Blast Radius

by Rebecca McKinney

  Again, crap.

  I linger there, my heart hammering and my hands sweating in hers. I want to, obviously. There are any number of ways she could make it up to me, with those full lips and ripe peach breasts. One kiss and all will be forgiven. Maybe two.

  I twist my hands and slide them out of her fingers, then flick her wedding ring with the nail of my middle finger. ‘This still means something. Call me old fashioned, but I wouldn’t do that to the guy.’

  Molly stares at the floor and mutters something. Possibly, she has said, ‘You wouldn’t be the first,’ but I’m not quite sure, so I ignore it, get up and dump the rest of my tea into the sink. It’s getting late, my back is aching and I still have to take the van to the shop and unload.

  ‘I’d better go before you get me into trouble, Mrs Wells.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better.’

  I push back from the table. Her eyes follow me to the door, but she remains rooted to the spot.

  ‘I’ll be back on Sunday, alright?’

  She nods meekly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s alright.’

  I leave her at the table and drive back to the shop, unload the van, then get changed and head out for a run. It takes ten miles and Green Day on the iPod, turned up loud enough I risk blowing out my good ear, to unwind myself enough to go home.

  V

  Billy is particularly bedraggled the next morning, colourless hair limp over his forehead and thin grey trackies tucked into a pair of greasy brown rigger boots. He’s got a sleekit way about him, sharp eyes that never stop darting from one side to another, hunched shoulders like a ferret on the prowl. A jerky walk and nervous hands. He talks a continuous stream of bullshit, showing pointy teeth the colour of whisky and releasing the kind of bad breath that makes you think he must be rotting from the inside out. You can smell the disease in him. Cancer, liver disease, whatever; I can smell it and he doesn’t even know he has it yet. I’m willing to bet he has never voluntarily allowed anything green to pass his lips.

  Today, just to add to his charm, he’s got an almighty shiner around his left eye. He climbs in beside me and I roll down the window. Our first job is in Portobello and as we go rumbling and lurching through the morning traffic, my cornflakes are churning around in my gut with the stench of him. He’s glancing at me, turning his cheek toward me deliberately, obviously hoping I’ll ask about his black eye. From time to time he gives it a rub and a little wince. The man’s wired so tight he’s zinging like a guitar string about to snap.

  My eyes feel like a boxer’s bollocks. I’ve been tossing and turning most of the night: lying on my right side cursing myself for my less-than-professional behaviour in Molly’s kitchen, then on my left wondering what was wrong with me that I’d walked away from her.

  Mitch is jabbering in my ear but he’s all static today, like a poorly tuned radio, and I can’t make him out. Needless to say, I’m not in the mood for Billy’s drinking and scrapping stories. I ignore him and drive in determined silence.

  ‘Caught some heat last night,’ he says eventually, as we clear Sherriffhall roundabout and accelerate onto the bypass.

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘Darren Armstrong, ye ken him, aye?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ye must ken him. Boab Armstrong’s laddie. Ponces aboot like David fucking Beckham, really thinks he’s something. The Oak last night, he’s fuckin’ starin at us, laughin and that. Had tae get him telt, like. Ye must ken him. Really no?’

  I shake my head, but it’s not quite the truth. Darren Armstrong was a lean, swaggering kid a year below me at school, good on the football pitch and popular. He really thought he was something at school too, and maintained his hard man status by picking fights with bigger guys on a regular basis. I wasn’t much of a fighter at school, but being big and good at rugby, I could bring down most people who tried it on with me. I flattened Darren on more than one occasion, but I don’t let on. Instead, I think he can’t be too much of anything if he’s still here, drinking in The Oak. Not a person I care to invest time in remembering. There aren’t many. My life here before the Marines is like a film I watched once a long time ago and never wanted to see again.

  ‘Anyway, I goes up tae him and asks him whit’s so funny, and he willnae say. So I turns around, and as I’m walkin’ away, I hear him tellin’ his mate that he shagged Linda once, when she worked in the Waverley and he was like nineteen or something. So I go back and tell him to shut his hole, and he goes for me.’

