Everything She Forgot

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Margaret placed her hands in his. He pulled her through fast, although her hips got caught and she landed on top of him.

  She lay breathing on the man’s chest, feeling the chill of the snow on her cheeks and scalp and grateful for it. Margaret lifted her face up and saw the gnarled skin of his neck.

  He strained to get up, and she could see that he was in pain. He helped her to her feet.

  “Hurry, we need to—”

  When they were nearly at the embankment, the car blew up. The explosion reverberated through Margaret, expelling all the air from her lungs. Her mind was bright with the horror of it, but the man pulled her into him and back down onto the road, rolling her over and over as debris fell around them. Margaret felt the great weight of his body above her, and then nothing, then the weight again, pinning her down and rolling her forward, a gravitational momentum. She felt safe there, grateful.

  Half of Margaret’s face was in the snow. The stranger raised himself from her and brushed the snow from his body. He was bleeding badly from his forehead. He knelt, watching the blaze, holding his bloody hand in the other. Margaret rolled over and stood up. Her shoes were gone and the icy snow wet the soles of her feet. She could see paramedics in green rushing toward them. She could hear nothing but her own heartbeats and the roar of the fire.

  Her car was engulfed in flames and she saw now that the whole of the M11 was a carnage of crashed cars. The motorway was like a scrapyard: upended vehicles and the stench of burning rubber. The blue lights were so far away because even the emergency services couldn’t get close.

  Relief flooded into her, warm as a shower. Margaret looked down to the man who had saved her.

  “Were you in the crash too?” she asked him. “You’re hurt. Your hand must be broken and your head …”

  “Fine” was all he said, turning his eyes from her, trying to pull his scarf over his face with his bloodied hand.

  “It’s all right,” Margaret said, putting a hand on his neck. “Thank you. I would have died. Now we must get you some help.”

  “I’m fine,” he said again, then staggered to his feet and walked away from her, down the lane of concertinaed cars, into the smoke and fire and snow.

  “Wait,” Margaret called to him, “please?”

  Paramedics swarmed over the scene. She was wrapped in a space blanket, her pulse was taken, and then she was given a tag and instructed where to wait; that she was going to be OK. She gave her details and was told that Ben would be informed.

  Margaret shivered on the side of the motorway, clutching the foil blanket around her, looking for the burned man who had saved her. She asked the paramedic who tended to her, but he shook his head. “I’m not sure I’ve seen him. There’s too many injured. You need to rest now. Just take a break and let us look after you.”

  She remembered the heat of the stranger’s palm against hers, and the sheer size of him crouched in the snow, holding his damaged hand to his chest. He had been hurt, she knew he had; she wanted to find him to make sure he got help.

  CHAPTER 2

  Big George

  Friday, September 27, 1985

  BIG GEORGE GOT UP ON THE TABLE, PINT IN HAND, AND began a rendition of “Sweet Caroline.” He was six feet three with black hair, bright blue eyes, and longer eyelashes than his only sister, Patricia. He was the best looking of all the McLaughlins and had gotten away with murder for years because of it. He had been his mother’s favorite, and he could carry a song like she had, although it had been years since she had had anything to sing about.

  George was on his fourth pint and there was a sheen of glee in his eyes. The whole bar turned to him, clapping in time. The McLaughlins demanded attention, but usually that was enforced with the threat of great violence. Georgie Boy was different. Most people in the East End of Glasgow knew him and were wary of him because of his family, but those who knew him well said that George was a gentle giant. George’s father, Brendan, had called him soft, but then they didn’t come much harder than Brendan McLaughlin.

  George leaned on Tam Driscoll’s shoulder as he climbed down from his impromptu stage. An older man leaving the bar patted George’s back: “Look out, Neil Diamond.”

  “Away!” said George over his shoulder, his eyes smiling at the compliment.

  “You ready for another, big man?” said Tam.

