They never used to shout, Stevie’s Mum and Dad, not when he was wee. Now he was eight, and they did it behind closed doors, sending him out if he came in the room, but Stevie still heard them through the walls. They shouted about the flat. Or if Stevie’s Dad went out they shouted about that: where he’d been and who with. Mostly it was his Mum’s voice Stevie heard.
He was glad of the times she was happy, and Stevie knew his Dad was too because he did things to keep her that way, like watching the football at Uncle Brian’s house. Or not watching the football at all.
He drove them off the scheme one Saturday morning: the three of them, all together, out to the hills, and Stevie’s Mum laughed when he parked them up by a sheep-scattered field.
“What we doing here, then?”
Stevie’s Dad shrugged at that, like he wasn’t too certain himself.
But he used to come and camp here sometimes, with Uncle Craig and Malky Jnr., back in their army days, when they came home on leave. He said they’d shown him the best way to the woods, and how to keep a fire lit, and then he built them one just by a stream, so Stevie could stand on the bank and throw stones in.
Stevie’s Mum crouched next to him at first, harder to win over, arms tight about her knees. But then she rolled up her jeans, and slid down to the water to put her toes in. She ended up wading right across barefoot; hands up for balance and fingers spread wide, and then she turned and stood grinning over at them from the far side.
“I’m needing that fire now!”
When the next weekend came, she asked to go back again.
“Has Malky Jnr. still got his tent?”
They didn’t go every Saturday, but most. Driving off early in the van, windows still misted from the cold, borrowed camping mats and sleeping bags in the back, between the red plastic tray shelves that held Stevie’s Dad’s tools.
The drive was just long enough for Stevie to get drowsy, strapped into the front between his parents, and he’d nod off sometimes after they’d stopped, with the warm sunlight on him through the windscreen, and the wind buffeting the sides of the van. His Mum and Dad would be outside when he woke up. Leaning over the gate and talking, sharing a smoke, their heads level and close; his Mum’s feet up on the metal rungs, and his Dad’s in work boots, planted in the wide tractor ruts.
If they stayed away overnight, then Stevie slept lying across the seats, in a sleeping bag under the windscreen. He’d be up with the sun, earlier than his Dad and Mum: they’d still be sleeping in the back, in the narrow space down the middle of the van, just wide enough for the camping mats. Stevie would climb over to find them, half-dressed but warm, lying under old blankets and clean dust sheets, and he’d nudge each of them over so he could slot himself between them.
The wheels got stuck one Sunday morning, in the soft verge, and dug themselves in deeper when Stevie’s Dad tried to drive them home. The engine roared, the back of the van sagged and his Dad cursed. Then he set off down the road, on foot, his solid back receding, Rangers shirt flapping: royal blue, picked out by the sun, standing out against the surrounding green and grey and brown. There was a farm a mile or so on, and while his father was gone, Stevie pressed all the buttons he could reach on the dash, and his Mum unclipped her seatbelt, climbing out to stand by the van.
The wind caught her hair, a few loose strands, two thin red flags flying, and so Stevie tried the window-winder, shoving and bashing it round in its stiff circle until the window opened enough to put a hand out to them. But he couldn’t reach, and his Mum had her face turned to the sunshine anyhow, breathing in the wind.
Stevie’s Dad came back with help: sacks to put under the wheels and an old guy in overalls who put his shoulder up to the back of the van with him. Stevie’s Mum had to work the pedals, sitting well forward, her bum on the edge of the driver’s seat and the steering wheel huge in her hands. She cheered, loud and happy, as the van lurched under her, and she steered it onto the road, laughing at the sight of Stevie’s Dad in the long wing-mirror, his mud-spattered shirt. Only then she clapped a guilty hand over her mouth, seeing his face all dark with blood, the effort of getting them back onto solid ground.
“Aye, well. You can laugh. I was gonnae wear that tae the club thenight.”
Stevie heard them shouting again that evening, from behind the closed door of his bedroom.
Pride of bloody Drumchapel.
His Dad had been in it before Stevie was born, and now his Mum yelled about him going to practice again.
You never said.
Shouldnae have tae ask.
He started going on Sunday nights, and then there were no more camping trips.
Some days the yelling started at lunch. If Stevie’s Mum got angry enough, she’d slam the doors, run down the close and off down the road, and Stevie watched her go then, from the window in his bedroom, her red head bright against the tenements. He thought if she turned, she’d see him up there; his hair was the same as hers. Stevie watched her all the way down the hill, until she made the corner. She never looked back, but he knew where she was headed.
