The Walk Home

by Rachel Seiffert

  “Best tae leave bridges unburned,” Eric told her. “That’s what I’ve learned, hen.”

  He’d taken a lonely path, and it had undone him. He’d left the scheme behind, his old life, his father; Eric had discarded it all, part and parcel.

  “Who doesnae have need tae turn home, but? You’ve no way ae knowin what life’s gonnae hurl in your track.”

  He’d left it too late with Papa Robert. That’s what he’d come to realise, in his worst days, clear and stark.

  “After I lost Franny, I saw how I had nothin. Naebody tae hold tae, and nae home tae return tae, just as I’d lost my way aheid.”

  Eric told the girl:

  “Terrible tae be on your ain. Terrible tae feel that way.”

  And though she only nodded, terse, eyes still averted, he could see he’d touched a nerve.

  Eric thought he was getting through to her, and if he could just get Lindsey to hear him out, he might still be able to talk her round; he couldn’t bear to think of her lonely, and he wanted to let her know, how she could still avoid it. But all this was so hard to speak of, Eric had to look away himself just then.

  His chest was tight with all he’d just told her, his wrists weak, fingers too. The girl was still quiet in his armchair, and Eric could feel her waiting, but he had to give himself time, something to do with his hands. He needed to gather himself, so he started to pull his sketches into some kind of order, the ones still on the floor between them.

  Papa Robert in boyhood, in his mother’s garden, among dog rose and willowherb. And then carrying water to his father at the plough: a lone figure in a wide field, his labour no longer wanted or returned by any of the families nearby. Eric thought how he’d been remembering while he was drawing: all Papa Robert’s stories, the soft and also the sore ones. Eric had told and retold them, over and over as he sketched, and he’d remembered them all so clearly. But his father thought he’d never paid heed to him.

  “I made my Da feel terrible an aw.”

  Eric said it out loud, not so much to the girl, more in self-reproach.

  “He felt I’d ignored him. I’d cast him aside.”

  It didn’t make Papa Robert right, Eric didn’t want Lindsey thinking that: his father had hurt him, and for all the wrong reasons. But Eric thought that drawing his Dad had brought him something like understanding just the same, allowed him to feel something like tenderness again, in among the fury. For his Drumchapel roses first, and now the ones of his childhood memories. Eric had drawn them both, and the way the pictures opened him up was painful, but they’d allowed in new thoughts as well, they’d renewed sympathies. He told Lindsey:

  “Hard tae feel left behind.”

  His fingers on his father’s picture, he lifted it to show her again:

  “He was still so small, my Da. Just a wee boy, aye, when that blow fell; when the faimly were cast out ae Ireland. Papa Robert thought I’d forgotten. Mebbe I had done.”

  Eric was sorry for it.

  Only then it occurred to him that he could draw it, what his father went through in Louth; Eric thought he might be able. Now he was no longer so angry, perhaps he could feel it as his father had.

  He told the girl:

  “That could be a drawing.”

  And then Eric fell to remembering. How Papa Robert said it was night when all the men came to their house; dark when the family were roused from their beds. He’d told how the door was kicked open, and the lane beyond it was full of dogs, all their wild barking. Men were out there in numbers, and at first he saw only strangers. But then also neighbours: folk his family had long known and worked with. Their faces turned hard, voices as well, they were calling out, telling of another burning. And they’d said it was a warning, only it sounded more like a threat, shouted well back from the house. They were backing away, none coming to help.

  “That could be a picture, aye,” Eric repeated, before he lapsed back into silence, seeing it all laid out before him. Papa Robert’s father, brought low by the door, head cradled in his rough paws. And Papa Robert, of course: a small boy, clutched to his mother’s skirts, hearing her worst fears confirmed.

  Only then Lindsey cut across his thoughts:

  “You can stop there,” she told him. Before he’d even started.

  “You can just stop now.” She said it so firm, Eric felt himself sit back in shock, his train of thought broken.

  It was a good few seconds before either of them spoke again.