  George nodded, wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm, and put his empty pint glass on the bar. By the time Tam was served, a table had become available at the periphery of the bar and, tired after his performance, George sat down and ran his hands through his hair.

  Tam had recently started working with George in the garage the McLaughlins ran, along the Shettleston Road. The garage was semi-legitimate, although cars were “cleaned” there. It was as close to the family business as George could bear to be. Tam was a mechanic and a good one, but had only taken the job because he had been out of work for nearly a year.

  “I don’t want to get involved,” he would whisper to George, his face and hands dark with engine grease, when George’s elder brother, Peter, visited, clasping and unclasping his gloved hands. Peter had taken over, years ago, after their father had disappeared, presumed dead.

  “Me neither,” George had reassured him.

  In the few weeks they had known each other George had been in the habit of sharing stories with Tam, as a mark of friendship and trust, but Tam had yet to share anything other than his time and his beer money with George.

  George understood Tam’s fear, and had decided to be patient. His father had made his name as a heavy for the top loan shark in Glasgow. Even now, in this bar, there would be at least two or three people who had been injured by the McLaughlins. One of the people clapping along to George’s song had been Giovanni DeLuca, who owned the chip shop on the corner. Just the sight of DeLuca in the crowd had made George forget a line, although his audience thought it was the beer. He had watched Giovanni’s pale skeletal hand clapping against his other, strong brown one. At fourteen years old George had watched his father force Giovanni’s hand into the deep fat fryer.

  Tam walked slowly to their table, careful not to spill the beer. He was a full head shorter than George and fifteen years older, thin and wiry with gray hair cut short. He had taught George how to bleed an engine and how to change an exhaust. George, who had never been any good at school, found he loved learning about cars, and picked up quickly what Tam taught him. He had few friends and he had liked Tam instantly. It was as if Tam was a replacement father figure: benevolent, where Brendan, God rest his soul, had been a bastard.

  “You just can’t help yourself, can you, big yin?”

  “Nothing like a wee song to raise the spirits.”

  “If you say so.”

  George took another long drink of beer. “No, no, not this time,” he said, drunk and patting Tam on the chest. “Not if I say so. I want …” George swallowed a hiccup, “to hear what you have to say for once. You’re the man. The man that can. You’re my teacher, my maestro.”

  “Och away. You’re just haverin’ now.”

  “I’m serious, by the way. I have serious respect for you. Serious respect. But you never talk about yourself. Tell me about you—YOU—give me your craic.”

  “There’s not much to say, really,” said Tam.

  Even through the blur of beer, George could tell that his friend was worried. George was big like his father had been, but he had his mother’s heart. His brothers, and his sister to a large extent, had been inured to the violence. George and his mother had empathy, which they had polished in each other, a pearl in the mud and dirt of their lives. She had died just last year, cruelly, unfairly, of a simple infection after surviving a lifetime of violence.

  “You have a family,” persisted George. “You never talk about them.”

  “There’s not much to say.”

  Only Tam’s eyes moved on his face.

  “You have a daughter. How old is she?”

  “Fiftee
n,” said Tam, his voice faint, as if at confession.

  “I’m only asking,” said George, squeezing the older man’s arm.

  “I just want to know who you are, for Chrissake. If you consider it personal, then just tell me to piss off. I’m not your priest.”

  Tam nodded. Once again, George read something in his eyes.

  “You’re not a Catholic, are you?”

  “My mother was a Catholic. I have nothing against—”

  “I don’t give a shit what you believe in. Believing in anything at all is hard enough, is it not? You’re my man and if you’re a Proddy, then that’s good with me.”

  Tam said nothing, nodding. There was a sheen of sweat on his face. George took another sip of beer and decided to return to his old tactics of sharing his own life and hoping that Tam would feel comfortable enough to reciprocate.

  “You’re lucky,” George said, sitting back and folding his arms. They were side by side on the red pleather bench. George surveyed the oval island of the bar as he spoke, deliberately trying to relax his friend. “I envy you, having a daughter. Having a daughter changes a man. I mean, it didn’t change my father, but he was a special case. It changed me.”

