This Road is Red Page 6

  May 1971

  There were a few other cleaners standing with her at the bus stop at five-thirty. Solitary cars slipping along the grey streets, the sun nowhere, the sky a great black yawn over their heads. Barely a light in any window. Her son still sleeping. Mrs Orr, her blessed neighbour from up the stair, who let herself in to wake him every morning for school, said it was like waking the dead, the way he slept.

  The morning was fresh about her face and so quiet she thought the whole bus queue would be able to hear her stomach working away at her porridge. The bus came and stopped for the ladies. She sat with Betty, who cleaned houses over in the West End but today was doing an early-morning shift at an office in the town. She started up right away.

  ‘You’re looking well, May.’

  ‘I always try.’

  The bus turned right down Petershill Drive. Betty turned in her seat and looked straight at her.

  ‘You’ve done your hair different.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve put a colour in it. You’ve changed your perfume.’

  ‘No, Betty.’

  ‘If I was to guess I’d say that you were trying to impress somebody.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing, hen.’

  If May was honest, she would say that she was tired. She would say that her divorce and the years in the Calton had caught up with her. She would say that she didn’t quite believe there wouldn’t be thumping on the door or frightening phone calls. But something in her wouldn’t let her be too tired or too feart. So she coloured and curled her hair and wore lipstick and told herself to come on May. And yes, there was a man at the Health and Welfare where she cleaned. The caretaker. Called Alistair McBride. Who had a gentle wave in his hair and thick sideburns. But if she ever had any godforsaken time to even speak to the man let alone attempt to impress him, could somebody please tell her where that time was and how she was to fit him in with her two shifts at the Health and Welfare and the night shift at the Shettleston Club and her son who’d been through enough already in his dear short life.

  ‘You’re blushing, May,’ Betty said but May thought it was more likely to be anger in her cheeks than anything else. Romance was easy. The rest was hard.

  The boy who sold the totties at the door, he told her there was a fella loitering about the foyer asking for a May Thompson. He had a tough-looking face, so the tottie boy lied and said he didn’t know anybody of that name and the man stared at him all the time he waited for the lift. The tottie boy was big enough to handle himself now but he seemed worried the day he knocked on May’s door and told her all about it. And then it had been Hogmanay and she’d had a great time in her neighbours’ house, and the accordion and singing and dancing and banter had taken her mind off things.

  ‘My lovely neighbours are moving out,’ Betty said. ‘They’ve bought a house in Cumbernauld.’

  The bus went past some empty stops lit by orange streetlights. Nothing was open. A man walking his dog along the road was all May could see.

  ‘I don’t want to move, do you?’ May said.

  Betty shook her head. ‘I’d love a wee back and front door though.’

  ‘I’d miss my view.’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss the lifts. Did I tell you this?’ Betty had the best stories. ‘The other day I was waiting on the lift to take me down to the ground and when the doors opened I got the fright of my life. Two undertakers standing bolt upright and a coffin leaning against one of the walls. It was Mr O’Keefe, God rest his soul. He died in his chair and they had to bring him down standing up because the lifts are too small to lay a coffin flat. There’s no dignity in that.’

  ‘He wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. I’d know. If I stayed long enough in Red Road to die in my chair I’d know I’d be going down in the lift standing up in my coffin. No, I shall be in Cumbernauld in a wee front and back door when I die. Easy in, easy out. This is me, hen.’

  Betty stood up.

  ‘Did you get in the lift with him?’

  ‘Did I what? No, I gave the man some privacy and took the stair.’

  ‘From fifteen up?’

  ‘Aye, I know. I was nearly ready for a coffin myself when

  I got to the bottom.’

  May watched her step off the bus and pull her good fur coat about her. Then she got off the bus too. She walked through the still-dark morning to Ingram Street and when she got to the Health and Welfare, she saw Alistair unlocking the doors.

  Inside, she offered to make him a cup of tea because she always had one after she’d done the dishes in the wee staff kitchen. She told him she’d leave it on the worktop for him as she knew he went about the building turning on lights and checking the place and she wouldn’t know where to find him. He rubbed his hands together and said that would be grand and then put his hands in his back pockets and May was sure she saw him looking at her hair. Unless he was skelly. They were like a pair of sparrows twitching and fussing about each other. I haven’t got time for this, May thought, and turned her back on him, plunging her rubber-gloved hands into the soap suds.

  Her son had asked about his father the night previously. He’d said he wanted to look at his old house in the Calton. Why would you want to do that? May said. Because a boy in his class at school stayed with his da on the weekend and they’d gone to see the football together.

  ‘Your da doesn’t live in our old house anymore,’ May said. And he wouldn’t take you to the football anyway. He wasn’t that sort of da.

  It troubled her though, that Red Road wasn’t enough for him, as it was for her. Or maybe she wasn’t enough for him.

  She did the toilets and the toilet floor, vacuumed the corridors and the rooms, polished the desks and window ledges. She emptied the bins of the previous day’s rubbish and shook out fresh bin bags, pressing them into the baskets.

  When she was folding her apron and putting it into her bag Alistair came into the kitchen with his mug from earlier in the morning.

  ‘Lovely cup of tea.’ He smiled and rinsed the mug at the sink.

  ‘I meant to make another one for myself,’ May said, ‘but I

  was behind with my work this morning, I don’t know why.’

  ‘Me too,’ Alistair said. ‘Must be Monday.’ She knew he ran a boxing club on weekends and took some of his older boys to

  amateur fights. He seemed like a man used to himself. Fit. Trim. He didn’t wear a wedding ring.

  ‘Let me make you another one,’ he said, and May didn’t want to say no, even though she had a bus to catch and plenty to do in the house before she was back to work again.

  ‘If it’s no bother,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all.’

  He took a fresh mug from the cupboard and put it on the worktop. Then he filled the kettle with water and set it to boil. He opened the cutlery drawer and found the tea strainer that May knew was there because she’d washed and dried it earlier that morning. He put a spoonful of tea into the teapot and turned to her. Then he turned back to the kettle.

  ‘It’s a slow boiler,’ May said and Alistair said, ‘Aye.’

  When the kettle boiled he lifted it straight away and steam shot out of its spout.

  ‘Watch yourself,’ May said. She hated that phrase and didn’t know why she’d said it. It reminded her of him.

  A few moments later Alistair tinkled the spoon against the side of the teacup and stirred in May’s milk. He turned the teacup and passed the cup to her, handle first. Fair hairs on his fingers.

  ‘Where’s yours?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not having one.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have said aye if I’d known.’

  ‘No, no, on you go, sit down. You work bloody hard, May.’ Alistair pulled a chair from under the table. May sat.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He waited for her to take a sip. May blew on the top of her tea but couldn’t sip because it was still too hot. She smiled.

  ‘You take your time,’ A
listair said, and when he was almost out of the door he added, ‘Are you doing your afternoon shift?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And your shift at the bar?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You work too hard, May.’

  ‘Alistair, it’s either that or I lose my house.’ He nodded as if he understood.

  ‘I’ve drunk in your bar before,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve never seen you.’

  May wondered what drink he would take. She thought he might be a heavy man or he might swill a half in his glass and nurse it in warm palms. She would look out for him.

  ‘I like the bands. And the dancing.’ May looked up.

  ‘Do you, Alistair?’

  He nodded. They smiled.

  ‘So long.’

  He tipped an imaginary hat and went away.

  May waited for the tea to cool but felt anxious sitting there with nothing to do. She knew if she didn’t leave now she would miss the bus, and she’d only catch it if she ran anyway. It felt pretty pointless to be sitting here with a cup of tea that wouldn’t cool down, when if she really wanted a cup of tea she could have one back in her house while the washing was soak- ing in the sink. She tipped a glug down the sink and filled the teacup with cold water. It was still too hot to drink. She checked behind her. Alistair was gone. She tipped the tea down the sink, ran the tap and swished the lot down the plughole. A quick rinse of the cup, the teapot emptied, swilled and dried, put back in the cupboard, and then she was away out of the building towards home. If he asked, she’d tell him it was the best cup of tea she’d ever tasted.

  Davie 1971

  ‘Need any potatoes, missus?’

  ‘Aye son, give us two pound.’

  Davie ran to the sack he’d left between the lift doors and

  took out a two-pound bag. He held the bag while the woman dipped into her purse.

  ‘That’s for your trouble,’ she said and Davie put Fred Aston’s money in his money belt and his tip in his shorts pocket. This woman was a good tipper. She wore rollers underneath her hairnet and had painted nails. Today they were pink. Davie humphed the sack back into the lift and waved as the doors closed and he went down to the floor below.

  ‘Any potatoes missus?’

  If he sold his sack of potatoes Fred Aston would give him another one from the back of the van and then he would collect him and drop him in front of more high flats. He and the other lads – there were five others – did the area: Sighthill, Red Road, Germiston. It made good money but hurt his back and his fingers from the lifting and carrying. He was so hungry he would have bitten into a potato had he not done it before and got a mouthful of starch and dirt.

  At Red Road he did one of the long blocks; the posh blocks, his pals from Thirty-three Petershill Drive called them. Totties hauled from the van, through the foyer doors and into the lift, his forearms dirty from reaching into the sack, his face sweaty and speckled with mud. The lift wobbled its way to floor twenty-seven and he began his routine and his patter with the women who came to the doors. On the fifteenth floor, before he could get a foot out of the lift, Betty Meechan was at her door instructing him.

  ‘Use the mats, son. Don’t let your dirt spill onto the floor. What have you got for me?’

  She always asked him what he had.

  ‘Any totties – ’

  ‘I can’t hear you from over there. Come to me, please.’

  He hopped over the mats that went from the lift to her doorstep.

  ‘Any totties missus?’

  ‘Well, I’ll be having my ham today so I’ll need totties for that, my joint of beef tomorrow, my steak pie on Monday and my mince on Tuesday. The mince will do for two days so we’ll have that on Wednesday as well and on Thursday and Friday we’ll have links and soup. So, the only day I won’t need totties is...’

