Exile

Chapter 8

She stopped on the edge of the pavement, waiting for a break in the traffic. Fat, freezing lumps of rain began to fall, seeping through her hair to her scalp, sending a shocked chill down her spine. She felt in her pocket for her stabbing comb, a metal one with a sharpened handle that Leslie had given her to use in self-defense. She found the head and grasped it, giving it a little squeeze, pressing the teeth into her palm to comfort herself. The sharp point was making a hole in her new coat pocket but she liked to keep it with her.

The scheme loomed over the street. Brilliant spotlights beamed skyward from the high roof, alerting passing helicopters and blinding pedestrians at a glance. Maureen couldn't recall ever having heard a story about the scheme. Bad schemes had elaborate mythologies, tales of rapes and crucifixions, of vicious gangs and gangster families and neighbors dead for months behind the door. Good schemes, like good families, had no history. A giggling couple in their forties stopped farther down the pavement. The woman wore a thin dress and had the man's jacket over her shoulders, as if she'd come out for a drink in June and had been caught out by the change of season. The traffic thinned and Maureen crossed over.

The entrance to the flats was down a set of stairs and across a concrete-slabbed yard. At the base of the block a row of shops sat boarded up and empty. Only the solicitor's and a cut-price fag shop were doing any business. Maureen picked her way across the uneven paving stones, avoiding the treacherous puddles, and opened the door into a white-tiled foyer. The lift call button had been melted with a lighter. She pressed it and a distant red light signaled to her from behind the lumpy blackened plastic.

She looked at the address on the scrap of paper. Leslie had scribbled "thanks" at the bottom, as if Maureen were a vestigial friend doing her a favor, an unhappy reminder of the gray time before Cammy and the bracing breeze in her cleavage. The lift arrived and she stepped in, pressing the button for the second floor. As the doors slid shut she was engulfed in a cloud of dried ammoniacal urine. Someone had been pissing in an ambitious arch, trying and failing to reach a felt-tipped IRA slogan on the wall. A wet cloth would have wiped it off but he probably didn't have one handy in his trousers. The doors opened on the second floor and she stepped out quickly, anxious to escape the sharp smell.

A gray concrete veranda stretched away from the lift, overlooking the busy main road. The long gallery of front doors was interspersed with small bathroom windows glazed in mottled glass. One or two of the doors had been customized, painted and fitted with fancy doorbells and alarms, letting the neighbors know that it was a bought house. Number eighty-two had not been customized. The door had been painted with thin red gloss a long time ago. Time and the weather had dried it, lifting the luster, cracking and flaking it off the wood. The bell had been ripped out of the door frame, leaving an empty socket in the joist.

Maureen chapped lightly, glancing down the corridor and reminding herself where the stair exit was. The door opened a crack and a tall, skinny man looked out at her. His eyes were open a little too wide and underlined by dark purple hollows, lending him the look of a startled pigeon. Leslie had been right: he wasn't the robust man in the Polaroid, he was a lifeless sliver of a man. He blinked, glancing behind her to see if she was alone. "Aye?" he said, brushing his thinning hair back from his face, tentative, expecting trouble.

Maureen smiled. "Is Ann in?"

"She doesn't live here anymore."

"D'ye know where I could get a hold of her?"

From deep inside the house came the noise of something falling heavily onto a solid floor and a child began to wail. The gray man took a deep breath, turned back into the flat and left the door to fall open. The living room was bare, the grimy hardboard floor dotted with offcuts of carpet. The wallpaper had been ripped off, leaving papery patches on the gray plaster, and in place of a sofa stood a plastic child's stool and a worn brown armchair. The house was a testament to long-term poverty. Maureen thought of Ann and wondered how many desperate schemes had been hatched and abandoned here, how many fights about spending, how many distant relatives and lapsed friends had been considered for a tap. A blue sports bag sitting against the far wall caught her eye. The green and white sticker looped around the handle seemed familiar and troubling somehow. Intrigued, Maureen stepped into the hall, pulling the front door shut behind her.

