501

  The youth shrugs his shoulders, lights a cigarette, pauses at the door, flicks her the packet in a parting gift.

  ‘Just tell her that. Only that, mind,’ he says and then he is gone, whistling down the stairs.

  Like nothing has happened. Like nothing for five cheap fags in a cardboard carton.

  Later, before I try to fill my head with sleep, I’m watching from the window at a building Dundee gale. The wind’s veered to the west and the rain’s falling in sheets. Mam’s still not come home and I’m thinking that the flat sounds hollow, sounds empty. There’s a feeling creeping over me that I need someone to cuddle, someone to hold me: someone safe. There’s a feeling I’ve gone over a threshold, done something I’m not sure of, so I make the sign of the cross and tell Jesus all my troubles. I don’t know why I do because I never go to church, never make a confession or take communion, but in the dark, wet night I talk to someone who listens because the world has changed for me.

  Then I wait for Mam to come home.

  And you know what? When she does, that bastard Denny comes around for his money’s worth, saunters in like he’s cock o’ the walk.

  And I suppose he is in this house.

  Anyway that’s enough for now because when I relive those days, they drain me. They pull all the strength out of me, and I’m not hardly started; there’s years to go. So I pour myself a stiff whisky and toast myself – ‘Here’s tae me’ – and knock it back in one hit. Then I pour myself another. Then I pour myself a hot bath and, when I’m undressed, I stand in front of the mirror and smooth out the wrinkles, peel the years from my old body, remember what it was like to be young and firm.

  And beautiful.

  And then to fill my head, like I always do, I count the cats of my life, right from the first kitten that Dizzy gave me for my eighteenth birthday.

  ‘Now you’re really one of my girls,’ she says after the busiest Saturday in months.

  By the time I’ve put my cats in order of time and place it’s a quarter to eight and the George is calling and I’ve reached Posh and Becks.

  And it ends there.

  At the George, Danny says, ‘You’re late on parade. Thought you needed the practice.’

  I suppose we do, we had a shit result last week against the King Charles – Charlie’s Angels – and it’s nice of Danny to remind me.

  I say, ‘Cut the cackle and get me a whisky.’

  Danny says, ‘Charming, yer miserable Jock.’

  He milks the optic and then slides my drink across the bar like they do in the Western films.

  ‘Hope it chokes you.’

  ‘You’d miss me, Danny.’

  ‘Like fuck.’

  The girls are practising on the dartboard and I sit down with Maggie. I get on well with her – she understands about my cats.

  ‘I’m thinking of getting a pet,’ she says quietly. ‘Maybe a dog, it’ll be something to keep me company at night.’ The next thing she says is, ‘I saw the piece in the paper.’

  I saw the Piece as well. I tore it into bits and flushed it down the loo. I know where it came from; I had a reporter come sniffing around, knocking on my door.

  ‘Mrs Stewart,’ he says, ‘I’ve heard you’ve had a problem with your cats.’

  I tell him there’s no effing problem now because they’ve all been murdered.

  ‘Murdered?’

  He’s really interested now, this man standing on my doorstep, waiting for an invite in, waiting for a cup of tea and a juicy story dressed up in a cosy chat.

  ‘If you really want to know what happened…’ I pitch this in just above a whisper, and he leans forward with his head cocked and his little piggy eyes bright with anticipation.

  ‘If you’re really interested,’ I say in barely more than a whisper. He moves up another step and I shout loudly, suddenly, into his face. ‘Ask those bastards next door.’ Then I slam the door on him.

  But then you know what? The slimy little toad wrote a story about a lonely widow who’d lost her only friends. He even quoted those bastard neighbours saying how my cats had been my whole world and they missed them as well. Fucking Pinocchios.

  Maggie says, ‘I expect you want to get another cat.’

  I’m thinking that it’s the last thing I want because my old heart couldn’t stand another hurt.

