'Aye.'
        Graham looked at Lindsey, but she just looked pleased with her picture.

        Graham went over to his mum's later that evening, while Lindsey was giving Stevie his bath, and he asked to borrow her bible. She dug it out from the chest of drawers by the sofa, and he could see she wanted to know, but she didn't ask, and he was grateful. He read Judges before he went to bed, standing at the counter in the kitchenette, following the tight lines with the straight edge of the gas bill, folded over, and after he'd found Jephthah's story, he went ranting into the bedroom, where Lindsey was already dozing. Graham could still feel the afternoon's tea with whisky as well, but it wasn't making him sleepy.
        'Bewailin hur virginity?'
        'What now?' Lindsey groaned and pulled the covers over her head, but Graham kept on, bible in hand, at the foot of the bed.
        'Says here the daughter went intae the hills tae bewail hur virginity.'
        'So?'
        She spoke from under the covers.
        'Huv I tae spell it out tae ye, Lindsey?'
        He shouted, and she sat up then, and looked at him, full in the face.
        'Mebbe ye have.'
        Graham blinked. He said:
        'Ye've hud a kid wae me.'
        He wanted to cry, because her eyes were still on him, level and grey, unblinking. She said:
        'I have.'
        Graham tried hard not to raise his voice again.
        'Ye're my wife.'
        It came out shrill and Lindsey lay back down, wordless. Graham was convinced of a hidden, sordid meaning to the picture, and that his uncle had been making a joke at his expense. Or maybe they both had. He stared at Lindsey, willing her to confess, but she only sighed, impatient.
        'Jist a way a sayin she's still a child.'
        His wife turned her back to him.
        'That's aw. She's still a child an she'll never have a life.'
        Her voice was tired. Graham sat down at the foot of the bed. He put the bible on the floor by his feet and rubbed his eyes, hard; rubbed the tears back into them with his knuckles, until his eyes ached, and then he looked at his fists, there in his lap, large and damp and useless. Ham-fisted. That's what his Papa Robert had called him, his mum's dad, Eric's dad too. One afternoon, when it was Graham's turn to check in on the old man after school. The brothers stopped by and made him tea and toast on their way home, or they were meant to, except Graham was the only one who turned up with any regularity, and so he often had to bear the old man's anger at being alone now and neglected, as well as the sheer bloody inconvenience of going up to his flat in the first place. Graham's diligence was rewarded with ham-fisted. Shouted at him when he chipped the lid of the teapot, accidentally, replacing it too hurriedly, too much in a hurry to get off up the road. Papa Robert snatched the pot from him, fierce, and told him he was just like Eric, his own son, bloody useless. Graham stared at the old man's fists, clenched around the handle and spout: solid and pink, they looked to Graham just like meat boiled in brine. The words were there and ready in his mouth, but they wouldn't come out; too hurtful, and he was too much of a coward. He stood in front of his granddad, mute and full of fury. Battling the urge to fling his own ham fists about.

5

  

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