Part 13 (1/2)

He'd sat and sketched, while she'd sat and knitted. Or she'd have a book along.

”She liked it anyhow, my Franny, just bein out and up high. That peace, aye? She grew up in a small house, wae a big family.”

Eric laughed.

”Did they like you? Her family,” Lindsey asked. Eric thought she was blus.h.i.+ng at being so forthright; it was like she'd wanted to know all this for ages. ”Did they mind?”

”Us gettin wed?”

Lindsey nodded.

”Her grandmother tellt her she'd go tae the bad fire.” Eric smiled. ”Her parents, but, they werenae bothered. Franny was over thirty, aye? Old tae be unmarried. They were glad tae see her settled.”

Lindsey was quiet after that; no need to ask what Papa Robert had thought. The girl knew how it was, when your father wouldn't come to your wedding.

The sun was setting, the last of the day still visible in the gaps between the Maryhill tenements: gold and purple, it lit up the water. Time to go now. But Eric wanted to tell Lindsey more; his mind still turning back, to Lochcarron holidays, his Skye honeymoon, and how he and Franny had their first rows when they got home.

”She had her ain ideas,” he said. ”Franny was like you that way. The s.h.i.+pyard wouldnae have married women on the books, so I thought she'd be stayin at home, darnin my socks, pressin my work s.h.i.+rts. Only Franny wouldnae have it. She went out and found hersel a new job.”

Eric hoped it might console her, to hear he'd been a stick-in-the-mud husband too, and that he'd seen sense in the end. But the girl just looked at him, sad. What was she thinking?

The banks were gloomy, but the ca.n.a.l still bright, the reedy backwaters radiant, like the western sky. Lindsey said: ”You left everything for her.”

She said it like she approved. But like she didn't know if Graham could do the same for her. Then she turned and started making for the road.

Eric saw her onto the bus, and she waved a hand to him from the top deck as it drew away, but she cut such a lonely figure up there, it left Eric shaken.

He'd left everything, just like she'd said. And Eric knew she hadn't meant to, but Lindsey had unsettled him, even so; she'd roused unquiet thoughts. He knew all too well how it felt to be alone in this world.

Slow down the road towards home, Eric turned over the girl's words, his mind turning over itself, going back to his own lonely times, after Franny died.

Brenda had come to see him, whenever she could manage. But it was a long haul from Drumchapel, and she'd had her boys to look out for, all still so young then. John Joe had done his best, keeping track of Eric's prescriptions, counting out his tablets on the kitchen table, when he thought Eric couldn't see him, making sure he was keeping up with the dosage. But he'd had his own life too, his work and his doos. His brother-in-law was a good man, but Eric had known he was a burden.

Back at his desk, he'd intended to do more drawing, but Eric found he could only sit; wretched thoughts crowding his mind, pus.h.i.+ng out the happy times he'd meant as a comfort to the girl.

All those weeks of Franny's last treatment, Eric remembered: how when she was in the hospital overnight, he used to sleep on her side of the bed until she came back. And how he slept there again, in the worst months after he'd lost her; it was the only way he could trick himself into getting some rest.

Memory had Eric dry-mouthed. That bleak and fearful time, long past.

Lindsey had made the break too, from home and from her father. And now what?

Eric thought he had to warn her not to cut herself adrift. He didn't think Graham would leave Drumchapel, and it was too hard to think of the girl alone, like he'd been.

Stevie's Mum wasn't always in the playground. None of his school pals got picked up any more, so he didn't mind that too much. But he didn't always know which way to go from the gates: back to his Gran's, or to his old house where his Dad lived. No one had told him what was happening, or which one was meant to be home now, and it left him feeling nowhere, so he made for the high blocks some afternoons, seeking out his cousins.

They were finished with their exams, working different jobs, but even if they weren't there, Stevie mostly found different kids to knock about with: boys from school, or whose dads he knew from the band. Stevie played keepie-uppies in the echo-loud stairwells, or dares outside, jumping off the roofs of the bin sheds, running pure breakneck along the high walls. Or he played nothing if there was no one about, just hanging around the lift doors. It was best if he left it a couple of hours until he went to his Gran's; if he could put off being alone with his Mum. The way she looked at him sometimes. Better his Gran was back from work to do the talking.

