Everything She Forgot

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Angus got to his car just before his parking tag expired. Everything he had heard reinforced his private thought, that this was his scoop. The abduction of Molly Henderson was a story meant for Angus Campbell.

  Angus checked his map. It was a straight road from Queen Street station, right along George Street and on to Duke Street. Just ten or fifteen minutes and Angus could be at the McLaughlin garage.

  He checked his watch: just before three. He needed to leave Glasgow by five o’clock, six at the latest, if he was to arrive home before the Sabbath.

  His stomach tightened with what in a lesser man might have been fear, but Angus knew that true investigative journalists had sometimes to put themselves in danger.

  It was his calling. Angus put the car into gear and headed east. On the Shettleston Road, after a supermarket and a dark, bleak stretch of tenement housing, Angus saw what looked like a garage on the left-hand side. It was set far back from the road and fenced in with wire mesh rimmed with barbed wire. He pulled over and strained through the windshield to read the sign: FIX IT.

  Angus got out of his car and squatted on the curb, unscrewing the cap on his back right tire, then pinching the nozzle to let the air escape. He let the tire sink onto the pavement a little, then replaced the cap. He got back in the car and pulled into the garage.

  The sun had gone down and Angus felt a chill in the air. He pulled on his cuffs as he walked into the yard. Broken-down cars were parked on either side but there were no lights on inside the garage, no signs of life, and Angus wondered if they were closing. A large wooden sign read TIRES, REPAIRS CARS BOUGHT FOR CASH.

  He heard the rasp of metal against metal and turned to see a small man in a boiler suit pulling down roller shutters covered in swirls of graffiti. The man looked over his shoulder as Angus approached but said nothing.

  “Hello there,” said Angus, putting his hands in his pockets. “I was wondering if you could help me out? I have a long drive ahead and think I might have a slow puncture.”

  The man padlocked one of the shutters and turned to Angus, saying something that he couldn’t catch.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We’re closing,” said the man; his skin was translucent, wrinkled on the forehead.

  “Well, I need to get up north. I just wondered if you could take a look? I have a six-hour drive ahead. It was just to put my mind at rest, y’know?”

  The man hesitated, then motioned for Angus to come inside.

  “This is your garage?”

  “McLaughlins’,” said the man, turning to go back inside the shop. He was thin inside his boiler suit.

  “And you are?”

  “Tam,” the man said, turning.

  “Tam McLaughlin?”

  “Driscoll.”

  Angus followed Tam Driscoll inside.

  The garage was small, but there was a ramp and a cupboard-sized office and a display of oils, antifreeze, and car polish. The walls were stacked with spare parts and old tires, all blackened with car grease.

  “All right, bring the car in,” Tam said, without even looking at Angus.

  Angus reversed into the garage, then watched as Tam jacked up the car.

  “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “Shouldn’t take long.”

  “It’s just I have a long drive up north.”

  “You said.”

  “I came all the way from Thurso.”

  “Where’s that?” said Tam.

  Angus was shocked at Tam’s lack of knowledge, but also encouraged. This was the first part of the conversation that Tam had initiated.

  “It’s right at the very top of Scotland. Have you heard of John o’ Groats?”

  “Of course, John o’ Groats to Land’s End.”

  “Well, Thurso’s only half an hour along the coast from John o’ Groats. So I have a fair drive ahead if I want home this evening, and of course … tomorrow’s the Sabbath.”

  Tam raised an eyebrow, glancing up at Angus.

  “It’s just I’d noticed the tire going down, and … just between you and me … my spare’s bald,” Angus said, putting his hands in his pockets and shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  Tam blinked but said nothing. Another worker came in and went straight into the office. Angus nodded at him, and he nodded back. The man had very blue eyes that Angus found chilling.

  After a moment, he hunkered down beside Tam as he pulled the tire off.

  “So … this place is the McLaughlins’ garage?”

  Tam nodded, rolling the tire on the garage floor, not looking at Angus.

