Pamela 1990
Sounds of breathing. Everyone breathing. She lay in the hall with her head pushed against the skirting board. Her jeans unzipped and the waistband tight around her thighs. Her knickers pulled down too. They must have come out into the hallway and fucked there.
He was in the kitchen holding a cigarette over a saucer, looking out the window. She watched the end of his cigarette as she zipped up her jeans and pulled her hair away from her face.
‘I’ve got something to do today,’ she said. ‘Something important. I can’t mind what it is.’
She turned on the tap and put her mouth to the water. Then she coughed into the sink and spat. Gravel in her chest. No milk in this house. A kettle and spoons. A used tea bag in the bin. She leaned across Liam for the kettle and filled it with water. Then she set it to boil and rinsed some mugs.
‘Help me, Liam,’ she said. ‘I have to do something today. What day is it today?’
‘Saturday.’ He tapped his cigarette and a tower of ash fell onto the saucer.
The tea was weak.
‘We have to put Kirsty outside,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it myself.’ His arms were the skinniest they’d ever been; scabbed,
sore, translucent skin. His fingers shook.
‘Why?’
‘Are you a fucking eejit?’
It pissed her off, the way he spoke to her, but she didn’t rise to it because she relied on him to find them more smack. That’s how it worked.
‘We’ll have to put her outside and then fuck off.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Are you not listening?’
‘I’ve got something to do today, Liam, and I can’t remember what it is. I’m thinking!’ And then she realised.
‘Who did you say?’
‘Kirsty.’
A squeak from her throat. A flutter of the muscles in her face. She couldn’t control them.
‘God rest her.’
Liam turned on the tap and held his cigarette under the running water. He rinsed ash from the saucer.
‘Are you sure?’
‘She’s grey and stiff with a mouthful of vomit.’
They walked into the lounge and Pamela heard the breath- ing again.
‘Is anyone else dead?’
They lay, the rest of them, like children; soft arms, gentle knees, parted lips, a whistling nose, a flickering under the eyelid.
Flips started up in Pamela’s belly. Metal in her mouth.
‘They’re all breathing.’
‘Why Kirsty?’ It hurt to cry. The pain knocking about her head, something swollen in her throat.
‘Come on and we’ll get her outside and then we’ll go.’ They took a thin arm each. Pamela gripped Kirsty’s wrist
and felt the chain she wore against her palm. She wasn’t heavy but Liam was weak and worse than he’d ever been. Kirsty’s head bumped along the floor. They put her out on the back stair and Liam put his hands in her pockets and took out a cigarette lighter and a tissue. He kept the lighter and threw the tissue on the stairs. Pamela didn’t have time to say goodbye because Liam took her arm and pulled her back into the house and out the front door.
They stood in the lift, stinking and silent with their thoughts. Pamela was thinking about what she would say to Kirsty’s ma. She thought she would visit her own ma.
Liam walked away. His tiny jeans hung scrunched around his arse. He held an arm behind him and said to Pamela, ‘efter.’ It was easier to cry on her own. On the corner of her ma’s
building, children hung about. They were restless and excited, some jumping, skipping, clapping, twitching their legs. Noise. From further down Petershill Drive came the sound of horses’ hooves. The children surged towards the noise. Above her, on the verandas, her ma’s neighbours clapped and shouted out. She thought she heard her ma’s voice shouting Go on yourself Nicola, but she couldn’t see her when she raised her head to look. She would be on Colleen’s veranda. Nicola came in her horse and carriage with her husband at her side. The horse flicked its tail and shook its head as it walked. Nicola waved. Her husband wore a kilt. Her dress was white and she wore a tiara and a veil.
Maybe she caught Pamela’s eye as she scanned the crowd on the street and all the way up the building, well-wishers hanging out the windows and leaning on the verandas, but she didn’t wave.
The best man got out of his car, put his hands in his pockets and threw a shower of coins into the crowd of weans. The weans screamed. They bashed heads and threw themselves onto the rolling and spinning coins. The best man lifted his arms again and threw more coins. A coin for every child. They chased them before they rolled into the drain, distracted by another shower.
The horse and cart and Nicola and her husband were away down the road. The best man held his palms above his head and said no more. A couple of coins rolled Pamela’s way. She bent to pick them up and went after two more before she heard the heckles and reprimands from the people on the verandas and then she went up the stair to sleep in her ma’s lounge, if her ma would let her.
Section Five
Kamil 1990
KAMIL’S TAXI DRIVER dropped him in front of Kwik Save and told him to walk around the slab block to find the concierge in number Twenty Petershill Court.
‘This building here, this is my one?’ Kamil asked. He could see neither the top nor the sides as he looked through the taxi window. It was vast, and the people outside seemed blasted with cold and wind and bad temper.
The taxi driver told him as he took his money, ‘I’ll give you one piece of advice son: act like you’re up for a square go at all times, even if you’re keeking your breeks. That’s my advice. Take it or leave it.’ He picked something out of his tooth, tooted his horn, turned on the tarmac, and drove back onto Red Road.