He went through the rooms then, looking for his Dad. One time Stevie found him on the sofa, white-faced and quiet. His Dad asked:
“She gone tae your Gran’s, aye?”
And Stevie nodded. His Gran said her door was always open. Stevie’s Dad told him: “I know whose side she’s on, but.”
He sat with his fists on his knees. Then he put his big hands up to hide his face, and Stevie didn’t know what to do then.
He wished his Mum had taken him with her. He didn’t know why she’d left him with his Dad. His Dad told him:
“She reckons I’ll have tae stay home now.”
Sometimes he did. He ran Stevie his bath and put him to bed.
“Warm enough, pal? Aye. Get tae sleep then.”
But sometimes he made their tea early and then they’d head off across the scheme, the opposite way to his Mum. Stevie knew they were headed to practice, and that she’d shout when she found out. She shouted about Shug especially.
He was the bandmaster, and he’d be round the back of the snooker club when they got there: tall, with his long arms folded, standing in the doorway like he’d been waiting hours. He had pale eyes and raw-boned fingers, and he shook hands with Stevie’s Dad first, before he looked at Stevie:
“You with us this week, aye? You can make yoursel useful.”
Shug laughed when he said it, but it didn’t sound like he was joking, so Stevie did as he was told and put the chairs out. A half-circle for the flutes in the middle of the function room, so they had somewhere to sit in the breaks, and one to hold the bass drum too, in front of the stage. Stevie learned to do it fast, and right first time, leaving enough space for the snares to stand either side.
The drums were kept in lockers at the far end of the room, and if Stevie was quick about finishing the chairs, his Dad gave him the key, and let him carry his drum to the stage.
“Mind an be careful.”
It was an Andante, top notch, and it had sat locked up for years, but it cost four hundred new, near enough. Stevie knew that had come out of his Dad’s pocket; and his drumsticks too, that were hickory wood Dutharts. His Dad stood by the lockers, sorting out the best pair, resting them in his palms, testing them for weight. He said they had to balance, and he turned Stevie’s hands face up, laying one in each, so he could feel it.
“Naw, naw, son. Keep your wrists easy.”
But they were over a tenner a pop, so Stevie kept his thumbs gripped tight about them.
The function room had a bar at one end, and a stage, and the rest was just wide, white walls, with benches down the sides. It was a great, cold hangar of a place, but Shug said it suited him: big enough to make a good noise in. Once the drums were out, he went down the line of them on the stage, checking the skins, bending forwards and tapping with his fingertips. Stevie watched the way he put his ear up close, twisting the screws, tight, but not too tight: Shug said he wanted noise, but it had to be the right one. His hair was sandy, receding, and he kept it clipped, and Stevie could see his scalp creasing beneath the soft fuzz while Shug worked; all the fine blue veins between skull and skin, if he was close enough. Stevie mostly kept his distance, but he stood next to Shug when he tuned the drums up, so he could see the reddish sheen on his eyelids, when he got the tone right and he closed them; the soft line of his thick white lashes.
“It’s the music, aye?”
Shug wanted the whole band to love it like he did. And put in the hours to make it worth it, so no one was late if they could help it. He kept a fine box: an ice-cream carton with a slit cut in the lid, and come more than ten minutes after the door shut, you’d risk a ban.
“You cannae keep time, I’ve nae use for you. Fuck off hame.”
“Ach away and wank, Shug.”
Not all the bandsmen would have it, especially the older ones with families and jobs, reasons to be late sometimes. But some had been in other flute bands before, where the instruments were all third-hand and there’d been no uniform as such, so they were quick to put down any moaners.
Pride of Drumchapel marched in royal blue livery, made by Victor Stewart of Lurgan; Shug reckoned the best regalia came from Ulster. He chose gold braid and epaulettes and high caps too, with short black peaks that pointed straight down your nose. They made you walk with your chin up and your back straight so as to see the way ahead. Military bearing. Shug said the lodges the Pride played for got quality: sharp turnout and tunes, and no booze until the parade was done with. And he made sure the lodges came up with proper money for it. Discipline paid: for uniforms and banners, and trips to Belfast.
Stevie got to like it there, in among the men. Even if it made his Mum shout. Even if they could be merciless some nights, taking the piss; out of Stevie’s tiny bones, and how his Dad was big and thick. Everyone knew everyone, the long and the short of it, and they made jokes that Stevie didn’t get, but he knew his Dad should. About how Stevie looked like his Mum, a dead spit, and there was none of his Dad in him. They reached up and rapped at the side of his Dad’s head, if he was slow to laugh:
“Emdy there?”
