The Walk Home

by Rachel Seiffert

  “Aw, son.” Lindsey put her arms about him. She still had hold of the drawing, and it looked like she wanted to keep it.

  Brenda caught sight of her brother’s lines again, the way he’d sketched his Frances, comfortable, middle-aged, still lovely. She wondered if it was a new one. It hurt to look at, so she thought it must hurt to draw it.

  She didn’t know if they should put it back. If they should risk that. Brenda didn’t think she could face Eric’s today in any case. She rubbed her forehead and looked about herself, at the wide hall and all the woodwork; all these hours they’d been here, and the floors still had to be mopped. They’d spent half the morning in someone else’s house, going into things that still cut so deep. That shouldn’t still hurt so much, surely. Only they did.

  10

  The boys had tiled two walls in the main bathroom by late Thursday morning and—stealing aside—Jozef was impressed. There was no way they’d manage both bathrooms by Friday, but he didn’t tell them that: they were keen and he knew this was to his advantage. They kept on well into the evening, until it was dark enough to need the lights on, and by the time they called it quits, they had only the floors left to complete.

  Stevie was laying plywood in the ensuite when the developer arrived on Friday morning. The boy didn’t look up during the inspection, he just kept on with his measuring and fitting, pencil tucked behind his freckled ear, but Jozef had the uneasy feeling that he was listening to everything. To the developer’s specifications—it had to be brushed steel for all the fittings—and to how Jozef pointed out the neat silicone seals around the shower tray as well. Even if it was strange to be overheard, Jozef liked what he saw: all the tiles lining up precisely at the corners. He told the developer:

  “We deliver good workmanship, yes?”

  And the man threw a last, grudging look around the ensuite.

  He left Jozef with three catalogues of bathroom fittings, with Post-it notes marking the relevant pages. Jozef made all the phone calls, costing everything up—steel shower rails and towel rails and taps—but then he didn’t place any orders. It was hot again, and nearly the weekend, and the past few days had started badly but finished well, with plenty of good work completed, even if the developer couldn’t bring himself to say it. They were close to halfway done now, and it was midsummer too, the warm days becoming a heatwave, so Jozef walked down the road to the off-sales and bought two pallets of cans: enough for everyone.

  His workers stood around by the back steps drinking before they went home, with Stevie joining them, almost. The boy kept to the edge of the group, avoiding Tomas, and Jozef thought that was a good move.

  On Saturday, the whole place was quiet. Jozef slept until eight, which was late for him, then had some breakfast and went back to bed. He dozed and read; a whole stack of newspapers from home that his sisters sent him. Marek knew Jozef’s weekend habit, and he’d told him it made no sense when he could get Polish TV news in his room, or on his phone, and while it was still news too, not a week or more old.

  Jozef thought it was a mistake sometimes, having family on the job. He was uncle to Marek before he was boss, and Marek crossed lines that shouldn’t be crossed with all his you should see yourself and why do you do that? Jozef was glad his nephew wasn’t here at the weekends, so he could read in peace: keep up with home, keeping home at arm’s length. So much easier to do it like that.

  Jozef went to the launderette, late in the afternoon, once it got cool enough to drop off his week’s clothes, and when he got back in, he remembered the boy. It was his second weekend here, and Jozef wondered if he was in the top flat; what he was up to. He stood and listened for sounds from up there, but there was nothing: just the church clock marking the hour, and him at the bottom of the wide stairs.

  It was getting dark when he got a phone call from Marek. Jozef had just finished eating, and he thought his nephew sounded drunk, out and about the pubs again. But he wasn’t with Tomas, or any of the others. Marek spoke fast, tripping over his words, making little sense, until he said he was with Stevie.

  “We’re in Mount Florida. At the last job.”

  Marek told Jozef he was in the back court behind the unfinished tenement, and then:

  “Bring the van, bring the van, yes? Stevie’s inside, right now. He’s getting us the towel rails.”

  Jozef cursed down the phone, and he cursed on the drive there. Half past ten and the evening streets were lit up, all the shopfronts, the pub-goers out in short skirts and T-shirts. Jozef almost turned round twice, at two different junctions, thinking he should leave the idiot boys to deal with this. It was their mess, and if they got picked up by the police, it was their look-out as well. But then the police might come to the house, and—besides, besides—Jozef could never justify that to Ewa.

  Marek had told him to drive up the lane, the one used by the refuse trucks, but Jozef parked on the street instead and walked up the rutted track, peering over the bin sheds. The back court was gloomy, only a few lights on in the windows in the high walls all around, but it was easy to spot the right block, scaffold-clad and pitch black. Jozef cut across the grass and found Marek by the back steps, keeping to the shadows, with a towel rail propped against the wall beside him. Marek put a hand to it, excited, and whispered:

  “There’s another one up there too.”

  As though Jozef didn’t know that already. He had to bite back the urge to shout, give his nephew a clout. He couldn’t look at Marek, so he looked up instead, at the scaffold and wall, taking a step back, two, to get a clearer view; the boy must be inside there somewhere. Jozef glanced around the windows behind, on either side, checking for watchers, the sashes open to the summer night. He could see a woman washing up on a top floor: would she make them out against the dark grass, if she looked down here?

  Jozef stood in the evening gloom and warm, heard the dik-dik-dik of a blackbird; the bird as rattled as he was. No sign of the boy yet.

  His eye caught something at the stairwell window, a shape being lowered: a long rectangle. Marek saw it too, stepping over, punching Jozef’s arm, so Jozef grabbed his fist, he hissed:

  “It’s no game. This is reckless. Stupid. You hear me?”

  Looking up again, Jozef could just make out the boy’s face, a white shape up against the dark window. He’d tied a cord to the towel rail and he was letting it down the side of the building, slow and careful. It slid down the narrow gap between scaffold and wall for almost a storey, but then one corner caught the sill below; not badly, but enough to set the towel rail turning on its rope. Marek sucked in his breath, and Jozef did as well, anticipating the loud clang, metal against metal, and then the towel rail made contact with the scaffold. Jozef flinched. The sound echoed around the back court, and the boy stopped letting out cord abruptly. Jozef stood tight, eyes up, and the towel rail hung where it was, swaying in the half-light.

  He shot a look across the back court to the woman he’d seen before, and she was still at her sink, eyes down at the suds. He saw no faces at any of the other windows, but were there more lights on now?

  Jozef looked into the scaffold again and spotted movement, high among the bars. Even before Marek said anything, he knew it was Stevie. His nephew whispered:

  “You watch him, he’s fast.”

  The boy dropped hand over hand, aiming for the towel rail. Jozef thought he must have tied it off at the window, and he must be petrified too, but Stevie was getting closer now, and from the deft way he moved, he didn’t look it. Jozef could see his hands and how he swung himself, gripping the bars, and then letting go, taking hold of the bar below. Easy and skilful. He had a second cord looped across his chest, and he stopped now and slid that off, securing the towel rail to the scaffold. The knots of the first cord proved stiff, he had to work at them with his teeth, but once they were loose, Stevie hooked both arms around one of the horizontals to steady himself, and then lowered the towel rail down. The whole thing was done so swiftly, it was as though he did this night
ly.

  “You’ll have tae catch hold,” he hissed to Jozef from the poles. “Havnae enough rope, pal. Quick.”

  And then Jozef found himself stepping forward, arms up to catch the stolen goods.

  In the morning, still in bed, Jozef contemplated putting the towel rails in the skip out front. Or going across town to find some other skip to dump them. He’d have made Marek do that himself last night, except he thought Marek had drunk too much to drive. Jozef had dropped him at the end of his road; not at his door, he’d made him walk. And then it hadn’t felt safe to leave the towel rails in the van overnight, so he’d brought them inside, after Stevie had gone upstairs.

  They stood in the kitchen recess now, next to Jozef’s tool bag, under some dust sheets. Jozef looked at them while he ate his breakfast, feeling absurd for hiding them, and for driving them back here in the first place; he should have just put them in one of the Mount Florida bin sheds, and left the two young ones to walk home.

