“The biiiig hospital. The wan through in Edinburgh. Well, we got your test results back, aye, your GP sent us yer case notes. Dr Deacon, that’s right. Well he sent us yer notes to take a look at and ah’m afraid we’ll need to take both of them.”
“Both of what?” said the woman. “I only went to see auld Deacon about my cough.”
Gallowgate was drawing flowers in the condensation. “That’s the thing now, Mrs Beaton. We need to amputate both of yer legs in order to make your cough better. It’s all connected see. Don’t cry now. We could try and save them from the knee down but the surgeon couldnae say for sure till he had a look at ye himself.” The phone rang its three pips and the call disconnected. Gallowgate sniggered to himself.
The rain was driving sideways now. The loch disappeared, then the white houses, then the yew tree. Gallowgate flipped through the phone book again. He found a name he liked the sound of and decided to tell its owner that he was their long-lost son. He hoped the woman was old enough, but then everyone up here seemed old; anyone with a spark of life had already left for the city or further south.
When he was in Barlinnie he had passed many an empty hour doing much the same thing. He had nobody of his own to call, so he dialled Glasgow numbers at random and talked to whoever should answer. The people were generally kind, a little confused maybe, but kind. They would go to their window and describe the weather to him in considerable detail. Rain, it was mostly always raining, but to hear the different strangers describe the thousand different types of rain gave him a calming pleasure. Some folks would open their Evening Times and read him the day’s headlines. Occasionally they would forget who they were talking to and would stop halfway through a story about rape or murder and would try instead to find something about local politics. Lonely old men were the best company. These men would tell him about the Old Firm game, running through the match in such meticulous detail that he felt he had been pitch-side at Parkhead for Celtic’s victory.
Other times Gallowgate had gotten a wean, a child who was home alone while her mammy ran some messages. Sometimes he got a wee boy and then, nearly always, he hung up immediately.
He was dialling the number and thinking about what this woman’s son might be like, when he stopped. He waited for his coins to be returned to him, then he dialled a different number. Something from deep in his memory.
A young girl answered the phone. He could hear the tinny sound of a pop record blaring behind her, and from the tangle of different voices he could tell the house was full of people, and thick with happiness. “Hallloo-oo,” she sang.
“Jacqueline, is that you? It’s me. It’s Angus.”
He could practically hear the girl’s face harden, the song wiped off of her lips. “What do you want? I thought we telt ye not to phone here again.”
“Ah know. Ah’m out though, ah’m on the outside and ah’m getting help. Ah’m getting better.”
“Outside. Outside where? Where are you, Gus?” There was a tinge of panic in her voice. He could imagine her looking around herself like he might step out of the hallway cupboard or from behind the settee.
“Ah’m up north, ah’ve gone away for a fishin’ weekend with a couple of the lads. Ah just remembered what day it was and ah thought ah should phone.” He took a slug of the dusty lager. “Ah’m no drinkin’ anymore, Jax. Ah’m past all that. So, can ah speak to Mammy?”
Jacqueline didn’t answer. He heard her put the receiver gently on the table and talk to a person in the other room. There was a succession of doors closing and the pop record grew faint. There was a familiar voice on the other end. “Angus? What do you want?”
“Hallo, Mammy.” He pumped more coins into the phone. “Ah just wanted to phone ye.”
“Okay. Is that it?”
Gallowgate wondered what she looked like now.
He could picture his mother in happier times; a time when she had rented a cream and claret caravan down on the Saltcoats coast for the Fair Fortnight. She had taken the three of them away on the train, Angus, Jacqueline, and young Evan. The rain had fallen in solid curtains all that week. She had spent the first afternoon crying and staring out of the caravan window as the rain hammered a maddening drumbeat on the tin roof. He knew how hard she had worked to afford the week away. She had put money aside the whole year, saving what she could from her job cleaning the local school.
While the weans had jumped on the banquette she had left the caravan and gone down to the beach. She came back with buckets full of gritty, wet sand and upended them until there was a sandpit on the linoleum floor. All afternoon she went back and forth in the pouring rain bringing sand back to the caravan for her children. Gallowgate could not remember a happier time than the four of them sheltered from the rain and playing on their private beach. The steam rising from his damp mother as she knelt before the gas fire.
There was not a sliver of that warmth in her voice now. “I asked you to stop phoning here.”
“Ah know. Ah wanted to tell ye ah was out of prison, Mammy. That ah was working at it.”
“So I had heard.”
He was rubbing his thumb against the mouthpiece. “Ah’ve got myself a wee job. Nothing fancy. Just laying underlay for a carpet fitters out on the Royston Road.” He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t say anything. “Ah’ve been going to AA meetings in the evenings. Ah’m trying my best to stay away from the drink.”
“Where are you phoning me from?” He heard the same worry in her voice that had clouded his sister’s.
“It’s awright,” he said. “Ah’m nowhere near the house. Ah’m away fishin’。”
He had expected her to find a calming ordinariness in this. He was far away from the Gallowgate housing scheme. He could not be a bother to her. But instead of being calmed, her voice pitched and went up in tone. “Who are you fishing with?”
“Naebody special. Just an auld guy ah know from some of the AA meetings.”
She must have moved her mouth close to the receiver because her next words had a muffled quality to them. “Angus. Are there children there with you?”
“No. I know the rules.”
Gallowgate was a born liar. He had learned the skill when he was young, and he had found no better way to make the things he wanted come to him: sympathy, chocolate eggs, an afternoon off school, new Diadora football boots, or a look at the private place on the wee boy next door. For a time there was almost nothing he couldn’t lie his way into. It had started insidiously enough but by the time he was sent down to Barlinnie it had become more than a grease to ease his way in life and was now a facet of his nature. Gallowgate was a born liar; his mother had learned that the hard way.
“Dear God,” she whispered. “Angus, please don’t hurt the boy.”
He didn’t know when she had stopped loving him, but he wanted to find out and go back to a time before it. She had accepted the real truth about his nature now. She had taken Evan’s side, believed his brother’s stories, and then she had called the police. Now, as Gallowgate let the last of the pennies die, he knew the four of them would never sit in a sandpit in a cream and claret caravan on the Saltcoats coast again.