“Naw. Lights is on, but.”
They patted his cheeks, that had gone all flushed.
It made Stevie want to ram his head into his Dad’s soft belly; the way he had no come-back, just an aye right, shrugging them off, like he wasn’t that bothered.
His Dad wasn’t quick with words, but Stevie knew he was good on the drum, better than anyone on the scheme, so he was always glad when Shug got his Dad to kick the practice off. With part of a drum salute, maybe, to get them all going, his right stick knocking, while the roll was kept up with his left.
He’d never done a full salute for the band yet. That took near-on five minutes, and he told Stevie he had to get it perfect first. It was the parts where he had to pick up a different beat that were the hardest, and on Sundays when they didn’t go to practice, Stevie listened to his Dad working on them at home in the evenings. While Stevie’s Mum wasn’t there to hear it.
Stevie watched him from the sofa; going over and over the same change on his drum pads, then stopping and going to the fridge, getting himself a fresh can, before he worked on the next.
Shug got hold of a video for him, of a World Solo Drumming Championship. It was folk who played with pipe bands, from Scotland and Canada and Northern Ireland, but Stevie’s Dad never bothered with all the bagpipes and talking at the start, he just wound through to the competition. He said Alex Duthart was the finest drummer ever, and he was dead now, but everyone still played his best salute. Stevie’s Dad learned it by watching it; not all the way through, but broken down into bits. Listen, rewind, listen, to all the different parts. He sat and played them over and over, knocking the remote against his thighs.
If Stevie kept quiet enough, his Dad would forget to put him to bed. He could stand and drum half the night on his pads, and Stevie could sit just as long and watch. Especially when his Dad knocked with both ends of the sticks, turning his hands over and back, over and back, so fast, and still keeping time.
It even worked on Stevie’s Mum. If she came home while he was playing, she didn’t shout, or even ask how Stevie was up on a school night. She didn’t come into the room either, but he saw her watching from the dark in the doorway; her eyes fixed on his Dad.
The Duthart was his showpiece, and if Shug didn’t get him to kick off a practice night with that, someone in the band would call for it, more often than not.
Stevie’s Dad’s heels lifted as he rocked, marching on the spot, keeping the rhythm, his chin and chest going out and back like a pigeon’s. But no one laughed. The band were all quiet, mindful of the skill, just like his Mum had been, and Stevie liked that. They all stared at his Dad’s hands, rapt, while the sticks flew and tapped, and his big face went soft and blank. Like it was just him there, and his drum.
When they were all playing was best, the full band, twenty-five of them, all of a piece. Stevie loved the music, the serious faces while the men played, and the thick foam his Dad let him slurp off his black pint after. They usually stayed for one, and Stevie’s Dad said he wasn’t to tell his Mum. Stevie never did; that wasn’t why she stopped him going. He told her something else he shouldn’t have about a practice night.
It was January and cold out, but Shug had the gas heaters roaring on the walls when they arrived. He’d been phoning round all week with reminders: it was the first practice back after Christmas, so spirits were high and attendance was near-on full that night, and the hall got hot with all those bodies. The first half was done and sweatshirts were coming off, fags being lit and trips being made to the bogs. Shug had gone straight through to the bar. No alcohol was allowed until practice was over, but playing was thirsty work, so he always poured pints of water and diluting orange at the break.
All the men were waiting, wondering how Shug was ages about the juice, when it was usually him that nagged about getting back to practice. Then he came back through with no glasses, just an edgy look about him. His face was shining, and most of the men were sweating, but Shug’s face was different; gone all tight, and his body too, like he might slap you if your playing wasn’t up to the mark. Everyone noticed the change, because no one moaned about being parched, or the heaters still blasting. They all just got on with playing “Derry’s Walls,” like Shug told them.
The half-circle of flutes had their backs to the door, and the drums were facing them, just like always. Stevie was on the end of the line, so he could see past the flutes, and he was the first to see the door open, and the man who came in to watch them. Jeans and blue T-shirt and balaclava. He walked into the big space between band and bar, and then he stood, wide-legged, head down, his hands folded, respectful: God bless the hands that broke the boom and saved the Apprentice Boys.
Come the end of the third verse most in the band had seen him. They were glancing over shoulders, and missing notes, but Shug made them finish before he told them:
“We have an honoured guest. He’s far from home and cannot return, but his cause is just. So let us make him welcome.”
Shug ordered “Hands Across the Water,” and there was a fair bit of shuffling before they started. But they did well, and the guest raised a palm when they got to the end, nodding his thanks. He never spoke, and he never took off the hood, but he listened all the way through the second half, sitting on one of the long benches at the wall, his arms spread out along the seat-back; rock-still, save a tapping finger. A couple of times he beckoned Shug over and whispered a request. They played “Fields of Ulster” for him and, a bit after that, “Absent Friends.” Stevie could see the hairs on Shug’s forearms, all on end, and the slow tide of sweat running down his neck. Doug and Harry were next along, both with wide, damp patches spreading downwards from their collars, and Stevie wondered if his Dad was the same, on the other end of the line, only he didn’t dare lean forward to look.
There were slick faces all around the half-circle in front of him; the men were blinking the stinging salt out of their eyes, but no one missed a beat to push at their slipping glasses. At ten o’clock Shug ordered the flutes to stand on the chairs, and the drums to surround them. They stood like that in silence, heads high for the stranger, and then they played The Sash for a full fifteen minutes and longer.
So they were late finishing, but the barman had already called the lock-in. Everyone stayed. It was just the band in the snooker club, sitting around the tables; a few bare-chested, Stevie’s Dad among them, his soaking T-shirt stuffed into his bag. Stevie sat next to him, and he could feel the heat off him, his skin and his jeans, his red ears. There were a lot of red ears round the tables; eyes down and stop-start conversations. Heads trying not to turn to the bar where Shug was talking with the guest. Or anyhow listening while the guest spoke, frowning serious, and then laughing at his jokes.
A bucket went round the room. Stevie had seen a bucket go round after practice before, collecting coins for sick kids or band funds, but there were no coins going in it this time, only notes, and Stevie saw his Dad tuck the fiver back into his pocket when the bucket came closer. He threw in a tenner: didn’t want his blue standing out against all the brown and purple.
“Who was that, Da?”
It was frosty outside when they left, and Stevie’s Dad pulled on his jacket over his bare shoulders, but he didn’t answer.
“Who was he?”
Stevie had to trot next to him up the long wind of the hill towards home. His Dad always walked fast when he was annoyed, and Stevie knew the question annoyed him, but it seemed worth knowing, so:
“Da?”
“I dinnae know his fuckiname, son. Kay?”
That was all he got.
So Stevie asked his Mum, the next day when she fetched him from school. He told her about the stranger and the bucket while they were climbing the stairs, and she stopped still on the second-floor landing, after she’d heard him out. She took a breath:
“Tell me. What was he wearing again, this man?”
Her eyes had gone sharp and dark, and then Stevie thought he’d got the word wrong; it was a strange word, and maybe it wasn’t called a balaclava at all. He said:
“A hood. Wae eyeholes, but. A black wan.”
“Bloody hell.”
She muttered it, pulling Stevie back down the stairs, down the road to his Gran’s. He wasn’t to ask more, Stevie knew that.
Brenda didn’t know what to say to Lindsey. When she showed up raging, pulling Stevie behind her, still in his school clothes. The boy looked at her, like this was all his fault, so Brenda gave him toast and jam, and plenty of it, and she sat him in front of the telly. She sat with him there a good few minutes, bracing herself before she went to the kitchen to listen to the girl.
It was the band, the band, the band, it always was now, coming between them. But this time it was worse, and Brenda got properly scared, thinking what Shug was up to, and what Lindsey might do now. She was scared for her son’s sake.
Brenda had long had her doubts, ever since Graham joined his first band, just shy of his thirteenth birthday. She’d seen three sons cross that Rubicon, and she’d been dreading another. Not that her older boys had been terrible. They always were a handful—so many, and so close together—but she and Malky had kept a firm grip, even through their teenage years; seen them through to the army, and fatherhood. The scheme had gone to the dogs, though, over those years, and by the time Graham was in secondary, even the good kids were doing mad stuff. Setting fires in closes, and mainlining sleeping pills; taking other people’s cars and doing handbrake turns in the sand traps on the golf course. Brenda knew good women who lived in fear, of phone calls in the small hours and visits from the police; of hearing what their feral boys had been up to this time. Then Malky’s cab got taken one night, and when the police found it two days later, a burnt wreck by the canal, it turned out their neighbour’s son was the culprit. Brenda wept about that, in the watches of the night, under the bedclothes, and it wasn’t just the shock of it, or the lost earnings; it was how the boy’s mother couldn’t look at her when they passed in the close. Brenda thought: there but for the grace ae God.
She’d steeled herself for Graham’s wild years, but they never came. He never stuck needles in his veins, or got himself hauled up in court on charges. A son in a flute band seemed like a blessing by comparison. Graham seemed happy enough with his once-weekly band practice and his drum pads. He even got Brenda to show him how to press his own uniform, and she remembered crying in bed again that night, only this time with gratitude.
