But when Robbie looked up, Sandy had vanished. He peered into the gloom, but saw nothing.
‘Sandy,’ he said. ‘Sandy, you’ll only...’ Robbie slid sideways down the wall and was asleep.
She was not at the Miners’ Institute. He walked on, down the hill towards the swimming pool. It had been a gift to the town from the miners, built in the mid-1960s when things were already beginning to turn sour. It had been popular throughout Fife for a time, but then a much larger pool had been built in Kirkcaldy, and another dream had become merely an echo in the showers. Now it was used by the town’s swimming club and by some old people. It was falling into disrepair. Gangs painted its walls with vaguely sectarian slogans and would gather against its back wall to be warmed by the hot air ducts there. Some public conveniences, much vandalised, stood locked nearby, and the park was separated from the pool only by the town’s bowling green.
Sandy took a short cut behind the bingo hall, wary of the shadows. The Cars might not be far away. He could easily fight them all on a night like this. The slap he had given Robbie stung in his memory.
The rain hardly touched him, and his eyes stared at the backs of the buildings. It looked as though someone had broken into the Soda Fountain, but that was of no concern to him. She had been cruel. She had been needlessly cruel. Every fibre of her was rotten with experience. She might burn in hell, but she would have to face him first. His fingers tightened into hardening fists.
Mary walked by the edge of the flooded park. Her shoes were sucked at by the sodden grass, but she could not feel the dampness rising around her. She had stopped crying, and had set up the necessary barriers between herself and her grief. She would survive, but she wished that the night were over. She wished that she could transport herself many weeks into the future, to a time when everything had healed and seemed to have taken place in an unreal time. Either that or let her fade into the long past, beyond the Boxing Day to a time when the world had promised much and asked for little. She stopped to look over a railing. The stagnant, near-dead burn had filled with rain-water. It was as if it had been revitalised. For a moment she might have been ten again and watching Tom playing football. She remembered that day. The goblins in the burn. Her burning hair. It was dreamlike now, as this night would sometime be...
Sandy heard the animal sounds and recognised them. His stomach like a sea-squall, he turned the corner. She was against the wall, moving with a forced motion up and down it. A duct hummed above her and sent a small amount of steam curling down over her and the figure which obscenely wedged her against that rough wall. He knew that figure. It was the worst thing he could have imagined. The grunts were unbearable. He watched in fascination as the rhythm played itself out. He almost laughed. It was banal; like adults playing at being children. Then he walked toward! them. Her head turned and she saw him approaching. She pushed at Belly Martin, but his weight was on her like heavy winter blankets. His head rested against her as he eased himself down towards reality.
The reality was stunning. Sandy pulled him away from Rian by the hair, lank and greasy, away from the unresisting He threw him, grunting, against the wall, turned him, and kicked him solidly in his absurdly baby-like genitals. The squeal was satisfying. His fist sank into an unfeeling, doughy mass. He stood back and kicked again, and Belly Martin squealed again and went down on all fours to be sick.
Sandy, breathing lightly, looked at her. She had smoothed her skirt down and her head was bowed, her lips red and bated.
‘Slut,’ he said. It was as if he had hit her. She jerked a little, but kept her eyes on the ground. He saw that she had the shawl, grubby now and hanging heavy with rain, around her shoulders. He did not want to touch it. Suddenly he felt subdued, tired. His brain was tired and his legs were tired and he wished that it would end. He eased himself against the wall beside her and rubbed at his forehead. Boot-polish still hung in the air around him, the grubbiness of gypsies. She had not moved.
‘Sandy...’ Her voice was quieter than Belly Martin’s retching. ‘Sandy, it was Robbie...’ He shook his head in disgust.
Belly was cursing him with what breath he had. Sandy pushed the obscenity with his foot and watched it roll over. It curled itself into a foetal, protective position, rather like a snail, and did not move.
‘Sandy, it’s not like you think.’
‘No more tricks, Rian. I’ve been too fucking stupid for too long.’ But then why was he listening to her at all? And why was his head thumping like some tightened drum-skin? He should leave now. He should make the best of it. What was the best of it? He levered himself from the wall and moved past her. She put a gentle hand on his back.
‘No, Sandy, listen to me. It’s you I want, Sandy. It’s you.’
When he turned she was right behind him, and she stood forward even then to kiss him on the lips. Her tongue ran along his teeth, her hand snaking to the back of his neck, caressing the headache, the tension. He felt her cool saliva. How much of it, he thought with sudden revulsion, was Belly Martin’s? He pushed her away, but she fell against the wall, steam wafting around her. Graffiti encircled her like the frame of a painting. Her hands were behind her back and inviting, the whole of her body open to him. He faced her and felt triumphant, a warrior claiming some prize. But she was... He should... There was no sense... Her hand went to his thigh. He was a child again, staring at what he did not really understand.
Then he heard the scream. He had never heard his mother scream before, and yet he knew that the sound was hers. It lasted only two seconds, but it was his mother, and he knew that it was coming from the park. He turned away from those wide, knowing arms and began to run.
had ordained it. Here she was, delivered unto him, at his mercy. She had had no mercy, and he would show none. Poor George. What had she done to him? She had bewitched him, as she had bewitched others. She had destroyed Matty, and now she had destroyed George. There was no one left in his life. They had been systematically taken by her. She had put a blight on the town and on his own life. Poor George.
He had gone to the Soda Fountain late. He had told George that he would not be coming at all, but had managed to anyway. The door was locked. It was strange that it should be locked so early in the evening. He had knocked, but to no avail. He had walked round to the back of the shop, peering on tiptoe through the small, blackened window into the back room. George was hunched over his desk as though writing. He had tapped on the window, then had knocked and called out, but nothing had moved inside. Only then had he seen the bottles. He had put a stone through the window, had opened the catch and strained towards the bolt on the door. He had pushed his way inside. His friend was cool, growing cold. He could not believe it. An envelope lay beside him, addressed to Mary Miller. In his stunned grief Matt Duncan had torn it open. He had unfolded the note.
Mary, you will never forgive me, I know, and will feel that, in some ways, I’ve taken the easy way out. I have suffered all these years, believe me. I have suffered. Perhaps you are satisfied. Perhaps satisfaction does not enter into it. But I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me. Please forgive me. Your father’s last words before he died were “I loved her, though,” and I believe that he did. We are not bad men, Mary. Only very stupid.