Hymn From A Village (13 page)

I winked at him and hit the switch.

“Good night James Foster,” I said into the darkness and rested my head on my desk.

“I
f you dig far enough,” I tell him, “you’ll reach the other side of the world.”

It’s what my dad told me when I was digging here. Isn’t it what all fathers are supposed to say to their children in such circumstances?

“Really?”

“Really, really.”

Wee Donald is standing in the middle of his hole in the sand. I can see all of his five-year-old body from the knees up, the rest of him being hidden under the ground. He’s got the big, red spade today, the one he uses when there’s serious digging to be done. His blond hair pokes out from bottom of his faded baseball cap and there are white marks on his fair skin where I didn’t manage to rub the cream in properly.

“So what’s at the other side of the world?” It’s a good question.

I play my part with well rehearsed lines. “Australia. You get to Australia.”

He stops digging for a moment and straightens his glasses so that they sit properly on his button nose.

“What’s in Australia, Dad?”

“Well, it’s night time there when it’s daytime here and everything’s upside down. They’ve got kangaroos and koalas and didgeridoos. And everything they eat comes from the barbecue.”

Donald thinks about it and gets back to his digging. “I don’t think I want to go there, Dad.” It’s like he’s reading from the wrong script. “I’m looking for treasure.”

Ah, it’s the treasure he’s after. So it’s not the wrong script, it’s just a different one.

“Treasure? Who do you think might have left treasure here?”

He looks at me like I’m completely stupid. “Pirates of course.”

“Why would pirates have put their treasure in the ground?”

It’s obviously another stupid question. “So they can hide it from the baddies, silly.”

I know my place and pretend to settle back to reading my book.

As soon as he’s completely involved in his work again, I pull over my bag and discretely fumble about in my purse. I feel for coins, making sure I don’t get anything more valuable than a 20p and take them out.

I put my book down and go over to inspect the hole.

I must say, it’s impressive. He’s got a good work-rate and he seems to have mastered the art of keeping the dry sand at the top from filling in his new space.

“It’s good,” I say.

“It’s great.” I wonder where he gets the energy from and where that energy will go when he’s older. If all the builders in the world were under 10, I think, I reckon all building jobs would come in ahead of schedule.

While he’s so focussed, I take the coins from my hand and drop them one by one into the sand behind his feet, careful to keep them apart so that they don’t make any noise.

I go back to the rug when the inspection’s over and pick up my book.

I don’t read a word. Instead I wait for him to discover the pirate’s haul.

It doesn’t take long.

5 minutes later, he bends down and looks closely at something.

A huge smile spreads across his face and the sunshine fades in comparison. The beams of his happiness make my insides glow.

“Daddy. Daddy. Look what I’ve found. The treasure.”

Once again, I play my part. I go over and investigate and tell him that he’s right and wonder if there’s any more.

Within moments there’s a pile of 5 sandy coins by the side of the hole.

He seems satisfied, gets out from his hole and picks up his red bucket.

Off he runs to the sea, returning with a bucketful of water into which he drops the coins and washes them.

The money takes centre stage on our rug.

He comes over and sits by them and keeps a close eye, watching them all through our lunch of sandwiches and crisps.

When we finish eating, he leans in to me and keeps staring at the Doubloons as if he’s expecting someone to swoop down and steal them back.

Gradually, his eyes turn sleepy from all their effort and eventually shut altogether.

I take over on watch and carefully adjust my position so that I shade his face from the sun.

I look down at my boy, my wee treasure, and scan the horizon for Jolly Rogers.

C
old air poured in when they opened the doors. It would soon be over. All Carlo had to do was accept his punishment and they could wake up in the morning and start over.

The ride had been at high speed and in a straight line, so they’d either gone south down the A1 or round the Edinburgh bypass. It wasn’t easy to tell in the dark, but he figured south was the more likely when he factored in the roundabouts.

