By the time Mrs Mags arrived back with Sandy and Dougie, my mum and I had fallen asleep where we sat. We were woken by the boys’ laughter.
‘You boys are in no position to laugh!’ roared Mrs Mags. ‘Sorry to waken you, Mrs Gillespie.’
They were as filthy as boys ever were, except after the bombing, and had clearly had an exciting morning. Sandy’s jumper was thick with mud from cuff to shoulder as if he’d stuck his hand down a rabbit hole and their boots squelched.
‘Off with the boots!’ shouted Mrs Mags. And off the boots came, along with the trousers and the jumpers. I didn’t know where to look and neither did my mum. The door slammed behind us but the row was probably heard at the other end of the field. After a while they reappeared, clean in old clothes they’d outgrown and were too big for, and Mrs Mags holding them both by the wrist. She tramped off up the hill with them towards Mrs Connor’s hut. A heavy silence fell.
My mum needed a wee.
Such a small thing to need, and obviously I knew she did wee because I’d seen her at home with the pot under the bed when it was too dark and cold to go to the cludgie on the stairs, but this was different. I’d never had to help her do it before, and cludgies were built for one. I had to be her modesty screen, to prop her up and to undress her all at the same time so that by the time she finally landed on the seat she couldn’t look at me. I closed the door for her and felt all the grit in me sink back down into my shoes. And she was right about the crutches: straight through the grass they went, sinking three inches down in some places and refusing to come out. By the time we were back at the front step we were both exhausted, and she was very quiet.
Then Mrs Wilson came. She looked harmless enough in her blue, white and grey Aran knit and her pale grey-blue coat, but looks can often deceive, as my gran often says, and although I hadn’t been right when I thought she was a witch, I wasn’t entirely wrong either. I know she came to help and she was just what my mum needed and I know it had to be done but I couldn’t bear it, not for a second. After all, I’d spent so much time making sure the blanket was all the way down to the ground.
Anyway, she helped my mum indoors so she could ‘tidy her up’. I brought Mrs Mags’s chair in and Mum sat on it with the blanket over her knees by the window for light. Mrs Wilson closed the door. I stoked up the fire and boiled some water. I even helped undo the bandage round her head, holding the safety pin between my teeth while I did it, like Auntie May does with the baby’s nappy pin.
‘Off you go, Lenny,’ my mum had said. ‘You don’t need to be here for this.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Wilson. ‘She needs to learn how to do this so she can do it herself when I’m not here. It’s not difficult.’
And when the bandage fell down around her neck I saw that on one side of her head the hair was greasy and flat like it hadn’t been washed in weeks, and the other side had no hair at all. None whatsoever, only what looked like hair but was actually a line of black stitches with the ends of the thread sticking up. The skin beneath it was rose pink and the rest was white like window putty but with stubble like my dad’s chin.
The safety pin fell on the floor. My head felt hot like it might burst and I swear I could hear my own pulse, even see it in the room which suddenly seemed very bright. I noticed a jam jar that had fallen behind the stove and the spider that was hanging from its lip, and the boys’ muddy boots down there too, and when I looked back at my mum’s head the wound was still there, bulging round the thread.
‘That’s a beezer of a cut,’ said Mrs Wilson, ‘but it looks quite clean. Lenny, pass me the first aid tin will you please. Lenny?’
But I was backing away towards the door. The bench jabbed into my leg and I fumbled for the door handle until I had it and had turned it and opened the door and fled, flinging it shut behind me. And I ran round the back of the hut and hid behind a bush, but after a couple of minutes I couldn’t keep still and I thought I ought to go back in. Then I heard them calling me so I changed my mind and ran through the trees and up behind all the other huts and the rope swing where there were loads of kids and through the pine trees into my clearing, and then I sicked up the tea and bread and honey that I’d had earlier on and I thought I’d never stop.
Because I knew what would be happening next in Mrs Mags’s hut.
I knew they’d be pulling back the blanket and rolling up the dungarees and . . . and I was sick all over again just at the thought of it, except there was nothing left in my tummy to be sick with. And having felt so very hot at first, I began to feel cold as if it wasn’t a sunny day at all but a cold winter one with icicles.
I had one of Mr Tait’s clean white handkerchiefs in my pocket so I took it out and wiped my mouth and bundled it up and stuffed it back in again, then went and sat down on the log of wood that I’d found when hiding there before and I rocked myself and cried and hummed and tried not to think about what was underneath the bandage beneath the dungarees.
I plucked at the shoe in my pocket, which for some reason I still hadn’t shown to my mum, and I laid it on my lap and had a good look. I know this seems odd but I hadn’t really looked before, hadn’t followed the indentations and wrinkles, the crease around the toes, the shiny worn bit on the leather made by the buckle pin, or the stitching round the heel. I hadn’t even undone the buckle except to tie it onto the belt at my waist. I untied it then, and put my hand in and tried hard to remember what Mavis’s foot looked like, what her toes were like, what those nobbly bits at her ankle were like, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even see Mavis’s face, and it made me wonder whether Mavis had lost a foot too. And I felt ill again at the thought and shook the shoe off my hand so that it jumped across the clearing and fell into a patch of stingy nettles. Then I wrapped my arms around myself and cried like there was no tomorrow.
I didn’t hear George shuffle into the clearing until it was too late.
‘What are you doing here?’ I snarled.
‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled back.
‘This is my bit,’ I said. ‘Go away!’
‘This is my bit,’ he said. ‘You go away! If you come back here I’ll . . . I’ll throw that shoe in the loch.’
I ran to grab it from the nettles but he got there first.
‘Give it back!’
He whacked me about the shoulders with it so I kicked him hard in the shin and he laughed and said I wasn’t a bad fighter for a girl. He grabbed my pretty hat with the ribbon and the flowers and flung it in the nettles where the shoe had been, so I tried to kick him again. He dangled the shoe over my head so I couldn’t get it.
‘Your mum’s a tart!’ he said. ‘My mum said so and your sister is dead.’
‘No, she’s not!’
‘Dead as a doorknob!’
‘Stop it!’
‘Dead!’ He held it high so I jumped and caught the front.
‘No!’
‘Dead!’ He swung me towards the pine.
‘Give me it!’
‘Dead!’ The nettles brushed my leg.
‘Bastard!’ I screamed.
‘Ha, ha! Yes, probably that too!’
Some bracken caught my ankle.
‘She’s dead!’ he shouted, as I fell into the nettle patch.
‘Dead!’ he said leaning in at me.
So I grabbed some nettles and rubbed them in his face, just like Mavis had done with the gravel down by the canal, and while he was hopping from foot to foot I picked up Mavis’s shoe where it had fallen and hit him hard across the back of his head then ran out of the trees as fast as I could.
My hands were red and white and sore. They were like the toads I’d seen one morning with Sandy and Dougie, all lumpy and mottled, just a different colour, and they were hot as if there was cheddar cheese baking inside them. By the time I arrived at Mrs Mags’s they were throbbing, whoomf, whoomf, whoomf.
But the sight that took my breath away was Mr Tait, sitting on Mrs Mags’s chair talking with my mum, who was listening to every word he was saying and nodding in agreement. She had the blanket over her legs, all the way down to the ground so I couldn’t see if Mrs Wilson had ‘tidied it up’, and although my mum wasn’t actually looking at Mr Tait, I knew she was listening because her eyebrows were very close together in the middle and because if she hadn’t wanted to hear him she would have sent him away and thrown daffodils at him, if he’d brought her any. Above their heads a strip of bandage was strung like Christmas decorations across the front of the house, clean and dripping, to catch the breeze.
Which is what my hands were doing over my own head, trying to catch a breeze. Bits of nettle were dangling from my elbows too. And no hat, so my stumpy hair was there for everyone to see. I drew down my arms and showed them my palms.
‘Lenny!’ said Mr Tait. ‘So George found you then?’
‘Look at my hands!’ I wailed and for a moment I wasn’t sure who to go to.
I went to my mum and she went into a tailspin (Sandy told me that one – it was something to do with bombers) but she couldn’t actually move, so the tailspin was more of an agitation, which was my gran’s word. (She cured them with a nip of whisky.)
‘Dock leaves!’ she said. ‘Get her some dock leaves!’ Mr Tait was already on his feet, his real one and his wooden one, and pulling gigantic leaves out of the ground, two or three times the size of my hands.
‘Let me see,’ he said in his calm, quiet voice. ‘Oh, dear, that looks very sore.’
Well, of course it was sore and now that the shock of seeing them together had worn off, the pain in my hands was worse.
But inside me my heart was singing with joy as if it was soaring in the sky like the rooks I had seen on the way to the school, and when my mum was fussing about trying to find her crutches a little later I gave Mr Tait a huge big smile.
They took a hand each and rubbed the leaves into my palms. I let my hands go limp and surrendered myself to them. There was nothing else I could do. I stood leaning against my mum’s good leg, and every so often she turned her face up to mine and smiled quietly.
‘Big George forgot a thing or two,’ I told Mr Tait.
‘Yes, I see that,’ said Mr Tait. ‘He did, didn’t he?’
‘He said Mavis is dead,’ I said, ‘and he said . . . .’ But I didn’t like to mention what he called my mum.
‘Mavis is not dead,’ said my mum. ‘I’m her mum and I should know.’
Mr Tait nodded. ‘I’m afraid George is not very well behaved at the moment, Mrs Gillespie, not at all. I will do my best to keep him out of your way. He seems to behave better over at the Cuilt Brae where my hut is.’
‘Is it up yet?’ I asked.
But Mr Tait just laughed, and suddenly I was angry with him again.
‘Mr Tait,’ I said. ‘Do you have a wooden leg?’
‘Lenny!’ said my mum. ‘Don’t be cheeky!’
The smile fell from Mr Tait’s face.
‘You lied!’ I said.
‘Lenny!’ said my mum. ‘Stop it!’
‘I didn’t lie,’ said Mr Tait, in his kind voice. ‘I just didn’t think you needed to know, at least not until you’d seen your mum.’
‘Of course I needed to know,’ I said. ‘I thought you were my friend. Friends know everything about each other, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’ he said. ‘Would it have made a difference? Would you still have stayed with me? You were scared of me to begin with anyway. How could I have made friends with you if you’d known about my leg? Hmm . . . ?’
‘It was a lie. A black lie.’
‘Lenny!’ said my mum. Her mouth was hidden behind her hand as if it was her saying all these terrible things.
‘It wasn’t a black lie,’ he said. ‘It was a white lie, so that I could be your friend. The rest of me’s all flesh and blood. Pinch me and I squeal.’ He pinched himself and squealed. ‘Tap me and . . . .’ He tapped his knee with his knuckle and there was a hollow ‘toc, toc’.
‘No!’ I said, putting my hands over my ears.
Gently he took them and he bent down so that his face was close to mine.
‘It goes all the way up to here,’ he said indicating a point halfway up his thigh. ‘If I’d shown you that you’d have run a mile. I had to find out how bad your mum’s was,’ he said with a nod in her direction. She was still hiding behind her hand. ‘There was no point in frightening you with something worse or you’d have worried yourself sick. You probably did anyway, so perhaps I should have told you.’
‘That’s very kind,’ said my mum, coming out from behind her hand. ‘Thank you for being so kind. Lenny, apologise to Mr Tait for being rude.’
I looked from one to the other and wondered how the world came to be on its head. She should have been apologising to him, not me; well, perhaps me too.
‘Sorry, Mr Tait,’ I said.
‘That’s alright, Lenny,’ he said.
My mum went back to rubbing the dock leaves into my hand. They were pulp now and my palms had turned green as well as white and red.
‘Good girl,’ said my mum, and when she looked up at me I glared at her. She stopped rubbing my hand for a second and looked away. I coughed. She let go of my hand.
‘Mr Tait,’ she said. ‘Lenny thinks I should apologise to you for thinking you were to blame for the trouble at work.’
‘What do you think?’ he said, letting go of my other hand.
I held my breath. My mum rearranged her blankets.
‘I think I may have misjudged you,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You have no need to be sorry,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It was an entirely understandable mistake. I’m delighted you have seen the light! Let’s say no more about it.’
‘Oh, Mr Tait!’ I jumped up and hugged him and then my mum, who mumbled something about there being no need for public displays of affection.
And then they got boring like grown-ups always do just when something exciting is happening and they talked about people from Singer’s factory who I’d never heard of, and I wanted to ask Mr Tait if my mum was going to be able to test sewing machines any more or if there was another job he could give her. So I went off again, this time round the back of the hut where I heard Sandy and Dougie having a carry on.
They didn’t see me at first, and they didn’t see Mr Tait either when he sneaked up behind me. Dougie was sitting in a chair I hadn’t seen before.
It was an old chair made of dark brown wood with a straight back and two curved arms, so it was like lots of other old chairs you might see anywhere, a bit bashed and dusty looking and not very comfortable. But this chair had wheels, two big ones at the back and two smaller ones at the front. All four were brown with rust, but as Sandy and Dougie were demonstrating, they all turned. It was a fully functioning wheelchair, of a sort.
‘Oh, Lenny!’ said Dougie, in a silly voice. He had one leg tucked up behind him. ‘What am I to do? No-one will want me now I’m Peggy the peg leg!’ He rolled in the seat and howled with laughter. Sandy, who had been pushing the chair, now pulled his leg up too.
‘Hop, rabbit, hop, rabbit, hop, hop, hop!’ sang Sandy, until he fell onto the grass, helpless with laughter. ‘Don’t let the farmer get you with his . . . mop!’
‘Boys!’ shouted Mr Tait at the top of his voice, and I jumped and threw myself to the ground as if a bomb had gone off, then I scurried back to my mum before another word could be said. I didn’t tell her what had happened, but vowed never to talk to boys again, ever.
Having sent the boys off somewhere, Mr Tait brought his creation round for my mum to see. She sat very upright where she was and stared at this odd chair.
‘You didn’t have to . . . ,’ she began. ‘I can’t . . . I don’t want . . . .’ She put both hands to her face. ‘Thank you,’ she said at last. ‘Sorry, I’m so rude. Thank you so much. So many surprises! It’s hard to know what to do!’
Mr Tait and I didn’t say a word.