The Tin-Kin (34 page)

‘Come to the beach and I’ll tell you,’ I go. I stare at the red
bicylce and the flashing silver handlebars with that funny invention hanging over them. I want another go on it. We walk down the path to the beach, Starbuck wheeling the bicycle beside him.

‘Well?’ he goes.

‘She’s not there any more,’ I tell him.

After that I don’t know what to say, and he doesn’t either. I don’t want to think about the baby. We walk over the dunes, where it’s hard to push the bicycle cause the wheels sink in, and when we get to the smooth wet surface near the water he puts the bike down.

‘Seen one of these before?’ he goes. He unwinds the cans on the string off the handlebars. ‘It’s a telephone.’ We try it out, me shouting into one can and him shouting into the other, the two joined by the long string.

‘One! Two!’ I shout into it. ‘Onetwo, onetwo.’

The waves are crashing so loud I can’t tell if it works.

‘Hello, Lunar 142. Landing Control, please.’

‘Here,’ Starbuck says, hoisting me in with the string. ‘Have another wee shottie of the bike, if you like.’

And this time it feels good. I already know I’m going to get it right. To start with, Starbuck holds the back while I ride along, struggling to find my balance. I’m all unsteady, Skinny Malinky on his long lanky legs. But then it starts to feel smooth, and Starbuck lets go without telling – I’m riding all by myself! The waves and air skim past and my pal’s cheering behind me.

‘Bring it here a minute. Look at this,’ he goes.

I get off the bicycle and tuck my hair back. My cheeks are cold and wet, just over my ear where I flick my finger. It’s as if I’ve been greetin on the bicycle, but I haven’t. Or maybe I have. I’m not even sure. Starbuck takes the pedals and does a big circle on the bicycle, right round where I’m stood. He speeds up, then spins out in a straight line. I hear the smooth running of the wheels while he sticks both arms out. No hands!

‘I want to do that!’

He starts laughing. ‘You’ll fall, ye ninny, you just learnt to go!’

But already I can see myself. I’ll go right along the whole beach, just like that, with no hands.

‘Get on the front,’ says Starbuck, nodding to the handlebars.

I sit myself down and stick my arms out while he pedals. I’ll

just get the hang of it first.

‘It feels like flying, doesn’t it?’ Starbuck says, and he tucks his head down and pedals a bit faster.

Dawn

It was still dark. The road in front was long, lit with cats’ eyes and patterned with the shadows of trees. If she followed it far enough north they’d reach the emptiest moors and the most silent mountains, the places with no names in their own language. Or she could head south, take them back to the city where all the lines in the map drew together like veins, a heart. The direction wasn’t important.

She’d read the inquest report Big Ellen had stuffed in the old bag. She’d crept out to the car for it in the early hours of the morning, and she’d sat in the front seat reading till the sun came up. Fifty pages of words, but only a few things stuck in her mind now.

The witness list was long and all their statements were typed in a blurry ink with a wide margin down each side. She found Dad’s name and stared at it for ages, the dark smudge over the ‘H’, the name of a man in a black uniform who she didn’t really recognise.

CONSTABLE GORDON HENDRY.

Mostly she thought about Jock’s shoes. All the witnesses in the report had mentioned them – the way he kept having to stop because they fell off all the time. They were black slip-ons with a worn heel. A size too large. It was probably because of those shoes that he’d tripped in a close off High Street, in the middle of the brawl to which there were no witnesses. He’d cut his head on the cobbles, and was later found in the gutter by a policeman. The police called for assistance. They put his shoes back on for him, put him in the car, and took him to hospital for stitches.

Later, when he’d been patched up by the nurse, they arrested him for drinking.

What if his shoes had fit? Dawn wondered. Would everything be different?

In court there had been two questions to Dad. She had memorised them.

Q.   Did you have to strike any blows?
A.   No.
Q.   Did you have to draw any blood from him?
A.   No, hardly touched him.

Dad. Would he have known something else and kept his mouth shut? Maybe. Dawn could believe that.

Constable Munro was the other policeman on duty that night, but he was dead before the trial. He’d died from asphyxiation, the court heard, probably a heart attack. He’d been walking his dog through Cooper Park and was found in the morning, his body stiff on the grass and his uniform wet with dew.

There was no mention of Shirley. A girlfriend was talked about by Bruce Topp, a witness for the defence, but the court was informed that the girl was unable to testify. There was no name in the report. No one seemed to know who the girlfriend was, or consider it a detail of any relevance. No one was found guilty, after all. Jock’s death was explained by a deficient heart combined with the cold weather, the strong likelihood he had been involved in a fight earlier in the evening, and the amount of drink he’d had.

At the Halfway Café Dawn stopped the car and they walked up the gloomy track towards Big Ellen’s. She wasn’t surprised to find the site deserted. The only signs of anyone ever being there were the black rectangles of burnt caravans and some new graffiti on one of the prefabs. The windows had been broken and
the sides were scrawled with mustard paint. Dawn walked over, the dirt crunching under her feet.

SCUM

They turned back.

Where are we going? Maeve said. You choose this time.

Dawn popped a cassette into the player and turned the volume up. A favourite came on. Maeve had the map open on her knees, her eyes closed. She was spinning a finger over it.

Every moment was the centre of the compass. They took the small roads and drove till the places flashed by too fast to name. And then there were places that had no names at all, places with no people left to name them.

They reached the mountains. They were high, the peaks jagged, grazed with scree and topped with a whip of clouds. Right at the top there was a sparkle of snow. Maeve would never make it that far in her wellies, but Dawn had an idea. Somewhere on the map there was a tiny cable car symbol.

By the time the sun was high over the land, they were travelling upwards in a red cabin with the number 21 painted on the outside. Dawn pointed at the number, but Maeve was too excited to reach the snow, and she didn’t care.

Above them the sky was a great expanse of blue, crossed with the long white trail of a jet plane.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

From the beginning,
The Tin-Kin
had the feel of a big family project. I really want to thank my family, all my aunts, uncles and cousins, for supporting the book, and for offering help and calm refuge whenever it was needed. I owe special thanks to Mum and Dad, for their belief in everything I do. I am so lucky to have you. Another special thank you to my cousin Debbie, for trawling the net with me, and for squelching through muddy cemeteries with a buggy, all in the name of genealogy!

Distant cousins and friends who generously shared histories, photographs and enchanting stories include Frances, Linda Gall (née Williamson), the Wilson family, the Williamson family of Williamson & Co. Scrap Metal Merchants, and in Australia, Peter Evans and Clementina Whyte Evans (née Cameron).

Thank you kisses for Christopher Dooks, for truly inspiring me, and for making me laugh every day. Salmon and olives for our cat, Gus.

Thank you to my friends: to Tricia and Dave Eddie, for their energy and for sharing their local knowledge; to Alison Irvine, Kate Dowd, and John McGeown, for suggestions, understanding and good company; and to Robbie Leask, for ‘Ellie’s Literary Elation’ – a joyful fiddle tune. Thank you also to Catherine Walsh for lending ‘Ted’, who modelled for the paperback cover.

I am so very grateful to Professor Willy Maley at the University of Glasgow, who read the first scribbles that became this novel,
and whose passion for a story that ‘had to be told’ gave me the confidence I needed.

I would also like to thank the following wonderful institutions: The School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University, Elgin Local Heritage Centre, The Saltire Writers’ Group, The Taransay Fiddlers, and The Crusty Climbing Club.

Early on, the New Writing Ventures Award opened doors, and also gave much needed financial support, not to mention huge encouragement. A big thank you to everyone at the New Writing Partnership, and to all the writers of 2006.

Euan Thorneycroft at A.M. Heath does a brilliant job as my agent. I really am grateful for the hard work he does and the encouragement he gives me. Finally, a huge thank you to everyone at Duckworth, but particularly to my editor Mary Morris. I feel as if she stepped right into Lady Lane, spent a summer with my ‘family’, and was very kind and very good to them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eleanor Thom was born in 1979 and currently lives in Glasgow. She won the New Writing Ventures Award in 2006 with a chapter of
The Tin-Kin
, her debut novel. Eleanor is a graduate of the Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University, and an Honorary Writer in Residence for the French Department. She was recently awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship.