Authors: Eleanor Thom
Wee Betsy, 1954
Monday is the best night of the week. The wireless stays in Granny’s room, but tonight we’ve shifted it cause she wants a bit of shush. Uncle Jock has heaved the old thing into his room and we’ll sit on the bed and listen together, just me and him. When Uncle Jock fiddles with the dials he gets creases in his forehead, but Jock’s wrinkles don’t stay there all the time. He can wipe them off with a hand, not like Granny with her mashed-tattie face.
‘Not a peep, pet,’ Uncle Jock says over the buzzing wireless. ‘Maybe it’ll nae work here.’
I‘m already on the bed waiting, and I fold my arms over my chest and kick a heel into the mattress. But he hasn’t stopped trying. He twiddles away and I watch the wee orange marker sweep left and right over the dial. It crosses names of places we only hear of in the news and at the picture palace: Paris, London and Rome. There’s a strange one, Bud’p’st, and near the middle is Scotland, where
Journey into Space
should start. But all that’s in the box tonight is a swarm of bees.
We’ve never missed a single episode. The music at the beginning makes my ears screech and I always hold my breath till the voices start. That’s what it’s like when you’re flying in a space machine. Everything’s fast and screaming loud, and the air is funny. Special words are used up there which I didn’t know before, but Uncle Jock explained all the hard bits. He knew what Mitch and Jet meant by ‘Over’ and ‘Check’ and ‘Earth Control’.
Now I know the right words, I sometimes play The Space
Game. I say things like ‘Hello, Lunar 142. Landing Control, please.’ Wee Rachel gets in a huff cause she can’t join in. But it’s her own fault. She can’t sit still long enough to listen to the wireless.
‘Aha!’ Uncle Jock says all of a sudden. The box makes a pop and then goes clear. He’s fixed it just in time. The posh voice is doing the introduction.
‘The BBC presents Jet Morgan in
Journeeey intoooo Space
.’
The music starts. I clap my hands for Jock. He kicks off his
shoes and jumps on the springy bed beside me so I bounce. We pull a coat over us and Uncle Jock reaches to turn the volume up, which makes the wireless crackle again but not too badly. There are mannys shouting in the Lane and we don’t want to hear their racket. I lean my head on his chest and he kisses me, pulls the coat higher over my shoulders. A space suit.
This is the best feeling in the world. It’s just us, our breathing, the smell of soot that’s in our hair and clothes and bed sheets. Our Mission Control. And them. The voices in the box that come from the future in the clean, cold sky.
Dawn
The music in the church was leaking from a keyboard set on Wurlitzer and an old lady swayed plumply at the piano stool. The minister was standing nearby, nodding in time. He couldn’t have met Shirley. She hadn’t set foot in a place of worship in years, Dawn was sure of that. Aside from family there were about twenty friends and neighbours at the funeral, which seemed a lot considering. No one would have paid attention to Dawn if it hadn’t been for Maeve.
They were sitting on the same pew as her sister and parents, the building impressing a strange silence on them after their five years apart and the stiff welcome acted out at the church door. Her mother kept peering over, a confused expression on her face as though she were searching for the right words to sum everything up, to find some kind of bond between them all. Later she might make them stand in a line for a sombre family photo. When would she next get the chance? It wasn’t like they spent Christmas together. A few times she whispered harshly to Dad, who was smiling in Maeve’s direction whenever he could catch her eye.
Well, then, Dad had said when he saw them arriving outside the church, and he’d bent down to speak to Maeve. Dae ye ken who I am?
Dawn had been about to whisper in Maeve’s ear that this was her grandpa, when he’d suddenly blurted, ‘Aren’t you a bonnie wee thing? Just like your mammy was as a bairn!’ Dawn had swallowed her words. Instead she’d kissed Maeve’s fine, shiny curls, breathed in the smell of the baby shampoo. No More Tears.
Now Maeve was scuffing the toes of her new red shoes into
the tiled floor. She’d pressed herself close to Dawn as they’d come in, wary of the strange wrinkled hands patting her shoulders and smoothing her hair. It was the first time she’d been inside a church and here she looked so small it was terrifying. So small a person could be too easily torn away. One single swipe of God, if there was such a thing.
