The Pinny And The Ginnel

When it became clear to Stevie Poach that he was not getting any better, he decided to return to the city of his birth to die.

After nearly fifty years’ exile, Linfield city centre was alien to Stevie. The beautiful old gin palaces of his youth had been swapped out for monochrome steel and glass edifices to money, populated by faceless drones. The gorgeous gothic cathedral seemed smaller, dwarfed by looming bland office blocks.

As he made his way out of the city centre, however, he found the outskirts of the city much as he had left them half a century before. Redbrick terraces, row after row like the tentacles of some timorous sea beast, stretched out to either side of Flint Mount Drive, each identical, even bearing the same black scars of pollution they had in his memory. The same litter swirled in the eddies of the breeze- obsolete newspaper scraps, discarded snack wrappers.

Some things, Stevie thought with a sigh, will never change. Squalour never changes. Nor does human nature.

Finally, he found what he was looking for. Another anonymous street, a redbrick terrace like all the others. This one, however, was different to Stevie. It was imbued with a secret magic known only to him- the lustre of a past irretrievable except in the recesses of the mind.

Horatian Street. It was here, nearly seventy years ago, that a proud woman birthed him. She had repeated the story so many times it was as gospel to him.

Stevie’s car swooped into the entrance of Horatian Street and pulled smoothly to a halt, lurching slightly as it breached the kerb. He put his head back and closed his eyes. He could hear his mother’s voice in his mind. She had been gone some forty years, and yet he could still summon forth every crackle and harrumph at will.

“I was taking the bins out,” the old woman would say as she wiped her hands clean on the faded floral apron she seemed always to wear, “When I felt the most terrible bellyache. Before I could even drop the bin bag onto the pile, out you came, blue and wailing and with a full head of hair. And,” she would add with a wry smile, “You haven’t stopped bellyaching ever since.”

Sometimes, Stevie found himself contemplating that apron, as if it too were imbued with mystical powers. Even now, whenever he saw a faded floral pattern in curtains or the dress of a pretty girl, it drew forth memories of his mother in her apron.

Stevie opened his eyes, and took in the street properly. It seemed dull, grey, archaic, compared to the Horatian Street he remembered from his childhood. After her stroke, Stevie had moved his mother to his own place, a massive house compared to the austerity of the site of his birth. He himself had left Linfield ten years before in search of wealth and fame, and never looked back.

Now, however, as the end of his life drew near, he found himself plagued by dreams of Flint Mount Drive. He saw the ginnel in which he was born, awash with womb water, brick walls draped with faded floral fabrics.

Stevie cagily clambered from the car and shuffled over to the ginnel entrance. It was gated off now, inaccessible. Logically, he understood that this was a wise precaution against burglars; nevertheless, on some level, he felt a surge of anger deep in his belly. It seemed so unfair- he entered the world there, on the cobbles and amidst the decaying waste, and yet he was barred from ever returning. He could never go back to that place, no more than he could go back to that time, never feel his mother’s loving arms around him, never again see that faded floral pinny rise and fall with her steady breath.

As Stevie wiped a stray tear from his eye, he realised there was something stuck to the top of the gate. Some strand of fabric that swayed gently in the breeze. He lifted a hand wearily, and snatched down the shred of cloth.

It was a thick fabric, like that of an old apron. The design, although faded, could still be seen- it was a floral print, dotted bluebells coated with the decay of wear and of time.

Stevie took the forgotten shred, and clambered back into his car. He examined it closely, shaking his head as he took in the weave of the fibres and the few strands that poured from its torn sides.

That was when he knew that it was time to go.