Redemption Road

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Margaret waited while Tara spoke to the charge nurse. The ward smelled of antiseptic and reminded her of the Germolene that she pasted on to the children’s cuts and grazes. She took a squirt of antiseptic cleanser into her palms and rubbed them together.

  When she was called, she followed Tara along the corridor. The nurse opened a door to a room at the end of the hall and then left Margaret alone.

  It was the man who had saved her. He was in a room of his own, tubes in his nose and his arms. The sight of him took Margaret’s breath away.

  This time, it was not the man’s appearance that shocked her, but rather his existence itself. The sight of him was gratifying, as proof. She had been involved in a major incident – a multiple motorway pile-up – but had emerged with nothing but a few scratches. It was hard to believe that it had happened at all. It was difficult to fathom that he was real and not a figment of her imagination. But it was true: her car had crashed, and this faceless, friendless stranger had saved her life.

  There was a whiteboard above the bed that read Maxwell Brown, 23-09-55.

  ‘Maxwell,’ Margaret whispered to herself. She stared at his face. If the board was correct then Maxwell was fifty-eight years old. The man’s scarred, shiny face defied age.

  ‘Maxwell saved your life, did he?’ said Harvey, the charge nurse, coming into the room and flipping through a chart that was hooked to the end of the bed.

  Margaret nodded. Harvey replaced the file and then took a pen from his uniform pocket.

  ‘So our Maxwell’s a hero then, uh? He’s been a mystery to us. If it’s all right, I’ll take some details from you. We have almost nothing for him on file – just his NHS number and a date of birth, and records of historical treatment. We can’t find any next of kin.’

  Margaret took the pen and a piece of paper from the nurse and listed her name address and telephone number. ‘Is he very ill?’ she asked, returning the pen and paper.

  ‘He’s in a coma,’ said Harvey. ‘But you can still talk to him.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Margaret folded her arms as she stared at Maxwell, then turned to the nurse again. ‘I didn’t know he’d been this badly hurt. He helped me out of my car but then he just walked away.’

  ‘I heard he came into A&E as walking wounded – just a broken hand – but then started vomiting and passed out in triage. When they gave him a CT scan they found he had a brain haemorrhage – a slow bleed. He’s been put in a coma to try and stop the bleeding. It’s easier for us to monitor his blood pressure this way.’

  ‘How long will he be under?’

  ‘Until he stabilises. Might be a couple of weeks or more. We just need to wait and see how he gets on…’

  The nurse lingered outside the door while Margaret stood looking at the man. The tentacles on his face were extensive and even more shocking illuminated in the harsh hospital light. The scars licked down his throat and on to his chest. Maxwell was connected to a heart monitor, a ventilator and another monitor, which Margaret was unsure about. His left hand was in plaster to the elbow.

  As soon as she was alone, Margaret went to the man’s side.

  ‘Hello,’ she whispered, under her breath.

  The ventilator exhaled and inhaled. The tentacled face of the man did not move; his shiny, lashless lids were closed.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Margaret, again feeling the chasm within herself. Her eyes were dry, her heart was steady yet she felt the breach.

  She looked over her shoulder, and saw that the nurse was gone. She was alone with him. There was no sound except the beep-beep of the monitor.

  She felt an urge to touch him, and so she gently put a hand on his arm. There was a strange relief in touch. His skin was warm against her cold hands, but he didn’t react. Margaret took a deep breath, tasting tears in her throat.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  The man’s chest was exposed to the lower ribcage and there were pads and electrodes stuck to it. Even the man’s chest had been burned and the skin was white, shiny, inhuman.

  Margaret took a step forward and placed her palm where she thought his heart might be. She could feel the heat from his skin.

  ‘I’m sorry but it’s getting late now,’ said the nurse. Margaret withdrew her hand and turned. Harvey was standing at the door. She flushed and her heart began to pound, as if she had been caught doing something wrong.

  ‘Of course,’ Margaret said, ‘I should get going.’

  Harvey smiled and held the door for her.

  ‘Would I be allowed to visit him again?’ she asked, turning, swallowing.

  ‘For now, of course. We’ll keep looking for his next of kin. I have your details now, so it shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘Will you let me know if anything changes?’

  Harvey nodded. ‘Sure thing.’

  Margaret took a deep breath as she stepped into the lift. She was alone and she checked her watch and ran a hand over her face. The hospital lift was like a drawer in the morgue. She felt the lurch in her stomach as she descended. Seeing the man had shaken her. Maxwell Brown, she repeated silently inside her head, making fists of her hands in her pockets.

  She had wanted to know his name, and now she did, but it was not enough. Seeing him had been a relief, but there was a gnawing hunger in her veins to know more. The day had shaken her, and she was exhausted and sore. She felt like a child again – unprotected. The lift jarred in the shaft and then the doors opened. She walked out into the winter air, needing home and needing to be alone in equal measure.

