501

by Robert Field

  ‘You better get dressed,’ she says.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she screams into my face, ‘and I don’t want you for a daughter,’ and she’s out of the room while downstairs Mikey has started bawling for his tea.

  Me and Dandy look at each other. His face is full of shock, of disbelief, of blood.

  He says, ‘What have I done, Lena? What have I done?’

  I say, ‘We. What have we done?’

  I go to him, go to hold him, but he pushes me away, turns away, stumbles into his clothes as rejected me watches the beginning of an attempt of salvage.

  ‘What are you going to do, Dandy?’

  ‘Going down to her.’

  ‘What about me?’

  He says, so tiredly, ‘She’s hurt, Lena. She’s so hurt,’ and then he’s treading down the stairs.

  I sit on the bed, dressed now, as below their voices ebb and flow between recrimination and tears. I listen for an hour and then I go to my room, put on my coat, take some money from my emergency fund and creep down the stairs.

  Outside it’s still blowing rain and the early evening light is only just into fading as I start to walk the streets. I walk past the familiar, the grey pavements and the bright shop windows, out to the edge of the town. I can’t believe what’s happened, it’s like I’m in a dream, but this feeling keeps coming back to me, screaming in my ear.

  ‘You’re not my daughter, Lena. Not my daughter.’

  But through all this I’m thinking about Dandy, loving him from this distance. Still wanting him.

  I suppose I’m crying, my hand’s to my mouth, and I’m cold, and the wet is squelching in my shoes, creeping down my neck, and I must get out of the rain. So I walk into the next pub I see.

  Inside there’re only a few people drinking, and a log fire is burning in a big old grate and I stand in front of it and let the heat soak into me. I must cut a strange figure, straggly-haired and red-eyed.

  Then a voice, a woman’s voice. ‘Will you be after looking at that girl; she’s steaming.’

  Then she comes over to me, stares me up and down, this woman with a G and T in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She says, ‘Are you all right?’

  I can’t say anything, I just nod. At my feet a puddle is forming and she puts her hand on my sleeve and says, ‘You’re wet through, my lovely.’

  She yells across to the bar. ‘Danny, a warming drink for this poor mite.’

  He shouts back, ‘How old is she?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, just get her a brandy. And if you’re asking, I’m paying.’

  She drags up a chair. ‘Set yourself down.’ Then she says to me, ‘Boy trouble?’

  I find my voice. ‘Man trouble,’ I say and she laughs. ‘Tis usually so.’

  Then she says, ‘Christ, here I am and I haven’t even introduced myself.’ She holds out her hand. ‘Mary. Mary O’Brian, but everyone calls me Irish. Now, what’s yer poison? Mind it’s all shit that he sells here anyway.’

  She nods at the bar and tells Danny to stop drooling and serve up my brandy and says that if he can manage to take his eyes off my tits for long enough she’d like another gin and tonic.

  Danny says that it’s nice to have a customer who’s young and pretty and not the wrong side of forty. He adds, ‘And a bit too well fed.’

  Irish says he needs to take a look in the mirror and mutters about pot and kettle and is that a bad smell coming from behind the bar?

  Then she turns to me and says, ‘Do you play darts? Cos we’re short of a player.’

  So this is my introduction to the George and to Irish and now, while I’m finishing my cigarette and shivering in the dark, Irish is… is what?

  Locked up? Banged up in the nuthouse? What must she have been thinking?

  I can’t believe what she did.

  And then I think that Mum couldn’t believe what I did, probably never would have if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

  I flick the cigarette but into the garden and then I go up to bed.

  To Dandy.

  Same night – Scottie Dog at home.

  As soon as I’m at home I open a can of Whiskas for Robert the Bruce and pour a whisky for me – it’s funny that our sustenance sounds the same. Well, almost. He eats his on the floor, purring away, and I drink mine in my big chair, worrying away.

  I can’t help this, can’t stop my fingers searching my stomach, pressing here, pressing there; feeling the things that aren’t right.

  Well, that’s stating the fucking obvious.

  I’ve got a doctor who won’t look me in the eye, who says, ‘I’ll make you an appointment with Mr. Hope.’