  Davie put his hands in his pockets while Betty worked out how many pounds of totties she needed. He thought about Kes and hoped his brothers weren’t poking at her. His da would keep an eye on her. I’m proud of you for taking falconry seriously and committing yourself to looking after a hawk, his da said to him frequently. Davie always told him he would never give up on Kes.

  ‘Better give me half a stone, son.’

  Mrs Meechan gave Davie the money and told him to wait there.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked when she handed him a soap-sized parcel of white paper.

  ‘For your kestrel.’

  Davie smiled and looked properly into the woman’s face. Her glasses made her eyes look huge. The curls at her forehead were like his granny’s curls. Her cheeks seemed soft. Perhaps she’d given him some of her week’s meat.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’ve seen you over on the field you weans call the High

  Chaparral.’

  She stepped back from the door and Davie saw her slippers just before it closed.

  ‘Thank you! Thank you so much, missus!’

  He unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a mouse. The door opened again.

  ‘The caretaker’s cat brought it in and I told him not to get rid of it, because I knew a bird who’d make swift work of it.’

  ‘She will,’ Davie said, and felt, perhaps, a little disappointed. He put the parcel in his pocket along with his tips.

  When he walked with Kes to the High Chaparral with the line of weans following him he looked up at Mrs Meechan’s house. She wasn’t on her veranda and he couldn’t see her at her window because the sun was shining, making all the windows flash black and gold. He told the weans to stand well back, then he set the hawk down and began his circles, Mrs Meechan’s mouse attached to the leash that he whizzed around his head; a tip for a boy, a meal for a hawk.

  Matt Barr

  There was a steel fire escape that ran up one side of the building and at the top of the fire escape there was a door onto the roof of the building. We used to spend a lot of time up there because it was somewhere that nobody else was. And the views from there were fantastic. It was very windy. There were concrete slabs made into a fence with four-inch slats that you could look through. And above that there was a wire safety net. It was supposed to stop you climbing any further but we used to get on top of that. And there were also kestrels that had nests on the top of the buildings so we used to go up and try and catch them.

  Davie 1972

  His ma brought two letters into the kitchen. ‘One’s for you, Davie,’ she said and Davie’s spoon fell into his bowl, splashing milk onto the table.

  ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Davie took the letter and turned it in his hands. He wondered if he should wait to read it with his pals because he could guess who it was from.

  ‘Open it,’ his older brother said. So he did.

  ‘Dear Boys,’ Sir Phillip Glasier wrote. ‘I don’t mind you

  boys writing to me so frequently, but will you please include a stamped addressed envelope from now on.’ And then he answered their question on when a kestrel might be ready for free-flight.

  ‘Tight bastard,’ his brother said and he took the letter. ‘Sir Phillip Glasier wants a stamped addressed envelope so he doesn’t have to pay to write to the weans from the multi-storey.’

  ‘I’m going out.’

  Davie took his air gun with him. The boys from the long blocks were playing giant headers. There was a kid hanging out of one of the high floor windows and a kid on the ground waiting with his chin skywards.

  Davie shot a rat and carried it by its tail back to his house. Outside his building, he saw another rat running out of the back of Sixty-three Petershill Drive. He put his dead rat on the ground, knelt down and aimed.

  ‘I wouldn’t if I was you.’

  It was a man’s voice with polis shoes. Davie twisted him- self around and saw a big policeman standing over him and another one standing next to a panda car. The rat scampered out of sight.

  ‘I was going to shoot that rat.’

  ‘It l
ooked to me like you were aiming for those windows.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I keep a kestrel. I feed it rats and sparrows.’

  ‘We’ll see what your parents say about your air gun and your kestrel. Where do you stay?’

  If he expected Davie to be worried, he wasn’t. The polis always got it wrong. His da was at work but his ma would tell the polis that he’d never shot a window in his puff.

  ‘I need to get my rat.’

  ‘Leave the rat.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he said under his breath.

  The weans waiting for the lift fell silent as Davie and the policeman joined them.

  ‘What floor are you, son?’

  ‘Six.’

  The policeman pressed the button with a strong finger. And when he looked down at his watch the weans did the lift trick and the lift shot straight up, right past Davie’s floor, to the top of the building.

  ‘Help! It’s not stopping!’ one of the weans said before the policeman pressed number six again and said, ‘If the lift doesn’t stop at floor six this time, I’m lifting the whole lot of you and you can spend a night in the cells.’

  ‘All right, Officer.’

  They stepped onto Davie’s landing. The policeman knocked on the door.

  ‘I could let us in, I’ve got a key,’ Davie said.

  ‘No.’

  His older brother answered the door with a piece of toast in his hand.

  ‘Ah, Officer, he’s not been in trouble again has he?’

  ‘Ian, where’s my ma?’

  ‘She’s not in.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Just tell the polis that I keep a kestrel and I shoot rats not windows.’

  The policeman said, ‘Is his mother or father not in?’

  ‘Not the now, no.’

  ‘Tell him I keep a kestrel.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Tell him Ian. I got the air gun for shooting rats and sparrows.’

  ‘You’ve got an air gun?’

  The policeman took a notebook from his pocket and opened it. Davie pushed past his brother and told the policeman to follow him. He found his letter from Sir Phillip Glasier on the table in the living room.