The Glasgow Coma Scale

The Glasgow Coma Scale

Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Corsair,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2014

Copyright © Neil D. A. Stewart 2014

The right of Neil D. A. Stewart to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication
Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-47211-268-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-47211-392-4 (ebook)

Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon

Printed and bound in the UK

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For Gayla

Between the shoddy jeweller’s at one end of the Sauchiehall Street pedestrian precinct and the low-rise, low-end department stores at the other, Lynne’s charity became a compulsion. As her money dwindled, she began to feel a mounting, reckless desire to give away everything to the beggars: her overstuffed weekend bag, her earrings, the fine silver cross around her neck; then still more: her shoes, her jacket. After that, she might twist her fingers and pop off each joint, distribute these too, a controlled disintegration. Surely she would, carrying out this procedure, succeed in locating then eradicating the parts where pain and resentment and dismay resided. For a moment, disposing of herself like this, she felt a flush of liberation. If you could give money to strangers, maybe you could disappear without trace.

The first man she’d given a few coins to had been sheltering in the entrance of a boarded-up sandwich shop outside Queen Street station. After that, some dog-whistle signal must have gone out, because on Sauchiehall Street she encountered more
Big Issue
sellers and more homeless – a vaguely insulting noun, but what else was she to call them? – than she recalled ever seeing there before. They didn’t exactly accost her, but each stepped from a doorway in readiness as she approached, and, shifting her bag to her free hand, she gave something to every single one.

Some took from her without meeting her eye, swiping coins from her palm with blackened fingers, their due. Others thanked her, low-voiced, embarrassingly deferential – calling her missus, calling her doll. She made a point of looking them in the eye. They were wounded, wind burned, and a haunted look was common to all. ‘God bless,’ they said to her, even the most taciturn, and she could imagine Raymond’s voice remarking, from lordly height, on the intensity of belief evinced by the luckless. He’d claim it was impressive or even moving, how their misfortunes seemed only to strengthen their faith – he would describe it as a phenomenon. But really he’d be seeking only to mock, his whole speech a trap to be sprung as soon as she agreed with him. What made her think, he’d challenge her, that their godliness was genuine, not simple expediency? He liked to explain the way the world worked, in the process painting her as lamentably naïve.

Better it end today, Lynne thought: the first proper day of autumn, late in coming, inevitable. Overnight, the change in season had put metal in the air, thrawn the year’s leaves down off the trees. A time for letting go. Had he woken up and decided, on seeing the frost and the weatherless silver sky, right then, that this was an apt day to make his speech?

Even before she paid proper attention to the man begging outside Menzies, he stood out from the others. For one thing, he did not lift his chin off his folded arms as Lynne approached, but remained motionless, staring into space, cross-legged, back set hard against the newsagent’s brick wall. For another thing, Lynne knew his name.

How it happened: she had the last few coins ready in her hand, prepared to withhold them if the man didn’t at least acknowledge her presence. How quickly goodwill had turned to entitlement! When at last he lifted his head, she gratefully poured the money into the chewed polystyrene cup between his feet, noticing at first only that his face did not have the same weather-beaten ruddiness as his fellows’. The actual recognition, the actual name, arrived only as a second, delayed reaction.

She hunkered down beside him. ‘Angus?’

He didn’t speak – wasn’t quite making eye contact – but a vertical furrow appeared between his brows. Up close, she could smell the sharp, soupy aura that surrounded him. His hair, peeping from beneath a grubby black woollen hat, was greasy-sleek and unkempt, his heavy beard riddled with wiry silver hairs, but Lynne knew she wasn’t mistaken. ‘My God, Angus, it is you.’

‘It is?’ He seemed no more than moderately interested. He scanned left and right along Sauchiehall Street for the next mark. ‘Guid tae know.’

‘Don’t you recognize . . . ? It’s Lynne. Lynne Meacher.’

‘Oh, eh, thanks then, Lynne.’ She knew that gruff manner, the familiar strong accent she had once, new to Glasgow, struggled to understand. When she didn’t move on, he mumbled, reddening, ‘Fer the contribution tae funds.’ He shoogled the coins in his cup, seeking to ward her off. ‘Ah’m, ye know, appreciative.’

She felt she was being watched, from a doorway maybe, but when she glanced around there was no one in sight. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘sorry, no. It’s just – don’t you remember me? From the School of Art?’ She gestured towards Garnethill. ‘You taught me. Second-year painting and printmaking.’

The line between his brows deepened. ‘Lynne . . . Meeker?’

‘Meacher.’

‘Meacher.’ A pause, then: ‘Hey,’ he said in astonishment, ‘you’re Lynne Meacher!’

‘I am!’ Laughing with relief.

‘Second-year painting and printmaking, aye!’ He jabbed his finger at her. ‘Let’s see, and weren’t ye friendly wi . . .’

‘With . . . well, the other English students mostly.’ She laughed. ‘The other invaders. Oh, and Elena Papantuano. You must remember her – you both came to my house one night back then? We sat up all night drinking.’ He shook his head, unconvinced, blistered lips barely smiling. Trying not to let him hear disappointment, she said: ‘Well, it’s a long time ago now, I suppose. Years and years. But Angus, what are you doing here?’

‘Nae ither place tae go,’ he said, shrugging. ‘None ah’d relish bein, that is.’

‘You mean you’re really . . .’

‘Oan the streets? Ah really am, aye. Nae joab, nae hame – scored the double.’

‘But how could this have happened to you? You were so . . .’ Wonderful, she’d nearly said. Indomitable. ‘Well, never mind about that now. Can you stand?’

Angus looked at her with great forbearance. ‘Yes thank you, that ah can do. Look, Lynne, no meanin tae be rude, it’s kind ay ye to stop and chat, but the thing is, ah willnae make much cash if ah’m jist sat here gassin.’

Lynne, incredulous: ‘I’m not leaving you here. How could I? Come on, you’re staying at mine.’ She stood, her knees aching from so long in the crouch, and felt a momentary dizziness. Sundays usually meant brunch at Raymond’s favourite Merchant City café – a place to which, evidently, she now could never return.

Angus had not moved. His eyes were hazy, as if what she was offering was inconsequential. Again it went through her mind: what would Raymond think if he witnessed this exchange? He would have said she was being absurd. ‘Come on, then,’ she enjoined, more forcefully.

‘Aw – Lynne. Ah couldnae.’

How else to speak to him but as to a child? ‘Angus, I’m not arguing. I’m telling you.’

She half ran to the end of the precinct, flailed for a taxi, then went back for Angus, who was, despite his protests, clambering to his feet. She tried to take the dusty blue kitbag he’d been sitting on, but he clutched it to him, a wary, shamed scowl on his face. Behind her, the taxi, which had crept on to the pavement, honked its horn warningly. Lynne hesitated, wary too: for a moment it was impossible to see, through the exhaustion and shabbiness, the Angus Rennie she remembered.

He said nothing for the twenty minutes it took the taxi to reach the West End; Lynne, relegated to a flip-down seat so Angus could sit beside his bag, fretted, also silent. Not quite five o’clock but already near dark, all that remained of sunset a swathe of peach sky compressed between black horizon and black cloud, intermittently visible between the buildings they passed. Each time they stopped at a red light, she tensed for Angus to throw open the car door and sprint away into the dusk.

When they reached Glendower Street, she went on ahead up the close’s cold stairwell. Angus lagged behind her, pausing on the stair, leaning against the Arts and Crafts tiling. He patted his thigh. ‘Busted leg. Sorry. Gie me a second.’

By the time she’d unlocked the front door he had caught up with her, but still hesitated when she indicated he enter before her, as though unable to cross the threshold without an explicit invitation. ‘This is really guid of ye, Lynne. Ah’ve no way tae repay ye.’

‘That doesn’t matter. It’s not . . . I’m just doing what anyone would.’

‘Point is, naebdy bothered before you. Ah jist wantit tae thank ye.’

‘Well, let’s not stand out here discussing it. Go on in. Please. Straight on in and to your right, that’s the living room. There’s a futon we can roll out for you to sleep on.’

He shook his head. ‘That’d be magic.’

With Angus safely inside, Lynne shut and double-bolted the front door, then followed him into the living room. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Only it’s just the one bedroom . . .’

‘A sight better than whut ah’ve put up with lately,’ he cut her off genially, looking around. With dismay, Lynne too was seeing the room through his eyes: the dowdy knick-knacks, the framed stock photograph over the mantelpiece, the unburned church candles ranked in the old fireplace to disguise the horrid electric fire she had never got round to replacing.

Rashly, she tried prompting him. ‘So, do you remember any of this from when you came before?’ She pretended to calculate – ‘Five years ago or so?’ – not wanting to alarm him with a considerably more precise date.

‘Nup.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry.’

‘Well, it was just one evening, after all. A long time ago. And it’s probably changed a lot since then.’ She added this, rather hopefully, despite the evidence of her own eyes. ‘Well, anyway, that’s by the by. Let me get you some bedding for later.’ Even as she said the words, he yawned, hugely as a cat. These curtailed October days did this to a person, daylight barely bothering the visible end of the spectrum; the instinct was to hibernate until spring came. ‘Have you eaten? I can throw something together. I’m famished,’ she laughed, then worried that she sounded insensitive.

Before fetching the spare sheets from the press, however, she darted into the kitchen and began unpinning certain photographs from the cork board. She had been hoping that being in the flat might remind Angus of his previous visit – what had passed between them then – and was disappointed that he evinced only mild interest in his surroundings. But it’s him, she was thinking, even if he barely seems to remember your name; it is still him, and that’s the important thing.

She paused over one photograph: Raymond and herself, early on, triumphant at the peak of a Munro. Such good bone structure she’d had, such clearness to the whites of her eyes. She was tired today, and her face had a weary rosaceous shine: these were depredations, she now felt, that Raymond had worked on her. She set the photograph face down into a drawer with the others. She hadn’t changed all that much in five years, had she? The younger Lynne from the picture could still come back, just as Angus had.