The Children's Writer by Gary Crew

with the roof tops. I thought maybe some hoboes had made a fire there, and leaned forward for a better look. But there were no flames flickering against the walls either side, so I stood, and shuffled forward until I reached our stone wall.
    Being closer and higher, I could see some sort of ladder, maybe a climbing frame, as in a children’s playground, standing in the middle of the allotment. I could see every rung so plain that I could count each one (there were nine) from the longest at the bottom to the shortest and highest, way up in the dark.
    I couldn’t make out what held this structure up. As I said (or as it appeared to me), the thing was standing in the middle of the allotment, rising out of the glow, the uprights apparently unsupported.
    I took a grip of my glass and climbed over the wall onto the footpath to take a better look. I must have been unsteady on my feet (already pissed?) because I tripped onmy blanket and fell in the gutter. I managed to hold my glass high, and didn’t break it or spill too much, but when I got up, the light was gone, and the ladder, so I picked up my blanket and went to bed.
    The next week was pretty average. I went to work on Monday (a bit hungover) and Friday, with uni in between.
    I liked uni. I liked to sit in the big lecture theatres surrounded by hundreds of people that I didn’t know and who didn’t know me. I liked to have intelligent and articulate academics lecture to me. I liked to hear their words wash over me, sometimes filling me up until I could cry with what I’d learnt.
    Sometimes this happened when I was at St Finbar’s, all those years ago. I remember Father Steven, who was young and earnest, giving us boys sermons about ‘Keeping the Faith’, and ‘The Temptations of the Devil’. St Finbar’s was not a rich school, but it did have a stone chapel, which was vaulted and cool, and I would kick off my shoes and put my feet flat on the stone floor to feel the cool creep up through my socks. I would sit alone, off to one side, so chapel could be my dreaming time.
    As I have said, St Finbar’s was not rich, but above the altar was a stained-glass window showing Jesus with little children. This window had been donated by the Kelly family whose boy Joseph had drowned. It said so on a plaque in front of the altar. The plaque also said, ‘In Paradise’, and on another line, ‘Lamented’, which made no sense to me because why would the Kellys lament if little Joe had gone to paradise? There were several thingsabout that window that made a boy think. The eternal fate of Joe Kelly was just one.
    Another was, ‘Suffer little children to come unto Me’, the words written beneath the feet of Jesus. Why did little kids have to suffer to come to Him? Couldn’t they come to Him if they were happy? But if you did have to suffer to come to Him, this made me think that I was better off living alone with my mother who was always broke, rather than being like other kids whose parents had money. Even Rory’s father worked in a factory.
    And why did Jesus have white feet and a pink face and yellow hair? If He came from over there, and Jews had black hair, how come He didn’t?
    These things may sound naïve, even childish (which of course they are, since I was a child), but they have shaped me, remaining with me, creating the persona that lives in my body, who inhabits my mind. And so I accept them (though I struggle with my body, my fat, my flab) and think on them again and again, remembering that chapel was always a good place to dream, or imagine, if you like. It was good to lose myself in a stained-glass window. In the pictures I mounted in my mind.
    Sometimes I would stare at the face of Jesus (He was handsome), imagining what my life would be like if I had a father. Especially if my father had yellow hair. My life would be different, I knew. I wouldn’t have a mother with black hair and a moustache. I would have a blonde mother and blondes were sexy. All the ads