The Walk Home
BY RACHEL SEIFFERT
The Dark Room
Field Study (short stories)
Afterwards
The Walk Home
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Pfefferburg Ltd.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. Originally published in Great Britain by Virago Press, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, an Hachette UK Company, London.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Seiffert, Rachel.
The Walk Home : a novel / Rachel Seiffert.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-307-90881-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-307-90882-7 (eBook)
1. Families—Scotland—Fiction. 2. Glasgow (Scotland)—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR6069.E345W35 2014 823′.92—dc23 2013051017
www.pantheonbooks.com
Jacket photograph by Paul Treacy/Millennium Images, U.K.
Jacket design by Kelly Blair
v3.1
For my family;
I’m glad to have them.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Reading Group Guide
The woven figure cannot undo its thread.
“Valediction,” Louis MacNeice (1934)
1
Glasgow.
Now, or thereabouts.
The boy turned up with no work boots, just a pair of old trainers, and a holdall slung across his back, almost as big as he was. Jozef looked at him, doubtful, on the doorstep; at his red hair and freckles, and the way he squinted in the summer light, the June sun already up above the rooftops.
“You got me out of bed.”
The church clock opposite said ten past six, so he must be just off the London bus; no hanging about, he looked like he’d come straight down to the South Side on foot. The boy gave a nod, a shrug:
“Romek tellt me tae come straight here. He said you’d pay me.”
And Jozef had agreed to do that, it was true. So he stood to one side to let him in.
Romek had told him the boy was nineteen, but he didn’t look it: too slight across the shoulders. His red head was cut close, and the back of his skinny neck too pale, blue-pale above his T-shirt. Jozef watched him as he showed him around the big house: the stripped-bare rooms, and up and down the wide stairs. All the work still to be completed. The boy walked ahead of him through the empty top floor that commanded the best views, over the park in full leaf, and all the other sandstone villas. This place could fetch a premium price, so Jozef said:
“The developer, he wants hardwood on the floors, built-in wardrobes. Quality finish.”
The boy narrowed his eyes at that, running a critical palm across the plasterwork, and Jozef sighed:
“I know, I know. Not good enough. But the one who did those walls, he’s gone now.”
“Aye.”
The boy gave a smile, as though he’d already been told, and Jozef didn’t much like to see that. Just how much had Romek been saying?
Jozef was struggling up here, and he didn’t want that spread wide; he couldn’t have it getting back to Poland and his wife. He needed this job to work out so he could talk Ewa round, into trying again. But things kept getting away from him somehow, and far too easily: his workers falling out, and failing to show after payday, the ones he’d found in Glasgow anyway. It was as though they’d sniffed him out: not site-boss material, too soft, not nearly bottom line enough, and Jozef cursed that it showed. But Romek was a proper site-boss, of the Polish old school—big-hearted, but hard too, when it was needed—and he’d promised him a good worker. Romek had said this boy was one of the best he’d found in London, plus he was from round here, so he could help Jozef with the locals, the way they spoke.
Back downstairs, they stood together in the half-built kitchen, the boy at the door, like he was ready to get lost again, any moment. Still uneasy, Jozef put the kettle on for tea, but he had no food to offer. He’d been living on the ground floor while he did up the rest of the building; he saved on rent, the developer on security, and it meant Jozef was putting aside a good sum each month. Come the end of the summer, he’d go back to Gdańsk and show Ewa: how much he’d saved, and that he could still make things work for them. In the meantime, it was the others who brought in the food, all his workers, the ones he’d found from home. Some of them had their families here now, and their wives packed extra for Jozef; sympathy meals, but he was grateful. He told the boy:
“We have some breakfast when we start. We start eight o’clock.”
The boy gave that same nod-shrug again, his eyes not on Jozef but the Glasgow morning, blue beyond the garden door. The long back gardens sloped on down the hill, and after that came the rooftops of the South Side tenements, with the sun already high above the slates and chimney pots. The summers here were bright but short, and not nearly warm enough, and Jozef couldn’t tell what the boy was thinking: if he liked what he was seeing, if he was ready to start on this job.
His clothes had been worked in, even if they weren’t work clothes: his T-shirt thin with wearing, jeans trodden down at the hems. The boy had a patch on his knee, sewn on badly, with a hand pictured on it: a red one, held up, palm forward, No Surrender stitched underneath. Jozef hadn’t been here long, but he suspected that was from a football club. Most of his workers followed one club or another, but Jozef didn’t. He’d grown up in a houseful of women and never grew to like the game, or pay it much attention, he only knew that one Glasgow team wore blue, the other stripes, green and white, and the fans did so much fighting. It was a split in the city that went deeper than sport, and he didn’t pretend to understand it, but it made Jozef wary; he’d warned his men not to take sides, or go drinking on game nights. The pubs here put signs on their doors, no football colours in the bar, and Jozef didn’t want work days lost to a pub brawl, so he looked again at the boy’s patch, the raised palm an angry red, and he wondered which side this hand belonged to. But then he told himself: as long as the boy gets on with the others. And at least he’d be the only Scot among them.
They had three floors, and a bit less than four weeks to finish them. Almost mid-summer now, they had till the first July weekend to get out, so Jozef was pressed for time. Romek had told him the boy was just what he needed: an extra pair of hands, without the extra paperwork, no National Insurance Number, no questions asked. Jozef had expected someone bigger, though. And work boots too.
“You can’t wear these ones.”
He nodded to the boy’s trainers, spattered with gobs of plaster. From the look of the frayed laces, he must have been wearing them on the job for ages. The boy stepped forward, reaching for the mug he’d filled, and the sugar bag too, and then he pointed down at his holdall with the teaspoon between stirs.
“I’ve a pair ae Romek’s. Wan ae his boys.”
That made Jozef laugh. It was just like Romek to give his son’s boots to a stranger’s child. This boy must be someone’s, so Jozef asked:
“Who will you stay with?”
And then the boy looked at him, sharp:
“You. Here.”
He pointed to the ceiling, the rooms up there:
“Romek tellt me that was part ae the deal.”
He blinked at Jozef, looking straight at him now, but his eyes were guarded:
“I’ve a sleeping bag an that. Nae bother. I can take care ae mysel.”
The boy said it like he’d been doing that for a long time. It was the most he’d said since he arrived, so Jozef watched him, his young face, and the way he drank his tea, his eyes turning away again, back out to the skyline. Romek had said nothing about him staying in the house, or that there might be trouble with his family. But then the church clock struck the quarter, and the boy put down his mug:
“May as well make a start, aye?”
If he was willing to start early, Jozef wasn’t going to argue. He shrugged his assent: there was no shortage of empty rooms upstairs, and as long as this boy got the work done, family didn’t have to come into it.
2
Tyrone.
Early 1990s.
Graham was eighteen and rubbish at talking to females. Even some he’d known years, like his brothers’ wives. He looked like a grown man, only he wasn’t yet; he was just all shoulders and neck, wide forehead, and no talk. Everyone in the flute band was aware of this, so when they were out in the Ulster wilds, it was Graham they dispatched to get the lunch, because it was a girl he’d have to speak to on the burger van: a fine one.
He’d been up since dawn, drumming and drinking all morning. It was his first time away from home, his first Orange Walk outside of Glasgow, but nothing like the other Walks he’d been on. Same skirling flutes, dark suits, bright sashes, and crown and Bible banners, but no tarmac and traffic, no high flats and crowds of torn-faced shoppers. Tyrone was all wet fields and hedgerows, as far as his eye could see, and the echo of the Lambegs thudding back at them from the low hills. There were masses of folk out too: more every village they passed through, and the field they stopped in at the halfway mark was heaving. Grannies in deckchairs with tea in flasks, mobs of young kids in Rangers-blue T-shirts; candyfloss, and sausage suppers, smell of wet grass and frying onions.
The lodges were on the far side; all the dour faces, making their speeches. Protestant values in chapter and verse. The band stuck with the crowd, though, and the colour: more chance of a drink there. Graham hadn’t paid for a pint since he got here. There were always more folk buying, especially if he told them his Grandad was from Ireland: his Mum’s Dad. And that Papa Robert was in the Orange. Graham’s tongue loose with lager, he’d been telling folk ever since the ferry, but his tongue was pulled tight again by the sight of Lindsey.
Dark red hair. Wee skirt and trainers, bare arms. All those freckles. She drew all eyes in the queue, including Graham’s. Lindsey was taking the money, getting the cans of juice out of the fridge, and adding up what was owed in her head. Half the band had set their sights on her for after, even if none of them rated their chances, and Graham could see why, when she turned her grey eyes on him:
“What’ll it be then?”
She knew he’d been staring. So Graham had to look past her to get the words out. He was ordering for most of the band, or that’s what it felt like. And then a couple of the flutes kept changing their minds, calling across from the grass where they’d parked themselves with the drums; chopping and changing between burgers and bacon rolls. They were doing it to wind him up, Graham knew that fine well, so he did his best not to let it show, except the order got too hard to follow, and then Lindsey gave up on the sums and got the calculator out of the cash box.
The queue behind Graham was grumbling by that stage, but Lindsey just told them all to watch their manners. He looked up at her then, and saw how her eyes were sharp and smiling, her back straight, like she could take on all comers. She got Graham to go through the order again, roll by roll, burger by burger. And she wasn’t teasing him either; she knew he was shy, but that was all right.
