Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness: Different Worlds - 6

Robert K Hogg

It’s all too easy for the memory of events, associations, to become hazy, and
blur into each other. I’m pretty convinced it wasn’t until primary four and five I
had drifted into shoplifting comics; American imports I couldn’t afford, along
with any books that looked interesting, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan –
some volumes in the series banded together and on sale in a big bargain box in
'Woollies' in the High Street (Some years later, when I'm twelve or thirteen, I'll
come across a paperback copy of Colin Wilson's novel The Killer and read it
soon after. A deeply intriguing and unsettling study of a psychopath), along with
small and not so small models in the Airfix series, as well as the mini-tins of
paint I could slip under my sleeve or conceal in my hand at the counter.
I completed the aeroplane models, painted them, and hung them with
coloured string from the ceiling. One was a Sopwith Camel and the other a
Harrier Jumpjet. I liked the contrast between old and new. I’d attempted a larger
model of a modern battleship but gave up after getting into a mess with the
superglue supplied, when trying to attach all the lifeboats. Later, possibly with
money from a paper round, I bought one of the vintage stylee Armada gunships –
not the actual ship – then had trouble with the plastic masts sticking to my
fingers. I gave up before I even got to the rigging; it was driving me up the wall.
(Better just to stick to doing drawings of ships and rigging). It had turned into a
chore. Another kid I knew – the one I later gave the drawing of Bruce Lee to,
would set his models alight and throw them out of the window. A too brief thrill
for the effort put into making them I thought, but each to his own. Speaking of
which, I loaned him The Killer and he said he read it in a day. A few years later
he got into some serious harassment from some yobs at a nightclub in Union
Street and attempted to resolve the situation by trying to murder two of them in
the street outside.

I had become close friends with Alex Roberts and we developed and
cemented it by these kleptomaniacal expeditions on the way home. We also stole
sweets of course, and lesser boy trinkets and would compare and combine our
hauls, chuckling gleefully behind the store, which was virtually waste ground and
out of sight of anyone, and drunk with good humour over our combined efforts
and ability to pull a fast one over the powers that be, and so effortlessly. We
knew what we wanted, we didn’t have the funds and Xmas was a long way away,
and anyway, it wasn’t guaranteed you would get what you wanted. With a little
bit of enterprise, resolve and some cheek and calm nerves, it could be Xmas
everyday or as near as. It seemed grossly unfair, an unfortunate miscalculation
by the powers of destiny and food fortune, that all these goodies should be there
to tantalise us with no means of getting our grubby little paws on any of them.
Rationalisations and justifications for it were as unconscious and swift as they
were constant. Boyhood was here only once and would last only for a short time;
better to experience and increase the quality of it through whatever presented
itself.
All of this is worth mentioning, because I have no recall of thieving
anything before that. Neither did I ever steal anything from school, before or
after. I think it would have felt like 'taking from my own', and from primary four
onwards I really liked my teachers on the whole; loved them in a way. What I
did get was ideas from school as to what I might want to pick up from any store,
such as the light glue – 'Marven' – to make things of my own. I bought or nicked
a scrapbook then barely used it when I realised it would only be a means for my
mum to nosey in on. I mention this because I have the distinct impression I was
still in primary three – I only have to picture the layout of the classroom, even
though there were only two floors in the whole school – when I was asked to stay
in class for a little while, whether during a playtime break or lunchtime or after
school, and a pleasant women I had never seen before gave me a series of puzzles
to work on. One was a geometric diagram she told me to study for a few
minutes, then when she was out, having taken the diagram with her, I was to
draw what I could remember; which was simple enough. Perhaps this was after
primary three. We had Mrs MacDonald, but I have a vivid memory of disgusting
Mrs Palmer by my habit of filling my mouth with milk – we had free small
bottles of milk, a highlight of the morning – before slowly swallowing it. I still
do it now, but then who doesn't?, as with wine. She remarked directly on it,
which pissed me off as well as 'hurt my feelings' as I recall. No doubt because it
reminded me of my mother’s fault-finding and I was used to school being
something of a a breake from the overt tyranny and character assassination. That
I should be allowed to drink it as I liked, and in peace. I probably glowered at
her, resenting her tone and the focus it brought on me. That, and that I felt like a
little shit in front of the girls, because if she saw me as that... A situation that
never arose with my mother. Fortunately she sensed not to push it, or picked up
on it. But in my memory it’s the classroom that is out of synch. I remember it as
primary three, because of the arrangement of the desks. (Elaine Hurst glowering
at us in semi-mock hatred through half closed eyelids, while the ginger-haired
John Reilly and me laughed at that, but not her. Shortly after, she invited me
home with her during the 'dinner' break. She lived in a block of flats on the
Lochee Road, near the entrance to Dudhope Park. Her close had an interesting
tile design along the walls. No else was in her flat. I didn't think twice about it,
nor did I have any romantic attraction to her, though she was pretty enough. I let
association slide.). I think Palmer stood in for Mrs MacDonald that day; which
might explain the incident over the milk. Or perhaps a clear memory is
impossible as they were all on the same floor, before I was in primary six and
seven upstairs. It's potentially significant as I don't know whether the tests were
instigated before or after events still to describe here. It was before. Because I
easily recall the woman, some educational psychologist, smiling at me through
the window of the classroom door before she moved out of sight. She probably
knew my mum was nuts 'too'. Sometime after I was asked to go to the small
office room at the girls side of the building. The headmaster's office was on our
side. There was an older woman there, sitting behind a desk, friendly also, she
said to sit down, and gave me something I had to fill in, answer some questions,
something like that – the memory is beyond vague. She Brierly perused the
answers I'd scribbled, then laughing pleasantly, and – puzzlingly, said “There's
nothing wrong with you. Off you go”.
Which was nice. But what the hell did they know? They were obliged to
look into it, but no one asked the questions that needed to be asked, because they
didn't want to deal with it. Compliant for the most part and naïve, there was
nothing for me to add. The situation wasn't set up that way. I was due to my
mother behind the scenes, so to say, looking for the primary school equivalent of
getting me institutionalised. Only, they weren't going for it, as I was intelligent
and artist, good-humoured and considerate for the most part. Most kids in class
liked me, even admired me in a way – the ones I was close to, and I got along
with most of them. One or two clearly loved me. They picked up on that too, as
became apparent, re-arranging desks in fours to face each other, two on each side,
and putting me and Alex to face two girls, which might be nerve-racking enough,
only, he sat opposite Heather Borland and, to my sickly eexcitement and
mortification, I was opposite Lynne Edwards, the girl I loved, but didn't know it,
or refused to think about; even when it became apparent she might feel the same
way, and perhaps had all along. Palmer was giving us – or me – a helping hand.
But this was the following year, as the following event took place when we still
had Mrs MacDonald.
_______________________________________________

One evening, when I was reading in the bedroom, I heard my mum calling
my name from the sitting room. A bit unsettling, as the only thing she called on
us for was to say our tea was ready or for me 'get some messages' – go on an
errand, and that was usually from the window when I was outside. Otherwise,
she would call from the lobby, or better still, walk straight in, all the better to
surprise and monitor me. This was more muffled. She was still in the sitting
room with the door closed. When I went through, she was sitting oddly –
crouching – in front of the armchair and by the TV, squat over the basin from the
kitchen sink. Then I saw blood was streaming from her underside into the basin.
A queasily uncomfortable sight. She was remarkably, unusually calm, survival
instincts taking over perhaps – maybe it was even consideration for me – but
freaking me out would be of no help at all to her and she didn’t know what my
reaction might be to the scene – as she told me to “go into the bedroom and into
the chest of drawers and get a plastic bag,” I went through purposefully, but
couldn’t see it among all the towels and the rest, and shouted back to her I
couldn't see what she meant. “Oh for fuck sake, you fucking useless… It says
Tampax on the front.” Feeling slightly less foolish and panicky as I knew she
wouldn’t be marching through to follow up on her frustration, and aware she
needed me for a change, along with the glimmerings of concern I felt – an
confusing mix of emotions – I found the bag of sanitary towels, tucked away at
the side or the back and took them through to her. If she'd had said tampons I'd
maybe have made the connection sooner. Nor did I know anything about
'periods'. If I had found an empty plastic bag I'd have brought her that. We
weren't told shit, at home or at school. I had no idea what she had in mind.
