The Dead Hour Read online

  “Hey, you’ll like this one,” Billy said, turning the radio down for a second. “What’s a domestic altercation?”

  “I don’t know, Billy, what is a domestic altercation?”

  “A fight in a hoose in Bearsden.” He turned the radio back up and smiled at her in the mirror, telling her it was okay.

  She looked sadly down at her hand as it uncurled in her lap. Her palm had blood on it. “You’re right, Billy, I do like that one.”

  She needed the money. Her father had been unemployed for two years. There were four children living at home and she was the only one bringing in a wage. She was the youngest and now the major earner. It gave her an unspoken veto in family decisions; her mother told her how much every item in the shopping cost and emphasized her frugality with food. It left Paddy with nothing for herself and she couldn’t fathom how to rectify the power imbalance at home. Still, the Meehans were relatively well off: one in three adults was unemployed in many parts of the city. Her mother wouldn’t notice the blood on the note as long as she left it to dry and brown.

  “Was it a couple?” Billy wound his window down an inch, dropping the end of his cigarette out of the crack. It bounced off the sill, giving off a burst of red sparkles, before disappearing over the edge.

  “She had blood on her. I don’t know if we should have left her there.”

  “Don’t feel too bad. They’re not like us, rich people.”

  “Aye.”

  “She could leave him if she wanted.”

  “So I suppose.”

  The domestics they usually saw were in tiny flats on sink estates, public events of necessity because the couples had to go out into the street to get a good swing at each other. Husbands and wives could languish on the council list for years while they waited for separate houses to come up, festering in small rooms. Blowups were inevitable.

  Billy caught her eyes again. “We gonnae phone that story in, then, or just leave it?”

  If she didn’t think Billy had seen her take the money, she would have moved on to the next call and the next incident but she didn’t want him to think badly of her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s find a phone box.”

  “Then we could try up at Easterhouse,” suggested Billy, letting her know that he doubted the story would make it to print. “There’s been a lot of swordplay in Barrowfield as well.”

  All over the city nutters and gangsters were getting hold of machetes and swords and claymores and attacking each other. Sword fights had been going on for years and the moral panic they generated had been mined to death. It was a tired story but it was still a story.

  “Aye, some bastard must be killing somebody somewhere,” said Paddy, hating her job and all the places it took her to.

  TWO

  LIVING ON HIS KNEES

  I

  When Paddy left work the sun still wasn’t due to rise for three hours. The few early-morning commuters on the street scurried along, heads to chests, keeping warm and keeping going, determined as clockwork mice. She was the only person sauntering through the icy city center, head up, the only person watching. She had discovered that in the mornings, particularly when it was dark, no one looked up, they scurried along with their heads elsewhere, rehashing fights or rehearsing their day ahead, sometimes talking to themselves. She alone was present in the street, alone in the fleeting moment.

  She walked slowly. She didn’t want to get to Sean’s too early or she’d have to sit while his mum walked around in her slip and skirt and ate her breakfast, passing on stories, most of them impliedly malicious rumors about women in the parish.

  Taking a long, wandering way down to the train station, Paddy doubled back up Albion Street and crossed the Siberian expanse of George Square. She was warm in her green leather. It was a knee-length fifties coat in soft green with a round collar and three big green buttons. It was a jumble sale buy, bought for a pound, made of buttery calfskin. Best of all it hung straight at the back with no waisting at all and disguised her bum a bit. It was roomy enough to allow for sweaters and a couple of scarves underneath. She slowed to a stop, pulling her red scarf up from the back of her neck to cup her head, covering her ears to stop the icy wind giving her earache.

  A man in a green boiler suit and heavy work boots hurried across her path. As she watched him make his way toward the city chambers it occurred to her why she liked green so much: it was because of Betty Carson and Paddy Meehan’s prison release day. She hadn’t associated the thought before. Maybe that was why she’d been so drawn to the green sleeve on the rack at the jumble sale.