  George took a deep breath. Just the word daughter took him out of himself. It was like a breach in his drunkenness, a portal to another state of consciousness.

  “I didn’t know you had a daughter,” said Tam quietly.

  George turned to him again, smiling broadly. “Have a gander at this,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it back to show Tam his chest. There, above his heart, tattooed in red ink, was the name Moll.

  “Moll was your daughter?” said Tam, taking another sip.

  “She is my daughter. She’s not dead. She’s alive.”

  Tam licked his lips. George could tell he was interested but afraid to ask more. George took another drink of beer and then told Tam the whole story.

  “You won’t know Kathleen Jamieson, but I started seeing her soon as I left school, and I told you already that I was chucked out when I was fourteen, so it was early on. She was my first love … my only love, I suppose. Five, six years we were together, on the sly most of the time, because her family didn’t like her hanging around with me. She was a nice girl, you understand. Anyway, we weren’t careful and she got pregnant. I was happy when she told me, because I’m not like other guys. I always wanted to be married and have children. I wanted to start my own family since I was six or seven years old …” George stopped for a long, hearty laugh. “Probably because my own was such a fucking nightmare, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tam conceded a smile. He smiled on one side of his face, while the other half remained guarded, almost sad.

  “Her family was really devout—you know the types: a Hail Mary every time you fart. Pregnant and unmarried was bad enough, but pregnant by the likes of me … Well, they of course said she would have to have the baby. I was straight round there with the diamond ring and everything, but they were having none of it. They told me she’d had a miscarriage and had gone to visit her aunt to recover. I was sure they’d packed her off to a convent, like they did in the sixties. My mother said as much. She was the only one in my family I told … about the baby.”

  George put a cigarette between his lips and patted his pockets for his matches until Tam gave him a light. He took a long drag, wincing as he inhaled.

  “What happened?” said Tam. George was encouraged.

  “Well, it was just after Christmas and I was thinking of Kathleen and popped round to the Jamiesons’ one morning after mass, just to ask for news of her. I thought they’d tell me to piss off, but when I arrived, Kathleen was there and in labor. Her father was out, and I think had all but washed his hands of her by that point, and so I ended up giving her, her mother, and her sister a lift to the hospital.

  “We were in there for the longest time. I ran out of fags. It was the middle of the night when my daughter was born, and I remember me and this other expectant father were sharing a flask of whiskey in the waiting room. Only … it was his third, and he knew he was going home with the bairn.” George looked at a spot in the distance as he remembered. “I can’t tell you what it was like when I saw her for the first time.”

  “The bairn?”

  “She was so beautiful. Did you feel like that … ?”

  Tam raised his eyebrows.

  “Molly. I called her Moll. She has my eyes. Kathleen let me hold her, although her mother and sister were complaining that I stank of whiskey and kept shouting at me to mind and not drop her. I don’t know how you felt, but there’s nothing so humbling for a man. My father’ll turn in his grave if he hears me say this, but I just wanted a wee girl.”

  “Girls are a lot less trouble, so they say” was all that Tam would concede.

  “After I’d seen that bairn, I was in love. I would have done anything for her. When she got out of the hospital me and Kathleen went to register the birth and we went for a walk and I proposed to her all over again. On my knees in Glasgow Green … on my fucking knees, but … she said she was seeing some other guy.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Her family had sorted it all out, I’ve no doubt. No doubt in my mind at all. Some old bastard that was willing to take on a fallen woman and her child. I mean, did these people not know it was nineteen seventy-seven. Nineteen fucking seventy-seven!”

  “They married her off?”

  “Kathleen was upset, crying. She told me it was the only way … Her family was angry at her, but over their dead bodies would they let her marry me. She’d changed. She was cold toward me. You know what women are like. ‘Forget about her, Georgie,’ she told me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tam, taking a long sip of beer. The bell for last orders sounded.