  Jozef heard the boy’s feet on the stairs, and then the outside door fall closed. Coming up for nine on a Sunday morning, who knew where he was going? Not to church.

  Jozef rarely went himself. How many years since his last confession? Last night’s events would make for an embarrassing disclosure, and Jozef felt absurd again, imagining how it would sound, spoken out loud. He’d have liked to laugh about that with someone; with Ewa. He knew if she were here now, she’d be in the pews across the road, if only to listen out for Polish voices; she’d had her ways of staving off homesickness. Jozef knew Ewa would have taken Marek along too, for company, or maybe out of family duty. So then he wondered what she’d make of what happened last night. If she’d think he was failing in his duty of care to her nephew.

  He was in over his head looking out for those boys.

  Marek was young and still foolish, but Jozef doubted the tiles and towel rails were his idea. Stevie was even younger, but he was the one who’d done the stealing. The boy hadn’t been drunk, and Jozef didn’t think it was another game to him either. It was as though he’d done it to please; not Marek, but Jozef. The boy had dropped down from the scaffold to stand beside him, red hand on his knee, red-eared with pride and the effort of climbing, as if he thought Jozef might be proud of him, or grateful.

  So Jozef had lost it.

  “No more. You understand me?”

  He’d stood and scolded him, like a child.

  “You don’t come back here again.”

  Uncomfortable with the memory, Jozef stood up now in the empty kitchen and went to get his tools. He didn’t like Sundays: too quiet and long, and too easy to spend them mulling, he often just ended up working. Jozef had done the same thing with his London weekends, because Romek always had extra jobs for extra cash, and when he thought back to that time now, he found it hard to decide: had all that work made Ewa turn for home, or had it kept him going when things started going wrong?

  Jozef wanted this job to go the right way, and so he stood in the recess, making a list in his head of tasks for the coming week. The bathrooms had to be finished, all the fittings, and Jozef looked at the towel rails under their dust sheet camouflage, thinking the developer was due to come again on Friday. Then he remembered the man’s grudging approval of the tiling, and after that he just wanted to get this job over and done with.

  Stevie came back as he was finishing in the ensuite. The boy stepped inside the small room, with his holdall on his shoulder, and looked at the towel rail, fitted neat against the wall.

  Jozef kept packing away his tools, ready for some smart-mouth remark, but none came. Stevie just stood there, expectant, in his worn-out trainers, as though he was waiting. But for what? It made Jozef think again, how hard this boy was to figure out. He only felt sure of him when he was working.

  He’d brought the smell of launderette with him: tumble dryer and clean clothes, and a bag full of bread rolls and biscuits too. Jozef looked at him: all ready to start his working week. So he asked:

  “Did Romek teach you to fit a radiator?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then you can fit the other towel rail.”

  Jozef handed him the spanners, and the boy raised his eyebrows:

  “Just now?”

  Jozef nodded:

  “When you’ve changed out of those.”

  He pointed at his shoes.

  “Then you can spend the afternoon plastering, on the first floor, if you want. I can pay you. Time and a half, yes? So you can buy your own work boots.”

  Stevie gave a small smile, and then he asked:

  “You’ll be payin me fae what I’ve saved you, aye?”

  He flicked his head at the towel rail, so then Jozef had to smile himself, because the boy was right. He’d already done the calculations in the van last night: two towel rails were three hundred pounds, give or take. It was a good chunk of what was owed him from Mount Florida, and there was some satisfaction in that.

  11

  Stevie’s cousins lived in the high flats; Uncle Brian’s boys and Malky Jnr.’s. They were bigger than Stevie, all in secondary, but he still got to go to their houses after school, some afternoons. If his Mum had work on, then Stevie’s Dad would arrange it, so they’d be there at the school gates with their pushbikes, and Stevie got to sit on their handlebars, gripping tight, while they rode him home fast to make him laugh.

  There were always kids out around the high blocks, even on days it was cold. Way more kids than lived round Stevie’s, playing football on the grass where it said no ball games. There were plenty games he could join in with, even if there were some kids who wouldn’t have it—get tae fuck—Stevie’s cousins being big, it meant he was safe, and he could always go and be with the older boys anyhow.

  Tall as men to him, Stevie stood amid them while they traded words, smoking fags, after the kickabout was done with. The days got longer, turning into summer, and all the wee kids were called inside, but Stevie could sit out on the low wall with the big boys till his Mum arrived.

  His Dad liked him playing with his cousins, and after school broke up he dropped him there some mornings, if he had a late start at work. Uncle Brian and Auntie Cathy would be out already, and then Stevie’s Dad would have to lean on the buzzer to get the big boys out of bed.

  “Did your Maw say I was droppin Stevie?”

  “Aye, aye. Nae bother. We just forgot.”

  They’d come down the stairwell in their boxers and bare feet to fetch him, and Stevie’s Mum rolled her eyes about that later when she heard.

  “Bunch a layabouts, so they are.”

  “Ach naw. Just growin boys, enjoyin their holidays.”

  Stevie’s Dad thought it was funny, and Stevie didn’t mind it either, because after his Dad was gone, he got to sit and watch Uncle Brian’s big telly while his cousins slept on a bit.

  Only then Stevie’s Mum got him up early one morning, first thing, and she didn’t take him to his cousins’; she took him with her on the bus instead, and she dropped him off at Uncle Eric’s.

  “Sure this is all right? It won’t be every morning, just the days I’m working.”

  “Aye, on you go.” Eric smiled while Stevie came inside.

  But then after his Mum left, the flat was quiet, and Stevie stood and looked about himself. The old man didn’t have a telly, or toys, or kids out playing in his back court. Just his desk and all those files.

  They made Stevie think about that picture he stole.

  It was months ago now, but he knew his Mum had kept it: at home in a shoebox in her bedside drawer, alongside the coaster with the two of them on it. And then Stevie worried: if his Gran had told Eric. If that’s why he was here and not with his cousins. He looked at his uncle, who pointed to the sofa:

  “Sit down, son, an I’ll read tae you. I’ve some stories you should know, aye?”

  Uncle Eric read to him every morning he was there over the holidays.

  It was always the Bible, so Stevie thought this was maybe his punishment. Exce
pt the old man didn’t plod through from start to finish like Papa Robert. He told Stevie:

  “I’ll only read you they bits that matter. Promise.”

  Some days he’d have the big book open and ready on the sofa. Other mornings, Eric would thumb for ages through the gold-rimmed pages, scanning the lines, whistling through his big teeth. He’d break off in the middle of a line, impatient. Or he’d mutter:

  “No no no, bloodyhellno.”

  And start afresh, somewhere entirely different.

  Eric told Stevie:

  “Not aw the Bible is poetry. They bits that are, but. They’d stand alongside any book. Ecclesiastes now, or mebbe Lamentations. For love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals ae fire, which hath a most vehement flame.”

  The old man sucked in his breath, eyebrows up, like that was amazing.

  “Aw that heart, aye? Cannae beat it. That’s Song ae Solomon.”

  Eric always said what part he was reading before he started; the book and the chapter it was from, and what the people in it were called. Stevie could read a bit by now, so he’d sit close, and follow his uncle’s finger along the words. But there were so many of them, and they were dead small too, it made Stevie tired, so he’d shut his eyes, and then he could feel Eric speaking more than hear him. It was like a hum in his chest, low and steady, and that was nice, so Stevie mostly just followed the old man’s voice; the sounds it made if not the sense.

  After the story was finished, Eric would get Stevie to say what he remembered.

  “Just tell me they bits that stuck.”

  He’d tap Stevie’s forehead, gently, with a fingertip, and then he’d smile when Stevie couldn’t come up with anything much.

  But there were days he made sure of Stevie’s attention:

  “Can you mind who Isaac is, son?”

  Eric stopped one morning, in the middle of a reading, and when Stevie shook his head, the old man said: