Chasing Angels (8 page)

‘Does she ever just laze aboot the hoose, though?’ she asked instead.

Harry looked perplexed. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, sometimes, when ma Mammy has a bath, she puts on her pyjamas an’ lies on the couch wi’ her hair in curlers, readin’ a magazine. Does Auntie Jessie dae that kinda
thing?’

Harry looked lost. ‘I’ve never seen her like that,’ he said with a smile. ‘She gets her hair and her nails done every week.’

‘Her nails?’ Kathy asked, raising her voice. ‘Ye mean somebody does her nails for her?’

Harry nodded. ‘She goes to a beauty parlour and has a manicure, her hair, the lot, all done at once every week.’

Kathy was amazed. It was all done with mirrors after all then; Jessie regularly got herself professionally refurbished, inside and out.

‘Whit else does she dae, when ye’re at school, or when ye go hame?’

‘Well, she has her work during the day, hasn’t she?’ Harry asked. ‘Then someone comes in and sits with me and Claire most evenings, so that my mother can go
out.’

Ah ha! ‘Where?’

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Clubs or somewhere, I suppose. Or to her dressmaker, because she’s too busy working at the hospital during the day to see her then,
isn’t she?’

Was Harry having her on? Didn’t he know that Jessie’s ‘work’ took place at night? Kathy never found the answer to that one, because, being fond of her cousin, she
didn’t have the nerve to say, ‘Look, Harry. Your mother’s on the game, she always has been. Everybody knows she’s a slapper.’ Neither did she feel comfortable hinting
at what he should know, that not many hospital secretaries could fund the lifestyle Mrs Nicholson and her children enjoyed, and damn few could afford weekly trips to beauty parlours and
dressmakers. But Harry was a clever lad, she thought, surely he must’ve thought of all this himself and wondered? And if he had done, he had obviously decided to keep such musings to himself,
so just like the confused topic of Harry and Claire’s true parentage, Kathy stopped asking her cousin questions, though she never did stop wondering just what he did know, and how much he had
decided not to know.

3

Her first taste of life outside the East End had been on a school trip when she was thirteen. Somehow Lily had scraped together a few shillings and, even more amazingly, had
successfully kept them hidden from Con, so that Kathy could go on a coach trip to Fort William with her class. She remembered Lily seeing her off that morning, her stomach in knots of anticipation
and fear, because however excited she was at the prospect of the trip, the Highlands were another world away. She had never been that far from her mother before, there hadn’t been a second of
their lives when they hadn’t known exactly where the other was, and though she felt embarrassed about it, there was a very childish fear deep inside that she might vanish off the edge of the
earth and never see her again. As she boarded the coach Lily had pressed more money into her hand, all of it in pennies and silver sixpences, telling her ‘Mind, noo, ye’ve no’ tae
bring back presents. That’s for you tae spend.’ She’d felt guilty, though, knowing that Lily would have done without herself to finance the trip, and she made up her mind there
and then that of course she would buy Lily a present. It was a cheap enamel brooch of a bunch of heather held together with a tartan ribbon, and Lily had worn it from that day on; it was still
pinned to the scrap of charred cloth that had been her coat, recovered from the fire a couple of years later.

The trip seemed to last for days, though it could only have taken two or three hours to get there, but as far as Kathy had been concerned it didn’t last long enough. As they left the
built-up centre of Glasgow the buildings gradually thinned out, and there was a feeling of light and space that she had never experienced before. Everyone else was singing, or eating too much and
being sick, or chattering to each other in high excited voices, but Kathy Kelly sat with her face pressed against the window, soaking up the scenery in silence. Glencoe completely overawed her. In
the background a teacher’s voice tried to penetrate the garble of the girls, and even when she knew she had lost the battle, she kept trying valiantly; this trip
would
be educational,
whether or not it was also enjoyable. To many of the girls it was neither. Born and bred in the city, they had no liking for this vastly different landscape, finding it alien and almost
threatening. Anxious voices kept asking ‘When will we be there, Miss?’, desperate to reach Fort William, where there would be streets and pavements and people once again. ‘Many
people,’ the teacher screeched over the noise, ‘find Glencoe a brooding, dark place,’ but Kathy didn’t. She turned her head from side to side, desperate not to miss the
mountains rising high on both sides of the narrow, winding road, and thought of them standing here for millions of years, not brooding or dark, but magnificent. It probably hadn’t changed in
trillions
of years, and if you blotted the road out of your mind, you could imagine that the ancient people of Glencoe were still alive, just over that hill, round the next bend in the road.
‘Many of the Redcoat soldiers,’ preached the teacher, ‘searching for the remnants of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, had never seen scenery like this before, and they suffered badly
from vertigo as they hunted through these mountains.’ But you didn’t have to be English to be affected, many of the Glasgow girls on the bus, coming from just as flat a landscape,
clearly felt exactly the same as the Redcoats. Kathy didn’t find it frightening or disorientating, though, it was a fascinating place, a magical, glorious place, and with each new ridge that
appeared her imagination soared. She spent that day in silence, so full of the place that she couldn’t have described it or given an opinion, her throat tight, transfixed by the grandeur.

