The Dead Hour

I

Bed swallowed her, sucking her down into a coffin sleep. She dreamed of Kate coming alive in the photocopied picture, smiling, throwing her head back and laughing at a funeral, her big hair bouncing on her shoulders. Ramage held Kate’s elbow to support her and suddenly she was on fire, her hair burning as she laughed and nodded, burning hair flailing around her shoulders, spitting vicious little sparks.

Paddy sat up suddenly to the sound of the telephone burring next to her, the heat of a low winter sun spilling through the window, burning her face.

“Hello?”

The switchboard had a call for her, a man called George Burns, should they put it through?

“Meehan.” He didn’t sound friendly but she had just woken up and was too disoriented to be cold back.

“Oh, hiya, how are ye?” She checked her watch. She had only slept for three hours and it was lunchtime.

“Eh, fine, yeah, fine. I called to tell you that Tam Gourlay and his partner McGregor have been suspended because of the inquiry. I saw Gourlay leaving the Marine just after he heard. He’s a shirt full of sore bones this morning.”

It took her a moment to work out why she would be interested in Tam Gourlay’s shirt. “You beat him up?”

Burns hesitated but she could hear a smile when he spoke. “Aye, but I’m telling you in code, for the purposes of being sneaky.”

“Did you do it in secret?”

“Em,” he sighed, “no. I did it in a car park full of policemen.”

“So, why are you being sneaky?”

“I don’t know, really. I thought it might impress you.”

They giggled down the phone for a moment and Paddy rubbed her hot face. “God, it’s boiling in here.”

“Anyway, you won’t have any more trouble from him.”

She thought of Knox. The trouble ran deeper than Burns could possibly know. “Thanks.”

“It’s okay. I’m not far away, just round the corner, actually.”

He left a heavy pause. She could have invited him up to her room but she had two days left and felt too delicate for a repeat of yesterday’s gymnastics.

“Burns, could you do me a favor?”

“Anything.” He sounded certain, thinking she was going to ask him up.

“Could you get Chief Superintendent Knox’s home address for me?”

She could feel his annoyance carrying down the phone line. He clicked his tongue.

“Sure,” he said briskly. “Sure. I’ll get that for you.”

“Ye did say anything.”

“Yeah. I did. I said that.”

After she hung up the red light on the phone continued to flash at her. She thought it was a mistake at first, but picked it up to check Burns wasn’t still on the other end.

“There’s a visitor for you in reception.” The receptionist sounded resentful. “You requested that no one be sent up to your room.”

She imagined Gourlay dripping blood onto the marble flooring, Lafferty standing by the desk, grinning and holding a firebrand. “Who is it?”

The receptionist sighed and put her hand over the receiver, asking a question of someone. She came back on.

“It’s your mum.”

II

The lift doors opened and Paddy saw Trisha standing, looking lost, in the middle of the reception hall. She was wearing her poor beige going-into-town mac, clutching crumpled reused polythene bags in front of her. The heavy bags, stretching at the handles, pulled her rounded shoulders down. She looked scared.

As Paddy approached, Trisha saw her and almost bowed. The handle of one of the overfilled bags snapped and Paddy’s clothes spilled onto the gleaming marble floor. When Trisha saw the knickers and sweater on the floor in front of her she almost cried.

“Don’t worry about that,” said Paddy, and knelt to scoop the items back into the bag. She stood up, uncertain how to greet her mother, going for a kiss on the cheek but missing as Trisha turned to receive it and hitting her awkwardly on the ear.

“Hello, pet,” said Trisha quietly. “Hello.”

“Will we get a cup of tea?”

“Well-” Trisha looked around as if they might be having it in the reception area. “It’s a bit of a bother…”

“No, it’s not a problem, we can go in here.” Paddy took her arm and led her across the floor to a set of stairs leading down into the bar.

Trisha looked shocked. “Well, please God, no one’ll see me sitting in a pub at lunchtime.”

Paddy smiled and squeezed her arm. “Have you ever been in a pub?”

“Of course I have. When your father and I were courting. Chapman’s.” She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t like it.”

The bar area doubled as the hotel breakfast room, then turned into a lunchtime pub and at night served as a restaurant. As such it had a large steel server in the corner to keep greasy breakfasts hot and juice cold. It was dark now, the steel base of the hot-plate scrubbed and sitting ready for the morning. The bar in the middle of the room was served by young men in white shirts and waitresses skirted the tables on the floor. Chairs and benches were upholstered in purple and yellow, matching the carpet and textured wallpaper. The room smelled of cigarettes and vegetable fat.

Trisha and Paddy sat next to each other on a banquette facing the large room. It was pleasant not to have to look at each other. Between them and the windows onto George Square groups of businessmen in dark suits were clustered around tables eating huge plates of chips with fish or cottage pie washed down with pints of lager. Everyone had neon green peas on their plates but no one seemed to be eating them.

“This looks very dear,” muttered Trisha. “There’s a café across the road.”

“I can charge it to the room. The paper’ll pay for it. Would you like some lunch?”

Every day in living memory Trisha had a plate of soup and two boiled eggs mashed up in a cup for her lunch. She looked at a neighboring plate. “I couldn’t eat all that at lunchtime.”

“You don’t need to eat it all, you could have some and leave the rest.”

“That’s wasteful. I’ll just have tea.” She slipped her coat off. She was wearing a smart white nylon blouse she usually saved for mass.

The waitress took their order for two teas and biscuits, and a plate of chips for Paddy’s breakfast, and then Trisha lifted the plastic bags onto the bench between them.

“Now, I’ve brought you some clean clothes and your toothbrush and a carton of soup.”

Paddy smiled into the bag at the Tupperware tub. Trisha had carried the heavy carton all the way from Eastfield. It was a broth, a vegetable with marrow fat peas, flecked with pink gammon. Soup featured in every Meehan family meal but breakfast. Recipes were passed from mother to daughter. Soup had a talismanic quality: the poor man’s filler, source of vegetables, and, because it took so much time to chop the veg and soak the peas and featured meat, a shorthand for loving concern in a family where affection was never spoken of. “Ma, where am I going to heat soup?”

“Is there not a stove at work?”

“Come on, I’d look like a right diddy standing over a pan heating soup.” She meant to tease her mum for her eccentricity but Trisha took it as a slight.

“But I made it for you.” Her eyes filled up. She took a hankie from her sleeve and dabbed at her nose as the waitress put the order on the table in front of them.

Paddy stroked her arm when the waitress had left. “Don’t cry, Ma.”

Trisha covered her mouth and cried some more. “Why are you here?”

“I told you why, Ma, because we’re working on a big story and I need to be near the office.”

“Why are you asking me to look out for that car, then? Are you in danger?”

“No.” Paddy had tried to make light of it but her mother could read and had seen the paper. “Billy’s fine. He’s getting out of hospital today. They just exaggerate it to make it a better story. There’s nothing to worry about.”

But Trisha carried on crying, fighting it, biting her hankie at one stage. Paddy had sat through enough of her crying pangs recently to know it wasn’t really about her. She poured tea for them, putting in a sugar for her mum and stirring it, setting a nice biscuit with chocolate on it on her saucer as a prompt. She picked at the chips but didn’t really want them. The smoky room made her feel a bit sick.

Trisha sighed and picked up the biscuit and looked at it. Dried coconut speckled the chocolate. “I’m sorry for crying.”

“It’s all right, Mum.”

“I don’t really mean it half the time.”

“I know, Ma, I know.”

They drank their tea quietly together, watching the businessmen eating. Every so often Paddy patted her mum’s leg and Trisha said, “Uch aye.”

“I wish you were home.” Trisha sipped her tea. “Can you get home before Saturday? Father Marian’s arranged for Mary Ann to go to Taizi on Saturday. She’s going to France .”

“I’ll try. That’ll be nice. France isn’t that far away.” Paddy had read about the Christian community in Taizi and it looked like as much fun as could be had on a retreat. They did a lot of singing, apparently, guitars featured heavily in the pamphlets, and met other young people from abroad. They ate foreign food in a tented canteen. “It’s all young people there; maybe she’ll meet a nice boy.”

Trisha smiled into her cup. “Mary Ann’s not interested in boys. She’s thinking she might have a vocation. She’s looked at the Poor Clares.”

Paddy had known it was coming, that Mary Ann was teetering on the brink of declaring herself interested in the religious life. The Poor Clares went about at night foisting watery soup on homeless people. The ones Paddy had met always kept their eyes down and had winsome, obsequious smiles. “She might still meet a boy.”

But Paddy knew Mary Ann would love Taizi. She’d like the discipline of prayer and the ecumenical nature of the place. She wouldn’t be sharing a room with someone who bared her breasts and swore while she prayed. Paddy would miss her silent presence, her giggling, and the sound of her breath as she slept. She’d never felt the same about her brothers or Caroline. Mary Ann was exclusively hers. She thought of Kate and Vhari, two sisters, the older one compliant, the younger a defiant little spitfire who brought ruin on the others.

“How’s Caroline?”

Trisha tutted and sighed.

“Not gone back to him?”

She tutted again.

“Maybe she shouldn’t, Ma.”

“Well, she shouldn’t have got married, then.”

Paddy nibbled a coconut biscuit. “The story we’re working on: the police went to the door of a house and saw a girl covered in blood but they left and the man killed her. They thought it was her husband. John must have beat Caroline something awful-”

“She should not have married him, then,” said Trisha firmly.

“But, Mum, she did.”

“For better or worse.”

Paddy picked up a chip and took a bite. “What if he kills her, Ma? What if you send her back and he kills her?”

Trisha slapped Paddy on the thigh. “Don’t talk rubbish.”

“Seriously, what if he murders Caroline? How bad are you going to feel if he does that?”

Trisha turned to look her in the eye. “It’s a sacrament, Patricia, a vow in front of God. Ye can’t just change your mind and leave. You and your women’s lib.”

“Oh, God, Mother, don’t start all that-”

“Well.” Trisha put her cup down noisily in the saucer. “You’ve missed your chance with Sean over a job, a job, for heaven’s sake, and now he’ll be married soon and he’s got a good job and could have kept ye fine.”

Paddy was so surprised she dropped the half-eaten chip onto the floor. “What do you mean ‘be married soon’?”

“He proposed to Elaine, did he not tell ye? The minute he got that driving job he proposed and she’s accepted. Mimi Ogilvy’s taken up residence outside the chapel telling everyone. Did he not say?”

“No.” She tried to hide her disappointment. “He never said.”

Elaine was a squeaky mediocre pest but Paddy could hardly blame Sean. Since she broke off their engagement she’d slept with three men and knew Sean was waiting until he got married. He must have been as horny as hell. She knew how much that could warp her own judgment. Mary Ann was leaving and now Sean wasn’t hers anymore. For the first time ever she saw herself as alone.

“Who are you going to get now?”

“I’m only twenty-one, Mother, there are other men in the world.”

“Aye, we’ll see, anyway.”

They finished their tea but Paddy left the rest of the chips untouched.

At the door of the hotel she took the plastic bags from Trisha and felt she was leaving her forever. She followed her down into the street, running after her.

“Ma!”

Trisha turned and Paddy threw her arms around her, hugging her hard even though Trisha stood stiff in her arms. Tiredness and nausea overwhelmed her and she pressed her face into her mum’s shoulder, eyes flooding onto Trisha’s neck.

Reluctantly, Trisha lifted her arms around her daughter and whispered into her hair to hush. A bus rumbled past and the cold wind sweeping across the square skirled around them.

“I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry I’m not what ye want me to be.”

Trisha was crying too, fighting it but crying, sobs racking her chest as she stroked Paddy’s hair and patted her back. “Oh, now. Come on now, it’s not so bad as all that, surely?”

She hid her face in her mother’s soft neck. “I’m not you, Mum. I can’t be as good as you.”

Trisha stroked and patted her, holding her tight as if she had been hungry for contact for ten years.

Finally, Trisha broke off. “Eat that soup, it’ll do you good.” She smiled bravely and unzipped her handbag, rummaging for her change purse and her house keys, reassuring herself that she would be home soon.

Paddy wiped her nose on the back of her hand and sniffed. Trisha pulled the keys out, and Paddy saw the clear laminated plaque on her key ring and remembered the slogan. Trisha had bought it in a holy shop, an orange sunset behind a silhouette of a tiny boat and the inscription:

Lord help me,

The sea is so wide

And my boat is so small.

III

The renewed vigor of the newsroom had disappeared now that everyone had worked out when Random would be in and out of the room. The fact that he was generally stationed downstairs holding meetings about money meant that long hours could easily be spent carelessly doing nothing or scanning job vacancies in the News or other papers.

McVie sloped in through the door to the tea room and stood close to her, watching the kettle come to the boil.

“How are you?” he asked, uncharacteristically needy. He was too close, looming over her.

“I’m fine,” she said, scowling up at him, hoping he’d do it back.

“So, what did you…” He rolled his head to the side. “You know, think the other night?”

She realized that he wasn’t standing close to her so much as pinning her into the wall, penning her in. “He’s a nice chap.”

McVie raised his eyebrows and leaned across her, picking at a bit of dried jam on the fridge top. He seemed offended.

“I mean, he’s nice enough. I wouldn’t spend a lot of time with him. Not that you shouldn’t. He’s nice. Pleasant.”

“Hmm, pleasant… Yeah.”

McVie and Paddy had known each other for four years and had a bitchy, easy rapport, but now the conversation felt as clumsy as grade one Arabic. They cringed in unison, watching the kettle come to a boil. She had overfilled it. Scalding water bubbled out from under the lid, spilling down the sides and over the cord. They grinned together as the steaming water spilled down the door of the fridge.

“That’s not very safe, is it?”

“Naw.” Paddy grinned and moved her feet away. Her suede boots were ruined already but she didn’t want to make them any worse. “I don’t care if you’re a poof.”

McVie blinked hard at the word and rubbed his long gothic face with his hand. “I heard you shagged George Burns in his car.”

Paddy felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end in alarm. A week before she would have been frightened of him knowing-she’d never really trusted him sexually-but now he was the only safe man in the newsroom. Suddenly it seemed funny that McVie knew. She started to giggle into the wall. McVie watched her, disconcerted for a moment, and then snorted through his nose, shaking his shoulders, actually looking more miserable than before but laughing, she was quite sure he was laughing.

“What did your wife say when she found out about you?”

McVie rolled his head back at the mention of his wife and barked up at the ceiling. “Surprised.”

“Are you two having an affair?” It was Shug Grant, standing at the door, talking loud to draw the newsroom’s attention to them.

“Grant.” McVie spoke without a hint of aggression. “You’re about a half as interesting as ye think ye are. Fuck off and shut up.” He turned back to Paddy. “Tomorrow night we’re going for a drink with Paddy Meehan. Press Bar, seven o’clock. Okay?”

She nodded.

Scolded, Shug backed out of the room and McVie followed him, pointing a warning finger back at her. “Seven, right?”

“I’ll be there.”