  “What has any of that to do with me?”

  Lindsey said it quietly, dropping her voice. So Eric didn’t think she was angry; he didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be certain.

  He shouldn’t have brought it back to Ireland: hadn’t Lindsey told him nothing changes? Eric thought he should have stuck with where he’d gone wrong, with his Dad and with his life; that was what he’d planned to talk to her about. Only Eric couldn’t remember just then how far he’d got, and he still felt so jolted by the curt way the girl had just interrupted, his thoughts went tumbling over themselves.

  His father had been a boy once, who’d loved his home and lost it, and drawing what he missed so much had taken kindness.

  “I’d never thought I could feel kind towards my Da, hen,” Eric told her, hoping that might explain it. “I reckon he’d ae never thought it either.”

  Eric didn’t know if he and Papa Robert could have saved themselves all those sore years; he still reckoned that was too much to ask.

  But surely Lindsey still had a chance.

  “Mebbe you should think about your Da, hen?”

  Eric blurted it, the point he’d been leading up to, all this while. He’d been thinking ten years was a long time, but Lindsey’s father wouldn’t be old yet. “You could still go an see him. You’ve plenty ae life left tae put things right between yous.”

  Only Lindsey looked up at him, sharp. What was he asking?

  “I dinnae even know what yous fell out over,” Eric apologised.

  All these years and he’d never asked her; they’d always talked so much about his drawings, it felt like she knew so much about him.

  “Was it the wean?” Eric thought it must have been. “Your boy, I mean?”

  But Lindsey shook her head, still mute, incredulous. It fell to Eric to break the silence:

  “Could you take Stevie then? Tae meet his Granda.”

  A grandson might be just what was needed: someone for them to talk about while they were still unused to speaking.

  Only then Eric saw the flush spread across Lindsey’s neck, shocking red, and how her fingers came up to cover it. Should have left the boy out of this: Eric cursed himself. The girl’s hands were shaking now—was that rage?—as she lifted them to cover her face, and then she sat there for what seemed like an age. It left Eric wordless.

  He knew he’d been pushing her, but he hadn’t meant it to go this far. This wasn’t what he’d intended at all; this morning and all he’d just told her, it was all for her benefit.

  He still loved his Dad, that was all he’d wanted her to know. And how it had surprised him too, to find he was still capable. Maybe it was a sore kind of love that Eric felt, but surely any kind was welcome. He’d been glad of this new softness, even if it was bruised and overdue, and then he’d thought of Lindsey, and of her father: perhaps they had need of that too?

  But the girl stayed silent. And it was so quiet in the room just then, Eric couldn’t be sure if he’d said all that, or just thought it. Would it harm to repeat it? Eric went to make a start, but it was Lindsey who spoke first:

  “I didn’t come here for this.” She dropped her hands. “And not from you either.”

  She said it like he should have understood; he, of all people. The girl had come to him for comfort, for support, and what had she got?

  “You think I’m needing a lecture?”

  Was that what it had felt like? Lindsey’s eyes were dark, her pretty face gone hard. Eric hadn’t meant to browbeat; what could he say now to make
up?

  “Love suffereth long an is kind.”

  Eric tried a smile, anxious, hoping to soothe her if he brought the talk back round to kindness. That she might still hear him out, just a few moments longer, and that she might still think it over.

  “Love beareth aw things.”

  Eric hadn’t thought to finish with St. Paul, but the words just came to him, just as Papa Robert had read them years ago, and he felt those lines tied everything together so well.

  Only Lindsey shifted after she’d heard them, like she was impatient. She made a sound; she didn’t speak, it was more a breath, but it was enough to stop him, to have Eric frightened. Perhaps Lindsey was just too angry, still too sore to understand, just as he had been for so long. But Eric didn’t know what else to do but carry on.

  “Love hopeth aw things, endureth aw things.”

  Except there was that breath again. A word, or something like it: kinhell, muttered, disgusted. Eric couldn’t finish, he couldn’t tell her love never faileth, because Lindsey had her face turned away, and she was standing to go. Eric stood as well, so then he heard her more clearly. Quiet, but furious.

  “Bad as my fuckin Da.”

  20

  Brenda thought she’d never get over it. Lindsey said gies a kiss in the morning when Stevie left for school; the girl got herself up and even dressed, and she saw him off at the top of the stairs. Be good for your Gran, son. You listen to what she tells you. Brenda walked him down the road, but then Lindsey wasn’t there when she got in from work. Just the boy and Malky, who said he hadn’t seen her all day.

  No call, and no answer when they rang her; Eric said she hadn’t been at his place. They waited and waited.

  It got dark, and Brenda thought she knew then what the girl had done. It was a twist in her gut, but it still took Graham to say it out loud, when he came in that evening and Lindsey wasn’t in any of the rooms.

  “That’s it then.”

  He sat down in the kitchen, defeated.

  “That’s it then.”

  Such a wrench. And they were such hard weeks that came after, Brenda didn’t know how she lived through them.

  Stevie bearing it quiet, it broke her heart; being good like his Mum had told him. And Graham getting nowhere with all his Tyrone phone calls.

  He called all Lindsey’s uncles and cousins, over and over, and then he turned up drunk one night outside Eric’s close, roaring hate and blame up at his windows. He had Eric shaken, and his neighbours crying breach of the peace, and then the officers who brought Graham back to Brenda’s looked at her hard-eyed, like hers must be a problem family.

  She got more of the same from the boy’s class teacher.

  “Is Stevie still living with you now? We do need to be kept informed. It’s in your grandson’s best interests.”

  Brenda told Malky how she could feel the woman pigeonholing, for all her nods of concern. When they were all trying so hard, just to keep things going.

  They had someone there for Stevie, at the end of every school day. Malky, or her, or Malky Jnr.; and Graham still came to see his boy in the evenings, when he made it back from work.

  It wasn’t the best, Brenda knew that, and it nagged at her as the weeks passed. As she hauled herself from bus to bus, house to house, all over Glasgow; knocking her broom into the corners, shoving the mop bucket across the floors, flinging the filthy water down the plugholes. Brenda cooked meals and got messages, and loaded the washing machine, drawn tight, all the while, cramped inside. It was a caved-in feeling. Like she had nothing left, she just didn’t have the wherewithal: they didn’t have Lindsey now.

  She made Graham stay for something to eat most nights, after Stevie was in his bed, and Malky sat with him if he wasn’t out driving, or Brenda kept him company while she did the ironing. She pressed the sheets and thought they’d just have to get used to this, in time. Even if she couldn’t think how.

  Malky reckoned they’d have to move Stevie back in with his Dad, sooner rather than later, try and make this new shape of things feel normal. Only Brenda wanted Graham back on his feet first; she wanted the best for him so she tried, night after night, to think what could make this all right. Or even just better than it was. But when she thought about Graham happy, she just saw Graham with Lindsey. Or with his drum.

  That loved and hated object was still in her cupboard. Every time Brenda got out the ironing board, she thought how dearly she’d like to be rid of it. Only then one night, when she went to get the board, it just wasn’t there any more.

  “Where’s it gone?”

  Brenda stood at the table, where Graham was sitting with Malky.

  “Where’s your drum?”

  He put down his fork, halfway through his peas and chops, and looked to his father for help.

  “Naw, son.” Malky shook his head. “You tell her. It’s your ain bed you’re makin, you’ll have tae lie in it.”

  Malky folded his arms, and Brenda felt like she’d been kept in the dark.

  “What’s aw this about?” She told them: “Wan ae yous had better say now.”

  So Graham sighed:

  “It’s Shug, aye. He’s asked me back tae practice. He’s got the band an invitation.”

  Brenda couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “You’re no goin, but? You’re no gonnae take it up?”

  She stared at her son, who sat there silent. Malky kept his eyes on Graham too, telling her:

  “He’s no decided. Am I right, aye?”

