Exile (15 page)

She led them into the living room and sat Leslie in the armchair and Maureen on the settee by the door so that Siobhain herself could be nearer the television and wouldn’t have to miss anything Quincy said. Leslie crossed her legs, resting her leather biker boot on the arm of the chair. Siobhain pointed at her. “Get your feet off the furniture,” she ordered. “Please.”

Leslie tutted and moved her leg. They sat silently, listening as Quincy summed up the case to his idiot sidekick. Siobhain leaned down to the side of the sofa and pulled two blue plastic photo albums onto her lap. She sat with them on her knee, patting them occasionally, smirking to herself when Quincy made a joke. The ads started.

“Have you brought something for us to eat together?” she asked Maureen.

“I think I’ve got some chewing gum.” Maureen pulled a battered packet out of her back pocket. Siobhain held out her hand while Maureen squeezed two shiny rectangles of gum out of the tight wrapper and took one for herself. Leslie refused. They sat chewing and watching the ads until Siobhain turned to Maureen, put one album in her lap then stood up slowly, walked over to Leslie and handed her the other. “Have a look,” she said, and sat back down.

Maureen opened the first page. Below the sticky cellophane a cacophony of color shrieked across the page. The pictures were cut out of magazines, printed on flimsy paper. They were pictures of babies, of models and members of the public, photographs of toothpaste tubes and ketchup bottles and houses and new cars and competition prizes. Each picture had been cut out very carefully, no detail too insignificant to be missed. They were perfect. Over the page another riot was in progress, and over another and over another. It must have taken her hours. Siobhain was delighted at their surprise. “See?” she said, grinning at them.

“See what?” asked Leslie.

“See my pictures?” said Siobhain.

Maureen knew that Siobhain took her medication religiously and she knew that she was treated for depression but she didn’t know what to make of this. “Are they your pictures?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Siobhain. “They are by me and for me. Do you like them?”

Maureen smiled uncomfortably. “Yeah, but what are they for?”

“They’re about my people,” said Siobhain, “about when I was young and the martyrs.”

Leslie pointed at a picture of a baby in a bath, wearing a pointy hat of soapy foam. “Is this one about martyrs?”

“It’s about my mother bathing children in Sutherland.” She stopped.

“Should you be doing this, Siobhain?” said Leslie, turning the page and staring down at a tourist-brochure photograph of Majorca.

“Yes, yes, they’re from my books,” said Siobhain, nodding over to a mutilated pile of true-life magazines behind the television. “They gave them to me at the day center. I can do what I like with them.” She pointed to the picture Leslie was looking at. “Shangri-La.”

“How long did it take you to do it all?” asked Maureen.

“All of yesterday evening and this morning,” she said solemnly, as if she had achieved a long-held goal. She pointed to Leslie’s lap. “Go forward a wee bit — there, there, look at that one.”

It was a picture of a car. Maureen watched her. Siobhain didn’t seem volatile or changeable but she was quite high and the pictures were bizarre. She might be getting letters from Angus, she might have upped her medication if they bothered her — that might explain how high she was. Siobhain smiled at her, not the sleepy smile Maureen knew her for but a big wide-awake grin. “Do you like them?” she said hopefully.

“I don’t understand them, to be honest,” Maureen answered.

Siobhain nodded. “No,” she said quietly, “I know. They are a story you haven’t heard, about my home and my people.”

Maureen was stumped. “Are you thinking about going home?” she asked.

“No. My home is gone.” She patted the album on Maureen’s knee. “It’s in here now.”

Leslie put her album down on the floor and stood up. “I need the loo,” she said, and walked out to the dark hall.

“If you forget where you’re from,” said Siobhain, when Leslie was out of the room, “if you forget your people, it’s a kind of betrayal, isn’t it?”

Maureen cleared her throat. “Do you get a lot of post, Siobhain?”

“No,” she said, and turned back to the album on Maureen’s lap. “How do you like this one?”

“Nice,” said Maureen. “So, what else have you been up to? Have you been going to the day center?”

“Yes.”

Maureen scratched her arm. “How’s Tanya?” she said.

“Fine.”

Maureen didn’t know how to ask about Angus without frightening her.

“D’you understand now?” asked Siobhain.

“A wee bit. Do you get post?”

“Not much.” Siobhain chewed her gum for a moment, looking out into the hallway for Leslie. “What’s taking her so long? I hope she’s not rummaging in there.”

“You haven’t had a letter recently?”

Siobhain sighed and looked at Maureen insolently. “No. No post. No,” she said spitefully. “Stop going on about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Look,” said Siobhain, snide and quiet, like a bullying babysitter having a dig while the parents were out of the room, “I’m not your patient. You cannot come to my house in the middle of the day and ask me questions over and over.”

“I’m sorry,” said Maureen, feeling tearful again. “I just — I don’t understand the pictures.”

Siobhain looked into the hall again. “I know you don’t understand,” she whispered. “It doesn’t mean I’m wrong, does it?”

Maureen looked at her. The color had risen in Siobhain’s face, her chubby cheeks were flushed. She touched her hair, tucking it behind her ear. She seemed so different, like someone Maureen would know, someone she’d be friends with, like a girl of her own age and time. “Siobhain, I’ve never seen you like this.”

“It’s a long time since I felt like this.”

“Like what?”

Siobhain patted the album on Maureen’s lap and looked her in the eye. “Interested in something.”

They heard a flush down the hall and the bathroom door opened, amplifying the noise. Siobhain waited until Leslie sat back down and arranged herself in her chair before telling them it was time they left because her favorite soap was coming on.

A damp sheen coated the close, making the stone stairs slippery.

“Do you think we should phone the doctor?” said Maureen, as they stepped out into the blinding sunshine.

“I don’t know, she’s pretty strange most of the time.”

“She’s high, though. Depressives don’t get high unless something’s going on.”

“Did you ask her about the letters?”

“He’s not writing to her,” said Maureen.

“He’s just writing to you, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, she’s got more on him than you have. If it was a real threat he’d be writing to her too.”

“But if it’s not a threat,” said Maureen, “then what is it?”

Duke Street was busy and clogged with cumbersome buses easing their way around the pedestrians. The scathing sunshine beamed directly down the busy street, blinding everyone facing west, catching the drivers heading east in their rearview mirrors. Leslie nipped through the line of traffic, cutting up the taxis and driving along the central line, keeping her head tipped down so that her visor afforded some shade. They crossed a junction and followed the hill to the town, passing the abattoir and the brewery. They stopped at the lights outside the Model Lodging House Hotel, a crumbling homeless shelter built in the shadow of the Necropolis. Behind a protective pedestrian barrier dirty-faced men of indeterminate age squatted on the steps, drinking lager out of cans and smoking rallies, watching up and down the road.

Leslie parked across the street from the office and left Maureen with the bike while she ran in. Katia and Jan were standing in the doorway of the baker’s vent, warming their heads against the jet of warm air and having a stilted chat. They hadn’t spotted Maureen. She sat down on the bike with her back to them, keeping the helmet on. If it was something in her maybe she was sick. Maybe she’d been wrong to think she didn’t need to see a psychiatrist anymore. Maybe her family was right about her, maybe she was mental. She toyed with the idea, enjoying the possibility, running it through her mind like sun-warmed sand through her fingers. There was nothing wrong with her. He had done it and the family was siding with him and the world was a dark and despairing place.

Leslie was at her side, panting with excitement. “The police have phoned a couple of times but haven’t been yet, and Senga said we can go and see her tomorrow.”

Chapter 19

VERANDA

They had a couple of hours to spare and Leslie was hungry for a supper. She said that a Frattelli supper was the only decent supper in Glasgow and insisted that they go back to Drumchapel. Maureen didn’t want to go back to Leslie’s house. She had a suspicion that Cammy was living there and couldn’t be sure that the Frattelli line wasn’t just a cover for Leslie to go back and see him. She had never mentioned Frattelli’s before. But Leslie shamed her into agreeing and they drove back along the Great Western Road into a golden sunset.

The teatime queue was already forming in Frattelli’s. Dads bought five portions of chips on the way home from their work and singletons came looking for a hot meal. Maureen was relieved when Leslie ordered a fish supper for each of them and nothing for Cammy. She ordered a glass bottle of Bru as well and a Chomp bar each for their pudding. Maureen insisted on paying.