  George nodded, looking at a point far in the distance. “You for another?” he asked.

  “I’m all right,” said Tam, looking into the remainder of his beer.

  “Ah, go on, it’s payday after all,” said George, slapping his wallet on the table.

  Tam nodded his assent. George felt his balance wavering as he stood to return to the bar, but he found it again after a second or two.

  “Thanks, big man,” said Tam when George returned, spilling a little beer on the table.

  They were silent for a while, watching the other men in the bar. It was mostly men. The room was tinged blue with smoke, and George felt his mind heavy with beer and memories.

  “Do you ever think about getting out of here?” said George quietly, but facing the room of people rather than Tam beside him.

  “Sometimes,” said Tam, hedging his bets, as always. “Why?”

  “Can I count you as a friend?” said George, turning to look Tam in the eye. Tam’s own furtive eyes widened for a moment under George’s gaze.

  Tam swallowed and then licked his lips as if in anticipation.

  “You need to keep it to yourself.”

  Tam nodded.

  “I found a bit of money. It would only do you harm to know where, so I won’t mention it, but it’s enough—enough to totally disappear with—and I’m planning on disappearing. Now you see me …” said George, elbowing Tam to coax a smile from him, “now you don’t.”

  “Where are you going?” said Tam, his face suddenly gray and drawn.

  “North first, then south. I’m not going alone.”

  “I … Georgie, I have a family. I’m a quiet man …”

  George allowed another fit of laughter to erupt from his body, although beneath the beer and the joviality he was deadly serious.

  “I’m not talking about you, Tam, relax! Christ. I think I’m a worrywart, but I’ve got nothing on you. I mean, I like you and all, but I wasn’t planning on running away with you.”

  Color returned to Tam’s face. He was too thin-skinned and scrawny for a full blush but he colored all the same.

  George unbuttoned his shirt again and placed his right palm over the tattoo, as if he were making a
pledge.

  “I found her, you see,” said George, his eyes fixed on a horizon far beyond the walls of the Portland Arms.

  “Who, Kathleen?”

  “I didn’t get to finish my story. Kathleen went north with some old fella and it crushed me, but … well, I tried to get over her. You’ve no idea what I was like when I was younger—pissed every night and going with whatever lassie’d have me. I did all that but I couldn’t get her and the bairn out of my mind. I couldn’t forget how it had felt to hold my own daughter in my arms and to see her face and see my own in hers. It changes a man. Did it not change you?” Again George looked to Tam for some kind of validation.

  “They’re bonny when they’re young, that’s for sure” was all Tam would give.

  “Anyway, I didn’t care for a few years, or told myself I didn’t. I had no idea where they were anyway. Kathleen was gone—not in Glasgow—and she’d basically said that her and the wean were well shot of me. But then I met Wee Malkie. He’d been on the oil rigs and had done work all over the north of Scotland. Did he not run into Kathleen with the wean? He said the wee one was the spit of me.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two years ago. I’ve found out where she lives.”

  “Two years, people move.”

  “People move, but not if you have a big house in Thurso. I know where they are.”

  George downed the rest of his pint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Tam was smiling again—that strange smile he offered when Peter was in the garage. His eyes were scrunched up, which made people think it was a proper smile, but somehow it was out of synch with his mouth. His mouth was wary to commit. When Tam smiled like that, it looked as if he was in pain.

  George turned to him, unsmiling, honest, wishing something worthy of Brendan McLaughlin: wishing that Tam was a bigger man. But George was not his father and George was determined to trust small, thin, terrified Tam, who knew an engine as a surgeon knows a body.

  “I have the means,” said George slowly, leaning in so close that he could smell the starch on Tam’s Friday night shirt. “Third time lucky. I’m going up north to ask Kathleen to be mine and then the three of us can go away together—me, Kathleen, and my wee girl.”