ROBBIE BACH AND I

by
Rob Marshall

(i)

In the Land of my Many Fathers it was the summer of 1976. I remember asking Mum to teach me how to smile? “We smile from here,” she said. Pointing at her nicotine-stained heart.

(ii)

Ladybirds clung to the sweat on our flesh. An airborne army, flickering against the sky like a red Venetian-blind thrashing and twisting in a storm. Nain stood at the closed window, and grumbled that the ladybirds would have to be culled; as if summer had unleashed a plague of flesh-eating locust.

(iii)

Nain looked for images of Christ in the woodwork. She finally found him in the wardrobe. Neighbours came from doors around to view the apparition. They all agreed, with callous candour, that it looked more like George Best. Nain was devastated, but out of awkward reverence, she still removed the copy of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ from the wardrobe.

(iv)

Mum sat at the kitchen table, slurping tea as if that’s why God gave her such a beautiful mouth. She left traces of lipstick on the rim of the chipped cup; a porcelain and rouge palimpsest of all the afternoons she had waited for him. After the waiting came the pills. After ‘Mummy’s sweets’ came the waiting.

In the front room, beyond the teak veneer, Nain crouched over the ironing board. Her dead husband’s handkerchiefs still crisply ironed, lying like ghosts over the back of the settee. Nain’s lips moved, words tumbled from her mouth, but there was no sound.

I spoke to Henry at the foot of the garden, but Henry wasn’t there.

(v)

On the beach, we found baby seagulls. Dead. Alison wanted to preserve them. She had seen a BCC documentary. Rows of dead things in jars.

“God is dead,” she said, repeating a slice of the narrative. “Myself is mutilation and separation.”

Under a Godless blue sky, we placed the cadavers into a Woolworths’ bag and carried them home. They were cramped into an empty pickled onion jar, which she filled with methylated spirits. The spirits gnawed at their raw skin and released a flotilla of pink shavings. These fizzed to the surface like drunken divers sprung from the seabed. Alison shook the jar and pressed her giant’s face against the glass. The birds swayed violently, on the verge of taking flight or opening minute beaks. The whirlpool soon faded. Alison rammed her chubby fingers into the jar. She carefully placed them on a tin plate, like she had seen her Mother prepare the roast for the oven.

“Robbie bach,” she said, running the tips of her fingers over the birds, “now you must eat them.”

(vi)

There was a revolution in a back garden. Acne-ridden Daz, a pocket battleship in ill fitting shorts, assumed control of ‘The Catz.’ A Chinese burn, deftly delivered to Jonesy’s wrist, the final act of the baby Bolshevik’s coup d’état. Displaying Cyberman chic, Daz decreed that balaclavas should be worn at all times. A sensible edict when faced with the icy legions of winter, but eggs were being fried on pavements. As the country sizzled, ‘The Catz’ were nearly fried alive under their woollen armour plating. They sat on the sea wall at Splash Point, resplendent in swimming trunks and balaclavas, looking like they were going to terrorise sunbathers with the doggie-paddle.

(vii)

Maybe you can pack a case with despair?

(viii)

On the platform, we waited for a train which we were never going to get on. Through the dawn fog I could see the outline of the black and solid hills, which stretched further and beyond. I imagined the endless hills that followed and of being lost in the country at night. The first bursts of sun soon burned-off the fog. The hills looked less imposing, ready to trace the outline of the heat against the sky. This time we waited until the train arrived and watched it pull away from the station.

“Oh bugger it,” Mum said. “Let’s go home Robbie bach.”

(ix)

Jim won’t fix it. He may have sent some fat cub scouts on a rollercoaster picnic, but he fixed nothing down our street. He never even wrote back. I wrote in my best handwriting too.

(x)

“Do you love me Robbie bach?”

Alison stroked the edge of the kerb with her heel and pushed her face into the sun.

“Do you love me Robbie bach?” She rolled the question over and over, and as she did, her heel stroked the kerb faster; a metronome pulsing out of control.

“If you did love me, you’d show me that thing between your legs.”

I pushed my face into the sun.

“Bloody hell,” Alison shrieked. “It looks like a bloody cheesy wotsit.”

(xi)

The rain fell gently at first, like a child stroking piano keys. Almost apologetic, as it folded the corners of summer towards slumber. The clouds hung like an executioner’s smile across the lips of the harbour. And I knew, sometimes things may have to get worse before they get better. And sometimes they just get worse.

(xii)

She told me she was going to live in the house on the moon. On the day she was buried someone passed me a telescope. I told people I could see her talking to astronauts and stuff. The people smiled kindly, but we all knew she lay beyond the cemetery gates at Dyserth Road, where we had scattered rose petals washed down by the rain.

(xiii)

Henry was knocked off his bike by a truck.

Sometimes it was a bus.

Sometimes it was a big, blue car.

Henry was in intensive care.

Sometimes he was in a coma.

Sometime he was paralysed.

I had told Mum ‘we prayed for Henry at school.’

Sometimes she had asked ‘is Henry better?’

Henry got better.

Sometimes.

© Rob Marshall
Reproduced with permission

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