Chasing Angels (2 page)

When she was a child she had lived with her family in Moncur Street, beside the Barras market. The Barras had been part of her life, the noise, the bustle and the characters. She only had to
think back to hear the gramophone records of the Fifties playing in her head as loud as they were all through her childhood, echoing and reverberating through the market to the streets beyond.
Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Connie Francis, Guy Mitchell and Perry Como formed the backdrop to her early life, with their booming laments to lost and crossed love. People now enshrined in Glasgow
folklore were part of her daily existence, the McIver clan who started the Barras and still controlled it, Freddie Benedetti, Chief Abadu with his cure-all snake oil that would blow your head off
before it cured whatever ills you might have, Curt Cook who sold jewellery, though he wore more on his hands than he had on his stall, and the entire Pearson dynasty in Moncur Street itself. They
were as much part of her life as her own family, and the old Moncur Street tenement was where she still placed her mother in her memory; it wasn’t until Con was on his own that he had moved
into the new house, just round the corner. They had lived two up on the right in Moncur Street, with Lily’s mother, Aggie, above them, and the Crawfords next door, across the landing. Jamie
Crawford had been her childhood companion; even though he was two years older, an enormous gap to children, Jamie had been closer than a brother. In the bags of photos spread around her, there were
lots of snaps of herself and Jamie because they were never apart. They walked to the Sacred Heart Primary School in Reid Street together, met up at playtimes, then after school they walked home,
dumped their bags and went out to play together. Lily used to shake her head and smile. If you saw one, she used to say, the other one wouldn’t be far behind; they had been inseparable in
those days. In her secondary years Kathy had been sent to Our Lady and St Francis Convent School in Charlotte Street, though strictly speaking Moncur Street fell out of the catchment area. But Old
Con, who felt that nuns were holier than mortals without habits, had asked Father McCabe to plead his case and Kathy went to the convent. Not that it bothered her, one school was as good as
another. Jamie went to St Mungo’s Academy in Crownpoint Street, but they would still walk together along London Road till their paths diverged at the junction of the Saltmarket and High
Street, and meet up again at the same spot every afternoon for the return journey. Looking at the snaps she was struck by how familiar he still was, it might all have been yesterday. Jamie was
always a solid boy, solid in looks and solid in nature. He stood there, foursquare in the photos and in her life, looking the camera straight in the eye, a shock of dark fair hair falling over his
forehead. She hadn’t seen him in over twenty years now, not since, oh well, it didn’t matter; it was all so long ago. Everyone had to grow up, grow older, she hadn’t been alone in
that at least.

She looked around Old Con’s domain and wished she could find a bin liner big enough to hold it and all its contents, and a hole in the ground big enough to throw it into. That had been her
instinct about Old Con Kelly himself come to that; it always had been, she thought wryly. But it was in hand now, she thought, good things come to those who wait, though it would be a box instead
of a bin liner, and he wouldn’t so much be dropped into a hole as scattered to the four winds, much to Father McCabe’s irritation, which of course was an added bonus. She had irritated
Frank McCabe all through her childhood and teenage years and he had always let it show, believing that his position was unassailable, that no one knew the secret that could destroy him. And why
not? After all, there wasn’t another person alive on the planet who did know; what a sigh of relief he must’ve let go when that funeral was over. But Kathy knew, and that little secret
would keep, she thought, smiling quietly to herself, till the time was right.

