This Road is Red

by Alison Irvine

  ‘There’s a space here,’ Michael said.

  ‘You were in the Brig the other night,’ the Asian guy said and sat down with his back to the bar.

  Talk rumbled through the pub again and Michael patted the seat next to him and said quietly, ‘Mate, come round here so you can see who’s round about you. Always best to in here.’ The Asian guy moved seats, Michael closed his book and they exchanged names. Some guys with kit bags and sweat- shirts came into the pub. Nobody bothered looking at them; Michael recognised them as locals who played in the Red Road football team. Most of the guys had been born and bred here.

  ‘You recently moved in?’

  ‘Aye. You?’

  ‘Nah, moved in a year ago,’ Michael said.

  A man with a gentle face walked slowly to their table. His name was Terence and he collected the glasses. The landlord didn’t pay him, Michael said to Kamil, when he’d moved on.

  Instead, he allowed him to drink the leftovers in the glasses he collected. So Terence was always in and he always had a drink.

  Suddenly Kamil sat up in his seat, stuck his arm in the air and waved. ‘Hiya!’ he shouted. A girl was waving at him, in the same boisterous way. Michael recognised the girl. She always came in with a crowd of crazy-looking people at her table. Men who looked like they’d stick the head on you for sneezing near them. Girls who could drink six of everything in the bar and still stand to dance on the tables. Kamil stood up and set off towards her with his pint, turning back to Michael to say, ‘I work with this lassie.’ The pub fell quiet again and heads turned to watch Kamil’s big footsteps over to the girl and her crowd. When the girl put her arm around him and told him to sit down, the talk started up again. Michael watched Kamil and the girl and thought if they hadn’t shagged yet, they would do soon. They were so into each other, her, touching him all the time, him big-eyed and beaming, all of them knocking back their drinks. He seemed to have a way of making people laugh. Even the tough-headed guys that sat with them were creasing up.

  Michael wanted Kay. The girl that Kamil knew reminded him of Kay. The same sensibility; sweet and young and gorgeous, but feisty and most likely utterly demanding. Good luck to Kamil. It would be eventful. Michael picked up his book again, drank the last of his pint and was wondering if he’d head home to see if Kay was in when Kamil came past looking for the gents. I’ll introduce you to Michelle in a moment, Kamil told Michael and walked on to the toilets. One of the guys who stood at the bar near the bnp men put down his pint and followed Kamil in. Nobody else seemed to notice or to care. Michael was horrified. He watched the door and listened for violence. He argued with himself; should he go in or should he stay out of it. Or was he being paranoid. He checked the bnp men at the bar and thought they seemed slow and casual. Kamil’s lassie was clapping her hands and screeching at something. Her pals were laughing too.

  Perhaps he was being paranoid. But nobody came from the toilets. It was long enough for Kamil to have had a pish now.

  Michael nearly physically jumped when the pub doors burst open and a man walked in. ‘Da!’ Kamil’s lassie shouted and the man unzipped his jacket and shook the rain off it as he walked towards his daughter. Michael clocked the bnp men clocking Kamil’s lassie’s da. Nothing from the toilets. This was a fucking mental pub. Nobody would see anything if the polis asked but sure as hell they’d all bundle into a fight wielding chair legs and ash trays if provoked. He stood up. He’d go in. And then the toilet door snapped open and the guy who followed Kamil in came out first. He turned around as Kamil came out and the two men stared at each other. Kamil stepped forwards. He looked ferocious and strong. The guy walked away and shook his head at the bar. Kamil stepped close to Michael.

  ‘Are you all right, pal?’ Michael said.

  ‘Fucking guy came in and wanted a square go. Said what was I doing chatting up his ex-girlfriend. I said aye, all right, I’ll give you a square go, come on outside. And then he backed off. Fucking shitebag.’

  Kamil’s eyes were black and shining with adrenalin. He licked his lips.

  ‘Are you all right, pal?’ Michael said again.

  ‘Aye. I’ll give him a square go if he wants,’ Kamil said and he breathed deeply and looked over his shoulder.