Graham watched her fingers on the calculator buttons, and her narrow lips, repeating what he told her; the pink tip of her tongue, and all her freckles. His eyes found them on her face and hands first, then down her neck as well, and up her arms. They were all wearing the same T-shirts on the van: oversized, with what looked like a lodge number and today’s date printed across the top of the chest. They all had aprons, so the rest of the shirt was covered, but Lindsey was wearing hers back to front, and knotted at the side, so when she turned round to get Graham’s change, he could see the Red Hand of Ulster printed on the cloth. And how long her hair was too: a long, loose plait. It stopped at Lindsey’s hips, where Graham found more freckles to stare at, on a bare inch of lovely skin showing just above the waistband of her skirt.
After all that, she didn’t have enough coins left in the float.
“I’ll bring the change over later.”
Lindsey told Graham she’d come and find him, before the lodges set off up the road again. She looked right at him too, making her promise:
“Won’t forget you, honest.”
Graham watched her while he was eating, from the safer distance of the damp grass, sitting with the rest of the band. She was the same with everyone she served—joking, familiar—and he was gutted, thinking he’d just imagined it. He’d been so sure of it, up at the van: that she fancied him. He tried to work out how old she was: could be fourteen, could be eighteen, no telling. Graham hoped she wasn’t older than him.
Lindsey did come over when they were making ready to go, and she gave Graham the coins she owed. He had his drum back on already, and his gloves, so he pulled those off to take the money. He felt her fingers touch his palm, just for a second, and then she stayed next to him while the bands and lodges assembled. Graham couldn’t look at her then. But he was certain again.
He waited for her after the Walk, in the back room of the only pub. Graham sat there a good couple of hours, sure that she’d come, certain he’d never have the nerve to go and look for her if she didn’t; and then he saw her. Walking through the bar, and looking for him, he knew she was, because when she saw him she made a bee-line through the crush. She had the same T-shirt on, still knotted, but no apron, so now Graham could see the skin on her belly, and it was all he could do to stop himself putting his hands there when she got up close.
One drink later they were out the back and walking, past where the barrels were stacked and on, with the sun going down behind their shoulders. It was quiet out there after the pub doors fell shut; just the two of them on the empty track, and neither of them talking. Only the sound of the wind in the wheat, and the weeds growing tall beside the farm gate. They walked the length of a tumbledown wall until it got low enough to climb, and behind that was a hidden spot with just enough grass for Lindsey to lie down.
Graham shouted out when he pushed himself inside her. He didn’t mean to, but it didn’t matter; she didn’t laugh or anything. But then after, when it was over, when she stood up and pulled down her skirt, Lindsey looked at him, and then he saw it hadn’t been that way, not for her.
Graham was still on his knees, and he busied himself with his trousers. Tucking in his shirt, to cover his shame: gutted again. Too much drunk, he regretted the pints he’d already sunk.
Lindsey stood a moment, watching, and then she crouched down next to him reaching for her knickers. They’d slipped of
f her ankles, over her trainers, and she picked them up from where they’d landed.
“Where you from then?”
She was looking at him, face level with his, and close; knickers bunched in her fist. Graham told her:
“Scotland.”
And she rolled her eyes. But friendly, he thought: like she’d been on the burger van that afternoon. Graham said:
“Fae Glasgow. I’m fae Drumchapel.”
He named the housing scheme, though she’d never have heard of it, and then Lindsey narrowed her eyes a bit:
“You in a juvenile lodge, Graham? Or a man’s?”
She was smiling. She’d found out his name from someone, and now she was guessing how old he was. But she was teasing as well, and that nerve was still too raw for Graham to take courage. So he shook his head:
“I’m no.”
Bad enough he was in a band, that’s what his Mum said. There’d be no end of nagging if he joined a lodge: she’d told him their family had had troubles enough. But Graham wasn’t about to go into all that, because Lindsey had her cool eyes on him, like she was weighing him up. She leaned in a bit closer:
“Me either. My Da’s Orange enough for the two of us.”
Lindsey pulled at her T-shirt, tugging the lodge number up onto her shoulder to show him, then shoving it back again, out of sight.
The knot at her waist had gone slack. So she undid it, and then re-tied it, tighter; higher up, under her ribs, and she told him:
“I’ve never been to Glasgow. Is it good there?”
Graham shrugged, trying not to look at her skin. That strip of it on show again above her skirt.
“Aye.”
He’d never thought if Glasgow was good or not, he couldn’t say. Lindsey looked at him a second or two:
“Better than here.”
She wasn’t asking, but Graham shrugged again, by way of reply; not wanting to put this place down, because he’d had a fine time. Except that made Lindsey smile, so he had to look away, and then his eyes landed on the small scrunch of cloth between her fingers. Lindsey laughed: