That night we shared the floor with Izzie, a docker, his wife and their three kids, and Joey the budgie, and of course Mr MacInnes. In the morning when I woke up Mr Tait, Izzie and the docker were gone and the rest were still sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.
I was so excited. Mr Tait had done what he promised! Again! He’d gone to Clydebank.
I was sure to have news that night.
Sandy, Dougie and bad George were all wearing identical balaclavas which Mrs Mags had finished knitting the night before. They were the colour of girders with four holes on the front (or the back if you’re daft like Dougie), two for the eyes, one for the nose, and a bigger one for the mouth. That’s twelve holes in total. Mrs Mags was at pains to point this out. I don’t think she likes knitting. The boys thought they were Romans and made swords from fallen branches which they sharpened with penknives and poked the girls, especially me, in fact in George’s case, most particularly me.
George surpassed himself that day. That means he beat himself at his own game. In other words in trying to be the biggest nuisance and the baddest boy in the whole school he was a great success, so much so that Miss Read and the other teacher had no time to put him out, or even to give him the belt, or even to take him into the other room, before he had run off anyway, shouting, ‘You’re all filthy, scummy wee bastards anyway, and you’re a stuck-up bitch,’ and other terrible things like that. I was thrilled and horrified all at once, so much so I thought I might embarrass myself and be sick right there in the classroom next to my new friend, Senga, who has a back-to-front name.
Miss Read was mostly calm, relieved I think, when he ran off. Her thick round glasses leapt on and off her nose, into and out of her hand to begin with. The other teacher had a face like iron, as if she was wearing one of Mrs Mags’s balaclavas too, the skin all tight and pulled across her large bulbous nose.
Then, at the end of the day, Dougie was handed a sealed envelope addressed to Mr Connor (George and Dougie’s dad) so we all hid behind the hedge in the turnip field by the ruined house and Sandy, being the oldest, tried to ease the letter out. But the rain made the envelope soft and it ripped anyway. He read it silently to himself, nodding like a grandfather, his lips forming the words, then the envelope landed in the mud, same as me two days earlier.
‘Well?’ said Dougie. ‘Well? What does it say?’
‘He’s been expelled,’ said Sandy, retrieving the envelope.
‘Expelled?’ said Dougie.
Expelled? What did that mean? Was that something to do with witches? Were Miss Read and the other teacher witches?
‘Expelled?’ said Dougie again and he asked my question for me. ‘What does that mean?’
Just then we heard the bus coming through the trees by the school and ran out in time to watch it hurtle by without us. The boys swore and pulled their balaclavas over their faces. I yanked my straw hat down over my ears, and we tramped back to Carbeth. We wondered where George might have run to. Clydebank probably, up and over the hill, in my opinion, just like I wished I had done.
The bus was pulling away from the Halfway House pub when we stumbled panting into the crowd it’d left behind. For every human being there seemed to be the same bulk again in baggage. I counted four budgie cages, two cats in orange boxes, two small cupboards, one with drawers, three rolled-up mattresses, countless bundles that rattled with pots and pans and broken crockery, a couple of chairs and five pot plants. Several people were carrying small piles of bricks tied up with rope, and a stack of pale wood with ‘John Brown’ stamped on it stood next to another that said ‘Singer’.
I scanned the heads hurriedly and found no Mr Tait, no Mavis and no Rosie. Perhaps this bus was too early for Mr Tait. He had a lot to do.
Mr Tait thought my poor mum wouldn’t be out of hospital for another week or two, which would be enough time for us to build a hut, as long as it all went to plan. Mrs Wilson, who used to be a nurse, said she thought my mum would be in for much longer. Mrs Mags said we should wait and see.
There was no sign of bad George either but Mrs Mags was there to help out, so we all helped out too. It was unfortunate, after what happened to Joey, that I was handed a budgie cage to carry with not just one budgie but two inside it hanging on for dear life and unfortunate too that their owner lived at the top of the hill near Mrs Wilson’s hut and the other rope swing. The climb certainly heated me up.
I gave the swing a professional once-over, now that I was an expert, and watched with green envy as five little kids swept across the path to it without so much as entering their hut. Through the window I saw their mum and dad standing by the curtains in a hug. It was like the hug my mum and dad had hugged when he went away just after we moved to Clydebank. They didn’t do that sort of hugging very often and only when they thought you weren’t looking. I left the budgie cage at the front door.
Instead of going straight back down to Mrs Mags’s hut I headed into the woods, beneath the pine trees, behind the big beech tree where the other rope swing was, the main one. I could hear other kids there, and if I was careful I could see them too. There was a log of wood lying there in the grass, damp and slippy and hard to move. I rolled it over as best I could, cold earth slipping up my wrists. I wanted to sit on it. I wanted to be close to the other kids but alone, alone but not lonely.
The thick pines deadened most of the sound (like being wrapped in a blanket) but even so I heard Mrs Mags and bad George shouting.
‘Where is Lenny anyway?’ shouted Mrs Mags, clear as a bell across the field.
‘How should I know where she is?’ said bad George. ‘Who gives a damn, anyway?’
‘Don’t you swear at me! Just you wait till your father gets here!’
‘Hah! If he ever does.’
‘Come back here this minute!’ she said.
Bad George swooped past the beech tree. For a second I thought he was going to dive into the trees and find me. I kept as still as I could until he set off along the path towards the two budgies’ hut and the other rope swing.
‘Lenny!’ It was Sandy, calling for me.
‘Lenny!’ shouted Mrs Mags.
And then I couldn’t hear anyone, only ‘Wuh-woo-woo-wuh-wuh!’ somewhere in the branches above me, and a reply from somewhere far off. ‘Wuh-woo-woo-wuh-wuh!’ so soft and peaceful, two friends calling to each other through the trees.
‘Wuh-woo-woo-wuh-wuh!’ I whispered. ‘Wuh-woo-woo-wuh-wuh!’
I closed my eyes the better to listen. I don’t know how long I sat there.
Then something in the bushes made me jump, and suddenly George was standing by the pines near where I was hiding. He stared at me through pinched little eyes, as if he didn’t want to let anything either in or out. His mouth was small and clamped shut. I was scared of what he might do. Then from down below the horn on a bus honked twice, which usually meant ‘goodbye’. George made a face and left without a word, so I breathed a sigh of relief and I too started wandering down the hill towards the road.
‘Beep! Beep!’ I whispered.