Graham's brothers were all old enough to stay at home alone, and they'd tease him because he had to go over to Eric's with their mum. They called Eric a heidcase, for which their mother slapped their legs. She said family was family, and Graham's dad said they should learn from example and do their duty. But then there were no Maryhill trips for ages because Eric was back in hospital, for a long stay this time, and after that he was rehoused. When Graham asked to stay home instead of going up to the new place, his mum didn't press him.

        Family was family, and Graham did want Lindsey and the baby properly introduced, but then Lindsey decided she liked seeing Eric, and all his strange drawings, and she told Graham she wanted to carry on going over to Possil to see him. She always got Eric talking about his pictures on their visits: she'd walk along the walls, holding her cup of tea and squinting, asking questions. Lindsey knew her bible, far better than Graham, who'd always preferred the singing in church to the readings, when he was a boy and the family still went, every Sunday, almost. Lindsey recognised the stories Eric had put in his pictures, and Graham would watch his uncle getting all fired up with his explanations, excited about having an appreciative audience. Happy, like he'd always been at John Joe's. He and Lindsey would sit up at the table together with the bible, although they didn't need it, as far as Graham could tell. Quoting stories at each other over their mugs of tea, very cosy. Eric would dig out more sketches to show her, different scenes or different versions of the same, pictures he said he wasn't sure of yet, and he'd ask her opinion. He even drew one for her, he had it ready one Sunday afternoon, on the parlour table when they arrived, and Lindsey didn't even stop to get Stevie out of the buggy. He was crying because he'd lost his dummy, but Lindsey just went straight to the bit of paper on the table, and stood there looking at it, like she couldn't hear the baby wailing.
        The picture was of Jephthah's daughter; coming out to greet her father when he came home from battle. It looked to Graham like Lindsey coming out the front door to see her dad, returned from the Walk, in his suit and collarette; his umbrella rolled, and his arms raised, or were they outstretched? It was all there, anyway, the mid-terrace pebble dash and neat square of front garden, just like Graham remembered it, although he'd only been there twice. When he went over to Ireland to get her, and that first time, when Lindsey pulled him up the path and into the house, and there was no-one home, nobody but them, half on the floor, half on the sofa in the front room. The memory set off a lurching feeling inside him, happy, but uneasy: Eric had never been there at all, so how did he know what her dad's house was like? He'd even put in the hills, dark and sodden, up behind the house, and Graham was stung, because he'd thought he was the only one Lindsey had told about those.
        When they'd got the Drumchapel flat, she'd stood Graham in front of the living room window, her hands on either side of his chest, and she'd shown him the view out west, beyond the scheme, to where the higher country beyond Glasgow began. She said you could see hills just like them from her dad's kitchen, and Graham thought she was pleased, from her tone, although she never usually liked to talk about home. So he didn't ask her any more when she fell quiet. His wife (wife!) was still an unknown quantity, and in any case Graham didn't really notice the view so much that morning. He just enjoyed the feel of her hands, and the hard mound of her belly, pressed into the small of his back, that twisting inside it, that was his son, he was sure of it.

        Lindsey knew the story of Jephthah's daughter already, of course she did. But Eric took it upon himself to explain it to Graham, over a cup of tea with a slug of whisky in it, from the half-bottle that Graham and Lindsey had brought with them.
        'It's fae Judges. Jephthah made a bargain wae God. If he could thump the Ammonites, then he'd sacrifice the first thing he saw when he got hame. Trouble was, it wasnae wan a his goats, it was his girl that came out tae greet him. His oanly child.'
        'So he killt her?' Graham couldn't believe what a morbid story Eric had picked to make a picture.
        'He didnae want tae. She tellt him he wis tae keep his promise. His daughter. She doesnae huv a name in the story, now that I think a it. She asked tae go intae the hills wae her pals, anyhow, fer two month. She came back efter that, but. An she held him tae his word.'
        'He killt her?' Graham asked again, the only bit of this sorry tale that mattered to his mind.

4

  

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