Chasing Angels (7 page)

And Jessie’s two children had no visible father, though she had been married briefly to a man called Sammy Nicholson, whom everyone thought of as a decent enough bloke, until he fell down
a flight of stairs and broke his neck. ‘Fell or was pushed?’ Kathy used to ask Lily, and Lily would laugh, ‘Kathleen! That’s terrible!’ ‘Well, he’d served
his purpose, hadn’t he? He’d supplied Jessie wi’ an alternative name tae make her respectable, or as respectable as a name change alone could ever make her.’ In the curious
way of things, she was known locally all her life as Jessie Bryson, even if legally she was Mrs Nicholson, while both Harry and Claire, who had no relationship, either biological or legal, to the
unfortunate Sammy, had taken his name, though Harry had been there many years before his mother’s brief marriage, and Claire didn’t appear till much longer than nine months after
Sammy’s death. What always fascinated Kathy was what explanations Jessie could possibly have given her children about their origins, or were they unaware of the time scales involved in their
births and the demise of their ‘father’? The rest of the family knew of Harry’s origins, but Kathy was never sure if he did. His father was Eddie Harris, a notorious Glasgow
gangster, and for however long the relationship lasted he would visit Jessie in her home in nearby Broad Street on a regular basis, while his two bodyguards waited outside. Thus, anyone passing
knew that Jessie and Eddie Harris were inside, attending to ‘business’. There was a suspicion that Eddie Harris was the only punter who didn’t actually pay for Jessie’s
services, though for some years afterwards he contributed to the upkeep of the product, known for the first few years of his life as Harry Harris. ‘D’ye no’ remember him
comin’ tae see Harry when he was a wee boy?’ Lily would ask Kathy, but Kathy had been even wee-er than Harry at the time and she was never sure if she could remember, or if her mother
had told her so often that she thought she could remember. ‘D’ye no’ mind the time ye asked why Harry wasnae comin’ oot tae play an’ Aggie said his Daddy was
visitin’ him, an’ you said, “But Harry’s Daddy’s deid”? Ye coulda heard a pin drap!’ Kathy wasn’t sure whose memory that story came from either, but
from somewhere there was an image of a tall, thin man wearing a tight, double-breasted suit and a hat, and black suede shoes with thick crepe soles. But then that was everyone’s image of a
gangster and Kathy could have lifted it straight from a comic or a film, even if her vision of Eddie Harris was taller than either George Raft or Edward G. Robinson.

In time, though, the visits had stopped and Jessie had married the ill-fated Sammy Nicholson, and from then Harry was known as Harry Nicholson. If he was aware of having changed names he gave no
indication of it, but certainly Father McCabe had been aware of that and all the other intricacies of Jessie’s life story, not that it stopped him accepting cash from her and welcoming her
into the faith. Kathy supposed that Jessie just trotted along to confession once a week in her mink coat, repented of that week’s liaisons, took her penance and emerged clean as a whistle and
ready to liaise again. And oh, by the way, Father, here’s a couple of bob for the new roof. Was that how it worked, she wondered? Claire’s father had come from climes further afield, as
was evident from her exotic features. That two such handsome children, one blond and blue-eyed, the other darkly beautiful, should have come from Jessie, was a thing of wonder to Kathy. How was it,
she mused, that they had been lucky enough to take their looks so entirely and obviously from their fathers, when Jessie’s plainness was so strong? No one knew for sure who Claire’s
father had been, but around the time of her conception and birth there were increasing numbers of immigrants arriving from the Indian subcontinent. As it was always assumed that Jessie’s
skills did not lie in her brain power, she would probably have had more difficutly than most telling one of her dusky customers from another, if, indeed, she was ever able to distinguish the
features of any of them, regardless of their colour. The price was all that interested Jessie, so whoever had fathered Claire one thing was certain, he must’ve been one of the wealthier new
arrivals, because Jessie had her standards, or her tariffs at least.