  “The McLaughlins … as in Brendan, Peter, Richard, and George?”

  Tam’s nod was imperceptible. Angus was sure that he had assented, but it was too small a movement to be sure.

  Angus asked again, “As in Brendan, Peter, Richard, and George?”

  “Keep your voice down. What’s your fucking problem?” said Tam, dropping the wrench onto the floor of the garage. The sound of metal against concrete echoed in the corrugated iron space.

  Angus noticed that the man in the office looked over at them. He had smelled this story since the moment he heard about Molly’s abduction on his police radio. Now he sensed how potent it was: how far the spores had been dispersed.

  Angus crouched down beside Tam again. He wished that he was a smoker and had a cigarette to offer him. Up close, the man smelled of stale tobacco, and Angus knew that a cigarette would have cemented their new relationship as hack and informant. Instead, he used bravado: “What can you tell me about George?”

  “What’s George to you?”

  “You know him?”

  “What if I do?”

  “Where is he?”

  Tam wiped his hands on his trousers and then lifted the tire up, ready to take it out back for checking. “Where is George?” he said, laughing lightly.

  Angus did not know Tam, yet his laugh was surprising.

  “Where is Georgie Boy?” Tam repeated, grinning and showing his straight but yellowed teeth. Smiling, Tam was almost handsome. “That is the magic question.”

  “You know him then?”

  “I went for drink with him now and then …”

  “He works here?”

  “When he sees fit.” Tam spoke under his breath. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, very loudly, as if wanting the man in the office to hear. He took the tire out back.

  Angus stood stooped with hands in pockets. He dared not approach the man in the office. Instead, he stood waiting for Tam in the open garage, shuffling his feet on the oil-stained concrete.

  Tam returned with the tire and then dropped down on his knees to replace it. “Your tire’s fine. There’s no puncture. I’ll blow it up for you. It’ll last you the drive no problem and then just keep an eye on it …”

  Angus bit his lip. The time had passed so quickly and he had not yet got what he needed from Tam.

  “I wonder …” said Angus, clasping his hands as Tam got to his feet. “Now that I’m here I may as well … The car hesitates starting. Saying that, it’s been fine for the last few days, but with the drive ahead … would you check it?”

  “What do you mean, hesitates starting?” said Tam, with wrinkled forehead.

  “The engine keeps turning but then finally starts …”

  “Could be the spark plugs.”

  Without another word, Tam opened up the bonnet of the car and leaned over it, black hands spread over the engine. Angus ducked under the bonnet to speak to him.

  “I detect from your tone that George is not around at the moment. Has he skipped town?”

  “You seem to know more than I do,” said Tam, pulling out and inspecting each of the spark plugs.

  “You used to work with him but he’s no longer here, correct?” Again Tam nodded imperceptibly.

  “You say you used to drink with him. Did he say where he was going?”

  “How would I know? Why would he tell me?”

  “Di
d he say anything about a child?”

  Tam’s face was perhaps the most inscrutable that Angus had ever set eyes upon, but—as a parent, and a husband—he had learned to tell when people were lying. He had learned to read the sly lick of light that caught the eye of the liar. He saw that wink of deception in Tam’s eyes, just as he said: “No, nothing about a child … This spark plug is pretty bad. Do you want it changed?”

  “Please.”

  Angus felt a dry hunger at the back of his throat: knowing that he was in Glasgow, having his car fixed by someone who might know where Molly Henderson had been taken and by whom.

  He was not a tactile person—not a toucher—yet as Tam leaned over the bonnet again, Angus reached out and took his arm and squeezed it. “Are you a father?”

  As if commanded by Angus, Tam nodded.

  “Do you think it possible that George McLaughlin would have taken a young girl?”

  “No,” said Tam, avoiding Angus’s eye and continuing with his work.

  “You seem uncertain?”

  “I’m not uncertain, maybe you are?”

  “No, I’m just interested in the facts.”

