Journey of a Nobody

By R. Erskine

In the uncharted realms of anonymity, where the ordinary conceals extraordinary stories, "Journey of a Nobody" unfolds as a poignant exploration of a life without spotlight. Through the uncharted landscapes of a directionless existence, this narrative delicately traces the footsteps of a soul struggling to find purpose in the quiet shadows.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: R. Erskine
• Release date: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805414483

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Copyright © 2023 by R. Erskine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

used in any manner without written permission of the copyright

owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

FIRST EDITION

978-1-80541-447-6 (paperback)

978-1-80541-448-3 (ebook)

Contents

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1.

He opened his eyes, after however long, to see a huge white space which seemed to be a room of some sort. Was he still dreaming? Lying in bed trying to take in where he was, seeing the whiteness everywhere, the beds, all these young people, all strangers, some in beds, some out, while his brain gradually began to put past events together to understand where he was and how he got here.

Whut’s yer name? a gruff voice in the bed next to him spat out. After however long asleep he struggled to turn and look at this neighbour.

Robbie, he told this inquisitor.

Ah’m Joe. Whut team d’ye support?

Half dead in bed, he drew a breath. He knew enough from local Catholic and Protestant schools to realise the answer to this simple question was crucial: it said where you stood, who you were, whether they were going to be pals. A simple choice with complicated consequences. Despite his young age he knew that much. Now he was feeling increasingly anxious and quite alone as a result of this question, due to his confusion about what team – Rangers or Celtic – he supported, and knowing his peace in this place depended on getting it right.

He stalled… Eh? The question was repeated, and through his foggy brain he guessed Rangers as confidently as he could.

Ah support Celtic!! was the right answer, accompanied by a long glowering look.

Having failed this test the exchange ended after a futile argument about who would win the league, cup etc., who had the best players; none of which he could be bothered with. After this he was free to deal with his pain and disorientation.

Not the best start to living in this new place, having to make the wrong choice, his scarlet fever introduction to the inescapable, suffocating, puerile sectarian divide, as he was to learn as he grew up. Catholic or Protestant, green or orange who knows? Who cares? Did it matter in this place? But he felt really weak and knew he couldn’t get away or even get out of bed so he had to stay put, hang on and hope. He’d learned to pretend and try to fit in. And fortunately ‘Joe’ was able to get out of bed and harass all the others.

He turned over in bed, trying to remember how he got here, vaguely remembering being carried from the house on a stretcher down the stairs and through the close to an ambulance, where the morbid locals had gathered to see him, an ambulance at the close being an unusual event. The ambulance men must have brought him here but Mum wasn’t with him.

When taken to his bed in the hospital he was told to stand on the bed by the nurse and stripped of all his clothes, naked and red blotched in front of all the other young people there: her new prized specimen. She told them to look at him and see how bad he was and announced he was by far the worst case of scarlet fever in the place, which no doubt made them all feel much better.

This proclamation of his extremely diseased body only confirmed what he already knew, as he remembered the doctor saying something like that before the ambulance arrived. But it wasn’t what he’d hoped, standing there naked, covered in red blotches for all the other young wide-eyed children to gawk at. Although completely exposed and nervous, he was too unwell to feel afraid and anyway it was what grown-ups do, children don’t feel grown up things like decency. He was used to being the worst, as this had always been the case whether due to measles, chicken pox or anything else he contracted. Every time Mum took him to the doctor she was told how bad he had these things.

The nurses were kind, if a bit strict, and changed his bed, pyjamas, brought meals, medicine and checked he was getting better. No visits from Mum or Dad, which was never explained, but although lonely he didn’t complain in case he was sent somewhere else.

Within the first week the worst happened, as he knew it would, but thought it would be sorted without a fuss, as was always the case at home. He was wakened by a nurse during the night shouting at him: YOU are JUST a LAZY BOY! while stripping off his pyjamas and smacking him hard three times, in keeping with her loud words, and waking all the others who’d been asleep… he’d wet the bed. The shock of this treatment left him unable to move, in tears. In this mire of humiliation and misery, he was just glad her sentences were short as he was now also in considerable pain. She had obviously concluded he couldn’t be bothered going to the toilet, which wasn’t the case. Lying in urine-soaked, stinking sheets wasn’t his idea of comfort. It had been happening most of his life at home and would no doubt happen again in this place. Not only was he the most diseased in the ward but he couldn’t even manage to go to the toilet when he needed.

As the grinding days, weeks and months passed he watched as all the other children in the ward left one by one to go home to their families. The rest of the time he spent trying not to get noticed, to be invisible, just wanting to go home. It seemed forever since he was brought to this place.

At some point Mum and Dad arrived and took him home, completely better it seemed, if just a bit more traumatised. Mum explained they hadn’t been allowed to visit, something about contagion.

After he got home he overheard the grown-ups talking about scarlet fever being a life-threatening disease and how bad he was and there had been a good chance he might not have got through it.

Something to be thankful for, it seemed.

2.

The family was poor, from a fundamentalist Protestant background which was authoritarian and anti-women. In this overwhelmingly conformist society rooted in Calvinism, women subsumed themselves to their husbands and families, with contraception, aspiration, choice and educational opportunities stacked against them. It was the woman’s responsibility to keep the family together, they were held morally responsible for everything that went wrong in their families and communities. Unable to escape from such a society they became like their mothers: they married for safety and security, hoping only to protect their children from this oppressive culture.

They lived on the first floor of a tenement in a run-down part of the city: Robbie, his big sister, Mum and Dad, and later a wee sister. They had two bedrooms, a kitchen and their own lavatory, which was more than their neighbours, who had outside lavatories. It was very near where his paternal grandparents lived. Mum had moved too far away from her family to keep regular contact. She had lost twin boys in childbirth so the successful arrival of a healthy son pleased her greatly. She was protective towards all three of her children but probably a bit more so of her son. As the years went on she would always bring out the old shoebox with the all photographs when family and neighbours visited, the pride of her collection being him in his pram holding his bottle. Like most babies he had an angelic face and the women would all coo and say nice things about him. She doted on him.

His paternal gran was the head of the family. His grandparents had two sons and a daughter. As an adult their daughter gave birth to a baby girl out of wedlock and as the child was illegitimate and in serious danger of being removed from the mother by the authorities, the situation was camouflaged by the grandparents assuming parentage and bringing her up accordingly. No one knew except those living in the house. The extended family members who grew up alongside the daughter were conditioned to accept the situation, having no need to question it. In order to maintain the distance from other children in the family, this child was sent to a private fee-paying school following Primary, something that was unheard of in working class families. How this was funded was never asked nor explained, although Grandad had a comparatively high income as a carpenter in the shipyard. The effect of all this was that the child was kept apart from the wider family for years . She was the only cousin he and his sisters never spent any time with. She was treated by her ‘parents’ as a special child and grew up in a somewhat affected way. The whole scenario had been successfully flipped on its head.

They were always well looked after, his sisters and him, and sent to school well-presented, with clean clothes and shoes and a play-piece. Mum would thoroughly wash the children every Sunday night in the zinc bath, and when older the kitchen sink, ready for school the next day. It was a relief when this was over; he hated being bent over the sink getting his hair washed, with soapy water in his eyes and up his nose. Midweek he was allowed to wash his face himself before going to school, with Mum always telling him to turn round when he was dressed to fix his collar, and checking for tidemarks. Mum kept the house as clean and as hygienic as possible, but it was difficult due to the mice and in summer so many flies, no proper washing facilities, and an often broken toilet. Sometimes there wasn’t enough money to buy toilet paper so they used newspaper, which was jaggy and made your hands black from the ink. The coal bunker in the cupboard in the lobby was always filthy with all the black coal dust left from the bags of coal, which Dad would use to make coal pies for the fire when there was no money to buy more coal. When burning in the fireplace in the kitchen, these big lumps of dirt would belch clouds of smoke throughout the house.

The younger years were difficult. Often when he’d had a tantrum and Mum was at the end of her tether, she’d threaten him with the Cruelty Man who’d come and take badly behaved children away. But when this had no effect she’d warn him: Your dad will leather you when he gets home! which inevitably happened and hurt and always made him cry, which showed it worked. Dad would say after a walloping Be tellt! An don’t huv me tellin yi AGAIN or ah’ll use the belt! Unlike Mum, Dad didn’t hold back with a walloping, but as it went on he was never sure what was worse, the pain or the fear of it. They didn’t know what to do with him and believed his behaviour was just because he’d such a bad temper. But the belt, the big broad black workman’s belt, which Dad never wore, always hung on a hook on the outside of the cupboard door in the bedroom in direct sight of his bed. It was obviously the most convenient place to hang it in a small house with no actual clothes cupboards. It was the last thing he saw before going to sleep. It was a constant reminder of what a real leathering looked like. So during the day at home he tried hard to control his temper but couldn’t stop the huffs and tantrums. Mum would tell him he had no patience with things when he grew angry, but he always felt useless and knew when Dad got home he’d get another wallop for being cheeky to Mum.

Each time he got walloped it triggered the feeling he had when he was younger. It was a hot summer’s day and Dad was sitting in his chair without his shirt on, Mum was at the shops. His big sister Rose – she wasn’t really very big – Dad’s favourite, went over to him and sat on his knee and had a carry-on, laughing a lot, while he watched, pretending to play with toys. When she went to her room, he went over to Dad and sat on his knee copying his sister, and playfully tugged the hairs on his bare chest. It must have hurt as, although Dad said nothing, he put Robbie’s small hand in his own big hand and crushed it till he was crying loudly. Nothing was said. Shortly after, Mum came back and asked why he was sitting in the corner crying. He was too afraid to say anything and just curled up. Dad completely ignored Mum’s question. He learned never to try to play with Dad again.

He wet the bed and had nightmares every night from an early age. It was always the same nightmare. Mum would ask him what the nightmares were about and eventually, though feeling a bit stupid trying to explain a nonsense dream, he was determined enough to describe it to her as a huge black roller machine-thing slowly trundling toward him in darkness to crush him, and he couldn’t get away. It obviously didn’t make any sense and just made Mum as confused as he was. The bedwetting was so frequent through the years that Mum, completely exasperated and worried, took him to the doctor from time to time, but after examining him he declared there was nothing physically wrong. So it went on. After a while he stopped getting told off but as Mum was always having to wash and dry the sheets and mattress, she bought him a fold-up zed-bed when his own bed wasn’t usable. Nothing advised by the doctor made any difference: stopping having drinks before bedtime, staying up a bit later before going to bed, trying to settle him to sleep. It made no difference. And his outbursts became increasingly frequent during the day with Mum almost hysterical, trying to control him as he ran about the house shouting and screaming and lying on the floor banging it with his fists, crying. Eventually he’d run to the bedroom and crouch behind the door so she couldn’t open it. At