Jack’s face glows with his minor victory. He leads the rest of the boys back onto the pitch, and I shake my head, then sit down on the wet grass and pull off my trainers.
XII
‘God, what happened to you?’
I step past Molly into the kitchen, scoping several empty wine bottles lined up under the window. She’s in a baggy jumper and old jeans tucked into woolly slippers, her hair tied up in a sloppy bun on top of her head.
The little line of butterfly bandages at my hairline itches as she draws my attention to it. Gingerly, I scratch the skin around the cut. ‘Rugby. Someone caught me with a stud in the ruck. I’m fine.’
‘You’re limping. You call that fine?’
I laugh. ‘I’m sore in muscles I didn’t know I had but honestly, I’m fine.’ And I am, for the moment. I’d be better than fine if Paula would phone as she promised, but I’m trying to push her to the back of my mind. We scraped a win yesterday. I put in a bunch of epic tackles and a couple of decent runs with the ball, and the endorphin rush carried me through until bedtime. A handful of painkillers and I was unconscious for nine hours.
‘Barbaric sport.’ She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath through her nose. ‘I haven’t even touched anything since you were last here. To be honest, I’ve got the mother of all hangovers. Dad kept some excellent wines, and I’m afraid I’m not willing to donate those. Where’s your scruffy little mate?’
‘Billy? AWOL at the moment. He hasn’t been at work for a few days.’
‘He’s allowed to get away with that?’
I shrug. ‘I’m not the boss.’
Molly pours me my now customary cup of coffee, refills her own cup and stands leaning against the worktop, her hands wrapped round her mug. She looks shaky and ill and her voice is weak. ‘I’m sort of glad.’
‘Sorry . . . did you say you’re glad?’
She looks up, nods.
I swallow some coffee and pause to enjoy the feeling of it working its way into my blood. ‘About what?’
Molly doesn’t answer. Instead, she stands there staring at me with an odd little smile. ‘I had an estate agent here on Friday. The minute he arrived he had a look on his face like someone had died. At the very least I’m going to have to get that road sorted and replace the roof and windows before I’ll have any kind of chance at selling the place. He wasn’t even sure it was worthwhile putting it on the market just now, the way things are.’
She takes another steadying breath and looks up at the ceiling, tears quivering in her eyes.
‘Oh come on, that’s only one guy’s opinion. Find someone else.’
‘That’s the third one, Sean.’
‘Ah.’ There is an uncomfortable moment as we both try to figure out what comes next.
Molly presses her fingers into her eyes. ‘There’s some money left in my dad’s estate, but I didn’t want to blow it on fixing this place up just to sell it. Peter’s business isn’t doing well just now and he’s after me to come home, and I . . .’
She pinches the bridge of her nose, then spills a stream of words that seem to have been crowding in her mouth, plotting their escape. ‘I’ve got nothing of my own. No career, just a few miserably paid jobs raising funds for charities. I’ve been at the mercy of men my entire life. Cambridge degree in Literature, that’s it. Completely useless. I married a man with big ideas and became his fucking housekeeper. I can’t even have a baby, Sean. Even my body’s incapable of producing anything good. Everything’s just . . . fucked up.’
I set my mug down and cross over to her, open my arms and gather her in against my chest. She leans in stiffly at first, but then gives in and goes a bit limp as my arms come up around her back. Her breath is trembly and thick against my shirt. There is something so familiar about that self-hating vulnerability, it makes my brain hurt with memory.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I say.
‘How will it? I don’t know what to do.’
‘You’ll figure it out.’ I rub her back. ‘Look, why don’t you just go home for a bit and get away from here. Just lock it up and leave it for a while, give yourself some time to think. I’ll keep an eye on the place for you if you like.’
‘How much will that cost me?’
I laugh. ‘Nothing. Call it a mate’s favour.’
She lifts her chin up and looks at me. ‘What if I don’t want to go home to Peter? What if I said I didn’t love him anymore?’ She lifts her hand up and gently touches the cut on my forehead.
I stiffen and back away. ‘Molly . . . don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want you to.’ I worm out of her grasp.
‘I don’t get you, Sean,’ she snaps.
‘What don’t you get, exactly? I’m not that complicated. I was giving you a hug to be kind, I wasn’t coming on to you.’
She refills her coffee cup and pushes a lock of hair away from her face. ‘You really don’t like me, do you?’
She’s just declared checkmate and absolutely nothing I say next will get me out of this situation unscathed.
Mitch hums in my head and begins singing about Mrs Robinson.
I clear my throat. ‘Not in that way.’
Her eyebrows arch upwards, drawing deep lines on her forehead. ‘Oh. Okay.’ She sniffs and unties her hair, twists it around her hand, then ties it up again. ‘I see.’
‘Please don’t take it personally.’
She laughs, drags a chair over the flagstones and sits down heavily. ‘Oh no, absolutely not.’
‘Do you want me to get on with the job or not?’
She mutters something and her words disappear into her hands.
‘Pardon?’
She says it again.
I kneel in front of her and place a hand on her shoulder. ‘Molly, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I didn’t mean to upset you, alright?’
She looks up and shouts in my face. ‘Alright Sean, get on with it! Is that loud enough? Jesus Christ, just take all of this shite away. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?’
I hold up a hand and nod slowly. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’ I stand up, take two steps backwards, then spin around and duck out of the kitchen before any more venom comes flying my way.
By late afternoon, I have cleared more or less everything I am capable of carrying on my own, leaving only the heaviest items of furniture, the bedding in Molly’s room, and the kitchen. Gutted, the house smells of damp stone and dust, and I notice dozens of places where the wallpaper is peeling, the skirting boards have loosened from the walls, dampness has seeped through, or the plaster has crumbled overhead. The wind whistles down from the treeless hillsides behind, and the name Cauldhill seems entirely appropriate for such a place.
I load in one final chair and slide the van door closed with a grimace; my head is pounding and there isn’t a part of my body that isn’t contracting with pain. Reaching into the glovebox, I pull out a packet of ibuprofen tablets and press two into my hand. Swallowing them with some lukewarm tea from my flask, I stand for a moment letting the sun ease some of the strain in my shoulders. The air is sweet with gorse blossom and Scots pine, and I close my eyes, leaning on the bonnet, absorbing the stillness.
After five minutes, I’m so stiff it’s an effort just to pull myself upright. I hobble into the kitchen and find Molly asleep, curled in a stained old wing-back in front of the Aga, a novel in her lap. We’ve been avoiding each other all day, walking round each other in large circles, exchanging only necessary words.
‘Molly,’ I say softly to wake her, and she sits up with a sudden intake of breath.
‘That’s me. I’ll need to leave the rest until I’ve got another pair of hands.’
‘Oh . . .’ she pushes her reading glasses up onto her head and rubs her eyes, ‘okay. Wait.’ She scrambles out of the chair, opens a drawer and pulls out a key ring, with three keys on it. ‘Were you serious about keeping an eye on the place?’
I shrug. ‘Sure, nae bot
her.’
‘Then take these.’ She holds out they keys and drops them into my hand. ‘You can take the rest of the furniture whenever. No rush. You have my number, just call me if there’s any problem.’
I pocket the keys. ‘So I take it you’re going?’
‘For a while,’ she says slowly. ‘I’ve got decisions to make. Sean, I . . .’ she stops, her brown eyes wide and her lips parted. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t behaved very well. You must think I’m half mad.’ She sighs. ‘Maybe I am, I don’t know. I can’t seem to think clearly about anything.’
There are a lot of things I’m tempted to say, about her and me and our respective brands of insanity. But I settle for, ‘I’m hardly one to cast judgement.’
She looks up at me. ‘Thank you. And I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier. It was insensitive.’
‘Forget about it.’
‘I’ll call you.’
‘Right.’ I peel myself slowly from my leaning position and move stiffly toward the door. ‘I’ll see you, Molly. Take care, eh?’
‘You too.’ She touches my arm as I step outside.
