Huts43

The Old Kilpatrick Hills loomed above Mary Russell and me. I tried flinging a protective arm around her at the bus stop, because she was going, never to be seen again, and because I was so horny I’d have shagged a hole in the ground, or even old Mrs Summerville next door to us. I didn’t want any thanks for everything I’d did for her, but a wee bit might have helped. Mary had simply removed my hand, as if it was an unwanted scarf, and flung it back at me. I paced up and down, but she wouldn’t even look at me. I thought about doing a bit of hill yodelling, but that might be too much. I could have seen her point if she was doing something, but all she was doing was reading a stupid book.

‘What’s it called?’ I wasn’t going to ask her anything about the book, but she’d broken me. I gave in.

Mary turned the cover over for me to see. The Gulag Archipelago, a book about rock climbing. But it was worse than that. It was by a Russian. I knew it was by a Russian because as soon as I looked at the author’s name I forgot it and had to look and forget it again.

‘What’s it about? I said, putting my hand in front of the pages so she had to acknowledge me in some way.

‘Prison camps,’ she said, not looking at me. ‘I’m sorry this is a good bit and I can’t read on the bus because it makes me travel sick and we can talk then.’

At least that was a start. We could talk Russian for all I cared. I wasn’t sure about her reading material, and I wasn’t sure how you could get to a good bit in a prison camp. Russian novels were all the same. Even the seven horsemen of the apocalypse had a bit of colour about them. I couldn’t face that endless grey land and its bundled up grey people, that were always killing themselves, or each other, to reveal some hidden inner truth, because it was always winter, even in the summer.

I also couldn’t really understand why she was reading about prisons, when she was, more or less, leaving one. That would be like getting a ticket to the Scottish Cup Final and taking a book about Scottish Football to read on the terraces, during the game.

The bus into Glasgow was thankfully early. We wandered up to the back seats, more through habit than anything else, because that’s where young people vied to sit, even though we were old enough now to know better. I got a light off the conductress for both of us. I handed a fag to Mary.

‘I thought you got travel sick when you read on a bus?’ I said.

‘Ssshh,’ she said, ignoring me again.

I leaned my head against the window looking out. Our relationship wasn’t going in the way that I’d hoped. She was ignoring me even before she was leaving me. But then her hand crept into mine.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m just nervous, and reading helps me think about other things. I’ve never been to Glasgow. Is it nice?’

That warmed me to her. She had been in the same place as me all those years and she’d never travelled up the road to Glasgow. I felt like a veteran traveller, ready to impart all my years of cumulative wisdom. I tried desperately to think of something. How to use a half crown to widen the opening in your can so that you could pee in it and fling it out the window? How sick always runs downhill, so that you might think you’re safe, but it starts coming back on you?

‘Aye, it’s nice,’ I said, squeezing Mary’s hand to reassure her. ‘And the people are very friendly’.

She smiled. And we had a wee kiss. It wasn’t much. But it was. The conductress just laughed. ‘Hi, you two, keep that until you're married,’ she said ringing the bell to let us off.

The conductress was nice and friendly, like all the Glasgow folk I’d told Mary about. ‘Where do we get the bus to London?’ I asked.

‘Over there, at the ticket office,’ she said pointing at the bus station forum, ‘but it leaves at 11pm and there’ll be a lot of drunks about, watch your bags and stick together. And she gave us another smile and ring of her bell, so that we had to jump off the back end of the bus while it was moving.

We went down to the ticket office and I stood outside, watching Mary’s book and bag, whilst she bought her ticket. But we still had a few hours to wait. And I was scared I’d get us lost. I was determined we would stay within viewing distance of the station.

‘C’mon,’ said Mary, looking a bit grim faced, ‘let’s get a tea or something.’

‘We’ll get a drink!’ It was the only answer. It would help calm us down, kill a few hours and might make Mary horny.

The first pub we went into just up from the bus station had a few folk sitting at the bar, but they looked up as we came in and looked quickly away.

‘I don’t know,’ I said to Mary, out of the corner of my mouth. We were stranded half way between the door and the bar. ‘Maybe we should just leave.’

But the barman was watching us, so that I took a step forward, rather than back. Mary stood behind me at the bar.

‘Maybe I should get you a half pint of bitter, since you’re going to London,’ I said to Mary.

I tried to include the barman in my joke. But he looked through me as if I’d stolen his wallet and he hadn’t quite decided what to do about it yet. He finally pushed his fat belly off the bar and served another older guy along sitting two seats down. It seemed to take longer than a Russian novel. When he finally consented to look at us again, he finger wagged me first.

‘I’m not serving you,’ said the barman, ‘because you’re too young.’ ‘And as for her,’ he said, shifting his gaze and the direction of his finger-wagging, ‘I wouldnae even serve her Coke. She’s about eleven.’ The others in the bar seemed to nod their heads, pleased with the barman’s performance, as we backtracked out the door.

I looked at Mary again when we were outside. Mary’s hair was pulled tightly into two little black bunches and she’d on a blouse thing with a little plaited tartan skirt that reached just above her knees. She’d a little cut off black jumper, with only a hint of breast. The barman was right. We’d never get served.

Finally, I found a pub that would serve us. But even before I’d the drinks down on the corner table, behind a pillar, we had an argument.

‘I need to go to the toilet,’ said Mary.

‘You can’t,’ I whispered through clenched teeth. ‘The woman’s toilet is up the stairs, through the main bar and someone might see you’.

It was no use. She was already away, cutting through the smoke and the tables as if she’d been born to such things. Men and women looked up from their drink, and smiled, how could they not? She was beautiful.

‘You better go,’ said Mary when she returned, ‘the last bus to Glendevon leaves the garage before mine.’

I grabbed at her hand.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Go.’

I’d three or four pints and I could feel them working there way through my body, relaxing me and making me talk sense.

‘I cannae go,’ I said, ‘I’ll go with you to the bus and make sure you get on it alright.’

She seemed glad of that. We had created our own little home out of the ashtray and glasses and lights of the pub, but as the orders for the last bell sounded, we had to dismantle it and move out into the night.

Everyone crowded around the London bound bus, nudging their bags closer and closer, in concentric circles, as if having a ticket was no enough and there’d need to be a sprint and fight for seats. I held Mary close, staggering forward with her, like a package, as the engine revved. I touched her nose, her cheek, her mouth and felt as if I’d finally came face to face with her, but as soon as she stepped on that London bus she would become an image.

‘I’ll write to you,’ I said through her hair.

‘Me or Norean?’ she said toying with me, once more.

‘You,’ I said. ‘Only you.’

‘And how are you going to find me? she said mysteriously, taking the giant leap, away from me, onto the bus. Leaning over she kissed my lips gently, as if it was me that was leaving and not her. ‘And how are you goin’ to get home?’ she asked, ‘Taxi?’

‘Taxi,’ I harrumphed. ‘only rich folk get taxis,’ but her bus was already drawing out of the station, and she was looking down, her nose buried in a gulag. I was talking to myself and nobody was listening.