The Walk Home (3 page)

“A braw lassie wae red hair doon tae her bum, missus. Nothin tae dae wae us.”

It took days to get any sense out of Graham. He sat there with his dinner plates untouched, his eyes all small and sore in his big face. The phone kept going, every few hours, call box calls from far-off Tyrone, and Graham lay on the sofa pining after the next one, a great soft lump. Young love. Malky said it would pass, give it a month. But one morning, a bit more than a month later, Graham was gone. His bed was made, and a note taped to the kettle:
back themorrow
. And he was too, with Lindsey, who was seventeen and six weeks pregnant.

It floored her; Brenda wasn’t going to deny it. But there they were, standing hand in hand in her kitchen, both smiling so much she could feel the happiness off them, like heat.

She and Malky lay awake again that night, and most nights that followed, keeping their voices hushed so as the kids wouldn’t hear them across the hallway. It was hard to know where to start,
and it felt like hours could pass with them both just lying silent in the dark. Even Malky, who said life was for getting on with.

They couldn’t have a go about their ages: Brenda was nineteen when they’d had their first, and Malky not much older. He said:

“We’ve nae leg tae stand on.”

But they’d grown up just two Drumchapel streets apart, they’d known each other most of their lives, so Brenda whispered:

“Graham’s only known her five minutes.”

Graham took Lindsey all around Drumchapel. On days he wasn’t at college for his certificates, he took her to see his band pals and round his brothers’ houses, Craig’s and Brian’s and Malky Jnr.’s. Perching on the three-piece-suites with all the nieces and the nephews, all their young faces turned to the new girl come from Ireland. Brenda thought Graham was showing her off, and she couldn’t blame him. She told Malky:

“It’s a lovely face she has, right enough. An the way she carries hersel.”

Few on the scheme would have thought Graham could catch such a fine thing, and now he took her everywhere he went. Even if it was just out to buy milk. Mostly he went on his bike, with Lindsey sitting side-saddle on the rack at the back, and Brenda told Malky she watched them from the windows, cycling up the long wind from the shops, past all the long grey blocks. She said she followed Lindsey’s eyes, to all the different close-mouths and the salt-streaked damp under the tenement windows, and Brenda wondered: maybe it was city life the girl had wanted, only now here she was, on the far western fringes. The girl kept her fingers hooked into Graham’s belt loops, her arms rising and falling while he stood on the pedals; her spine
dead straight, arms slender, all her limbs, and her face showing nothing, but taking everything in.

“She’s upped sticks tae come here.”

The girl had left hearth and home, and so Brenda worried now: if Drumchapel didn’t match up. Or Graham for that matter.

“Hard tae know. What goes on inside that heid.”

Brenda was used to daughters-in-law: she and Malky had three already, and she’d found a way to rub along with all of them. But Lindsey kept herself to herself, so Brenda had to work at drawing this one out. Night by night, she told Malky the bits and scraps she’d turned up:

“The girl’s mother walked out. A few years back now. Wae no contact since.”

Graham had let that much slip; when he came in from college and Brenda was banging the pots about in the kitchen because Lindsey had spent the entire day holed up in his bedroom.

Malky sighed at the news. It was too dark to see his face, but Brenda knew what he meant: a stray was all they needed. She said:

“You can see how that would hurt a girl, but.”

“Aye, right enough.”

It was probably still too hurtful for Lindsey to tell them herself. They’d both learned fast that the girl didn’t like too much being asked, especially about home and her family. Venture a question, or an
only tryin tae help here
, and she’d close down on them, swift, and dead fierce with it.
Did I ask you?

Brenda knew it could take years to build up trust, and they only had months. They had to know Lindsey better, before the baby arrived, so she told Malky:

“I tried again tonight.”

She’d pushed Graham’s legs off the sofa, and sat down in front of the telly with them.

“Shouldae seen their faces.”

The memory made her laugh, and Malky too, and it felt like they needed to laugh just then, about this girl turned up, and how both of them felt so clueless. Brenda said the girl sat well back in the cushions, the whole time she was in the room, like she had to keep the solid width of Graham between them.

“I had tae look tae Graham for most ae the answers. An we both know he’s spare wae words at the best ae times.”

Brenda shook her head:

“It was like pullin teeth. I didnae get much. I made a start.”

She’d got some names and places. It sounded like the girl had uncles and cousins all over Tyrone and beyond.

“It was just her and her Dad at home, but.”

It was speaking to Lindsey’s Dad that made the difference. Brenda called him while the lovebirds were out and about and Malky was driving his cab. She found the number in among the bus tickets in Graham’s pockets, and she wasn’t proud of sneaking about, but the girl had been with them a good three weeks by then, and Brenda couldn’t be certain: if she’d told her family where she was, or even about the baby. Lindsey had brushed off that question every time she’d asked.

“She’s told me.”

Lindsey’s father didn’t sound best pleased to get a call. Brenda had expected him to be relieved, even if he was angry as well, but all he said was:

“She’s told me not to expect her any time soon.”

He left the talking up to Brenda, the whole first half of the conversation, and she thought at least she knew where Lindsey got that stubborn streak. But he put her in mind of her own Dad too: hard-bitten. Papa Robert had got too bloody good at the silent treatment; he took the hurt of his own life and turned it on his children. Brenda hadn’t even caught the worst of it, that fell to her brother: Eric had spent years on the receiving end. It drove the family apart, left Eric out on his lonely limb. But all that was passed now, and too hard to think about. And Brenda didn’t want schisms anyhow, not in yet another generation, so she was careful to keep Lindsey’s Dad on side:

“We’re aw still reelin, aye. Take us aw a while.”

Brenda thought maybe it worked, because he did say a bit more after that. About how the baby had come as a shock, but not that his daughter had run off.

“We’ve borne our share of the Troubles in this town, as you’re maybe aware. Lindsey seems to believe, as her mother did, in cutting and running.”

He was for holding fast; Brenda thought she could hear just what kind of Ulsterman he was. It didn’t make her feel easy.

Then Lindsey’s father sighed:

“She knows where her home is.”

And he didn’t sound so bitter. More just tired. Of his girl, or maybe just his life. It was a hard place he lived in, Brenda thought; she wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And then he told her:

“Lindsey’s been away before now, and she’s always come home again.”

It gave her heart, that he could say that. Even if he spoke like his girl was a dead weight. A disappointment. It didn’t seem right to talk like that, not to someone he’d never met, not about his own child. But Brenda knew the weight of her own boys:
much as she loved them, there were times they felt like four great stones. So she said:

“They keep us fae slipping away wae the tide, anyhow.”

And Lindsey’s Dad managed a laugh, tight and short:

“Aye, well. That’s one way to look at it.”

Brenda was glad when that call was over, but it gave her new eyes on Lindsey. The girl carried the marks of her hardline Dad and hometown, and Brenda thought she could see her softening.

On days she went cleaning, Brenda was first out the door, and it was none too easy to go toiling when everyone else was still in their beds, especially because there’d be more of the same scrubbing and wiping when she got back. Only when Brenda came home towards tea time that next week, Lindsey had mostly put her hand to something about the house: she’d washed the breakfast things, or been to the shops with Brenda’s message list. One night she was even peeling the potatoes.

The girl gave a small smile, wry, when she saw Brenda, stopped short in the kitchen doorway.

“Only trying to help here.”

It was a treat to come home to that: a first chink in the girl’s armour plating, plus a good meal into the bargain. It was just the two of them at the table, because Malky was on lates, and it was one of Graham’s college days when he didn’t get in till after dark. Brenda used to have a houseful, she still couldn’t get accustomed to empty rooms, and she found herself thinking: what would a house be like with just that Dad and his girl?

She watched as Lindsey set out their plates. The girl had no belly, not yet, no boobs, no weight on those narrow bones, but
she dished the food with practised hands. And then Brenda thought there were some places, some families, that made kids grow up too fast.

She was still turning things over when Malky got in. Brenda sat up in bed while he took off his work clothes, and she said:

“I’d have mebbe made mysel scarce. If I was that man’s girl.”

It made Malky smile, hearing her talk:

“You gonnae make it better, aye? This girl’s life.”

A part of Brenda wanted to do that, but she waved Malky off, like she wasn’t that daft:

“I’m just sayin.”

Maybe Lindsey had good reason for wanting a new start.

“The girl’s no chosen the easiest path, but.”

Brenda told him how she’d been trying to picture Lindsey with a child: all that graft, how she’d manage. Malky said:

“She’ll manage.”

Like he’d made up his mind. He’d only known the girl a month, but Brenda knew Malky could do that, without lots of wailing and wringing of hands. He said:

“She’ll have you tae help. If she wants it or no.”

Malky laughed, properly this time, and then Brenda had to join in. She’d already caught herself that evening, thinking about the baby, starting to look forward. She was going to be a Gran again, and being a Gran was the best thing.

Soon Lindsey had been with them three months, then six. It was winter, and then, it was coming up for spring. Graham got
himself work, and got his City and Guilds, and the lovebirds sat shoulder to shoulder in the evenings, out the front of the close, bike abandoned below them on the tussocky slope. Brenda still watched them down there sometimes, watching Lindsey especially; the tilt of her red head, and that small, round tell-tale belly, like a pillow stuffed under her sweatshirt.

The girl still didn’t say much when it was just the two of them in the house. But Brenda saw the way she looked up, when she heard Graham’s key in the door: like he was a relief, like she’d been waiting all day. It made Brenda glad for her boy, and it soothed her worries, and she decided it was best to leave Lindsey in peace on their quiet kitchen evenings.

It was April and early when Brenda was woken by a knock. It took her a moment to come round. The sun was just up beyond the curtains, and there was Lindsey, standing in the hallway, all dressed, her wee hands pressed across her pillow-bump:

“Might be time now.”

She whispered it, frightened, blinking in the half-light.

“Will you come with us, Brenda? To the hospital. Please?”

It gave her such a lift to be asked, she could have lifted the girl down the stairs. Could have strode with her coal-carry down the road. But Brenda remembered her own four births, and what Lindsey had just ahead.

“You give Graham a shake, hen. I’ll get Malky tae drive us there.”

Jozef sent Marek to get plywood, but he came back empty-handed. He came into the garden where Jozef was cutting tiles, and said he couldn’t find the timber yard:

“It wasn’t where you told me.”

Marek was his nephew. Or, more precisely, he was Ewa’s: not yet twenty and still learning on the job, but he spoke like he knew better than his elders. Jozef was twice his age, with grey in his stubble to show it, and too many years under his belt finding his way around foreign cities, so they stood and argued, in Polish; only then the boy came out of the door behind them.

He’d been up in the top rooms all of yesterday, and most of the morning, re-doing the skim coat on the walls, and Jozef thought he must have finished already, because he walked to the outside tap and started washing out the buckets. Halted in mid-flow, and still annoyed, Jozef called him over:

“You know this place?”

He waved the docket from Pollockshaws Timber, and the boy
looked up from his tools, but then he shook his head, like that was a stupid question. So then Marek was irritated too:

“You from Glasgow, yes?”

The boy nodded:

“Born an bred.”

But then he flicked his head at the long gardens, the solid South Side villas all around them:

“No round here, but.”

He turned his face skywards, working through the compass points:

“I’m fae out that way.”

He pointed west.

“Beyond the pale.”

The boy smiled at them, like he’d just made a joke, and then he stepped forward, wiping his fingers on his jeans. He took the docket, reading the address, and Jozef saw how Marek kept his eyes on him, trying to work him out; if he liked him or not.

His nephew liked it here in Glasgow: he said it was the people and the things they laughed about. Marek went out to pubs with Jozef’s other workers, and ended up drinking half the night with people he’d never met before. He said all Glasgow men knew about Gdańsk: a kindred shipyard town where the workers had made history, front pages all around the world. So Marek got their life stories, as well as their jokes, and he’d been asking about the boy yesterday lunchtime, when he didn’t come down to eat with them. Marek had told Jozef he was useless, because he couldn’t even remember what his name was.
You go and ask him then, you’re so interested
.