Chasing Angels (24 page)

After exchanging a few words with Con, whose attentions were anyway directed towards performing his suffering, humble martyr routine to a new audience, she and Harry had gone to the
Women’s Voluntary Service cafeteria on the ground floor of the hospital. She would’ve preferred to go elsewhere, but the thought of walking down Castle Street, of actually being seen
with this apparition, was too much. Most people in hospitals, she reasoned, had other things on their minds, so they probably wouldn’t notice the odd duo in their midst. Or so she thought. As
they sat stirring their coffees she was aware of glances in their direction, and then reverential approaches from what she supposed were normal people with mental problems. They clasped
Harry’s hand and stared into his eyes, ecstatic smiles suffusing their faces, and on each he bestowed his benign attention and murmured a few words before they backed away, tears in their
eyes. Kathy had no idea what to make of this, but her cousin, seeing the look on her face, quietly explained all. He was now a well-known, not to say renowned fortune teller, and he was no longer
Harry Nicholson, he wasn’t even Harry Harris, he was simply Hari; such was his importance and fame within Glasgow that he needed nothing more to identify him. His appointment book, which he
called ‘my client audience list’, was booked up a year in advance at any given time, and he had been forced to invent a means of not being contacted by phone. He had a series of codes
that had to be changed frequently as the wily Glaswegians, hellbent on receiving his forecasts, or perhaps desperate for a card trick, cracked each one. At the moment, if she wanted to speak to
him, or his mother, Jessie, he informed her earnestly, she should let the phone ring three times, hang up, redial and let it ring twice, hang up again, and on the third attempt, let it ring four
times, and on the fourth ring either he or his mother would know it was safe to answer. She watched in amazement as he took a notebook and pen from his pocket and wrote the sequence down before
slipping it across the table to her, making her promise – ‘
On what?
’ she thought, suppressing a mad giggle. ‘
Ma faither’s life?
’ – never to
let anyone see it, no matter how much they might plead with her. She took the piece of paper and put it in her coat pocket, scrunching it into a ball as she did so; she thought she could assure
Harry that she would neither divulge it, sell it, or use it, for that matter. The citizens of Glasgow, he explained, held him in such high esteem that he could barely venture outside his, or,
rather, his mother’s door, without being recognised and a few reassuring words requested by those who crossed his path. Harry had become Glasgow’s very own guru, sought out by the
famous, by footballers even, and for many Glaswegians few came more famous than that. She had felt slightly light-headed; never before had she regarded Glaswegians as being particularly stupid or
gullible, but sitting before her, wearing thong sandals on bare feet in the middle of a chilly autumn and sipping coffee that was too hot, too weak and needed more milk, was the living proof that
they must be. If she hadn’t seen the way total strangers were still approaching him, she would’ve assumed by his conversation and appearance that he had gone gaga, but she could see the
truth with her own eyes: they did worship her oddball cousin. Had this happened, she wondered, after she had gone? The citizens of Glasgow couldn’t have been like that while she lived there,
she would’ve noticed, surely? Had some alien species landed and brainwashed them all? Was it like the sci-fi film she remembered from when she was a child,
The Bodysnatchers
? Had pods
containing embryo Doppelgänger Glaswegians been deposited in the backcourts of tenements, waiting for the tenants to fall asleep before being taken over by the physically identical creatures
growing inside the pods? She laughed quietly to herself at the thought, then laughed again because it seemed more likely than Harry the Fortune Teller. He showed her the medallion around his neck,
given to him by a grateful client, and when he insisted that she look closer, she saw that it had been specially designed for him. It was like a large coin surrounded with a frill of gold filigree,
with Harry’s profile pressed in to the centre. Harry the Queen, she smiled, then wondered if he was, in more ways than one. He was beaming with happiness. Warming to his theme he described
the centre of his operations, a tiny single-end in Maryhill where he granted audiences to his clients; he thought it was important, apparently, to stay close to their roots.
‘
Aye
,’ she thought, ‘
an’ their money tae, Harry!’
The single-end was decked out in dark green chintz and the very best second-hand Victoriana, he had an
absolute rule that everything had to be at least second-hand, had to have had a ‘past life’. He could, he said very calmly and seriously, spot a reproduction piece by the aura it gave
off, and he allowed nothing in the single-end to ever be cleaned, the spiders’ webs and the dust were crucial to the aura. Spiders were his ‘thing’, he explained, they had
mystical significance, he even had one on his business cards. He produced a card for her inspection and, sure enough, there it was, the single word ‘Hari’ with a tiny spider dangling by
a thread from the first letter. Kathy tried to concentrate on a blank section of the card, because had she looked up and met her earnest cousin’s gaze she knew she would giggle till she
collapsed in a heap on the floor. In the middle of the one room in Maryhill, he continued, was a table, an old one, naturally, to avoid causing hell to the all-important aura, and on it was a
crystal ball. Looking at him she wondered if he’d seen his psychiatrist lately, and if she could get to the door and take off before he caught her. And around the room were various other
items that also held mystical significances. There was, for instance, a piece of stone sacred to Highlanders and, he said, teuchters keen to curse enemies arrived in a steady stream at his door to
hold the stone and send its destructive vibes on their way. Kathy nodded seriously; no doubt Harry had discovered the ‘sacred stone’ in some backcourt, backcourts being particularly
abundant in similar ‘sacred stones’.

