by Isla Dewar
He hadn’t known what to do. He was a man without a past. Without a future, he’d thought. Every so often he’d grip his own arm, punch his thigh. ‘I’m here. Flesh and blood.’ He’d wondered if his mother, whoever she was, hadn’t registered him. Auntie Ella had been vague about his parents. ‘Your mother was a beauty. Long fair hair, perfect skin. Mairi, she was.’
‘What about my father?’ Charlie would ask.
‘He was rich. I didn’t know him really.’
She’d been equally vague when asked about herself. ‘Oh, I had a little flat in Glasgow before you came along. But I moved here to be by the sea. My sweetheart died in the war, you know. Oh, he was a lovely man. Tall, handsome just like you’re going to be.’
Charlie had decided he was a fool. He should have asked more questions. He should have found out more about his mother and father. He shouldn’t have been so accepting.
He’d bought a house in Bath Street – three storeys of disrepair, bad plumbing, scary wiring and rotting floorboards. But he liked the space, large rooms and a wild garden at the back. He’d moved in with just a suitcase, sat on the floor and thought he really ought to get some furniture. ‘Cups,’ he’d decided. ‘Spoons, towels, a kettle.’ He’d bought a mattress, a record player, a kettle, some cutlery, two towels and a cup. All a man needs, he’d told himself.
He’d spent his days lying on his mattress looking up at his dust-streaked windows listening to Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He’d eaten at cheap restaurants, drank a lot, felt sorry for himself but had rather enjoyed that. He’d indulged himself in his sorrow. He was a man who didn’t exist.
Every day he’d go to the newsagent’s to flirt shyly with Sheena as he bought an evening paper to read in the pub nearby. On the day of spotting Martha, he’d told Sheena she was looking good today, which she wasn’t. She’d laughed as he headed out the door and said, ‘Get a job. You need to do something. Your flirting technique’s terrible.’
Charlie stopped, stared across the road. ‘Who’s that?’
It had been Martha. Looking fierce. A girl who knew everything about herself – who she was, where she was going, and didn’t care what anyone thought. Her jaw was set and she stared up the road, willing the bus to come. How dare it not come? Didn’t it know she was waiting?
If Charlie fell in love with her, it was only for five minutes. She’d been too young for him. And at the time his preference had been for women of experience, older than him with plump pillowy breasts and smoky voices. They’d be wiser and perfectly capable of drinking him under the table. But the girl across the road had stopped him breathing. He was lost in wonder. He’d stared. He’d envied her confidence, her ambition. He should be like that. He should look for himself, find out who he was and then move on from that.
He’d seen her often. Sometimes she’d had a boy with her. He’d been puppy-like, following her. Then, a few years on, she’d been pregnant. After that she’d disappeared, didn’t turn up at the bus stop for a while. Later, about three years on, his heart had leapt when he saw her with a young child, a girl. She’d been leaning down talking to her, laughing at something she’d said. It’d been a good laugh. Hearty, warm.
Ten years after that first sighting across from the newsagent’s, when Martha walked into his life once more, it had happened again. Charlie stopped breathing. He fiddled with his pens. He flicked non-existent dust from his phone. He couldn’t think of a decent job interview question to ask her. And when he’d come to himself, she was gone.
Oh, the joy when he’d come out of the café with his bacon sandwich. There she’d been, standing in the rain. He’d smiled and said something inane about the weather and Hollywood. Back at his desk, feeling like a responsible employer, he’d opened his paper bag and as he sniffed deeply the aroma of hot bacon and melting butter, it came to him that actually, after being too tongue-tied when she was sitting in front of him, he’d interviewed the poor woman as she stood on the pavement being soaked by relentless drizzle.
‘Fool,’ he’d said. ‘Fool. Fool. Fool.’ And banged his stupid head on his desk. He cursed himself for not getting the interview right. He thought he never got anything right. He stood. Pulled on his raincoat. Whistled on Murphy to stop snoozing on the sofa and come with him. He felt it coming on – the sadness. It always came on when he’d messed up.
Before it got too bad and the blackness gripped him, he’d go home and see how the people there were doing.
3
The Second-Stupidest Thing You’ve Ever Done
‘so,’ said Sophie, ‘did you get the job?’
Martha said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did.’
‘Oh dear, I was hoping you wouldn’t.’
Sophie was sitting at the kitchen table. She wore her work outfit – a pair of men’s dungarees, a voluminous checked shirt that had belonged to her husband and a blue apron.
Martha took off her coat, hung it on the post at the top of the stairs and kicked off her shoes. ‘Well, I got the job. So nyaah.’ She stuck out her tongue at her mother and looked round. ‘Tea?’
‘I never say no to a cup of tea,’ said Sophie.
‘How’s work going?’ asked Martha.
‘Got two in the oven. Another one to go. Then I have to put it all together.’
She baked cakes for birthdays, anniversaries, indeed for any occasion that her customers thought would be enhanced by a specially decorated piece of baking. Her cakes came in any shape, size or colour. Today’s cake was to be in the shape of a bicycle for a district nurse who was retiring. ‘The wheels are tricky, but I’m worrying about the handlebars.’
‘Why take all those difficult cakes on?’
‘Money,’ said Sophie. ‘We need money. Especially now you’ve given up a well-paid job with a good company for a small-time one-man detective agency. You had prospects. Now you’ve a silly job. You’ve no sense.’
Martha put tea into the teapot and sighed. ‘Mother, I’ve told you already. It takes over an hour to get to work at the moment. I have to leave before eight every morning and I don’t get home till after six. I hardly see Evie these days. She’s seven. She needs a mother. Anyway, it isn’t a detective agency, it’s a missing persons bureau. The Be Kindly Missing Persons Bureau.’
‘Evie’s got me. I can sort out her problems. That’s what a grandmother is for.’
‘I’m missing seeing my own daughter growing up.’
Sophie shrugged. ‘That’s the way of things in the modern world. Also, you have to consider you might be a bad influence now you’re working at a detective agency. You’ll be mixing with criminals.’
‘No, I won’t. Charlie traces people who have gone missing.’
‘I know why you did this. You think this Gavin chap could be the one. The one who’ll find Jamie.’
Martha shook her head. ‘Oh, he’s not the one. Definitely not. I don’t think he could find anyone. I have a feeling he’s a terrible detective.’
‘Then why take a job with him?’
‘I’ve already told you. No commuting. I can leave here a few minutes before nine and be home just after five.’
‘You’ll never meet anyone working there. The only people you’ll meet will be lonely people who have lost the ones they love. It will be depressing and tragic.’
Martha said she wasn’t looking for anybody. ‘I’m happy as I am.’
‘I don’t believe you. Nobody’s happy as they are. Everybody wants a little bit more of what they’ve got. New gadgets or curtains or a bigger house. Or they want something completely different, a new way of life. If people were happy as they are the world would come to a stop.’
‘So you’re not happy as you are?’
‘Of course not,’ said Sophie. ‘I’d like to be thinner and richer. And I don’t think you can be happy living with your mother in the house where you were brought up.’
‘It was your idea. When the Jamie thing happened, you said Evie and I should move in here with you. You said it wo
uld save me paying the rent and you’d look after Evie while I was at work.’
‘And I do. I love doing it.’
Martha said, ‘So why are we arguing?’
Sophie sighed. ‘We are arguing because I can’t believe you are leaving a very good job in insurance to go and work in a sad little agency. It’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.’ She sniffed, ‘I take that back. It’s the second-stupidest thing you’ve ever done.’ She looked round the kitchen. ‘This place could do with a good clean up. And I need to sort out the cupboards. Everything’s all jumbled up.’
‘It’s not too bad.’
‘It’s a mess. I think I should put the things in the food cupboard in alphabetical order. Then I’d know where they are. A for . . .’ She couldn’t think of anything beginning with A. ‘B for biscuits and beetroot, for example.’
Martha said, ‘It’s a longstanding jumble. I know it well.’
Sophie got up. ‘In that case, I’m going for a walk. The doctor says walking’s good for me. You can take the cakes out of the oven.’ She disappeared down the hall and minutes later reappeared heaving on her coat. ‘I don’t believe that this has nothing to do with finding Jamie. You think that detective man can help you.’
‘No, I don’t think he could,’ said Martha. ‘But Jamie is my husband. I’d like to know where he is and what possessed him to disappear like that.’
‘He was selfish and irresponsible.’ Sophie was incensed. She stomped down the hall heading for the door. ‘He couldn’t face a life of marriage, bills, endless routines and bringing up a child.’
‘Something’s weird about it all,’ Martha said.
Sophie stomped back up the hall. ‘You’re looking for a mystery where none exists. Jamie was bored. He’s a quitter, that’s all.’
Martha said, ‘Perhaps.’
She heard Sophie march to the front door and go out, and looked at her watch. ‘Twenty minutes.’
Sighing, Martha sipped her tea and stared at the cooker waiting for the cakes to be ready. It left her mind free to roam through what she now called the awful time. The black time.
4
The Chip Thief
It had started when Martha had told Jamie she was expecting their second child. She’d thought he’d be delighted. ‘We’ll be a proper family – husband, wife and the regulation two children.’ She grinned at him.
He nodded. ‘So we will.’
They were eating lunch in a diner in Stockbridge. Martha’s treat – she’d started saving for this, sneaking small secret amounts of her weekly housekeeping allowance into her knicker drawer every week since missing her first period. This time she was going to do everything properly. This pregnancy was going to be beautiful. She’d be relaxed, glowing. Baby would arrive in the world smiling. She planned to move through her expectant months wearing soft, wafting clothes listening to Mozart and eating healthy things. She imagined herself an earth mother. Barefoot and pregnant. Clear-skinned and calm.
The wonderful, uplifting, remaining seven months would start with her telling Jamie her good news here in this place where rock’n’roll roared out and the walls were festooned with American heroes – Steve McQueen, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Paul Newman. Jamie loved it here. He loved everything American. He loved that his burger was served with fries and not chips. Never chips.
Unfortunately, Martha’s financial reckonings were wrong. Things cost more than she’d budgeted for, so she claimed not to be hungry and ordered a cup of coffee for herself. She smiled watching Jamie and Evie eat, almost enjoying the feeling of martyrdom. It was good to feel saintly about forsaking a meal so loved ones could enjoy a burger. Then again her stomach was making strange and embarrassing gurgling noises.
Jamie had bought a new Stones LP and seemed more interested in reading the sleeve notes than he was in Martha’s announcement.
‘You don’t seem very pleased.’
‘Of course I’m pleased. Who wouldn’t be? It’s great news.’ He smiled, a slight upward flicker of his lips. ‘I’m going to be a daddy again. Cool.’ He returned to the sleeve notes.
Not wanting an argument, she’d left it at that. Jamie lit a cigarette and watched a group of people at a table nearby. Martha followed his gaze. The people were probably the same age as she and Jamie, but looked younger. They had youthful confidence, were dressed to shock – jeans, cowboy boots, beads, T-shirts. One of the girls had a pink feather in her hair. She was rolling a cigarette and telling everybody she wouldn’t have a burger, she’d turned vegetarian this morning. This seemed to impress the group. Jamie nodded agreeing and pushed away his plate, disowning it. He had, however, finished the burger that had sat on it.
Wafts of patchouli drifted across to Martha. She absently picked up one of Evie’s fries and ate it.
The child wailed, pointing at her. ‘You ate my chip. It was my favourite. My best chip. And you ate it. I was savin’ it.’
Martha blushed. ‘Sorry.’ She pointed at the plate. ‘There are other chips. Look, there’s a good one. I think that’s the chief chip.’
Evie shook her head. ‘I don’t want the chief chip. I want that chip you ate.’ Red-faced and tear-stained, she pointed at Martha’s mouth. The place where the chip was last seen.
The patchouli group turned and stared at Martha. Harsh, accusing looks. She was a cruel mother. A chip thief. They were young enough to think they knew everything and young enough, also, to disapprove of anyone boring enough to have married and produced a child. They sneered. She cringed.
Bored by this drama, Jamie drew his cigarette along the base of his ashtray, looked at his watch. ‘Must go. Have to be back at work in fifteen minutes. Don’t want to be late.’ He pointed at Evie’s plate. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. I hate it when someone pinches my chips, too.’
Martha went to the counter to pay. And on her way back to the table glanced at the patchouli people. She heard one of them say that when she had children she’d let them do as they liked. ‘They’ll be free spirits. They’ll grow up with no hang-ups.’
Jamie had disowned her. He was outside, leaning on the wall, smoking another cigarette, acting aloof.
They walked up the road slowly, tiny steps at a young child’s pace, heading for Princes Street. Martha spoke about the new baby, the changes that were about to come into their life. It would be good for Evie to have a brother or sister. A boy would be wonderful, but in a way it would be handy to have another girl. ‘We wouldn’t have to buy new clothes. I think it’s cool to have a family while we are young. We can grow up with our children.’ She prattled on, not really looking at Jamie, just letting her thoughts flow. ‘We’ll have to get a bigger house in time. The kids can share a room at first but they’ll want their own space soon enough.’ She stopped, frowned. ‘What d’you think of Luke if it’s a boy? And Emma for a girl. Evie and Emma. Sounds good.’
Jamie stopped walking. Looked a bit panic stricken. ‘Shit. I’ve forgotten my LP. Left it back at the diner.’ He whirled round and started to run back. She watched him go, thinking that really he didn’t need to run so fast. His head was back, arms working like pistons. He was travelling. Something about the urgency in his voice and his sudden speedy departure upset Evie. She reached out, calling, ‘Daddy. Daddy!’
‘He’s only gone to get his record,’ said Martha. ‘He’ll be back.’ She leaned on the railings, looking into Queen Street Gardens. ‘I’d love a big garden,’ she said.
Ten minutes passed, twenty, half an hour. Where the hell was he? She decided to walk back to meet him, thinking he’d probably met somebody he knew and couldn’t get away. She would rescue him.
She turned the corner expecting to see Jamie coming towards her. The street was empty. As was the diner. Sonny and Cher were booming out on the radio, ‘I Got You Babe’. Martha stood in the doorway looking round. She couldn’t believe Jamie wasn’t here. ‘Did my husband come here to pick up an LP he’d forgotten?’ she asked.
The waitress said, ‘Yes.’ She p
ointed to the table where Martha and Jamie had been sitting. It had been cleared and wiped. ‘He left with his friends.’
‘What friends?’
The waitress pointed to the table the patchouli people had occupied. ‘The people there.’
Martha said, ‘Ah. Right.’ How odd, Jamie hadn’t mentioned that he’d known these people. He hadn’t said hello to them. Surely he would have introduced her. She went back into the street, looked to the left and right. Nobody there. She went back into the diner. ‘Are you sure he left with these people?’
‘Yeah, positive.’ The waitress looked offended at being doubted.
Martha looked round once more. But the place was definitely empty. She dipped and glanced under the table. Bobbed back up, caught the waitress’s eye and blushed. ‘He might have been playing a joke.’
The waitress shook her head. ‘No. No joke. He’s not here.’
Martha shrugged. She must have missed him. How odd. He’d probably gone back to work. He’d taken a different route. One he’d decided was quicker than the one they had been walking.
She caught the bus home. Spent the rest of the afternoon playing with Evie, dreaming about being a proper family – husband, wife and two kids like the people in her school reading book – and ignoring the raw churning in her stomach. Something odd and fearful had happened.
At six o’clock she started getting Evie ready for bed and put two lamb chops under the grill to cook slowly. Jamie usually arrived home at half-past. He’d sit Evie on his knee and read her a story. After that he’d slip out to his shed to check his record collection. There wasn’t space in their tiny living room for his hundreds of albums. Tonight, however, Jamie didn’t return at his regular time. Tonight he didn’t come home at all.
A miserable ache of a February night that Martha would never forget – the awful, awful night. The night of silence, her imagination in overdrive and a burning anxiety raging through her. She moved between the kitchen and the living-room window, staring out. Waiting for Jamie to appear. ‘Where the hell has he got to?’