This Road is Red Page 4

  Douglas put the point of his umbrella between the lift doors.

  ‘Take your jacket off,’ Betty said.

  Douglas didn’t answer and levered the doors open with his jacket on.

  A gaggle of uniformed children fell out onto the landing. They milled and fretted and hopped around and spoke in high voices.

  ‘Did you not hear us shouting?’ one boy said.

  ‘I was asleep, son.’

  ‘My sister slept through the whole hurricane.’

  Douglas yawned. Betty looked at the children and noted areas for improvement. When it was clear that the other lift was stuck too she took matters into her own hands.

  ‘You can come through the house,’ she said, ‘and use the back stairs.’

  It was the only way down if the lifts were broken.

  ‘Some storm,’ the boy said.

  ‘Yes, and mind your fingers on the walls.’ She led the way through the lobby and into the bedroom where she unbolted both doors and stood back to let the children pass.

  ‘Wait!’ she ordered. ‘Douglas, we can’t let these children out in the state they’re in.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with them.’

  ‘Shoes. Hair. Stains. This one’s face needs washing.’

  The children looked up at the adults with pale, expectant faces, brylcremed quiffs and Alice bands. Beautiful shining eyes, the lot of them. Betty felt a tug inside herself, some shift towards sadness or serenity, it was hard to tell.

  Her husband laid his briefcase on the bed and knelt in front of the open wardrobe. He leaned inside and pulled out a shoebox.

  Betty ran out of the room and returned with a bowl, a flannel and a brush.

  ‘Line up!’ she said.

  The children did as they were told, turning their heads to peek at the bowls of potpourri, the wedding picture on the chest of drawers, the poem in a frame – If, it began.

  ‘What’s that, a prayer?’ one wee boy said.

  ‘It’s a poem about how to live,’ Douglas said. ‘I’ll do their shoes first.’

  He told the first child to sit on the bed.

  They were silent as Douglas opened a tin of black polish, dipped the bristles of a wooden brush into it and began to scrub the shoe. He asked the child to straighten his leg and put his flexed foot into his hand and he did the back and sides and toe of the shoe and then he took a yellow cloth and shined up his work. He did the other shoe and the children and Betty watched. When he was done the boy stood up and looked down at his shoes.

  ‘Don’t you go splashing in any puddles,’ Douglas said.

  ‘They need to last you a wee while.’

  ‘I’ll take over from here,’ Betty said and she dipped a cor- ner of the flannel into her bowl and wiped at a stain on the boy’s jumper. ‘What is that, toothpaste? Tut tut, wee man.’

  ‘At least I cleaned my teeth.’

  ‘Did you hear that? At least he cleaned his teeth. You’re right to clean your teeth son, or you’ll end up with wallies like me before you’re twenty-one.’

  The children turned their faces towards Betty and she gave them a righteous closed-lip smile.

  When the first boy was done, Betty patted him on the back and led him towards the doors to the back stairs. ‘On you go,’ she said, ‘and don’t tell your mammy or she’ll give me a row for interfering.’

  Douglas and Betty worked their way through the line of

  children. Betty pulled up socks and washed mouths and noses, parted hair and put a brush through ponytails.

  Douglas dipped into a tobacco tin and searched for a tiny screw which he held under the light by the window and twisted into the hinge of a wee girl’s glasses. He rolled the sticking plaster that he’d taken from the glasses between his thumb and forefinger and Betty held out her hand for it. ‘I’ll deal with that,’ she said and they looked at the girl who was missing a tooth but there was nothing they could do about that.

  ‘On you go,’ Betty said and they watched her turn and wave before she clomped down the back stairs.

  ‘You look handsome, Mr Meechan,’ she said and straight- ened his tie again.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Meechan. Just imagine if we’d been allowed to...’

  ‘Stop. Don’t spoil it. You don’t make the rules.’

  ‘We could make good parents – ’

  ‘I know.’

  She followed him to the back stairs and watched him go. He turned his head before he was out of sight and smiled.

