This Road is Red

by Alison Irvine

  I suppose it would have been cold because it was right at the end of the building. When I was really young I’d go in there if it was windy. If it was really windy it would rattle the windows and the building would be swaying and if I was scared I’d go in the box room. I always remember shouting for a fur coat. My mum would come in with her fur coat and I’d get under that so it must have been cold.

  I think some folk used to just put junk in there. But we put a bed and a wee cabinet and a wee record player or a tape player in there. We drilled a hole in the wall, which was a no-no because of the asbestos, but we drilled a hole in the wall and plugged into Mum and Dad’s electrical supply. It was great, it was a great wee room.

  Ricky 1977

  Ricky loved the lumber room so much. It was definitely better than sharing a bedroom. His mattress fitted brilliantly on the floor and he got peace all night. His ma and da had let him clean the place out so there wasn’t any junk, just his Action Men and mattress and he could sleep in there whenever he wanted. No windows either so morning light didn’t bother him. It was the best room in the whole house. Yes, he had to take turns with his brothers but let it be remembered that he cleared it out and made it into a bedroom in the first place so he should get first choice.

  ‘I missed the fire? Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘Never wake a sleeping baby,’ his ma said.

  ‘I’m not a baby, I’m nine.’ Ricky put his elbows on the table and cupped his cheeks.

  His ma raised her eyebrows and he took his elbows off the table.

  ‘How many fire engines were there?’

  ‘Oh, about twenty.’

  ‘Twenty!’

  ‘It was on the radio, they came from all over. Dumbarton, Helensburgh, Falkirk. It was some fire.’

  Ricky couldn’t believe it. He’d never seen firemen putting out a real fire. It was his dream to see that.

  ‘How many firemen?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, son. Hundreds?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Ricky put his head in his hands again and wished he hadn’t slept the night in the lumber room. His ma told him about the people in their pyjamas and the dogs and weans, the cameras and journalists with microphones, the bright white tv lights. Polis. The place buzzing when they finally went to bed and still buzzing when they woke.

  ‘Some fire,’ Ricky said and ate up his breakfast, eager to get out and see Ten Red Road for himself.

  His pal Tommy lived in Ninety-three Petershill Drive. They met every morning and made the short walk to school. The first thing Tommy said was, ‘Did you see the fire?’

  Ricky paused. But not for long.

  ‘Aye, it was mental! Twenty fire engines, a hundred fire- men, tv cameras.’

  ‘Flames a mile high!’

  The boys added detail after detail to their story, passing

  Ten Red Road and gasping at the burnt structure, smoke up

  their nostrils and in their throats. They stood outside their school and saw grown-ups where schoolchildren would have been, standing in twos and threes and fours in the playground, treading all over the games and patterns marked out on the concrete.

  ‘No school!’ a kid from their class shouted as he ran past them and away.

  The boys didn’t wait for anyone else to tell them different. They walked back the way they came, then went off to the grass behind the Little House on the Prairie, the community hut that stood alone on the field, and played long shots with the football Ricky took with him wherever he went.

  Jennifer 1977

  While the Corporation worked out what to do, they let the residents of Ten Red Road who lived on floors nineteen and beyond back into their ruined houses.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Jennifer’s mother said because she’d talked to a neighbour who’d said she’d broken down when she went through her door and saw her house of ten years wrecked and all her possessions useless.

  ‘Jim, just take what you think we can salvage,’ she said and waited at her mother’s on Dykemuir Street where the family were staying.

  Jennifer went with her father and James and a couple of suitcases. They caught the lift to the eighteenth floor then walked the rest. They stepped onto their wet landing and her father put the key into their door. There was a terrible smell of smoke, the air in the lobby was damp, the carpets sodden and there was fungus on the walls. Their panicked beds were wet through. Books, carpet, curtains drenched. Jennifer and James filled their suitcases with clothes and items they thought could be salvaged. Their father took photographs that weren’t ruined, for Colleen, and his bottle of malt, and documents from a drawer, even though they were wet.

