Chasing Angels Read online

  Praise for Meg Henderson’s novels:

  THE HOLY CITY

  ‘A hugely absorbing story. Henderson brings the horror and pain of wartime experiences vividly to life with vigorous humour, commonsense wisdom and vitality.’

  Observer

  BLOODY MARY

  ‘A novel full of the rich detail of domestic lives, told with humour and sharpness.’

  Scotland on Sunday

  CHASING ANGELS

  ‘Henderson writes from a position of uncompromising humanity. A strong, atmospheric writer with gifts of insight, she has a sharp and tarry black humour, so while she attacks the objects of her wrath, she leavens the battle with a running current of dark and infectious wit.’

  Glasgow Sunday Herald

  Also by Meg Henderson

  FINDING PEGGY: A GLASGOW CHILDHOOD

  THE HOLY CITY

  BLOODY MARY

  DAISY’S WARS

  THE LAST WANDERER

  SECOND SIGHT

  A SCENT OF BLUEBELLS

  This ebook edition published in 2012 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  First published in 2000 by Flamingo, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  Copyright © Meg Henderson 2000 and 2012

  The moral right of Meg Henderson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-192-7

  Version 1.0

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I find the older I get the bolshier I get too, so this may very well be my last ever batch of acknowledgements in a book. There are those, however, who supplied factual information, like Lillias Grant and her fine body of women at the National Trust for Scotland’s Glenfinnan Monument Centre, who gave of their time, and unbeknown to at least one of them, her personality. And the Barras people deserve a mention, the vast army of Pearsons who contributed snippets here and there, and the Barras Enterprise Trust. Most of it, though, the streets, the stories and characters I remember from childhood expeditions to the Barras on a Sunday afternoon, a ritual for many Glasgow children of the time. And there was no particular Father Frank McCabe: he didn’t exist. He is an amalgam of all the priests I ever knew. Parts of his personality can be traced back to the many tyrants who tried to impose themselves, unwanted and uninvited on my childhood, so I suppose it’s only fair that they should now take a bow. At a public appearance years ago I was ambushed by a coven of rabid nuns complaining that in an earlier book I had used the real names of the nuns who scarred the schooldays of many children, my own included. I pointed out then that those women had enjoyed a great deal of power – which they abused – over little swine like me and the price they had to pay for that power was the risk that one of the little swine would grow up to be a big swine who one day might tell the world about them and name them. However, I enjoyed the Battle of the Rabid Nuns so much that I thought I’d go for the priests this time.

  Contents

  Questions About Angels

  Chasing Angels

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Questions About Angels

  Of all the questions you might want to ask

  about angels, the only one you ever hear

  is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

  No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time

  besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin

  or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth

  or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

  Do they fly through God’s body and come out singing?

  Do they swing like children from the hinges

  of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?

  Do they sit alone in a little garden changing colours?

  What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,

  their diet of unfiltered divine light?

  What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall

  these tall presences can look over and see hell?

  If an angel fell off a cloud would he leave a hole

  in a river and would the hole float along endlessly

  filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

  If an angel delivered the mail would he arrive

  in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume

  the appearance of the regular mailman and

  whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

  No, the medieval theologians control the court.

  The only question you ever hear is about

  the little dance floor on the head of a pin

  where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

  It is designed to make us think in millions,

  billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse

  into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:

  one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,

  a small jazz combo working in the background.

  She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful

  eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over

  to glance at his watch because she has been dancing

  forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

  Billy Collins

  from his collection Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

  Chasing Angels

  The entrance to the Barras Market, and to generations of Glaswegians especially, gateway to exotica. There’s not much you can’t get there, from candyfloss to snake oil and beyond. For me as a child the real delight was in watching the people, like Chief Abadu and Cockney Jock, and my now famous one-legged Uncle Hughie, who lived in nearby Stevenston Street.

  1

  She had never much liked her brother, that was what it amounted to. In her hand was a snap of the two of them, taken many years ago when she was a child. She turned it over and saw her mother’s small, careful handwriting: ‘Peter and Kathleen,’ it said, ‘1956.’ She traced the letters with her finger, listening to Lily’s voice in her head as she did so. Funny how deeply touching someone’s handwriting was when they’d gone, she thought, a link more personal and lasting than anything else she could imagine. No chance of that with her father then; she doubted if Old Con’s fingers had ever been free of a glass or a bottle long enough to learn to write. She tried to control the smile flickering around the corners of her mouth. She didn’t understand why, but she had been laughing a lot in the last few days, and she was beginning to wonder if it was perhaps getting out of control. She looked again at the studio-posed photo of herself aged three and her fourteen-year-old brother. The child Kathleen was sitting in a wicker chair, her best dress decorously arranged around her, and that peculiar ribbon bow Lily always tied in her hair that made her look as though she had a budgie sitting on her head. She looked at Peter, standing well to the side and looking uncomfortable, as though he didn’t want to be there; how significant was that? The distance between the two frozen images was almost palpable, she thought, even on a piece of paper. And it wasn’t caused by the eleven-year age difference; they would have disliked each other e
ven if they had been twins.

  She disliked everything about him. The way he whistled ‘Pedro the Fisherman’ as he came up the stairs, in the sure and certain knowledge that whoever heard it would rush to the door to let him in, which, of course, they always did. Who else but Peter would have his own theme song? There was a sureness, an arrogance about him that made you either adore him or loathe him. He always knew everything better than anyone else, and he didn’t hesitate to tell them so; Peter Kelly was the arbiter of the universe, and what Peter Kelly said went. That was the odd thing, other people were only too happy to accept his version of their lives, grateful even. Even if they were older and more battle-scarred in life, they accepted that Peter was more knowledgeable than they were themselves, and they revered him for it, honoured almost that he had taken the trouble to involve himself in their humble little existences. For Kathy, though, it had always been like the King’s New Clothes, and she was the boy who had noticed he was naked; her brother had never fooled her for an instant, and she sensed that he knew it too. Watching him, listening as he pontificated, she felt his unease at her scrutiny, almost to the point where he couldn’t stop himself glancing at her from the corner of his eye, knowing what was in her mind and wondering if she would put her thoughts into words. His sarcasm could be cruel, but it never made any impression on her, even when she was a child and he an adult. There was that one time, that defining moment, when he had seen through him. As a child she had loved reading and writing little stories, and she was good at art during her schooldays, so naturally Peter had to find a way of putting her down. ‘You are,’ he once said scathingly to her, ‘interested only in yourself. All your pastimes are solitary, which proves that you have no interest in other people.’ And even as she listened to him declaiming from on high, the thoughts that sprang into her mind weren’t of hurt or anger, she felt no impulse to argue her corner. Instead, she suddenly thought, ‘He’s jealous! The great Peter Kelly is jealous of his wee sister!’ He didn’t return her smile in response, but then he knew why she was smiling. ‘What an arse!’ she thought, her usual insult towards her brother, and everyone else who annoyed her, come to that. Lily used to chide her for it, but it wasn’t as bad as some of the things you heard on the streets every day, it was quite ladylike in fact. ‘Ye shouldnae call yer brother that, Kathy!’ Lily would say. ‘But he is an arse!’ Kathy would repeat joyously. Blood may well be thicker than water, but it wasn’t glue, certainly not in their case, and the fact remained that she had never really warmed to him and, in truth, a truth furthermore that bothered her not at all, he had never really warmed to her.

  She was sitting on the floor of her father’s home in Stevenston Street, sifting through the detritus of the life Old Con had shared with her mother and beyond, sorting through the papers and family photos, deciding which she would keep. It had been a feature of her nature since her teens, this need to tidy up, to tie off every loose end. Even when whoever held the other end wasn’t bothered or wasn’t there to be bothered, when arguments were gone and forgotten, to Kathy there was always something more to say, a final comment to really finish it off, and only then could she file it away in one of the many compartments of her mind. The tendency had been there already, of course. ‘It doesn’t matter!’ Lily would say. ‘Let it be!’ She smiled, thinking of the number of times she had heard that, and still she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t as if she wanted to pursue things to the bitter end, it wasn’t really something she could control, that was what even Lily never understood, and after Lily had, well, when Lily was no longer there, the tendency had taken a real grip. She could never forget anything, unfinished business of any kind worried her. It was how she coped, how she stayed in control, which was why she was here, she thought, looking around Con’s house, going through the meagre goods and chattels of a dead man. There was little in the entire house she wanted, and that was a fact, maybe because she had never lived here, apart from these last months, and she didn’t see that as living, more like boarding or just passing through. Even so the usual nightmares had gathered in intensity while she had been here. Since the day she had left, all those years ago, she had been constantly waiting for a giant hand to reach down from the sky and drag her back to the East End of Glasgow where she had grown up, and where so many of her worst memories lay in wait for her, not to mention the recurring nightmare that was rooted here. That was how she thought of it, as though her life in Glasgow wasn’t so much in the past as dormant, waiting for her to stray near enough to lay claim to her once again. Her life in these streets lay some twenty years or more in the past, but it was as though she couldn’t believe that her escape was permanent; the hand was ever-present, ever hovering above her, just waiting for an opportunity. In those black dreams she was always back here, and even though she would protest throughout that she didn’t belong here, whoever was directing the dream would ignore her, till she woke, sobbing and drenched in sweat, in her cottage all those miles and years away, her legs twisting the bedclothes in a desperate attempt to get away.

  When she was a child she had lived with her family in Moncur Street, beside the Barras market. The Barras had been part of her life, the noise, the bustle and the characters. She only had to think back to hear the gramophone records of the Fifties playing in her head as loud as they were all through her childhood, echoing and reverberating through the market to the streets beyond. Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Connie Francis, Guy Mitchell and Perry Como formed the backdrop to her early life, with their booming laments to lost and crossed love. People now enshrined in Glasgow folklore were part of her daily existence, the McIver clan who started the Barras and still controlled it, Freddie Benedetti, Chief Abadu with his cure-all snake oil that would blow your head off before it cured whatever ills you might have, Curt Cook who sold jewellery, though he wore more on his hands than he had on his stall, and the entire Pearson dynasty in Moncur Street itself. They were as much part of her life as her own family, and the old Moncur Street tenement was where she still placed her mother in her memory; it wasn’t until Con was on his own that he had moved into the new house, just round the corner. They had lived two up on the right in Moncur Street, with Lily’s mother, Aggie, above them, and the Crawfords next door, across the landing. Jamie Crawford had been her childhood companion; even though he was two years older, an enormous gap to children, Jamie had been closer than a brother. In the bags of photos spread around her, there were lots of snaps of herself and Jamie because they were never apart. They walked to the Sacred Heart Primary School in Reid Street together, met up at playtimes, then after school they walked home, dumped their bags and went out to play together. Lily used to shake her head and smile. If you saw one, she used to say, the other one wouldn’t be far behind; they had been inseparable in those days. In her secondary years Kathy had been sent to Our Lady and St Francis Convent School in Charlotte Street, though strictly speaking Moncur Street fell out of the catchment area. But Old Con, who felt that nuns were holier than mortals without habits, had asked Father McCabe to plead his case and Kathy went to the convent. Not that it bothered her, one school was as good as another. Jamie went to St Mungo’s Academy in Crownpoint Street, but they would still walk together along London Road till their paths diverged at the junction of the Saltmarket and High Street, and meet up again at the same spot every afternoon for the return journey. Looking at the snaps she was struck by how familiar he still was, it might all have been yesterday. Jamie was always a solid boy, solid in looks and solid in nature. He stood there, foursquare in the photos and in her life, looking the camera straight in the eye, a shock of dark fair hair falling over his forehead. She hadn’t seen him in over twenty years now, not since, oh well, it didn’t matter; it was all so long ago. Everyone had to grow up, grow older, she hadn’t been alone in that at least.

  She looked around Old Con’s domain and wished she could find a bin liner big enough to hold it and all its contents, and a hole in the ground big enough to throw it into. That had been her i
nstinct about Old Con Kelly himself come to that; it always had been, she thought wryly. But it was in hand now, she thought, good things come to those who wait, though it would be a box instead of a bin liner, and he wouldn’t so much be dropped into a hole as scattered to the four winds, much to Father McCabe’s irritation, which of course was an added bonus. She had irritated Frank McCabe all through her childhood and teenage years and he had always let it show, believing that his position was unassailable, that no one knew the secret that could destroy him. And why not? After all, there wasn’t another person alive on the planet who did know; what a sigh of relief he must’ve let go when that funeral was over. But Kathy knew, and that little secret would keep, she thought, smiling quietly to herself, till the time was right.

  Earlier they had taken Con to St Alphonsus’s. He would lie in the chapel overnight, a ritual she had never understood, but then it was Con’s funeral and Con’s religion, and now that the battle was over she didn’t feel strongly enough to go against either. Con had been one of those loose ends she found it so hard to put up with, and now she just wanted the whole business over, finally, completely, permanently over. The undertaker had asked what she wanted him dressed in, as if she cared. She’d looked out a few things, feeling almost giddy with the nonsense of what she was doing. Eventually she decided on the blazer with the Highland Light Infantry badge on the pocket, the grey flannels he wore with it, and the white shirt and regimental tie that he donned faithfully for every reunion. At least that would get rid of all the irritations at once. She remembered the tears springing to his eyes and his chest swelling with pride every time he wore his civilian uniform. He was useless at family life, but he felt a real sense of belonging to the HLI, though he’d only spent the Second World War years within its ranks. ‘The Germans called the HLI “The Ladies from Hell”,’ he’d say proudly, ‘because of oor kilts.’ Kathy would stare at him. ‘Ye’ve no’ much in yer life if that’s wanna the highlights,’ she’d reply. Her mother had tried to excuse his emotional attachment; he must, she would say, have gone through some terrible times with his comrades during those years, so it wasn’t really surprising that he felt the way he did, probably they all did. ‘We’ve been through some terrible times wi’ him,’ Kathy would reply, ‘but Ah don’t feel sentimental when Ah see him fa’in’ through the door, dae you?’ and Lily would laugh. Poor Lily. She had no love for her husband, and the guilt of that drove her to defend him, to indulge him more than he deserved, but Kathy had never really accepted his tears as purely sentimental, though God or whoever knew, sentimentality was a mainstay of whatever personality he had. Everyone knew that reunions were excuses for boozing; Old Con was just filled with joy at the prospect of being filled with booze, that was all. Still, she had gone through the motions for this last time, picking out the blazer, flannels, shirt, tie and socks; burning them was a satisfying thought, it would be the end of them as well as him. She drew the line at underwear, it seemed too bizarre somehow, and besides, where he was going the last consideration would be keeping him warm, and he wasn’t likely to get knocked down by a bus now either. Then she’d laughed at the thought; as if any of it made sense. Finally she’d looked at his various pairs of shoes, then deliberately picked the ones that had blistered his feet. By that time he was paralysed and couldn’t feel his feet, so the blisters had burst and become infected before anyone had known they were there. Eventually gangrene had set in and the doctors had wanted to amputate his leg, but they tried skin grafts over his heels instead as a last gasp, harvesting healthy skin from inside his thigh, and somehow it had been a success. She handed the shoes to the undertaker. ‘Put them on the old bastard,’ she said.