by Janice Brown
‘‘I suppose. It could’ve been worse. At least you weren’t hurt.’’
The guy was right. They’d taken his phone, his cash, his shoes and socks, and written very rude words in black permanent marker on his bum, but yes, it could’ve been much worse. So, hah hah, good natured theft and humorous assault. Happy New Year.
‘‘Thanks for stopping. I should’ve said that first.’’
‘‘You thanked me at the time. How many of them were there?’’
Somewhere in the house a phone rang and was picked up.
He couldn’t remember. ‘‘A crowd. Full of the gear.’’
‘‘Nightmare. Not a lot you could have done. So, are you working? Or at college?’’
Ryan explained. He sipped at the coke, watching the shut door, only half listening when the other spoke. They talked about music. He was surprised and cheered to find that they both liked the same bands, because Kerr didn’t sound or look like the type who would. Then the door opened, but it wasn’t her.
‘‘Dad, this is Ryan.’’
‘‘Hello, glad to meet you,’’ the man in the priest’s collar grasped his hand. ‘‘We’ll have to talk again, I’m sorry. Sudden emergency. Don’t finish the chicken, Kerr. I’m not fussed about the veg.’’
‘‘Potatoes?’’
‘‘Just a couple.’’
Grabbing a red jacket from the coat-rack behind the door, he was gone.
Ryan found his voice. ‘‘Is he a priest?’’
‘‘What? Oh right. Because of the collar. No, it’s just a clerical collar. He says it’s more comfortable, plus you can wear it with an ordinary shirt. And we’re doing our own ironing while Mum’s away, so that’s a big thing. Are you Catholic?’’
‘‘Depends. No’ really.’’
‘‘Are you vegetarian?’’
Had he heard right?
‘‘I’m starving. But if you were vegetarian, I wouldn’t eat it in front of you, so we’d have to wait till you left. But there’s plenty. Harriet kind of overdoes it when it’s her turn.’’
Kerr stretched out backwards, and opened the oven door. The smell that poured forth made Ryan’s mouth water. But the girl would be furious if he stayed.
‘‘Well, I’m no’ a vegetarian,’’ he said slowly.
‘‘Good. Knives and forks in the top drawer.’’
The kitchen was totally middle class: white units, plants on the window ledge, blue and white curtains with tie backs, blue mugs matching them on a white mug stand. He hung his coat on the back of the door where the father’s jacket had been, and began taking out cutlery.
Upstairs in her father’s study Harriet took volume M to Z from the bookcase. Flicking over the pages, she found the confirmation she needed. ‘Qanat. A gently sloping underground water tunnel.’
She waited and waited where she was, ears straining to hear the sounds of their visitor leaving. She needed to eat. The rich smell of Chicken Forestière and roast potatoes had spread through the entire house. The parsnips were probably overdone by now, but she wasn’t going down till she was sure he was gone.
Why had Kerr given him shoes? Where had they met? A thud from below told her the front door had been opened and shut. Well, thank goodness for that. Her head was beginning to hurt. She shrugged off a miniscule feeling of guilt. She hadn’t actually said anything nasty. And she’d been nice at the door. More than he deserved, really.
Chocolate
Walter was taken aback to find Lesley on his front door step offering him an empty Pyrex dish.
‘‘Ruby’s having a bath,’’ he said.
‘‘I just wanted to hand this back. It was very kind of you, thank you.’’
She looked cold, despite being wrapped up sensibly.
‘‘Please tell Mrs Robertson it was very good.’’
‘‘Oh, she does a good beef stew,’’ he said. It occurred to him that perhaps he ought to ask Lesley in, this being the season of goodwill. In or out of the bath, Ruby won’t like it warned a voice in his head. Neither Lesley nor her late mother had ever crossed the door. Moreover he was aware that Ruby’s attitude to their neighbour had undergone a subtle shift at New Year. He could hear the faint sound of the radio upstairs in the bathroom.
None of our business, he told himself again.
‘‘Come in for a minute,’’ he said.
‘‘No, I mustn’t keep you back.’’
‘‘Oh, you’re not keeping anyone back. Just for five minutes.’’
He put the dish on the hall table, then led her into the front room, where he switched off the television. The silence seemed louder than the newsreader’s voice had been. He sat down in the opposite armchair, only then noticing a red stain on the cuff of his fawn pullover. Bolognese sauce from teatime. ‘‘Would you …’’ he stopped. He wasn’t sure whether to offer her alcohol or not, and it was such a long time since he’d made his own tea or coffee that he doubted his competence.
‘‘Nothing for me, please,’’ Lesley said. She had unwrapped her scarf, folding it into a neat square, but her coat remained buttoned, and she sat forward on the edge of the chair, as if ready for flight.
‘‘A chocolate then?’’ There was a large tin of Cadbury’s Roses on the coffee table. One of the reps had brought it into the office. He wrestled the lid off and slid it over to her. ‘‘Take more than one. Take some for later. Ruby’s only letting me have one a day. They’ll last till Easter.’’ He chose an orange cream for himself, and slipped a toffee into his pocket.
Her quick smile was like a young girl’s, not a middle-aged woman’s. He wondered what age she actually was. She looked younger, close up. The old mother had been eighty two, according to the funeral eulogy, but Lesley was the only child, so she might have been a late surprise.
She was looking at their wedding photograph. Thirty years next year, he thought.
‘‘I like what you’ve done with the fireplace, Mr Robertson.’’
‘‘Walter, please. Yes, I’m happy enough with it. Took me longer than I thought it would though.’’
‘‘You did it yourself?’’
The admiration in her voice was nice to hear. ‘‘Oh, there’s nothing much to it,’’ he stretched his arms and folded them, turning the stained cuff over. ‘‘When you’re in one trade, you have a fair grasp of the rest.’’ He unwrapped his chocolate, making two bites of it. In his boyhood days he had played with chocolate creams, tonguing the soft centres out until the shells were left. ‘‘But you’ve got the originals, Lesley. This is all reproduction,’’ he gestured at the Art Nouveau tiles and pale pink marble. ‘‘Whoever had this place before us should’ve been prosecuted. You shouldn’t modernise these houses, you have to go with the plaster and all that. And you’ve got those beautiful stained glass windows.’’
‘‘Mother didn’t care for change. But they’re very draughty.’’
‘‘I’d keep them myself. You could put in secondary glazing. Or fit the stained glass into double glazing panels. Cut out all the draughts. I know a good glazing firm.’’
‘‘It sounds rather expensive,’’ she said.
He saw he’d overstepped himself. He cleared his throat.
‘‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you your own business …’’
‘‘No, I’m sure you’re right. The bills would be smaller, I suppose. It’s just that there’s so much …’’
‘‘Yes. Takes a lot of getting used to. Just you take your own time, pet, and don’t let other people try to run your life. It’s early days.’’
He’d seen tradesmen take advantage of single women. Silly prices and shoddy work, and charm. Not in his firm, he made sure of that, but he’d seen it happen. He wondered if she’d be all right with no-one else in the house. His mother had kept his father’s police hat and raincoat on the pegs in the hall for years, so that no caller would think she lived alone. He and his brother Archie had cleared the garage and sold the car. She wouldn’t let them clear out cupboards, would
n’t let them do more than paint the anaglypta downstairs.
Lesley got up from her chair, ‘‘I’d better get back,’’ she said.
He followed her into the hall and she opened the door herself, before he could do it for her.
He switched on the outdoor light. Within seconds she was halfway down the long path.
Just as he closed the door, he heard Ruby coming cautiously down the stairs. She was in her dressing gown, the pink plastic bath cap still on her head.
‘‘Who was that?’’
‘‘Lesley next door. She brought your dish back.’’
‘‘How long was she in?’’
‘‘Long enough to give me the dish back.’’
‘‘Did you give her the boots?’’
‘‘What boots?’’
‘‘The boots that woman left for her. ’’
‘‘I forgot. I’ll run after her,’’ he said.
‘‘No, it’s all right,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll take them round myself tomorrow. What were you talking about?’’
‘‘Fireplaces,’’ he told her.
The place to be
Walking home with a strong wind at his back, his head freezing cold, and too many thoughts jigging inside it, Ryan tried to make sense of his evening. Light from the street lamps shimmered in the puddles. Every house with its curtains open looked like a treasure cave. A woman walking a big black dog smiled at him when they passed, and he smiled back, though he’d never seen her before. Man, had he eaten some weird things. Parsnips, sweet and mushy. Long thin green beans, French beans they were called, OK but not great. Roast potatoes he’d had a lot of times, but not like theirs. There were small round objects in the sauce, which turned out to be mushrooms, and squarish bits that he recognised as bacon.
The girl had avoided looking at him, which left him free to look at her. The set of her ears entranced him. Where in his skull he’d found that word he didn’t know, but it was perfect. She had her hair caught back in grips, so that the ears showed, and every time she turned her head, like when she talked to Kerr, he traced the curves. The way they leaned away from her head at the top made him think of elves. She wasn’t wearing earrings, and the lobes weren’t pierced. He supplied a pair – gold because of her hair, with pale blue stones to match the sweater. After a minute he took the stones away. Plain gold was better.
He’d taken some of all he was offered, eating slowly in case he gagged. Kerr did most of the talking, but after a while, politeness seemed to get the better of her, and she asked about the trainers. Then she wanted to know the whole story, and she actually looked quite upset. Kerr didn’t say anything about the fact that he’d been too pissed to protect himself.
‘‘We don’t get presents worth stealing any more,’’ she said.
‘‘That scarf thing of yours wasn’t cheap,’’ Kerr protested. ‘‘What you have to understand, Ryan, is that this child,’’ he gestured towards her with his fork, ‘‘is very greedy. She misses the good old days when she and her buddies went round every shop in Aberdeen every Saturday. She has the biggest wardrobe in the house. She could start her own clothes shop.’’
Ryan’s sisters were the same, but wise for once, he accepted more gravy without saying anything. With them it was shoes. Mostly shoes that didn’t even fit. He remembered them throwing gravel at his bedroom window to get him to open the back door in their late night dancing days. They’d hobbled in, heels and toes raw and bleeding. He didn’t think they went to the same shops as Harriet though.
He had to wait for several cars to pass before he could cross Main Street, but there weren’t that many people on foot at this end of the village, away from the shops. An older couple with another dog, this one straining on its chain as if it wasn’t walking fast enough. One cyclist. Not anyone he knew.
He crossed the footbridge. The river was noisy, high from all the rain. He pulled the hood of his jacket tighter, wishing he’d had the sense to wear a hat. On his right the houses had sandbags stacked beside their low walls and hedges; there had been flooding a few years back, he couldn’t remember exactly when. They hadn’t been in any danger themselves, being higher up the hill. Big private houses were being built much higher up, on a new road, well away from the river, on land that would have been too difficult or too expensive to build on in the past. ‘‘The Place that’s Going to be the Place to Be,’’ according to the hoardings.
Different planets. With each stride he felt himself resenting what he was going towards. Their house was as clean as the one he’d just left – his mother cleaned as if that was what kept the planet turning, but that was all you could say. Nothing matched. Every window ledge had some stupid, cheap ornament on it. Two furry kittens in a basket adorned the bathroom cistern. He’d tried and failed to find some kind of symbolic significance in that. On the kitchen wall hung a calendar with red print and green exotic birds, a freebie from the local Chinese takeaway. Why she kept it, he didn’t know, since there was nothing written in any of the spaces. In the living room on top of the fireplace sat his all-time favourite, a glass vase decorated with a hand-painted teddy bear in a tartan scarf, and the words A Present from Ullapool in gold script. Ullapool had probably been glad to see the back of it.
