The Low Road

by A. D. Scott

  “It left an hour ago.” She looked at him and grinned. “Don’t worry, we’ll find somewhere to stay. I’ll tell them you’re my uncle to save your reputation.”

  Again he found himself discombobulated by her forget-me-not-blue eyes and could think of no quick or witty reply.

  It took much asking before they found a place to stay. No. Nae chance. You’re kidding? These were the polite answers to their pleading for a room. It was the stares and the frank looks implying dirty auld man that McAllister hated most.

  Eventually, at the unfashionable end of town, up a narrow lane that smelled of a late-night city alleyway, in a house that was hidden behind another, taller, more respectable boardinghouse, a man wearing a string vest answered the door.

  With a cigarette dangling off his bottom lip, he said, “Youse can have the attic for five pounds.”

  “Five pounds?” McAllister was outraged.

  “We’ll take it.” Then she nudged McAllister. “Pay the man.”

  He was about to snap at her, You pay, and she saw it. “It’s all on expenses,” she said, but as he was still annoyed while he counted out the change, she said, with the landlord listening in, “Oh, I get it, you don’t want to put in a claim in case some nosy parker in accounts starts wondering why we’re sharing a room and spreads the gossip.”

  “Right,” was all he replied. But that wasn’t why he was annoyed. She was a rich girl; he knew how they behaved around money, always expecting someone else, someone as rich as herself, to pick up the bill. It was only in his twenties that he discovered the rich never paid cash; all bills, accounts from the butcher, the baker, the dressmaker, the department store, came in the mail, to be paid by a retainer. And in spite of her ability to change her accent, drink with her colleagues, and mix with the hoi polloi, she was still a rich girl. Still part of the Scottish aristocracy.

  The entrance to the room in the eaves was off an outside flight of stairs, ending on a wide wooden landing, which McAllister suspected was unsafe. They found it was indeed an attic, the window a skylight, and the only other source of light a single bulb dangling from a long frayed chord. Behind them the cliff rose not two feet from the building’s back wall. At the top, about fifteen feet higher than the rooftop, it gave way to a rocky ledge. Exposed tree roots clung to the damp rock formation, with ferns growing out of crevices. A smell of cave or cellar or mausoleum completed the sense that this was not a place to be in winter; even the brightness of high summer never touched this rock face.

  “Leave the door open,” Mary said. “It’s warm enough.”

  There was one bed, single, with metal ends similar to a hospital bed. There was a sink. The tap dripped and had probably dripped for years, if the long rust-colored stain was any indication. There was a chair, large, leather, rounded arms, the bottom sagging, with a piece of fabric that looked like a horse blanket thrown across the back.

  “You take the bed. I’m tiny. You’re tall. And I can sleep anywhere, anytime,” Mary said, flinging her bag on the chair. “Unless you want to share.” Even in the dim light she could see his terror. She laughed. “I’ll just think of you as one of my father’s old pals.”

  He tried to not look offended but was taken aback.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean . . . I’ll think of you as my boss, and you know what they say about ‘on your own doorstep.’ ” She took his cigarette from him, took a puff, then gave it back. “My father’s pals, some of them were a right randy bunch. Oh so polite and respectable but leching at me, checking out how my breasts were developing. One man, a major, suggested I sit on his knee. I was all of sixteen, and he was visiting to pay his respects to my mother, who’d only heard a month previously that my father did not survive Hellfire Pass on the Burma railways.”

  She pulled off the scarf, shook out her hair, scratched her scalp with both hands, then twisted her head and stretched her neck, enjoying the release. She kicked off her shoes, then settled into the chair, turning this way and that to get comfortable.

  McAllister was reminded of his soon-to-be-stepdaughter Jean’s cat. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Mary started purring.

  He hung up his jacket and sat on the edge of the bed. It creaked. He took off his shoes. He had seldom felt so uncomfortable.

  “Sandy Marshall says you’re to be married soon. Tell me about your fiancée.” Whether Mary said this because she was interested, or to distance them, he couldn’t tell. But he began, “Joanne.”

  He swung his legs up and rested his back against the metal bed end. Then leaning forward, he pulled the pillow behind him. It was still horrendously uncomfortable; the smell of mildew didn’t help. “Joanne worked—works—at the Gazette; she was there when I started as the new editor. Nearly three months ago she was hit on the head by a madwoman and kept prisoner for two and a half days and almost didn’t make it.”

  “Aye, but she did make it. That’s what counts.”

  “Yes. She did.” McAllister considered Mary’s comment. And was glad to be reminded. He had been dwelling on what-ifs for too long: What if she doesn’t recover? What if she’s brain-damaged? What if I can’t live with a ready-made family? What if I can’t live in a small town any longer? What if? What if?

  “So what’s she like?”

  “She’s kind. She’s beautiful. She laughs a lot. She makes me a better person.”

  “That’s a very sound basis for a marriage.” Mary had pulled the blanket over her knees. The distance between the chair and the bed was not far enough for McAllister, and he was glad to be reminded of Joanne. Certainly he had occasional lustful thoughts towards Mary. But that was not it. It was her youth. Her intelligence. And, he admitted to himself, he was jealous; she had a future, he had a past.

  “And you? Any plans for marriage?” He didn’t know why he asked this. He knew women like Mary, knew them far better than a woman like Joanne.

  “You disappoint me, McAllister. I wouldn’t have taken you for one of those rare men who doesn’t believe a woman has to have a husband—and children—to be complete.”

  “I’m not.” But this sounded lame even to himself. “You should move to Paris. There are intellectuals there, not only women, who would agree with you.”

  “Maybe I will,” Mary replied. “When I’m made a foreign correspondent for the Manchester Guardian I will do just that.”

  She let out a huge yawn. “Night-night, McAllister. Sleep tight.”

  It was that last phrase that did it. Joanne says that, he thought. Night-night, sleep tight. Sleep tight he did not. He lay awake. He dozed. He listened to her breath. He chastised himself for being an idiot—longing for what he couldn’t have. His youth.

  TEN

  McAllister awoke to the dawn chorus and a cockerel crowing. His knees hurt, his thighs ached, mostly from the bicycle trip, but also from the bed that sagged in the middle and was too short, with the horsehair coming through the mattress in numerous patches.

  The armchair was empty, the blanket discarded on the floor. After a wash in the bathroom out the back he felt better but, unable to shave, he saw himself in the cracked mirror looking like a crook in an Ealing Studios black-and-white crime film. When he came back he found Mary sitting outside on the wooden landing, leaning against the brick wall in a narrow shaft of sunshine.

  “Tea”—she handed him a mug—“and rolls straight from the oven.” She passed over a paper bag with two floury soft white buns. He sat on a step below her. “The baker wasn’t open, but I went to the back door and used my feminine charm. They’re buttered, but no bacon.”

  It was not yet six o’clock when, breakfast finished, they walked to the harbor. As yet there were no holidaymakers, but there was plenty of activity amongst the small fishing boats, and the wooden cobles with local men preparing lobster pots to lay along the rocky shoreline at the back of this and neighboring islands.

  “Grand day,” said one man, his skin weather-worn to the color of a native of India.

  “It is that.” Ma
ry smiled back. She took a seat on a nearby bollard, watching as he mended his nets, the wooden shuttle wound with thin twine moving fast and sure along the tear.

  McAllister leant on the seawall, leaving the conversation to her.

  “I’m not going to spin you a line,” she started. “I’m a journalist, and him over there”—she jerked her head in the direction of McAllister—“he’s a colleague. We’re looking for a man who’s on the run from some pretty nasty Glasgow folk. This man’s a Highlander, of the Gaeltacht, and bound to be noticed in a wee place like this. So we’re wondering where he might hide out.”

  “There’s some pretty rough folk in Glasgow,” the fisherman agreed. “Not that I’ve been there, mind. No. You’ll no’ catch me in thon city.” He tied off a piece of twine and cut it with a short deadly-looking blade, then started on the next tear in the net. “I’ve been to Buenos Aires, mind. Now that’s a grand place. Stopped off there on the way back when we wiz at South Georgia for the whaling. I was the only one o’ the crew who wasn’t a Highlander, or an Islander. Mostly from Lewis and Harris the whaling boys, so I have a bit o’ the Gaelic.”

  Mary knew to wait. Say nothing except an “aye” or “really?” and nod often.

  McAllister offered a cigarette, which was accepted, his only contribution to the exchange.

  Through a stream of smoke the fisherman kept working, then said, “There’s no one much here the now. They’ll come back from the fishing around mid-morning, around eleven, but I’ll see what I can find out.” He looked at Mary. “This Highlander, he’s in trouble you say?”

  “Big trouble.”

  The fisherman finished mending and began to pack up his tools into a folding layered wooden toolbox, with metal handles. “See you later.”

  Mary and McAllister said thanks and made their way to the promenade, Mary saying, “I hope to God the tearoom is open, I’m starving.”

  It was. The waiter was the same lad. His vocabulary hadn’t improved, and the breakfast was excellent.

  It felt like Sunday morning, which it was. From the Cathedral of the Isles, the smallest cathedral in Europe, according to the locals, a bell tolled. Neither Mary nor McAllister felt like moving, and they enjoyed an hour of calm. More tea. More cigarettes. Little conversation. But lots of people watching.

  Families, laden with children, buckets and spades, tartan rugs, and wearing silly hats, were beginning to make their way to the sandy part of the seafront. A six-man Salvation Army band marched past, the trombone player marking out the beat with an oom-pah, oom-pah that McAllister always found comical. They were heading for a prime spot on the grassy strip above the sand to hold the Beachside Sunday school.

  McAllister remembered them from his childhood holidays; “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” was a song he could never forget.

  From the opposite direction, in procession, towards the small hut where they kept deck chairs for hire, came a man in a hat that from a distance seemed to match the hat on the donkey. He was leading a string of ponies and donkeys to the part of the beach with packed hard sand, where they would ply their trade for the rest of the day. With him was the blind man, but no sign of the woman.

  McAllister’s prayer was that the donkey would join in with the band. It was one of his favorite memories of another Sunday morning decades ago.

  His mother and father were on deck chairs. He and his wee brother were playing in the sand. The Salvation Army band started up. One of the donkeys started to bray. His mother was shushing him and his brother. “Don’t laugh,” she was saying. But her hired deck chair was shaking.

  The band kept playing. The donkey kept braying. His dad was laughing and eventually had to take the hankie, knotted at the four corners, off his head to wipe away the tears. It was the best holiday McAllister could remember. I must remind Mother, he thought.

  “Come on, McAllister, time to go.” Mary took his stillness, from being caught in the memories of that holiday, as reluctance. “You’re here to find your pal. I’m here for a story. How else will we get our expenses past the editor?”

  He had no intention of claiming expenses for a single room in a boardinghouse in Millport with Mary Ballantyne as his roommate. Not if he ever wanted to live down the teasing from Sandy Marshall.

  Mary took her shoes off and began walking amongst the people on the sand, stopping now and then to ask questions. McAllister doubted she would find out anything useful. The whole trip was feeling like a waste of time. The sound of children singing to the beat of a tambourine drifted over him. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so . . .”

  The squawk of seagulls as they fought for the crusts from the egg sandwiches that a wee lassie near him was throwing up in the air, was another evocative seaside sound reminding him of childhood.

  He heard shouts. Then a scream. A donkey ran towards the line of sunbathers in deck chairs, then he saw Mary running towards the hut and the ponies.

  Two men, with what looked like clubs raised above their heads, were hitting out at the ponies. No, McAllister saw, they’re attacking the man in charge of the pony ride. He ran to help.

  A pony broke loose, cantered over the grass, then galloped down the street. A third pony was bucking and kicking, reins loose, saddle askew. Its hind legs caught one of the men, who fell down in a ball, clutching himself and screaming like the women on the beach.

  McAllister almost cheered. That kick was right in the family jewels.

  More screams. And yells. The blind man was waving his stick in the air but keeping out of the fray, sheltering in the entrance to the hut.

  Mary had grabbed hold of the bridle of a bucking pony. She was talking to it, trying to calm it down. The man in charge was struggling with another pony, trying to keep it between himself and the second gangster, who was trying to dodge between the terrified animals. His right hand held high, he didn’t care that the razor was glinting in the sun. He was oblivious to all the onlookers and about to slash down and across the face of Jimmy McPhee, when McAllister yelled, “Watch out!”

  A whistle blew; it was the woman in charge of the Sunday school. Everyone stopped, except the animals. But only for a moment. When no policeman appeared, the fight resumed.

  Mary screamed a banshee wail and slapped a pony on the rump. She swung her satchel at its companion, shouting, “Shoo, shoo, get away with you.” She hadn’t realized they were tied together. Kicking and baring their teeth, eyes flaring, they pulled one way, then another, tangling the reins and stirring up the sand.

  The second assailant became caught up between them in the tangle of reins and slipped. He fell, rolled into a ball, hands over his head to protect himself from flailing hooves.

  Mary grabbed Jimmy’s sleeve. “Jimmy?”

  “Aye?” He was too surprised to ask more. But he had seen McAllister.

  “I’m with McAllister. Come on! Run!”

  They ran. And as they ran past a man with a Brownie camera pointed at the mêlée, she shouted, “Hey, mister! Get those pictures to the Herald, we’ll pay for them.”

  They ran past the band, now playing a loud ferocious oom-pah-pah, hoping to keep the children distracted, and the woman with the tambourine kept banging away, yelling, “Jesus loves me, this I know . . .” The rest of the hymn was inaudible, as the distressed donkey kept running around in a circle, braying loudly and long, drowning out all but the tuba.

  McAllister watched Mary and Jimmy running towards the harbor, dodging in and out of the startled pedestrians. He lost sight of them behind the seawall.

  A trio of men, locals by the look of them, advanced on McAllister, all in a line. They called out to the blind man, “Aa’ right, Jock?”

  The blind man reached a hand out for McAllister’s face. McAllister obliged. The man quickly patted it, and said, “He’s wi’ me.”

  The local men moved towards the fellow lying in a ball, hands over his crutch, rocking and moaning, “Mary, mother of God, help me, help me.” The other fellow had vanished.r />
  “Get up, ye bastard,” a man in waterproof trousers and braces said. But the injured fellow couldn’t stand. Not yet.

  “Mrs. Cruickshank’s tearoom would be best,” the old man with the white stick said to McAllister.

  “Aye,” he agreed.

  They made their way across the esplanade, McAllister holding his companion’s elbow to guide him through the milling, chattering, excited crowd, leaving the injured man and the discarded weapons—razors and clubs—to the locals.

  In the tearoom, McAllister and his companion sat in a window table.

  “A pot of tea, please, Robert,” the blind man called out.

  “Coming up,” the boy waiter replied.

  McAllister was watching the beach over the lace half-curtain. A group of men were trying to untangle the ponies. Others were righting the deck chairs. Children, escaped from Sunday school, were darting around like flies in the aftermath of a battle. As the adrenaline drained, McAllister relaxed. Then he gave a half-smile. A small lobster boat was heading out to sea. Silhouetted against the silver horizon, he could make out three figures, perhaps two men and a child. Two men and Mary, he decided.

  “Looks like Jimmy got away,” McAllister said.

  “Good,” his companion replied.

  “John McAllister,” he said, wondering as he introduced himself what the protocol was. Did you lean over and take the man’s hand to shake it, or wait? He waited.

  “Jock McBride.” The man held out his hand.

  McAllister shook it. “Not Wee Jockie McBride?” This was a legendary name amongst boxing aficionados.

  “The same.”

  Now it started to make sense. Of course Jimmy would hide out with friends from his time in Glasgow, and Wee Jockie was another of those boxing stars of the thirties—this time from the badlands of Govan.

  “After I was injured I ended up here wi’ ma daughter. A right miserable cratur she is, too, but I’ve nowhere else to go.” He was looking around for his tea, which was slow in coming. He didn’t see McAllister watching him but guessed. “I can see a wee bittie. Movement, shadows . . .”