This Road is Red

by Alison Irvine

  ‘Oh my God, they’re tearing up the couch,’ Michelle whis- pered and they stopped laughing after a while because the police pulled the stuffing out of the couches and stayed in the flat for nearly an hour, searching.

  Kamil and Michelle walked casually out of Michelle’s building and went to the Broomfield for a quiet drink, vowing never to let on that they knew who’d called the polis on Leigh and Gary, as they knew they’d inevitably be asked. Any number of men promised access to guns in the Broomfield. It was a currency. Everybody talked about them. The police knew they were about.

  ‘He’s a crackpot,’ Kamil said about Kyle.

  ‘Aye, he’s getting worse,’ Michelle said. ‘It’s my pal I worry about.’

  ‘It was funny, but.’

  Incident Book 1995

  Fire in supermarket. Fire brigade attended and broke into main doors with force. Fire subsequently put out. Bingo hall below damaged.

  Iris 1995

  Iris was furious. She’d planned to go to the bingo on Saturday and take Pamela, and Pamela had agreed to go with her and be in her company which would have been a relief and a pleasure. Now the bingo was closed indefinitely and there were rumours that it would never reopen. The water from the firemen’s hoses had leaked to the bingo hall below and the whole place was saturated, apparently. All the electrics and upholstery ruined. She stood outside the supermarket with Zeus waiting for the owners to come by and survey the damage. She planned to put her finger in their faces and tell them she knew it was an inside job, that she’d seen the stock run down for the past few weeks and that they’d ruined the lives of hundreds of women. She stood with her dog and watched the youngsters walk by in their groups or cycle by, standing on their pedals. Nobody from the supermarket came. A couple of rats shot past the entrance to the Women’s Centre in the slab block. A man about twelve floors up tipped bread from a bread bag.

  Nicola, Pamela’s old friend, stopped to say hello. Iris hardly ever saw her. Her hair was long. It suited her.

  ‘How’s your man?’ Iris said.

  ‘He’s working the day. He’s all right.’

  ‘One that’s still got a job, hang on to him.’

  ‘I know,’ Nicola said. ‘Tell Pamela I was asking after her.’ She paused and smiled. ‘Tell her I’m expecting. Due next June.’

  ‘Oh that’s lovely,’ Iris said. ‘Pamela’s got a wean. She’s three now. They live with us.’

  She called Zeus, who didn’t need a leash, and went to the paper shop for her fags.

  She told the young student lassie that she couldn’t believe there would be no more bingo buses, that there would be no more chance of her winning any money, of having something to spend above and beyond what little she knew was coming in every week.

  Kat 1995

  Kat watched the woman with the dog leave. She would miss the bingo buses too, because the women were always popping in for mints and magazines and it made the day go quickly.

  Two Saturday girls worked with her and Fern. They spoke in whispers as they stacked the shelves, and Kat never understood why they didn’t like her to join in. Sex. They talked as if they were wee wifeys. Men. Condoms. Catholic roulette. Perhaps they didn’t think Kat had ever had sex. She did some catching up when she got to university, yes, but she knew about condoms, she knew about the pill, and she didn’t intend to have a baby before taking on academia. You know you can insist on a condom, she wanted to say to the girls who said their men, their older men, well into their twenties and them still in their teens, didn’t like the feel of them.

  A woman came in the shop and the girls stopped whispering. Fern put down the Saturday supplement she was reading and said, ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Twenty Marlboro Lights please.’

  The girls and Kat turned their heads to stare at the woman.

  ‘Will you be wanting anything else?’

  Kat thought she was going to say ‘Ma’m’ as she’d done once before but she didn’t, she just tilted her head deferentially.

  ‘Give me one of your lighters too,’ the woman said and picked coins out of her purse.

  They all stared at her back as she pulled on the door and stepped outside.

  ‘Marlboro Lights,’ one of the girls said.

  ‘Who does she think she is?’

  ‘I’ve never had a Marlboro Light.’

  ‘What’s wrong with a plain old Embassy No.1?’

  ‘Some people have more money than sense. They should take away her benefits.’

  Kat laughed with the others. They never sold Marlboros. She used the price gun to put tickets on some cans of soup and one of the girls took them from the counter where Kat stood and put them on the shelves. Fern pulled the other packet of Marlboro Lights to the front of the shelf and stacked the boxes of matches.

  ‘Will I put the kettle on?’ one of the girls said.

  ‘Her man hits her,’ Fern said and the girls held onto the things they were pricing or putting away and stopped to listen. But Fern didn’t say any more. She just pressed her lips together.

  One of the girls started up. ‘I’d hit her if I was her man. Torn-faced cow.’

  ‘It hurts to be hit, you know,’ the other girl said and she coughed into her sleeve.

  Fern picked up her glass of water from behind the counter and said, ‘No one’s saying it doesn’t hurt.’

  Kat remembered, perhaps they all remembered, the time she’d come into the shop with yellow smudges on her jaw and cheekbone and none of them said anything. Not then, not ever. No one said anything to anyone ever.

  The door burst open. Two men, unsteady on their feet, came to the counter and waved their arms. One carried a penknife, the other a broken bottle. With their drug-ravaged faces they weren’t frightening, but their voices were loud and because they demanded money and because they were carrying weapons, the women didn’t refuse them. Kat and the two girls moved to

  stand next to Fern. They watched her open the till and they all stood still and firm while the men crashed out of the shop.

  Afterwards, shrugs, half-smiles, a few words, then, ‘Right, if nobody’s going to put the kettle on, I will.’ Fern clasped her hands together and went out to the back shop.

  Azam Khan

  I remember one time I went to the chippy for a pint of milk because we ran out of milk so I only had thirty pence, forty pence, whatever milk was, and I had to go up the hill – there was a wee hill there, I think they called it Chippy Hill. So I was going up Chippy Hill, went up there, got my milk and I was coming back down and there was two drug addicts standing there and they were like that, got any money? Giz your money. And I was like that, no, I haven’t got any money on me, I only had enough for a pint of milk. And they were like that, giz your milk then. I said, that’s not gonna happen here and they’re like that, giz your milk or we’ll stab you. Again, like I says, Barmulloch was one of those places where if you were pushed about by one, everybody was going to push you about so you had to turn round and go like that, fucking stab us then. I’m not giving you my milk. You had to stand up. And because they were drug takers and all that there wasn’t much to them so I pushed one of them and he fell down Chippy Hill. The other one just ran off. And when I walked down Chippy Hill he was at the bottom and was like that, you didn’t have to do that, you could have just said no. And you’re like that, don’t do that again. But aye, in that way, it kind of prepared you for life because you had to be a tough guy and you had to toughen up because there was a lot of nutters walking about.

  Iris 1995

  She should have been excited about the party she was throwing for her son, but Pamela was off the rails again. The wean wasn’t enough to keep her clean.

  She opened her door and the girls were there again saying they had money for Pamela that they owed her. Iris let them in and watched them talk to Pamela as Lauren played on the floor. The girls needled at Pamela, Iris could tell. They were no good and they didn’t care.

  ‘Ma, will you watch the wea
n for an hour?’ Pamela asked.

  ‘I’ll put her to bed then,’ Iris said.

  ‘Would you?’

  Liam was long gone out of the house. Iris kicked him out because she found needles in the bedside drawer when she was looking for nappies. And Pamela would be next, God help her, if she didn’t draw back from whatever road those girls were tempting her down.

  The wean didn’t sleep well. The wean gret a lot and suf- fered from constant colds. But the wean was a wean. She was the most precious thing Pamela had and Pamela was messing it up.

  ‘I need to talk with you, my lassie,’ Iris said as Pamela was leaving.

  ‘I know, Ma,’ Pamela said. Iris knew she knew. But she couldn’t stop.

