The Kellys of Kelvingrove (3 page)

Doris felt herself begin to tremble with distress. Haltingly she admitted, ‘I suppose there have been times when I’ve been so frightened and upset by some of the things Mother does – like running out of the house. It’s just … It’s just that I’m afraid she’ll come to some harm.’

‘But my dear,
why
does the poor helpless old lady run away from you?’

‘She’s … she’s ill. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. But she keeps doing things and I can’t help getting impatient and upset and … And …’

‘Harm her?’

‘No, no, I’d never harm my mother. She was so good to me when I was growing up. I’ll never forget that.’

‘My dear.’ Mrs Gardner’s voice became quietly accusing. ‘I saw you yesterday grab her roughly by the arm and drag her back into the house. You jerked her off her feet. I heard her cry out in pain. That’s why I’ve been so worried and want to help you.’

Tears gushed up to Doris’s eyes. ‘But I’d got such a fright. I’d gone to the bathroom and when I came back out, she’d disappeared from the sitting room, where I thought she’d dozed off to sleep in the arm chair. I was afraid she might fall into the river. I found her quite near the river. She could have fallen in.’

‘There’s a little footbridge, dear. She was trying to reach the little footbridge and escape from you. I hear her saying that, or words to that effect.’

Doris was weeping helplessly now.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt her.’

Mrs Gardner sighed. ‘So you did harm her?’

‘No, I mean … I grabbed her arm but I didn’t mean to hurt her.’

Mrs Gardner patted Doris’s hand. ‘Try to calm yourself, dear, and forgive yourself. I’ll come back tomorrow to help you. We’ll work this out between us, don’t worry. I know you’re a good daughter. We just must find a way to calm you down.’

Doris, still weeping, saw her neighbour to the outside door and watched the elegant, beautifully dressed figure with glossy dark hair and little pearl earrings and designer suit walk along Waterside Way. Only when she had disappeared into the garden, then the house at number six did Doris retreat back into her own house.

She ached to speak to Mrs Gardner again to try and convince her that she had never done her mother any harm. What she secretly agonised about, of course, was that there had been times recently when she felt like throttling her mother. She prayed Mrs Gardner would save her from herself and save her mother. Guilt about her violent feelings had begun eating into her very soul. Her mother had been so good to her when she was little and while she was growing up. Her loving kindness could not be denied and Doris didn’t want to deny it. But her mother now was like a different person. It wasn’t only that she kept disappearing, often in the middle of the night, but she kept repeating everything. She kept asking the same questions over and over and over again. Doris feared it was driving her mad.

Mrs Gardner had been able to read her innermost secret mind, the part of her mind that wanted – dare she admit even to herself – to kill her mother.

Mrs Gardner was a beautiful kindly woman who would do her best to help her and prevent her from doing anything dreadful. She ached for Mrs Gardner to come back and help her. She ached for anyone to help her.

She truly loved her mother and was desperately afraid of doing her any harm.

Mae was trying her best to save enough five pound notes to replace the money she’d stolen. She needed tights and new pants, to mention just a couple of things, but she denied herself them and everything else. In the middle of all this worry, it didn’t help when Mrs Jean Gardner, the neighbour from number six, began coming in. First she’d go into Doris and Mrs McIvor’s house next door and then she’d come knocking at her door. Mae didn’t like her, couldn’t take to her, even imagined there was something suspicious about her. Of course, it could just be, Mae secretly admitted, that she was too worried about the awful things she herself had done and was just transferring her own guilt on to this very caring, kind and perfectly innocent woman.

‘Are you all right, dear?’ Mrs Gardner asked gently once they’d settled into the black leather easy chairs in the sitting room.

‘Yes, why shouldn’t I be all right?’ Immediately the words were out Mae felt ashamed of their sharp tone. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘I’m feeling a bit stressed just now.’

‘Well, I don’t blame you, my dear,’ Mrs Gardner stretched over a soft white hand and patted Mae’s knee, ‘with the worry you have to contend with just now.’

Mae suddenly felt faint. Did this woman actually know about the theft of the five-pound notes? But how could she?

‘I … I …’ she stammered in distress. ‘I don’t … I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You poor thing,’ Mrs Gardner sympathised. ‘It must be awful for you.’

‘How do you … How do you know? I don’t understand.’

‘I saw it, dear, with my own eyes.’

‘You saw it?’ Mae really believed she was about to lose consciousness. ‘When did you see it? How could you?’

‘This morning, dear.’

‘But you couldn’t have.’

‘Oh, but I assure you I did, dear. And of course it made me very sad.’

‘But I’ve been in the house all morning.’

‘I know, dear. I know.’

‘Then how could you? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Your husband, dear. What an unusually handsome man he is.’

‘My husband?’ Mae felt a wonderful wave of relief engulf her. She collapsed back into the scarlet satin cushion of the chair. She even managed a smile. ‘Yes, he is handsome, isn’t he? I’m very luck to have him.’

‘Yes, dear, and you want to keep him, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Mae began to feel uneasy again. What was the woman on about now?

‘So you’re doing something about it, are you?’

Mae gasped with impatience. ‘About what?’

Mrs Gardner patted Mae’s knee again. ‘The other woman, dear.’

‘The other woman?’ Mae couldn’t help a laugh escaping. What a bloody menace Mrs Jean Gardner was. A real stirrer of trouble. Mae could believe that she was the one behind Mrs Arlington-Jones calling the meeting and getting all het up about the gay men and the Pakistanis.

‘If you’re suggesting, Mrs Gardner, that my husband is having some sort of secret affair, I can assure you you’re wrong.’

‘I do admire your faith and loyalty, dear,’ Mrs Gardner said gently, ‘but I’m sorry to say that I saw them together.’

‘My husband is a police officer. People approach him all the time for help and advice. He knows lots of women through his work.’

‘I understand he only works inside the local police station, dear. He doesn’t go out on the beat.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I saw this woman get into his car outside the police station, dear. A very attractive young woman she was.’

‘Mrs Gardner, the woman would have been in the station asking for help and advice. No doubt she was so upset with her problem that my husband felt it his duty to see her safely home. That’s why she’d be getting into his car.’

‘I do admire your faith and loyalty, dear,’ Mrs Gardner repeated. She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go now. I promised to pop in and see Mrs Arlington-Jones. But don’t worry, dear. I’ll see you again tomorrow and I’ll do what I can to support and help you.’

Speechless at the cheek of the woman, Mae saw her to the door but didn’t return the wave of the scarlet-nailed hand. She went back to the sitting room and collapsed into her chair.

‘Well,’ she said out loud, ‘could you beat that? What a creep of a woman. No, a wicked woman. Wait till Jack hears about this.’

Then she thought, no, probably Jack would be furious and she had enough worry and trouble to contend with without stirring up any more.

The long-nosed woman was watching him – white women were very cheeky. He could never quite get used to how free they were. How they made eye contact. Mahmood was still shocked by this. It was most disconcerting. He prayed to Allah that the woman would go away.

He was examining the outside of the house. It was structurally sound but it seemed very sad and dilapidated. The last tenant, an old grandmother, had lived in it alone and could not have been expected to clean and paint it. He had met her and her family before she moved out. Or rather, before her family moved her out and put her in an institution. That was another thing about the British life he would never get used to and which shocked him most deeply. They did not care for their families.

In the whole of India and Pakistan, there would not be as many abandoned and lonely people as there were in this one Scottish city of Glasgow. In Britain, widowers and widows, grandfathers, grandmothers, unmarried uncles and aunties by the million lived separately from their relations and were lonely. They lived in dingy slum tenements like those in the Gorbals, or in nice places in the West End.

What did it matter where you were if you were lonely and abandoned and no one paid you any respect?

They had gone to pay their respects to the old grandmother who had been the previous tenant in number three. Rasheeda, the mother of his children, could not speak much English so she sat very quietly but his teenage children, Zaida and tall, handsome Mirza, spoke most politely. Bashir, his son-in-law, was at work and could not be with them. They owned a successful grocery business. It wasn’t a very large shop but it had a splendid variety of groceries and newspapers too. Bashir worked hard and conscientiously in the shop since he’d lost his wife, Mahmood’s dear daughter, in a gas explosion in which his parents had also died. The house had been completely destroyed, along with everything in it.