In time, though, Jessie’s line of work got to her, and it was a great sorrow to Kathy that Lily hadn’t lived to see it. Jessie developed a phobia about germs, though, as Kathy wryly
noted, not until her physical charms, such as they were, had faded and presumably – but who knew for certain? – business had dropped off. Wherever she went Jessie held a handkerchief
over her mouth and nose with white gloved hands, in an attempt to avoid whatever bugs were seeping out of passers-by and making their way directly to her. It didn’t help that Kathy was always
overcome with sneezing and coughing attacks whenever Auntie Jessica appeared, or that she was so happy to see her that she insisted on hugging Auntie Jessica whenever they met either. Then Jessie
began washing her hands so often that the skin was permanently red and weeping, and instead of attending the VD clinic she transferred to the Dermatology clinic, where various unguents and lotions
were tried over the years; in vain, of course, the problem being in her mind, not her hands. Where once she was instantly recognisable by her expensive clothes and potato-like, young Sid James
features, together with the treasured mink coat and her lack of nether garments, everyone’s perception of Jessie Bryson was changed in later years, and she was reduced in their minds to two
weeping, red, raw hands, enclosed in white cotton gloves, clutching a handkerchief against her nose and mouth.

‘Poor Jessica,’ Aggie sympathised, ‘her hands is that bad she’s had tae gie up her work.’

‘Nae wonder,’ replied Kathy. ‘Ah know men don’t care too much where they put their willies, but even a scabby auld horse would think twice about lettin’ Jessie
touch them wi’ her hands in that state! Efter a’, if the ootside’s like that, there’s nae tellin’ whit the inside’s like!’

‘Ah’ll swing for you, lady!’ Aggie screeched, rising menacingly from her chair beside the fire.

‘Aye, well, make sure ye wear a wee sparkly costume when ye dae, Aggie. The effect is everything when it comes tae pleasin’ the public. Just ask your Jessica.’

‘As God is my witness, may you be struck deid for whit comes oota that mootha yours!’ Aggie screamed, spittle flying in all directions, and her hands performing a blessing across her
body to seal her granddaughter’s fate.

‘Christ, Aggie,’ Kathy responded conversationally, ‘if ye don’t go a bit easier wi’ yer sign o’ the cross ye’ll dislocate yer shoulders wanna these
days. An’ anyway, if yer God hasnae struck Jessie deid for what he’s witnessed hur daein’, Ah don’t think he’ll bother too much wi’ me, Aggie. Dae you,
really?’

Jessie and her children moved from Broad Street after the demise of the unfortunate Sammy. With business booming she, Harry and Claire moved to Newton Mearns, on the affluent southern fringes of
the city, the natural home of Fifties yuppies, where she bought a 1920s bungalow with double bay windows. Family visits to Jessie were not frequent, so Kathy only saw her house once, and was struck
by how respectable it looked, with its net curtains and neat garden. Jessie didn’t exactly ban the family from her home, she just didn’t issue invitations, and in a strange, but civil,
way there was a feeling of polite discouragement. Kathy’s great friend, apart from Jamie, had always been her cousin Harry. Jamie was her soulmate, but she knew he had no interest in the
things that interested her; they were so close because their personalities complemented each other. Jamie’s dreams for the future were simple and commendable, if dull. He would serve his time
as an engineer then settle into married life and have two children. He wanted a better life for his children than he had had himself, a better house in a better area, better clothes, better
schools, in fact in the future he envisaged life would be much the same, only every aspect would be better. She had always known that his horizons didn’t stretch as far as her own. He had no
interest in books for instance, and books were her great solace. They would go to the library together, he to study for his City and Guilds, she to read poetry, though she never told him that; he
had assumed she was doing homework and she didn’t deny it, that was all. But it was different with Harry, because Harry had been educated, and out of the entire family he was the only one on
her wavelength. He was a cheerful, good-natured boy, always with a welcoming smile, happy to talk books with her, the only one she could ever divulge her deepest ambitions to. Harry didn’t
laugh because she wanted to be a writer, though the dream was so far away that she knew it was indeed laughable, and from her very earliest days she felt an unspoken understanding between them. She
was proud of Harry, he was clever, he was pleasant, and one day he would, she was convinced, be somebody, he would succeed. And when that day came, she could imagine him being the same open,
pleasant chap, unlike her brother Peter, who wanted nothing to do with his background or the people he came from, who was ashamed of them, regardless of the adoration they all felt for him, well,
almost all. Peter too would make it big, of that she had no doubt, he would have it all one day and he’d keep it, whereas their cousin Harry’s success wouldn’t stop him being one
of the family. Peter was a phoney, she thought, but Harry was the real thing.