Earlier they had taken Con to St Alphonsus’s. He would lie in the chapel overnight, a ritual she had never understood, but then it was Con’s funeral and Con’s religion, and now
that the battle was over she didn’t feel strongly enough to go against either. Con had been one of those loose ends she found it so hard to put up with, and now she just wanted the whole
business over, finally, completely, permanently over. The undertaker had asked what she wanted him dressed in, as if she cared. She’d looked out a few things, feeling almost giddy with the
nonsense of what she was doing. Eventually she decided on the blazer with the Highland Light Infantry badge on the pocket, the grey flannels he wore with it, and the white shirt and regimental tie
that he donned faithfully for every reunion. At least that would get rid of all the irritations at once. She remembered the tears springing to his eyes and his chest swelling with pride every time
he wore his civilian uniform. He was useless at family life, but he felt a real sense of belonging to the HLI, though he’d only spent the Second World War years within its ranks. ‘The
Germans called the HLI “The Ladies from Hell”,’ he’d say proudly, ‘because of oor kilts.’ Kathy would stare at him. ‘Ye’ve no’ much in yer life
if that’s wanna the highlights,’ she’d reply. Her mother had tried to excuse his emotional attachment; he must, she would say, have gone through some terrible times with his
comrades during those years, so it wasn’t really surprising that he felt the way he did, probably they all did. ‘We’ve been through some terrible times wi’ him,’ Kathy
would reply, ‘but
Ah
don’t feel sentimental when Ah see
him
fa’in’ through the door, dae you?’ and Lily would laugh. Poor Lily. She had no love for her
husband, and the guilt of that drove her to defend him, to indulge him more than he deserved, but Kathy had never really accepted his tears as purely sentimental, though God or whoever knew,
sentimentality was a mainstay of whatever personality he had. Everyone knew that reunions were excuses for boozing; Old Con was just filled with joy at the prospect of being filled with booze, that
was all. Still, she had gone through the motions for this last time, picking out the blazer, flannels, shirt, tie and socks; burning them was a satisfying thought, it would be the end of them as
well as him. She drew the line at underwear, it seemed too bizarre somehow, and besides, where he was going the last consideration would be keeping him warm, and he wasn’t likely to get
knocked down by a bus now either. Then she’d laughed at the thought; as if any of it made sense. Finally she’d looked at his various pairs of shoes, then deliberately picked the ones
that had blistered his feet. By that time he was paralysed and couldn’t feel his feet, so the blisters had burst and become infected before anyone had known they were there. Eventually
gangrene had set in and the doctors had wanted to amputate his leg, but they tried skin grafts over his heels instead as a last gasp, harvesting healthy skin from inside his thigh, and somehow it
had been a success. She handed the shoes to the undertaker. ‘Put them on the old bastard,’ she said.

Later, as she followed the coffin into the church, where it would lie on the night before the funeral, she had caught sight of a notice advertising the Christmas Dance only a few weeks away.
‘Come and dance the night away!!!’ some enthusiastic believer had painted freehand; three exclamation marks conveying, she supposed, that three times the pleasure was to be had. Then
she’d thought of the shoes old Con was wearing in his box and she’d laughed out loud. ‘No’ in
they
shoes he won’t!’ she giggled. The undertaker’s
men carrying the coffin ahead of her turned their heads slightly and looked at her, but made no reply. For some reason she found it hard to control her laughter, her mind seeking out amusement and
finding it, whether it was there or not. Before the undertaker had taken Old Con out of the house for the last time, he had asked if she wanted to place anything in the coffin. She stared at him
blankly.

‘Some people put in a note,’ he had suggested helpfully.

‘Whit for?’ she had asked. ‘Sayin’ “Haste ye back” or somethin’? That’s the last thing Ah want noo that Ah’ve got the upper hand at
last!’ Then, as she’d looked around the house, her eyes had fallen on Old Con’s collection of religious tat. He had been devoted all his life to the Child of Prague, a figure of
the child Jesus wearing an ornate scarlet and gold robe, a crown on his head, his right hand raised in blessing and an orb in his left hand. There were pictures and cards of it everywhere, and
statues of every size, Con being unable to pass up the chance of buying yet another, including her favourite little ones inside clear, hard plastic shells, like preserved birds or wedding cake
tiers in Victorian times, only in miniature. When she was much younger she’d twist their heads off, replace the tiny mutilated figures inside the plastic tubes and leave them lying around for
Old Con to find. He used to go berserk, screeching, yelling and falling on his knees to offer up prayers for forgiveness. Then she had perfected the ultimate blasphemy in his eyes, by performing
the Papal blessing over him as he prayed. ‘Whit’s up wi’ ye?’ she’d ask innocently. ‘Ah’m giein’ a blessin’, an’ Ah’m wearin’
a dress just like the boy there! A’ Ah need is the crown and the tennis ba’ in ma hand tae finish it!’ It was the only revenge she was able to get, in those days at least, and it
raised her spirits greatly. Beheading the plastic figures had been a vent, she supposed, and performing the blessing was simply enjoyable vengeance.

