It was three or four million people like him.
They hadn’t been out just to break their strength – they had been out to break their spirit. To do is to be; the Tories took away what they did. They took away what they were, took away what their fathers had been, took away their past and their legacy, and left them not just without means, but without purpose. And a man without purpose offers little resistance as a foe. He has nothing to fight for, and no comrades in arms.
Steel. Coal. Ships. Cars.
They closed whole industries.
Scotland had to change, the Tories insisted. Its days of heavy industry were gone, and its future, as envisaged by Thatcher, was as a “service economy”. Tam would have found the idea hilarious if the reality hadn’t been so fucking painful.
Picture it.
The Fegie Park Public Relations Agency – “We’ll make sure they get the message”. Get your point across with force. Lethal force if necessary.
The Barrhead Advertising Bureau. Guaranteed to get your name seen, with prime-site positioning: railway bridges, bus shelters, derelict buildings and more. Previous campaigns and slogans include: “Fuck the Pope”, “Up the Ra”, “Priesty Young Team ya bass” and “Ulster Says No”.
Glenburn Financial Services – sound investment advice for when you fancy playing the futures market with your next giro.
A service economy. Gie’s a brek.
Tam couldn’t believe it. Then with more pain and anger it gradually sank in that the Tories had never really believed it either. It was just an excuse. Disembowelling the country’s industries, breaking its backbone and bringing the unruly northern colony to its knees was the primary objective.
Sure, they could vote en masse against the Tories at every opportunity – and they did – but the bastards were probably laughing up their sleeves about it back in London, like adults at the tantrum of a petulant but powerless wean: “You can whine about it all you like, but we’re not changing our minds. Now stop crying or we’ll really give you something to cry for.”
Meiklewood had been quite a nice district. Not exactly affluent, but certainly respectable. Tam’s had been a modern wee council scheme, built in the Seventies, and it had looked fairly pleasant – although admittedly people’s tolerance for bad taste in those days extended to architecture as well as clothing and hairstyles. But colour-schemes and exterior wallcovering materials notwith-standing, it was always neat, always clean. People looked after the place because they had known a lot worse. They had jobs and they had self-respect, two things that could make stray chip pokes and lager cans fill the mind with a far greater dismay than if you actually had something serious to worry about.
They had been happy there, him and Sadie, and the wee yin. He had been a man of modest dreams, he knew, and had felt a degree of pride at where he was, what his family had, and what he might realistically hope to bring them. He had left school at fourteen, as had two of his brothers. Only Greig, the youngest of them, was allowed to stay on, with the other three helping his da bring money home. Greig went to university, up in Glasgow. These days he was teaching in a university, down south, a professor of physics.
There were brains in the family, he definitely knew that, and he had felt a sense of progress and achievement that Paul would get the chance to use his. Tam hadn’t sat at night and wondered what if, bitterly reflecting on missed potential and chances denied him, but he did feel a dull ache of regret at times, and that was soothed by the thought of his son being able to spread his wings. Sibling strife and petty jealousies aside, when it came right down they had all felt pride in Greig, and in the part they had played, but that would be nothing compared to the pride Tam would have in Paul, and in himself for having got his son that far.
Then the plant closed.
Certain powers had made the law jump through hoops to keep him inside for almost the full seven years, but it was only when he got out of prison that Tam realised the full extent of the price to be paid. He had walked, like bloody Rip van Winkle, unsteadily and in weeping disbelief, from the bus stop and through the scheme to the old house. That was when he realised that jail had just been where they kept him while they got his real punishment ready.
He had known about it, heard the tearful and increasingly blameful bulletins from Sadie in letters and visits. Pressure, strain, and inevitably, disintegration. But when he heard it, it was just news from the other world, the one he’d been banished from. His world stayed the same, and with his emotions frozen and anaesthetised, the only meaning the other world had existed purely in the words from Sadie’s mouth and the letters on the page. Just stories.
What he had shut out, what he couldn’t afford to face during all those years inside, was that the world Sadie’s words created was the world he would have to live in later. The one he used to live in hadn’t been taken away for a time decided by the judge. It was gone forever.
The scheme looked like Sarajevo without the tanks. Chipboard seemed to have become a popular alternative to glass in a great many of the window frames, enjoying the same insulation qualities at a lower price, but perhaps sacrificing a certain degree of transparency. However, glass itself had not gone out of fashion; rather it was now employed as a road surface material, making the streets glisten and sparkle, kaleidoscopically reflecting the blue flashing lights of the patrol cars and ambulances. Stray dogs snapped angrily at each other in the overgrown gardens, where the balding and broken hedges slumped above walls daubed with slogans uniformly promising violence and retribution against various groups or individuals for unspecified transgressions.
Burnt-out or just knackered domestic items and appliances lay abandoned on front greens and once-grassy squares, like the fallen in a war of the furniture. And across the road from the house, like a sneering epitaph to the life Tam had lost, was the burnt-out metallic husk of a car. It was so many years since he had seen one, and the thing was charred and mangled, but he could still recognise the make and the model: built in Meiklewood.
There was no emotional scene when he chapped the door and Sadie opened it to let him in. No big hugs, no tears, no smiles. There was barely eye contact. He had stepped into the hall, his nose recognising immediately the smell of the place, but its very familiarity was disconcerting, seeming only to remind him of the fact that he didn’t belong any more. He felt unsure where to go, which room to head for, as if he needed to be shown, invited, permitted. It wasn’t his house. It wasn’t their house. It was Sadie’s house. The woman he had left behind, the woman he had failed. He had long ago ceased to think of her as his wife, of himself as a husband or father. Prison didn’t let him. His marriage, their relationship, was something else he had been forced to forfeit as part of his penalty.
He could feel only humble in her sight, the only emotions precipitated being regret for what he had done to her and gratitude that she was charitable enough to take him in.
It had been a self-indulgence, really. A boys’ thing. All of them feeling rightly sorry for themselves over what had happened to them, betrayed, sold out and chucked on the scrapheap at an age when it was getting a wee bit late to be learning a new trade. They were feeling vengeful and reckless, wanting to strike out at someone to demonstrate their anger and frustration, too worked up to worry about the consequences. That self-deceiving logic of self-pitying abandon: what could happen to me that’s worse than what already has?
Big wean. It was one thing not to care what happened to himself, but his sin was in not caring what happened to Sadie and Paul. His indulgence – the indulgence of all the so-called Robbin’ Hoods – was to think that what had happened had only happened to him. To forget that it had happened to Sadie too, that it had happened to a family. But Sadie didn’t retreat into herself for days and weeks; Sadie didn’t go out drinking with her fellow sufferers and bemoan her lot before collapsing in a puddle of spew and pish; and Sadie didn’t try and kid herself on that she could feel like a man again by breaking into somebody else’s house in t
he middle of the night and stealing a few fucking baubles.
Sadie just got on with it. The women always just got on with it.
She hadn’t known about the burglaries, and it hadn’t been hard keeping it from her. They didn’t make a great deal of money from the stuff, not even later on when they knew what to go after, and Tam hid what he did make from Sadie by secretly topping up the account with his redundancy in it each time they made a with-drawal.
They had no idea what the first stuff was worth when they decided to flog it after accepting that the cops weren’t coming for them. The plan had been to hold on to what they took from Halworth, all of it, until they were collared, then give the whole lot back untouched to show that it had just been an angry act of protest. None of them had convictions for anything before, so they had hoped that between that fact and playing the whole thing as a political stunt, they would get off with probation or suspended sentences at the worst.
They didn’t know any handlers, any fences. Well, there were a couple of dodgy characters drank in The Meikle that were always trying to offload the odd video or hi-fi, but certainly no-one who could deal with fine art and jewellry. Eventually Bob Hannah got in touch with some pal of a pal’s dug’s owner’s brother’s cousin’s mate who gave them some cash – a few hundred – for the Halworth gear, probably an utter fraction of what it was worth, but what the hell would they know? However, it was the guy this bloke passed the gear on to next who came back with a message to say he’d be on the lookout for more. He told them what sort of gear he was specifically interested in, and what kind of figures he was prepared to pay.
Maybe, they told themselves, it was the promise of the money that made them go back; maybe the need to provide for the family now the plant was shut and they were on the dole. But Tam knew what really did it: it was the buzz. It was the hyper-awareness, the vitality, the excitement you felt in the shadows of those grandiose rooms, where every nerve-ending felt electrified as the thin torch beams slashed across lacquered tables, chaise longues and paintings. The planning, the talk, the recce drives in Bob’s Hillman Hunter, leaving a trail of empty Export cans all the way back to Paisley.
The secrecy. The companionship. The brotherhood.
Christ, maybe they should have all just joined the masons and saved everyone a load of bother.
But they had all felt so useless, worthless and impotent after the plant closed, and the feeling of purpose – so intensified and dynamic in those circumstances – gave them back what they had lost. It was a job. And of course when the headlines started appearing . . .
Jimmy Bell was the first to suggest they chuck it. There had been a close scrape on the last job, down near Stobo, with some wee au pair lassie coming up the stairs in the middle of the night to investigate whatever she had heard. Dinger had looked through a keyhole out of the big dining room and seen her heading down the corridor towards them. They had to leg it out the window and down a drainpipe, and Frank Docherty broke his ankle when he hit the ground. With the story all over the papers in recent weeks, not only was every cop in Scotland champing at the bit to come flying out in response to a call from one of these joints, but the householders were on their guard like never before.
Frank’s injury aside, they had been really lucky that night, and they knew it. They were only a floor up, and they had been able to get out a different way from the one they came in, a route they hadn’t planned or checked. They might not be so jammy in future. It was Dinger who came out and said that he didn’t want to be in a situation where the only means of escape would involve violence, but it was something they had all come to contemplate. They could have walloped the au pair lassie, no bother. Capability wasn’t the issue. They could even have hidden and jumped her from behind, made sure they weren’t seen, then blindfolded her and tied her up or locked her in a cupboard while they escaped. Minimum force, the lassie’s worst injury would have been the fright she got. But that wasn’t the issue either. There was a line to cross.
They talked about one last job, one meticulously planned and executed operation, some place where there would be no-one home, guaranteed. One last job where they would get hold of some really valuable gear, to make it all worthwhile, and where they would leave a note to announce the Robbin’ Hoods’ retirement. Then they’d pool what they made and what each of them still had left from before, and start their own business – a repairs and bodywork shop, where they could work honestly, and which could never be sold out and shut down.
But it was a dream Tam couldn’t believe in, and he suspected it was a unanimous conspiracy of false faith. It was something to talk about over pints, some hazy fantasy of putting yesterday into tomorrow, just a less painful way of mourning what was gone. And if you ever admitted that to anyone else, its comfort was ruined for all of you.
There was no last job, not even a plan or a target, when the cops came for them. Somehow they had deluded themselves into thinking that if you didn’t get caught in the act, you were in den one-two-three. Keys up. They had never formally decided upon their “retirement”, still talking about that mythical final robbery because it kept them in touch with the excitement of what they had experienced to pretend to themselves that it wasn’t over. But it was. So after months of Tam feeling his heart leap every time someone chapped the door or the phone rang, the police were the last thing on his mind the morning they arrested him. He was so surprised that he felt as if they were making an absurd cock-up, like he was being taken prisoner by enemy soldiers who hadn’t heard that the war was over.
It was when Sadie was allowed to come in and see him that the truth and its enormity hit him. When he saw the confusion, fear and disbelief in her face and he couldn’t tell her it was a mistake. When he had to admit to her what he had done, how he had deceived her, and admit to himself what the cost for both of them would be. He didn’t feel angry and he didn’t feel hurt and he didn’t feel defiant and he didn’t feel wronged.
He felt like a stupit wee boy.
A stupit wee boy.
And he didn’t believe Sadie would ever see him as anything else.
But Paul . . . Jesus Christ, Paul.
What he had done to Paul.
He had kidded himself on for a while that it was because he was inside, because he couldn’t be there to keep him in hand and to offer him paternal support. But he knew that the real damage had been done by his crime, not his incarceration.
The wee fella had always believed his dad would be there for him, always believed his dad was his best pal, and always believed what he told him. What was right and what was wrong. What was on and what was not.
“Stealing is the worst kind of cheating. It’s cheating at life, son. It’s for folk that arenae any good at life, so they have to cheat.”
Remember that?
He had left Paul, at fourteen, not only without a father, but without anything to believe in, at an age when kids can be self-destructive enough under the best circumstances.
Hearing Sadie’s episodic chronicle of Paul’s deterioration was more a process of confirmation than disappointment. Exams he hadn’t got, exams he hadn’t even sat, trouble with the polis, drinking, fighting. Inside, it was like listening to the football results. You never saw any of it, you just heard the outcome, and you knew fine the news would be bad because you had long lost any positive expectations. St Mirren always got fucked. The Huns always won. Paul always screwed up in a new and worse way.
Stealing motors. Joyriding, they called it now. Didn’t even have the sense to sell the bloody things. Just drove them about at speed, and then when the petrol started to run out, took them out of town and set them ablaze. Tam couldn’t understand the kick. You had to walk home, for a start.
Paul was in and out of a load of duff jobs. Shops and offices. Fast-food dives. Crap hours, crap money, crap prospects. Sadie would tell Tam about each new start with a mother’s dutiful optimism, and his heart would sink as he knew that she’d be back in front of him in a couple of
months, looking that bit more shattered by the blackness following another false dawn.
Occasionally she would urge Tam to “have a word with him” on one of the blue moons when he turned up for a visit. But there was absolutely nothing that Tam felt he was in any position to say. What authority did he have to chastise Paul for letting his mother down or making a mess of his life?
None. And he couldn’t face hearing Paul point that out.
In the first couple of years after Tam was released, he saw his son barely more than when he was inside, even though he only lived a couple of miles away, in that flat he shared with some other waster. Paul came to see Sadie when he knew Tam would be out. He never acknowledged it, but he knew it. Sometimes it hurt and sometimes he was grateful. When they did see each other, there was an uncomfortable latent atmosphere of blame and disappointment, unspoken wounds and grudges. They were two people who could no longer respect themselves and could no longer respect each other, and it hurt more because they regretted it.
Tam lay face down, the dry grass under his chest, his sleeves rolled up and one foot curled around a tree stump behind him. He could feel the growing strength of the sun on the back of his neck, its light playing up on to his face, reflected by the unbroken surface of the water. The heat of it would soon take the chill off the wind; by midday it would feel more like late summer than your usual Scottish September.
The stream was about twelve feet across, the eighteen inches from the surface to the bed translucently visible in a light copper gel. The movement of the water was languid, grown lazy over the summer and as yet awaiting the invigoration of cold winter rains. Tam watched the hair-like legs and feet of insects dimple the surface tension like it was cling-film, the motion of the water itself evidenced only in the fragments of submerged weed, pulled along underneath by the invisible threads of the current.
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