  So this is a good night in the George, we’re playing the Busy Lizzies from the Queen Elizabeth. (We call them the Busybodies because they seem to know everything that’s going on in town and more.) They’re a middle-aged team with middle-aged spread and they sit in the middle of the league. And they play a middling game, not giving us too much trouble – well, except for Lena, she’s really off-colour. Her hair is straggly and she’s hardly bothered with make-up. She doesn’t want a drink, keeps running off to the loo, wants to sit down between throws. Her match takes so long she pisses off the Busybody she’s playing.

  ‘God, we’re going to be here all night at this rate.’

  Irish says, ‘Wake me up when they’re done.’ But she goes to the bar and watches from there as she slots in a drink between rounds. Even Katy, who’s chalking the scores, is stifling yawns. We’re all hoping that it’s a quick check-out on the double but the Busybody has lost interest and her casual chucks are wide of the mark. So it’s Lena who eventually drops into her number.

  There’s a half-hearted cheer and her opponent offers a congratulation and a ‘Thank Christ for that’.

  Lena flops down beside me. ‘I thought that would never end,’ she says.

  I say, ‘You weren’t the only one.’

  Then, as Pegs is at the oche, I look around this pub. There’s the yellowed ceiling, dated adverts, fading photographs of the Motley Crew on pub outings from the seventies, eighties, nineties, noughties. They’ve gone from young men in flares, with wide collars and big hair, to plump, and skinny, and balding, and fashionless.

  So I look around and I count the years like I counted my cats. Twenty years I’ve been coming here, twenty years of Danny behind the bar, of darts on a Monday and practice on a Thursday. Twenty years of being carried home every Hogmanay – Christmas is all right for the Sassenachs but New Year belongs to us Jocks. And lately I’ve missed all things Scottish. I’ve missed the summer rain, the winter snow. I’ve even missed hearing Mr Brown’s dour accent.

  And now I’m going to miss this team, my friends, this town. I’m going to miss the George and joshing with Danny.

  Because it’s time to go home before I die.

  Because there was blood in the toilet again this morning.

  Lena says, ‘I’ll buy this one,’ but I tell her she’s been on lime and soda all night and so I’ll get the drinks instead.

  At the bar, Danny says, ‘What’s up with Lena tonight?’

  ‘Upset stomach. She must have eaten one of your sandwiches.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  I bring the drinks to our table and unload a gin for Irish, a whisky for me, a rum and pep for Maggie a brace of vodka and Coke for Katy and Pegs. But Lena’s buttoning up her coat.

  ‘Your soda,’ I say.

  Lena says, ‘Sorry, Scottie, I’m going home; I feel like shit.’

  She’s burping and swallowing and I think she might throw up so I move out the line of fire, give her a clear run to the door.

  After Lena’s scurried away I say to Katy, ‘She’s been a bit odd lately.’

  Katy says, ‘Use your eyes, can’t you see what it is?’

  ‘What it is?’

  ‘Pregnant, Scottie; she’s pregnant.’

  Irish says, ‘How do you expect her to know, she’s never popped one out.’

  Then I say quietly, ‘Yes, I have, Irish,’ and they all shut up and look at me. But I just pick up my whisky, take a sip and keep my mouth closed, because it’s my secret, my story, and I won’t share it with anyone.

  Now you would think after the Denny Adams episode my life would be changed. But what’s to change? It just goes on like before. Mum
’s the same, I’m the same – apart from being a bit sore for a few days.

  So things stay in the status quo of my existence.

  But I’m not a lonely kid, even though I spend a lot of time being alone; I have friends from school, friends like Connie Smart, Lennie Dalgish, Pete Macoy and Mickey Broyne.

  We share cigs, we share cider, we share Light and Heavy.

  And we share growing up.

  That was when I found I had a weakness for men – well, boys at the outset – and though the first was Denny Adams, after him it was easy. So easy.

  I’m fifteen when the Welfare call – it wasn’t Social Services in those days – and they’ve come to school to collect me. Now this is a school I like, because we’ve been at the same address for over a year now, and things have become familiar to me.

  I’m sitting in class and we’re trying to memorise the capital cities of South America. I’m pretty good at this and I’m quicker than the rest. While Colin Smith is struggling with Venezuela I whisper across to him, ‘Caracas.’ Then, for Ollie White, ‘Brazil – Rio de Janeiro.’