  Patrick Meehan’s story was through her like weft through a weave. Telling details came to mind at the most unlikely times, bubbling up from her subconscious just when she was least expecting it.

  Paddy Connolly Meehan was a career criminal, a small-time safe blower who had spent more of his life in prison than out of it. If he wasn’t cooking gelignite in frying pans in deserted tenements he was boasting about his exploits in the Tapp Inn. He had been found guilty of a high-profile murder when Paddy was just a child and the accident of their names meant that she followed the story all through her childhood, hearing before most people in the city that he was innocent, that the real villain had tried to sell his story to the Sunday papers, that a famous journalist was writing a book about the case. Growing up faithless in an obsessively Catholic family, Paddy looked to the outside world for models on how to behave, and somehow she’d replaced the New Testament with Meehan’s story. It wasn’t that unusual a thing to do, she realized: many failed Catholics became Marxists because of the perfect fit of mental infrastructure. Both had a single text and their own saints and fallen heroes. Both demanded time and money and evangelizing and both looked forward to a future day when justice would superabound and the meek would inherit the earth.

  She had become obsessed with the Meehan story, finding bravery and dignity there, nobility and perseverance, integrity and loyalty. The only detail spoiling it for her now was Paddy Meehan himself: after his pardon he stayed in Glasgow, hanging around the pubs and telling his story to anyone who’d listen, falling out with journalists and barmen and everyone. He lived past his glory moment and couldn’t stay a hero in the workaday mess of getting by.

  He was the reason she became a journalist, why she wanted the crime desk and saw glory and dignity in a job most would see as a career compromise.

  A green coat.

  In Paddy’s imagination Betty Carson’s flame-red hair was brilliant against the cream close wall, her skin as pale as white bread. Betty and Patrick Meehan were each eighteen, both taking shelter in the same dark close, waiting for the rain to go off. They spoke for a while and he walked her to the bus stop, waiting with her, watching her wave from the retreating tram with his heart beating loudly in his throat.

  Betty was from good people. Her staunchly Protestant family were surprised when she came home a few months later and announced that she was married but, in a bigoted city, they were open minded and accepting of the young Catholic man. They gave Meehan every chance to do the right thing. Each time he came home from prison they welcomed him, expecting it would be different this time because he said so.

  Prison release day. According to his own account Betty met him outside the gates at the end of every single sentence. Every time she would be outside, standing in rain or wind or in the biting dark of a long Scottish winter. And she’d be wearing a new green coat or dress or suit, green for new beginnings, green to set off her red hair.

  Meehan and Betty kissed, Paddy imagined, kissed and wrapped their arms around each other, squeezing a little, delighted to be together, and they’d set off, arms linked, walking calmly as she did through the early-morning rush of people hurrying to their work, head-down people talking to themselves and hurrying through a gray morning to the conversations they were already having. On release day Betty floated through the town with her man, taking him home to a hearty breakfast.

  Betty, a happy
fleck of festive green and red in the great gray city.

  II

  Paddy stepped off the train onto the windy Rutherglen station platform, bleary eyed, with dry powdery baked potato coating her teeth. Her head was too scrambled to stick to the high-fiber diet, but she was still trying and always kept a cold baked potato in her bag. She had put on weight in the last few years, on her hips and her chest. Any faith that she could stick to a disciplined regime had deserted her so that she ended up applying the principles in a half-arsed way, supplementing meals with baked potatoes or cold beans eaten straight from the tin, feeling tired and guilty all the time and shamefully scuttling off to corners to pass stinking wind.

  As she climbed the long flight of stairs from the platform to the street compound, tiredness made her back curl over, her hands slapping on the steps in front of her. She needed a big starchy sugar lift and knew there would be porridge and honey at the Ogilvys’. As she walked down Rutherglen Main Street, passing the commuters spilling outside the bus shelter, she swithered over the promise of porridge. Being fat was holding her back at work. She didn’t have the confidence to put herself forward or take the initiative and apply for better jobs in London. If she was thinner she could do it. She was just twenty pounds away from the life she should have been living.

