by Denise Mina
Leslie was miserable, the pink tinge to her eyes exacerbated by the rose-tinted glass on her sad-eye shades. ‘Hiya,’ she said, scratching her cheek with her thumbnail and looking as if she might cry.
Leslie was dressed in a pair of pink denim cut-offs and a green running shirt. She rarely drove her motorbike now that they had the van. Maureen was used to seeing her in her leathers all the time and she’d forgotten Leslie’s flair for throwing on horrible clothes and making them look like a daring statement. She had thick black hair, cut short, with a life and will of its own, large dark eyes and the righteous air of a very angry mother taking on the school bullies. She had perfect shoulders, fat-free arms, and radiant skin that made Maureen secretly jealous.
‘I’ve ...I’ve split up with Cammy,’ she said, and sighed at the wheel.
Maureen was finding it hard to keep acting surprised. Leslie and Cammy had split up three times this month alone. ‘Really?’ She tried to think of something to say that she hadn’t already said about it. ‘How’s he taking it?’
Leslie nodded indignantly at the wheel. ‘Well, he knows I’m serious this time, that’s for sure.’
‘Are ye serious this time?’
‘Maureen,’ rebuked Leslie, ‘I’m doing my best here.’
‘I know,’ said Maureen, ‘I know.’
Leslie wrestled the wheel left and pulled out. ‘And I’m not bringing him to Kilty’s brother’s wedding either,’ she said. ‘I’ve told him.’
‘Oh,’ said Maureen, secretly pleased. ‘Have you told Kilty?’
‘No, but I will.’
‘Because it’s about fifty quid a head at Cameron House.’
‘I’ll tell her, I’ll phone her. Anyway, tonight,’ said Leslie, stopping at the lights, ‘we’re sorting his stuff out and he’s giving me the keys back.’
‘God, that serious, is it?’ said Maureen, trying to sound encouraging.
‘That serious. He’s suffocating me, I can’t stand it any more. If I’m in the loo too long he thinks I’m having an affair.’
Maureen didn’t like Cammy and the feeling was mutual. They snipped at each other when they were in company and sat in a chilly, stubborn silence when they were left alone. Cammy was a contrary little shit. He blamed his bullying temper on the oppression of the Irish Catholic working man. Leslie was Protestant and, although not a natural candidate for ancestral guilt, she believed him. Maureen and Liam were Catholic and told her that Cammy’s patter was a load of paranoid rubbish, that their generation were untouched by anti-Catholic prejudice, and sectarianism was nothing more than a football fan’s accessory now. Still, Cammy maintained that history had dealt him a cruel blow. Maureen was sure that Leslie would have finished with him long ago if she had still had her job at the Scottish Women’s Shelters. Being a house manager had given her a focus, a role to play in the good fight, and she was restless and unfulfilled since being sacked. Behind the van the driver of a red truck hooted. ‘Keep your hair on, ya postie bastard,’ said Leslie, and jerked the old van into first gear.
5
Paddy’s
Beyond the designer shops and glass cathedral shopping malls of Glasgow city centre, across a broad and windy car park stood the ancient flea market called Paddy’s. Anything could be bought there, from secondhand underpants to office furniture. Trapped between the river and a high railway viaduct, it made the shoddiest car-boot sale look as orchestrated as Disneyland. The market consisted of a ramshackle series of stalls set up in the dark tunnels under the disused railway line. In good weather hawkers would set up in the uneven alleyway outside, some on trestle tables, some spreading their goods over blankets laid out on the cobbles. It was a lawless place and the decency of the hawkers set the standards. Duty-free fags and cheap drink were okay, as was out-of-date mayonnaise and sectarian regalia. Hard-core pornography had to be kept hidden and, whatever they were selling, the junkie dealers were hedged in at the end of the lane by the river, away from everyone else.
Paddy’s was named in honour of the last major wave of itinerant immigrants to Glasgow and operated as a cultural port of entry with each new group of incomers coming to buy cheap goods or make a small living. As they became known at the market and introduced their own customs and marketing opportunities, gradually, usually grudgingly, they became integrated.
In times past the market had been much bigger but the railway above was disused now and three of the tunnels had been shut down because of galloping damp. The spare ground in front of the lane, where the poorest hawkers gathered, had been clawed back by the council for an extension to the High Court. The council tax had risen and everyone knew that Paddy’s was dying. The council were proposing to lift the cobbles from the lane and sell them to a new development. The flea market was being asset stripped.
Leslie eased the rickety van slowly down the cobbled lane at the back of the market, climbed out and knocked on the big wooden door three times. After a short pause, red-faced Peter, an obese man with a heart condition, swung the door wide, pinning it open. Maureen and Leslie lifted the cardboard boxes of cleaning products from the back of the van and carried them to their stall.
It was just inside the back door, across the tunnel from fat Peter and wee Lenny. Peter sold batteries, crockery and second-hand videotapes. Lenny was a TV repairman who’d been sacked from Radio Rentals on the ground that he was, indeed, radio rental. He took his smelly dog, Elsie Tanner, everywhere with him. Lenny had found Elsie in Ruchill Park, just behind the Co-op, hungry and homeless. She just ran out of a bush at him and he had no choice but to take her home with him. It didn’t trouble Lenny that a hungry dog was unlikely to hang about in a little-used public park when there were bins aplenty fifty feet away. It was obvious to everyone but Lenny that he had stolen someone’s dog.
Maureen set up, arranging the bleach, the squeezy and the dusters on the stall. They hardly ever sold any of the cleaning products: they were just a cover for the duty-free fags – the bleach bottles were getting dusty, a sure giveaway.
Maureen opened a packet of dusters and gave the bottles a wipe, shielding Leslie from view. Leslie opened the cycle bag, took out the sleeves of cigarettes and placed them carefully in the green council wheelie bin that always sat near the back door. If the police found the cigarettes they could deny all knowledge of them: the worst that would happen was that their stock would be confiscated.
The tunnel seemed particularly damp today, contrasting bitterly with the warmth of the sunny lane outside. Leslie went off to park the van. When she came back in she found Maureen wiping down bottles of Toilet Duck and singing along to the cheeky, staccato beat of ‘It’s A Kind Of Magic’. ‘It’s a Home Gran Gotcha.’ Leslie handed over one of the jerseys they kept in the cab for damp days in the tunnel. ‘God,’ said Maureen, realizing she had been singing.
‘I don’t even know I’m doing it.’
Together, they peered accusingly down the tunnel to the tapes stall. The woman standing behind it was a white haired sixty-year-old with gold sovereign rings on every finger. She dressed in trainers and one of the rustling, baggy Kappa tracksuits all the kids were wearing. Giving her age away, she drew brown, single-line arched eyebrows high on her forehead above the frames of her glasses like Joan Crawford. She sold bootlegged tapes of CD albums on a stall financed by her well-to-do son and played tapes on her ghetto-blaster all day long. They were mediocre mainstream ballads and rock anthems, songs the listener didn’t realize they loved until they heard them out of context, without the prejudice of packaging or association. Maureen and Leslie found themselves singing along to Jim Diamond, Queen and the Quo, knowing all the words, feeling uplifted until they realized who it was.
Maureen and Leslie unfolded their little canvas picnic stools and sat, Maureen facing the entrance to the tunnel and Leslie the wheelie bin, watching for robbers. Leslie kept her sad-eye shades on to hide her sad eyes. Maureen gave them a squ
ashed Regal each and took out her chrome oval lighter. The flint jammed and she had to pull the backside off the lighter, unscrew the spring and put the flint back in before she could get a light. The strip-down and rebuild took thirty seconds because she’d done it so often. Leslie kicked her ankle and made a sad face when she looked up. ‘Oh,’ she said pathetically, ‘I think I’d feel a bit better if I had a fried-egg roll.’
Maureen laughed. ‘You go,’ she said. ‘I’m always going.’
‘But I’m having a trauma.’
‘So am I.’
‘What’s your trauma?’
‘My pal’s bossing me around.’
‘That’s not as sad as a relationship failure,’ said Leslie. ‘It could result in a relationship failure,’ said Maureen seriously.
Leslie looked away wistfully. ‘If only someone cared.’
Maureen stood up. ‘All right, but you’re going tomorrow.’
She was walking towards the mouth of the tunnel, checking her pocket for change, when a hand shot out and grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, spinning her round. Home Gran was behind her, peering down her bifocals. Maureen had never seen her so close up before. The puff of white hair had a yellow nicotine smudge at the front and the cross-hatched wrinkles on her cheeks looked like duelling scars. Today she was modelling a beige tracksuit with black trim. ‘You,’ she said and took Maureen’s hand. Surprisingly strong, she swung Maureen between the stalls to behind her tape counter, manoeuvring her by twisting her wrist like a rudder. ‘You’ve got a degree, haven’t ye?’
‘Yeah,’ said Maureen, ‘but it’s only in history of art.’
‘Don’t care about that.’ Home Gran pointed Maureen on to a rickety kitchen stool, gave her a pen and an official looking form. ‘I need this filled out.’ It was a form to start a case in the small-claims court. The agile old woman squatted down to sit on the stall’s cross-bar, five inches off the ground.
‘I haven’t got anything to lean on,’ said Maureen. Home Gran reached underneath the stall and pulled out a rough scrap of hardboard. She had a bandage on her right hand, wrapped tightly around her wrist and her thumb.
Maureen had never really had a conversation with Home Gran but she knew the other stall holders were wary of her. Peter and Lenny had told Leslie that Home Gran was a retired prostitute. Her son had been a scholarship boy at a posh private school. The Parish Mothers had organized a petition against the place going to her boy because she was a street-walker but, to the school’s credit, they kept him on and he went to university and studied management, no less. Maureen had heard of Home Gran walloping light-fingered shoppers across the head with the lid of her change tray. Sometimes she did it to innocent young guys on suspicion, prompting widespread disapproval: no one would come to the market if they thought they might get battered just for looking. But it was a slow day and Maureen had nothing else to do but go outside and dodge the sunshine. ‘Okay, then,’ she said, pulling the lid off the biro. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Ella McGee.’
‘Address?’
‘Fifty-four, flat 12 D, Benny Lynch Court, G1.’ The Gorbals had recently been renamed and rebranded for the third time in a century but the area had yet to lose its heroin-plague and slasher-gang reputation. The high flats were a reminder of a simpler time, when the area was a repository for the most difficult and troubled families in the city. Maureen had heard that the janny’s office was fitted with bullet-proof glass. Ella muttered,‘It’s not like ye think.’
Maureen moved on swiftly. ‘And who’re ye bringing the case against?’
Maureen waited, pen poised, but Ella didn’t answer. She looked up to find Ella with her bandaged hand raised, ready to give a slap. ‘One word to anyone,’ she said, but it sounded as if she was begging.
Maureen shrugged casually. ‘No odds to me,’ she said, and pointed at Ella’s hand, ‘but raise your hand to me again and I’m off.’ She went back to waiting to fill out the form and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Ella’s hand drop to her knee.
‘Okay. It’s my son, Si.’ She waited for a reaction but Maureen kept a straight face.
‘Si McGee,’ said Maureen. Is that his full name?’
‘No,’ said Ella.
‘Well, we should put his full name down.’
‘Simon Alan Egbert McGee.’
‘Egbert, is that a confirmation name?’
‘Aye.’
Maureen hadn’t figured Home Gran for a Pape at all but now she looked at her and saw the heavy gold crucifix at her neck in a slightly less Versace light.
‘Egbert.’ Ella smiled weakly. ‘Silly bugger, eh?’
‘There’s dafter names in the canon,’ said Maureen, letting Ella know that she was Catholic too. Liam’s confirmation name, Mortimer, had been chosen out of a hat in collusion with four pals at school. It could have been worse: the other options were Crispin, Ado and Mary. Maureen marvelled once again at the idiocy of allowing hysterical children to choose their own confirmation names. She left Egbert out of Si McGee’s name and moved on to the address box. She looked up at Ella expectantly, pointing at the page. Ella was watching her face. ‘Well?’ said Maureen. ‘Where does he stay, then?’
‘Twelve Bentynck Street, Bearsden,’ said Ella.
‘That’s a swanky address. Is there that much money in tapes?’
‘Naw, he’s got different businesses,’ Ella pointed to the tray of tapes above her head. ‘There’s not a lot of money in this. He just set me up to keep me out of the way of the buses.’
Maureen turned back to the form, pointing to the amount box. Ella was staring at her face again, trying to read something in it. She seemed determined not to look at the form. Maureen tapped the page with the pen and looked at her expectantly. Ella blinked and raised her drawn-on eyebrows.
‘How much does he owe ye?’ asked Maureen finally.
‘Seven hundred pound.’
‘How come?’
Crouched down on the cross-bar, Ella looked like a withered child, hiding from angry adults. She lowered her voice. ‘Don’t tell?’ Maureen shook her head and Ella looked at the floor, resting her chin on her knee as she drew a finger through the dust. ‘He has nae been paying me,’ she said softly.
‘For working here?’ whispered Maureen.
‘Aye, and my cleaning I do for him in his shop.’
‘Has he got money worries?’
‘Nut. The shops are doing well. He’s not short, he just thinks there’s nothing I can do if he doesn’t pay me.’Uncomfortably, she gestured an elaborate rolling circle with her finger and stopped. ‘I’m getting benefit. If they knew I worked . . .’
Maureen had seen tourists hounded out of the flea market for raising a camera and knew that Ella’s position was not unique. ‘Ye’d hardly get a balloon and a badge for that here, would ye?’ she said, wondering why Ella was confiding all of this information in her at all. They didn’t know each other. She must have had closer friends in the market. Maureen wrote ‘loan’ in the box, trying to keep her writing tidy. The hardboard she was leaning on was still gritty and she felt the pen crunch through dust, pitting the back of the page. She looked up and Ella was still drawing zigzags on the dusty floor. ‘What does your son sell in his shops?’ ‘This and that,’ Ella waved her hand, ‘houses, and wholesale stuff, ye know.’
‘He’s an estate agent?’
‘Aye, and other things.’
‘Well, what business address should I put in here?’ Ella thought about it for a moment, looking at the floor. Her face contracted slowly, her lips tightened, eyes narrowed. ‘Park Circus Health Club, ninety-three Becci Street, Kelvingrove.’
‘I didn’t know there was a health club there,’ said Maureen, writing it down.
When she looked up again Ella was suddenly ancient.
Maureen imagined her without the tracksuit, without the
gold rings and the eyebrows and her glasses, and realized she must be much older than sixty. She was at least seventy.
‘And that’s where you clean, is it?’
‘Aye.’
It wasn’t part of the form but Maureen was keen to know.
‘Why don’t ye just keep back the money from the stall?’ Ella harrumphed. ‘Wouldn’t cover it.’
‘So you’re still handing over the money ye make here?’
‘I’ve kept my side of the bargain.’
‘Is he just avoiding ye, then?’
‘Nut,’ said Ella, turning her mouth down at the corners.
‘He’s threatened me.’
‘With violence?’
‘What else would he threaten me with – a holiday?’
Maureen dropped the board on to her lap and leaned forward. ‘Ella, that’s appalling,’ she said seriously. ‘Did ye have a fall-out?’
Ella nodded quietly. ‘Over a foreign woman. Not even a Scottish woman,’ she said, as if that made a difference to the fight-worthiness of anyone. ‘A girlfriend?’
Ella chewed the inside of her cheek.
‘Have ye got any other kids?’
‘A daughter.’
‘Could she not talk to him for ye?’
Ella ignored her and sat up, straightening her back and pointing at Maureen. ‘Ye know what? Fuck them, I’ll go to court if I need to.’
Maureen thought back to her time working at the Scottish Women’s Shelters, remembered how unusual it was for family members to go all the way to court over anything, much less a small debt and a point of pride. ‘Up to you. Ye just need to sign this.’ She held out the form but Ella shoved the hardboard back at her. ‘You do it.’
‘Well, it says here you have to sign it.’ Maureen pointed to the box.