  Then there’s an interruption when one of the first-formers brings in a note for Sir.

  Sir studies it, frowns, looks at me and then says, ‘Marie Stewart, Headmaster wants to see you. Straight away.’

  All eyes are on me as I scrape back my chair, and Colin Smith says, ‘Who’s been a naughty girl then.’

  As I pass him in the aisle I slip him the Vs up and mutter that he’ll have to answer his own fucking questions now.

  He comes back with, ‘Moo cow,’ and Sir tells us to be bloody quiet or else Smith will be joining me in the Headmaster’s office.

  But on my way to the office I wonder what I’ve done, if the Headmaster is going to give me a pep talk about my schoolwork? He’s called me in a couple of times before. ‘If you tried – really tried – you could go places. You could have a career.’ Then he tells me that he knows my home life isn’t ideal. ‘But you have a quick mind, Marie and…’ He pauses. ‘And I hate to see waste.’

  But this isn’t going to be a pep talk. This is the interfering busybodies of the Welfare State and they’re sitting, puritan straight, on rigid backed chairs. They’re the couple that you see in the crumbling mansion: the creepy housekeeper and her butler accomplice in a shadowy horror film. In unsmiling disapproving disclosure, they tell me that Mam’s...

  …that Mam’s stepped out of a pub and under a lorry.

  They don’t exactly say that – they say ‘traffic accident’ – but later I find an article in the paper about a Mrs Stewart who ‘believed to have been drinking in the Rose and Thistle, walked into the road without looking’. The lorry driver, ‘A Mr Arthur McBain, stated to the police that, “The lady was laughing with a companion, and she just didn’t see me.”’

  After, a long time after, I like to think that Mam died with a smile on her face and a drink in her belly. I like to think that she died happy, unknowing.

  I’d like to die like that.

  But now Housekeeper and Butler also tell me that they’ll take me home to pick up my belongings and then it’s into care for me.

  The Headmaster, who’s been sitting quietly through this, says, ‘I’m sorry, Marie,’ and he says it like he means it but he frowns like the sentence isn’t enough said.

  And it’s not.

  You know, all my clothes, all my things, fit into a suitcase and a hold-all. That’s all I take, apart from the photo on the mantelpiece of Mam and me. She’s got her arm around my waist and we’ve got the same smile, same figure; we could be sisters.

  But now we’re what?

  I don’t know about the next few days – they’re not the proverbial blur – they’re more like a realisation that sinks slowly in. Fuck it, I don’t want to try to put it in words because it’s all in impressions.

  Me lying in bed in the attic dorm at the Home in the attic and seeing the bright moon fill the skylight, a huge eye peeping in at me.

  The other three girls softly sleeping, softly snoring in the warmth of their beds.

  Me the stranger, a story they all want to read at the breakfast table.

  Me thinking that it’s all been a mistake, and soon Mam will be calling to take me home. She’ll have a pocket full of money and a head full of dreams.

  ‘My little girl,’ she’ll say, even though I’m not little. ‘Things are going to be better now.’

  But she doesn’t come, of course she doesn’t, and, here in this time, there’s no one to talk to – it’s not like today when a counsellor’s on your doorstep even if you just sneeze.

  Because I’m fifteen, grown-up and about ready for the world, no one bothers me too much. On most days, in this week of waiting, I sit in the attic room and sometimes I go down for a meal, sometimes to listen to the radio, and sometimes I don’t.

  Mostly I watch the Dundee rain through the window, blowing in off the sea. I think about Mam and I have a cry to myself. Then I dry my eyes and carry on in a foretaste of what my life’s going to be.

  On the day of Mam’s funeral, Housekeeper and Butler come to take me to the church. We catch the bus from the bottom of the road, and I’m in a borrowed black coat with my fair head covered with a dark scarf.

  ‘We’ll see you to there; we won’t be coming in to the service,’ Housekeeper says.

  She looks to her partner. ‘We won’t be coming in,’ Butler says in a confirming echo.

  At the church there’s a polished hearse pulled up and a coffin’s being shouldered into the church by four men in charcoal suits. I follow, not quite sure of what I’m meant to be doing, if I should sit to the left or to the right.

  There are people here, perhaps twenty, no one I recognise though, and there’s a priest with his back to the altar. He smiles and nods me to my place with Catholic care. Then an organ begins a hymn, and priest and player launch loudly into voice. They’re joined by a mumbling, ragged congregation.

  ‘We shall sleep, but not forever,

  There will be glorious dawn.

  We shall meet to part, no, never,

  On the resurrection morn.’

  I’m listening but I’m not really hearing because I’m studying the nameplate on Mam’s box.

  Ellie Stewart 1924–1956

  I’m counting the years, taking the date of birth from the date of death. Then I take my age away, and Mam’s seventeen and she’s carrying me.

  Behind me one of the – I suppose I should say mourners – is having a coughing fit. It goes on and on even when the service ends and we’re following Mam out into the graveyard.

  So the priest says a few words and Mam’s lowered into the stony soil and everyone stands stock still for a few moments except the poor bugger who’s still coughing. Someone says to him, louder and more shrill than intended, ‘We just as well leave you here too.’

  It’s then I that I take notice of this group, this dozen mixture of men and woman who drank with Mam, who plied their trade with Mam. Who lived in Mam’s world.

  There’s too much perfume, too much make-up, too much jewellery, too much fake fur, too many bulging waistcoats and florid faces. They come up to me one by one to pay their respects.

  ‘She was a lovely dear, your Mam.’

  ‘She’d give away her last penny.’

  ‘Heart of gold she had. Heart of gold.’

  There’re no introductions, no names. Just a few words and then a return to the flock. Then there’s one man, fifty if he’s a day, towering over me, who takes my hand and says, ‘If you ever need anything, you ask for Ben. Big Ben of the Beagle. Landlord I am. Thought the world of your mother.’

  He leans forward and pulls me to him in an embrace close enough for me to smell the drink on his breath. He holds me slightly too long and in my ear he says again, ‘Big Ben, my dear. Don’t forget. Anything you want, come to the Beagle.’

  Then he does let me go and he returns to his companions. And then again there’s that shrill, cutting voice.

&n
bsp; ‘Och, her mother’s hardly cold and you’re pestering that slip of a girl.’

  But I didn’t think that then, that I was being pestered. I’m unaware of anything in my state and it wasn’t until a few years later, when I was really in – or on – the Game, that I understood the attraction of grief to a man.

  The last person to come to me is a man who’s been standing in the background talking earnestly with the Housekeeper and Butler. Now he walks up to me, tall, dark-haired and smart: so very smart. He’s what Mam would have called a handsome man. There’s a purpose to his approach and a half smile of greeting is forming on his face. I can remember every detail of these moments when I first met him, as he takes my hand gently in his, looks straight into my eyes.

  ‘Marie,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ The accent is a thick, harsh Glaswegian. Then he says, ‘You should know, Marie, that I’m your father.’

  And although I didn’t know it then, ahead of me were the happiest and the saddest days of my life.

  But now I’ve got to shut the door, shut down all that I know will happen. I’ll leave it to laugh over, to cry over like the sad exiled Scot that I am.

  So tonight we’ve had…

  …a fairly comfortable win with only Irish losing. She’s played like she doesn’t care and she’s got right up Katy’s nose.

  ‘You better pull yourself together for next week,’ Katy says to her.

  ‘Sure everyone has an off night.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you’ve got to have everyone’s,’ I tell her because I can’t keep my nose out.

  Irish says, ‘Tis only a fucking game; it’s not life or death.’

  Maggie says quietly, ‘I love our nights out; let’s not spoil it.’

  And that shuts us all up because no one would want to upset gentle Maggie after what she’s been going through. Is still going through.

  It’s later I ask her, ‘Ken. How’s Ken?’

  ‘All he does is stare, Scottie. He stares at the television, he stares out of the window, he stares at me.’ Her voice breaks just a little. ‘But he doesn’t see anything.’

  Then she says, ‘I keep the Ken I knew at home.’ She touches her heart with her fingertips. ‘And in here, Scottie. And in here.’