The hissing came from the dark. “Fuck you. I know you are going to leave me. I’ve seen you making eyes at that Orange prick. I know that you are going to leave me to deal with her on my own.”
“Leek. Can you not stay in the light, where I can see you?”
“No. I like it over here.”
Catherine dried her hair on the coat sleeve and thought for a moment. She pushed back against the fear the neds had left inside her. “Shame, I’m here to take all my clothes off and wrestle a giant winged snake for you.”
He stepped from the darkness, shaking his head. “Dinnae bother. I prefer to draw bigger tits.”
Catherine flinched, but she said, “Use that imagination of yours.”
“I don’t have a pencil fine enough to render their intricate, miniatur-ey-alley-osity.”
They glowered at each other with serious expressions. Catherine made the dry boak face first and pretended to throw up all over the old man’s coat. Leek copied her, until they were swimming in imagined vomit. Catherine watched her brother’s shy smile return, and she thought how it was a shame he didn’t do that often enough any more. Leek caught her searching his face. “Take a picture, why don’t ye?”
Catherine tried to soften her gaze, afraid she might send him back into the shadows. “So did Mammy look in a fighting mood or more of a maudlin mood when you left her?”
He shrugged. “She was on the phone most of the day looking for Shug. I could just tell it was gonnae end badly.”
“How comes?”
“She was drinking like she wanted to get somewhere else.”
“Was she loud?”
He shook his head. “More sad than loud today.”
Catherine sighed. “Fuck. We’d better get back. I think there’s been some trouble.”
“No way. I stole enough food to stay here the night.” He was halfway back to the dark already.
“You’ll catch your death of cold.”
“Guid.”
“Come on, Leek. You’re a bit bloody old for a Wendy house.” It was a mean thing to say, and she knew she wouldn’t win if she continued in this way. Her brother had been gifted with legendary stubbornness; he just stared through you and floated away, leaving behind his frame to be pecked to pieces. Catherine didn’t want to face their mother alone. She did not want to walk back through the darkness without him. “Please. I came to get you. I didnae give your glue-sniffing pals a look up my skirt for nothing.” She bit her lip pitifully. “They have a fishing knife, Leek. They grabbed my tits.”
Leek looked very angry then. She was always scared and secretly delighted by the sudden force of his temper. It always came quietly and brutally, and the smallest slight could turn horseplay into horsepower. “Please.” Her arms went limp by her side in a gross pantomime of helplessness. Being pathetic was not in her true nature.
Leek went back into the dark corner of the cave and returned with his hooded anorak and the broken handle of a garden shovel. He turned it menacingly in his hands. He put out the smoky camping lamp, and together they climbed quietly back up the hole and out on top of the pallets. Leek slid the trapdoor shut, and they stood looking out over the glistening city below. It was beautiful. Catherine lifted her right hand and pointed into the darkness far beyond the orange city lights. “Leek. Do you see that o’er there?” she asked.
It was a line of emptiness on the horizon, black like the edge of nothing. He followed the line of her finger. “Nope.”
“There!” she said and pointed harder, as if this might help. “Look past Springburn and Dennistoun. Look past the very last scheme.”
“Caff! Just because you make your arm go stiff it doesn’t help me see any better. It’s pitch-black. There’s nothing there.”
“Exactly!” She considered this before lowering her finger and turning back towards the high-rise. “That’s where I overheard Shug say we were flitting to.”
Six
Agnes had lain with fits of coughing and hacking most of the night. Now the morning light that was pushing in through the curtainless window would give her no peace. She could no longer ignore the wet draught that was pushing into the room and down on to her clammy body. Opening her eyes, she searched the room feebly for a solution to this nuisance. Her eyes hadn’t expected to find the black fingers of soot. She had bolted upright in a panic before she recognized the burnt bedroom as her own. Like a terrible postcard from the night before, her reflection stared back, fully dressed, with a face full of spoilt make-up. She looked at the pillow behind her and at the wet blue mess she had left there. Her gaze shifted across to Shug’s side of the bed. It hadn’t been slept in.
Agnes lowered her chin back to her chest and tried to clear her blackout. The correct images wouldn’t come. Running her fingers through her black curls she felt the crispy brittleness of too much hairspray. From habit she placed her head in her hands and dug her nails sharply into the hairline, feeling the poisoned blood flush to her scalp. It felt good. The memories of the previous night started to ring like large chapel bells in her skull.
Clang, here is the wean dancing on the bed.
Clang, here is the flame on the curtains.
Clang, here is Shug, twisting his wedding band with a face full of disappointment again.
Agnes lay back in bed. She sobbed, but it was the self-pitying kind that brought no tears. She thought about holding the wean down as the flames raced up the curtain. She pushed the memory away and willed herself not to look at it again, yet the more she looked away the more it blossomed like a terrible flower. The guilt sank like dampness into her bones, and she felt rotten with the shame. She searched for a cigarette to coat her sore throat; it felt as black and sticky as tarmacadam in July. There were no cigarettes left in the room and no matches either. She had been placed under surveillance. This at least cheered her a little.
Out in the hallway the house was quiet. It must have been late enough, because the door to her parents’ bedroom was open and she could see their bed was neatly made. She went into the windowless bathroom and closed the door, sitting on the toilet. She thought about taking a bath and sinking to the bottom to wait for the Lord. In the tub were two sodden bath towels, badly blackened by fire. She couldn’t bring herself to move them.
Agnes wrapped her lips around the cold metal tap and gulped the fluoride-heavy water, panting and gasping like a thirsty dog. She began to wipe the ruined make-up off her face; the cotton wool came away blackened with soot stains. Opening the medicine cabinet, she searched the plastic shelves for Wullie’s medicine, something to take the edge off, but the painkillers were gone. She lifted a bottle of congealed cough syrup and took a mouthful, and then she took another.
When she finally emerged into the dark hallway, she stood for a long time arranging herself. In the dark she tried on different smiles, small apologetic ones where she lowered her eyes and looked up through heavy brows with tight trembling lips. She tried some light casual smiles, like she was just back from the shops. She tried a large, toothy, beaming smile, a gallus head nod that said, So what? Fuck you. If Shug was in there, this would be the one she’d wear.
Wullie and Shuggie were sitting at the round dining table eating soft eggs and soldiers. Sixty years apart, they were huddled together in the far corner like old drinking pals. Leek was upended on the settee, his bare legs up and over the back, a sketchbook in hand. When he saw his mother, he got up very quietly and passed her with a polite nod, like a stranger in the street.
All the windows were thrown open, the house already scrubbed with bleach. The air was bitter and sharp. Wullie turned his head back towards his eggs when he saw her. He must have been at early Mass, his good suit was folded neatly over the kitchen chair. He sat in his undervest, his thick arms a tapestry of faded