  The lassie, Michelle, waved again, and shouted ‘Kamil, come and meet my daddy.’

  The bnp men put their glasses on the bar and walked past

  Michael and Kamil, out of the pub.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Kamil said.

  ‘Nah, I’ll go back and check on my soup. See you after.’

  ‘See you after.’

  Michael stepped out to the cool air, saw the bnp men walking away on the other side of the road, and went home for his soup.

  Trish and her pal were crashed out on the couch when he returned to the house. The television showed pictures of those silent horses again. Trish stretched a naked arm and waved at Michael. She yawned. The house smelt of soup and hash. His brother’s boots were under the table by the window.

  ‘He home?’ Michael said.

  ‘Gone for a sleep on your bed.’

  ‘Kay?’

  ‘No.’

  He went into the kitchen. Trish had switched the cooker off like he’d asked but she’d also eaten some soup. A lot of it. The pot had orange rings on the inside, where the soup had once been. Three blatant bowls sat unwashed in the sink.

  They were putting their clothes on when he came into the living room. The guy was struggling into his combats and Trish grabbed onto the back of them and jumped, pulling them up over his arse. The pair of them laughed and fell back onto the sofa and Trish reached for the remote control. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere even to beat his fists against the wall. They all had to fuck off out of his flat. Once before, after a row with Kay, he’d sat out where the chute was and now he did it again, taking a black coffee and a couple of ginger nuts and his book. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cold wall and stayed there until Kay found him and said,

  ‘Michael, get a grip.’

  She took him into the lounge for a smoke and a drink, put a Bob Marley tape into the player, and the night turned into a session where all the soup got eaten and they sent Stephen, Trish’s man, down the stair for more drink, because nobody had work or uni the next day and nobody seemed to want to stop.

  Kat 1991

  As well as the job in the paper shop, Kat took a job going round houses collecting forms and conducting interviews. It’s for the census, she would say to people with sudden fear on their faces, believing she was from the social or the police or the housing. They would let her in and sit her down while she asked the questions and wrote their answers if they needed help with their forms. Birnie Court was one of her blocks and she was back again to get the houses she’d missed the last time. The same houses were deserted. A peek through the letter boxes showed piles of letters on the hall floor, bare boards and little else. Giro drops. But one such house had a woman and a boy in it. The boy rode a tricycle in the hall and the woman took Kat past him and into the living room.

  ‘Oh sorry, apologies, I’ve not got my carpets yet,’ the woman said. ‘Or my couch.’

  She made Kat sit in the only chair which was an armchair and Kat didn’t want to but the woman leaned against the wall and told her on you go. Kat asked her questions and recorded the woman’s answers. Age: twenty-three. Dependents: one, aged two. Job: unemployed.

  ‘I was an auxiliary at Stobhill,’ she said, ‘but I can’t work it round my son.’ Her boy pedalled himself into the living room. ‘Does that count?’

  ‘Well, yes, but I need to put what you’re doing now,’ Kat said. ‘It’s to record this moment in time.’

  The woman leaned against the wall and stared at her boy.

  ‘That’s you done,’ Kat said and the woman, when she closed the door said, ‘Thanks for coming.’

  Kat saw too many women like her and too many house- holds with no men in them. Too many families with no income because th
eir jobs had gone or they couldn’t afford childcare. Does anybody see this? Kat thought, does anybody know we’re here?

  Helen McDermott

  You had a good view from the flats, you know, looking out the window and that, pass your time of day. I used to sit at the window for hours, watching people coming up and down. And night-time, the young ones used to steal the cars, knocked-off cars, motors, and drive round with police getting after them. You had some view watching the motors going out and in, you know, getting chased.

