She let the curtain roll back, tensed in her chair, gripping the wheels, suddenly feeling like the girl running through the corn. Her husband got the awkward chord change and the tuneless song went on.
JO AND WALTER HAD walked the same route every Sunday, around midnight, except when on holiday and the twelve weeks when Jo was off with her new hip. They sauntered mostly together, side by side, chatting and watchful. They looked like any other old couple, maybe a bit incongruous out on the streets of Glasgow in the witching hour; Walter with his thick anorak zipped up to his neck, a scarf tucked in to keep out the chill. Jo wore a navy-blue coat that nearly reached her ankles but it did keep the cold away from her hips. Their faith and their uniform were both worn quietly, their belief more obvious in their compassion.
Over the years they knew who was on the street, who would be in what doorway, who might need feeding, who might kick-off, who was new and who might be saved in the Lord’s eyes. Nobody was beyond redemption. But mostly, they sought out those who might be in need of a kind word and a bowl of soup, if not the loaves and fishes of the Lord himself. Though, they both hoped, that would come later.
Big Smout McLaughlin sometimes joined them. He was an enigma of Glasgow city centre. Tall, thin with chiselled features, articulate and well educated. They wondered, but never asked, why he chose to sleep in an alley at the back of the sheriff court. Sometimes he would come to the soup kitchen with a young one in tow, showing them there was always someplace to go if it got too scary out on the street. Smout McLaughlin had only ever stayed in the night shelter himself once in the twenty years he had been living rough and that was because of a vile chest infection. Jo reckoned he had somewhere to go when he needed, a safe haven tucked in his back pocket somewhere. To Jo, the maths was simple. People didn’t last twenty years on the streets of Glasgow; pneumonia, sepsis or more recently TB would take their toll. All on the backdrop of the chilling wind and the damp, damp air that picked off the weak.
On this bitter November evening Jo and Walter were heading east from George Square. They had walked the concourse of Queen Street train station, had a word with the transport police. All was good. Next stop was Buchanan Street bus station, the first stop for many of the throwaways and runaways finding refuge in the cold, hard streets of Glasgow, or as their overnight stop on the way down south, to the colder, harder streets of London.
Walter adjusted the holdall he carried over his shoulder. It wasn’t heavy, just bulky. It contained a couple of clean blankets and about ten pairs of warm woolly socks. They were heading, vaguely, for a young lad living in a box outside the side door of the bus station. Until recently he had been overnighting on the ground floor of the multi-storey. That was highly prized territory in the depth of the winter. Last week, the boy had his cardboard boxes back out on the street, tucked underneath the overhang of the station roof. And he had a bruised, bloodied face and a red socket where a front tooth used to be.
Tonight they found him, nestled into his fleece against his flattened cardboard. It was three degrees outside, the boy didn’t have a pick on him. They woke him with a gentle prod, knowing that he would lash out before realising they were handing him a blanket. Then they gave him the socks, Walter handing them over one at a time trying to make some kind of human, and humane, contact, letting the eye connection last as long as possible.
The boy had woken up, flinching, his fist up ready but he didn’t pull away. Seeing the socks, he immediately kicked off his dirty soaking trainers, one toe pushing off the heel of the other. Even in the stink of the human waste in the alley, Jo could smell the stench of the boy’s feet from here. His toes were translucent grey, the skin round his toenails white and wrinkled, fisher-woman toes. There were deep dark tramlines where the seams of the socks had put pressure on the skin. She thought she could see the red puncture marks through the dirt in between the toes, but it was dark except for the overspill of lights from the concourse; maybe she was seeing what she expected to see. It wasn’t her place to judge. The boy pulled on a pair of fresh socks, then placed his foot on the ground, soaking the dry sock, then pulled on his trainers.
Walter was talking to him, taking a good look, thinking that he was in his late teens at the most. Jo stood back, pretending to give him space and remain unthreatening, but really keeping clear of the dreadful smell. Walter’s voice, friendly but not overly so, was telling the boy how close the soup kitchen was if he wanted something to eat, giving him rough, brief directions, before adding, if he couldn’t manage they did have a van and could collect him. The boy was ignoring him, going anywhere meant giving up his space under the overhang. He was too busy stuffing the other two pairs of dry socks into his pockets and down his trousers. They were a prize and he didn’t want them taken from him by unseen eyes watching from the dark.
Walter asked him if there was anything they could do for him. The boy looked blank. Even if he didn’t speak a word of English, as increasingly was the case, there tended to be some response. Those in the clutches of heroin tended ‘to roll’ as Walter put it. Cocaine addicts rarely stayed still enough to fall asleep but this boy gave a resentful closed look before he went back to his business with the socks, pulling back the cardboard bed into the shelter of the overhanging roof. Two sheets had worked their way out from the wall a few inches and were swelling with the rain.
The look was more than Walter had got the last time, and an inch was better than a mile in the right direction. A look, then a word, then a smile, then he would be looking out for Jo and Walter to come walking along the street. Then a conversation and information. Then the boy was not that far from being saved from the streets and hopefully safe in the arms of Jesus.
Jo and Walter walked away, saying goodbye, wishing the boy would shout at them to come back but he didn’t. Not this time.
Their next stop was usually the Heilandman’s Umbrella, a section of Argyle Street under the raised tracks of the railway.
The shops and pubs were busy with shoppers during the day and clubbers out on the bevvy at night, and with the homeless and the lawless in the small hours. They preferred to get covered in pigeon shit rather than the constant Glasgow rain. Jo and Walter had turned into Buchannan Street precinct when Smout appeared, out of nowhere. This time he had a saxophone as well as his rucksack, obviously been doing some busking.
‘How are you doing, my friends? Still doing the good work of the Lord?’
‘While there remains good work to be done? Of course.’ It was a familiar exchange.
Their conversation was light-hearted; Smout was not a lamb looking for a shepherd. He was more a collie looking after his flock.
He fell into stride with them both. ‘There’s a new one you might want to talk to, she’s hanging about the bottom of the Buchanan Galleries. Been there all evening, confused. Older, definitely older, and somebody has had a go at her already. And drunk, can’t get a word out of her, you’ll know by the smell, Eau De Thunderbird. See ya.’ And he nodded, slapping Jo gently on her back, walking his jaunty walk into the darkness of Dundas Lane, where he melted to invisibility, the smirr of rain swallowing him.
Walter consulted his watch and looked up as the rain started coming down in stair rods, jagged spears of orange in the street-light. A night bus crawled its way round Nelson Mandela place, windows steamed up, engine groaning slightly.
‘Shall we?’ asked Walter.
Jo nodded. There was only one thing more vulnerable than the young on the streets of a big city. The elderly.
Ten minutes later Jo and Walter found the woman huddled into the corner of the steps of the concert hall. Her dark blue jacket had the hood up over her head and pulled tight round her face in an attempt to keep the world out. It was Jo who approached this time; even from a distance she could smell the alcohol but as she got closer she could see the blood on the side of her cheek, dried in a leaf-like pattern. The woman looked up, then when she saw Jo looking at her hands, she looked down at them also.
Jo approached as if she was a frightened animal. It could be a mental health issue, she needed to be careful. Human bites could be very