The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir (6 page)

So you shouldn’t cry because now the little girl is in Heaven. But Emily cried herself to sleep because the little match girl died and no one cared.

It was very dark when I woke up and saw that huge hand coming round our bedroom door. It was the creaking of the door that woke me up. Then it floated into the room. I thought I would scream but I didn’t want it to find me so I stayed very quiet and still. I was scared that it would hear me breathing so I held my breath.

But it came nearer and nearer to me. Nearer and nearer. I could hear it make the sound.

Drip, drip, drip.

It floated over to Emily’s bed and put its huge face up close to hers. Then it turned and floated over to Margueretta’s door and went inside.

Perhaps it would kill her. I hoped it would kill her. Don’t kill me.

I heard some sounds. Surely it would kill her.

Drip, drip, drip.

Kill her.

And then it floated back into our bedroom and out the door. I know where it went. It went back into the cellar. Back with its bulging green eyes into the darkness. And the next time I am locked in there, it will kill me.

14

I
will not get anything by whining. It’s about time I realized that I will miss out on a whole lot of things in life because of my constant whining. But when I start a whine it’s hard to make it stop and then Emily starts whining and she can whine even better than me and then none of us can stop.

And that is why we never go to the seaside. Mum does not want to hear me whining about toffee apples and candyfloss and doughnuts and going to Billy Manning’s Funfair. But two days ago she said that we could go to the seaside soon but only if she does not hear one more bloody whine coming out of us or we will stay behind and everyone else will go without us, and that will be that.

I have only whined once in two days and I can’t even remember what it was about, which just goes to prove that whining does not get you anything. And Mum was prepared to overlook this as it was only the once.

So that is why we are here on the beach with the smell of fish and chips and the beautiful bright colored lights going around and around on the big wheel at the front of Billy Manning’s Funfair. And there are other wonderful things but I am trying to ignore them or they will start me whining.

The man who has stripped down to his string vest with the black hairs poking out is my Uncle Jack. He’s got a thick black belt holding up his trousers. And he doesn’t thread it through the belt loops—that’s so he can whip it off quickly if he needs to.

He’s drinking Whitbread’s Mackeson Milk Stout because he says it looks good, it tastes good, and by golly it does you good. Dad is having one
too but Auntie Ethel is drinking sherry with Mum and Nana. They like to drink sherry because it comes in smaller glasses and no woman should be seen drinking a pint of beer, especially not from a bottle.

We would have had pickled eggs for lunch but someone left the jar on the sideboard, even though my mum reminded my dad three times to bring them. He never bloody listens. Someone also forgot the towels and we don’t have any swimming costumes so we will just have to swim in our underwear. That is fine for me but it means that I can see Margueretta’s nipples and she has blue veins around them and she can’t keep her hands over them if she wants to swim. Nana says we can dry ourselves on her skirt when we come out of the water.

Emily won’t be going in the water. It’s not her fault that some thoughtless idiots left broken glass on the beach and she didn’t see it because it was lying amongst the stones when she trod on it. It’s green glass and Dad says it’s probably from a cider bottle. Or it could be from a wine bottle but Uncle Jack doesn’t think anyone would drink wine on the beach in Portsmouth. And when Dad pulled the glass out of her foot, there was blood everywhere and it dripped onto the stones and looked like little purple beads. You can make purple by mixing red and blue together.

“Do not step in that tar!”

Mum was talking to me, not Emily, because Emily can’t walk anywhere. I was just on my way down to the water and there was a big lump of tar on the stones in front of me and Mum said that if I get that on me it will never come off. And even if we carried her, which I suggested, Emily cannot go into the water because it’s got sewage in it and then her foot will get infected and it would have to be amputated, which means they would cut it off and she would be a cripple because you can’t just grow another foot. I do not want my sister to be a cripple, even if Nana says that Jesus can make the lame walk again.

