‘I didn’t,’ Amy said, ‘I didn’t mean to be stand-offish—’
The woman smiled broadly. The man with the goatee beard leaned across her and said, in the same accent as Scott’s, ‘She needs keeping in her place, believe me!’
‘You weren’t,’ the woman said. ‘You were just finding your feet.’ She nodded towards the stage. ‘Just wait til the music starts.’
‘Glad to be here,’ the guitarist said.
He stood on stage in a halo of red and green lights, a lanky man in black, his hair tied back with a bandanna.
‘Always glad to be here. Radio 2’s Folk Club of the Year – when was it? Can’t remember. Anyone here old enough to remember? Forget it.
Today’s my birthday. It’s also my guitar’s birthday. It’s everyone’s birthday. It’s even our resident shanty man’s birthday and he’s planning to sing a song about a strike with al the bairns dying, just to cheer you al up. But before that I’m going to play you something. When the lads are ready, that is. Wil you wait while Malc puts more gaffer tape on his accordion? Now, I wrote this tune on the ferry from Mul . Such a beautiful journey. I was on deck, the boys were in the bar. I wrote it for a friend’s wedding and if it makes you want to dance I suggest you keep it to yourselves. Ready now?
Ready, boys? Two, three—’
And then it began. Amy had been to concerts and gigs al her life, to Wembley and Brixton Academy and the Wigmore Hal , to jam sessions in pubs and people’s back bedrooms, to theatres and hotel bal rooms to hear her father perform in his polished, relaxed, almost casual way. She had heard music of every kind, she had heard it in the company of her family, her friends and alone in her bedroom, picking over melodies as her father had urged her to do until, he said, the flute could say something for her in a better way than she could say it in words. But for al that, sitting here in an institutional arts centre surrounded by people older than her own mother, people of tastes and habits that had never, ever occurred to her before, she felt a sense of something enormous flooding through her: not exactly excitement or an exhilaration, but more a sense of relief, of recognition, of comprehension, a sense of coming home to something that she had never been able to acknowledge before as there.
The group with the guitarist played a forty-minute set. Several times, the guitarist slung his guitar sideways, and leaned into the microphone and sang. Then they left the stage and the shanty man appeared, holding a harmonica.
‘It’s one hundred and thirty-three years since Joe Wilson died. I’m going to sing one of his songs, in his memory. And then I’l give you Tommy Armstrong’s “Durham Jail” because my father was a miner, though he never was nicked for stealing a pair of stockings, as Tommy was.’
Scott leaned towards Amy.
‘OK?’
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the stage.
‘Next act,’ Scott whispered. ‘Wait for the next act—’
‘“Oh, lass, don’t clash the door so,”’ the shanty man sang.
‘“You’re young and as thoughtless as can be.
‘“But your mother’s turning old
‘“And you know she’s very bad
‘“And she doesn’t like to hear you clash the door.”’
Scott watched Amy covertly. He’d thought she might be intrigued, might quite like it, might be curious to hear the music Richie had grown up with, the music of the mines and the ships, but he had not thought that she would love it, that she would sit enthral ed while a little old man with a mouth organ sang a comic song from a nineteenth-century music hal , a lament from an oakum-picking prisoner in Durham Jail. She looked, in that cheerful, warm-hearted, unambitious room, as out of place as if she had fal en from another planet, but she was as absorbed as any of them, and when the shanty man had finished, and gone hobbling off the stage, to be replaced by a second group, two fiddlers, an accordionist and a slender girl carrying a flute, he thought she was hardly breathing.
The girl stepped up to the microphone. She was perhaps in her mid-twenties, with hair as long and dark as Amy’s own, dressed in deep green, to the floor, and wearing no jewel ery except for long glimmering silver chains in her ears.
‘Good evening,’ she said softly. Her accent was Scottish. ‘We’re so happy to be back. This is the twenty-ninth gig of our epic tour round England, Wales and Scotland. But we love coming here. We love coming back to the UK’s home for music and musical discovery.’
