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Waterline

ROSS RAISIN

VIKING

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PENGUIN BOOKS

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Acknowledgements

By the same author

God’s Own Country

1

One here, a soft fog of flowers painted on the front.

There’s plenty more like that, plus as well the wild flower kinds. Meadows. Bustling hedgerows. A woodland clearing mobbed with bluebells. Hard to imagine there’s this many types of card in the supermarket. A churchyard, quiet and peaceful with brown leaves blowing about. A teddy bear. And another here that’s for some reason a cat gazing out the window at a sea view.

It’s Robbie that wanted to put the cards up. He wasn’t much wanting to do it himself, but Robbie had dug the heels in. What else are you going to do with them? Stick them in a drawer? Leave them lying on the counter with the funeral programmes and the electric bills? So now the pair of them are in the corridor, fixing them up to the red ribbon that Robbie’s fished out from the Christmas cardboard box. The light dimming in the front door. Dull laughter from the living room, where the rest of them are sat watching the television.

‘You know all these people, Da?’

‘No really, being honest. There were some the day even, I don’t know who they were. A few would’ve been from the department store. And then the family, course.’ He nods at the living room wall. ‘I preferred no to ask.’

Robbie is reading inside a card. ‘They could’ve introduced themselves,’ he says, closing the card and pegging it with a red plastic Christmas tree. It’s normally the wife does this, getting up the greetings cards. This same red ribbon drooping off the pictures about the living room; pinned-up spruce as launch bunting around a ship, dutifully awaiting the chop from whichever of the wee begrudging women of the royalty have been sent up.

There’s going to be too many cards will fit in the lobby and corridor. Robbie asks will they get up the rest in the living room when Alan and Lynn are away to their bed. No, he tells him. He isn’t having these cards all about the room when Robbie and Craig are sleeping in there. No that it makes a great deal of sense but. When everything else in the room is some kind of reminder. Fact is, if you start taking down all the things in the place that are fingered with memories, then that’s the whole house emptied.

Dear Mick,

Words don’t say enough. If there’s anything we can do, please let us know. All our thoughts are with you the now.

Love from Derek and Jean and all the family

One thing you can be sure, it’s the women that have written them. Nay chance any of this coming from the husbands. All our thoughts are with you the now. No that it should be but, no that it should be. It was the same story earlier: the women all hats and hands and kind words while the husbands stood in beside them, cloyed up. He would’ve been the same but. No denying it. Silent, listening politely while Cathy said everything that was needed. These were men like him, guys he’d worked with, easier with steel sparks showering on top their head and their mate pattering bullshit in their ear. You can’t blame them. As natural to them, a funeral, as redundancy. And the response aye the same: straight to the bar, boys.

‘I was talking to Claire,’ Robbie says. ‘You know, was with Maw at the store?’

‘I mind her, aye.’

‘She was saying how bad they all took it when they heard. Says the place hasn’t been the same the last year.’ He looks round at the living room door and says in a quieter voice, ‘She couldn’t understand Lynn’s stupid finger food either. Serious, what was all that about?’

‘I missed out on it.’ He takes a peg from the box and looks up at Robbie. ‘They’re trying to help, Rob, that’s all.’

‘Come off it, Da. Mozzarella fucking parcels? In the Empress? Fuck off. There was a whole black bag left afterwards at their end of the table.’

True enough. He’d actually watched Desmond clearing it out afterwards, when everyone had went. A quick sniff and a nibble of Lynn’s various parcels, weighing up the resale possibilities, before dumping them in the bag.

Mick had kept himself in with the main group, huckled together at one end of the spread by the sausage rolls and the cheese sandwiches, Robbie and his wife either side of him like a pair of minders. Craig keeping to himself, away in a corner. Truth be told, he wouldn’t’ve objected trying one of Lynn’s mozzarella parcels, but it would have meant going over the other side of the table, where Alan and Lynn were holding court with the rest of Cathy’s family. Most of they lot he hadn’t even seen since the wedding; so you’re talking thirty-five years ago. And that’s the ones that came. Some of these he’d probably never clapped eyes on in his life. He’d gave a bye to the idea of going over. Leave that lot to themselves, he thought.

It was only the weans, scootling about the place, who moved between the two groups. And the brother-in-law, of course. Man of the people Alan there, he didn’t miss his opportunity to introduce himself. Heartfelt greetings to the ones he knew – quite a few of them from back in the day in the yards – never mind it was him who’d bloody laid them off. Christsake. Smiling away there. No hard feelings, eh? We didn’t want to do it but see that was the times, there was no choice.

Mick had made sure to keep his distance. Took himself away for a pee when it looked one moment Alan was coming over to speak to him. When he’d closed the lavvy door behind, he saw that Desmond had gave a proper clean in there. There were toilet rolls stacked in the windowsill, and he’d moved the rotten rolled carpet that used to be outside the window. The blockages cleared from the urinals. A few extra pineapple-soap chunks. Strange how it goes but that was probably the only moment all day when he was close to greeting, when he saw that. He stood there a moment after he’d finished peeing and for a few seconds just, something got hold of him and it was an effort to stop the tears coming on. This pure strong feeling that you could only describe as utter gratefulness toward the guy because he’d cleaned out his toilets.

