Authors: Cathy MacPhail
Mungo opened the cupboard by the fireplace, and took out a cardboard box. ‘Here.’ He handed the box to Col. ‘You’ve always wanted one of these.’
Col put the box on the coffee table and ripped it open. He gasped. It was a full CD unit, the latest state of the art, the best he had ever seen.
He gazed at Mungo in amazement.
‘I told you I’d pay you back for giving me an alibi, didn’t I?’ Mungo said.
‘You bought this for me?’
Mungo hesitated, then he grinned. ‘Maybe not exactly
bought
—’
His mother had come back into the living room and caught the last words. She put her hands over her ears. ‘Oh, no. I don’t want to hear this. You up to your old tricks, Mungo?’
But she was laughing, as if it was only her mischievous son at it again.
Col laughed too. He didn’t care where the unit had come from. If someone was stupid enough to get burgled, then they deserved all they got.
Thelma Blaikie was leaning against the school wall, waiting for Col when he went back to school the following Monday. Pretending she wasn’t, of course. She was chewing gum, studying her red-painted nails, her black eyes not even looking his way as he moved towards her. He tried to walk past her.
‘Ooo, it’s
my hero
,’ she said.
Col stopped. ‘I’m nobody’s hero. OK?’
Blaikie blew a bubble. ‘Come on, McCann. Front page of the papers and everything.’ She smiled. Her teeth looked grey against her too-white face. ‘All you need to do now is start wearing your Y-fronts over tights and you really will be Superman.’
Even Col managed a smile at that. ‘I do that anyway, Blaikie,’ he said, moving away before she could think of a smart answer.
But there
was
something different in the way she spoke to him. As if ever-so-cool Blaikie really was impressed.
It was the same in his classes. His first was Mathematics, and Mrs Holden surprised him more than anyone else.
‘We’d like to welcome you back, Col,’ she said, when the class had filed in and taken their places.
He glared at her for a second, sure she was taking the mickey. She certainly wasn’t smiling. Her face was as grim as it had ever been.
‘That was a very brave thing you did,’ she went on. ‘Someone is alive now, because of
you
.’
A picture of Dominic sprang up before him. Bright, energetic Dominic – all that life still there, because of him?
‘You almost died yourself, and yet … here you are, still alive. You must be here for a reason. You have made a difference. You have changed the world. That boy may go on to be a great doctor, or a great inventor. To do great things, all thanks to you.’ She smiled, a very tight-lipped smile, as if she just wasn’t used to it. ‘Did you ever see a film called …
It’s a Wonderful Life
?’
Col slunk down in his chair. He shook his head.
Suddenly, Asim waved his hand wildly. ‘I’ve seen it, Miss. I’ve seen it.’ Without waiting he immediately launched into a potted version of the plot. ‘It’s about this guy, see, who wishes he was dead, because he’s a real loser and then, when he is dead he meets an angel and this angel shows him what might have happened if he’d never been born … and he had actually saved his brother’s life and his brother would have died if he hadn’t been there, and his brother went on to save people’s lives as well, so he wasn’t that much of a loser after all.’ He took a breath. ‘Then he wasn’t really dead anyway …’ his voice trailed off. He looked at Mrs Holden. ‘Mind you, it was a rubbish angel, Miss. He didn’t have wings or anything.’
Mrs Holden looked stunned.
‘Sounds really interesting …’ Col said sarcastically.
‘It is a very good résumé of the plot, Asim,’ Mrs Holden said, ‘and put very succinctly.’
Asim looked puzzled. Not sure what she was talking about or whether she had insulted him or not. Mrs Holden turned her attention back to Col. ‘But, like the man in the film, what you have done has changed the world.’
And there it was in her tone, the same tone Col had
heard in Blaikie’s. Admiration.
Paul Baxter got to his feet. Paul Baxter, the cleverest boy in school. French, English, Mathematics. He was as good at one as he was at the other. He and Col had hardly broken breath to one another since their first day at school.
‘Can I ask Col something, Mrs Holden?’
‘Well, of course, Paul. What would you like to ask?’
Col steeled himself. Something sarcastic probably.
Confidently, Paul turned to Col. ‘What made you do it?’ he asked. ‘Because, honestly, I don’t think I could ever be that brave.’ And he actually looked as if he meant it.
Mrs Holden looked at Col – the whole class did – waiting for his answer.
Col didn’t stand up. He slunk even further down in his seat, fiddled with his pencils, tried to think of an answer. ‘I wasn’t going to at first,’ he began. ‘It was his own fault. He’d broken the ice himself. I’d watched him banging down a boulder on to it. I heard the ice crack, but I didn’t know that’s what it was … not until I saw him kind of … dancing on the ice, sliding into the water. And even then I still thought,
tough. It’s your own fault.
’
Col was remembering the icy fog, the stillness, the
cold. ‘But he kept shouting for his mam, shouting for somebody to help him and … there was only me. I didn’t even think. Before I knew it, I was running, knowing I couldn’t let him die and that I had to help him.’ His voice wavered. ‘I’ll never really understand why …’
He stopped, embarrassed, sure they were all going to laugh at him. But no one did. They were all silent, watching him. Finally, Paul said, ‘I think that’s brilliant.’
And again, there was real admiration in his voice.
Suddenly, the whole class was talking and laughing and asking questions. Col was the centre of everyone’s attention.
As they were filing out at the end of the lesson Mrs Holden called him back. ‘I know we’ve never really got on, but I want you to know how much I applaud what you did, Col. I never thought—’ she hesitated, realising what she was just about to say.
Col finished it for her. ‘You never thought a McCann would do anything decent.’
She blushed, but she held his gaze. ‘Does it not make you feel good?’
Col remembered Bobby Grant’s words ‘To be on the side of the good guys.’
He wanted to get angry at her, but he couldn’t.
Because she was right. He did feel good. ‘Better get to my next class,’ he said. And then he smiled.
He smiled at Mrs Holden!
‘Us good guys are never late.’
And to his utter surprise, Mrs Holden laughed.
Denny was waiting for him in the corridor. ‘Hey, I don’t believe it. Was Mrs Holden actually being nice to you?’
Col laughed. ‘Sure was.’ He didn’t add the even more surprising fact … that he was being nice to her.
A few days later Col went back to the loch. Couldn’t for the life of him understand why. Mungo had warned him over and over not to go back there – and he certainly didn’t want to antagonise Mungo. But even stranger than that was the fact that
he
didn’t want to go there. He was frightened to be here. Yet, here he was.
There was still ice on the loch, the weather was as cold as it had been that awful day. He could have gone home after school and sat by the fire listening to his new CD player. Yet, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, he walked past his street, up through the estate to the hills and the loch that lay nestled in the valley beyond.
It was beautiful up here. He had always thought so. Beautiful and eerily quiet with dusk falling and the lights of the town twinkling beyond the valley.
Col found himself standing exactly where he had stood that day, watching Dominic jump up and down on the ice. The ice was still broken, and the loch looked strangely peaceful. Would it look as calm, as peaceful, if he had been lying, floating like the reeds, deep down in that icy water? And, suddenly, in spite of the cold he began to sweat. The memory was too much for him to hold in his head. He wanted it away.
Bad idea coming here, boy, he told himself.
‘Remembering?’
The voice, so close to his ear, made him jump. He turned so quickly he stumbled and almost fell.
‘Sorry. Did I frighten you?’
It was Klaus, the young man who had come to see him in hospital.
‘What are you doing here? Did you follow me?’
Klaus shook his head. He badly needed a haircut, Col noticed, and a good wash. ‘No. I saw you, I wanted to thank you. You did not tell anyone about me. You did not tell your brother?’
Col snapped at him, ‘How do you know so much about my family?’
Klaus shrugged. ‘Everyone knows about the McCanns. Especially about your brother.’
‘But you’re not from round here. You’re foreign, ain’t ye?’
‘I’m Latvian,’ Klaus said simply. ‘I have been living here for a while, but I am not supposed to be here.’
‘What do you mean? Here … at the loch? Here … in this town?’
Klaus smiled. ‘No. Here in this country. I was … what do you call them?’
Col knew what Mungo called them. ‘Dirty illegal immigrants, them and asylum seekers. Bleedin’ this country dry. They should all get chucked back to where they belong.’
‘You’re an illegal immigrant?’
Mungo and his mates made life hell for the asylum seekers on a nearby estate. What would he do if he found out that an illegal immigrant was up here, alone? An illegal immigrant with no protection at all from the police? The thought made Col shiver.
