Concierges 1997
Wee Theo Orr was moving out of his flat on the thirteenth floor. He was moving down the stair to a house on the fourth floor because he couldn’t move about much and it was closer to the ground if the lifts broke down and he had to walk. He came into the concierges’ office with his paper and rolls. John and George were on days.
‘Boys, would you mind giving me a wee hand shifting a bit of furniture?’ He was full of business, waving his paper in one hand with his bag of rolls in the other.
‘Aye, no bother, Theo,’ John said.
‘What time do you want us?’
‘I’ll get my breakfast into me and then I’ll buzz down to you.’
‘Right you are.’
John said that some of the tenants trod a fine line between respect and taking the piss but he liked wee Mr Orr. He some- times gave him a cheeky racing tip and although John wasn’t a betting man, he would put a couple of pound on Mr Orr’s tip and it paid out near enough every time.
‘So, we’ll help Theo with his flit and then we’ll see what’s what,’ George said. ‘Who are they flowers for?’
‘Sandy. You know Barbara, she went into labour a few nights ago and he says she raced in here saying Sandy, it’s time, it’s time, the baby’s coming, I’m in labour. So he phoned an ambulance but fifteen minutes later it still hadn’t arrived so he says Barbara, hop in the car and I’ll run you down to Rottenrow. He got her there in time and her ma came in this morning before you got here and said to give these flowers to Sandy. Barbara got overloaded with them in the hospital and she was sharing them out, like, to say thanks.’
‘So where’s the baby now? Where’s Barbara?’
‘Home.’
George gasped. His eyes went to the cctv monitors. ‘There’s a tiny wee baby in this block.’
‘Aye. I never saw it. She’ll bring him down when she’s ready.’
‘Welcome to Red Road.’
George gulped his tea and walked with his mug to the kitchen.
‘I tell you what,’ John said, ‘I’m surprised there’s not been more near misses in these flats with all these people over the years. We should be trained in midwifery.’
‘Careful what you wish for,’ George said.
They left Allan in charge of the office and went up the stair to Theo Orr’s house. His door was open and his twin brother and twin brother’s wife were there too.
‘We’ll take the small things, the black bags and boxes and the like. If you chaps could take the big items that would be grand,’ Theo said.
There were quite a few big items.
‘All this?’ George said.
‘There’s a wardrobe in the bedroom that needs to go down too. Thank you boys, you’re a great help.’ Theo Orr was pan- icking a bit, John could tell. He kept pushing his specs further up his nose and changing direction in the living room, not quite getting anywhere.
George and John took off their jumpers and made a start. They shifted a table first and left it in the landing outside the lift. They moved a sideboard next and a drawer fell out so they put it down and took out all the drawers and left them on the couch. When they were in the lift a couple of kids with a bike tried to get in too and George said, ‘Boys, it’s not going to work now is it?’ and when they were gone he said, ‘Is it me, or are the young team getting more and more dense?’
The flit went on for an hour and a half. A bed, a wardrobe, a telly and its stand, a nest of tables, a framed photograph of the Rangers 1972 European Cup Winners Cup team. Wee Theo Orr began to visibly relax. He’d got his sister-in-law working in the new house, unpacking boxes and putting crockery on shelves. He shook his head and looked about him, his old house bare with rectangles of bright clean carpet on which furniture had stood.
After the last piece of furniture he said, ‘Lastly, I’d be so grateful if you’d take a picture of me,’ and he stood by his window and his view and John snapped him portrait and land- scape with the window wide open behind him. ‘I won’t see a view quite like this again.’ Theo put the camera cord around his wrist and walked with the concierges to the door.
‘Oh wait a wee second,’ he said. ‘Something for your trouble.’ He came back with a carrier bag with cans of lager inside and George and John said, ‘Oh Theo, you needn’t have,’ but when they were alone in the lift they said that they were looking forward to a cold lager at the end of their shift.
‘See, you don’t mind helping somebody out if you know you’re appreciated,’ John said. And then he laughed. ‘Sandy and his flowers and us and our beer. I know what I’d rather have. He hasn’t even got a missus to give his flowers to.’
Allan was desperate for a piss when they got back to the office and he got up from his chair in what seemed like a huff but when he came back from the toilet he laughed and showed the boys the incident he’d written in the incident book. Maureen made another complaint about her neighbour’s noise. John looked at his watch.
‘I’m not getting into that today. She can suffer Angus scraping butter on his toast for one more day. The woman’s off her nut.’
‘Scraping is scraping,’ Allan said. ‘It made it to the incident book.’
‘It can stay there. George, gonna put these beers into the fridge so they’ll be nice and cool for when we get home.’
George took the beers from the carrier bag and said, ‘Oh look, there’s the lager lovelies on these cans!’ He held one out.
‘Hello Susannah and your apple basket.’ He put the bag on the table and took the cans out one by one. ‘Mary, June, hello again Susannah and two Normas.’
‘Let me see,’ John said and George passed him a can. ‘I
thought they stopped these years ago.’
‘Which lovelies do you want to take home with you?’ George said.
‘Can I have one?’
‘Did you shift any furniture, Allan? No, you did not. So you can share Sandy’s flowers.’
‘Get yourself to fuck.’
John said, ‘Wait a wee minute’ and shook his head. With a finger pointing to the can’s expiry date he walked over to George. ‘Read that.’
‘07/88.’
‘07/88. That’s eight years ago.’
Allan let out a laugh at the same time as answering the phone. ‘Hello Ten Red Road Court concierge,’ he said as George and John looked at the expiry dates on all the cans and put them back into the carrier bag.
John put the bag into the bin.
‘Not taking your Tennent’s home, boys?’ Allan said when he was off the phone.
‘I don’t want to poison myself tonight,’ George said. ‘I’ve got a half marathon on the weekend.’
‘If the students were here we could give them to them for their collection.’
‘If the students were here we would be able to drink them because they would be in date.’
‘I’m just saying they would look good on their beer towers.’ Allan picked up the incident book and wrote in it.
‘Boys,’ he said. ‘That was the community police. They’ve had a call from Maureen, saying she’s got a nuisance neighbour and can they come up and sort it out.’
The two fellas on the back shift came into the office and
George and John put on their coats.
‘Welcome to the mad house,’ John said and George said
‘Don’t drink the beer.’
‘The beer in the bin with the models on,’ Allan explained.
‘I used to collect them.’
‘You’re welcome to them. If wee Theo Orr comes in the office, ask him how long he’s had they beers in his fridge for and if there’s anything else he finds in there, we’re not hungry or thirsty.’
Kamil 1997
Kamil worked hard in his new job. His shifts on the street with the teenagers in Possil ended at ten and he finished his evening in the office, writing up notes and leaving messages for the next day.
Michelle phoned. He almost didn’t answer because he was headed for
the door. ‘Hiya, gonna do me a favour?’ she said.
‘I’m leaving now.’
‘Good. I’m starving. Can you jump into a kebab shop and get us a kebab or a Chinese or something?’
He’d eaten a burger at eight when he was on the street.
‘Can you not make yourself a piece and we’ll go to the supermarket tomorrow. I’m so tired.’
‘Please, oh please babe. Jump into a kebab shop or a Chinese or something.’
He’d do anything for her. So he jumped into a Chinese and read a newspaper while he waited. It was hard to read any- thing because he was exhausted. The kids he worked with were hard core. They had a pinch of respect for him based on where he lived but they were hard going all the same.
The man in the Chinese gave him free prawn crackers and Kamil tore a hole in the bag, put them on the front passenger seat and ate them as he waited at the lights and drove on home. He was hungry after all.
When he got to Petershill Court he saw two police cars parked outside and blue and white tape strung across the entrance to his building. The police let him through and up to his house.
Concierges 1997
The concierge stationed in Twenty Petershill Court watched the man on the cctv monitor. The only person in the foyer, he carried on as if he was out of his face on drink or drugs, pacing, head down, his hands jerking in his pockets. He was a sight, but not an unusual sight because the flats were full of junkies and drunkards and odd bods. He kept an eye, however. A tenant rang down and asked if a parcel had arrived for him. The concierge checked the shelf in the office and said no, nothing had come.
Another tenant, Jack McGann, let himself through the doors of building Ten and joined the man in the foyer. The two men, he could tell, were wary of each other; Jack stood still, his hands clasped behind his back, his rucksack between his feet, and his eyes flicking towards the other man and back to the lift. The concierge saw all this on the cctv monitor. The other man sidestepped along the far wall, his back pressed against it, back and forth, from one side of the wall to the other.
When Jack McGann moved to press the lift button again –
perhaps it was never pressed in the first place – the strange man went for him. He pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed Jack McGann’s side and plunged the knife in and out of his body. Jack McGann, he opened his mouth and tried to turn his body away from the man but the man stabbed his back and kept stabbing him. Oh sweet Jesus, the concierge said and called the police and ran to the man’s aid. The attacker was gone and blood spread out on the floor. Jack McGann was conscious but he was dying.
‘Don’t leave me,’ he said and the concierge knelt in the blood and put his jumper under Jack McGann’s head.
His breathing was shallow. He lay on his side, his cheek buried into the wool of the concierge’s jumper, eyes blinking.
Does it hurt? the concierge wanted to ask and prayed that it didn’t, that his body had gone beyond pain. He checked the wounds, tried to stop the bleeding, took off his shirt and tried to plug the gashes in the poor man’s body.
‘Don’t leave me,’ Jack McGann said again and the concierge knew that he knew he was dying and there was no time for running for relatives. His dying wouldn’t wait.
‘You’re all right,’ the concierge said and Jack McGann said again, ‘Please don’t leave me.’
‘I won’t leave you. I won’t leave you.’
It was too bright a place to die. Too cold and bright. ‘I
won’t leave you,’ the concierge said.
He tried to resuscitate him and when the ambulance arrived the paramedics tried too but the concierge knew Jack McGann was gone and he knew the point at which he’d gone. The man had let his head sink heavily into the pillow of his jumper, he’d stopped struggling and seemed to turn in on himself; eyes, breath, chest, turned in and stopped. He didn’t breathe again.
Kamil 1997
Kamil and Michelle stood in their flat and counted. They knew it took him five or six minutes to drive home at ten o’clock at night. The man was stabbed at eight minutes past ten. The attacker had been hanging about the foyer since ten o’clock and the man, the dead guy, he was the only person through the door. Kamil knew it could have been him.
‘This place is going to ruin our lives,’ his missus said.
‘I was lucky, I was lucky,’ Kamil said and he found it hard to concentrate. ‘You can’t protect yourself against that, can you? Sudden acts of violence. You can’t avoid that, no matter how tough people think you are.’
They made up their minds quickly.
‘We’re moving out,’ he said to Michelle and Michelle sorted them out a house miles away.
Three weeks later they were gone.
Iris 1997
It was a blousy morning, the clouds light, the wind docile; mild for December. Iris went to the paper shop. She got the papers even though Colleen sometimes did them on a week- end, but Jim had phoned saying Colleen wasn’t up to going out that morning; she was unwell and he’d never seen her like that before. Iris delivered the papers and rolls to her elderly neighbours and when she was back on her own floor, she chapped Colleen’s door to check on her.
Jim was anxious.
‘She’s out of sorts,’ he said.
‘That’s not like her.’
‘I’m after giving her a cup of tea and she’s not drunk it. Will you come in and see her?’
‘Aye, no bother.’
Iris went into his house and opened the door to the bed- room. Colleen lay across the bottom of the bed.
‘Come on Colleen, stop your carry on,’ Iris said. ‘Get up doll, get up.’
Colleen didn’t move. She lay as if in a stubborn sleep.
‘She’s not well,’ Iris said and she called down to the concierge and told him he’d better get up quick because there was something wrong with Mrs Ryan.
‘No, come up the now,’ she said, when the concierge said he would be along in a minute.
Jim told her that Colleen had been under the weather of late, with her usual cough and aches and pains, but she’d been fine the night before, wrapping presents and trying on her Christmas outfit.
‘She’s maybe worn out with the stress of Christmas,’ Iris said. When the concierge arrived, Iris left Jim in the living room and took the concierge in to see Colleen. He knelt at the foot of the bed and gently touched her shoulder and forehead and neck.
‘Iris, she’s dead,’ he said.
Jim didn’t believe her but when the concierge told him too that his wife was gone, he sobbed in his chair. Iris waited with him while the ambulance came. He was so upset, so sorry that she would have to go down in the lift, dead. They’d always said they wouldn’t let that happen to each other, he told Iris, that they would get each other out before they had to be tipped up and leaned against the lift wall.
‘Don’t worry yourself, Jim, please,’ Iris said. ‘You weren’t to know. You did your best.’
She couldn’t console him.
Michael 1997
Michael and Kay slept in the lounge with their baby in her Moses basket alongside them. It was warmer in the lounge. The bedroom was on the gable end and the mould wasn’t good for her, they decided. The baby was a girl. She moved as if underwater still, her fingers painstakingly curling and uncurling, her tongue poking through her tiny red lips. When they caught a glimpse of her full, open, indigo eyes, they agreed she took their breath away.
Michael knew Kamil was scared to return to Red Road but he came with Michelle to see baby Lisa and when they were inside, and the baby was bundled asleep in his arms, he had to give her back to Kay and turn away from them all. Michelle put a hand on his shoulder but he left the room. She told Michael he was acting strange since the stabbing and wasn’t coping great.
They left, all together, to see the lights in George Square. The baby slept and woke for milk twice. It was exciting, being in town with the Christmas shoppers and the actual day almost upon them. Trish met them on Buchan
an Street and tried to persuade them to have a drink but when they’d said goodbye to Kamil and Michelle, they told her to jump in the taxi with them and they’d have one back at the house for old time’s sake.
Concierges 1997
Christmas Eve. The concierge office dripping with decorations. Tinsel, paper chains, shiny silver snowflakes that popped open like light shades and twirled gracefully on thin string. The office warm and bright. Moira, the latest addition to the concierge team, in flashing snowman earrings. George and John in Santa hats and fluffy beards. Tins of biscuits on the desk and shelves, the lid off the Quality Streets and most of the strawberry ones gone already. Mince pies in the fridge. The Christmas songs
tape on a loop. The postie dropping off sacks of parcels and George and John and Moira taking turns to ho-ho-ho the parcels to their recipients.
Mrs Donoghue calling out as she came down the corridor and George jumping up to take her arm and escort her in.
‘There’s a wee present for you in my handbag, son. Take it out.’
So George clicks open the clasp and pulls out her purse.
‘Thank you very much, how much is in there?’ he jokes and she laughs her old, deep laugh and says, ‘No you daftie, the bottle.’ There’s a bottle of Bells inside and George says, ‘Oh no, that’s too much,’ and Mrs Donoghue says, ‘I didn’t come down here to argue with you. Take it or I’ll wrap it round your head.’
George kisses her and so do John and Moira and Moira takes her back up the stair. John writes his shopping list for his whiz round the town when his shift finishes at seven. They leave as mammies and daddies arrive, carrying shopping bags with wrapping-paper rolls sticking out, beads of rain on their hair and arms, like snow. John just misses his bus and George offers a lift, even though it would mean going into town in the opposite direction, but John says no, he’s happy to stand, on Christmas Eve, and watch the world go by. A black cab pulls up and lets out a young man and two young women. The young man lifts a pram from the taxi and inside the pram’s rain cover a baby sleeps. One of the women hangs carrier bags over the pram’s handles and the man begins to push. The woman puts her hand in the young man’s back pocket and the young man stretches his arm over her shoulders and pushes the pram with one hand. The other woman walks alongside them, turning in to talk. They take a right off Red Road and walk into the flats, and on into Christmas.
This Road is Red Page 21