Closed Doors (19 page)

Granny makes her excuses and takes Frankie for a walk, which is a huge excuse for Granny because she never takes Frankie anywhere. I don’t even think she knows how, but Frankie won’t care. He’ll hurl himself in front of her and with her little legs Granny will have to catch up to him. I wish I was going just to watch but I’d rather sit with Da and chew my gum.

Tricia stays for a long time with Ma. She is probably another support to Ma and Ma needs a lot of support right now, even if it is from Tricia Law who Ma threw gin at the week before. Tricia and Ma are best friends whether we like it or not and so we say nothing and hide from their friendship. Da says women are funny when it comes to being friends.

‘They can fight and love and all in the same breath,’ says Da. ‘Always stay clear of women having a go at each other and NEVER get involved.’

Da says Ma might have to go to Glasgow High Court and give evidence and face the dirty rapist again. She will need her family and her friends around her, maybe Professor Friendly will come. Tricia will definitely come, but not me. I’ll be left in Rothesay with Granny. Tricia will go to the High Court and not care about Da or Granny not liking her.

‘She has a thick skin that one,’ says Granny.

When Tricia leaves the house she sticks her head around the living-room door and says goodbye to Da, who hates the bones of her, but Tricia will keep saying goodbye to Da until she dies because that is how Tricia is.

‘See you around, Michael,’ she says and gives me a wink, which means she will always have Juicy Fruit for me. I wink back because I want the Juicy Fruit.

‘It’s going to be tough, Michael, you know that, don’t you?’ says Da.

I nod.

‘People will say things about your ma and you have to turn the other cheek, you understand?’

‘I will, Da.’

‘You just ignore them, son,’ says Granny.

‘What about you, Ma?’ I ask.

‘I won’t mind them. None of us will.’

But that’s not what happened.

EVERYONE ON THE
bus was noisy but then I got on and the place got quiet. I notice the driver snatch a look at me through the rear-view mirror.

‘Sit on your arse, boy,’ he says.

I realise then the driver is Suzanne Miller’s father and he looks ready to burst open at the sight of me.

It wasn’t me, I want to say to him. It wasn’t me who lied and kept secrets. It was my ma.

Walking up the aisle I see Paul on one side of the bus and he’s sitting next to Fat Ralph.

‘All right, Michael?’ says Fat Ralph.

‘Fine,’ I say to Fat Ralph.

Paul just nods at me and then looks through the window. I should bash his brains in for that, but he has lots of power today. Everyone on the bus has. They are all together and I am on my own. They have been told by their parents to stay away from the Murrays. We’ve done a terrible thing and everything about us is wrong. My ma kept a secret that got Mrs McFadden hurt and ruined. It is lucky Mrs McFadden is alive today, they say. No one cares the same is true of my ma, that she could also have been killed.

Nothing much is being said to me because I am still the toughest lad on the scheme and it seems to keep the bus silent.

Dirty Alice is at the back of the bus with Marianne, Tracey and Fiona. She looks at me like she could kill me, but there is another look in her face and it means something else.

I sit down and hope the bus stays quiet but I know someone is going to say something.

Da says every house on the scheme has been jabbering about my ma and there’s no point guessing or worrying about it. ‘It’s done,’ he says.

Maybe some people will feel bad for her, I think. Maybe some people will blame her. Maybe some people won’t care about it at all and won’t want to be involved, but on an island like this someone will be thinking something and when people are thinking they are also looking and it’s the looking that scares Ma the most. She says it speaks the loudest.

‘Your ma is a stupid bitch,’ says Dirty Alice.

Everyone looks up. A fight, they think, a grand old fight, but I will never fight Dirty Alice.

‘Shut your mouth, you filthy cow,’ I say.

‘I will not. Your ma didn’t tell the police what happened to her. If your ma had told them, what happened to my ma wouldn’t have happened at all.’

‘Your ma?’ I laugh, but I don’t mean to. I’m just trying to show how strong I am and that Dirty Alice is just stupid.

‘Leave it alone, Alice,’ says Luke, who is reading a book two seats up. I didn’t even see him at first, but when he sees me, he looks away like Paul did and stares out of the window as if I don’t exist.

‘That’s right, my ma,’ says Dirty Alice and she’s daring me to say otherwise but I don’t. I just want to sit back down again and look out of the window like Luke and Paul. I want to forget this whole thing.

‘Why don’t you just shut up? You don’t know anything about anything,’ I say and I turn my back to her and sit on my seat.

‘Make me,’ she says.

I can’t believe it; Dirty Alice wants to fight me now and on a bus driven by Suzanne Miller’s da who hates me too.

Suzanne Miller’s da should stop the bus. It’s not like he didn’t hear a girl wants to fight the toughest boy on the scheme, but he doesn’t care because maybe he wants a fight and hopes the whole bus will jump on top of me. I worry they might.

Dirty Alice sits behind me then. She smells of Bazooka Joe bubblegum. I turn to her with a face on me. I need to pretend I hate her and don’t want her anywhere near me. Her skin is still brown from her holiday. Her hair is shiny and her skin looks soft. I hope she will change her mind about being nasty to me and be nice like she was before. I hope she remembers the Valentine’s card she sent, but she doesn’t. She grabs at my hair and slaps me across the face like Mrs McFadden slapped my ma. I don’t hit her back because she is a girl and because she is Dirty Alice. She jumps on top of me then and punches me until my nose bleeds. The blood makes me afraid and angry. I want to reach for her long hair and pound her head off my fist. I want to pull her from the seat and kick her up and down the aisle, but I don’t. I let the blood melt. I let the tears boil and fall down my face. I look straight into her eyes, my face red and bruised. I see the hurt in her then, I see the Valentine’s card, but she won’t cry, not Dirty Alice. She doesn’t like me any more and we are back to how it was before. Hate.

‘Fucking pussy,’ she says loudly and returns to the back of the bus with a victorious smile on her face. The girls yell, ‘Championnnn, championnnn!’

I cry then. I cry for the blood. I cry because I am alone. I cry because I am no longer the toughest lad on the scheme and because a girl called Alice McFadden kicked the arse out of me. I will never be tough again.

MA GOES TO
Glasgow to identify the rapist with Da. Tricia Law also comes and drives Da mad with her gabbing. Mrs McFadden won’t go. She is afraid to admit she made a mistake about Patrick Thompson, who has left the island and can’t come back any more.

Da tells Granny in the kitchen Ma was brave and faced the pervert head-on and not behind a sheet of glass, but Ma couldn’t make her mind up between two men, both of them with red hair. She chose the one who smelled of smoke. It was the right choice and the same one Suzanne Miller made, although they don’t exactly hug about it on the boat home. Da tells us everything while Ma stirs her tea and hardly says a thing. It was a big day for her but Suzanne Miller was mad at her and told her so in front of the whole ferry.

‘“He could have raped me,” she said, and with everyone watching us, Ma,’ says Da. ‘But then Tricia reminds the stupid girl that he didn’t rape her.’

‘No, he didn’t,’ says Granny. ‘And she should count her lucky stars, little bitch.’

‘Don’t, Shirley,’ says Ma.

‘“But he terrified the life out of me,” she says. “I still can’t go out on my own,” she tells us, and I swear, Ma, the dirty looks they were giving us on that boat.’

‘Can you blame them?’ says Ma.

‘And how do they think it was for you, Rosemary?’ says Da, who is getting very worked up about it all.

‘And what about the prostitute?’ asks Granny. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘We don’t know,’ says Ma.

‘It won’t matter anyway,’ says Granny.

‘Why not, Granny?’ I ask.

‘She’s a lady of the night. The bad sort,’ says Granny.

‘A prostitute?’ I ask.

Granny nods.

‘What’s a prostitute?’ I ask.

‘Never you mind,’ Granny says.

‘But you’re always talking about them,’ I say.

‘I am not,’ says Granny.

‘You say it about everyone.’ And she does. If a woman has a short skirt on her. If a woman wears tight trousers. If a woman has bleached hair. If a woman wears too much make-up and if she sees a woman talking to a man she isn’t married to, Granny goes mad about it and calls her a prostitute. Granny even called Mrs McFadden a prostitute when she was Miss Connor and going to the pub with Mr McFadden.

Da laughs his head off. ‘Boy’s right,’ he says.

Granny is annoyed. ‘You shut up,’ she says to Da.

‘No, you shut up,’ says Da to Granny.

‘Both of you shut up,’ says Ma and then tells me what a prostitute is. I am shocked to death that Granny would call anyone we know a prostitute, especially Mrs McFadden.

‘I still don’t understand why it will be hard to get the man who hurt you in jail, Ma, because one of the other women is a prostitute. She saw him just like you did.’

‘I don’t know either,’ says Ma.

‘The truth is, Michael, it’s going to be hard convincing a jury that a man raped any woman,’ says Da.

‘But why?’ I ask.

‘Because that’s how it is in the world,’ whispers Ma. ‘And it might never change.’

‘You’re wrong, Ma. The judge will see how horrible he is and he’ll put him away for ever and ever.’

Da puts his hand on Ma’s back then. She’s drinking tea and looking sad, but no tears come. Ma isn’t crying too much these days, or maybe she is, I just never see her.

MA AND DA
go everywhere together. He couldn’t save her from the rapist but he can save her from wagging tongues and dirty looks. Of course not everyone gives her dirty looks, some people are very nice and hug her in the street. They ask if there is anything they can do but it is way too late for that now. Other people just smile at her because they have their own business to be getting on with.

Da says the only way forward is to get out there and confront the demon that is gossip and not to hide like a criminal but to face the angry people head-on.

‘We won’t run away from this, Rosemary. What’s done is done!’

Ma nods and listens to Da for the first time in ages. They take Frankie on long walks to the loch or on the shore road and I go along too, but sometimes I don’t. People stare and it puts me off enjoying my ma and da’s company. Anyway I have my keepy-uppies to practise.

Granny is quiet about it all and goes to chapel all the time, cleaning the pews and arranging the flowers. She even knitted the priest a cardigan. It made Mrs Maitland mad with jealousy because she wants to clean the pews and arrange the flowers too and so the priest says they must share the duties of God, who likes really shiny chairs and beautiful carnations.

‘The priest is a great counsellor of sin,’ says Granny, who feels very badly for the secret we have kept. We all do, but like Da says there is nothing to be done about it now, not even if you’re being beaten on a bus driven by Suzanne Miller’s da.

‘Everyone has a fucking opinion. Today it’s this. Tomorrow it will be something else. We have the bastard is the main thing,’ yells Da, who has started to yell about everything to do with the pervert who hurt Ma, so does Tricia Law. It’s the one thing they have in common and together they yell their heads off about judges and juries and ignorance.

‘Tricia is a lion,’ says Granny, who likes her much more now she’s gobbing off at Ma’s workmates for saying Ma did wrong not telling anyone what happened to her in the park, but Ma doesn’t care about them. Ma only cares about Louisa McFadden. Ma is desperate to talk to her but Da says it is a bad idea.

‘There is nothing to be mended there, Rosemary,’ he says.

‘Brian’s right,’ says Granny. ‘Leave the woman be.’

Sometimes I find Ma peeking through the curtains in her bedroom at Mrs McFadden sitting in the garden holding on to her big belly.

‘Rosemary, get away from that window,’ says Da, catching her spying on Mrs McFadden. I’m glad he never caught me when she was Miss Connor.

‘But we’re in the same boat,’ says Ma to him.

‘Rosemary, that poor woman wouldn’t be in our boat at all if we’d all just said something. We did her wrong. She’s not going to fall into your arms for that.’

Ma nods and cries with the guilt and Da holds her tight.

THE RAIN COMES
in May. A terrible rain. The kind you can hear on the roof. The kind that hits concrete like a stone. The kind that blinds you and smacks you in the face like it hates you. The kind you get lost in.

Mr McFadden went off to the mainland in the morning to get a surprise for Mrs McFadden and the baby. That’s what Mrs Maitland told Granny anyway and Granny was annoyed at her because Mrs Maitland knows of the situation between the Murray family and the McFaddens, everyone does, and Granny hates to be reminded.

‘She was trying to cause some trouble. And in a house of God. Old bitch.’

When the electricity goes off because of the storm I get very excited. We always have brilliant food when there is a power cut. Granny brings out pickles, cheese, yogurts and crackers and jam, anything she doesn’t have to cook, which is brilliant. Granny also brings out her scones, even though we’ll get indigestion if we eat them, but if we don’t we will hurt her feelings and so we spread jam on them and nibble at the edges.

The doorbell rings and it’s Dirty Alice with a broken umbrella. We are all very surprised to see her. Her face is red from the rain and she looks very scared. I am glad she is scared and I hope she might cry so I can tell everyone what a whinger she is.