Flesh Wounds (18 page)

She parked the Civic in front of the house and walked to the front gate. The grass was in need of a cut, but not so much as to necessarily indicate neglect.

Jasmine climbed the outside stairs at the side of the building, wondering whether the ascent gave Josie problems these days. Before she reached the top, the door opened and her auntie was standing there with a huge grin. She looked absolutely fine, and Jasmine hurried up the last few steps impatient to hug her, relief opening the floodgates to a slew of other emotions. She was unable to prevent a few tears.

‘Goodness, Jasmine, it’s not
that
long since you last saw me,’ Josie chided. Her voice was a little hoarse, but she didn’t sound as though it was such a struggle to speak.

‘I’m sorry,’ she confessed. ‘You didn’t sound so good on the phone, and I was worried you might be in a bad way.’

‘Och, it’s nothing. I had a bad cold, but I’m on the mend. Come on inside.’

The flat seemed smaller than Jasmine remembered, mainly because most of those memories had been compiled when she was half the size. The effect now was to further emphasise how impeccably neat the place was, so much detail and variety squeezed into a tiny living room without it feeling cluttered. It was much as she remembered it, including the smell of pot pourri. The only marked differences were a DVD player beneath a flat-screen telly, and a picture of Fran on the mantelpiece.

Fran appeared in other photos on the walls, usually standing next to Josie. Jasmine remembered them being referred to collectively by family as Francie and Josie, after Rikki Fulton and Jack Milroy’s legendary music-hall characters, something they tolerated with good humour. Individually, however, Fran was always just Fran, though it was usually prefaced with ‘Josie’s friend’.

It had only been after Fran’s funeral that Jasmine deduced why this preface often sounded awkward in the mouths of relatives. She recalled being given Fran’s room when she stayed with them, and wondering why there was little in it that suggested the personality of its occupant, in such contrast to the bloom of colour and vibrancy in Josie’s bedroom. Furthermore, it had always struck her as unfair that her auntie had a double bed compared to Fran’s single, not to mention a TV as well as all the nice cushions and knick-knacks.

‘I saw you pulling up,’ Josie said. ‘That’s a smashing car you’ve got. You must be doing very well.’

‘Busy, though. That’s why it’s taken me so long to get in touch. Sorry. Excuses, excuses. What happened to your wee car?’

Josie used to have an old-model VW Beetle, the longevity of which played a large part in inspiring Jasmine’s determination to keep her mum’s early-nineties Civic running despite boasting hardly any of its original parts by the time of its fiery end.

Josie sighed.

‘I just lost a wee bit of confidence. Had a couple of near things and didn’t trust my eyesight the way I used to. I often regret it though. I’m sure I’d still be a far safer driver than half the headbangers on the road today.’

Jasmine doubted it. Josie had always been a terrifying driver. She used to boast that she’d never had an accident, to which her mum would respond under her breath, ‘Aye, but she’s seen dozens in her rear-view mirror.’

‘I make the most of my bus pass, but I miss the simplicity of my car. There’s places I haven’t been in years because it would just be too complicated.’

Wheels began turning in Jasmine’s head, an idea beginning to appeal. It struck her that she would feel better about the mercenary element of her visit if she was also doing Josie a favour. It also might incline her great aunt to open up more if she wasn’t stuck in her living room. It was a place where she would still see Jasmine as a seven-year-old, the temporary custody of whom always came with certain caveats regarding what she was and wasn’t allowed to talk about.

‘Like New Lanark, for instance?’ Jasmine asked with an inviting smile.

‘Och, don’t be daft. I thought you were coming by for a quick cuppa. You must have things to do.’

All of which sounded a lot like ‘That would be lovely.’

Josie had taken Jasmine to this place a couple of times when she was wee, so it seemed appropriate she should reciprocate now that Jasmine was the one with wheels and a licence.

‘So, I get the impression business is booming, but how are you doing?’ Josie asked, as they descended from the car park at a leisurely stroll. They had traded plenty of small talk and catch-up blether on the drive down, so Jasmine knew this was a specific and genuine enquiry.

‘I’m okay,’ she replied.