The man was standing over two tiny boys with Ann's clashing pink skin and fluffy yellow hair. They were babies, much younger than the boy in the Polaroid, and were thin, their rib cages visible under their skin, their baby fat eaten away by need. The man had been in the middle of changing them into their nightclothes when Maureen knocked. They were standing close to each other, chewing furiously on their dummies, their little button eyes flicking nervously around the room. The older brother was three at most and knew he was in trouble. A skin-colored Tupperware beaker lolled on the floor, the hardboard discolored by a spill of red juice. The man grabbed the boys and slapped the back of their legs, keeping time with the blows as he shouted, "All – fuckin' – day – ye – been – windin' – me – up."

The boys raised their faces to the ceiling and bawled, their dummies sitting precariously in their open mouths as they found each other and held on tightly. Maureen hovered uncertainly in the doorway. "Are ye just looking after the weans yoursel'?" she asked.

He turned and shouted at her, exasperated, "I'm doing the best I can," he said. "Their fucking ma's no' here, is she?"

"D'ye know there's a nursery down the road?"

The man paused. He didn't know why she was telling him that.

"If you're not working," she said, "and you're looking after them on your own, you'd have a good chance of getting them places."

Apparently unfamiliar with good news, the man looked worried.

"Ye'd get some time on your own," she added, wondering about the blue sports bag, wary of looking straight at it.

"Aye?" he said, watching his babies as they forgot what they were crying about and began to pull at a newspaper on the floor. "What's your name?"

"Maureen. What's yours?"

"Jimmy."

He tried to smile at her, sliding his lips back, but his face was too tired to pull it off. He had threateningly sharp teeth, which slanted backwards into his mouth. They looked like a vicious little carnivore's, naturally selected because they slid deeper into the flesh when the victim resisted.

"I'm going fucking mad here." He picked up an old pair of Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas from the cold floor. "What d'ye want Ann for?"

"I owe her some money," she said.

"You taking the piss out of me?" He said it as if everyone did and he was past caring.

"No."

"You owe her money?"

Maureen nodded uncertainly. Jimmy knelt down and started to dress the smallest boy, tugging him into his pajamas. The boy chewed his dummy, holding his daddy's jumper.

"Why are ye really looking for Ann?" he said.

"What makes you think I'm lying?"

Jimmy displayed his sharp little teeth again. "Ann owes everyone on this scheme money. If ye ask me, that's why she's off. Last I heard she was living with the Place of Safety people."

"Place of Safety?"

"Aye." His voice dropped to a whisper. "She telt them I'd hit her."

It was painful to watch a man so ready to take a punch.

"Did ye hit her?" she asked.

"No." He was adamant and Maureen was pleased. "I never hit her. Nor anyone else."

Maureen thought of him slapping the children, but then remembered that children don't count as people. She leaned against the wall and felt the sandy texture of plaster rubbing into her shoulder. She stepped back and propped herself against the door frame. "Why would Ann say you hit her if ye didn't?" She noticed herself changing her accent to speak to him, paring down her language, as if Jimmy was so thick he wouldn't understand if she spoke normally. She hated herself.

"I don't know," said Jimmy, squeezing the child into a pair of tight pajama bottoms. "The police said she'd had a doing. Maybe she wanted to hide."

"Did ye send her a Christmas card?"

"A card?"

"Yeah."

Jimmy looked blank and Maureen guessed that he didn't have an extensive Christmas-card list.

"What are ye asking me these things for? Who are you?"

If he was going to turn nasty now was the time to do it. Maureen was glad she was near the front door and had a five-foot start on him. She mentally rehearsed opening the door and running along the balcony to the stairs. "I work for the Place of Safety," she said quietly.

Jimmy looked at her and nodded softly. "We've had hard times," he said, "but… Ann knows… I can't believe she's going about saying that about me. I'd never hit her. You won't believe me." He turned away from her, patted his son's bottom to let him know he was finished changing him and held out his hand for the older boy to come. The children swapped places on the strip of rug.

"I do believe ye, Jimmy," she said, and she meant it.

"Ha," he said, as if he'd never really laughed. "Thousands wouldn't, eh?"

He looked at her, genuinely expecting a response to an inappropriate cliché. Maureen couldn't imagine a suitably bland response. "If you didn't hit Ann," she said, "can ye think of someone who would?"

"Take your pick. There's hard men up at this door every night in the fucking week looking for her. I'm left paying her debts while she's off gallivanting with the child-benefit book. They've even threatened the wee ones in the swing park," he said, yanking his son's pink little body into worn pajamas. "All I know is that she left here without a mark on her."

"When did she leave?"

