Part 11 (1/2)

Stevie watched him from the sofa; going over and over the same change on his drum pads, then stopping and going to the fridge, getting himself a fresh can, before he worked on the next.

Shug got hold of a video for him, of a World Solo Drumming Champions.h.i.+p. It was folk who played with pipe bands, from Scotland and Canada and Northern Ireland, but Stevie's Dad never bothered with all the bagpipes and talking at the start, he just wound through to the compet.i.tion. He said Alex Duthart was the finest drummer ever, and he was dead now, but everyone still played his best salute. Stevie's Dad learned it by watching it; not all the way through, but broken down into bits. Listen, rewind, listen, to all the different parts. He sat and played them over and over, knocking the remote against his thighs.

If Stevie kept quiet enough, his Dad would forget to put him to bed. He could stand and drum half the night on his pads, and Stevie could sit just as long and watch. Especially when his Dad knocked with both ends of the sticks, turning his hands over and back, over and back, so fast, and still keeping time.

It even worked on Stevie's Mum. If she came home while he was playing, she didn't shout, or even ask how Stevie was up on a school night. She didn't come into the room either, but he saw her watching from the dark in the doorway; her eyes fixed on his Dad.

The Duthart was his showpiece, and if Shug didn't get him to kick off a practice night with that, someone in the band would call for it, more often than not.

Stevie's Dad's heels lifted as he rocked, marching on the spot, keeping the rhythm, his chin and chest going out and back like a pigeon's. But no one laughed. The band were all quiet, mindful of the skill, just like his Mum had been, and Stevie liked that. They all stared at his Dad's hands, rapt, while the sticks flew and tapped, and his big face went soft and blank. Like it was just him there, and his drum.

When they were all playing was best, the full band, twenty-five of them, all of a piece. Stevie loved the music, the serious faces while the men played, and the thick foam his Dad let him slurp off his black pint after. They usually stayed for one, and Stevie's Dad said he wasn't to tell his Mum. Stevie never did; that wasn't why she stopped him going. He told her something else he shouldn't have about a practice night.

It was January and cold out, but Shug had the gas heaters roaring on the walls when they arrived. He'd been phoning round all week with reminders: it was the first practice back after Christmas, so spirits were high and attendance was near-on full that night, and the hall got hot with all those bodies. The first half was done and sweats.h.i.+rts were coming off, f.a.gs being lit and trips being made to the bogs. Shug had gone straight through to the bar. No alcohol was allowed until practice was over, but playing was thirsty work, so he always poured pints of water and diluting orange at the break.

All the men were waiting, wondering how Shug was ages about the juice, when it was usually him that nagged about getting back to practice. Then he came back through with no gla.s.ses, just an edgy look about him. His face was s.h.i.+ning, and most of the men were sweating, but Shug's face was different; gone all tight, and his body too, like he might slap you if your playing wasn't up to the mark. Everyone noticed the change, because no one moaned about being parched, or the heaters still blasting. They all just got on with playing ”Derry's Walls,” like Shug told them.

The half-circle of flutes had their backs to the door, and the drums were facing them, just like always. Stevie was on the end of the line, so he could see past the flutes, and he was the first to see the door open, and the man who came in to watch them. Jeans and blue T-s.h.i.+rt and balaclava. He walked into the big s.p.a.ce between band and bar, and then he stood, wide-legged, head down, his hands folded, respectful: G.o.d bless the hands that broke the boom and saved the Apprentice Boys.

Come the end of the third verse most in the band had seen him. They were glancing over shoulders, and missing notes, but Shug made them finish before he told them: ”We have an honoured guest. He's far from home and cannot return, but his cause is just. So let us make him welcome.”

Shug ordered ”Hands Across the Water,” and there was a fair bit of shuffling before they started. But they did well, and the guest raised a palm when they got to the end, nodding his thanks. He never spoke, and he never took off the hood, but he listened all the way through the second half, sitting on one of the long benches at the wall, his arms spread out along the seat-back; rock-still, save a tapping finger. A couple of times he beckoned Shug over and whispered a request. They played ”Fields of Ulster” for him and, a bit after that, ”Absent Friends.” Stevie could see the hairs on Shug's forearms, all on end, and the slow tide of sweat running down his neck. Doug and Harry were next along, both with wide, damp patches spreading downwards from their collars, and Stevie wondered if his Dad was the same, on the other end of the line, only he didn't dare lean forward to look.

There were slick faces all around the half-circle in front of him; the men were blinking the stinging salt out of their eyes, but no one missed a beat to push at their slipping gla.s.ses. At ten o'clock Shug ordered the flutes to stand on the chairs, and the drums to surround them. They stood like that in silence, heads high for the stranger, and then they played The Sash for a full fifteen minutes and longer.

So they were late finis.h.i.+ng, but the barman had already called the lock-in. Everyone stayed. It was just the band in the snooker club, sitting around the tables; a few bare-chested, Stevie's Dad among them, his soaking T-s.h.i.+rt stuffed into his bag. Stevie sat next to him, and he could feel the heat off him, his skin and his jeans, his red ears. There were a lot of red ears round the tables; eyes down and stop-start conversations. Heads trying not to turn to the bar where Shug was talking with the guest. Or anyhow listening while the guest spoke, frowning serious, and then laughing at his jokes.

A bucket went round the room. Stevie had seen a bucket go round after practice before, collecting coins for sick kids or band funds, but there were no coins going in it this time, only notes, and Stevie saw his Dad tuck the fiver back into his pocket when the bucket came closer. He threw in a tenner: didn't want his blue standing out against all the brown and purple.

”Who was that, Da?”

It was frosty outside when they left, and Stevie's Dad pulled on his jacket over his bare shoulders, but he didn't answer.

”Who was he?”

Stevie had to trot next to him up the long wind of the hill towards home. His Dad always walked fast when he was annoyed, and Stevie knew the question annoyed him, but it seemed worth knowing, so: ”Da?”

”I dinnae know his f.u.c.kiname, son. Kay?”

That was all he got.

So Stevie asked his Mum, the next day when she fetched him from school. He told her about the stranger and the bucket while they were climbing the stairs, and she stopped still on the second-floor landing, after she'd heard him out. She took a breath: ”Tell me. What was he wearing again, this man?”

Her eyes had gone sharp and dark, and then Stevie thought he'd got the word wrong; it was a strange word, and maybe it wasn't called a balaclava at all. He said: ”A hood. Wae eyeholes, but. A black wan.”

”b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.”

She muttered it, pulling Stevie back down the stairs, down the road to his Gran's. He wasn't to ask more, Stevie knew that.

Brenda didn't know what to say to Lindsey. When she showed up raging, pulling Stevie behind her, still in his school clothes. The boy looked at her, like this was all his fault, so Brenda gave him toast and jam, and plenty of it, and she sat him in front of the telly. She sat with him there a good few minutes, bracing herself before she went to the kitchen to listen to the girl.

It was the band, the band, the band, it always was now, coming between them. But this time it was worse, and Brenda got properly scared, thinking what Shug was up to, and what Lindsey might do now. She was scared for her son's sake.

Brenda had long had her doubts, ever since Graham joined his first band, just shy of his thirteenth birthday. She'd seen three sons cross that Rubicon, and she'd been dreading another. Not that her older boys had been terrible. They always were a handfula”so many, and so close togethera”but she and Malky had kept a firm grip, even through their teenage years; seen them through to the army, and fatherhood. The scheme had gone to the dogs, though, over those years, and by the time Graham was in secondary, even the good kids were doing mad stuff. Setting fires in closes, and mainlining sleeping pills; taking other people's cars and doing handbrake turns in the sand traps on the golf course. Brenda knew good women who lived in fear, of phone calls in the small hours and visits from the police; of hearing what their feral boys had been up to this time. Then Malky's cab got taken one night, and when the police found it two days later, a burnt wreck by the ca.n.a.l, it turned out their neighbour's son was the culprit. Brenda wept about that, in the watches of the night, under the bedclothes, and it wasn't just the shock of it, or the lost earnings; it was how the boy's mother couldn't look at her when they pa.s.sed in the close. Brenda thought: there but for the grace ae G.o.d.

She'd steeled herself for Graham's wild years, but they never came. He never stuck needles in his veins, or got himself hauled up in court on charges. A son in a flute band seemed like a blessing by comparison. Graham seemed happy enough with his once-weekly band practice and his drum pads. He even got Brenda to show him how to press his own uniform, and she remembered crying in bed again that night, only this time with grat.i.tude.

It was Lindsey's turn to cry now. She spent the afternoon in tears in Brenda's kitchen, and Brenda stood with her thinking how Graham had a family now. Lindsey alone was worth more than any flute band, surely.

The girl didn't want to go home to him this time, it didn't matter what Brenda said. So Brenda took Lindsey's keys and she was there when Graham got in from work.

”You're no goin back tae practice.”

”How?”

”You b.l.o.o.d.y know why no. Don't gie me that.”

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 s.h.i.+tebags 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l 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 b.u.mp 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 pa.s.sed 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.