  On the other hand she wasn’t at work this morning and she was tired and sorry for herself. She could give in and gorge on warm porridge and mugs of milky tea.

  Rutherglen Main Street was in the calm lull between the morning rush to work and the gathering of old people and young mothers for ten o’clock mass at St. Columbkille’s. They would be making their way there slowly, coming through the shopping arcade and making their way downhill from the small housing schemes dotted around the Main Street. All her elderly relatives would be coming. Her sister Mary Ann would be walking the straight road from Eastfield. Paddy kept her head down and hurried through the back streets to Sean’s house in Gallowflat Street. She’d hide in Sean’s until well after the mass came out, or suffer a hundred inquiries after her mother, father, and brothers and sisters as she tried to make her way to her warm bed and a long, creamy sleep.

  The Ogilvys’ kitchen window was steamed up, the living room dark. The living room light would be on if Sean was up, he liked to watch the school programs while he ate his breakfast. Paddy turned into the close, almost bumping into a young woman with a screaming baby in an old-fashioned Silver Cross pram.

  “Fiona O’Conner, how ye doing?” said Paddy, though she had never liked her at school and vaguely remembered being insulted by her. “Is this your wee one?”

  Fiona raised red smarting eyes. “Oh, yeah, hi. Help us down with the pram.”

  Paddy took the front axle of the pram and lifted it down the two steps to the street. Fiona looked annoyed. “I thought Sean was going out with Elaine McCarron now.”

  Paddy winced a little at the mention of Elaine and wondered why she did. “Aye, they’ve been together for a year now. Seem to be getting on well.”

  “Oh, right,” said Fiona slyly. “You’re always here, but, eh?”

  Paddy gave her a stiff smile and slipped past Fiona into the close.

  She could have been married to Sean by now, they might have had a family and a house of their own. She chose instead to continue working at the News and hope for a career, to dream one day of a house of her own that didn’t smell continually of soup and potatoes. Making the difficult choice wasn’t enough. She was still at home, her family of five were reliant on her wages. Her clothes were cheap, came from What Every’s and lasted no more than two washes. A place of her own was a long way off.

  She had started going with Sean at school. They were close and both came from big families so neither of them bothered with other friends. It was too late now; the lifelong friendships that trail on after school, that made for best men and holiday companions, were out of reach for them now. They found themselves stuck together, not engaged or even dating, just hanging around during the day watching County Court on TV, or grainy pirate videos of the three films his brother owned: Airplane!, Evil Dead, and The Exorcist, or else going for pointless walks up the Brae.

  Mimi Ogilvy was pulling on her coat on as she opened the door. “Come in, Paddy, wee hen, good of you to come.”

  Paddy stepped into the hallway, into the warmth and the cozy smell of toast and strong tea. The holy water font inside Mimi’s door was large enough for a small chapel: a Disney-ish Our Lady gazing lovingly down at a fat baby Jesus who was holding a pink oyster shell full of holy water. Paddy dipped two fingers of her right hand and dabbed her head, her breastbone, and both shoulders as she crossed the threshold. It was an old habit she couldn’t shake. She had no faith but knew the gesture soothed her mother’s fears about her. Every time she did it she felt like a hypocrite, but a hypocrite with a calm mother.

  She noticed a new set of leaflets stacked under the telephone table. Black text on red paper this time, proclaiming Callum Ogilvy’s innocence. It cost a lot of money to print them—she wondered where the hell Sean was getting it from—but just then Mimi ambled out of the kitchen, peeled two pound notes from her purse, and laid them on the telephone table, answering her question.

  “That’s for his ciggies and a pint at teatime. And,” she pulled out a fiver and three more pound notes, “he’s got his last driving lesson later.”

  It was meant as a compliment that she did it in front of Paddy, a mark of acceptance. Paddy looked away. Mimi had paid for so many lessons that Sean had his test in a few days. Sean didn’t need to drive, he wouldn’t be able to afford a car, and anyway, no one was paying for her driving lessons.

