Chasing Angels

by Meg Henderson

  Aggie nodded again and started weeping quietly. ‘No’ a livin’ soul knows that apart frae me an’ him!’ she said. ‘No’ even oor Jessica.’

  ‘An’ yer God tae, surely, Aggie!’ Kathy thought, her mind spinning. And she was further confused by the Aggie she saw before her; she had never seen her grandmother this vulnerable. She almost felt sorry for her, and being unused to feeling anything but combative towards Aggie, the emotions she was now going through confused her still further. ‘Ah’ll no’ say anythin’, Aggie,’ she said seriously. ‘But how the hell did that come aboot?’

  ‘It was when Ah wanted back tae the Church,’ she wept. ‘When the Orangeman went tae work Father McCabe would come tae see me an’ we’d pray thegither.’

  ‘Sounds like ye did merr than pray thegither, the randy wee bastard!’

  ‘Naw, it wasnae like that!’ Aggie pleaded. ‘He was only a boy, a few years younger than me, just oota the seminary. He’d been there since he was just twelve year auld. He didnae know nothin’. It was ma fault, no’ his.’

  ‘Aggie,’ Kathy said gently, ‘ye canny hae it a’ roads. It was the Orangeman’s fault for gettin’ ye pregnant wi’ ma Mammy, but no’ McCabe’s fault for gettin’ ye pregnant wi’ Jessie. Does that make sense, hen?’

  ‘But it was ma fault!’ Aggie insisted. ‘Ah knew merr than him, he had never had anythin’ tae dae wi’ women afore.’

  ‘He musta learned bloody fast, then! So who decided tae cover it up an’ pass Jessie aff oan the Orangeman?’ Kathy asked suspiciously.

  ‘He didnae know whit tae dae,’ Aggie explained.

  ‘Up tae a point!’ Kathy interrupted.

  ‘Ah said we should leave things as they were. There was nae point gettin’ the boy intae trouble, he had God’s work tae dae. An’ Ah was right, because he’s been a good priest, he’s got a hearta gold an’ there’s many folk aroon’ here he’s helped ower the years. An’ yer grandfaither never knew the difference, he thought Jessica was his ain. Ah just decided God had been good tae me, giein’ me this special wean, it was a sign that he’d forgiven me, an’ that wan day Ah’d get back intae the faith.’

  Kathy had no doubt that young Father McCabe had been only too happy to go along with that interpretation, but what the hell, if it hadn’t occurred to Aggie in all these years, why force her to see it now?

  ‘He always kept in touch, though,’ Aggie said, her face beaming. ‘Never abandoned me in a’ that time.’

  ‘He was just protectin’ his interests, ya daft auld bugger!’ Kathy thought furiously. ‘Makin’ sure ye kept quiet!’ but she said nothing.

  The two women sat in the first silence there had ever been between them, each lost in their own thoughts. They were some crowd, the women in her family, Kathy thought wryly, nobody could ever accuse them of not being sociable, and their fertility was every bit as notable as their morals. The Orangeman had married Aggie in a ‘havtae’ situation because she had been pregnant with Lily, then Frank McCabe had bestowed Jessica, the ‘special’ child on her. Lily had been pregnant with Peter when she married Con, while Jessie had never married the gangster who was Harry’s father, and her other child was certainly not the offspring of her legal union to the unfortunate and long-deceased Sammy Nicholson either. And now here Kathy Kelly was herself, the fiercest critic of all of them, with another bastard child growing inside her and the father already married to someone else.

  When Kathy got up to go Aggie pleaded with her again not to say anything about Jessie’s holy, if not immaculate conception, and Kathy repeated her promise that she wouldn’t. ‘Christ, Aggie,’ she said kindly, feeling the only affection she ever felt for her grandmother, ‘we’re family, hen! Even if Ah dae look like the auld Orangeman, the wan thing Ah know for sure in this mess o’ a family is that ye’re ma Mammy’s mammy, an’ that makes you an’ me related!’ Aggie smiled and reached out to Kathy as though to embrace her. ‘Noo wait a minute!’ Kathy said, laughing. ‘Don’t go overboard, Aggie! Ye’re still an evil auld bugger, an’ Ah’m still me tae!’ But as she made her way back to her own home it occurred to her that even without the laying on of hands, the atmosphere between them had been like an embrace anyway.

  Next morning Aggie was found dead in bed, she had indeed held her last breath till the door had closed behind Kathy.