  I tell him that’s a good name for a hopeless case and he coughs and says that nothing’s certain and I shouldn’t worry and I must be checked out. But something outside the window has caught his attention as he speaks, draws his gaze from me again.

  And his diagnosis is in his avoidance.

  So I don’t want to be pushed about, prodded about, cut open, filled with chemicals. I’m too old, too tired, to fight. I feel it in my body, in my bones, and it makes me wonder how long I’ve got? Weeks? Months? A year?

  All that time for this pain to grow, to make me catch my breath.

  All that time before it becomes unbearable and whisky and aspirins come out of the cupboard.

  Together.

  But have I got enough time to take the train to Scotland, the train to home?

  A voice whispers in my head:

  If you go now.

  Have I got enough time to get to Glasgow?

  If you go now.

  Will I find Aubrey? Will I see him?

  Silence. Deep, deep silence. The silence of the grave, of things long gone, long buried.

  Like Mam’s funeral on that afternoon of fifty-five years ago.

  ‘Hello, Marie,’ he says. ‘I’m your father.’ And a wonderful smile crinkles his face. Then he takes my hand and we stand on the brink of Mam’s grave.

  ‘Lovely,’ he says. ‘She was so lovely.’ He turns me to him, strokes my face with his fingers. ‘You’re so like her,’ he says. Then he stoops, takes a handful of soil and trickles it into that dark hole, onto Mam’s coffin. As we walk away, leave Mam to God, he slips his arm around my waist.

  And it fits so well, so comfortably, this embrace from my father the stranger, that I want to stop and hold him. I’m trembling slightly and he grips me tighter and I can feel the strength of his hand, the muscles of his arm, as we walk from the churchyard.

  He just took me, just put me in his car, drove me to the Home, waited while I packed my case, grabbed Mam’s carrier-bag of mementoes, and left by the kitchen door. Then we picked up the old A road to Glasgow and we were on our way. He never really said, ‘Come with me.’ He just led and I followed.

  That’s how it was.

  On the road he says, ‘Light me a fag, Marie?’

  There’s a packet of Capstans in the glove compartment and I light one up and pass it to him. It seems like a familiar gesture, something close to this unknown man who’s my father.

  ‘You have one,’ he says. ‘If you like?’ He flashes a smile at me.

  I do like, I’m used to smoking, and for a while we sit in silence while I study him from the corner of my eyes.

  His hair is dark and thick and I’m thinking he must be around Mam’s age; the age she’ll be forever.

  He says, ‘I never expected you to be so grown-up, Marie.’

  ‘I’m fifteen,’ I remind him, ‘and I’ll be sixteen before Christmas.’

  But that he thinks I look so grown-up has pleased me, warmed me.

  We stop at a crowded roadside café and while he goes to the Gents I order up two teas from the flustered server and find us a table. I still can’t quite believe that I’ve left a life behind me, that a new one is beginning. I’m daydreaming, staring out of the window, wondering if Mam is watching me, wondering at an explanation that left so much u
nclear. Unsaid.

  (‘Marie, don’t pester me. He was no good. He made his choice’

  ‘What did he do, Mam?’

  ‘Och, he liked the women too much.’

  ‘But Mam…’

  ‘Aye, and I liked the men too much and there’s an end to it.’

  ‘But Mam…’

  ‘An end, Marie.’)

  But it’s not an end because I’m here with him, I’m going to his home, I’m going to meet his wife. I’m going to live with them.

  The end was for Mam.

  I want to cry then but I bite my lip, suck in my tears. I don’t want my new Dad to think I’m not grown-up.

  Anyway he comes to the table and lights a cigarette, while the woman behind the counter furiously beckons me to her.

  She snaps, ‘It’s no waitress service here; I’ve got other folk to see to. Yer’ll take yer boyfriend his tea.’

  To tell the truth, I’m a wee bit flattered that she thinks someone as handsome as that could be my boyfriend. But that doesn’t stop me saying that the tea’s too strong and could she give me some more milk?

  She says it’s how it is and I say that when the farmer comes to milk her later, he should give her tit an extra squeeze.

  She calls me a cheeky madam and I call her a stupid cow and go back to Dad. When we leave, I can feel her eyes boring into my back and I stretch my hand behind me and give her the V’s-up.

  So Dad and I take the road to Glasgow, to a stepmother I never knew existed.

  To a life I never knew was waiting.

  A life with Canny and Davina in a nice house in the better part of town.

  Dad calls her Diva and she calls him Canny. ‘Like he’s bright or something,’ she laughs, but the smile doesn’t quite reach the dark eyes of this slim, black-haired woman.

  We’re sitting in the kitchen and she’s made us a plate of ham sandwiches and opened a box of crisps. This room is clean and tidy; no cobwebs in the corners, no pots in the sink, no shoes in the doorway. But it’s a warm, comfortable cleanness; not the Spartan coldness of the Home.

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother, Maria,’ Diva says.

  I’m sorry too but I don’t say that, I just mutter a thank you. Then Dad says he’ll show me my room and it smells of fresh paint and wallpaper paste.

  ‘I had a week to smarten it up,’ he says, ‘after I heard.’

  He turns me to him, puts his arms around me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘Sorry for all the years.’

  He’s holding me so lovingly, so close, that I can taste the smell of him. He strokes my hair and tells me again that I’m the image of my mother. Then he says, ‘Get yerself a good night’s sleep, Marie,’ and he gently releases me.

  ‘Dad,’ I say, and I savour the word. ‘Dad?’ But he puts his finger to his lips and says, ‘Tomorrow, Marie. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

  Before I go to sleep, I do what I always do. I go to the window to look at the street outside. There’s a new window, a new scene, a new life, and as I’m watching I’m thinking of all the times I was on my own, all the times when Mam was away. All the times my face was pressed to the cold glass.

  I’m watching the street for a big American car, and a flash Yank who’ll buy me the tallest Knickerbocker Glory in the world. I’m watching and waiting and when he comes he just drives by without even a glance up at me.

  I’m not his anymore.

  I pour myself another dram, top it up with tap water, and see myself in that new, clean room all those years ago, warm in my new bed, flattered by Dad’s attention, unsure of Diva, wondering if she’ll become the wicked stepmother; she with her black hair and black eyes. But most of all that first night, I’m missing Mam. So I have a few tears to myself and ask that faraway God to let her into Heaven. Because she wasn’t that bad, was she?

  Then I sleep and not a single dream disturbs me.

  But tonight, here in this southern town, I’m going to relive it all again: this bitter-sweet story of unbearable love. There’s just me, Robert the Bruce, and the best part of a bottle of Bells to hear the song being played through once more.

  As I’m listening, remembering, I’m going to be packing my case and tomorrow morning I’ll be standing at the station for the eight o’clock train to the north.

  And Robert the Bruce will be in a box outside the Cat Rescue.

  Dad and Diva run a nightclub and, after a week, I go to work with them. The club is a shuttered-up building in an alley just off Sachaihall Street. There’s broken glass on the cobbles, blood on the wall and a padlocked grill over the door.

  Dad says, ‘It can get a bit rough sometimes.’

  Inside there’s a small dance-floor lit by two square skylights, a tiny bar, a seating area with a dozen tables. Diva and I mop the floor while Dad stocks the bar with beers from the cellar. We’re working together like a family, like we all belong together. A record player is wired up to corner speakers and Diva sings along to Ruby Murray, ‘Softly softly turn the key and open up my heart’, as we mop and rinse, clean up the spilt beer and the dog ends. She has her hair tied back in a headscarf, like a gypsy. She’s dark and slim and I’m blonde and curvy; least I think I am. We must look complete opposites: chalk and cheese, I suppose.

  Dad laughs, calls us his ‘Bonny Lassies’ and reckons that we should be able to pull the punters in.

  ‘Of course, when you’re a bit older, Marie.’

  Diva, warning, says, ‘A lot older, Canny.’

  Later, when she’s gone to the warehouse, I’m polishing glasses with Dad and, because it’s just me and him, I ask the question because now I’m confident enough; I know him enough and we never had our morning-after chat.

