The Hanging Shed

EIGHT

There was no welcome flick of the curtains from my mother’s tenement. For a minute I panicked thinking the worse. But of course she wasn’t expecting me. I went in the close and up the single flight of stone stairs and knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked louder. Then I checked my watch. It was half past one. Tuesday. I left my case by her door and hung my dripping coat on the doorknob. I walked down to the entry and out the back. Sure enough. I could hear the noise of splashing from the brick wash-house. Smoke was coming out the open door.

I stuck my head in. It was the witches’ scene from MacBeth. My mother was standing wreathed in steam next to a cauldron – the washing bine: the big metal dish that sat on a waist-high brick column. Underneath, a coal fire spat and glowed and boiled the water. My mother wore a headscarf and a pinny. Her blouse sleeves were rolled up and her arms were red and wet with suds. She held a sheet in both hands and was rubbing it up and down the ridged washboard that protruded from the bubbling pot. Behind her, one of her neighbours, Mrs Cuthbertson, was grinding the big handle of the mangle and pulling through another sheet. A steady cascade of water filled a wooden basin below the mangle. My mother’s face was puce but she was happy in her work, humming away to herself.

She looked up and her face lit. She flung her hands to her face, stopped and dropped them to her apron. She dried them and shot round the bine to me. She clutched my arms afraid to get me wet against her soaking washday clothes.

‘Douglas! You should have phoned. I’ve nothing ready. I havenae baked a thing. Are you all right? Is anything the matter?’

‘Mum, it’s OK. Can I no’ visit my mother without it being a national disaster?’

She looked up at me, her face losing its smile, tightening. ‘You’ve come about Hugh, haven’t you?’

Later, I heard her version of the story as we sat quietly sipping tea in front of the coal fire in the back room. It felt, as it always did, like being wrapped up in a cosy blanket. A tiny place. Two rooms, front and back, with the scullery leading off the back room. As the light fell outside, I got up and lit the gas mantles to send a soft glow round the room. The clock on the mantelpiece beat out the rhythm that had measured out my quiet boyhood absorption in a new book from the library. I prodded the fire so that the glow illumined the big black metal fireplace. We sat either side of it, mimicking the Wally dugs whose black china eyes gazed down on us from the mantelpiece. She’d drawn the curtain across the bed-in-the-wa’ and the room tucked itself round us. It was a world away from a cold cell in Barlinnie.

‘You don’t seem that surprised, Mum.’

‘About two weeks ago, Jessie Cuthbertson got a telephone call asking for me. It was a secretary from a solicitor’s office. Wanting to get in touch with you. Jessie had your number in her book and she gave the woman it. I hope you don’t mind?’ she asked anxiously. ‘We’ve got a note of the name.’

‘Of course not. It was fine.’

She nodded. ‘That poor wee bairn. And him Fiona’s boy too. The trial was in all the papers here, once they found he was a Kilmarnock man.’

My stomach flipped. It was one of the few times my mother had ever used her name in this house. Going out with a Catholic lassie had been as counter-cultural as voting Tory. Hugh had got past the religious censoring by dint of being a neighbour’s child.

‘Did you not think I should know?’

She looked embarrassed. ‘You had enough troubles. I thought maybe you’d heard and decided to say nothing. You don’t phone that often. Oh, I know it’s such a fuss.’

It was true. It involved me phoning Mrs Cuthbertson and her running up the stairs and getting my mother to come down. And my mother then panicking that I needed to call her and her shouting down the line because she was so far away. Trauma all round rather than a casual kindness. Letters were always easier somehow, and more lasting. I reread hers at least two or three times, just to hear the gossip about the town. But clearly there were some things that weren’t for writing down.

‘My fault, Mum. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get the phone put in here. And don’t you worry, I’ll pay the bills.’

She looked startled and anxious. ‘Oh, I don’t want that thing going off in the middle of the night. What would I use it for anyway? Everyone I need to talk to is just a walk away. Except you, of course.’

We had some more tea and then she looked me in the eye. ‘Did he do it, Douglas?’

As usual I’d underestimated my mother’s ability to absorb the unthinkable. She was taking it calmly and sensibly, as though Hugh had been caught plunking school.

‘It’s hard to draw any other conclusion.’

‘But?’

‘But there are a lot of questions.’

‘What like, son?’

‘The big one is why? Why would Hugh do such a thing? The boy was missing for a week. They searched Hugh’s room early on and found nothing. Then they found the body in the coal cellar outside Hugh’s tenement, and found Hugh up to his oxters in evidence linking him to the murder. Where was he hiding the boy all this time? How did nobody see him, hear anything? Who told the police to look there? What about the other four missing boys? If it was Hugh, how did he keep them quiet? Why did he dump Rory’s body where it could be found? Carelessness or arrogance? Maybe they asked all these questions at the trial and the answers still added up to him being guilty. I don’t know.’

We sat in stillness for a while, each of us, I’m sure, imagining that wee broken body lying in the dark. And wondering about the missing lads. Her hair shone silver in the flickering light. She shook her head, as though puzzled with the badness in the world.

‘When is it?’ She meant when would they hang him.

‘Four weeks. April the thirtieth.’

‘What will you do?’

Not it’s no business of yours; keep away from this because mud sticks; what will the neighbours think? No question that I wouldn’t, shouldn’t, get involved.

‘I don’t know. The odds are against him. So is time. I’d just be wasting my efforts.’

‘But you said there were questions.’

‘But who’s going to answer?’

She must have read something in my face. Even before I admitted to myself. She nodded. ‘Just like your dad. He always had to know.’

‘If Hugh didn’t do it, somebody did.’

‘It’s not about Fiona, is it?’

‘No, no. That was a long time ago.’ I hoped I sounded convincing.

‘I’ll make up a bed in the front room. It’s back to sharing the scullery, son.’

I shook my head. ‘Just the one night, Mum. I’ll get digs up in Glasgow for a week or two. That’s where I’m going to be spending my time. I’ll visit a lot though.’ I smiled to soften the blow as she failed to hide her disappointment.