  6

  She had bitterly resented coming back to Glasgow to nurse Con through his last months; it had been an odd experience. On that first evening she had walked up London Road, wondering at how small the place seemed; once it took for ever to walk from Glasgow Cross and along London Road. Glickman’s Candy Shop was still there, where the famous Glickman’s cough sweets came from. The shop front, with its long, low windows, was painted in black gloss, framing the crammed displays of every sweet you could imagine. The years of her life she must’ve spent with her nose crammed against the glass. It was a ritual that she had never questioned. At the end of the school day she would meet up with Jamie and they would walk home together, and always stopping to stare in Glickman’s window, though they rarely had money to buy anything; it was just something they did. Arranged on glass stands were thick bars of coconut ice, fudge, peppermint fondant, nougat, all coated with chocolate, and they would examine everything on display, wave to Frances, Anne and Max Glickman as they served inside, then continue the walk home. It was almost an arrival ritual; when you saw the Candy Shop you knew the school day had gone and you were home again, and staring in the window was the way to mark the passage from one part of their lives to the other. There was something comforting about seeing it there after all these years, even if Frances, Anne and Max must be long gone. And a little further on, before you turned into Kent Street, was where Maggie Davidson’s fruit stall stood. Maggie was the tiniest woman Kathy had ever seen in a city of small people. She had fair hair, though she had never been seen without her headscarf, and friendly blue eyes all crinkled at the corners, and she always wore a long coat held close to her by an apron with two deep pockets along the hem for keeping change, and heavy, zip-up, suede boots with thick crepe soles. Her stall was a wonder to behold. It was narrow, with a small passageway to the side giving Maggie access to the back to construct her display, and there was a stool there where she supposedly sat at slack times, though Kathy could never recall seeing her sitting down. From the front of the stall the fruit was displayed on a carefully constructed and incredibly high slope, boxes of immaculate oranges, apples, bananas and whatever else was available, all beautifully presented in their shining, glossy glory. Maggie did a roaring trade, yet the display was rarely seen with an apple or an orange missing, because Maggie always had a ready supply of equally perfect, identically glossy fruit ready at the back to replenish her stock. If anyone could pass Maggie’s stall without buying something they had no heart, because more artistically appealing fruit could not be found anywhere. She was a friendly soul too, never letting a child pass without throwing them an apple, and she always kept sugar lumps in an apron pocket for the delivery horses.

  Kathy had been there when the horse fell down; she had only been about five years old and it became the day when her hatred of Father McCabe had taken firm root. Maggie had been getting a delivery by horse and cart from the fruit market in Candleriggs, and the horse had slipped on the cobbles and fallen, scattering the cartload across London Road. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence in those days, so there was never any shortage of passing males giving advice, and soon a crowd had gathered. The horse had tried to get up a few times, urged on by the efforts of the carter who dug the toe of his boot into the animal’s side and beat it with a strap. But every time it tried to struggle up its hoofs would slip again, sending it crashing once more on to the road, and each failed attempt made it that much less keen to try again. The animal was scared, and the gathering crowd was scaring it even more, and soon it decided to stay where it was no matter how much encouragement the carter gave it. It lay there, a great, huge, tragic creature, beaten by the cobbles and the
crowd, neighing pathetically on the ground. St Alphonsus’s was only yards away, and Father McCabe was soon on the scene. ‘Nae show withoot Punch!’ a voice muttered from the crowd, and everyone laughed.

  ‘Right, that’s enough commotion!’ he cried authoritatively. ‘Get a vet to put it down!’

  ‘An’ who the hell might you be, pal?’ the carter demanded. ‘It’s ma hoarse an’ ma livelihood, Ah’ll decide whit’s tae be done.’

  ‘You don’t come from around here,’ Father McCabe remarked, as though that entitled him to take control of the situation. ‘The whole road’s blocked by this, we need to get it cleared.’

  ‘Take wan step near ma hoarse an’ Ah’ll clear you!’ said the carter menacingly.

  ‘Well, I’ll call the vet if you won’t,’ responded Father McCabe, and made to walk off, but the carter grabbed him by the back of his collar and held him fast with a huge, grubby hand.

  ‘Whit does he want tae dae?’ Kathy had asked Jamie.

