by Lesley Kelly
I’m beginning to feel queasy.
Mac carries on. ‘We’ve been having a chat with the other shopowners round here and we’re quite happy to make sure you leave town again, if you get my drift.’
I always get people’s drift and it’s never good. ‘Hold on a minute here’. I raise my hand to start pointing at the pair of them then quickly lower it when Logie makes a grab for it with his mutant melted paw. ‘Before there’s any vigilante justice here, can I just say I’m no longer part of the Stoddart empire. The person you need to be worried about is Bruce.’
‘Who’s Bruce?’ says Mac.
‘One of Mrs Stoddart’s laddies-with-dogs,’ answers Logie.
They both stare at me.
I’m still hungry and the smell of deep frying is driving me insane. ‘Can I have my chips?’
‘Naw!’
I’m beginning to think that I’m not the popular man-about-town that I thought I was. There was me thinking people laughed at my jokes ’cause I was funny, and slipped me a free fish supper now and again ’cause I was a good bloke.
I was wrong. Seems nobody in this town would have given me the time of day if it wasn’t that they saw the shadow of Mrs Stoddart over my shoulder.
As I wander back up Leith Walk looking for somewhere that’ll serve me, I hope Mac and Logie put the word out that I’m not looking for trouble, otherwise my head is going to end up in someone’s deep fat fryer.
1980
My mammy died for the first time in 1980.
I woke one morning in late May to find the sun streaming into the room I shared with my brother Colin. This was a good sign. We were counting down the days to the school holidays and the weather was looking promising.
‘Col.’ I threw a sock in his direction as I groped around the bedroom floor to find the clothes that I’d dumped there the night before.
‘Col!’
The Colin-shaped lump in my brother’s bed grunted and pulled the covers further over his head. We went through this rigmarole every morning. Back then he wasn’t what you’d call a morning person.
‘Col!’
He grunted again but didn’t move. I lost patience with him and pulled all his bedclothes onto the floor.
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ he said, as he did every morning.
The first sign we got that this was not a normal day was when we walked into the kitchen to find my father sitting there, smoking a cigarette. This was unusual both because he wasn’t normally there at this time, and also I didn’t think I’d ever seen him sitting at the kitchen table. Usually he consumed all his meals sitting in front of the TV.
‘You not at work the day, Dad?’ I asked, making for the fridge.
‘Your mother’s not well.’ He stopped for a long draw on his fag. ‘She’s in the hospital, so I thought I’d better stay home this morning and make sure you got your breakfast.’
Col and I exchanged a glance. My Ma not being up at this time was not out of the ordinary. We didn’t usually see her before we left for school, and were quite adept at getting our own Rice Krispies without any adult help. The fact that my dad wasn’t aware of this didn’t strike us as odd at the time.
I was curious about this turn of events. ‘What’s wrong with her? She didn’t seem ill yesterday.’
‘Can we visit her?’ Col was hopping from foot to foot, a sure sign that tears were on the way.
I looked to my dad for reassurance. ‘Will she be back before the holidays?’
My father slammed his hand down on the table. ‘Will you stop with all the questions?’
To the casual observer this might seem an odd way to respond to two young laddies who had just found out their mother is seriously ill. But if we noticed anything amiss, we never remarked on it at the time.
‘When’s she coming back?’ said Col, with a quiver in his voice.
‘Not for a while, son.’ Dad stubbed out his fag, and stood up to empty his ashtray into the bin. With his back to us he added, ‘Maybe never.’
This did strike both of us a slightly abrupt way of breaking bad news to young children, odd even to two survivors of 1970s parenting techniques such as ourselves. We responded with the only weapon we had, and both started to cry.
‘How come?’
‘It’s not fair.’
‘I want my mammy.’
My father’s face crumpled. He sat down and pulled Col onto his knee. ‘I know, son, I know.’
Two days later Dad told us Ma had passed away. It was to be a small funeral; so small that neither of her sons were invited. When we asked Dad why we couldn’t go, he said it would be too upsetting for us.
