Docherty (39 page)

‘See that picture the nicht? Charlie’s in a ship, ken? An’ he’s supposed tae be makin’ the grub . . .’

The footsteps on the stairs were his father’s. Conn saw how the sound passed like a pain across his mother’s face. Mick cracked the spine of his book against his leg.

‘But the ship sterts rockin’

His father came in and Conn knew that nobody was listening. Half of his father was still too much to ignore. He was drunk and he had more beer in his pocket.

‘Good evenin’ to youse all,’ Tam said archly. ‘An’ a Happy New Week.’

His eyes never quite rested on any of them, flickered like those of a man who was watching trains go by. He took his jacket off, covered Conn’s with it, put the beer on the table.

‘Ah could go a drap o’ soup, hen,’ he was saying. ‘Is there some in the poat?’

‘Aye, Tam. Ah’ll just fetch it.’

‘Naw, ye’ll nut. Ye’ll sit jist where ye are, lass. Tak’ yer ease.’

The irony of his generosity embarrassed them all, as if having immured her alive he should give her an armchair. But Tam made a fuss of putting the pot on the fire, unaware that he was a stranger in the house. While he busied himself, he kept throwing words about like conversation.

‘Ye’re there, Conn, son. Ye’re there.’

‘Aye.’

‘Hoo are ye comin’?’

‘Ah’m a’ richt.’

‘Ye’re mair than a’ richt, son. Don’t forget it. Mair than a’ richt. Aye, Jenny. Ye made a joab o’ them, hen.’

He glanced across at Mick but said nothing to him. With a plate, a spoon, some bits of bread and a cup of beer on the table, he stood rubbing his hands.

‘Who’s fur some?’ he asked.

‘No’ me, feyther.’ Conn’s voice was kinder than he had intended it to be. For he shared against his will the luxury of what the moment meant to his father – some hot soup, some beer, the warmth of the fire, and what was left of his family round him. That much at least he had earned.

‘Mick?’

‘Mick an’ me’s no’ long feenished, Tam,’ Jenny said quickly.

‘Aye. Weel.’

His pleasure was diminished to a solo performance. He crossed and crouched in front of the fire, stirred at the pot with the ladle, sniffed.

‘Aw, Christ!’ he said slowly. ‘Like a poat o’ bull’s bluid. Tak’ yer time noo. Ah can wait.’

He stayed crouched, his eyes watery in the firelight, staring blindly into the heat.

‘Ye ken whit Ah’ve a hellu’a notion o’ daein’, Jen?’

‘What’s that, Tam?’

‘Gettin’ a haud o’ a wee plot o’ grund. A gairden plot. An’ growin’ things.’

‘Aye. Ye could dae waur than that.’

The serious consideration his mother was able to give the suggestion amazed Conn. His father had a new idea almost every night and not one of them went beyond his mouth. She was remarkable. Where did she find the strength and the patience to go on suckling this man’s stillborn dreams?

‘Jist fur wurselves, like. Nothin’ big. But we wid always hiv wur wee bit extra there.’

‘Aye, it wid be a help.’

Tam’s face relaxed as if all the planting was already done.

Mick said over his book, ‘Whit wid ye grow in it? Hops?’

Conn’s body contracted slightly, waiting for the reaction. But his father’s face merely went very still, and stared on into the fire, as if he hadn’t heard. It was his mother who lowered her head slightly, seemed to draw the hurt away from his father.

‘Aye,’ Tam said and ladled himself out a plate of soup.

Eating, he went on talking – about gardens, about ‘gettin’ oorselves pu’ed thegither’, about going to Cronberry in the summer, about getting a good greyhound. At some point on every tangent, a remark of Mick’s intercepted him, and Tam went off in another direction. ‘Things could be worse,’ Tam said. And Mick said, They will be.’ Tam said, ‘Ah could buy a guid grew,’ and Mick said, ‘Or take up opium.’ Tam said, ‘Ah’ve seen better coal,’ and Mick said, ‘There’s too mony banes in it.’

The baiting became so merciless that Conn wondered why his mother didn’t speak. He saw she was troubled and thought she was silent because for her to speak would force Tam to admit what was happening, and perhaps he couldn’t admit what was happening. Conn didn’t say anything to stop it himself for, no matter how reduced his father might be, Conn couldn’t patronise him. In a sense he had to let it go in order to see his father clearly as he was, because too much of himself was invested in Tam to let him hide from what his father had become.

