Exile Read online

  ‘We didn’t ask for your life story,’ snapped a suddenly nasty Winnie.

  Maureen couldn’t help herself. It was a big mistake but she smiled at Winnie’s appalling behaviour and gave her quarter. The disapproving woman took to her heels and scuttled away, watching her feet on the icy ground. Maureen took Winnie’s arm and guided her out of the busy thoroughfare and into the side of the pavement.

  ‘Thank you, honey,’ said Winnie, covering Maureen’s hand with her own.

  Maureen wanted to turn and walk away. Every time she had seen Winnie before the schism Winnie hurt her or freaked her out or had done her head in one way or another. She dearly wanted to walk away, but looking at her mum’s badly applied makeup, at her shiny nose and big mittens, Maureen realized that she’d missed her terribly, missed all the fights and the high drama and the mingled smells of vodka and face powder. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I’m not staying away from you because you don’t love me.’

  Tears were running down Winnie’s face and her chin began to tremble. ‘Why, then?’ she demanded, catching the eye of a workman on his way into the news agent’s. ‘You know why,’ said Maureen.

  Winnie wiped her face with her mittens, scarring the beige suede with her tears. ‘You know about Una?’ she asked.

  ‘I know she’s pregnant. Liam told me.’

  Winnie sniffed, wringing her hands. ‘And what did you do on Christmas Day?’ she asked.

  Maureen shrugged. ‘Had dinner with friends,’ she said.

  She had spent the day alone with a packet of Marks & Spencer’s sausage rolls, which she had eaten and hadn’t liked at all. An hour later she had read the back of the packet and realized she was supposed to have cooked them. Liam had come over in the evening and they had watched the tail end of the good television together and had a smoke. He had refused to eat with the family because Michael would be there. Liam said George, their stepdad, had almost come out with him. George didn’t like Michael either and he liked everyone. George would have liked Old Nick if he could hold a tune and got his round in.

  ‘It’s because of your father, isn’t it? We hardly see him now,’ said Winnie. ‘He isn’t very nice.’

  But Maureen didn’t want to know. She didn’t want one more scrap of information for her subconscious to build nightmares around. ‘Mum,’ she said, trying to stick to the point, ‘it pains me to see you, do you understand?’

  Winnie pressed her hankie to her mouth. ‘How do I pain you?’ she said, as her face crumpled. ‘What have I ever done?’

  ‘You know fine well.’

  ‘No,’ wept Winnie, ‘I don’t know fine well.’

  ‘How could you have him back in your house after what he did to me? I’ll never understand that. I know you don’t believe me but if you even wondered about it—’

  Winnie took a deep wavering breath, snapped her wrist out and slapped Maureen’s arm. ‘At least phone—’

  ‘Don’t fucking slap me, Mum!’ shouted Maureen. ‘I’m an adult. It’s not appropriate.’

  Winnie began to sob, making Maureen into the sort of person who would shout unkind things at her crying mother. She had promised herself peace from this but here she was, falling into the old traps, playing the bad guy again, coming to hate herself on a whole new level.

  ‘We don’t see him any more,’ Winnie struggled to speak through convulsive sobs, ‘and Una’s angry and George won’t speak to me . . . I miss you, Maureen. I don’t want you to not see me.’

  Maureen wondered at Winnie’s resilience. If Winnie had set her mind to world domination she could have done it. Unhampered by the twin evils of manners or empathy, Winnie could railroad an acre of salesmen into charity work if she set her mind to it.

  ‘Mum,’ she said softly, ‘I don’t want to see you for a while and that continues to be true, whether or not you’re all having a nice time together.’

  Winnie clocked the condition. She looked up when Maureen said it would only be for a while and looked away again. She blew her nose and narrowed her eyes at Maureen. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do,’ she said, hope twitching at the corners of her mouth. ‘You’re still a cheeky wee besom. And I’ll slap ye if I want to. I could take you in a fight any day.’ She looked at the spilled meat, scattered and trampled by passing feet. ‘Are ye sure ye won’t have a slice?’