At Fort William they had stopped to have their packed lunches, then they had gone round the shops in the small main street, but even as she bought Lily’s brooch Kathy was anxious to get
back on the road again, to travel through Glencoe. These days she knew the names of all the mountains, she could tell Buachaille Etive Mor from Buachaille Etive Beag, point out the difference
between the Chancellor and the Study, if you could see them for people that was. There wasn’t a lay-by on the winding road that wasn’t crammed with Volvos and Mercs, and you’d a
better chance of meeting your nextdoor neighbour trying to walk up Aonach Eagach in trainers, than in the local supermarket. But the feeling of awe never lessened. Every time she went through the
Pass of Glencoe, the power, the raw beauty of the place hit her again just as strongly, and tears would spring to her eyes. She would get annoyed at herself, horrified at the thought of Old
Con’s sentimentality creeping up on her as she got older, so she would blink in an attempt to banish them. And though she would never have admitted it out loud, and furthermore, would have
denied it ferociously had anyone suggested it, the Western Highlands had entered her soul that first day, never to leave again; there was an immediate sense of belonging to a place she hadn’t
known existed till then. When she’d returned from the school trip all those years ago, exhausted emotionally rather than physically, she had tried to describe to Lily what she had seen, but
all she could do was wordlessly hold her hands wide and high in the air. What words were there that could do justice to the feeling of space, to the light, to the ever-changing shadows dancing
across the mountains, to how it all made you feel? It was like trying to describe colour to the blind and music to the deaf all at once, it filled your senses on so many levels and in so many
directions that you couldn’t verbalise one sensation without taking off at a tangent on another, and another after that. She had tried to explain it to Jamie, knowing deep in her heart that
it was outside Jamie’s understanding. His world consisted of where he lived and what he was doing, or knew for a fact he would do, he wasn’t the type to take flights of emotional or
imaginative fancy. Jamie wasn’t stupid, but he was intensely practical, and one of the things she always liked about him, had relied upon in fact, was how grounded he was, because she knew
she wasn’t. He was safe, sure and dependable, whereas she was prone to acting on impulse, to saying and doing what was in her mind. It was why she argued so much with Aggie and Con, she knew
that, she lived on her emotions, terrified all the time that she was showing signs of Con’s greatest weakness, and desperately trying to rein herself in. But Jamie balanced her with his
down-to-earth view of life, reflecting reality on to her fantasies and evening them out, and given their lives that was a valuable quality to have, or to have access to. Even so, she couldn’t
contain herself over Glencoe, and Jamie had indulgently smiled his solid smile as she described it.

‘But there’s nothing there, is there?’ he asked kindly.

‘Whit dae ye mean?’

‘Well, there’s nae shops an’ streets, nae buses, nae people, is there?’

‘Why does there havtae be?’ she had demanded, annoyed that he was putting down her great adventure.

‘But ye canny live up a mountain, can ye?’ Jamie persisted. ‘Ah mean, it’s mibbe OK for a trip, but ye wouldnae want to live there, would ye? Ye
couldnae
live
there, noo could ye?’

She was almost angry now. ‘Naebody says ye havtae live up a mountain,’ she scowled at him. ‘There are hooses no’ far frae the mountains, Ah saw them, an’ people
dae
live there.’

Jamie shook his head slightly and smiled affectionately at her. ‘But there’s no’ a lotta work in they places, is there?’ he stated, rather than asked. ‘If ye wanted
tae be an engineer, ye wouldnae go tae the back o’ beyond tae dae it, would ye? An’ ye wouldnae want tae live in a place where there’s only grass, an’ sheep an’
things.’

