Chasing Angels

by Meg Henderson

  She had no idea how long she slept, a deep, dreamless sleep, all she knew was that it had been dark as she lay down and was lighter as she awoke. Covering the red satin box with the bed-clothes she took a fresh Dr White’s towel from the drawer and made her way to the bathroom again where she changed it for the soiled one before returning to the bedroom to get dressed. In the bedroom she gathered together all the bloodstained towels, put them inside a carrier bag and placed it in the case under her bed. Outside the Sunday market would soon be stirring, and looking at the clock she saw the hands at nearly 7 a.m. She dressed, straightened herself before the mirror on the inside of the room door, and lifted the satin box from her bed. In the kitchen she found a shopping bag that had belonged to Lily, placed the box inside and pulled the zip, put on her coat and let herself out. Then she stopped for a moment outside the door, turned and let herself back in. In the kitchen she rummaged through the cutlery drawer till she found a broad-bladed knife that she wrapped in a copy of the Evening Times and placed inside the bag before letting herself out again. The last thing she could cope with was conversation, so in case there were people at the bus stops in London Road or Gallowgate, she walked instead the short distance to Glasgow Cross, firmly holding the precious cargo. There she waited for a number 37 bus to Springburn, and once aboard sat in detached silence till it arrived outside St Kentigern’s. At a nearby shop she bought a bunch of flowers and then made her way to the grave of the Kelly women, with its white, heart-shaped headstone. It was oddly quiet in the early morning, the sparse Sunday traffic noises fading into the distance. Kneeling down she unzipped the bag and, leaving the newspaper wrapping behind, began cutting through the dew-heavy turf with the knife till she reached the earth below. She dug into it with her hands and, when the hole was big enough, she took the box from the bag and carefully lowered it into the hole. After covering the small grave with the disturbed earth, she replaced the rectangle of turf, laid the flowers on top and replaced the knife in the bag. She didn’t realise that her hands were covered in thick earth, made muddy by the dew, till she stood up again and tried to zip the bag, so she took the newspaper out and rubbed off as much of the mud as she could from her hands and her knees; there was little she could do about the hem of her coat. Before she left she gently re-arranged the flowers covering the spot where her child was buried. ‘Her name’s Lily,’ she said quietly. ‘Take care of her, Mammy,’ the first words she had spoken in many hours, and then she turned and walked back through the gates. Sitting on the bus going back to Glasgow Cross, the conductor looked at her. ‘Did ye fa’ or somethin’, hen?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ she replied flatly, ‘Ah fell.’

  He grinned at her. ‘Ah bet ye canny remember how! That’s whit happens when ye go oan the skite oan Setterday night an’ don’t waken till the mornin’!’ he replied cheerily.

  ‘You’re tellin’ me!’ she said quietly, smiling wanly.

  ‘Ye look as if ye’ve got a heid like the inside o’ a badger’s arse that’d been well kicked wi’ a tacketty boot!’ he said. ‘Bet yer maw gies ye a tankin’ when ye get hame!’

  ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘likely enough.’

  As she got off the bus at the Cross he called after her, ‘Maws is queer things, hen. Take ma advice, tell her ye were abducted by wee green men. She’ll likely believe that easier than the truth!’

  ‘OK,’ she smiled, ‘Ah’ll remember that!’ Then she walked back along London Road, past Glickman’s, past Maggie’s perfect fruit stall, the wooden bones of her display still having the flesh put on them as Maggie set up for another day’s trading.

  Maggie looked her up and down as she passed. ‘Whit happened tae you?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah fell, Maggie. Makes ye feel that daft!’ she replied and kept walking. Back inside the house she went straight to her bedroom, feeling consumed with weariness once again, but there were things to be done, loose ends that had to be attended to, before she could rest. She felt as if she was being directed by some outside force, as though she wasn’t really there. It was like sleepwalking, only she was conscious and aware of what she was doing, if not why; decisions were being dictated to her, and she was obeying them to the letter without the slightest question or pause. She sat on her bed, her head down and her hands crossed in her lap, till she heard Con in the background getting ready to leave for the Barras to pay for his next drink, and as he closed the door behind him she took the suitcase from under her bed. In the living room she removed the bloody towels and ripped them up into as small pieces as she could. Then she burned them, bit by bit, in the fireplace, as she was used to doing every month, only this time the pile seemed endless. When the more saturated pieces wouldn’t burn she looked around for Con’s lighter fuel and dripped it on to the material till it caught fire, sitting alone by the hearth for what seemed an endless time, making sure there was nothing left in the grate but sticky, black ash. When it was finished she returned to her bedroom and emptied her possessions into the case, retrieved her bank book from its hiding place under the faded lino and placed it safely under her pillow, only then gratefully lying down and slipping once more into the deep, dreamless sleep of the night before.

  When she woke she heard a child crying somewhere in the distance; it must be morning. After dressing she wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table for Old Con. It simply said, ‘I’m off.’ He was still lying inside the front door snoring loudly, he’d had such a skinful that he hadn’t made it to bed. Kathy moved him by repeatedly opening the door against his back, pushing it a bit more each time. Somewhere in his drunken stupor each nudge of the door registered, and he muttered petulantly in his sleep, but eventually the shapeless heap on the floor had shifted enough for her to open the door and let herself out before closing it quietly behind her. As a final gesture she pushed the key through the letter box and heard it land with a crack on the lino; she would never be back here, so she would never again have need of a key. It was quiet outside, the Barras was recovering after the weekend trading, and there were only a few non-market people queuing at the bus stops on their way to work, all wearing their Monday morning depression like an extra coat. She looked at her watch: 5 a.m. She had no idea it was that early, but still, there was no reason to delay her departure. Looking around she felt an unexpected stab of sorrow at the thought of never seeing again people she had grown up among. She was saying goodbye to everyone she had known throughout her life, to Maggie, Chief Abadu, Cockney Jock, the McIvers and the Pearsons, only they didn’t know it. Still, they all knew she had been planning on leaving, so no one would think it strange that she had simply gone. They would assume that being heartbroken about Jamie Crawford’s betrayal she had deliberately opted to slip away quietly. She smiled wryly and glanced at St Alphonsus, thinking of Frank McCabe inside, hugging his secret safely to himself; there were some she felt no sorrow at never seeing again. She knew exactly where she was going now, though she had made no conscious decision. She was going to Queen Street Station to catch the train to Fort William. She would leave behind her everything that had ever made her unhappy or caused her grief, and that included what had befallen her in these last months and days. Once she was clear of this place her life would start anew and nothing that had happened in the past would count. It would be like completing a circle. With her escape from the East End to the West Coast the slate would be wiped clean, no pain, no suffering, no disappointment or loneliness. She would head for the Western Highlands to heal it all, to do what or for how long, she had no idea, but that was where she was headed on that crisp March Monday in 1973, and she was never coming back to this place ever again.

  7

  Only, of course, she did come back. Against her will, to be sure, and many years later, first when Con was ill and then when he was dying, and now here she was, sitting in his house, sifting through what was left of him before she escaped again. Since she had arrived three months ago she had slept on a fold-down bed in the living room. There was only
one bedroom, and Con had that, but even if there had been five she would still have used the fold-down; it was a statement of the temporary nature of her stay. He had died thirty hours ago, though who was counting, and in another twenty-four she wanted to be gone from here, so she was in a rush to get as much done as she could, to get the thing finished. He was lying in St Alphonsus’s, a candle at each end of his box, and hopefully with the communion wine safely locked away, just in case. In the morning there would be a funeral mass, followed by the long trek to the Linn Crematorium to have Con cremated, then back to the East End for the traditional reception. And as soon after that as she could manage, she would be on her way back to the West Coast, this time for ever. This place would have no further claims on her, no ties of duty or emotion, and with all the loose ends finally tied up, maybe the dreams would disappear too.

  When she awoke for that last time in the Moncur Street house all those years ago, the first sound she heard was a child crying. She had paid no particular heed to it, there were many children in the area, all with reasons to cry. What she didn’t know then was the crying child would haunt her for the rest of her life; it hadn’t been a child, it had been her child. Sometimes the dream would disappear for months at a time, but it would always return, triggered by something that reminded her or by nothing that she could identify, but it always returned. She would hear a child crying, and in the dream she would run through streets she had long since left, searching for her child, frantic with worry, shouting that she was coming, that she would be there soon. But wherever she ran, however hard she searched, she could never find the child, and she would wake drenched in sweat, sobbing and panic-stricken, with the child’s cry fading into the background, till the next time. And in the months of Con’s dying the child cried longer, stronger and more often. The East End was where she had last seen the tiny, dead form, it was where the nightmare had started, and it was as if the ghost of the daughter she had failed still waited here. And the aftermath was always the same. She would sit in the twisted bedclothes, hitting her head rhythmically with her fists, sobbing ‘Useless! Useless!’ over and over again. She hadn’t wanted the baby, it had been a mistake and a huge inconvenience, but once it was gone she would’ve done anything to bring it back to life again. Those months of her hidden pregnancy when she had desperately detached herself so successfully from what was happening inside her body that she had barely felt the pain of labour, and the months before when she had safely concealed her gradually swelling belly, yet what had it all been for? Given that time over again she would have been happy to brazen it out, to display her illegitimate daughter to the world, if only she could hold her again and see her breathe, see her pink and smiling. She felt less than a woman, she was useless. Anyone could grow a child, a glance down any street confirmed that, it was easy, it was normal and natural, but Kathy Kelly couldn’t do it. Kathy Kelly who had always thought herself so smart, so clever, Kathy Kelly who judged all the women in her family and found them wanting, who always had the last word, and she couldn’t do a simple thing like have a baby. Well, Aggie could, the Aggie she had regarded as stupid and had baited all of her life, and even Jessie the whore could, yet she couldn’t, so she must be something less than a woman. She had never given a thought to being female before, she just was, that was all, but any real woman could have a child. What kind of abnormal specimen couldn’t even reproduce? A failure, that kind. Her, Kathy Kelly. She had failed at the most basic, fundamental task, and she had failed her tiny, dead daughter. All the baby had needed was somewhere safe to grow, any child had a right to that, and any other woman could have provided it. Only she couldn’t. She had turned her own helpless, defenceless daughter out of the safety of her womb to die, little wonder that she cried in revenge all those years.

  Lost in thought, tears streaming down her cheeks, she barely noticed the knock at the door. Probably that wee swine Frank McCabe with another entreaty to have Con buried in St Kentigern’s, she thought. She wasn’t worried about being found out, about the grave with the white heart-shaped headstone being opened and the red box containing the remains of the child being discovered. What had happened that night in Moncur Street was private, it had been between her and the child and Lily, it was no one else’s business. Even as she was burying the box with the Kelly women, her thoughts hadn’t been on the fear of discovery, but on placing her dead baby in Lily’s care. Her refusal to bury Con there was based simply on the belief that they were all free of him, his tragic sisters, his mother and his wife, and now the baby she had called Lily, and she didn’t want Con near any of them even in death. There was another, louder, knock. ‘Ah’m comin’,’ she shouted wearily, and took her time wiping her eyes before she opened the door. She was shocked to find Jessie standing there, though she didn’t show it. ‘Come in, Jessie,’ she said calmly. She had only vaguely registered Jessie’s face in the chapel earlier, or what had been visible above the ever-present handkerchief covering the lower half, and had silently nodded to her in passing. Now Jessie passed her with a small but detectable body-swerve, you could never be sure about germs, and headed for Con’s living room. She still held the handkerchief to her nose and mouth with gloved hands, and the mink coat, her proud acquisition of long years ago, hung absurdly over her emaciated frame. Jessie looked around the living room, taking in the scattered pieces of paper and photos on the floor, then she glanced at Kathy.

  ‘Ye shouldnae let this upset ye, hen,’ she said briskly.

  ‘It doesnae,’ Kathy replied.

  Jessie gave her a disbelieving look. ‘So that’s why ye’ve been greetin’, is it?’

  ‘Aye, well, mibbe a bit,’ Kathy grinned. ‘There’s stuff here aboot ma Mammy,’ she sighed quietly, ‘things Ah havnae seen for years. God knows why she married the auld bastard!’

  ‘Because she was up the duff!’ Jessie said simply. ‘Ye surely didnae think it was love!’ Jessie rolled her eyes as she said it. ‘He was nae catch, ye know. Naebody but an innocent lassie like oor Lily woulda been taken in by Auld Con!’

  ‘Christ, that’s good!’ Kathy laughed. ‘Yer mad auld mother wanted you tae marry him, reckoned Lily had stolen him frae ye!’

  Jessie snorted. ‘Wouldnae’ve spat oan him if he’d been on fire!’ she said calmly. ‘An’ aye, Ah’m here at his funeral, Ah know, but ye’ve got tae go through wi’ these things, haven’t ye? At least ye can satisfy yersel’ that the auld sod is really deid an’ gone if ye’ve seen the lid screwed doon oan him.’

  ‘Sit doon, Jessie,’ Kathy said. ‘Ah’ve a feelin’ Ah’ve mibbe misjudged ye a’ these years!’

  Jessie looked around for the smallest surface she could risk sitting on, her gaze settling on a kitchen stool with a plastic seat. She took an antiseptic wipe from a packet in her bag, wiped down the plastic and perched on the stool. ‘Aye, ye have,’ she returned eventually, ‘but it wasnae really your fault, hen. Ye never really liked me, did ye?’

  ‘Ah didnae really know ye, Jessie.’