The Walk Home

by Rachel Seiffert

  She followed Graham through the flat, keeping on at him while he looked for Lindsey and his boy.

  “You needn’t bother, son. They’re both at mine.”

  Graham stopped where he was in Stevie’s bedroom. He didn’t look at her, he just sat down, heavy, the small bed sagging under his bulk, and the sight of him there put a halt to Brenda’s tirade.

  She said:

  “You’re a grown man, Graham. Sort ae. I cannae stop you, can I? You should listen tae Lindsey, but.”

  She was from over there. And she’d just spent half the afternoon telling Brenda how she’d grown up with folk like Shug and you didn’t want them near you. One of her Dad’s pals had kept a safe house, for UVF shitebags who needed time out of Belfast. What if Shug kept one too? It didn’t bear thinking about. Lindsey thought she’d left all that behind, along with Tyrone and her bloody father. She told Brenda he got carried away with all that stuff, especially when he was in his cups: he’d have flung his week’s wages in that bucket, most likely, kept the mystery man in balaclavas for a couple of years at least.

  Brenda asked:

  “Who the bloody hell was he?”

  “He wasnae emdy.”

  Graham let out his breath, out of his depth on the duvet. His big shoulders gone slack, and his jaw. He rubbed his face and then he told her:

  “It was just some stunt ae Shug’s. Tae bump up funds. He’s wantin new uniforms an we cannae afford them.”

  Brenda was quiet a moment. She didn’t know much about Shug. Maybe Malky did. He heard all sorts in his cab: things that never made it into the papers, or only ages after the fact. How guns and men and malice passed back and forth between Ulster and this side of Scotland.

  She was frightened again, and she could have done with Malky to steady her just then: he never got carried away. But neither did Graham, not as a rule; he was like his Dad that way. So Brenda sat down on the bed, next to her son, and then she said:

  “Shug’ll get hissel hurt.”

  “Ach Maw. Shug’s no stupit.”

  Graham looked at her. And then he blinked:

  “Aye, Okay. So mebbe he is. A heidbanger. Just playin, but.”

  “If you say so.”

  Brenda couldn’t think what else to say just then. She wished for Malky again, but he was out and driving. And then she thought of Papa Robert: what would he have said now to Graham?

  He wouldn’t have approved. She knew that much.

  Her Dad had been choosy about bands, careful who his lodge picked to play for them on the Walk. Papa Robert said folk got far more riled by the drums than they did by his ilk, for all their suits and sashes. He’d favoured the accordions, hymns to walk along with, and folk tunes. “The Sash” had counted as a hymn in his book, and “Rule, Britannia,” but he never allowed songs about the Troubles, reaching out hands to Loyalist gunmen, or cheeseburgers to Bobby Sands. He said it wasn’t dignified, and the Walk wasn’t done to provoke, it was a solemn occasion. Sobriety was a virtue, and one that Papa Robert thought worth taking literally. His lodge had been dry, the last dry one on Drumchapel, and though he’d let Brenda’s mother use brandy in the Christmas cake, even administering the spoonfuls, once that was in the oven he’d stood with her at the sink, grave, ceremonious, while she poured away all that was left of the quarter-bottle.

  Brenda sat with Graham on Stevie’s bed, thinking it was rare that she wished for her father, but she did just now. Papa Robert would have been hurt by this, that was his strong suit, and he could lick his wounds longer than anyone she knew. But he’d have got Graham to listen, too. Her father was born the year of the Easter Rising, and he’d been formed in the cruel civil war that came after. Brenda didn’t like to think of the vicious things he’d seen, but she reckoned her boy could do with being told, by someone who knew first-hand: Graham hadn’t the first idea what he was dealing with.

  Just a stunt, Maw. Half the band probably wanted it to be real, and Shug would know that fine well. A living, breathing paramilitary taking a short break from the struggle to listen to their music. He was gifting them a thrill, Brenda thought; getting them closer to the dark heart, but not close enough to harm. Only she wasn’t sure enough of Shug, so the thought didn’t give her much ease.

  “Lindsey’s right, son. You’re tae keep away fae him.”

  17

  Tomas came on Saturday to start work on the boiler. He laid out all the parts in the ground-floor kitchen, while Jozef cut pipes to size, working to the developer’s floor plans; making ready for the week ahead. It was their last on the job, he would soon be in Gdańsk, but there was so much to get through. The day had started heavy too: still hot, but not nearly so bright, grey outside.

  Jozef propped the back door wide in the hope of a breeze, and he kept one ear open for the delivery due that morning. But he caught no knock, just a half-heard rumble and whistle, a far-off sound, there and then gone again. It was almost like music, but not quite, coming across the city rooftops, too remote to make out, and Jozef was only half-aware of it as an unfamiliar sound; not the delivery van he was listening out for.

  Tomas stopped for coffee at ten o’clock, and Jozef joined him outside on the back step, in need of a breeze and a second opinion on his too-long job lists.

  “We’ll run over at this rate. I’ll be in breach of contract.”

  Any extra days would come out of his fee, and Tomas nodded; he knew how these things worked, so he took a pencil to Jozef’s lists, shifting jobs from one column to the next:

  “I can come tomorrow, after mass. Start laying the pipes. You put Marek with me, I’ll get them done quick. So I can help with the finishing.”

  All those small details, Jozef thought: they always took longer than anyone expected. He ignored the drop of Marek’s name, grateful for Tomas and his will to get things done on time, and then the breeze they’d been hoping for arrived, so they both stood quiet a while.

  Jozef caught a strain, that unfamiliar sound again. It was the same rumbling and whistling as before, but it was music, this time Jozef was sure: drums and high notes to go with them.

  “Listen.”

  He held a finger up to Tomas, to see if he could hear it too, or say where it was coming from. But then the breeze dropped.

  “Never mind.”

  It was gone again, and still no delivery van. Jozef’s coffee was finished, so he went back inside.

  He found Stevie in the kitchen.

  “Anythin needin done just now?”

  There was plenty, even if Jozef had to pay him overtime. It would be less than the penalty clause, so he told the boy:

  “You can do the render coat, in the living room.”

  Stevie went to the sink, crouching down to get his buckets, but then he saw Tomas was outside.

  “Is he here theday then, aye?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You can still work. You’ll be in a different room.”

  Stevie looked doubtful. He stayed down on his haunches, picking at a stray thread around the patch on his jeans, and then Jozef frowned at him, and all the doubts he raised.

  The badge he worried at was worn in places, older even than its host trousers. The threads he pulled were yellow and fine to match the border, different from the thick black ones that held it roughly in place now. It looked like it had, at one time, been sewn neatly to another garment, and then ripped off and stitched onto these. Jozef imagined the boy, mending his knees. With whatever thread he could lay hands on, because that’s what it looked like. It wasn’t his best work, so Jozef told him:

  “Go on. You get started on the walls. But you make them prettier than that, Okay?”

  “Jozef!”

  Tomas shouted from the back step:

  “You hear that?”

  The driver was outside in the delivery van, leaning on the horn as Jozef came down the front steps.

  “Did you knock? I didn’t hear you.” He glanced at the time on the church clock, irritated; the man was late, but that was hardly hi
s fault.

  “I’ve been out here ages. I’ve been held up already this morning.” The man gestured with his head, over in the direction he’d come from.

  He wasn’t Scottish, or not originally; brown-skinned, maybe Asian. He was suffering in the heat, in any case. He said:

  “You help me unload, so I can get going.”

  The driver opened the van doors on a stack of new radiators, but Jozef didn’t need more of those.

  “We ordered thermostats only.”

  “Christ’s sake!”

  The man swore with a Glasgow accent, so he must have been living here a while. He slammed the van doors shut, and the noise brought Tomas outside, Stevie too, a few paces behind.

  “Everything all right?” Tomas made himself broad on the bottom step, but Jozef stood him down:

  “Just a mix-up. A traffic hold-up.”

  “Not traffic,” the driver cut in. “It was a marching band. Bloody idiots. I took a back route to be fast, and then I got stuck. Three cars behind me, idiots in front. Hear them?”

  He put a hand up to them all to be quiet, and sure enough, there it was: music to march to, just like the man said. Jozef turned to Tomas, who nodded because he’d heard it, and then up to Stevie on the top step, who shifted a little, as though under scrutiny.

  The driver stood and regarded them a moment, taking in who he was dealing with: two grey-haired Poles and a skinny Glasgow boy in badly patched trousers. He kept his eyes on the boy especially, before he turned back to Jozef:

  “Your first summer here, am I right? It’s like this every July. Like we’re in bloody Belfast. You ask him there.”

  He pointed at Stevie.

  “Ask anyone local. That band out this morning, they’re only bloody practising. Next Saturday, first July weekend, that’s the big one, right?”

  He directed his question up the steps, but Stevie was turning his back, retreating into the house, so then the driver shook his head, dismissive, and passed Jozef a returns form.

  “They’re not even allowed to march today, you know that?”

  He spoke low, as though for Jozef’s ears alone.

  “They have their big parade next Saturday, they hold up the city, the whole day. Make their noise, make everybody annoyed. They’re not allowed on the street before that.”

  “What’s he saying now?”

  Tomas stepped forward but the man was getting into his van again, still shaking his head, as though he had no more time for them. He pointed up to the doorway, empty now.

  “Like I said. You should ask that boy.”

  Stevie was in the big room when they got inside, wiping down the walls ready to render them, buckets and tools already beside him. Tomas asked:

  “What was all that about?”

  “Nothin tae dae wae me, pal.”

  The boy wrung out his cloth, keeping on with the task at hand. Jozef thought he and Tomas should be doing that too, back in the kitchen, but Tomas wasn’t satisfied.

  “The driver said we should ask you. Why?”

  No reply. So then the three of them were quiet. Jozef wasn’t sure they would get more out of Stevie this morning, or that he wanted to hear more either; it seemed like there was always more about this boy than he’d bargained for. He said:

  “We’ve all got lots to get through.”

  No profit in making things complicated.

  “Just one more week, then we’re all out of here, yes?”

  This was directed more at Tomas, but it was the boy who nodded.

  He was still working, and forbidden or not, the band was still marching, rattling away, off in the distance. Stevie glanced behind him, sharp, at the open window. He strode across and pulled it shut, then went into the kitchen to refill his buckets.

  18

  Brenda worried about Lindsey. It had taken all her good offices to get the girl talking to Graham. Promises had been made, Graham had given his word, Malky had even fetched his drum from the lockers in the snooker club. It sat unused these days, shut in Brenda’s hallway cupboard, but the girl and Stevie were still living in her spare room. It had been weeks now.

  Malky had got Graham coming round, morning and evening, thinking it might help if he lent a hand, getting Stevie up for school or putting him to bed. But Graham couldn’t push it too far because Lindsey was quick to take offence.

  “What’s he doing here again?”

  She’d point at him in the doorway, saying:

  “I’m not wanting help. Not his kind anyhow.”

  She was hurtful; back to the hurt young thing she’d been when she first arrived from Ireland.

  Lindsey claimed she still had cleaning jobs, but Brenda wasn’t so sure that was true any more. She’d been such a busy thing, full of bright purpose, but it seemed like days could pass now, with her just sitting on the sofa, face uncertain, pale against the cushions. She’d be there when Brenda left for work, and still there when Brenda got back, like she had nothing to do, nothing to put a hand to, until Stevie came in from school.

  The girl had her stumped: Lindsey didn’t want Graham doing too much for the boy, but it was like she didn’t know what to do for Stevie either. Brenda remembered how she used to hoik him about on her hip, carrying him with her from job to job, room to room, while she sorted and tidied and hoovered. Now Lindsey stared blank-faced at her son when he came in the door; taken aback, like it had slipped her mind how much he’d grown.

  Stevie was still skinny, most likely he always would be, but his arms and legs were long now, not long till he’d be in secondary, and he’d lost that soft boy’s face, it had been replaced by sharper angles in his young brow and cheekbones. When he sat at the table he was all shoulder blades and elbows, and he was always hungry, shovelling his platefuls in a hurry, too big for sitting on her lap. Lindsey sat across from him at mealtimes, like she didn’t know what to make of him.

  Brenda had done the same, four times over, and she knew how it felt: like you’d lost something that used to be your own.

  So she told her:

  “Boys grow up, so they do.” One night while they were clearing the table, and she gave the girl a small smile, as much to say she’d survived it.

  “They come back tae you, hen. In their ain time. Still the same, but different as well. Us mothers, we just have tae wait it out.”

  Brenda meant it as a comfort, that she’d wait it out with her. Only Lindsey was looking at her from across the table, plates in hand and her small face helpless, like she couldn’t see herself cope with that. It was just too hard, all of this: marriage and motherhood, the scheme and band, the hooded man, and no wee boy to hold on to, nothing that was hers, she shook her head:

  “I never meant for him to grow up here.”

  “I know that.”

  “Time’s gone so fast. I should never have let it go past.” Lindsey said it like she’d failed him. “Maybe I’m no cut out.”

  “Ach.” Brenda put down the glasses, held out her arms, telling her: “Course you are. You’re Stevie’s Mum, you’ll do what’s best for him.” As much as to say that’s what mothers did.

  But Lindsey shook her head again:

  “You and yours maybe, aye. Not mine.”

  It gave Brenda a start, that lost look she gave her: the girl’s Mum had gone, she’d left her, and with that father as well, which was just about the worst thing. So Brenda nodded. She let her arms fall, and then they both just stood there a moment.

  “Sorry, hen.”

  “Don’t be. You’ve no need.”

  The girl sighed, and Brenda hoped she might let herself be held now: all these years Lindsey had been here, Brenda thought she’d been making life better for her, that they all had. Only here she was now, saying:

  “They grow apart. Kids and their parents.” Blunt-voiced, speaking from experience. “It’s part of life’s pain. That’s what Eric says.”

  It was an Eric way to put it, an Eric way to look at it, right enough. So then Brenda stepped over and pul
led Lindsey close.

  “Don’t heed my brother too much, will you?”

  It had started to frighten her, how much Lindsey spoke like him.

  The girl was too much like Eric at his lowest ebb, and Eric’s was just about the only place she went these days: he still had her looking through his sketches.

  Her brother had a gift, Brenda had always known it, even if his pictures were mostly too dark for her to like. He saw the dark in things, in people, and it wasn’t that she thought he was wrong to draw it, she just wouldn’t want that on her walls.

  “Hard tae look at the world like that.”

  She told Lindsey as much, a few days later, when it was just the two of them out to get the messages. Brenda wanted Lindsey to get out more, and not just to Eric’s, so she chivvied her to come on chores at least, up and down the scheme steps. No sense sitting inside, getting nowhere but lower; Brenda even had half a mind to take her cleaning, like she had in their early days.

  Back then she’d been glad that Lindsey went to her brother’s. The girl had been a friend to him, but Brenda wasn’t at all sure Eric could do the same in return.

  “Dinnae get me wrong, hen.”

  Brenda loved him, and dearly, but she knew he wasn’t to be relied upon, not in life’s tight spots:

  “He just gets caught up in his own mind.”

  Forewarned was forearmed, so she told Lindsey while they walked: how the worst of Eric’s episodes was after Franny died, but it wasn’t the first time he got ill.

  “That was when he was still at school. Daen his Highers. He tellt you this?”

  Lindsey shook her head, squinting a bit, and Brenda shifted her bags from hand to hand, saying:

  “Didnae think so. Best you know, but.”

  All his teachers predicted high grades and proud achievements, but when it came to his exams, he couldn’t write, couldn’t put a thing down on the paper, not a word or a number.

  “Eric never tellt anywan at the time either.”

  Even when it happened in every subject. He just sat in the hall and watched the clock, and when the exams were over and done with, he wouldn’t leave the house.