‘I paid a lot of money to come to Britain,’ Klaus went on. ‘Everything I had. Transported in a crowded, dirty lorry with so many others. I was promised work. Peace too. So much poverty in my country. In my village, I have a mother, sisters. I came to find work.’
‘But why Scotland? Why here?’
Klaus crouched down and began picking at the icy ferns. ‘When we arrived it was up to every one of us to find somewhere to live, to hide, a place where we could disappear. Most of my comrades stayed in English towns. They thought I was mad to come here. I thought there might be others here in this town, like me, illegal immigrants. But no … I am the only one from Latvia. I stayed here because Scotland with its mountains and its lochs seemed so much like my own country. I thought, even alone, I would not be so homesick here.’
‘You look pretty sick to me, Klaus, son,’ Col said, suddenly feeling sorry for the young man in front of him. The feeling took him by surprise. He had always been like Mungo, hating them. He had always taken his lead from his brother.
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Col was puzzled. ‘You’re taking a chance. If I told my brother about you, he would bring his mates up here. They don’t like your kind. Boy, you would be sorry.’
Klaus looked at Col for a long time. His eyes were a muddy blue and he didn’t blink – not once. ‘I don’t think you will. I trust you.’
Here was another first for Col. Someone actually trusted him.
‘I came here thinking I would find friends, someone to help me. Instead, I found only violence and hate. Just like at home.’ Klaus almost smiled when he said that. ‘I had lost all hope. I could find hardly any work, only odd jobs with the farmers around here. Always waiting for the police to find me, always hiding. I had had enough. I have wanted to go back home for so long.’ He closed his eyes. For a second Col thought he might be about to cry. Please, don’t let him cry, he thought. He wouldn’t know how to handle that.
But Klaus didn’t cry. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open and he looked at Col and said with real fervour, ‘I still want to go back home, but I don’t know how. I can’t trust anyone. When you ran into that icy water and you saved the little boy, you risked your life. You gave me back my hope, Col, that there is still decency somewhere. I know I can trust you.’
Col’s breath clouded the cold air in nervous bursts.
He’d
done that?
‘You’ve come across Mungo before. That’s how you know about us.’ Col knew it suddenly. Mungo and his mates roaming the area, ready to do battle with anyone who was different. Klaus the foreigner would fit that perfectly.
‘I had been warned to watch out for him. Yes,’ he answered softly.
‘How do you live?’ Col asked, trying to imagine how it would be with no friends, no money, no food.
Klaus seemed to take a long time to answer.
‘Some of the farmers around here give me work, no questions asked. I sleep anywhere.’ He gestured across the loch. ‘The old air-raid shelters around there are good hiding places.’
‘You live there?’ Col screwed up his face in disgust. The old wartime shelters, embedded in the moorland, where the townspeople used to take shelter during the Blitz, were manky, smelly places. ‘You better be careful. Everybody knows about them. They’ll find you eventually.’
Klaus smiled. His teeth were small and white and even, except the front ones were broken. Not many dentists in Latvia. Not a lot of time to think about your teeth, Col supposed. ‘I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.’
Col stood up to go. ‘I’m not worried. You’re not my problem.’
Klaus only smiled again. ‘You know, maybe that day you didn’t just save Dominic’s life. Maybe you were sent to help me too.’
* * *
Col wandered home in the icy darkness. He’d never go back to the loch again, he decided. He knew he couldn’t. Not with Klaus there. If Mungo ever discovered there was an illegal immigrant sleeping rough there, Col didn’t even want to think about what he would do.
In that moment he knew Klaus was right. He wouldn’t tell his brother about him. It wouldn’t be a lie. He would never lie to his brother. He’d only hold it back, for Mungo’s own good. Mungo would only get himself into trouble if he knew.
At least, he told himself that was the reason.
Mrs Macann, who lived down the street from Col, was opening her front door as he passed.
His family didn’t talk to the Macanns. They were no relation, the names were not even spelt the same, but Mrs Macann and Col’s mother had more than one stormy argument because of that. Mrs Macann had even removed the nameplate from her door because of the number of visits the police made to her house thinking she was ‘one of them McCanns’. Consequently, there was a long-time feud between the two families. And Mungo took every opportunity of breaking the odd
window in her house, scraping keys across her car as it stood parked at their front door, of doing any irritating little thing he could think of to ensure the bad feeling remained.