‘I foretold your father’s illness,’ he intoned.

‘So did Ah, Harry,’ she laughed. Now she was back in Glasgow she found that the harsh accent she had thought lost for ever had re-established itself without a pause, and the thought
depressed her almost as much as being there. ‘Let’s face it,’ she said to the guru, ‘the drink was aye bound tae get him in the end. No’ think so?’

A slightly irritated but tolerant smile played across his lips, but he said nothing.

‘Can Ah ask ye somethin’, son?’ she asked.

Harry nodded.

‘Are yer feet no’ freezin’ cold in they sandals? Would ye no’ be better tae just wear them in the summer, like?’

Harry smiled sadly. She didn’t understand, he said, his aura kept him warm at all times, he didn’t feel things in the same way as other people.

For some reason an old song popped in to Kathy’s mind. ‘
I’ve got my aura to keep me warm
.’ She almost laughed out loud, then she looked at him again and felt like
crying.

‘When did this happen tae ye?’ she asked, her voice full of concern, despair and sympathy, that obviously passed over his head.

He took a deep breath and launched in to what she realised was his standard reply to an oft-asked question, if not the one Kathy had asked. ‘I always knew I had the power,’ he said,
and she knew he could hear the words echoing mysteriously in his mind as he spoke, ‘but I had to keep it in check. I had much to learn, I had my art to perfect before I gave it to my
people.’

‘Away for God’s sake!’ she said kindly, as if talking to a misguided but basically pleasant child. ‘Harry, son, this is
me
! Kathy, remember? We’ve known each
other since we were weans.’

The guru gazed at her sadly; he had been denied once.

‘Harry, Ah don’t mind ye foolin’ a’ these folk, except it tends tae be the poorer wans that are easiest fooled, an’ they don’t have money tae gie tae guys
wi’ crystal balls!’ She laughed at her own double entendre. ‘Everybody hastae earn a livin’, that’s fine, Ah can see that. But Harry, son, you don’t really
believe a’ this, dae ye?’

Harry looked even sadder; denied twice. Then suddenly he screwed up his eyes and squinted at her so intensely that she had a hard time not giggling hysterically. He grasped her wrists in his
hands, closed his eyes, breathed so deeply and evenly that he was in serious danger of hyperventilating. Kathy looked up, and all around them were anxious faces, witnesses to an impromptu guru
session. ‘I see,’ Harry intoned, his voice dropping a couple of octaves, ‘your future. I see you in a foreign land—’

Kathy yanked her wrists out of his grasp and got up to leave. ‘Away tae hell, Harry, son! This is
me
, no’ wanna the punters!’ she said. ‘You’re the wan in
the foreign land, it’s called Nutterville!’

Thrice denied. He sighed; it happened to the best of gurus.

