Exile (16 page)

Maureen’s eating habits were always a good measure of her mental state. She could never swallow properly when she got upset because her throat closed up. When she had had her breakdown she lost three stone and had to be fed soft food in hospital. “I’m eating fine,” she said.

“How ye feeling, though?”

Maureen took out her cigarettes. “Sad. I feel very sad. I’m not angry or upset or anything, just very sad.”

“Maybe you’re grieving for Douglas.”

“I feel as if I’m grieving for everything.” She held out the packet to Leslie. “I keep fucking crying. I can’t control it and it always happens at awkward moments like in the middle of a fight or in a shop or something.”

Leslie took a fag from her and set her plate down on the floor, pulling up the collar of her biker’s jacket to keep her warm. “If it’s grief that’s good,” she said.

“Why?”

“It’s healing and grief isn’t infinite.”

“Feels infinite.”

Downstairs a rogue child sprinted across the ground, jumped on the mountain bike and cycled away from the waiting crowd, pedaling fast over the far hills. The angry mob of small kids ran after him, shouting at him and calling to their brothers and sisters to get him. The older children looked on, their arms folded, and did nothing.

“Hey,” said Maureen, sitting up, “that wee bastard’s just stolen the bike.”

“It’s his bike,” said Leslie. “He got it for Christmas. The tiny team keeps taking it from round the back of his house. He has to steal it back at night.”

Maureen sat back. “Have ye got that Polaroid of Ann’s on ye?”

“Yeah,” said Leslie, and pulled it out of her inside pocket.

Maureen looked at it in the light from the kitchen window. “Look,” she said, and pointed to the wee boy’s hand, “see the Christmas card he’s holding? Could that be the card she got in the post?”

“I dunno, it’s bigger than the envelope.”

“He’s only a wee boy, though. Maybe it looks big in his hand?”

Leslie squinted at it, flicking her ash on the floor. “Yeah, still bigger and it’s got cotton wool on the front. Ann’s card felt smooth and thin — it wasn’t spongy. It was square.”

“How square?”

She was explaining that the letter was only about as square as the Polaroid and weighed about the same as the Polaroid when she stopped and stared at it.

“Hmm,” said Maureen. “What could it have been?”

Leslie smiled faintly and looked at the picture.

“But why would someone send her a photo of one boy?” said Maureen.

“Maybe he was her favorite?” said Leslie.

“Shut your eyes and feel it again.”

Leslie did and felt sure it was the right size. “And it felt slippery inside,” she said. “Like a glossy card.”

“So it could have been this?”

“Could have been.”

Maureen pointed down to her plate. “I’ve eaten enough to get a Chomp, though?”

Leslie looked at it carefully. “Oh,” she said grudgingly, “okay,” and handed her one from her pocket.

They sat chewing their toffee bars, smoking and watching the black storm clouds steal across the sky and swallow the sunset. The children below began to disperse and they could hear rain approaching in the distance. Maureen thought about what Liam had said, that she shouldn’t spoil things for Leslie. “Are you happy with Cammy?” she asked, watching the horizon.

Leslie looked at her. “Yeah,” she said, “I am.”

“I’m sorry for what I said in the Grove,” said Maureen quietly. “I’m a bit wrapped up in myself just now. I do want ye to be happy, Leslie, you’re the nicest person I know.” The words were hardly out of her mouth when her eyes overflowed. She slapped her forehead impatiently and looked at Leslie. “See?” she said, pointing at her wet eyes. “They’re fucking doing it again.”

But Leslie was crying too, watching a heavy wall of rain wash across the dirty yard. “I got a fright in Millport,” she said, her voice trembling. “Mauri, I got a fright and I was disappointed in myself because I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t do it.”

Maureen leaned over and touched Leslie’s cheek, lifting the little fat tears with her fingertips. “Auch, wee hen,” she said softly, “I think Jimmy’s the same. I don’t think he could either.”

They sat together for a while, sniffing, their heads inclined together, sniffing and thinking.

“I understand how ye felt at the time,” said Maureen quietly. “Right now I want to pack up and fuck off and never come back here.”

“Really?” Leslie looked at her. “I always think you’re fearless.”

Maureen shook her head. “Just want to get the fuck out, away from Winnie and Una. My flat doesn’t even feel comfortable anymore.”

Leslie had never imagined either of them moving away. She’d always assumed they’d have their kids together, be single mums together, rubbing along and managing somehow. “What would running away solve, though?” she said.

“Don’t know, but I can’t just keep on fighting everyone all the time, can I? That’s no life for anyone.”

“You’re not fighting everyone all the time.”

Maureen sighed into her chest and looked up. “Feels as if I am.”

“Ye can’t just stop fighting and walk away You’re not the sort of person who can just opt not to give a shit just because you live somewhere else. D’ye think what ye did to him in Millport affected ye?”

“Dunno.” Maureen shrugged. “I suppose. Violence corrupts.”

“Does it, though?”

“It has to. Ye have to lose empathy before ye can deliberately hurt someone, don’t ye? Or else ye’d feel it yourself and ye couldn’t do it.”

Leslie thought about it and hesitated before she spoke. “Does it need to corrupt? Can’t ye lose empathy selectively?”

Maureen snorted. “And just attack the bad guys?”

“Yeah.”

“In theory, maybe. Those distinctions are hard close up. Maybe if you’ve got a solid theoretical basis for sorting out the good guys from the bad it’s easy, but distinctions always blur close up, don’t they?” She sighed and took a draw. “It corrupts ye. Blood will have blood.”

“Yeah, close-ups are tricky,” said Leslie, looking at her lap. “I’ve been talking like a psycho for years and I can’t even slap a wean’s hand. I’ve been telling women at the shelter not to give their keys out and then I meet someone and within two months I’m asking him to take it.”

Maureen wanted to let the doubts about Cammy lie and fester but she couldn’t. “I’m not very taken with Cammy but I think he’s quite safe.”

Leslie sat forward and stared at her intently, the warm kitchen light reflecting off her leather collar. “Do ye?” she said.

Maureen nodded.

“How can ye tell?” asked Leslie, and waited anxiously for a reply.

Maureen stared at her. “Do you honestly not know whether he’d hit ye?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t know how to tell them apart, the ones that will and the ones that won’t.”

“Then what the fuck are ye doing letting him into your house?”

Leslie shook her head and looked away. The rain was falling hard, pattering onto the veranda and wetting the toes of their shoes. They could see the water sheets wafting across the wasteground. The few remaining children huddled in dry close mouths waiting for it to finish.

Leslie leaned heavily on her knees, letting her head hang as she took a draw. “D’ye remember when they were looking for the Yorkshire Ripper?” she said. “One of the things that held them back was so many women suspected their partners and reported them and they had to investigate every one of them. I thought that was ridiculous at the time.”

Maureen patted her hand. “I don’t think Cammy’s the Yorkshire Ripper, Leslie.”

“I know. But ye think ye know things about yourself, think ye have principles, and then things happen and ye find out ye weren’t who ye thought ye were at all.”

“That’s just growing up.”

“Well, it’s scary.” Leslie sat back and exhaled a gray cloud. “I don’t like it.”

“Me neither.”

Chapter 20

MALKI THE ALKI

Night came quickly and dark clouds continued to roll in from the north. The pavement glistened black smeared with orange from the streetlights. Leslie walked the bike down the gravel alleyway at the side of the house and chained it to the railings, taking care to tuck it in the shadows, out of view from the street. Maureen left her to it, wandering out into the empty road. Rain fell hard, bouncing off the pavement, and she was glad of her big coat. She stood and looked up and down the street, trying to imagine how Ann would have felt standing here, fresh to the shelter with a bruised, bony body and four absent children, looking for somewhere to drink.

It was a broad road, wide enough for two carriages to pass each other comfortably, and long-established trees grew out of the generous pavement. Maureen pulled up her collar and looked at the detached Victorian house behind her. It was built from huge blocks of red sandstone and stood three stories high with a coy attic for the servants’ rooms. The neighboring houses were equally imposing, set back from the road by small gravel forecourts and low walls. It was obvious to the most casual observer that the shelter was poorer than the others. There were no cars outside, the narrow front garden was overgrown and lights shone from every window in the house. Leslie came out of the shadows and walked across the road to Maureen. They looked up at the shelter, listening as a radio blared through a frosted bathroom window. The DJ whinnied and played a thump-thump dance record.

