Cold Hands (8 page)

* * *

The last time I saw my mother was late November 1982, the height of the trial and all the publicity. It was sleeting outside and it had taken her a train and two buses to get there. Her face was wet and her coat steamed gently in the institutional heat of the visitors’ room. We sat under the merciless strip lighting and shared the bar of chocolate she had brought me.

‘He’s not been keeping well,’ she’d said by way of explaining my dad’s absence. ‘And there’s been some trouble.’ Her lip was trembling as she nibbled on a square of Dairy Milk.

‘What trouble?’

‘A man . . . a man punched him in the street the other day.’ She darted a look at me. Before I could ask ‘Why?’ she said, ‘Because you were his son.’

She started crying softly, her head bowed as she spoke, almost hiccuping the words out between the sobs. ‘The things they’re saying in the paper, the things they say you and yer pals did tae that boy. Are they . . . did ye?’

I stared at the floor, numb, and didn’t reply.

‘Oh, William. Oh, God help ye. God help ye . . .’ She kept repeating that. Over and over.

A few weeks later, just before Christmas, I got a package with some presents (a jumper, a pack of playing cards, an Airfix kit) and a letter. The letter was short and written in my mother’s strange mixture of upper and lower cases. It said:

Dear William,

MerrY Xmas. Here’s a coupLe of Wee presENts. Its no much. Munies a bit tite.

ThiS is a Sad letter to wriTe son. Your Dad and Me have decided we woN’t see yoU anymore. WhAt you’ve dun is Too bad for us too take. I hOpe God Will forGive you BUT we cant. I’ll try and remember You as the nice wee Boy you used to bEe and noT who it says you are in the PaPer. I’ll always think about YE but you are No lONger a son of ours.

I,m SoRRy,

Mum x

I never saw nor heard from them again. I was thirteen.

* * *

I drained the glass and put the bottle back in the drawer, locking it. As I stood up to leave I saw a light was still on in Irene’s house, a yellow square in darkness, about half a mile away. A shadow loomed near it for a second and then, just as I had noticed it, the light went off and the horizon was black.

I went to bed.

THERE WERE A
couple of hundred guests moving through the large, well-lit rooms of the mansion on Elm Street, the men in black ties, the women in gowns. White-jacketed waiters pressed through the throng topping up glasses from frosted champagne bottles, the bottles smart too in their white neckerchiefs. There were ice sculptures in the hall and a string quartet in the drawing room. I was in my traditional position near the buffet, nibbling on crudités and drinking club soda. (Soda water we called it back home. For many years after I moved out here I thought club soda was a special non-alcoholic cocktail unique to the bar or ‘club’ you were in. Like the ‘house’ soda.) This was very much Sammy’s environment.

In the last few years, ostensibly to help with her mother’s arthritis but, I thought, really, simply to enjoy their wealth, Sammy’s parents had begun decamping to Hawaii around the middle of every December, to a suite in the Ritz-Carlton on Maui, overlooking pineapple fields and the sea. They stayed there until the beginning of March, missing the absolute worst of the Canadian winter. We usually flew out a few days before Christmas and spent a fortnight with them,
coming home right after New Year’s. Old Sam had taken to throwing a big Christmas party at the house before they went and now the occasion was set in stone. It was a good chance to schmooze advertisers, the Mayor and the like. I was spearing a shrimp when I heard a deep voice behind me saying, ‘Hitting the hard stuff, huh?’

‘Hi, Mike,’ I said, turning. Mike Rawls, Old Sam’s security chief – six three, two hundred plus pounds – was grinning and nodding towards my brimming tumbler of clear, bubbly water.

‘Driving home later.’

‘That’ll make us the only two sober people here then.’

We stood and surveyed the crush, Mike doing so with the practised eye of someone used to scanning crowds for trouble; for someone getting too close, moving too quickly, or staring too intensely. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘sorry to hear about your dog.’

‘Ah, yeah.’

‘What happened exactly?’

I told him the whole story, having gotten it down to a routine pitch. ‘It was horrible. Just ripped the poor bastard to pieces. The policeman even found a kidney in the snow. They’re going to –’

‘That’s odd, huh?’ Mike said.

‘What’s odd?’

‘Well, you’d think it’d be one of the first things they’d eat, wouldn’t you? A pack of hungry wolves? The kidneys, the liver, the sweetbreads? Anyway –’ Mike raised a hand to another security guy who was signalling him from the main door across the hallway – ‘I gotta run. I think the Governor’s arriving. Catch you later, Donnie.’

I watched him go and suddenly I had the urge to check on Walt. I headed for the back garden, passing through the drawing room where the string quartet were starting
The Four Seasons
again, taking out my cellphone and dialling as I went. Irene answered on the third ring, just as I stepped out onto the back porch, into the freezing December air, shivering in my tuxedo.

‘Hi there, Donnie. How’s the party?’

‘It’s fine. I’m about ready to leave. How’s Walt?’

‘He’s fine. We’ve been playing his video game thingy. He’s just about to go to bed, aren’t you, Walt?’ I heard some kind of protest in the background. ‘Don’t rush home on our account.’

‘No, I’ve done my thing here. Shown my face. Can I talk to him?’ A muffled fumbling and then Walt’s voice on the line. ‘Hi, Dad.’

‘Hey, son, how’s things?’

‘OK. I beat Irene at Medal of Honour!’

‘Did you? I’m sure that’s not really Irene’s thing.’

‘She’s pretty good. Better than you!’

‘Really? Well, look, it’s nine thirty. Time for bed.’

‘When are you coming home?’

‘In about an hour or so. But you’ll be asleep by then, won’t you?’

‘Yes, Dad.’ He says this automatically, dutifully.

‘OK. Sleep well. Night, son.’

I hung up and looked out over the trees. The air was so sharp now that to inhale was to feel a stinging burn on the rims of your nostrils, a wintry crackling in your lungs. The black sky felt heavy above me, like it was swollen with the impending snow.

You’d think it’d be one of the first things they’d eat, wouldn’t you?

I heard the door opening behind me and turned to see the old man himself coming out, a thick coat over his shoulders and a great cigar clamped between his teeth and already lit, his cheeks bullfrogging as he puffed, getting it going, grey, perfumed smoke wreathing his bald head. ‘Donnie,’ he said simply, nodding.

‘Hi, Sam.’ I held up the cellphone by way of explanation for what I was doing out here, feeling, as I often felt in Sam Sr’s presence, that I had been caught doing something inappropriate. ‘Just checking in on Walt.’

‘How is the little fella?’

‘He’s fine. Just off to bed.’ I remembered now how Walt’s first instinct when we told him about Herby had been to try and get the old man to do something.
Get Grandpa to
. . .

‘Want one?’ Old Sam said, patting his pocket, holding up the cigar.

‘No, I’m good. Some party. I hear the Governor’s here.’

‘Yeah,’ he yawned, stretching, looking at his watch. ‘Took his time getting here too. I’m gonna have to kick all these freeloading bums out soon.’ The old man was in his late sixties now but in good shape, lean and trim, the hair loss the only concession to ageing. Hard, clear eyes, the kind you wouldn’t want to look into and bullshit. I’d once seen a drunk at a restaurant downtown get too mouthy, too familiar with Sam, and he’d knocked the guy out. Clean. One punch. He’d had to pay the guy off in the end, of course. ‘You get your picture in the paper now and then,’ he said afterwards, ‘people figure they can say anything to you.’

‘What time are you getting off tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘Five fifty in the a.m. Chopper to Winnipeg then the flight to LA.’

‘You want to get to bed, Sam.’

‘Ah, you don’t need too much sleep at my age.’ He puffed on his cigar and we stood looking out over the lawn, the elms, the moonlight as the party thrummed in the house behind us, the hum of conversation, the music. ‘Might be last time we throw one of these,’ he said.

‘How come?’

‘Well, I’m nearly seventy, Donnie. You start to think in terms of “lasts”.’

‘Christ, Sam, you’ve another –’

‘Ah.’ He cut off whatever platitude I was about to utter with a wave of the cigar.

‘Well,’ I said, yawning myself now. ‘I’d better go find Sammy. Say goodnight. I’m driving back.’

He nodded. ‘And Walt’s coping OK with the dog business?’

‘I think so. He’s a bit shaken up. We all are.’

‘Damn shame. Anyway, you’d better get a move on if you’re driving, look . . .’ I followed his pointing, glowing cigar tip and saw that, behind me, the snow had started falling silently in huge powdery flakes.

‘Bang on cue,’ I said. ‘Well, thanks for the party.’

‘And we’ll see you all on the island in a few days?’

‘Twenty-second,’ I said.

‘Night, Donnie.’ We shook hands. ‘Drive safe.’

I found Sammy in the lounge, near the great fireplace, talking to Billy Vaughan, the paper’s Head of Advertising, and what looked like a gathering of favoured clients,
middle-aged guys in tuxedos holding Scotches. Sammy was wearing a long black dress that clung to her, deeply décolleté, with a little diamond brooch, her hair down tonight, spilling over her shoulders. In her heels she towered over most of the men. She was in mid-sentence as I approached, saying the words, ‘. . . to drive more traffic to the website . . .’ I smiled at her and she said, ‘Excuse me a second, guys.’ Billy took up her speech as she came towards me, taking a few steps away from the group.
The kept man
.

‘I’m gonna take off.’

‘Really?’ Sammy said. ‘It’s only –’ She looked at her watch. ‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, time flies when you’re hanging with the big boys.’

She made a face and whispered, ‘I’m bored shitless listening to myself and my feet are killing me.’

‘That’s why you get the big bucks, baby.’ A line I used often. ‘Anyway, I want to get going before the snow gets any heavier.’

‘OK. I’ll – Hi, Graham,’ she said to a passing tuxedo. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Give Walt a big kiss from me.’

‘Yep.’ I leaned in to peck her quickly on the cheek. Sammy wasn’t big on public displays of affection.

‘Drive safe.’ She turned and walked back off towards the fireplace. I watched her go, roughly hitching up one of the spaghetti shoulder straps of her dress with a thumb as she went, always something of the tomboy, the jock, about Sammy.

I got my overcoat, the valet brought the car round, and I headed down the drive, the heater cranked full, snowflakes whirring through the cones of the headlights.
The great Edwardian house disappeared behind me, its many windows blazing with light in the rear-view mirror.

THE HOUSE I
grew up in. Post-war pebble-dash. Woodchip walls and sworling, nicotine-baked Artex on the ceilings; the pine mantelpiece with its knick-knacks, geegaws and ornaments, the multicoloured glass clown, the glazed ceramic horse tiredly pulling its cartload of barrels, the white ashtray with Blackpool Tower etched into its base in gold; the squat television encased in plastic wood; the electric fire with its fake coals, glowing a soft tangerine on winter nights, pitch dark at four thirty as I lay on the carpet watching
Roobarb and Custard
, or
Magpie
, my face burning and my back freezing, icy pools of condensation on the windowsills.

They both drank, my parents. My dad openly, my mum more secretly. My dad worked in the timber yard. They’d finish work at 4 p.m. and go to the King’s or the Delta. Two hours in there, five or six pints, and home for his tea. Then the steady stream of cans of Tennent’s in front of the television until he passed out around ten. By the time he got in from the pub my mum would have been on the Martinis, not Martinis as I came to know them in later life, after I met Sammy – the chilled stem glass, the
clear gin and the bobbing olive – just sweet vermouth with lemonade. She’d start on these in the late afternoon, keeping the bottle out of sight in the pantry, glugging them in the kitchen while she sweated over the frying pan and the boiling potatoes. By teatime she’d sometimes have put away half a bottle or more and the tea would be burnt or cold and the fights would start. One night, staggering, swaying, she dropped the plate into his lap accidentally, spattering hot fat over him. He smashed the plate to pieces off the wall and punched her in the stomach, screaming ‘YA STEAMING FUCKING MESS, YE!’ while I ran crying for my room. Later she came up, drunker, and told me they’d just had a ‘wee argument’, that it was all fine. I’d get the odd slap, punch or kick, but I didn’t really get hit. (I mean, I didn’t get hit like Banny got hit.) My dad lost his job in 1981, when the timber yard closed down, like so much else in Ayrshire around then (‘that fucken hoor Thatcher’) and the drinking and the fighting intensified in that last year I spent at home. My mum got a part-time job cleaning offices and my dad would go to the bookies, or do the odd day on building sites, his visits to the Delta or the King’s getting earlier, three o’clock, two o’clock.

Now I can see that my parents disliked each other and perhaps blamed each other for the stagnation of their lives. They had no common interests; in fact, no interests at all; just the endlessly flickering telly, the pall of cigarette smoke, the silence broken now and then by the crack and hiss of a ring pull, a stilted conversation about something in the local newspaper. Locked in this sad battle, they barely noticed me and I came and went as I pleased. Later,
much later, one of the therapists would suggest that, unable to break through to my parents, I went elsewhere for attention.

Banny, Tommy and me did the usual stuff. We smashed windows. We raided people’s gardens. Our friendship intensified over that hot, endless, Royal Wedding summer. Having watched the riots in Toxteth and Brixton on the telly, having seen those burning orange petrol bombs flying through the dark, we stole a length of rubber hose from chemistry class and went out one night siphoning petrol out of cars into empty milk bottles. I remember getting a mouthful of bitter, oily petrol, gagging and retching while Banny and Tommy laughed. We stuffed rags into the bottles and threw them at the wall of the church and watched the flames lick up the white pebble-dash. The burn marks were still there years later. We did that.