The Walk Home (18 page)

The half-circle of flutes had their backs to the door, and the drums were facing them, just like always. Stevie was on the end of the line, so he could see past the flutes, and he was the first to see the door open, and the man who came in to watch them. Jeans and blue T-shirt and balaclava. He walked into the big space between band and bar, and then he stood, wide-legged, head down, his hands folded, respectful:
God bless the hands that broke the boom and saved the Apprentice Boys
.

Come the end of the third verse most in the band had seen him. They were glancing over shoulders, and missing notes, but Shug made them finish before he told them:

“We have an honoured guest. He’s far from home and cannot return, but his cause is just. So let us make him welcome.”

Shug ordered “Hands Across the Water,” and there was a fair bit of shuffling before they started. But they did well, and the guest raised a palm when they got to the end, nodding his thanks. He never spoke, and he never took off the hood, but he listened all the way through the second half, sitting on one of the long benches at the wall, his arms spread out along the seat-back; rock-still, save a tapping finger. A couple of times he beckoned Shug over and whispered a request. They played “Fields of Ulster” for him and, a bit after that, “Absent Friends.” Stevie could see the hairs on Shug’s forearms, all on end, and the slow tide of sweat running down his neck. Doug and Harry were next along, both with wide, damp patches spreading downwards from their collars, and Stevie wondered if his Dad was the same, on the other end of the line, only he didn’t dare lean forward to look.

There were slick faces all around the half-circle in front of him; the men were blinking the stinging salt out of their eyes, but no one missed a beat to push at their slipping glasses. At ten o’clock Shug ordered the flutes to stand on the chairs, and the drums to surround them. They stood like that in silence, heads high for the stranger, and then they played
The Sash
for a full fifteen minutes and longer.

So they were late finishing, but the barman had already called the lock-in. Everyone stayed. It was just the band in the snooker club, sitting around the tables; a few bare-chested, Stevie’s Dad among them, his soaking T-shirt stuffed into his bag. Stevie sat next to him, and he could feel the heat off him, his skin and his jeans, his red ears. There were a lot of red ears round the tables; eyes down and stop-start conversations. Heads trying not to turn to the bar where Shug was talking with the guest.
Or anyhow listening while the guest spoke, frowning serious, and then laughing at his jokes.

A bucket went round the room. Stevie had seen a bucket go round after practice before, collecting coins for sick kids or band funds, but there were no coins going in it this time, only notes, and Stevie saw his Dad tuck the fiver back into his pocket when the bucket came closer. He threw in a tenner: didn’t want his blue standing out against all the brown and purple.

“Who was that, Da?”

It was frosty outside when they left, and Stevie’s Dad pulled on his jacket over his bare shoulders, but he didn’t answer.

“Who was he?”

Stevie had to trot next to him up the long wind of the hill towards home. His Dad always walked fast when he was annoyed, and Stevie knew the question annoyed him, but it seemed worth knowing, so:

“Da?”

“I dinnae know his fuckiname, son. Kay?”

That was all he got.

So Stevie asked his Mum, the next day when she fetched him from school. He told her about the stranger and the bucket while they were climbing the stairs, and she stopped still on the second-floor landing, after she’d heard him out. She took a breath:

“Tell me. What was he wearing again, this man?”

Her eyes had gone sharp and dark, and then Stevie thought he’d got the word wrong; it was a strange word, and maybe it wasn’t called a balaclava at all. He said:

“A hood. Wae eyeholes, but. A black wan.”

“Bloody hell.”

She muttered it, pulling Stevie back down the stairs, down the road to his Gran’s. He wasn’t to ask more, Stevie knew that.

Brenda didn’t know what to say to Lindsey. When she showed up raging, pulling Stevie behind her, still in his school clothes. The boy looked at her, like this was all his fault, so Brenda gave him toast and jam, and plenty of it, and she sat him in front of the telly. She sat with him there a good few minutes, bracing herself before she went to the kitchen to listen to the girl.

It was the band, the band, the band, it always was now, coming between them. But this time it was worse, and Brenda got properly scared, thinking what Shug was up to, and what Lindsey might do now. She was scared for her son’s sake.