My mind is something of a blank beyond that. I can only assume that Mrs
Beats next door phoned for the ambulance, as we had no phone. Her boyfriend
having moved in some time ago, with his controlling nature and precarious
income, as unstable as his moods and predilection for the booze, a telephone was
a needless expense, a luxury. She got one only after she had got rid of him. Her
dad, Willie, my granddad, arrived first. When we went back through, she was
slumped in the armchair. He said the ambulance is on its way. “I've lost about
four pints of blood,” she said. Another blank in my memory as to immediate
events, meaning who looked after my brother and me... but the enduring image is
of Mrs MacDonald explaining to our class that I “will be away for a few weeks
as my mother has taken ill, but will be back again after that. Very considerate of
her to do this, presumably so as not to have an unexplained gap that might
alienate me from the rest to an extent; or them from me. Or in case they all think
it's alright to begin taking days off whenever they feel like it.
Those few weeks turned out to be one of the most enjoyable, most emotionally
positive periods of my life. There were the usual fears, loathing and trepidation
involved in being in a new school among other things. But first off, we were to visit
my mother at Hammersmith Hospital, London, where she was having chemotherapy
for a 'benign' cancer. Our Uncle Billy, who we would be staying with, along with his
wife, our Aunty Cathy – we didn't call anyone 'Aunt' – (and more intriguingly and
unnervingly, our cousins, two girls much the same age as me, one slightly older, one
slightly younger – along with their younger brother), would drive us down there;
Granddad, my younger bro, and me. A long trip from Dundee, too long for us kids,
but a whole lot cheaper than the train, and probably better than the bus – I would start
feeling travel sick on trips to the beach at Broughty Ferry with neighbourhood friends
and be feeling woozy by the time I stepped unsteadily off the bus (It was only five
miles from the centre of Dundee) – it started off alright, and we were always happy to
be with Granddad, and Uncle Billy seemed good tempered enough. We hadn’t seen
much of him but neither had I any reason to think he might be anything like my
mother (he wasn't; not really); I paid little attention to the relations between relations,
and barely registered if at all, they were brother and sister. Vague to the point of
abstraction at times, I assumed adults were as if born that way, each in a self enclosed
universe. Which I suppose they were. Certainly they must have been feeling
something like that just then. My thoughts were neither on that or on mum, but on
making sure I got some comics for the trip. It was going to be a long haul we were
told. I didn’t need telling twice, and picked up Marvel Comics’ latest, Fantastic and
Terrific, which were just that, featuring The Fantastic Four and The Submariner (DC
had Aqua-man) and The Mighty Thor from Asgard; bought courtesy of Granddad.
My brother was getting keen on them as well by this time. Life might go on in all its
uncertain and unrelentingly grim way, but so did comics in their own way, somehow
as real, if not more real than the everyday world; still a part of that world, but like a
light in the darkness – a faint glow perhaps, but a consistent one, and a reflection of
something within and that deeply responded to those stories; and that might keep at a
distance the deep uncertainty that permeated every aspect of it.
Rather than insisting on getting us something sensible like fruit when we'd
stopped at the newsagents where we'd got the comics, we were allowed to
choose cakes to keep us going for part of the trip; we’d get something more
substantial when we got there, having eaten earlier. Predictably, I chose the ones
with the most heavy and sweet icing... then felt nauseous shortly after, and puked
over the back of the front seat. (I can’t remember my Granddad smoking in the
car – though I preferred his home made rollups to my mothers industrial strength
nostril shrivellers, but I've had travel sickness on longer journeys my whole life).
We spent the night in a lay-by, sleeping in the car. I woke up first, reaching for
my comics behind me first thing, in the way my mother would reach for her
fagarettes when she first woke, and after first coughing her guts up, which only
got worse as the years went by.
A brief discussion between Granddad and Uncle B as to whether we should
be fed or could carry on, and off we went, the decision made that it wouldn't be
long before we got there. I didn’t get into any bother for being sick in Uncle
Billy’s car on the way to London, short of a snort of exasperated disgust of
Granddad’s, probably more concerned at my being a nuisance to his son.