  “Is everything OK, Tam?” the man in the office called out. Angus looked over at him. It wasn’t Peter, he was sure, but there was something about the man that made him wary: the tilt of his chin, the cut of his suit, the way he forced his hips forward when he put his hands in his pockets.

  “All fine,” said Tam, wiping his hands and raising his voice so that it carried over his shoulder to the man in the office.

  “If you know anything …” Angus pressed again.

  “I know that’s you sorted to drive up to Thurso,” said Tam, with a one-sided smile, letting the bonnet slam closed.

  Angus took a deep breath. “What do I owe you?”

  “I won’t charge you for the tire … give us a fiver for the plug?”

  “Very well,” said Angus, opening his wallet and taking out a twenty-pound note.

  “Pay over there,” said Tam, walking away.

  Angus approached the cash desk and gave his twenty-pound note to the man behind the counter. He found it hard to look the man in the face, but he was sure that this was the other McLaughlin brother—Richard. He recognized him from the photograph taken on the steps of the High Court.

  The man placed fifteen pounds change on the counter in front of Angus.

  “Can I have a receipt?” said Angus, raising his eyes, swallowing, and then looking straight at the man.

  Richard stared at Angus for a moment or two then slapped a receipt book on the counter. He leaned so heavily on the page that the pen tore through to the carbon paper beneath.

  Tam had returned to rolling down the shutters when Angus moved to leave.

  “Thanks for seeing me when you were shutting up,” said Angus, loudly and for effect. “I’m very grateful to you.”

  Tam nodded and then Angus leaned over and passed him his business card. “If you need to get in touch with me …”

  Tam glanced at the card, then slipped it into his pocket. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “In case you remember anything more. I have reason to believe that George McLaughlin has abducted a small girl. As a father, you might—”

  “I told you I know nothing,” said Tam, nodding good-bye to Angus and turning away.

  IN THE CAR, Angus checked the clock. It was just after six. Even if he drove continuously, it would be midnight before he was home. Glasgow was heavy. He sensed the weight of its baroque red sandstone and felt the leaden energy of the garage still surrounding him. He was a newspaperman and he knew it was his calling to mingle with the filth of the earth, but sometimes he felt besmirched by it. It was like gutting out the barn: one way or the other, it got under your fingernails.

  Animals were so much purer than most of the human race. Angus remembered the barn when he was a child, and the comfort that the animals offered him: taking him into their fold and nurturing him. He had wrapped his arms around the warm necks of ponies and nuzzled their faces, taking the smell of them down into the deepest part of him. The animals had healed him. They had shown him love outside the coldness of his family: his father’s indifference, his mother’s criticism, and the house that stank of gutted fish.

  He leaned forward and accelerated so that he was driving just below the speed limit, in order to get home as soon as possible. Saturday evening and he had expected the roads to be clear, but he got stuck in a traffic jam before Dunfermline, and then there was an accident after Perth and again just before Inverness. By the time Angus pulled into Thurso, it was eight minutes to midnight. He was glad he had made it home in time. Technically he had been working, and it was immoral to do any kind of work, or indeed play, on the Sabbath.

  The Sabbath was only for worship.

  As he passed through the town, then turned off the main road and drove down the farm track to his house, Angus felt a heavy, sick feeling in his stomach. It was time for bed, but there was a minute or so left to put his mind at rest. He had to check on Maisie.

  He got out of the car and opened the door to the house. All the lights were on, but there was no sign of Hazel. He pulled on his Wellingtons and walked down the path to the barn.

  He heard Maisie before he saw her: long, agonized cries, deep and stirring as the low note on a viola. He broke into a run.

  He was out of breath when he arrived at the barn, not because the distance was far but because he had run too fast. The familiar smell of the barn, sweet hay and dung, was laced with the bitter, iron smell of blood. When he went to Maisie’s pen he saw she was on her side, her large eyes wide with panic. Hazel was kneeling, red-handed, at Maisie’s tail. The concrete floor was splashed wet with her waters, and the straw was blackened with blood.

  Angus looked at his watch. It was two minutes to midnight. Sometimes the Lord’s grand design eluded him, yet he knew that it was not his place to question God’s will.

  “Get up,” he shouted to Hazel. “Get away from her.”

  Hazel stood. Her arms, the front of her cooking apron, her knees, and the toes of her rubber boots were all covered in blood, so that she seemed a strange communion of homemaker and butcher.

  “You’re not to touch her.”

  “You were away and she’s in such pain. It’s stuck. It’s breech. I can feel its rear end. She needs the … the v-vet. Will you help her, Angus?”

  “Did you do this? Did you interfere before her waters broke, out of your ignorance and your … impulsiveness?”

  “I did nothing.”

  “This morning you told me she was fine and now look at her …”

  “She needs you … she needs a vet. Will you call?”

  “It’s the Sabbath,” Angus whispered so quietly that the words were only felt leaving his tongue, not audible.

  “Will you help her though?” said Hazel.

  Angus struck her across the face with the back of his hand. She stumbled under the blow and turned away from him, cowering against the barn wall. He was filled with pain and fear for Maisie and could think of nothing else. He didn’t want Hazel in here. He didn’t want her anywhere near the barn. It was the Sabbath and she had no right.

  “You had no right,” he shouted, taking her by the neck and then driving her face into the wall. She buckled under the blow and put a hand to her nose.

  A shovel, used for mucking out the barn, stood near the door. Angus picked it up with two hands. Hazel made no sound but ran for the door. He caught her before she got there, once between the shoulder blades and again in the small of her back. She fell under the blow, then curled up in the mud outside the barn.

  Exhausted, chest heaving, Angus threw down the shovel and looked up at the moon.

  He blinked and remembered being a child, locking himself in the barn on their farm. The barn was a place for exaltation and love, not pain and death. It had been the place where he felt safe.

  “Why?” he screamed, a single, long, diaphragm-aching syl
lable that emptied him of air and hope.

  Hazel began to crawl, in the mud, back to the farmhouse. Angus looked down at his hands and the shovel at his feet. He felt a shiver of shame. The force of the blows had jarred his shoulder and he realized that he had gone too far. Nevertheless, he turned his back on her and reentered the barn.

  He could see that Hazel was right for once and that Maisie was in trouble. Angus looked at his watch—midnight—and then removed it. He turned his hand to the side and flattened his palm, fingers tight together like a swimmer, and then entered the heifer. He could feel the calf’s rear before he was elbow deep. It was breech and it was stuck.

  If it had been Monday, Angus would have called the vet and paid the emergency call-out fee; then, as he waited, he would have got down on his knees and slipped his hands inside her, pushing the calf farther inside in the hope of turning it. Maybe he would have been able to then find its feet, allowing him to slide it out of Maisie, timing his actions with her own muscular push. She would be silent, breathing heavily through flared nostrils, knowing that he was caring for her. The calf would slip out, blue and yellow, stuck with the gel and slime of the birthing.

  Angus stood before Maisie and looked into her face, his right hand slick with her insides.

  “It is the Sabbath,” he told her. “And the Sabbath is sacred. I have to leave you. I know that you can do this by yourself. It is God’s will.”

  Maisie let her head fall against the hay, her mouth open and her eyes half closed. Angus got down on his knees.

  “You understand, my girl,” he said, making long, flat-palmed strokes on her velvet neck, “that I love you, but I also love God.” She jerked away from him. He wondered if a contraction had taken hold or the calf had shifted, or if she had heard and understood every word he had said and was, now, appalled by him.

  There was a tremor in her abdomen and Angus could see the angle of the calf under her flank. Maisie bent her front leg, as if preparing to stand, but could not. She moaned again, so loudly that it caused the water in the metal trough to ripple.

  Angus got up and ran outside. He ran toward the farmhouse, two hands pressed over his ears. By the time he arrived at the house, he was in tears. He covered his face and sank down on his knees into the mud.