It was Lindsey’s turn to cry now. She spent the afternoon in tears in Brenda’s kitchen, and Brenda stood with her thinking how Graham had a family now. Lindsey alone was worth more than any flute band, surely.
The girl didn’t want to go home to him this time, it didn’t matter what Brenda said. So Brenda took Lindsey’s keys and she was there when Graham got in from work.
“You’re no goin back tae practice.”
“How?”
“You bloody know why no. Don’t gie me that.”
She followed Graham through the flat, keeping on at him while he looked for Lindsey and his boy.
“You needn’t bother, son. They’re both at mine.”
Graham stopped where he was in Stevie’s bedroom. He didn’t look at her, he just sat down, heavy, the small bed sagging under his bulk, and the sight of him there put a halt to Brenda’s tirade.
She said:
“You’re a grown man, Graham. Sort ae. I cannae stop you, can I? You should listen tae Lindsey, but.”
She was from over there. And she’d just spent half the afternoon telling Brenda how she’d grown up with folk like Shug and you didn’t want them near you. One of her Dad’s pals had kept a safe house, for UVF shitebags who needed time out of Belfast. What if Shug kept one too? It didn’t bear thinking about. Lindsey thought she’d left all that behind, along with Tyrone and her bloody father. She told Brenda he got carried away with all that stuff, especially when he was in his cups: he’d have flung his week’s wages in that bucket, most likely, kept the mystery man in balaclavas for a couple of years at least.
Brenda asked:
“Who the bloody hell was he?”
“He wasnae emdy.”
Graham let out his breath, out of his depth on the duvet. His big shoulders gone slack, and his jaw. He rubbed his face and then he told her:
“It was just some stunt ae Shug’s. Tae bump up funds. He’s wantin new uniforms an we cannae afford them.”
Brenda was quiet a moment. She didn’t know much about Shug. Maybe Malky did. He heard all sorts in his cab: things that never made it into the papers, or only ages after the fact. How guns and men and malice passed back and forth between Ulster and this side of Scotland.
She was frightened again, and she could have done with Malky to steady her just then: he never got carried away. But neither did Graham, not as a rule; he was like his Dad that way. So Brenda sat down on the bed, next to her son, and then she said:
“Shug’ll get hissel hurt.”
“Ach Maw. Shug’s no stupit.”
Graham looked at her. And then he blinked:
“Aye, Okay. So mebbe he is. A heidbanger. Just playin, but.”
“If you say so.”
Brenda couldn’t think what else to say just then. She wished for Malky again, but he was out and driving. And then she thought of Papa Robert: what would he have said now to Graham?
He wouldn’t have approved. She knew that much.
Her Dad had been choosy about bands, careful who his lodge picked to play for them on the Walk. Papa Robert said folk got far more riled by the drums than they did by his ilk, for all their suits and sashes. He’d favoured the accordions, hymns to walk along with, and folk tunes. “The Sash” had counted as a hymn in his book, and “Rule, Britannia,” but he never allowed songs about the Troubles, reaching out hands to Loyalist gunmen, or cheeseburgers to Bobby Sands. He said it wasn’t dignified, and the Walk wasn’t done to provoke, it was a solemn occasion. Sobriety was a virtue, and one that Papa Robert thought worth taking literally. His lodge had been dry, the last dry one on Drumchapel, and though he’d let Brenda’s mother use brandy in the Christmas cake, even administering the spoonfuls, once that was in the oven he’d stood with her at the sink, grave, ceremonious, while she poured away all that was left of the quarter-bottle.
Brenda sat with Graham on Stevie’s bed, thinking it was rare that she wished for her father, but she did just now. Papa Robert would have been hurt by this, that was his strong suit, and he could lick his wounds longer than anyone she knew. But he’d have got Graham to listen, too. Her father was born the year of the Easter Rising, and he’d been formed in the cruel civil war that came after. Brenda didn’t like to think of the vicious things he’d seen, but she reckoned her boy could do with being told, by someone who knew first-hand: Graham hadn’t the first idea what he was dealing with.
Just a stunt, Maw. Half the band probably wanted it to be real, and Shug would know that fine well. A living, breathing paramilitary taking a short break from the struggle to listen to their music. He was gifting them a thrill, Brenda thought; getting them closer to the dark heart, but not close enough to harm. Only she wasn’t sure enough of Shug, so the thought didn’t give her much ease.
“Lindsey’s right, son. You’re tae keep away fae him.”