"I've… I've split up with Cammy," she said, and sighed at the wheel.
Maureen was finding it hard to keep acting surprised. Leslie and Cammy had split up three times this month alone. "Really?" She tried to think of something to say that she hadn't already said about it. "How's he taking it?"
Leslie nodded indignantly at the wheel. "Well, he knows I'm serious this time, that's for sure."
"Are ye serious this time?"
"Maureen," rebuked Leslie, "I'm doing my best here."
"I know," said Maureen, "I know."
Leslie wrestled the wheel left and pulled out. "And I'm not bringing him to Kilty's brother's wedding either," she said. "I've told him."
"Oh," said Maureen, secretly pleased. "Have you told Kilty?"
"No, but I will."
"Because it's about fifty quid a head at Cameron House."
"I'll tell her, I'll phone her. Anyway, tonight," said Leslie, stopping at the lights, "we're sorting his stuff out and he's giving me the keys back."
"God, that serious, is it?" said Maureen, trying to sound encouraging.
"That serious. He's suffocating me. I can't stand it anymore. If I'm in the loo too long he thinks I'm having an affair."
Maureen didn't like Cammy and the feeling was mutual. They snipped at each other when they were in company and sat in a chilly, stubborn silence when they were left alone. Cammy was a contrary little shit. He blamed his bullying temper on the oppression of the Irish Catholic workingman. Leslie was Protestant and, although not a natural candidate for ancestral guilt, she believed him. Maureen and Liam were Catholic and told her that Cammy's patter was a load of paranoid rubbish, that their generation was untouched by anti-Catholic prejudice, and sectarianism was nothing more than a football fan's accessory now. Still, Cammy maintained that history had dealt him a cruel blow. Maureen was sure that Leslie would have finished with him long ago if she had still had her job at the Scottish women's shelter. Being a house manager had given her a focus, a role to play in the good fight, and she was restless and unfulfilled since being sacked.
Behind the van the driver of a red truck hooted.
"Keep your hair on, ya postie bastard," said Leslie, and jerked the old van into first gear.
Chapter 5
Beyond the designer shops and glass cathedral shopping malls of Glasgow city center, across a broad and windy car park, stood the ancient flea market called Paddy's. Anything could be bought there, from secondhand underpants to office furniture. Trapped between the river and a high railway viaduct, it made the shoddiest car-trunk sale look as orchestrated as Disneyland. The market consisted of a ramshackle series of stalls set up in the dark tunnels under the disused railway line. In good weather hawkers would set up in the uneven alleyway outside, some on trestle tables, some spreading their goods over blankets laid out on the cobbles. It was a lawless place and the decency of the hawkers set the standards. Duty-free fags and cheap drink were okay, as was out-of-date mayonnaise and sectarian regalia. Hard-core pornography had to be kept hidden and, whatever they were selling, the junkie dealers were hedged in at the end of the lane by the river, away from everyone else.
Paddy's was named in honor of the last major wave of itinerant immigrants to Glasgow and operated as a cultural port of entry with each new group of incomers coming to buy cheap goods or make a small living. As they became known at the market and introduced their own customs and marketing opportunities, gradually, usually grudgingly, they became integrated.
In times past the market had been much bigger but the railway above was disused now and three of the tunnels had been shut down because of galloping damp. The spare ground in front of the lane, where the poorest hawkers gathered, had been clawed back by the council for an extension to the High Court. The council tax had risen and everyone knew that Paddy's was dying. The council was proposing to lift the cobbles from the lane and sell them to a new development. The flea market was being asset stripped.
Leslie eased the rickety van slowly down the cobbled lane at the back of the market, climbed out and knocked on the big wooden door three times. After a short pause, red-faced Peter, an obese man with a heart condition, swung the door wide, pinning it open. Maureen and Leslie lifted the cardboard boxes of cleaning products from the back of the van and carried them to their stall.
It was just inside the back door, across the tunnel from fat Peter and wee Lenny. Peter sold batteries, crockery and secondhand videotapes. Lenny was a TV repairman who'd been sacked from Radio Rentals on the grounds that he was, indeed, radio rental. He took his smelly dog, Elsie Tanner, everywhere with him. Lenny had found Elsie in Ruchill Park, just behind the Co-op, hungry and homeless. She just ran out of a bush at him and he had no choice but to take her home with him. It didn't trouble Lenny that a hungry dog was unlikely to hang about in a little-used public park when there were bins aplenty fifty feet away. It was obvious to everyone but Lenny that he had stolen someone's dog.
Maureen set up, arranging the bleach, the squeezy and the dusters on the stall. They hardly ever sold any of the cleaning products', they were just a cover for the duty-free fags – the bleach bottles were getting dusty, a sure giveaway. Maureen opened a packet of dusters and gave the bottles a wipe, shielding Leslie from view. Leslie opened the cycle bag, took out the sleeves of cigarettes and placed them carefully in the green council wheelie bin that always sat near the back door. If the police found the cigarettes they could deny all knowledge of them: the worst that would happen was that their stock would be confiscated.
The tunnel seemed particularly damp today, contrasting bitterly with the warmth of the sunny lane outside. Leslie went off to park the van. When she came back in she found Maureen wiping down bottles of Toilet Duck and singing along to the cheeky, staccato beat of "It's a Kind of Magic."
"It's a Home Gran Gotcha." Leslie handed over one of the jerseys they kept in the cab for damp days in the tunnel.
"God," said Maureen, realizing she had been singing. "I don't even know I'm doing it."
Together, they peered accusingly down the tunnel to the tapes stall. The woman standing behind it was a white-haired sixty-year-old with gold sovereign rings on every finger. She dressed in trainers and one of the rustling, baggy Kappa tracksuits all the kids were wearing. Giving her age away, she drew brown, single-line arched eyebrows high on her forehead above the frames of her glasses like Joan Crawford. She sold bootlegged tapes of CD albums on a stall financed by her well-to-do son and played tapes on her ghetto blaster all day long. They were mediocre mainstream ballads and rock anthems, songs the listeners didn't realize they loved until they heard them out of context, without the prejudice of packaging or association. Maureen and Leslie found themselves singing along to Jim Diamond, Queen and the Quo, knowing all the words, feeling uplifted until they realized who it was.
Maureen and Leslie unfolded their little canvas picnic stools and sat, Maureen facing the entrance to the tunnel and Leslie the wheelie bin, watching for robbers. Leslie kept her sad-eye shades on to hide her sad eyes. Maureen gave them a squashed Regal each and took out her chrome oval lighter. The flint jammed and she had to pull the backside off the lighter, unscrew the spring and put the flint back in before she could get a light. The strip-down and rebuild took thirty seconds because she'd done it so often.