Bedtime Story

Bedtime Story

When we were kids, three of us shared a bedroom. It made bedtime a highly sociable occasion. My brother was six and a year my elder. He and I shared a big double bed and it was an I’ll-scratch-your-back-and-you-scratch-mine arrangement - except it was always mine more than his. Jim was always more than aware of his duty of care for me and our younger sister. I don’t know if it was tiredness from all the back-scratching or boredom with our chat (Jim was always much brainier and more worldly wise than me and Mara, having been on the planet a whole year longer than me and two more than her) but he always fell asleep first.

Mara would then want all my attention. From her cot in the far corner of our darkened room, she would insist I tell her a story. I guess she felt lonely all the way over there with nobody to scratch her back. Eventually I’d capitulate and begin my story. It was always the same one although I’d have promised it wouldn’t be.

“Once upon a time there was a big, bad wolf and he lived at the bottom of the lift in Galbraiths”

Galbraiths was the biggest department store in my small Scottish hometown. It was celebrated as the only shop for miles and not in ‘the big smoke’ to have a lift between its four floors. It was one of those old-world department stores and no doubt it had been chique in its day, all oak and mahogany counters with glass tops and sales assistants in uniform. The lift had a conductor, also in uniform. It was one of those steel cage affairs, with double sliding steel gates. The stairs ran around the lift shaft and from each landing you could view it from the basement to the roof - depending where the lift was of course. I dare say the ‘open-plan’ of it all was meant to look imposing. It certainly left one in no doubt as to the whereabouts of the lift. But it had become dark and grimy like all old machinery. The belts and chains that hoisted the lift along the strangely clean and polished chrome steel pole that ran the full height of the lift-shaft and along which the lift travelled, had become black and hairy with the dust that clung to their oily surfaces like fur on an animal. Awestruck, my siblings and I would clutch the heavy steel mesh of the cage and watch the carriage drop into the murky depths of the basement, revealing the terrifying, vertigo inducing sheer drop it left in its wake. The filthy rigging of the control wires, and the whining and moaning of the ageing apparatus added to the gloom and menace of the scene, as the lift rose and fell constantly, a captive in that eerie shadow-world. We loved to go and watch it while our mother grabbed a few moments respite, staring at the silk head scarves she wouldn’t need to cover the bee-hive hairdo she could never afford. We loved it because it terrified us.

“Once upon a time there was a big bad wolf. He lived at the bottom of the lifts at Galbraiths. Two wee boys and thur wee sistur wur left behind in the shop by accident one time, lang after everyone was awa’ hame. While they were waiting on thur Mammy and thur Daddy tae come an’ get them, they suddenly heard a noise coming up the stair aroon’ the lifts. It went ‘boom, boom..boom, boom ……booom!’… an they knew, they jus’ knee-eewww…it was the big..BAD…WOLF !!!!”

Immediately Mary would be screaming, telling me to ‘stop it John, its no true. There’s no such thing as the big bad wolf! It’s jist a fairy story”

“Och no, there is! There IS ! There really IS a big bad wolf an’ e lives at the bottom of the lift. Now - there they were, the three wanes, an’ they can hear these huge steps comin’ up the stair aroon’ the lift. - boom, boom….. boom, boom, boom”

Mary would never let me get any further with it. “Eeeee-eeeeee. Staawp! Maaaaaaaaaaammy ! Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaammy!”

I’d open my mouth to laugh at the desired result of my efforts - only to find myself screaming even louder than she was. “ Maaaaaaaaaammmy!! Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddy!!”

Our parents would arrive, the lights would go on and they would minister individually, Mum to Mary and Dad to me, until we were consoled and ready to sleep, exhausted by the trauma of it all. Jim, miraculously, would have slept through it all. I remember how my father would wake him up, as if having two out of three awake and upset was not enough….

“Hey you!. Where were you while aw this was goin’ on? Ah thought ah telt you tae look after these!”