Rolling round inside the back of the van, he’d been reminded of driving his wife and first-born home from the maternity ward at Little France in the restaurant’s Berlingo. Maria had been bumped around as sleeping-policemen and pot-holes took turns to attack the suspension; even with her newly stitched episiotomy, she didn’t utter a noise the whole way. Nor had Chris, the poor child, head bobbing in the seat they’d spent an age working out how to secure.

That was ten years earlier. Since then Maria had given birth to a second child and, when her patience finally wore through, filed for divorce and sent him packing from the family home and business.

If he’d kept away from the booze, he might still have been in line for taking over one of the most successful eateries in the city. He could have been sitting back counting cash and sipping orange juice while his shoulders were rubbed and he watched the Hoops put one past the Jambos or the ‘Gers. Instead he was in some God-forsaken place wondering how they were going to take their revenge.

It wasn’t long before they dropped him to the ground, his head hitting something hard and sharp.

The icy wind from the Forth cut through his jacket and the smell of the salt filled his nostrils. He guessed they were at the cement works - that’s where he’d be doing it if the steel toe caps were on the other foot.

The men standing over him took a moment to spark up cigarettes. Carlo rested his cheek upon the smooth metal rail, so chilled that his tongue might have stuck to it if he’d given it a lick. His fingers identified wooden sleepers with pebbles scattered in between and his legs found the parallel rail exactly where he knew it would be. The bleating of a goat was the last piece he needed to complete his picture. They weren’t at the cement works but the East Lothian Family Park, built to entertain the kiddies.

Sure, what he’d done wouldn’t be winning him an M.B.E., but using trains as weapons should have died out with silent movies.

These guys were animals. Perhaps the farm was the best place for this to end after all.

*

T
ranent needed another chip shop like it needed another teenage pregnancy. When Carlo Salvino impregnated Kylie on the same night that he opened ‘the Golden Fry’, he really managed to hit the bull’s eye.

Belters they were called, the people from the town. Some said it was on account of the tanneries in the area way back when. Others had it that it was because of the way the miners had worn their lamps. As far as Carlo could make out it made more sense that it was because they were likely to settle a disagreement with punches rather than words and that they could hit as hard as anyone he’d ever come across.

If he’d had the money he’d have set up in the city, moved over to Glasgow even, but at least this way he was within ten miles of his kids, the rates on the High Street were cheap as his chips and with four pubs on the doorstep success seemed a sure thing.

‘The Golden Fry’ opened on Valentine’s Day. Carlo fixed up ribbons and fairy lights, ordered in cases of cheap sparkling wine and sprinkled heart-shaped chocolates along the window seat for the kids.

At six the place was buzzing. By half past, the Cava and chocolates gone, the only person left was a girl who’d been giving him the eye since walking in.

They chatted about something, the weather or football or the price of fish. Whatever it was, Carlo couldn’t remember. Nor could he fully recall sharing a quick one against the wall in the Wynd when he walked her home. He had a vague recollection of some fumblings, but they weren’t enough for him to even daydream about while he stood around waiting for customers.

Kylie came in the next day for a poke of onion rings wearing her school sweat shirt. She may have looked at least 18 and he knew nothing illegal had taken place, but if he could have run a mile without needing to stop for a rest, he might well have done.

Hers was the only sale that day and the next. The competition had put out word and the Belters were sticking together against the new blow-in on the block with his one eighth Italian blood and fading good looks.

It was Kylie who gave him the idea. If he could lure in the kids from the High School, he’d be quids in.

He took on two extra staff, a couple of older ladies who’d never travelled further than Prestonpans, hand wrote signs and offered food at half the price of anyone else. ‘Credit Crunch Lunch’ he called it and it took off like it was supersonic.

There were still queues of black sweat shirts at the bakeries and the other chippies, but he had the lion’s share, the line of youngsters stretching back to where he and Kylie had had their fun. Hot plates full of fried pizza (his ex-wife’s father would have had a heart attack), burgers, puddings, pies and fish were emptied daily within half an hour, as if a plague of locusts had descended and licked them clean.

They were getting through two hundred polystyrene trays at a sitting, twice that on a Friday when the primary school kids piled in to kick-off their weekend with a healthy fry-up.

After a month of success, Carlo felt that he had finally earned the slice of the luck he’d always deserved.

Things started to change when two lads came in after the rush hour, all swagger and spiky hair with the familiar white line down the middle that always made him think of wobbly skunks.

When they spoke, he just listened until they’d finished and watched them leave without ordering a thing, their mullets bobbing against their designer gear.

Turning to Mrs Edgar, who was wiping grease from the wall tiles, he asked for an interpretation.

They wanted him to put the prices up, she told him, and they wouldn’t be asking so nicely the next time. And, if he didn’t mind her putting in her two shillings worth, the Ramsay boys were nasty pieces of work and it might be worth listening to what they’d said.

Listening? He’d tried that and hadn’t understood a single word.

The wee shites. Who did they think they were telling him how to run his business? They’d have been plankton in Leith if they ever ventured from their tiny pond into those shark-infested waters.

That same afternoon, Kylie told him about the baby. She wasn’t ready to tell her dad and her mum would beat her enough to make sure the kid never saw out the first trimester so there was no way she was going round there with the news.

She wanted to keep it, leave school and live with Carlo. She could serve at the counter for six months and after that she’d be a stay at home mum, make a nest they could share, a cosy place that would be a cut above the council scheme she was used to.

Carlo didn’t say anything. Instead, a hug of reassurance, a pat on the behind and a poke of chips “on the house” did their job and she left with a half smile on her lips.

Turning the open sign to closed, he hooked up his apron, left the ladies to get on with things and headed for the Cross Keys. Having a glass in his hand always made life easier to understand.

The landlord, Billy, knew all about the Ramsays. They’d graduated from the Tranent Young Team and had a brief spell with the Hibs Casuals.

Local folklore had it that they used the derelict farm up near the cemetery as their base. There were tales of broken bones, cuttings and even a crucifixion. He’d seen clips of them on You Tube working away on some bloke with a pair of pliers. Their faces were hidden, but everyone in town knew who they were watching.

They were involved in drugs, loan-sharking and a bit of dog-fighting every now and then.

Their mother was known to everyone as Nan. Nan was where Carlo and just about everyone else went to get cheap fags. She sold them singly to those that were really hard up or too young to know better, with special deals for the under 9s. The Ramsays were likely to be allied to ‘The Happy Haddock’ given that the older one of them was sleeping with Nan’s half-sister, whose brother owned the joint.

As Billy pulled Carlo another pint, he started on about Kylie’s dad. Bert was put away for tying a man to a car and dragging him around the Heugh for slapping his sister. That and for driving underage and without a licence. Family life had cooled the fire in his belly, though Billy described him as a dormant volcano.

The stories of some of the other fast food joints that followed were hardly better news.

Opposite Carlo’s place was the ‘Quick N Eazy’, run by Ray and Jim McMerry. The brothers worked like a tag team when it came to a scrap, the kind that would have had grannies screaming at their sets when wrestling was still taken seriously.

Then there was Kwok or Kwang or whatever his name was at ‘Peking Cuisine’. He was bound to be Bruce Lee or a Triad or both.

No, it wasn’t looking good for Carlo Salvino, not until his fifth whisky gave him inspiration. There was nothing to be scared of.

Who, he asked himself, who outside of the area had ever heard of the town? They didn’t even have a football team. It was a blackhead on the face of a giant and it was about time someone gave it a squeeze.

First he took on the McMerrys. The ‘Quick N Eazy’ had slashed its prices to keep up with him and the Ramsay boys had probably paid them a visit too.

As far as he could see, outside of a good fight and making a few quid, there was only one thing that Ray and Jim McMerry cared about. Their cat was pure Russian Blue and worth a few bob. An elegant thing, Carlo imagined she was the sort of creature a pharaoh might have wanted to have with him in his tomb.

Beautiful she may have been, but loyal she was not. It took nothing more than chocolate drops and Catnip to get her to go with him.