She paused for the cheering, standing quiet and stil and smiling. Then she bent towards the microphone again.
‘Sometimes, as you may remember, I want to jazz things up a little, give them a bluesy twist. But not tonight. Tonight, you get it sweet and straight, played the way it was written.’ She raised her flute and inclined her head to meet it.
‘Ladies and gentleman. Brothers and sisters. “The Rose Of Al andale”.’
They bought burgers on their way home, and carried the hot polystyrene boxes in the lift up to Scott’s flat. The flat was dim, lit only by the summertime night glow from the city coming through the huge window, and Scott didn’t switch any lights on, just let Amy walk in, and drop her bag on the floor randomly, just the way he dropped his work bag, and wander down the room, running her hand over the piano as she passed it, to stand, as he so often did, and stare out at the lights and the shining dark river far below and the great gleaming bulk of the Sage on the further shore.
She’d hardly spoken on the way home. He’d rung for a taxi while she was buying the CDs of the groups they’d heard, and she’d climbed in beside him in a silence he was perfectly happy to accommodate. In fact, he respected it, was gratified by it, and when, as they were crossing the river, almost home, and Scott had asked the driver to drop them off so that they could pick up something to eat, she had said suddenly, ‘Oh, I want to be her!’, he had had to restrain himself from putting his arms round in her in a heartfelt gesture of understanding and pleasure. Instead, with an effort, he’d asked her if she wanted a burger or a kebab, and when she didn’t answer, when it became plain that she had hardly heard him, he almost laughed out loud.
‘D’you want to eat standing there?’
She turned, very slowly.
‘Where – where are you going to eat?’
He gestured.
‘Where I usual y do. On the sofa.’
She came away from the window.
‘Wil you play for me?’
‘What, the piano?’
‘What else?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe we’l both play tomorrow.’
She sat down on the sofa. He handed her a box.
‘Want a plate?’
‘No.’
‘Good girl. Eat up. What have you had today – coffee and crisps?’
‘My favourite,’ Amy said.
She opened the box and looked at her burger. She sighed.
‘I want to be her.’
‘I know.’
‘I want—’
‘Wait,’ Scott said, ‘wait. You’ve work to do first.’
She glanced up.
‘What work?’
‘Exploring.’
She lifted the burger out and inspected it.
‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’
‘What are you going to do tomorrow.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sending you off,’ Scott said. ‘I’m sending you on a little journey of discovery.’
Amy stared at him. He winked at her.
‘You’l see,’ he said, and wedged his burger in his mouth.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chrissie had never felt quite at home in Sue’s kitchen. It wasn’t the disorder realy, or the noise – the television never seemed to be switched off –
but more a sense that Sue’s children and Kevin were so intent upon their own robust and random lives that her presence there meant no more than if a new chair or saucepan had been added to the mix.
Sue herself seemed oblivious. The muddle
of people and purposes, of washing-up and lunch boxes, of newspapers and flyers and scribbled notes, wasn’t something she strove for, but rather something she simply didn’t notice. She had absently moved a footbal boot, a magazine and an empty crisp packet from a chair in order that Chrissie could sit down, in a manner that suggested that sitting down wasn’t necessarily a chair’s function in the first place.
‘Can I turn that off?’
‘What?’ Sue said. She was polishing a wine glass with a shirt lying on top of a pile in a laundry basket.
‘The TV,’ Chrissie said.
‘Course. I’ve stopped hearing it. I’ve stopped hearing most things, especial y anybody under sixteen asking for money.’
‘I gave Amy twenty quid,’ Chrissie said, ‘and now I’m worrying that wasn’t nearly enough. A whole weekend, on twenty pounds.’
Sue put the wine glass on the table, amid the clutter.
‘They’l pay for her, won’t they?’
Chrissie made a face.
‘That’s what I was thinking when I gave her the money. They can darn wel pay for her, that’s what I thought. But now, I wish they weren’t. I wish I’d given her more.’
