grimms16

Instead of going home, Jaz kept walking. Not far, a few closes along, on another day, a good summer’s day, he could lean out the window and give Rab a shout. He stands for a minute outside on the pavement, collar up, putting his thoughts in order, the clangour of men’s chatter dissipated from Mac’s pub with early closing, but the miasma of booze hanging over the dark close, the metal hatch of the pub beneath his feet. Stepping inside the close mouth his nostrils adjust. The acrid shadow of pee stains against the back walls lead out to the bins, but he’s running upstairs, hand on the bannister. An ambulance, with sirens and flashing lights, weaves through the traffic at his back. He didn’t look round, but his fingers felt for the ivory handle of his razor in the same way other men would stroke the fur of a lucky rabbit’s paw. He hopes Rab’s in, so that he can fill him in on the story they need to get sorted.

Sammy answers the door with a fag in his mouth when Jaz chaps.  He looks like a bigger and older version of his son Rab blocking the light above his head, baldy and fatter, trousers clinging to his belly and a stained yellow vest, smelling of booze and fags. He peers short-sightedly out at Jaz until he works out who it is and what he wants. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he says in a gruff voice, ‘he’s still in his scratcher, but you can try your luck.’ Big hands that once worked in the yards wave him inside.  Jaz follows him through the lobby and into the living room.  

His wife jumps up from her chair beside the fire when he comes in. ‘Ye’ll be wanting tea son.’  Her housecoat is a popular catalogue choice for returned cigarette coupons, dainty flowers now withered with wear, over a polyester brown dress. She doesn’t bother waiting for an answer, sliding away from men’s talk.  

He spots Rab’s bed and his feet outside the blankets lying in a made-up bed in an inshot beside the window. He makes a show of yawning and stretching as he slowly gets up. His trousers and shirt are a pile at his head, he slopes down head touching the curtains to pull them on.

‘Take a seat son,’ Sammy waves Jaz into the armchair vacated by his wife and slumps into the seat opposite staring into the fire and flicking his fag into the lum. Both of them sit under the luminous charge of King Billy, which hovers  above matching wally dogs on the mantelpiece,  prancing on his charger, ready to right all wrongs, gold-trim tricourn hat and a better perm than Rab’s mum.  ‘Whit you up to noo, son, anyway?’ Sammy asks hawking and spitting in the embers.

‘Nothin’ much,’ says Jaz. He unbuttons his coat and lets it hang open on his shoulders. He’s went from being too cold to too hot.

Sammy shouts through to his wife, ‘can you no’ hurry up with the boy’s tea,’ and apologises, ‘sorry I cannae offer you something stronger.’

Rab sneaks in between them, warming his hands at the fire and nods at Jaz in acknowledgement.

‘Whit dae you take in your tea, son?’ Rab’s mum shouts.

‘Four sugars,’ Jaz nods his thanks to Sammy opposite and tilts his head to speak to Rab, knowing his Da is also listening. ‘I’d a bit of trouble there with Godge, had to sort out.’

Rab laughs through his nose, ‘Aye, whit’s the daft bastard done now?’

‘It’s no funny,’ says Jaz. ‘Caught him, red-handed, tampering with my sister, Peggy.’

‘That wee spastic lassie,’ Sammy blurts out. ‘I mean, whit’s the world comin’ tae? I’d soon put a stop tae that.’ His silence is filled with Rab’s mum stumbling through with a brown glazed teapot and milk, sugar and mugs on a tray.

Sammy leans on his elbow and stares up at his wife as she serves Jaz his tea first. ‘Did yeh hear that woman, that bastard has been kiddy-fiddling?’ His anger went up a notch, so his cheeks are red as Santa’s.

Jaz says nothing about his sister being nearer thirty then ten, and her being the opposite of wee, the biggest in the family, because she doesn’t go out and has to be watched or she’ll eat everything, including the margarine in the cupboard, scooping it into her mouth. He sips at dishwater tea as Rab’s mum serves Sammy brew from the same pot.

‘Any bread, Ma? for a bit of toast.’ Rab  dances away from the fire to give her room, inside him, at the ingle

‘No son, we’re all out, I’d need to go down to the Kippen Dairy.’

‘Well, get us a packet of fags when you’re down there,’ Rab says, taking the cup out of his Ma’s hands.

‘Do you want me to go down to the shop for you, Mrs Burrows?’ Rab says, smiling boyishly at her.

‘Och, no’ son, I couldnae ask you to dae that,’ Mrs Burrows says, but like a tortoise popping its head out, she grows a little taller and sounds pleased.  

‘It’s only fair,’ says Jaz, taking another swig of tea ‘after the hassle last night, when the pubs closed, and Rab and me had to come up the stairs and tap you for a fag, remember?’

She stands looking perplexed for a minute, hands and fingers knitted together in a parcel of indecision. ‘Oh, aye, that’s right,’ she says, looking at him slightly askance. ‘That’s no’ any bother, son.’ And instinctively searches through her pockets for her packet of fags.  

‘Hurry up, Ma,’ Rab says, ‘I’m starvin’.’

‘I know whit,’ I’d dae with him.’ Sammy’s giant hand almost crushes the chipped mug.

‘Whit can you expect from a Catholic?’ says Jaz.

Sammy spits into the fire and bangs his mug down on tiles. His ire is directed at his son. ‘Whit dae you mean bringing a Taig, into this fuckin’ house? Sittin’ on my furniture. Sittin’ on that very chair there.’ He points at Jaz, but shouts at his wife, who is standing in the lobby with her coat on. ‘Get a cloth and some of that spray stuff and get in here now and clean that chair.’

Mrs Burrows scuttles from the hall into the kitchen. Sammy slaps Rab a crack on the back of the head. ‘I thought you’d have more sense than that, bringing those fuckin’ white Pakis in here. Takin’ all our jobs. Monkey’s that’ll sleep with anybody. You can see that can’t you, look whit he did to that poor wee Spastic lassie.’ He motions towards Jaz and in an apologetic tone, ‘You’ll need to move son, while she cleans the chair. And you’ll need to get that coat aff your back and gee it a good wash.’

Rab holds the back of his head, where he’s been hit, and answers in a wee boy’s voice. ‘I didnae know he was Catholic, he’s always goin’ on about Rangers. That’s all he ever talk’s about.’

Jaz standing at Rab’s shoulder flings in his tuppence worth. ‘Aye, that’s true, but his Ma is a Catholic, never away from the chapel.’

‘Jesus,’ says Sammy, ‘If you lie with dogs, you get fleas.’ He points a finger at his wife, inspecting her cleaning work on the chair. ‘That’ll dae,’ he waves her away. ‘Goin’ and get that chair over there,’ he instructs her with a nod of his hair at the wooden seat at the window. ‘And there’s a seat in the kitchen. Bring that through.’

Jaz hold his hands up, ‘Oh, no’ I’m just goin’. That’s no even the half of it, wee Benny was saying that he heard Godge broke into an old woman’s house and half killed her, tried to rape her. And the bastard was boasting about it, as if he was the big man.’        

 There isn’t enough space to hold Sammy’s anger. But he duck down, spitting out words, so that Rab and Jaz lean into the heat of the fire, heads bowed in front of King Billy. ‘I wasnae goin’ to say anything. I’m sworn to secrecy, but I have it on very good authority that of the 66 glorious dead, men and boys, killed in the Ibrox disaster, at least ten had bullet wounds. Shot by the White Pakis.’ He spat into the fire. ‘Covered up, of course, by the high, fuckin’ heid yins.  But now that the British army has to roll over the border and take Dublin to stop those mad fuckin’ Paddies in the North bombin’ everybody, and everything, we need to do our bit here. We’ll be gettin rifles. Shiploads of them.  Internment here and there. And you boys are just the kind of boys we need. And the first thing, we’ll dae is take care of that dirty wee Fenian bastard. First name on the list. So fuckin’ help me God, we’ll cut his balls aff and string him up. The only thing worsw than a Paki is another fuckin’ white Paki. In fact, if you gave me the choice, I know which one I’d pick.’

'None of them,' he says and the boys laugh with him.