Jenny McCartney - The Ghost Factory

One day when we had waved off Aunt Mary, amidst a rapid hail of queries and promises, Big Jacky sat down in his armchair and took out his pipe. Pressing the springy tobacco into the bowl, he sighed and said: ‘Normal service resumes.’ He lit up, and took a puff. Then he said: ‘They drove your mother mad too.’ That was it. The pipe smoke drifted my way. I drank it down with the brandy-glow of conspiracy.

After Big Jacky died, normal service never resumed again.

A few days after I heard what Titch had done in McGee’s shop, I was walking past his house down to the chippy. I looked in the window: Titch was beached on the floor of the front room with a pint glass of orange squash beside him, and his mum was lying on the sofa with her shoes off. They didn’t see me, because both of them were in hysterics at some crappy film on the television.

Why didn’t I go in? Normally I would have. But it’s a bore, when you’re in the middle of watching something, to have to start explaining the whole plot to the enquiring, only half interested visitor ( He’s the blonde one’s husband, but he’s doing a line with the brunette who’s married to the police inspector. No, not him, the other one, with the moustache ). And I suppose I didn’t want to take my claw-hammer to the fragile shell of happiness that surrounded them. I carried Titch’s trouble around with me now. The pair of them had unburdened themselves of it, and burdened me. I’d walk in there as gloomy, responsible Jacky, with a miserable long face on him like a Lurgan spade, and the talk would suddenly be all about McGee, and Titch going to Newry, and Titch refusing to go to Newry, and his mother trembling again on the edge of weeping. The funny film would be forgotten and the laughter stowed away, and who knew if anything would ever happen to the big eejit anyway?

I walked on. The midget James Dean with the skinhead was hanging around outside the chippy, with a can of Sprite in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other. He acknowledged my proximity with a curt wee hardman nod.

‘Hello,’ I said.

He proffered his crumpled packet of Embassy, eyes narrowed: ‘Smoke?’

‘No thanks,’ I said, ‘I’m frightened it might stunt my growth.’

‘Very fucking funny,’ he said, mortally offended. The swear word was thrown in as proof of his maturity. He hauled all four foot seven of his dignity up on the wall and sat there, puffing away and ploughing all his energies into ignoring me.

I bought my chips, soaked them in vinegar and salt, and came back out. I had poked a hole in the warm paper to eat them while I was walking and keep them hot. He was still there, working hard not to look at me.

‘Chip?’ I asked him.

I was sorry I had made that crack earlier, after he had offered his ciggies with such ill-concealed pride. He turned his head slowly, still offended, but he couldn’t be bothered to keep it up. The hand came down and rummaged around for a chip: it salvaged two. I sat up on the wall beside him.

‘What’s your name?’ he said.

‘Jacky. What’s yours?’

‘Marty.’

A pause, bulging with contemplation.

‘I seen you walking around with that big fat fella from up the road,’ he said eventually.

‘Is that so.’

‘He’s not right in the head, that fella.’

‘Maybe not. His name’s Titch,’ I said. ‘Are you right in the head?’

He laughed, showing his pointed, irregular teeth: ‘My ma says I’m a headcase.’

‘Good, then you and Titch would get on fine. Two prime headcases together. Joint gold medallists at the Headcase Olympics.’

‘My ma says he takes things from shops.’

‘Your ma keeps her eyes peeled. Do you ever take anything from shops?’

‘Took a couple of Crunchie bars once from Hackett’s, when Mrs Hackett was away in the back getting newspapers. And a Walnut Whip, a few times.’

I thought of poor old Mrs Hackett, carefully exploring the familiar confines of her shop like some ponderous old turtle in a crumbling tank. It was almost impossible to imagine her young. She looked as if she had been born with a granny perm. I pictured the doctor saying to Mrs Hackett’s mother, ‘Congratulations. You have a lovely baby girl,’ and both of them looking down fondly at Mrs Hackett’s tiny wizened face, framed with the hollow sausages of grey-beige hair.

God help her, anyway, when even eleven-year-olds saw her for a soft touch. And God help Titch, when even an eleven-year-old knew to take things from Hackett’s, and not McGee’s.

‘You shouldn’t steal from Mrs Hackett,’ I said. ‘She has trouble with her arthritis, and she’s always nice to the customers, even wee headcases like you.’

‘Aye she is,’ he conceded. ‘She gave me an ice lolly once when I told her it was my birthday.’

‘See?’ Something struck me: ‘ Was it your birthday?’

‘No.’

He dug his paw in for some more chips.

A pause.

‘The thing about telling lies to people,’ I said, slowly, ‘Is that one day they find out you’ve been lying. And when they do, they don’t like you as much as they did before.’

‘Mrs Hackett never liked me that much anyway,’ he said. ‘Think she knew about the Walnut Whips.’

There wasn’t really much I could say to that: it had the probable advantage of being true. I got down off the wall, and passed the rest of my chips over to him: ‘You finish them. I don’t want any more.’ He sat watching me as I walked back up the street. As I turned the corner I saw him squinting into the greasy paper, diligently hunting out the best bits, the crunchy pieces of fried potato that lurk around the sodden corners of the bag.

When Big Jacky died, Aunt Mary and Aunt Phyllis made a pilgrimage to Belfast to sort out the funeral. They took charge of all the phone calls to friends and family, such as there were. I could hear every word they said as I lay in my room, looking at the shadows the lamp cast on the ceiling. ( Yes. An awful shock. Quite sudden. Just passed away right there on the street. Still, at least he didn’t suffer for too long. Thank you. You know how much we appreciate it. Him? Oh, taking it very hard, you know, can’t get too much out of him as usual .)

They put the death notice in the Belfast Telegraph . Aunt Mary wanted a poem, but Aunt Phyllis thought not. I thought not, too. God knows what doggerel the pair of them would have come up with.

They held lengthy, respectful consultations on coffins and services with Mr Gascoigne, the undertaker. They mulled over flowers. Fine choices were sifted and weighed. The Porchester (handsome oak, satin-lined) or the Wellington (slightly more accommodating, less costly wood)? They could have mummified him in newspaper, tied him up with brown string and lowered him into the Lagan, for all I cared. All I knew was that he was gone for good. I didn’t say that, of course. I dug up an empty opinion. On balance, the Porchester, I said.

The aunts annexed the kitchen with the speed of two peacetime generals suddenly placed in charge of a military campaign. Odd, I thought, that it took a death to bring them fully to life. They churned out doilied plates of tray-bakes and delicate, pan-loaf ham sandwiches carved into tiny triangles. They went shopping for teabags, milk, sherry, whiskey, beer: the full equipment for the perfect funeral. I should have been grateful. God knows I couldn’t have done it by myself. And yet I wasn’t, particularly. I thought I could smell a faint triumph buried somewhere in their help, the way a dog can sniff out a bone deep in a dustbin.

Sam dug himself out of his sofa, prised his hand off the remote, came up for the day to commiserate, and motored sedately back to Carrickfergus that night. The aunts stayed over. It was like a terrible dream played out in slow motion, and this time there was no waking up. I didn’t want to stand there after the burial in my Sunday suit as the kind, creased faces came up one by one and said: ‘I’m sorry for your trouble, Jacky. He was a great man.’ I wanted to haul myself off into waste ground and howl like a wolf, dash my head against the wall until my forehead poured with blood. Anything to distract me from the pain coming from the void deep in my chest, the small hollow the size of the universe where Big Jacky had been.