I glance down at her fingers, long and pale on my sleeve, but I don’t look back at her face. I descend the steps as quickly as my seized muscles will allow me, holding my breath until I am safe in the van and can let it out with a long groan of pain. Molly is still standing on the steps as I turn out of the drive and disappear down the road.
****
‘Put your coat in the wardrobe, will you?’ Janet shouts from the kitchen. The usual pile of shoes and coats in the lobby has been tidied and the house smells of spices, not dissimilar from the smell that wafted from the little mud brick or cinder block Afghan houses in the villages. They were the lucky ones, of course, the ones who could afford spices and meat; so many others lived on rice and meagre bits of bread.
‘I’m making curry,’ she shouts over the canned laughter of some television studio audience.
I poke my head into the kitchen and breathe in deeply. Hunger rises in my belly like a waking dragon. ‘Smells braw.’
She smiles, pushing a mush of onions, garlic and spices around in a pan. Beside her on the worktop is enough chopped chicken breast to feed half a dozen, three fat red tomatoes and a verdant clump of fresh coriander. A pot of yellow dal is simmering on the back ring and basmati rice is soaking in cold water by the sink.
‘You having company?’
She gives me a nervous smile and a pair of wide, excited eyes. ‘Tim’s coming round.’
‘Tim from work?’
She’s been on about Tim for months. I know exactly what music Tim likes (hairy 70s country rock), that he writes poetry, was a social worker for years before coming to work in housing and that he really gets it, whatever it is. He sounds like a pompous, middle-aged hippy to me and I’m sure the only thing he has in common with my sister is the middle-aged bit. But then, if you’re in your forties and still single, maybe that’s enough.
‘He called me, he said he’s been hillwalking in the Borders and he thought he might pop by on his way home. I said just stay for his tea . . . it didnae take much arm twisting.’ She flutters her hands. ‘He’s just a friend. It’s not a date.’
‘What is it?’
‘Just . . . you ken . . . You’ll eat with us, won’t you?’
I give her the aye, right eyebrow. Even if I believed her, the prospect of dinner with her and Tim wouldn’t be appealing. No doubt there have been long office conversations about the dubious state of her ex-commando brother’s mind, and I’m really not in the mood for the smug, social worky gleam in Tim’s eyes as he tries to suss me out.
Didn’t she meet enough of them, I wonder, when were kids?
‘Do I have to? I’d rather just confine myself to my cell for the evening. You can open the flap and slide some curry through.’
She tuts. ‘Sean. You okay?’
‘I hurt.’
‘Poor baby. You will play rugby. Where?’
‘Everywhere. I’ll have a bath.’
‘Leave the bathroom in a fit state, please.’
‘Aye, ma’am.’ I give her a lazy salute and drag my complaining legs up the stairs.
Half an hour in the hottest water I can stand – I top it up when it starts to cool – followed by a smear of liniment on the worst offenders (shoulders, thighs, lower back and arse) and a couple of extra-strength paracetamols, and I’m starting to feel vaguely mobile again. I comb my hair and wipe the steam off the mirror to have a look at the damage. The butterfly bandages on my head have peeled off in the bath, leaving a scabby, inflamed red line: another scar for my collection, for certain.
Having ensured that there are no short curlies left in the plughole for Janet to berate me about later, I step out of the warm steam and into the cold air of the landing. A male voice rises up from below, followed by a rich crescendo of laughter from Janet, and again, I think aye, right, then scurry along to my room before he politely asks to use the toilet and comes up to catch me dangling here.
I pull on some clothes and am just plotting my sneaky route out the front door when Janet raps once and pokes her head into my room.
‘You decent?’
‘You’re meant to ask that before you come in. I think I’ll go out, catch a film or something.’
‘Dinnae go out, Sean, come down and have something to eat.’
‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘It isn’t all the same to me,’ she snaps. ‘You stay here and be sociable, please.’
‘I’m not a fucking teenager.’
‘Then dinnae act like it. And dinnae spoil this for me, like . . .’ She stops short, mouth open like she’s just inhaled something deeply unpleasant, and we face each other silently.
Like I’ve spoiled the rest of your life. She hasn’t said it, and because Social Work Tim is downstairs and the walls are thin, neither will I. But we’re both thinking it.
I breathe deeply and drop my voice. ‘I’m not spoiling anything. I’m giving you some privacy, which I thought you might appreciate.’ Then I turn my deaf ear on her and squeeze past, jog down the steps and out, swiping her car keys from their little hook by the door on the way.
XIII
I don’t go to the cinema. I’ve been once since my injury and reckon I missed at least half of the dialogue: a pointlessly expensive and annoying experience, not to be repeated anytime soon. Instead I drive down to Portobello and park at the Joppa end of the Promenade near the public toilets. A wee gang of teenage boys is bumping up and down the steps on stunt bikes and I pause to watch them for a minute or two. One of them hops the bike onto a metal bench, balances his front wheel on the back of the seat for a moment before whirling a full 180 degrees and bouncing smoothly onto the ground. Courage, hormones and boredom put to impressive use; better use than I ever found for them, anyway.
I walk past and head along the Promenade, thinking back on my teenage self: all humiliation, aggression and jealousy, cleverly packaged so nobody could tell one from the other. I would have been the kid balancing the bike on the bench or pulling wheelies on top of the sea wall if I’d had a bike capable of it. Every Christmas I asked for a new one and Mum never came up with the goods. The best I had was a rusty green clunker that had belonged to my granddad: an ugly, battered old thing that to me looked like a neon sign flashing out POVERTY CASE to the world. Sometimes I wonder how different my life might have been if she’d managed to give me just one thing I really wanted.
You joined the RMC because she never bought you a bike? You blame that poor woman for a hell of a lot.
I joined because it was my only way out.
You could have gone to uni and got a job in Civvy Street, if that’s what you’d wanted.
I was a fuck up at school.
That’s nobody’s fault but your own, boyo. You had the brain for it.
‘You try learning the periodic table of the elements when your ma’s puking her guts out in the kitchen sink. It�
��s a bit distracting.’
You’re talking out loud again, Nic. And there’s no point blaming the dead; they can’t talk back.
You fucking do. Are you just here to break my balls or what?
Maybe, if that’s what it takes.
‘For what?’
Bloody hell, you figure it out.
And he switches himself off with a ghostly little harumph, leaving only the soft rumble and hiss of the waves on the beach, the rush of the city traffic and the now distant, crow-like laughter of the boys on the bikes.
I lift my eyes from the ground and watch little waves rolling under a heavy, darkening sky. It’s not a cold night but a blanket of North Sea haar is creeping up the Forth, blurring the lights of Fife across the water, moistening the air. There aren’t many people out now, just a few dog walkers and couples holding hands, and lights are coming on in the bay windows of the Victorian houses facing onto the Prom.
I walk along, pass the Porty swimming baths and fall into a kind of oblivious march, not thinking about where I’m going. From somewhere behind me, I hear a shout but don’t register any meaning in it so don’t turn. After a moment, footsteps come thudding along the pavement and a hand lands on my back.
I jerk sharply out of my daze and duck away from the hand.
‘Holy crap, it is you, Nic,’ a breathless voice says, just comprehensible over my rushing pulse. A face I know but haven’t seen in at least four years, waving brown hair and green eyes that dart back and forth in a manic kind of way, a head that bobs up and down emphatically with every word.
‘Jesus,’ I splutter, ‘Tigger, you scared the crap out of me, mate.’ I grin, slap his arm. ‘What you doing here?’
Tommy Davidson was a Peterhead boy who came of age on his dad’s trawler before joining up, a year or two before I did. We were together through two operations in Iraq and the first tour in Helmand. He was called Tigger because of his bouncing stride and irrepressible cheer. He was one of the most eager bootnecks I ever met, but had to leave after breaking a couple of vertebrae in his back on a winter warfare training exercise in Norway. We kept in touch for a year or so after that but inevitably lost touch. Last I knew he was living with his wife and kid in Aberdeen.
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