“We’ve ruined that house, haven’t we?” said Leslie.

“We haven’t done anything that couldn’t be fixed,” said Maureen, looking down the road. “Did Ann know this area before she came to stay here?”

“No,” said Leslie. “She needed to be told where to get the bus into town.”

“Okay.” Maureen nodded. “She probably just followed the biggest road, then?”

Leslie shrugged. A hundred yards farther up, a yellow-lit junction glistened like a jewel in the inky darkness. They walked slowly towards it, passing big houses with expensive cars parked outside. The curtains were open in one house and an elegantly graying couple were sitting on an oversize white leather settee, watching a large television. Their slim teenage daughter came into the room and moved her mouth at them. She looked pissed off. Her blond hair reached down beyond her waist, so thick and wavy and young it would have made an old man cry. The mother said something and the young blonde slapped her thigh petulantly with her fist and left the room in a huff. They looked warm and satisfied and Maureen wished she were the girl, a cherished member of a comfortable family, with parents steady enough to kick against. “Nice life,” she said, wiping the rain from her forehead.

“Aye,” said Leslie. “The girl’s learning to drive. I see her going up and down the road at three miles an hour in the Merc.”

“She’s learning to drive in a Merc?”

Leslie nodded.

“God.” Maureen looked back to the warmth and lack of want, covetous and wondering. “Nice life.”

Cars and lorries hurtled across the bright junction. They stopped and looked and Leslie pointed to the right. They walked down a few hundred yards and came to a row of white pub lights glistening through the rain. It was a freestanding house, broader and older than the shelter, whitewashed, with an illuminated plastic sign in garish red and gold. Flower boxes of plastic greenery lined the inside of the windows. A Jeep and a Jag were parked in the forecourt.

“No way she drank there,” said Maureen. “She couldn’t have seen it from the junction and, anyway, it’s a brewery pub and they’re always pricey. She wouldn’t have enough money for a lot of drinks and I can’t imagine anyone else buying for her.”

“Yeah,” said Leslie. “It’s handy, though.”

“If you were covered in bruises and feeling like a good bevy would you go in there?”

Leslie looked at the pub I. “No,” she said.

They retraced their steps to the junction and walked to the left this time. They could just make out a dingy shop front farther on. It was a pub called the Lismore, ill lit and set up against the road without a gable sign.

“There,” said Maureen, and walked towards it.

The Lismore was pleasant inside. The varnish on the floor had been worn away from years of shuffling punters; a strip of worn and softened wood led around the bar like the suggested route in a department store. More striking was the absence of music; the only sounds were the undulating murmur of voices and the chink of glasses being washed behind the bar. A lone table of elderly men huddled over their half-and-halfs, chatting to one another. The barman smiled automatically as they came in and put down the glass he was polishing. “Good evening, ladies. What can I get ye?”

“Two whiskeys, please,” said Maureen, brushing the rain from her hair.

They pulled up two bar stools and looked around the room as the barman relieved the whiskey optic of its contents. He put the drinks in front of them, sliding a fresh beer mat under each glass and pulling an ashtray over for them.

“I wonder if you could help us,” said Maureen, counting out the right money for the drinks. “A pal of ours is missing and we’re worried about her. We wondered whether you might have seen her.”

The barman took the money and looked uneasy. “Depends,” he said.

Leslie pulled the photocopy out of her pocket. She hadn’t done her job very well. She’d enlarged the full-length shot by two hundred percent, getting Ann from the waist up. They had to fold the photocopy over in the middle so that her bra and battered tits were hidden, and the color on the photocopier had been wrongly set: Ann’s face was high orange, her irises deep black. She looked as if she’d been colored in by a child.

“Oh, aye, Ann — is she missing, then?” The barman paused and looked at them sternly. “You’re not here on behalf of her man, are ye? Because I know he hit her.”

“No,” said Leslie quickly. “We’re trying to make sure she didn’t fall back in with him.”

“We don’t even want to find her, really,” added Maureen. “We just want to know if you’ve seen her.”

“Right.” He thought about it. “Right, no, I don’t know where she is. She came in here for a while, a couple of weeks — she’d a burst lip. She was a favorite with the old fellas over there. She used to listen to their stories and flirt with them and that. Aye, she was a big favorite.”