The Tin-Kin (32 page)

The television is switched off. It makes a popping noise, and then the light of the screen gets further and further away, shrinking till it’s just a wee white hole in a world of blackness. It’s quiet in the room without the cheerful voices from the programmes, and I feel like something from inside me has been sucked into the little white square along with Andy Pandy. I look round the room for something to think about, something nice. Mrs Mellor has a collection of glass animals on the windowsill, and porce-lain girls with lipstick smiles dancing in pretty dresses, but they’re so still it’s like they’re just pretending to be smiling. So all I can think of is Uncle Jock.

I wish we could stay at the budgie house a bit longer. Last time we came home from here we had a new sister, but this time
we’ll have one less person to say hello to. While we were watching television, Uncle Jock’s things were being taken away and burned. That’s what Granny said they would do this afternoon. Make a bonfire of all Jock’s things. She said it’s a wonderful thing that means he can go away, to Heaven or to Peace, or wherever he has gone. He won’t have anything left to hold him back. But we won’t have anything to hold onto either. I think it’s sad. His comics and his aeroplane books, his wallet, the pictures off his wall, his pillow, the letters he got from his penpal in Belgium, his tools for carving, even the favourite shirt with the cigarette burn through the shoulder, all that will be gone when we get home, turned to ashes and dust.

Back at the Lane, I don’t go into the house right away. I can hear Granny crying from outside. Instead I drag my feet up to the drying green to see where the fire was. I want to be by myself, except for the doggie. I find Rascal at the green too, lying on the grass. I sit beside him on the edge of the blackened bit, as if it was still ablaze and we were going to sing a campfire song. I rip up weeds from the edge, get up and kick my toes into the dirt. One. Two. One. Two. One. Two, I say. One. Two. One. Two. One. Two.

I throw grass into the black circle and over Rascal’s head. He tries to catch it in his mouth. When I’m tired of the game I lean over and press the tip of my forefinger into the dust, draw a snail swirl. And right in the middle I find something. There’s one thing that’s left, saved from the flames. It’s a sooty pebble with a hole in it, which Uncle Jock wore round his neck. He must have meant it for me. When I pick it up I feel like I’m holding Jock in my hands, all of who he was, still alive, as if it was a flying saucer and he was inside.

I put my hand in my coat pocket, wrapped over the pebble, and I turn it over and over as I climb to the top of Lady Hill, following Rascal, my heart getting bigger and bigger. There’s no noise from the scrap yard today. All the men were off work to go to the funeral, even the bosses.

It’s getting dark fast, but I’m not scared. Rascal’s with me and so’s Uncle Jock. It feels like I’m holding his hand. The gulls have gone to sleep. No one else is up here except for two old tramps with a bottle in a paper bag. I sit on a ruin and hold the pebble in front of my face like a pirate with a precious stone. I imagine myself in a red velvet ball gown, one of Mrs Mellor’s bright green budgies perched on my shoulder, a telescope in my hand, a skull and crossbones fluttering above me. Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly!

My hands are blackened with ashes from the fire dust. I don’t mind, though. I’m plundering the seven seas for diamonds and rubies! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! I squint through the wee hole in the pebble, moving it round so through it I see the moon, then the mountains, then the Fifth Duke of Gordon’s head (Make the gent walk the plank!), then the roof of our house, then a steeple with a cross on top.

As I’m scanning my ocean for the cathedral tower, there’s a flash of light. Buried treasure! We’re rich! Let’s drop anchor and sleep in the caves with the tinkers. We’ll live happily ever after!

I hold my hand steady and peer through the hole at my treasure, flashing lights blinking on and off, on and off over the High Street. It’s the flicks. C.I.N.E.M.A., the lights spell. On. Off. On. Off. One. Two. One. Two.

This is what Uncle Jock wants me to see.

**CINEMA* *CINEMA* *CINEMA**

Dawn

Maeve said it was going to snow but Dawn hoped she was wrong. The last thing she needed was blocked roads. Anyway, at this time of year it would be a weird thing to happen. Not right. September for Christssake. But to Dawn’s surprise the weather man thought there was a thirty to forty per cent chance. He told them so as he did his wizard’s swooping sidestep over the top half of the map. Good odds for Maeve. Much stranger things had happened with infinitely small odds. One day she’d explain all this to her, the tiny chances that things always came down to.

It had snowed the day she left Warren. Her burns were dressed in bandages, and were still sore, but she’d managed to put everything she’d set aside into a suitcase. She’d been preparing for a while by then. She’d been collecting valuables she could tuck away without much notice, jewellery mostly, that and anything else that fitted into matchboxes. She’d thought she’d not have much time, when the time came, so she’d only prepared small things.

But there were two surprises the day she left. First, she had plenty of time. Warren didn’t try to stop her. He actually smiled, a daft smile like she was off to get him something he needed from the corner shop. Later, that’s what she thought of when Mother asked if the wounds on her wrists had been a mistake, a strange sort of accident. Warren was such a nice boy. His mother was one of Mother’s best friends. Dawn could be clumsy, after all, and she was full of stories, so prone to exaggeration.

Dawn saw how wrong Mother was now. She’d never been one for tall tales. She’d never believed in magic or fate, or lucky charms or the kelpies, or any of that stuff. Not ever. She knew when something was real.

For years her ribs had throbbed where he’d got her with his knuckles and sent her to the floor. He’d held her down with just one hand, and forced her against the Valor, an old one they’d got second-hand. It would’ve been fine except that she’d turned it up just after breakfast when she’d taken the bins out. The wind had chilled her to her core. Back inside she’d needed to warm her hands and she’d turned the thing up even though he’d told her not to. It’s like a bloody furnace in here already, he’d said. She’d hated the sound of his voice, and turned it up even more, liking the crack of the dial each time it was notched up a setting. Breaking bones.

She’d never forget the pain of the burns. The screaming was like it wasn’t part of her, and she didn’t remember that any more. She only remembered thinking the neighbours would hear and come to stop it, and later wondering why the bastards never did.

When he pulled her to her feet he was close enough to kiss. He had her by the collar, almost bloody strangling her with one hand, the other making a fist over her. She watched a ribbon of saliva curl over his bottom lip, saw the shimmer inside it from the Christmas fairy lights. She tried to hide her face, waiting for the fist. With her head down she noticed a drip of slether on the toe of one of his favourite loafers. He buffed those loafers till they shone, bright enough to reflect his face. It took strength to polish shoes properly, he always said. A man’s strength.

Mummy! Snow! Maeve shouted from the window.

The snow. That was the second surprise that day. She was wearing heels. She’d got her bag together without once looking out of the window, and she’d shut the front door firmly behind her. She hadn’t slammed it, just pulled it quietly to till the lock clicked and it was final. That was when she’d noticed the snow. There was no going back to change her shoes.

Maeve was calling her. Dawn got up from the sofa to switch off the telly, and bending down she felt a twinge. Another
wound from him, just above the left kidney. He’d given her old bones. The twinges were always a sign of the cold weather coming back. Time to start saving for Santa Claus.

December the twenty-fifth, one week after she’d left him. The blood hadn’t come straight away. She found a dark stain on her white underwear, and Shirley took her straight up to the hospital, poor thing, the second time in a week. But the baby she’d waited years for would hold on. It was just getting comfy. They went home in the evening and sat in front of the films till bedtime. Dawn wasn’t really watching. She was too busy imagining it inside her, small and round and suspended, full of secrets, a Christmas orb in red velvet.

That was the real magic.

The phone calls from Warren began on Boxing Day. At night he came to the house drunk and screamed at the door. He fell down the icy steps and lay groaning on the lawn, but they didn’t let him in. They kept everything locked and worried he would smash the windows or freeze to death on the ground, so his body would have to be chiselled out in the morning. The fear of it kept Dawn awake all night. Shirley insisted she should leave, as soon as she was fit enough and the snow had melted. And eventually that’s what she’d done. Shirley had called a friend in Glasgow who’d given her a bed there for a while, just till she found a job and a room of her own.

It wasn’t snowing outside the kitchen window at all.

It will be!

Maeve insisted. She’d already put her woolly hat on, and Dawn realised she was to play the game. She gave the air an exaggerated sniff, but the air hadn’t changed. A whole summer and it was still the same smell in the flat. Nearly four decades of talc, dry-cleaned tweed, cardboard, roast tatties, and bloody pot-pourri. She sniffed again.

You’re right about the snow, she lied. It’s on its way. Are you all packed?

Maeve didn’t reply. She rested her head on Dawn’s hip. Her thumb was in her mouth. She’d started doing that recently, and Blue Scarfy seemed to have disappeared.

Let’s get your boots on, Dawn said.

Dad was waiting at the window, looking into the sky, worried the weather wouldn’t hold for their journey. Dawn left most of the cases in the car. She’d handed in the keys at the estate agent’s and packed everything she owned in just under an hour. She was wearing the old wool coat, Lolly’s favourite shade of blue, and in the pockets there were matches, Marlboros. She’d taken her cassette tapes, the scruffy old child’s slipper, the photos, and Shirley’s locket with the black curl inside. Maybe it was her own baby hair, or even better, maybe it was Jock’s. She could have it tested for DNA. It gave her butterflies just thinking about that. She’d seen it done on the telly. A scientist would look through a microscope and shout ‘We have a match!’ And that would be it – she would know. Case closed.

She was keeping the locket safe inside a box of Scottish Bluebell matches. That box was the first one in her old collection, a reminder of the first night she spent with Warren in their house with the lucky red doorstep. That was a good memory, one she’d give to Maeve.

They’d arrived late at night. The place smelt of unwashed towels and cigarette smoke which wasn’t hers. She didn’t start that habit till later. Their bed was a mattress on the floor and she could hear there were mice but it was too dark to see. The light bulbs had gone and there were no spares. Warren went out to scrounge a bulb off a neighbour. She loved his excitement about the place. He’d been on about doing the garden, saving up for a three-piece, even a nursery, for Christssake! When he came back he handed her a paper bag full of candles and that box of matches. Scottish Bluebell Brand. She liked them because they had blue tips and because they were from him. They might have even been the reason she took up smoking.

Later that night she filled the bath and watched the reflections of the candle flames flickering on the water and on the shiny white tiles. He washed her hair, lifting it gently through the water, feeling its weight. He said he’d never seen anything so black. She wore it right down to her hips in those days, an inky spill right down her spine.

You coming in, then? We’ve a roast on, Mother said. All packed?

All packed.

Maeve had been forgiven and they took her into the kitchen for orange squash. Dawn found Linda upstairs in their old bedroom. She knocked on the door and popped her head round. Her sister was on the bed with the family photo albums open.

Oh, it’s you. I was just looking at some of these.

Linda looked better, not as orange as usual. Dawn sat beside her. You not working in the shop right now?

Work’s fine. I read a thing on the beds in a magazine, though. They reckon they found a link with skin cancer. So it’s just one a week now.

That’s good, Dawn said. It only felt strange to say that because she meant it now. Her sister wasn’t half as bad as she’d remembered.

You’re away tomorrow, then?

Aye, long as it doesn’t snow.

Linda went to the window. Her cigarettes and lighter were on the sill. It was raining.

Typical bloody weather, she said. Summer’s over, eh?

Dawn looked at the family pictures. They were all together in one old shot, just the four of them, so Shirley had probably been behind the camera. Mother had lifted Linda, just a wee thing, out of the pram, and Dad had his arms tight round Dawn. She was smiling, just for the camera but you couldn’t tell. She didn’t remember where they were or why the photo was taken.

Can I take this? she said. For Maeve.

Linda nodded. You’ll be coming back, though?

Maeve wants to, Dawn said.

So?

Yeah. Probably. I never did get to Lossie beach. I was meaning to visit.

Next time, then.

Yeah.

Dawn turned the page. Wedding photos of her and Warren.

Linda stubbed her fag out on the flat roof. She cleared her throat

and closed the window. Take whatever you want.

Aye. Maybe a few of Shirley.

Fine.

Linda sat on the bed and Dawn passed the album back. Linda tapped at it for a while with her nails.

Look at the hairstyles on us, eh? And Mother in that hat, oh Christ!

Dawn sniffed. Warren looks happy.

He was, Linda nodded. And don’t worry, he won’t find out about her. They’ve promised nae a word.

Thanks.