This Is Where I Am (14 page)

Laugh? I nearly cried.

Yes, that’s the spirit. Dear failed asylum seeker . . . Laugh! Or at least be civilised about all this. You can either be dragged screaming back to the country you fled from, or . . . we can do this the dignified way.
Good God, man – you wanted to be British, didn’t you? Well, here’s your chance. Let’s see that stiff upper lip. March proudly on to that plane of your own volition, and thank Britannia you learned a little of what makes us great
.

That was the thing with Callum, the worst of it wasn’t the illness; well, of course it was, Deborah, you stupid heifer. OK, take that as a given, because there are insufficient words in all this universe to describe observing – uselessly observing while you rail and pray and search for uncreated cures – your husband set within the carapace that was his quick, lively body, the body that held you and made love to you and must now be fed and wiped. So.
Deborah
of the slipshod thoughts. Given it’s riven through your marrow that the illness was the worst thing, what you’re trying to say – as you sweat inside this sombre, ticking room – is the ancillary stuff compounded it utterly. All those changed appointments, the mobility aids that didn’t fit, new doctors with old questions, interminable waits in waiting rooms when time is one of the many presumptions you no longer have. Trying to get benefits for his increasing disabilities: we’d to go to a medical for that one. Oh, that was a fun day out. All appointments took place on the second floor, and there was the lift not working and there was a disabled man in a wheelchair. Ah, but was this the first of the tests? How crippled are you, really? How desperate are you to ascend to the place of power and distribution?
Pick up thy bed and walk
. Jesus was a DWP assessor. When we finally got there, we were given a ticket, like the ones for the deli queue at Sainsbury’s. Had to wait until our number was called. All us junkies and shamblers, fat women leaking weans, old boys with sticks, young men with limps and a girl who laughed hysterically and swigged from a paper-wrapped bottle. Strange noises distressed my husband, he couldn’t turn his neck very far. I knew how vulnerable he felt when we ventured from the house, although Godknows I tried to make him do it. Fresh air, some other faces, a remnant of life still living through our walls. Now I wonder, was I just being cruel? But at that point, he could still walk a wee bit, and where there’s life there’s hope and every day brings a new dawn and all that shite. His walk was a swaying hobble with the aid of me and sticks. After a few near-tumbles, though, we decided he was safer in the chair.
But I’m choosnit. It’shnot choosin me
. He smiled his lopsided smile and I kissed his lopsided head.

Too long sitting, though, and Callum’s shredded nerves begin to scream. He-we needed to move again, raising and shifting buttocks. He hated this; it drew attention to him. Callum, my erudite witty professor, exposed as a sack of limp bones and fluids. One hour late, we were summoned to our medical. The entire interview was conducted by a male nurse who refused to look at the notes I’d brought from Callum’s consultant. We all quickly formed a rapport: in answer to the long list of questions, Callum would slur
schomtimes
, I would say
he can at the moment, but in a month or so he won’t be able to
and the nurse would say
but he can now
, and tick his little boxes.

When the letter arrived some five weeks later, I was proud to learn that Callum scored consistently highly throughout. Apparently my husband – who, at the moment I was reading this letter, was lying on his side in bed unable to halt the passage of liquid shit that was trickling down his thighs but I was too busy reading this fucking letter to notice – had been
found capable of work
. We could appeal, of course, it said. As long as it was within one month, and, by that time, Callum had been hospitalised with a bout of pneumonia and I no longer had the capacity to care about anything except his lungs not drowning him.

That is how they do it. Pick, pick, picking at your bones. Grinding you down and goading you on until all the fight in you dies. They’ll do it with Rula too, wherever she’s hiding. I shake out my coat before putting it back on. ‘Ready?’ I ask Abdi. We’ve been in all the rooms of the Tenement House – twice – and visited the exhibition space downstairs.

‘This is fascinating.’

‘I know. How we used to live, eh?’

I’m thinking how spartan it is, how cramped.