  ‘Keep working hard,’ she said and went inside, bolting both doors and returning through her house to the landing where the mop stood in the bucket of water, now cold. She picked up the mats from outside her neighbours’ front doors and shook them. She gathered up her special mats – the ones she stepped on when she came out of the lifts to avoid spoiling the floor – and she leaned, for a second or two, to gather herself, letting herself imagine, briefly, tidily, how life could have been.

  Jean McGeogh

  Once we got in we discovered that there were no stairs off the lifts and if the lift broke down the kids they would be standing in the landing saying ‘shoosh, shoosh’. They had to go through your house to get onto the back stairs. And then, ‘we’ll miss school’ and I used to open the door and say ‘no yous won’t’ and they’d walk through and they’d be looking at the house and that and the wee ones would go (to my son) ‘oh I was in your house this morning.’ And maybe some of them did it themselves, I don’t know what they did but the lift would stop and the door would open and let them out and they’d be on the landing and I’d get up and say ‘come on, out through the house.’ Always they had to go through somebody’s house to get on the back stairs.

  Jennifer 1969

  Jennifer’s father rolled out the pastry to Elvis Presley. ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.

  The record player was brand new and the Elvis LP one of two long players he possessed. The other was The Dubliners. He turned up the volume as loud as acceptable for communal living in high flats with decent neighbours and opened the kitchen window. He liked to bake.

  His wife was hanging out washing on the roof again – she’d become intrepid since moving to Red Road. With the other women, her friends now, they were like pioneers, making use of every bit of space, every facility, every aspect the flats had to offer. She was still unhappy with the lack of shops, however, and grateful for the vans that came by, parked up and sold everything. Dick’s was the orange van. Calder’s was the green. His wife sent the weans on errands on weekends and they came back loaded with messages for their mammy and their neighbours. His lovely wife. He’d been lucky to meet her at his age with four weans already under his belt. But she called her- self a late starter and took on his children as if they were her own and asked Jim if he’d mind being a daddy all over again. Anything for you, hen. They’d worked hard in the old house, on top of each other, fighting for space. Now that they were in Red Road with the older weans moved out and moved on, he hoped life might be a bit easier for her. For them all.

  He added cinnamon to the stewing apples and turned off the cooker. He took the paper from a bar of butter and ran it over a Pyrex dish. He rolled the pastry some more, palming the rolling pin to the pastry’s edges, flattening and smoothing the bumps. He’d floured the worktop and the sheet of pastry lifted a treat, dangling from his fingertips. He pushed it into the base of the pie dish, his fingers creating divots where the pastry met with the wall and the base of the dish. With a quick knife he cut off the pastry that hung over the sides of the dish, leaving some to spare. More flour on the worktop and the pastry rolled into a ball again then flattened. Elvis Presley played on.

  They would eat the pie after they sat down for their tea and before the weans got washed. He couldn’t get over the

  state they returned home in. Mud in their hair, grass stains, dirt under their fingernails. He knew they were happy, but. His daughter with her Guides and Irish dancing, his son with his pals who ran about daft looking for ferrets and birds’
eggs.

  The apples poured nicely into the pie dish and he spread them to the sides with a wooden spoon. He took a ramekin and planted it into the apples, base up. Then he used the rolling pin once more on the other piece of pastry. It lifted well and he lowered it onto the pie, using the ramekin as a post on which to hang it. A roof on a house. Bending over the work- top, he shaped some spare bits of pastry into the letters of his wife’s name and he glued them with egg to the top of the pie. Colleen. An apple pie for his wife. The edges squeezed together with flour-caked fingers. More egg to seal and glaze. Knife-slits to release the air. Four. At twelve o’clock, three o’clock, six o’clock and nine. His wife’s name showing up clear. The oven hot and the pie in.

  She was in the doorway with her empty washing basket at her hip.

  ‘Jim,’ she said. ‘Come out here and listen.’