When he came back out, the brother-in-law had moved away, his big broad shape over on the other side of the room, doing the rounds. He was like a politician. Getting into the group at the bar, shaking hands, making sure everybody knew it was him had paid for it all.

Robbie is looking at him. ‘It wasn’t on either’ – he jerks his head at the wall – ‘that speech of his.’

Mick doesn’t respond. He pegs up another card, overlapping them as they get near the end of the corridor.

‘He barely mentioned you. Craig and me, sure, but anybody could’ve listened to that and thought you and Maw had never met – that she’d lived her whole life up in the Highlands with the sons of fucking lairds chasing after her. She’d have skelped him, if she’d heard it.’

He goes in the box for one of the last tree pegs. He isn’t getting into this the now. No with the guy sat there in the next room. He keeps quiet, and the two of them get on with the job in silence a while.

‘Sorry, Da, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just, mean, he’s a bloody blowhard.’

‘Robbie.’

‘I know, sorry.’

They have done along both sides of the corridor. There is a small stretch just, by the living room door, left to fill.

‘I’ll put these up in the kitchen somewhere,’ Robbie says, holding up his last handful. He walks off, and Mick stands a few seconds looking down the two lines of cards. The sound of the television gets louder, fades away again. There are two cards next to each other, he notices, identical. Foggy flowers in a vase. Intrigued a moment, he steps forward to get a look who they’re from.

Pete and Mary; Don and Sheila. He must have opened these cards himself sometime over the last few days, but he hadn’t took full notice of the names. Both couples were there the day. There hadn’t been much chance to talk but it was good to see them. Familiar faces. The men bloodshot and bald the now but aye familiar. He sees Pete now and then because they stay no that far away still, but Don, he couldn’t have seen him in twenty years. Twenty-one, in fact. He can mind fine well actually the last time he saw him: they were in the Empress, the same stools they’d been stuck to for months, fuck this, fuck that, fuck the brother-in-law, fuck Thatcher, fuck the dunny money, bastards. But they’d took their dunny money and by then they’d drunk most of it, and the last he saw of Don he was steamboats and drawling how him and the wife were moving out of the city. They were back the now, they told him. Found themselves a nice done-up flat in a tenement in Drumoyne, where the landlord wasn’t quite the robber their last one was.

The wives must have read about Cathy in the Southside News. Went to the Co and plumped for the same card. He imagines Mary and Sheila going in for it, putting it on the counter with a paper, pack of fags, Lotto ticket.

He gives Pete and Mary’s card a read:

Mick,

We were so very sorry to hear about Cathy. She was such a wee gem. I still mind fine well the launch days and the pair of us dressed up in our finest, and you and Pete three sheets to the wind! Pete is working on the crane at the old John Brown yard at the moment, of all places. I know the last year must have been very hard on you and the family, Mick. If there’s anything at all we can do,

All our best,
Pete and Mary

He smiles. She does go on, Mary. He puts the card back up on the ribbon. He’s heard about the crane. Turned into a visitor centre. He’s seen it lit up pink and red at night a couple of times when he’s been over near Clydebank. The last he knew, they were talking about putting a restaurant in the jib and making it revolve. He’d read that in the paper. It was part of a project to represent the industrial heritage of the area. A revolving pink restaurant. You’ve got to wonder how they dream these things up. And see the view? That’s one thing for starters they’ll have to change. All very well getting the full panorama but if all you’re looking out on is a puddled wasteland every direction – gangs of weans playing football and smoking, pigeons roosting and crapping over the rusted fabrication sheds – it isn’t going to make your mozzarella parcels taste much the better, is it?

In the kitchen Robbie has put up the cards on top of the microwave. He takes the last lot out of Mick’s hand and arranges them in with the others. Through the wall, next door’s baby is wailing. Mick leans against the counter and looks out the window at the back garden, the tubs of flowers that have gone thin and yellow, overgrown.

‘Don’t feel ye’ve got to stay, Robbie,’ he says.

‘We’ll stay as long as we can, it’s no bother. Anyway, Christ, we’ve come that far, there’s no point us leaving yet.’

‘I know that. But Jenna will want to get back soon. It’s no right spending too long away when they’re that age.’

‘He’s fine at his grannie’s. Knowing Jenna’s maw, she’s probably teaching him how to make homebrew or go tracking through the bush.’ He balances the last card on top of the microwave. ‘Anyway, we’re not leaving you on your own with the Highlanders.’ He is grinning. ‘How long do they plan stopping, you know?’

He’s about to tell him he isn’t sure, they haven’t said, but just then the sound of the television comes loudly from the corridor. There are footsteps, which pause a moment, then continue toward the kitchen. Craig comes in the room without speaking or looking at either of them, and opens the fridge. He crouches, looking inside the door, but he obvious can’t find what he wants and starts moving aside the packs of sausages on the bottom shelf.

‘After a beer, son?’

He doesn’t reply. Keeps looking, next shelf up.

‘They’re in the carrier on the side here, if ye are.’

He gets up, giving a quick look at the cards on the microwave. Then he goes for a can out of the bag over by where Robbie is standing.

‘Thanks,’ he says, snapping the can open as he leaves the room.

He wakes and looks out the window at the dark. A few wee lights on in a few distant multis. It’s awful warm but. He considers a moment getting out of the bed to open a window, and stays a while trying to work up the energy to go do it, but in the end he gives it a miss and stays put where he is. Ye buried the wife today. She died, and ye buried her. Somehow it’s no registering. He repeats it to himself a few times, but it’s as though the words don’t make sense, he can’t get understanding them. What he feels instead is the same as he felt the day last week the hospital telephoned to say she’d passed away. Relief, is what it is. It is a relief the funeral’s over, that it’s went off okay; Craig didn’t put the mix in; he doesn’t have to talk to Alan about arrangements any more. He doesn’t have to imagine her in another bed somewhere while he’s lying here. Course there’s other things he could be imagining but they’re so far off seeming real they’re out in fucking hyperspace. He turns over, sticky, heavy and sticky. It was hot the day too. Obvious enough they were all sweaty and tickling in their hats and their suits, but what can you do – it’s a funeral.

He kept off saying it earlier, but he’s really hoping Robbie and Jenna will stay a while longer before they disappear back to Australia. That he won’t be left alone with these more testy elements of the household. Although surely the Highlanders won’t be here much longer. There’s nothing for them to do now that the funeral is over, and there’s nay danger Lynn is wanting to stop around enjoying the luxuries. Craig – that’s another story. And not one that he’s too keen sharing, that’s clear enough. He’s here the now because Robbie’s told him he has to be here, and probably he’ll be away as soon as Robbie’s gone. No that Yoker is the other side of the world, but the way he’s acting it’s fine well possible that it’ll be Robbie that’s back here again first. He needs to talk with him. Go for a drink. Find out what’s going on in that brainbox of his. They both of them need to do that. And if they do, maybe best for his own part swerving the fact he’s no greeted once since she died; that all he can think is: it’s a relief, and when are all of these lot going to get out of the house.

2

The multis stand solid in a row like a picket line, looking down over the red tenement streets filing toward the Clyde. From up on the seventeenth storey, the view’s a beauty. You can see the glimmering glass roof of the Botanical Gardens north of the river. Kelvingrove Park. The Exhibition Centre’s silver armadillo. And further on, the skyline of the Campsie Fells, keeping the city in. Joe doesn’t much look out at these things though. If he’s looking out, it’ll be at Ibrox. The ground’s a few minutes’ walk from the multi just. On match days, he can see the supporters coming in from all around, crowds growing on the pavements outside the pubs, pouring in through the streets.

This morning but he’s having a see out the window as the sun comes up. Watching the dismal light peter in through the streets that run straight lines toward the river, bending only where they have to go around the stadium, or broken where they’ve took out the tenements and no got round to replacing them. By the river, there’s the twinkling new apartment blocks at Glasgow Harbour, the dry ski centre, and down the water, the shipyards, what’s left of them. Govan, this near side; Scotstoun, across the water. From where he is, he can just make out the top of HMS Defender, sat at her berth at Govan. She looks from up here like an Airfix model, with her miniature gun and helicopter pad on the flight deck. That’s where Joe is headed, the light nearly up now and him away out the flat, clicking shut the front door to go pick up Suggie.

It is six o’clock. There’s never anybody about in the building now except for one queer old ticket he sees on the stair sometimes, who gets up to give his dog a walk. It isn’t so bad, this time in the morning. He’s tired, but it’s fine. The back shift is the one that kills him. He presses the button and the lift doors are straight open. They cleaned it out a week or two ago, so it’s no bogging like it was, but it’s been wrote on already. CUNT, one wall says, nice and simple. He gets out on the ninth floor and goes toward Suggie’s.

He chaps the door. There’s a light on underneath. A good sign. He’s tired enough himself this time the morning, but he’s pure sparkling compared to Suggie. There’s times he’ll be banging five minutes before there’s any answer, and a couple of mornings he’s resorted to giving it a wee clang with the fire extinguisher off the wall fixing. The door’s looked better, in truth. Today though Suggie opens it on the second knock. He’s in his pants still, but he’s up.

‘Come in, mate.’

Joe follows him in and sits on the settee while Suggie goes in the bedroom to get dressed. The television is on and he looks at it without paying much attention. There’s a fair number of empty cans about, on the table, over the floor. Suggie must’ve had some mates round. No the less, he’s dressed quick enough, appearing at the bedroom door in a couple of minutes, red eyes, grinning, his yellow helmet in his hand.

‘Right, we off, well?’

Once onto the street the two apprentices get making their way briskly through the crisp cool morning toward the yard. They go over Saturday’s match again, a couple of times, but most of the way they walk without talking. The roads are near deserted. A few cars. The old boy from their block, coming back with his dog. They give him a nod.

It wasn’t always like this, course. Their fathers and their grandfathers have shown them enough photographs – photographs there’s plenty of in the grand crumbling library they are walking past now – how it used to be. These same streets a hundred years ago, sixty, forty even, mobbed with hundreds of workers starting out for the day shift. Tired and quiet, like this pair, getting moving. The noise of boots on the road, the hooter about to sound up the way and signal the start of work. The occasional wife in a tenement window in her nightdress, watching her man off, and him finding his way into his own team, grouping up as they move on – riveters, caulkers, blacksmiths, the welders clear visible in their spotted hats and their leathers, boilermakers, platers – the whole black squad marching on up the road. And at the back, the apprentices, pishing about.

A different story the now. Two lads in blue overalls walking through the empty streets like a pair of convicts who’ve just survived the end of the world; passing by the primary school, the park, the red-stone tenements, and the terraces of grey pebble-dash houses with their wee patches of front garden.

One of these, the grass growing longer than its neighbours, has a great flash Saab parked bold as day out the front. Inside, Mick is listening to the brother-in-law snoring loudly through the wall. He’s put them in the boys’ old room, so they will be lying there asleep across the way from each other, the two beds having been pushed years ago as far apart as possible. The sound he’s making, Alan must be on this side closest to himself. If there’d been anywhere else to put them, he’d have put them there, but there wasn’t, simple as that. So they’ll have to put up with it just, staying in a weans’ room. Nothing has changed in there since Robbie was eighteen and he moved to Australia – it’d hardly changed in fact for a long time before that – the opposing walls still covered with football stickers and Blu-Tack scabs, a great worn circle of carpet between the two beds, faded from years of board games and fighting.

He turns over, toward the window. The snoring unrelenting. Christsake. The man can’t keep quiet even when he’s asleep.

Down the stair in the living room, Robbie will be slumbering on the floor with an arm curled around the wife. They are on a pile of stale brown blankets Robbie found from somewhere. No that they two mind. They don’t. They’re fine. On the other side of the room the older brother lying there in his sleeping bag and his legs poking out from the end of the settee. Thinking his thoughts. Thinking his thoughts and keeping the lot of them to himself.

The truth is, it is good of the Highlanders to have come. They could have drove down for the funeral and then been away back to their lochside and their mighty brick stronghold and that would’ve been that, never to be seen again. They don’t have to be here. It is Alan’s choice that they are. That’s obvious enough, the way she pinpricks around the house. The peeved squeezed eyeballs every time she gets inspecting a piece of cutlery or a glass out the cupboard. Go on, well, Lynn, what is it ye think, eh? Because ye’re no making it quite clear enough with the subtle facial movements there. Ye think it’s a dump, eh? Well go on, then, and get to fuck why don’t ye?

The snoring has stopped. For a few minutes, the house is peaceful. A thin shaft of light is through the curtains, falling on the carpet at the bottom of the bed. After a while though, the snoring starts up again, quiet at first, then gaining force. See another way you could look at it: he’s retired a long while the now, so an event like this isn’t exactly getting in the way of things for them. They can make space for times like this. Births, deaths, the graduation of the miraculous son, no able sadly to make it yesterday because he’s over in America, making his millions, how lovely for him.

As well, their summer holiday is by. A trip to France this year, cycling round the vineyards and taking photos of each other in food markets examining the local sausagemeats. He shouldn’t be so hard on them. It can’t be easy of course for the brother-in-law either, let’s no forget, the responsibility he’s got to shoulder. The responsibility he’s aye got to shoulder.

Mick gets out of bed. It’s early still and everyone else will be asleep, but he goes in the bathroom to wash his face, puts on a short-sleeve shirt and trousers, and steps down to the kitchen. He checks in the cupboard to see if there’s any bread left, but it’s been finished, so he closes the cupboard door and sits down at the table, looking out the window, where a wee disappointed sparrow is hopping about the grass wondering how there’s nay food put out for him these days.

So this is grief, well. Sat at the kitchen table with all your joys and your miseries sleeping and snoring about you and you sat there wondering what to do for your breakfast. Maybe it’s by, maybe that’s it, he’s gone through ten months already and the moment when she’s dead actually marks the end of it because she’s gone now, she’s no laid there dying in front of him one day to the next. It’s over. He’d greeted back then, alright, when they’d been told. On his own, or the pair of them together sat clutching to each other at this same table. That day the doctor phoned them up and asked could they both please come in to see him. The X-ray results were returned. It wasn’t her back. Pleural mesothelioma. A total whiteout of her left lung. A year, maybe, at the most. He closes the eyes and tries picturing her, her face, before that, while she looked healthy still. It’s a blank but, the brain doesn’t want to go there, so he sits with the eyes closed just. A moment of peace. You keep on. What else can you do? You keep on.