  He pauses, gives a manic laugh which turns into a raw cough. ‘Fucking stuck the heid in, man, laid me oot. Ma heid’s killin me the day. I think he’s fuckin’ fractured ma cheekbone. Wee bastard, man, I’m tellin’ ye. I need someone tae sort him for me.’ He glances at me again, waits.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You could do him nae bother, Sean.’ His eye twitches and his hand snaps to it, fingernails digging.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Would ye, though?’

  ‘Why the hell would I want to do that?’

  He shrugs. ‘Thought you squaddie types liked a scrap.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Bet you blew the arseholes out of a few ragheads in Helmand though. Fuckin’ Al Qaeda bastards. How many?’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Billy shifts around in his seat, clears his throat harshly and gobs out the window. ‘My mate Tam’s brother, he was in the army. Said he kent a boy who cut an ear off every raghead he shot and hung them on a necklace.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘How? Whit’s wrang wi’ ye? How many terrorists did ye send back tae Allah, then? Go on, tell us. You’re a hero, man.’

  ‘JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST, IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP I WILL PULL OVER AND LEAVE YOU AT THE SIDE OF THIS ROAD WITH THE REST OF THE SHITE. DO YOU HEAR ME?’

  I’ve learned to shout from the best of them. The stale air in the van seems to reverberate with it for several seconds afterwards.

  Billy stares at me, mouth half open, breath rasping in his throat. The vapour it produces makes my eyes water.

  ‘Don’t call me a hero, Billy. You don’t know anything about it.’

  He holds up a nicotine-stained hand. ‘Awright, awright, man, keep yer hair on, Ah wis only askin. Sorry.’

  Take a chill pill, Nic. The angsty veteran act is SO American.

  I nearly laugh; bloody Mitch. I bite my lip, pull in a deep breath and release it slowly, relax my grip on the wheel and let my gaze wander momentarily to a buzzard rising on an updraft at the side of the road.

  ‘Forget it,’ I mutter, pulling my eyes back to the road in front of me.

  Billy clears his throat. ‘So this bird up the road, she’s a bit of alright.’

  ‘Sorry, what was that?’

  He raises his voice. ‘Yon wifie whae’s hoose yer clearin. She’s no bad tae look at. I thought ye was gonnae take me up wi’ ye tae shift the gear.’

  ‘Only if you have a shower first, ye mingin wee soapdodger.’

  ‘Oh come oan, eh? That’s below the belt.’

  I glance at him, one eyebrow raised. ‘Truth hurts, eh? Personal administration isn’t your strong point, is it?’

  His brows knit together and his lips go thin and bloodless. ‘Ah’d fuckin hammer ye, son, if ye wernae drivin this van.’

  I laugh, slowing as we reach the roundabout at Old Craighall and head left onto the A1 toward Porty. Billy sits there fizzing, then fishes his tobacco pouch out of his back pocket and with thin, deft fingers arranges some sticky, blackish hash onto fag paper. He doesn’t light it though, just sits there fingering it gently as we find our way down to the address on John Street.

  I bring the van to a halt in front of a sandstone Victorian villa, turn off the engine and stare at him. I don’t know why I should care whether he gets high on the job; it’s not like he’s behind the wheel and it’s hard to imagine him being much greater cope straight than he is stoned. But I do.

  ‘If you light that, I’ll
report you.’

  He looks at the spliff, shifts uncomfortably in his seat, seems to shrivel into himself. His eyes dart around with the familiar haunted panic of an addict denied his fix. ‘Never pegged ye as a narc, like.’

  I reach across and slide the joint out of his fingers, insert it gently into my shirt pocket. ‘Give me the rest of it, man. You can have it back when you clock off tonight.’

  ‘Get tae fuck.’

  ‘Can you afford to lose your job? I bloody can’t.’

  A ferocious little flame kindles momentarily, then dies. Poor wee bastard, he’d be unemployable anywhere else. Looking utterly defeated, he hands over the full pouch. I stuff it into the glove box and lock it.

  ‘It’s gonnae be a long day for both of us,’ he mutters as he shoves open his door.

  ‘You make it till lunchtime without moaning, I’ll buy you a black pudding roll.’

  ‘I make it till lunchtime wi’oot stickin’ ma fist in yer pus, ye’ll be lucky.’

  I slide out of the van and stretch my arms, enjoying the six or seven inches I’ve got on him. ‘Feel free to try it anytime.’

  He stretches his neck upward, which only succeeds in making him look scrawnier. ‘I’ll come at ye from the left and ye’ll no hear me.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Billy laughs, the first genuine belly laugh I’ve managed to get out of him, and it changes his whole face. I’ve never seen anything but ugliness in him until now, but with that laugh I get the tiniest flash of the man he might have been.

  We step up to a grand, black front door and pull the old-fashioned bell, wait several minutes while some shuffling footsteps make their slow way toward us. A hunched wee woman opens the door, hair tied up in a loose white bun and a pair of gold-framed glasses on a chain perched on her nose.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Burns, we’re from Once Loved,’ says Billy in his best Cheeky Chappy voice. ‘We’re here to collect the settee.’

  ‘Yes, come in,’ she says, and we follow her along a tiled lobby into a corniced room full of books and musical instruments. A faded and particularly heavy looking sofa, upholstered in something like medieval tapestry, is partly pulled out from the wall, revealing at least half an inch of dust on the floorboards behind it. I stare at it, wondering how we are going to manoeuvre the monster out of the room.

  ‘Is this the one?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s never a real Steinway,’ Billy says behind me. I turn, to see him approaching an upright piano against the far wall, Mrs Burns tottering behind him.

  ‘My husband’s wedding present to me,’ she says. The proud, clear tones of an educated Edinburgh lady. ‘I can’t play anymore, my hands are too bad.’ She holds up arthritic fingers.

  Billy lifts the keyboard cover and glances at her. ‘Mind if I have a shot?’

  Cringe time. ‘Billy . . .’

  He and Mrs Burns ignore me. She nods at him, and he tinkles a couple of keys, then settles both hands over the keys and launches into a bluesy rock number.

  Knock me down with a toothpick, he can actually play that thing.

  Mitch is right. Close your eyes and you might be listening to Jerry Lee Lewis. Billy plays for a couple of minutes, grinning from ear to ear, then stops abruptly in the middle of the tune and clears his throat.

  Mrs Burns claps, eyes alight with pleasure. ‘Oh wonderful. Wonderful. Don’t stop there.’

  ‘Ach,’ Billy grunts, turning back toward us. ‘I’ve no played in years. Always wanted a wee shot of a Steinway. Ta for that.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she says. ‘I miss hearing it.’

  Then he juts his chin toward the sofa. ‘That it, aye?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. I’m sorry to part with it, but I can’t get out of it anymore. These blasted hips and knees. Hamish used to have to hoist me up. He could lift me with me with one hand, just up until the day before he died. He passed away four months ago.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ I offer.

  She smiles at me kindly, without sentimentality. ‘I do hope it will go to a family who needs it. It’s a wonderful sofa for reading.’

  I smile back. ‘I’m sure it will. Right, Bill, how are we going to do this?’

  With great effort, and no small amount of grunting and muttering, we angle the sofa through the door and down the hallway. As usual, I have to take the weight of it down the front steps and then up into the van, as Billy curses and wobbles and breaks wind with the effort.

  At last, it slides into the van like a coffin sliding away into the flames of the crematorium. I glance back at Mrs Burns, who has followed us out into the street. Her lips are quivering ever so slightly.

  ‘That’s us,’ I say, dusting my hands on my trousers.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ says Mrs Burns graciously. Then she turns to Billy and places a hand on each of his arms. ‘Your little bit of music has brought a smile to my day.’ She lingers there, fading eyes taking in the details of his face, and for just a moment I think she’s either going to kiss him or offer him the piano.

  It’s not easy to silence Billy, but she’s done it. ‘Ach, well,’ he says after an embarrassed moment, ‘we aim to please, eh?’

  We climb back into the van and are halfway to our next job in Craigmillar before he speaks again. He leans his head back against the headrest and releases a long sigh. ‘Braw piany.’

  ‘Where’d you learn to play like that?’

  ‘My ma. She was a rare musician. Used tae sing in the jazz clubs and that in toon. Hard tae feed a family o’ six on it though. Aifter the pit shut, that was the only money we had comin’ in.’

