Poking Seaweed with a Stick and Running Away from the Smell (8 page)

19
Me, Maggie and Susan

Susan was in the same class as me and Maggie. She was dead brainy but she was skinny and ugly and Maggie, while a bit fat, was beautiful. Me, I wasn't brainy nor beautiful, and I never would be so long as Mum kept perming my hair with the leftover perming lotion she kept under the sink after she'd permed Auntie Annie's hair. All the good-looking boys fancied Maggie, the brainy ones fancied Susan and none of them fancied me. Whenever we got homework Susan would always get a gold star and me and Maggie, well, sometimes we got a star but it was never gold and mostly our pages were covered in red pen and Susan's, well, it was never covered in red pen, only stars, golden stars for the golden girl and after a while, that started to really get on me and Maggie's tits.

I was dead brilliant at Physical Education though. Maggie, she wasn't, 'cause she was fat, but she still came to the gym and put on her stretchy navy-blue school shorts and the boys circled around her like flies round shite, at least that's what Mum used to say. I could do the front splits without batting an eye, jump the high jump the highest, put the shot further than anybody ever had in the past and I was the only one,
ever
, to finish the egg-and-spoon race with the egg still on the spoon. I was brilliant at P.E. and nobody could take that away from me, not even Timothy Strachan, who, to be fair, could jump quite a distance in the long jump but nobody gave a fuck about him, 'cause he was poor and had to line up in the free-dinner queue at the school canteen. And even Susan, brainy fucking Susan, used to watch me in awe along with the rest of the class. I was the envy of my P.E. class and I loved it.

But nothing could take away the fact that Susan was the brainiest and each time she got her homework back from the teacher with another gold fucking star on it, she'd stare at that star on the page and her nostrils would flare in and out in self adoration.

So me and Maggie hatched a plan. The next day after P.E. we retreated to the changing room and pulled off our stretchy navy-blue shorts and black plimsolls. The whole school had to wear those black plimsolls with the stretchy panel in the front and Susan, well she was so fragile, so small, so
brainy
, she couldn't have the black school plimsolls like the rest of us. She had to have pretty pink slipperettes with the non-slip soles in case she hurt herself in the big nasty gymnasium. As if it wasn't bad enough she got special treatment in the classroom for being brainier than the rest of us, now she got special treatment in P.E. 'cause she was so fragile.

Maggie and I changed quickly out of our P.E. gear and into our school uniforms and our hearts were racing at the thought of our plan and the excitement made us shriek with laughter as we waited to get it under way. Eventually, Susan arrived, last back to the changing room as usual. Poor Susan, so fragile, so small, so brainy, that she had to take her time coming from the gymnasium lest she should hurt herself on the way. And as Susan busied herself getting out of her navy-blue stretchy shorts and pink slipperettes, Maggie and I pretended we weren't paying any attention to her at all and talked between ourselves about this and that, boys mostly, boys who fancied Maggie with her big tits and fat arse, and we racked our brains trying to come up with at least one boy who might fancy me in this lifetime, but none came to mind. And we watched Susan as she headed to the shower, then we made our move. We raced across to her open locker and there they were, those little pink fucking slipperettes with their non-slip soles and I looked at Maggie and Maggie looked at me.

‘Right, grab them,' I said in a loud whisper.

‘No,
you
grab them,' she loudly whispered back.

‘No,
you
grab them. It was your fuckin' idea,' I said, the whisper no longer a whisper.

‘No,
you
fuckin' grab them, we're in this together,' she almost shouted.

‘Keep your voice down, for Chrissake. Right, let's both of us grab one each at the same time, that way I can't blame you and you can't blame me!' I whispered back.

So we did. We put our right hands into the locker and Maggie took one pink slipperette by the toe and I took the other pink slipperette by the heel and we ran together screaming like banshees down the corridor and crashed through the swing doors, nearly taking them off their hinges and out into the playground and we kept on running and screeching all the way to the other side of the school to the garbage-bin compound and once we were there we stopped, each of us holding our pink slipperettes and laughing so hard that it hurt.

‘Right, what now?' I panted.

‘Let's throw them into that big bin there at the back, that way she'll
never
get them back,' Maggie said.

‘Aye, good idea,' I said. ‘Okay, I'll say one two three, then we'll throw them into the bin at the same time, then it's both our faults, right?' I said.

‘Aye, right,' Maggie said, and just as we were about to count to three, Maggie looked at me and her eyes twinkled with badness. ‘I've got an idea,' she said. ‘Before we put them in the bin, why don't we rub them in that dog shite that's over there in the corner? That way, even if she does find them, she'll never want them back again with dog shite all over them.'

Quietly, I didn't think the dog shite was such a good idea, but if I ever wanted to get a boyfriend I'd have to hang around with Maggie with her big tits and fat arse so I agreed with her and told her I thought it was a brilliant idea.

‘Okay, let's do it,' I said and a strange sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, the fun suddenly gone from it all. We made our way to that dog shite, each of us still holding our slipperettes, and we did what Maggie ­suggested. When we were done, we threw them into the big bin at the back and ran all the way back to the main school playground and neither of us was laughing anymore.

The plan that had seemed so much fun, so hilarious as we were hatching it, was no longer funny and I felt sick in my stomach. What harm had her slipperettes done us anyway? What harm did her braininess do us? It felt like a horrible mistake and when we saw her come out of the gym building carrying her little gym bag with tears in her eyes, I felt sick. She came up to us, 'cause we were her friends, and asked if we'd seen her slipperettes anywhere, that she'd lost them and if she went home without them her da would take the belt to her. I looked at her and wanted to cry with shame. So what if she was brainier than me? So what if her nostrils did flare in and out when she got her homework back from the teacher with another fucking gold star on it? So what if she was so fragile and her feet so small that she couldn't wear the black plimsolls like the rest of us?

Maggie thought the whole business was a hoot and she said later that if Susan's mother replaced the slipperettes then we should do the same next time we were in the gym. I laughed and told Maggie that was a brilliant idea but started to wonder if I was really that desperate to find a boyfriend. I was ashamed of myself and what I'd done and I vowed to myself right there and then that no matter how desperately I wanted a boyfriend, I'd never rub anybody else's pink slipperettes in dog shite again.

And Susan never found out what we'd done to her pink slipperettes and she went on getting the gold stars that made her nostrils flare and my best pal Maggie and me, well, we went on getting the red pen, and the terrible shame of the pink slipperettes would stay with us our whole lives long.

A few years later, just like I always knew she would, my best pal Maggie got herself a new best pal and her new best pal's name was Linda Hodgekiss. Linda had long, shiny chestnut hair and big tits too, just like Maggie, and one day in the playground they sang ‘You Are My Sunshine' and ‘Nothing Could Be Finer Than To Be In Carolina In The Morning' and that's when I went to the tuck shop and got myself a Curly Wurly.

I sat in the playground by myself at playtimes after that and I didn't care 'cause if I couldn't have Maggie as my best pal, then I didn't want anybody. And nobody asked me why Maggie wasn't my best pal anymore and why we weren't singing our songs together anymore and why we weren't going to each other's houses at lunchtime anymore. Nobody cared, 'cause Maggie and Linda just looked so right together, so shiny and chestnutty together, that everybody soon forgot that it was
me and Maggie
who played with the blue crayons that first day at school; that it was
me
who was Maggie's best pal first; that it was
me and Maggie
who sang ‘You are my sunshine' and ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning'; and that it was
me and Maggie
who were going to sing on a real stage one day and make so much money we'd have all the tinned ­macaroni and cheese that money could buy.

20
Buster's weekend by the sea

We had a caravan by the sea at Lendalfoot and my da used to let us go there sometimes with Mum on the weekends, so long as we'd collected all the milk money on the Friday night before. There was no sand there, just gravel and rocks and rock pools and crabs, and the waves would crash up hard against the rocks and if we were on the beach we'd have to run for cover. Mum bought us some fishing line once and we sat by the rock pools with our lines in the water forever and a day but we didn't catch anything and Mum said that didn't matter 'cause at least we were out getting the fresh air about our arses. The Irish Sea washed up dark-brown seaweed every day and if the sun came out the seaweed attracted millions of flies. Sometimes if we poked it with a stick a terrible smell would escape and we played a game of seeing who could run away from the smell the fastest.