When she asked Harry about his mother it was as if he knew why she was asking but wasn’t offended, in fact he was so easy about it that she often wondered if he really knew what Jessie did
for a living. Until the later days of her germ phobia, Jessie always presented an immaculate figure to the world. Kathy would see her at Aggie’s house, the only place she ever did see her,
and she never tired of examining the vision that was Jessie. Everything was a little overdone. The black of the eyebrows was too strong, the face powder too heavy, and too pink. Her rouge was just
a hint too rosy red, and applied as a precisely defined circle of colour on each cheek. Her habitual scarlet lipstick was too red and too thick, so that it overran her lips, bleeding into the tiny
lines leading from her mouth. She looked to Kathy like one of those women you saw in the big stores being taught how to apply make-up, but over time she had remembered the impression while becoming
hazy about the detail, so that the result became increasingly imprecise, and her face more like a mask. Then there was the mink coat, of course, and an ever-present, black velvet concoction of a
hat, like a little saucer with a saucy bow on top, sitting on her head. Two open triangles of velvet-covered wire held it tightly in place at both sides, and a delicate black veil with little dots,
like a spider’s web full of dead flies, fell from her forehead, ending at the tip of her nose. She wore plain, black suede shoes with pointed toes and high stiletto heels, the most oddly
sophisticated yet questionable shoes Kathy had ever seen. Around the edges, where each shoe met the foot, a thin, white leather lining was just tantalisingly visible against the sheer black of her
stockings. In ancient Greece prostitutes wore shoes with ‘Follow me’ imprinted in the soles, leaving an invitation to potential male customers with every step. Jessie’s shoes,
Kathy always thought, were the modern Glasgow version, they were twentieth-century ‘fuck me’ shoes. They were decadent and slightly kinky, in their oddly sophisticated way, a way you
instinctively understood without knowing how or why, whore’s shoes without a doubt. With her decadent shoes, Jessie wore fully-fashioned stockings with a design of little graduated steps
climbing upwards and getting smaller from the heel, fading to a black line up her calf so straight and precise that it looked painted on her leg. Even when fashions changed and women everywhere
gave thanks for the invention of tights, Jessie wore her fully-fashioned stockings, but then it was understood that men hated tights and loved suspender belts and stockings, because they
didn’t have to wear them, so maybe it was less to do with choice than Jessie’s ability to look after business. Her clothes under the mink were always black and simple, no frills or
flounces, and over her left arm she carried a plain black handbag that fastened with a gold clasp. On the third finger of her left hand she wore a slim gold band under a black leather glove, in
which she carried the right hand glove, so that she could smoke a cigarette. The cigarette was held in an elegant pose between two fingers, the other two fingers gently curved towards her palm, the
pose set off by scarlet painted nails like talons. It was, Kathy knew, the way Rita Hayworth held a cigarette, because she’d seen it in a film. Yet Kathy never actually saw Jessie put the
cigarette to her lips, the cigarette just sat in position, the smoke curling high into the air until the glowing tip finally burned so low that it was in danger of scorching her fingers, then it
was stubbed out. Apart from her wedding band, the only jewellery she wore was a gold watch, and on her ear-lobes, single pearl studs, white and virginal, the traditional choice of white brides
everywhere. Instead of having her ears pierced, Jessie wore earrings with a loop of gold running from the pearl and under the lobes, where it was held in position by a tiny screw arrangement. The
whole picture was one of determined sophistication, which, apart from the shoes, never really rang true as far as Kathy was concerned. Despite the expense of this carefully cultivated image she
still looked like Jessie Bryson trying to look sophisticated, and Kathy often wondered if she lived her life in that mode. She couldn’t, for instance, imagine her aunt in a wraparound pinny,
ankle socks and slippers, her hair in curlers and pins and a fag hanging from her lips, as she did the dusting in Newton Mearns, listening to ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’ on the wireless.
And Harry confirmed this. A woman came in twice a week to do the cleaning, he said, and a man appeared every fortnight to tidy the garden. And did Jessie do the shopping? No, Jessie did not; the
same woman who did the housework also did the shopping. So what exactly did Jessie do with her time then? Well, she worked in the hospital, didn’t she, said her son. Kathy never did work out
if Harry was saying this tongue in cheek, or if he believed it. For a start, didn’t he ever wonder how she could type with those nails? But in case he did believe it, she left it alone and
said no more.