Graham was none too sure about Stevie spending his days at Eric’s. Lindsey had told him it would just be a stop gap, just for the holidays, but she even had the old guy picking Stevie up from school now. Graham’s Mum said:
“It’s only now an again. Tae help you out, son, while you’re savin.”
She knew Graham wanted a new baby, and that Lindsey wanted to move to a new place, and she reckoned it was good for Eric to feel useful to them in the meantime.
“You know how he can brood, son. Better he feels part ae the faimly again.”
Lindsey said the same, and she told Graham it was a shame, dead wrong, how Papa Robert had cut Eric out, all those long years.
Graham couldn’t argue with that, even if he wanted, he was never any good at holding his own in arguments. But he thought it wasn’t about whose fault it was anyhow: it was the old guy’s health that had him worried.
When he was a boy, Graham used to go to Eric’s with his Mum. The times he remembered most were just after Auntie Franny died, and he knew his uncle wasn’t well, even before anyone told him. The old guy made Graham nervy; he’d most often be teary or angry when they arrived, all unshaven, and raw about the eyes. He did no drawings then, he’d just sit up at the bedroom window while Brenda wiped and tidied, and Graham watched him through the half-open doorway. His face was always wet, his eyes always leaking, and it was like they weren’t there for him. Eric was clever, everyone said so, but Graham knew there were times his uncle couldn’t even see who was in front of his nose. He never even said cheerio when they went up the road.
Graham’s brothers were all old enough to stay at home, and they teased him because he had to go to Eric’s. They called their uncle a headcase, for which their Mum slapped their legs, and Graham knew his brothers weren’t being nice, but it wasn’t just them who thought Eric was strange. He saw the way other folk stared if Eric was with them on the bus, and how they shifted over if he sat too close, and he heard how his Mum lied to the neighbours as well, saying Eric was fine, even when he was in hospital for a long stay.
Graham could remember other times too, when his uncle was on the mend. Eric still had a telly then, and he sat with Graham on Saturday mornings watching Tiswas. Or sometimes the old guy would take him out while Brenda was busy sorting the flat. They’d not go far, just a little way along the canal to see one of Franny’s brothers, who worked out at Clydebank and kept racing pigeons.
John Joe bred tipplers with one of his pals: endurance birds that could fly for hours. The two men had a loft full of them near the shipyard, and John Joe went there every day after his shift, to keep up with his share of the feeding and cleaning and what-have-you. He was nice too, and he told Graham loads about his birds. How most Glasgow doo-men kept pouters and croppers, fancy breeds, but they were just weird-lookers to his mind, inferior to his athletes. The trophies they’d won overspilled the cabinet in John Joe’s living room, and when he saw Graham looking, he said that was only a half-share of the honours, the rest were up at his pal’s place, along with the doos.
Eric had seen the birds, he’d been out to Clydebank any number of times, and he could draw them from memory: quick lines on the backs of envelopes, while he and his brother-in-law talked. John Joe kept a hen with him in the house; not in a cage, she walked from room to room like a cat, and hopped up onto his lap. Eric drew the pair of them like that: small biro likenesses that Graham slipped into his pockets while his uncle was busy with the next. Both men saw him take the drawings, but they acted like they hadn’t, just getting on with their conversation; John Joe telling Graham the hen was no prize bird herself, but the mother of many. He’d stand her up on the table, putting his face down level, and then she’d peck at his nose, side to side, fast but dead gentle too. Eskimo kisses, John Joe called them, while the beak clack-clacked against his big spectacles, and Eric laughed.
Graham liked his uncle when he was like that. But you never knew how long it would last, and he didn’t want Stevie to see Eric’s other side.
Lindsey didn’t know the old man like he did, but she wouldn’t hear a word said against him, and she was so much better with words than Graham. If he mentioned his worries, she could talk him round. Or make him feel like he was being unkind, like those folk years ago on the buses.
Stevie always looked happy enough, when Graham went to pick him up; lying on the floor with his Lego, or looking at one of Eric’s pictures.
“Can we no stay a bit, Da?”
“Naw, son. Your Maw will have the tea on by now.”
Eric never offered him tea, he just got Stevie’s coat. Mostly it was Lindsey who did the fetching, and Graham knew he was second best for Eric, because his uncle would look past him down the close some evenings when he opened the door, like he was hoping to see her coming up the stair.
If Lindsey picked Stevie up they’d always be late back. Graham knew she talked with Eric about his drawings, because he’d seen them do it, the few times they’d been there together. Lindsey walked along the walls where Eric pinned his new pictures; still the usual, Glasgow and folk from the Bible, but Papa Robert had joined them too now, mostly with his roses. They stretched as far as the hallway these days, so it could take Lindsey forever to get past them, holding the cup of tea Eric had made for her, pointing and asking questions. The old guy would be all chatty next to her, dead happy at having someone who paid such close attention. Easy, like he’d always been at John Joe’s.
Except Graham couldn’t feel easy watching that. Listening to Eric and Lindsey talk. It seemed like she talked so much more with Eric than she did with him, it set off a lurching feeling, deep in the pit of his guts, every time. Like he might be second best for Lindsey as well.
The more she heard about Eric, the more Lindsey wanted, and Graham couldn’t tell her nearly enough about his uncle, or the big row with Papa Robert. He tried, even if it was all before his time, and it didn’t come easy either, dredging through all he’d been told. Graham hauled out the main events from ages back, all that family sadness; the argued-over wedding, Franny’s death, Eric’s breakdown, but Lindsey wasn’t satisfied.
“So then what?”
“That’s it. I’ve just tellt you.”
Had he not just said?
It felt like he must be lacking words again, because Lindsey turned to Brenda instead; she took his Mum aside most times they went round there. They’d stand in the kitchen, all caught up in the past, shaking their heads, all sad, and no one could shift them from the subject.
Graham kept to the living room with his Dad, who tried to see the funny side, but it got to him as well. Malky asked Graham:
“Have you seen the pair ae them in the next room? Wringin their hands again.”
Rubbing at the sore spots on the family conscience. He saw no use in it:
“Cannae be daen wae sackcloth and ashes.”
Lindsey said it wasn’t like that. She told Graham:
“It’s your family. I’m just interested.”
And she made him feel like he wasn’t.
Lindsey reckoned it was Papa Robert who had need to atone.
“I could never do that. Cut out my own child.”
She said things like that all the time, out of the blue; when they were lying at home on the sofa, or just out and driving somewhere.
“How can Eric draw him? After all that.”
Lindsey was always thinking about it. So she had Graham thinking about it too, remembering stuff he hadn’t thought about in years, and none of it too cheerful; he didn’t like to think about Eric in tears, or his Mum at her wit’s end.
Lindsey reckoned Papa Robert should have made it up with Eric, after he came out of hospital:
“You’d have thought he’d have tried then. He could have made the first move. He knew what it was like, did he not? Losing a wife.”
Graham’s Mum had said the same thing, especially as Papa Robert got older: it had made no sense to her, the pair of them lonely widowers. If they could just get over theirsels.
On days she was working, she used to get Graham to check in on his Grandad after school. All his brothers were meant to take turns, except he was the only one who pitched up with any regularity, so he often had to bear Papa Robert’s grousing at being alone in his old days, and neglected, as well as the sheer bastard inconvenience of going up to his flat in the first place.
Graham remembered: how his Mum had told him to bear with it. Your Grandad’s on his own too much, just let him moan a bit. Only it seemed like Papa Robert did nothing but, he was hard bloody work. It was another thing Graham didn’t like to think about.
He was forever doing something wrong in the old man’s eyes. Coming late, or with his uniform untucked.
“Ach look at you. Look who I’m lumbered wae. They no teach you anythin at that school ae yours?”
None of Graham’s brothers had done well in their exams, and it felt like Papa Robert held it against him, almost every visit.
“How was it only Eric could manage a decent schoolin?”
Graham dreaded hearing that, and not just because it meant he’d been found wanting; Papa Robert was always much the worse for being minded of Eric. Graham would be all fingers and thumbs in the kitchen, fearing the worst, making tea and toast, while his Grandad kept a critical eye.
“Ham-fisted boy!”
Papa Robert shouted that at him from the doorway one time, when Graham chipped the lid of the teapot, by accident, putting it on too hurriedly, in too much of a rush to get off up the road. His Grandad snatched the pot from him, fierce, and then Graham stood and stared at the old man’s fists, clenched around the handle and spout; they were solid and pink, and they looked just like meat boiled in brine. Aye well, Papa. You can talk. The words were there and ready in Graham’s mouth, but they wouldn’t come out: they were too hurtful, and he was too much of a coward. So Graham stood in front of his Grandad, mute and full of fury. Battling the urge to fling his own ham fists about.
There was nothing he could do, so he did the washing up, Papa Robert’s breakfast plate and cup, to keep his hands from damage, and his grandfather stood there and watched him for a couple of over-long minutes.
The old man drank a slurp of his tea—two, three—and then, milder again, he said:
“You havenae the measure ae your ain strength yet. But you’ll get that, Graham, given time.”
Papa Robert looked at him, like he was sure of him, watching the calm return to him. Then he asked:
“You’ll forgive an old man his grief?”
And Graham nodded, because he did.
He thought about that some evenings now, driving Stevie home from Eric’s. How what his Grandad said bore weight; not just the bad things, but the good as well. If Papa Robert took your part, he could make you feel right, and Eric could have done with some of that back-up when he came out of hospital. So maybe Lindsey had a point.
Only Papa Robert had told him he’d get to know his strength, and Graham still didn’t feel like he knew it. And there was that part about grief too. Nana Margaret had been dead ages, and so Graham couldn’t decide, if it was her Papa Robert was sad about, or if it was Eric.
He knew his Grandad was sorry for what he’d said to him that day.
Maybe he was sorry for much more besides.
But Graham reckoned if he tried saying that to Lindsey, she’d need to hear the proof. Or she’d ask him why it was, then, that Papa Robert never made the first move. So he didn’t tell her that story. It had him too rattled anyhow, feeling too weak and word-poor, and he didn’t know that he could tell it right.
Lindsey was taking Stevie’s cot apart one evening when they got in. She said it wasn’t being used, save to house Stevie’s toys.
“It’s too cramped in his room to play, so I’ve found a box for his things now.”
She was making a neat job of fitting the cot sides into the back of the hallway cupboard, with the bolts and bits in a plastic bag, taped to one of the legs.
“Ready for the next wan,” Graham said.
And Lindsey smiled.
“Soon as we get a better place.”
She gave Graham a kiss, but he still got that same lurching feeling, like he was second best again. Just like these walls he’d plastered and painted, this home he’d made for them. If Lindsey wasn’t talking about Eric and Papa Robert these days, then she was on about moving, so Graham said:
“Aye, I know.” Watching her shut the door on the cot. “Soon as we’ve a better place tae go.”