This Road is Red

by Alison Irvine

  ‘You look tired,’ her friend said.

  Khadra pushed hair out of her eyes and shrugged. ‘I got my leave to remain,’ she said. ‘When you left Red Road I was still waiting.’

  It was much more difficult to speak to her than Khadra thought. ‘Video link to London. Three years of hell, eh?’

  ‘Are you married?’ Khadra’s friend said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not to the Scottish man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a shame for you.’

  Khadra shrugged again and smiled at the children.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without him during those

  asylum years, so I’m grateful to him, in a way. But he ended up not being very nice to me.’

  ‘We have to go home now,’ her friend said and held out her hands for her children.

  Khadra looked at the creases on her old friend’s face. The woman turned away. And then Khadra couldn’t stop herself.

  ‘Have you got a problem with me?’

  Her friend turned to look at her and the twins stared.

  ‘Have you? Is there a problem?’

  Families walked past them towards the roundabout at the bottom of Red Road. Groups of boys kicked footballs. People with cameras and microphones approached groups of asylum seekers.

  ‘We have nothing in common,’ Khadra’s friend said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have nothing in common any more,’ is all her friend would say and she walked away.

  Khadra stood for a while with her hands in her pockets and the wind blowing her hair and wished she was the kind of person who could hold onto things like faith and origin as if they rooted her to something, but she couldn’t. Red Road. She took one last look at the place where she’d endured the process that finally gave her leave to remain and went on home.

  Concierges 2007

  It was a strange feeling, doing their job and knowing one day where they sat would be rubble or grass or somebody’s new living room. They were told new jobs would be found if they could be found, but demolition was a way off yet. Some of the boys had moved on to other multi-storeys but John said to George that the more high rises they knocked down, the fewer jobs there would be. Some of the Sighthill buildings were on their way out. One of the Gorbals high rises was ready to go. All over Glasgow cranes with claws – munchers – were sticking their nails into walls and windows and picking off floors. And all over Glasgow they were moving tenants into new builds with front and back doors and only one set of neighbours either side.

  George and John were there to wave cheerio to Mrs Donoghue. Her daughters wanted her closer to where they stayed in Bishopbriggs. They wheeled her along the corridor to the concierge office, her legs covered with a tartan blanket.

  ‘Where have you been hiding?’ John said.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been up in my wee house, having fun,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t get about much now.’ By the nick of her, with her frail face and sloping shoulders, she wasn’t wrong. George and John saw one or other of her children almost daily, on the CCTV cameras, waiting for the lift with a bag of messages. Devoted. Or loyal. Or just being good children for their mammy. One of the daughters whispered to George and John that Mrs Donoghue was petrified of being alone at night. They were considering taking it in turns to stay over until she got used to the new place. They hoped it was the right thing, moving her closer to where they lived, but away from the house she’d known for years and years.

  ‘She liked having you concierges there,’ one of the daughters said and John said, ‘Aye, a lot of the older folk liked the security.’ So they went down the stair to wave Agnes Donoghue goodbye and the old woman had tears in her eyes as her daughters wheeled her out of the foyer and she kept looking back over her shoulder, straining her neck. In the end she put her pale, thin fingers over her face and the cuffs of her blouse rode up to show her white and bony forearms and her daughters wheeled her, like that, to the car and she didn’t look back.

  Teenage Asylum Seekers

  There’s Scottish people, Somalian, Pakistan, Iraqi, Iran, Afghanistan.

  Congo.

  Congo. Nigeria.

  Nigeria, Somalian, Scottish, American. Iraq.

  Everyone. People from around the world. Side Kicks is the organisation. We play Blacks versus Scottish. They beat us. Sometimes we beat them.

  (Laughter)

  Concierges 2008

  The concierges sat in their office. Nothing showed up on the monitor. Nobody in or out. The phone rang and it was a mainstream on twenty-five floor. She said she could hear glass breaking and crashing about. John went up with his radio and torch. He didn’t wait long for the lift and it was just him who got in it. On the twenty-fifth floor the mainstream tenant stood in her doorway. She pointed at the window on the fire door. Kicked in with glass everywhere.

  ‘I think they’ve done it all the way down,’ the woman said and John radioed George, telling him to catch the boys before they got out.

  ‘That’s them away,’ George said because he saw them on the monitor, running out of the building, their mouths open like warriors. Young, some of them. Really young. Local boys.

  ‘This will take a while to clear up,’ John said and George stood up to get the dustpan and brush.

  Andrea 2008

  The elderly man wouldn’t sit. He came through the door with a woman who worked at the centre and it was laughs and jokes at first but he didn’t want to sit and he wouldn’t sit. So he stood next to one of the walls that were covered with photographs of elderly people. The stage had three chairs on it and looked out on to rows of more chairs. The room was full. At the back of the hall women in housecoats stood at a hatch. And behind the women and the hatch was a stainless-steel kitchen. Alive and Kicking was the name of the building, and the hall in which Andrea sat and the elderly man stood was shiny with laminate and polish, a thousand smiles on the walls, the wood floor and wall panels in comforting tones and the air warm. Andrea had never been inside before but she knew about the Women’s Centre next door where she worked once, albeit in a different building, at its old address in Petershill Court where the rats used to run past at night when she locked up.

