The Low Road (6 page)

“He's fine, thank you for asking, Mrs. McAllister.”

“He says he hasn't seen much of you these past years,” she said.

“You know how it is,” Gerry replied. “You must miss seeing your John an' all,” he countered, the reproach clear.

“Aye. But he writes me a right lovely letter. Regularly.” She bent over the table. “More tea, Gerry?”

He handed back the teacup and saucer, terrified; the saucer was as thin as ice, and the handle of the cup too small for his sausage fingers.
Funny he should be so clumsy,
McAllister was thinking,
he's known as a razor artist, able to carve the deepest and most damaging scar in exactly the right part of the face for maximum effect.

“Remember how, when you were wee, you used to call ma husband Uncle John?” Mrs. McAllister was relentless; a rat in a trap had more chance than Gerry. “Aye,” she continued, “one time—I think it was when we were all going for a day trip doon the water thon Fair Fortnight—you said,
Thank you, Mr. McAllister
, when he bought youse both an ice cream, and ma husband, he says, ‘Call me Uncle John.' And I said, ‘Call me Mrs. McAllister.' ”

They all laughed more heartily than the remark warranted.

Round three to my mother,
McAllister thought. He was enjoying the performance, but anxious about his train. It was clear to him his mother knew why Wee Gerry was here, and clear he would have to stay until his mother was ready to release the visitor.
To have the razor keeking out his pocket,
McAllister was thinking,
attempting to intimidate me, or show off, wrong move in front of my mother.

“Well, it was nice o' you to visit, Gerry,” Mrs. McAllister relented. “I'll no' keep you—this being Sunday, you'll be wanting to visit your father.” Nodding her head in benediction, she finished, “Give him ma best.” And Gerry Dochery was dismissed.

McAllister saw him out. They said little. But at the door McAllister held out his hand, and Gerry did not refuse.

“Good to see you, Ger. Any time you're up for a drink, call me at the
Herald
or leave a message there. It'll get to me.”

McAllister knew he was looking at a man who had visited with the intention of doing damage. But something seemed to have shifted in the carapace of Gerry Dochery; his sense of invincibility now cracked with a hairline fracture. Or perhaps it was sheer embarrassment, the same as when, as young boys, they had been caught standing on the high wall of the Acropolis cemetery having a weeing competition onto a grave below. A woman had appeared, looked up at them before they had time to run, and shaking her
head she went to lay flowers at the foot of the tombstone splashed with urine.

“I won't harm you, John,” Gerry told him, “but I can't say the same about your friend.”

It was then that McAllister realized he was right—harming him had been his former friend's intention. “About my friend, where . . .”

But Wee Gerry Dochery was off down the street without acknowledging the question. McAllister knew there was no point in chasing after him, in asking more; Gerry Dochery, childhood friend, had crossed a line long since and would not, could not, come back.

As he walked back towards the kitchen, he could smell bacon frying. The clock in the sitting room struck ten. He had missed the train.

“Sit yerself down,” his mother said. “And you can make yerself useful by buttering the rolls.”

After the full Scottish breakfast of bacon, eggs, black pudding, and fried tattie scones, he thought he and his mother would talk about Gerry's visit. Not so.

When he tried to broach the subject, all she said was, “Best leave it, Son, no use stirring up trouble.” She stood. “I'll make a fresh pot.”

“Not for me, I've missed my train. I need go to the station and book a sleeper. Then I need to let Joanne know I won't be back till the morning.”

“Aye. You do that. And give the lass ma best.”

“I will.” He looked at her. She gave her usual tight wee smile. And suddenly, whether it was because of his living away in the Highlands, or because Joanne had prized open his I'm-a-buttoned-up-Scottish-male persona, he saw his mother anew; he saw the woman who had lost her husband, a fireman, in the
horror of the wartime Clydeside Blitz; a woman who had buried her second son when, at sixteen, he had drowned himself in the River Clyde; a woman who had kept a family together through years of poverty, always encouraging her sons to break free of the Glasgow slums through education.

