Chasing Angels (16 page)

And there were other dark secrets. She had hardly noticed the backache at first, and even when she did she put it down to the effort of clearing out Aggie’s house. How a
woman who had hardly moved from that chair beside the fire, except to regularly call down the wrath of her God on her granddaughter, could’ve collected so much stuff was beyond Kathy. Frank
McCabe had been in attendance at various times throughout the day, just in case, she mused, there might be something in writing about the little secret he had been only too glad to let Aggie carry
all her life. Well,
nearly
all her life. There were rosaries everywhere, made from various materials, each one more ornate than the one before, all of them, she was sure, specially blessed
for her by the wee man himself. When you thought about it, Aggie’s demands must have run him ragged, blessing statues of the Virgin Mary – how he must’ve blushed a bit while doing
the business over that one – pictures of the Sacred Heart, holy medals of every description, and providing holy water for the tatty plastic shrines all over the house with little wells at the
base for moist sponges. Every time Aggie passed one she would dip her hand to wet her fingers before blessing herself. ‘Christ, Aggie,’ Kathy would remark, ‘if ye threw some Fairy
liquid in there ye’d never needtae climb intae the bath again.’

‘An’ nothin’ would clean that soul o’ yours,’ Aggie would counter. ‘It’s as black as the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat, so it is! Ye’ll
burn in Hell for yer blasphemy, you mark ma words!’

‘Is that how the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat got so black, then? Was he wearin’ it while he burned?’

‘Ye know fine whit Ah mean, lady! You’re no’ kiddin’ me!’

‘Christ, Aggie, Ah’ve never understood a word ye’ve ever said, an’ you know
that
fine. Ah think ye make it a’ up as ye go alang. Either that or ye’ve
got a special line tae yer God.’ And all the time she had, that was the funny thing. She had her own direct line through McCabe and their ‘special’ child.

If she had admitted her pregnancy to herself she would’ve at least suspected that the backache was connected to the child she was carrying, but she had kept it filed away in the back of
her mind. No one knew, and at around five months she had still managed to cover it up, but deep down she had been making some sort of provision for the fact that she couldn’t hide it for
ever. There was nothing focused about it, just a quiet acknowledgement that, as she had told Aggie, she would have to go away from here soon. She had no thought for the child growing inside her, in
fact she didn’t even think of it as a child. It was an inconvenience, a situation she would rather have been without, but she had never imagined it as a human being, a small, living, growing
human being. So there was nothing in her mind about what would happen, how she would cope with the birth or what would become of the child, because it wasn’t a child, it was something that
she dealt with moment by moment. The pain wasn’t severe, a dragging discomfort more than anything, and with Con out on his usual round of the pubs in the area, parading his grief about the
late, lamented Aggie to anyone who would stand him a half, she was alone in the house. She decided to have a bath to ease the aches of the day, and then, after she pulled the plug from the bath and
started to get out, the world became blurred. Suddenly there was a tiny thing lying there and blood everywhere. The universe contracted and time stood still as she tried to make sense of what was
happening. She had been getting out of the bath, then somehow the tiny thing was lying there in front of her, and she had no idea if it had happened minutes or hours ago. Her mind was trying and,
so far, failing to function. She wondered where the thing on the floor had come from; it simply didn’t occur to her at first that it had come from her, and when she gradually realised that
she was bleeding she still didn’t see any connection. There was nothing beyond what was going on in the bathroom, where time was moving at a snail’s pace, with huge delays between
thought and action. Slowly she reached for a towel, clamped it between her thighs and sat down on the bathroom floor again, her back against the wall, staring at the thing. There was no plan of
action, one thing simply led to another without any real reason or thought. Somewhere in her mind she knew she would have to
do
something, but she didn’t know what, so she sat against
the wall for another uncertain aeon and did nothing. Eventually she looked at the thing on the floor. It was a baby. Dear God, it was a baby! It didn’t look exactly like other babies she had
seen, its head was out of proportion to its body, as it lay there, unmoving, curved in a fetal position, the cord and the placenta still attached to it. But it was undeniably human, a little
person, pale and dead, but a person, and as there was no one else around she surmised that it must’ve come from her. She reached out and lifted it from the floor, cradling it on her knees for
a long time, looking at it, examining it. It was a girl. It felt waxy and looked like a newly hatched chicken, not quite complete, not ready, covered all over in a fine hair. Its large, bulging
eyes were shut and veins were clearly visible through its translucent skin, but everything was where it should be. She couldn’t stop looking at the smallest details, the fingers with their
fingernails, the toes, the way it curved inwards as if to protect itself. It looked so pathetically small and defenceless. There was no world outside the bloodstained bathroom; the only reality was
her and her dead child. Feeling cold, she reached for her thin, flower-patterned dressing gown and gently wrapped it around the child. She put it back on the floor before stepping once more into
the bath and removing the bloodsoaked towel from between her thighs. The bleeding had eased and was no longer gushing down her legs. She ran the water till it was lukewarm and sponged herself off,
watching it, tinted orangey-red, disappearing down the plughole till it became clearer. Stepping out once more she took a towel and ripped it, placing half between her thighs again and slowly,
carefully, drying herself with the other half. Then she brushed her hair, and finding it nearly dry, she wondered how long she had been in here. Lifting the flower-patterned bundle, she made her
way calmly back to her bedroom and sat on the bed, then she left the bundle on the bed and looked in her chest of drawers for a sanitary belt, a Dr White’s towel and a pair of pants. She put
them on in an unhurried manner, one thing at a time, then she reached for the suitcase under her bed and took from it the brown paper parcel containing the red satin box with the woven hearts that
she had bought for Lily all those years ago. Inside, in one of the compartments of the red mock velvet shelf, she saw the charred enamel brooch she had brought back for her mother from that
long-ago school trip to Fort William, three sprigs of white heather tied together with a tartan ribbon. She was gripped by the need to give the dead child something precious and the brooch, the
only link she had between herself and Lily, was there, so she eased the pin through the thin material, taking care not to hurt the child underneath. Lily would want her to have it. Then she removed
the shelf, before lifting the bundle and gently fitting it inside the box and closing the lid, trailing her fingers along the gold cord at the edges. Finally, she lifted the covers on the bed and
slipped between the sheets, taking the box with her, to lie at her right side. She was more exhausted than she thought possible.

She had no idea how long she slept, a deep, dreamless sleep, all she knew was that it had been dark as she lay down and was lighter as she awoke. Covering the red satin box with the bed-clothes
she took a fresh Dr White’s towel from the drawer and made her way to the bathroom again where she changed it for the soiled one before returning to the bedroom to get dressed. In the bedroom
she gathered together all the bloodstained towels, put them inside a carrier bag and placed it in the case under her bed. Outside the Sunday market would soon be stirring, and looking at the clock
she saw the hands at nearly 7 a.m. She dressed, straightened herself before the mirror on the inside of the room door, and lifted the satin box from her bed. In the kitchen she found a shopping bag
that had belonged to Lily, placed the box inside and pulled the zip, put on her coat and let herself out. Then she stopped for a moment outside the door, turned and let herself back in. In the
kitchen she rummaged through the cutlery drawer till she found a broad-bladed knife that she wrapped in a copy of the
Evening Times
and placed inside the bag before letting herself out
again. The last thing she could cope with was conversation, so in case there were people at the bus stops in London Road or Gallowgate, she walked instead the short distance to Glasgow Cross,
firmly holding the precious cargo. There she waited for a number 37 bus to Springburn, and once aboard sat in detached silence till it arrived outside St Kentigern’s. At a nearby shop she
bought a bunch of flowers and then made her way to the grave of the Kelly women, with its white, heart-shaped headstone. It was oddly quiet in the early morning, the sparse Sunday traffic noises
fading into the distance. Kneeling down she unzipped the bag and, leaving the newspaper wrapping behind, began cutting through the dew-heavy turf with the knife till she reached the earth below.
She dug into it with her hands and, when the hole was big enough, she took the box from the bag and carefully lowered it into the hole. After covering the small grave with the disturbed earth, she
replaced the rectangle of turf, laid the flowers on top and replaced the knife in the bag. She didn’t realise that her hands were covered in thick earth, made muddy by the dew, till she stood
up again and tried to zip the bag, so she took the newspaper out and rubbed off as much of the mud as she could from her hands and her knees; there was little she could do about the hem of her
coat. Before she left she gently re-arranged the flowers covering the spot where her child was buried. ‘Her name’s Lily,’ she said quietly. ‘Take care of her, Mammy,’
the first words she had spoken in many hours, and then she turned and walked back through the gates. Sitting on the bus going back to Glasgow Cross, the conductor looked at her. ‘Did ye
fa’ or somethin’, hen?’ he asked.

‘Aye, that’s right,’ she replied flatly, ‘Ah fell.’

He grinned at her. ‘Ah bet ye canny remember how! That’s whit happens when ye go oan the skite oan Setterday night an’ don’t waken till the mornin’!’ he
replied cheerily.

‘You’re tellin’ me!’ she said quietly, smiling wanly.

‘Ye look as if ye’ve got a heid like the inside o’ a badger’s arse that’d been well kicked wi’ a tacketty boot!’ he said. ‘Bet yer maw gies ye a
tankin’ when ye get hame!’

‘Aye,’ she said, ‘likely enough.’

As she got off the bus at the Cross he called after her, ‘Maws is queer things, hen. Take ma advice, tell her ye were abducted by wee green men. She’ll likely believe that easier
than the truth!’

‘OK,’ she smiled, ‘Ah’ll remember that!’ Then she walked back along London Road, past Glickman’s, past Maggie’s perfect fruit stall, the wooden bones of
her display still having the flesh put on them as Maggie set up for another day’s trading.

Maggie looked her up and down as she passed. ‘Whit happened tae you?’ she asked.

‘Ah fell, Maggie. Makes ye feel that daft!’ she replied and kept walking. Back inside the house she went straight to her bedroom, feeling consumed with weariness once again, but
there were things to be done, loose ends that had to be attended to, before she could rest. She felt as if she was being directed by some outside force, as though she wasn’t really there. It
was like sleepwalking, only she was conscious and aware of what she was doing, if not why; decisions were being dictated to her, and she was obeying them to the letter without the slightest
question or pause. She sat on her bed, her head down and her hands crossed in her lap, till she heard Con in the background getting ready to leave for the Barras to pay for his next drink, and as
he closed the door behind him she took the suitcase from under her bed. In the living room she removed the bloody towels and ripped them up into as small pieces as she could. Then she burned them,
bit by bit, in the fireplace, as she was used to doing every month, only this time the pile seemed endless. When the more saturated pieces wouldn’t burn she looked around for Con’s
lighter fuel and dripped it on to the material till it caught fire, sitting alone by the hearth for what seemed an endless time, making sure there was nothing left in the grate but sticky, black
ash. When it was finished she returned to her bedroom and emptied her possessions into the case, retrieved her bank book from its hiding place under the faded lino and placed it safely under her
pillow, only then gratefully lying down and slipping once more into the deep, dreamless sleep of the night before.

When she woke she heard a child crying somewhere in the distance; it must be morning. After dressing she wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table for Old Con. It simply said,
‘I’m off.’ He was still lying inside the front door snoring loudly, he’d had such a skinful that he hadn’t made it to bed. Kathy moved him by repeatedly opening the
door against his back, pushing it a bit more each time. Somewhere in his drunken stupor each nudge of the door registered, and he muttered petulantly in his sleep, but eventually the shapeless heap
on the floor had shifted enough for her to open the door and let herself out before closing it quietly behind her. As a final gesture she pushed the key through the letter box and heard it land
with a crack on the lino; she would never be back here, so she would never again have need of a key. It was quiet outside, the Barras was recovering after the weekend trading, and there were only a
few non-market people queuing at the bus stops on their way to work, all wearing their Monday morning depression like an extra coat. She looked at her watch: 5 a.m. She had no idea it was that
early, but still, there was no reason to delay her departure. Looking around she felt an unexpected stab of sorrow at the thought of never seeing again people she had grown up among. She was saying
goodbye to everyone she had known throughout her life, to Maggie, Chief Abadu, Cockney Jock, the McIvers and the Pearsons, only they didn’t know it. Still, they all knew she had been planning
on leaving, so no one would think it strange that she had simply gone. They would assume that being heartbroken about Jamie Crawford’s betrayal she had deliberately opted to slip away
quietly. She smiled wryly and glanced at St Alphonsus, thinking of Frank McCabe inside, hugging his secret safely to himself; there were some she felt no sorrow at never seeing again. She knew
exactly where she was going now, though she had made no conscious decision. She was going to Queen Street Station to catch the train to Fort William. She would leave behind her everything that had
ever made her unhappy or caused her grief, and that included what had befallen her in these last months and days. Once she was clear of this place her life would start anew and nothing that had
happened in the past would count. It would be like completing a circle. With her escape from the East End to the West Coast the slate would be wiped clean, no pain, no suffering, no disappointment
or loneliness. She would head for the Western Highlands to heal it all, to do what or for how long, she had no idea, but that was where she was headed on that crisp March Monday in 1973, and she
was never coming back to this place ever again.