It was the mornings that were hardest.

Some days Stevie woke up with his Mum in the bed beside him. Grandad Malky had put an extra bed in the spare room, and Stevie would half-remember her getting up and s.h.i.+fting him over in the dark, closer to the wall, a few inches, making just enough room to fit her. His Mum used to lie with him when he was wee, to get him off to sleep, so even if it was a squeeze now, it was still cosy; more like the way things used to be.

Only then he'd hear his Dad come in. He'd open the bedroom door and stand there, a few seconds, a minute, and Stevie would keep his eyes shut, because he didn't want to see his Dad's wounded face. He knew his Mum wasn't sleeping either: he could feel it from the way she lay, tight and still, her back to the doorway. Stevie felt like this was all his doing.

If it was a school day, his Dad would get him up; over his Mum and into the kitchen. He'd nudge Stevie into his clothes: ”Socks, son. Mon. Breeks.”

Handing him his trousers, coaxing him out of his sleep. If Stevie's Gran was there, she'd give him his breakfast and take him to lessons, so that would be fine then. But on mornings she was out and cleaning, Grandad Malky not yet back from his night s.h.i.+ft, his Dad put out cereal and milk, and had to go to the bedroom door again.

”Lin?”

There'd be nothing first, and then: ”Yeah, yeah.”

His Dad left for work after that, and if his Mum still didn't get up, Stevie would go and stand by the bed. Until she opened her lids, squinting a bit.

”Sorry, love. I'll be upna minute, kay?”

Except he knew she wouldn't. They'd always be late for school: best part of an hour, or more than, on a bad day, when she buried her head in the duvet. On bad days, she'd ask: ”Where's your Gran, son?”

Like she didn't understand his Gran had gone to work.

”Would you go and find your Gran, love?”

Like his Gran was the one he should go to, not her.

So Stevie took himself back into the kitchen and wished his Dad was still there, or Grandad Malky back from driving. To lift his Mum out of bed and into her jeans, or just to sit with him. Stevie didn't like waiting on his own, because he was never sure how long he'd have to stay there, watching the hand on the kitchen clock, ticking on, thinking who he should go to now. He knew he'd be going in to cla.s.s with everyone turning and staring at him anyhow, and the teacher all torn-faced again.

Sometimes he asked his Dad, when he was handing him his vest: ”Can you no take me? Please?”

And his Dad looked like he might, only then he sighed: ”Your Maw'll dae it, son.” All quiet.

Stevie thought it would be better if he shouted. Or if his Mum did. So then at least he'd know if they were angry, or what. If one of them was angry with him, or both. Who he belonged with. The way things were just now, Stevie didn't know where to put himself, left alone in the kitchen, tying the laces on his school shoes. Time went on, he took to walking to school by himself.

On his days off, Graham would get to his Mum's house early. Stevie wouldn't be home yet, and Graham couldn't just sit there like a spare part, so he mostly went to the spare room and looked at the bed where Lindsey slept now.

It would never be made, or Stevie's single by the wall; the blankets all in a heap, and clothes all over the floor. Graham picked them up and folded, because he was meant to be doing his bit. Even if Lindsey didn't want it.

On his hands and knees like that, he found an old s...o...b..x one afternoon, half under Lindsey's bed. He pulled it out and lifted the lid. Graham found a whole pile of Eric's pictures.

So then he knew where she went; most likely she was with the old guy right now.

There was a small sketch at the top, of Auntie Franny: all creased, like it had been looked at a lot. Graham lifted it away and found faces he knew, and faces he didn't, a couple of Papa Robert among them. And then there were a whole lot of sketches with no one in them.

They were all of landscapes and they all looked like Ireland; just like the place Papa Robert had always told of. Rolling fields as far as the skyline, riddled with lanes, dotted with farms, framed by the hills that rose behind them.

Or were those the Tyrone hills behind Lindsey's Dad's house?

Graham leafed on through the pages, and there they were again, in the low summer sun, and the more Graham stared, the more they came to look the same as he remembered from that first time. When Lindsey pulled him up the path and in through the door, and there was no one home, n.o.body but them, half on the floor, half on the sofa in the front room.