  So I say, ‘Why did you never come to see me?’

  He shuffles glasses onto the shelf, looks away from me.

  ‘Dad?’ I’m still savouring that word and it takes the bite out of the question.

  ‘Dad?’ I say much more gently, squeezing myself in front of him, holding his eyes, making an answer unavoidable.

  ‘Marie,’ he says, ‘I didn’t even know until I came back from the war.’

  What he didn’t know was that the girl he left behind with a bellyful of white mice was pregnant.

  He puts his hands on my shoulders, holds me away to look at my face. He says, ‘She was lovely, just like you, Marie.’

  Then he kisses me softly on my cheek and slowly draws his lips down to mine, and I’m so thrilled.

  So thrilled.

  You know what, I can still taste the beauty of that first proper kiss across all these years; I can still put myself into that dim club on that hot breathless Glasgow alleyway. I can still be fifteen years old and tell Robert the Bruce to close his ears, not to listen to this tale, but he lies in my lap and cocks his ears every time I speak.

  I call him a dozy little moggie and he nudges my hand and purrs. I’m going to miss my little friend when I leave. When I’m gone.

  Anyway, now I’m going take another mouthful of Bells, close my eyes and become young again.

  Young and fiery and bored out of my skull.

  Dad and Diva are at the club and I’m sitting in the lounge. It’s Saturday night and they won’t be home until the early hours. Talk about fed-up. I’ve taken a sip of spirit from every bottle in the cabinet and I’m restless for excitement; I want a bit of life and it’s barely nine o’clock. The windows are open and I’ve pulled the curtains back, but it’s still hot, sticky hot, in this room. All day the city sun has been blazing down and I’m missing the cool sea breeze of Dundee around my ears, the familiar streets, the café where we’d all meet up. I’m missing people like me: the waifs and strays of broken marriages, broken homes. Young people. Wild people. Orphan people. My people.

  So I loll on the settee, pull my knees up to my ears, hum along to Radio Luxemburg, light up another cigarette and realise that, in a strange way, I’m homesick.

  But I’ve also got a yearning in me; I want to be held in that way, he
ld close and feeling the whispering of warm breath on my body.

  And how long has that been?

  You know, I’ve hardly been out on my own; I go shopping with Diva, work with Dad and Diva; I just want to be able to stretch my wings, explore this town. But Dad… well, he keeps an eye on me.

  ‘There’s bad folk here,’ he says, ‘and you’re an attractive girl.’

  Diva’s not in the room, so mouthy, restless me snaps, ‘What, like Mam?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says quietly, ‘like your Mam.’

  Instantly I wish I hadn’t snapped like that, but that’s me. Big boobs, big arse, even bigger mouth.

  A quietness sits between us and I can’t stand the silence so I perch on the arm of his chair, put my arm across his shoulders, around his neck. He reaches for my hand, holds it gently. Then there’s this feeling of such closeness, of such sweetness that I want to cry. A sob catches in my throat.

  ‘Marie,’ he says, and I slide onto his lap.

  We just hold each other as my tears trickle down my face, spot the front of his shirt.

  And I don’t know how long we’re like that, how long I’m lost in this place where I really shouldn’t be. It’s only when Diva says, ‘Tea’s ready,’ that this spell is torn.

  She’s standing in the doorway and she’s not smiling; she’s fixing me with her hard, dark eyes.

  ‘Shepherds’ pie, Marie,’ she says. ‘I hope you like it.’

  And she’s not taken her eyes out of mine.

  But anyway, this night, this hot sticky night with thunder rumbling in the distance, I can’t bear a moment more indoors. I close the windows, leave the door on the latch, and I’m out onto the street in my bright summer dress. On my arm is Diva’s white handbag and on my feet are her white, tight shoes. They make me four inches higher and I reckon I must look the bee’s knees, clipping along the pavement and pulling on a cigarette.

  In this part of town the pubs spill out into the road and wolf whistles feed my ego. Maybe I do swing my hips just that little bit more, tighten my stomach, breathe in deeper, hold it longer. I know I seem older than I am, I know that I’m well-developed, and my long blonde hair draws the stares, the comments of the lads.