Crime

just about managing to keep the smile of your face.

Donald and Joanne Lowe were already seated beside their daughter. Trudi was wearing a blue dress you hadn’t seen before, and she’d had her hair done. You kissed her, complimented her and winked, then greeted her parents. You liked them both. They were a youthful couple of around fifty, but seeming closer to your age than your folks. Donald was a handsome, fine-featured man with slightly thinning, greying hair. He worked as a transport manager for a bus company, and had once been a professional footballer, keeping goal for Morton and East Fife. Joanne was a trim, beacon-eyed woman with a smile like a lottery win, who ran a cards and gift shop in Newington.

The Lowes greeted Avril and Jackie enthusiastically, compelling both women to apologise for the absence of their husbands, Avril stressing that in her case it was temporary. — He’s been down at the office, she rolled her eyes. — Sunday! she added, too loudly for your raw nerve endings.

Your father always worked on a Sunday, he said it was the busiest day for rail freight. John Lennox supervised local operations from a small office in Haymarket, transitioning there after a long-ago heart attack had stopped him driving trains. You liked the hoary, Gothic feel of his dark office and occasionally met him there to take him for a pub lunch in one of the local bars. Even though the operations had long been computerised, your father maintained neat files of hard copies of dispatch orders, delivery notes and route plans, taking pleasure that he could carry on working when the systems went down.

Arriving a few minutes later, he nodded to you, kissed Trudi and shook hands with Donald and Joanne, giving his wife and daughter cursory acknowledgement before sitting down.

— No Stuart? John asked.

Fuck Stuart, you thought, the spoiled wee bastard would make the evening all about him soon enough. — He’ll come when he comes, you said, ordering some champagne for the table. It amused you to watch everyone pretend they didn’t know what was happening. They stole glances at Trudi’s hands, both of which she kept covered with cream gloves. — We’ve got something to announce, you said, determined to get this part out of the way with as little bullshit as possible, — we’re getting married next year, probably September.

Trudi whipped off the gloves, unveiling the ring to delighted gasps and comments. You tried to gauge the reactions: nobody was overtly pissed off. The least enthusiastic responses seemed to come from your own parents, and as Trudi was hugged and kissed by hers, you felt the smack of envy. Your father merely nodded with the same look of quiet vindication he deployed when the Hearts dugout finally obliged with the substitution he’d been calling for all afternoon. You could almost hear the ‘aboot time n aw’ coming from the old man’s lips. You watched something in your mother’s sinewy neck sliding up and down like a pump-action shotgun. She held that motion for a moment before finding her voice:— El Mondo… my wee El Mondo, bleating out your childhood nickname, the one that had graced the bullfighting posters on your bedroom wall, procured from old Spanish holidays.

The meal was well under way by the time your semi-drunk brother arrived. John Lennox moved away from his wife so that their younger son might sit in between them, as if he was a child they had to take turns watching. — Had an audition yesterday in Glasgow, he explained, — Stayed over in the land of the Weedge and my train got held up. Engineering works.

You set your face in a scungy smile, turning to your father. — The decline of the railways, eh, Dad?

John Lennox was a man prone to splenetic discourse on where Britain had gone wrong, invariably tracing it back to the railways. The words ‘Beeching’ and ‘privatisation’ he would pronounce as others might sexually transmitted diseases, but tonight your father was keeping his counsel.

— Your big brother’s getting married, Stuart, Jackie said. Her appeasement of Stuart grated; as a ball- crunching criminal lawyer she never behaved like this with anyone else.

— Well, no shit, Sherlock, Stuart laughed. — I had sort of gathered that was what this wee shindig was about, and he poured himself a glass of champagne. — To Ray and Trudi, he toasted, — may the force by with you!

— Stuart, Jackie warned.

Your brother ignored your sister, looking over at the bride-to-be. — Well, Trudi, I can’t help being the brother of a polisman, he said, — but marrying one? That’s a very brave choice, I shiteth thee not.

You would if you could find one that fancied you, you’d thought, but bitten your tongue. Instead, you contented himself with, — I’m sorry I’ve been such a big trial to you.

— I bear it with dignity, Stuart laughed loudly. He looked over at Donald, who had an eyebrow raised, and Joanne, who seemed to be enjoying his performance. Her eyes fizzed like aspirin in a glass. — You know, years back, a bunch of us from the drama college went every morning up to Dundee to join the Timex factory picket line. I said to my brother, ‘How can you do that job: protect the rich, shit on the poor?’

— I’m sure you’re going to tell everybody what I said. You acted bored, drumming your fingers on the table and looking to the ceiling.

— Aye. You said you asked yourself that every day. Stuart paused, looking around the silent table. — Every day, he repeated.

— Yeah, you tried to affect weariness.

But Stuart had now clicked into actor mode, enjoying his audience. — Naw, I shiteth thee not; you said something like: ‘I do it to get the bad bastards out there. Ask any of the most vulnerable people in Muirhouse or Niddrie who they really fear and they’ll all tell you that it’s the bad bastards in their own midst.’ So I said something to the effect of: ‘Fine, Raymond, but what about the rich bad bastards?’ Then he looked pointedly at you, encouraging everybody else to do the same.

You made an exasperated farting noise by expelling air through your lips. — They get away, unless they’re really careless, you conceded. — That’s Jackie’s department, the criminal justice system. I’m only a gofer.

— Leave me out of this, Jackie said.

You recalled how Stuart was never satisfied with this response. And he was right to not be. While it was the truth, there was another factor, a personal element, that you could never bring yourself to include in your stock speech. Now Stuart, with his open, imploringly sincere eyes, manifestly sensed the omission, and not for the first time, but disclosure wouldn’t be prised from your lips. — Help me out, Ray, he pleaded, — I’m trying to understand you.

The Lowes were now, sensibly, you thought, engrossed in their own conversation with your dad at the other end of the table. As the food and drink went down your mother was trapped, with her children arguing across her.

Then you said, — Remember that doll, what was its name? though you remembered Marjorie very well.

Jackie looked poisonously at you.

— Raymond, Avril pleaded.

— It’s okay, Mum, Jackie said. — This is what happens when we get together as a family. Stuart resents Ray for who he is and Ray resents me for who I am.

You were taken aback by this. All the more so because you realised it was true. You’d been trying to hit back at Stuart in a roundabout way. Preparing to develop the theme that you’d loved that doll so much your dad worried you were queer. By the time Stuart came along (who actually was gay), John Lennox had grown more laissez-faire in his parenting and had forgotten about the Marjorie-and-biro incident, which had so shamed you and your sister.

— He was such a lovely wee laddie, your mother announced in desperation to the gathering. — My sweet wee El Mondo.

You know fuck all about me, you thought bitterly, looking round the table at your family.

Donald Lowe had put an arm around Trudi. — Well, I have to say that this one never gave us a day’s trouble, did she, Joanne? The perfect daughter, he announced with pride.

— I wouldnae go so far as to say that! Joanne laughed, bringing up a trivial childhood anecdote, and you were delighted that it was now Trudi’s turn to squirm. Then, for a second or two, the table vanished and all you could see was a slab with a small blue body on it.

Hyperventilation shook you and you fought it down, staring at a wedge-shaped lamp bolted to the wall. — You okay, son? your mother asked, noting your discomfort.

You switched your stare on to Stuart. The angel-faced wee crawler who’d turned into the opinionated