Nothing left unsaid, p.17
Nothing Left Unsaid, page 17
‘That’s exactly it,’ I replied. ‘I’m still married, and I’m about to go back to my childhood home, which has stirred up all sorts of new emotions. I can’t think straight. Fuck, I am a bore, sorry. Please give me a takeaway coffee?’
‘Just call me when you can,’ Clyde said easily. ‘I really enjoyed being with you and I’d very much like to see you again some time. But there’s no rush. Tell me when you’re ready. I can wait.’
He passed me a coffee and gave me a wink. Amid the rush of emotions, I felt my stomach flip.
Janet had flown back to Glasgow, dropped off her bag at the hotel and taken a cab to meet us in Shettleston. John and Janet hugged tightly as she got out of the car.
‘Is this where the milk bottle factory used to be?’ she asked as we all stood outside Mum’s old house, pointing to a row of very modern six-to-a-block flats with double-glazed windows and blue pipes sectioning off the front gardens.
Our old street looked so different. We hardly recognised the place. ‘It looks so small,’ Janet said as she stood in our old close. The tenements were no longer as imposing as we remembered them – now blasted to a rosy pink, with security doors and buzzers for each tenant.
We used to run through these streets and all through the back courts, plastic sandals skidding on the Victorian flagstone, and we would jump over puddles and hide in the outside shared toilets that some tenements still had. There were derelict wash-houses out in the back courts in those days too, where women in the olden days boiled water to do their laundry. Quite a few wash-houses fell down with age and some kids died in the rubble. We were always warned to stay away from them, but of course the dark, dank wee buildings were such a draw to kids. We played houses in them and built fires where the boilers had been.
That was all long gone. The back courts were now smooth concrete and lit by tall, fancy lamps, with smart-looking bin shelters and a range of multi-coloured wheelie bins. No kids were out there playing now – there was a sign that said ‘No Ball Games’.
The ghosts of our childhood were all around us but we never saw anyone we knew. The pub was gone; the butcher’s, fruit shop and social club long gone too.
We took a photo of the three of us with the tenements behind us to show Mum when we got up to the hospital.
I shut my eyes and thought of the diary.
I could still see my mum, Isa, Bunty and Philomena leaving the pub and letting the door slam behind them as Laddie waited to walk them up the road. Sandra always went in the opposite direction. Vibrant young women with a scraggy dog barking as they clutched handbags and each other’s arms, singing ‘Blanket on the Ground’ as we hung from the bedroom window watching them, the occasional flare of a cigarette marking out their journey as they came up the street.
Memories.
We had found everyone but Sandra. Where was she, and why wasn’t anyone in touch with her any more? Maybe people didn’t like remembering what happened to their pals back then. As my mum would say, a little knowledge was a dangerous thing.
Sandra had been swimming in dangerous waters; had she survived?
1978
April
Sandra stayed over at mine last night – that bastard Jim has punched her legs black and blue. She ran through the streets in her housecoat and slippers and made it to mine after midnight, Laddie barking in hysteria as she fell through my door. The whole close near got woke up. Frank came up to see if we were all right. He was in his vest and looked like he’d just pulled on his trousers.
‘Has that bully bastard battered that lassie again?’ he asked me as I was trying to get Laddie back into the house.
It seems the whole world knows Jim beats Sandra, but nobody can do anything about it.
‘Let me get the polis,’ Frank said.
‘No! No . . . please don’t,’ Sandra pleaded. ‘He’ll kill me if I bring the police to his door – please, Frank, don’t.’
The old man stood his ground. ‘I will listen at my door downstairs, hen, and if he comes round here to look for you I’ll take a hammer to him,’ he said, puffing out his bony chest. The sight of him in his vest and old trousers, trying hard to look after a young woman who was beaten down, was heart-wrenching.
But Jim never came near.
‘The drinking has got worse and the money isn’t coming in – I think he’s upset the Devlins as well, so he takes it out on me.’ Sandra sat there rubbing her skinny legs.
‘Sandra, you need to get away from him, he’ll end up killing you, pal,’ I sobbed as I gave her a cold, damp cloth to soothe the bruises.
She came into bed with me, her frail body curled up in the foetal position like a small animal trying to make itself tiny to hide from prey. We lay there in the night, watching the orange streetlights make patterns on the ceiling. Listening to Radio Luxembourg on low playing Steely Dan and ELO, her breathing slowed down and she finally fell asleep. Poor wee soul. Sandra married for worse, but she still has the wedding photos up on her walls, like a constant reminder of how happy they should be.
Bunty, Philomena, Isa and I need to have a sit-down and figure out how to sort this. Word on the street is that things aren’t working for Jim because he tried to take a sneaky cut out of a deal. Old Tam Devlin is a violent bastard and he won’t take anyone messing him about. I’ll ask them to come round in the morning so we can talk to Sandra together. We need a plan.
CHAPTER 28
2019
Day eighteen
Sharon
John was sleeping soundly when I woke up, so I crept around the flat quietly. I got dressed with a notion to head to the coffee shop, but as I opened the door I got captured by Betty and Maggie.
‘How’s your mammy?’ Betty enquired as they stood like guards blocking me: immovable, unshakeable and waiting for answers. Handbags over their forearms like sturdy weapons, and headscarves tied tight under their chins in big bows.
‘She’s still hanging on, ladies, how are you two?’ I replied, trying to deflect the onslaught.
‘I have diabetes, and she’s got new tablets for her stomach,’ Betty said, pointing at Maggie without blinking through her owl-like glasses.
‘Has your husband been in contact? Jessie in the community centre tells me you’re having a fine time with the big laddie that runs the queer hawk café,’ Maggie butted in.
‘The queer hawk café?’ I said, annoyed at their snipe at Clyde’s coffee shop.
‘Aye, that café that sells cakes made of carrots and watery tea – the big fella who has all the hair.’ Betty mimed a long ponytail, which Clyde didn’t have. Maggie watched me like an aggressive, nosy stoat, waiting for a reply, lips pursed in anticipation.
I took a deep breath and stared them down.
‘Well, Mum is still with us, my soon-to-be-ex-husband is still away shagging a yoga teacher, me and Clyde have had sex in his flat and I think I might shag him again. Tell that to Jessie, whoever the hell she is. Anything else, ladies?’ I said this all with my head held high, deliberately trying to shock them.
Their faces broke into big smiles. Handbags were humped up their arms and they made to move off. ‘Good for you, hen, tell yer mammy we were asking for her,’ Betty said, and they set off out of the communal door.
I rang Elaine on the way to the café and she laughed out loud when I told her what I’d said. ‘Sounds like you’ve made your decision about Steven,’ she said. ‘Good on you. Change is afoot, for sure.’
1978
May
The weather was so good so I flung all the big windows open and did a spring clean. The whole place got gutted out, I mopped under all the beds and got the cupboards cleaned. Mrs Bradshaw is off to her house in Portugal, so I have a week off. Though I am still doing extra shifts cleaning the local pub, as the TV man is coming round and I am finally getting a new colour TV. It’s taken lots of saving, selling football cards in the social club with Philomena, and selling jeans for Bunty, but I’ve finally made the deposit and convinced the Radio Rentals man that I can afford the HP payments. Philomena, who has the most regular job, put her name down as guarantor in case I failed to make the weekly instalments.
I am so excited and this time it won’t have a meter on the back and the kids are so bloody happy. They can watch cartoons in colour, see the Banana Splits in all their glory, and Coronation Street is going to look like real life. The whole world is orange and brown with swirly bright carpets.
We are having a party to celebrate ‘The Telly’ arriving. Philomena, Janine and Bunty are coming over – we have sausage rolls and some vodka for a wee night in. Top of the Pops is on and that’s going to look amazing in full colour. Can you imagine? I feel like a proper toff. Next I will be getting a phone and running about like her from The Good Life, making prawn vol-au-vents and sherry for my guests!
Things are looking up, except Billy turned up like a bad penny this morning as I was beating the carpets out the back. He looked terrible, but that’s not my problem. Luckily the kids were at school as he stood there in dirty flared jeans, smelling of drink too early in the day.
‘What do you want, Billy?’ I asked him as I slammed the beater into the dusty carpet. Mrs Wilson was at her window, watching us like a hawk behind her net curtains.
The dust and dirt billowed around us and the sweat ran into my eyes with the physical exertion of attacking the thick pile with the flat beater. I don’t think it escaped his attention that I was thinking of battering him as I was going at it.
‘Do you need a hand?’ he asked. Standing there, his hands in his pockets, looking like a small boy waiting on a beating.
I stopped and really looked at him, and he shrank under my full glare. I heard he was out of work again; at least he’d stopped hanging around with the Devlins.
Where was that vibrant young man who’d held my sixteen-year-old pregnant belly and sung Beatles songs to me under the summer sun? What happened to him? I genuinely felt sorry for him. I loved him once, and he is the father of my babies.
‘I don’t need your help, Billy. Go and look after yourself, you’re a mess,’ I said. ‘Be a better man for Donna and sign those divorce papers for me.’
‘I’m sorry, Senga,’ he said and just walked away. I watched him go through the close and stared until he disappeared into the shadows. Tears were flooding down my face.
I wept buckets battering those rugs, I don’t know what came over me. Must’ve been my hormones but there was just something so final and sad seeing him looking so broken. But I can’t go back to having him in the kids’ lives. He will tear their wee hearts apart with his stupid behaviour. You don’t get this shite in a love song, do you?
Mrs Wilson came out the back close. She had a headscarf wrapped around her rollers and her wee pinny tied round her stout body. She was carrying a glass of water and as she put it in my hand and gave me a hanky for my face she took the carpet-beater out of my fist and had a go at the rug. I forgot how much she liked battering carpets.
She’s a good wee woman.
‘You did the right thing, hen, you’re just getting on your feet, you don’t need that man back in your life,’ she said breathlessly as she whacked the carpet. Two women getting all their sadness and anger out on a patterned rug. You don’t get that kind of therapy with a hoover.
Can’t wait to see my pals tonight. I wish Sandra was coming but she’s back home with Jim and there’s nothing we can say about that now. I just hope she won’t forget about the plan we’ve made.
CHAPTER 29
2019
Day nineteen
Sharon
Senga and her carpet-beater. I could still see it hanging behind the coal bunker door. There was a girl in my class who used to get beaten with one and we saw the red ring marks on her back when we went swimming. Senga, thank God, never really battered us – she threatened the Scholl’s to the legs often but rarely followed through on the threat. Her angry voice was enough to make us shudder with fear.
That felt like the end of Mum and Dad’s relationship too, finally. I knew I had reached the same point with Steven. There had to come a point when you just accepted you couldn’t see a way back.
And what was Sandra’s plan? I was desperate to read on.
Senga was looking the same today as she had yesterday, drifting in and out of consciousness. Bunty had been up each day since she arrived, sometimes with Philomena too, sitting with Mum, chatting away to her as if they were having a full-on conversation. So far, it was just Bunty’s wee animated head bobbing about, nattering away as Senga lay there with her eyes shut, far away in her own wee place. I sometimes thought (and hoped) that Mum’s mind was somewhere nice, somewhere she’d never been, like Hollywood or a tropical beach or a holiday that never involved rain, wind or a bingo stall. Still no sign of Isa; we were all just waiting for the old gang to be reunited.
‘I did another search for Sandra on Facebook yesterday,’ I said to Bunty today as she was leaving. She looked startled and hoisted her bag on her shoulder immediately, walking out into the corridor. I followed her out.
‘Have you now?’ she asked, turning to me.
‘Mum’s mentioned a plan in her diary, you know,’ I added. ‘Know anything about that plan, Bunty?’
She shook her head and started searching her pockets and making a fuss about looking for something. Classic distraction tactics. Then she said, ‘See you later, Senga,’ over my shoulder and headed off down the corridor, her wee feet moving fast as she pressed the lift button repeatedly. She would not turn around to see me standing there outside Mum’s room, watching her go.
Janet and John have been poring over the diary all week, but they haven’t read as much as me. ‘Did Davie Dunsmore really meet Elvis?’ John said – he was absolutely fixated on him.
‘I think Davie might have been lying,’ Janet replied. ‘He talked a load of shit. But we should look him up as well, while we’re here.’
Clyde texted me and suggested we go to his place for supper. I debated whether I should go. John was ironing his clean shirts and said, ‘If you don’t go, I will.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sharon, go,’ said Janet. ‘It’s not like you have a line of young men asking you to drop your fancy pants. If Mum’s diary has taught us anything at all, it’s to grab life. I’ll go and sit with Mum. Have a night out. We’ll be fine, won’t we, John?’
‘Wear something nice and shave your moustache,’ John added, laughing, shaking smart shirts and hooking them round Mum’s wooden coat-hangers.
I knew they were right. Clyde was a wonderful distraction and I did enjoy his company. But my own life was complicated enough without trying to figure out my feelings towards a new man. I didn’t even know if there were any feelings. I think I was just flattered. Louise would be horrified if she knew her middle-
class, middle-aged mum was shagging a younger guy she’d met in a Glasgow café whilst she was meant to be looking after her dying mother. But life seemed so bizarre just now. And afterwards, I could say with certainty that a fit young man throwing me about his bed was good therapy when I was grieving and in mental turmoil.
1978
May
Got up early and organised the ironing, let Laddie out for his pee and broke open a packet of Club Orange biscuits for the kids’ breakfast. Sharon is taking wee John out on her paper round to shown him the ropes. He wants a job when he gets older so this is a good way for him to start. Janet is taking a giant rocket model she made from Blue Peter to school for her science project and am worried it will fall apart the minute she lifts it. She went round all the doors for empty washing-up liquid bottles and the thing is fucking huge and covered in sticky glue. If she doesn’t win the school prize, she might actually fire the rocket at the class.
I am loving my colour telly – my eyes are square watching it now I don’t have to worry about putting coins in the back. World in Action was on last night about the poor men who came back from Vietnam and how the Americans turned their backs on them, then I watched an old film with Bette Davis in. Am getting too old for Top of the Pops now, full of kids bopping about to shite, and that weirdo Jimmy Savile staring at wee lassies gives me the creeps. I have switched over to The Old Grey Whistle Test and a British group called The Police and an American one called Blondie. I ended up watching until the wee black dot dissolved and they played the National Anthem.
I told my cousin Monica some more about this diary in my latest letter but I don’t think I want anyone else to see my personal thoughts and feelings and, to be honest, I can’t remember if I’ve been shitty about people so they all might go mad if they see it.
I was watching the news and they said another young woman has been found dead in the North of England and it looks like there might be a serial killer on the loose. What the fuck is wrong with men that they have to go out and hunt down women and kill them? Someone is hiding that man, and until people speak out he’ll never get caught. The cops don’t really take violence against women seriously until they start turning up dead in numbers. I hate the world sometimes.
Sandra has been round at mine a few times this week. She’s looking OK. She told me Jim has been away working on the cars again and the Devlins have let him back in on their deals, so fuck knows what trouble he will be in this time. Hope he gets the jail and gives us all peace this summer. She mentioned she’s started saving some money again and has found a brilliant hiding place. Philomena has taken Isa’s suitcase, the one Sharon borrowed for her trip, over to her place to fill with clothes and bits – just in case.
Went to the pub with the girls; Philomena and Bunty have started a club for a bus run to Saltcoats and it’s £2 a week. I love the bus runs. It’s for adults only – we went to Ayr last year and ended up drunk at the mini bingo on the seafront and Bunty got into a fight with a woman who said she was eyeing up her man. We know that was a lie because Bunty is rubbish at bingo and can’t look at two things at the same time. We won a giant stuffed toy panda – it was the size of a two-man tent and we could hardly find room for it on the bus home. Frightened the weans and Laddie half to death when they saw it and we ended up giving it to the church for the raffle.