  Michael 1992

  It was an early start. Out of doors while the sun was buried under the sky. The walk down Petershill Drive in the smirr, through the blind tunnel, into Germiston, right on to Royston Road then left at the lights and down the road to the Blochairn fruit market. Barely a car on the road and a day’s grafting ahead of him. Then the walk back at the end of the day, arms aching from lifting the crates and cartons of fruit. That’s why he borrowed the work van after his workmates told him he’d be daft not to, especially because the gaffer was away for a couple of days. That’s why he drove it home from the fruit market the night before and parked it outside his building. That’s what he told himself as he stood by the van at six in the morning surveying the damage. The wee triangular window was smashed in and the radio gone. Turning desperately, as if he would be in time to catch whoever did it, all he saw were the still, knowing forms of the buildings around him. Not a soul. So he drove down the roads he used to walk down and instead of driving with the heating and the radio on, pushing back against the driver’s seat and stretching his hands to meet the steering wheel, he sat hunched and agitated, ruminating on how he could fix the window without his boss knowing. It wasn’t even a nice van. The radio was shite. They’d steal anything, but.

  Iris 1992

  Iris had promised her neighbours she’d get the papers and rolls for them so after a cup of tea she took Zeus with her. In the foyer there was a gorgeous wee bedside table that one of the rich folk had chucked out. A couple of other items were there too, including a mirror – but Iris already had a mirror she was happy with – and a wall clock, but having no desire to see another wall clock she didn’t want that one. She told herself to remember to call in on the concierges when she was back with the messages. After walking Zeus on the empty field she popped into the paper shop. Zeus waited outside and she bought her cigarettes off the student lassie who didn’t mind that she asked to pay for each set of papers and rolls separately so as not to get confused with the money.

  She walked into the concierge office and the concierge stood up.

  ‘Graeme, that wee bedside table down there, it’s been thrown away, hasn’t it? Because it would do for Pamela and Liam’s bedroom with the baby.’

  The concierge held out his arms. ‘I’ve been buzzing you for the past half an hour. I was on my way up.’

  ‘Did you guess I’d be after it? Second Hand Rose will have that.’

  ‘No. It’s Pamela.’

  ‘What’s happened? Has she phoned?’

  ‘The hospital did. They’ve a message for you.’

  ‘Oh good God.’ Iris felt as if her legs had snapped. She held onto the concierge’s arm.

  ‘It’s good news,’ he said. ‘She’s had a baby girl.’

  Iris cried. She put her hands over her face and they shook as she cried. Graeme kissed her cheek and told her that visiting hours were from eleven until twelve-thirty and the midwife said that Pamela was fine and the baby was pink and healthy.

  ‘That baby wasn’t meant to come out for another three weeks.

  I don’t know if Pamela even had her bag packed. Oh Christ, I need to clean my house. They’ll be bringing the baby back.’ The concierge said he’d run the messages up the stair to the elderly folk and if Iris left her key with him on her way out, he’d drop the bedside table up for her. Iris dabbed at her eyes with her knuckles and went upstairs with Zeus to prepare for the hospital and the baby.

  Michael 1992

  His workmates called him a jammy bastard because he’d got away with it. A guy at the fruit market had a pal who worked at a scrappies so the two of them drove the van to the scrappies and they got a window and fitted it there and then. When the gaffer came back he never noticed.

  The long walks home weren’t too bad that week. Each afternoon the Glasgow sun was out, throwing itself against the windows of the Red Road Flats. One afternoon he came down Petershill Drive and saw a woman taking a baby out of a car. The woman was tall with a graceful bobbed haircut. A younger man and woman stood next to her, holding hands. They all watched the baby and as Michael passed, he saw a pink newborn face amid the blankets and the wool.

  Kamil 1992

  He began by taking her home from the restaurant and seeing her in to her building safe as he sat in the car. Then she invited him up and showed him the damp on her walls and opened the doors to her freezing rooms. She asked to see his flat and soon after they were sharing a bed and not long after that she moved in with him. Unlikely love, to others perhaps, but proper heartfelt, spirited love to Kamil.

  ‘I’ve got this ghost,’ he said. ‘Bob. He doesn’t bother me. Are you all right with ghosts?’

  ‘Aye, fine. The more the merrier.’