  5

  Big George

  Tuesday 1– Wednesday 2 October, 1985

  Big George was in Thurso. He felt taller here than he did in Glasgow. He felt as if people were watching him in their peripheral vision. Being in Thurso cramped him. He was too tall and his clothes felt wrong. Everyone spoke funny up here, and he had to keep asking them to repeat themselves, after which they would say, ‘You up from Glasgow, then?’

  It was like being at school again; knowing that the nuns had his card marked.

  It had taken him six hours and he had driven nearly three hundred miles. As he had neared his destination, he had veered off the A9 and driven up to John o’Groats. Thurso was only half an hour’s drive from ‘the start of Britain’ and Scotland’s north-eastern tip, and he wanted to see it for himself. He pulled over as soon as he saw the sea, and smoked a cigarette, looking along the coast towards Orkney. He reached into his pocket and took out a small black velvet box. He bit down on the cigarette and then opened the lid: inside was a sparkling solitaire diamond ring.

  It was the same ring that he had used to propose to Kathleen in Glasgow Green, the second time he had asked her to marry him. The first time, he had not had a chance to buy a ring and had offered only himself.

  His mother had said he could take her own engagement ring. ‘We don’t know where your father is, but I hope he’s dead. Take this and treat her better than he treated me.’

  George had not wanted his parents’ engagement ring to sully his own union. Now, he took the ring he had chosen for Kathleen in forefinger and thumb, and kissed the hard stone.

  Kathleen had been right for not wanting him seven years ago when Moll was born. His father had disappeared when he was still winching Kathleen, but his elder brother Peter had eagerly stepped into Brendan’s shoes. Even with their father gone, the McLaughlins were still synonymous with fear in Glasgow. George had always dreamed of running away with Kathleen, but it was only his mother’s death last year and then the discovery of the money that had made him think that escape could be possible.

  George finished his cigarette as he conjured Kathleen in his mind. He found it hard to reconstruct her face, but he remembered the smell of her and the softness of her fine dark hair. He remembered her laugh and black eyelashes and the gap between her front teeth.

  He took a deep breath and thought about the weight of Moll in his arms. He had held her whole body in his two hands. He remembered her tiny ey
elids opening to reveal blue eyes as sharp as his own, struggling to focus on his face. Everything about her had been fresh and new and perfect.

  Standing in the wind, looking along the coast, he felt strange: as if he had shed a skin. He felt free and invincible and full of hope – daring for the first time to think that he could be happy.

  It was after three in the afternoon when George drew up before the grey stone villa where Kathleen and Moll lived. He opened the top button of his shirt and leaned back into the seat of the stolen Austin Allegro that had been ‘cleaned’ at the McLaughlin garage. He sat for over an hour watching the house, amazed by the neatly shaped privet, the tiny flowers on either side of the path, the green-painted garden gate. Even from the road, George could see the large chandelier hanging in the lounge.

  He sat in the middle of a row of parked cars, watching for signs of movement inside and out. There was a BMW parked in the red ash drive. A deliveryman came and rang the doorbell but no one answered, so he placed the parcel in the garage at the side of the house.

  George smoked another two cigarettes before he saw a woman approach the garden gate and open it. It had been several years since George had seen Kathleen, but even from behind he recognised her. He still knew the way she moved. He had always admired the fluid way that she walked, as if she could hear music. She was still slim, but her hair was longer, hanging between her shoulder blades. He hadn’t seen her since that night in Glasgow Green when he had proposed for the second time: the grass wetting the knees of his jeans.

  He whispered her name under his breath and, as if she had heard, she turned.

  George sat quickly back in his seat, out of sight. Some hot ash fell from his cigarette and burned his trousers. He brushed it off, cursing, but it was too late; it had made a hole in the fabric.

  Kathleen turned away again. In the distance, in the direction of Kathleen’s gaze, there was a child, running. She had long dark hair and long legs and George peered at her. The child looked older than Moll should have been: nine or even ten, not seven – but she ran up to Kathleen, who held the gate for her, and then together they went towards the house.

  ‘Jesus,’ George said again, brushing a hand over the fabric of his trousers. The white of his skin shone through the perfectly circular hole. He glanced over again as the pair went into the house. The girl was wearing the local school uniform, which George had seen when he stopped in the town for a sausage roll.

  He lit up again out of annoyance and narrowed his eyes as he stared at the house. In daylight, it was difficult to watch their movements inside. He hadn’t expected Moll to be so big. He hadn’t been around a lot of seven-year-old girls, but he had expected her to be much smaller.

  He took a drag of his cigarette as he contemplated. He had imagined meeting Kathleen again: Kathleen had been willing and the bairn had been tiny, not much taller than his knees, and chubby. In his imagination, both she and the bairn were in thrall to him and he had persuaded them easily to come away with him.

  George sat holding on to the steering wheel with sweaty palms. It was as if Thurso was another world, and here he was, a petty criminal from Glasgow, peering through the gate into paradise. He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror and ran a hand through his hair. It had been a long drive and he felt sticky and unkempt. He fingered the burn hole in his trousers and cursed again.

  It was dusk and he watched as lights came on inside the large stone house – the hall, an upstairs bedroom. Through the bay window, George could see the chandelier in the lounge light up and sparkle brighter than the diamond ring in his pocket. After a moment, Kathleen appeared in the window. She reached up and drew the heavy curtains, blocking George’s view.

  He exhaled into his hands. His daughter and Kathleen were alone inside the big house. He wondered if he should get out of the car, right now, walk up the garden path and ring the bell. He sat still, breathing hard. The hopes he had nurtured about meeting Kathleen again, taking her hand and persuading her that she and Moll wanted a life with him, now seemed nothing more than fantasies. The imaginings danced in his mind, light, scorched, insubstantial, like papers up a chimney.

  He imagined himself standing on the doorstep with the crease in his trousers gone, a burn hole in his suit and five o’clock shadow on his chin, then ran a palm over his jaw and felt the stubble already breaking through. He and Kathleen had been children together. They had grown up together. George had thought he knew her better than he knew himself. But now, sitting outside her house, he felt beneath her. He felt out of place.

  Just then, a long Porsche approached the property and pulled into the drive, tucking itself in beside the BMW with intimate expertise.

  A tall, thin man got out of the car: he was suited, sloped shoulders, balding, carrying a briefcase heavy enough to favour his gait to one side. The front door opened, warm light spilled onto the doorstep and the child came out. She hugged the man and carried his briefcase inside with two hands.

  George swallowed, feeling sick. He had seen what he needed to see. He turned on the ignition and pulled away.

  He spent the night in his car at a northerly point looking out to sea. Autumn, and the wind was up and the waves were wild. He ate a fish supper and drank Tennent’s lager.

  The money was in a holdall in the boot of the car: nearly one hundred thousand pounds in used notes. He could afford the best hotel Thurso had to offer, but he stuck out like a sore thumb here. Instead, he drank quickly, with the door open and one leg outside, looking out to sea. The dream that had caused him to drive three hundred miles now seemed naive. He was awash with dejection, his body stiff. He knew he should get out and walk around for a bit – stretch his legs – but he didn’t have the heart for it, so he shook the tin can in his hands, then drank the remainder of the warm lager.

  Now, looking out to sea, he felt stupid, worthless, small. He opened another can, lit another cigarette and tried to smile at his folly. ‘Big house in Thurso and a man with a Porsche… a perfect family and you think she’s going to run away with you… w’you?’ he taunted himself. Tears blurred his eyes for a second. He downed the rest of his lager and crushed the can hard, then sat, with his hands between his knees, watching the waves break in the darkness, far out at sea.

  The next day, he woke early to the keening of gulls. It was Wednesday. George drove back to the grey stone villa before seven, just in time to see the Porsche backing out of the drive. The metallic shiver of a hangover was upon him but his sense had been restored. There was no way he could go back to Glasgow – not now – but George realised that neither could he face Kathleen. He sat, hunched down in his seat, watching the front door.

  It was another hour before the door of the house opened. Kathleen stood on the doorstep in her dressing gown, clutching her arms against the cold. The child came out, uniformed, satchel on her shoulders, and Kathleen fixed her hair and kissed her and then stood at the door with folded arms, watching as she walked down the path and crossed the road. They waved to each other three or four times until Kathleen closed the door.

  A thought came to George, insistent as a flame. He felt unworthy before Kathleen, but his daughter needed to know who he was. If he could catch her alone, he would try to speak to her. He only wanted to look into her face again and hear her voice. The thought brightened him and he sat up in his seat.

  The little girl walked right past George’s car. He peered at her but something startled him about her appearance. Her face seemed strange. Although he only caught a glimpse of her before she passed, it seemed as if she had only one eye.

  Getting out of the car, he fell into step behind her, watching the swing of her ponytail, the swish of her grey skirt, and hearing the clatter of the pencils in her pencil box inside her satchel. He drew breath and was about to call to her when she stopped to tie her shoelace, so he hung back, making as if to light a cigarette – not looking at her directly, yet noticing now that the child was not one-eyed after all, but wore a skin-coloured plaster cove
ring her right eye.

  When her shoelaces were tied, she pulled her satchel further up her shoulders and walked on. George put away his cigarette, in case the smell distracted her. She was thin: her knees larger than both her thighs and her calves. She walked with two hands on the straps of her satchel and her head down.