Exile

by Denise Mina

  It was the smallest question she’d ever heard. ‘Tomorrow?’ she said. ‘’Kay.’

  She shut the door behind her and took the stairs slowly, wondering how much more damage it would do to Alan if he found out Ann was alive. But Ann might come back in a few years’ time, just reappear one day, and a dead mother’s return would fuck anyone up.

  Back downstairs Isa was everywhere. There was a light in the kitchen, the sink was empty and sparkling and a giant box of tea-bags was sitting on the clean work-top. Even the strips of off-cut carpet had been rearranged into a block formation representing a rug, and the hardboard floor had been scrubbed clean, right up to the corners.

  Jimmy had finished dressing the babies in matching sets of cheap but new pyjamas. He was holding their dummies above their heads, hypnotizing them into standing still while he ambushed them with a wet flannel and wiped their faces. Maureen stood in the doorway and lit a cigarette as Jimmy picked up a baby in each arm and brushed past her. ‘Can I have one of them when I come back?’ he said, gesturing to her fag. ‘Aye.’

  Jimmy took a deep breath and climbed the stairs. Alan would probably come back down as soon as the babies went to bed, and Maureen wouldn’t get a chance to speak to Jimmy alone tonight. She could put it off, it didn’t have to be tonight. Could be any night. She had wanted to talk to Leslie about it before she decided, but Leslie was still captive in Cammyland and she was such a loudmouth sometimes that telling her would be as good as making the decision.

  ‘Give us one, then.’

  Jimmy was behind her, rubbing his hands and staring at her cigarette. She handed him the packet. ‘That was quick,’ she said.

  He nodded, walked over to the chair and lifted the cushion, took out a box of matches and lit up. He turned off the fire and Maureen looked out into the hall. ‘Isn’t Alan coming down?’

  ‘Naw, he likes to sit with them till they fall asleep.’ He blew out a stream of smoke, holding his head back, standing tall. ‘A smoke’s just what ye need sometimes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye.’ She looked at her cigarette, as if it knew what the fuck to do.

  Jimmy sat down in his chair. ‘What ye did for me and the weans,’ he said, smoking and squinting at her, ‘I’ll never be able to thank ye for it. Ye were brave to go down there.’

  ‘That’s not brave, Jim. Bringing up four weans on benefit, that’s brave.’

  Jimmy looked into the dying fire. He took a draw and sucked it down, deep to the pit of his stomach. ‘I lied to ye,’ he said, whispering so the children wouldn’t hear him, ‘Ido miss her.’ He took a deep draw. ‘I even miss her being sick and being missing. I miss her being in trouble and blaming me and hitting the weans and bringing parties back to the house and passing blood. I miss her. I miss her all the time.’

  ‘She’s not dead, Jimmy.’

  He shook his head at the floor and Maureen wondered if he’d heard her. ‘I miss her,’ he said.

  ‘Jimmy,’ said Maureen, ‘it wasn’t Ann. She’s not dead.’ Jimmy shuddered and closed his careworn eyes tight. ‘I miss everything about her,’ he whispered.

  48

  White Martyr

  Siobhain’s face was twenty-foot high and she stared angrily down at them. She was standing too close to the camera, her face spilling over the edges of the frame. ‘I am Siobhain McCloud, of the clan McCloud.’ A self-conscious snigger rippled through the audience as the more insecure let their neighbours know they’d got the reference.

  Siobhain stepped away from the camera. She was standing in her beige living room and all around her on the floor, on the big telly, on the sofa, on the windowsill were her cutout pictures. There were pictures of babies in baths and dogs and food and models and readers’ pictures and home baking and top tips and holiday resorts. She told the audience that she had kept the pictures that pleased her and liked to collect them in books. She held open her album and Liam’s lighting brought the image to life. It was a picture of a horse-drawn wedding carriage with a grotesquely unattractive couple in full wedding regalia. The camera zoomed in on it. ‘This,’ said Siobhain, ‘is Sandra and John from Newcastle on their happy day,’ she turned the page, ‘and here is my favourite picture of a crab.’

  Her delivery was strange and stilted, she was talking too loud and sounded simple. She showed the audience a picture of a plate of fish and explained about her people. They were Highland travellers. She described how they would dredge the rivers in the summer months, wading and looking through boxes, past the choppy surface to the still waters below, finding pearls and selling them in the cities. The camera turned to the painting above the fire and she told the story of her young brother, Murdo, and how he drowned in a shallow burn in the autumn and grief made her mother leave the land. She turned to a picture of an Italian holiday resort and pointed to the flag fluttering above a castellated battlement, explaining that according to the old church there were three types of martyrdom. Red was death, green was leading the life of a hermit in the woods and white martyrdom was exile, leaving the land and your people for the preservation of the faith. Her accent sounded thick and she didn’t look pretty at all. Her face was fat and her chin dissolved into her chest, leaving her with a small Hitchcockian chin. ‘I look very fat in this,’ she whispered indignantly to Maureen.

  The other shorts had received a quiet ripple of applause but when the lights went up on Liam’s film everyone applauded, some politely, some sincerely. A couple of attention-seekers at the back cheered and whooped. The audience stood up and began to file out. Maureen tried to look around for Lynn but her neck brace was restricting.

  ‘I looked very fat,’ said Siobhain, staring at the darkened screen.

  ‘What did ye think?’ Maureen asked Leslie.

  ‘Went on a bit, didn’t it?’ said Cammy, as if he wasn’t sitting in an art-house cinema wearing a Celtic Puffa jacket. ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Kilty Goldfarb, shaking her half-eaten Cornetto at him in exasperation. ‘It was nine fucking minutes long. What are you? Brain-damaged?’

  ‘Still,’ said Cammy, uncomfortably, ‘I thought it did . . .’ He looked away around the cinema, knowing he’d got it wrong.

  ‘It went down well with the audience, anyway,’ said Leslie, covering for him.

  Liam had been right about the three-month honeymoon. Maureen saw Leslie looking annoyed when Cammy said stupid things. She seemed to have changed her mind about having kids as well but she hadn’t told Maureen why. Liam came in from the back, fighting his way through the flow of the crowd and stood next to Maureen, flushed and proud. ‘What d’ye think?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Fucking super,’ said Kilty.

  ‘I looked fat,’ said Siobhain, annoyed, as if Liam had tricked her and used a special lens.

  ‘I thought it went on a bit,’ said Cammy, assertive now that a man was there.

  Liam blanked him. ‘I think it went quite well,’ he said, looking around. ‘Lynn was working late but she should have been here by now.’

  Leslie took Maureen’s elbow and said that Cammy had his car and they were going to drop Siobhain and stop off at Jimmy’s to bring Isa home, did she fancy coming and seeing the boys?

  ‘Can’t,’ said Maureen. ‘I’ve promised to meet someone.’ Cammy could hardly contain his delight. ‘Brilliant, okay.’ He grinned. ‘See ye later, then.’

  Leslie and her entourage were swept away in the flow. Several members of the audience recognized Siobhain and stared at her as she made her way out, thinking her a very clever actress. Kilty watched them leave. ‘You were right about him, Mauri,’ she said. ‘That guy’s a prize arse.’

  Maureen sighed with dismay. ‘What makes her stay with him?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Her family go for idiot men, though, don’t they?’

  Maureen nodded. ‘Aye, right enough.’

  ‘And here,’ he said, ‘is someone e
lse who goes for idiot men.’

  Lynn had watched the film from the back and was shuffling sideways along a row to get to them. Maureen felt implicated in Liam’s betrayal of her. She hadn’t felt the same about Lynn since Martha. She was letting her down by not telling but she couldn’t, it wasn’t her business. She’d tried to trip Liam up by saying that Martha might be HIV positive, but he said he’d been careful. Lynn climbed over the last seat and called to Liam. ‘Your film made Siobhain look like a prick.’

  ‘No, it didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Actually,’ said Kilty, ‘she looked like a bit of a nutter.’

  ‘It’s the best film you’ve made so far,’ said Maureen.

  ‘D’ye think so?’ he said.

  ‘I do. Have ye got your key, Kilty?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kilty. ‘Aren’t ye coming for a drink with us?’

  ‘Can’t,’ said Maureen, ‘I’m meeting someone.’

  As Vik parked his car he thought of Maureen up on her hill, sitting in her cosy little house with the heating up and the big curls in her hair dancing as she laughed at something on telly. He walked up Sauchiehall Street, digging his hands deep into his jacket, lowering his head to keep his neck warm. The pubs were busy for a Monday. The Issue sellers and the beggars were working the cinema queues and the drinkers filtered up and down the street, finding a bar for the night. An excited crowd of women in sweat-shop nylon outfits gathered at Porter’s door for the karaoke and the students were hanging about outside the Baird Hall.

  Mark Doyle was waiting in the Equal Café. He had kept his donkey jacket on, a big dirty man sitting alone at a small table by the window, smoking. He nodded when she came in. ‘Right?’

  ‘Were you early?’ she said.

  ‘Bit, aye.’

  ‘D’ye want something to eat?’

  He shrugged. He didn’t look comfortable. Maureen didn’t know if he’d ever been in a café. ‘What is there?’ he said, behaving like a nervous spy.

  ‘Cottage pie?’ He shook his head. ‘Fry-up?’ He shook his head again. ‘Bad stomach.’

  ‘Soup?’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Minestrone.’

  ‘Aye. I like that. I’ll have that.’

  The waitress was busy at another table. Maureen looked at Doyle. He wasn’t an easy man to make light conversation with so she didn’t try. ‘Do you think Pauline would be pleased that we know each other now?’

  He touched the broken skin on his face. ‘Think she would,’ he said. ‘But, then, she never mentioned you tae me. For all I know she mibi couldn’t stand the sight of ye.’ He raised an eyebrow and Maureen smiled at his joke. The sullen waitress limped over to the table and Maureen ordered them a bowl of soup each and some bread.

  Vik turned to cross the road and looked into the Equal Café. Maureen O’Donnell was sitting in the bright white light behind the window, wearing a skin-coloured neck brace, looking relaxed and happy. Across the table from her was a tall, dark-haired man with broad shoulders. He wasn’t her brother: he didn’t look anything like her. Vik walked on and crossed further down the road. When he got to the Variety he ordered a pint and found that he was trembling with disappointment. She would have to pass the doors on her way home to Garnethill She’d know he was in there. He was always there on Mondays. He and Shan were always there. ‘Elizabeth,’ said Doyle. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Out on bail. Went for a hit. OD’d.’ He told the story as if he was passing on a social arrangement.

  ‘God,’ said Maureen, ‘that’s awful.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Doyle.

  The waitress brought over two plates of soup garnished with greasy croutons and a plate of spongy white sliced.

  ‘What did ye want to see me for?’ asked Doyle, resting his big hands on the table, leaving the cutlery undisturbed. Maureen stopped with her spoon an inch from her mouth. She put it down in the bowl. ‘My father is back in Glasgow.’

  Doyle nodded as if he already knew that. ‘He’s a bad father,’ she said. ‘He’s like your father.’ He caught her eye. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘But—’

  ‘Ye can’t go back, after. Ye think they’re in your head before, but when ye cross that line, then they’ve really got ye. You’re no better than them.’

  But she hadn’t been weakened by Millport, she’d felt better afterwards, stronger, more powerful. If she could keep her nerve this time and not freeze like she had with Toner, she could do it.

  ‘Whatever he did to me,’ she said, ‘is in the past.’ Doyle nodded. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘That part’s over.’

  They looked at each other. Doyle lifted his spoon and sipped his soup.

  ‘What’s this part?’ he said.

  ‘My sister’s expecting. I want to know what to do.’

  ‘Warn her.’

  ‘I have warned her. She doesn’t believe me.’ Doyle shook his head, looking at the table. ‘Don’t do it, hen.’

  ‘What else can I do?’

  ‘Run away. Leave. It’s not your business.’

  ‘I can’t leave.’

  ‘Ye can’t stop it.’

  ‘But I can stop it. You know that. We both know that. I can stop it.’

  Doyle shook his head again. ‘You’ll ruin yourself.’ He wrapped his big hand around the handle of the spoon and flexed it anxiously, splitting the skin at the joints into red slits on the papery skin. He began to eat his soup. Disappointed, Maureen watched him. She’d wanted him to say yes, make suggestions, or even offer to help her. ‘Nothing’s ever over, is it?’ she said.

  ‘Nut,’ said Doyle, and crushed a crouton between his teeth.

  Vik waited all night. He sat on a bar stool, watching the door for four hours, pretending to chat to Shan about Gram Parsons and Motherwell’s line-up. Every time the doors opened he felt sick and nervous. He waited and waited until the bar staff were shouting time, but Maureen never came.

  THE END