‘You can tell Kyle that if he comes near this house again with his fucking fake tenners, I’ll toe his balls.’
The voice sounded too young to be toeing anyone’s balls.
‘Is your da in, son?’ Kamil said.
‘Aye.’ The boy stopped. ‘How much are you wanting?’
‘A half Q.’ Kamil’s back was aching. ‘Why am I bending down talking to a letter box?’ he said to Michelle, who shook her head.
‘Listen, wee man, open the door will you and go get your da.’
‘Wait there,’ the voice said.
Footsteps sounded and Kamil looked around. ‘Bit mental this,’ he said and Michelle tapped her heel on the floor.
The footsteps returned and a grubby hand came out of the letter box again.
‘Fifteen quid,’ the voice said. It was the same boy. ‘Give us the money and I’ll pass out your gear.’
‘Aye, right you are,’ Kamil said. ‘Open the door.’
‘No,’ the voice said and then it went quiet. Kamil could hear himself breathing. Michelle had stopped tapping her heel. He had fifteen quid in his pocket.
‘Are you gonna give me the money or what?’ the voice said. Kamil stuffed the notes into the boy’s hand and watched as the letter box closed. He stood in front of Michelle and waited and when nothing happened he shook his head and cursed Kyle. As he was clenching his fist, ready to thump the door and walk away, the letter box opened again and the hand held out a tiny clingfilmed package.
‘Now fuck off and mind and tell Kyle he’s getting toed,’
the voice said.
‘Wee prick,’ Kamil said quietly and took the package just as the door with the umbrella outside opened. An old gent in a cap and smart shoes came out and picked up his brolly. He glanced at Kamil and Michelle, and Kamil thrust his fist into his pocket.
‘The polis raided them last week. I don’t know how long they’ll keep up this cloak and dagger shite. It’s getting right on my tits, I can hardly hear my telly.’
He called the lift and stood silently with his back to them. Kamil and Michelle got in the lift with him when it arrived and they all stood silently as it took them down to the ground.
Concierges 1993
Mrs Donoghue called up for a wee bit of help on the same day that Mr O’Brien threw himself off the thirtieth floor. She wanted help to move her couch out from the wall because she said she’d taken a notion to clean behind it. They did it on Saturdays, the suicides, or when the weans were coming home from school. That’s how it felt anyway, but if he added them all up, and he didn’t want to, maybe he’d find no pattern whatsoever, just a bunch of tortured human beings. John went up at the end of his shift, just before the back shift started. Mrs Donoghue kept her house awfully neat.
‘Poor Mr O’Brien,’ she said. ‘What a terrible shame.’
She was right. He’d only moved into the flats a few months ago, without a home because his wife had kicked him out, but most of the residents knew who he was because he looked so bad. He didn’t shave and rarely washed his hair. He looked at his shoes when he walked. He struggled to get words out and John used to have to lean close to him to hear and it irritated him, which he didn’t feel proud about but there it was. And he’d made an awful mess throwing his body onto the concrete. Nobody should come to that. It was a terrible waste and a terrible shock.
‘So this is the couch to be humphed, is it?’
Mrs Donoghue took the cushions off it and moved her
Hoover and its cord out of John’s way.
‘I’ve had this settee twenty-three years,’ she said. ‘And there’s not a mark on it despite all those grandweans of mine clambering all over it.’
‘Aye, you keep your house nice,’ John said and moved one side of the couch at a time, lifting it out from the wall. There was very little dust behind it.
‘You sit for a bit,’ Mrs Donoghue said and pulled the Hoover behind the sofa and switched it on. John looked at the telly. The horseracing was on and John wondered if Mrs Donoghue had had a wee flutter. She did from time to time and made it known to practically the whole block that she was seventy pounds to the rich or thirty-five or fifty or whatever it was. That reminded John.
‘Mrs Donoghue,’ he said when she’d finished her hoovering. He stood up and pushed the couch back against the wall. ‘You know if someone comes to your door selling stuff just say you’re not interested, right?’
‘Sit yourself down again, son.’ John sat and leaned forwards.
‘Or if you get someone asking to borrow stuff over and
over, you just say no, or you tell me or one of the concierges about it.’
‘I’m an old woman, son, but I’m not an eejit.’
‘Okay.’ She was right. He needn’t have worried. There was no shocking and no telling Mrs Donoghue.
‘So who’s been robbed or conned or led up the garden path then?’ she asked.
‘Well,’ John said. ‘There’s a lady in Twenty Petershill Court. She got some new neighbours in and thought they were very nice and friendly but they kept knocking on her door and asking to borrow tin foil. And she just thought they must be doing an awful lot of baking. But they borrowed all this tin foil and never brought her in any baking at all; no cakes, no biscuits, nothing. So they keep on borrowing the foil and she’s too polite to suggest they buy their own tin foil so one day she says to the concierge, Martin, “Would you mind, son, just saying to that young couple could they buy their own tin foil for their baking in the future.” Martin hits the roof and tells her it’s not baking they’re doing. And he tells her what it was for. You know what they were using it for, don’t you?’
‘Aye,’ Mrs Donoghue said and took off her housecoat.
‘Heroin. Or yon crack’s the up and coming thingmy nowadays isn’t it?’
‘Just you watch who comes to your door.’
She put the cushions back onto the couch and plumped them into the corners. Then she pulled in the Hoover cord and wheeled it into the hallway.
‘Is that you done for the day?’ she said.
‘Aye, I’m on my way home now.’
John made to stand up but Mrs Donoghue said, ‘Will you have a wee orange before you go?’
‘Oh, no thank you.’
‘Go on, how about a wee half?’
A wee half might be just the ticket. It had been a bastard
of a day with Mr O’Brien throwing himself off. It made John think about his Uncle Charlie who was under the doctor for this, that and the other and was making all sorts of threats. People seemed to struggle through this life.
‘Aye, I’ll take a wee half,’ John said and looked about Mrs Donoghue’s immaculate living room with the Mills and Boon books on the shelf and the lampshade with the cream tassels and the cross-stitch pictures in frames on the wall and sewn onto the front of cushions. He pulled a circular cushion from behind his back and studied it. Freedom Come All Ye, it said in stitching on one side and it made John smile.
He looked up just as Mrs Donoghue came back into the living room with two plates. She handed one to John and kept the other. No glass. And on his plate was half an actual orange. There was his wee half. He ate it, but, and listened to Mrs Donoghue tell him about the bingo she was going to that night, as a treat for spring-cleaning her house. The orange was sweet. He had such a thirst on his way down the stair that he was tempted to take George into the Brig for an actual wee half but knew he oughtn’t socialise with the people he worked for. I’ll just knock this up as another one of my Red Road stories, he thought and went on home.
Kamil 1993
‘Come on and we’ll go to Leigh and Gary’s house,’ Michelle said one Friday night in the Broomfield Tavern. A nutty white boy had threatened Kamil in the toilets again.
‘Who do you think you are?’ His chin jutted towards Kamil.
‘I’m not interested, mate.’
‘You will be fucking interested when I take you outside.’
‘Come on rig
ht now then.’
Kamil prayed the guy would back down like they always did.
‘I’ll get you later then.’
Michelle stroked the back of his neck and looked defiantly
round the pub. Her best mate had taken up with Kyle and the four of them drank up and went to Leigh and Gary’s.
Hash. Bliss. Cushions, couch, soft carpet. Lights from other flats making the buildings seem closer than they really were. Table with Rizlas, lighters, pots and packets of dope, teapot. Happy faces. Leigh and Gary with their haircuts and no nonsense. Kids at the granny’s so bunk beds for anyone who wanted to stay the night. Michael and Kay already there. Warmth and chat and smoke-filled air. Take That.
‘Get that crap off the stereo,’ someone said.
The girl who liked Take That tutted. Michael chose a Bob Dylan tape and put that on. It was a good, happy crowd at Leigh and Gary’s. Michelle’s best mate stood at the window and said, ‘Look, that’s my living room.’ Kamil stood with her and looked where she pointed at a yellow window directly across from the window at which they stood.
‘What’s going on in all those rooms?’ Michelle’s pal said. They talked about what to do later on. Michael’s pal’s
band played in the Furlong in town and it was decided they’d head over there. Leigh and Gary would stay and smoke some more because that’s all they wanted to do.
‘You’ll never guess what happened to me,’ Michael said and told them he’d nearly been hit by a falling nappy, thrown from a window in One-five-three block.
Kamil said once he’d nearly been hit by a falling pan loaf. Michelle said the wind blew her off her feet one day and she fell on the path outside her building. Michael said he’d just missed being hit by a roller skate. Kay said she saw a kitchen worktop sticking out of the grass, with the concierges pulling on it, trying to lever it out of the earth.
‘You know, pennies don’t speed up if you throw them out the window,’ Gary said, ‘so you wouldn’t get killed from a penny hitting you on the head.’
‘You would from a kitchen worktop,’ Leigh said.
Gary’s voice changed. ‘Whoa whoa whoa, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
Michelle’s pal’s boyfriend was in the corner of the room, holding a lighter underneath some silver foil. He looked up.
‘What?’ The lighter went out and he flicked it on again.
‘Pal, we’re not into that here. You can’t do that in this house.’
‘I’m not bothering anyone.’
‘Yes you are, me.’
The guy seemed confused. Gary stopped the tape and turned on the big light. People rubbed their foreheads. Kamil got up for a pish but before he went he watched Kyle fold the foil over his smack and put his gear into a small tin. He stood up slowly, scowling, knocked over a can of coke and kicked it with his foot.
‘Are you coming?’ he said to Michelle’s pal and she got up too and put on her coat.
They walked past the people sprawled around the living room and didn’t say goodbye. Gary turned off the big light, Kamil went to the bathroom and he heard the Take That fan saying ‘Can we put ‘Could it be Magic’ on?’
‘No!’ Lots of voices shouted at her.
‘Hippy cunts,’ she said and Bob Dylan carried on with ‘Sad
Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’.
Incident Book 1994
7.47 P.M. Saturday. Jumper. Police and ambulance called. D.O.A. Suicide not tenant of Ten Red Road or any of the Red Road Flats. Concierge cleaned up and washed concrete. Window on thirtieth floor landing secured.
Michael 1994
Today would be the day he finally got some money off Trish. No longer a student, he didn’t qualify for help with anything any more and he hadn’t got a job yet. He wanted something he’d studied for, some kind of job in the community, working with people he understood. Kay still worked.
‘No, Kamil,’ he said as he passed him on the way out of the pub. ‘I can’t have another one, I’m going food shopping and I’m getting a tenner off Trish because it’s giro day.’
‘Good luck,’ Kamil said.
Fate or something produced Trish. She was walking towards the entrance to Two-one-three, their building.
‘Hey,’ Michael shouted. ‘Tenner.’ Trish stopped and turned.
‘All right, Michael?’ she said and smiled. He wondered if she’d heard him.
‘Hand it over,’ he said and held out his hand. ‘We’re going shopping.’
‘Michael,’ Trish said, ‘look what I’ve got. Put your hand in my pocket.’
‘If it’s a tenner, I’ll put my hand in.’
‘It’s better than a tenner. Go on.’
Trish’s cheeks were flushed and the wind stuck strands of hair to her pink lips. She held open her pocket and Michael saw the edges of a crumpled paper bag.
‘Go on, Michael, put your hand in.’ She was teasing him. He knew it instantly.
‘You don’t want to go shopping now, do you?’
‘No. Where’d you get them from?’
‘Donald.’
He didn’t know who the fuck Donald was but he said oh aye and they caught the lift to the flat.
‘Will we wait for Kay?’ he said.
‘If you like.’
They didn’t wait for Kay or his brother. But they did leave them some and when Kay came through the door not long after, they stood up and said, ‘Hmm, what’s for tea? Shall we have mushrooms perhaps?’ and Kay ate what was left for her and said, ‘Who left my cornflakes out, was it you?’ and Trish said no it definitely was not her, she didn’t eat anything in this house except mushrooms, and Kay said, ‘You ate our soup, you eat our crisps and now you’ve eaten my fucking cornflakes.’
‘You’re always eating our food,’ Michael joined in.
‘I am not.’
‘You are so.’
‘And you shag in our bed,’ Kay said.
‘No!’
She did. Michael and Kay had worked it out from the rum- pled sheets and condom wrappers.
‘You eat our food and you shag in our bed!’
Kay was laughing and Trish picked up the box of cornflakes and said, ‘I bought these cornflakes, you lying bastards. Look, that’s the shop next to where my ma stays.’ She pointed to the price label.
‘Well that’s the only thing you’ve bought this year.’ Kay grabbed the box but Trish held onto it. They fought with the box and Trish won and tipped the packet over Kay’s head and Kay swatted her hand through her hair and grabbed the box off Trish and shook it as if she was shaking confetti and Michael grabbed a handful of cornflakes and put them down Trish’s back and Kay’s front and the two girls pulled at the back of his jeans and shoved their hands full of cornflakes into his pants.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll get a carry out and a fish supper and sit on the grass.’
And that’s what they did, the three of them smirking as they walked until they flopped onto the grass by Birnie Court.
They ate their fish supper and lay on the grass, Kay curling herself into Michael’s body, his arms around her, one hand clasping the side of her head, Trish with her arms wide at her sides.
‘Fuck, they’re huge, aren’t they?’ Michael said.
They looked at the blocks, so close and so high Michael
felt they might fall over and flatten them. The way the clouds moved made the blocks seem as if they were moving too.
‘Wow,’ Kay said.
‘Gravestones.’
‘Eh?’
‘Gravestones.’ Trish said again. ‘This place is a cemetery.’ Kay shifted her position. Michael cupped a hand over his
eyes and stared.
‘Fucking great gravestones. That’s what they are.’
She was right; they stood with their lower floors in shadow and the tips of them in soft sun, reaching from the ground, tilting towards the sky or God or whatever else was up there.
Kamil 1994
One Friday night Kamil we
nt with Michelle and her pal and Kyle to Leigh and Gary’s house but Leigh and Gary turned them away at the door.
‘We’re not having anyone round tonight,’ they said.
‘You’re joking.’
‘No we’re not.’
The four of them stared at each other and then back at Leigh and Gary. ‘We just want some quality time together. We never get any time on our own.’
‘Kyle, fuck off for a second,’ Kamil said and when Kyle had gone through the door to the stairs, Kamil asked them, ‘Is it because he’s with us? We’ve told him he’s not allowed to smoke any of his drugs.’
But Leigh and Gary assured him that it wasn’t because of
Kyle, they just wanted a night in to themselves. That was that.
Kamil and Michelle and the other two went back to Kamil’s house and threw Kyle out at the door. They told him to go and do his thing and come back when he’d finished because they weren’t having anyone smoking heroin in their house. He came back half cut and the other three were half cut and he said to them, ‘Do you want to do something dead funny?’ Of course they did.
He led them outside to the phone box and called the police. Putting on a conspiratorial voice, as if he and the police had an understanding, he said, ‘There’s a guy jumping about with a gun. Aye, he’s acting like a lunatic. One-two-three Petershill Drive, nineteen floor, flat three.’ He gave the police Leigh and Gary’s address.
‘Now we take our seats and watch the show,’ Kyle said and they went to Michelle’s pal’s house because she had a view of Leigh and Gary’s house from her living room window. They laughed in the dark at the thought of the polis arriving with their battering ram and raiding Leigh and Gary’s, their place loaded with hash because it was a weekend and they usually got an ounce in on a weekend. When the police turned up with their vans, the four at the window laughed and laughed and wished they could be closer to see the look on Leigh and Gary’s faces. They saw enough to nearly make them die laughing. In the yellow room across from them they saw police coming in heavy handed, lifting cushions, pointing and gesturing at Leigh and Gary who stood flailing and shaking their heads as the police did over their place.
This Road is Red Page 19