  ‘Say goodbye to our house,’ he said and Jennifer and James did that. Jennifer stepped once more on to the veranda because she liked the view.

  In the living room she found her father shaking his head and looking as sad as she’d ever seen him.

  ‘See this,’ he said and put his fingers to the red wallpaper with the swirls.

  It slid to the floor with only the lightest of touches.

  ‘Your mammy’s wallpaper,’ he said and they shut the door behind them and walked down the stairs in silence until Jennifer said, ‘We’ll get another house for you to decorate, Da.’

  And they did. Sixty-three Petershill Drive. Twenty-four/four. Fair play to the folk who wanted out; out of Barmulloch altogether, out to a new house in a different part of Glasgow, but not for the Ryans, with the easy walk to Provanmill and their kids settled in their schools and Colleen with her friends in other houses and her own ma just up the road. No. A new house. A new view. Red Road changed and changing but the Ryans sticking with it.

  Section Three

  Ricky 1978

  SCOTLAND! NINETEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT! The World Cup Finals! Scotland’s year. Scotland’s decade. Scotland’s finest hour! Ally MacLeod’s words in his head. Everybody’s da and even their ma was going to be watching the first match. Scotland v Peru. Scotland! Ally’s Army! Scotland!

  Ricky booted the football up the pitch for his pal Tommy to run on to and take goalwards. His was a kick worthy of the

  1978 World Cup squad. He’d be fourteen for the next world cup and eighteen for the one after that. A Scottish footballing legend, that’s what he was going to be. Oh Scotland.

  He was out playing as long as he could contain his excite- ment. His mammy had already kicked him out the house because he couldn’t sit still and wait. From the numbers of boys out playing, Ricky guessed their mammies had done the same thing. Red Road was hoaching with weans and footballs and flags. The Saltire flapped from windows and verandas. A badge. A statement of allegiance. The most exciting summer of Ricky’s life. Boof, the ball came to his feet and he saw a quick, sneaky pass down the wing to Tommy. Boof.

  Suddenly, boys began to run. Hundreds of them. They took off. Some carried footballs, others just ran in their sannies or football boots and they ran as if the world was ending or beginning. Weans shouted down from verandas and waved up their brothers and sisters.

  A slow, guttural chant started up; We’re on the march with

  Ally’s Army! dragged from the boozy bellies of a group of men who staggered past Ninety-three Petershill Drive.

  Ricky ran with his pals to One-five-three. He would watch

  the match in his house. Tommy was coming with him. His brother would be there and his ma and da and anyone else they’d invited in. Oh mammy daddy it was too exciting.

  It felt like hundreds of weans were waiting for the lifts and it was a scrum of elbows and shuffling feet and wee pointy shoulder blades. Scotland! Scotland! Their shouts cracked against the painted walls. May McBride came in with her hus- band Alistair and she put her hands over her ears.

  ‘Oh you boys are making an awful racket,’ she said but she laughed and looked around the mass of twitching, twittering boys.

  ‘He’s up the stair already,’ Ricky said to her. ‘He wanted to watch the build-up.’ Ricky was pals with May’s son. They went to school together
.

  ‘That’s my boy,’ she said.

  A lift arrived and the boys surged in. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty boys squeezed themselves into the silver-walled lift that was meant to carry eight adult bodies at the most.

  ‘You should let May into the lift, boys,’ Alistair called out, his hands on his wife’s shoulders.

  ‘It’s all right, we’ll wait for the other one.’

  ‘Okay, just this once.’

  They stepped aside and Alistair pulled on the lapels of

  May’s raincoat and drew her lips towards his.

  ‘I’m not letting that lift get away,’ Ricky said and he and Tommy pushed past some hesitant boys who’d only just moved to Red Road and squeezed themselves in. The lift was hot and smelled of mud and sweat. A tiny boy sat on the shoulders of a big boy. Hands reached to the number panel until a boy took control and, because he knew where all the boys lived – they all did – he pressed the buttons himself. The doors shut and thirty boys’ toothy faces looked up at the ascending numbers that lit up above the doors. The lift stopped at the second floor and several boys berated the boy who squeezed himself out.

  ‘You should have taken the back stair you lazy cunt,’ one said.

  ‘You can’t get in the back stair, you can only get out.’

  Ricky couldn’t speak now. He closed his eyes and felt his stomach flip and squirm. Jordan. Dalglish. Gemmell. Burns. Masson.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Tommy said.

  ‘Aye. I just want to be in front of my tv,’ Ricky said through clenched teeth and a barely-open mouth.

  The lift set off again and a cheer went up. Scotland, Scotland! The boys began to sing and bang the lift walls with their fists. More boys jumped up and down and the lift went on up. Then it stopped. Just shook and stopped. Sudden silence. Ricky breathed in and opened his eyes. All the boys looked at the doors. The tiny square window showed no light; they weren’t even nearly at a floor. Still in silence, the boy who was good at working the lifts, the one who put it on the fireman’s switch or got it to miss floors or stay still when new people were in for the first time, squeezed a path through the boys and got to work. He tapped a few buttons, got a bunk up from another lad and fiddled around with the lift panel. Nothing. The lift didn’t move.

  ‘Try jumping,’ a boy said.

  So they all jumped, hoping that it would kick-start the lift in the way some of them had seen their fathers jump-start their motors. The lift didn’t move.

  ‘Try shouting,’ another boy said and they screamed and bawled and shouted for help.

  ‘Where’s the caretaker?’ somebody said.

  ‘In front of his telly with his baffies on,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Ricky and he thought he might greet.

  The boys went quiet again. Tommy began to laugh. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Ricky wailed and said nothing more.

  Ricky couldn’t believe it. He just couldn’t believe it. Even if the caretaker found them he knew they’d never get a lift engineer out while the game was going on. They were stuck and he was missing Scotland’s finest footballing hour. He told himself that the lifts in Red Road were cursed and doomed and he would never take one ever again.

  At eight forty-five a boy looked at his watch and said, ‘That’s kick-off,’ and the boy with the tiny boy on his shoulders said,

  ‘Matty, I can’t hold you up anymore. You have to get down.’ The boy with the watch began to count down the first-half

  minutes and somebody made up a commentary that had Jordan scoring a hat-trick and Rough performing a dynamic and stunning save.

  ‘And Graeme Souness with his thunderous left foot floats the ball to Rioch’s feet. What a joy to watch.’

  Ricky closed his eyes again. The boy with the watch counted down a full forty-five minutes then fifteen for half time then another forty-five and when they were well into twenty-six minutes of injury time they heard the caretaker shouting to them and telling them that help was on its way.

  ‘What was the score?’ Ricky shouted.

  ‘You don’t want to know, son,’ the caretaker shouted back.

  ‘We do!’

  ‘Three-one. To Peru.’

  ‘Oh pishing, shiteing, typical Scotland.’

  ‘There’s always Iran.’

  ‘Ach well, it can’t get any worse.’

  June Aird

  The bus stop used to have a lane all the way through and it was a pathway, a busy, cheery pathway. You used to walk all the way along and you’d come to my Aunt Molly’s. And she would have a brae, you went up a brae to my Aunt Molly’s, and there’d be chutes and swings kind of built in. And we used to play on that. Because Aunty Molly was a wee bit better off than her other sisters you knew you were going to get some chocolate biscuits. You just loved going to Aunty Molly’s.

  She was a character. Everybody knew her. Her pastime was the bingo. Bingo was a social place. She won vast amounts. She won lots of different things. They’d have a play-off – you shout ‘house’ in one game then you’d get a special ticket to play in another game and they linked up the bingo halls – and Aunty Molly got the star prize of going to London to see Miss World. She took one of her sisters with her.

  Ricky 1980

  A weird-looking man came into the flats and a few minutes later they heard a thump and a bang. Ricky and the boys played kick-ups outside the shed as people came home from their work. There were two footballs between them and although there were no rules as such, it worked out that two boys played against each other, keeping up their footballs until one of them missed. When Murdo Johnson had a shot they mostly just watched him because the boy was brilliant and it was like watching a keepie-uppie exhibition with the football bouncing off his neck and head and toes and knees and even his arse at times. He would probably go on to be a professional player if he kept on being so good, and fair play to him. The guy never even smoked or anything.

  The weird-looking man had walked quickly past them. He wore denims and a khaki jacket and carried a rucksack. He could have been a teenager or he could have been older, it was hard to tell. His hair was cropped close to his skull and his face was weird; a bit mad-looking. He didn’t seem to want to look at the boys even though they looked at him; they said hiya to everyone who came in or out because they knew everyone. But Ricky had never seen this guy.

  Tommy chucked the football to Ricky and he started his turn at keepie-uppie. Murdo Johnson had the other ball and started really showing off. Ricky stopped after a bit and held his ball against his side and watched. Murdo flicked it behind him and then kicked it up over his head and nudged it back into the air with his thigh. Then there was a thump and a bang. Murdo looked up at the boys but carried on with his kick-ups, not show-off ones now, just simple keepie-uppie ones.

  ‘I’m going to see what that noise was,’ Paul said. He was a wee boy, only about eight.

  Murdo carried on and Ricky started again, knocking the ball into the air with just his head. He could be as good as Murdo if he put his mind to it. And then he mishit the ball and it flew towards the wee boy Paul who was coming back from round the back of the building. Paul didn’t pick up the ball. He let it roll past.

  He said, ‘There’s a dead guy round the back.’

  ‘Shut up,’ the boys said and Paul said, ‘I’m telling you, there is. There’s a dead guy.’

  They were used to seeing men lying in funny places. And women too.

  ‘He’s not moving.’

  Ricky went with him and as soon as he saw the guy he knew that he was dead. It was the guy in the denims and the khaki and his head was underneath his shoulders because of the way he’d landed. His arms were snapped and lay at strange angles. There was no blood at all, just this frightening-looking body.

  ‘He’s dead isn’t he?’ the wee boy Paul said.

  Ricky looked up and saw an open window way up high.

  ‘Aye. I think he’s a suicide. He
’s jumped.’

  ‘He only went in the building two minutes ago,’ the wee boy said.

  ‘I remember.’

  They told the other boys who came to look too and some put their hands to their mouths and peered and they all stood at some distance from the poor body on the ground.

  ‘He’s not from the flats is he?’ Tommy said.

  ‘He came here to get killed,’ the wee boy Paul said.

  All the boys went together to tell the caretaker about the dead body and they stayed together while the caretaker waited for the police to come and take statements. They each told the police more or less the same thing. A weird-looking man came into the flats and a few minutes later they heard a thump and a bang.

  Jean McGeogh

  We liked Perry Como, and his shows, we liked that. I hardly watched the telly I was always working, Christ. Well, I worked in the Shettleston Club and I knew all the songs they were playing and the bands and the music. No, I never had time to listen to wirelesses. I hardly watched the television by the time I washed myself, maybe took a bath and got into my bed.

  I mind one time the boys came in. I think they were nineteen, eighteen and they all came in and that, and I was in my bed and ah, I smelt this lovely smell of ham coming through to me and I got out of my bed and they were all in the kitchenette, we had a wee table with benches and that all done, and I went do you think this is a bloody Reo Stakis hotel, come on! And they would go, Get into your bed, Jean, you’re tired.

  I just loved them. I knew they weren’t any trouble. If they weren’t in my house they were in another neighbour’s house. They were good boys. They were no trouble. You still worried about them.

  Ricky 1981