The Walk Home (26 page)

“How long you gonnae keep me?” His Gran sighed, still waiting for an answer.

Only Stevie didn’t have one. And he didn’t see why he had to be good now either, not when nobody else in the family was. So he made for the door, just thinking to get out and climbing, knotting the sweatshirt around himself; July and warm, at least he didn’t have to wear it. But Stevie still heard his Gran shouting down to him as he left the close.

“Cannae be waitin on you forever, son.”

Jozef had taken Stevie off the job. He’d seen no other way out.

The boy had made himself scarce, up the stairs, and now Jozef set to work, hauling up the kitchen floorboards. He turned his back on his men, furious with them for closing ranks. Jozef was furious with himself as well: no pride in falling into line.

But it had worked. He’d got them all shoulder to shoulder, for what felt like the first time that summer. He hadn’t even needed to shout: Jozef had just told his men to get on,
you know how much we have to get done
. And now he heard them, picking up their tools, picking up swiftly where they’d left off.

Tomas went out for pipes, and the rest of them all got their heads down, putting in a solid afternoon. The boiler was righted, the kitchen units fitted neatly around it; floorboards re-laid, heating pipes all in place. On any other day it would have pleased him, but Jozef was glad when they left for the evening, especially Marek.

His phone went while he was sweeping, and Jozef thought it would be the developer, calling with a compromise offer, but it turned out to be Romek.

“Don’t you pay for the over-run, you hear?”

“I’m not.” Jozef was irked: always someone talking behind his back, thinking he had no backbone. And besides, he’d had three phone calls from the man this afternoon, and hadn’t bent once.

Romek told him:

“Good, good.”

And then:

“So you sacked the boy.”

“Who told you?”

It must have been Tomas, Jozef thought. He must have called him, in triumph, but Romek said:

“Stevie. He just phoned me asking for a job.”

Jozef looked up the wide stairs, leaning his broom against the wall. He’d sent the boy to pack up, but he hadn’t heard him leave yet; only so long he could put off throwing him out. Jozef asked:

“So have you got work for him?”

Hoping Romek might. The last Jozef heard, he’d been in line for a big conversion, but Romek told him:

“No. I’ve got nothing. Until well into the autumn. Might have to go on holiday.” He laughed, half-hearted. “Might see you in Gdańsk. I told the boy to stay in Glasgow anyway. Gave him some numbers, people up there. There’s nothing for him in London.”

He didn’t ask why Jozef had sacked him, so Jozef thought he must have heard the whole sorry story. Stevie’s side, in any case. Romek told him:

“You shouldn’t let it get to you.”

“I’m not.”

“All right then.”

Romek let out his breath. Then he said:

“I just know that boy can get to you. Right? If you let him.” Jozef said nothing. It was a surprising admission. But then he thought of the boots: Romek’s son’s, that he’d given to Stevie. Romek had sent the boy up here, told him to stay put; maybe he wanted him off his conscience. Back with his family, even. Romek told Jozef now:

“What can we do? Me and you? We have no work for him.”

And then:

“It’s better this way. That’s what I say. He’ll have to work things out for himself.”

Jozef locked up downstairs, shutting all the windows; he did the same on the first floor, making sure everything was secure. He was leaving the house, for food and air, and bit of respite. But he had to get Stevie out first.

The boy was in the big room when he got upstairs, sitting at the wall with his holdall; all packed up, but like he didn’t know where next. He gave Jozef a black look when he came in the door, and Jozef nodded: understood. But then he told him:

“You didn’t take the pipes. But you are covering up for a thief, yes?”

He was hurt: the boy had got to him, Romek was right, but Jozef hadn’t wanted it to show like this. He was hot again, from the climb through the closed-up house, too aware he was sweating. He hadn’t planned what to say, and he should have planned it. He asked:

“Did Marek get a good price?”

He’d like to know that at least. When he went to see Ewa, he could tell her Marek had learned something over the summer. But Stevie gave no answer, and then Jozef sighed, exasperated.

“Why don’t you go home now?”

“Why don’t you?” Stevie shot back, sharp.

Jozef thought he’d had that coming; he let it pass. He didn’t like to put the boy out onto the street, though, not if he could help it, so he asked:

“How old are you?”

“Auld enough.”

Jozef couldn’t be sure that he was.

“Been takin care ae mysel since I was fourteen, pal.”

The boy made it sound like a long time; it sounded far too young to Jozef.

“Been on my ain two feet since the day I left here.”

There was a hard note in his voice; hard to tell if he was proud or aggrieved. Jozef asked:

“They know you’re back here? Your parents?”

Stevie shook his head, definite.

“You have anyone else?” Jozef persisted. The boy must have someone; uncles, grandparents.

The boy shook his head again, still annoyed, only not as definite this time, so Jozef waited a moment, thinking he might be getting somewhere. Stevie sat forward a little, as though to speak, but he took his time before he said:

“Used tae stay wae my Gran.”

A brief statement of fact, but Jozef seized it, before the boy could withdraw again.

“Here? In Glasgow?” he asked. “Your grandmother is still in the same place?” Maybe he could go to her.

“Aye.” Stevie blinked, still hesitant. “I phone her there. Sometimes.”

“So, you can phone her now,” Jozef cut in. He didn’t want to know if the boy’s calls were welcome or not, he just got out his mobile, held it out.

But Stevie frowned at the offer, sitting back again, his face darkening.

“I’ve my ain, pal.”

And then Jozef felt foolish, for forcing the issue; for thinking it could be so simple.

The boy had to leave now, even if he had nowhere to go, Jozef knew there was no way round this. He put away his mobile and pulled out his wallet.

“Listen.” He counted out some notes. “This is your wages. It’s what I owe you.”

It was a tidy little wad, enough to cover the final week, not just the days the boy had worked. So Jozef was buying him off, but he hoped they could both pretend he wasn’t.

The boy looked away as Jozef stepped towards him, but when he held out the money, Stevie took it from his hand. In no position to be proud. He pocketed it, and then he muttered:

“So I can get new work boots, aye?”

Jozef nodded. Something like that.

He thought Romek’s boots must be in the holdall, because the boy had his old trainers on, and the shabby jeans too: the same outfit he’d arrived in. Jozef was close enough now to see the fraying stitches around the patch; that it was coming loose, just above the red hand. He told him:

“You can get yourself good work trousers as well.”

Stevie looked down at himself. He bent his knee up to his
chest, leaning forward, making a show of inspecting his badge. Then he said:

“It’ll hold.”

Ducking his head, biting off a stray thread.

“Nae hole there anyhow.”

He gave Jozef a nod, a shrug, patting his knee, but his face was difficult to read: defiant, or maybe just in need. Who did this boy belong with?

Stevie sat a while, rolling the thread against his teeth with his tongue, then he asked:

“You’re wantin me out. Just now. Am I right?”

Jozef did. But he found he couldn’t say it. He said:

“I am out of here too. Monday, Tuesday.”

The boy gave no response. So then Jozef had to tell him:

“This job is done now. I am going. I can’t help you.”

Blunt truth; he hoped he sounded sorry at least. The boy squinted, over at the one still-open window. He’d been on his own since the day he left here. Stevie wouldn’t meet Jozef’s eye, but he nodded.

Stevie skipped school to go up to Eric’s.

The old man never moaned at him about missing lessons, so he’d been going there off and on over the winter. Eric’s head in his drawings, Stevie reckoned he didn’t even know what day of the week it was; the old man kept his flat warm and his nose out of Stevie’s business.

It was a fine morning, bright and blowy, and Stevie got off the bus early because he knew Eric liked to go out sketching, now the weather was getting better. He knew all the places to look, too. He’d found Eric by the canal last week, with his big old coat on, pencils in his pockets, and paper under his arm, strapped to a square of thin ply with rubber bands. The old man had been on the slope by the allotments, sitting and squinting in the sunshine; the wide reach of Glasgow below, and pigeons pecking about him in the long grass. His pencil was moving fast, his old face folded in concentration, and he didn’t break off drawing when he saw Stevie coming up from the road:

“Haud on,” Eric told him. “Just wait there.” Like he was warning him off coming any closer. “Just need tae get this ontae paper.”

Eric had been working on the same picture for weeks now, and it had got so he couldn’t think of anything else. He’d told Stevie it was going to be of Jacob and Esau.
Isaac’s boys, aye?
Abraham’s grandsons, still split by the old man’s spite. Eric kept changing his mind; he couldn’t settle on which part of the story, but they were all he could talk about.
Wasted their young lives fightin over their Dad’s love, so they did
. He kept saying how Jacob got sick of it and cut his ties—
can you blame him?
—so Stevie reckoned his uncle would most likely draw him leaving his brother behind, his warring family: a young man starting out on a new life. Only when his uncle spread out his sketches on the grassy slope, all of them were of pigeons, mostly of their wings, and Stevie couldn’t think where they came into it. The old man said:

“Wish I had some ae John Joe’s birds tae draw.”

His brother-in-law had told him, how the best part was when he heard the first of his racers, coming back to the coop:

“Aw that waitin, aye? An then the welcome sound ae wings.”

Could take them for ever sometimes.

“John Joe, but. He never gave up on his birds.”

Eric said he’d wait up ages for the last, and he’d check each one over, taking his time, with love; especially those that had been away the longest. So then Stevie thought it must be Jacob’s homecoming he’d be drawing, because it was years and years before he went back; he and Esau were both grown men by that time.

Only his uncle was still on about John Joe:

“He used tae spread they feathers wide.” Eric spread his big arms to demonstrate. “Sleek an handsome, so they were.”

Then he pointed to his pictures of the allotment birds:

“These are nothin bloody like them.”

He called them miserable specimens, and he shoved the papers together, rough, closing the subject:

“It aye looks like shite till it’s ready anyhow.”

Eric had got moody like that just lately. More and more, since he’d started this drawing. Whatever part of the story he was working on, Stevie hoped his uncle wouldn’t be so crabbit today.

Back of ten, Stevie had been looking for the best part of an hour, and the old man wasn’t by the allotments; he wasn’t on the canal banks either. Stevie had searched them, from the Applecross basin up as far as Maryhill, but there was no sign.

The only thing he had to go on was Eric’s picture, so then he tried to remember how the story ended, when Jacob went back to Esau, because it was hard not to be worried about his uncle and his strange moods; where could he have got to? Eric had told him last time, how Jacob stopped by a river, and that water was hard to draw, especially if it was moving fast. The canal was still, just about, so Stevie cut back to the road, thinking to try the Kelvin; best an eye was kept on him.

The few sketches he’d seen were dark, as was Eric’s habit. It had looked like a bit of Jacob’s story that happened at night, and Stevie jogged uncertain down Queen Margaret Drive, until he saw the trees beyond the West End tenements, tall ones, shading the riverbanks. He found a bridge and beneath it the green-black Kelvin, and then he took the steep steps down to the shadowy path that ran along the water’s edge.

Stevie was cooler when he got down there, and he felt better under cover, surrounded by spring growth, everything in full
leaf. But he still had to pass under the high, damp arches of two more bridges before the path turned and he found his uncle.

Eric wasn’t on the footway, he was further down, nearer the water, where the river made a bend and there was a small strand, a rocky curve of dry land. The old man was sitting on the stones, tucked against a leaning tree trunk; Stevie could just about make him out. Joggers went past, mothers with buggies, but nobody looked down there. It was not far past a weir, so the water was swifter here, and Stevie could see why Eric had chosen the spot. But the old man wasn’t drawing, he was just sitting, all hunched, staring at the river.