‘Yes! To have so many possessions, such comfort. Only two women lived in all these rooms?’ Abdi smooths his hand one final time along the rosewood piano.

‘Yes, but some places could have families of ten or more, no inside toilets. This is more . . . middle class. And I don’t think you’re meant to touch.’

Mentoring is far closer to teaching than I realised. Mentally exhausting. Depending on the route you take, the words you choose, a random question can lead to a chain of further questions, a lesson, an entire journey into an area for which you haven’t prepared. And we haven’t even got to where we’re meant to be this afternoon.

‘Middle class?’ he says. ‘Like in a school?’

‘No. More like a . . . caste? A group with more money, more status?’

‘Hmm.’ He nods, thoughtful. ‘Still, I think your Industrial Revolution must have been a wonderful thing. Did people realise what it brought them? In my country, a home like this would be far beyond most people’s reach. Even in the cities.’

‘Well . . . there was a lot of upheaval.’ I button up my coat, aware of the April wind that blustered us up the hill when we came here, and will still be prowling outside. ‘Folk being made to leave their homes in the country, coming to a town they didn’t know . . .’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Speaking of which, we’d better shift our butts. We’ve to be at Housing by three.’

The Homeless Unit have agreed to a meeting. I decided to go straight to the top – the local office Abdi’s been dealing with is where the problem emanated, and I’m too jaded to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. We move outside the tenement, begin the long descent towards the city’s centre. The wind is behind us this time, which is cold but helpful, until it catches my hair, blowing it up and out. I must look like I’m being electrocuted. Abdi, ever-sanguine, pulls on a red woolly hat.

‘Ooh, very smart. Matches your bag. Knit that yourself, did you?’

‘No. My friend Mrs Coutts made it for me. For my birthday.’

‘It was your birthday? When?’

‘Last week. On Wednesday. I did not know my real birthday, so Mrs Coutts decided that would be the day.’

‘You should have said.’

‘But why?’

‘Well . . .’ I make it into a joke. ‘I could have knitted you a scarf to go with it.’

‘Ha! No, I fear Mrs Coutts may already be doing that. She is a demon with the needles.’

‘An old lady, is she?’

‘Yes. Very old.’

‘So how do you know her?’

We’re passing the doorway of BHS.
I could buy him a scarf in here
I’m thinking as I skirt both the man selling the
Evening Times
and a
Big Issue
guy who jinks with the wind, thrusting his single magazine at customers while offering to open the door for them.

‘She is a lady in my church,’ Abdi says. ‘But I met her before – that is how I know about the church. In fact, I found her in my flat.’

‘
Inside
your flat?’

‘Last one, hen. Err a last
Big
–’

The
Big Issue
seller waves his magazine at me. ‘No thanks,’ I say, upping my pace until we’re out of his plaintive reach. I always say
no thanks
, I don’t ignore them. I’m still trying to process the fact that Abdi’s said ‘church’. We’ve never talked about it, but . . . well, his name is Abdi, he’s from Somalia. How could he not be Muslim?

‘Yes.’ Abdi’s half-laughing. ‘It was very first night we have come to Glasgow. There was . . . we had no food or milk, so I had gone to shop with Rebecca. We were away long time . . . When we are back and I open door of our flat, there she was! Ancient grey lady, sitting on mattress we had been left.
That you back, son?
she is saying. I didn’t know what to do; I thought maybe we were to share flat with her? But she stands and is offering us paper bag.
Does the wean want a wee sweetie, son?
Of course, I know
now
what she is saying, but then, I was so confused. I am circling one way, she is coming after! Before I know what goes on, she is shoving red shiny sweet in Rebecca’s mouth. I made her spit out – well, I didn’t know what it was, it could be poison! Then Rebecca starts to cry, and Mrs Coutts is patting her, trying to quieten her and I am backing away!’

