Four New Words for Love (23 page)

We went through the same routine as last time, where I held his hair to stop his face hitting the table. It wasn’t just that he escaped from his life into the bottle, he was now abandoning
hers for the same hole. I could forgive him for the past bits of her life he ruined. But not this. I let go. I mobilised all those guys, I suppose you could call them boyfriends, to look and ask.
If there was a rock in Glasgow she couldn’t have hidden under it. Nothing. Fuck all. Ruth even suggested phoning the police. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ I said. Wee
Tam’s either a mason, or he’s got a pal who’s a mason, or he’s got a pal who’s... and so it goes. None of them admit to it. I explained it to Tam. The masons is
heaving with police. Tam walks into the pub this night with this specimen. Six two. Farm boy hands.

‘Plain clothes,’ Tam says.

‘Not so plain,’ I say.

‘Not plain clothes,’ he says, ‘off duty.’ So I give him the once over and fill in the details. ‘Has she been reported missing?’ he asks.

‘I’m telling you,’ I say.

‘Maybe she’s just gone,’ he says.

‘Well fuck me, Sherlock. Two years’ training for that. Glad to see all our tax was well spent.’

‘Let me see what I can do,’ he says, turning away. And I just
knew
it was the brush off, and he was losing interest and he’d be stone cold after a pint. The same way I
knew I had to do something to keep his attention on this.

‘No,’ I said, ‘let
me
see what
you
can do.’

And I did. And he did. And in other circumstances I probably would have anyway, so I didn’t feel as if I was cheapening myself or anything. All in a good cause, like putting nicked money
in boxes in poppy week. I don’t know what I expected – posters on lamp posts or what – but something. Two weeks later I’m crossing the zebra and I see him stopped in the
squad car with a woman police officer. I tap the window. It rolls down on his sneer. I ask him what’s happening. ‘What d’ y’ expect,’ he says, ‘top billing on
Crimewatch
?’ He’s showing off to her.

‘So what’s the total of your efforts?’ I say.

‘There hasn’t been a crime,’ he says.

‘I’ll tell you what’s criminal,’ I say, ‘you calling that thing the other week a hard-on. I’ve seen stiffer six-pinters before, when they can’t raise a
smile. I’ve bent them in with the best of them. That felt like a marshmallow pushed into a piggy bank. You’d be done under the trades an’ descriptions for calling that a
soft-on.’ It wasn’t true but it’s the easiest way to hurt a man. His mouth had disappeared into this line and he was breathing through his nose. If she hadn’t been there
he’d have got out and slapped me around – and not in a nice way. I leaned in and spoke to her. ‘If you’re thinking of giving him a bit of hand relief behind the lock-ups,
then make sure it’s a double shift, love.’

He roared off. So much for the fucking authorities.

Ruth, God bless her, didn’t have my gifts when it came to getting men to do what she wanted. She hadn’t a net to cast. She wore out shoe leather asking around, and this from a woman
who starts to blush handing across the bus fare. I don’t know if it was the constant rejection, or the gloom of missing her, but she looked like shit. And I suppose I did too, under the war
paint. Nobody was seeing me like
that.
Gina’s absence seemed to get worse, not better. Her not being here, day after day, became like an actual
thing
in the room with us. It
turns out Ruth did visit the police. I found out long afterwards. And she got as much joy as me – without the joy.

Bad as it was we were diverted by another problem her leaving had caused. We were completely, utterly skint. I don’t claim to be any economist, but even I could see how desperate it was if
we were to keep the place for her. And on that we both agreed. Instantly. We
were
going to keep the place for her. She was going to have a place to come back to. To give it up was like
somehow giving up on her.

‘I’ll move upstairs,’ Ruth says, ‘keep it nice for her.’

‘It’s not the occupancy you stupid cow – it’s the double rent!’

‘You think I don’t fucking know that?’

‘Stop the world – I want to get off. That’s the first time I’ve
ever
heard you swear.’ And we looked at each other. Her swearing set the seal on it –
the seriousness of the situation. Our determination. ‘Come here,’ I said. And I gave her the kind of hug I usually reserved for Gina. And it felt right.

We both agreed we wouldn’t touch
her
room.

Ruth took on extra shifts. It wasn’t as if her life wasn’t dreary enough already. It wasn’t fair. She was dragging herself home night after night looking more and more like a
refugee. I bit the bullet and got a job as a hospital orderly in the Victoria Infirmary. I don’t know why they call it ‘orderly’. The place might run well but nothing I could see
was orderly about
my
job. There was always the thought, in the back of my mind, that I might snare a doctor, some young guy with a shiny stethoscope, clean habits and prospects.

Not a fucking chance. I think there’s a caste system in bits of the NHS that’d put India to shame. I felt like an untouchable. I spent my breaks smoking outside with the porters. It
reminded me of Gina having
her.
I’d walk back into the antiseptic smell with a lump in my throat.

At the end of the first week I’m worn out after my shift, eyes gritty with tiredness. I’m walking to the bus stop to go home. I’ve been working from an hour that a month ago
was the middle of the night. It’s still bright daylight and I’m blinking in the glare, when I see a big shapeless sack staring back at me from the glass. I stop dead. So does she. A
week and this is what I look like. Other shifts have finished too and a lot of women, cleaners or auxiliaries or orderlies or whatever they are, are all gathering at the bus stop. There are about
fifty separate conversations going on at the same time. The noise is tremendous and it makes me feel better. A 66 draws up and the first woman pays to go into town. ‘I’m no’
goin’ to town,’ says the driver. He looks about fifteen. All conversations stop. We all want to go to town, or that direction.

‘What d’ y’ mean?’ says the woman.

‘This bus goes to Shawlands.

‘But it’s a 66.’

‘It’s a 37.’

‘It says 66 on the side.’ And so it does. She points. But it also says 37 on the front. Some useless bastard, probably him, sent it out the garage with two numbers. This is pointed
out to him by a chorus of women.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘it says 37 on the front. And this bus goes frontways – no’ sideways.’

‘Sonny,’ says the first woman, ‘I’ve been wipin’ arses all mornin’ and you’re the first one that’s talked back.’

And we all just about piss ourselves laughing and he shuts the door and escapes to Shawlands. And before you know it a 66 has arrived and we’re all feeling like one of the gang and the
driver, who looks like the last one’s younger brother, watches me fumble for my pass and says, ‘On you go missus.’

And then it hits me, like a bucket of freezing water. I
am
one of them. First of all I’ve got a bus pass, cause I can’t afford a daily return. Then the driver calls me
‘missus’. He sees me as one of the herd, and no harm to them, but that’s what they are. You see them at break time, in uniform, taking up a quarter of the canteen, their noise
drowning out everyone else’s. And they drift together, like wildebeests, from work, to shops, to bingo, to wherever, before they all go their separate ways to go home and come back and club
together tomorrow to start all over again.

Well that’s not me. It’s just not. I’ve never been a member of any gang in my life. You can take your Girl Guides with your knot tying and your star gazing and your map reading
and shove them up your arse. I know fuck all about the team spirit and that’s the way it’s staying. I couldn’t dump the job flat, cause we need the money, so I took another job
– on an ice cream van. I’d come home from the Victoria and change, just to tinkle round the housing estates, announced by
Greensleeves
that got faster when he got the revs
going. The owner, Pavel, was decidedly dodgy. I don’t know where his family originally hailed from, but he spoke pure Glasgow at Gatling-gun speed. He used every excuse to rub against me. As
far as I could see, all his transactions were on the black. If they looked at his books he probably said he spent a hundred quid on petrol and drove five hundred miles to sell two Magnums and a
ninety-nine. That didn’t bother me. I could put up with the groping and him swindling the taxman. It’s the other trade I couldn’t abide. There were certain customers, most of them
older than sixteen, he always served himself. Almost nothing was said. He’d hand out tea-bag-sized sachets to them and take the cash. You could spot the type a mile away. They’re
waiting
for you to turn the corner. When you get close you realise it isn’t an earth tremor, it’s them who’s shaking. They’d all complexions like Gina’s dad,
but there’s a difference between drunks and druggies. It’s hard to explain but you can see it a mile away. Druggies are always skinny, more desperate,
sinister.

