Rise
Authors: Karen Campbell
For Mum
Contents
Also available by Karen Campbell
Pin in a map, pin in a map. Anywhere at all. Don’t care, as long as it’s not here.
The sandstone tenements glare, crushing her, towering, toppling, full of lives and noise, and she doesn’t want any part of this. They staunch air; it flows sickly through manky alleys. Great visionaries planned glass ceilings for these streets, to protect the air their children breathed; Justine has a clear picture of her teacher at school, showing plans for arcades, for vents of sweet air.
Visionaries
she’d said, and it made Justine think of ghosts. Two centuries later; the air’s still slow. Man, she wants whooping great gusts of freshness to sting her clean. To wring her lungs inside out. She wants to stand on the highest hill and scatter herself, throw herself hard and trust to luck she lands somewhere soft.
She thinks of places she’s been, places she’s read about, and, all the while, she is walking away from home. Definitely not running because that makes folk think you have something to hide. Her leatherette bag creaks on her shoulder. The endless rain adds its own weight; everything monochrome, her feet sodden. All the world on her back. Not to mention that bloody itch. Hands in pockets, pressing her knuckles on the sore patch, pressing not scratching.
Pressing
not scratching, in little angry beats. Far enough now, surely.
It will be safe to stop here.
Justine takes her phone from her pocket. It’s a shiny gizmo that has too many complex apps. She didny choose it. Carefully, she flips the back off, takes out the SIM card. There are very few numbers she’d like to keep, but to separate with them fully, at this moment, seems more dangerous. You must always leave an escape route. Every room you enter, every avenue you walk down: check the exit first.
Opposite the bus shelter, a white barrier lowers as a vehicle approaches the car park. A man in yellow saunters from his plastic box, tips slightly forward to the driver. He ticks something on a clipboard, wanders back to raise the barrier, let the car in. The sentry box has a logo with a flame, and
Sentinel Power
written beside it. It’s on the back of the guy’s jacket too, when he turns. All that power. See how wide it makes him swagger? Bet he plays at being a big man. Muttering into his lapel:
Yup, security code red the day. We’re expecting a raid on wur pylons.
As the car drives through the entrance, a bus comes bumping towards her, heading into town. Justine tosses her mobile beneath the wheels, sticks out her hand. Does not look back, not once, not even when the sense of being watched is so acute that the scales of her flesh rise. She gets on the bus, lays her profile against the coolness of window, avoiding the obvious smears. Her cheek makes the glass warm. In the panicked spill from listening to grabbing to running, does she feel safe yet? She concentrates: on her cold fingers, erratic heartbeat. On the skin on the nape of her neck. Feels electricity crawling, nothing more; sparking from the engine below her.
Her head, bobbing against the window, empties out; she pictures it opening like one of those speeded-up flower films where the petals unfold and spores fly everywhere. The long broad street with its charity shops and legal-advice centres draws away. Blurs. She remembers this street when she was wee. There was a fruiterer’s and florist’s; an old-fashioned watchmaker’s staffed by two elderly brothers who lived silently amongst the ticks and chimes; an elegant ironmonger’s where you could buy anything – and where they kept a talking parrot in a cage. Two butcher-shops as well, dressed in sawdust, and stinking of blood. She can recall the shock of black hook, pink flank. A whole dead tongue. Her mum’s polyester skirt, her face, buried in it, and then she sees
his
face. Charlie Boy’s. She
sees
it, twisted. Bouncing.
Feels the black hook sinking in.
He is running down the street behind the bus. He’s pulled on trackie bottoms but his chest and feet are naked. Puddles splash up white nylon; his mouth contorts, he stumbles to clutch his foot. Instinctively, she ducks, hiding her head between her knees.
Oh God ohgodgodgod.
In a foetal curl, she waits for him to get her. But the bus trundles on. She hears a woman at the back of the bus scream.
‘Fucksake! Has that nutter got a
gun
?’
‘Where?’ squeals her pal. ‘Naw’ – more calmly – ‘just a big chib. Fuck! Look at him go! Prick thinks he can fight a bus.’ They both giggle, pop gum. Justine can feel no impact from the blows, no sound of manic smashing. Still terrified, she raises her head a tiny bit, but they have moved further round the bend, and she can’t see. From the driver’s Perspex box, she hears a crackly beep, then the driver speaks, unhurriedly. Because this is Glasgow, and these things happen.
‘Aye, Number 4 northbound earlyshift to Control. Just to report, there’s a total numpty wi’ a baseball bat, beating crap out the Number 6 behind me. Suggest you get the polis . . .’