The old lady had chuckled and said, ‘The neighbours are going to have kittens having you lot beside them, especially that snobby woman in number five. But good luck to you, I say, and thanks for coming to see me.’

He did not understand why the neighbours were going to have kittens but the visit had obviously pleased the old grandmother and made her happy. And so he was happy. His lean brown face stretched into a smile.

He would never understand how the old lady’s son could have so cruelly given her away, instead of welcoming her into his own home. The prophet Mohammed (may Allah’s peace and blessings be on him) said, ‘The Lord has decreed … that ye show kindness to your parents. If one of them or both of them attain old age with thee, say not – fie – unto them or repulse them, but speak unto them a gracious word and lower unto them the wing of submission through mercy and say: My Lord, Have mercy on them both as they did care for me when I was little.’

He wondered if she wanted them to visit her again to keep her company and pay their respects. He thought it might be cheeky of him and so he just waited for her to invite them. They hung around the bed repeating polite goodbyes but no invitation came.

His house at number three was exactly the same in layout and proportions, he understood, as the other houses. All had a sitting room, a dining room and a kitchen downstairs. Upstairs there was a bathroom and three bedrooms. Each house had a garage attached to one side.

He and Bashir had much painting to do before they moved in. Rasheeda much cleaning and polishing. But it was a good house with a garden at the front, something they thanked Allah for. Bashir used to live in a very good district with his wealthy parents far from the Gorbals and had a garden there. But Mahmood had never had a garden before. At the end of the garden was a path and a narrow stretch of the River Kelvin, then a line of trees. Beyond that was a rough slope which led to the back of the Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum.

Oh, many a fascinating hour he and his family would spend in that beautiful place. His small frame trembled with pleasurable anticipation. He could hardly wait. The family at present, however, were busy cleaning the old house so that it was left in a respectable condition.

Now the removal men had arrived at the back of the house in Museum Road. Mahmood rushed through the empty house to open the door, shouting and brandishing the keys. Already the removal men had the back of their van open and were punching and jerking at his furniture. In his excitement, Mahmood spoke quickly and loudly in Urdu.

‘Aye, aw right, dad,’ one of the men said, without looking round. ‘Keep your whiskers on.’

Another man said, ‘Christ, the posh yins round about here are goin’ tae go a bundle on this!’

Mahmood flicked a worried gaze around. No sign of his family yet.

He felt naked without them. It was most strange to be on his own. And in such a strange place. It was almost as different from the Gorbals as the Gorbals had been different from his homeland. But at least the Gorbals had been noisy and had many children. Here, away from the main road and the noise of traffic, it was still and quiet. Nowhere had he ever been used to quietness.

The removal men were staggering towards the back door, chins glued to a large, old-fashioned sideboard. They were cursing because of the muddy quagmire their feet were sinking and slithering into. Mahmood squeezed back against the wall and called to them instructions about where in the dining room to put the sideboard. At the same time he kept an anxious watch on his other possessions in case any thief came by.

Next from the van appeared the bed settee. It had been covered in green cloth by his wife Rasheeda, who was very clever with the sewing machine. The bed settee was very useful as an extra bed. It would be a long time before they could afford to buy another.

Chairs were balanced on the pavement of Museum Road and a rolled-up striped mattress tied tightly with string. He slithered down to try and lift a cardboard box. It was full of pots and pans and it rattled and clanged noisily.

‘Look, will ye jist leave everything to us, dad. Away ye go back into the house. Ye’re like a wee bird hoppin’ about out here.’

He was not insulted. Everyone Scottish was all right to him and his family. They were happy with the Scottish people.

‘Excuse me. I give you much trouble.’

‘Aye, ye’re right, auld yin. Away ye go in and make yersel’ a nice wee cup o’ Pakistani tea.’

Mahmood laughed. Yet at the same time, it occurred to him that these men would not see anything funny or out of place about a man doing women’s work. It was the Western way.