‘Talk to me, bud,’ I say, and wait.
Nothing.
I set the guitar back in its case and bring my knees up, hug them against my chest, huddling against a sudden, panicky emptiness. After all the times I’ve told him to fuck off, maybe he’s actually done it.
‘I need you to give me a sign,’ I say into my knees. ‘Come on Mitch, just . . . please help me.’
Just then, my mobile phone beeps from inside the pocket of the running shorts I’ve left on the floor. It actually startles me enough to make my heart jump. I unfold myself, fish it out and read the text.
Hey you. The craziest thing has happened: I’ve had a baby! Eva Mairead. Born by c-section on the 13th. I’m home now and ok but hurting a bit. Please come see us as soon as you can. 53C Gilmour Place, Tollcross. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. P.
XVI
I drive too fast through the still busy streets, up Causewayside and onto Melville Place, past the Meadows toward Tollcross. Her building is a typical dirty yellow Edinburgh sandstone tenement with window boxes and a red door. I press the buzzer labelled Fairbairn and wait, only now beginning to wish I’d phoned first; she’ll get the idea I’m desperate. But then, maybe I am.
After a few seconds I raise my finger to buzz again, then hesitate. I stand there, finger touching the button, feeling as stupid as I look, and I nearly turn back to the car. But then there is a bit of static and Paula’s voice sounds through the tinny intercom.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Sean.’
‘Hey you.’ The door clicks open and I enter a wide, clean stair which smells of lemons and damp stone. A door opens above me and Paula peers over the black iron railing as I jog up the stairs. ‘Wow . . . short.’
‘What? Oh . . .’ I rub my hand up the back of my head. ‘Better?’
‘Much.’
Her lovely round belly has deflated and she looks pale in a baggy white blouse and leggings. I open my arms when I reach her and we hug each other tightly. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you. God, I’m glad you’re here.’ Her smile flickers as she takes me by the hand and leads me into her warm living room. It’s just as I imagined her living room would be: walls painted a calm creamy white and hung with framed art prints, plush red Persian rug covering the wooden floor, potted plants, a high ceiling and Victorian cornicing. The gas fire is puttering gently and there are seven or eight candles burning on the mantelpiece, giving the room a soft, yellowish light. There is a Moses basket on a stand beside the sofa.
‘Come see her, quietly. She’s just gone down. See if that buzzer had woken her up, I’d have had to strangle you.’
‘Sorry,’ I whisper, then peer into the basket at the wee bundle, tightly wrapped in a white blanket. The tiny face is pink and plump, with a dimpled chin and a crop of spiky black hair. The eyes are closed and the rosebud mouth makes a sucking motion, as though working at an invisible breast.
‘She’s beautiful,’ I say. Paula stands close next to me. I let my hand fall onto her back and rub the flat place between her shoulder blades. ‘Like her mum. How are you?’
‘I’m tired, Sean.’ Her eyes are liquid and she looks as if she might cry. She presses her fingers into them. ‘Come into the kitchen.’
I follow her, and she pulls out a chair for me at the table that sits in a recessed window, overlooking the back green and the little squares of light from the surrounding tenement windows. An old fashioned pulley hangs from the ceiling, draped with white and pink baby clothes and blankets.
Paula fills the kettle, then leans her bum against the bunker and looks at me. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t phone you, I just . . . freaked out a bit.’
‘It’s fine, don’t worry. Are you okay?’
‘I’m just fucking knackered.’ She closes her eyes. ‘The birth was horrific. Forty hours of labour and an emergency section, and I don’t think I’ve slept more than three hours in a row since. I’m sore, it’s a nightmare getting the pram up and down the stairs and I’m not allowed to drive. My tits feel like someone’s sticking hot needles in them when she feeds. Nobody tells you that before they’re born. I’m starting to think my ma was right, you know, about how hard this is going to be on my own. I don’t know if I’m up to it. Tell me this is going to get easier.’
‘Come here,’ I say, pushing the chair away and crossing over to her. I wrap her up and hold her against my chest. She cries for a minute and I hold her until her breathing stops shaking and she goes a bit limp. She smells of fabric softener and something that might be baby sick.