Linda had been less friendly than Dad. She’d briefly placed her arms round Dawn but they’d touched only by accident where Dawn’s tense shoulder blades met Linda’s wrists and could not be avoided. The perfume on her sister’s neck was so strong and sweet it had stung Dawn’s nose. Breaking apart, Linda had waved a pen and held out a tiny card for a wreath, blank and waiting.
There was something insincere about writing messages to the dead, like the stories Dawn told as a girl, when sometimes she hadn’t known, even herself, if they were real.
Dawn was full of excuses, her mother used to say. She’d always found reasons to wander to places out of bounds, and in shops she’d been an embarrassment, putting things in her pockets and forgetting they were there. She’d always been off fighting somewhere, but of course it was the other kids who started it and Dawn never admitted any blame. Her stories had gone on for ever.
Years later Dawn heard herself telling another story, how she’d had a bit too much to drink and walked into a lamppost, given herself a black eye. And that time everyone had believed her, except for Shirley, who had always kept her doubts to herself.
Staring at the blue Biro poised on the wee card, in the end Dawn had settled for ‘Thank you for everything.’ She’d scribbled the words, trying to keep them neat and hold her shaking hands steady. Her sister had hovered, sniffing at Maeve, who’d been uncomfy in the heat, itching in a blouse with a tickly label, wriggling and stuffing her hands down the back of her skirt.
Linda looked nothing like Shirley Temple these days. She’d bleached her hair too many times and it had gone a strange shade, a minty paste, ironed paper-straight. She wore it long and Mother obviously liked it. When she’d come over to say hello to Dawn and Maeve, it was Linda she’d petted, stroking her hand over the flat, milked-out tresses.
Mother had said hello to Dawn, and then she’d looked down at her granddaughter. ‘And what’s
your
name?’ she’d said, pretending.
Maeve had hidden her face, and Mother turned to Linda with a whisper.
Maeve Dunn by name and ‘may’ve done’ by nature, I suspect, if she’s even a wee bit like her mammy was.
Linda only commented after they’d sat down in the church with Maeve between them.
How old’s she now? Four? Four and a half? And it’s true, Dawn. There’s only you in her. No clues there. Shirley said she didn’t know who the F.A.T.H.E.R. was. She spelt it out and raised an eyebrow, the skin beneath it eye-shadow white, gleaming against the fake tan.
Linda had been seeing Warren for a while after Dawn left. ‘Seeing him’ was how Shirley had put it. At the time Dawn hadn’t cared. But now the thought of them together floated in front of her eyes, flesh pink and cranberry red, their mouths black and open like the holy singers on the stained glass window. Dawn felt a stab. She didn’t know what to believe.
The minister faced the crowd and the keyboard music stopped. Everyone waited. He gave an introduction and pointed to a board with a list of hymns. He announced the first one. Hymn number 121.
Maeve tugged at Dawn’s clothes, and when Dawn didn’t look down she poked her hard in the belly.
One. Two! One. Two!
Shhh! Dawn quieted her, but Linda heard.
What’s one two? she whispered.
Angels.
Oooh! Like that one? Linda said, pointing to a painting, a milky white scene of Heaven and a glowing woman with long caramel curls. She looked like an advert for conditioner.
Maeve frowned.
Dawn had never heard about the angels before. She looked down at her daughter, who was whispering again.
One. Two. One. Two.
Angels, Linda said. That’s nice.
The minister had a hard job summing up Shirley’s life. All he had to go on were the dry facts Dad had offered up, Shirley’s simple, sensible tastes, which everyone knew about already. Dad’s memory didn’t seem up to much either. He couldn’t mind what his sister’s first job was (and even Dawn knew that), why she’d briefly gone to Aberdeen, or what she was like as a child. He probably didn’t know if Shirley had ever been to a rock and roll concert or had a boyfriend. But to be fair, it was hard to imagine Shirley being young, dressing up, doing the twist, falling in love. She’d never mentioned those things herself.
After a single sob at the mention of Shirley Temple, Linda squeezed out a few tears. She dabbed her eyeliner and snuffled into a tissue, then tucked her hair behind her ears. It didn’t seem right that Linda was the one to cry, but Dawn had always been so much the stronger one. She could sit through the weepiest of films with dry eyes. Warren had called her an Ice Queen, and sometimes she’d wondered if there was something wrong with her. A blockage. But here, next to her snivelling blonde sister, Dawn was pleased she could lift herself above grief, up to the rafters where the hymns echoed.
