The Walk Home (23 page)

“You think I’m needing a lecture?”

Was that what it had felt like? Lindsey’s eyes were dark, her pretty face gone hard. Eric hadn’t meant to browbeat; what could he say now to make up?

“Love suffereth long an is kind.”

Eric tried a smile, anxious, hoping to soothe her if he brought the talk back round to kindness. That she might still hear him
out, just a few moments longer, and that she might still think it over.

“Love beareth aw things.”

Eric hadn’t thought to finish with St. Paul, but the words just came to him, just as Papa Robert had read them years ago, and he felt those lines tied everything together so well.

Only Lindsey shifted after she’d heard them, like she was impatient. She made a sound; she didn’t speak, it was more a breath, but it was enough to stop him, to have Eric frightened. Perhaps Lindsey was just too angry, still too sore to understand, just as he had been for so long. But Eric didn’t know what else to do but carry on.

“Love hopeth aw things, endureth aw things.”

Except there was that breath again. A word, or something like it:
kinhell
, muttered, disgusted. Eric couldn’t finish, he couldn’t tell her love never faileth, because Lindsey had her face turned away, and she was standing to go. Eric stood as well, so then he heard her more clearly. Quiet, but furious.

“Bad as my fuckin Da.”

Brenda thought she’d never get over it. Lindsey said
gies a kiss
in the morning when Stevie left for school; the girl got herself up and even dressed, and she saw him off at the top of the stairs.
Be good for your Gran, son. You listen to what she tells you
. Brenda walked him down the road, but then Lindsey wasn’t there when she got in from work. Just the boy and Malky, who said he hadn’t seen her all day.

No call, and no answer when they rang her; Eric said she hadn’t been at his place. They waited and waited.

It got dark, and Brenda thought she knew then what the girl had done. It was a twist in her gut, but it still took Graham to say it out loud, when he came in that evening and Lindsey wasn’t in any of the rooms.

“That’s it then.”

He sat down in the kitchen, defeated.

“That’s it then.”

Such a wrench. And they were such hard weeks that came after, Brenda didn’t know how she lived through them.

Stevie bearing it quiet, it broke her heart; being good like his Mum had told him. And Graham getting nowhere with all his Tyrone phone calls.

He called all Lindsey’s uncles and cousins, over and over, and then he turned up drunk one night outside Eric’s close, roaring hate and blame up at his windows. He had Eric shaken, and his neighbours crying breach of the peace, and then the officers who brought Graham back to Brenda’s looked at her hard-eyed, like hers must be a problem family.

She got more of the same from the boy’s class teacher.

“Is Stevie still living with you now? We do need to be kept informed. It’s in your grandson’s best interests.”

Brenda told Malky how she could feel the woman pigeonholing, for all her nods of concern. When they were all trying so hard, just to keep things going.

They had someone there for Stevie, at the end of every school day. Malky, or her, or Malky Jnr.; and Graham still came to see his boy in the evenings, when he made it back from work.

It wasn’t the best, Brenda knew that, and it nagged at her as the weeks passed. As she hauled herself from bus to bus, house to house, all over Glasgow; knocking her broom into the corners, shoving the mop bucket across the floors, flinging the filthy water down the plugholes. Brenda cooked meals and got messages, and loaded the washing machine, drawn tight, all the while, cramped inside. It was a caved-in feeling. Like she had nothing left, she just didn’t have the wherewithal: they didn’t have Lindsey now.

She made Graham stay for something to eat most nights, after Stevie was in his bed, and Malky sat with him if he wasn’t out driving, or Brenda kept him company while she did the ironing. She pressed the sheets and thought they’d just have to get used to this, in time. Even if she couldn’t think how.

Malky reckoned they’d have to move Stevie back in with his Dad, sooner rather than later, try and make this new shape of things feel normal. Only Brenda wanted Graham back on his feet first; she wanted the best for him so she tried, night after night, to think what could make this all right. Or even just better than it was. But when she thought about Graham happy, she just saw Graham with Lindsey. Or with his drum.

That loved and hated object was still in her cupboard. Every time Brenda got out the ironing board, she thought how dearly she’d like to be rid of it. Only then one night, when she went to get the board, it just wasn’t there any more.

“Where’s it gone?”

Brenda stood at the table, where Graham was sitting with Malky.

“Where’s your drum?”

He put down his fork, halfway through his peas and chops, and looked to his father for help.

“Naw, son.” Malky shook his head. “You tell her. It’s your ain bed you’re makin, you’ll have tae lie in it.”

Malky folded his arms, and Brenda felt like she’d been kept in the dark.

“What’s aw this about?” She told them: “Wan ae yous had better say now.”

So Graham sighed:

“It’s Shug, aye. He’s asked me back tae practice. He’s got the band an invitation.”

Brenda couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“You’re no goin, but? You’re no gonnae take it up?”

She stared at her son, who sat there silent. Malky kept his eyes on Graham too, telling her:

“He’s no decided. Am I right, aye?”

It sounded like they’d had plenty of words; like Malky had been trying to get through to him.

“Naebody says you cannae play, son. It’s just they bands, you get me? That Shug. Aw they folk like him on the band scene.”

Malky had got himself out of it, but Brenda knew he still liked the music: he kept tapes in his cab from his younger days, and played them some nights when he had no passengers. Graham nodded at them both, like he knew all that too, only he wasn’t convinced. What was the use of playing to no one? He told them:

“Gonnae give it a try, Maw. It’ll mebbe just be this wan time.”

“Bloody hell, son.”

Malky swore, but Graham kept going:

“They’ll be nae mad stuff, Shug swears it. It’s a step up, Maw. We’re tae play for the Grand Lodge.”

So then Brenda said it loud:

“Out!”

It was all she could do not to shout.

“Out ae my house!”

She’d have picked him up and thrown him, only Malky stood up, arms spread to keep the peace here.

“Haud on. Can we no haud on a second?”

He turned to Graham, like he thought more talk was called for. But Brenda wasn’t for listening, or for holding back now.

“You tellt me he’d grow out ae this,” she shouted. “Did you no? How long we gonnae bloody give him?”

Graham had had long enough, more than enough chances. Could he not see how the band had wrecked things? She loved him, but he couldn’t have Stevie, not to live with him.

“You cannae have the boy.”

Not if this was what he was doing.

Graham blinked at her, like that was news to him. But what was he thinking?

“What’s it gonnae take, son? When’s it gonnae sink in?”

Get through his thick skull and skin.

Brenda reached forward to rap at Graham’s forehead with her knuckles, only her son stood up then, sharp, and she knew she’d got to him at last. He looked at her fist, then at her, all hurt, and Brenda felt bad then. Only not bad enough to stop him when he made for the close. He had to learn, even if this was what it took, and so she yelled after him:

“I’ll no have it any more.”

Not inside her four walls. Brenda was resolved, even after the door shut and he was gone.

It was just her and Malky then, and the quiet, dead-right feeling about the stand she’d made.

She said:

“Only so far we can go, aye. Nae further.”

It was for Graham to come up to the mark.

“He willnae have Stevie till he does.”

Except Malky eyed her, stone-faced. He shook his head:

“Like faither, like daughter.”

He pulled the rug out from under.

And then Brenda thought: was that who she was like now? Papa Robert. Did he still love Eric, even when he pushed him out? Maybe he’d thought it was for the best, just like she did.

Brenda cast about herself, floored, still feeling she was right,
but that she might have got it wrong too. Then she saw Stevie’s bedroom door; how it stood half open to all her shouting. Was hearing all that in Stevie’s best interests?

“You think he’s awake?”

She pointed, and Malky cast her a look, like she should have thought of that before. He told her:

“You stay there.”

She’d done enough for one night.

“I’ll go an see about the boy.”

Headache weather, heat and clouds, and Jozef’s men were all crowded in the ground floor; getting in each other’s way, trying to get the job done, drills going in every room, and nail guns. It was airless down there, even with all the windows wide, and the men had to watch their step, because Tomas had half the floorboards up to lay the heating pipes.

Tomas was in the living room, but he’d left one side of the corridor stripped to the joists, making it hard to pass. Except no one was saying anything about that, even if it annoyed them, because he’d been in a dark mood since the developer’s visit that morning.

“He leaves it till Thursday of the last week to say?”

Jozef could hear him grousing, even from where he crouched on the back step, under the heavy sky with his laptop. Not that Jozef blamed him; the two of them had been working on the kitchen that morning, and then the developer showed up, to tell them the boiler was in the wrong place. They’d been working from the wrong plans.

So of course they would run over now: more jobs on Jozef’s lists than there were days left to do them, even if he paid all his men to work straight through the weekend.

Tomas was shouting again, inside the living room; something about the pipes. But Jozef had already heard his complaints about having to cut a fresh lot for the kitchen, so he blocked him out, squinting at the sky first, wanting rain, cooler days to do all this work in; then down at his emails, scrolling his way back through the attachments, all the endlessly updated plans. The developer claimed he’d sent him the latest, but Jozef would prove he hadn’t. He was going to look out for himself now, like Ewa said, not pay for someone else’s cock-up.

He’d got all his men working again in the meantime. Marek was in and out of the kitchen, just behind him, carrying tools and odd lengths of pipe, ready for Tomas to unhook the boiler, and Jozef thought he should be happy about that at least, getting his apprentice back at last; he’d taken Marek out round the local pubs to raise a toast, just last night. But all Jozef could hear right then was Tomas’s angry voice.

Jozef stood up, impatient, and looked inside. The kitchen was empty: no Marek, no sign of anyone.

The floorboards by the back door were up, so Jozef stepped across the pipework, joist to joist, hearing no drills or nail guns or saws. There was no work being done at all, just bellowing, coming from along the hallway. Tomas was the loudest, but other voices were joining his, in Polish and English: an angry mix.

Jozef stepped his way faster along the corridor, and found all his men, massed in the living room.

“What the hell is going on?”

It was stifling in there, and everyone was standing and angry, with Tomas in the middle.

“Bloody copper pipes,” he shouted. “None left. That’s what. I ordered extra, yes? Three whole bloody bundles. I need them for the boiler. But they’re not here now.”

Tomas flung his arms up, looking around the room, so Jozef looked around himself too, at all his men standing, grim-faced; and then he saw Stevie in their midst, with his arms folded wary across his chest.

Tomas fixed his eyes on the boy, and soon everyone was turning.