Seventeen 4 страница

Shug was eyeing the fried fish in the hot counter. “It’s the drugs. I widnae dare stick it in them any more. ”

“Aye, they’re dropping like flies. If the drugs are no doing them in, then some bad bastard’s choking the life out of them. ”

“You’ll put me aff ma whelks. ” Shug pulled a tight face. “Gies a fish supper, extra salt and vinegar, would ye? ”

Joe took the white paper and dropped a heaped scoop of fat chips and a big bit of golden battered fish on it. He drizzled the hot food with salt and vinegar, and Shug circled with his fingers. “Mair, Joe. Mair. ” The man piled it on till it was sodden.

He handed Shug his parcel. “So, you never give me an answer to my offer. You want the wee house or no? ”

As well as running the chippy, Joe DiRollo was famous for grifting the Glasgow City Council. He signed up for subsidized flats under the guise of one of his many daughters. Then he rented them along, skimming an extra tenner a week over what the council originally charged him.

“I’ll let you know, ” Shug said, backing out the door. “Mrs Bain, well, she’s difficult. ”

“I’m surprised you want to move at all. Thought you would be living like a king up there in that Sighthill sky. ”

“The King is fine; it’s the Queen that wants a beheading. Just hold on to that empty house of yours a while longer. There’s a lot that has to be lined up first. I want it all to go perfect. ” He smiled and bit into a fat chip.

By the time Shug finished the last of the whelks there was only an hour or so left on the clock. He rolled down the windows as the sun broke the top of George Square, bathing the city in a warm orange light and setting the statue of Rabbie Burns on fire. It was the best time of day, the city at peace, before it got ruined by the diurnal masses. He watched the clock in anticipation and set off early for the North Side.

Driving slowly all the way to Joanie Micklewhite, he left the windows down and flicked the green air freshener with his forefinger. She would finish her shift soon, and then they could say all the things they could not over the CB radio. He pulled the taxi in tight amongst four or five others and waited for her, slumped forward in his seat, grinning like a daft boy, watching the front door like it was Christmas.

Four

They were both still damp and sitting on the edge of the bed when the evening street lights came on. Agnes had run Shuggie a deep bath, and then, feeling lonely, she’d climbed in beside her youngest. Lizzie would’ve had a fit if she had seen. It would have to stop soon, he was too canny for five. It was the first time he’d looked at her privates and then considered his own, like a spot-the-difference puzzle.

The water had grown cold as they made a great game of filling the shampoo bottles and then soaking each other with the soapy jet. She let him scrape at the old nail polish on her toes, his care and attention feeling like a penny dropped in an empty meter.

At the edge of her bed, she combed the boy’s glossy black hair, as his head lowered in concentration. He made the Matchbox car squeal through the paisley maze of bedspread, it climbed over her bare leg as easily as the Campsie hills. Without knowing what he was looking at, he traced the white scars, the memories of Shug’s fingernails, that lined the inside of her thigh. Then the car careened back to the bedspread. The tyres would scream loudly, and the boy would look up at her and smile with the self-satisfied face of his father.

Agnes drew a fresh can of lager from a hidden place and gently pulled at the ring top. With a careful finger she gathered the bubbly drips and popped them into her mouth. She gave the boy the empty Tennent’s can. He had always liked the half-naked beauties photographed on the side. Shuggie was intent on this one, he hadn’t seen her before, and he liked the way her name sounded when he spelt it out slowly, just like his Granda Wullie had taught him. Shh-hee-nah.

Shuggie would collect the empty cans from around the house and line up the women on the edge of the bath. He would stroke their tinny hair and make them talk to each other in imagined conversations, rambling monologues, mostly about ordering new shoes from catalogues and whoring husbands. Big Shug had caught him once. He had watched proudly as Shuggie lined up the women and spelt out each of their names phonetically. He bragged about it later down the rank. “Five years old, eh! ” he would say. “What a chip aff the auld block. ” Agnes had looked on sadly, knowing what was really going on.

Later that week she took Shuggie into the BHS and bought him a baby doll. Daphne was a chubby little toddler, with the tufted coif of a fifties housewife. Shuggie loved the doll. He put all his lager ladies in the bin after that.

Shuggie had been watching his mother quietly. He was always watching. She had raised three of them in the same mould, every single one of her children was as observant and wary as a prison warden.

“Howse aboots some light entertainment? ” he asked, mimicking some nonsense from the telly.

Agnes flinched. With her painted nails she cupped his face and squeezed his dimples gently. She pushed until the boy’s bottom lip protruded. “Ab-oww-t, ” she corrected. “Ab-OU-t. ”

He liked the feeling of her hands on his face, and he cocked his head slightly and baited her. “Ab-ooo-t. ”

Agnes frowned. She took her index finger and pushed it into his mouth, hooking his lower teeth. She gently pulled his jaw open, and held it down. “There’s no need to sink to their level, Hugh. Try it again. ”

With her finger in his mouth, Shuggie pronounced it correctly if not clearly. It had the round, proper oww sound that she liked. Agnes nodded her approval and let go of his lip.

“Dus that mean the wee mooose wisnae loose aboot the hooose? ” He was giggling before he could even finish the cheeky nonsense. Agnes hunkered down to chase him, and he squealed with happiness and terror as he raced around the bed.

A pile of cassettes sat next to the alarm clock. He raked through them, scattering them to the floor until he landed on the one he was after. Shug had bought the alarm clock for her. He had saved bricks of petrol coupons, rubber-banded together, and handed them to her like they were gold bullion. The plastic button released the cassette drawer. Shuggie punched the tape in and rewound it, screaming, to the beginning. It sounded tinny and hollow on the alarm clock, but she didn’t care. The music made the room feel less empty. Shuggie stood on the bed and put his arms on her shoulders. They swayed that way for a while. She kissed his nose. He kissed her nose.

As the song changed, Shuggie watched his mother clutch the can to her chest and spin around the room. Agnes screwed her eyes shut and went back to a place where she felt young and hopeful and wanted. Back to the Barrowland, where strange men would follow her hungrily across the ballroom and women would drop their eyes in jealousy. With fingers unfurling like a beautiful fan, she ran her hand over her body. Just above her hips, she touched the stubborn roll of fat she had earned from birthing her three weans. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she returned from the past, feeling rotten and stupid and lumpy.

“I hate this wallpaper. I hate those curtains and that bed and that fucking lamp. ”

Shuggie rose to his stockinged feet on the soft bedspread. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and tried to cling to her again, but this time she pushed him away.

The small flat was never quiet, the walls were too thin. There was always the drone of the big telly turned up too loud for her father. The low complaints of Catherine, with the telephone pulled into her bedroom, the cord saw-sawing the good veneer off the bottom of the door as she paced and moaned about the slights of being seventeen. There were neighbours on every side and on the sixteenth floor, the wind, always the pulsing wind, rattling against the ill-fitted windows.

Agnes put her head in her hands. She listened to her parents roar with laughter at some effeminate English comedian. Her eldest two were out, who knows where. They always seemed to be gone now, ducking her kisses, rolling their eyes at everything she said. She ignored Shuggie’s light breathing, and for a moment it was like she was not nearly forty, not a married woman with three children. She was Agnes Campbell again, stuck in her bedroom, listening to her parents through the wall.

“Dance for me, ” she said suddenly. “Let’s have a wee party. ” She stabbed at the alarm clock, and the cassette squealed forward, the slow sad music speeding up to something happier.

Shuggie lifted her lager can. He put it to his lips like it was a magical power juice. The bitter oaty flavour made him flinch, the way it tasted like fizzy ginger, milk, and porridge all at the same time. He danced for her, stepping side to side and clicking his fingers and missing every beat. When she laughed, he danced harder. He did whatever had caused her to laugh another dozen times till her smile stretched thin and false, and then he searched for the next move that would make her happy. He bounced and flung his arms out as she laughed and clapped. The happier she looked, the harder he wanted to spin and flail. The vibrating patterned wallpaper threatened to make him sick, but he kept going, punching the air and rattling his hips. Agnes threw her head back in peals of laughter, and the sadness was gone from her eyes. Shuggie snapped his fingers like a hardman and jutted his head, still missing the beat. It didn’t matter.

