The Tin-Kin (27 page)

Maeve had shown Dawn the back of her head, a messy pigtail, and stared up the trunk of the tree.

It’s all right, Dawn had told her. You don’t have to see them any more today, if you don’t want.

Slowly Maeve had turned round.

Who’s Big Ellen?

When they reached the top of the hill and looked down at the caravan site, Dawn felt sure she’d made a mistake bringing Maeve. The site looked eerie and deserted. Most of the vans were gone. She’d warned Maeve about the dogs, not to creep up on them, but now there weren’t any there. Without the barking it was oddly quiet.

Come on! Maeve said, pulling her hand.

Dawn couldn’t remember which van had belonged to Big Ellen, but she went up to one and knocked.

Stand back! a familiar voice shouted from inside.

Dawn was relieved. The round handle spun ninety degrees and the door burst open.

By faith! Dinnae be standin there, ye’ll catch a death.

Big Ellen put her arms round Dawn, almost enveloping her as she dragged her inside. When she saw Maeve, Big Ellen beamed, her cheeks like two sponge cakes rising. She crouched down as far as her great belly would allow, a circus elephant on its knees, and kissed the top of Maeve’s head.

What a bonnie wee thing ye are. Dae ye like beasts? We’ve cats, dogs, rabbits . . . what else? There’s a horse an all!

Maeve grinned.

Oh, ye’ll be fine here! Big Ellen said, clapping her hands together.

Maeve pulled her own pet, Blue Scarfy, from her pocket to show Big Ellen.

Benny? Big Ellen shouted.

A man appeared in the cold open doorway. He climbed the steps, walked in, and took his pipe from a ledge. He nodded to them. It was the same man that had collected the furniture from Shirley’s flat when Dawn sent it to auction. She recognised the coarse red hair in his nose, a tuft from each nostril. He looked at her differently now. Benny gave them a smile and his eyes twinkled like a toymaker’s. Maeve took his hand, and once the two of them were down the steps, Benny lifted Maeve onto his strong shoulders.

The electric heater in the middle of the van gave off a roasting, chemical smell and the orange bars across it were hypnotic. They seared Dawn’s eyes when she looked too long. She was sweating buckets. It must have been on full blast. Big Ellen was already setting water on to make tea, and before it had boiled Dawn could hear Maeve and some other children playing together with the animals.

What was it brought ye back up here? Big Ellen asked when she’d sat back down and taken a sip of tea.

Sweat prickled Dawn’s neck and forehead. She loosened Shirley’s blue coat. It was a bit too small so she had to tug to get her arms out.

It was Maeve who asked to come. She’s been strange since we went to see Ma Batchie.

Big Ellen chuckled to herself. You met the old woman. Is that so?

Have some people left? Dawn said. The place looks a bit empty.

Big Ellen nodded through the window to the hill, and Dawn remembered the bikers.

Some local folk were causing too much trouble, Big Ellen said. Trying tae force us tae shift. It’s thon place on the road that’s the problem – the café. The young lads go there. The army boys and the scouts use it. They dinnae like our sort. My grandson, Jocky, had a run in wi them.

He’s all right?

Aye, Big Ellen said. She was still looking out the window, gazing at the view as though she could ink it into her mind.

They set five vans alight and put Benny in the hospital, but. We’re all shifting now, in the next few days.

Big Ellen pointed out the window to the plot next to hers. The ground where the caravan had been was branded black, burnt pan loaf.

They go up quick, she said.

I’m sorry.

Ach, Big Ellen shrugged. She looked as though she might say something else but didn’t bother.

I hope you don’t mind me coming back, Dawn said.

I’m glad!

Big Ellen breathed deeply. She motioned again to the charred patch of earth out the window.

There’s something I decided nae tae talk about before. I thought the past is the past. But this here changed my mind.

Dawn could feel a question on her tongue now. She could almost taste it, dry like rice paper stuck to the roof of her mouth.

You knew Shirley?

Big Ellen shrugged. Well, now, that I couldnae say, if ah had or if ah hadnae. She didnae work in the cinema?

Yes! Dawn said. Her first job was there. She sold the tickets.

She did, ye say? Big Ellen scratched her chin. Well, maybe ah remember. Maybe.

Dawn had heard all about Shirley working at the pictures. That was before she went to Aberdeen and became a nurse. She’d always said how much she’d loved it, sitting in the booth with the rolls of coloured tickets all wound up like ribbons in the haberdasher’s.

But I wanted tae tell you about another person, Big Ellen said eventually.

Big Ellen had found a loose thread on a cushion and was pulling it free, winding it slowly, finger-painting swirls. She seemed nervous, as if she were waiting till the thread snapped before she could start.

Dawn was thinking about her aunt, and about Shirley’s secret. She’d been wondering for a while now. When Shirley said ‘her Dawn’, had she really meant ‘
her
Dawn’, that Dawn had been
hers
all along?

Since meeting Ma Batchie, Dawn had studied the tiny picture of Jock and Lolly till her eyes were sore with it. More and more she stood herself in front of the mirror and compared. The long, straight nose, her full upper lip, earlobes, eyes, Jock’s shiny black hair. Sometimes she had a sense there was something there, but the picture was too small. Sometimes it felt like a tall tale, the kind they would all expect her to come up with, Linda and Dad and Mother.

Dawn wasn’t particularly shocked by it. In some ways the thought had always been there. Maybe it was a film or a storybook that had first suggested it. You heard stories like it all the
time. They were probably as old as history. So maybe Shirley’s secret was much bigger than she’d ever imagined. Or perhaps she should say it was exactly as big as she had
always
imagined. She couldn’t decide any more.

Ye ken about the Batchie Woman, dae ye? Big Ellen said suddenly. Shame, she whispered. A terrible shame.

Dawn nodded and looked away. On the window ledge behind them was a line of cassettes. Dawn read along the row of titles. There were names she recognised, all country singers. She had them in her collection too; albums she hadn’t listened to in ages. She laughed to herself. She and Big Ellen liked the same music.

I can read your palm, if you want, Big Ellen said out of nowhere, as if she wanted to change the subject.

But Dawn didn’t believe in all that hocus-pocus. She pushed her hands deeper into the seat cushion, keeping her scarred wrists hidden.

Big Ellen looked at her for a long time. Ye’ve got sense! she laughed. When is it ye were born? Fifty-five, was it?

Dawn nodded and Big Ellen’s lips tightened slowly, as if she were reading Dawn’s fortune in her face and finding something there to hide.

Your aunt knew our Jock. That was him beside her in the photo. I think they were going together, ken? It’s lucky ye came up here when ye did. She took a deep breath. We’ll be gone in a week.

Big Ellen stood up and pulled a drawer from under the seats. She reached in and took out an old doctor’s bag with a broken brass clasp. The mouth of the bag sagged open and the leather was dry and beaten, covered in scratches and grazes. It held a heavy mess of envelopes and papers, other bits and pieces, and at the top was a tin with a picture of a castle on the lid. The weight of all this had disfigured the bag. It was full of lumps, like a badly stuffed bear.

This is the only thing that survived the fire next door, Big Ellen said. It was Maggie’s van. Ye ken Maggie?

Big Ellen patted the bag and did crossed eyes. Maggie Marbles.

Dawn nodded.

It doesnae mean much tae me, and when I saw it lying in the middle of all that flames I thought there had tae be a reason it didnae go up wi the rest. I spoke tae Benny, and we decided it belongs with you.

Big Ellen started pulling things from the bag, covering the floor.

Ah’m after something in particular. Here, have a look in that tin there.

Big Ellen handed her the old shortbread tin that had a castle picture on the lid and red tartan painted round the rim.

That was Auld Betsy’s tin. The auld woman in yer photie. Ah’ll check on the bairns in a minute, let ye get a look through in peace.

The tin was packed so full it made no noise when Dawn gave it a shake. She eased off the lid. On top was a photo Dawn didn’t recognise. Five teenage girls round a boy perched on a bicycle.

Big Ellen leaned over.

That’s Auld Betsy’s grandbairns. Your Jock’s nieces – Wee Betsy, Rachel, Nancy, Elsie, and Wee Helen, who’s named after me. They never had boys. The laddie’s Jimmy Starbuck. He used tae drive the mobile library.

Are they still here?

Ach, no. Wee Betsy and Jimmy Starbuck got married right after she finished university in Edinburgh. She was a clever clogs. Folk says they moved tae Canada. Heaven kens what happened tae the rest. Ah heard Nancy was in London, workin fer the BBC! That’s what someone says tae me! Helen and Elsie, they were in Glasgow and Edinburgh, last ah heard, but doing what ah couldnae say. And Rachel, well, ah’ve nae idea where life took her.

Big Ellen left to check on the kids while Dawn kept looking through the tin. She tipped the contents out to sort through them faster. There was a rosary with shiny red beads, a tiny carving of a plane, some old threads in different colours wound into finger-sized circles, and a framed picture of Maggie Marbles as a little girl, unmistakable with her crooked eyes.

Dawn found what she wanted at the bottom. It was a portrait photo of Jock, taken in a studio with his hair neat, wearing his best clothes. The picture was printed on a hard piece of card and had been given an old-fashioned pastel wash. The artist had put some colour in Jock’s cheeks and lips, and given him greenyblue eyes.

A newspaper article was wrapped round the photo, roughly cut out with a shaky hand and folded in three. The paper was brittle and stained, but not torn. It had been carefully put away, as if whoever put it there knew it would be important one day. The article was printed in an old typeface and the paper was yellow with age. There was a strong smell on it, like library books. Dawn rubbed it between her fingers. It felt too thin, too ancient to be part of her story. The cold sun outside was blinding white and outside it was noisy. As Dawn read, she lost her place a couple of times. She could hear the children playing, and one voice she knew was Maeve’s. She could hear it even across a playground. A mother–daughter frequency only she could hear.

There was nothing in that moment to mark what she was reading. Jock was gone. It had happened at the police station, the old place where Dad had once worked. Dad might even have been there. Would she ever know? The old station was gone now. It had been pulled down a long time ago and the shopping centre put up in its place. The exact spot where the truth should have been, balancing just under the surface, would now be one of the fast-food counters on the ground floor. It would be wiped clean every day.

Ye’ve found what ye were after, then? Big Ellen said, coming back and seeing the article in her fingers. Her voice was clipped.

He wasnae like that, that’s what the papers never tell abody. Your Jock was clever. He was grand. I named my first child after Jock. Normally you wouldnae do that so soon after, but there was something special about him and no one wanted tae let go. You met our grandson, and the wee boy. They’ve all taken his name.

Big Ellen came back to the seats and reached down, smudged a thumb briefly onto the photo. She pressed it over Jock’s chest where the buttons down his suit had been given a bluish colour by the painter. Dawn held the photo for a while, running her fingertips along its soft, worn edges, and then she put it back in the tin and put the lid back on, feeling the pressure of it closing like hands round her throat.

Big Ellen showed her more photographs, trying to shift the mood.

These were Auld Betsy’s an all. Here! This is what ah was after.

It was an old photo of a lady in a wooden wheelchair. A bright red tartan rug was draped over her legs and she was surrounded by a garden. It was full of orange and yellow flowers. Auld Betsy’s body was flimsy and pale like a doll, but her sage-green eyes looked right at the camera and there was a hint of laughter about her rosy lips.

Ha! she seemed to say. Ah made it intae colour!

She was ninety-two or thereaboots when she died, Big Ellen said. God love her. I’ll tell ye a story ae Auld Betsy’s. It’s a good een.

There was this tinker who lived in a hoose, she says. And he didnae ken who he was, ye see? Oh, he was confused. He didnae ken who in the name ae God he was! So she says he tied a tin pot tae his ankle one night. She says, if this tinker woke in the morning wi the pot still tied tae him, she says he’d ken he was the same manny he was the night before. So he goes tae sleep.

There was a loud bang outside and Big Ellen lost her concentration. What the Devil was that? Are those bairns all right?

But Dawn could hear Maeve. Maeve was fine and there was laughter outside.

What are those bairns at? Where was I? Oh, aye. Now, next tae the tinker in the bed was his wife. And this was a clever woman, the daughter ae a sea captain. So she says, in the middle ae the night when the tinker was sleeping, she says this wife untied the tin pot, and instead attached it tae her ain ankle.

The morning came and the tinker woke up, and oh me! she says, oh me! What a confusion he was in. Cause, she says, he looks at the wife wi the tin pot tied tae her ankle and he cries, but in the name ae God, wife! If ah’ve no got a tinker’s pot tied tae my ankle, and you have, then you are me! So who in God’s name am I? Who am I wi nothin tied tae me? Oh, me!

They both laughed, and Dawn looked at the picture of Auld Betsy, wishing there were more stories.