  On the way to the veranda, she put the washing basket down. She took his hand. ‘I’m covered in pastry,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  They stood together.

  ‘What am I listening for?’

  ‘Just listen.’

  He looked and listened. His weans were down there with all the other weans and he sought them out. Noise of children playing, yes, and seagulls, but no extraordinary noise.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Exactly. There’s no noise. It’s finished. Red Road. It’s finished.’

  She was right. The cranes, the huts, the scaffolding, the diggers, the men in hard hats, they were all gone. No drilling or crashing or clinking metal.

  Below them the routes from building to building were busy with people passing back and forth. A few tender trees were growing up well.

  ‘You’re playing your Elvis record,’ she said.

  ‘And the pie’s in the oven.’

  ‘And the moon’s out.’

  The moon was there, in the fading sky, twilight settling over Glasgow.

  ‘They’ve been on that moon,’ Jim said.

  ‘And they’ve built Red Road.’

  ‘Progress.’

  ‘It is, you know,’ his wife said.

  ‘Come here.’

  He kissed her on the veranda, forgetting about his hands that left soft deposits of flour, a trace of white dust on her hair and face and back and arms and shoulders, his precious wife’s body, her body that was strong enough to keep them all, to house them all, to love them all. Her name forging in the oven's heat. A new oven in the new Red Road.

  Section Two

  1970s

  KERBY. TWO THIN-LEGGED boys stand on Petershill Drive, facing each other with the road between them. The first boy holds a football above his head and throws it towards the second boy. The ball arcs the road, drops in front of the second boy and bounces off the kerbstone. The first boy holds his arms above his head, palms flat. One nil. The second boy retrieves the ball, holds it above his head and throws it. They watch the ball, both boys, and see it fall and hit the kerbstone in front of the first boy. The second boy clenches his fists. One all. The first boy chases after the ball, taps it and toes it into the air, catches it and turns with quick feet. He throws again and the ball falls short of the kerb. Still one all. The second boy squints as he aims. The sun shines on his face and his hair is in his eyes. He throws.

  Behind the second boy children watch a game of tennis. Some of the crowd palm the ends of tennis rackets, waiting. The game is a rough game and there are squeals when the ball is whacked out of the court and into the crowd. The net is a brick wall. The tramlines are smudged asbestos. When the game is finished, the children pick a side, run onto the court, and start a new game. Teams. Ten against ten, twelve against twelve, whatever. It’s a riot of whacks and smashes and the ball can only bounce once.

  The ball can bounce twice in the squash match. The squash court is the side of Two-one-three block and six boys and girls use their tennis rackets to keep the ball bouncing against the side of the building, non-stop.

  Next to them, other kids play giant headers. The football is already at floor fourteen and a boy is hanging out the window with the ball in his hands, ready to let it fall. Down below another boy waits and watches the ball as it drops. He shimmies to manoeuvre his head underneath it and performs a perfect giant header. Easy. The kids clap and roar. Another boy swipes at the ball to take it up in the lift to the seventeenth floor for the next giant header. It’s a slow game and while they wait they watch the squash. They turn back to the building when they hear a shout – are you ready? – and see the boy’s head and arms and the football hanging out of the window. He drops the ball and the boy on the ground heads it. The crowd cheers. The boy cups his neck. A girl grabs the ball and takes the lift to floor twenty- two. The crowd waits for the girl and the ball to appear and the boy cranes his neck, looking up for the falling ball.

  The Castle is hoaching with weans climbing over its turrets, making up games or just hanging about. Some of them jump from wall to wall and one of them misses and scrapes her knees on the concrete. Someone’s ma shouts Alasdair, come up the stair and get your medicine and mop-haired heads turn towards the voice and then away, trying to locate Alasdair. Alasdair your ma wants you for your medicine someone says to him. What’s wrong with you this week? someone else asks.

  Three girls stand by the tunnel to Germiston and watch older boys walk into the black. The girls climb the grass hill and head for the High Chaparral where they will collect feathers and bricks.