  Babies crawled along the floor at the end of the aisles in the hall. Some folk chatted. Others sat still in their seats and stared at the empty chairs on the stage. After the elderly man came folk from the gha. And then the woman who worked at the centre returned with a tumbler of drink – a liquid coin of whisky at the bottom of the glass – and a plastic cup of water. The elderly man took the tumbler and held it while the woman poured in water. She pointed to a chair, apart from the rows of chairs, by the wall, and the man sat. He sipped his whisky and pulled at the collar of his jumper. Cable-knitted. Cream coloured and thick. The man had strong-looking eyes and when he caught Andrea staring, he raised his glass and winked. Andrea smiled. The people from the gha asked for attention.

  The meeting was brief. The flats were coming down over a period of eight years. The blocks would be emptied as new houses became ready or vacant. The needs of tenants would be taken into account as to who got the new builds, the other high rises in the city or the older housing stock in Springburn, Barmulloch and Balornock. Disturbance money would be paid.

  Questions? Can we choose where we go? To a certain extent. When will we go? The tenants of the slab block at the back – Two-one-three to One-five-three Petershill Drive – will go first. How will it be demolished? Explosives. Probably. Safedem is the company. You will hear more from them. They will talk to the children in the primary schools and have an office on site for enquiries. Rent? Comparable. Although expect to pay a wee bit more for the new builds. What about the asylum seek- ers? They will continue to come to the ymca. Can we watch the demolition? There’ll be an exclusion zone. Best to watch it from a very safe distance. I heard there’s tons of asbestos lining the walls and the ceilings. There is. We need to make the building safe.

  ‘What if
you don’t want to leave?’

  The voice came from the back of the room. It was a man’s voice. Andrea saw the elderly man with the whisky and the warm jumper turn his head, as Andrea did, to see who had spoken. While the speaker’s question was answered, the elderly man sipped the last of his whisky. The woman who worked at the centre stood over him and poured more whisky and more water in his glass.

  ‘I thought I was the only one refusing to move,’ the elderly man said and the woman said ‘Shoosh Jim’ and touched him on the shoulder.

  When the meeting was over Andrea stood up. She walked past the elderly man and heard him say, ‘They can blow me up in my house. I’m not leaving.’ The woman touched his shoulder again.

  ‘Your hair’s looking lovely today, Janet,’ he said.

  ‘I knew you were coming in, Jim,’ she said.

  ‘I come in every day.’

  ‘So it must look lovely every day.’

  ‘No. Some days it’s a wee bit flyaway. Today it’s looking lovely.’

  ‘Thanks Jim. I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘Take it any way you like.’

  The women in housecoats and younger men arranged the vacated chairs around long tables and elderly folk stood about

  and sat at the tables when they were ready. The women in housecoats were full of business in the stainless-steel kitchen.

  ‘You don’t want to go?’ Andrea said. She didn’t know why she spoke. She hardly spoke to anyone she didn’t know.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ the man said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I like my house. I’ve lived in it since 1977 and Red Road since 1966. What on God’s earth is the point of me moving somewhere else now?’

  ‘Do you not want a nice back and front door?’ she asked the elderly man.

  ‘No. I want my peace and quiet and my view and the house my wife died in.’

  Someone struck some chords on the piano and the elderly man widened his eyes. ‘Now, that’s a beautiful Irish song,’ he said.

  ‘He’s sharp as a button,’ the woman, Janet, said in Andrea’s ear. She spoke softly and kindly. ‘But he’s upset today. He doesn’t see why he should have to move at his age.’

  Andrea couldn’t wait to move. She’d been married and divorced and married again at Red Road, she’d raised her weans and brought in a wage and sat on sunny days with friends on the grass by the wall near the shops, but she longed to leave. It was enough now. Twenty-five years. The four boys who lived next door didn’t respect anyone; they played on the landing floor as she was out there on her hands and knees trying to clean it. When the concierges buffed the floor when it was her old neighbour’s turn, the boys trod mud onto the shiny floor and spilt ginger on it without wiping it up. They chapped the door and ran, scraped her door and burnt her door, put sandwiches through her letter box. Countless arguments with the boys’ mother came to nothing. Andrea didn’t like to argue but she felt she had to. And don’t get her started on the drug dealer across the landing; the girl whose house was busy with comings and goings all day and all night.

  One of the last to leave the hall, she turned to look at the elderly man who walked tall and slow to one of the tables, to eat his lunch, and then return later, presumably, to his house in the high rise. Andrea wondered which was his house and wanted, on a wee whim, to see the world from his flat, to feel his peace and quiet, to maybe understand why it was he wanted to stay.

  Donna McCrudden

  Fond memories? Oh aye, some good times. In summer we’d all go down and bring sandwiches and juice and what have you for the kids. We’d either just sit on the grass down beside our flat or the wall round the back at the shops, there’s a wee wall that’s there. We’d all sit there outside the shops and watch everybody going by with the sun shining right on us and we’d sit on the grass behind the shops, a big patch of grass behind the shops, and the kids would run about and everything. I went with one of my neighbours, she had girls as well. We’d have a radio and the girls would play with their dollies and skipping ropes.

