Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival by Janey Godley Read Free Book Online

old, studying History at university and his mammy had bought him the scarf for his birthday. He died with 15 stab wounds underneath a parked car. The young guy who murdered him demanded he be put in a prison which held Protestant UDA terrorists because he claimed the killing was part of a political struggle against the Pope, the IRA and all Catholics.
    As a child, as far as I knew, Catholics went to chapel and were at least taught about their religion but most Protestant adults did not attend church. We kids all went to Sunday School groups, sometimes in the local church, sometimes in the local Shiloh Hall or Tabernacle Hall. It was somewhere to go in those days before computer games, videos, DVDs or even high street amusement arcades arrived. There were not many community activities for kids, so most of us piled into a Sunday School, collecting our penny candy on the way in and on the way out. But I did not really take to religion. The preacher – he wore no religious dog collar, just ordinary clothes – would stick figures depicting Bible characters onto a big red fuzzy felt board at the front of the hall and talk about the Lord’s divine love. Every week, I used to listen to a sermon about opening my heart and letting Jesus in and, every week, I prayed for Him to stop my Uncle raping me. But it never stopped. I thought Jesus did not like me or maybe I was not important enough to be saved.
    My Uncle David Percy played flute for the local Orange Lodge; he also taught Orange children the flute. I hoped he never hurt any other child there. But I knew he
had
abused at least one other child. I had found this out three years before when, one night, my big sister Ann sat with me in the toilet at home in Kenmore Street and I had started to cry. Ann sat me on her knee to comfort me while I stared at the swirly orange and red linoleum pattern on the floor.
    ‘Why are you crying, Janey?’ Ann asked. ‘Are ye sore?’
    I crouched on her knee with both my hands jammed between my legs.
    ‘Aye, I’m sore,’ I told her. For the last two years I had had a burning pain whenever I peed. The swirly orange and red pattern on the floor blurred out of focus as tears magnified the colours.
    ‘Where are ye sore?’ she whispered to me.
    I pointed to my lower abdomen, then pulled up my skirt and pointed at my knickers: ‘My pee pee hurts all the time and Uncle David Percy tickles me there an’ I hate it!’ I sat still, scared to breathe. I could feel Ann’s arms tighten around my waist as she balanced on the toilet pan.
    ‘Oh Janey! No, no, no! I thought if I let him touch
me
he widnae touch
you
!’ She pulled me round and hugged me; my legs went round her waist and she sobbed into my neck. ‘If we never let him get us on wur own he willnae do it again, so let’s just stick together when he is here, eh?’ She hugged me tighter.
    But that had been three years before; the abuse had continued, had turned into regular rape and Jesus had not stopped it.

4
The gangs, the Gadgies and a gun
    I USED TO read newspapers in the toilet because it was one of the few places in our crowded flat where you could get peace and quiet. By reading the papers, I knew Glasgow in the 1960s was a crime-ridden city. It was notorious for its razor gangs – they used open, cut-throat razors as weapons. I read that the ageing pop singer Frankie Vaughan had gone to the rough Easterhouse area and tried to get the gangs to give up their weapons but failed; I read about Jimmy Boyle being put in prison for killing people and my Mammy had told me she had gone to the Barrowland Ballroom and must have danced with ‘Bible John’, a red-haired serial killer who attacked women who were having their periods and who quoted from the Bible before strangling them and kicking their faces in.
    There was a gang in Shettleston called The Tigers and my brother Mij would tell me tales of how they would go into nearby Tollcross Park at night and fight with machetes, but Mij