Dawn’s curls were black like Maeve’s, a natural jet black with just a few grey hairs these days. She was born with it, black hair reaching right down her neck. It was one of those stories Dad had always told the same way.
I said, God Almighty! That’s nae a babbie, that’s a black craw! That’s what I said the second I laid eyes on the bairn!
He joked about it.
Would you ken something about this, Wilma? Been seein some Italian feller? Naebody in my family’s got beetle-black hair like that!
Dad wasn’t mean, though. He’d never wanted to upset her. If she looked upset at him he’d pull her close and swing her through the air in his arms, telling her she was bonnie.
Every beetle’s bonnie in its daddy’s eyes, eh?
When Maeve was born with that same beetle-black hair, Dawn thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world. She’d been pleased to have her all to herself.
Linda looked over with watery eyes. She held out a clean tissue, as if being without one might have been holding Dawn back.
I could have lent you something from my wardrobe, Linda sniffed. You didn’t have to come like that.
Dawn was still wearing the black cardigan. Cigarettes in the left pocket, matches in the right. She sucked air through her teeth as if she’d just lit up. The day she starved into Linda’s size it’d be her own funeral. She looked past Linda to Dad. By the looks of things he’d barely sung a note or mumbled an ‘Amen’ despite Mother’s niggling elbow in his side. He was like Dawn. Since the service had started he’d sat rigid as the plain wooden cross he’d pinned his eyes on. Dawn couldn’t imagine him writing the words in the letter she’d kept. She’d not even known his handwriting. It was full of flourishes she would never have suspected, curly tails and loop-the-loops.
Mother sat on his other side, knitting needles poking out her handbag like antennae, and her hair-do set like crinkle-cut crisps. She’d given Dad’s hair a tidy with water before the service began. Dawn could see the wet grooves from the comb’s teeth and his scalp below, salmon pink beneath the silver.
It’s your own sister’s funeral, Dad. You have to look presentable. That’s what Mother would have told him. Or folk’ll talk.
Dawn had overheard her mother boasting before the service. There may not have been many people there, she’d said, but the
right ones
had showed up. That teacher from the West End school was there, the
West End
, mind, not the East End. And there was that manny who used to live over the road from Shirley. Everyone knew he’d inherited, and now he had a big second home in Spain. It
meant something
for such folk to turn up.
When the minister said ‘Let us pray’ for the second time, Dawn scooted along the pew and made quickly for the door. She could feel the eyes at her back and heard her mother’s long suck of disapproval, but she ignored it. Her fingers were secretly rolling over the papery smoothness of a cigarette in her pocket, and she didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know that Maeve was following behind her.
Outside it was pouring. Long blades of grass were bending with drops of rain which swelled and swirled. Dawn watched the torrents from just inside the church. She leant against the sturdy wooden doorframe and watched Maeve play at spinning and hopping. It was better to remember Shirley like this. She’d always enjoyed nature. And now she’d go into the ground herself, become part of the earth. Dawn had never believed in Heaven and Shirley had never spoken of it. Maeve was still too young to understand, but Dawn hoped she did believe in something. Perhaps not God, but something, at least for now, even if it was angels or some other silly idea.
Maeve was whispering.
One. Two. One. Two.
The new cemetery squelched and oozed under their feet, and there would likely be a puddle at the bottom of the grave. It was still spitting. Dawn followed behind Dad, who linked arms with Linda and Mother. She hung back, and it wasn’t till now that she
noticed Ally, her downstairs neighbour. He was casually dressed in jeans and a black jumper. The young woman by his side had come without a coat and he’d given her his. The sleeves covered her hands. Ally reached out to take her arm but she was too busy adjusting her umbrella and didn’t seem to notice. Dawn wanted to watch them for longer, but she had to keep hold of Maeve, who was desperate to jump in the muddy puddles. Dawn tried to distract her, showing her the gravestones.
The new cemetery was organised into a grid, long neat rows of wet granite slabs like cut-offs from kitchen worktop. Tough! Chip- and scratch-proof! They would never weather, crumble and rot, not like the bodies beneath them. Dawn read the names and inscriptions out loud, pointing to them. 1972, 1985, 1965. To Maeve that might have seemed a long time, but the graves in the old cemetery had been there much longer. Some were leaning over now and almost all had worn, the sandstone inscriptions rubbing gradually away to nothing. Dawn used to go there as a teenager to meet her pals and drink shandy from tall brown cans.