  Like Kamil, the pigeons bothered Michelle more. And any- way, the flat was hardly ever quiet enough to hear footsteps or goings on because Michelle liked her indie pop and talking on the telephone and the house was always full with her crazy pals. Her da came up from time to time and talked to Kamil about golf. One time he showed him his golf clubs.

  ‘I got the message,’ Kamil said to Michelle, later.

  The pigeons kept coming. He spent a morning throwing two and one pence pieces at the window to scare them away.

  ‘Want to pack that in? I’m trying to read my magazine,’ his missus had said.

  Kamil pinned a bed sheet from the veranda railing to the concrete ceiling. It kept the pigeons away but it blocked the sky out too. They read the Saturday papers for a while until a pigeon saw its way behind the sheet and careered about the veranda, flying into the soft puff of the sheet and the hard glass, fluttering and squawking.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ Kamil said and he was scared, more so than of Bob the ghost or the tough guys in the pubs.

  They fed the cat and shut the door behind them.

  Kamil paced about on the landing while they waited for the lift. His neighbour’s door opened a crack and Adam poked his head out.

  ‘Oh, hiya pal, it’s you,’ he said and raised his arm and his eyebrows and shut the door.

  ‘We could ask him to get us a telly,’ Michelle said. Kamil furrowed his brow and looked at her.

  ‘No,’ they both said as the lift arrived.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  The doors slid shut. Kamil looked at the lift buttons.

  ‘I’ve pressed the ground floor, son,’ a woman in a beige coat said. Michelle smiled at her.

  ‘Will we get some hash in for the weekend?’ Kamil said and pressed a button on the lift.

  The woman shifted her handbag on her shoulder and tightened her mouth.

  ‘I’m all out of marijuana,’ their dealer said when they sat on his couch. ‘My supplier taxed me a bit too heavily and I didn’t get as much as I usually do. But I’ve got these.’ He opened the neck of a scrunched paper bag and took out a bottle. ‘Co- codamols 500 milligrams.’

  ‘Nah, you’re all right,’ Michelle said and they stood up. They tried the next block. Sometimes they got their hash

  from Trevor with the hat and the mad dog. He usually invited them in and made a ceremony of presenting his stash before they bought it. But this time he shook his head and put a foot between his dog and the door and said he was all out.

  ‘We know Kyle,’ Kamil said. Kyle was their pal who knew everyone and got everyone anything. He was a helpful pal to have. Use my name any time you need it. It’ll get you far, he used to say to them.

  ‘I know you know Kyle.’ That was all
Trevor said, then before he closed the door he said, ‘How are you keeping, Michelle?’

  ‘Aye, all right,’ Michelle said and when they were back in the lift Kamil said, ‘You know some crackpots.’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ Michelle said.

  Finally they tried a dealer they’d never been to before in a block they knew barely anyone in. One-eight-three Petershill Drive.

  ‘Will we try Kyle’s name?’ Michelle said and Kamil said yes but shat it. He didn’t know whether to make himself look full of it or inconspicuous but eventually opted for the swagger.

  Floor fourteen had a fluorescent light that flickered. Three of the doors had doormats, plants, wee brass ornaments and one had an umbrella leaning against the wall, point down. The last door was plain. No name. Kamil knocked. Nothing. They waited, listening for footsteps. Kamil knocked again. Still nothing.

  ‘You sure this is the house?’ Kamil said.

  ‘Aye,’ Michelle said. ‘Kyle told me about it.’

  She knocked this time. Nothing. Knocked again and sud- denly a hand pushed the letter box open. Michelle shrieked and stepped back.

  ‘What are you wanting?’ a voice said. The voice was young and wary, its tone hard.

  Kamil bent towards the letter box.

  ‘We know Kyle,’ he said.

  ‘That wee prick.’

  ‘We don’t know him that well.’ Kamil turned to Michelle and shrugged but Michelle said, ‘That’s my pal he’s talking about.’ She had a way of speaking out that landed him in it. Kamil put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Eh?’ the voice said from the letter box.

  ‘Listen, mate, we were told you could sort us out with some hash. Kyle sent us your way.’