That had been their first meeting in fifteen years and, thereafter, throughout the progression of Con’s illness, Kathy had contrived to keep Harry at arm’s length. She had thought
about it often during her blessed returns to Glenfinnan between crises. There had been no special link between them; it had all been an illusion. Harry was one of those people who are all things to
all men, and women too, presumably. What she had thought of as deep and meaningful had in fact been a vacuum, everything, even the dearest dreams she had entrusted to him, went in one ear and out
the other. She suspected that everyone he had ever met had thought they had a special relationship with him too, because Harry listened uncritically while smiling that lovely smile. He probably
couldn’t remember anything she had ever said to him, anything anyone else had ever said to him either for that matter, there was nothing inside that lovely head and never had been. But she
had loved him as a child, as she had loved Jamie Crawford, and at least Harry had done her no harm. Well, no conscious harm anyway; it was hardly his fault that she had invested more in her vision
of him than actually existed. How could Harry be blamed if people built castles in the air, just because that was all his mind consisted of? So on subsequent visits to Con she had avoided her
cousin in order not to hurt the feelings of the Harry she had once thought he was, in case that shining creature should be in there somewhere, locked behind the banal gaze of the guru. Still, you
couldn’t help laughing when you thought about it. Harry Nicholson, true son of Eddie Harris the gangster, a soothsayer in sandals!

And now, a few years later, here they all were, the ungrieving daughter, Harry, the fortune-telling cousin, Jessie, his ex-whore mother with the germ fixation, sitting in their places in St
Alphonsus’s, with Con in his box at the front and Rentacrowd a few pews back, ready, willing and anxious to do their stuff but tolerant, if only just, of the family’s right to be at the
front. Kathy looked at Con’s coffin; the twenty-four hour candles were still burning and, more to the point, they were still there, as Frank McCabe had promised. ‘The auld bastard must
be deid right enough, then,’ she smiled to herself. She turned her gaze on Frank McCabe himself, all togged up in his business vestments, though still with the habitual slipper boots on his
feet. The little priest had been worried that few people would turn up to see Con away, hence the booking of Rentacrowd, but many old-timers from the Barras had filed in behind what was left of the
family. Some were missing, of course, Maggie, the Chief, the older Pearsons. She swallowed hard; the last thing she wanted to do was to start bubbling, that might well be mistaken for tears for
Con. Hysterical laughter, dancing down the aisle with those castanets burning holes in her hands, all of that would be acceptable, she mused, but tears were definitely out. Frank McCabe started the
mass. She had already decided that she would not be bobbing up and down as required, she would remain seated at all times. She was not of this faith, therefore, she reasoned, it would be
patronizing to ape its rituals, which anyway had changed out of all recognition since the last time she’d been at a mass. And apart from that, she knew Frank McCabe would be watching her and
her refusal to conform would drive him mad. It was all in English now too. Hadn’t it still been in Latin in 1973 when Old Aggie had been seen away? She couldn’t remember, but her mind
had been full of other thoughts at that time, there had been no room for registering the language of the rituals. There was a shuffling noise behind her and a hand touched her shoulder. She looked
round but didn’t immediately recognise the man and woman standing there, so she smiled non-committally and faced the front once more. Then it hit her. Jamie Crawford! She felt the hairs on
her neck stand up – another cliche that was true – and kept looking to the front rather than turning round again. What was she supposed to say anyway? What exactly was the etiquette for
greeting your former lover, the father of the unfinished child you had secretly buried early one Sunday morning a lifetime ago? The woman must be – what was her name again? Angela; that was
it. And how was she supposed to make conversation with
her
? Oh, you had the live baby, did you? How nice! Mine was dead. I just put her in a red satin box with hearts on it and stuck her in
a muddy hole beside my mother.

Frank McCabe was well into his stride, he must’ve circled Con’s coffin a dozen times, tossing the incense about like there wasn’t a budget to consider. The time for Communion
came and he stopped and stared at her. Kathy stared back. Behind her Rentacrowd waited for the bereaved daughter to take the host first, but the bereaved daughter returned the priest’s stare
with one of her own, and then added the sweetest of smiles to her coquettishly batting eyelashes, as the seconds ticked by. Behind her Jamie moved towards the altar, then others followed him, and
the moment was over. There was another bizarre episode that she caught from the corner of her eye, when everyone turned to those on each side and shook hands. She couldn’t remember anything
like that. She was sitting in the front pew with Jessie, who had placed herself far to the left, out of the reach of all but the most determined germs, so she knew she could count on her not to
attempt shaking hands, but she couldn’t be as sure of the rest of the congregation, so she kept her back firmly turned to them. ‘
Just let one of them try it
,’ she thought
savagely. ‘
Just let them try it
!’ and was almost disappointed when no one did. What she needed at that moment was the chance to take a swing at someone, the feeling of fist on
chin, but her lack of enthusiasm for the hand-shaking innovation had doubtless been put down to her deep level of grief, and a communal decision had obviously been taken not to intrude. There was a
great deal of hymn singing, which was fair enough when you thought about it; you couldn’t book a turn then only let them loose with a few choruses of ‘God Save the Pope’ to sing,
after all. Then Frank McCabe was at it again, this time soaking the entire area as he circled the coffin dispensing holy water held by an altar
girl!
Kathy did a double take and then smiled
slyly, catching Frank McCabe’s eye. In her day only boys were allowed to assist at mass, but it wasn’t, she suspected, as much a case of gender equality, as a lack of lads willing to
take part that had let the girls in to this once jealously guarded male closed shop. The girl held a silver bowl into which the priest dipped a metal implement with a wire gauze head, then he
vigorously shook it in the direction of Con’s coffin, chanting as he did so. ‘Dear God!’ Kathy muttered audibly as he passed close by. ‘Throw in some carbolic soap an’
we’ll gie him a quick scrub! Let it go at that, gie it a rest, wee man!’ The priest’s stride was broken for the briefest of nanoseconds before he reloaded and defiantly threw yet
more water about, but the slight hesitation was enough to cheer her. Then the undertaker’s men walked forward, moved the candles, lifted the coffin from the bier and performed a perfect
about-turn. This was traditionally the hardest part of any funeral service, when the body was taken away; for genuine mourners it was the beginning of the final act. When they had carried Lily down
this same aisle all those years ago, it was as if Kathy suddenly wakened from a trance and instead of following behind she had kept in step with the front pallbearers, desperately fighting the urge
to get in front and demand that they stop right now and take her mother back. The-moment had come too soon, she wasn’t ready, but then she never would be. There was no such feeling about Con
being taken away, it had all gone on far too long a time as far as she was concerned, not too short. Still, she went through the motions, falling in step behind the coffin, Frank McCabe in the
lead, a prayer book and a rosary held in his hands, and the rest of the congregation following on behind her. Once outside, the undertaker took firm hold of her elbow and tried to guide her into a
large, sleek limo behind the hearse. ‘Ever broken an arm at a funeral?’ she asked in a quiet, pleasant tone of voice, picked up from those masters of the conversational insult, Bunty
and Angus Macdonald. The undertaker looked confused. ‘Well this could be the day, sunshine!’ she hissed, making sudden, savage eye contact with him while pulling her arm free. It was
probably her own fault, she mused. She hadn’t thought about the details, she had thought in gigantic leaps: Con in his box, Con in the chapel, Con out of the chapel, Con at the crematorium,
she simply hadn’t thought of protocol, like the big cars and who went in them. Her cousin, the guru, appeared at her elbow. ‘My mother says you’ve to come with us,’ he
announced. In deference to the occasion he was wearing a crisp white shirt over his medallion, and he had ditched the shiny white suit in favour of an identically shiny one in bright fuchsia, with
an all-over pattern of tiny spiders weaving tiny webs. There was no sign of a black tie, but black was represented in a pair of patent leather Doc Martens instead of the usual sandals; Harry, it
seemed, preferred to wear his grief on his feet. Still, she was only too happy to follow the apparition to Jessie’s Mercedes and sink gratefully into a deep leather backseat beside her aunt.
She noticed without the slightest offence that Jessie moved further over in her own seat, all the better to keep bacteria at bay, the ever-present hankie held to her nose and mouth with the white,
cotton-gloved hands. They exchanged brief, conspiratorial smiles, or at least Kathy thought Jessie was part of the exchange, though who could tell behind the hankie? As they moved off from outside
the chapel, though, Kathy looked back at the defunct limo that had been earmarked for the chief mourner, and she threw back her head and laughed loudly. Beside her, Jessie did the same.