  On the flattened grass behind Petershill Drive people sit on blankets and drink cider. Behind them, games of football patch- work the grass. One game, the biggest game, with the biggest boys, has barrels for goalposts.

  By the railway tracks some of the older kids lob stones into the empty space on the other side. They plank good bits of brick for later. Suddenly, Gyto boys and girls come from nowhere and threaten them with weapons. The Red Road boys run back across the field, collecting footballers and weans as they run. But there’s no fight yet, and the football games pick up again.

  Boys and girls on bikes wheel with no hands the path between Ten Red Road and Ninety-three Petershill Drive. They’re going to get bread and milk from Dick’s van. Someone’s mammy chucks down money wrapped in bread paper and shouts that she wants totties and good biscuits.

  They look up and see Greg Wilson, the quiet boy, who climbs over his veranda, holds onto the rail and leans out, twenty floors up. They see his mates on the ground looking up, holding their stomachs and their mouths. They see Greg let go of his hands and clap then grab the rail. Again he lets go his hands, claps twice, then grabs the rail. Three claps. Four claps. It goes on. And on. Spellbinding. He could fall, the children think. But he never does. And at the kitchen window next to the veranda, Greg’s mother, does the washing up, waves and smiles – ‘hiya lads’ – at his pals down below.

  In the shed next to Ten Red Road boys play Brag and watch older kids scramble onto the ledge that runs around the building just above head height and sit smoking, with their legs dangling over the edge.

  Broomknowes School is empty but there’s a football game going on in the playground. There’s football on Little Wembley too, with its immaculately-cut grass.

  Weans climb the Chippy Hill. They play in the disused rail- way that collects water when it rains. They fill bottles from drainpipes and soak whoever they choose to soak. They avoid the adults.

  Inside, the buildings are teeming with weans; hanging about the landings, sitting in bedrooms looking at dollies, jumping in the lifts and making them jam, winching on back stairs, climbing up the narrow tunnels between floors where the electrics are kept, and throwing Action Men from windows, watching their parachutes take them softly to the ground or trap them, dangling, over window catches several floors down.

  Inside and outside, there are weans who don’t return home until their mothers call them from verandas or send their huffy big sisters down to get
them. Hours spent with each other; the kids who leave the house at five to nine to go to Broomknowes Primary and those who march under the road through the tunnel – another tunnel – to St Martha’s Primary or Albert

  Academy or over to All Saints or Barmulloch Primary. What team do you support? Fine. The kids don’t care.

  Dares, bother, mischief, games, fun. Stones, feathers, tadpoles, dens, bikes. Boxing. Bird-nesting. Tournaments. Peever. Skipping ropes. Water fights. Football.

  Hunt the Cunt.

  ‘You’re the Cunt,’ said Ewan.

  ‘No way,’ said Brendan.

  The other boys nodded and moved towards him.

  ‘I don’t want to be the Cunt.’

  ‘It’s your turn.’

  ‘I’m always the Cunt.’

  ‘We won’t batter you hard.’

  ‘Yes, you will.’

  Brendan looked around him but there was nowhere to hide. The boys were blocking the entrance to his building. They must have planned this in advance.

  He tried one last time. ‘Can we play something else? Can we play football?’

  ‘After you’ve had your doing.’

  ‘Aw no.’ Brendan put his hands on his head.

  Ewan was his best mate. It was because he won the squash and Ewan didn’t. It was because he played good tennis too and had the kids from Ninety-three block stopping to watch him. Miserable bastards if they made him be the Cunt because he was good at something.

  ‘Twenty, nineteen...’

  Brendan ran away. He didn’t know where he was going to go.

  ‘Eighteen, seventeen...’

  His brother wasn’t home or he could have chapped his door and hid in there.

  ‘Sixteen, fifteen...’

  The best bet would be to lead them away from his building,

  do a circuit of the flats and try to get back to his house before they caught up with him.

  ‘Fourteen, thirteen...’