They were both breathless from laughing when they heard it.

In the hallway the front door opened and closed. It was more a sucking of wind and a contracting of space than a noise. Heavy footsteps came slowly up the carpet to the bedroom door. Agnes gathered the spent lager cans and hid them on the far side of the bed. She twisted the rings upright on her fingers and, turning expectantly to the door, she practiced her most lighthearted smile. The heavy footsteps stopped outside. Agnes and Shuggie listened to the soft chink-clink of small change in a trouser pocket. Then there was a low sigh, and the footsteps passed on down the hallway to the living room. He was home for his first tea break. It should have been a time to spend together. Now she listened to Shug say hello to her parents, his voice flat and without warmth. Agnes knew her father would have looked up, the television reflected on his glasses, and smiled. There would be a moment when Wullie would have stood and offered Shug the comfy armchair. Both men would have circled it, in an awkward game of musical chairs, until Shug put his hand on Wullie’s shoulder and lowered him back into the seat. Lizzie, stony-faced, would have stood to boil the ketttle and shivered likely, as though it was not Shug but the cold Campsie wind itself that had arrived.

Agnes listened to it all through the wall. In a single sweep, she caught the creams and perfume bottles on her dresser and sent them across the room. The lamp lay broken on its side. The bare bulb glaring up at her changed her features so completely that it scared Shuggie. Everything had turned upside down so quickly.

Agnes sank to the edge of the bed. Shuggie could feel her can of lager spill on to the mattress and start to soak through his socks. Burying her face in his hair, she sobbed her dry, frustrated tears; her breath was clammy against his neck. Falling back on the bed, she pulled him down beside her. As she gripped him, he could see her face was lopsided, the paint on her eyes was blurred and running away. It looked like the lager beauties sometimes did, a careless printer and a misaligned screen, and suddenly the woman was no longer whole, just a mess of different layers.

Agnes reached across the mattress for her cigarettes, she lit one and sucking loudly, she coaxed the end into a blazing copper tip. She looked at the light for a moment, and her voice cracked with the poor me’s as she sang along with the cassette. Her right arm extended gracefully, and she held the glowing cigarette against the curtains. Shuggie watched as the ash started to smoulder and then gave off a grey smoke. He started to squirm as the smoke burst with a gasp into orange flame.

Agnes used her free arm and pulled him tighter towards her. “Shhh. Now be a big boy for your mammy. ” There was a dead calmness in her eyes.

The room turned golden. The flames climbed the synthetic curtains and started rushing towards the ceiling. Dark smoke raced up as though fleeing from the greedy fire. He would have been scared, but his mother seemed completely calm, and the room was never more beautiful, as the light cast dancing shadows on the walls and the paisley wallpaper came alive, like a thousand smoky fishes. Agnes clung to him, and together they watched all this new beauty in silence.

The curtains were almost gone, they dripped like ice cream on to the carpet. Some of the wallpaper that had come loose around the damp window was alight, and the plastic curtain track melted in two and swung down like a broken bridge. A large bead of bubbling curtain landed on the corner of the bed, and the smoke grew around them. Shuggie started to squirm again. He couldn’t stop coughing. A dark cough, sticky and bitter, like the time one of Lizzie’s bingo pens had burst ink into his mouth. Agnes never moved, she just closed her eyes and sang her sad song.

Big Shug stood framed in the darkness of the doorway. As fresh oxygen entered the room the flames ran across the ceiling to greet him. He was on and over the bed and had the window open in an instant. With his bare hands he pushed the burning polyester out the window. He picked the largest pieces of melted magma off the floor and threw them after the flaming fabric. Suddenly he was gone again, and Shuggie cried out for his father, certain he had left them alone.

When Shug returned he was swinging wet bath towels. They sprayed sour water each time they found their mark and the flames died under them. Shug turned to the bed and slapped the damp wet towels across the tangled bodies. Shuggie tried not to cry out as the whipping stung his skin. Agnes lay stiff, her eyes closed.

When the last of the flames had died Shug stood with his back to his wife and son. Through stinging eyes Shuggie watched his father’s shoulders shake with anger, and when he turned around Shuggie could see that his face was flushed with the heat and his fingers were curled, scarlet and sore where he had burnt them.

Lizzie and Wullie stood in the darkness of the hallway. Shug ripped his son from under Agnes’s arm and shunted him into Lizzie’s embrace. Agnes lay still and lifeless on the bed, and when Shug pinched her face in his hand, her lips parted in an odd fishlike expression. Bending down he shook her sharply and repeated her name over and over, till the corners of his mouth were filled with spit.

It was no use.

He looked to Lizzie, who held the boy close. Wullie ran his thick, calloused hand under his glasses, tears already running down his face. Shug looked down at his wife and her lifeless body. The room was silent. No one knew what to say.

Agnes did not trust the quiet.

She opened one of her eyes; its pupil was dark and wide but focused and clear. She put the mangled cigarette back between her lips. “Where the fuck have you been? ”

Five

The city centre was full of Orangemen. With their flutes, fife, and drums they had paraded from the cenotaph in George Square through the city to Glasgow Green. From the office window Catherine had watched the banners and sashes of the different lodges go by. At first the Protestants sang their support of King Billy, and later, after the pubs had opened, they screamed, “Get it up ye, ya Fenian basturts, ” to some tune Catherine did not know and doubted they did either.

All day policemen in reflective jackets sat on nervous horses. Now that the march was finished, young men gathered and sang sectarian songs like hateful carollers. They shouted at young girls that passed by and chased any man who wasn’t wearing the correct colours.

Catherine left the office as late as she possibly could, hoping to avoid the worst of it. She stood outside the sandstone building, deeply regretting her new emerald-green coat and high-heeled suede boots. As rain clouds covered the July sun she cursed having to work the Orange Saturday. It wasn’t like she was that great with numbers, but Mr Cameron insisted she be there when he was, to answer the phones that never rang, to make the tea he never drank.

It wasn’t a bad first job, her stepfather, Shug, had argued, especially for a daft lassie just out of school with her brain rotten on boys and clothes. Credit lending was boring, but she did like the way everything had to be neatly organized and squared away. She loved looking at the neat red pen at the bottom of each ledger page, tallied, undisputed, and true. In a way it was her inheritance from Agnes, this neat fastidiousness, this keen eye on what you had and what you could spend.

It wasn’t a bad job, and besides, Mr Cameron had a son who was a big handsome sort, and as Catherine skulked home she let herself think about the boy. Up at the cinema Campbell Cameron had been all slithering hands, like a dirty octopus. Even his tenderest winching had felt entitled and demanding.

Her granny had taken her aside once and told her that she was daft, that she should marry Seamus Kelly. Lizzie explained how she had married her good Catholic boy, and he had stood by her for over forty years, through all sorts of problems. It was easy to ignore her granny’s advice. After all, Lizzie had only had two new settees in as long as Catherine could remember, and there had to be more to marriage than chapped hands and scullery knees. Lizzie needn’t have worried about the young Cameron anyway. Catherine’s stepfather was busy pushing his own nephew, Donald Jnr, on her.

When she had first seen her step-cousin, she had been secretly thrilled at the way he carried himself, how he made himself feel right at home in their small front room. Donald Jnr sat with his legs confidently open, taking more space than was his to take and talking about himself with no modesty. She liked the subtle ways he let her know that he was more important than her. It was the way that Proddy dogs always looked, like they were so loved, so well fed, the centre of their own lives. They were their mother’s pride, even in their shame or shortcomings, and Donald Jnr seemed entirely free from conscience or burden. He was golden, though in reality, he was more of a dewy translucent pink.

Catherine liked to watch him eat. She was scandalized by the way he preferred lamb meat dripping to cabbage soup and the way he always expected three whole sausages in his plate of stovies. She had watched him hand his plate back to Lizzie and ask for more. So how could she tell her wee granny she felt lucky to have him? It was common knowledge that he’d winched dozens of girls while she had been sharing a bedroom with her two brothers. Donald Jnr didn’t have to pay digs in to his mother. He didn’t have to feel grateful or guilty for anything.

Almost as soon as they had met, he had been trying to separate her from her virginity. Catherine had lectured him in the first Communion, and he had guffawed when she earnestly said she was waiting for marriage. He was Shug’s nephew right enough. She dug her nails deep into the palm of her hand and chastely turned him down. Secretly, she liked this rare imbalance of power, though part of her had assumed he would dump her for it. Yet somehow Donald Jnr never turned back. Instead, he spoke to his Uncle Shug, and on her seventeenth he proposed to her, his step-cousin, on the top deck of a Trongate bus in a showy scene that was more about him than it ever was about her.

As the rain fell harder, Catherine started into a small trot on the high boots. There had been all kinds of lurid stories splashed in black and red across the front of the evening papers, with photo-booth pictures of young women who had been raped and murdered in the shadows of the city. The papers said they were prostitutes and published biased stories about the drug problems they had to feed. One of the young girls had been strangled and dumped in a shallow burn by the edge of the motorway. The killer had folded her abused body neatly and slipped her inside a black bin bag. She had lain there for months until some fly-tippers had burst the bag, and her purple hand slid out. In all that time no one had reported her missing. It made Wullie suck at his dentures in pity and Lizzie ask where the Chapel was in all this.

Catherine had studied the newspaper photos of the dead girls with horror. Their hollow cheeks and sunken eyes were stark against the photo-booth portraits with their blanching orange background. A murdered young girl, and the best photo her family could provide was the extra copies she had done for her monthly transit pass.

It wasn’t yet dark when she reached the concrete forecourt of the tower block. In the gloaming there were several young weans standing in a circle and poking something with a stick. The weans were too young to be out this late, and some had no coats or shoes on in the July rain. Something in the damp pile caught her attention, something familiar but out of place. Catherine crossed the forecourt and hoped it wasn’t a dead dog again. Someone had been rat poisoning all the Sighthill strays; they had thought that kinder than watching them writhe in heat.

On the ground lay a wet heap of smouldering curtains, purple paisley that she recognized to be the same as her mother’s, burnt and still smoking. Counting in twos she found the sixteenth floor and saw that all the lights were on and the windows were flung open at this late hour. It was not a good sign. Chances were that her brother Leek wouldn’t be home. If the night had gone as she expected, he would have seen it coming at dinner and sloped off and hid. He was good at that. Being quiet nobody missed him much.

But she had to find him. She couldn’t face their mother alone.

There was a dark alley with the iron railings of Saint Stephen’s on the right and the chain-link fence of Springburn Pallet Works on the left. It was known as a dangerous walk; once you had started down the path there was no turning back till you reached the far end. Gangs loved it. About halfway down the alley an old drunk couple was staggering through the windblown rubbish. Catherine could hear the woman whispering dirty promises to the old man. She hurried along and then dipped down and crawled under a gap in the chain-link fence. The fence caught the back of her hair, and for a panicked moment she thought they had a hold of her. Catherine pulled, the hair ripped, and as she freed herself she fell backwards into the mud. Wet and scalped, she watched her hair hanging there like animal fur and thought about the ways she could take it out on Leek.

Inside the pallet factory there were thousands of stacked cubes made up of blue shipping crates. Each cube stood around thirty feet tall and was as wide as the foundation of any tower block. The foreman had arranged them like tenemented streets, ten blocks wide by ten blocks deep, set with just enough space in between to move a little pallet truck up the aisles. She counted the way as Leek had grudgingly taught her. It would have been easy to get lost amongst the pallets in the daytime and was much easier in the dark. Spotlights mounted on the side of the warehouse cast a weak glow down the north-south lines of pallet cubes, but turn a corner and it was instantly as black as night.

By the time she noticed the orange embers dancing in the dark it was too late. She tried to turn, but the wet heels of her suede boots slipped, and she slid further into the darkness. Hard hands grabbed her arms and pulled her towards the swarm of fireflies. She made to scream, but a hand closed over her mouth. She could taste the nicotine and glue that lingered on the fingers. Many hands moved on to her body, roaming and searching. There was a swishing sound of corduroy as a pair of legs moved closer behind her. The legs pressed into her, and she could feel the man through the thinness of his tight trousers. He was bloating with blood and excitement.

One of the burning embers came closer and glowed ominously in front of her face. “Whit the fuck do ye want? ” it asked.

“It’s goat nice tits, ” said the embers to her left. All the burning fireflies laughed and danced.

“Gies a feel. ” She felt a small hand, almost like a woman’s, pull at her work blouse.

A silver light cut through the darkness, and Catherine felt cold metal press against the side of her face. The dirty hand over her face moved down to her throat. The silver fishing knife touched the side of her mouth and pushed inside a little. It tasted metallic, like a dirty spoon. “Celtic or Rangers? ”

Catherine let out a sad whine. It was an impossible question: if she answered wrong the blade would leave her with a Glasgow smile, a scar from ear to ear, a marking for life. If she answered right she might just get raped.

Many nights Catherine had sat up in bed, brushing her long hair, and watched Leek ask the same nonsense of Shuggie. Leek would straddle his baby brother with his lanky limbs and pin him to the floor. He would make two fists, holding them inches from Shuggie’s face, and would ask, “Cemetery? Or hospital? ” It was pointless. All answers gave the same result. You were going to get whatever the bad bastard on top of you wanted to give.

“I’m no gonnae ask you again. ”

The gutting knife rattled against her teeth as it tested the inside of her cheek. A single tear escaped her left eye. Catherine thought of the gluey fingers and forced a guess. “Celtic? ”

The man huffed in disappointment. “Lucky answer. ” He drew the knife out slowly from between her lips; he was enjoying the terror on her face. Catherine put a finger inside her cheek, tasting the warm salty tang of blood, but the skin was still blessedly together.

A bright light shone directly into her face, and she shrank back against the man behind her. “Fuck me! ” said the voice. “It’s wee Leek’s sister. ” It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the torchlight; she put her hand on the tip and angled it down to the ground. The men standing around her were only boys, younger than her and probably younger than Leek. They had been smoking and waiting in the dark. With no peace at home they were waiting for someone to molest or for a chance to knife the night watchman.

Her hand shot out and connected with the owner of the silver knife. She felt no better, so she made another fist and rained it down on his neck, head, and shoulders. The boy covered his head and danced away, laughing.

Catherine pushed through the boys in disgust and ran the last block of pallets. She could hear feet, fast and flat, behind her. She grasped the wall of rough blue wood, and as quick as she could, she hauled herself up the stack of pallets. Behind her she felt a hand wrap around one of her new boots; it gave a quick tug, and her foot came free from its ledge. It took all of her strength to hold on to the splintery wood. She swung her boot back and heard it crack off a thick skull bone, and lifting her knee she found some purchase and scrambled up the rest of the tower.

The torchlight shone up her skirt, trying to illuminate her gusset. They were taunting her, their voices pitched, ready to break, the dangerous sound of little boys coming into the intoxicating power of manhood. She pulled herself the last ten feet to the top. She wanted to lie down for a moment and catch her breath, but she forced herself to stand up and look defiantly over the side. There were five of them, pockmarked and fuzzy-faced. They were grinning up at her, as the eldest was pushing his forefinger into a donut hole he had made with his other hand. Catherine spat over the side on to them. It was a wide shower of white foam, and the boys shrieked like the children they still were and scattered like laughing rats.

Standing on top of the flat pallet stack, she looked over the uniform fields of bright blue wood. The boys had made her lose count, and she hoped she had climbed the right tower. Leek could leap the eight feet or so between the stacks, but she never could. In wet boots she would slip and fall to the ground. She shuddered to think what the neds would do to her body as she lay there with a broken neck.

Catherine counted four from the fence and counted five from the turning. It was right; she hadn’t lost count. Searching the top of the stack, she decided on a pallet that was about four by four in from the southeast corner. Checking over her shoulder, as she had been taught, she bent over and lifted a blue pallet free from the rest. A flickering light shone from somewhere within.

Catherine put her head into the opening and hissed her brother’s name in the direction of the faint light. “Leek, Leek! ” There was no answer. She hissed again, and suddenly the flickering light was snuffed and it went dark in the hole. Rain dripped from the end of her nose as she peered closer into the void. Suddenly a white face with small pink ears shot up at her from the darkness. “Boo! ”

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