Jozef sent Marek to get plywood, but he came back empty-handed. He came into the garden where Jozef was cutting tiles, and said he couldn’t find the timber yard:
“It wasn’t where you told me.”
Marek was his nephew. Or, more precisely, he was Ewa’s: not yet twenty and still learning on the job, but he spoke like he knew better than his elders. Jozef was twice his age, with grey in his stubble to show it, and too many years under his belt finding his way around foreign cities, so they stood and argued, in Polish; only then the boy came out of the door behind them.
He’d been up in the top rooms all of yesterday, and most of the morning, re-doing the skim coat on the walls, and Jozef thought he must have finished already, because he walked to the outside tap and started washing out the buckets. Halted in mid-flow, and still annoyed, Jozef called him over:
“You know this place?”
He waved the docket from Pollockshaws Timber, and the boy looked up from his tools, but then he shook his head, like that was a stupid question. So then Marek was irritated too:
“You from Glasgow, yes?”
The boy nodded:
“Born an bred.”
But then he flicked his head at the long gardens, the solid South Side villas all around them:
“No round here, but.”
He turned his face skywards, working through the compass points:
“I’m fae out that way.”
He pointed west.
“Beyond the pale.”
The boy smiled at them, like he’d just made a joke, and then he stepped forward, wiping his fingers on his jeans. He took the docket, reading the address, and Jozef saw how Marek kept his eyes on him, trying to work him out; if he liked him or not.
His nephew liked it here in Glasgow: he said it was the people and the things they laughed about. Marek went out to pubs with Jozef’s other workers, and ended up drinking half the night with people he’d never met before. He said all Glasgow men knew about Gdańsk: a kindred shipyard town where the workers had made history, front pages all around the world. So Marek got their life stories, as well as their jokes, and he’d been asking about the boy yesterday lunchtime, when he didn’t come down to eat with them. Marek had told Jozef he was useless, because he couldn’t even remember what his name was. You go and ask him then, you’re so interested.
The boy had only come down towards evening, after the others were gone. He’d sat and drunk a can of lager out here on the back step, in his patched trousers and tatty old trainers, while Jozef sorted through the accounts at the kitchen table. He’d made no conversation to speak of, but Jozef had needed respite from the day’s travails, and his nephew’s know-all questions, so he hadn’t minded the boy’s tight-lipped way last night. He couldn’t decide if he minded it now. Marek asked him:
“So you can drive me there?”
“Aye.”
The boy nodded.
“Havnae a licence, but.”
He blinked at them, deadpan, until the penny dropped.
Then Marek grinned; Jozef could see that joke had settled it for him. His nephew put out a hand, which the boy took.
“Marek. From Gdańsk.”
“If you say so. I’m Stevie anyhow.”