She’d missed two periods by then. She reckoned she must be ten weeks gone or more. It wasn’t the rape, it was before that. Another thing to face up to. Robin said, ‘What do you want to do? Whatever you want, I’ll help you through with it.’ She said, ‘I can’t ask you to do that.’ He said, ‘You’re not asking me, I’m just saying.’ And then, at last, she was able to tell him what had happened. Everything that had happened. Everything. He listened and watched, and they talked through the possibility of involving the police, and the time that had elapsed, and the absence of witnesses, and the almost nil chances of a successful prosecution. ‘Why am I such a coward?’ she said. ‘We can’t leave a man like that out on the loose. Who’s he hurting now?’ Robin said, ‘Let me talk to someone.’ ‘Who?’ she wanted to know. ‘I know a guy in the police.’ ‘No.’ ‘I promise I won’t tell him who you are. Let me ask him about Lennie.’ And at that it came to her like the sound of a bell across still water: she knew in that instant, without a flicker of doubt, after what he had done to her, after the collapse of her life, after the way she’d had to throw herself on the mercy of another man, after all of that she knew with an astonishing certainty what she wanted, and it was the last thing, the last thing …
‘I’m going to keep the baby,’ she said.
Robin looked at her. ‘You are?’
‘Aye. I’m not killing it for that bastard.’
‘Okay,’ Robin said. ‘Then that’s what we’ll do.’
She almost resented the way he said we, as if they were in it together. Then she didn’t resent it at all.
‘I know it sounds mad,’ she said. ‘I mean, why would I? I can’t explain it.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘Either way, you don’t have to justify yourself.’
She stared at him. She saw him clearly, as if for the first time. Robin Piggott.
‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘Why are you so kind to me?’
He smiled. ‘It’s not kindness,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it. It’s not me, it’s you. I’ll do anything for you.’
§
‘I talked to my policeman friend,’ Robin said, a week or so later. ‘I told him about something that happened to a woman I know, a month ago. He listened very carefully. He shook his head a lot. He thought the procurator fiscal wouldn’t even think it worth preparing a case. So I told him she knew the guy who did it to her was into other bad stuff and maybe they could get him for something else. I gave him Lennie’s name. It’s another force’s area, but he said he’d ask around.’
‘And?’
‘The police in Drumkirk have Charlie Lennie on their wish-list. They’d love to pin something on him. But he’s clever. Clever and scary. There are never any witnesses to anything he does. Or none that are prepared to stand up in court.’
‘What about what happened to me?’
‘It’s what we thought, Ellen. It’s too late and even if it got to court you’d only be a witness. Your word against his. “Why did you take so long to report it? Why did you throw out your clothes, any evidence?” The bruises are gone. No jury would convict him.’
‘That’s it?’
She felt the sense of failure welling up again. But something else too. She was going to have the baby. Lennie didn’t even know it existed. She had something of his and she was keeping it. It was his but it wasn’t his, it never would be. She was going to be strong again.
‘He’ll get what’s coming to him,’ Robin said. ‘I know he will, sooner or later.’
‘Sooner,’ she said, ‘would be my preference.’
§
Out of the smoking ruins that were her self-respect, her emotions and her intellect, a strange image began to emerge. She saw herself with Charlie, she saw herself with Robin, she saw herself alone on a dark stage, rehearsing a play, an actress delivering lines. In the stalls a director was shouting at her. She hadn’t written the part but she’d learned the lines and now the director wanted to change her way of saying them. The role she was playing was Lady Macbeth. Then it wasn’t her in the role, it was another woman. Distance, perspective. Where was Macbeth? What was Lady Macbeth without Macbeth? What was she with him? Amazon, murderess, temptress, manipulator, schemer, victim, bully, coward, demented sleepwalker? A man had written the lines but the character had come alive, moved beyond the playwright’s grasp and beyond the lines he’d made for her, and now another man was trying to impose his will on her. On the character, on the actress. Suppose she, Ellen, understood all this, understood the politics of the theatre, of the play, of the interaction between the characters and between the players? Suppose she saw this as clearly as anything, and yet she bowed to the director’s will, played Lady Macbeth not by instinct, but in obedience? A strong woman trapped by the play she was in. What would that mean? Who would be to blame? And how many more Lady Macbeths were out there?
She began to sketch out a plan of something, a stage-set for a play she wanted to direct, not perform in.
§
She still woke in the night sometimes, heart racing, and reached out for Robin, and he was always there. ‘You’re all right,’ he’d say. As if he’d been waiting for it. She’d get up to check Kirsty, and when she came back Robin would be asleep again and it would be almost as if nothing had ever happened. But it had. Everything had happened. Kirsty was proof.
§
She thought, there’ll come a day when I seek out Denny again. She’d checked with her mother. What was the story about Denny? Mary said he’d been mixed up with some lunatic political group. They’d been trying to get weapons for a nationalist rebellion or something. Guns and raising money would have appealed to Denny, but Ellen couldn’t imagine him being interested in politics. Anyway, the scheme had been smashed and the gang members had gone to jail. But Denny was out again in a matter of months. How come? Mary didn’t know. Good behaviour? Maybe he’d done a deal. Anyway, he dodged away between Borlanslogie and Drumkirk, and Mary reckoned he was constitutionally incapable of staying out of trouble.
