‘What happened to your grandmother’s shawl, Sandy?’ She had turned the tap off and was facing him, her hands on the rim of the sink behind her.
‘What?’ He knew that the red was already rising to his cheeks. His heart was like a sports car. It had just been let loose along a long, straight road. Oh shit, he thought. Oh shit.
‘Did you give it to her?’
‘To who?’ His mother’s consequent laugh was unpleasant.
It had the hacking quality of a witch’s triumph. She did not smile.
‘To the tinker, of course. Your girlfriend.’
‘Look, Mum, she’s...’
‘I know what she is! Everyone in this town knows what she is. But they all try to ignore it. It doesn’t really concern them. And now you’ve gone and got yourself mixed up with her. How could you be so stupid?’ The final word was like a judgement of fire. Sandy’s face burned as brightly as a tongue of flame. He had never, never seen his mother so angry and so disgusted by him. It was hard to hear out the rest of her verdict. ‘She’s just a slut. You’ve been lucky, Sandy. You’ve managed to gain some kind of acceptance in this town. I’ve worked hard for it. It hasn’t been easy for you, and it hasn’t been easy for me, and now you’re going to throw it all away because of her. That’s stupid. There’s nothing clever in it at all. It’ll be all round the town by now.’
‘So?’
‘So? I’ll tell you so. Don’t you think it’s hard enough for me as it is without people laughing at me because my son’s going out with a hoor?’ There were tears forming in the corners of her dark eyes, so suddenly alight.
‘She’s not a hoor!’
‘Oh? What is she then? You tell me.’
‘She’s...’ It was impossible. All his pretty speeches, his arguments and his statesmanship had flown out of the window. His brain was soggy. He was up against a cruel and professional opponent. He felt cut, winded, leaning on the ropes with nowhere to go but back into the centre of the ring. ‘She’s like us,’ he managed. His mother opened her eyes wide in astonishment. She laughed again, cutting him deeper.
‘Like us? How dare you. She’s a slut. She’s not like us, Sandy.’
He wanted to play a cruel trick then, wanted to say “So who’s my father?”, but he could not make himself do it. He swallowed hard. In the silence, his thoughts seemed to have struck home anyway. His mother came and sat at the table.
‘Mum,’ he began, his face pleading, ‘I want her to come and stay with us.’ He might have been asking to share his mother’s bed. Her eyes only opened wider. ‘Listen, I can explain. Rian’s not what you think...’
‘Worse then.’
‘No, better. She’s been used, that’s all.’
‘Used? I’ll say she’s been used! And everyone knows it. At least she’s not fooled you there.’ The sarcasm lasted only a second. She was looking at the table, was studying the texture of the sauce bottle. Her fingers played with the saltcellar. The tears, their assault having failed, retreated. ‘Sandy,’ she said calmly, taking several breaths of air, ‘please promise me that you won’t see that girl ever again. Promise me that and things will be all right. You’ll see.’ He stared at the false love on her face. It was useless. He needed time. She wasn’t giving him any. He pushed back his chair, not hearing its horrible scraping across the linoleum floor, and left the kitchen, climbing the stairs as noisily as he could.
In his room he lay on his bed, face down, and closed his eyes on everything: on his mother, on Rian, and on the small, tight world into which he had been so mysteriously born.
5
On his birthday, as planned, Sandy boarded the early train to Edinburgh. His mother had given him fifteen pounds. He had taken the money quietly, thanking her as politely as he would have thanked a distant aunt. She had been quiet, too, but had refused to weaken during the several fights that they had had in the past fortnight. He had even said that if his mother would accept Rian into the house, then he would return to school to do his Highers. She had shaken her head. Blackmail, she had truthfully called it. School had started three days previously. Secretly, Sandy was tempted by Highers. His friends had found nothing waiting for them outside school. Whether he liked it or not, he had until Christmas to decide. He knew that when he joined them it would be to a cold, flat world of quick-setting adult cement. Already Mark and Clark were bored, and were calling him “lucky” because he could return to the womb-like warmth of the school with its ancient radiators and its sarcastic teachers, teachers like Andy Wallace, who had tried talking to him about Rian and his mother, but who had been a flabby, impotent interrogator.
Now he had money in his pocket and was sitting on the old train, an engine pulling three carriages of second-class compartments. He was not intending to spend much of the money, only enough to satisfy his mother. The rest he was going to use to tempt Robbie, for he had not given up his plan. Instead he had modified it slightly: Rian and he would leave Carsden together, or Rian would hide out somewhere away from her brother and her aunt. The former was a drastic measure. The authorities would seek him out. They would be a wanted couple. He was not sure nowadays that melodrama like that could work outside of Hollywood films. Still, the alternatives were few and unsatisfactory. He watched Carsden swing away from him like a ball on a rubber string. It was rapidly replaced by spent countryside and indolent cows. Electric pylons swept across the landscape like giants, and he watched their rhythms from his window. The train seemed to pass a lot of back yards, as if it were an inspector of the shabby reality in every town. Rubbish strewn in gardens. Factories and warehouses with their rusting cast-offs. Earth-moving equipment at work right across Fife, and a petrochemical plant burning in the pale, smoky distance.
He considered the possibility of someone outside throwing a rock at his window. What would he do? He would not duck, just as he had not attempted to dodge Rian’s slap. He would sit and watch the rock’s trajectory cutting towards his reflection. His eyes would close over the splinters of glass. Why would he sit there? To experience, and so that afterwards he could curse his maker for creating the incident. He believed in God now, but it was a malevolent thing and he would speak of it with a small, vehement “g”. He believed in god. He believed in the cruelty and the inevitability of suffering. And he believed that he was doomed. As if to reassure him, thunderclouds gathered above the Firth of Forth. The train passed over and through the red structure of the bridge in a mist that hid from view the road bridge and the water. He knew that it was all because of him.
Soon enough, Edinburgh presented itself to him as a grey smothering of tall buildings. He walked up the steep incline from Waverley Station and was confronted by roadworks and fumes and a slow drizzle. He made towards Princes Street, one hand in his pocket so as not to lose his tiny roll of money. The city’s coldness was a physical thing. People brushed past him without noticing. No one nodded or acknowledged his existence. Soon he was soaked. The drizzle was fine, but the traffic blew it into his face as though he deserved no better.
In a café, he was overcharged for a can of lemonade. He clutched his pound notes more carefully. The large shops were like nests of vivid ants. The streets were strewn with litter and curious men who asked for money or slouched on benches. Tourists walked by slowly, seeming not to see any of it except what they were there to see. Sandy began to wonder if it were real at all. He bought two records cheaply in a shop in South Clerk Street. Everywhere shops were being closed down, redecorated, and opened again. Many of the windows were boarded up. FOR SALE signs cluttered the immediate skyline. He found himself in a small concrete square. People sat on the steps around this square and talked. They seemed quite young, though a few years older than him. It was quiet all around. The road curved away from the square at a decent distance. The buildings were a mixture of the very old and grey and the very new and white. He ventured into one of the newish ones. It had a glass dome, beneath which sat a clump of tropical plants and trees. Music played in a café. There was a bank. Two other sorts of shop were closed. By reading various notices dotted around, Sandy was able to conclude that he was in a part of Edinburgh University. He was startled. He looked around furtively, but no one seemed about to throw him out. He walked out of the building and crossed the square to another, older construction. Inside, it offered much the same facilities as the first. They were like small, self-sufficient communities. For some reason they reminded him of Cars- den. He wished that he had brought Rian with him. He wondered why he had not thought to ask her. He had not seen much of her in the past weeks. His mother had scared him off, but he had not given her up. He had not had enough money to bring her with him; that was all. He needed more money. Robbie, he felt, would never agree to let her go for less than thirty pounds. Sandy had only twenty-seven pounds fifty, less what he would spend today. He squeezed his pocket, wishing the money would grow.