She caught his expression. “What are you doing, grinning to yerself?” She smiled back.

“Remembering how you used to make me sit at this kitchen table and never let me up until I'd done my homework. Years after, I discovered you'd asked my teacher to set me extra work.”

“Aye, and look where it got you. You have a great job. And you own your own house.”

“I would never be where I am now without you pushing me.”

She turned away but not before he caught her smile. “Get away with you. Go sort out thon ticket else you miss another train.”

He was glad he had acknowledged her insistence on his studying. And so was his mother. As he left the house, he was thinking,
It's too bad my education has made us strangers to each other.

He was about to walk to Central Station, but a tram came by and he jumped on. As it rattled its way down George Street, he knew he should also call Mary as promised, letting her know he'd met up with Gerry Dochery. Her number was in his notebook under MB. Somehow writing her full name had not seemed wise.
Not that I'm hiding anything
, he told himself.
I enjoy her company much as I enjoy the company of Rob McLean on the
Gazette
—another person going places, another person twenty years younger than myself.

He changed his train ticket, paid the supplement for the sleeper, then decided to call from the phone box outside the station.

“Hello.” Again it was Annie who answered.

“Not at Sunday school?” he asked, putting what he hoped was a smile into his voice.

“No. And you're not on the train.”

“I missed it. Too busy chatting to my mother to notice the time.” There was a silence to that. “But don't worry, I'll be on the overnight train and see you in the morning.”

“I don't care. It's Mum who worries when you're not here.”

She was being deliberately rude, and there was nothing he could say because she was right. “Can I speak to your mother?”

The sound of the receiver being put down was loud, and he saw he was short of florins for the call. He put in his remaining change and pressed the button, hoping it would be enough. There was a wait of about two minutes before the sound of someone breathing like the sigh of wind in pine trees came down the line.

“Hello? Is that you, McAllister?” Her voice, timid, hesitant, was so unlike the Joanne he'd fallen in love with.

“I am so sorry, I missed the train, I'll . . .”

“Are you coming back? Will you be here soon?”

“Of course I'm coming back. I'll be home in the morning. Promise. I've already got my ticket. I'm . . . I've just got a couple of things to see to. I'm staying with my mother . . .” He knew he was blethering. “How are you? How are you feeling?”

“I love midsummer. It's never really dark. I like that. Last night a full moon came up just as the sun was going down. It was beautiful.”

“Has the doctor been by? What did he say?” McAllister was feeling he no longer knew how to talk to her. He didn't know how to reassure her. Not without being with her, holding her.

“Come home soon, McAllister.”

“I will and I'll . . .” The pips started. “I'll be back in the morning and . . .” He was shouting over the beeping counting down the seconds. “I'll . . .” But they were cut off.

He swore under his breath. He strode towards the newsstand to ask for change, then stopped, turned around, and made for the
Herald
building. The newsroom was always open, Sundays being no exception. He had calmed down by the time he reached his temporary desk to call Joanne again, and have a proper conversation.

Without quite knowing how, he found himself saying, “Hello Mary? It's McAllister.”

He had no intention of taking out his notebook. Looking up MB. Calling. He would have sworn he dialed by accident. A typewriter was sitting plumb in the middle of the desk—he could have left her a message. All this ran through his head in less than a second in real time.

“You're up bright and early for a Sunday.” It was after eleven o'clock, but he remembered what an unearthly hour that was for a news reporter used to midnight deadlines.

“I had a visit from Wee Gerry Dochery.” He was trying to sound professional. He didn't succeed. He wanted to see her. To chat. To laugh. To forget.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“The
Herald
.”

“Meet me in Blythswood Square. The north side, in the middle. Give me half an hour.” And she was gone.

He had to wait twenty minutes for the bus, it being Sunday, and was five minutes late. He stood on the pavement outside the black iron railings of the square park, under the full
prima verdi
canopy of trees. The sky behind the three-story Georgian terraces was an almost painful and very unlikely shade of deep blue.
This looks more Madrid than Glasgow
, was his immediate thought.