‘Why are you so interested in Denny Hogg?’
‘I just wondered.’
‘Stay awa frae him. He’s bad news.’
‘Don’t worry, I will.’
She didn’t want anything to do with Denny, not for a long while. But one day she’d like to clear a few things up with him.
Maybe there’d be a day when she felt ready to clear a few things up with Charlie Lennie, but she doubted it.
§
Robin said, ‘If we’re going to be honest, with Kirsty I mean, then we’ll have to have an answer ready for her one day. You’ll have to have an answer for her. For when she says, well, if Robin’s not my dad, who is?’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I will.’ On the birth certificate she had left the space for the father’s name blank, as she was entitled to do.
‘And what will it be?’
‘It’ll have to be the truth,’ she said. ‘And when she knows and understands it, she’ll have to decide what to do about it.’
After a silence she added, ‘That day fills me with dread. To have to tell her whose child she is. But I won’t lie to her. Oh fuck, Robin. Did I do wrong, bringing her into the world?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You didn’t, and you know you didn’t. Look at her. She’s beautiful. Your beautiful daughter. And she’ll grow up with us, here, so she’ll only ever know love. She’ll be all right. She’ll do the right thing.’
The way he said it, she just about believed him.
Times came when you almost cracked under the weight of the questions. In the night you’d wake in the ruins of an old kirkyard, among the dead and the ghosts and the crying of hoolets, and there was the ink sky and stars in their hundreds above you and the questions would flood in, bombarding you like tiny meteorites. Who were you and what the hell were you doing and what had you done and why had you done it? And there were no answers so the questions kept piling up, bearing down. You’d get up because you couldn’t breathe under them, yo
u’d run stumbling on tree roots, whipped by branches, setting off deer in the shadows. These were desperate hours when you felt utterly alone, and then dawn would slowly diminish the darkness and the blind running panic and again you’d be alone, but now calm and complete. To be apart, to be separate, was to be complete. It was the reason you were how you were. The estranged figures of the past faded in the light.
Times too when you became aware of new people around you as you travelled. You noticed them first on your brief sojourns in the cities. In Edinburgh, bus drivers in turbans. In Glasgow, a group of quiet, brown, wary-looking men drinking tea outside a southside warehouse. Like you they kept themselves apart, or perhaps were kept apart. You passed corner shops, crammed with goods inside and with racks overflowing with fruit and veg outside the door, the women and men who ran them stoically sacrificing their days and nights to the future. Restaurants and takeaways with exotic, unchallenging names – the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall – appeared on the streets of unimpressed small towns. You walked past their steamy windows and inhaled their spicy announcements: here we are. Clusters of black-haired boys and their giggling sisters ran past you to or from schools. You walked on. Things fall into place. Once we were all strangers. Before these folk there were Pakistani pedlars speaking Gaelic to their island customers. Before them were Poles and Italians, before them Irish, before them Jews, before them English, French, Danes, Scots. The swart wreckage of Spanish warships floated in the blood of Lewis, the salt-sprayed vision of Vikings was in the eyes of Angus farmers. ‘My ladye with the mekle lippis, that landet furth of the last schippis.’ Once were Irish and Picts and Egyptians and Britons and slaves and cave-dwellers and hunters of mammoths and gatherers of clams and berries and once they were not here and once they will not be here again. Only the land will remain. People dug it and cut it and burned it and built on it but the land remained. ‘It is we who must reconcile ourselves to the stones, not the stones to us.’ You picked up the stones and carried them for a while, then you released them. You yourself were released. You were a skeleton walking out of the jungle, you were a man, you were alive, you were dead, you were bones crumbling into the earth. You were a shadow on the land, someone else’s glimpse, their fading memory, then nothing.
§
There was a moment of clarity. You couldn’t remember when or where but you remembered the moment. A man said, What’s your name? A man who was giving you work, or shoes, or a mug of tea. Of course folk asked for your name. Of course you gave it. Jack. That was all they needed. That was all you gave them. But this time the man said, That’s my name too. Jack what?
And it came out of you. MacLaren. Jack MacLaren. You did not say it. It came out of you.
It was a miracle. MacLaren was not dead. He was home, here, now.
It crushed down on you, that miracle. It was a burden. Then it wasn’t. You saw that you could save him. You couldn’t save the others, they were dead. But you could save Jack MacLaren. That was his name. You were both Jack, like the man who asked the question.
He was home. That was all. You never had to say his name again.
Jack said, Fancy a stroll to India? It was a joke. You all laughed, to show it was a joke. But when you stopped laughing you fancied it. He saw that and together you made your plans. Together you and he went, out into the jungle night. You had a week. Then Jack got sick. He said to leave him but you couldn’t leave him. You took him to a village. That was where they found you. They brought you both back but only one of you was still alive.
Jack was too weak. He shouldn’t have gone. He was never going to make it.