Down on the floor by the bin he notices a box of cereal. He picks it up, gets himself a bowl and shakes out the last flakes and the sawdust from the bag inside. The Highlanders are going the messages later, they announced last night, so there will be plenty enough food for them all soon enough, even the wee chap outside, given up and flown off the now. It’ll be organic, course, but such is life, eh. Him and the sparrow aren’t complaining.

Above his head, somebody is walking about. He puts the box back by the bin and gets the kettle on, returns to his seat at the table. And again, the same thought that keeps coming back: he is alive. He’s the picture of bloody health sat at the kitchen table. The floor creaks again above his head. And no just him as well, still alive.

That evening they all sit in the living room with the television on, eating the spaghetti Bolognese that Lynn has made. Everybody agrees it is good and tasty, except for Lynn, who says it should have garlic and it should have tomato purée and it should have whatever else in it. She hadn’t thought to get these things when she was in the supermarket. If she’d known there was none in the house she would have bought them. She isn’t acting it there; they’ve bought no end of other unnecessary stuff. Parmesan, wine vinegar, three different kinds of bread. It must have cost a fortune. When they arrived back and got everybody outside helping unload the dozens of carriers from the boot, he and Robbie gave each other a look over the top of the car, the meaning of which was clear enough. How long do they think they’re staying? They then proceeded to organize the putting away of the messages, cheerily deciding what was to go where, chucking out whatever dregs or no-good-enoughs were already on the shelves, as if by buying in all this better class of groceries, the kitchen was now theirs to do with as they wished.

The news is on. They sit watching and eating in quiet. It is the fifth night now Robbie and Jenna have brought through the chairs from the kitchen so they can all be in here, and they are in the habit already of keeping to the same seats. Alan and Lynn take the settee and, opposite, Mick sits between Robbie and his wife, the three of them sat close together like a row of naughty schoolweans sent to the headmaster’s office. Craig is over in the armchair by the window, the head down, concentrating on his plate.

‘It’s some place now, the shopping centre at Braehead,’ says Alan, setting his empty plate on the carpet in front of him. ‘All new stores since we were last down there.’

The three of them look up and agree.

‘I suppose it will be,’ Mick says. ‘I never go.’

‘It’s a great M&S,’ says Lynn. ‘Two levels, and a decent café. We stopped in for a sandwich when we’d done. And there’s a dry ski slope down there now, I couldn’t believe it. You should go over there and take a look, Mick.’

The weather comes on. It has been record temperatures for August, the guy says, and September is going to continue the same. Mick minds the time Cathy went down to the M&S, and what she’d thought about it, coming home with a single carrier of potatoes and mince. She wasn’t impressed. It’s too bloody expensive, was the verdict.

‘You’ve seen the new apartments at Glasgow Harbour as well, have you?’ Robbie says after a while, looking at Lynn.

‘Yes. You pointed them out, didn’t you, Alan? Very modern. About time they made more use out of all those dead areas along the river.’

‘You think?’ Robbie says, putting in a mouthful of Bolognese.

‘I do,’ Jenna breaks in, likely sensing Robbie’s mood. ‘Better developing than leaving it a wasteland.’

‘There you are, then, Da. You should get one. You could have a wee balcony to sit on and look out over the water.’

Jenna gives Robbie a look, which because they are sat so close is right in Mick’s face.

‘There’s no point leaving it to decay like it has been. Those cranes, and the berths all crumbling. It’s not safe, for one thing. You’re just being a mule, Robbie, you know it.’

He is feeling uncomfortable, these two starting to argue around him. He gets off his seat. Plus he needs to go up and check how much is in his wallet, to give toward the messages. As he leaves, he starts picking up the empty plates from the floor. Jenna is immediately helping him, reaching down for the Highlanders’ plates before he has the chance. Maybe it isn’t on purpose, but you never know. She’s sensitive to things, Jenna; she knows the score.

In the kitchen they stack the plates by the sink. They’re about to turn and go out when she presses her hand gently on top of his on the counter.

‘You’re pretty quiet today, Mick. How are you?’

‘Coping on, I suppose.’

She smiles. ‘It can’t be easy, not when there’s’ – she raises the eyebrows a little – ‘a houseful.’

He feels awkward, their hands touching there like that. Guilty, somehow, daft as it is.

‘You shouldn’t feel afraid to talk to these boys, you know. Even Craig. He’s grieving, that’s why he’s being like he is.’

He tries to smile. She’s a good girl, Jenna. Cathy was aye fond of her. She’s down the line, is what it is. Honest. She’s like Robbie that way, only less of the argle-bargle tendencies.

‘It isnae that simple. He blames me.’

‘He shouldn’t. He’s being selfish.’

‘Aye, well. Maybe.’ He looks away down the corridor. ‘He keeps it inside himself. It was his maw he talked to.’

‘Bulldust. You’re here. And Robbie. He can talk to you.’

She takes her hand away.

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s see how the party’s going.’

‘Okay. I’ll be through in a moment, I’m going the toilet just.’

He goes upstairs to the bedroom. A ten-pound note, plus a bit of smash, it’s all he’s got on his tail. He can’t offer that. If he gets up early again in the morning, maybe, he can nick out to the cash machine before any the rest of them are up. See what’s in the account, then give Alan his share when he gets back. He’ll tell him later the night that’s what he’s doing.

It’s no exactly cheery, the mood in the living room. They’re all sat there in the same positions, the television noisily on in the corner. It’s like walking into a hospital waiting room, a bunch of edgy strangers pretending they’re interested in the telly adverts – see maybe what he should do is bring in some old magazines for them to have a rummle through, distract themselves with the horoscopes and out-of-date TV listings.

He takes his seat. Looks around the room. Jesus. How long is this going to go on?

Jenna speaks. ‘When are you back at the garage, Craig?’

They all turn to look at him. He keeps his eyes on the television.

‘Don’t know yet. Couple days. Depends how much is booked in.’

‘Will you stay here or go back to your flat?’

‘Go back. Too far to travel in from here.’

She doesn’t push him. That’s clear enough all he’s going to say on the subject, and the room is silent again as they get back to their television watching. A quiz show. Two families in Englandshire competing one against the other for the incredible cash prize. A bald proud uncle with the spotlight on him now, chosen as the family expert on geography matters. A bit of patter with the show host as the countdown appears in the corner of the screen. Are you feeling confident? he gets asked. He is. It’s his favourite category on the Trivial Pursuits at Christmas. Wee smiles along the family row.

It is the television that has become the centre of their movements. Up until yesterday it was Cathy. Her bed on the ward, when it had just been Robbie and Jenna here in the house, and then when she went, the arrival of the Highlanders and all the funeral arrangements to be sorted: undertakers, cemetery, wake spread; GP, register office, council. Now that it’s all finished though, there’s nothing for them to do but stick the TV on. Fact is, if it was to stop working they would be royally fucked. Or go home, maybe. He gives a keek over at Craig. He’s sat with the arms folded, no expression, just staring. Don’t come near me, is what he’s saying. Don’t come near me or I’ll stiffen ye. He needs to get a moment to speak to him, Jenna is right about that. He’ll be away without a word otherwise and then Christ knows what happens after that. Silence, probably.

He has brought it on himself but, he knows it fine well. No like he’s made such a big effort to talk to the boy; ever, actually. All they years of sitting in the living room when Craig’s come round to visit, leaving him and his maw to have their patter in the kitchen. It adds up sooner than you’d think, all that time. You start no to see that she’s the one holding it together, and that without her, what kind of a relationship is there between you? Plus as well the boy as good as thinks that he killed her, which could prove a wee conversational stumbling block.

Alan gets up, asking if anybody is wanting anything from the kitchen. He goes out the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. In a moment – during which the bald uncle gets the spotlight took off him having pure disgraced himself as the family expert on geography matters – Mick follows him. He steps in the lobby just as Lynn is reminding everybody that she had known two of the answers.

Alan is bent inside the fridge. Mick comes in the room and he glances up at him as he pulls out a bottle of wine and sticks it on the counter.

‘Would you like a glass, Mick?’

‘I’m okay, thanks. No much of a wine drinker.’ He stays by the counter, shuffling the great dump of post into more of a tidy pile.

Alan fetches himself a glass from the cupboard, pulls open a drawer for the corkscrew and gets opening his wine. Mick loiters over in the corner. He feels like a bloody houseguest. Alan takes a sip of wine and puts the bottle back in the fridge.

‘You get to many Rangers games these days, Mick?’

‘No much. Cathy being ill, it’s –’

‘No, sorry, I don’t imagine you have.’

He has another drink of his wine. Mick fingers the envelopes. In truth, it’s almost ten years, after Robbie left, since he was going to the games. And as well the season ticket increases. He slots the post in by the mini television. That’s another thing will need seeing to before long. Brown envelopes. Some of these are from the same senders. Council. Housing Association. Her name is still on most of them. What happens about that, well? Is it the register office that wires it to all the relevant parties? Your computer tells my computer that such and such is to be wiped from the account. See the way it is with these bastards though, you more likely have to tell them yourself. Ten minutes waiting on the line to tell some poor bored hen in a call centre in East Kilbride that you want to advise a change in circumstances: I’m just ringing up to inform ye that my wife’s died. Duly noted, Mr Little, I’ll log it in the system for you.

Alan is staring away into the dark outside the window, drinking his wine. Then he turns round to him.

‘How’s work these days?’

There’s a genuine unexpected topic of conversation between the two of them.

‘It’s a while since I’ve been driving, actually.’

‘When do you think you might go back?’

‘Well, I don’t know. Soon enough. They said take as long as I want.’

‘That’s good of them.’

‘Well. See they’re no too busy.’

He should have said about the money earlier. Quick and simple.

‘You know, Mick, you mustn’t think that Cathy’s family aren’t here for you. They are. It’s been hard for everybody.’

‘I’m sure it has.’

‘It’s a really tough blow.’ He makes it sound like a post office closure. ‘You know any time you want to come up and stay at ours you’re more than welcome. Have some dinner. Go out on the boat.’

‘Right, thanks.’

Alan is stroking the stem of his wine glass. He turns again to look out at the small crap garden.

‘Look, all this shopping,’ Mick begins. ‘Will ye let me give you something for it?’

Alan turns toward him. ‘No, Mick, you don’t need to.’

‘No, I will. I won’t have us not paying our way.’ He glances up the corridor to the living room door, as though he’s been sent to represent the others, the family shop steward.

‘I won’t take it. It came to a lot, anyway. I wouldn’t want you to.’

‘Wait here a moment just, will ye?’ He leaves Alan fingering his wine glass while he goes from the room.

When he returns, Alan is stood where he was.

‘Here.’ He holds out the crumpled tenner. ‘I’m going the cash machine in the morning, but here’s this for now.’

The brother-in-law looks at the note a moment. ‘Okay, then, Mick.’ With a slow movement, he takes it from him. ‘Thank you.’

He puts his glass down on the side and takes his wallet out the trouser pocket. As he flips it open, slipping the note in the back, there’s an identity card, the top of his head poking out of one of the slots. A company card. How’s he still carrying one of those? He’s retired more than five years now. They must have kept him on, well – a consultant or something. An adviser. What I advise you is this: we’ve no enough orders for new ships and the yard isn’t making enough profit, so get out the dunny money packets and lay the buggers off.

He is picking up his glass, and walks by Mick to the door. ‘There’s beers in the fridge if you want one,’ he says over the shoulder.

Mick watches him away, the cards down the corridor flapping in the draught as his great back moves past them.

He stays in the kitchen a while, staring down toward the lobby. Then he opens the fridge and gets out a can. He drinks half of it in a single drain. Puts it down and wipes his lips.

Wanker.

3

It is hot and he can’t sleep. The alarm clock across the way getting on for three o’clock. It’s been pure stifling like this the last few nights and by now the heat is gathered in the upstairs rooms, no wind to blow it out. Earlier, Robbie and Jenna had went for a bit of air before bed, and came back saying it’s near as muggy outside as it is in. Then Craig went out too, on his own, as he’d done the other nights. To the pub; you could smell it on him when he got back in. Mick had waited up after the others were away to their beds, but Craig was later back than usual, and in the end he decided it felt the wrong moment and he gave it a swerve.

He gets up and opens the other window. No difference. He leaves it open anyway and climbs back in the bed. She wouldn’t’ve let him have it open. Breeze or no breeze. She hated a chill that much, grumbling on next to him with the covers pulled up to her chin, cauled tight around her. A soft familiar lump there in the bed. He stares at the alarm clock, waiting for the minute to switch over. This room, it’s no like the other rooms. She has a say here still: the mirror with its collection of receipts and holiday competition cuttings wedged in the frame; the clutter of magazines by the wall; the electric heater on the other side of the bed with its broken outer bars.

He gets up again and goes out the room, needing the toilet. Afterwards, he goes down into the kitchen, where he turns the mini television on quiet, sits down at the table. Another quiz show. A young girl hosting it. She’s got on this lunatic smile as she picks up the phone, waiting for the caller to guess the blank. The first word is Iron. The guy on the line seems pretty sure he’s got it. ‘Statue,’ he says. The girl turns to look at the giant screen behind her in mock excitement. ‘Let’s see if it’s there … No!’ She slaps her thigh. ‘Not this time, Terry.’

It’s fair obvious the people ringing up to do this at half three in the morning are either blootered or they’re no the full ticket. The next one, a shrill woman called Christie, could be either way. ‘Is it board?’ she asks. It isn’t. ‘Unlucky, Christie. Better luck next time.’ There is what looks like a flicker of desperation on the girl’s face. I hope they pay ye well for this, hen. He turns it off and gets up to go back to bed.

3.54. The alarm clock, that’s her as well. She’d got it years ago with his saved-up petrol coupons from the cab. He knocked it on the floor a couple of days ago when he was tidying up the things on her table, and the plug came out. Setting the time and date again proved a complete impossibility – he’s never all these years figured out how the thing works – and so for the past two nights the alarm has come on at some point in the early hours. Both times, it took him bloody ages working out which button shuts it up, and then he spent what was left of last night finally fixing it out: time, date, bastard thing. No that he was that put out, in truth. He was awake anyway.

He moves himself over the other side of the bed. He may as well have stayed put in the kitchen. Given a call in to the show. Iron Age. Iron Lady. A look of pure relief on the girl that she’s no the only sane person up the night. Down there in the kitchen, the living room too, the things are things just, she isn’t present in them. Hard to say how that is when it’s her that bought most of it but that’s how it feels, unlike up here in this room. He’s surrounded by her here, but he isn’t a part of it himself. It is strange, the other side of the bed. Unknown lumps and bumps of wiring poking up at the mattress. He’s got a queer awareness of what it would have felt like for her, on her side. He lies a while longer, staring at the alarm clock, until, at the back of five, he gets out of bed and lays down on the floor next to it, pulling the covers down over him.

There is a toilet roll under the bed. A pair of broken sunglasses. He should give a clean under there, he gets thinking as finally he starts to drift off. Add that to the list.

4

A cemetery worker is busy sweeping along a flagstone path, collecting up the dirt into a wheelbarrow. He has seen the man there by his wife’s grave each of the last few days: he comes in the morning and stands there a long time, staring down at the ground. Obvious that he’s having a hard time of it, and so he makes sure to keep his distance now as he gets about clearing the path and tidying the area around a plot he’s to measure and mark later the morning.

He has seen the rest of the family here as well. They come all at different times; even before the service, he knows from his manager that there’d been some difficulties with the arrangements. A guy that it seems is the brother of the deceased comes with his wife, and they stay a short time rearranging the flowers; the son with the queer accent, he gets here after lunch and stays holding his partner’s hand; and then the older son comes after the others have gone. He’s always the one that stays the longest. Yesterday, he was sat on the grass next to the grave almost the whole afternoon, getting a book out at one point and just staying there reading.

He pushes the wheelbarrow off down the lawn to the store room, where he puts it away with the broom and the shovel. He fills a bucket with water and takes a stiff brush, a pair of black rubber gloves and a container of solvent from a shelf, then he goes out of the store and down toward the road. The cemetery wall has been defaced again – K.A.H., it reads, sprayed in large black lettering over the concrete – and he kneels down on the pavement to get scrubbing at it with the thick creamy solvent. From where he is, he can just about see the grey head of the man, grieving beside his wife’s grave. Poor guy. There had been kind of an awkward atmosphere after the service, and it’s a fair guess the family relationship’s no the best. Always politics somewhere. He was in the yards, this one, according to his manager. That whole length of path is lined with the names of yardmen, copped their whack before their time. A whole shop floor under that lawn, he’d heard the registrar say a while back, and it would be true enough, except that so many of them are the wives and weans. He keeps on scouring the wall a few more minutes – it doesn’t get rid of it, but it’s the best he can do, the solvent and then the sun beating down on it between now and when it gets painted over at the end of the summer. When he’s done, he picks up the bucket and container and walks back through the cemetery, passing the man, who is stood now by the black iron palings on the other side of the grave, gazing down.

Mick is reading the tags on the flower bouquets. There’s a new big bunch from the Highlanders that they must have got in the Marks and Spencer. A smaller one from Pete and Mary. He puts the tags back as they were, and gets ready to leave. The first few times he’s come here, he’s stayed almost an hour, looking down at the mound of not yet sunken earth. He tries to imagine her. It’s no easy but. Each time, he ends up standing there just, trying to feel that she’s there, trying to see her face, but it’s no happening, is the truth – he may as well be stood staring at a car engine for all the closeness he’s getting.

Maybe when the headstone is up, it will feel different. Although even that hadn’t been without its difficulties. It was him that gave the inscription for it; Alan had paid. The only thing they’d went halves on was the coffin. When they were in the funeral director’s, Mick had called for a modest and simple box, saying that it was what she would have wanted, although of course he knew fine well that if she had any say in it she would have gone for the most expensive one in the shop. He turns to leave, looking down at the space next to her as he moves off, lush and well tended, the stalks of the flower bunches resting down over it, like she’s saving a seat for him on the bus.

The Highlanders are in the kitchen when he gets back, one of them carefully monitoring the grill and the other holding a saucepan.

‘Craig about?’ he asks, his head through the doorway. Sausage and beans, it looks like.

‘In the bathroom, I think,’ says Lynn. ‘You ready for some breakfast?’

‘Aye, thanks,’ he says, eyeing the sausages as she gets turning them over. ‘I’ll be through in a minute.’

He goes up and waits just inside the bedroom, hoping to catch Craig as he comes past. But when the bathroom door clicks and he makes his move, it is Robbie that is stepping out. They stop there a moment on the stairhead.

‘Been the grave?’

‘Aye, I’m just back.’

‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine, Rob, thanks.’

In the kitchen, he and Robbie get themselves a plate of breakfast from the dishes on the table and go through to the living room, where the others are already eating.

Robbie and Jenna have booked their flights, they say. Monday morning. There’s a stop-off in Hong Kong, and they could’ve arranged to stay a night, but they’re wanting to get back to the baby. At the mention of this, Lynn gets telling the story of their own trip to India a couple of years ago: how the flight was a nightmare and the locals pack into the trains like pilchards, and there’s cows in the road but if you hire a driver he won’t even pamp the horn at them. Mick’s not much interested in another of Lynn’s stories; he’s thinking instead how he’s going to manage taking Craig aside. His best bet, he knows, is when the house is quieter, that’s obvious enough, while the Highlanders are off on one of their visits to the Botanic Gardens or the Tenement House. He’ll have to wait just, bide his time. Chin him before he goes visiting the grave.