Billy boy

We were normal. We were. There was only me and mum. Everyone else in Old Kilpatrick had more brothers and sisters in their houses than you could get frogspawn in a jam jar. Mum said we kept ourselves to ourselves. I tried my darnest not to, but everyone seemed to just slip away from us, except for the Curleys, who called me a bastard and flung stones at me. Of course, I was too quick for them. nipping in and out of the grassy slopes like a weasel. They could never get me.

That changed one hot summer day when even the cow dung set as hard as pebbles on a beach and the frogs retreated to the witches' pond where they bass croaked at you to come and get them, come and get them, come and get them. Then they shut up and went invisible. I wasn't going to let them away with that. I started building a dam, so that the pool would drain and that would sort out those croaking bastards. But it was no use. I would need 1000 slaves or a tractor. One appeared like a shadow by my side.

I stuck out my hand as mum had taught me to do and said: ‘I'm Billy’. He laughed, but I didn't say anything that was funny, maybe it was because my hand was still pretty dirty. I washed it in the stream so that he knew the kind of person I was and didn't take these things too lightly.

‘Yes’, he said, searching his great coat pockets for a light. He must be fucking sweltering I thought, but he patted me on the head as if I was some kind of goat that was ready to butt him. He was probably out of that hospital were they kept the dafties. He was probably dangerous. Too late. I wished I'd brought my Swiss army knife.

‘Yes, William,’ he said. ‘I'm Seamus, Seamus McGarvie, your sister's brother,’ as if that solved everything, or meant anything to me.
But he was daft right enough. Everybody knew there was only me and mum. That was it. Everybody knew that. Her mum and dad had died in our very house; some kind of disease that affects old people. There was nobody else. No brothers or sisters. I didn't want to tell him this in case it unsettled him and he started frothing at the mouth and bolted right into the pond where he could drown. He would drown. He'd never be able to swim with that big fucking piece of carpet on him. I casually picked up a stick.

He laughed, but he didn't laugh like a daftie. It was more the kind of laugh you do through your nose. The kind of laugh that my mum did when she said I'd be the death or her, but she was only kidding.

‘Aye Billy’, he said, lifting his great sack on his back and turning back onto the path, out through the secret hole in the fence that only I knew about. I followed him at a safe distance, curious to know what way he would go. He waddled from side to side like a duck walking straight ahead towards our house. I used the secret whistle to warn mum that somebody was coming, the one that she didn't know about, because nobody ever came, but I was practising it anyway, just for such an occasion as this.

I ran quickly by him. My black summer sand shoes not even touching the ground. He waddled relentlessly on like a clockwork toy, towards the house. I would have barred the front door. But, of course, we had no lock on it. How were we to know that we were going to get invaded by dafties? I shouted, ‘mum, mumm mummmm’, and nearly swore, but that would have meant three Hail Marys and a Glory Be. Mum wasn’t in. She was at mass, were I was meant to be, before the frogs had shouted at me.