You were going to die. That was why they brought you back. Jack was already dead but they brought you back to kill you. To make an example of you. All the other men on parade, three sides of a square. You and Jack in the middle, in the blaze of the midday sun. You were kneeling, hands bound behind your back, blindfolded, head bowed, neck to the sun. Jack lay beside you, face down. You could just about touch him if you dared. You did not dare. He was dead. You were going to die.
Hours, you lost count of them, hours passed. The sun was a weight on your neck. Your mind was black with pain and fear. You were going to die.
The officer screamed at you. He screamed at the men all around you. This is what happens if you try to escape. You will be brought back. This is what will happen.
You heard the sword leave the scabbard. You felt the blade rest on the back of your neck. You felt blood trickle from where it rested. Then the sword lifted. You were about to die. Your head. You heard the sword in the air. You screamed. You heard the blade take off your head. Then you heard nothing.
You were in a bamboo cage. There was no room to turn, no room to stretch. You could just about crouch, just about curl. They must have folded you smaller than yourself to get you in. There was no room to be a man.
You were in there a long time. You never knew how long. When you came out you weren’t who you had been. You weren’t Jack Gordon. Jack Gordon was away. You were someone else. You didn’t tell them. You didn’t tell anyone.
The sword cut off dead Jack’s head but you thought it was yours it severed. They put the head on a stake for all to see. It was a way of saying what would happen next time. They would do it to you next time. They would do it to anyone.
The fact that you were away. You kept it to yourself.
Now – ever since the man said Jack what? – you knew. Now you understood why you left. You left because you could save Jack. You could do nothing for the others, but you could save Jack.
You told ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ to the hoolets. It was all you could do for Geordie. There was nothing you could do for Sim.
You were never going back. You were free. You were never going back in the cage.
There was no room to be a man.
You told ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ to the hoolets, and they cried back. You knew the meaning of their cries.
You knew the meaning of dogs barking.
You knew the meaning of rain, of wind.
You knew the meaning of stones.
You knew.
You knew.
You knew.
PART FIVE
Questions of Loyalties
Fate said, I’ll bloody show ye. But no, Don didn’t believe in fate, God or any of that. He believed in humanity, and that humans had the power and the will to change themselves and the world, but not necessarily for the good, and that was where socialism came in, the only way forward was socialism and democracy, and in Britain that meant Labour, the only party committed to those ideals but rooted and realistic enough to be able to deliver them, or some measure of them. Everything else was a diversion, every other political party either reactionary and anti-progressive, or oppressive and destructive. The far left was insane and out of touch, the right was an offence to ordinary people’s dignity. But the Labour Party was in trouble, it had run out of steam, exhausted itself trying to manage an ailing economy in an unforgiving world. Suddenly it looked old: Jim Callaghan looked old, Michael Foot looked old, even Denis Healey – who was only three years older than Don and with whom he’d always felt an affinity because of their shared war experience in North Africa and Italy – looked jaded. They were put out to pasture and the younger, leaner, bolder Tories under Margaret Thatcher moved in. The old compromises were crumbling. Soon they would be gone altogether. Nothing must stand against the new religion of the market. Public spending must be slashed, wages screwed down, the money supply ruthlessly controlled, inflation battered into submission. If the poor, the sick and the weak suffered in the bygoing, this was regrettable, but it was the poor, sick, weak British economy that needed emergency treatment and without it the future would be grim for everyone. If businesses closed and unemployment rose, it showed that the medicine was working. Don, who had once despised what they called one-nation Toryism, a kind of gentlemanly appreciation that it was counter-productive to squeeze the workers too hard, now found himself nostalgic for it. Compared with some of
the slavering fanatics barking around the Prime Minister’s heels – compared with Thatcher herself – it almost rated as decent. He detested what he saw on the news every night, the undoing of society. He was appalled by summer riots in Liverpool, London and Bristol, the kind of violence he associated with America, not with England. Labour was breaking up on the rocks, torn apart by ideological warfare. Was he losing touch with his country, or was it losing touch with him? And which country? He remembered Jack Gordon. Scottish Nationalism lay wrecked along with so much else, its proponents arguing amongst themselves. And he thought of Charlie, patrolling the streets of Derry or wherever the hell he was, ready to shoot or be shot at on behalf of Her Britannic Majesty’s government. Forty years since the war and still the fighting continued. And for what, for what?
He spent his weekends and many of his evenings out in the garden, putting his back into something he could still be proud of.
§
Byres Brothers had been laying off workers for two years. Most of the drivers were no longer employees: the firm made them redundant, then later hired new men, self-employed men, as subcontractors. Some of the old drivers set up on their own, buying their own cabs, hiring themselves out to the highest bidder. Even in the repair shop, when a man retired he was replaced – if he was replaced at all – by someone on a short-term contract. And Don’s union was powerless to stop all this happening. The trade unions generally were disunited: they were competing for members and different unions adopted different methods of dealing with changing employment practices. More than half the men at Byres Brothers were no longer in a union, and those that were were split between two. And Byres Brothers wasn’t big enough to get the full attention of senior union officials, who had enough on their plates elsewhere, trying to stop huge job cuts in manufacturing, resisting closures or, more often than not, negotiating thousands of redundancies as plants and businesses all over the country closed their doors.
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