Sue found a second glass, and blew on it.
‘Stop thinking about her.’
‘I—’
‘Haven’t you got enough to think about?’ Sue demanded. ‘Isn’t there enough going on without fretting over the one child who’s actual y striking out?’
‘In the wrong direction—’
‘For you,’ Sue said. ‘Not necessarily for her. Don’t you just love it that wine comes in screw-top bottles these days?’
Chrissie wandered back from turning off the television and watched Sue pouring wine into the glasses.
‘I’ve sometimes wished, since Richie died, that I real y, really liked alcohol. I mean, I do like it, I love a glass of wine, but I don’t crave it. It would have been easier to crave something rather than just be in such a state.’
Sue held a ful glass out to her.
‘Tel me some good news.’
‘It’s sort of OK news—’
‘Fine by me.’
‘I took the job,’ Chrissie said.
Sue let out a yelp, and clinked her glass against Chrissie’s.
‘Go, girlfriend!’
‘It isn’t amazing. In fact, it’s very lowly, very lowly indeed, but it’s the first one I’ve been offered, actual y offered, in al these months of trying, and I suppose it might lead to something—’
‘It’s a job!’
‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘they were so nice to me. I met Mark’s father, and al his uncles, and they were lovely, so welcoming.’
‘You’l be so good at it—’
‘I hope so. Nine-thirty to six, four weeks’ paid holiday, pay-as-you-earn tax.’
‘Chrissie,’ Sue said, ‘this is good. This is even great. This is like starting again, and do not, do not, do not tel me that starting again is the last thing you want to do.’
‘OK,’ Chrissie said.
‘You’re smiling.’
‘I’m not—’
‘You’re smiling.’
‘It’s relief,’ Chrissie said.
‘I don’t care what it is. You’re smiling. And the flat?’
Chrissie took a sip of wine.
‘If I don’t sel the house—’
‘You will sel the house.’
‘I can’t afford the flat on what I’l be earning.’
Sue cleared a heap of T-shirts and a pair of swimming goggles off another chair, and sat down.
She said, ‘What about those girls?’
‘Wel , Amy—’
‘I don’t mean Amy. I mean Tamsin and Dil y.’
Chrissie said cautiously, ‘Dil y is looking for a job—’
‘Is she now.’
‘And Tamsin. Wel , I don’t real y know what’s going on with Tamsin.’
‘Do sit down,’ Sue said.
Chrissie said, sitting, ‘She keeps talking about moving in with Robbie, but she doesn’t do it. He’s built her an amazing cupboard, apparently, but she doesn’t seem in any hurry to fil it. He’s like a dog, sitting there hoping for chocolate. I thought he was so strong and masculine, and would support her the way Richie did, but she doesn’t seem to want to let him any more.’
‘You can’t have both of them living with you—’
‘I could—’
‘No,’ Sue said.
‘There’s just enough room—’
‘ If you get the flat—’
‘Yes. If—’
‘Stil no,’ Sue said. She leaned back, twiddling her wine glass round by its stem, watching it, not looking at Chrissie. ‘Do you real y want them to live with you?’
There was a pause, and then Chrissie said slowly, ‘I don’t know if I want to be alone.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like. You might love it. You might prefer it, actual y, to living with two people who ought to be fending for themselves.’
Chrissie said nothing. Sue went on leaning back. Then she took a mouthful of wine and said, ‘Wel , Amy’s having a go at it, isn’t she? Amy’s trying to swim without her family water wings on, isn’t she? Instead of banging on about how you don’t like what Amy’s doing, why don’t you try imitating her instead?’
Scott had given her some money. She’d felt very awkward about confessing that she’d spent the money her mother had given her on CDs at the folk club, and that her card would probably be rejected at an ATM, but he’d held some notes out to her that morning, saying, just take it, don’t say anything, take it.
‘But I feel awful—’
‘You’re family. Take it.’
‘I shouldn’t—’
‘Yes, you should. Anyway, I want to. I want to give it to you.’
‘OK,’ Amy said. She glanced down at the notes in her hand. It looked as if he’d given her an awful lot. ‘That’s – so great. Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Scott said. ‘The hard part is now.’
‘The hard part?’
‘You’re going to North Shields. You’re going to see where Dad and my mother grew up, went to school. You’re going on your own.’
Amy looked at him.
‘Why aren’t you coming?’
‘Because I’l colour it for you. Because you’ve got to see it through your eyes, not mine.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I’l tel you where to go.’
Amy said doubtful y, ‘Is this a good idea?’
‘Was last night a good idea?’
Her face lit up.
‘Oh, yes!’
‘Then trust me,’ Scott said. ‘Walk your feet off and come back and tel me. I’l be waiting for you.’
She had walked, on her own, up the steep streets to the metro station at Monument, and there, as instructed, she had bought herself a return ticket to North Shields, feeling as she did so that her very anonymity in the Saturday-morning crowds was as exciting as the adventure itself. She sat, as Scott had told her to, near the front of the train so that she could have a sense of the scene through the windows of the driver’s cab, as they sped out of the glowing underground station and out on to the raised rails through Manors and Byker, past the cranes of Walker and Wal send and out along the river shore through Hadrian Road and Howden, through Percy Main and Meadow Wel , to North Shields.
On the platform, busy with people who belonged there, who knew where they were going, she said to herself, ‘This is it.’
‘Start with the quays,’ Scott had said. ‘Head for the river. Head for the quays.’
You could smel your way to the shore, almost at once. The air smel ed of water, river and sea, rank and salty, and overhead there were gul s, wheeling and screaming, huge black-headed gul s with heavy beaks and solid, shining bodies. Amy headed south, staring up at the sky and the clouds and the shouting seabirds, staring about her at the street and the houses and the chi
ldren, scuffing along together in packs, just as Richie must have done when he grew out of being that toddler in hand-knitted socks and bar shoes.
And then, quite abruptly, she was on a ridge high above the water, standing by a house which had plainly once been a lighthouse, looking out across the great breadth of the Tyne River, to South Shields and Jarrow, a name Amy knew because of Bede, the seventh-century monk who lived in the monastery there, whom she remembered because a history teacher had once told her class that he kept a precious store of peppercorns to make monastic food less boring. The road she was standing on was quiet, much quieter than the streets near the metro station, and the gul s seemed to be whirling higher, their cries echoing in the wind up there, the wind that was blowing in off the sea, blowing Amy’s hair across her face, obscuring her vision. She caught it up in both hands, and twisted it into a rough knot behind her head, and set off down a steep and turning path to the shore.
And there was Fish Quay, as Scott had said it would be, the quayside where his grandmother and great-aunts had gutted herrings for a living.
He’d said that in their day, in his mother’s girlhood, the herring drifters had been packed in against the quayside several deep, but now the water lay almost empty, just a straggling line of trawlers moored alongside battered iron-roofed sheds, with the water slapping at them and long rust marks streaking their sides. Everything was shuttered, al the doors were closed, there was nobody on the street, no movement except the odd plastic bag and scrap of paper litter lifting in the wind and skittering along the surface.
She walked slowly along the quay, past the bacon grocer’s with its jol y chal enges painted in the window glass – ‘If you aren’t wearing knickers, smile!’; ‘Never go to bed mad: stay up and fight!’; ‘Do not enter the shop if you have no sense of humour!’ – past the fish and chip shops, past the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, and the warehouses for Larry’s Fishcakes and Blue Dolphin Seafoods, and came out at the end into the Low Lights car park, where there was a bench looking out across the wide, crinkled grey river melting into the further grey sea and, on the horizon, the silhouetted statue of Admiral Col ingwood, where Scott said he and his mates used to gather after school, standing like Earl Grey high above the world below and gazing forever eastwards from his grassy mound.
The Other Family Page 26