That bastard would sell anything to
anyone.
He went out with sub-standard ice cream and soggy cones and came back with
thousands.
For the first time
I
was the
respectable front. I was thinking about chucking it when a brick came through the side window, and
Greensleeves
upped tempo, like the
Keystone Cops
or fast motion bit at the end
of
Benny Hill
, while we made our getaway. Maybe it was an unsatisfied customer, who’d just found out that the flake in his 99 wasn’t Cadbury’s. Who knows. Who cares. Not
the police, who called Pavel to tell him that the overnight lock up had been jemmied and the van was up on blocks. Oh, and the wheels were stolen. And the contents stripped out. And it had also
been torched. Out of curiosity I went round to see it. They’d driven it out to strip it down. It was still smouldering. Pavel’s leaning against the lock-up running his fingers through
his greasy hair looking like some refugee who’s lost his whole family in a tidal wave. I’m wondering how much of someone else’s merchandise walked, the kind of stuff you
don’t insure. From the look of him you can tell that
they
won’t be understanding about it. He’ll be avoiding any high-rises in the near future in case his investors help
him find the quick route down. There are some kids throwing stones at the only window that somehow didn’t cave in. The police aren’t even trying to stop them.
They
don’t
give a fuck. Truth be told, neither do I. That was the end of my career in retail.

After that the hospital didn’t seem so bad. I still knew nothing about the team spirit but the older women seemed to like me. It’s as if I became their mascot. They kept asking me
about my social life. Mostly they were settled, with kids and stuff, in various stages of happiness, like the rest of the world, but they liked to hear what I had to say. Maybe they liked imagining
themselves in my place, if this or that hadn’t happened back then, if their lives had taken a different turning. I used to pile it on. ‘Men are like Alton Towers,’ I said,
‘some rides are tame and some rides are scary.’ They loved that kind of thing. I had them all round for a knees up. When they all arrived they thought the place had been ransacked. Ruth
came down at the noise, which was good because I was going to invite her anyway. Somehow she managed to be nice, shy and disapproving all at the same time. After they’d gone she offered to
help tidy. ‘Don’t bother,’ I said, ‘stuff takes up the same amount of space whether it’s over there or over there.’ But she hung about anyway, like this cloud of
gloom, blaming me. She didn’t say a thing, and the more she didn’t say it the worse it got. I don’t know how long I lasted but it was quite a long time for me. ‘Look,’
I shouted, ‘I can’t bury myself. I just can’t. I’m not like you. Life can’t stop. She
chose
to leave
us
.’ But what I couldn’t bring
myself to say, because it was too harsh, was that Gina was her only cause because nothing else was happening in her life. ‘Just cause she’s your only cause cause nothing else is
happening in your life...’

She stopped dead still with the tights she was holding. Something was stuck to them. It looked like a trapped bat but it couldn’t have been. And then she started speaking and got quieter
till I was holding my breath to hear the end of the sentence.

‘You’re probably right. She is my only cause. She came and found me when I was rotting away with loneliness. She didn’t need me. She had you, and
her.
She went out of
her way to find me and I’ll return the favour if it’s the last thing I do.’ And then she burst into tears. Well, actually, I burst into tears at being cruel. I’m not like
that. Well, actually, I am – but only to people who deserve it. And she didn’t. Well she did a bit for having the nerve to come down here, like some ghoul, all silent blame for me
daring to enjoy myself. But still I shouldn’t have said it. Or maybe I should have, but only in a nicer way. I couldn’t catch a breath or find a hanky so I snatched the tights from her
and blew my nose into them and said, ‘Do you honestly think me looking this way and acting like this make me miss her any less?’ And then she started to cry, really quietly, and I
looked at that sack of a person and saw what Gina saw worth prising away from that selfish cow Moira. And I realised I loved her.

‘I love you,’ I said. And a look came over her face that I don’t think any man’s succeeded in putting on mine. And before she could say anything I handed her back the
tights. ‘They’re for the bin,’ I said.

I finished a back shift, and for the first time in years I thought it might be nicer to walk for a bit. That’s what wearing flat shoes during working hours does for you. I was passing one
of the churches, because they seem to be a religious lot around here, when this thought suddenly struck me. I’m nice to people who deserve it, but maybe I’m not as well-behaved as I
like to think I am. I can’t think what I might have done, but maybe Gina’s departure is some kind of
punishment.
And I ran into the church. There was light coming through the
stained glass in shafts, like some old religious film, and when I turned to all the empty pews, all silently shining with devout polishing, I came over all religious and a thought struck me.