‘She doesn’t have a phone.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Look, you go on. I’ll give it another half an hour.’
‘No you bloody well won’t. I’m not leaving you here on your own. We’ll give it ten more minutes then we’re going home. Right?’
I nod meekly. ‘Yes, miss.’
‘You’re too bloody soft, that’s your problem.’
‘Soft?’
Me? Me that is a wreck of flattened-out humanity, grinding my weary way on? Me, who can’t see beyond bitterness and regret? I don’t think so, little sis. When was the last time I was soft? When I wept at a roadside don’t don’t don’t when I held my son, oh yes, for a glittering perfect instant soft was the finest of all things I could be. When I nursed my husband, reeking stoic fortitude?
I have to say, Debs, you’re just so brave.
A couple of Callum’s work colleagues had called to visit. That was the last time anyone called me soft. I remember because it was also the last time Callum would let anyone except closest family see him.
Soft hands too. Mike, kissing my hand as he said goodbye. He was a sociology professor – and a little bit creepy.
Och, you know – hands that do dishes . .
We had laughed, a dry rasp neither of us meant. The other chap, Gregor, was ostentatiously patting Callum’s shoulder, telling him in a too-loud voice THEY WOULD SEE HIM AGAIN SOON. Callum, staring at the fireplace in a huffy trance as the dribbles carried down his chin, bringing with them the last of the biscuit he’d insisted on sooking. While he’d alternately gnawed and choked on the mushy Hobnob I held to his mouth, I’d engaged his colleagues in conversation, skirting over all but the most mundane of our trials. We had tossed words back and forth like a desultory ball, none of us keen to hold the responsibility for very long. And then it was time for them to go and me to stay. I don’t know how you do it. Mike, all breathy, his quick hands pressing down on mine as my husband hung ape-like and inert. Both Mike and Gregor had been visibly shocked when they’d come in; it had been a few months since they’d visited last. Even then, Callum’s trembling mouth and limbs had been alarming. Now the spasms were held in check by his atrophying body, his thickened slurs incomprehensible. Communicating with desperate eyes. It could not be, would not be borne that these were the same eyes which laid claim to me twenty years ago in a trendy bar. When I could, I avoided looking into them.
Och, you just have to get on with it, don’t you? I had moved to rescue Gregor, who seemed incapable of taking his leave.
Right, my love, time for a wee nap, I think, yes? It was an innocuous, if insensitive, phrase and I’ll never know if he spasmed or it was a purposeful act, but Callum’s arm jerked furiously over the tea tray, the plate of remaining Hobnobs smashing on the wall.
I suppose if I’d ever gone to the Carers Support Group (never enough time, a fear of mass emotion and the wilful lack of apostrophe in the title ensuring I did not), there may have been some kindred spirit there who could empathise and explain that yes, familiarity did breed contempt, and it was gruelling routine which made us so, not cruelty. That when anger spilled as our loved ceded to their illness, it was justifiable, because every so often the delicate contortions of balancing more than our fair share were bound to send us spinning, and that dreams of pillows firm-pressed against the coming of another light were merely that. Bad dreams.
Och aye, a total soft touch, me.
‘Hoi! Dozy!’ Gill is smirking. Always a bad sign. ‘Earth calling Deborah! I said how’re things with your big black man then?’
‘Gillian!’
‘I’m joking! But when are we going to get to meet him?’
‘You’re not. For God’s sake. He’s not a prospective boyfriend.’
‘Hey, I wouldn’t be complaining if he was! Do you no harm at all to have a wee bit fun.’
‘Gill, just shut up, will you? God, I can’t believe you think –’
It is May. One year this month since my husband died. I haven’t been to the grave. I think if I did, I would climb in beside him. And then where would I be? One year. It’s for ever, and it’s nothing.
‘I don’t! I don’t! Calm down. I’m not disrespecting you, or Callum – or Azerbaijani . . .’ Gill’s annoying pointy chin comes to rest on my shoulder, arms arched behind her like a coquette.
‘His name’s Abdi.’