When Tam started on the beer, his talk became even more emptily self-confident, as if to justify the indulgence his drinking represented. A fragmented theme emerged from his ravings: ‘Aye, we’ve had no’ a bad life through it a’, Jen.’ He developed it haphazardly, remembering unlikely idylls. Mick became more openly contemptuous as he went on. Apparently oblivious, still seated at the table, Tam continued on a collision course with Mick’s rancour.

Both Jenny and Conn could see it coming, and Jenny was desperately trying to think of a diversion when Mick suddenly stood up.

‘Christ, man!’ he shouted, crossing towards his father. ‘Yer brains are droonin’. There’s piss comin’ oot yer mooth. Hiv ye no’ had enough?’

Before Tam knew what was happening, Mick had taken the cup with its dribble of beer out of his hand. But the next second, still sitting and with a reflex that came from twenty years ago, Tam had back-swept the cup out of Mick’s one hand, shivered it against the wall. And as Mick jumped back, Tam stood and heaved the table over in one movement. As Jenny called, ‘Oh my Goad!’, the table crashed and juddered on the floor, the plate smashed, the spoon skittered across the waxcloth, and a bowl of sugar that had been in the centre of the table spilled itself. Beer bled down the wall.

The room was fused. Light raced, converging on one glowing filament of rage. The three of them hung petrified. They knew without the slightest doubt that anything could happen, absolutely anything, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Conn watched, mesmerised by an anger as awesome as a mystic’s ecstasy. He saw the shoulders heave and they seemed to him like hills. He saw that terrible stare volleying past them, making its own horizons. In the instant, his flippant pity and the arrogant mood of an evening became trash, and he was again a believer, not just in what his father had been but in what he was, because he saw the frightening place where his father had learned to live. He knew how petty his and Mick’s judgements of him were, because this man had long ago taught them the terms in which to judge him, and did they imagine that the man who had made the terms so harsh in the first place didn’t now apply them with a rigour and a severity that made their strictures like a salve by comparison? Conn didn’t even feel insolent to have thought of his father as he had. He just felt cheeky.

He thought he understood the paradox of his father standing there, having summoned an annihilating force into himself, yet motionless. He thought he understood why he accepted Mick’s taunts, his family’s secret pity. He took it because his quarrel wasn’t with them. They were midges in the scale of his own rage against himself. He had fed his children to a system that gave them back as the bread he ate every day of his life. And it wasn’t until he had eaten them that he discovered what he had done. Now that it was too late, he understood.

It was that he lived with. And who was there or what was there with which he could confront the force that his realisation had generated? Raging helplessly inside him, it eroded him.

Conn was very afraid. At the same time, having seen this, he couldn’t imagine much else of which he would ever be afraid again. Tam slowly subsided. He walked round and lifted the table back on its legs. Nobody else had moved. Leaning as if suddenly exhausted on the table, his head lowered, Tam spoke.

‘It’s no’ a wean ye’re dealin’ wi’, son,’ he said quietly. ‘Ah’m no’ in ma dotage yet.’

Without speaking, they all helped Jenny to clear up the mess. In the silence, Conn heard the scuffling of his grandfather’s feet on the bare floor of the next room, and then the creaking of the bed. He must have been listening at the door.

Conn looked at his father. The belly sagged a bit, the shoulders were thickening. But what remained with Conn was the image he had seen – his father standing making everything afraid of him, because you realised that he had learned to live where you daren’t, and in his utter defeat there was an absolute power.

For the rest of his life, from time to time, those eyes would flare, like meteors in his outer memory.

10

Hammy Mathieson was the nearest thing to a witness and he hadn’t seen it. He had heard and he had felt. Asked about it afterwards, as he so often was, he took refuge in the same repetitive statements, ritual responses to the awe he felt. Death had brushed his back and he hadn’t known about it at the time. It happened that quick,’ he said. And, ‘Ah can still feel his hauns oan ma back. Ye’ve heard o’ birth-marks. These is daith-marks.’ And, That man did ma deein’ fur me. Every bite Ah eat, he gave me.’

Hammy’s awe was only increased by the fact that the most stunning event of his life had happened on such an ordinary morning. Messiahs are born in stables. Going back to that morning again and again, he constructed it like a church. Having made it the most important place in his memory, he regularly re-enacted there those brief, blinding movements.

‘The auldest boay had a cauld, Ah mind, that mornin’,’ he told others.

Davey was in the set-in bed to get the good of the fire. He was talking about going to his work just the same. His mother was appealing to Hammy.

‘Wid ye make that galoot see sense?’

‘Mither, they’re busy at the factory the noo. An’ they’ll dock ma wages.’

‘Better that than you doon wi’ pneumony,’ Hammy said. ‘We canny afford the funeral. Ma piece no’ ready yit, Jinty?’

‘Ah’ve only two hauns.’

‘If Ah’d kent ye were deformt, Ah widny a mairrit ye.’

Dennis came through, shivering in the long shirt he used as a nightgown.

‘Boay!’ Jinty said. ‘Whit are ye daein’ up the noo? The schil’s ‘oors yit. Get back tae yer bed.’

‘Ach, let ‘im stey, Jinty,’ Hammy said.

Dennis got himself in front of the fire and stood there, his eyes still splintered with sleep and gouged by the heat. Jinty laid out Hammy’s piece and the cold tea. Davey subsided on the bed, his breath hirsling like leaves in a wind. Hammy gathered up the piece and the bottle.

‘Daddy,’ Dennis said, mesmerised by his own thoughts. ‘Can Ah get buyin’ squeebs?’

‘We’ve a’ got wur ain worries richt enough,’ Hammy said. ‘Staun’ back a bit. If that fire catches yer shurt-tail, ye’ll no need a squeeb. Ye’ll be wan.’

Hammy hung over the fire for a time, his hand on the smokeboard, trying to take in enough heat to see him to the pit.

‘It’s nae use tryin’ tae stoap me, Jinty,’ he said. ‘Ah’ll have tae go. Greetin’ll no’ help ye.’

She humphed, and he went out.

Nothing had happened to warn him there – the first moment of the morning, familiar, like a step worn by his own feet, the first of several. Who could have guessed they were leading to a sheer drop?

Outside, a black wind was blowing. A skin of frost on the causeys and a face that felt like raw beef inside minutes. He caught up with big Dan Melville on the way to the pit. They walked stiffly through the cold, their bodies held like metal casts that have set.

‘A widny mind a word wi’ Goad,’ Big Dan had said. ‘He’s no’ provin’ onythin’ wi’ this kinna wather.’

At the face Hammy had worked as usual along with Abe. It wasn’t a bad morning. They shifted more coal than they expected. At the break, Abe went along first to where the pieces were. The men always sat down together and talked while they ate. Hammy was finishing off.

He could hear the noise of somebody else still working, then it stopped. Hammy packed up himself.

He came out of the working and started along the tunnel towards the men. Nothing was different. The water noises, the whisper of timbers, the voice of one of the men wandering at him through the tunnel ghost of a friend. It was then it happened.

All Hammy’s memory held of it was really one instant. Though so much must have happened, the speed of it had pelletised everything. He had found himself thrown on his face. It was only in retrospect he was able to analyse that capsule of sensation into what must have been its component parts. There had been sound, what seemed just an instantaneous and deafening roar. But he was sure later he could distinguish two parts to it – the scream of the cracking timber, the fall of the roof. There had been the blow, smashing into his back, blessedly low enough not to buckle him but to force his legs into motion, so that he staggered for yards before he pitched on his face. There had been the outraged grumble of the settling debris. There had been silence.

Into his petrified stillness, bringing the renewal of time, ran the men. Two helped him to his feet. Dazed, he looked at them, reaffirming his life in their known, ordinary faces, and followed their eyes past himself to where he had been. The fall was big but contained, a high, neat mound of rocks and wood and rubble. The dust still drifted, choking. Someone hoasted. Automatically, he made the gesture of dusting himself down, trying to be casual in shaking off the residue of his almost death. Instinctively, he stopped. He looked at the men. He looked back at the mound of debris and he knew. It was a burial mound.

‘Feyther!’

The voice was Conn Docherty’s. Some of the men tried to hold him.

‘Son! It hisny settled yit,’ Tadger shouted.

But he broke from them, snarling with grief. They watched, frozen by dread, while he dived, scrabbling the rubble. While Conn whimpered with effort, the realisation of it broke through Hammy. He knew himself walking in the tunnel with Tam Docherty behind him. He knew a man diving into his own death to push Hammy out of his. He saw the stunning speed with which Tam must have moved. He felt those last handprints burned into his back. He saw Jinty and Davey and Dennis given back to him. He felt the joy of Davey having a cold. He stood accepting the magnitude of an unasked for gift. The generosity of it made it hard to breathe. There passed through him like a lightning-bolt love for someone who had always been for him just a hard wee man.