Brenda had long had her doubts, ever since Graham joined his first band, just shy of his thirteenth birthday. She’d seen three sons cross that Rubicon, and she’d been dreading another. Not that her older boys had been terrible. They always were a handful—so many, and so close together—but she and Malky had kept a firm grip, even through their teenage years; seen them through to the army, and fatherhood. The scheme had gone to the dogs, though, over those years, and by the time Graham was in secondary, even the good kids were doing mad stuff. Setting fires in closes, and mainlining sleeping pills; taking other people’s cars and doing handbrake turns in the sand traps on the golf course. Brenda knew good women who lived in fear, of phone
calls in the small hours and visits from the police; of hearing what their feral boys had been up to this time. Then Malky’s cab got taken one night, and when the police found it two days later, a burnt wreck by the canal, it turned out their neighbour’s son was the culprit. Brenda wept about that, in the watches of the night, under the bedclothes, and it wasn’t just the shock of it, or the lost earnings; it was how the boy’s mother couldn’t look at her when they passed in the close. Brenda thought:
there but for the grace ae God
.

She’d steeled herself for Graham’s wild years, but they never came. He never stuck needles in his veins, or got himself hauled up in court on charges. A son in a flute band seemed like a blessing by comparison. Graham seemed happy enough with his once-weekly band practice and his drum pads. He even got Brenda to show him how to press his own uniform, and she remembered crying in bed again that night, only this time with gratitude.

It was Lindsey’s turn to cry now. She spent the afternoon in tears in Brenda’s kitchen, and Brenda stood with her thinking how Graham had a family now. Lindsey alone was worth more than any flute band, surely.

The girl didn’t want to go home to him this time, it didn’t matter what Brenda said. So Brenda took Lindsey’s keys and she was there when Graham got in from work.

“You’re no goin back tae practice.”

“How?”

“You bloody know why no. Don’t gie me that.”

She followed Graham through the flat, keeping on at him while he looked for Lindsey and his boy.

“You needn’t bother, son. They’re both at mine.”

Graham stopped where he was in Stevie’s bedroom. He didn’t look at her, he just sat down, heavy, the small bed sagging under his bulk, and the sight of him there put a halt to Brenda’s tirade.

She said:

“You’re a grown man, Graham. Sort ae. I cannae stop you, can I? You should listen tae Lindsey, but.”

She was from over there. And she’d just spent half the afternoon telling Brenda how she’d grown up with folk like Shug and you didn’t want them near you. One of her Dad’s pals had kept a safe house, for UVF shitebags who needed time out of Belfast. What if Shug kept one too? It didn’t bear thinking about. Lindsey thought she’d left all that behind, along with Tyrone and her bloody father. She told Brenda he got carried away with all that stuff, especially when he was in his cups: he’d have flung his week’s wages in that bucket, most likely, kept the mystery man in balaclavas for a couple of years at least.

Brenda asked:

“Who the bloody hell was he?”

“He wasnae emdy.”

Graham let out his breath, out of his depth on the duvet. His big shoulders gone slack, and his jaw. He rubbed his face and then he told her:

“It was just some stunt ae Shug’s. Tae bump up funds. He’s wantin new uniforms an we cannae afford them.”

Brenda was quiet a moment. She didn’t know much about Shug. Maybe Malky did. He heard all sorts in his cab: things that never made it into the papers, or only ages after the fact. How guns and men and malice passed back and forth between Ulster and this side of Scotland.

She was frightened again, and she could have done with
Malky to steady her just then: he never got carried away. But neither did Graham, not as a rule; he was like his Dad that way. So Brenda sat down on the bed, next to her son, and then she said:

“Shug’ll get hissel hurt.”

“Ach Maw. Shug’s no stupit.”

Graham looked at her. And then he blinked:

“Aye, Okay. So mebbe he is. A heidbanger. Just playin, but.”

“If you say so.”

Brenda couldn’t think what else to say just then. She wished for Malky again, but he was out and driving. And then she thought of Papa Robert: what would he have said now to Graham?

He wouldn’t have approved. She knew that much.

