Two months passed with their requisite ups and downs. The ratio of làn to beathachadh to assorted bad-sad feelings was comfortable enough. Làn was exceedingly rare, but when it did happen, its effects flowed deep and far. The rest was fundamental in building her being-house. Foundation, grouting.
When, two months after she got her guitar, Euna woke in the middle of the night completely soaked, she could not have known she was headed toward the highest moment of làn her life had, to that point, offered. Aileen’s péire was in her lap, and, pulling back and flipping on the overhead lamp, she saw that Aileen’s striped nightshirt was wet. Euna poked her awake. Mè bheag, she said, I think it’s happening.
Aileen reached a hand back to feel her nightshirt. Well, shite, she said. I need to get to a hospital.
Euna helped Aileen to sit upright, no simple task, given how swollen and top-heavy she had become. Muireall straightened up from her cot, where she had been sleeping before Euna turned on the overhead lamp, and came to sit between the two women. She clapped her hand onto Aileen’s far shoulder. Hey, kiddo, she said. This is why some civilized folks go for check-ups when they’re pregnant. To avoid nasty surprises.
Shut up, you stupid bawbag, Aileen snapped. Euna felt a bit of a chill. For a minister’s daughter, the girl sure had a filthy mouth.
Muireall stroked Aileen’s cheeks. They were at this point in the pregnancy dappled with acne, and Muireall was careful as she touched each pink mark. She said, You know what, I was asking for that. Euna, make sure she’s comfortable. I’ll get us to the hospital.
She went to the driver’s seat and buckled herself in tightly. The radio was still broken, so Muireall started to sing her favourite driving tune, ‘Flower of Scotland’. She had taught it to Euna, who joined in, though this earned her a bladed glare from Aileen. Muireall pulled out of the greengrocer’s car park, where they had established for themselves a pleasant little setting – a lawn of primroses poking through the concrete, a few blue tits as pets – and burned down a series of roads en route to the university hospital. She parked illegally across two doctors’ spots and, with a twinkle over her shoulder, said, Off with you. Aileen, do you have identification?
Yes’m, she said. But aren’t you coming with us?
Oh no. I don’t do well in these places.
I need you, Aileen said. I’m scared.
Muireall paused to consider the girl’s plea. Something was clearly drawing her away from the hospital, while Aileen’s call for help was binding her. Euna could not bear to see that tension. Muireall needed to know she could come and go as she pleased; that anyone should hold her against her will, even Aileen, was too much for Euna to tolerate. So, against her nature, Euna interfered. Don’t go too far, hey, she said. We’ll look for you here when we have a happy baby in tow.
Okay, Muireall said. She sounded relieved. You know, one of these days I’m going to buy you a phone.
As long as you pay for it, Euna said. Which was not actually much of a joke, considering Muireall paid for all they did, going to museums, eating chips and cod, with her furtive cash-stream.
You know I will, you cheeky brat, Muireall said.
Aileen was by then gritting her teeth, so Euna gripped her waist and helped her down the high camper stairs. She strapped her guitar onto her own back, sure she would have some downtime to practise while Aileen was birthing the child. She said a rushed blessing to Muireall and closed the door. Outside it was raining, romantic. Euna longed for string music. She helped Aileen into the hospital, a tall, four-winged erection, all colourful and modern. Where Cala had been full of cobwebs, literal and figurative, of stinky books and knickknacks and vintage tincture bottles, everything here was minimal and new, chosen partly for its clean aesthetic. Get me some fecking painkillers, Aileen barked.
Euna took her by the crook of her arm to a reception desk and, drawing great attention to Aileen’s belly and damp nightshirt, had her transferred straight away to a bed in the maternity wing. Euna asked the nurse for painkillers, flat ginger ale, gossip magazines. She knew what she had witnessed in the passion and dissolution of Grace and Muireall’s relationship – from that she had tried to collage an image of loving: tea, touch, bounty, stories, then potions, silence, abstention. So she helped Aileen to fluff her pillows and braid her hair, and then, fearing she had made herself a wee bit too available, reclined in a chair on the far side of the room’s gossamer screen.
On that far side was another woman set to enter into labour. She was nearing middle age, and she looked like some of the troubled residents of Castlemilk, anaemic, malnourished. The nurse came back to deal Aileen her magazines and soda, and to sedate her, as she had demanded they do. On his beeline to Aileen, he slighted the other woman. She did not cry out to him, nor did she press her call button after he had left. And so she stayed where she was in bed, sweating like a kettle about to shrill, invisible.
She gave Euna a look she could not quite parse. She sensed this woman was being judicious with her silence. At times when Muireall was clutching the ruler back at Cala, Euna would latch her lips, locking the voice inside. She had not started off doing that. But after a while she had learned.
The woman refused to break her look. It was awful to have those eyes on her, as if Euna were complicit in something monstrous that she could not possibly understand. Or worse, that she could understand if she risked burning down the life she had just started to build. There was something under the woman’s irises, imprecise and prickly, and it linked to the lack Euna had seen in Possilpark, and before that to the kids running around in Bucksburn, mucky and scraped, knees too large for their skinny, unfed legs, and for that matter, to the desperate mam at Dungavel.
After a while of being watched, Euna went back to Aileen, who was young, and moneyed, and beautifully drugged. She was sleeping deeply on the white sheets, bleached as they had been to hide other patients’ stains. Euna curled up beside her and laced their fingers together, singing a lullaby into her creamy ear. When she was ready to join Aileen in dreamlain, she pulled the shared blanket over their bodies. There they were warm and far from harm. There they were insulated from the things they did not understand.
*
A full day later, on the first of October, Aileen gave birth to a tiny blue thing, a ghoulish boy. Euna counted back the months to when the girl had first climbed through the Cala window, showing her swell, and gathered that the child was premature by about two weeks. This seemed significant. This seemed like something Euna could have helped to prevent, had she nourished Aileen properly. But there was no room for shame now. The boy deserved a better welcome.
Aileen was recovering in the maternity wing. Euna did not want to be there any longer, not as long as that distressing woman was sharing Aileen’s room and the baby, so small and so blue, was in an incubator nearby. She went outside. She sat on a bench in front of the hospital with her guitar on her back and waited for Muireall to return. It was still raining, and Euna only had on her tunic, her plain, cotton trousers, and a pair of slip-ons Muireall had bought her on a solo jaunt downtown. Euna was getting soaked, her collarbones cold, nearly iced. And yet there was a looseness in her not fussing, in her simply sitting there and letting the clouds clean house. She held her tongue flat and took in a mouthful of the water. She had been too tuned to Aileen’s needs to ask the nurse for a drink for herself, and besides, she had got quite good at standing thirst.
By some miracle, Muireall did show up, some time later. Her face was noticeably bruised. She started at every sound, starling or car alarm, and her eyes darted from place to place. Aileen’s newborn baby had that same energy, raw-nerved, verging on panicky. What happened? Euna asked.
Muireall said, Some caveman just robbed me at work.
Rain filled in the frown lines of her face. Red lipstick was caked across her cupid’s bow. It was only in seeing this compromised version of her that Euna understood how much she had come to rely on Muireall’s starch and stability. She was an adult in a world of halted children. Euna put her hand on her friend’s shoulder and rubbed it gently. I know first aid, she said, if that would help.
You don’t understand, Muireall said. He’s taken the camper.
She was right that Euna did not understand. You told me it happened at work, she said.
Muireall lifted her nose in order to look down it. I don’t know why you’re so thick, she said. But since you don’t seem to have it figured out yet, I work in the camper. I sleep with men for money.
Euna had learned to sort intent, as a way to maintain faith, and Muireall’s intent had never been to hurt her. Right now, she was just scared, and so she was using the mouth of her worst self. Euna did not want to do the same, so she stayed quiet.
Remember the drunk when we first got to Glasgow? Muireall asked. He’s a client. He’s the one who took the camper.
You left me alone with him that first day.
I had to go out. I locked the door. Better that you knew the threat, or better that you took your shower in peace?
Euna considered the question.
Anyway, you had the mattock, Muireall said. I’ve chopped off a wandering finger or two.
