Gallowgate was quicker without the boy trailing behind him. On the far side of the loch, the clouds hung around the hills as though they were trapped and couldn’t find a way out. The loch appeared restless, angry, as the wind hurried down the hillside and raised its hackles. The rain began to fall in sheets and by the time he reached the little shop he was soaked to the bone.
The teuchter woman watched him closely as he dripped up and down the only aisle, filling his arms with tinned ravioli and fruit cocktail. Her limited selection of alcohol made for a poor man’s pantry. He was forced to choose a fine whisky that was too expensive for necking and a nooseful of lagers that had a thick coat of stour on the top.
“How much for a smile?” he asked, stalling for time. But the shopkeeper was immune to his charm. She sent him out into the pouring rain and locked the door behind him.
Gallowgate sheltered in the red phone box and squelched down upon the wooden chair. The rain rattled against the glass, but it was mostly dry inside. Taking the phone book, he laid his cigarettes out on the cover like little wounded soldiers. He tried to save them, and he burst the tobacco from the ones that were beyond repair and piled the loose baccy in his pocket. Blowing the stour from the top of a can of lager he took a long, grateful pull.
The sky had come low. The clouds closed completely and the last shafts of sunlight were gone. It would take a long time to stop raining. Gallowgate read the phone book. There were very few names here and what surnames there were repeated over and over. People tended not to move far in this part of the world. He chose a name at random and turned a coin in his hand. There wasn’t much money left; they had gotten through more alcohol than he had budgeted for and when he counted his change, he realized he didn’t have enough to get them all safely back to Glasgow on the bus. He thought about Mungo and wondered if that was a good idea anyway, to take the boy back to the city where he could tell his side of the story.
It happened all the time. Young boys from the city drowning in lochs, the water deeper and murkier than any chlorinated swimming pool. The evening paper was full of stories of inexperienced young men freezing to death on hillsides or caving their heads in on a steep Munro. It would be believable. It happened all the time.
Gallowgate pushed the coin into the slot. He dialled the number and waited. He was about to ring off when a faint voice answered at the far end.
“Hallo, is that Mrs E. Beaton?”
The woman sounded winded, like she had travelled a long way to reach the telephone. Perhaps it was another phone box that sat in the middle of a cluster of cottages, perhaps she had been in a hot bath. “It’s Dokter Procter from the hospital. Ye know, the big hospital.”
“What hospital, Doctor? I’ve never even been to any hospital.”
“The biiiig hospital. The wan through in Edinburgh. Well, we got your test results back, aye, your GP sent us yer case notes. Dr Deacon, that’s right. Well he sent us yer notes to take a look at and ah’m afraid we’ll need to take both of them.”
“Both of what?” said the woman. “I only went to see auld Deacon about my cough.”
Gallowgate was drawing flowers in the condensation. “That’s the thing now, Mrs Beaton. We need to amputate both of yer legs in order to make your cough better. It’s all connected see. Don’t cry now. We could try and save them from the knee down but the surgeon couldnae say for sure till he had a look at ye himself.” The phone rang its three pips and the call disconnected. Gallowgate sniggered to himself.
The rain was driving sideways now. The loch disappeared, then the white houses, then the yew tree. Gallowgate flipped through the phone book again. He found a name he liked the sound of and decided to tell its owner that he was their long-lost son. He hoped the woman was old enough, but then everyone up here seemed old; anyone with a spark of life had already left for the city or further south.
When he was in Barlinnie he had passed many an empty hour doing much the same thing. He had nobody of his own to call, so he dialled Glasgow numbers at random and talked to whoever should answer. The people were generally kind, a little confused maybe, but kind. They would go to their window and describe the weather to him in considerable detail. Rain, it was mostly always raining, but to hear the different strangers describe the thousand different types of rain gave him a calming pleasure. Some folks would open their Evening Times and read him the day’s headlines. Occasionally they would forget who they were talking to and would stop halfway through a story about rape or murder and would try instead to find something about local politics. Lonely old men were the best company. These men would tell him about the Old Firm game, running through the match in such meticulous detail that he felt he had been pitch-side at Parkhead for Celtic’s victory.
Other times Gallowgate had gotten a wean, a child who was home alone while her mammy ran some messages. Sometimes he got a wee boy and then, nearly always, he hung up immediately.
He was dialling the number and thinking about what this woman’s son might be like, when he stopped. He waited for his coins to be returned to him, then he dialled a different number. Something from deep in his memory.
A young girl answered the phone. He could hear the tinny sound of a pop record blaring behind her, and from the tangle of different voices he could tell the house was full of people, and thick with happiness. “Hallloo-oo,” she sang.
“Jacqueline, is that you? It’s me. It’s Angus.”
He could practically hear the girl’s face harden, the song wiped off of her lips. “What do you want? I thought we telt ye not to phone here again.”