Dad will come into the water later and teach me how to swim, which he says is really easy because you just have to put your arms out in front of you
and kick your legs. But he needs to drink his beer for now because he is very thirsty and I can play in the water with Margueretta but she does not want to teach me how to swim. She just waited for a big wave and held my head under the water. And that’s how I found out that you can open your eyes under water and then I could see bubbles and black seaweed, like a cloak all around my head.

It is impossible to breathe under water. We have lungs and fish have gills and they are totally different. That’s why fish can’t breathe out of water. Which is why it is a good thing that Margueretta let me back up to take a breath before I died but then she pushed my head back under again and held it down with her knees.

Complaining about your older sister trying to drown you is not the same thing as whining. But it didn’t matter because absolutely no one was listening to me when I was trying to tell them about nearly drowning because they were all singing and it’s hard to hear a little boy complaining about nearly drowning when you are singing very loudly on the beach about a brass band playing tiddley-on-pom-pom.

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!
I do like to be beside the sea.
And I do like to stroll along the prom, prom, prom,
Where the brass bands play, tiddley-on-pom-pom!

You shouldn’t try to dance on stones, which is why Auntie Ethel fell over and broke her sherry glass. Luckily, they brought spare glasses with them and Mum got her a refill. I didn’t tell Auntie Ethel that she put her arm in some of the black tar when she fell over. She will have that tar on her arm for the rest of her life, and she will have to tell people that she was being stupid trying to dance on stones on the beach.

It is also not whining if you are really very thirsty and you ask for a drink just once. I only asked once and Mum said there was nothing for me to drink
and she offered me an Opal Fruit pastel because they are made to make your mouth water, which is the same thing as a drink. So I ate the fruit pastel and it did not make my mouth water. It is not the same thing as a drink. It made me even more thirsty.

If you ask for something twice then that is possibly the start of a whine. And when I asked for a drink a third time, while running around in circles, it was definitely a whine. Mum said there was a really good chance that she would take me home and leave me there if I didn’t stop and Uncle Jack agreed that he did not come all the way here from London just to listen to my whining so I should bloody well shut up.

And I thought I was going to pee myself when he told me to come over and stand in front of him. All the time, his fingers twitching around that belt buckle.

Twitch, twitch, twitch.

I stared at that belt and he stared into my eyes.

Then he poured me a big glass of sherry and handed it to me and that made him and Dad laugh and they laughed even more when I gulped down the whole glass because I was so thirsty.

“Just like your dad! You’re a real man now, sonny,” Uncle Jack shouted.

“That’s my boy!” said Dad.

Dad was really proud of me and I am a real man now. But Auntie Ethel looked angry.

“What the bloody hell did you just give him?” demanded Auntie Ethel.

“It was Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry! The boy said he was thirsty,” Uncle Jack replied.

“You can’t do that!” Auntie Ethel replied.

“Why not? He said he was thirsty!”

“Well, that’s our sherry. The sherry is for the women. You should have given him one of your beers! Bloody cheek of it!” said Auntie Ethel.

And everyone started laughing and singing again and Uncle Jack said I could have another drink if I wanted one but I said no because I was feeling very dizzy.

“Och, come on, wee ones. Let’s get you out of here.”

Nana said I would feel much better once we get to Billy Manning’s. I was only sick once on the beach and Uncle Jack said I needed a lot more practice and he said that would be no problem with my dad around and next time I should just have a beer instead of drinking a whole glass of sherry so quickly.

And I knew it was a mistake when Nana said we should go into the House of Mirrors. The mirrors make you fat with a tiny head or like a dwarf with massive eyes and I was looking in the mirror with Nana and noticed there were three Nanas. No, four. Five. Six Nanas. And they were going around and around.

Those people in there did not like it when I was sick all over the mirror. It’s also hard to get out of the House of Mirrors in a hurry because some of the doors look like mirrors and you don’t know which ones are real.

“Och, those mirrors even made yer old Nana feel unwell! How about the carousel?”

Sometimes Nana doesn’t listen to me and I was not whining when I said over and over again that I did not want to go on any rides and they were not making me feel better. And she lied when she told those people on the carousel that it wasn’t me when the ride stopped and I slid off my horse. Everyone could see it was me who had sprayed sick everywhere. There was sick all down my shirt and the horse.