One thing had just become clear to Euna. Muireall worked, day after day, to be as poised as she was, to build a loving and lived-in camper realm, and to fill it with food and kin. It was not some act of magic. It had taken sweat and forfeit, and now blood. Euna wanted to ease Muireall’s burden, even as she wanted everything to go back to how it had been, before this man had stolen their home.
Aileen had our baby, Euna said. He’s not looking too hot yet, but I think he’ll fill out nicely.
Muireall inhaled. She seemed to be straining to contain a whole mess of sentiments, or sounds, or tensions. Surely a person could not hold all that inside without becoming a cloud eventually, dimming, dumping down a skyful of rain. She took Euna’s hands into hers, which were cold and quivering. I’m so happy to hear that, lamb, she said, word by pinched word. How’s Aileen doing?
She’s tired, Euna said. Like, tired as hell. But you know her. She’s been insisting on the best pillows and painkillers.
Muireall clutched Euna’s hands more forcefully now, crushing their finest bones. Where are we going to take them? she asked. She sounded desperate.
Anyone else would abandon us now, Muireall. You said it yourself, people split all the time. You don’t have to make this your problem.
I never told you this, Muireall said, because I wanted you to like me. But I lost a child years ago at this same hospital.
Why would that have made me dislike her? Euna wondered. But then, Euna had withheld her own story for the same reason. She approached Muireall, very slowly, as she used to approach the most skittish horses. I can’t imagine how much you’ve suffered, Euna said.
Muireall was crying now. I was eighteen and out on a long tour, she said. I never slept. Drank too much. The boy would have been your age by now.
I see why you didn’t want to come in with us, Euna said.
You girls deserve a good life, Muireall said. As does the child.
Euna stood with the cold wind mincing her skin. The way ahead looked sick and dark. I have no idea how to make that happen, she said.
Nothing in my life is free, Euna’s mother used to say. That must have been it. Maybe she had reasons to get rubbered. She used to throw things at Euna’s father, New Testaments, collection plates. Maybe he had reasons to moor their lives with scripture. Euna was a mother now, a kind of mother, anyway, and though she could not redo her own childhood, she could do everything in and out of her control to make the newborn’s right the first time around.
She held Muireall close, while the woman cried from some ancient place inside. Euna plumbed her own body to that same depth, to find the place from which courage would certainly come. And between her ribs she did find the muck, the heartbreak. Let that be the origin, she thought. Let that be the aolach, the rain the rain, and let a new, young world sprout from so much shit and hardship. In the middle distance, Euna saw a nurse wheel Aileen to the hospital exit, a snugly wrapped infant in her lap. The parcel was hardly larger than her two hands. She looked flyblown, her skin blotched and her hair dirtied, but her air was rather serene.
Euna waved. The nurse rolled Aileen over to them and helped her to stand before heading back into the hospital. Isn’t he a bit small to be sent out already? Euna asked, once the nurse had gone. Surely he’d do well with a few more days in the incubator.
Aileen said, There’s no space for us. If he were sicker, they’d make room for him.
So they’re sending him out before he’s fully cooked? Muireall asked.
Aileen laughed. Then she noticed the tears on Muireall’s face. Awright? she asked.
Awright, Muireall said.
Euna put her arm around Muireall’s shoulders and gestured to Aileen with a wink of the neck. Euna started to walk north, in the direction of the River Clyde, and the other women followed her.
Hey, Aileen said a few minutes later, why’d you park the camper so far? You have no idea how much my tits weigh.
Here’s the thing, Muireall said.
Euna said, We’ve had a bit of misfortune.
Aileen rolled her eyes. You’ve got to be feckin’ kidding.
Their squad pushed ahead through a miserable airstream. Euna dreamed they were back in the Hebrides, where such foul weather could be mythicized, spun into song and story. Head in the mist, she whistled a tune that came to her, an abstract one full of sharps and flats. She knew their route was both far and uncertain. She knew, likewise, they could survive an epic trek. They were too odd and obstinate to give in to despair. And besides, when Aileen grew tired, Euna would take the baby into her own arms.