  Maureen started to smile but her eyes began to water and she had to breathe in deeply and blink hard to stop herself crying. It was good news: they weren’t getting on, he had nothing to keep him here, no reason to stay. Winnie took off one of her mittens and played with her hankie, pulling at the corners, looking for a dry patch. The wedding band George had given her was loose on her finger Winnie was losing weight; her skin looked thin and a watery grey liver spot was developing on a knuckle. Maureen reached out suddenly and held her mum’s hand, cupping it in her own, trying to hold the warm in. The wind blew freezing tears across her face like racing insects. ‘Mum,’ she breathed. ‘My mum.’

  They stood close, looking at Winnie’s hand, chins trembling for love of each other, crying for the pointless sadness of it all.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ whispered Maureen.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Winnie.

  But she meant the moment and Maureen meant her life. Winnie reached up to Maureen’s face, dabbing at her wet ear like a drunken St Veronica, letting her fingers linger on her cheek.

  Maureen sniffed hard, dragging the cold air up to her eyes, waking herself up. ‘Is he going back to London, then?’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ said Winnie.

  ‘Who’s keeping him here?’

  Winnie tutted at her. ‘No-one’s keeping him here,’ she said. ‘He’s got a flat, a council flat, in Ruchill.’ She pointed over Maureen’s shoulder to the horizon, to the jagged red brick tower of the old Ruchill hospital.

  Maureen could see it from her bedroom window. She dropped Winnie’s hand. ‘What the fuck did you tell me that for?’

  Winnie shrugged carelessly. ‘It’s where he is.’

  ‘I don’t want to know anything about him and you come here and tell me he lives near me?’

  Winnie knew she was in the wrong. She tugged her mitten back on and pressed her face up to Maureen’s. Did it ever occur to you,’ she said, ‘that the rest of us know him as well?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not all about you,’ shouted Winnie. ‘He’s their father too. Don’t you think they wonder about him? Don’t you think I wonder?’

  ‘Wonder?’ shouted Maureen. ‘You stupid cow! D’ye think I was committed to a psychiatric hospital suffering from pathological wonder?’

  ‘Don’t you cast that up to me.’ Winnie held up her hand.

  ‘Your breakdown wasn’t just about him. You were always a strange wee girl. You were always unhappy.’

  They hadn’t seen each other for five months and although Maureen vividly remembered how angry her mother made her, she had forgotten the sanctimonious bulldozing, the utter disregard for her feelings, the vicious kindness and blind denial of what Michael had done.

  ‘Think about it, Winnie,’ she said, talking through her teeth, the fury reducing her voice to a whisper, ‘think about what he did to me. If it wasn’t for him I’d never have been so unhappy. If it wasn’t for him I’d never have been in hospital. I’d have gone on to a real job after my fucking degree. I might be happy, I might be married. I might even have the nerve to hope for children of my own. I might be able to sleep. I might be able to look at myself in the fucking mirror without wanting to scratch my fucking face off.’ She was out of control, shouting loud and crying in the street. Art students stole glances at her as they came out of Mr Padda’s with their newspapers and lunchtime rolls. ‘And what did he sacrifice all of that for? For a fucking tug.’

  Winnie had never believed in the abuse and had never flinched from saying so before. But th
is time she pursed her lips and clasped her hands prissily in front of her. ‘Is that all you want to say?’ she said, grinding her teeth and looking off into the middle distance.

  Winnie was trying to listen. She was actually trying, and Maureen had never known her do that. Not when they were children, not when they were adults, not even when Maureen was in hospital. ‘Mum, that man and the memories and stuff. I know what he did. He knows he did it too.’

  Winnie looked nervously around her. ‘Do we have to discuss this here?’

  ‘Does he ever ask for me?’

  Winnie swallowed hard and looked away. She muttered something into the wind. ‘What?’ said Maureen.

  ‘No,’ said Winnie quietly. ‘He never asks for you. Ever. It’s as if you were never born.’

  ‘How likely is that, Winnie? Doesn’t it make ye wonder?’ Winnie couldn’t think of an answer. It must have bothered her terribly. She looked angrily over Maureen’s shoulder. ‘I’m sick of this,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you tell me he lives there? God, am I not troubled enough already?’

  ‘You can’t blame me for that—’

  But Maureen was backing off into the street. She leaned forward in case Winnie missed anything. ‘Stay away from me,’ she said slowly, pointing at her mum’s soft chest. ‘And stop phone-pesting me when you’re steaming.’

  ‘If I was that bad of a mother,’ Winnie shouted after her, ‘how come none of the rest of them had breakdowns?’

  The vicious morning frost had numbed Maureen’s ears before she was two hundred yards down the hill. She turned a corner and the wind ambushed her, parting her eyelashes.

  She stopped and waited at the lights, staring at the patchwork tar on the road. The nervous cars and buses jostled each other for road space, speeding across the twenty-foot yellow box, afraid of being left back at the lights. If she threw herself into the road she’d be killed instantly, a five foot jump to an eternity of peace and no more brave ploughing on, no more shouting over the storm, no more nightmares, no more Michael. She thought of Pauline Doyle and envied her.

  Pauline was a June suicide. She had been in psychiatric hospital with Maureen. Two weeks after she was released, a walker had found her dead under a tree. Maureen couldn’t stop thinking about her. Her thoughts kept short-circuiting straight from worry to the happy image of Pauline at peace on the grass in springtime, oblivious to the insects crawling over her legs.

  She glanced up, conscious that something around her had changed. The green man was flashing on and off and the other pedestrians had almost crossed the road. She jogged after them, clutching the fag packet in her pocket, bribing herself on with the promise of a cigarette when she got to work.

  4

  Work

  The morning dragged by like a stranger’s funeral. Maureen found herself picking over everything Winnie had said, looking for clues about the family, guessing what she really meant. Liam had told her that Una was pregnant, but Maureen wasn’t concerned: she knew the baby would be safe from Michael because Alistair, Una’s husband, was so even-tempered and he had always believed Maureen about the abuse. What jarred more intensely was Winnie trying to listen to her. Douglas used to say that Maureen was hypervigilant with her family, always looking for signals and signs, clues about what was going to happen next, because nothing was predictable. He said it was a common behavioural trait in children from disturbed backgrounds. She couldn’t remember Douglas’s face properly any more. All she could picture were his eyes as he smiled at her and blinked, a strip of memory floating in a void, like an animated photo fit strip. Maureen looked across the desk at Jan.

  Jan was tall and blonde and plump around the middle. She had an inexplicable penchant for wearing green and purple together and giggled about it, as if she was a great character. She stayed with her parents on the south side but resented living in their warm home and eating their groceries. Her parents had retired recently and seemed to spend their days kicking about the house, bickering with each other about minutiae. Jan kept trying to engage Maureen in the dull stories by asking about her own parents: did they fight, were they happy, who took out the rubbish? Maureen made up a story about a close family of two with an adoring mother who was very religious. Their father had left them when they were very young. She didn’t remember him but he was a sailor with a gambling habit and a beard. When Maureen saw her fictional father in her head she always imagined him steering a fishing-boat and wearing a yellow sou’wester and joke glasses with pop-out eyeballs on springs.

  ‘Smoke?’ said Jan.

  ‘Two minutes,’ said Maureen, and went back to staring at a chapter in the housing-law textbook. It didn’t make any sense. A regulation had imported a double negative into the legislation. She was crap at this. When they had given her the job it was because of Leslie and the posters, not because she had shown any capacity to map housing legislation or write summaries. The few reports she had submitted were politely bounced back for revision by the committee and she knew their buoyant faith in her was flagging.

  In anticipation of the funding cut, the Place of Safety Shelters had moved to the cheapest city-centre office in Glasgow. It was an ugly, grey, windowless room. The funding cut had been deferred because of the poster campaign but the PSS stayed there, saving their money as best they could, getting ready for the hard times ahead.

  The poster campaign was one of the few selfless things Maureen had done with Douglas’s money. Leslie didn’t tell the committee they were doing it. They plastered the city with the posters in one long night, working from west to east and finishing at dawn. Not many people phoned the funding committee number at the bottom of the poster to protest. The picture was quite obscure and most people didn’t know what it was about but, still, the funding cut had been deferred for six months. Everyone in the office had been speculating about the posters after the decision was announced; Leslie called a meeting and admitted responsibility. She told them that her pal had masterminded the scheme, paid for it all herself, and now she’d like to work for them on a voluntary basis if they could find a place for her. They saw that Maureen had a degree and gave her the housing job. She’d been a hero two months ago– everyone in the office wanted to talk to her. The desk she shared with Jan was right by the door and she could hardly get a full hour’s work done on any given day because women kept stopping by for a chat. She had a lot more time now.

  Work was a reluctant ten-minute stroll from Maureen’s house. She hated the ugly office, the endless river of broken women they had to turn away, and her occasional strained run-ins with Leslie. Once or twice in every working day Maureen wanted to get up and walk out but she stopped herself. She’d be letting Leslie down if she chucked it and she was doing something that mattered. She could stay for a short while, until the money ran out. So she was spending her days trying not to cry in front of Jan, avoiding Leslie and writing reports on housing-law regulations with exceptional incompetence.

  Jan stood up from her chair and pulled on her coat.

  ‘Benny Hedgehog?’ she said, picking up her fag packet.

  ‘Naw,’ said Maureen, taking one from her own. ‘I’ll just have a Silkie.’

  They made sure they had a light and headed downstairs to the street.

  Staff weren’t allowed to smoke in the grey open-plan office. The air-conditioning didn’t work well so the committee had decided that only the waiting women could smoke. Jan and Maureen spent large portions of their days downstairs trying to think of something to say to each other. Cliques of exiled smokers are usually intimate and pleasurable, coming together as they do in ten-minute bursts of addicts’ camaraderie. At the PSS Maureen found herself spending a lot of time with Jan and other women in whom she had no interest, trying to participate in conversations without crying, grasping for the appropriate response when Jan upped the friendship gears with whispered confidences.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Jan
, as they took the first flight of stairs. ‘You look a bit pale today.’

  ‘I need a fag.’

  ‘I think you’re getting flu.’ Jan lowered her voice. ‘Did ye hear about Ann?’

  ‘Ann?’ said Maureen.

  ‘Ann Harris, remember? She came to us, she was all cuts and bruises and didn’t want to go to Casualty. She moved into Leslie’s shelter.’

  Maureen did remember Ann because of her peculiar colouring. Ann’s pink skin clashed with her yellow hair, making her look angry or ashamed or on the verge of throwing up. She wore a big yellow gold identity bracelet that accentuated the discord, as if she was decorating the mistake. Maureen had noticed that wearing big jewellery was a feature of the very rich and the very poor for essentially the same reasons. But she remembered Ann most vividly because so few women came in after a bad beating. For most the decision to leave was a long, slow dawning.

  Ann had come in wild-eyed and badly beaten, smelling like a long binge on cheap drink, asking for the pictures to be taken before she was even assured of a place. The Criminal Compensation Board photographs were always offered to the women. They provided evidence for interdicts and criminal prosecutions. Usually the women didn’t want proof, they just wanted to get away and feel safe, but Ann wanted them. She didn’t want to prosecute, she said, just wanted a record, just in case. She sat next to Maureen on one of the plastic chairs, waiting to be interviewed, and then waiting again for Katia to set up the camera. She sat staring at the floor, taking the fags Maureen offered her, smoking around the split on her bottom lip. The swelling was as thick as a thumb, like a localized collagen implant.

  ‘Well,’ continued Jan, ‘she’s disappeared.’ She looked shocked, as if the end of the story had come as a complete surprise to her.

  ‘She’s probably lying drunk somewhere,’ said Maureen.

  ‘No,’ said Jan, ‘because she emptied her locker and she’s gone.’

  ‘Well, she’s left, then,’ said Maureen. ‘What’s surprising about that? Lots of women leave without saying anything.’ Jan had heard the story from someone else and they had been very surprised. She didn’t remember why but she knew that they were. She opened the glass door and slipped out into the street, feeling sure she had forgotten part of the story.