Rabbie Gold is a man who knows the value of things.
He knows the street value of one gram of magic dust is twenty quid. He knows that a finger of heroin is valued at five hundred pounds sterling. He knows the Barlinnie Prison saves 2,400 pounds each month the administration leaves the prison library across from his cell unstaffed and unused.
He also knows that a man who cannot protect and care for his own child is worth less than nothing.
Some days he wakes early, before the fluorescents switch on in the cells, and Rabbie imagines the feeling of his son's snug, wee body nestled against him. He and his boy shared the same sagging mattress on the floor of their flat ever since Balfour was an infant. Rabbie kept the milk bottles lined up along the edge of the bed and fumbled with them in the dark. He had loved the sweet, soapy scent of Balfour's damp curls after a bath. When his boy was old enough to talk, he loved whispering back and forth in the darkness until they both fell asleep.
"Da, what happens to things when they die?"
"I dunno, Bal. I dunno that anyone honestly knows that."
"Da, what happens to me if you die?"
"Bal...I'm not planning on dying, son. Not for a very long while. I'll always be here. I'll always keep you safe."
"But what if you did die, Da? If you was walking along, and a truck came up from behind and killed you? Who would stay with me and take me to school and fix my meals?"
This was a difficult question to answer. Rabbie Gold has no family worth speaking of. His father walked out on his mum when he was still in nappies. His mum had left him with her mum when the lure of drink and heroin overtook her. And his grandmum had been a hard woman to love. She was taciturn and unhappy, quick with a belt or the back of her hand. She died from heart failure when Rabbie was thirteen, and he hadn't mourned her long or deeply.
After her death, he had been on his own until Balfour came along. He ran deals, mostly illegal, and dodged the truancy officers and child welfare officials. He slept on the couches of his mates, who were illiterate hustlers like himself. Sometimes he went hungry, and sometimes he was flush with cash. Always, he yearned for a different life, a decent place to call home.
He met Balfour's mother, Molly, when he was nineteen, and for a short while he was happy. She was beautiful, far too beautiful to be wasting her time on a skinny stray like himself. All his mates warned him she was only in it for the drugs and free drinks and a place to stay, but he wanted so badly to believe she cared for him. He loved sharing his bed with a woman. Rabbie would twine her long, dark curls around his fingers after she had fallen asleep, and sometimes he would whisper into the darkness everything he wished for the future: a flat of their own, a large family, steady work.
Of course, when the money dried up, Molly left. She took up with one of his better looking mates. 'Killian' was the bastard's name. The pair left Glasgow together on a ferry when a drug deal went sour.
Nine months later, Molly reappeared looking strung out and peevish. She found him sitting on a stoop on Bedford Street, in the seedy heart of the Glasgow Gorbals. She carried a dingy car seat. In it was a squalling, red-faced newborn.
"It's your son, Rabbie," Molly says, her bloodshot eyes skittering away from his. "I wasn't going to keep him, but then…" She shrugs. "Killian doesn't want a baby, not now anyway. I can't be a mum to him. I'm too young. There are too many things I still want to do."
She places the handle of the car seat in Rabbie's hands.
"What's his name?" His voice is shaking. So are his hands.
"I named him Balfour, after my Da."
"It's a good name...a strong name." Rabbie cannot take his eyes from the little mite in the car seat. He unbuckles Balfour and lifts him gingerly to his shoulder, taking care to support his fuzzy, wobbly head. The baby's nappy is soaked through, and his cotton jammies are wet to the ankles.
"I have to go, Rabbie." Molly sees the tears swimming in his eyes. She sees the gentle kiss he brushes over Balfour's temple and the way he begins to tenderly shush and jounce him. Molly doesn't rightly know if the boy belongs to Rabbie or Killian, but she knows who will be the better father.
As she turns to walk away from her son, Molly feels sadness. Yet overshadowing the sadness is a blessed sense of relief. Tonight she will sleep soundly with no baby to wake her with its mewling, and tomorrow she will leave with her lover for another thrilling trip across Europe.
"Molly, wait! I don't know what I'm meant to do!" Rabbie looks up at her, wet-eyed and frantic.
She hardens her heart, thinking of Killian and the many adventures he has promised her. "Feed him. Change him. You'll figure it out, Rabbie." She turns on her heel and walks out of his life again.
Balfour is still crying. "It's okay...it's okay..." Rabbie tells him, even though, of course, it isn't. Not when your mum's walked away and left you with a stranger. "I'm your, Da. Shhh...shhh..."
Rabbie has money enough in his pocket for two cheap plastic bottles and one can of formula. The nappies and wipes he has to get from the baby pantry at the local homeless shelter. He gratefully accepts secondhand clothing and blankets from the clucking, elderly volunteers. A kindly woman who goes by 'Granny' shows him how to tend to Balfour's diaper rash and fasten his nappy so that it won't leak. She gives him the paperwork to go on public assistance and apply for a subsidized flat.
"You have a good heart, son," Granny tells him as Rabbie carefully buckles Balfour back into the car seat. "It's in the eyes. I can tell. You'll be an excellent father. Just love him, and the rest follows easily enough." He nods, not trusting himself to speak.
After that, he straightened his life out, all for Bal. He quit running deals and got a job at the textile mill on the River Clyde. The work was tedious, threading machinery and laying cloth, but it paid the childminder and put food on their table. Rabbie was still illiterate, hard-featured, and nothing much in the eyes of the world, but Bal didn't mind in the slightest. Bal's sun rose and set with his Da.
"Excuse me?" A woman's soft voice disrupts his early morning reverie. Women's voices are never heard in the men's cell block.
She is peering into the cell of Mad Jefferson, adjacent to the darkened prison library across the hall. Jefferson is awake and upright, but catatonic.
"Sir," she whispers to Jefferson, "Can you tell me whom I should speak with about seeing to the light bulbs in the library? Is there a maintenance office in this wing?"
She is beautiful. Rabbie can tell just from her profile. Her long, russet curls gleam beneath the dim emergency lights that line the cell block. Her nose is upturned and her cheeks have a charming fullness, even though her build is slender. She is slight. Shorter than him, even.
He stands and walks to the bars in his nightshirt and prison-issue cotton pants. It won't do for this lovely girl to rile Jefferson. The man can go from catatonic to raving in mere seconds. He might terrify her.
"Miss..." He calls quietly across the hallway, wrapping his thin, grey blanket around himself for modesty. "Miss…"
She turns, and he is struck dumb. 'Beautiful' doesn't even approach what this girl is. She is altogether angelic. Her eyes-the bluest he has ever seen-are rimmed with thick, sooty lashes. Her lips are exquisitely full and rosy. Her cream wrap dress appears to be made of the softest, most expensive wool, and she wears a delicate locket on a gold chain.
Girls like this simply don't exist in the Gorbals.
"There's a janitors' closet on the first floor, miss." Rabbie stares at the cement floor as she approaches his cell. Although he has spent the past nine years of his life in the Barlinnie Prison, he is still ashamed when regular, decent people see him behind bars. Particularly this woman, who takes his breath away.
"Thank you, sir," she says, and her voice has the sweetly lilting melody of the upper class. She's likely from Bishopbriggs or Hillhead. She probably was raised by two doting parents in a posh brick rowhouse or perhaps on a sprawling, green estate. She certainly attended private schools. It's unlikely she has ever come into contact with men such as himself before.
"It's my first day on the job, and I was so anxious I couldn't sleep. I figured I'd get an early start. They gave me the keys to the library at the security station, but it's in a rather sorry state, and the lights won't come on."
He chances a glance up at her, and Rabbie feels the full impact of her dazzling, dimpled smile. Good God.
"My name is Belle Ferguson. I'm the new librarian." She extends her soft, white hand through the bars, and for a moment he is too startled to take it. When at last he encloses it in his own, Rabbie flushes and his heart quickens. He cannot hold her warm, candid gaze, so he stares down at the buttery brown leather of Belle's knee-high boots.
"My name is Rabbie Gold, miss." The fluorescent lights flicker on, and he is mortified that this girl will see his tiny cell, his unmade bed, his rusty sink with the broken plastic razor, and his low, lidless toilet.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gold." Her smile widens. He realizes he is still holding her hand and drops it with an apology.
"Sorry. Sorry. Just Rabbie...please…" No one ever calls him 'Mr. Gold.'
"Rabbie, then." The clomping of a guard's sturdy boots can be heard down the hallway, and Belle murmurs, "Excuse me…" before vanishing from view.
He can hear her lovely voice, asking the guard to unlock the janitors' closet. He realizes he has been holding his breath and exhales slowly.
After his breakfast in the noisy dining hall, Rabbie watches Belle from beneath his lashes, pretending to rest on his cot. She has already replaced the light bulbs and is now dusting the book shelves. She is seemingly unconcerned about the state of her dress and mussed hair. She glances over from time to time and smiles at him, causing his heart to race ever faster.
Later on, Rabbie will realize that he actually fell in love with Belle the very first day they met. He was just too flustered to know it then.