Every day waiting. Standing in her bedroom upstairs just far enough back that the neighbours can’t see her. Mrs Skeers forever at her throat. You heard from him yet, lass? Aye, it’s a long way, the other side of the world. Aye it is.
Ida blushing and twisting her fingers into the knot of hair that is thinning and matting by her right ear what with all the blushing and twisting.
Magic Donahue, the postman, arriving on a groaning black bike his ma bought for him for Christmas when he was fifteen, so Ida’s ma says and even though Magic Donahue is now more than fifty-two according to Mrs Rannoch over at number twelve, he still rides that damn bike which is just as well for Ida because she can hear the screech of the worn down brakes and the rattle of the bike’s metal basket as he hurtles down the sharp cobbled incline of Cannon Lane before sweeping into Inchview Drive giving Ida just enough time to run upstairs and stare out the window and hold her breath and pray to the Holy Jesus please Jesus please Jesus let there be a postcard today.
Ida keeps a calendar under her single bed beside the box of her dead brother’s metal farm animals and Teddy George that’s she’s now grown out of but can’t quite give up. Her da says fifteen is too old for Teddy George and she should hand him over to the church for the African babies but Teddy George has the same smiley expression as Tommy and lifting Teddy George is like being lifted by Smiley Tommy if she shuts her eyes real tight and lets her heart sing.
Ida, prostate under the bed coughing away dust, puts a pencil cross through each day the postcard doesn’t arrive counting and not counting, a hand on her belly as it spreads and burls in line with the thick lead crosses. Under the bed she reasons with the calendar. Six weeks, he’d said, to get to the other side of the world. Forty two days with no postcard. No post office on a ship of course, and then, what if there’s a storm, there’s sure to be storms on the other side of the world, another five days for that. Forty nine days, no need to panic, no need to panic at all.
At eighty five days letting her blouse hang loose over the skirt she’s let out at the waist. They’ll not have given him a day off at the farm, there’ll be no post office within reach, maybe there’s no pens, maybe he’s frightened, all that way on the other side of the world.
Come down from there, Ida, what’s wrong with you all the time hanging around up there moping get down here and fill the coal scuttle.
One hundred and four days and Magic Donahue rattling and sweeping into Inchview Drive, swinging his leg over the chippy black frame, leaning the bike up against the rowan tree in fully ripe berry bloom, walking towards number six, their number six, Ida forgetting the neighbours her face pressed up against the glass hand on the murmur of her belly, Mrs Skeers staring up her from her washing line full of pink floral sheets, her ma out there on the path greeting Magic Donahue in her apron.
Not a postcard but a thin brown envelope, Smiley Tommy never mentioned a brown envelope, a postcard he said, as soon as he arrived he said, Magic Donahue standing there waiting for her ma to open the envelope, ma staring at that brown paper in her hands, Ida still up hard against the glass, her da shouting from the scullery out back, is that mail for us, Agnes, what a surprise there’s nae bills due this week we’re all up and paid and everything.
Ida’s ma turning to look up at the window, catching Ida’s blinking eyes, Ida’s ma’s face crumpling as she opens the brown envelope and reads the slip of paper, Magic Donahue turning to stare up at Ida shaking his head and Ida, Ida stepping back, Ida sliding down the wall to the floor, Ida reaching for Teddy George, lifting Teddy George, he said there’d be a postcard, he promised, he absolutely promised.
SANDERLINGS 