‘Have I done the right thing, Sean?’
‘You’re asking the wrong man.’
She looks up at me. A lock of hair falls over her eye and I want to move it aside and feel it glide over my fingers.
‘I’m being a jessie, huh?’
‘Major surgery, sleep deprivation and another wee person sookin’ the life out of you. I think possibly jessie is too strong a description. Have you had your tea?’
‘No. She was crying for an hour before you got here.’
‘Neither have I. Why don’t you go close your eyes and I’ll make us something.’
‘I’ll make it, Sean. What do you want? There isn’t much in the fridge.’
I pull away from her and point toward the door. ‘Go lie down. That’s an order.’
‘I’d like to have a bath.’
‘Then go have a bath.’
‘If she wakes up . . .’
‘Don’t worry about her. Go on.’
She stands there looking at me for a moment. ‘Sorry, Sean.’
‘Shut it and go have a bath, woman.’ Turning my back on her, I open the fridge. She’s right, there isn’t much in. I hear her leave the room and the squeak of the bath taps across the hall, the water splattering into the tub.
There are eggs and bacon in the fridge, so I take these out along with a slightly wrinkled green pepper and a lump of cheddar cheese. Before starting the food I make two cups of tea and bring one in to her. She takes it from me without a word, sets it down on the shelf beside the bath and kisses me on the cheek.
It takes me a few minutes of rummaging in her cupboards to find everything I need, and I try to do this with a minimum of banging. Once I have set out the required pans and dishes, I peek in at the baby. She has worked her arms out of the blanket and laid her tiny wrinkled hands up next to her ears, but her eyes are still firmly glued shut and her little mouth working away.
Her cheek looks soft as a peach and I want to touch it but don’t dare. So I go back to the kitchen and click the gas on, peel open the bacon and lay six strips into the pan. Then I mix up a bunch of eggs and chop the green pepper for an omelette.
Although I’ve never been in Paula’s kitchen it feels good to be here, prodding the bacon with a fork and grating cheese. I think about Duncan, alone in his bothy with the wind sweeping over Cauldhill. I think back on what happened and what I saw on his malt-cured face. Little genetic signposts: a nose that was straight and slightly too long for the face, a small indentation on the chin, eyes that couldn’t decide whether they were grey or green or blue, skin that has a tendency to freckle. Common enough Scottish features, but put together in such a familiar arrangement that I can’t believe no-one else has noticed.
I also saw the way the drunken belligerence became something frightened and more damaged at the mention of my name.
Everything clicks, maybe too neatly. Maybe I’m forcing things. Further recon will be required, for my own peace of mind at the very least. I’m don’t know how I’m going to do it without going up and trying to tease some information out of the man himself, and the prospect of that makes me queasy.
And what the fuck do I do if it turns out to be true?
A voice behind my back startles me, and I turn sharply. Paula’s behind me, pink-faced and wet haired, in silky green jammies and a white dressing gown.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you.’
‘I said penny for ’em.
’
‘They’re not worth that much. Feel better?’
‘Aye.’ She comes up behind me and slips her arms around my waist, then looks at the omelette in the pan. ‘Jesus, that looks good. I’m starving.’
‘Me too, I ran miles today after work. I think this is ready.’ I pull away and dish up the omelettes and bacon, with toast and a pot of tea to refill our mugs. Paula carries the plates to the table, and we sit across from each other.
I begin eating at double time as I always do, until I notice that she’s watching me with a funny smile on her face. Mouth full, I pause and look up.
‘What?’
She shakes her head. ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘For being a good guy.’
I raise my eyebrows and swallow. ‘That’s a funny thing to say.’
‘No it’s not. You are. You might not have been, after the kind of life you’ve had, but you are.’
‘How do you know, Paula? You’ve hardly seen me in years.’
‘Because you haven’t complained that I didn’t ring you when I said I would, and you’ve come here tonight and cooked my tea.’
‘Maybe I have a selfish motive. Maybe I think I’m going to get a shag.’
‘You’re not. I plan never to have sex again.’
I half rise from my chair. ‘Okay, I’m off.’ Then I laugh and sit down again. ‘No, really I just came for the food. Are you going to eat that? Because if it’s not up to your usual standards, I’ll be happy to have it.’
She picks up her cutlery and begins to eat. ‘It’s good. It’s fucking brilliant, in fact.’
‘Why are you surprised?’
‘I guess I never thought cooking would be high on the list of essential skills for you guys.’
‘It is. Mind, if it isn’t boil in the bag, it generally involves foraging or hunting something vaguely edible and doing your best over a fire or primus stove. Rabbits, birds, fish, worms . . .’
‘You’ve eaten worms?’ she says through a mouthful. ‘You haven’t really.’
‘I have. Mountain Leader training. It’s amazing what you’ll eat when you have to.’
‘Oh my God.’
I laugh. ‘There was this guy on the course who was a bit of an expert on wild mushrooms. In the dark, after hours or days on exercise, he could pick a helmet-load of mushrooms and fry them up with some salt and wild herbs. Then he’d sit there eating what looked like a gourmet French stew while the rest of us scrabbled around in the mud for blaeberries and worms.’
‘I guess it can’t be much worse than Gaz’s Supper Van. Remember that?’
‘Oh Jesus, I’d forgotten the van. Properly minging. I’m sure Gaz used to cook with a fag hangin’ oot his mooth . . . ash all over the fish.’
Paula laughs heartily. ‘Salt, sauce and fag ash. Sprinkle of dandruff and a pickled onion. It’s a wonder we survived it.’
‘So it is. I haven’t seen him since I came back.’
‘Nah, he died . . . four or five years ago. One black pudding sausage too many. Poor old Gaz.’
‘Aye . . . he was alright though. Used to give me and Janet the leftovers at the end of the night . . . sweets and things, you know.’
‘Us too. During the strike when we were so skint. I’ll always remember that. I think he must have about bankrupted himself giving out free food.’
I polish my plate with a last corner of toast, and just as I lean back in my chair and bring my mug to my lips, a little high- pitched cry comes from the living room.
Paula’s face falls. ‘Bollocks. The wee bissum, she hasn’t been asleep an hour.’
‘I’ll get her.’ I stand up for real this time. ‘Just you get that eaten.’
‘She’ll want feeding.’
‘You want feeding. She won’t starve in the time it takes you to finish that.’ I leave her there and go back to the living room. Eva has managed to work her legs loose from the blanket and is now waving her arms about, fingers finding her face and then her mouth. She inserts her fist into her mouth and makes a snuffling noise, then pulls it out and starts to cry again.
‘Hey,’ I say, bending over her and presenting a finger. She grabs onto it with surprising strength, and I shake it gently. ‘Hello, wee one. Come on then.’ I get my hands under her back and lift her, supporting her neck with my fingers. Her little body feels like a hot water bottle as I lean her onto my shoulder, and she turns her head toward my face, mouth open, looking for something to suck. Determined to give Paula enough time to finish her meal, I walk her around the living room, muttering under my breath each time she snuffles and starts to rev up into a cry. We inspect the photographs on the mantelpiece: Paula in a cafe somewhere that looks like Paris, Paula with her arms around a girlfriend on top of a hill. An old one of Paula’s dad in his pit helmet and donkey jacket: a handsome barrel-chested man with pork chop sideburns and quick eyes.
I lean down and examine the photo. Andrew Fairbairn was about the only man I knew as a kid who wasn’t interested in screwing my mother. He had a big laugh and big opinions, a booming voice which by all accounts he used to great effect on the pickets during the miners’ strike. Sometimes he would take me fishing down on the Esk and tell me about the coal face and the men he knew down there. He told me what it meant to work hard and to trust other men with your life. He told me those things because he knew nobody else would.
‘There’s your granddad, Eva. I wish you could have met him.’
‘So do I.’ Paula comes up behind me and stands next to me for a minute. I think she might be about to cry again but she just stands there, teetering on the brink. ‘It’s the thing I wish more than anything else. This would have been a different story if he’d been around.’
I’m not sure what the appropriate response to this should be, so keep my mouth shut.
Then she holds out her arms and delicately I transfer Eva into them.
‘Sean, I could fall in love with you right now. She’s puked down your back. Sorry, I should have told you, she pukes. A lot. Baby sick trumps commando dagger.’
‘Charming.’ I laugh and crane my head around to peer at the cheesy white cascade down my shirt.
Paula swipes at my back with a muslin cloth and giggles. ‘How very symbolic.’ She lifts Eva up and kisses her cheeks. ‘You can be our secret weapon, Eva-bean. Semi-automatic, just point and hurl.’
The baby opens her mouth, snuffles, then screws up her face. I duck away from her and cover my head with my hands. ‘Incoming. Take cover!’
Paula snorts. ‘Oh my God, that’s so wrong. Poor child will be damaged for life.’ Then she sighs, sits on the sofa and lays Eva on a cushion on her lap, fidgeting around into a comfortable position before lifting her top. She looks up at me, her cheeks flushed with laugher. ‘Sit down.’
I sit beside her, and she leans into me. The baby slurps and makes little gulping noises, little fingers curling and uncurling. I stroke the top of her head, feeling the indentation where the bones have not yet fused. ‘Fuelling up for another sortie.’
‘Believe it. God, I feel like a cow. I don’t know how men think boobs are sexy after they’ve seen this.’
‘That’s what they’re meant for. Why should everything be about sex?’
‘I don’t know. Isn’t it?’
‘Is it fuck. Sex and booze. As far as I’m concerned, they cause more trouble than they’re worth.’
Her body shakes against me. ‘Are you considering taking holy orders or something?’
‘Aye. Maybe I’ll go live in a Tibetan monastery. D’you know what, after everything, that doesn’t sound such a bad idea. I’ll shave my head and raise yaks.’
She studies my face. ‘I wish we’d written all this time. I have missed you.’
‘Me too.’ I look down and stroke Eva’s head. ‘It was . . . too hard, I guess. Thinking of you married to someone else. It was easier not to be in touch. I’m sorry.’
‘What do you want, Sean?’
‘W
hat do you mean?’
‘In your life? Now that it is your life?’
I rest my head against the back of the settee, close my eyes, think for a moment. It doesn’t seem to matter what plans you make; you put your foot down in the wrong place and your world gets blown to pieces. A tremendous weariness presses me into the cushions, but right now there’s no reason to be anywhere else.
‘Nothing very much,’ I say eventually.
‘That’s not a very good answer.’ For the first time, she sounds like a teacher.
I sigh and wish Mitch would tell me what to say. But all I hear are the baby’s little grunting noises and the traffic outside.
‘A bit of peace, Paula. When I say nothing very much, that’s what I mean. Just . . . a bit of peace. Is that better? Is that enough?’
She nods, eyes veiled, turned down toward the wee dark head at her breast. ‘That’s enough. Will you stay here tonight?’
‘I’ve got Janet’s car; she’ll need it for work in the morning.’
‘I’ll probably be up at five feeding her. You can head off first thing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. No shagging, mind.’
I kiss the top of her head. ‘I thought we were just friends.’
‘Oh yeah.’ She grins and rests her cheek on my shoulder. ‘I forgot.’
XVII
Davie Blair’s monumental arse clenches in front of me and the scrum grinds like a tank, with an almost orchestrated harmony of groans and grunts and curses. The resistance is fierce at first, then eases and we begin to drive forward. The ball rolls about like an egg between the tangle of legs and I manage to catch it with my foot and pull it backwards.
‘Connor!’ I shout for the scrum half, and he fishes the ball out from between my feet and pops it out to the waiting line of backs. The scrum breaks up and Alan Noble heaves himself forward seven or eight metres before being felled like a giant redwood. I scoop the ball from his outstretched hands and run headlong into a wall of Gala men, Jackie and Callum clattering into my back and propelling me forward. Somebody comes in low from the other side, and I feel my feet swept out from under me. I release the ball to Callum as I fall, and my breath is forced violently from my lungs as the Gala loose-head lands on top of me. Sheltering down in the soft turf, I lie still until the pile of bodies above me untangles itself, then rise experimentally to my hands and knees, waiting for my lungs to re-inflate and feeling for anything that might be damaged.
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