The Glasgow Coma Scale, page 1
The Glasgow Coma Scale
Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Corsair,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2014
Copyright © Neil D. A. Stewart 2014
The right of Neil D. A. Stewart to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication
Data is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-47211-268-2 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-47211-392-4 (ebook)
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the UK
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For Gayla
ONE
Between the shoddy jeweller’s at one end of the Sauchiehall Street pedestrian precinct and the low-rise, low-end department stores at the other, Lynne’s charity became a compulsion. As her money dwindled, she began to feel a mounting, reckless desire to give away everything to the beggars: her overstuffed weekend bag, her earrings, the fine silver cross around her neck; then still more: her shoes, her jacket. After that, she might twist her fingers and pop off each joint, distribute these too, a controlled disintegration. Surely she would, carrying out this procedure, succeed in locating then eradicating the parts where pain and resentment and dismay resided. For a moment, disposing of herself like this, she felt a flush of liberation. If you could give money to strangers, maybe you could disappear without trace.
The first man she’d given a few coins to had been sheltering in the entrance of a boarded-up sandwich shop outside Queen Street station. After that, some dog-whistle signal must have gone out, because on Sauchiehall Street she encountered more Big Issue sellers and more homeless – a vaguely insulting noun, but what else was she to call them? – than she recalled ever seeing there before. They didn’t exactly accost her, but each stepped from a doorway in readiness as she approached, and, shifting her bag to her free hand, she gave something to every single one.
Some took from her without meeting her eye, swiping coins from her palm with blackened fingers, their due. Others thanked her, low-voiced, embarrassingly deferential – calling her missus, calling her doll. She made a point of looking them in the eye. They were wounded, wind burned, and a haunted look was common to all. ‘God bless,’ they said to her, even the most taciturn, and she could imagine Raymond’s voice remarking, from lordly height, on the intensity of belief evinced by the luckless. He’d claim it was impressive or even moving, how their misfortunes seemed only to strengthen their faith – he would describe it as a phenomenon. But really he’d be seeking only to mock, his whole speech a trap to be sprung as soon as she agreed with him. What made her think, he’d challenge her, that their godliness was genuine, not simple expediency? He liked to explain the way the world worked, in the process painting her as lamentably naïve.
Better it end today, Lynne thought: the first proper day of autumn, late in coming, inevitable. Overnight, the change in season had put metal in the air, thrawn the year’s leaves down off the trees. A time for letting go. Had he woken up and decided, on seeing the frost and the weatherless silver sky, right then, that this was an apt day to make his speech?
Even before she paid proper attention to the man begging outside Menzies, he stood out from the others. For one thing, he did not lift his chin off his folded arms as Lynne approached, but remained motionless, staring into space, cross-legged, back set hard against the newsagent’s brick wall. For another thing, Lynne knew his name.
How it happened: she had the last few coins ready in her hand, prepared to withhold them if the man didn’t at least acknowledge her presence. How quickly goodwill had turned to entitlement! When at last he lifted his head, she gratefully poured the money into the chewed polystyrene cup between his feet, noticing at first only that his face did not have the same weather-beaten ruddiness as his fellows’. The actual recognition, the actual name, arrived only as a second, delayed reaction.
She hunkered down beside him. ‘Angus?’
He didn’t speak – wasn’t quite making eye contact – but a vertical furrow appeared between his brows. Up close, she could smell the sharp, soupy aura that surrounded him. His hair, peeping from beneath a grubby black woollen hat, was greasy-sleek and unkempt, his heavy beard riddled with wiry silver hairs, but Lynne knew she wasn’t mistaken. ‘My God, Angus, it is you.’
‘It is?’ He seemed no more than moderately interested. He scanned left and right along Sauchiehall Street for the next mark. ‘Guid tae know.’
‘Don’t you recognize . . . ? It’s Lynne. Lynne Meacher.’
‘Oh, eh, thanks then, Lynne.’ She knew that gruff manner, the familiar strong accent she had once, new to Glasgow, struggled to understand. When she didn’t move on, he mumbled, reddening, ‘Fer the contribution tae funds.’ He shoogled the coins in his cup, seeking to ward her off. ‘Ah’m, ye know, appreciative.’
She felt she was being watched, from a doorway maybe, but when she glanced around there was no one in sight. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘sorry, no. It’s just – don’t you remember me? From the School of Art?’ She gestured towards Garnethill. ‘You taught me. Second-year painting and printmaking.’
The line between his brows deepened. ‘Lynne . . . Meeker?’
‘Meacher.’
‘Meacher.’ A pause, then: ‘Hey,’ he said in astonishment, ‘you’re Lynne Meacher!’
‘I am!’ Laughing with relief.
‘Second-year painting and printmaking, aye!’ He jabbed his finger at her. ‘Let’s see, and weren’t ye friendly wi . . .’
‘With . . . well, the other English students mostly.’ She laughed. ‘The other invaders. Oh, and Elena Papantuano. You must remember her – you both came to my house one night back then? We sat up all night drinking.’ He shook his head, unconvinced, blistered lips barely smiling. Trying not to let him hear disappointment, she said: ‘Well, it’s a long time ago now, I suppose. Years and years. But Angus, what are you doing here?’
‘Nae ither place tae go,’ he said, shrugging. ‘None ah’d relish bein, that is.’
‘You mean you’re really . . .’
‘Oan the streets? Ah really am, aye. Nae joab, nae hame – scored the double.’
‘But how could this have happened to you? You were so . . .’ Wonderful, she’d nearly said. Indomitable. ‘Well, never mind about that now. Can you stand?’
Angus looked at her with great forbearance. ‘Yes thank you, that ah can do. Look, Lynne, no meanin tae be rude, it’s kind ay ye to stop and chat, but the thing is, ah willnae make much cash if ah’m jist sat here gassin.’
Lynne, incredulous: ‘I’m not leaving you here. How could I? Come on, you’re staying at mine.’ She stood, her knees aching from so long in the crouch, and felt a momentary dizziness. Sundays usually meant brunch at Raymond’s favourite Merchant City café – a place to which, evidently, she now could never return.
Angus had not moved. His eyes were hazy, as if what she was offering was inconsequential. Again it went through her mind: what would Raymond think if he witnessed this exchange? He would have said she was being absurd. ‘Come on, then,’ she enjoined, more forcefully.
‘Aw – Lynne. Ah couldnae.’
How else to speak to him but as to a child? ‘Angus, I’m not arguing. I’m telling you.’
She half ran to the end of the precinct, flailed for a taxi, then went back for Angus, who was, despite his protests, clambering to his feet. She tried to take the dusty blue kitbag he’d been sitting on, but he clutched it to him, a wary, shamed scowl on his face. Behind her, the taxi, which had crept on to the pavement, honked its horn warningly. Lynne hesitated, wary too: for a moment it was impossible to see, through the exhaustion and shabbiness, the Angus Rennie she remembered.
He said nothing for the twenty minutes it took the taxi to reach the West End; Lynne, relegated to a flip-down seat so Angus could sit beside his bag, fretted, also silent. Not quite five o’clock but already near dark, all that remained of sunset a swathe of peach sky compressed between black horizon and black cloud, intermittently visible between the buildings they passed. Each time they stopped at a red light, she tensed for Angus to throw open the car door and sprint away into the dusk.
When they reached Glendower Street, she went on ahead up the close’s cold stairwell. Angus lagged behind her, pausing on the stair, leaning against the Arts and Crafts tiling. He patted his thigh. ‘Busted leg. Sorry. Gie me a second.’
By the time she’d unlocked the front door he had caught up with her, but still hesitated when she indicated he enter before her, as though unable to cross the threshold without an explicit invitation. ‘This is really guid of ye, Lynne. Ah’ve no way tae repay ye.’
‘That does
‘Point is, naebdy bothered before you. Ah jist wantit tae thank ye.’
‘Well, let’s not stand out here discussing it. Go on in. Please. Straight on in and to your right, that’s the living room. There’s a futon we can roll out for you to sleep on.’
He shook his head. ‘That’d be magic.’
With Angus safely inside, Lynne shut and double-bolted the front door, then followed him into the living room. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Only it’s just the one bedroom . . .’
‘A sight better than whut ah’ve put up with lately,’ he cut her off genially, looking around. With dismay, Lynne too was seeing the room through his eyes: the dowdy knick-knacks, the framed stock photograph over the mantelpiece, the unburned church candles ranked in the old fireplace to disguise the horrid electric fire she had never got round to replacing.
Rashly, she tried prompting him. ‘So, do you remember any of this from when you came before?’ She pretended to calculate – ‘Five years ago or so?’ – not wanting to alarm him with a considerably more precise date.
‘Nup.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry.’
‘Well, it was just one evening, after all. A long time ago. And it’s probably changed a lot since then.’ She added this, rather hopefully, despite the evidence of her own eyes. ‘Well, anyway, that’s by the by. Let me get you some bedding for later.’ Even as she said the words, he yawned, hugely as a cat. These curtailed October days did this to a person, daylight barely bothering the visible end of the spectrum; the instinct was to hibernate until spring came. ‘Have you eaten? I can throw something together. I’m famished,’ she laughed, then worried that she sounded insensitive.
Before fetching the spare sheets from the press, however, she darted into the kitchen and began unpinning certain photographs from the cork board. She had been hoping that being in the flat might remind Angus of his previous visit – what had passed between them then – and was disappointed that he evinced only mild interest in his surroundings. But it’s him, she was thinking, even if he barely seems to remember your name; it is still him, and that’s the important thing.
She paused over one photograph: Raymond and herself, early on, triumphant at the peak of a Munro. Such good bone structure she’d had, such clearness to the whites of her eyes. She was tired today, and her face had a weary rosaceous shine: these were depredations, she now felt, that Raymond had worked on her. She set the photograph face down into a drawer with the others. She hadn’t changed all that much in five years, had she? The younger Lynne from the picture could still come back, just as Angus had.
Angus, as it happened, remembered quite clearly the evening to which Lynne had been alluding, but wasn’t yet prepared to admit it. In her absence, he lay back on her couch and busied himself fumbling in his crotch, trying to extricate his right testicle, which seemed to have retreated beneath his pelvis.
He had some concerns regarding the reasons for Lynne’s kindness, but a decent sleep in an actual bed, or as good as – rather than passing the night beneath a tree in Kelvingrove Park, in a glassy insomniac trance – was motivation enough not to question too hard. There was food here, light, warmth. You couldn’t just turn your nose up at that.
Hearing Lynne scuffling about in the hallway, Angus withdrew his hand from his underwear, sniffed his fingers and, composing himself for her return, arranged his face into what was, under the circumstances, the broadest, most ingratiating smile he could muster.
TWO
Lynne made herself late on Monday morning, dawdling in the flat, hoping her house guest would wake before she had to leave. It was unusual for her not to be first to arrive at the office, but despite what had happened over the weekend, first with Raymond, then Angus, there was no question of taking the day off. In the end she had to run, through the smirr of rain, to the underground station, and arrived into Arundel’s offices flustered, her hair damply wadded, an unpleasant trickling sensation under her arms. Late or not, people barely seemed to notice her enter, much less greet her. Only Heather Gillespie, on her final warning for punctuality herself, raised her sleepy face and, to Lynne’s horror, winked at her.
She started up her computer, then went to make breakfast – adding milk to the Tupperware box of cereal she’d brought from home. In the kitchenette, Faraz, beard luxuriant but scalp freshly gleaming from its weekly shave, was adding his name to the list for the office Christmas party, due to take place, because of various apparently irreconcilable scheduling clashes, in the middle of November. Beside him, waylaying him, pink in the face, was Struan Peters.
Most of Lynne’s colleagues came in on a Monday morning keen to discuss the weekend’s football or the new talent contest on TV; Struan arrived vibrating with indignation from a weekend seemingly spent researching ways in which Scotland’s failure thus far to secede from the United Kingdom was causing him personal injury.
‘What they need to do,’ he was telling glazed Faraz, ‘is really go after the sixteen- and seventeen-year-aulds. Get them political, get them fighting for their ain country. These guys’re our future – they dinnae want Westminster making their decisions for them. They’ll vote for independence soon’s that pen’s in their haund, guaranteed.’
Lynne wanted to speak up – declare that in her experience young people were a lot more conservative than Struan was giving them credit for. But this was hardly true of Raymond’s daughter, nor indeed of the young Lynne, who had upped and come to Glasgow alone aged eighteen, on what had amounted to a whim. Even in her silence, however, she was having her customary quantum effect on the debate: observed by Arundel’s sole English employee, it began to modulate subtly towards still-deniable jingoism. ‘Oor oil goes tae England,’ Struan complained. ‘Aw they wind farms blighting the hillsides and the moors, the power they generate? Straight down south.’
‘Aye, they pay for it, but. And there’s, like, tax breaks and that. Och, I don’t know, but it’s no like we give it away free.’
Struan ignored Faraz’s interruption. ‘Keep that fer oorsels, we’d be minted, the richest country in Europe. Ye could dismantle hauf they places and still power the whole ay Scotland. What do we need England for anyweiy? No for money. Moral guidance? Aye, right. What they gonnae teach us, how tae pan in windows and steal trainers and TVs?’
Lynne, unable to help herself: ‘That’s hardly fair.’
Struan’s head pivoted jerkily around, putting Lynne in mind of old films with frames missing. ‘Whit’s fair? Tellin us we’d fail on oor ain? Yis tell us we’re stupit even contemplatin it. Way tae win us over, calling us haufwits.’
Barely mid twenties, he acted like someone who’d survived decades of oppression and exploitation. These embittered youths, these independence advocates who behaved like victims of a totalitarian regime: where did all the anger come from?
‘We’re better together,’ she told him. ‘Co-operation’s how things get done, not by antagonism, not by a race to the bottom.’ On the TV last night she and Angus had watched a young Tory, who seemed to have emerged from the same dressing-up box as the rest of his ilk, stutteringly make this same point. He had embarked upon a clumsy metaphor about long marriages, at which point Angus, yawning exaggeratedly, had suggested they switch off; and you had to think, if this was the standard of speaker the anti-independence movement were using to put their viewpoint forward, they were either very confident or very complacent. ‘Apart, we’re less than the sum of our parts.’
‘Yous English,’ he said, ‘want tae keep us in fear. Alwis huv, alwis will.’ The kettle popped; with his colleagues distracted, Faraz made his tea and departed the kitchen at speed. ‘Ye know full well that without us, England’d fester and shrivel.’
To quell, at least temporarily, the unease rising towards her throat – such was her dread of these daily debates-turned-confrontations – Lynne resorted to exercising her authority, shaky though she felt it to be: ‘All right, Robert the Bruce, it’s gone nine o’clock. Time to start making calls.’ He scowled. ‘Try not to proselytize to the customers, will you?’ – hoping the word would baffle him.
Suddenly and unexpectedly promoted over Faraz, Struan and the others two months earlier – the interview process had comprised one telephone conversation with someone at head office in Aberdeen whom she hadn’t met then or since, followed by an email headed CONGRATULATIONS, which she now viewed ironically – Lynne had received no training in how she should address people transfigured overnight from colleagues to juniors. She understood the pitfalls – too familiar and they wouldn’t respect her, too severe and they, longer-serving Arundel employees who already resented her promotion, would turn to openly loathing her – but hadn’t yet worked out the right tone to take.