“Don’t be daft,” said Leslie. “It was my idea.”

But Maureen muscled in front of her and handed over a tenner.

They put the flimsy plastic bag in the box and Leslie drove like a bastard up the hill to get home before the chips went soggy Cammy wasn’t in and the house was dark, but he had left a scribbled note in the kitchen and Leslie read it, chuckled indulgently to herself, and looked up at Maureen as if she was surprised to see her. “He’s at football,” she said.

“Are you two living together, then?” asked Maureen, taking two scratched Barbie dinner plates down from the cupboard to sit the paper parcels on.

“Kind of. He lives with his folks but he spends a lot of time over here.”

“Have ye given him his own key?”

Leslie glowered at her. She had always sworn she would never give a man a key to her house because she saw what happened to the women in the shelter. It was a routine trap. The women met a nice man, fell for him, and he gradually insinuated himself into their homes. They gave him a key for convenience and when he beat them the only practical solution was for the women to run away and leave him with the house.

“Nah,” she said, unwrapping her supper and arranging the paper over the edge of the plate. “Mrs. Gallagher across the landing lets him in.” She blushed and got two Barbie glasses out of the cupboard, unscrewed the lid of the ginger and meticulously poured them a glass each as Maureen watched.

“You gave him a key, didn’t ye?”

“Yes,” said Leslie, slamming the bottle down on the side. “I gave him a key. Happy?”

Maureen grinned at her. “I don’t make up your fucking crazy rules, Leslie, don’t get pissed off with me.”

“Well, what are you having a go at me for?”

“Leslie,” said Maureen, teasing her, “you’re having a go at yourself.”

Leslie huffed at her dinner. “I don’t know. You give out all this advice for years and then when it happens to you, I don’t know, I just feel so out of control around him.”

“Yeah,” said Maureen, unwrapping her parcel, “I know.”

Leslie looked out of the window and crossed her arms. She looked terrified. “Sometimes”—her voice had dropped and she could hardly bring herself to say it—”I make his dinner for him coming home.”

“Ooh,” said Maureen, “that’s a very bad sign. You’ll be dead in a month.”

“Is it a bad sign?” said Leslie anxiously.

Maureen saw she wasn’t joking. “You’ve just fallen for someone. Enjoy yourself.”

“But I don’t feel like myself.”

“That’s what falling in love is. You lose control and you don’t feel like yourself. It’s supposed to be nice. Isn’t it nice?”

“Did you feel this way about Douglas?”

Maureen picked out the brownest chips from her dinner, the withered twice-fried ones that tasted of caramel, and thought about it. She couldn’t remember the relationship very well — all the softness and the fond good times were lost in the violent end — but she supposed she must have felt that way, and her behavior must have been just as confusing to Leslie. Douglas was married and old and a bit predatory. When she thought about it she could see how angry it must have made Leslie and she began to soften towards Cammy, but then she remembered that Leslie hadn’t liked Douglas and had never been even passingly pleasant to him. “I suppose I did,” she said, picking up her plate and glass and wrapping her pinkie around the neck of the sauce bottle. “My supper’s getting cold.”

Out on the veranda they climbed over the dead pot plants and sat on stained deck chairs, resting their plates on their knees and eating with their fingers. Small clouds of fragrant steam rose as they each broke into the battered fish, filling the veranda with the tantalizing smell of vinegar.

The veranda looked out onto a wide stretch of wasteland. Children from the scheme gathered there; the older ones stood talking to one another, watching over their younger siblings as they took turns at riding someone’s mountain bike over and around the hillocks and splashing through the muddy puddles. Leslie was right about Frattelli’s suppers. The fish was fresh and firm and the chips were crunchy.

“Good, isn’t it?” asked Leslie, sinking her teeth through crisp batter to the soft and subtle fish.

“Lovely,” said Maureen.

The light was failing. The burnished yellow sky was smeared with streaks of orange and thin cloud. Heavy black rain clouds conspired on the horizon. Maureen sat back and sighed at her dinner. “God, I don’t know if I can eat all this.”

“You’d better or you won’t get your Chomp bar.”

Maureen smiled out at the muddy hillocks and the big sky.

“Ye left that cheese salad the other night as well,” said Leslie quietly. “Are ye eating?”