Chapter 16
‘Ye have the item with you?’
‘Aye, it’s just here.’
‘Can ye put it in the tray for me please?’
He takes off his watch and places it in. She inspects it a moment, turning it about in her fingers. She’s pure laggered in jewellery: her fingers and thumbs, a gold necklace, and these wee pearly bullets in her ears. Must be she gets a discount.
‘Give me a moment please.’
She swivels out from her chair and goes through a back door, and he stands waiting in the empty shop. It isn’t like he expected. What was he expecting? Christ knows. Not this, anyway. There’s nothing antiquey about the place, that’s for sure, all bright lights and a blaze of yellow in the display windows. Sour red carpeting and security notices on the walls. It’s like a bank. Actually, no, it’s even worse than a bank. He goes over to the window to look at the pieces. Hundreds of rings and bracelets, each of them their own sorry story. In fact, see why don’t ye just go and slit the wrists in the corner here — ye may as well if ye’re in the mood, ye maunderly auld bastard, christsake. There is a dull chap on the security window as the woman returns.
‘Twenty pound.’
‘Serious?’
‘It’s quite worn.’
‘No, mean, it’s more than I thought.’
She smiles. ‘Want it back, well?’
‘No, no, it’s okay, thanks.’
She is still smiling as she takes out the money and puts it in the tray.
A grey, dreich day outside, the tops of the multis merging into the clouds and the sound of car tyres hissing up water as they come past. Twenty quid. He should probably feel pleased but he’s too bloody starving, on the approach now to a minimarket for a sandwich. The watch was a fiftieth birthday present from the other drivers at Muir’s. It must have been pretty expensive if he was getting twenty for it now. That birthday — him, Cathy and the boys, they’d went to a restaurant in the centre. He tries to picture her, but he can’t. It was just before Robbie left for Australia because Craig was digging him up the whole time — gonnae send Kylie my love and all this — he wouldn’t leave it alone. They’d sat at a table in the corner and she’d been next to him, the place full and noisy, the waitresses with these old-fashioned aprons on and Robbie awful cheeky getting with them, to Craig’s annoyance. He can’t see her though. He knows she’s there sat right next to him but she’s the only part of it that’s a blank.
He gets his sandwich, and he walks over to the cemetery to go sit down on one of the benches and eat it.
Still a blank. The familiar tightening of his body coming on and he has to relax. He has to relax. Normally he can do that in here, that’s aye how he comes, but he’s no helping things rubbing himself up like this; he should just calm it down, eat his sandwich. Craig. Craig is here. He’s going up the footpath. The first instinct is to duck the head. He’s walked right past him, and now he’s away up the path toward the grave. Did he see him? Impossible to know, he might’ve, he might, how could he not’ve — he’s come right beside him. The heart going mental. His body rooted to the spot, but nothing he can do: he can’t get up because that will obvious draw attention to himself so all he can do is stay put and hope he doesn’t turn round. He gives a keek up. The back of Craig’s jacket, a way up the footpath now. He watches as the boy passes through a line of trees to the next lawn and stops when he reaches the grave. He’s got his work clothes on, by the look of it, although it’s hard to tell from this distance. He’s just standing there, looking down. Me and you, Maw, it’s me and you against all the rest of them. He stands there a minute or two before he starts to bend and crouch down, and as he does so he turns his head. He is looking straight toward him. It’s a bare instant just, a single second, then he turns back to the grave.
He flicks the light switch out of habit but of course it doesn’t come on, but so what, he doesn’t need to see any of it, the less he can see in fact, the better. As it is, he can still make things out in the half-dark. The mound of post at his feet; the bare, ripped ribbon dangling off the wall. This needs to be done quickly, or if not he’s going to collapse in a heap no able to get up and that’ll be that, never to be seen again. Except by the man up the stair, of course, that bastard — he needs to be calm, concentrate — no think about a man up the stair. He keeps it all blanked out as he goes through the kitchen, fetching a carrier, and then gets up the steps to the bedroom. He moves quickly inside. Ignores the dark heap on the bed. He pulls open her drawer and grabs a handful of jewellery, dropping it into the bag. His breath is snatching now, coming in jolts, but he’s managing it, he’s coping, taking another couple of handfuls to empty the drawer, and the truth is it feels good — there — so fucking what? What difference does it make anyway? She’s dead. She’s not going to wear it.
He’d be pure raging if he knew. But he doesn’t, and he can get to fuck if he thinks he’s got any more right to her than anybody else. He goes out of the room and back downstairs, where he gets his jacket and the small battered holdall from the lobby, and starts putting things into it: the carrier of jewellery, then out to the shed for his change of clothes and the newspaper. Then he’s away. Gone. Goodfuckingbye.
‘Ye back, then?’
‘I’ve brought some more things.’
‘Go on, well, let’s see.’
He empties the carrier into the tray. She gives him a look but he ignores it, and he stares away toward the window while she inspects through it.
‘Is it for loan or sale, this?’
‘Sale.’
‘Okay, well we buy gold and silver by the gram, so I’ll need a wee while to price this lot up, that alright?’
‘That’s fine. I’ll wait.’
She gives him £250 for all of it. It’s worth a lot more, he knows, but no like he has much of a choice. There’s a ring in there that used to be her grandmaw’s, which must be worth a couple of hundred on its own, plus a few other things that were handed down to her when she was a wean in a big house in the Highlands and she hadn’t yet disgraced and ruined herself with the dirty plater husband.
It’s pishing it down when he gets outside. He could get on the subway, all this cash he’s got on his tail now, but he needs to be careful saving it so he waits for a bus instead, standing a long time with the wind blowing in and water dripping off his nose. He gets the next one into the centre and gets off at the coach station. There is only a short queue at the ticket desk.
‘When’s the next coach to London?’ he asks the guy.
Chapter 17
There is a bronze statue by where the man waits. A life-size young couple greet each other, a bag on the floor beside them, and he is lifting her up, their lips about to meet, one hand sliding down over her bottom. The man smiles, looking at it. A couple of girls come past and notice the statue; they start giggling. His own bag is not much bigger than the bronze man’s. In it, his few clothes, his work boots, a plastic wallet with his valuables and a little food for the journey. Already there is a large group waiting by the glass doors for the London coach, but he sits further off, on a plastic orange seat by the statue.