Jimmy thought about it. He thought for a long time. He remembered that one of the boys' birthdays was on 15 November and Ann wasn't there for it. But Jimmy had money for presents so he figured that he'd probably had the child-benefit book that week. Ann had disappeared from Finneston around 10 or 11 November.

"That's a while back," said Maureen. "Did she go straight to the Place of Safety?"

"I don't know where she went." He pulled worn sweatshirts over the boys' pajamas. It must get cold in the concrete flat at night. "She came back at the start of December for Alan's birthday. I was at the shops and when I came back she'd been and gone. She telt him she hadn't been to visit because she was up and down tae London all the time. Could have been a lie, but…" He touched the smallest boy's head. "There's plenty on this scheme think I'm lucky because it's only the drink she's into."

Maureen looked around the desperate room, at the filthy bare floor and the cold children and the skinny man bent over them. Jimmy was anything but lucky.

"Can I make ye a cup of tea, Jimmy?"

It had been a long time since anyone had been kind to Jimmy and he didn't know what it meant. He looked up at her, trying to work out her angle. "There's nothing worth thieving," he said.

"I'm just offering to make ye a cup of tea."

He looked her up and down, licked at the dried spittle in the corner of his mouth and smothered a lascivious smile. He thought she fancied him.

"Aye, hen. A cup of tea. I'll put the weans to bed." He hurried the children off, carrying the smallest boy on his hip and holding the other one's hand, leading them out to the hall. He called back to her from the door, "Don't use the milk, I'll need it for the night feed."

She could hear Jimmy out in the hall encouraging the child up the stairs. She looked around the dirty flat at the broken toys and the worn clothes discarded on the floor. She went into the ragged kitchen. The bulb didn't work. Light from the street cast a dull orange glow onto the worktop. There was no kettle and no cooker, just a chipped portable grill with a single electric ring on top. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she saw a small scale-scarred saucepan in the sink. She filled it from the tap as the red ring came alive, livid in the darkness.

Back in the living room she crossed her arms. There was no TV in the room, no family photos, no books or ornaments or mementos, nothing that wasn't essential and secondhand. They didn't even have a radio. Next to the armchair sat a stack of free local newspapers. Jimmy had been tearing them into strips for use as toilet paper. She could hear him through the ceiling, coaxing the children into bed, when she suddenly remembered the blue sports bag with the troubling sticker. It was green and white and looped around the handle. She looked at it. It was a British Airways luggage sticker. Liam used to have them on his bags all the time when he was dealing. She crept over to it. The bag had been from London to Glasgow and the name, in tiny print on the fold, said "Harris." It was dated less than a week ago. She stepped back and looked at it, trying to reason away the incongruity. Someone might have given him the bag, someone with his name, a family member, but the bag sat as if it had been emptied recently, the base flattened on the floor, the sides flapping open. The scenario made no sense. Jimmy had flown to London on an expensive airline when they were too poor to buy a kettle.

The water was spitting hot but she could only find one mug, with black rings of tea stain inside. She made tea, took it back into the living room, sat down in the chair and lit a cigarette. It was damp and cold in the room. She could hear Jimmy coming down the stairs, leaving the restless children calling for him, answering their pleas with a curt "Shut it." He sauntered into the living room. He had wet his hair. Maureen stood up and offered him a fag. He took it, bending over her for a light. "You sit," she said.

Jimmy lifted the mug and sipped, looking up at her as he sat down.

"Jimmy, why does Ann owe so much money?"

"Come on." He smiled. "Come on, we'll not talk about her."

Jimmy didn't want to talk about kids or Ann or money. He wanted a quick, fumbled fuck with anyone willing and a ten-minute pause in the incessant worry. He held out his hand to her and bared his sharp hunting teeth. Maureen pulled her coat closed. "I want to talk about her," she said quietly. "That's why I came."

Long acclimatized to disappointment, Jimmy let his outstretched hand fall to the side of the chair. "She borrowed money for drink," he said finally. "Then she borrowed to pay the loan and it got worse and worse and worse. Ann's not a bad woman. It's the drink. She's different when she's not drinking. When she drinks she's a cunt."

"Ye don't think she could be dead, do ye?"

"I know she's not. She cashed the child-benefit book on Thursday."

"In Glasgow?"

"Dunno." Jimmy sipped his tea despondently. "They don't tell ye that at the post office, just that it's been cashed and I can't get it."