Her Dad had been choosy about bands, careful who his lodge picked to play for them on the Walk. Papa Robert said folk got far more riled by the drums than they did by his ilk, for all their suits and sashes. He’d favoured the accordions, hymns to walk along with, and folk tunes. “The Sash” had counted as a hymn in his book, and “Rule, Britannia,” but he never allowed songs about the Troubles, reaching out hands to Loyalist gunmen, or cheeseburgers to Bobby Sands. He said it wasn’t dignified, and the Walk wasn’t done to provoke, it was a solemn occasion. Sobriety was a virtue, and one that Papa Robert thought worth taking literally. His lodge had been dry, the last dry one on Drumchapel, and though he’d let Brenda’s mother use brandy in the Christmas cake, even administering the spoonfuls, once that was in the oven he’d stood with her at the sink, grave, ceremonious, while she poured away all that was left of the quarter-bottle.

Brenda sat with Graham on Stevie’s bed, thinking it was rare
that she wished for her father, but she did just now. Papa Robert would have been hurt by this, that was his strong suit, and he could lick his wounds longer than anyone she knew. But he’d have got Graham to listen, too. Her father was born the year of the Easter Rising, and he’d been formed in the cruel civil war that came after. Brenda didn’t like to think of the vicious things he’d seen, but she reckoned her boy could do with being told, by someone who knew first-hand: Graham hadn’t the first idea what he was dealing with.

Just a stunt, Maw
. Half the band probably wanted it to be real, and Shug would know that fine well. A living, breathing paramilitary taking a short break from the struggle to listen to their music. He was gifting them a thrill, Brenda thought; getting them closer to the dark heart, but not close enough to harm. Only she wasn’t sure enough of Shug, so the thought didn’t give her much ease.

“Lindsey’s right, son. You’re tae keep away fae him.”

Tomas came on Saturday to start work on the boiler. He laid out all the parts in the ground-floor kitchen, while Jozef cut pipes to size, working to the developer’s floor plans; making ready for the week ahead. It was their last on the job, he would soon be in Gdańsk, but there was so much to get through. The day had started heavy too: still hot, but not nearly so bright, grey outside.

Jozef propped the back door wide in the hope of a breeze, and he kept one ear open for the delivery due that morning. But he caught no knock, just a half-heard rumble and whistle, a far-off sound, there and then gone again. It was almost like music, but not quite, coming across the city rooftops, too remote to make out, and Jozef was only half-aware of it as an unfamiliar sound; not the delivery van he was listening out for.

Tomas stopped for coffee at ten o’clock, and Jozef joined him outside on the back step, in need of a breeze and a second opinion on his too-long job lists.

“We’ll run over at this rate. I’ll be in breach of contract.”

Any extra days would come out of his fee, and Tomas nodded; he knew how these things worked, so he took a pencil to Jozef’s lists, shifting jobs from one column to the next:

“I can come tomorrow, after mass. Start laying the pipes. You put Marek with me, I’ll get them done quick. So I can help with the finishing.”

All those small details, Jozef thought: they always took longer than anyone expected. He ignored the drop of Marek’s name, grateful for Tomas and his will to get things done on time, and then the breeze they’d been hoping for arrived, so they both stood quiet a while.

Jozef caught a strain, that unfamiliar sound again. It was the same rumbling and whistling as before, but it was music, this time Jozef was sure: drums and high notes to go with them.

“Listen.”

He held a finger up to Tomas, to see if he could hear it too, or say where it was coming from. But then the breeze dropped.

“Never mind.”

It was gone again, and still no delivery van. Jozef’s coffee was finished, so he went back inside.

He found Stevie in the kitchen.

“Anythin needin done just now?”

There was plenty, even if Jozef had to pay him overtime. It would be less than the penalty clause, so he told the boy:

“You can do the render coat, in the living room.”

Stevie went to the sink, crouching down to get his buckets, but then he saw Tomas was outside.

“Is he here theday then, aye?”

“Doesn’t matter. You can still work. You’ll be in a different room.”

Stevie looked doubtful. He stayed down on his haunches, picking at a stray thread around the patch on his jeans, and then Jozef frowned at him, and all the doubts he raised.

The badge he worried at was worn in places, older even than its host trousers. The threads he pulled were yellow and fine to match the border, different from the thick black ones that held it roughly in place now. It looked like it had, at one time, been sewn neatly to another garment, and then ripped off and stitched onto these. Jozef imagined the boy, mending his knees. With whatever thread he could lay hands on, because that’s what it looked like. It wasn’t his best work, so Jozef told him: