The Walk Home (8 page)

“Will you put them up?”

There were none of Eric’s pictures hanging in the flat, and that made no sense to her; it looked like he drew enough to paper a close. Eric put his head to one side, squinting at the walls, giving it some thought, but then he said:

“Naw. They’re no for display. I’ll be keepin them, but.”

He pointed at his shelves, full of box files and envelopes, and then he told her:

“I draw somethin most days. Try tae anyhow.”

Eric said the pictures that pleased him he filed away, and sometimes he replaced them:

“Wae different pictures. Or if I’ve done a better wan. I’m forever trying tae draw a better wan.”

The old man laughed at that, like he was laughing at himself, and it made Lindsey smile. Graham had warned her Eric wouldn’t be easy, Brenda too, in her own way. But Lindsey still thought he was just different.

She knew what it was like as well, being different from your family. How some could take it personally; as if they thought you were being different deliberately, to rub their face in it. She wondered what it had been like for Eric growing up, only then Eric put down his cup and leaned forward.

“Things I draw. They’re stories, aye? So if they’re long wans, they go over pages.”

He gestured to the three big sheets overlapping each other on the desk, a bit nervy now, like he wasn’t used to talking about his pictures.

“Five weeks I’ve been at these. Cannae make my mind up, but. If I’ve got them right yet.”

Eric stood, like he needed to take another look. So then Lindsey stood too; she’d been curious all afternoon.

“Mind if I take a peek?”

Eric wasn’t used to showing folk. But then he took a breath, standing to one side.

“Aye, right then. In for a penny. See what you think.”

There was a view of the city on the first, as seen from the top of Ruchill Park: spires and rooftops and trees, only with most of the West End submerged. It took Lindsey a moment to work it out: it looked like the two Glasgow rivers had burst their banks and, between them, they’d swallowed up the Expressway and Dumbarton Road, Kelvinhall and most of Woodlands; they’d made a huge black lake. It wasn’t too nice to look at, so Lindsey lifted the top page away, and the flood-waters were lower in the next, but there were overturned buses at Partick Cross, streets
that were thigh-deep and dark, and no people. That didn’t make for a nice sight either. So then Lindsey turned to the last one, and found a great ship, taller than the houses and grounded, leaning up against one of the Park Circus towers. Snakes and baboons and lizards, spilling from the portholes and into the puddles.

She stood there, at a loss. Lindsey could feel Eric next to her, waiting, but she couldn’t find anything to say to him. She hadn’t bargained on this; not on so much darkness, and not a Bible story for a start. Brenda and Malky didn’t go to church, or Graham, or any of his brothers, and none of them had warned her Eric was religious. She’d had nothing to do with any of that in years, not since she’d left home and her Dad behind her, and now Lindsey couldn’t find any words.

“Nae bother.”

Eric pushed the pages together, like to cover them over.

“It’s an auld story, that wan. Mebbe I havnae done it justice.”

He shrugged his big shoulders, making out it was all right: she didn’t have to like what he’d done. Eric didn’t seem hurt, not exactly; just at a loss, same as she was. He went to the shelves and reached out something from between his boxes, and Lindsey stepped forward, thinking to apologise, only then she saw it was a Bible in his hands. It stopped her in her tracks.

Eric sat down next to Stevie, and he was huge on the cushions, massive next to her boy, and Lindsey could see he wasn’t angry, not like his drawings, but it still made her nervous. The afternoon had taken a strange turn; was he going to give them a sermon? Stevie was shifting closer to the old man’s shoulder, expecting a story, while Eric leafed through the pages. The book lit by the corner lamp, with the rest of the room dark around them, Eric muttered:

“You’d think I’d know this wan by now. My Da tellt it often enough.”

Lindsey’s Dad had too. All about that first big flood, that punishment from above. He’d made sure she understood: how disappointed God was, by the children of man, the children he’d made. Always falling short of his mark. Lindsey knew her Dad had felt the same about her, and she could even remember some of the words now, about the waters prevailing over the creeping things of the earth. She’d never liked being told, Lindsey thought she’d had enough of that for one life, so she cut Eric off.

“It repented the Lord that he had made man. It grieved him at his heart.”

Lindsey quoted it, verbatim. Cold, like she’d always felt her Dad was. And then Eric looked up at her and squinted:

“That’s right.”

He closed the book on his lap—final, nodding—like he agreed: the story was a harsh one, hard to take. It took Lindsey aback: she’d thought they were squaring up for a slanging match, the kind she used to have with her Dad. Stevie was surprised as well, sitting up, and he pointed at the Bible:

“You no gonnae read tae us?”

Eric shook his head.

“Naw, son. Reckon your Maw’s had her fill ae this book. Am I right?”

He looked up at her, like maybe he knew what that felt like. So then Lindsey nodded, cautious: understood. She thought she might be, in any case.

Eric smiled at her, a bit shamefaced, and then he said:

“See my Da? Mine an Brenda’s? He used tae read tae us, every day, out loud, at least a couple ae pages. It got so I couldnae hear
it. I had nae time for God, no for years. Still havenae, truth be told. I only read now for the stories. For my drawings, aye?”

Lindsey heard him out, still a bit wary. Her Dad had never read out loud to her; it was just the way he was—Bible and lodge—after her mother was gone, anyhow, and that was bad enough.

Then Stevie spoke up again:

“Your Da. He was Papa Robert.”

And Eric raised his eyebrows. Lindsey felt herself do the same: what did Stevie know about it? He said:

“He was fae Ireland, same as my Maw.”

“So he was.” Eric looked at Stevie a moment, next to him on the sofa, like he was impressed. “Nothin much gets past you, am I right?”

Then he leaned in close:

“Children ae the Irish, son. You an me both.”

Eric whispered it, eyes bright, like they were in cahoots. It made his face look kind, and it made Stevie smile. Proper and wide. And when Lindsey saw that she thought she’d got the old man all wrong. He wasn’t like her Dad, he was completely different. Eric read the Bible so he’d know what to draw; he wasn’t like anyone she’d met before.

“Aye, Papa Robert.” Eric told Stevie: “He came over fae Ireland. Ages before your Maw, but. In 1923.”

He pulled his eyes wide, like that was time out of mind, to make her boy smile again, and Stevie did. Then Stevie pointed at the Bible:

“Your Da read aw that tae you?”

“So he did. Just like his ain faither read before him.”

Eric nodded.

“Startin wae creation an temptation, an then aw through the Numbers an Chronicles an Acts, aw through the weeks and the
months. Till he got tae
the Grace ae Lord Jesus Christ be with you, Amen
. An then he turnt tae the first page again.”

Eric turned the big book over with a thump, and Lindsey thought she knew that weight too, all too well. She looked at the old man and wondered how much he’d felt it, when he was still at home. He was still telling Stevie about his boyhood: how after he was confirmed, he had to take his own turn at reading.

“Every evenin, just before we got our tea. An I was a growin boy, aye ravenous: wan eye on the Bible, the other on the chops.”

He pointed beyond his shoulder with his thumb, and said from where he sat, he could see through to the kitchenette, without moving his head, and he showed Stevie what he meant: a stiff-necked pantomime, swivelling his eyeballs.

“Just between verses, aye? So as my parents wouldnae catch me, watching that pan, full ae potatoes.”

Eric smiled again, and said his mother got everything ready to fire up, but when Papa Robert came home, he washed his face and hands first, and then he read.

“I forgot my belly sometimes, right enough.”

Eric nodded.

“My Da could tell a story. Fae the Bible, aye, or his ain life in Ireland. Papa Robert could ae tellt you up was down, an you’d believe him, so you would. He had a way ae talkin. A voice you could listen tae, soft. Mair County Louth than Glasgow, even efter aw they years.”

He was still smiling as he said this, but squinting now too, like it might be painful—complicated—remembering that Dad of his. What had it taken for Eric to escape him?

Eric fell quiet there, and his eyes fell on Stevie, so Lindsey glanced at her son, and saw that he was listening like he could have listened on for ages. She felt the same way, even if it was dark
now and long past Stevie’s tea time. But her boy had that blank-faced look that Lindsey knew: like he might drop off, any second, sleep might take him even against his wishes. Eric saw it too:

“Aye anyhow,” he sighed. “That’s aw long done. Am I right? Time you were off up the road.”

“Naw!”

Stevie shook his drowsy head, and gave a pleading look to Lindsey. She didn’t much want to go either, so she put a finger to her lips, because she hoped Eric might tell them more now—maybe even about his leaving—if they were only quiet enough and waited.

Eric was sitting forwards, a bit hunched, and the lamplight made him look old, older than he was, and that got Lindsey thinking: based on what Brenda said, he must be somewhere in his fifties. Except he looked more like seventy, so how was that then? She watched his face and wondered: if being alone could age you. Eric had lost his job, and he’d lost his wife; nobody came to his wedding, and now he lived here by himself. It gave Lindsey a sharp and guilty stab, to tot it all up like that. And to think how Graham didn’t want to come and visit; there were so few in the family who made the effort. She flicked her eyes around Eric’s shelves, thinking there must be pictures of them all in those box files, surely. Of Papa Robert. And of Franny, too, Eric’s wife; maybe she’d helped him escape? But there was nothing written on any of the spines, no titles or subjects or names, so Lindsey thought it must all be in Eric’s head. So much in there she could only guess at yet.

He patted Stevie on the shoulder, and then he got to his feet, walking over to the desk, to where Lindsey was still standing. Eric stopped beside her, putting the Bible down next to his drawings, and then he narrowed his eyes and pointed; at the last
of the three, the one with the lizards and the monkeys, fierce and frightened, baring their teeth. He said:

“Nae rainbow, is there? Or olive branch.”

Lindsey searched for both and saw that he was right: just an ugly mess of life, shut inside and wanting out.

Eric shook his head, like he was daft for forgetting that’s how the story ended, and then Lindsey wondered: maybe Papa Robert never read him that part. Her own Dad wasn’t one for olive branches. Eric told her:

“I’ve no drawn it right.”

Flat, like he wasn’t happy any longer with his day’s work.

Lindsey looked down at the pictures, and they were still dark, but she saw how they were fine too, in their own way, in all the details; the wet fur and the fish scales, and the grain on the timbers in the ark. It was the way he’d drawn the city too, the spires and the shopfronts and the buses; they were all of them perfect. So she told him:

“It’s just like Glasgow.”

And then she felt her cheeks go hot, because it was and also it wasn’t. That’s not how she saw this place. But Eric’s pictures were good, so she’d wanted to say something good about them. And he hadn’t drawn them to preach, she knew that much, even if she didn’t know why he’d drawn them. Eric said:

“I’ll try again. Another time.”

Smiling at her, a bit downhearted, but like he was thanking her just the same, rolling up his pictures, twisting a rubber band tight around them. Eric had told her he drew every day, but he’d never said why, so Lindsey asked him:

“You see that thing you said? About a man’s soul. About enjoying good in his labour. Is that from there as well?”

She tapped the Bible, thick and shut, and Eric nodded.

“Aye, it is. Plenty ae good lines in there. If you know where tae look. Plenty ae stories. Plenty ae humans, in aw our weakness. Nothin new under the sky, same auld failins and frailties, goin back through the ages. Gies us insight, so it does, an consolation.”

It gave Lindsey another stab, that Eric needed consoling. Eric was lonely. Maybe that’s why he did his drawings. But how would it help to draw such dark things?

Eric blinked at her a moment, and then he tilted his head.

“He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

He told Lindsey he was waiting.

“I’ll draw somethin special. One day. So I will.”

Eric said the picture wouldn’t have to be perfect:

“It’ll cut through, but.”

He made a slice in the air with his hand, ending with a thump in the middle of his chest.

“Tae somethin that matters. Aye?”

Eric held Lindsey’s eye, still shy, but steady too now, until she nodded.

Not that she got it. Maybe one word in three. But Lindsey still wanted more: to hear the weight of Eric’s boyhood and how he’d thrown it off. Lindsey knew the old man could tell her all about escaping, give him time and half a chance.

Only their time was up for today. Her boy was still on the sofa, both his hands up to cover a yawn; up since the crack of dawn, Lindsey thought, and trailing behind her from pillar to post. So she told him:

“Aw, son, look at you. Best we get off home.”

And when Stevie shook his head, Eric smiled:

“You can come again. Nothin tae stop you. Bring your mother. Tell her I’ll draw her somethin better.”