Spit Against the Wind Read online

  I kicked my shoes off and had some toast and tea, snuggling up to Kevin on the couch. He was great. He would never have taken part in anything like the stuff we saw. He would kill those guys if he knew. But I wondered what he would think of Ann Marie. She was different from us. She never really had any time for me and she just argued with Kevin all the time. Kevin put his arm around me and I felt safe. As long as he was here I would always be safe, I thought. Even if Mum and Dad were screaming and crying and Ann Marie was doing line-ups at Shaggy Island, everything would be fine as long as I had Kevin.

  I went to bed, to the room I shared with Ann Marie, and lay watching the bare lightbulb hanging from the rose. I picked at the wallpaper. I hoped Tony wouldn’t think bad of me after what he saw of my sister. I heard the front door open and could hear the muffled arguing of Dad’s questioning Ann Marie over where she’d been all evening. Then there was the sound of her footsteps coming up the stairs and I closed my eyes tight, pretending to be asleep.

  I heard the rustle of her clothes as she pulled them off and I peeked out of one eye as she sat on her bed taking off her pants and pulling on her nightdress over her head. Her breasts were plump. I dreaded the time I would get them and maybe had to do what she did. Her face was red and her eyes looked as though she had been crying. I didn’t know why, but I was filled with sorrow for her. I turned my face to the wall so that she wouldn’t hear my sobs. Then in the stillness as I held my breath I could hear her weeping into her pillow.

  *

  There were laws to be followed by every one of us. But in their homes, in the little empires they’d built, the men were the only law. They could slap their wives from the house out into the street and no other man would intervene. They could go straight from work to the pub and drink a whole week’s wages while wives and children waited at home to be fed, and nobody would dare step in and tell them they were wrong. It was the men who made the rules, and broke them as and when they pleased. No wife would dare embarrass her man in public, and if she did, she would take what was coming to her.

  The night it happened to Jamie’s mum left all of us angry, confused and scared. We would never forget it.

  Jamie’s dad Jake was a born loser, I had heard people say. Almost every week, if he had a job, he would go straight to the bookies and gamble all his wages. That in itself wasn’t too unusual, and my own dad did it from time to time, as did other people’s dads. It was quite acceptable once in a while. But Jake McCabe did it nearly all the time.

  The night it happened, we were playing football in the street near where Jamie lived when we heard the commotion. Jamie was the first to stop in his tracks when he heard his mother’s screams and his dad shouting.

  We all stopped and followed the noise. As we approached, I was horrified to see that Jake had his wife Mary by the hair and he was dragging her out of the gate of their house. She was screaming to leave her alone, her desperate cries filling the night air and making me feel sick with dread. When she saw Jamie running towards them she was pleading with Jake. The other three McCabe children were out in the street in their pyjamas, bawling for their mum.

  ‘For God’s sake leave me! Leave me! Look at the weans! Oh please!’ She screamed as he slapped her on the mouth with the back of his hand. Blood spurted from her lip.

  Jamie ran towards them. ‘Daddy, stop! Stop, Da! You’re hurtin’ her!’ he pleaded, trying to grab his dad’s arm.

  ‘Fuck off, you, or you’ll get it next!’ Jake spat, his eyes blazing and his face wet with sweat.

  Curtains twitched in the windows of homes all around the street and one or two people were at their doors, their arms folded, watching the sideshow. But nobody stopped Jake. It was his fight. I was filled with rage at them. Why couldn’t they help her? They might as well have been out there holding her down while Jake was punching her.

  I ran to my house in the next street and burst in the door to get my dad. He was just in from the pub and looked a bit drunk.

  ‘Quick, Dad, you’ll have to come, Jake’s killing Mary in the street! Hurry!’ I urged breathlessly.

  He looked at me gravely and took me by the shoulders to calm me down.

  ‘You sit down where you are, Kath, it’s not your business now, nor mine. It’s for Jake and Mary. Now sit down and let them get on with it.’

  I couldn’t understand. I sat down, trying to get my breath back.

  My mum came in from the kitchen drying her hands. ‘What’s happened, Martin? What happened to Jake and Mary?’

  It was fairly straightforward in Dad’s eyes. Mary had come into the public bar where all the men were, looking for her husband. Jake had been standing at the bar holding court with the lads. He wasn’t all that drunk, Dad said, but drunk enough to turn nasty. She demanded him to empty his pockets, shouting that the weans were starving and that there was a procession of debt collectors at their door. Jake stood and took it all, saying nothing. But Dad said his face grew very dark and everybody knew there would be trouble.

  Dad said: ‘Every man in the bar was shocked to the core by what Mary did. It isn’t done. In the public bar, for God’s sake. No woman in her right mind would walk into a man’s place like that and humiliate her husband.’

  Mum was angry.

  ‘It doesn’t matter a damn what she did, Martin. She doesn’t deserve a beating. You should go out there and stop it.’ She went and looked out of the window. ‘Look! Half the street’s standing watching and no bugger will help the poor woman. I’m going out there,’ she said, turning away from the window.

  ‘No you’re damn well not,’ Dad said, standing in front of Mum with his arms blocking her way. ‘Listen, Maggie, it’s not our fight. Aye, it’s a shame all right, but it’s McCabe’s business. I knew by the expression on his face as he finished his pint after Mary went out of the pub that she would be in for a right hiding. But it’s not our fight. We’ll mind ourselves and let them get on with it.’

  ‘Why can’t you stop him, Daddy?’ I protested.

  ‘Because it’s not our fight. Now you behave,’ he barked back, giving me that look that told me not to contradict him.

  I was distraught. Tony came to the door for me to tell me it had calmed down and that Jake had stopped hitting Mary but he wouldn’t let her back into the house. He said she was sitting on the steps crying, with blood on her face. He said Jamie had been pulled into the house by his dad and that he was trying not to cry in front of Tony and Dan.

  I slipped out of the house and went with him to see what was going on.

  Mary was sitting on the front steps of the house sobbing, with her head in her hands. Tony and me stood watching her, not knowing what to do. Her mouth was bleeding and she kept wiping it with her hand in between sobs. I took my sweatshirt off and gave it to her to clean her face. She was shivering.

  ‘Away home, hen! Go on, Kath, don’t stay here. I’m all right.’ She tried to compose herself.

  I knew it wasn’t my business as my dad said, but I knocked on the door anyway, and shouted through the letterbox.

  ‘Jake! Jake McCabe! Let her in. Let Mary in! Ya big bastard!’ I was shocked that I had actually come out with that. So was Tony. The door opened and Jake appeared, still sweating and angry. I backed away.

  ‘Fuck off, you, before I kick your arse up and down the street an’ all! Now fuck off!’ He slammed the door without so much as a glance at Mary.

  Mary sobbed even more. Tony and me backed away. I was distraught. I could hear the children wailing inside and I looked up at the bedroom window where Jamie was standing in tears, half hidden by the curtain.

  ‘C’mon, Kath, let’s go home.’ Tony pulled me by the arm.

  The talk the following day was that Jake wouldn’t let Mary in and she sat on the steps all night. He finally opened the door early in the morning and she went back inside. All along the rows of terraced houses on either side of the road, people must have been looking out of their windows from time to time, but they did nothing about it. It ma
de no sense.

  We saw Mary the next day with her black eye and her burst lip. She looked at me and tried to smile, but her eyes were sad and swollen.

  Jamie came out to play with us and we never mentioned the events of the night before. There were some things we just didn’t talk about.

  Chapter Three

  Today was the day. As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning the normal tiredness and groans of getting out of bed for school were absent. It was the school trip to Ayr and we’d been talking about it and waiting for it for months. It might not have been such a big deal to some of the kids in the class, but to the likes of me and others who hardly ever went on holiday, this was as close as we got. I couldn’t wait. It would be Tony’s first school trip and he was really excited. The sea at Ayr wouldn’t be as big as his ocean in America, but we told him how fantastic it was. We would bring our swimsuits and run into the sea as soon as we got there. It was going to be great.

  I could hear the rain battering on the windows of my bedroom, but I didn’t give up hope. We’d see. The sun would shine.

  Downstairs my dad was making my breakfast, which was always a bad sign. He must have upset Mum before she went to work, either that or he was planning something. He only ever got out of bed to make the breakfast when he was trying to make it up to Mum or else was scheming. His breakfasts were always terrible. He was skimpy with the milk and the cornflakes were almost dry, choking you as you tried to eat them. He never buttered the toast at the edges either, not like the way Mum made it, with lumps of butter melting into the bread. There was no use complaining, though, because he just harped on about how it was when he was fourteen and down the pit with a bottle of water and bread and dripping. So I didn’t say anything, just ate the stuff. Soon I would be out of here for a whole day at the seaside.

  My duffel bag was all packed up by Mum before she went to work. Everything was there, the swimsuit, the jumper in case it got cold, the sandwiches of poached egg which smelled a bit already, and an apple.

  ‘There’s your money on the mantelpiece, Kath,’ Dad said, handing me my anorak.

  I counted it. There was a ten-shilling note plus a half-crown. My heart sank. Last night when my mum was getting me organized for the trip I knew there were two half-crowns on the mantelpiece. Kevin had given me one and I had saved up one. I had been checking it all night, picking it up, feeling it, smelling it. I never had that kind of money except on a school trip. I knew there was a half-crown missing. Dad couldn’t look me in the face. He stood with his hands in his pockets looking shifty.

  ‘Right, c’mon then, you’re goin’ to be late. What’s the matter?’ He tried to look innocent. I had seen that look before. I wasn’t mad. I felt sorry for him because he knew I knew what he had done.

  ‘Nothin’,’ I said, trying to sound cheery. ‘OK, Dad, that’s me. I’ll get you and Mum a present …’ I breezed out of the door.

  When I looked back I could see him standing at the window, watching me go down the path and along the road. He looked sad. Like the way he looked when he had promised you something and then made up a story because he couldn’t deliver it. He always knew that I knew he was lying, but I pretended to believe him and that was just how it was.

  Tony was waiting outside his gate for me and my heart lifted when I saw him. He was beautiful in his light blue jumper and khaki trousers. His mother appeared at the door clutching a brown plastic raincoat and shouting, ‘Tony, Tony, you forgot your raincoat,’ which obviously he hadn’t.

  ‘I don’t want it, Mom, it’s going to be sunny.’ He looked up at the grey sky, the rain slapping his face.

  She rushed out anyway and handed it to him, but he defied her, folding it and pushing it into the haversack which he had slung over his shoulder. She walked away shaking her head.

  She was a pretty woman, not in the kind of way my mum was, but more in a painted way. No matter when I ever saw her, she always had lipstick on and her cheeks were always red as if someone had pinched them. She was a kind woman and I liked her a lot. When I used to go into the house with Tony, now that we were inseparable, she was always offering me a glass of milk and a biscuit. She fussed over Tony constantly and it was always great when there was just the three of us in the house. But when the Pole was in there was always a feeling that something was about to happen. Whenever he walked through the door she seemed to shrink somehow and look afraid. I could understand it because he was a very gruff man and could barely utter a grunt in my direction. But that didn’t bother me, as bullying old men like him were ten a penny around here. I wasn’t afraid of him at all and he knew it. I always looked him in the eye when he gave me a mean look and I could see it put him off. I wondered how Tony’s mum could ever have married him. He was older than her and was always miserable. Most people I knew who were married didn’t talk to each other very much, they just seemed to exist in the house for the children. My mum and dad talked and argued and fought, but sometimes I would see the way he looked at her and his eyes would be soft and I would know that he loved her a lot. But with the Pole and Tony’s mum there was none of that. I had overheard my parents talking one night, saying that she had a boyfriend she was involved with after she married the Pole, and that she only married him to give Tony some kind of security. Dad said that the Pole had been too miserable to marry anybody and had been on his own since he came to Scotland and set up his own business as a tailor. My mum said she wouldn’t be surprised if Tony’s mum had a boyfriend, and no wonder, living with that fat old man. My dad used to laugh because I think he knew who the man was. Men just knew things like that.

  By the time we got to the top of the hill we could see the school trip bus revving outside the school gate. The excitement was brilliant. We quickened our step. All the kids from our class and the class above us were on the bus and waving at the parents outside, some of whom were in tears. The rain was coming down in sheets and our hair was soaked by the time we got on the bus. Kids were pulling open windows and stuffing streamers outside which flapped briefly before becoming soggy in the rain and sticking to the wet windows.

  The driver in his shirt sleeves banged the horn three or four times and we were off, with Mrs Lannigan, the deputy headmistress, shouting, ‘Hip, hip …’ and us all cheering as loud as we could, ‘Hooray!’

  The dreaded Miss Grant sat at the front of the bus and only got up to do a roll-call to make sure nobody got lost when we got to Ayr. We sat and answered, ‘Here!’ in a grudging way when our names were called. We had never forgiven her for that day she went crazy in the class, beating everyone, especially Tony.

  Miss Lannigan was more fun. She looked a bit like an old man with her white hair pulled back in and some soft white hairs at the sides of her top lip, but she wasn’t bad like Miss Grant. She did slap the kids in her class sometimes and we used to see her belting kids with a leather strap, but she didn’t seem as dangerous somehow as Miss Grant.

  She was marching up and down the aisle of the bus, organizing a sing-song.

  ‘Right … We’ll start off with Our Lady’s favourite hymn, “The Sun Is Shining Brightly”, and if we sing it really loud then maybe Our Lady will hear us and make the sun come out, OK? One, two, three …’ She began to conduct us enthusiastically.

  We all sang till our hearts felt they would burst. ‘The sun is shining brightly, the trees are clothed with green, the beauteous bloom of flowers on every side is seen. The trees are gold and emerald and all the world is gay, for it is the month of Mary, the lovely month of May.’

  It was actually the end of June, but how we belted that hymn out. It felt great to sing it. You could see the trees and the flowers and the sun blazing down on the big happy world with Our Lady standing smiling benignly from heaven. Soon it would be sunny. We followed it up with ‘Sweet Heart of Jesus’, then a medley of songs from The Sound of Music. ‘My Favourite Things’, ‘Edelweiss’, ‘Doh a Deer’. The more we sang, the more Miss Lannigan began to look like Julie Andrews and we were the fam
ily Von Trapp off to the mountains to escape the Nazis and win the talent contest along the way.

  We sang and sang, but suddenly the air was filled with a familiar stench and one by one we all turned up our noses and the song faded out. All we could hear was the retching of Joanne McGuigan being sick through her hands and on to her skirt. Elizabeth Reilly was sitting next to her and leapt from her seat as Joanne lashed vomit again and again. I looked around the bus, feeling a bit sick myself. Suddenly others started vomiting. The smell was overpowering. Tony was sitting next to me, his face the colour of stone. Dan and Jamie were convulsed with laughter and pretending to be sick over each other. Miss Lannigan slapped them on the back of the head with a flick of her hand. Everybody was grabbing for windows to open, gasping for some clean air.

  The driver pulled in to the side of the road and brought up the bucket and sawdust from the front of the bus. He cleaned the place up, his face twisted as if he too was about to be sick.

  Finally it settled down and Miss Lannigan assured us we didn’t have far to go. We would soon be there. ‘Just keep looking out of the window for the water and see who’s first to spot it,’ she was shouting.

  The bus trundled on through the countryside and it felt as though we were going to the end of the earth. We all trained our eyes on the horizon, desperately looking for the sea. But we had only left the school half an hour before and we must have been miles away from the sea. But we all looked anyway, willing it to emerge from nowhere just as we willed the sun to shine. And so it did. Just as we arrived at Ayr, while half the bus was asleep, the sun poked its head out from behind the clouds and suddenly the day was bright and clear and beautiful, just like the hymn. It glistened on the water that stretched for miles and miles. ‘See?’ Miss Lannigan said proudly. ‘I told you Our Lady would make the sun shine.’ And we all nodded our heads in total belief. Our Lady could do absolutely anything.