Harley4

Ma took the news that Mary was leaving with wee Fiona by making a stack of egg sandwiches, wrapping them securely in silver foil and diluting- some already diluted orange juice- and putting it in a bigger bottle for them to share.

‘When will you be back?’ Ma asked, before they had even left, and folded her arms in a businesslike way.

‘I’ll be back when I’m back,’ cried Mary, suddenly overcome with the enormity of going so far away, that England seemed like a foreign country, whose people spoke the same language, but didn’t talk. Homesick. She flung her arms around Ma.

Ma edged closer to the porcelain figurine of a little shepherd girl with pantomime rouge cheeks and bonny yellow curls bent low over what looked like a pillowcase, but under closer scrutiny it had ears. It was a family joke that the statue should have had a sign around its neck with break only in case of emergencies on it. The old notes and currency were said to date from before the Boer War. The statue had seen off Kaiser Wilhelm, then Hitler, but could not see off wee Fiona’s travails She dunted the porcelain pillowcase- lamb against the fireplace and the figurine split into two halves, like a chocolate Easter egg. Her fingers expertly found the three tenners inside.

‘Here.’ Ma held out her stash.

Mary wouldn’t let go of Ma’s neck, almost strangling her. She tried to speak, but couldn’t, choking with tears. ‘I don’t need it,’ she sobbed.

But Ma, without fussing, slipped the money into the little pocket on her denim dress. Ma allowed a tear or two to escape from the corner of her eyes. ‘Come on now,’ she said, ‘you’ll be having a train to catch. Just make sure that you write and let me know that you are all right and where you are. And make sure you put on a clean pair of undergarments.’

The sound of the doorbell allowed Ma to peel Mary off her. She looked out the window and waved; a signal to come in.

Mary didn’t have time to react before Findlay pushed his head, and with a glance took everything in. His skeletal frame, more leather jacket than body, eased through their front door. Mary moved in front of Ma, as if to protect her, but Ma had already moved towards the kitchen. ‘Do you want tea Findlay?’ she asked, plonking the kettle on the electric ring to sing and whistle.

Before Findlay could frame an answer, Mary pounced, ‘No. He doesn’t want tea.’ She looked at him, daring him to contradict her.

Findlay’s eyebrows creeped up his domed forehead. He looked at Mary and just as quickly looked away, behind her and up the stairs, as they heard a bump from the bedroom. ‘No Mrs Russell, I was just looking for my girlfriend wee Fiona.’ He tried a weasly smile on Ma as she stood with a chequered dishcloth in her hand in the door between the living room and kitchen. ‘You haven’t seen her have you?’

‘No. She hasn’t,’ spat out Mary.

Findlay stood stock-still. He had another crafty look at to see if Ma was going to come out of the kitchen, or coming back in.

‘Time you were going,’ said Mary.

‘Aye,’ said Findlay, but he made no move to go.

Every sound seemed accentuated and slowed down. They could hear Ma pouring some water into a cup and smack her lips together as if she was eating, rather than drinking tea. A cupboard opening and closing and Ma’s soft slippered tread as she came back into the living room, with a smile on her face and a mug of tea in her hand, surprised and delighted, that her daughter and Findlay still seemed to be in the same position, unmoving, like targets on a rifle range.

Findlay shot away first. ‘I’ll just use your toilet Mrs Russell,’ he said, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

At the top of the stairs, Findlay pushed open Mary’s room door with his leather biker boots and looked inside, as if expecting to find the motorbike that he’d never owned.

‘What do you fucking think you’re doing?’ snarled Mary, pulling his arm and pulling him back from entering her room. Her eyes flickered momentarily away from his face and into the room. She couldn’t see Fiona.

‘I know she’s fucking in there,’ he said, grabbing her arm and trying to pull Mary out of the way.

‘What do you thing you’re doing Findlay?’ Their childish wrestling stopped and they seemed to wait, to hang in the air, like Ma’s words.

‘I’m sorry Mrs Russell. I’m just looking for Fiona.’ Findlay’s mouth opened and shut as if he’d been hooked, as his feet purchased air and he fell with a bump down all the stairs.

‘You shouldn’t have pushed him,’ said Ma.

‘Had to.’ Mary’s words came out like a sneeze. ‘He was nosing about in my room and everything.’

‘I think I’ve broke my neck,’ groaned Findlay, moving his head gently from side to side. ‘You’ll need to get me an ambulance.’

‘You can’t have broken your neck, if you are able to move it.’ Ma’s words were accompanied by a strong arm as she helped Findlay up. When he was finally able to stand unaided she opened the front door, pushed him out and closed it behind him.

Findlay pried open the letterbox with his fingers and shouted through: ‘Ow,’ as he bent down and an involuntary spasm shot up his neck and ‘Tell Fiona I love her,’ before his feet crunched and sounded a hasty retreat from their front door.

‘Is he away yet?’ Wee Fiona said as Mary peered at her underneath her bed, clutching a teddy bear. She giggled, ‘he really loves me,’ as she got out of her makeshift-hiding place.

Ma handed out her hankies in the living room downstairs. They were crinkled and ruffled and smelled faintly of perfume that had been locked in a drawer for so long it had evaporated.

‘I’ll get this money right back to you,’ said Mary, holding the notes Ma had given her like a charm and echoing the words of some of the women that came to Ma over the years. But she knew it was more than that. It was her house and home and a safe place; a sanctuary in their little row of houses. ‘I love you Ma,’ said Mary.

‘I know lass. I know,’ said Ma.

Mary worried about who would look after Ma. And Ma started worrying about who would look after Mary. But neither said any more. Mary went away to pack some more clothes, take them out and pack them again. She tried to remember there was something that she couldn’t or shouldn’t forget.

‘What about knickers?’ said Fiona, toying with the nail varnish on her nails and startling Mary, making her sound older and wiser, part of the great clean knickers’ tribe of Ma’s generation.

‘What about you getting a move on?’ said Mary brusquely. ‘Where are we going to hide all that money?’

‘I thought you’d take it,’ Fiona said looking up, her thick eyelashes flickering.

‘Well think again.’ Mary zipped up and around her suitcase, and hauling it off the bed. ‘You keep an eye on your money and me and I’ll keep an eye on my bag and my money. Besides, nobody ever mugs little girls. It’s too embarrassing. So I think we’ll be safe as long as we’re not too stupid.’ She dragged her bag off the bed and shut her bedroom door with a satisfying and final clunk.

Fiona followed behind her. ‘We’ll just buy you some clothes when we get to Glasgow, or maybe even London. Glasgow is about 20 years behind in the fashion stakes,’ she added confidentially, although the last time she’d been to Glasgow was with Ma to see Ben Hur in The Odeon, and had never been outside Glasgow’s borders, with the exception of Shawlands, where she had an auntie, but she wasn’t much of an auntie and Shawlands didn’t really count as a real place. ‘I know where we can get you some fantastic outfits, Carnaby Street, that’s where Twiggy shops and you’re about the same figure, although, obviously, you’re smaller. But you’re just as pretty.’

Ma was waiting on the doorstep to wave them away. She pulled a hanky, like a posy of flowers, out of her sleeves for each of them. ‘I’ll miss you.’ She smacked a kiss against Mary’s forehead. She leaned down to wee Fiona and kissed her on the cheek.

‘Don’t worry Ma, we’ll just nip down to the phone box and get a taxi. Then we’ll get the overnight train. And we’ll book into the youth hostel in the morning. I’ll phone the phone box in the street about ten tomorrow morning, just to let you know we got there ok. If you’re not there somebody else will answer-they always do- and they’ll let you know. Bye Ma.’

‘Bye Mrs Russell,’ said wee Fiona, her arms tucked in under her armpits, like birds wings, as if it was cold, but it was clammy. She tottered along in her high heals clunking behind Mary, before spinning around and running back to the house. ‘You go on and phone the taxi,’ she shouted, ‘I just left my bag under your bed.’

They got tired of waiting for a taxi. On the bus they spotted the taxi heading in the direction they’d just come from. They looked at each other as if they’d a narrow escape. Apart from undertakers, only one man wore a homburg hat driving a black taxi car and that was Val McDermitt. He was one of Findlay’s dad’s Mason buddies, with a reputation for hat cocking and swaggering and picking fights with people much bigger than him, which included most people, including wee Fiona, but he never picked a fight with a woman, unless she was a man. And he never picked a fight with a Protestant when there was a Catholic available. He didn’t hold a grudge after people had died, but the world seemed to hold a grudge against him and took his job more seriously than life. He not only wanted to know where the punter was going, but why they where going there and who they were going to meet. He was a poltergeist of the taxi kingdom appearing here there and everywhere and flinging fares from their seats onto dark unmarked roads. Wee Fiona kept watching out of the bus window in case the taxi did a U- turn and started following their bus.

‘Give me a tenner and I’ll stick it in my purse for the fares,’ whispered Mary.

‘There’s some change at the bottom of the bag.’ Fiona pulled out bundles of notes and piled them on Mary’s knees.

A little boy in the seat opposite, looked over, his big eyes stuck open like lollipops. ‘Money,’ he said pulling at his mother’s sleeve

‘That’s nice,’ she said, glancing over.

‘It’s Monopoly money,’ said Mary stuffing the money back into Mary’s bag. She laughed, a false nasal laugh, like a donkey. The woman’s gaze returned to the traffic outside the bus window.

The train station wasn’t too busy. They sat on the hard wooden benches in the corner of the booking room. A two bar electric fire had been nudged upwards to heat the solar system and distract some buzzing flies.

‘Let’s see if we can dodge the train,’ whispered Mary.

‘To Glasgow?’ whispered back Fiona.

‘No. London,’ said Mary. The station guard looked at them through his little window to the railway world, which made wee Fiona pick at her nails.

‘Have we not got enough money?’ she asked.

‘No. It’s not that. But we don’t want to give money to British Rail! You know what they’re like. It’s just wasting money.’

The station guard waved at Mary. Then belatedly he waved at Fiona.

‘That’s Archie King,’ said Fiona, out of the side of her mouth. ‘He used to fancy you at school.’

‘Shit. I think you’re right. I thought he kept looking at us because we looked like train dodgers, but he didnae. He was looking at us because he fancied you.’ Mary got up and smoothed out her dress. ‘That means we’ll need to pay our fare.’ She walked towards the ticket booth.

‘What kept you so long?’ whined wee Fiona.

Mary looked flushed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think we could get a ticket to London from this station, but I was wrong. Archie had to put me down as a relative so that I could get one of those British Rail discounts and he put you down as a child fare. But he only did that because I promised that you’d go out with him when we get back.’

‘No chance, he’s all pimpley. And Finlay would kill him,’ said Fiona.

‘No, if Findlay’s dead,’ snorted Mary, ‘and besides, Archie’s not that pimpley now.

‘You got out with him then,’ said wee Fiona.

‘I might. I just might.’ Mary waved at Archie behind his window.