She had never really got her head round the Child of Prague. A fascination with angels she could understand. They had this ability she had always envied; whenever they felt like it they could
flap their wings and take off into the wide, blue yonder. The times she wished she could just close her eyes and wake up somewhere else, somewhere Con wasn’t. In the cold winters, with the
ice forming inside the windows and the air so cold in her unheated bedroom that she could see her breath, she would close her eyes and pretend to be somewhere warm. She would lie sandwiched between
patched sheets, with a couple of ex-army blankets on top and a coat or two in an attempt to generate enough heat to make sleep possible. But in her mind she was somewhere else, sunbathing in some
hot country, swimming in a warm, sparkling blue ocean, walking along a deserted beach at sunset, being washed by a balmy breeze. She had no clear notion of where this magical land might be, that
didn’t matter, just as long as it was hot, the kind of place where she’d need calamine lotion to soothe her pale, freckled skin as it turned red, as it always did – Sunnyland,
that would do. And, gradually, as she inhabited her fantasy, she’d make herself relax, muscle by muscle, limb by limb, till her teeth stopped chattering, under the gently waving palm trees in
deepest Moncur Street. And getting to Sunnyland wouldn’t be a problem, she had already worked that out. The journey wouldn’t involve an aircraft, because no one she knew had ever been
on one, so it simply didn’t figure in her Moncur Street life or her Sunnyland one either. Planes were tiny dots you saw in the sky, leaving white trails behind them, or they were props for
film stars to be pictured waving from. So it seemed to the young Kathy that sprouting a pair of functional, as well as aesthetically pleasing, wings from the shoulder blades was infinitely more
realistic, more interesting, too, than the possibility of flying on an aeroplane anyway. She would’ve given anything to have wings, to be able to fly away to Sunnyland, to anywhere, and
disappear. She would look at the angels on the statues in St Alphonsus’s or at school, where the main subject was always someone supposedly bigger, better and, more importantly, holy, with
the angels kind of tacked on at their feet almost as an afterthought, gazing upwards in adoration. Why, she wondered, didn’t they realise that their wings gave them an advantage, a skill the
holy people didn’t have, something she’d have made better use of if she’d had them? But her angelic days would have to be on a strictly freelance, independent basis, she knew
that; there was no way she would consider sitting by the feet of saints, waiting for orders to take to the sky. Winged or wingless, Kathy Kelly had never taken kindly to being ordered about. So she
had always liked angels, she could see the point of them, and there was a certain kind of logic to liking them that was entirely missing from Con’s thing about the Child of Prague, for
instance. Why would a boy be wearing a dress? And Jesus was Jesus, wasn’t he, the lad from the Holy Land, so where did Prague come into the story? While she was still at school she had
discovered that Old Con had no idea who the figure was or what it represented, he simply liked it, and Kathy had taunted him about it for as long as she could remember. Being unable, as usual, to
leave the thing alone, she had gone to her favourite place, the local library, to find out about it, and discovered that the original wax statue had been made for a Spanish royal family, who passed
it on to some count and countess at their seventeenth-century wedding in Prague. Then the count had died – so much for the figure bringing good luck – and the countess had got rid of it
by gifting it to the Carmelites. Over the years it had been destroyed and re-built several times, before being put on permanent display at the Church of Our Lady of Victory in Prague, complete with
different robes for different seasons. It reminded her of the dressing-up dolls she had played with as a child, cardboard figures of impossibly beautiful children with shining cherubic faces and
mops of irritatingly golden curls. They had paper wardrobes of equally impossibly beautiful clothes, with little tabs at strategic positions that you had to cut round very carefully. The folded
tabs held the clothes onto the doll figure and you could change outfits as the mood took you till they fell apart. She couldn’t see the difference between the dolls – who at least
promised nothing more than a few hours of harmless fun and dreaming – and the Child of Prague, who demanded adoration in exchange for possibly enriching his followers’ lives in some
way, or possibly not, depending on his mood. When she told Old Con that his revered icon was nothing more than a wax dressing-up doll, he rewarded her tenfold by becoming even more beside himself
with rage. He screeched that she was making it all up to mock God, the Child, the Pope and all Roman Catholics across the globe, especially himself; well, at least he was right with the last one.
He refused to believe the true story she had recounted to him, but when she’d challenged him to come up with an alternative he couldn’t. That was when she realised that Old Con had
never had any idea of the figure’s meaning, such as it was, or its background, he just liked it, and it had given her a weapon to use against him for the rest of his life. ‘Ye’ve
got a thing aboot blokes in dresses, haven’t ye?’ she’d taunt him scathingly, as Con raged with injured pride. ‘First your HLI kilties, an’ noo this wee guy, the
transvestite frae Prague. There has to be somethin’ wrong wi’ somebody who likes statues an’ pictures o’ boys dressed in frocks!’ Knowledge was indeed power, and her
knowledge of the Child of Prague drove Old Con wild whenever she aired it, as it was intended to. It was a means of evening up the score for Kathy, or as near as she would ever get, and having it
at her disposal, she often thought, had probably stopped her many times from lifting a hammer and bringing it down on Old Con’s head. She still wasn’t sure if that had been a good or a
bad thing. ‘Here,’ she said to the undertaker on impulse, gathering up Old Con’s Child of Prague collection, ‘stuff his gay icon in beside him. Then him an’ the boy in
the frock will burn thegither.’