  ‘So why don’t you play anymore?’

  ‘Other things on ma mind.’ He shrugs, then glances at me. ‘Yer ma was Diana, eh?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Nothin.’ He shakes his head, laughs softly. ‘She was a local institution, that’s all.’

  ‘What you saying?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Do me a favour and don’t talk about her, right? Not to me.’

  ‘Fine.’ He holds up a hand. Then he snorts. ‘A fucking institution though. Mair men in and oot her than all the pubs in Eskbridge put together.’

  ‘D’you know what, Billy? I was just beginning to think you weren’t the obnoxious little tosser I pegged you for at first. But I was fucking right the first time. You are. An obnoxious, foul mouthed little tosspot. Dinnae speak to me. Just sit there and keep your disgusting gob shut.’

  He sniffs and crosses his arms, stares out the window and says nothing further.

  We drive on, from leafy Victorian Portobello to the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Niddrie, where we collect a fridge and freezer that have been dumped in the rain to wait for us. Although there’s little chance they’ll be working, we take them to be broken down for parts and recycling. One final job in Morningside: a baby’s cot that is in such pristine condition it might never have been used.

  After this, Billy glances at his watch and slaps me on the arm. ‘Reckon you owe me that black puddin’ roll, Sunshine.’

  VI

  Molly meets me at the door on Sunday morning, eyes veiled and embarrassed. An icy rain splatters onto the gravel.

  She stands aside to let me in, clocks the bags under my eyes. ‘You haven’t slept.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I’ve been awake most of the night, watching shadows on my bedroom ceiling and listening to the wind wailing around the eves like dogs howling over a rotting corpse. I’ve got a headache rumbling behind my eyes and I’m starting to feel dizzy in a jetlaggy kind of way, but buggered I’m going to admit it to her.

  She doesn’t believe me anyway. ‘Well, I didn’t sleep. It sounded like the roof was going to lift off. I had to get up and clean things. Better?’

  The scree of old dishes and baskets has been cleared and the kitchen has been scrubbed clean. Years of burnt-on food splatters have been scoured from the surfaces, and the sticky coating of dust and grease removed from the shelves. I
t is now a functional farmhouse kitchen. There should be a pot of homemade soup bubbling on the range, a pile of green wellies next to the door and a collie sleeping on the warm flagstones.

  I run my fingers through damp hair and then hold them in front of the Aga, which is putting out an intense, shimmering heat.

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘I . . .’ She opens her mouth, then hesitates.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come back today. I . . . came on a bit strong, I guess.’

  Of course he was going to come back today, sweetheart, it’s been so long since he had a fuck, his bollocks are like hand grenades. Not that he hasn’t had offers, mind, he’s just choosy. Thinks he’s above all this. Sordid little affairs behind hubby’s back. Chicken, that’s what he is.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  She doesn’t look worried to me, son. She’s about as subtle as a Bangkok whore.

  ‘I’ll . . . ehm . . . make some coffee.’

  ‘I’ll make a start.’

  Her head bobs like a nervous little sparrow and I hurry along the corridor, past the now bare library to the sitting room. It is equally dusty, but there is less clutter and the room is cold, damp and musty smelling as an old stone church, as though it hasn’t been occupied or heated in a very long time. A room reserved for guests in a house which never had them. On the mantelpiece is a largish vase painted with green and red Chinese dragons, and when I lift it carefully I find that it is tethered to the wood by a thick net of cobwebs.

  Something clunks inside the vase as I begin to wrap it in newspaper, so I tip it upside down. Two dead spiders and a small parcel fall out. I examine the latter. It’s a bundle of folded paper, crumbly yellow, tied together with a black ribbon. Letters, all written in the same decorative hand, addressed to a Mr George Finlayson from H.B. Starling, 195 West 135th Street, New York, NY, USA.

  I flick my thumb over the brittle edges of maybe thirty envelopes, then bring them to my nose and inhale. Dust, pipe smoke, and possibly the faintest suggestion of perfume- though I could be imagining this. I glance quickly over my shoulder, then untie the ribbon and slide the top letter out of its envelope and read: