by Ross Raisin
Alan turns toward him. ‘No, Mick, you don’t need to.’
‘No, I will. I won’t have us not paying our way.’ He glances up the corridor to the living room door, as though he’s been sent to represent the others, the family shop steward.
‘I won’t take it. It came to a lot, anyway. I wouldn’t want you to.’
‘Wait here a moment just, will ye?’ He leaves Alan fingering his wine glass while he goes from the room.
When he returns, Alan is stood where he was.
‘Here.’ He holds out the crumpled tenner. ‘I’m going the cash machine in the morning, but here’s this for now.’
The brother-in-law looks at the note a moment. ‘Okay, then, Mick.’ With a slow movement, he takes it from him. ‘Thank you.’
He puts his glass down on the side and takes his wallet out the trouser pocket. As he flips it open, slipping the note in the back, there’s an identity card, the top of his head poking out of one of the slots. A company card. How’s he still carrying one of those? He’s retired more than five years now. They must have kept him on, well – a consultant or something. An adviser. What I advise you is this: we’ve no enough orders for new ships and the yard isn’t making enough profit, so get out the dunny money packets and lay the buggers off.
He is picking up his glass, and walks by Mick to the door. ‘There’s beers in the fridge if you want one,’ he says over the shoulder.
Mick watches him away, the cards down the corridor flapping in the draught as his great back moves past them.
He stays in the kitchen a while, staring down toward the lobby. Then he opens the fridge and gets out a can. He drinks half of it in a single drain. Puts it down and wipes his lips.
Wanker.
Chapter 3
It is hot and he can’t sleep. The alarm clock across the way getting on for three o’clock. It’s been pure stifling like this the last few nights and by now the heat is gathered in the upstairs rooms, no wind to blow it out. Earlier, Robbie and Jenna had went for a bit of air before bed, and came back saying it’s near as muggy outside as it is in. Then Craig went out too, on his own, as he’d done the other nights. To the pub; you could smell it on him when he got back in. Mick had waited up after the others were away to their beds, but Craig was later back than usual, and in the end he decided it felt the wrong moment and he gave it a swerve.
He gets up and opens the other window. No difference. He leaves it open anyway and climbs back in the bed. She wouldn’t’ve let him have it open. Breeze or no breeze. She hated a chill that much, grumbling on next to him with the covers pulled up to her chin, cauled tight around her. A soft familiar lump there in the bed. He stares at the alarm clock, waiting for the minute to switch over. This room, it’s no like the other rooms. She has a say here still: the mirror with its collection of receipts and holiday competition cuttings wedged in the frame; the clutter of magazines by the wall; the electric heater on the other side of the bed with its broken outer bars.
He gets up again and goes out the room, needing the toilet. Afterwards, he goes down into the kitchen, where he turns the mini television on quiet, sits down at the table. Another quiz show. A young girl hosting it. She’s got on this lunatic smile as she picks up the phone, waiting for the caller to guess the blank. The first word is Iron. The guy on the line seems pretty sure he’s got it. ‘Statue,’ he says. The girl turns to look at the giant screen behind her in mock excitement. ‘Let’s see if it’s there . . . No!’ She slaps her thigh. ‘Not this time, Terry.’
It’s fair obvious the people ringing up to do this at half three in the morning are either blootered or they’re no the full ticket. The next one, a shrill woman called Christie, could be either way. ‘Is it board?’ she asks. It isn’t. ‘Unlucky, Christie. Better luck next time.’ There is what looks like a flicker of desperation on the girl’s face. I hope they pay ye well for this, hen. He turns it off and gets up to go back to bed.
3.54. The alarm clock, that’s her as well. She’d got it years ago with his saved-up petrol coupons from the cab. He knocked it on the floor a couple of days ago when he was tidying up the things on her table, and the plug came out. Setting the time and date again proved a complete impossibility – he’s never all these years figured out how the thing works – and so for the past two nights the alarm has come on at some point in the early hours. Both times, it took him bloody ages working out which button shuts it up, and then he spent what was left of last night finally fixing it out: time, date, bastard thing. No that he was that put out, in truth. He was awake anyway.
He moves himself over the other side of the bed. He may as well have stayed put in the kitchen. Given a call in to the show. Iron Age. Iron Lady. A look of pure relief on the girl that she’s no the only sane person up the night. Down there in the kitchen, the living room too, the things are things just, she isn’t present in them. Hard to say how that is when it’s her that bought most of it but that’s how it feels, unlike up here in this room. He’s surrounded by her here, but he isn’t a part of it himself. It is strange, the other side of the bed. Unknown lumps and bumps of wiring poking up at the mattress. He’s got a queer awareness of what it would have felt like for her, on her side. He lies a while longer, staring at the alarm clock, until, at the back of five, he gets out of bed and lays down on the floor next to it, pulling the covers down over him.
There is a toilet roll under the bed. A pair of broken sunglasses. He should give a clean under there, he gets thinking as finally he starts to drift off. Add that to the list.
Chapter 4
A cemetery worker is busy sweeping along a flagstone path, collecting up the dirt into a wheelbarrow. He has seen the man there by his wife’s grave each of the last few days: he comes in the morning and stands there a long time, staring down at the ground. Obvious that he’s having a hard time of it, and so he makes sure to keep his distance now as he gets about clearing the path and tidying the area around a plot he’s to measure and mark later the morning.
He has seen the rest of the family here as well. They come all at different times; even before the service, he knows from his manager that there’d been some difficulties with the arrangements. A guy that it seems is the brother of the deceased comes with his wife, and they stay a short time rearranging the flowers; the son with the queer accent, he gets here after lunch and stays holding his partner’s hand; and then the older son comes after the others have gone. He’s always the one that stays the longest. Yesterday, he was sat on the grass next to the grave almost the whole afternoon, getting a book out at one point and just staying there reading.
He pushes the wheelbarrow off down the lawn to the store room, where he puts it away with the broom and the shovel. He fills a bucket with water and takes a stiff brush, a pair of black rubber gloves and a container of solvent from a shelf, then he goes out of the store and down toward the road. The cemetery wall has been defaced again – K.A.H., it reads, sprayed in large black lettering over the concrete – and he kneels down on the pavement to get scrubbing at it with the thick creamy solvent. From where he is, he can just about see the grey head of the man, grieving beside his wife’s grave. Poor guy. There had been kind of an awkward atmosphere after the service, and it’s a fair guess the family relationship’s no the best. Always politics somewhere. He was in the yards, this one, according to his manager. That whole length of path is lined with the names of yardmen, copped their whack before their time. A whole shop floor under that lawn, he’d heard the registrar say a while back, and it would be true enough, except that so many of them are the wives and weans.He keeps on scouring the wall a few more minutes – it doesn’t get rid of it, but it’s the best he can do, the solvent and then the sun beating down on it between now and when it gets painted over at the end of the summer. When he’s done, he picks up the bucket and container and walks back through the cemetery, passing the man, who is stood now by the black iron palings on the other side of the grave, gazing down.
Mick is reading
the tags on the flower bouquets. There’s a new big bunch from the Highlanders that they must have got in the Marks and Spencer. A smaller one from Pete and Mary. He puts the tags back as they were, and gets ready to leave. The first few times he’s come here, he’s stayed almost an hour, looking down at the mound of not yet sunken earth. He tries to imagine her. It’s no easy but. Each time, he ends up standing there just, trying to feel that she’s there, trying to see her face, but it’s no happening, is the truth – he may as well be stood staring at a car engine for all the closeness he’s getting.
Maybe when the headstone is up, it will feel different. Although even that hadn’t been without its difficulties. It was him that gave the inscription for it; Alan had paid. The only thing they’d went halves on was the coffin. When they were in the funeral director’s, Mick had called for a modest and simple box, saying that it was what she would have wanted, although of course he knew fine well that if she had any say in it she would have gone for the most expensive one in the shop. He turns to leave, looking down at the space next to her as he moves off, lush and well tended, the stalks of the flower bunches resting down over it, like she’s saving a seat for him on the bus.
The Highlanders are in the kitchen when he gets back, one of them carefully monitoring the grill and the other holding a saucepan.
‘Craig about?’ he asks, his head through the doorway. Sausage and beans, it looks like.
‘In the bathroom, I think,’ says Lynn. ‘You ready for some breakfast?’
‘Aye, thanks,’ he says, eyeing the sausages as she gets turning them over. ‘I’ll be through in a minute.’
He goes up and waits just inside the bedroom, hoping to catch Craig as he comes past. But when the bathroom door clicks and he makes his move, it is Robbie that is stepping out. They stop there a moment on the stairhead.
‘Been the grave?’
‘Aye, I’m just back.’
‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine, Rob, thanks.’
In the kitchen, he and Robbie get themselves a plate of breakfast from the dishes on the table and go through to the living room, where the others are already eating.
Robbie and Jenna have booked their flights, they say. Monday morning. There’s a stop-off in Hong Kong, and they could’ve arranged to stay a night, but they’re wanting to get back to the baby. At the mention of this, Lynn gets telling the story of their own trip to India a couple of years ago: how the flight was a nightmare and the locals pack into the trains like pilchards, and there’s cows in the road but if you hire a driver he won’t even pamp the horn at them. Mick’s not much interested in another of Lynn’s stories; he’s thinking instead how he’s going to manage taking Craig aside. His best bet, he knows, is when the house is quieter, that’s obvious enough, while the Highlanders are off on one of their visits to the Botanic Gardens or the Tenement House. He’ll have to wait just, bide his time. Chin him before he goes visiting the grave.
But the Highlanders have for some reason decided against an excursion. They stay in the house fussing on all morning, and it means the right moment doesn’t come; and so by early afternoon, when Robbie and Jenna return from the grave, Craig is out the door. Like the other days, he’s away a long while, not getting in until the back of six, when the house is busy and the Highlanders are preparing food again. It isn’t until after tea and the evening of television watching, when Craig is about to get up and leave, that he has an opportunity.
Craig is after excusing himself from the room, away to the lobby to put on his jacket. Mick gets off his seat and follows him.
He is by the front door, the jacket on, searching his pockets.
‘I might come join ye for a nightcap, if that’s alright,’ Mick says, reaching for his own brown jacket off the hook. He can feel the eyes looking at him.
‘Aye, if ye want.’
They keep on quick along the pavement. The blue light of televisions flickering through windows as they go down the street; heads, lager cans, weans lying on their fronts. Craig is walking at a fair crack. They stay side by side, and he has a job keeping up.
‘Ye go the Empress, is it?’
‘Usually. It’s quiet in there.’
‘Aye, well, nothing changes, eh?’ He falls back to let Craig pass a lamppost, and hurries on after. ‘There many in there ye know?’
‘No really. Only Desmond.’
He chuckles. ‘See that’s what I mean. Nothing changes.’
Desmond. A fine familiar and reassuring figure. Comb-over wrinkling under the gantry lights; the big potato hands lining up whisky tumblers along the drip trays to catch each last drop from the lager taps. He should thank him again for the wake, he gets thinking, as they turn onto the high street. It’s busy the night, smokers stood outside the Brazier and a queue out the door of the chip shop. Rangers were away the day but there’s still plenty of Bluenoses about the place. The two of them march on through. Keen to get on and be sat down with a drink.
It’s not Des behind the bar though. There’s a woman he doesn’t recognize as he goes up for their drinks and Craig sits down at a table in the corner. The tumblers are there on the drip trays though, so he’s about somewhere. Probably in the back, reading his detective novels. Glass of Grouse. Fag plugged in the ashtray. Disturb me at your peril, hen, disturb me at your fucking peril.
She holds the glass under the tap and allows the froth to slurp over the rim, slowly pooling in the tumbler underneath. Mick turns to keek over at Craig, where he is sat by the window staring up at the football highlights. Why is it they’re here, again? He’s no too sure any more. What was he expecting – a nice wee chat? A pure certainty that isn’t going to happen, and yet here they are; he’s pushed himself on the boy to come out for a drink but now they’re here he knows fine well it can only end in a fight. What choice has he got but? Nay choice. They need to have some kind of a conversation, whatever else happens. It isn’t his fault the boy sits there like a cauldron and you can’t get near him. Not totally his fault, anyway, no the full share.
He pays for the drinks. As he picks them up off the counter he catches sight, through the bar, of a recognizable shape sat in the parlour, hunched over a Guinness.
‘Pat,’ he calls through. No response, so Mick puts the pints down a moment to go round and say a quick hello.
‘Pat.’
He looks up.
‘Mick. How ye getting on?’
‘Fine. Keeping a lid on it, ye know.’
Pat looks through to the main bar, past the two lagers sat on the far counter. ‘Ye have the family with you, eh?’
‘I do. All of them.’
‘It was Tuesday, they said.’
‘It was, aye.’
Pat nods. ‘Ye have my condolences, Mick.’
With that, he turns back to his drink, and the matter is at a close. Condolences dispensed. They say goodbye.
Round the other side, Mick picks up the lagers and regards Pat a moment sipping his Guinness. He’s certain a worse state than whenever last he saw him. The nose is badly gone the now, sore and swollen, delicately fractured with blood vessels. What do you expect? The guy’s been coming in here for decades. He’s in with the bricks. He was sat right there almost thirty years ago when him and Cathy moved back from Australia, his grumbling presence even then moiled into the sight and smell of the place, as crucial a part of it as the framed battleships along the walls or the great dark stain on the ceiling. There was a brief period just, after the smoking ban came in, when he stopped coming. Desmond had told him, the big hands braced on the counter, that he’d no choice but towing the line. He wasn’t risking the fine. Pat had simply got up off his stool and walked out. ‘That’s fine, well. I will take my custom elsewhere.’ And he’d went round the bar and left, simple as that, closing the door quietly behind him. That’s me, pal. I’m off. Ye have my condolences. He was back within the month though. Climbed onto his seat at the bar and ordered his Guinness as if nothing had ever happened. No word was spoke
again about the incident, and you’d never know that Pat gave it another thought except that now, whenever he goes for a smoke outside, he lights up his fag as he’s walking through the bar, and takes that first draw while he’s still in the lobby, getting open the door.
‘Here we are, son.’ Mick places the pints on the small table and sits in opposite.
‘Cheers.’ Craig takes a drink of his lager and looks back up at the television. Mick joins his gaze. Hibs and Aberdeen. No the most compelling TV viewing. The commentator is the main noise in the room, which is pretty empty. A few tables across there is a man silently out with his wife; by the toilets, the occasional whine and clobber of the fruit machine, a young lad going away at it.
‘The Rangers game been on yet?’ Mick asks.
‘No yet. They won though.’
Through the bar, past Pat, there’s two old boys on the faded red wall seat that goes around the parlour, pattering away together. He takes a long sup, observing Craig over the top of his glass.
‘When did ye last get down?’
‘Eh?’
‘I say when was it ye last got down?’
‘How ye mean? Down where?’
‘Ibrox.’
‘Oh, right. Years ago. With you, probably.’
‘Christ, long time ago, that. Motherwell, was it, two–nil? I can mind that, I think.’
‘It was Hearts.’
‘Aw, aye, that’s right, it was.’
They go quiet again. Get watching the football. The Celtic match comes on and the man and his wife turn to have a look at the screen. They’ve played at home and he doesn’t recognize who they’re against, but whoever it is, it looks like Celtic have cuffed them. Is this what he’s been doing? he thinks with sudden pity. Sat here watching this keech on his own. Is it that bad he’d rather this than stay in the house? Obviously it is. What can he do about it but? There’s nothing he can say that’s going to put everything right, no now, it’s too built up, and the boy’s obvious no in the mood to listen either so anything he says is just going to dig him up the worse. Being honest, the best thing is for him to get back across town to his flat. Go back to work. See his mates. He’s no doing himself any good maundering away here, and the truth is, say what you want about it, but it will be a relief tomorrow when he’s gone. There. He admits it. The bastard father, spilling the beans. Celtic’s match is still on – three–nil, four–nil, more maybe – but Mick’s gaze drops away from the screen and he starts staring at the wall underneath the television mount, at the brown pitted wallpaper like moulding orange peel, and at the pictures hanging unevenly in rows. Ships and footballers, mixed together: the Bloodhound, HMS Valiant, Davie Meiklejohn, HMS Indomitable, Willie Johnston, RMS Empress of Japan, Alan ‘The Wee Society Man’ Morton. Clydebuilt, each every one, crafted and revered all down the water, talked about over people’s teatimes, sold off to England. Some of the players probably worked on these ships. They probably did; that’s how it was. They would have served their apprenticeships on the yards, black squad, up early for a day’s work, and then away for a quick shower and a bite to eat and they’d be down the training pitches. There was one guy he’d went to school with, Andy Loy, was in the juniors at Rangers: a great young player, fast, skilful, but he didn’t make the cut. Close, but no quite. He’d stayed on at John Brown’s instead, and become the yard’s ratcatcher. A terrible job in truth but the daftie bugger had loved it. This wee stinking hut that he’d worked out of – the shelves piled with poisons and explosives and rusted weaponry – but the swarming hordes all about the place never getting any less because Andy wasn’t going to risk losing his job so he only ever killed the male ones.