Kamil picked up his cat box and suitcase and walked the giant width of Petershill Court and around the thin gable end to the other side. There, he saw the three red columns stuck onto the beige that he would later learn were the stairs, built not long previously so that tenants didn’t have to walk through other peoples’ houses to the back stairs when the lifts broke down.
‘You’ll have viewed the flat already?’ the concierge said as he took the keys from the hook.
‘No. I just took it. I didn’t care where I went, I just wanted a house.’
‘Fine,’ the concierge said. He slid his swivel chair away from his desk and joined Kamil out the front by the visitors’ hatch.
‘Just you and the cat?’ the concierge said and looked down.
‘Aye. We can’t live without each other.’
They walked back into the cold and on to number Ten as the clouds began to spit rain. There were silver buttons on a panel by the door which the concierge showed him how to use.
Then he pressed a plastic fob to the security panel and the lock released. The concierge pulled on the door and a coin hit the ground and rolled away on the concrete. He looked up. So did Kamil. He saw the ghost of a closing window.
‘On you go, son, call the lift. I think I know who that little bastard was.’
Kamil went through to the foyer of his new block and looked back to see the concierge standing legs wide with his arm pointing vigorously somewhere high up the building.
Kamil put the cat box down and read some of the notices pinned to the wall: Credit Union in Twenty Petershill Court, Red Road Football Team, Samaritans. He saw a sign with a card saying Two slotted into it. Then he saw the silver lifts and pressed the buttons to call them.
‘You only need to press the one,’ a man said as he walked into the foyer. He had a moustache and sideburns and rain-ruffled hair. ‘You press the one and it calls the both of them.’
He whistled briefly then said, ‘What’s your cat’s name?’
‘Fluffs.’
The man smiled. ‘New to Red Road?’ Kamil nodded.
Three girls with ponytails of plaited hair skated through the lift’s opening doors. As they clattered their way throu
gh the foyer, pulling the hoods of their anoraks over their plaits, the concierge held the door open and called in, ‘You go on up, son. I’ve just seen one of the community polis and I need to have a wee word. Your flat’s fine. I checked it this morning.’ He threw the keys and Kamil caught them. ‘I’ll come up and chap your door in a wee while. All right?’
‘Aye.’
The foyer was suddenly quiet. The man with the moustache got in the lift and put his arm out to stop the doors from closing.
Kamil dragged in his suitcase and went back for his cat. The walls were metal. No mirrors. There was a metal panel
of numbers that stretched up the wall, higher than his head. He could touch each side of the lift if he held his arms out.
‘Small, isn’t it?’ Kamil said.
‘You’ll get used to it. If you tell me which floor you want we can get going.’
‘Oh, aye, nineteen.’
The doors slid shut and the lift took off.
‘I’ll make a prediction that you’re in flat nineteen/two.’ The man didn’t look at Kamil. He looked up at the red numbers above the doors. Kamil noticed his thick nasal hair.
‘How did you know?’
‘It’s the one that’s always empty.’
‘Is that so?’
Kamil looked up at the numbers too.
‘Do you want to know why?’ Sly eyes keeked sidewards towards Kamil’s.
Kamil knew there would be local types ready to tease him so he said nothing. But as the lift approached floor nineteen he said, ‘Go on then.’
‘It’s haunted,’ the man said and nodded his head. ‘Aye, that and you’ve two house-breakers either side of you.’
The lift wobbled as it stopped. ‘On you go.’
Kamil took his case and his cat and stood on the landing.
‘Why is it...?’
‘Haunted? You’ll find out. You might want to call your cat something else by the way.’
The lift doors shut and Kamil stood alone with his cat and four doors.
As he opened his own door and walked into the muffled quietness of his flat Kamil prepared for ghosts but unless a ghost had shat all over his living room, there was only pigeon shit to contend with. It covered everything; floor, table, sofa, chair, heater, veranda. Even the light that hung from the ceiling was splattered with white shite. The place looked like a midden and Kamil was only eighteen. He wasn’t keen on cleaning. His ma had cleaned his last place: of course she had; it was her house.
Two fat grey feathers lay on the carpet and Kamil threw them over his veranda. He looked out at his view. It was strange, like the view a child would have holding onto the legs of his mother and looking up; him halfway and her going up beyond him. Concrete, glass, smoke-grey cladding, red cladding, beige cladding, the tops of shops, the rain invisible and the air damp and thick.
When he let Fluffs out of her cage she stalked his flat and he followed her into the pale kitchen and the bedroom with the built-in cupboard, and the chilly bathroom. As if hunting down pigeons the cat dabbed her paws under the bed and around the back of doors then leapt onto the arm of the sofa and stayed there, her back humped and her tail erect, her eyes wide and freaked. She was either sensing pigeons or phantoms. When she bolted for the front door and leapt at the door handle as she’d done in his ma’s house he let her out and stood in his doorway watching her walk edgy circles around the floor tiles.
The lift doors opened. A man and a woman got out. They carried message bags and the guy carried a wee boy.
‘Cat,’ the boy said.
‘Want to stroke it?’ said the man. He was cheerful, amiable, skinny.