Justine cranes her neck. Skin pulsing.
The road behind is clear.
For twenty minutes, she stares at the road as it disappears under the bus. His feet will appear, his bleeding feet will be running, she will see them splash and—
Nothing. Her eye muscles ache. Stiff bones screaming. Eventually, they draw into the middle of the city. He was chasing a bus. He thinks she got on a bus.
Does he
know
that, though? There is no one beside her. She slumps in her seat, one delving hand reaching in to check. Still there. She eases a couple of notes out to prove she is not dreaming. A sepia queen’s face uncrumples in her fist.
Fucking own you, Just
.
Body, thoughts, the fucking works. Understand?
He’ll know. But he won’t know where she’s going, because even she doesn’t. Blindly, Justine hoists up her bag, jumps off at George Square. The benign lions of the Cenotaph watch as she runs through the flower beds, the lions’ stone paws folded so the claws don’t show. Up the hill, towards the bus station. An ugly concrete square, ranks of double and single deckers all parked on the diagonal. She moves through sliding doors, into a foyer strewn with cans and chip papers. It must all be forward motion. Keep moving. Stop thinking. An old tramp dosses on one of the plastic benches. She weaves past, goes straight to the ticket counter, which is blessedly empty.
‘Where to?’ asks the man.
‘Eh . . .’ Her eyes won’t focus, they’re too dry.
‘Where to?’ he repeats, slowly. LOUDLY. Thinking she’s a tourist, one of those happy explorers of history and life. It always surprises Justine, that her city interests tourists. She grips the edge of the counter. There’s a list of destinations on the wall above his shoulder.
Buchanan Street Bus Station – Gateway to the Highlands.
‘When’s your next bus north?’
‘Eh, Lochallach. Twelve minutes.’
‘Nothing sooner?’
‘Naw. It’s Sunday, hen.’
‘OK. A single.’ Is Lochallach past Oban? She thinks they went to Oban, once, and it seemed to take for ever. She passes him the money. ‘Long is it to get there?’
The man sighs, pointedly studies the timetable. ‘About two and a half hours by the looks of it.’
Is that all? Well, she’s bought it now. Once she gets there, she can travel further north. And further and further till she falls off the end.
She sits on a bench across from the flyblown Sleeping Beauty. They are all exposed in this glass-walled place. What if she’s seen? A door gusts open. She shivers. Flicks up her hoodie. Two men in boiler suits are pasting up a poster. A parade of people, marching in one thick coil on a path the shape of Scotland. At the back, there’s your Picts, your pagans, your Mary Queen of Scots (who, if the wee brass plaques in every Scottish castle are to be believed, really did travel the length of the nation). Beside her strides Mel Gibson as William Wallace, Bonnie Prince Charlie, a couple of beardie guys. Apart from tragic Mary, all the marchers are men. All plump and smug. Is that Rabbie Burns? The one with sideburns and a leery smile? Toting a telly comes John Logie Baird; then Alexander Graham Bell (with a mobile as a joke) then a whole wad of folk Justine doesn’t recognise, then Dolly the sheep. In the foreground, a wee girl holds the Saltire aloft.
Vote for your History
Vote for your Future
Vote YES for Scottish Independence!
An elegant, dark woman is reading the poster. She balances a toddler in one arm, wiping the tiny plaits of hair from her face as she stoops to speak to the little girl beside her. This referendum debate has been long, and strident. Tomorrow, the empty billboard next to the poster will no doubt be filled with other faces, insisting you:
Vote No for Unity
Vote No to Separatism
Vote No Thanks, we’re Better Together
Justine couldny care less. She puts one hand on her knee to stop it jittering. Beside her, another family: Mum outside having a quick fag, the children sitting on their suitcases, fighting each other for the most room. Dad is on the other end of the bench, her bench, reading the
Daily Record
, while the tramp snores on over the way. She watches him sleep. Lips cracked, parted and his eyelids dancing in some secret place. Beneath his chin, he clasps the neck of an old-fashioned brolly, placed like a sword across his chest. The skin round his nails is ragged and raw, filth in every crease, and he’s dressed all in grey. Grey coat and baggy trousers, held up by the standard length of twine. His matted beard and hair, though, are startling orange. Crazy loops of individual orange, making him real. His shock of hair makes him unignorable, if there is such a word. She wonders how you can sleep so trustingly in a public place. Then she thinks, he probably has nothing left to steal.