Slip of the Knife (9 page)

Trisha wouldn’t catch her eye because she suspected that Paddy had slept with Terry. Since Pete was born her mother had suspected Paddy of sleeping with every man she mentioned and her disapproval wasn’t just an intergenerational values clash: she believed that Paddy would go to hell for her sins, that the rest of the family would spend eternity in heaven, staring at an empty chair if they didn’t nag and disapprove and vilify her enough.

Compared to her mother Paddy had put it about, but not by much. She’d developed the habit of denying everything.

The boys were fighting again, this time about who was reading the cereal packet.

BC laughed joylessly. “You can’t even read yet.”

“I can so read.”

“Ye can’t read. Read it to me then, go on.”

“I can so read!”

“Go on then, read it out, if ye can read.”

Without looking up, Caroline told BC to shut up.

Trisha tipped her head to the table, telling Paddy to put the plates down, and then followed the turn of her head, swinging towards the table without looking at her. She poured two cups of tea from the steel teapot, setting one in front of Paddy’s place.

The boys had reached an impasse. BC was elaborately reading the back of the cereal packet and rubbing his cheek with the plastic dinosaur, a faded smile on his chubby face—just enough to upset Pete, not enough to get into trouble. He sighed contentedly, as if to say that everything he had ever dreamed of was here: the toy, the reading of the cereal packet, everything. Pete had his arms crossed up near his nose, was about to hide his face in his arms and curl over the table and cry.

“Son.” Paddy touched his arm. “You can choose what we’re doing this morning.”

Too late, she realized what he was bound to say.

Pete looked at her hopefully. “Really? I can choose?”

Anything but not that, she wanted to say, we’re not doing that. But if she forbade him she’d have to explain why, and telling a five-year-old that her friend had been shot in the head was beyond her.

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

To her right Trisha tutted under her breath. She didn’t approve of doing things children liked. She thought it would ruin them.

Pete’s tiny tight fists rose from the nest of his arms. “Lazerdrome!”

“OK, pal.”

Pete threw his head back and silently mouthed a big hurray, observing Trisha’s rule about not shouting in the house.

“Ruined,” muttered Trish through a mouthful of egg and bacon.

III

Throbbing music filled the dark room, disguising the shriek of trainers on the rubber floor and squeals of excitement. Paddy was crouching on one of the wooden walkways, keeping her body behind the partition so that she couldn’t be shot from the ground.

The memory of Terry’s BCG stabbed at her throat. Somehow her relationship with Terry was getting confused with the seagull in Greenock: a big ugly threat that wanted something from her that she didn’t have.

She heard a scream and turned to look down the dark walkway. Through the smog of dried ice she could just make out a strip of tiny colored lights, red through to yellow. There was a child down there and they’d just been shot.

Every person in the room had a pack strapped to their front and back, little light sensors on it to pick up the beam of the bulky laser guns they all carried. Shoot someone and their pack went off for thirty seconds and you got points. Her job here was to lose by a higher margin than Pete and be good about it, to show him it didn’t matter. She had thought it might freak her out after seeing Terry, being here among excited children shooting each other, but it was just an electronic version of tig.

Pete was down there somewhere, on the floor, chasing other kids or hiding, sneaking along a wall, the pack too big for him really, banging off his thighs when he raised his legs to run or climb a ladder.

They came here all the time and Pete always played the same game. He liked to run around as much as possible, fodder for the bigger kids who lay in wait in the good vantage points. She loved it that he was reckless but if he had played cautiously she would have cherished that too.

Her pack vibrated and gave off a little wind-down tune. She turned to see a smug boy of BC’s age standing behind her. “Looserrr,” he drawled.

She tutted and stood up straight, knowing her pack was off and she couldn’t be shot again for a while. “Oh dear,” she said, being good about it, “I’m rubbish at this.”

But her assassin wasn’t listening. He sauntered past her towards another set of lights twinkling in the dark, shot his laser gun at the target, and she heard a pack sighing the death jingle. She recognized Pete’s groan in the dark. “Looserrr.”

“Is that you?”

He walked over to her. “I’m getting shot all the time,” he whined.

“Everyone gets out sometimes.”

He dropped his head and his shoulders sagged with disappointment. Together they looked over the top of the walkway at the scurrying figures below. Somewhere a pack sang sadly in the darkness. “Looserr.”

“I don’t think that boy’s very nice,” she said, but Pete was watching the floor and didn’t answer.

Sweat beaded his face. He pushed the hair back from his forehead, the sweat making his fringe stand up in a spiky tiara.

“This is a good laugh, eh?”

“Aye.”

She wanted to reach out and kiss him but contented herself with touching his shoulder with her fingertips.

Paddy had been ambivalent all the way through her pregnancy. She was unsure about her fitness to be a mother, whether she could love the baby, whether she should have had an abortion and waited for the right man. But she didn’t believe in the right man, didn’t think she’d ever want to get married, and thought Pete might be her only chance to have a child.

From the moment he was born she knew she’d done the right thing. His fingers, his toes, the wrinkled promise of his testicles, every detail was hypnotic. It was like living with a pop star she had a crush on. For the first year she had a compulsive need to kiss him. Being in another room, even waking to his screams in the burning-eyed middle of the night, her heart rate rose at the thought of seeing him. The rest of life was nothing but a hollow interval until he was there again.

Her intensity worried her. She could only imagine how hard Pete would have to fight to shake her hand from his shoulder. She’d have done it for him but she didn’t know how.

Standing next to her now, he raised himself on tiptoes, looked out over the ridge, and turned back to her, smiling. “Hey, Mum, guess what?”

“What?”

Grinning, he raised the barrel of his laser gun and shot her in the chest. “You’re hit again.” Both their packs had come back on and she hadn’t noticed.

“Ya wee bissom!”

He laughed and ran away.

“Hey,” she called after him in the dark, “I’m not feeding you for two days.”

“My dad’ll feed me,” he called back.

IV

George Burns knocked on the front door like a hungry bailiff with a short temper. He didn’t even bother with a hello when Paddy opened it but swept into the hall, tutted at the boxes still scattered on the floor, and looked around for Pete.

“Hi, Sandra.” Paddy held the door open farther and invited his wife into the flat.

Sandra was blond, tall, and so thin she could have opened letters with her chin. Her rigorous grooming routine verged on manic and always made Paddy think of unhappy zoo animals that lick the same spot over and over until they go bald.

“Paddy.” Sandra dipped at the knee, making herself smaller, an apologetic smile twitching at the corner of her lipsticked mouth.

“Come on in.” Paddy took her warmly by the elbow and brought her into the flat. “Did you have a nice weekend in Paris?”

Sandra’s eyes skittered around the floor. “Nice. Good weather. Lovely hotel room—” She stopped abruptly, pressing her lips tight together, as if the words were fighting to get out. Paddy could imagine what the words were: he’s furious, get me out of here, I’m hungry all the time.

Paddy regretted having a baby to Burns. He was a nightmare to negotiate with and wasn’t a particularly warm father. Keeping her options open, she’d tried to muddy the father issue but Pete had popped out a perfect model of his dad: thick black hair, wide green eyes and the telltale dimple on his chin. And there was Burns at visiting time, the clay and the mold. When Pete was hospitalized with pneumonia Burns visited once a week and brought the four-year-old bunches of flowers.

“Where is he?” Burns was already brisk and impatient to get away. He usually saved it until he was bringing Pete back.

“He’s just getting his new Transformer.” Paddy spoke slowly, calmingly. “He wants to show it to you.”

“Is Dub in?”

“Naw, I haven’t seen him today.”

“Tell him I was asking for him.”

Pete arrived then at the door to his bedroom, already wary, sensing the atmosphere among the adults. Dumbly, he thrust the blue-and-red plastic robot out at them.

“Show your dad what it does, though.”

Without a word, Pete pulled a robot head here, clicked the legs that way, and held the truck out for inspection. A brittle silence descended on the hall.

“Wow,” Paddy tried to prompt Sandra and Burns, “that is amazing.”

Neither of them said anything. Sandra shifted her weight uncomfortably.

“Isn’t it?” Paddy said to Burns, a vague threat in her expression.

Sandra looked at the floor again and Burns gave Paddy a furtive smile. “Great, yeah. A real breakthrough in toy making.”

Paddy could have hit him. “We watched your show the other night.” From the corner of her eye she saw Sandra bridle. “That was a breakthrough, too.”

The effect was immediate. Burns snapped at Pete, “Where’s your coat?” Pete ran back into his room and came out with his blue-and-white tracksuit top. “You can’t wear that, we’re going to lunch with a television producer. We’re going to a nice restaurant. You need to wear something smart.”

It was too much for Pete. His mouth turned down at the corners and he started to bubble. “I don’t wanna . . .”

Paddy rushed across the floor to him, glad of an excuse to hold him. “Aw, son.”

Behind her Burns sighed. “For God sake, you shouldn’t baby him like that. He’s got to learn that he needs to dress smartly sometimes. It’s not a big deal.”

But Paddy had her boy in her arms, her fingers in his hair, and he was holding on to her tightly. “I’m just guessing here, but I don’t think Pete’s upset because you want him to wear a different coat. It’s the way you said it. Am I right, pal?” She pulled Pete’s damp face away from her neck and made him look at her. “Am I right?”

Pete nodded sadly.

“You treat him like a baby.”

“He’s only just nearly six.” Paddy brushed his hair back from his face and kissed him. “He’s a big boy but even big boys are still babies to their mums.” She held his chin and smiled as warmly as she could. “You can change your coat, can’t ye, darlin’? And have a nice night with your daddy. He’ll take ye to school tomorrow and I’ll pick ye up after.”

Pete looked longingly over her shoulder to his bedroom as Burns muttered “fucksake” to himself.

Paddy stood with her nose touching the cold window, looking down to the big black Merc parked next to the private central garden. The perfectly waxed boot glinted yellow sunlight as Burns dropped the overnight bag in and shut it. Sandra folded herself into the front passenger seat and Burns opened a back door for Pete, watching as he clambered in on all fours. He slammed it shut with a great sweep of his arm, took a step towards the driver’s door, and stopped. He checked across the roof of the car to see if the wife was out of sight, which she was, then he looked up to the window, at Paddy.

He flashed her a flirtatious smile. She didn’t respond. He smiled again and, using his thumb and pinkie finger, made a telephone gesture to his ear. Paddy paused for effect and then made a slow, laborious wanking gesture back.

Burns stood on the pavement and laughed his arse off.

SEVEN

BABBITY BOWSTERS

I

Had it not been sunny, the lane would have looked like a film set for a Jack the Ripper movie: cobbled street, a high brick warehouse with tiny barred windows on one side, a huge black wooden shed and, plonked between industrial giants, a pretty Georgian merchant’s house with a hand-painted wooden sign outside: BABBITY BOWSTER.

A Babbity Bowster, Paddy had been informed, was always the last dance played at a ceilidh. It was a partners’ dance, designed specifically for courting couples to stake a claim in each other at the end of an evening. The name of the pub couldn’t have been more apt, given the manner in which the press used it.

Babbity’s was the favored hangout for most of the names and senior management in the Scottish press. It was close to the News offices and the Press Bar, a homeland for newspapermen all over the city, but Babbity’s was expensive, which stopped the grunts from coming in. The usual characters who hung around in journalists’ bars were filtered out by the prices too: petty thieves and city gossips were left behind in the old place. Here the familiars were all high-ranking city officials, politicians and businessmen, beguiled by the shabby glamour of the press. Upstairs in the restaurant deals were done, high-paying columns doled out, talent poached and arguments resolved over the scattered remains of the cheese board.

Designed by Robert Adam, the merchant’s house had three perfectly proportioned stories topped with a jaunty pediment and a doorway framed by flattened Doric columns. It had languished in the city center for two hundred years, served as a storehouse, a fishmonger’s, and finally lain empty for twenty years until an enterprising French hotelier renovated it. Inside, the decor was understated Scottish bothy, no tartan or glassy-eyed stag heads but whitewashed plaster, slate floors and black-framed photos of crofters and forgotten fishermen. The bar had a vast malt whiskey selection and took pride in its Scottish beer. The restaurant menu offered herring in oatmeal, old-fashioned cuts of ham and beef, and the sort of seafood that Scotland usually exported straight to France or Spain. A Scottish hotelier would have done it up as a French restaurant.