  It sounded like they’d had plenty of words; like Malky had been trying to get through to him.

  “Naebody says you cannae play, son. It’s just they bands, you get me? That Shug. Aw they folk like him on the band scene.”

  Malky had got himself out of it, but Brenda knew he still liked the music: he kept tapes in his cab from his younger days, and played them some nights when he had no passengers. Graham nodded at them both, like he knew all that too, only he wasn’t convinced. What was the use of playing to no one? He told them:

  “Gonnae give it a try, Maw. It’ll mebbe just be this wan time.”

  “Bloody hell, son.”

  Malky swore, but Graham kept going:

  “They’ll be nae mad stuff, Shug swears it. It’s a step up, Maw. We’re tae play for the Grand Lodge.”

  So then Brenda said it loud:

  “Out!”

  It was all she could do not to shout.

  “Out ae my house!”

  She’d have picked him up and thrown him, only Malky stood up, arms spread to keep the peace here.

  “Haud on. Can we no haud on a second?”

  He turned to Graham, like he thought more talk was called for. But Brenda wasn’t for listening, or for holding back now.

  “You tellt me he’d grow out ae this,” she shouted. “Did you no? How long we gonnae bloody give him?”

  Graham had had long enough, more than enough chances. Could he not see how the band had wrecked things? She loved him, but he couldn’t have Stevie, not to live with him.

  “You cannae have the boy.”

  Not if this was what he was doing.

  Graham blinked at her, like that was news to him. But what was he thinking?

  “What’s it gonnae take, son? When’s it gonnae sink in?”

  Get through his thick skull and skin.

  Brenda reached forward to rap at Graham’s forehead with her knuckles, only her son stood up then, sharp, and she knew she’d got to him at last. He looked at her fist, then at her, all hurt, and Brenda felt bad then. Only not bad enough to stop him when he made for the close. He had to learn, even if this was what it took, and so she yelled after him:

  “I’ll no have it any more.”

  Not inside her four walls. Brenda was resolved, even after the door shut and he was gone.

  It was just her and Malky then, and the quiet, dead-right feeling about the stand she’d made.

  She said:

  “Only so far we can go, aye.
Nae further.”

  It was for Graham to come up to the mark.

  “He willnae have Stevie till he does.”

  Except Malky eyed her, stone-faced. He shook his head:

  “Like faither, like daughter.”

  He pulled the rug out from under.

  And then Brenda thought: was that who she was like now? Papa Robert. Did he still love Eric, even when he pushed him out? Maybe he’d thought it was for the best, just like she did.

  Brenda cast about herself, floored, still feeling she was right, but that she might have got it wrong too. Then she saw Stevie’s bedroom door; how it stood half open to all her shouting. Was hearing all that in Stevie’s best interests?

  “You think he’s awake?”

  She pointed, and Malky cast her a look, like she should have thought of that before. He told her:

  “You stay there.”

  She’d done enough for one night.

  “I’ll go an see about the boy.”

  21

  Headache weather, heat and clouds, and Jozef’s men were all crowded in the ground floor; getting in each other’s way, trying to get the job done, drills going in every room, and nail guns. It was airless down there, even with all the windows wide, and the men had to watch their step, because Tomas had half the floorboards up to lay the heating pipes.

  Tomas was in the living room, but he’d left one side of the corridor stripped to the joists, making it hard to pass. Except no one was saying anything about that, even if it annoyed them, because he’d been in a dark mood since the developer’s visit that morning.

  “He leaves it till Thursday of the last week to say?”

  Jozef could hear him grousing, even from where he crouched on the back step, under the heavy sky with his laptop. Not that Jozef blamed him; the two of them had been working on the kitchen that morning, and then the developer showed up, to tell them the boiler was in the wrong place. They’d been working from the wrong plans.

  So of course they would run over now: more jobs on Jozef’s lists than there were days left to do them, even if he paid all his men to work straight through the weekend.