Lockhart 2

I wish things could have been different. The moon shimmered through the uncurtained windows giving a metallic glow to the room. I was splintered in  an offshoot of the spaghetti bed, the mattress wedged near the door, when Mum came to formally invite me to the meeting downstairs.  

    Mum was the tallest of the women in the commune and tended to stoop, her broad shoulders hid by squaw-like black hair which hung loose. She wore a cheesecloth top, men’s denims and tasselled shoes. Everything was slightly too large for her, which didn’t make her smaller or thinner as she hoped but shrivelled and older than thirty-two.   

    ‘Josh,’ she said, standing above me, looking about the room.

Only the youngest children were sleeping, the rest of us whispering that fell to extended silences across the room, as bed clothes were tugged and bodies slackened.  Sometimes I’d make a story up and the others would listen. Sometimes Lena, who had a cute puppyish face with pale freckles on the tip of  her nose, would pipe up and she’d ask me a question -- like why was the king so fat? -- something so cringeworthy and obvious that a five-year old, if he hadn’t been practicing swear words instead,  could answer it.  The flame of Paul’s red hair crept out of tangled grey sheets his high excited voice piercing though sleepy dozy heads like a dart, ‘because they’re all fucking cunts’. He woke Alice, his wee sister, a snottery nose and shitty smelling child.  She cried and whined for attention, tugging his jammie top, crawling on top of him.

Alice didn’t say much during the day, even when we were at school in the basement and Marj Cowan was encouraging us to voice our opinions about the Vietnam war through word and dance -- which was basically a chance for the younger kids to shriek and hoot and run about kicking over chairs, Alice stood quietly underneath the square of light from the upper windows and watched.

George, who, after me,  was the next best fighter in the school, thought she was a Mongo, but I said although she was stinky,  she didn’t look like one. She just liked being by herself and anyone that said any different would get it. He’d backed down, sniffing, that thought wasn’t  the same as saying. We were best mates because we could work things out in that way, rather than resort to bourgeoisie violence.   

‘Here Mum,’ I said, sitting up, scratching my back and running my fingers through the tugs in my hair.

‘You need to go to the toilet darling?’ Mum said in her cooing voice to Alice.

Alice scuttled from underneath the sheets like a crab, scattering sleeping arms and legs in her wake, her pale chunky body outlined against the window. I held my breath and dived under the sheets. We called her Pongo  before we realised how hurtful and oppressive such a moniker could be, especially as she wore a nappy and not pants.  

When I was sure Mum was taking her to the toilet that worked downstairs, rather than the toilet that didn’t work and smelled worse that Alice upstairs,  I got up. I dressed too quickly pulling a shirt that pinched my nipples when I buttoned it  and baggy flared trousers, more like a dress,  from where they hung on the wardrobe door. All over the house, and not just on the kitchen pulley downstairs, clothes half washed and half dry dragged bannisters sideways  and grew into  tables and chairs like extra guests that had been discarded. Shoes were a constant worry. I could always find something to pull on, but not alway to tuck my oversized feet into. Adults kept their wardrobes locked. I chanced on a pair or Weegins with the toes curling like Rumplestilskin’s. I liked them because they were old and unostentatious and because they fitted me.  

I met Mum guiding Alice back to bed on the landing. She’d washed the little girl’s face and changed her into a nightshirt with bunnies on it, which was too small for her, but at least it was clean.

‘Won’t be a minute,’ said Mum.

I waited about ten minutes. When Mum came back she was smiling. She loved tucking kids into bed and kids loved her. ‘Don’t worry about the meeting, you did nothing wrong’. She reached out and squeezed my hand.

Her reassurance had the opposite effect. I flushed, my lips trembling and grew angry pulling my hand away from hers.

‘Josh,’ she said, ‘I had to tell them. It’s not fair on the other kids. If he did that to you there’s no telling what else he’s been up to.’ She patted my shoulder and I sniffed holding back tears.

‘Karl. My name’s Karl.'

‘Anyway, we’re having a meeting about it,’ she said in a lighter tone. ‘And we thought we’d invite you - to get your input.’

‘Meetings about meeting,’ I said. ‘They never achieve anything.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said, a bit too quickly.

I followed her downstairs into the kitchen, where the adult members of our commune were ranged round the kitchen table. They had been drinking and a burning joss stick couldn’t touch the cannabis smell which  hung heavy in the air and made me breathe only in shallow breaths. Ellie, a lock of dark hair, falling over her forehead passed a toke to Simple Simon sitting on a stool next to her. The skin on his face was lumpy and pitted like the moon. He squinted through the smoke at me.

‘Here comes trouble,’ said Simon, in the jokey voice he always used, his hand flapping in welcome.    

The thirty-watt light bulb flickered. We were having trouble with the generator. We were always having trouble with the generator. The only one that could fix it was Charlie. He had dark curly hair, grey at the sides and his eye wide set and he’d a way of looking and not looking at you, his eyes flickering away and back, away and back. Charlie didn’t say much. He was guarding, if that was the right word, Mr Clarke. The two of them in the corner of the room, sitting on high stools, away from the table, looking down on the others.

Mr Clarke had been duffed up a bit, with a cut lip and the beginning of a black eye.  

The light went out and came back on again. The candle burnt into the can holder flickering and showing the fog rolling like a stage curtain  through the window behind it. It hid the waist-high grass, making a grey meadow of the broken down Ford, several car tyres that had went to seed and a neglected bike, a forgotten rusted orange toy. It enclosed the dry-stone dyke wall, covered in holly, rhododendron and patches of wisteria. It obscured most of the other -better off -  houses that kept their distance with their clean cut grass and fancy foreign cars. It hid the bus stop on the hill, which the number 64 Auchenshuggle bus passed, and made our house seem like a legitimate destination.  

‘I was just saying,’ said Joe, who was tall, fair skinned with  bouffant blond hair,  ‘we have to make mistakes. That’s how we learn’.

    I squeezed in beside Mum on the bench, the reassuring weight of her hand on my shoulder. The electric light flickered back on and I felt my face flush. Everybody seemed to be looking at me.   

    ‘Shite,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s just shite. Well seen you don’t have any kids.’

    ‘You didn’t have to beat him up,’ said Ellie. She picked up her glass of red wine and downed it in a oner. Bottles dotted the table. Some were sitting in the sink.  

    I could see now she was drunk, that nobody was sober, apart from Mum, Charlie and, when I sneaked another look at him, Mr Clarke.

    ‘Order. Order,’ said Simon. ‘Lets keep to the matter in hand.’ He looked down at the notes of unlined A4 paper lying on the desk in front of him, his head dropping further and further into the text, before he looked up and looked about him as if trying to work out who we were. ‘Immediate expulsion and, or, phone the police and get the bastard jailed.’

‘No fuzz,’ said Marj, in a shrill voice. She took a hit of the toke, holding it up for all to see and laughed, ‘let him without sin cast the first stone.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Mum.

‘Well, let’s face it Cathy,’ said Marj, to Mum. ‘My Susie is always sending herself notes marked with lots of kisses. She signs it as if it came from Josh. She just loves him. Even her childhood bear is now called Karl and she kisses it now more than she did when she was a toddler.  And I can see why. He’s beautiful.’

‘Your Susie is nine. Alan Clarke is a forty-five year old loser. He  raped my son’s mouth and  I want him expelled from this house and I want the police informed. If neither of these things happen, we’re leaving first thing in the morning.’   

‘Suit yourself,’ said Janey. She was an older woman that wore lots of ratty metalic bangles that jingled when she talked, because she used her hands to speak. ‘Because let’s face it I was sexually active at that age and you need to open your mouth to put a cock in it.’

‘You fucking slut,’ said Mum, jumping up, only to be grabbed back down and wrestled, falling sideways into the back of other committee members sitting on our our side of the table by old George, who had bushy eyebrows.

‘Just ignore her,’ said Old George, Janey’s partner, ‘I always do and it seems to work a treat. She’s such a drama queen.’

‘Say what you want,’ said Janey, ‘but the police would love to know where Alan got that bruising round his face and nose. They’d love to know what that funny sweet smell is. And I’m sure they’d find out what we’re growing in that greenhouse and shed out the back. Be sensible for once in your miserable life.’

‘She’s got a point,’ said Simon. ‘It’s a can of worms.’

Mr Clarke stuck his hand up like a school kid unsure if he’d the right or wrong answer. ‘I’d just like to say I misread the situation. I was helping Josh with his poem...then we were making love...I’m very, very sorry...It’ll never happen again.’ He began weeping, tears running unwiped down his face.

Feet shuffled and I felt the shift in sympathy towards him.