We loved going to the caravan 'cause my da never came with us. It was brilliant. But even though he never came Mum would be sad knowing he was up to no good with all those filthy whores at the pub while we were down by the sea getting the fresh air about our arses.

My da had bought our caravan cheap and we felt like royalty that first weekend we went there. Our caravan was number 15b and we made a rock garden at the front of it and planted nasturtiums and pansies that Mum had bought from the garden centre. There wasn't any electricity and when the sun went down we used to light up the gas mantles and sing songs and sometimes we'd go for long walks in the dark with Mum. We'd look across the sea to Paddy's Milestone where a solitary light flashed every night and we'd wonder who would be standing there with a torch like that flashing away and Mum told us it wasn't a torch but a lighthouse and its flashing light warned sailors not to come too close.

The caravan site had a shop where you could buy stuff like crisps and milk and Fairy Liquid and it was owned by Doogie who owned the caravan site. We used to call him, ‘Doogie Woogie wi' the hairy nose' 'cause he had long hairs growing out of his nostrils and Mum said she wondered why Doogie's wife didn't just pluck the bloody hairs out or cut them off at least. One night after our dinner and once we'd sung all the songs we knew, we went to Doogie's shop and Mum bought us a packet of crisps each. I had pickled onion flavour 'cause they're my favourite and the four of us ran back to the caravan and huddled around the gas fire and ate them and Andrew invented a game. It was brilliant. You had to take your empty crisp bag and hold it up to the gas fire as close as you could get it and the heat from the fire would shrink the bag before your very eyes and whoever got their packet the smallest, so long as you could still read the writing, won the game. Andrew was the best at it 'cause he wasn't scared to burn his fingers, but I won the game once and you should have seen the size of the writing on my packet of pickled onion, it was tiny. That night Andrew got mad and said I was cheating, that his packet was the smallest, and Mum gave Andrew a crack on the arse and told him if he didn't sit down and behave himself then he could go outside and look at the flashing light on Paddy's Milestone for the rest of the night and we'd soon see how he liked that.

Once we took Buster with us to the caravan for the weekend and we had to be careful, 'cause Buster didn't like anybody else except us and we were always getting into trouble with the police at home 'cause he kept biting people who dared to come to our front door. We arrived at the caravan late that Friday night after we'd collected all the milk money in for my da. When we got up the next morning we took Buster to the sandy beach at the other end of the caravan park. The sandy beach was always deserted, except for this day, when there was another dog there. We knew this dog from the caravan park. Mum used to call him ‘Auld Man McGuiness' and he was old and had a white beard and walked around minding his own business all day long. When Buster saw him that day he raced straight across the beach, grabbed Auld Man McGuiness by the throat, and shook him like a rag doll right there in front of us. When Buster finally released his grip Auld Man McGuiness lay dead in front of us and his white beard was stained red with his own blood. Me and Andrew just stood there screaming and Izzy, well she ran up and grabbed Buster by his tartan collar and we all ran back to the caravan with Buster to tell Mum what had happened. When Mum heard she told us to get our belongings into the tartan holdall and fifteen minutes later we were in the car and hightailing it out of town and Mum kept looking in her rear-view mirror for flashing blue lights.

When we got home my da wanted to know why we were back so early and Mum told him Buster had been bad and that this time he'd killed a dog on the beach and my da was that happy he sent Mum to the butcher to get Buster the biggest bone that money could buy. He even let Buster sit up on the couch that night. My da loved Buster and years later when Buster died of old age, my da had an oil painting done of him and hung it on the wall above his leather armchair in the good room.

We didn't go back to the caravan at Lendalfoot for a long, long time after that and when finally we did, it was winter and the nasturtiums and the pansies had all died for the want of a drink and Mum said she'd get new ones from the garden centre and we'd plant them next time we came down.

And none of us went to that sandy beach again for fear of seeing Auld Man McGuinness still lying there dead. So we played on the gravely beach with its rock pools and crabs and as we played, the wind blew the rain horizontally and the Irish sea washed up its dark-brown seaweed, though none of us had the mind for poking it with a stick and running away from the smell.