What were once family homes of the wealthy were now mostly offices for solicitors, dentists, or doctors, or converted into flats. Many of the basements, once the kitchens and servant quarters, were now flats, often rented by students who didn't mind the gloom or the damp. However, a few of the terraced houses
remained intact, residences of the rich old-moneyed citizens of the city.

He saw Mary emerge from one of the homes. As she was locking the large door behind her, he could see no sign of the numerous bells that would indicate multiple occupancy. She looked across, saw him, waved, and came towards him in her usual setting-out-on-an-adventure stride.

“I'm desperate for breakfast,” she said. “There's a great hole-in-the-wall café near the taxi stand at the back of Queen Street station.

“I've just come from that direction.”

“Aye? I heard you're a Dennistoun boy.”

He grinned. Before he had time to ask her whom she'd heard that from she was jumping off the pavement into the street shouting, “Taxi.”

He marveled as a taxi appeared from nowhere, thinking she was the kind of woman for whom taxis mysteriously materialized when no one else could find one.

The café was indeed a hole-in-the-wall, and showing signs it had been busy early in the morning and was now in the lull between trains. They ordered mugs of tea, bacon rolls—two for Mary—and ate in silence. When Mary ordered a second tea, they both lit up, Mary again filching one of McAllister's Passing Clouds.

“You like those, do you?” he asked, indicating the pale pink packet. “An acquired taste, I'm told.”

“I'm trying not to smoke, but I take whatever is on offer.”

He laughed. It felt good to laugh. There had not been enough laughs recently.

“So,” she said, blowing smoke towards what he thought were dark patches on the ceiling, only to realize they were congregations of flies, lazing in the heat of the fumes from the chip fryer.

“So,” he started, “after mass . . .” He saw the arched eyebrows, the ones that looked as though they had been brushed on but weren't, rise. “To please my mother,” he explained. “I lost all religion in Spain—somewhere between Madrid and Barcelona.” He flicked the ash off his cigarette into the tin lid that served as an ashtray. “Gerry Dochery paid me a visit. My mother . . .”

“What?”

He smiled at her reaction. He described for her in ample detail the embarrassment—for both him and Gerry—of his mother's insisting Gerry come in for tea, of his mother's reminding Gerry of the family connection, of his mother's more than hinting that Gerry should visit his father. He finished by relaying Gerry's warning, word for word, as it was imprinted on his brain; Gerry Dochery knew of Jimmy McPhee, of that he had no doubt, and Gerry Dochery, or whoever he was working for, wished Jimmy harm.

“So you think it's Gerry Dochery out to get your friend Jimmy McPhee. Why?”

McAllister had no answer. “Search me.”

Mary was leaning back in the chair—a posture McAllister was prone to using—staring at the fly-clouded ceiling. “Gerry Dochery doesn't do the dirty work, he has men for that, but I've heard he takes contracts. So maybe this is business, not personal.” She stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette and contorted her mouth as though disgusted with the taste. “Tell me about this McPhee fellow.”

He wasn't sure where to begin. Travelers and middle-class, middle-aged men like himself seldom had close friendships with the likes of Jimmy McPhee. Professional relationships—yes. But his relationship with Jimmy? Good reporters had to have good sources. Mary obviously had. Was that what Jimmy McPhee was? He couldn't answer his own questions. So he started by lighting
another cigarette and telling her about Jenny McPhee, Jimmy's mother, Traveler, singer, matriarch, a woman said to have the second sight, a woman feared, respected, and a woman never to be underestimated. He told her of the Travelers' encampment, his respect for Jenny McPhee, his helping her in the past, and vice versa. “And Jimmy, her second son, is her right-hand man.”

Mary was listening intently, and from her face he could see she understood his fascination with Jenny McPhee. “Would all this”—she waved her hand in a circle encompassing not just the table, the café, but the whole of Glasgow—“would it be to do with the Highland tinkers? A clan dispute? A blood feud?”