She said nothing, but she was almost crying, and at the time she couldn’t understand exactly why. She was talking to him of beauty and feelings, of flights of fancy and dreams, of almost
seeing in your mind the defeated Highlanders making their way home through the glens and mountain passes after the defeat of the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden, and he was dashing it all with
casual, cruel insensitivity, because he hadn’t the slightest glimmering of an understanding that such notions existed or should. But the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, making her
blink furiously to stop them escaping over her cheeks, were caused by something deeper than Jamie’s lack of imagination. All her life she had valued his outlook, it was part of what had made
her feel safe, but suddenly she felt that she was talking to a stranger who didn’t understand the language. Her tears marked the first time she had felt
disappointed
in Jamie, let down
almost, by his inability to see with her eyes, even though she knew that was unfair, because it was precisely the quality in him that she had so loved. She had felt the earth stir under her feet,
that was what it had amounted to, a fissure had unexpectedly opened up on solid ground, exposing in someone she loved a weakness that she had always regarded as a strength. And that in turn made
her feel disloyal to Jamie. He was who he was, who he had always been, and his qualities were the ones she had depended on all her life. If the value she now placed on them had changed, well, then,
that must be her fault, not Jamie’s. Confused, she turned to her cousin Harry, and to her great joy and relief Harry understood; she could always rely on Harry. He sat listening as she
described what she had seen, what she had felt, what she had imagined, nodding and smiling at her enthusiasm. There were times when she didn’t know what she would do without her cousin, he
was the only one in her entire family, in her entire life, come to that, who understood her completely, the only person in the universe who treated her dreams as not only possible, but sane. Harry
saw beyond the lives they were forced to lead by the circumstances of their birth, he had imagination and intelligence, and above all, unlike her brother, Peter, Harry was kind.

Nothing much had been heard of Peter since he had finished his National Service. His intake had been the last to be called up, after that conscription into the British Army ended. He had gone
happily enough by all accounts, but then it was some sort of move away from the East End, if not the ideal one, and after serving two years in Germany he was asked to train as an officer. He
didn’t though, instead he had remained in London after being demobbed, though no one seemed very sure what he was doing there. He worked as a barman in an Irish pub in Kilburn until he found
his feet, and the next anyone heard he was training to be a teacher. Everything was a stepping stone for Peter, even if he had no interest in teaching children, and Kathy knew instinctively that he
hadn’t, it was that much farther away from Moncur Street. There had been one, fleeting, miserable visit home shortly before Lily’s death, when Kathy had resented his being there almost
as much as he had resented it himself. Nothing pleased him, everything disgusted him. It was as if he had come back one last time to prove to himself that he didn’t belong there, and when he
had gone Kathy felt as much happiness as he did himself. She didn’t know then why he had bothered to come back if everything and everyone displeased him so much, and she hoped he
wouldn’t repeat the exercise ever again. And he didn’t, even for Lily’s funeral. A few years later a postcard arrived from Canada, saying he was working there, and then a local
man who was in the Merchant Navy reported meeting him in Alaska. In his absence his frontier spirit was held up to be admired by Con and Aggie, and he was much praised. ‘Ah always knew he
would make somethin’ o’ himself,’ Aggie would say, her voice cracking with pride and emotion, re-reading the few lines on the postcard, until it became so creased with handling
and age that the writing was illegible. Even so, it would be produced for the admiration of everyone who entered the house, regardless of how many times they had been forced to admire it in the
past, and for some reason it didn’t seem to occur to her, or perhaps it didn’t matter, that the gaps between future postcards, with their few noncommittal lines, stretched for years,
and there were never any letters. During the frequent deification ceremonies of Peter and his postcards, Kathy would catch Harry’s eye and they’d smile like conspirators. She had never
heard Harry say anything critical of anyone, not even Peter, but she always knew what he thought because of the bond between them. Peter never came home again, but he was forever announcing himself
as being on the verge of doing so, and that was enough for Aggie and Con. Kathy, though, knew better. ‘Liar!’ she would mutter, and wonder what Lily would’ve thought, had she been
alive. But Lily had never said much about Peter. Kathy had thought about her mother’s silence on the subject of the prodigal son many times over the years, wondering why she never volunteered
an opinion or a thought about him. It was because she knew him, Kathy thought. Lily took no offence at what amounted to Peter’s rejection of his entire family, whether his father and
grandmother recognised it or not, because she knew it was how he was and that there was nothing anyone could do to change him. Peter, like Jamie, was as he was, that, Kathy imagined, was how Lily
thought of her son, but even so, she wondered, would she have felt hurt or disappointed if she’d known he would never come back? Well, she would never know now, the fire at Stern’s made
sure of that.