And then she put me on the Helter-Skelter and they will have to close that ride for the day. And the Laughing Sailor was funny with all those people watching until I was sick in the middle of the crowd.

“Get your bloody brats out of this place!”

That man doesn’t know that Nana could thump him and he wouldn’t get back up.

“Och, you big bag o’ wind. It’s just a wee bit o’ excitement. Can’t you see the wee laddie is just a bit dizzy from all the rides?”

“Dizzy? Dizzy you call it? He’s been bloody well sick in the House of Mirrors, the carousel, the Helter-Skelter, and the Laughing Sailor. What in God’s name is next? The bloody Ghost Train?”

“Och, we’re not staying where we aren’t welcome. Come on kids. We’re leaving.”

We’re going home. And no one wants to sit next to me on the bus.

15

T
ommy is not my best friend anymore. It is bad enough that he almost killed me. Offering your best friend a sweet, which he said was definitely a mint imperial, and then sucking them together was very nice. But when I got home, Nana wanted to know what that dreadful smell was, and it turned out to be me. It is incredibly dangerous to eat mothballs because they are made from poison, which is why they were in his grandmother’s coat pockets where Tommy found them. They are definitely not mint imperials and I could easily have died if Nana had not stuck her fingers down the back of my throat three times to make me sick.

And making mud pies together and patting them around and turning them into shapes with your fingers is fine if you are making them with mud. It is not fine if you are making them with dog shit. It was a lot of fun until we took our mud pies to show my Nana.

And then while Nana was washing my hands with carbolic soap, Tommy ate our cabbage just like that without even asking. We were in our scullery and there wasn’t much cabbage left, mostly leaves, and he ate it all. Well, that made Nana even angrier and I’m not surprised. And it wasn’t because Tommy hadn’t washed the dog shit off his hands before he ate the cabbage. Tommy said he was starving and that’s why he ate it but Nana said we will be starving too if we have no cabbage and we will be like those people in Ireland who had the famine and ate worms. So he can’t come round again or the next thing you know he will be eating our potatoes and then all we will be left with is worms and dirt.

We obviously need more food so I have decided to take the eggs from the kitchen cupboard and hatch them into chickens. I think eggs need to be warm to help them hatch so I have put them in my cowboy hat and wrapped them in Nana’s scarf, the tartan one with the tassels. When they hatch, I will make them a small pen in the backyard and then they will grow into chickens and lay lots of eggs and everyone will be able to eat eggs—not just The Irish.

I have checked the eggs all day and there is no sign of them hatching yet. I am not sure how long it takes for an egg to hatch into a chicken. I hope it will be today, although it is nearly suppertime already and Nana is looking in the kitchen cupboard.

“What in God’s name has happened to ma eggs?”

Nana is looking at me and I know she thinks that Tommy has been round here again and eaten the eggs, which is really stupid because one of us would have to cook them first because you can’t eat raw eggs. And we don’t know how to cook eggs.

Nana will be very pleased when she hears what I have done and how we will have all the eggs we can eat just as soon as those chicks hatch out.

I will go and check on them again.

“It’s a mystery to me,” says Dad.

Dad has no idea what happened to the eggs but he will also be very proud when he knows that we have chickens in a pen in the backyard laying eggs all day. He could even have eggs for breakfast. Yes, he is going to be really proud of me. I know he is. Even more proud than seeing me drink a glass of sherry on the beach.

But The Irish don’t seem very happy because there are no eggs for their supper and that only leaves potatoes. I will check on the eggs one more time.

“Och, I know I had a half a dozen eggs in that cupboard! Someone has stolen ma eggs! Who would do such a thing? Johnny? You’ve got that guilty look on your face, laddie!”

It was when I told Nana my chicken plan that she slapped me round the face, right there in front of The Irish. Eggs are dead and I am a very stupid boy for thinking that I could hatch them into chickens.