‘She’s a bit unsettled,’ Kamil said. ‘She might scratch your wee boy.’
The guy put his bags down and hoisted his kid higher on his hip. ‘No touching,’ he told the boy. ‘The cat’s a bit spooked. Just moved in?’
‘What’s it called?’ the boy said.
‘Fluffs. Aye, first day.’
‘What do you think of your house?’
‘It’s all right. Apart from the pigeons.’
‘You have to keep your veranda door closed, mate.’
‘Aye, it seems that way.’
‘No you really do. And your windows too.’
The guy seemed serious. He picked a cigarette from behind his ear and twirled it in his fingers. Then he said, ‘I hope you settle in okay. If you need anything, just chap the door. I’m Adam.’
‘I will, I will. Thanks, pal.’
Adam put his boy on the floor and let him stroke the cat and the cat seemed to like the boy. Kamil relaxed.
‘Say ta-ta,’ Adam said.
‘Ta-ta,’ the boy said.
The cat danced about the doorway, seemingly fine.
‘I’ve met you now,’ Kamil said. ‘So it’s just the two house- breakers to go.’
The guy held his hand out for his son to hold but he said nothing. So Kamil continued. ‘Old boy in the lift. Told me my house was haunted and I had two house-breakers either side of me.’
‘Ta-ta,’ the boy said again to the cat.
‘He’s right on both counts. I don’t steal from my neigh- bours though, you’re all right.’ The young guy tapped his cig- arette and said, ‘Call down to the concierges, they’ll help you clear up that doo shite.’
When he was back in his flat, Kamil made sure his veranda door was shut and checked the windows too. He put his tea bags and milk in the kitchen and then called down to the concierges.
‘And do you want me to stick a broom up my arse on my way up, son?’ the concierge said.
It wasn’t the concierge he’d met before. Kamil didn’t know what to say or what to think or where to start. He sat with his cat for a quarter of an hour and then began to clean up the pigeon shit. He took a pair of pants from his suitcase, ran them under the hot tap, squeezed some washing up liquid onto them that his ma had put in his suitcase and began scrubbing.
An hour later, Adam’s girlfriend knocked on the door with a mug of milk. Adam and the wee boy followed her in.
‘Let’s have a look at your house,’ Adam said.
‘I’ve nothing in here yet.’
‘Don’t worry pal, I won’t take anything from you. Nor will
Jack. That’s a promise.’
‘Jack?’
‘Number three.’
‘Thanks but I’ve got milk already,’ Kamil said to Adam’s girlfriend.
She opened his fridge.
‘So you have,’ she said. ‘You didn’t look that organised. I
thought you were a student.’
‘I’m not a student. I work in a restaurant.’
The woman said ‘oh right’ and stared at him. She seemed on the verge of asking him something and Kamil felt nervous, standing in the kitchen with the wee woman with the back- combed fringe studying him so blatantly. He was glad when Adam came to get her and said, ‘Yer man’s flat’s the same as ours, except our bathroom’s here and our living room’s here.’
They filled the house. The cat sprang about with them.
‘You’ve got one of they big wardrobes too,’ the girlfriend said. ‘Adam uses ours. I can’t get a look in.’
Kamil didn’t doubt it.
‘And here’s where they jumped,’ Adam said. He turned to see where his son was playing, out of earshot, lowered his voice and said, ‘Two guys. High on drugs. Tripping. First one thought he was being chased and leapt out of the window. Second one thought he could fly. One after the other. Splat. Look down.’
Kamil unlocked the window and pushed the glass. Leaning out, he saw the long drop.
‘See that dark patch on the Kwik Save roof? That’s where they landed. They had to rebuild it. The ghosts came back to haunt the flat they jumped from. Well, I don’t know if both of them did, but one did definitely. Nobody stays in this house. Nobody lasts.’
He turned to look at Kamil, as if daring him to dispute what he’d said.
‘I’ll be staying,’ Kamil said
and the man shrugged his shoulders and glanced at his girlfriend.
‘Suit yourself.’ They left.
The ghosts tested Kamil that same day. He ran a hot bath and soaked in the suds from his shaving foam. The bath was all right. His cat was all right. She lay curled on the bathroom floor, enjoying the heat and steam. Kamil closed his eyes and let his head sink under the water. When his ears were submerged he heard a couple of loud thumps and sat up to work out where the noise was coming from. Water clogged his ears and as he tipped his head to one side to clear the blockage he heard his door rattling, as if someone was shoving a hand in and out of the letter box.
‘I’m in the bath,’ Kamil called.
The letter box rattled again and there were tough raps on the door.
‘Come back in a minute,’ he shouted but whoever it was either didn’t hear him or didn’t want to come back in a minute.
The chapping was loud, bossy, aggressive. Kamil pulled himself out of the bath, wrapped a towel around his waist and strode to the door as the thumps and rattles became ridicu- lous. But when he opened the door, nobody was there, not a soul. And not a sound. No footsteps tapping up or down the stairs, no lift whirring up or down the shaft. Kamil walked slowly around the landing, checking for evidence of a person just away. Then he knocked on Adam’s door.
This Road is Red Page 16