G03 - Resolution (33 page)

Maddie drew on her cigarette, sucking her thin cheeks into her mouth. She looked as if she’d just been tickled. “That’s it?” fraid so.

“No,” said Leslie defensively. “Everyone knows that young women from Eastern Europe are being tricked into coming here, thinking they’re waitresses and au pairs and being forced into prostitution.”

But Maddie sneered. “Isn’t that terrible?” she said. “Would ye think it was terrible if they came over thinking they were gonnae be working girls and just weren’t given any of the money they earned? Would ye be here if that was it?” She waited patiently for an answer.

“I don’t know if we would, no,” said Maureen finally.

“But what if these dirty bitches had their passports taken away and got battered if they tried to leave? What if they were told they’d to pay off a massive loan before they could keep any money? What if they’d to do stuff they didn’t wantae?” Maddie looked out of the window and they could see she was really angry now, and hiding it behind a big empty smile and a cigarette. “See?” she said, flicking her cigarette into the ashtray. “People like you only want to save people like you. Yees don’t want to save us, just women like you, women who’d need to be tricked into it.” She took a draw and narrowed her eyes, looking at Leslie. ” ‘Cause you think you’d never do that. You think that’s beneath ye, like your dignity cannae be took away.” She stopped and tried to calm herself, taking deep breaths, moving her mouth as if she was counting.

“We just don’t know anything about it,” said Maureen softly. “We don’t mean—”

“What if the women were doing it to keep their kids and they didn’t get paid? It’s all right if it’s for weans, isn’t it? Ye think ye know how low pros are until ye are one. No one cares. Down at Anderson we were getting raped and battered. No one cares.”

“Don’t the police care?”

“Oh, the police do care,” she said quickly. “The Glasgow police are decent enough — they try and help ye out of it and tell ye where to get a cup of tea and medical attention and stuff—they’re all right. It’s people. It’s the public. They’ll walk past ye getting your face kicked in, they laugh at ye and hit ye for nothing. There’s been one pro murdered every year in Glasgow city center for the past nine years and they never get anyone for it. Murdered in the street, in the open, some of them, and no one seen nothing. And d’ye know what sickens me about it? It’s not the same guy, it’s different guys. I have to pray not to get angry about that all the time.”

Maureen touched her arm. “Sometimes it’s good to be angry.”

Maddie frowned and blushed. “It’s bad. I have an anger in me.” She stopped, trying to word it. “It’s like a fire that’ll eat me, eat my being, know what I mean?”

Maureen and Maddie were leaning close in to each other. Leslie muttered an excuse and went to the bathroom, shutting the door after her.

“I do know what ye mean,” said Maureen.

“I’ve been angry and feart since I was wee,” said Maddie, hopelessly. “Cannae shake it off.”

Maureen saw Maddie blink and when she opened her eyes again she had gone back to another time, to an angry, fearful time when she was small. She pulled her legs up under her on the sofa bed, clutching her knees defensively, keeping them together. Maureen thought suddenly of the picture of the child in her cupboard. “Your dad?” she whispered.

Maddie looked up, appalled and afraid at what she had said. She pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head but her hollow eyes contradicted her. Maureen touched her hand to her chest. “My dad too.”

Maddie took it in, lips pursed, not looking at Maureen, wanting her to talk about something else.

“Tell me about Si McGee,” said Maureen.

“Anger is not accepting things as they are,” said Maddie. “That’s what Jack says. When we accept life as it is, we’re no longer angry.”

“I think that’s shite,” said Maureen. “We should try to change things. Anger’s a good thing. It can make ye challenge things that aren’t fair. It’s not comfortable and it’s not even nice to see in other people but it’s there for a reason. D’ye think he should be allowed to take women from Poland or wherever and make money from their wee bodies and for it to happen next door to houses with children in them and bars and curry houses and no one says anything? “

Maddie didn’t like that. She drew on her cigarette, inhaling the anger, sucking it all down. “He’ll get what’s coming to him,” she said.

“On Judgment Day?”

Maddie inhaled heavily again. ” ‘Judge not lest ye be judged,’ she said. “I know something about being judged by other people.”

“What about the next woman he brings over? Should she not judge him?”

Maddie ground her teeth.

“See, justice in the hereafter’s all very well,” said Maureen, “when all ye need to do is contain your anger. If you’re being raped and battered every night in the week it’s a bit more complicated.”

” ‘Judge not lest ye be judged,’ ” said Maddie weakly.

Maureen couldn’t remember if it was from Scripture or just the words of a hymn but she gave it a pop anyway. ‘ ‘Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me,’ ” she said.

Maddie flushed. “I try to be kind,” she said quietly. “I’m talking to you, amn’t I?”

With a flush and the crack of a door, Leslie came back from the toilet. Maureen was glad to see her, glad to have the intensity between them broken. “Why don’t the Glasgow girls tell on McGee?” asked Maureen.

“Well,” Maddie smiled softly and Maureen could feel her slipping back into her happy-Jesus-good-guy frame of mind, “how does the devil appear to us?”

“How d’ye mean?” said Maureen, bending forward to the ashtray and breaking eye contact.

Maddie tapped Maureen on the top of the head and made her look up. “When the devil comes, when temptation comes, how does it seem?”

“I dunno,” said Maureen. She was glad it was so bright in the room. She could at least hide her distaste for the holy chat behind a heavy squint.

“Well, it doesn’t come as a threat, does it?” Maddie opened her eyes, trying to look scary.

“No,” said Maureen reluctantly.

“No, the devil comes as a friend,” Maddie said. “He doesn’t come with knives in his eyes.” Maureen wondered if she was quoting a revelatory pamphlet. “He comes as a friend and promises us what we want. The selfish things, the fearful things.”

“Right,” said Maureen. “So Si McGee’s friendly to them, promises them good money, and they keep quiet about it?”

“Money and threats. The guys who put up the money are from London. They’re mental. Ye wouldn’t cross them if ye could help it. Anyway, we never got to know the women. They kept them downstairs and they couldn’t speak English.”

Maureen nodded. “Listen, Maddie, I go to a group on Thursdays. It’s a survivors’ group, for people who were abused.”

Maddie had frozen on the sofa bed, clutching her legs, her back rigid, staring from Maureen to Leslie as if they were attacking her.

“Would ye like me to tell ye where it is?”

Maddie’s head shake was so tiny it looked like a tremor.

“Okay. Well, thanks for the tea,” said Maureen, feeling as if she had violated her, “and for giving us your time.” She wanted to hug her, or say something that would make it okay, something to finish off the conversation and reassure herself that Maddie would be all right left alone. She reached out to touch her hand but Maddie recoiled.

“Should we just go?” Leslie asked her.

Maddie nodded once, watching their shoes as they walked out to the hall and shut the door behind them.

They were alone at the bus stop. The sun shone in through the thick, warped Perspex roof, refracting and fracturing in the shelter. They had bought more cans of juice and sat on the bench, sipping and watching for the bus.

“So, he’s bringing them in and keeping their passports,” said Maureen.

“It’s not just him, though,” said Leslie, sipping her Vimto. “He might have the agency but there must be others involved if they’re moving them around the country.”

They sat for a minute, trying to catch their breath in the heat.

“Does it really change everything for you if they know what they’re coming over for?” asked Leslie.

“It does. It shouldn’t, but it does. What about you?”

“D’ye want to drop it, then?”

“Fuck, no,” said Maureen quickly. “It shouldn’t make a difference.”

“Just ‘cause they’ve consented to be prostitutes doesn’t mean that they haven’t got any rights, does it?”

“No.”

“And anyway,” said Leslie, “how free is anyone to consent to that?”

“I don’t know, Leslie — if it’s a choice between juggling asbestos for thruppence a year or doing that and making money, ye can see why people would take that option. We shouldn’t try to impose what we want on them.”

The bus appeared on the horizon and they stood up, peering through the scratched Perspex until the number on the front came into focus. It was theirs.

“Maybe your problem,” said Leslie, reaching over and patting Maureen on the stomach, “is that you’ve a Jesus-shaped hole inside ye.”

“How would you know?” smiled Maureen. “You’ve never seen my hole.”

They caught a bus into town and Leslie insisted they go for breakfast at the Equal because the fry-ups were great, weren’t they? Really, though, weren’t they? Maureen smiled back and wondered what she was up to.

The Equal cafe was a fifties throwback with black Formica tables flecked with gold, a red and chrome coffeemaker and airbrushed pictures of ice-cream dishes on the wall. It was used by flush art students and office workers and was always quiet on a Sunday. It was down the hill from Maureen’s house and she had come here with Douglas for breakfast sometimes, when he got the chance to stay over. The food was cheap and the fry-ups magnificent, but the service was compromised by the sullen old waitress’s perpetually sore leg and short-term memory loss. She rarely brought a complete order to the table. Decades of small orders had started to blend and merge in her mind so that lasagna could transform into a toastie or a Coke into a coffee cake in the ten-foot amble between the table and the kitchen hatch.

Maureen and Leslie sat at a table by the window. West Sauchiehall Street was full of pubs and casinos, and the now deserted road was littered with takeaway chip wrappers and bottles from the night before. Outside worshipful Sunday shoppers passed in ones or twos, making their way down to the malls, heading east towards the resurrecting midday sun, squinting at the blinding brightness of it. The waitress shuffled over to them. Her brand-new orthopedic shoes had crepe soles on them that shrieked against the lino. “What d’yees want?”

Maureen was pleased to see that the waitress’s foot had healed. She had been wearing slippers with the toes cut out for months, apparently to get the air around some sort of fungal infection. Leslie ordered a fry-up, Maureen asked for a coffee, and the waitress screeched away from them over to the kitchen.

“What do you think about it, then?” said Leslie. “Is Mr. Goldfarb an evil flesh trader?”

“I don’t know,” said Maureen, lighting a cigarette she didn’t want. “I can’t see him as an unwitting partner in anything but he wouldn’t have told us if he’d known. What I don’t get, though, is why Poland? And why would McGee go to the trouble of getting Mr. Goldfarb to sort this out for him? The agency would be a traceable connection between McGee and those women. He’s so careful, why would he take that chance?”

Leslie stared out of the window. “To be honest, Mauri, I thought you were off your head there. I didn’t think there was anything in it at all.”

Maureen sat back in her chair and smirked. “Is that you being honest? Ye hardly kept it a secret, did ye?”

“Didn’t I?”

“Leslie, you told me you didn’t believe me.”

“Did I?” She looked surprised. “I don’t remember.” She took a cigarette and lit it slowly. “I’ve been worried.”

“About me?”

“About you.”

Maureen was irritated. “As is your close friend, Kilty?” she said sharply.

Leslie looked resigned and sat back, smoking and looking at her, chewing her tongue. “What do you weigh?”

“Are you weighing me in for a fight?”

“Mauri, if you could make eight stone with your shoes on I’d be surprised.”

Maureen glanced at her and shifted her gaze to the window. The weight was always the giveaway. She couldn’t hide it because it came off her face first. When things got bad she couldn’t eat, couldn’t bring herself to swallow properly, and she started smoking more and more so that her tongue got burned and she couldn’t taste anything anyway. When she was first admitted to hospital she had been under seven stone. Leslie was watching her across the table and she felt suddenly aware of her body, profoundly conscious of the bones of her bum rubbing against the seat, of the deep dip between her sharp hips and the baggy waistband on her shorts. “I’m doing fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“We are worried,” said Leslie softly. “I mean, okay, this was never going to be the time of your life, with the trial and the baby due and everything —”

“The baby’s born.” She was surprised she’d said it. She didn’t even know she’d taken it in yet. She blinked hard at the table and breathed in deeply.

Leslie hesitated. “Born?”

“A girl.”

During the twenty-minute taxi ride up to Drumchapel the driver tried to engage them in chat about the weather. Yes, they agreed, it was hot, very hot, most unusual for Glasgow. The driver told them authoritatively that it was because of global warming, like the floods all over England. The world was going to end soon, nothing surer. Leslie wasn’t keen to go upstairs but they needed to get the crash helmets. When she unlocked the front door the stale air hit them and Maureen saw how much Cammy had wormed his way into Leslie’s life. In the front room all the furniture had been moved around, as if he had been desperate to make his mark. The bedroom had been painted by a nonprofessional — the line between the white ceiling and the blue wall had been badly negotiated and the window frame had solid drips of gloss on it. Through the kitchen window she could see that Leslie’s beloved veranda had been cleaned up and the carpet of dead plants cleared away. Even the stained deck chairs had been washed so that the white stripes were no longer an off-yellow.