Josie nodded, understanding plenty from one word. She guessed Josie was okay too, in the same way, and that Josie could also make the following statement, verbatim, while talking about someone else.

‘I miss her every day. I’m coping, I’m doing all right, but there’s nothing in my life that wouldn’t be better if she was still here.’

Josie didn’t say anything; didn’t need to. They both knew she understood.

‘Perhaps the hardest part is realising I know so little about her. She had this whole life before I came along that nobody would ever talk to me about.’

They were approaching the rear of Robert Owen’s house, a place where the whole world had once turned for the better, even if most people didn’t know how.

Josie halted and regarded Jasmine with the look her relatives always gave whenever she attempted to broach this subject: pitying and regretful, but bound by oath.

‘Your mum was always afraid of what might happen if you went looking for your father.’

‘I’m not looking for my father, though,’ Jasmine replied plaintively. ‘I’m looking for my mother.’

The distant crash of the falls upstream was like the constant hum of an air conditioner in the background. It made all their words sound soft.

‘I’m not afraid of hearing something I might not like. I’ve heard enough eulogies. I want to know everything about her, because these fragments are all I have left. I’d rather know her for
all
she really was than merely accept a version that’s been deemed fit for public consumption. Surely you must understand that.’

Josie seemed a little rattled by her last remark, and in that moment Jasmine realised that this may well have been the first time anybody in the family had pushed her to acknowledge the truth about her and Fran. That was family for you: Josie may well have been ‘out’ in other circles but, for her or Fran’s own private reasons, remained content to leave the issue politely untouched among her relatives.

Josie breathed deeply and cast a thoughtful glance over the buildings below.

‘Tell you what,’ she said, fixing Jasmine with a penetrating eye. ‘Let’s not go into the mills. Seeing as I’m here, I feel like taking a wee wander along to Corra Linn.’

They took a left past the schoolhouse, where a younger Jasmine had been allowed to write on a slate and glimpse what childhood looked like in the nineteenth century, and continued along the wooden boardwalk skirting the banks of the Clyde.

‘What do you remember about Bruce, your grandfather?’ Josie asked.

Jasmine felt a shock of apprehension. She had been steeled to hear all about her mum being caught up with villains, but with Josie’s question she suddenly imagined a door opening to stories of abuse and realised she wasn’t quite as ready as she assumed to hear every harsh truth. Especially as Granda had been a sweet old thing with a soft and cheerful voice, one of the few men in her early life and therefore all the more cherished for it.

‘He died when I was six,’ she said. ‘So all I’ve got is impressions. He was nice. I didn’t see him often. I don’t think he ever kept very well.’

‘Bruce had too gentle a soul for the time and the place he was born into,’ said Josie, fondness and pity in her expression.

‘What did he do? For a living, I mean.’

‘Well, for a living…’ the question seemed to give Josie a moment’s pause. ‘He was a painter.’

‘An artist?’

‘No, though he had his gifts that way. He was a painter and decorator: always his fall-back. He was very good, though, the steadiest hands you’ve ever seen. He could gloss your whole house and never a single drip.’

Jasmine thought of the steady hands she was complimented on at the shooting range, and wondered whether they were an inheritance. She hadn’t been left much else by that generation.

‘What was my grandmother like? She died before I was born, and my mum seldom talked about her.’

‘She was actually Bruce’s second wife,’ Josie replied. ‘His first wife, Maria, died in childbirth. The baby died too. He met Elizabeth some years later. She was an actress. There you go: a family profession. Or rather, she
had
been an actress. She was in her thirties by the time Bruce met her, and I think she had a bit of a past. She was still a looker, but already fading and she knew it. It had been a while since she had trodden the boards, but she had a lovely singing voice. That’s how they met: Bruce was a talented pianist, and he became her accompanist.’

Josie took hold of Jasmine’s arm. They had reached a tight bend in the boardwalk, where the waters were quite high alongside, though Jasmine was not sure whether that was the real reason Josie was hanging on right then.

‘She never loved him,’ she said calmly, though she sounded like she was reining in her true emotions. ‘He couldn’t see it. Well, he could see it, but he thought he could change it. Always the dreamer. He was a good ten years older and worshipped her, but she just saw him as her consolation prize.’

