conductor’s smart-arse retort reverberated around the city:
‘Does this tram stop at the Renfrew Ferry?’
‘I hope so. It cannae swim.’
In 1947, Billy’s Uncle Charlie came back from America to visit them with his young son, Jack, in tow. Dolly, his daughter who had Down’s Syndrome, had stayed at home with her mother. Everybody loved Charlie: he was the family love story. He had fallen for Nellie, a charming Glaswegian lassie whose family emigrated to the United States. Charlie saved up enough money to follow her to Far Rockaway, Long Island, where they married and settled down in that beach-side town. Far Rockaway is the closest point to Scotland in the whole American continent and Charlie lived there his whole life, never travelling further than Philadelphia.
Charlie was a hoot. Out of his grinning, ‘smart-ass’ mouth came some great sassy American expressions, such as ‘Hey buster, how’d you like your eye done – black or blue?’ He would sit in the tenement window three floors up with one leg dangling. ‘Hey guys, you wanna drink?’ He would squirt them with a water pistol.
Even Margaret and Mona loosened up when Charlie was around, and they all went to the variety theatre together. Billy used to tell people they were all going to America to live on his Uncle Charlie’s ranch and they were going to get a car each.
There is a hefty, red sandstone Victorian apartment building in Stewartville Street that was originally St Peter’s School for Boys. The sunken car park was once a playground full of youngsters careering pell-mell from corner to corner and Billy loved to sit with his legs dangling through the railings, watching them with envy. Sometimes he even caught some of the older students hurrying out at lunchtime, heading for a nearby shop where they could buy a single cigarette for a penny, and a slice of raw turnip for a half-penny. Billy thought they were gods. He simply could not wait to be a schoolboy, and imagined himself smoking cigarettes, eating turnips, and wearing fight-smart, studded boots that made sparks in the street. He soon got part of his wish, for the aunts decreed that it was time for both him and Florence to attend school.
Very young Catholic boys attended St Peter’s Girls’ School, and then moved on to the boys’ school once they turned six. Billy’s first teacher at kindergarten was Miss O’Halloran and, at five years old, he doted on her. In her classroom it was all Plasticine and lacing wool through holes in cards. Miss O’Halloran was amazed he could already write (Florence had taught him) and Billy was paraded round the school as a great example. He even went to Florence’s class where to everyone’s amazement he formed the letter ‘J’ on the board. But, despite his early star pupil status, Billy was terrified of the nuns, and was especially wary of Sister Philomena who had pictures of hell on her wall that looked like travel brochures. Billy assumed she’d been there.
When he moved up to the boys’ school at six years old, there was a harshness he’d not experienced in kindergarten. In the main hallway there was a massive crucifix, a bleeding, life-sized Christ that thoroughly spooked him. Billy had not yet been fully indoctrinated into the faith, but once he was at the boys’ school that occurred as swiftly and as subtly as a fishhook in the nostril: on his first day at the new school his teacher Miss Wilson informed him that Jesus was dead and that he, Billy, was personally responsible. And that wasn’t the only bad news. From now on, he was to be addressed as ‘Connolly’ instead of ‘Billy’.
Things were changing at home as well. William, who was probably traumatized by his wartime experiences, seemed remote and gruff to his children. He was generous as far as his means would allow and Florence and Billy looked forward to Fridays when he would come home from his job in a machine parts factory, bearing comic books, Eagle for Billy and Girl for Florence. But, although he could be quite flush with a full pay packet, he generally proved to be an inconsistent and absent parent.
As time went on and the children became less of a novelty, the aunts began to fully comprehend the sacrifices they would have to make in order to bring them up. It gradually dawned on Mona and Margaret that their single lives were now over, for dating and marriage would henceforth be difficult at best. Consequently, they began to sour, and the atmosphere at home changed drastically for the worse. There was a hymn at the time, a favourite of Billy’s. It was called ‘Star of the Sea’:
‘Dark night has come down on this heavenly world
And the banners of darkness are slowly unfurled. Dark night has come down, dear mother and we Look out for thy shining, sweet star of the sea. Star of the sea, sweet star of the sea Look out for thy shining, sweet star of the sea.’
And that’s what he felt had happened. ‘This is definitely different,’ he thought to himself at six years old. ‘God’s dead, my first name’s gone, and the whole fucking thing’s my fault.’
2 ‘He’s got candles in his loaf!’
It is late fall in Philadelphia, 24 November 2000. An eclectic crowd is jammed into an arts-district theatre. Few people are still hugging their weatherproof outerwear, so under the seats are strewn woollen, nylon, or leather garments that have slid silently downwards as bodies began to relax and shake with hysteria.
Election time in the United States is a comedian’s gift of a social climate. ‘If you don’t make up your mind about your president pretty quick, the country’s going to revert to us British,’ threatens the shaggy, non-voting Glaswegian with the radio microphone, ‘and look at the choice you’ve got! Gore – what a big fucking Jessie he is … and George W. Bush – God almighty!’ A rant against politicians follows, and so do cheers and applause from this thoroughly fed-up bunch of voters. ‘I’ve been saying all along: don’t vote! It only encourages the bastards!’
The harangue eventually switches to introspection, and soon the theme is the march of time, probably inspired by the fact that this is the night of his fifty-eighth birthday. He bashfully announces this to the throng, which prompts a rowdy bunch on the right-hand side to instigate a swell, until the entire audience is singing happy birthday to Billy.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ he wails at them. ‘Behave yourselves!’ Every single detail of his highly embarrassing prostate exam has just been shared with all these strangers, yet the intimacy of a birthday celebration is making him very uncomfortable.
Later on, in the dressing room, there is a tiny cake from his promoter. Billy has just moaned to his audience that his birthday cake now holds nearly three boxes of candles, but the promoter’s sponge-and-frosting round has only four snuff-resistant flames dancing above a chocolate greeting. As always, Billy is shattered, sweaty, and still in a fragile trance from the show. I shower him with kisses and praise for a brilliant performance, but he slumps glumly in the couch, staring fixedly at the cake.
He is transported to the circus in Glasgow more than fifty years ago. Among the most terrifying characters from his six-year-old experience were, ironically, clowns, and one of these scary, painted monsters is riding a unicycle while balancing a birthday cake on his shoulder. Unaccustomed to being celebrated for being alive, wee Billy has never seen a birthday cake before that moment. ‘Look!’ he cries, to the amusement of his sister and aunts. ‘He’s got candles in his loaf!’
Nowadays, I like to order an extravagant loaf of breadshaped chocolate birthday cake with candles for Billy, which he always hugely enjoys, but back then, at St Peter’s School for Boys, special treats were unheard of. Absolutely everything seemed threatening. A boy was to march in file and remember his arithmetic tables or else. The punishment for noncompliance involved several excruciatingly painful whacks with a tawse, an instrument of torture made in Lochgelly in Fife. It was a leather strap about a quarter of an inch thick, with one pointed end, and three tails at the other. The teacher’s individual preference dictated which end Billy and the other boys would receive. Most liked to hold the three tails and wallop the culprit with the thick end. When a boy was considered a candidate for receiving this abuse, he was forced to hold one hand underneath the other, with arms outstretched. The tawse was supposed to find its target somewhere on the hand, but Billy noticed