get many visitors now. When I explained about Senga, her face changed. ‘Oh, yes, Senga did come to visit Janine, but she hasn’t been for a while. I’m sorry to hear she’s poorly,’ she replied.
I was led down a corridor to a large lounge, and I spotted a woman with long white hair and a fantastic bone structure who must be Janine.
‘Janine, hen,’ said the nurse, ‘this is Sharon, she’s Senga’s daughter. Remember Senga?’
Janine looked up slowly.
‘She’s not so good at remembering things now,’ said the nurse. ‘Don’t worry if she doesn’t know who you are.’
‘Where’s Senga?’ Janine asked. ‘You’re not her but you look like her.’
‘I’m Sharon, her daughter. Mum isn’t very well, she’s in the Infirmary,’ I said, sitting down next to her. ‘She’s given me her diary to read and she mentions you,’ I added. ‘Do you remember her friends?’
Janine looked confused.
‘She’s written that she came up to visit you in Easterhouse a few times?’
Janine smiled suddenly. ‘Aye, she did. We sat on the veranda. She was a good friend, your mammy. She used to call it Ipanema; we pretended we were on the beach.’ She let out a quiet chuckle.
‘Do you remember Bunty and Isa and Sandra?’ I asked carefully.
Her face clouded again. ‘No, hen.’
I showed her the pictures I’d found in the diary. She looked confused. ‘I don’t know who they are. Where is Senga?’ she asked, looking worried.
‘I think you should probably leave her be now,’ said the nurse.
I got up again. ‘Senga sends you her love,’ I said sadly, and I hugged her gently.
I sat in the car outside and cried for what felt like the hundredth time since I got back to Glasgow, and it was a proper release. Then I opened the pages of the diary to hear Mum’s voice again, from when her life was all still ahead of her.
1978
New Year’s Day
Got up early yesterday, gutted the house out, washed the windows, smoked a few fags and got the steak pie started. It was New Year’s Eve!
Bunty, Philomena and Isa came round first, and we had a huge carry-out: wine, vodka and some cream soda off the Alpine van. We’d invited Sandra but Jim wouldn’t let her out and she has a sprained wrist in a plaster, said she fell on the ice. Bunty’s cousin says she saw Jim in La Trattoria, the fancy Italian restaurant near George Square, with a dark-haired older woman on a date. He was all over her like a dirty tom cat, and poor Sandra lying in bed as that bastard is out on the town. Her nice neighbour, Mrs Foy, said she would keep an eye on her.
