drawing.
Dub slid along the wall, rolling his shoulder to the doorway, half muttering “fuck” before staggering outside. They could hear him vomiting.
Paddy sat down.
Sitting in the base of the box were nine dead mice, their slender bodies lined up neatly. The fleshy pink pads on their feet looked too tender to have carried them through rough wall cavities and fields. Paddy could see soft brown hair on their bellies, and, from the low-down swelling, that one of them was pregnant. Their front paws were curled tightly up at their chests. Above the neck their heads were bloody tattered smears.
Callum looked sadly at the door. “I battered them with a brick. But it wasn’t for a laugh, I did it for him.” He dropped the lid and slumped to the floor.
Paddy couldn’t look away from the box. She could still see their feet, the skin on their toes, translucent as an embryo’s. She hugged her knees to her chest.
Callum slid along the floor to her side, his shoulder tight to hers. “Are you crying?” He looked at her closely. “You’re not crying about the mice.”
It wasn’t a question so she didn’t answer him.
She rubbed her face roughly. “Look, Callum, son, you need to go with Dub, go back to the city. It’s not safe here anymore.”
“Are journalists coming? Aren’t you coming?”
“I have to meet someone here.”
“Who?”
“A man.”
“A journalist?”
“No, a man. It’s not about you, it’s about another thing.”
“What other thing?”
“Nothing to do with you, just another thing.”
They looked at each other and she saw a spark of recognition in his eyes. “It’s not safe here. Who’s it not safe for?”
She shook her head, looking at her hands. “You need to go.”
He nodded as if he understood perfectly and wrapped his arms around his knees, mirroring her pose. “Can I come back here after? I could be happy here. If I had a radio and food, I’d be happy here. I could look after it, sort a wee garden out for myself.”
Her eyes welled again. “Sweetheart, you won’t want to come back here.”
He stared at her rudely for a long time, watching her cry. Embarrassed, she fumbled her cigarettes out of her pocket. Callum took them gently from her hand, opened the packet, and handed her one. He lit a match for her, but her whole body was trembling and she couldn’t dock the tip to the flame. Callum held the end of her cigarette steady so that she could light it.
He sat back, very calm, muttering so quietly she had to tease the words apart in her mind to make sense of them. “Gotaknife?”
She shook her head. “Scissors.”
“No gun?”
“No.”
“Plan?”
She inhaled and took Callum’s big hand in hers. “Son, you’re young. Go home and have a life. It’s time for you to have a life. Live in the country. Meet a girl. You’re handsome, did you know that?”
Callum blushed.
“You’re a nice young man, well-meaning, good-looking. You’re an Ogilvy. Have a family, go to chapel, that’s what Ogilvys do. You like families?”
He nodded eagerly.
“That’s what Ogilvys do.”
“You’re my family.”
“I’m not your family, Callum. I’m close to your family but I’m not your family.”
He sounded sulky when he answered, “Aye, ye are.”
Dub leaned back in the door, pasty skinned and wet eyed, afraid to cross the threshold of the kitchen. “Callum,” he gestured outside, “’mon. Let’s go.”
“I only did it for you,” Callum said to him.
“I know, pal, that was nice of ye. I’m a bit soft. Come on. Paddy needs to be alone here. Someone’s coming to meet her. He won’t come if we’re here. Pad, I’ll be back at ten in the morning to pick you up.”
“Take care on the road,” she said, keeping it light.
He left. They could see him through the side window as he stepped carefully across the moss on the paving stones by the house.
Callum stood up suddenly, staring down at Paddy sitting balled up on the floor. His voice was shaking. “Ye call me son. Ye look after me. Ye are my family.”
Paddy’d known Callum since he was eight years old, had been to his father’s funeral and fought for him before she ever liked him.
“Son,” she said, her voice a growl, “you’re right. We are family.”
V
She went to wave them off. Dub backed nervously out of the driveway to the lip of the road, Callum guiding him through the grass with waves and warning slaps on the bonnet.
Out on the road, cars were speeding past at irregular intervals, more frequent on the opposite side of the road. Callum climbed into the passenger seat. Paddy could see Dub’s head flicking back and forth, worried about how to get across. Finally, Dub revved the engine, jolted forward, and hit the road going the wrong way. He sped off in the direction of Ayr. They’d have to turn at the roundabout.
The noise of the road died as she walked around to the back of the house. A low sun was setting over the lush green hills, the horizon baby-girl pink. It would be a long night.
She stood at the kitchen doorway, holding the frame to steady herself, and thought of her father. It was resisting death that made it painful. Con should have embraced it. She’d never thought about it before but his resistance was the ultimate act of defiance. She didn’t recognize it at the time, mistook it for fear because she’d never seen him resist anything before, but it took real guts to cling to life when the odds meant you’d die.
It was too dark inside, so she lifted one of the spindly-legged kitchen chairs and took it out, setting it against the back wall, on the spot where they had found Callum. She arranged her funeral coat around herself to keep warm, took the useless scissors out of her pocket and set them on her lap.
Then she lit another cigarette, leaned her head back against the crumbling wall, and waited for the sun to go down.
THIRTY-FOUR. DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAR
I
A car was approaching them from behind, coming out of the dark. Dub slowed to let it pass but it lingered behind them, wary of straying onto the midline of the road until they were out of the hills.