‘Abdi, then. Aah-b-di.’ Mouthing it in my ear. Then louder. ‘Abdee. Ab-i-deee! Time for bed, Ab-i-dee!’ Pretends she’s bouncing on a spring, twirling her fingers round an imaginary Zebedee moustache.
‘Christ Almighty. You are so immature.’ This is why I hide from her in cupboards.
‘But can I be the bridesmaid? When you get married?’
With anyone else, the heat in me would rise and I would – whilst not actually saying a single word – rage about their insensitivity. Luxuriating in the burn, and possibly ending with a big fat side-order of tears. That’s why people hide from me. I punch my sister on the arm. ‘Piss off. Anyway, I think the wedding’s off. He’s barely speaking to me.’
‘Ooh, gossip! Howso?’
‘Och, he asked me if I’d tutor his wee girl, and I just . . . I kind of dyked it.’
‘Why?’
Panic, I think. Simple panic. Not false modesty or reserve; it wasn’t me getting my own back because he refused my help before. Saying no was my first and visceral response. After all that effort to have Abdi ‘open up’, I got to see his insides torn and gaping, and I ran away. A kneejerk to the desperate rawness. It’s one thing to offer yourself in rationed measured doses, where you plan out how much and where and why you’re doing it – but it’s another to be seized. You can’t escape from that, and I know, I know all about great meaty mouths of need: they trap you. They slobber and sook till only your bones are left. And what if I couldn’t do it? Rebecca, that damaged wee soul relying on me? Wholly me to fix her? That kind of need can kill you. The damage I might make of them both. I’m not a teacher any more. I’m shapeless, pointless. Foolish, ugly, cowardly me – that’s what Abdi would find if he got to see my insides.
My sister’s waiting.
‘Och, loads of reasons . . .’
‘Scrape ’em off, Claire!’ Gill flares her nostrils, turns sidey-ways to creep like a pantomime villain. We both laugh. It’s a line from that film Scrooged, the one with Bill Murray. Our father (also Bill) was a ferocious Tory, much given to writing letters and shouting at the TV, and scrape ’em off, Claire was a phrase he readily deployed: at Mum’s request for extra housekeeping, whenever Gill argued about politics, the time I wanted to volunteer abroad for a year. He meant it in an ironic way, I think. Gill does not. The way she sees through me is chilling.
‘No! I mean, I was a secondary teacher, for one, not primary. And the wee one – Rebecca – has got communication problems –’
‘Deaf?’
‘No. Just doesn’t speak. Nothing physically wrong with her, as far as I can see.’
‘And you blame the dad?’
Do I?
‘No, I wouldn’t go as far as that. But I don’t think Abdi pushes her, put it that way. And I don’t think it’s healthy for a kid who’s indulged in her “not-speaking” to be shielded further. She needs to be in school.’
‘Where’s she down for?’
‘That’s the problem. She’s not.’
Gill opens her mouth and I can see a lecture coming on.
‘Just leave it, OK? I’m not going to teach her, but I’m not going to abandon her either. Let me work on it, and if I need your help, I’ll ask. Ask. Got that?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Fine. Right, Mata Hari’s a no-show. Now can we please go and get some dinner?’
My head aches, I want to go home, stuff Naomi’s five hundred quid through her letterbox and pour myself a big glass of wine. But Richard’s making us steak.
My brother-in-law is a bluff and jovial chap, five years older than me, and with the flushed face of a rather naugh
ty child – the kind who misbehaves in such an endearing way you can only laugh. He winds me up atrociously.
‘Deborah, my darling!’ Birls when we come in, wafting a spatula.
‘Richard! It’s the cooking fairy! Love your wand.’
He blows me a kiss as my sister takes my coat. ‘You’re looking scrumptious. How are you? Secret delivery all sorted?’
‘No, she never turned up.’
‘Good, good.’ Bowling on in his pinny and not listening to a word I say. ‘Sit down then, sit, sit. So. Still hard at it with the asylum seekers? Many of the great unwashed have you adopted this month?’
I pretend to count on my fingers. ‘Well, that’ll be six now – no, actually, twelve if you include the family of Iraqis in the back bedroom. Oh, and a camel.’
‘Excellent. Camel milk’s very good for you, apparently. In fact, I’m sure we’re trialling it down south.’
‘Yum.’
Richard is the regional manager for a supermarket chain. Started as a Saturday boy at college and worked his way up to the company car and a 15 per cent staff discount. A very handy ally if you’re planning a party and need a lot of booze. Which I think is how his and Gill’s courtship began. Gill returns from the hall, closes the door to her massive kitchen so we’re all wrapped up with the sizzle of meat and onions. They have a dining table and a couch in here, a Welsh dresser tumbled with books and pottery and a French armoire containing linen tablecloths. I could live in Gill’s kitchen. There’s a pile of books on the table, a Bohemian centrepiece in place of flowers.
‘Wine?’
‘Just a wee glass. I’m driving. Where’s the kids?’
My nieces Iona and Lisa. I don’t possess them like Gill does, but they’re easy and content with me. Both students now, they don’t have to visit Auntie Debs, but they do. We text and email and they wander in for dinner occasionally, or we meet in town for coffee. OK. My life’s not always as bleak as I make out. My sister and her family love me, consistently, irrespective of the rebuffs and sulks and the time Gill used her key to find me sobbing in the bed I’d refused to come out of for three days. But sometimes your situation is predicated on how you feel, not how it really is. I shift the books so I can read their spines.
‘Iona’s at her boyfriend’s and Lisa’s rehearsing.’
‘Rehearsing? Ooh.’ I look up at my sister. ‘Can I borrow this one, please?’ I hold A History of Scotland aloft. ‘Rehearsing for what?’
‘If you want. Rehearsing for the concert. The one I told you about. In the Royal Concert Hall? You have a ticket?’
‘Oh, yeah. That concert.’
‘It’s for Breast Cancer Awareness.’ My wine is placed before me, gently.
I cross my arms. ‘Well, I’m not wearing a pink bra, I’ll tell you that for nothing.’ My wee sister ruffles my hair. Glasgow Uni Big Band. With Lisa on trumpet. Canny wait.
‘Gill tells me you’re going out with one of them now.’ Richard shouts above the drone of the extractor fan and the exuberant gush of the water he’s draining from his boiled potatoes. I wanted chips. Everyone knows you have chips with steak.
‘One of who, Richard?’
‘Your asylum seekers.’
‘I’m not going out with Abdi and he’s not an asylum seeker. He’s a refugee.’
‘Same difference.’
In with a big bloop of butter. Good. We’re having mash.
‘No. It’s the exact opposite, actually. An asylum seeker’s someone who arrives in this country looking for help – appealing to our better natures to let them stay. A refugee’s already been told they can stay. And you have to go through a hell of a lot in between. Medicals, interviews, all sorts to prove you’re a victim of persecution. Thank you.’ I take the glass of water Gill’s offering. ‘The deal is, if you can persuade us your life was so shit before you got here that going back will kill you, you might, just might, be allowed to remain.’
‘And contribute to our economy by becoming Big Issue sellers?’ Richard dollops the mash in an earthenware bowl. I shudder. It’s the one I brought from the Transvaal. Eighteen bloody years ago and not a chip in its mud-ochre skin.
‘I tell you, there’s one stands outside our Giffnock store, looks like Gypsy Rose Lee.’
‘Economic migrant. Totally different again.’
‘Debs, he’s only winding you up –’
‘I am not. I’m thinking about the bigger picture. I’m a businessman, Debs. And we don’t have enough jobs and resources for ourselves any more. So why should it be this country welcoming all and sundry? We didn’t cause their wars or their famines, why should we be the dumping ground?’
Gill pours herself more wine. ‘OK, Richard, you’re not even funny any more.’
‘But if we don’t, who does?’ I want more wine, not water. Want the easy slurp and slide of warm lubricant which will polish my words and relax my neck. Above me, Richard twinkles, and I know he doesn’t mean it, but to not rise to the challenge is like laughing at an old lady falling, or a joke about handicapped kids. Even silence is complicit. Four months ago, my world was sleeping pills and sitting in my nightie.
‘Richard, you’re an arse. At least we live in a country that’s prepared to do something for our fellow man. And, for your information, we only take about two per cent of refugees worldwide, so we’re not exactly Mother Teresa.’
‘I love you, Debs.’ He drops a paternal kiss on my head, starts dishing out the food. ‘Sirloin steak for you, my darling wife. Sirloin steak for me, her masterful husband and – ah, yes, here’s some dry bread for our champion of the poor. Tuck in, Debs, it’s fab. I unwrapped it myself.’
‘Ha, ha.’ And we’re back in the pleasant hammock of banter in which our relationship rests. ‘Can I have my steak, please?’
‘Well, I thought you might want to take it away for the homeless –’
‘Don’t mock. But that’s something your bloody supermarkets could be doing, for starters: giving away food. All that past-its-sell-by stuff . . .’
‘Eh, for your information, madam,’ he passes me my plate, ‘we’ve just launched a new initiative, whereby we earmark a percentage of our apprenticeships for homeless folk.’
‘Oh, aye. Apprentice shelf-stackers?’
‘No. Butchery. Bakers. Fishmongers –’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes, seriously.’
‘Fishmongers?’
Gill winks at me.
Just as we finish dinner, my mobile goes. I snatch it, expecting it to be Rula, have judiciously nursed my little half-glass of wine in case I’ve to dash back to Maxwell Park. But it’s Abdi. At least I think it is. I can barely hear him, his voice a shaky whisper.
‘Please, Deborah. I need your help.’
I am there in twenty minutes. One front door, ajar. One policewoman, stern. Her arm acts as a hinge, preventing entry.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Who are you?’
I hear Abdi’s voice, thin but steady. ‘She is my friend.’
‘Excuse me, please.’
I squeeze past the policewoman as politely as she steps back. A performance-piece of studied movement, where both unbend but neither concede, and I really don’t care about any of that as I take in the scene in the hallway.
One doormat – ‘Don’t!’ says the policewoman. ‘Eh, I wouldn’t stand on that’ – one doormat, soaking underfoot and emitting a stink that can only be described as shitty.
One refugee, stooped. His fists balled by his sides, he has the sly furtive movements of a dog that’s just been whipped.
‘Are you all right, Abdi?’
‘Yes.’
One little girl, sitting bolt upright in her bed. You can see her through the open door, face patterned gold by the nightlight on her wall.
‘Hey, Rebecca!’ I do a little star shape with my hand. Her mouth opens slightly, eyes stay wide.
‘I’m Sergeant Heath,’ says the policewoman. ‘Jenny
Heath.’
‘Deborah. Abdi’s mentor from the Refugee Council. Eh, can you tell me what’s going on exactly?’
‘I was just leaving.’
‘What’s happening with Abdi?’
‘Nothing.’ She has a sharp, pretty face on her, and too much eyeliner.
‘Nothing for now, or nothing at all?’
They are thoughtful eyes, in amongst all that blue and black. She touches my elbow, positions and deports herself so I find myself propelled down the hall. It’s not threatening, in fact it’s quite hypnotic. We take ourselves off to Abdi’s living room, leave him standing there.
‘Abdi, you go and check on Rebecca,’ I manage to say, before the door between us is firmly shut.
‘I take it Abdi asked you to come over?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘So what did he tell you?’
‘That he’s been accused of hitting his neighbour.’
‘So the neighbour says. You know him?’
‘Which one?’
‘Old boy next door. Bullmore?’
There is a beat of hesitation, then I go: ‘Oh, him.’
‘Mmm. Now, at the moment, it’s his word against Mr Hassan’s. Mr Bullmore says he was pushed down the stairs, Mr Hassan claims he fell. Judging by the amount of alcohol Mr Bullmore has consumed, falling is certainly a possibility.’ Her stern, painted mouth has an upward tilt. Up close, I don’t think it is so stern; more a trick of the light and the uniform. ‘Unfortunately, we’ve no witnesses to corroborate either side of the story.’
‘I see.’
‘My problem is, I’ve a feeling if we don’t intervene in some way, then this is all going to escalate. I mean, I don’t know if you noticed the doormat . . .’
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