  As the family and the neighbours arrived for the party, Iris told them to tiptoe past Pamela’s room where Lauren slept. She put Queen on the stereo and then somebody found a tape of seventies hits and that got the dancing started. Her son had a look of shock on his face when the lights came on in the living room and people jumped out at him, bursting party poppers and chucking balloons in the air. Carol from up the stair did the stripogram, as she’d promised, and had them screeching and shrieking as she sat on the table and burst out of her bra.

  Lauren woke up with all the noise and asked where her mammy was. Iris held her close and told Carol to make herself decent, gave her the twenty quid she’d offered for the strip, and the adults put their happy, boozy faces close to Lauren’s and kissed her smooth cheeks and said she was the dead spit of her mammy.

  Pamela didn’t come back till the morning. That was it. She had to go.

  Kamil 1996

  The cat hadn’t bothered with anything until the day Michelle’s best mate turned up knocking on the door. She was with her boyfriend, the same one, who’d done some time in prison. Kyle had his hands in his pockets and his hair combed down onto his forehead. He didn’t look at Kamil; only at the cat that sprang into the hall and hissed and arched its back. The two of them barged in, Michelle’s best mate zipping and unzipping her jacket, playing with her fingers, jerking her head and speaking quickly and tearfully.

  ‘They’re going to hurt the weans,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re going to hurt the weans.’

  Over and over, the energy of the pair. ‘They’re going to hurt the weans.’

  ‘Who?’

  She didn’t stop for breath, her voice climbing higher and higher. They moved into the living room.

  ‘Sit down,’ Kamil said. She didn’t sit down and kept on talking. Her man followed her in and began to talk over her and Kamil watched Michelle, caught between the two of them, turning her head, her face frightened. She looked at Kamil. He told Kyle to shut up.

  ‘What is it? Who’s getting the weans? Whose weans?’

  ‘My niece and nephew. I’m looking after them for the weekend.’

  ‘If we don’t give them fifty quid,’ Kyle said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The dealers. They’re coming back in half an hour,’ Michelle said. She was back on the zipping and unzipping.

  ‘Basically,’ her man said and he sniffed, ‘we owe them money and they came back for it. When we didn’t have it they said they’d come back and kick the shit out of everyone in the house. Including the weans.’

  ‘Get the weans over here then,’ Kamil said and Michelle nodded.

  ‘So we need fifty quid.’

  ‘Aye, but get the weans over here first.’

  ‘Can you give us fifty quid, but?’

  It was Kyle again. His voice took on something else, a nip, a brittle note. Michelle looked at her friend.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said and her friend cried. She slowed her speech down. She put her head on Michelle’s shoulder and then she said, ‘I’m really sorry Michelle, I wouldn’t ask but I’m feart for the weans, for what they’ll do. I don’t care what they do to me but I need to pay them off.’

  Kamil went to his wallet and felt for notes.

  ‘I’ve got twenty quid.’

  They almost reached out for it. He saw their mouths open. Michelle’s best friend touched her zip and looked at her man.

  ‘You haven’t got any more?’ Kyle said.

  ‘Go get the weans.’

  ‘Aye, we’ll bring them over. Can I have the twenty quid?’ They were desperate; heads genuflecting, eyes keen and shameless. Kamil went to put the notes back in his wallet but looked at Michelle. She shrugged and said, ‘She’s my pal, Kamil, better give her the money.’

  When she took the money Michelle’s friend folded it care- fully and put it in her pocket. She bent down and said, ‘Hiya Fluffs.’ The cat purred and nuzzled.

  ‘See you after,’ Michelle’s friend said and Michelle nodded. She walked to the window and picked up a photo in its frame, then put it down again.

  ‘Mind you bring the weans over,’ Kamil said.

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ Kyle and Michelle’s friend said and they looked high, elated, delighted, as they walked out of the house.

  Kamil and Michelle waited in for the weans but they never showed.

  ‘We’ll check on them in the morning,’ Kamil said.

  ‘Aye, I expect they’re not even with her.’

  She was right. The next day Michelle’s best friend told her that Kyle had made her make up the story about the dealers and the weans as it was the only way they could get some money for a hit. They were desperate, she said. They’d have died without a hit. Michelle shouted down the telephone. ‘You’re my best friend and you did that to me? We went to school together, nursery together, we grew up together, we were dead tight me and you and this is what you do? You wanted your hit and you used those weans and our money to get it. Fuck the money, I don’t even want the money, it isn’t about the money.’

  She pressed her knuckles to her cheeks and cried, standing by the window. A pigeon landed on the veranda and Kamil picked up a one pence piece and threw it. The pigeon flew away and Michelle turned into the room.

  ‘Leave the pigeon alone,’ she said and she was red in the face and Kamil took his fingers away from the pot of coins. The cat hopped onto the back of the couch and meowed.

  Sharon McDermott

  My pal asked me to keep a hold of her wee lassie while she went to the hospital. I said aye but I have to take my son to a Christmas party this afternoon so you’ll need to be back for that. And I needed to go to the Rottenrow so I took the wee lassie with me. I went to the Rottenrow and then I think I went into town and then I came back, and there used to be a wee van that used to sit at the bottom of the flats and I went in and said have you seen my pal? and she said have you not heard and I said no what is it? – and her wee lassie was standing outside the van – and she said she’s took an overdose and she’s lying dead. And I was like, oh no, and I still had her wee lassie with me. So I went up the flat and everybody was outside this lassie’s house, so I went up and shouted through the letter box and these two big polis just came out and said who are you? and I gave my name to them and they said who’s the wee lassie? and I said that’s my pal’s wee lassie and they said do you know what’s happened? and I said I’ve heard something but I don’t know. And they said can I have a word with you outside on the landing? and I went out and the window was wide open and the lassie was sat outside waiting and they said she’s dead. And I said what am I going to do with this wee lassie, will I take her to her granny’s? The polis said we’ll deal with that, but this lassie, she was only about four, and she came out and she’s seen the window and she was like that, where’s my mummy, where’s my mummy, is my mummy okay? and it was instinct I think.

  Kamil 1996

  Two weeks later Kamil saw Kyle at a party. The sound of his voice caught him as he walked down the hall. He’d taken to mugging folk, Michelle told him, and there he was, telling his war stories with all these rapt faces listening to him say how he’d threatened this person and harmed that person and how the young guys now called him the Godfather
of Springburn.

  ‘You wee dick,’ Kamil said.

  ‘You what?’

  Kyle scowled at Kamil who stood with his shoulders big and his hands out of his pockets.

  ‘You want to watch who you’re talking to,’ the wee Godfather said.

  ‘See you, you’re nothing but a dick,’ Kamil said and Kyle stood up and put his hand into his jacket as if he was going to pull something out so Kamil hooked him, hard. The room was covered in patterned carpet and Kamil saw the wee prick’s face clear against the pattern before he walked coolly but quickly out of the door and up the road to the Broomfield.

  Michael 1997

  Three weeks later, in an empty house at last, Michael cooked lamb chops and totties and peas for Kay’s birthday. He expected her in at six. He ate his plate of tea at eight and when she came in steaming at eleven and said she wasn’t hungry, he smashed her plate onto the landing floor. Peas rolled everywhere. The lamb sat cold in a pile of gravy. Kay didn’t even take off her coat, but got back in the lift and went out again. Michael sat in the hall and only stood up when his neighbour, the blue nose with the King Billy poster, opened his door and said, ‘I thought someone was out here.’

  ‘Not happy with your cookery?’ he said and Michael got his mop and brush and cleared up. When Trish got in she told him she would have eaten Kay’s dinner.

  Kay came back at midnight and got into bed beside him.

  ‘Happy Birthday,’ Michael said.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you do a test?’

  ‘Two. I’m pregnant.’

  He turned to hold her body because he thought she might be afraid. He saw her blinking in the dark. He was afraid too.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said.

  ‘Aye.’

  He wanted it. He was pleased. Delighted. Dear God. They’d be parents. It’d be beautiful. And Trish, she would surely have to fuck off now.