Col and I weren’t happy about this, and plotted our campaign under the bedclothes in our room. We cornered Dad in the living room where he was having a quiet five minutes with the Daily Record.
‘About the funeral, Dad’ I began our interrogation. ‘Who’s going to be there?’
Dad sighed but didn’t lower the paper. ‘Well, me, obviously, and your grandad.’
We could have guessed that. ‘Aye, and who else?’
The paper rustled slightly. ‘Oh, people from your mother’s family.’
We wanted specifics. ‘Like Uncle John…?’ I asked.
‘and Tom…?’ asked Col, looking to me for support.
I nodded and added, ‘and Kirsten?’
The Daily Record was looking more uncomfortable by the minute. ‘Aye. Probably all of them.’
‘But Kirsten’s younger than us, and if she’s getting to go we should get to go.’ I couldn’t fault Col’s logic on that one.
Dad stood up, threw the Record on the ground and stamped on it. ‘You’re not going,’ he said as he left the room, leaving both his paper and his relationship with his sons in tatters.
The day of the funeral we stayed home with Granny Florrie, who, although not our real granny gave us more comfort than flesh and blood ever could.
‘It was for the best, lads. She didn’t suffer.’ She had an arm round each of us, holding us tight to her bosom, which wasn’t all that pleasant really ’cause she was an awful skinny woman. ‘She’s in a better place now. Who wants ice cream?’
Col wasn’t of a mood to be placated by mint chocolate chip. He had questions about all of this, and as she was the only adult present, he was determined to get answers from Florrie.
‘So, what did my mammy die of?’
Florrie was looking a bit hot, although it wasn’t a warm day. There was a flush to her face and she took off her cardigan and draped it over the back of her chair. ‘I’m not exactly sure, son, you’d have to ask your father.’
‘Was it her liver?’
Both Florrie and I looked at Colin in surprise. He had been giving this some thought. I was quite impressed; I was still struggling to come to terms with the idea that Ma wasn’t here anymore and Col was already onto making medical diagnoses for her demise.
‘Her liver? What makes you say that son?’
‘Cause Iain Ridley in my class said that his ma said that she wasn’t surprised that Ma was dead after all the strain she’d been putting on her liver.’
Florrie was looking hotter by the minute.
‘Aye, well, maybe, son, but you’d really have to ask your father about that.’
Col contemplated this for a minute or two. ‘So, where is she now?’
Florrie started fanning herself with a rolled up newspaper. ‘At the cemetery, son, being buried. Where else would she be?’
Colin looked slightly bemused. ‘I mean, is she in Heaven?’
Florrie looked relieved. ‘Oh aye, son, definitely. That mother of yours is with God now, looking down on her two laddies and feeling very proud of you both.’
Now I’m puzzled. ‘I thought Ma was being cremated?’
‘Ice cream, boys?’ Florrie leapt to her feet.
I could hear every window in the kitchen being opened. When she came back through with two heaped bowls, she switched the TV on and wouldn’t be dra
wn into conversation.
Wednesday
The sound of a door slamming wakes me up. It must have been Father Paul heading out to Mass. Maybe I should make the effort of going to church while I’m staying here; it seems like the least I can do in return for the free digs.
The last time I went to Mass must have been my laddie’s baptism, which would make it, Jesus, how many years ago would that make it? I decide to head to the bathroom rather than lie there thinking about my shortcomings as a parent.
The back of my hands are skinned, and the hot water stings as I wash them. I rub a few bit of dirt off and watch it spin into the plughole. My shirt is missing a couple of buttons and has a few flecks of paint attached to it. I’m momentarily confused, then remember climbing back in through one of the downstairs windows due to Father Paul not giving me a set of keys. I’m not sure if he was making a point about me being under house arrest, or if he just forgot. He’s a busy man.
I eat my breakfast in front of the TV to see if there’s any info about the Mavisview body, or about Lachie’s death, but there’s nothing on the regional news. I’d like to go out for a paper but my lack of keys puts me off. Another half-hour of channel hopping persuades me that I can’t face a whole day sitting in the Priest’s House. I turn out every drawer in the kitchen until I successfully locate a spare back door key.
I almost wish I hadn’t bothered. The sky is metallic and the rain’s coming down in lumps. It’s the kind of rain that drenches you on the way down, then bounces off the ground and soaks you again on the way back up. I cast a glance over my shoulder to the Priest’s House and the comfort of daytime TV, then sighing, leg it to the paper shop.
Manny, the owner, is standing behind the counter flicking through a magazine. He’s halfway through his usual shopkeeper’s welcoming smile when he realises it’s me and the smile grinds to an abrupt halt, leaving him with his teeth bared as if he’s about to lunge forward and sink them in my neck. The smile retreats completely and he speaks.
‘I heard you were back.’
‘Looks like it,’ I mumble.
He grins and reaches across the counter to give me a hug. Manny’s dad moved here from Malta in 1950. Manny’s lived all his life, as far as I know, in Leith, but he still has a Mediterranean attitude to life.
I push him away. ‘Aye, aye, get off me. I only came in for an Evening News.’
He laughs. ‘They’re not in yet but you’ll get a Scotsman on the stand.’
Manny goes back to flicking through his magazine and I wander round the shop. I rifle through the papers, looking for information about the murder. The Scotsman’s got a feature about it on page 2. There’s a picture of Mavisview as it is today, and also an old photo of it from its heyday, with a bit about its history. I decide to come back to that later and go straight to the update on the Polis investigation.
It’s a bit of an anticlimax, seeing as the first set of tests the Polis have had on the bones haven’t managed to tell them very much, beyond the fact it’s a body, and it’s dead. And any facts they do know about the body they’re not releasing to the likes of us just yet.
But in spite of that, the journalists have excelled themselves and managed to come up with a double-page spread of guesswork. There’s a half-page discussion about whether the body’s some poor chambermaid that was done wrong by her employer and ended up under the floorboards, nicely illustrated with a black and white drawing of a lassie with a drawstring cap and a mop. She reminds me of Marianne.
On the other page there’s a picture of a wee laddie climbing into a fridge, accompanied by an article stuffed with frightening statistics about the number of children that die or injure themselves every year playing places they shouldn’t be. They’ve got this down as some local kid who has being playing a game of hide-and-seek that’s gone fatally wrong.
I can’t wait for the morning’s Scotsman. If they manage to get four pages’ worth of news out of the story before we even know if it was a man’s or a woman’s body, once they find out the Stoddarts were involved they’ll be able to write a bloody book.
I hear voices raised in the shop. Peering round the paper rack I see Manny getting some grief from a couple of the local neds. I recognise the pair of them from the scheme. They’re a whole nightbus full of trouble.
‘Gie us 20 L&B.’ One of the neds is leaning across Manny’s counter. I’m not sure if he’s doing that to intimidate Manny or because he can’t stand upright.
The shopkeeper stands his ground. ‘Give me some money first.’
Ned Number One leans away from the counter, staggers a wee bit and leans back in. ‘Gie us the fags you Paki bastard or I’ll have you.’ Manny suffers a lot of misplaced racism. In the years he’s had this shop I’ve heard him called every nationality under the sun except Maltese.
Manny’s holding firm on the No Fags line, but the second ned isn’t having it. He’s not staggering, and peering round the paper rack I see a flash of blade as he gets a knife out of his coat. ‘Gie us the fags, Paki.’
I should really do something, but I’m not keen on rugby-tackling a knife-wielding ned, so I hide back behind the paper rack and hope they don’t notice me.
The door buzzer sounds.
‘You can come out now, Stainsie. They’ve gone.’
I slink out from behind the papers, and slope up to the counter. ‘You OK, Man?’
Manny reaches under the counter and pulls out a duster. He gives the front counter a wipe. ‘Aye. Bit light on fags though.’
He nods at the Scotsman which I’m still holding in my hand. ‘You taking that then?’
I’ve read everything of interest to me in the Scotsman already. ‘Naw – I’ll pop back for a News later.’
It’s not really Manny’s day. I give him a guilty wave and back out of the shop.
As I pull the door shut behind me, I bump into Wheezy.
He grabs my lapel. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
I brush his hand off my clothing. ‘And now you’ve found me.’ Despite his attempts at manhandling me he doesn’t look in a bad mood.
‘Let’s go and have a look at that house of yours.’
In the cold light of day, I’m beginning to regret telling Wheeze about my inheritance, but, what’s done is done and I quite fancy another look at it, although I’d prefer to go on my own. ‘It’s not really the weather for a visit, Wheezy.’
He pulls a face. ‘Och, away with you – a bit of rain never hurt anyone.’
We get the 16 bus. Wheezy is in an educational mood and insists on treating me, and the rest of the bus, to a potted history of the Trinity area.
‘’Course, Stainsie, son, it’s all ships, ships, ships, round there. It’s shipping money that got all those nice mansions built.’
‘Really.’ I know from bitter experience that he’s going to lecture me whatever I say, so I keep my input to a minimum.
‘And the street names. Half of the streets are named after ships: Stirling Road, Zetland Place.’
‘Last time I looked, Wheezy, Stirling and Zetland were places, not ships.’ I draw a little ship in the condensation on the window to emphasise my point.
Wheezy snorts. ‘That’s just the response I’d expect from a historian of your calibre.’
I ignore him, and rub my hand over the window. It destroys my drawing but at least I can see out into the world. The tide is in and the boats in the Newhaven harbour are bobbing up and down contentedly. Maybe I’ll buy a yacht when I’m minted, and name it The Isabella. The irony of that would keep Mrs Stoddart spinning in her grave for a year or two. We hop off the bus at the Chain Pier Inn and walk up York Road. It’s a steep climb and Wheeze moans all the way up.
‘Jesus Christ, Stainsie son, this is some climb. I’m not sure I’ll be visiting you much when you’re lord of the manor.’
I stop and feign amazement. ‘Really? You won’t be round eating my food and drinking my booze? You’re breaking my heart, Wheeze.’
We reach the
wrought iron gates at the end of Mavisview’s drive. I point to the house with a flourish. ‘This is it.’
He sticks his face right up against the gates for a better view. ‘Christ! How many of the Addams family are still living here?’
‘Very funny. It looks a lot better on a sunny day.’
‘And this is the new block?’ He gestures to the modern development. I nod.
‘Jeez-o. They look about as comfortable as a rabbit hutch. What are you planning on calling them - Jerry-Built Mansions?’
He’s got a point but I’m not giving him the satisfaction. ‘Shut up.’
‘Sorry, sorry.’ He doesn’t look all that contrite. ‘It’s really all very nice. Super.’ He clears his throat. ‘Mavisview was built in the 1800s for a shipping magnate if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Piss off, Wheezy.’
‘No, seriously, you can tell that this house was connected to shipping by the fact it’s got a tower. All the shipowners had a tower so they could keep an eye on their ships down at Leith docks.’
I’m not sure if he’s taking the mick or not. ‘Really?’
‘Oh aye. I can just see us sitting in the wee tower room with a fine malt or two, watching the yachts on the Forth.’
He laughs and we walk back down in the direction of the Starbank Inn.
Halfway down Wheezy stops and gestures back up the hill. ‘So, you really own all of that?’
I look up then back down the road and across the Firth of Forth to Fife. I’m not entirely sure I know the answer to Wheezy’s question. ‘Not yet. According to the lawyer wifey there’s a load of debts attached to the project and the whole thing might have to be sold off.’
Wheezy snorts. ‘Sounds like a load of bull to me.’
I agree. ‘You know this, Wheeze, I had the feeling all the time I was in her office, that the lawyer wasn’t being quite straight with me.’
He slaps my shoulder. ‘Of course she wasn’t! The more complicated they make it, the more money you have to pay them in fees to sort it all out.’
‘I could do with a look at all the papers the lawyer lassie had.’