He vaulted over the front gate. The catch was stiff, and there was a metal bit that could catch the delicate skin between your thumb and first finger if you didn’t do it right. Just one more shitty detail in his life. Up till now he’d managed to convince himself that money and class and all that crap didn’t matter because his day was coming, the day when everyone would see that he, Ryan Flaherty, was right up there. Inside he was a genius, inside he was different from everything and everybody round about him. God, it was easy to despise the bourgeoisie when you hadn’t tasted their parsnips.
‘‘Is that you, Ryan?’’
‘‘No, Mum,’’ he muttered, ‘‘it’s Pierce Brosnan come to take you dancing.’’
Loud canned laughter burst from the TV in the living room as if the studio
audience got the joke.
‘‘Your tea’s in the oven, son.’’
‘‘Ah’m no’ hungry,’’ he called back.
He kicked off his shoes, hung his coat over the post at the foot of the stairs and was halfway to the upper landing when the phone began to ring. Usually it was for her – one of his sisters complaining or passing on some piece of trivia. But it might be for him. He’d told them his name. Kerr had written down the address and phone number.
‘‘Dinna answer it!’’
His mother came rushing from the living room. Her face was flushed.
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Pit that doon!’’
He did as he was told.
She turned away, bumping into the doorframe before finding her way back into the room.
‘‘What’s happened? Wha’s deid noo?’’ He shouted after her.
He stood where he was for a few moments. She’d been up at the chapel again, he guessed. Every time she went she came back with news of some fatal illness or sudden death. That and a fresh sense of shame because her son never showed his face at Mass.
She was staring at the screen and didn’t turn her head.
‘‘Talk to me.’’ He moved between her and the set. ‘‘What’s the matter? Am ah in trouble again?’’
She pressed her hands against her eyes. ‘‘You’re in the road. Awa an’ have your dinner. It’s waited for you long enough.’’
Behind him the studio audience ooh’d and aah’d.
‘‘D’you want a cup of tea or somethin’?’’
She shook her head, her hands still up against her face.
In the oven he found a foil-covered plate of boiled potatoes, with three slices of fried bacon and some baked beans. He wrapped most of it in the foil, binned it, and put the dirty plate next to the sink. He could have washed it, but she’d only wash it again.
Up in his own bedroom he closed the door and locked it. His most recent sketch la
y on the desk. He lifted it by the two top corners, but after a few seconds laid it down. Why take your anger out on a decent drawing, an innocent sketch of wind-blown branches?
There was a pencil lying on the carpet beside the bed. This he picked up, and holding it in both hands, forced it until it shattered, startling him, so that one of the broken ends stabbed the soft cushion of flesh below his right thumb. He watched the bright blood well up, then smeared it over his jeans. If she asked, he’d say it was a nose bleed.
He switched the light back off and went to the window. The radiator was hot against his legs, the window glass chilled his upper body. He couldn’t see Harriet’s house for trees, but he knew where it was now, knew she was inside it, putting plates back in the white cupboards, watching TV with her brother, or reading some fancy book, just generally being a nice girl. He kicked off his shoes, lay down on the bed and pulled the quilt over himself.
This room had been his for three years, since Kelly moved in with her boyfriend. He’d painted the walls dark red, put up some posters, and binned the pink curtains.
‘‘Ah’m no’ buyin’ new ones,’’ his mother told him. ‘‘There was nothing wrong wi’ those. An’ they were lined.’’
‘‘Ah’m no needin’ curtains anyway.’’
‘‘You’ll feel it come winter.’’
She was right. The heat didn’t extend more than two feet into the room. Some day he would have his own place, with more than one room to himself. Two or three rooms. One just to paint in, loads of space with a wall of glass and nothing outside but the ocean. There would be one room to sleep in, with a double bed, so he could turn over without fear of falling out, and a ceiling painted dark blue, with small lights in it like stars. There’d be a jacuzzi bath at the far end, behind a wall of glass bricks, and a fitted fridge and bar in an alcove, really tasteful and discreet, and a few bits of antique sculpture under subtle spotlights, and the wall that faced the sea would have sliding glass panels so that on hot nights the whole thing could be opened up. And maybe above this, he’d have another room for music, with perfect acoustics, and the best Bang and Olufsen system money could buy.
