When Mary came into his room carrying a cup of tea and two ginger-nuts, Sandy was waking from another tolerable dream — though a kind of nightmare — concerning Rian and himself.
They were being chased by a gang, and had climbed to the top floor of a block of flats in order to escape. They had found one flat open and had swept inside, locking and bolting the door behind them. It had been a nice flat and Rian had immediately made herself at home, trying out the gadgets in the kitchen and turning on television, radio, stereo. He tried to make her see the danger they were in. The door was being pushed at by some vast, faceless force, but she had ignored him. Look, he said, I’m trying to save us. Can’t you help? She had come to him, smiling, as distant as ever, had kissed him on the cheek and had placed a bread knife in his hand. Use this, she had said, and kissed him again. He looked at the obscenely serrated edge of the knife. The door opened a fraction, held only by the chain, and a hand crawled round its edge, fiddling with the lock, trying to snap the flimsy chain. Methodically, but hating himself, he had begun to slice at the hand, which he wedged with all his might into the gap in the door so that it could not escape, and suddenly it was an animal, its body its own, belonging to nothing outside of the door. Gashes, but no blood. Screams, but no mouth. It had dropped to the floor in snake-like agony. Rian had come up behind him with a cup of tea. She had tapped him on the back. A cup of tea, Sandy, she had said. A cup of tea.
It was his mother’s voice, too sharp to be part of the dream. He blinked open his eyes and brought his head out from beneath the sheet. The light bit him. The curtains had been opened and his mother was standing in her dressing gown with a mug of tea in her hand.
‘Cup of tea?’ she repeated. He was plunged back into the dream for a moment, and at the same time was aware of an erection beneath the bedclothes. He sat up, concentrating on the tea and the new day, feeling the throb easing.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said. She began to leave the room.
‘Don’t bother going back to sleep now. There’s new bread and jam for breakfast. I forgot to get bacon yesterday.’
He could smell the bread. His erection was dying. Hunger and the need to pee redirected his thoughts. He swung out of bed and began to dress, sitting on the bed when finished to dip the ginger-nuts in the milky tea and suck the flavour from them. He had no plans for today. Unless his mother had anything arranged, he would go for a walk later and see who was around. Perhaps Colin would be in the park. He would not go to the mansion. He had not the courage yet.
Downstairs, the ritual of Sunday breakfast was waiting like some seldom-visited aunt. On Saturdays he would usually be out of the house before his mother could call him back to eat something. Saturday was the exciting day of the week. Everything else was build-up or anticlimax, but not a minute of Saturday could be wasted. During the weeks prior to the holidays breakfast had been the rush not to be late for school, a hurried, near-involuntary thing. He would cram toast into his mouth while moving from kitchen to bathroom, bathroom to bedroom. Inevitably, along the way his mug of tea and some piece of vital written work would be lost, and a trail of minute crumbs would show the steps taken to locate both.
Sundays, however, were different. On Sunday there was nothing to hurry for, no school to be late for. On Sunday Sandy had to sit through a lengthy interrogation by his mother while she fed him and poured out mug after mug of tea. She would ask him about his week, and they would discuss important things like potential holidays and television and work. He would answer patiently: she deserved nothing less. He could see how much these mornings meant to her. It was as if she were trying to pretend that they were a normal family, cramming all the mundane details of the week into one overlong morning. She seldom complained on those odd Sundays when a game of football took him careering out of the house, slamming the door on breakfast and conversation and her loneliness. Sometimes when he looked at her across the table he would notice something insignificant in itself such as that her hand shook as she poured the tea, or that she seemed tired, or that she had blistered the back of her hand on the iron leaving a raw red scar against the purer white, and on those occasions something would well up in him: pity and love perhaps, but those words were never adequate.
She was his mother, and one day she would die. It was a chilling reality. He fended it off with thoughts of Rian. Perhaps they would marry one day. On this particular Sunday morning his mother seemed sombre, and he contemplated telling her that he had a girlfriend to cheer her up. But having said that, what else could he truthfully tell her? No, he could not yet bring himself to share his secret love with anyone — especially a love so strange and uncertain and the knowledge of this isolation caused him to fidget in his chair as his mother leaned over the table with her plate of new bread, heat rising from it even in the warmth of the kitchen.
‘Are you going to church this morning, Mum?’ he asked.
She stopped stirring her tea. She contemplated the bread before her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Yes, I thought I might go along to welcome the new minister. And then I thought I’d go visit your gran.’
‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘Gran and Grandad?’ He was losing himself again, this time to the warm, soft wetness of the bread, the saltiness of the butter, the sweetness of the jam. He sucked on the paste in his mouth for a long time until the blend of flavours was only a memory, then swallowed and drank some tea and bit off another piece to repeat the process.
The longer they sat, the brighter Mary became. Her eyes at last took on a truly living look. Sandy looked at the clock.
‘Is it good bread then?’ she said. He nodded. She tipped her head a little in agreement. There was a short silence, not uncomfortable. ‘And are you still intent on not staying on at school, Sandy?’
His heart sank.
‘It’s important,’ his mother continued. ‘With jobs so short these days you’ve got to get as many qualifications as possible. You listen to some of the men down the street. They’ll tell you. They could kick themselves now for not having stuck in at school. They’re all on the midden now that the pits have shut and there’s nothing else around here except computers and things that they’re not trained for. Brains over brawn, Sandy. That’s the way of the world. More and more. The world revolves around intelligence. It’s the only way you’ll escape this place. So you stick in, and if you need any help, well, I’ll see what I can do.’ She was eating now.
‘Yes, Mum.’ It was his best defence. After a few more minutes he looked meaningfully at the wall clock and she caught the trick and followed his eyes.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘I’d better get dressed if I’m going to the kirk. You finish your breakfast.’ He was nodding. She rose from the table. ‘I’m away upstairs.’
Sandy relaxed when she left the kitchen. He could hear the creaking of the floorboards above him, locating for him his mother’s exact whereabouts. He could picture her every action from this succession of sounds: she was searching in her chest of drawers for clean bra, knickers, tights. She was over by the wardrobe, selecting and taking out her dress, hanging it up. She was gathering the lot together and was walking across the hall to the bathroom. In the bathroom she locked the door for some obscure reason of propriety, then took off her dressing gown and her nightdress. She squatted to pee, tore off some paper with which to wipe herself, and flushed the toilet. She stood at the small sink and looked in the mirror while running the water, then gave herself a good wash, water splashing the floor and the toilet seat. She then dressed quickly, zipping things and clipping things. Snap, the door was unlocked and she padded in her tights to the bedroom. She sat down at her dressing table and again wasted a minute staring into her mirror. Perhaps she was examining her hair. This she would then brush, using long, slow strokes. Perhaps she would dab a little make-up on to heighten the colour of her face, would spray a tiny amount of perfume on to her neck and her wrists, shaking the wrists to dry the spray, then would pull her dress on, bring her shoes out from beneath the bed and slip them on to her feet. Now her feet made great tapping noises on the floor, like a carpenter at work on a roof. Sandy’s eyes fixed themselves on the kitchen ceiling. A moment of stillness now from upstairs, a moment he could never explain, then she was descending with her coat over her arm. He rose from the table.