Tony Black - Loss

As I watched the old woman I felt like taking her up in my arms and blessing her kindness. It seemed surreal to me, in this world, that there were still people with any compassion for others. I said, ‘There’s no need, dear. It’s very kind of you, but really, I’m fine.’

She seemed to freeze in the street. I watched her breath escape beneath her dentures, but she didn’t say another word. I wondered if I’d offended her, if I’d broken some protocol that had been instilled in her long before I was born; the thought wounded me.

‘Thank you,’ I said. It seemed so trite. ‘Mind how you go on those pavements.’ I smiled at her as I went. She stood holding the little paper bag, unmoving.

At the end of the road I turned back and saw her shuffling up the street, trailing the trolley behind her like a child with a teddy bear. What I wanted to know, as I stared at her on the frozen path, was who would look after her?

As I walked, my father followed.

I couldn’t shake the memory I’d dislodged.

The reserves drew a fair crowd then. Cannis Dury was still a big name, even though his World Cup outing had faded in Scotland’s collective memory. I tried to recall if Michael had been at the game, but I couldn’t. I’d blocked him out. I was used to memories of my father flooding back to me unbidden, but I didn’t want these heartscalds to be confused with any recollections I had stored of my brother.

I clutched the quarter-bottle of Grouse in my pocket again, played with the seal. I had just about worried the label away; it no longer felt smooth, it was coarse on my fingertips. I tried to still my jittering hand — had this become some kind of obsessive compulsion? It was like a nervous tick, a disorder. I pulled my hand from the bottle. It sank to the bottom of my pocket and lay still. I schlepped all the way to the Mile. At Parliament Square a crowd of shivering Japanese tourists spat on the Heart of Midlothian: they’d obviously been told this was an existing tradition at the site of the old Tolbooth. I thought, these days, it was more likely to get them arrested.

I felt low as I walked. My thoughts lit on my father again, then, inevitably, my brother. I hoped I was getting closer to finding his murderer, but I was also getting deeper into the shit by the day. I’d pushed Debs away too, and I knew she couldn’t take much more; the real question was how much more could I take?

Dr Naughton’s receptionist greeted me with a cheery hello and directed me to a chair in the waiting area to the side of her desk. Two piles of National Geographic lay on the table but I still didn’t have the urge to read anything. As I sat, I heard the door from my therapist’s room open. She was ushering out a patient. The woman looked like a librarian or a schoolteacher; some of the teachers I’d had were walking wounded — I wondered if I’d fallen into this category now.

My palms began to sweat as the doctor called me in.

I kept my coat on, covered the bloody knees that showed beneath my torn trousers.

‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with your coat off?’ said the doctor.

I shook my head. ‘I’m fine.’

She stood up, adjusted the thermostat on the wall. ‘And how are you today, Gus?’

‘I said already, I’m fine.’

She let the sting of that settle. I turned away, didn’t want to catch her reaction.

The child’s tricycle still sat in the corner. She caught me staring at it again. ‘I thought we might try to talk about something different today,’ she said.

‘Oh, yeah?’ I snapped. I really wasn’t in the mood for playing the patient any more. I wiped my palms on my coat sleeves.

‘Would you like to tell me about your working life?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Oh, sweet Lord.’ I knew I was being difficult for reasons of my own, it wasn’t her problem. I checked myself. ‘Look, my career is over. The trade’s finished, and I’m what you might call on the scrapheap. So, not a good choice of subject really, doc.’

She sat forward in her chair, put out her elbows as she crossed her fingers together. ‘We can talk about whatever you like.’

I didn’t want to talk about anything, so that was going to be a short conversation. I stood up, sighed, ‘Is there much more of this to come?’

Dr Naughton’s voice softened. ‘That’s up to you… Do you feel you’ve made any progress with these visits?’

I shook my head. ‘Not really. I don’t much like going over the past.’

She motioned to my chair. There was nowhere to hide in the room so I sat down again. ‘Surely there must be some moments of happiness you recall.’

I kept my hands in my pockets, manoeuvred my coat over my knees again. ‘Some…’ They all involved Debs; it touched a deep part of me, registered why I was there.

‘Would you like to tell me about one?’

I dredged up a few images: expressions on her face, how she looked at one time or another. How happiness felt. My heart seemed to still inside me, and a warmth washed over my mind. A precious memory lit up; I almost smiled.

‘We were at the birth of my niece, Alice…’

‘Go on.’

‘It was special. Debs had taken a real interest when Jayne got pregnant — my wife, we were married then, she’d lost a child and couldn’t have another… I think she got something out of being around Jayne, do you understand?’

‘I understand, yes.’

I fiddled with a hangnail as I spoke. ‘It was all, y’know, baby talk and baby books and clothes and so on for months. Jayne and Michael were so young it was a bit of a shock to them both but I think it focused them, it was a real spark for Michael making something of himself… He was still trucking then, was halfway across Europe when we got a call to rush Jayne to the hospital. We were on standby, so to speak, we drove her in the back of the car.’ Now I smiled at the recollection. ‘She was so bloody big, like a house. We could hardly get her through the door of the car… Debs sat with her on the back seat, doing the breathing exercises.’

I stopped to savour the memory. My eyes misted.

A prompt: ‘And you drove the car to the hospital?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I did that…’ I remembered pacing the corridor. A nurse had asked me if I was the father and I had had to explain that Michael wasn’t coming. I remembered the way Debs had lowered her head when the nurse asked me; she was wounded. I stopped smiling.

‘Was it a simple birth?’

‘No, not at all… Christ, I must have emptied that coffee machine, we were there all night. They put off doing a Caesarean for hours but in the end Jayne was so weak that they had no choice.’ The moment we were called into the ward still lived in me: Jayne was almost too drugged to hold baby Alice, her head was lolling from side to side and Debs had to put her hand underneath to support it. We couldn’t believe the black hair on her, thick, thick black hair. When Debs took Alice in her arms they looked so similar that they could have been mother and child. We both had so much love for her that it felt as if she was ours. Jayne looked exhausted but she had enough energy to cry — we all knew why.

‘How did you feel when you held your niece for the first time?’ said Dr Naughton.

My throat seized, my eyes filled and I knew if I moved my head, even slightly, tears would fall. ‘I felt joy…’ I said, ‘real joy… and the most incredible pain that my wife would never hold our own child.’

Debs had left a note stating she’d gone to stay with her friend Susan.

‘Just… great.’

Susan would not be talking me up — we shared a mutual antipathy. The note was brief, said she’d taken the dog because he needed looking after and ‘You have enough to do mending yourself, Gus.’