There's Only One Danny Garvey, page 19
‘She’s no’ good, Raymond. It’ll be anytime now.’ There’s a long pause during which I can hear the metallic rumble of activity and the higher-than-normal spirits of Raymond’s fellow inmates in the halls around him. He sighs. I know it’ll be difficult for him. Constantly pushing to get out, and public-sector bureaucracy constantly delaying it.
‘Ye aw’right?’ I ask. I feel like I should.
‘Aye. Suppose so,’ he says. ‘Just hoped she could hold on a bit longer. Ah’ve finally got the date, Danny.’ He sounds unusually helpless.
‘Aye? When?’ He can probably detect the tremor in my voice.
‘First week in January. Supervised release terms are murder, but fuck it, ah’m done wi’ aw this shite.’
‘Aye. Ye said.’
‘An’ ah fucken meant it, tae!’ He’s angry. Probably not at me though.
‘Okay.’
‘Fuck’s up wi’ you?’
‘Nothin’. Just been a shite few days that’s all,’ I say. I’m not lying either.
‘How?’ he asks.
‘Ach … fitba’s been off.’ I haven’t heard from Nancy since she left early on Sunday morning. Fuck the football; that’s what’s really getting under my skin.
‘Dinnae fucken gab tae me about bored, son.’ Then he laughs. ‘Ach, it’s actually been aw’right here lately. Ah’m in the kitchens, cookin’ up the Christmas dinners an’ that. Tryin’ tae sort out the presents an’ shit.’
‘What d’ye mean?’ I can’t disguise the surprise in my voice.
‘Hey, it’s no’ aw about gettin’ it up the fucken arse in the showers, pal … or the screws batterin’ fuck outae the Stoat-the-baw’s day after day. Aw good relations mostly. We did a fucken run yesterday, hunners ae us. Dressed as Santa, raisin’ money tae send weans tae Lapland.’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Tellin’ ye. Ah fucken fell though. Twisted ma ankle. It’s absolute agony. Swelled up like a bastard balloon, it is. Ah’ve been askin’ for the doctor, but it’s hard tae get tae see him. Ye need tae book it, an’ it takes five or six days, it’s nae use,’ he mutters.
I hear someone shout for Raymond to get a move on.
‘Listen, ah need ye tae dae us a big favour. Can ye nip round an’ let Nancy know?’
‘Know what?’
‘That ah’m gettin’ out! Christ’s sake, Danny. Stop fucken dreamin’ for a minute, eh? Ah’d want her tae come an’ pick us up. She’s still got the wee motor ah got her in Ernie’s garage. Tell her tae be here early on the fourth. Dinnae want tae be hingin’ about a Glasgow suburb straight outae fucken jail, y’know?’
‘Raymond … ah dinnae really…’
‘Look, it’s a bit fucken awkward cos we had a big fall-out last time she was here. Ah know she still loves us, but ah need ye tae play the peacemaker for me.’
‘Right. Fine,’ I say, my heart sinking right down into my bowel.
‘Oh aye … an’ can ye sort out a room back at Mam’s house for us? See ye, bro’.’
And with that he’s gone. To enjoy the comradeship of others, a three-course Barlinnie Christmas dinner – plastic cutlery, plastic plates – and gifts of tobacco or bags of coffee that his fellow inmates have swapped with each other to manufacture some goodwill. I’m left contemplating the misery of life with him back on the outside. Merry fucking Christmas!
The rain has intensified. The short distance from Higgy’s place to Libby’s house offers no shelter. I’m walking – not running, since I have no desire to get there quicker – into the teeth of it, and I’m soaked through by the time Higgy opens the door.
‘Aw’right, son?’ His face is blotched and red. I can see he’s been crying. ‘Happy Christmas.’ He holds out a hand to shake mine.
‘Aye, same tae you.’
‘In ye come. Wisnae sure when ye’d show. Huvnae put the dinner on.’
I drop my jacket on the stairs. Water drips off it. I go through to the kitchen and dry my hair with a dish towel. Higgy follows me.
‘How’s she been?’ I ask.
‘Ach, y’know…’ he says. I don’t enquire further. ‘Ye hungry?’
I shrug. There’s a couple of cold meat pies lying out.
‘No’ that bothered, really,’ I say.
‘Aye, me neither,’ he says.
Christmas Day and none of us in this house can eat, to celebrate what we are conditioned to believe is the happiest day of the year. It may well be if you are rich enough to have options – to have alternatives to the imprisonment of each other’s company.
Libby is mumbling something incoherent. She’s in a morphine haze these days, as opposed to the Valium and alcohol ones of my teenage years. Hard not to think of the times when she had different types of tubes forced down into her stomach to pump out a poison that was self-inflicted. No such easy remedies this time.
She has lifted the mask up onto her forehead. Her eyes are open, and they look clearer than they have for some time.
‘Raymond … get yer ma the papers, will ye, son. There’s a good boy.’ She’s looking at me. It’s disconcerting.
‘She’s away wi’ the fairies, Danny,’ says Higgy. ‘Aw the time, now.’
‘Aye, okay, Mam. Ah’ll just get ye them,’ I say.
Her hand has reached over to mine without me even noticing the movement. The feel of it unsettles me, as if she’s already dead and I’m touching her skin for the last time before the coffin lid is screwed down.
‘Ah’m convinced she’s hangin’ on. Clingin’ tae life just tae see her boy one last time,’ says Higgy. He won’t be saying this to hurt me. Raymond was always ‘her boy’. I never came close. I accepted it over a decade ago. And Higgy may well be right. She’s already on borrowed time, according to the nursing staff.
I tell Higgy Raymond’s release date, and he sobs.
‘Ah bloody hell, they couldnae just let him go now? Where’s their fucken compassion.’
‘Paperwork, apparently,’ I tell him. ‘It’s the holiday season. Naebody around tae sanction it any earlier.’ I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t really care either.
Higgy wipes his face, probably embarrassed at me seeing him crying. ‘Dae ye want some tea, an’ a bit ae roasted cheese?’ It’s an excuse to be on his own for a couple of minutes.
‘Aye. Go on then. Thanks.’ It’ll be the first thing I’ve eaten today, since the handful of cornflakes that lined my stomach for the first of the two runs.
The telly is turned down low. To reinforce the sense of unreality, Del Boy and Rodney are dressed up as Batman and Robin, for some reason.
Libby turns her head. ‘Danny, son … yer mammy loves ye.’ Faintly, but clearly heard. This rocks me. I can’t be sure if it’s the younger me, or the me now that she thinks she’s talking to. ‘Mind an’ stick in at the school. Dae whit yer uncle Peter tells ye, okay? Ah’ve kept aw yer things here for ye. In yer box.’
Higgy comes back through at this point. Carrying a tray with mugs and a plate on it. And we’re both crying. Libby’s eyes are closed. Her breathing is calmer. She seems content.
We sit silently watching telly, unable to hear it. Eating a Christmas Day dinner of roasted cheese. It’s ten o’clock at night, and it feels like all three of us are slowly dying.
Sitting on the bed, there are so many things about the room that I’ve never noticed before. I was rarely in it, even in the early seventies, when Raymond and I officially lived here. This room was his room. My room was our room. Nonetheless, little has changed. A board with a punching ball on a flexible stick. A broken lamp shade. A poster of AC/DC. The sharpness of the sloped ceiling either side of the projecting dormer window that now I have to twist my body to avoid. A chewed skirting board where a mouse – or something bigger – seems to have made an escape route back into the relative safety of the roof space. A cupboard behind the entrance to the room that I can’t even recall having seen before.
The cupboard door is locked, but the key is dangling from a shoelace looped around the handle, inviting someone to investigate its contents. The majority of these are stacked newspapers. Quite why Libby felt compelled to keep something as immediately redundant as news is beyond me. There are some boxed toys, black polythene bags full of musty-smelling clothes and a rolled-up rug. In the back corner of the cupboard, hidden under the piled-up papers, I find a box. It’s heavily taped. Turning it around and over I discover my name written on its base.
The box contains a history of my younger life. The one I left behind before Aberdeen. Newspaper clippings reporting football matches I played in. Football cards that I valued. Kenny Dalglish, Andy Gray, Pat Stanton. The Scottish Football League ladders with club tabs that I adjusted regularly throughout the seasons whilst listening to Final Score. Copies of Shoot! magazine that Raymond once told me Libby had binned. A soft, airless football I was allowed to keep for scoring a hat-trick in a Schools Cup final. My Scotland Schools caps. The Barshaw v Auchinleck match programme from the cup semi-final with my name in the team sheet circled in red ink. A sheaf of football programmes. My football programmes. The ones that I was certain Raymond had sold. And the green primary-school banner that used to be pinned to the ceiling above my bed. My banner, with my name on it. Going back further, a spidery drawing from primary one with a silver star and a big, blue biro tick. From before she disappeared.
Standing up, and pressing my wet face to the window, I see the roof of Nancy’s house is visible in the distance over to the right. An upper bedroom light is on. I’m not sure if it’s her room, but I spend a sleepless night sitting uncomfortably on a small, wooden chair, staring at it, convinced that it is.
My brother’s coming home to be with her, and their son. The easiest thing for everybody would be for me to disappear back into the north-eastern haar from whence I’ve come.
I was desperate. I phoned Anne Macdonald. She came over and we sat in her wee purple car at the bottom of the road, and I poured my heart out. Told her of my painful dilemma. She gives good advice, does Anne. She always has done.
I left a message with Doreen that I needed to see her daughter. Doreen said she’d pass it on, although her reluctance to do so couldn’t be disguised. But she kept to her word. And now, here we are.
We haven’t spoken since that night over a week ago. We’re up at The Barn. Sitting on a damp bench that we’ve sat on before. Damo isn’t away in the distance this time though, distracting us, going up and down the banking repeatedly on his bike. This is a conversation for grown-ups, with grown-up issues to be addressed.
‘How’ve ye been?’ I ask her.
‘Fine,’ she replies. There’s no real conviction to the response and I don’t know what to read into it.
‘The wee man have a good time then?’
‘Aye. He did. Helped that he didnae have to go tae the school the week before, I think.’
‘Hmm.’
We’re dancing around it, but she must be regretting staying with me that Saturday night. Otherwise, she’d have called. She’d have got in touch. But she didn’t, and it can only be because avoiding it might make it go away.
‘How’s yer mam?’
‘Ach, she’s done,’ I reply. ‘Ah’m sure it’s only waitin’ for Raymond comin’ home that’s keepin’ her goin’.’ I notice her head drop at the mention of this, but I don’t turn to face her. I’m worried that I’d embarrass myself if I did. ‘Actually, that’s why I wanted tae see ye. He phoned on Christmas Day. He’s got his release date. He asked if ye would pick him up fae Barlinnie.’
She sighs. ‘What’s the date?’
‘Fourth ae January. He thinks it’ll be about three in the afternoon or that.’ Minutes of silence pass and I don’t know what to add. Happy New Year to us.
—He made this mix tape for me. When I opened it, it reminded me of school discos and snogging boys and the dreams of doing something with my life … nursing maybe. He wrote a wee message inside the cover that made me cry. It was the sweetest thing. He wrapped it up and gave it to me for Christmas and it was perfect. I didn’t know most of the songs, but I’ve just about worn out the tape listening to them. Looking for things in the lyrics … messages in his song choices that tell me what to do with my life. How to move on from this static compromise it has become.
But I can’t just snap my fingers. I cried listening to the songs because those dreams are gone. I’m barely thirty and the course is set. I cried to mourn the girl that returned for one night at that party before Christmas. I cried knowing that was the last I’d see of her. And also, because I felt like I had led Danny on. And that was unforgivable. He’s naïve and impressionable and vulnerable, and I knew all that before I even met him.
‘Danny…’ She reaches out and touches my arm. ‘Danny, that night we had … it wis lovely. Really.’ She turns and I’m still not looking at her. Still trying to conceal the pain I’m experiencing. ‘Danny, look at me.’ She’s saying this softly and compassionately, and I know it’s merely a prelude to letting me down. I’ve heard this tone so many times before. ‘That Saturday was just a…’ She doesn’t finish. ‘It was great tae no’ have tae think about Damo’s problems, or about ma mam on my back day an’ night … or that Raymond’s comin’ home now, an’ he’ll be expectin’ us just tae pick up where we left off.’ Home; that fundamental concept that I have no understanding of.
—God, this is so difficult. How could I have been so stupid?
‘He’s the one doin’ the time, Nancy … no’ you!’
‘Really? You think that’s the case?’ She isn’t angry. Isn’t aggrieved. It’s worse than that, she is submissive. Suffocating. Exhausted from the effort.
‘Why are ye settlin’ for this … this fucken brutal unhappiness?’ That was a bit unfair, I concede.
—If Raymond and I had the opportunity to start again, to wipe the slate clean, to learn from our mistakes, without any compromises or collateral damage … would I want that? Or is the masochistic comfort we find in the familiar just too powerful? I loved him once. Time will tell. I convinced myself that the practical constraints, such as lack of money or somewhere better for me and Damo to go, were the things holding me back, not Raymond. My mam stayed far too long in an abusive relationship for those same reasons.
‘What am ah supposed tae do here?’ she says. ‘Everywhere ah turn, ah’m trapped.’
I have no answer. She knows it. She’s merely hanging on in quiet desperation.
‘Ah loved the tape.’ The subject has been changed. ‘Those songs are really, really beautiful. Thanks Danny. Ah really mean that, but…’ She tails off. It’s a conclusion. She kisses my cheek. She stands, the paper with a time, date and location on it is in her hand. We’re done.
The morning of Raymond’s release and, miraculously, Libby is still here. Lucidity has long since left the building. She merely exists. A collection of automatic motor functions, running out of fuel. Something deep inside her draws the breath in and then forces it back out. The gentle, almost undetectable rise and fall of her bony chest now the only physical indication of life. Medical people are struggling to hide their astonishment. She’s a real fighter, they’ve been telling Higgy for over a month. I acknowledge my detachment. I find her determination to cling to life strange, especially if it’s only the promise of Raymond coming home that’s sustaining her. From my perspective it’s not a life that’s been particularly rewarding. Happiness always seemed fleeting, just out of her grasp.
It’s late afternoon. Another miserable wet day. We’re at the house. Waiting for him. The prodigal. The car draws up. The same one Raymond proudly described when I visited him in prison. It’s been in a lock-up for over a year, Nancy told me. Its suspicious origin was one of the reasons she and Raymond had argued.
She gets out. Alone. I meet her at the door. My open arms and outstretched palms asking where the fuck is he?
‘Danny, he wisnae there. He’d gone already.’
‘This what yer settlin’ for, Nancy?’ I say; words of spite and intended to hurt.
She glares at me. She turns and leaves, and I wish I hadn’t said them. I go back inside and break the news to Higgy.
It’s 7.15 pm. A car door closes outside.
Higgy gazes through the slots in the blind. ‘It’s him,’ he says. ‘Rocco Quinn’s just dropped him off.’
The door opens. Raymond comes in quietly. The beard’s back. He gives me the death stare as if all of this is my fault. It’s a look I’ve come to know well. I’m about to get a mouthful but he catches his breath when he sees his mother; tiny in an oversized bed. Tubes and wires and drips and cables and bags.
‘Aw … fuck, Mam!’ He drops his bags and falls to his knees at the side of her bed. Wailing into the mattress. Holding her fragile hand. Kissing it. Higgy puts an arm on his head, brushing his long, lank hair to one side. I pick up my jacket. Looking back at them, in the dim light, they are like the dark, despairing figures in a Caravaggio painting. I leave them to it.
Libby died early the following morning. The time of death recorded by a local on-call doctor as 2.50 am, although Higgy said it was about an hour earlier. He’s here now to tell me we should be cancelling today’s match. It’s the first game of the new year. We haven’t played for over two weeks. I tell him that I wouldn’t be able to get in touch with the management, the players, the officials at this late stage, but in truth, I want the game to go ahead. It’s me that craves the distraction – not to have to sit with my brother, watching his fake grief and remorse grow out of all drunken, self-pitying proportion. The funeral will be bad enough.
We arrive at Lugar. The memories of our league opener have not faded. There is aggression in the air. The players and management of both clubs are forced to navigate a narrow lane to reach the clubhouse. Pushing, shoving, swearing, spitting; a portent of the ninety minutes ahead.
‘Kick-off’s goin’ tae be delayed a wee bit, lads,’ admits the ref as he comes in to check the studs. ‘Fifteen … twenty minutes, tops,’ he says. He offers no further explanation, and both teams seem even more aggravated.
