The Serial: Wee Georgie Day 38

“She regarded children as a blessing but refused to put them before everything else, thinking this would give us youngsters an inflated image of our own importance

Istood the pictures on the bedroom windowsill to watch over me and protect me from Satan’s ram. But things didn’t work out as I hoped. Soon after, I dreamed that I was sitting on the bed chatting to Joe about something when he decided to get up and go, and he closed the door behind him leaving me alone in the bedroom. A dreadful fear came over me and I knew I wouldn’t like what I’d see if I turned round. I tried to open the door but it was locked, and I’d no choice but to look round.

There was the Sacred Heart pointing at me and silently screaming open-mouthed from the picture! This was terrifying, as the ram had never actually done anything except be there.

But for the Protector to threaten me I found intolerably scary, and I woke up. I crawled out of bed soaked in sweat and slid in beside Joe despite his protestations, and I knew I would have a problem looking at or touching that holy picture ever again.

That dream became a recurring event over a period of months and left me in pieces night after night, until Joe got fed up and wouldn’t let me sleep in his bed any more.

Distraught

In desperation I took his air gun one evening and shot the picture with a dart, leaving it sticking out of Jesus’ left temple.

Joe removed the dart before our parents saw it, in case he got the blame. But even then the dream kept coming back.

I finally broached the subject with Mum, telling her I’d had the dream dozens of times but not one sound had come out from the figure’s lips despite the opened mouth.

In Mum’s opinion there was no doubt that God wanted to communicate with me in some way, so she said next time I had the dream I had to look at the picture and ask what it wanted.

For Mum, conversations between humans and pictures of supernatural beings were an everyday occurrence.

I was still distraught with fear, but since Mum was almost always right, I resolved to try this tactic next time I had the scary dream.

The next couple of times, fear gripped me so much that I couldn’t even look at the picture even though I did try to do what Mum had told me.

But the third time, when I woke up, I turned to face the picture of the Sacred Heart and asked it what it wanted.

Of course it said nothing but to my great relief I saw that the mouth was gently smiling. I got out of bed, went over to the windowsill and turned the picture face down. I felt a lot better immediately. The next day I accidentally knocked it out of the third-floor window.

Wicked auntie

Katie Brown spent a great deal of her free time over at our house with her sister, my Mum.

Although she was always regarded as the wicked auntie by Joe and me, she was quite close to us really.

I suppose her only wicked trait was that she made no attempt to spoil us like the other aunties did.

Where Lizzie would visit armed with chocolate and other treats, Katie would come in and ask us to make her and Mum a cup of tea.

She regarded children as a blessing but refused to put them before everything else all the time, thinking this would just give us youngsters an inflated image of our own importance.

Her sisters didn’t share this insight. We didn’t know at that time that Katie was having a really hard time with Big Jim Brown, her husband.

She was put upon more than most because Big Jim had a taste for the drink.

Maybe her regular Saturday visit was her escape time once Jimmy and Tony, her sons, were old enough to look after themselves for a while.

One of the reasons we young boys found Big Jim such a great person was that he appeared to us to be amazingly generous.

If we were at Auntie Mary’s house in Coupar Angus or Katie’s flat in Dundee, Jim would never forget to ask if we wanted any sweets or crisps.

Then he would insist on going off himself to buy them for us, even if we said we’d go to the shops ourselves.

In hotels at family gatherings he would return to the company with a tray of drinks, then apologise for having forgotten to buy crisps and peanuts for the kids.

He would wander off back to the bar to fetch them. He was really unlucky with queues because he was always a long time coming back.

All I was aware of was his unusually generous nature.

Another memorable fact about Katie was that she was the first adult I ever saw naked. Which one of us got the bigger shock I don’t know, but it was unpleasant for both of us I think.

I blame the gas fire for tempting her. She had stayed Saturday night with us, sleeping in the bed settee in the living room.

I’d heard her chatting that morning with Mum, who had to go off to the linoleum factory for a Sunday shift.

Eventually I got up to have my breakfast, so, still in my pyjamas, I walked through to the living room expecting to find Katie still in bed.

The door was slightly open so I couldn’t see much of the living room.

However, as I came through I was greeted by Katie’s usual expression of surprise: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

Startled, I looked to see my Auntie Katie in her birthday suit warming herself in front of the gas fire, trying with two hands to cover three bits she didn’t want me to see. In her panic she failed to conceal any of them. Her body wasn’t like the bare bodies of children that I’d seen which mostly resembled skeletons with skin stretched over them.

Instead, hers had a variety of bits drooping this way and that, and kind of quivering as she turned.

(More tomorrow.)