Closed Doors (14 page)

This is the best part of Christmas Day for me and I stay out until it is dark and with Dirty Alice of all people, but we get puffed out throwing snowballs and end up sitting in the snow together. No one goes to the Woody much these days, not since what happened to Miss Connor, and so we play on the hill instead.

‘How is Miss Connor?’ I ask.

‘She’s fine. They’re getting married the weekend before Valentine’s Day now, not the summer, did I tell you?’ says Alice as if she should have told me because we’re great big friends or something. Alice looks happy about the wedding and I feel sort of pleased for her.

‘Are you sad for what happened to her, Alice?’ I say.

She doesn’t say anything for a minute. She knows what I am talking about and is wondering if she wants to discuss it with her arch-enemy.

‘I’m sad the man that hurt her won’t be punished, so is my da,’ says Dirty Alice.

She lies down in the snow and looks to the sky. I think she’s going to make a snow angel but she doesn’t. Dirty Alice would never make a snow angel. She just lies there and stares at the sky.

‘It’s very black, isn’t it?’ she says.

‘What are you talking about? There’s a ton of stars up there.’ I lie down next to her, thinking maybe I’ll make a snow angel.

She turns to face me and says, ‘I’m not dirty, Michael. I know you say that about me but it’s not true, and when you say it, it makes me hate you more than I do already, which is a big lot.’

I am as red as can be. It’s OK to call people names behind their back, but to be caught by the person and have them say something to you about it is a very embarrassing thing and so I try to think of something nice to say without being too sorry because it’s Dirty Alice after all and I don’t like her that much.

‘You used to be dirty, all that tangled hair and the filthy clothes you used to wear,’ I say.

‘Things are different now. We have Louisa to help us with the laundry and the house. Da is a new man because of her. That’s what Luke says anyway. We love her,’ says Alice.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say but not for calling Alice
Dirty Alice
, but for kind Miss Connor, who saved Alice’s family and who was raped because of my family and our ugly secret.

Alice gets comfy in the snow and looks to the stars. She’s wearing a purple jacket and a blue hat. Her mittens are red and her face is pink and I can see two little ponytails one on each side of her head. She isn’t even a little bit dirty. That’s when I feel sorry for calling Alice names but I don’t want to say sorry. I can’t. She’s still stupid, but for no reason at all I can’t stop looking at her cheeks. They’re so pink and warm and without even thinking about it I kiss her and Alice kisses me back, like a little poke on the face, and it feels strange and so we start throwing snow at each other until we are tumbling on top of one another. Alice is strong and pins me to the ground but I am stronger and roll around until she is pinned to the ground. I think she’s going to beat me for sure now but she doesn’t. She kisses me full on the mouth and not like Marianne, but in a nice way. She is gentle and I feel I could go at it for a long time. She tastes like Fizzy Lizzies. I don’t even feel Mr McFadden throwing me to the ground. It’s all a big surprise.

‘Da!’ screams Alice.

Mr McFadden is tearing at my jacket. I don’t even see my da pulling him away from me and then fighting Mr McFadden. Everyone is crying around me. Miss Connor, Alice, and I think Luke. Granny is dragging me away and all because I kissed Alice McFadden, who is holding tight to Miss Connor and breaking her heart. I should never have kissed her. It was a bad idea. Alice is always getting me into trouble.

When we get home Granny says she is disappointed in me.

‘You’re too young to be messing with girls at your age,’ says Granny.

Da comes rushing in.

‘Are you all right, son?’ says Da while at the same time squeezing his face in rage when he sees my torn jacket. ‘I should kill the bastard for this,’ says Da and goes for his coat.

‘You already had a go,’ says Granny. ‘Enough is enough. What the hell do you think you were doing, Michael?’

I am too ashamed to say ‘kissing’ and so I shrug my shoulders.

Ma, who never went outside and just watched from the window, says, ‘You only kiss girls who want to be kissed. You’re NOT to be rolling them onto the dirt and making them.’ She bangs the table with her fists.

‘That’s not what happened,’ I cry. ‘Alice and me were playing a game. She wanted me to kiss her.’

‘For God’s sake. He’s your son, Rosemary, and he was kissing his sweetheart and you think . . . what do you think, Rosemary?’ asks Da.

‘Alice and me were just fooling about, Ma. There was nothing in it, really.’

‘Shame on you,’ says Da to Ma.