‘Is this the part where you say that they had a baby because they thought it would bring them closer together?’

‘I don’t imagine it was something that either of them thought through. It just happened. And as you anticipated, it didn’t serve to change Elizabeth; not for the better, anyway. The poor thing endured what would these days have been identified straight off as severe post-natal depression. Back then, though, everybody just thought she wasn’t fit for motherhood. And of course it didn’t help that Bruce was always skint.

‘That’s why they ended up in Croftbank, which was a rough area even then. He did his best, but the harsh truth is that Elizabeth was drinking the money as soon as it came in. She had a bit of a drink problem even before she met Bruce, but everything got worse after Yvonne was born. She never got over her depression, and she didn’t really bond with the baby. She came to see Yvonne as representing a life she didn’t want, and a different life she had lost. That was why your mum was so determined to give you all of the love her mother never gave her.’

They had reached the hydroelectric power station. The falls of Corra Linn were just a few more minutes’ walk ahead. Jasmine stared up at the twin pipes that ran down the side of the hill, and could sense the vibration thrumming through them. Or perhaps she only imagined she could sense it. Perhaps it was she who was thrumming as the deluge flooded through her.

‘She never told me a hint of this. Not even that her mother was an actress. She said she was a housewife.’

‘Technically, she was, but not much of one. Bruce doted upon Yvonne, of course, but it can’t have been an easy house to grow up in, and they certainly weren’t easy streets to grow up on either. You’ll maybe have heard your relatives talking about how Yvonne “fell in with a bad crowd”, but I don’t think any of us has a clue about the truth of that. I think she just did what she had to in order to get by, and part of that was staying out of the house because it wasn’t a pleasant environment.’

‘I was given the impression that it was when she was older that she got mixed up with some bad people. You know, when she was a drama student and after that.’

‘No, I think these were people she grew up around. I know that Bruce became very concerned about her during her teen years. She always had money, for instance, and Bruce was worried about where she was getting it: it certainly wasn’t coming from him. It must have been hard to rein in a daughter’s excesses while one of her parents was descending into full-scale alcoholism.’

‘Did you ever see her at that time?’

‘I made a point of it, yes. We had all heard that she was becoming a wild child but she was adept at giving a different impression when it suited her, so I only saw what she wanted me to see.’

They were approaching the first viewing point from which the falls were visible. Jasmine expected Josie to veer off the main path towards the railings and the little platform, but instead she kept on going towards the stairs.

‘It’s a bit of a climb,’ Jasmine warned.

‘It’s worth it.’

They took it slow, stopping at each switchback. Jasmine was feeling it in her thighs, conscious that she spent way too much of her time sitting in cars and vans. She thought of Laura Geddes and her late-night runs. Air-rifle shooting wasn’t going to keep her fit.

‘Your mum left home when she got into drama school. She was still in Glasgow but she got a flat with some other girls, I think. I heard very little about her at that stage. I think Elizabeth’s funeral was the only time I saw her in about two years, maybe longer. She seemed fine, but, you know, older.’

Josie wore a pained little frown as she said this last word, one from which Jasmine was invited to infer a great deal, but neither of them would ever know the details.

‘Then perhaps a year later, out of the blue, Bruce tells me she’s appearing at the Tron theatre. She had a job with a repertory company, one of those where one month you’re on stage and the next you could be working with nine-year-olds in a community centre. Bruce was delighted. We all were. And then, just as suddenly, I heard she had quit the theatre company and left Glasgow.

‘Everything was very hush-hush and rather fraught. Bruce wouldn’t say where she had gone, never mind why. Then some months later he asked me to meet him in Edinburgh, and took me to the Simpson Maternity Unit, where I first laid eyes on you. I didn’t even know Yvonne was pregnant.’

Josie’s eyes filled a little now as she spoke, but for the first time since they started walking there was no sadness, no regret, only warmth.

‘It was as I got my first wee hold of you that Yvonne explained the disappearing act. She didn’t want the father to know about the baby. She didn’t tell me who he was and I didn’t ask.’