"Do you think she'll come back here?"

Jimmy shook his head into his chest. "She's not coming back." He sipped the tea, tipping the mug back and grimacing.

"D'ye know where she is?"

"She's got a sister in London. Maybe she knows."

"Could I phone her?"

"I dunno if she's on the phone."

"What's her name?"

"Moe Akitza."

Maureen wrote the sister's name on a receipt from her pocket and showed Jimmy the spelling. "I think that's right." He smiled at her. "Mad name, eh? She married a big darkie."

She knew if she pressed him he'd claim not to be prejudiced against anyone, except those grasping Pakis, of course. And the freeloading Indians. And the arrogant English. And the drunken Irish. And the suspiciously swarthy. "Well, Jimmy, thanks very much. It was kind of ye to talk to me."

"Aye," he said. "Well, I'm pressed as ye can see."

They smiled at each other to pass the time. Maureen broke it off. "Ye really don't know where she is, do ye?"

He looked into his empty mug and shook his head.

"D'ye miss her?" she asked.

Jimmy didn't need time to think about it. "No," he said, very sure and very sad.

Behind her the front door flew open, letting a cold slap of night air into the living room. Two wee boys with wet hair and filthy faces strolled into the room, their arms at forty-five-degree angles to their small bodies, strutting like miniature hard men. Their clothes were poor, even for scheme kids. Everything they were wearing had approximated to a dull gray color, the result of over-washing in cheap soap. Jimmy warmed and smiled when he saw them and his boys grinned back. "All right, Da?" said the older one. "Where's our tea?"

Jimmy cupped a gentle hand around the back of the bigger boy's head and swept him along into the dark kitchen. The younger one stayed in the living room and looked up at Maureen. He was the boy from the Polaroid photo, the boy holding the hand of the big man in the camel-hair coat, but he looked different close up: he had a little widow's peak, his eyelashes were thick and long.

He looked at her expensive overcoat. "Are ye a social worker?" he asked, in a tiny voice.

"No, I'm a pal of your mum's."

His face lit up. "Mammy? 'S Mammy coming home?"

"No, John," Jimmy shouted. "The lady's just looking for her."

Maureen looked into the kitchen. Jimmy was standing in the shadowy kitchen with his son, spreading cheap margarine on Supersavers white bread. She turned her back to the kitchen door, hoping Jimmy wouldn't hear her. "Son, did you get your picture taken with a man at school recently? In the playground with a big man with short hair?"

The boy nodded.

"Who was the man?"

The boy licked at the snotters on his top lip with a deft tongue. "It was picture for Mammy," he said quietly, as if he didn't want Jimmy to hear either.

"Was your mum there?"

"Naw."

"Who took the picture?"

" 'Nother man."

"And did ye know that man?"

"Nut."

"Have ye seen your mammy since your brother's birthday?"

"Nut."

"Thanks, son," she said, and it struck her how small he was, how thin his skin was, how it was a quarter to ten at night and he was six and had just come in from playing in the street with his brother. She wanted to wrap him in her good coat and make him warm and take him away and feed him nice food and read to him and give him the chance of a life. She wanted to cry. The wee boy sensed her pity and knew she was sorry for him, for the state he was in and for his future. He frowned at the floor. She hated herself. "You're a good boy," she said, and stood up, ruffling his hair like a patronizing idiot. She cleared her throat and called into the kitchen, "I'm away, then, Jimmy."

Jimmy didn't turn to see her go. "Aye," he said.

"I'll come and see ye if I find her."

"Don't," said Jimmy flatly, folding a slice of bread into a sandwich. "Don't come."

A scratched message on the back of the lift doors informed the world that AMcG sucked cocks. Maureen was glad to get out of the smelly lobby, glad to be away from Jimmy and his malnourished kids, eager to forget what she had seen. It was hard to look on poverty so all-pervasive that it even extended to his speech. She worked through the normalizing justifications: maybe Jimmy was lazy and deserved it; maybe he liked it – lots of people were poorer than him. But she had eight thousand pounds in her bank account and he had four kids and no kettle and she couldn't think of a single thing that made that all right. She felt her father following her across the yard to the street, his glassy eyes watching from every dark corner. Her muscles tensed suddenly and she broke into a run. Jimmy was right. Wherever Ann was she wouldn't come back here.