We’re both laughing now. I think he’s deliberately crafting this into a funny story. His exaggerated movements as he describes the scene, his clever parody of this old Glaswegian granny’s accent – it’s brilliant. That animation in him again, suffusing his mild smooth face; it’s like he’s thrown off a hood and I’m seeing him clearly as bundles of shoppers stream by us and the spring wind worries and whoops.

‘She keep wagging finger at me, and then I think she is cursing us! But now
I
am facing front door and she is retreating, and all I want is get her outside and away from us, so I follow, make sure she leaves. At door she stops, is pointing always at the handle. Clicking the little . . .’ Abdi mimes a tiny pincer movement.

‘The snib?’

‘She called it “sneck”, I think?’

‘Yeah, snib, sneck, it’s the same thing. The lock, really.’

‘Exactly! That is what it was she kept repeating.
It wisny locked, son! I waited here till yous came back. You hear me? Aye mind and lock your door, son!
She was rescuing me, God bless her – not cursing me! So now, we are great friends, her and I –’

A gang of youths are bearing down on us. Boys, really, they skip and jostle like gazelles, but their language has no grace. One screeches
Haw, ya fucking nig-nog!
as another strikes Abdi on the face, an insolent slap with the back of his hand, I’m shoved to the side as they whip the red hat from Abdi’s head, run squealing with their trophy and we stand, dazed. Reeling from the assault, the world all slow and distant. Abdi is dusty-grey but his first concern is for me.

‘Are you all right? Did they hurt you, Deborah?’

‘Oh my God, are you all right?’

We speak in unison, touching each other’s arms.

‘They hit you – Jesus Christ!’ I pull out my mobile. ‘Jesus, in broad day – I’m going to phone the police.’

‘No!’ he shouts, galvanised once more. ‘No police, please.’

‘But, Abdi! They assaulted you. They stole your hat. Christ! You have to stand up to these people –’

Abdi pulls away from me, starts marching down the street. ‘Do not tell me how to fight my battles, Deborah. I am not your child.’

Folk are gawping; I run after him, yanking on his arm. I swear to God, when he bowls round, dips his shoulder, I think he’s going to strike me.

‘Just leave me. Leave me!’

‘Haw! Haw. ’Scuse me there, big man!’

In my panic, I think the gang have returned. My arm lashes backwards, connecting with yielding fabric, then denser flesh.

‘Ho! Cool yir jets, doll! I’m no the enemy, by the way.’

A thin man is panting at us. I don’t think I hurt him, but he’s stooped slightly, catching his breath. In his outstretched hand, he brandishes the red hat.

‘Err you go, big man. Err your bunnet back, pal.’ It’s the
Big Issue
seller.

‘My hat? You found –’

‘Did they drop it?’ I am raw and furious and shaking. The safe air round us; ripped away, my skin with it. I am raw and furious and shaking.

‘Naw.’ The man stands upright. ‘Fucking decked the wee shite, so I did.’ He grins like a wizened pixie, presenting stained-brown teeth and a set of grazed knuckles for inspection. ‘Just weans, know? But you canny go round daeing that tae folk. So, err you go, big man. One hat and nae harm done, eh?’ He pats Abdi on the side of his arm.

‘Thank you!’ Abdi grabs his hand, shakes it vigorously. ‘Thank you.’

I turn my fury on our saviour, because he is part of it; all the shitty city street-crawlers are complicit in the stash of blades and crap and piles of steaming spew that is my home town. ‘You can’t just go round punching folk! What kind of a message does that give out? Abdi’s not from here –’

‘Nae shit?’

‘Well, he’s not. And you can’t solve violence with more violence. We need to get the police. What if those boys come back?’

A fluid shift; it’s not the wind, not even actual breath or motion, but I feel as if a sliding door has brushed quietly shut, where I am on one side and these two men, who are entirely strangers, cultural, geographical strangers, are on the other. A small nuance passes between them, erasing me.

‘There is no need for police.’ Abdi folds his arms. Regenerates. I could argue with him, I know I’m right. But I don’t.