Ma has thought something bad about me and then she thinks something bad about herself.

‘Oh, Brian,’ she cries.

Da goes to Ma’s side and takes her hands. They just sit there holding hands. Ma feels sorry, I can see it in her face.

Granny and I go to the sitting room and sit on the sofa. Granny looks tired. She has her arm around me.

‘I meant what I said, Michael, you’re too young to be kissing girls,’ she says. ‘But if you find you can’t stop yourself then you need to talk to your father, understand?’

I nod, but I have no idea what she is talking about.

PATRICK THOMPSON IS
in intensive care.

‘They kicked the shit out of him. He’s in Inverclyde now, a broken breastplate,’ says Da.

Ma grabs for Frankie’s lead. Frankie gets all excited, just the noise of the lead makes Frankie mental. He loves to go for walks.

‘Taking the dog out,’ Ma says.

Granny and Da exchange looks. Ma clips the door behind her. I finish my toast. I think of going with her but I want to hear more about Patrick Thompson.

‘No one saw a thing,’ says Da to Granny.

Granny shakes her head and crosses herself.

It’s a terrible thing to keep crossing yourself, I think. It’s like forgiving yourself every minute of the day for things you can’t really forgive yourself for, as if you’re saying that you’re still a good person even though you know you’re telling lies and keeping secrets you shouldn’t.

Da doesn’t cross himself; he lowers his eyes to his paper and gives it a shuffle. There is nothing we can do for Patrick Thompson but there is something we could have done and didn’t.

Everyone knows Ma would leave us if we didn’t keep this lie for her. We have seen her packed suitcase before and it frightened the life out of us all. We couldn’t be without Ma. We would be lost without her. Da would be lost without her. We love Ma.

I think of Alice all the time and the kiss in the snow, and then I think of her da tearing at my jacket, but he’s very sorry about that and Mr McFadden comes to the door with a leather football for me. He is actually weeping. Granny has to give him a cup of tea. Ma hides upstairs. She can’t face Mr McFadden or Louisa Connor or anything to do with their family. Mr McFadden tells Da and Granny the last few months have been hard on the family and when he saw me with Alice something inside him snapped.

‘They’re too young to be kissing,’ says Mr McFadden.

‘It’s a scandal is what it is,’ says Granny. ‘Too much TV.’

Da doesn’t say anything, he just bites his lip, because when he first kissed Ma she was only twelve and he was fourteen. They have loved each other that long.

Every day I feel like a big horrible liar and it’s been like that for a long time now. Whenever I see Miss Connor waving through her window or Luke or Alice I feel sick in my stomach. My hands go sweaty and I feel like I might have a heart attack or something. I don’t even care about my keepy-uppies any more, although it was nice of Mr McFadden to get me the cool new ball. It is so hard to concentrate on anything these days and I dread the talent show. Marianne announces it will be on New Year’s Eve and everyone thinks this is a brilliant idea except me because I know I will be rubbish and it will be freezing outside.

Ma says it will be fun to go to the talent show and seeing Ma cheered about it makes me think there might be something wrong with her. I don’t think she understands she will have to talk to Miss Connor at the concert and say Happy New Year to her and do the same to Mr McFadden, who might kiss her on the cheek. She might also have to clap for Alice when she sings her songs and have to be shocked and surprised when Luke the Magician does his amazing trickery. At the moment she hides from them all, but she can’t hide at the talent show. She will have eyes to look through and words to find. Right now she has none and so I dread the talent show and I wonder if my ma’s mind will get sick again. I hope Da never leaves her side.

With all the sadness that’s been on the scheme Skinny Rab decides we will also have fireworks and sausages in buttery rolls. It is a great excitement and Marianne can hardly breathe for the joy of it. Her da is her da again. On New Year’s Eve her ma makes sausages and passes them around and everyone eats them and laughs and acts like Tricia Law never existed at all.

Marianne has gathered everyone around her for the talent show, even me, who was banned from having anything to do with it. No one reminds her, not even Alice, who hasn’t looked at me since I kissed her in the snow, though I did see flaky sneak peeks every now and then. I wonder if she would like to kiss me again.

The talent show costs five pence and all proceeds will be given to the Salvation Army instead of the kids because the grown-ups thought it was a better idea. I think it is a rubbish idea. Anyway the Salvation Army agrees to come to our show and give a little service and play God songs with their brass band. This annoys Granny, who thinks the Salvation Army is not a real religion and the priest should be asked to give a service instead. Marianne’s ma agrees with Granny but for the sake of the kids they say nothing and pay their five pence.

Luckily the Salvation Army don’t give a service, they just turn up and say ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank you’ and go straight to playing their music. Everyone is glad. They play ‘Amazing Grace’, something that makes Granny cry, and then ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which is fun because we all hold our hands together and make a kind of wave. Then they collect the five pences for the show and take a seat like everyone else.

It’s a big turnout. People bring their own chairs to sit on and blankets to keep themselves warm. The street lights shine up the pretend stage, which is really a concrete car park, and Marianne begins with ‘Ave Maria’. She makes all the old ladies weep. Then she does the Highland fling with Tracey, Fiona and Alice. There is a lot of clapping going on and when they finish everyone stands up and claps some more, which is no surprise. Marianne is an award-winning dancer and was always going to amaze everyone. Marianne sings more songs and you would think it was ‘The Marianne Show’, but she does sing a song with Alice and it’s quite nice, Alice has a lovely voice too, but then there is more dancing and it gets a bit boring. Fiona and Tracey hardly do anything except dress up as Japanese girls and sing about a boy they really love. Luke does a magic show and it is quite good, he uses cups and things and tries to trick the grown-ups with pebbles and eggs; mostly I’m glad he didn’t play chess because that would have bored me to death. Sarah from Robertson Drive does jokes that aren’t funny but everyone rolls about the floor. Christian from Eaglesham Road plays ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ on a trumpet and the audience raves, even though he is off tune. I hate this trumpet talent. Paul and Fat Ralph dress up as women and dance about like a couple of fools. I am embarrassed for them, but the adults love it. Then Auld Ian from the top terrace, who is about a thousand years old and not supposed to be in a kids’ talent show, recites a Robert Burns poem about a red rose and again all the women cry all over the place.

When it is my turn I am nervous and shaking a little, but I know I am the best at keepy-uppies and will have the greatest talent in the show. But the first time I put the ball on my knee it falls to the ground. I look to my da and he gives me the thumbs up. I try again, but I only manage two. It is a pure humiliation. Marianne and Paul snigger and Alice and Fat Ralph look sad for me. I look to Ma and see her picking at her nails. She is doing anything she can to stop from looking up, from seeing faces, from seeing Miss Connor. She doesn’t even care it’s my turn. I don’t know why she is there at all. Anyway I get to twenty and everyone shouts and whoops like I did a hundred or something when I haven’t. I am gutted. I know I have done rubbish and so I don’t know why they are clapping at all. I look around then and see men and women with beer cans and wine bottles in their hands and that’s when I realise everyone is drunk or most people. I see Miss Connor smiling and waving at me with a huge smile when the truth is she probably hates to smile. Next to her Mr McFadden is tipping beer into his mouth and cheering with a sausage roll in his hand when it was only a week before he tore at my jacket for kissing his daughter. They’re faking it. Everyone is pretending they like our talents when the truth is they just want to get drunk for New Year’s and probably think we’re all shite. Fuck them all, I think.

‘Are you all right there, Rosemary?’ says Miss Connor, who positions herself right in front of Ma. Ma never saw it coming and takes a bit of a while before saying, ‘I’m good, Louisa.’

‘Haven’t seen you in a while. You look well,’ says Miss Connor.

‘So do you,’ says Ma.

‘Weren’t the kids wonderful?’ says Miss Connor.

Ma goes blank and says nothing for a minute. I think of interrupting and filling in the gap, but then Ma says, ‘I’m sorry, Louisa, I need the bathroom. Was nice to see you.’

Ma rushes to the bathroom even though I know she doesn’t need to go at all and is running from Miss Connor.

‘Is everything all right?’ whispers Miss Connor to me.

I shrug my shoulders and run to where Da is. He is helping light up the fireworks until they start to whistle and hit the sky. Faces light up and everyone raises their tins and bottles to the stars. All the kids are given sparklers and told to be careful. I love the sparklers, I can’t help it, they make me feel happier, and so I decide to tell my own lies. I tell Marianne she will be on
Top of the Pops
one day. I tell Paul and Ralph they were hilarious in lipstick and I ask Luke to show me his magic tricks, even though it’s hard to follow. I don’t tell Alice anything. I will not lie to Alice even though she tells me I am the best at keepy-uppies in the world.