  Mimi glanced at the clock on the far wall of the galley kitchen and stepped past Paddy to the door.

  “There’s porridge in the pot for ye and the honey’s in the cupboard next to the fridge.”

  She was gone, leaving Paddy in the hall listening to her ex-fiancé snoring and trying to resist the pull of warm porridge after a long night shift. Sean didn’t take porridge for his breakfast. Poor Mimi had gone to all that trouble just for her. It would be unkind to leave it.

  III

  He was awake. His breathing had become lighter, but he was still facing the wall and keeping his eyes shut, curled up to hide his morning glory.

  She rapped on the open bedroom door once more. “Get up.”

  Sean stretched out under the blankets, savoring the hazy sleep in his limbs. He was wearing his brown pajamas with a yellow trim on the pocket. He looked like a six foot two ten-year-old.

  “Hey, smelly boy, wake up, come on, you need to sign on.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He clasped his hands in front of himself and gave a luxurious stretch, smiling up at her standing in the doorway, his eyes puffy with sleep, his lashes pressed this way and that by the pillow.

  She felt a burst of righteous anger. Both she and his mother were working hard at thankless jobs and cooking and caring for him. She knew his brothers gave him money on the fly as well, two quid here, a packet of cigarettes there. One of them had bought him a season ticket to Celtic Park so that they could all go together. Paddy came straight over from work every two weeks to make sure he got up and went to claim his Supplementary Benefit. He couldn’t even do that himself.

  “You’re a lazy bastard. You want to get on your bike and look for work.”

  They locked eyes and grinned at each other across the soft darkness of the bedroom, a look that lingered too long. Ambushed by the sudden moment of tender connection, their smiles slid gently into awkward until Sean stretched his arms behind his head and broke it off. “Anyway, milk and five sugars, love.”

  “Fuck you.” It was a little too angry for a play fight and he was surprised into looking at her. She wasn’t angry at Sean, she was angry at herself for eating the porridge and then going back for more porridge with more honey and then standing, watching old ladies with string grocery bags passing by the kitchen window, picking at the papery skirt of dried porridge
around the rim of the pot, eating it and wondering why she was doing it. It didn’t taste of anything, it didn’t even have a pleasant texture. But while she was eating all she thought about was eating. She didn’t worry about work or her family or her weight. Even unpleasant food made her feel happy. Except cottage cheese with pineapple. She could hardly look at it now, after a reckless weeklong attempt to eat nothing else.

  Sean kept her eye and rolled away from her, farting lightly in her general direction. She tried not to smile.

  “Saw this in the hall.” She held up the Callum Ogilvy pamphlet.

  “Yeah, a woman took one from Elaine’s salon yesterday,” he said, propping himself up on an elbow. “She’s a reporter from the Reformer, said she was interested. It could be the start of something.”

  Paddy grunted. The Rutherglen Reformer was an advertising paper. They covered local swimming galas and wheelie bin controversies. They wouldn’t touch a story like Callum’s but Sean was trying to worry her, make her write about his campaign for the Daily News before someone else scooped the story.

  Callum was eleven when he and another boy were convicted of killing a three-year-old they had taken from outside his front door. Looking back it seemed bizarre that Paddy alone was convinced that there must have been an adult hand in the murder. The rest of the city settled happily on the two boys as lone culprits.

  Paddy had found the man behind the killing, she still had the mental scars to prove it, but even she knew that Callum had killed the wee boy. He might have been driven to the spot and terrorized into doing it, but Callum Ogilvy was still guilty. He had blood on him from the baby, his hair was found at the scene, and Callum had more or less confessed.

  Only Sean wouldn’t accept it. Callum’s innocence had become an article of faith with him and she thought he had half convinced Callum now too. The Ogilvys had abandoned the wee cousin to his fate once, leaving him to be raised by an unstable mother, and Sean wasn’t going to betray him again. The adamancy of his conviction and the sincerity with which he wrote letter after letter to MPs and journalists and anyone who might be able to help was starting to have an impact.