  Incident Book 2008

  Schools Liaison officer looking for Evan Harrison given paracetamol for headache. Sat in office for fifteen minutes and felt better. Evan Harrison evades detection.

  Andrea 2009

  She met with the officer from the Glasgow Housing Association and told them her stipulations, seeing as they’d asked. Firstly, don’t put that drug dealer girl anywhere near me, she said, and the housing officer understood and made a note on her paper. Secondly, I would like a new build please because I’m disabled now and I can’t manage stairs and I don’t want to be anywhere with lifts because they always break down.

  She requested a three apartment, one bedroom fewer than the house she already had, because two of her three girls had moved out and it would just be herself and her new husband and her youngest.

  ‘We’ll see what we can do,’ the housing officer said.

  Jim 2009

  The pills didn’t help any more. It was harder to get up in the mornings and when he was up, at half-past seven, he needed to return to bed soon after. This was something new. He tried hard to stay optimistic. He liked to hear the Chinese weans on the landing waiting for the lift. They waved when they saw him and he thought their mammy and daddy were bringing them up beautifully. The pain was a nuisance. It was a heavy pain and he told himself that he should expect pain at eighty-seven. They stopped his radio programme on a Sunday night and he was devastated. Jennifer and James bought him a television set with a cd player included and a dvd player too. It did everything but make the tea he told Janet and said he didn’t know if he’d live long enough to read the manual. Janet told him to stop that talk. He showed her a letter from the gha inviting him to a meeting with a housing officer to discuss his housing needs. I don’t have any housing needs, he told Janet. I have what I need and I live in it. Janet said that she would come with him to meet the housing officer if he wanted and Jim said, aye, that might be a good idea, you’ll keep me out of the jail.

  Andrea 2009

  Twenty-five years of staying in Red Road. Thirteen years in one house, twelve years in the other and now a moving out date – June 2009 – and a new house with a front and back door, a garden and three toilets. Three toilets. A downstairs, an upstairs and an en suite. Andrea daren’t tell her mother, up

  the road and using a chanti po at night because she couldn’t manage the walk to the bathroom. Nobody would have far to go for a pee in her house, that was plain. It was a beautiful house. She’d been taken for a look round by a man from the gha and stood in the garden in the shadow of Birnie Court admiring the cut grass and clean windows and inside she’d been pleased about the spacious kitchen and the laminate flooring. It was a good house.

  Andrea’s clear-out was meticulous and time consuming. First she added their savings to their disturbance money and worked out which of the big items they would need to keep and which they could afford to replace. She wanted everything new because the house was new and the start was new. If they were careful, it would work out that they could buy a television and dvd player, settee, table, chairs, washing machine and beds, totally brand new. So they ditched the big items. Everything else they sorted into bags for the charity shops or gave away to her daughters or their daughters’ friends. Andrea put bubble wrap around the paintings she’d done in Fab Pad on the twenty-third floor of Ten Red Road. She’d made a mirror too and she wrapped that and put it in the room with the boxes and stuff to take. Her daughters came up with fish and chip suppers on one of her last nights in the house and they watched the telly as if it was just another normal night, but their memories bounced about in their chat. Andrea saw them to the lift and her eldest daughter said, look, I can reach the buttons without a stick. See you in the new house, they said, and told her off for not getting one with more bedrooms in case they needed to stay over.

  On one of her last mornings she saw an elderly man coming out of the chemist as she was going in
. He held a sellotaped-down paper bag in one hand and pushed his other hand against the closing door, attempting to open it.

  ‘Too late,’ he said and she said ‘no bother’ and realised it was the man she’d met who didn’t want to leave. He wore a knitted hat and a knitted scarf and his hand shook as he tried to put his paper bag in the pocket of his coat.

  ‘Have you had your meeting with the housing officer?’ Andrea asked and the man’s brown eyes were confused.

  ‘I met you at the meeting about the demolition. You didn’t want to leave.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave,’ he said.

  Andrea commiserated, and having done her packing and sorting, she understood what an upheaval it would be for the man.

  ‘I’ll be gone by the weekend,’ Andrea said and the man nodded as if it was no surprise that another person was going.

  ‘It’s only me left on my landing,’ he said.

  She wished him well and he told her he was going next door to the paper shop to put on his lotto ticket for the next month. Twenty pound a month, he said. Is it worth it, because I’ve only won a few tenners and had four numbers once. Andrea went inside the chemist for her tablets then crossed the concrete to the burger van to say farewell to Barry.

  John McNally

  My wife went away about nineteen eighty-three to the hospital and I was on my own then, so this project opened and that was handy. I never left it. They offered me a house near to the ground, only five, ten minutes away but I never took it. That’s why I stayed there, you know. It’s hard to explain but it kind of knocks the heart out of you. I couldn’t imagine living any- where else now. I’m hoping that if I go to flats, I’m high up.

  Concierges 2009