  ‘He wants tae get somebody tae shoot the hoarse,’ replied Jamie, and Kathy was aghast. Horses were noble beasts, she’d never met one she didn’t like, yet this priest, revered in the area, wanted to kill it because it had fallen down! The scene was frozen in her mind like a tableau, the distressed, demoralized animal on the ground, its eyes rolling with fear behind the blinkers, the carter holding Father McCabe by the collar, and the crowd framing the picture, all shouting and laughing. And totally unseen into this mêlée had stepped the tiny Maggie with a handful of sugar lumps and a quartered apple, and began stroking the horse’s huge head. Kathy had only been aware of her because she was so small herself, it had seemed to her that there were two scenes going on at different levels, and she was part of the lower one, together with Maggie and the horse. Maggie crooned softly to the animal as though to a baby, and when she’d got its attention she began feeding it sugar lumps, then she coaxed it from its defeated place on its side on the cold, hard cobbles, its great hoofs scraping and sparking for purchase as it rose, as the rest of the performance took place above and around. Finally it stood there, shaking slightly from its ordeal but happily accepting Maggie’s apples and sugar lumps, until someone shouted, ‘Jesus Christ! Wee Maggie’s got it up!’ The delighted carter promptly forgot about thumping Father McCabe and returned to his task of unloading the fruit, and the crowd, having witnessed good entertainment, went back to what they had been doing before the drama began. It became part of the folklore of the place, though, that people telling old Barras stories would start off with: ‘D’ye mind the day Wee Maggie saved the hoarse?’ But Kathy remembered something else about the event, something she didn’t think anyone else had heard. As Father McCabe tried to beat a hasty retreat to reclaim his dignity, Maggie had said in a low, dark, dismissive voice, laden with disgust, ‘So your God doesnae love dumb animals, does he no’? Or was the poor auld hoarse a Proddy? That why ye wur so helluva fast to see it deid?’ Father McCabe hesitated for a second then headed back to his chapel without looking at Maggie, far less replying. From that day on Maggie had been Kathy’s absolute heroine and Frank McCabe her enemy. In years to come she would have many more reasons for despising him, but the first had happened on the day that Maggie had saved the horse.

  Walking past the closed market that evening, and coming to the very spot where Maggie’s stall had been, it suddenly struck her that Maggie must be long gone now too, even if her horse-saving tale would live for ever, and she felt tears prickling her eyes. Then she laughed at herself. If anyone had asked why she was upset and she’d replied it was because Maggie Davidson was dead, they would’ve thought she was daft, as indeed she thought herself, because Maggie had died many years ago. But she had never seen the place without Maggie, hadn’t become used to her absence by witnessing the day-to-day changes as Barras life closed around her loss and went on without her, so to Kathy it was as if it had just happened that evening, as she was walking towards Con’s home in Stevenston Street. And along London Road was the glowering red sandstone heap that was St Alphonsus’s, where Aggie had been accorded every rite known to Rome at her funeral. Kathy remembered watching Frank McCabe going through it all, making sure no prayer was missed out, not a drop of holy water unsprinkled, no incense unburned, and wondering what could be going through his mind. Here he was, seeing off with due ceremony and more the mother of his child, as that ‘special’ child, Jessie the whore, sat, stood and knelt as required, her handkerchief clutched to her face, watching her father officiate at her mother’s sending off! It was a bizarre scene, and how relieved he must’ve been that with Aggie finally silenced, there was no longer any danger of their secret leaking out, the only wonder was that he didn’t break into an Irish jig midway through the rites he was so enthusiastically performing. No one else knew, not even Jessie, that was what Aggie had said the night before she died, another twelve hours and he would’ve been as safe as he already thought he was. Only he wasn’t. Kathy knew, and she was the last person on earth he would’ve wanted to know, because he had no control over her. His God had forgiven him, no problem about that. One of his comrades would’ve absolved him of his sin, or more likely he would’ve gone in mufti to some strange priest for his absolution all those years ago, but either way, the secrecy of the confessional was sacrosanct – how terribly convenient that was – and then he had left the cuckolded Orangeman to rear his illicit child. Well, what could you expect of a man who would shoot an innocent horse because it was blocking the road?

  And there were other dark secrets. She had hardly noticed the backache at first, and even when she did she put it down to the effort of clearing out Aggie’s house. How a woman who had hardly moved from that chair beside the fire, except to regularly call down the wrath of her God on her granddaughter, could’ve collected so much stuff was beyond Kathy. Frank McCabe had been in attendance at various times throughout the day, just in case, she mused, there might be something in writing about the little secret he had been only too glad to let Aggie carry all her life. Well, nearly all her life. There were rosaries everywhere, made from various materials, each one more ornate than the one before, all of them, she was sure, specially blessed for her by the wee man himself. When you thought about it, Aggie’s demands must have run him ragged, blessing statues of the Virgin Mary – how he must’ve blushed a bit while doing the business over that one – pictures of the Sacred Heart, holy medals of every description, and providing holy water for the tatty plastic shrines all over the house with little wells at the base for moist sponges. Every time Aggie passed one she would dip her hand to wet her fingers before blessing herself. ‘Christ, Aggie,’ Kathy would remark, ‘if ye threw some Fairy liquid in there ye’d never needtae climb intae the bath again.’

  ‘An’ nothin’ would clean that soul o’ yours,’ Aggie would counter. ‘It’s as black as the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat, so it is! Ye’ll burn in Hell for yer blasphemy, you mark ma words!’

  ‘Is that how the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat got so black, then? Was he wearin’ it while he burned?’

  ‘Ye know fine whit Ah mean, lady! You’re no’ kiddin’ me!’

  ‘Christ, Aggie, Ah’ve never understood a word ye’ve ever said, an’ you know that fine. Ah think ye make it a’ up as ye go alang. Either that or ye’ve got a special line tae yer God.’ And all the time she had, that was the funny thing. She had her own direct line through McCabe and their ‘special’ child.

  If she had admitted her pregnancy to herself she would’ve at least suspected that the backache was connected to the child she was carrying, but she had kept it filed away in the back of her mind. No one knew, and at around five months she had still managed to cover it up, but deep down she had been making some sort of provision for the fact that she couldn’t hide it for ever. There was nothing focused about it, just a quiet acknowledgement that, as she had told Aggie, she would have to go away from here soon. She had no thought for the child growing inside her, in fact she didn’t even think of it as a child. It was an incon
venience, a situation she would rather have been without, but she had never imagined it as a human being, a small, living, growing human being. So there was nothing in her mind about what would happen, how she would cope with the birth or what would become of the child, because it wasn’t a child, it was something that she dealt with moment by moment. The pain wasn’t severe, a dragging discomfort more than anything, and with Con out on his usual round of the pubs in the area, parading his grief about the late, lamented Aggie to anyone who would stand him a half, she was alone in the house. She decided to have a bath to ease the aches of the day, and then, after she pulled the plug from the bath and started to get out, the world became blurred. Suddenly there was a tiny thing lying there and blood everywhere. The universe contracted and time stood still as she tried to make sense of what was happening. She had been getting out of the bath, then somehow the tiny thing was lying there in front of her, and she had no idea if it had happened minutes or hours ago. Her mind was trying and, so far, failing to function. She wondered where the thing on the floor had come from; it simply didn’t occur to her at first that it had come from her, and when she gradually realised that she was bleeding she still didn’t see any connection. There was nothing beyond what was going on in the bathroom, where time was moving at a snail’s pace, with huge delays between thought and action. Slowly she reached for a towel, clamped it between her thighs and sat down on the bathroom floor again, her back against the wall, staring at the thing. There was no plan of action, one thing simply led to another without any real reason or thought. Somewhere in her mind she knew she would have to do something, but she didn’t know what, so she sat against the wall for another uncertain aeon and did nothing. Eventually she looked at the thing on the floor. It was a baby. Dear God, it was a baby! It didn’t look exactly like other babies she had seen, its head was out of proportion to its body, as it lay there, unmoving, curved in a fetal position, the cord and the placenta still attached to it. But it was undeniably human, a little person, pale and dead, but a person, and as there was no one else around she surmised that it must’ve come from her. She reached out and lifted it from the floor, cradling it on her knees for a long time, looking at it, examining it. It was a girl. It felt waxy and looked like a newly hatched chicken, not quite complete, not ready, covered all over in a fine hair. Its large, bulging eyes were shut and veins were clearly visible through its translucent skin, but everything was where it should be. She couldn’t stop looking at the smallest details, the fingers with their fingernails, the toes, the way it curved inwards as if to protect itself. It looked so pathetically small and defenceless. There was no world outside the bloodstained bathroom; the only reality was her and her dead child. Feeling cold, she reached for her thin, flower-patterned dressing gown and gently wrapped it around the child. She put it back on the floor before stepping once more into the bath and removing the bloodsoaked towel from between her thighs. The bleeding had eased and was no longer gushing down her legs. She ran the water till it was lukewarm and sponged herself off, watching it, tinted orangey-red, disappearing down the plughole till it became clearer. Stepping out once more she took a towel and ripped it, placing half between her thighs again and slowly, carefully, drying herself with the other half. Then she brushed her hair, and finding it nearly dry, she wondered how long she had been in here. Lifting the flower-patterned bundle, she made her way calmly back to her bedroom and sat on the bed, then she left the bundle on the bed and looked in her chest of drawers for a sanitary belt, a Dr White’s towel and a pair of pants. She put them on in an unhurried manner, one thing at a time, then she reached for the suitcase under her bed and took from it the brown paper parcel containing the red satin box with the woven hearts that she had bought for Lily all those years ago. Inside, in one of the compartments of the red mock velvet shelf, she saw the charred enamel brooch she had brought back for her mother from that long-ago school trip to Fort William, three sprigs of white heather tied together with a tartan ribbon. She was gripped by the need to give the dead child something precious and the brooch, the only link she had between herself and Lily, was there, so she eased the pin through the thin material, taking care not to hurt the child underneath. Lily would want her to have it. Then she removed the shelf, before lifting the bundle and gently fitting it inside the box and closing the lid, trailing her fingers along the gold cord at the edges. Finally, she lifted the covers on the bed and slipped between the sheets, taking the box with her, to lie at her right side. She was more exhausted than she thought possible.