Hearing his bored voice as an indirect insult to her parents, she was glad she had brought Conn along tonight. He could try to read a bit for them. He should be able to, he was doing so well at school – top of his class. She had even once received a note from one of the teachers – a Miss Anderson – saying that Conn was ‘something special’ and was to be ‘given every encouragement’. She still kept it, at the back of a drawer, like an IOU from the future.
Watching Conn’s face as he listened, she saw the difference in the two boys. The words that Angus gave out grudgingly, so that his voice’s meanness seemed to make them worth nothing, were transformed by Conn’s receptiveness. His expression seized them, smiled over them, went into a conspiracy with his Granny, and everything was enlarged in his reaction to it. Angus’s flat insensitivity to things and Conn’s vulnerability to them were a contest.
When Angus paused at the end of an article, Jenny said, ‘Here, Angus. Take a wee rest. We’ll let Conn read a bit.’
Angus was canny.
There’s only the Jean McFarlane bit left, noo.’
It was her parents’ favourite column – written in the first person by Jean, a saga of trivia about the doings of herself and her husband, John. Helped by the name, Jenny’s mother identified with the writer. Conn would be starting at the top of the bill.
‘Aye. Ye’ve done well, son. Let Conn dae some work noo,’ Jean said.
Conn became immediately excited about it. Jenny understood the momentary reluctance with which Angus handed over the paper. He was trying to calculate what proportion of a shilling the Jean McFarlane column was worth. Conn settled himself on the footstool.
‘Noo,’ Mairtin said, ‘wan mistake an’ ye’re fired, wee yin.’
He made several. He started too high, had to modulate in the middle of a sentence, mispronounced some words. But finding his confidence, he read well. His voice really animated the small happenings it described. Mairtin and Jean responded well. They laughed, interpolated That’s a guid yin’. They were like a congregation which has suffered long under a minister apathetic enough to be an unbeliever, and suddenly rediscovers an old commitment in a new voice. Their enjoyment was refreshed through Conn.
Jenny recognised a success and knew that Thursday evenings were entering a new era. It saddened her a little – not for Angus, who would be glad to get free of the duty, if not the shilling. She simply saw in this minute shift of routine another sign that her family was growing up. Which was good. But along with the growth went the loosening process that frightened her, the loss of the difficult equilibrium of security in their lives which she had somehow managed to maintain. Development meant the shifting of their postures, the need for her family to put themselves one by one into positions of danger to themselves, to move out of the range of their parents’ protection.
Kathleen and Mick were already working. Kathleen was an attractive girl, getting big in the breast, subtly secretive about the eyes. She had started going to dances, being with boys. With that blank belief in the mysterious power of a faith which those who don’t believe it can best indulge, Jenny cloudily hoped that Kathleen, as the only practising Catholic in the house, had special protection. Mick was least worry of all to her. He seemed happy working at the mill in Menford Lane, where Kathleen also worked. He hadn’t wanted the pits, and his father was glad. Kathleen said that all the men liked him. He was so easy-going, pleasant, kind. He possessed some secret store of good nature, of unflappability, that had eluded the others. Perhaps it came from her father, whose favourite he was, and of whom he reminded Jenny.
It certainly didn’t come from Tam. Tam still had, it was true, the most instinctively generous nature she had found in a man. She believed him simply the man most worthy of love she had ever met. But more often now she felt him at times recede from her, become opaque. Having seen men go mean with the pits many times before, she dreaded what might be happening in him. It troubled her how ferociously he held to certain hopes. One of them was Conn. Vaguely Tam had decided Conn would go on with his education. She feared the time when that vagueness would have to form into something concrete. She could see no way in which it was possible. Financially, they lived on the edge as it was.
That disillusionment was one of the dangers she sensed ahead. She quite frequently experienced a deep but inexplicable sensation of catastrophe to come. It wasn’t something you could relate to specifics. Sometimes things were going smoothly when she felt it. It was like being on a river. The boat was sound enough. Everyone was reasonably well secured. Sometimes there were rapids, but you got through them with some fright, a bump here, a bruise there. Often there were nice times, good weather, easy talk. Yet always there was something else. A premonition. Heard faintly beyond laughter.
Conn’s voice, a small complacent contradiction to her fears, finished off. There were kind words for applause. There was milk with home-made biscuits, the traditional follow-on from a reading. They all had some. In spite of Jenny’s protestations, it was decided that Angus should still have his shilling, and Conn a sixpence. Both were pleased.
When Jenny told them to go straight home, Mairtin went out with them to see that they did. This too was traditional. He would wet his whistle in Mitchell’s pub before coming back. Jean didn’t approve of the drink. She went kirkwards every Sunday without fail and was well informed of the Lord’s opinions on the subject. But short of the Lord putting in a personal appearance, nothing was likely to change her husband. Mairtin was Mairtin. She had learned to accept him as such, and he in turn, though he might tease her with it, was tolerant of her holiness, which, in truth, tended to be more obtrusive than his drink. He usually drank little, but, having been staggering drunk on quite a few occasions, he always found that Jean had wrapped cloths round the smoke-board of the fire by the time he got back.
‘To protect them that canny protect themselves,’ she used to say.
But he suspected that it was all meant as a wordless gesture on the degrading evils of drink, and his favourite response was to go into a parody of drunkenness, swaying her into vision, missing his footing, reaching unsteadily for things. Since she could never tell whether it was real or not, it always got her hooked.
Jenny and her mother sat chatting for an hour. Their experience was so much a common factor that their conversation was a monologue for two voices. In the quiet of the house, with the evening settling softly around them, mother and daughter talked like two women teasing out a ball of wool between them. There were only a few, brief snagging moments when one knew something which the other didn’t.
Conn was coming on well, wasn’t he? Jean still regretted not having been able to help at his birth. She had been ill at the time. At least she had done something by taking Kathleen out of the way and letting her sleep here.
Jenny asked her if she had seen Johnny Hose’s latest poem. She hadn’t. He was a milkman who came round High Street, and he pasted verses to the back of his milk-cart. While he filled a half-pint or pint measure from the tap in his churn, and then poured it into your jug, you could stand and read his most recent offering. ‘Nae extra charge, ma bonny lass. Ye can’t put a price on genius.’ Every other morning at the mill gates, he could be seen waiting patiently, unconcerned with sales, while mill-workers crowded round his cart, some of them trying to memorise the lines they liked best. Usually they were funny, occasionally about women or nature. Jenny tried to tell her mother bits of the latest one. It was about prices.
Suzie Temple was rumoured to be ill. But then Suzie Temple was always rumoured to be ill. Miss Gilfillan almost certainly was ill, though she had mentioned it to nobody. A proud old woman. She couldn’t be feeding herself.
Gibby Molloy, they both agreed, was getting worse. He should be married anyway. His mother was the only one who could control him. His brother Alec – and wasn’t he a well-doing man – had an awful life from him. Wasn’t that a terrible thing the last time about him challenging Alec to fight. Alec’s wife, Mary, had been
telling Jean the true story. There was Alec laid up in bed, his ribs in plaster. An accident at the work. Some kind of wheel and ratchet thing breaking off. Alec could tell you the way of it, Mary says. There’s Alec, then, in bed. Mary sitting at the fire. The knock comes to the door. Gibby. ‘Mucky fou,’ Mary says. His eyes like penny-bowls. ‘Sen’ oot yer man,’ he says. Forces his way in, is making for Alec. And Alec not able to move hardly off his back. ‘A monkey fur a brither,’ Gibby says. Too lah-di-dah fur me noo, aren’t yese?’ Mary’s frightened Alec will try to rise. She tries to wrestle Gibby out the door. He’s gentleman enough not to put a finger on her, just digs in his heels. Then he falls between sideboard and the table, roaring like a bull. Mary knows that if he rises, the house is wrecked. She puts one hand on the sideboard, one on the table. And she dances on his stomach. By this time Gibby’s mother has been told. She comes round and leads him away like a lamb. The next morning Gibby’s round first thing to apologise. ‘The drink,’ he says. And give him his due, he thanks Mary for protecting his brother, and says he admires her courage. ‘Wan last thing, Mary,’ he says at the door. ‘Ye stertit wi’ a military two-step. But wis that an eightsome reel ye feenished wi’? Ah couldny follow the steps.’ You have to laugh. There’s a likeable bit about him, too.
Jenny remembered Tam saying he had seen Gibby in the pub just a short while back. Tam had said at the time that Gibby was slowly going to pieces. He had taken on the daftest bet you ever heard. Matt Morrison had said, ‘Your attention, please. Gentlemen, my learnt friend on the right will now endeavour to swally the sword.’ And Gibby had started to chew his tumbler, spitting out glass and blood. Brains had never been his strong point. But he was sure enough getting worse. His mother must be wishing they were back in the old days when breaking down the toilet door once in a blue moon was her biggest worry. He wasn’t a well man at all.
That was Buff Thompson away then. It had been a blessing at the end. It was sad to watch when their spirit went before them. Crying like a bairn. And saying some terrible things to Aggie. She would have her own to do now, poor soul, with her son’s wife not giving her the life of a scabby cat. She wouldn’t be long behind him. But he had been a good man, and that was a hard enough thing to be, God knew.
As Jenny left, her mother was methodically wrapping cloths round the corner of the smoke-board. The air of contained expectancy about her gave the impression that she was looking forward to Mairtin’s return. At the mouth of the entry, Jenny bumped into her father. He had had a fair amount, but seemed quite steady.
‘Here, Jen,’ he said. ‘His she got her claiths on the smoke-board yet?’
Jenny nodded.
‘Aye,’ Mairtin sighed. ‘By the time Ah get tae the top o’ these stairs, Ah’ll be awfy drunk.’
‘Och, feyther.’
‘Not tae worry. She enjoys it fine. Makes ‘er feel holy.’
He winked and went in. Climbing the stairs, he broke into loud and surprisingly tuneful song:
There’s nane may ken the humble cot
Ma lassie ca’s her hame.
But though ma lassie’s nay-hameless
Her kin o’ low degree-hee-hee,
Her heart is warm, her thoughts are pure
And aye she’s dear tae me . . .’
Throwing open the door, arms outspread, his voice rising, scouring the ceiling:
‘Her heart is warm, her thoughts are pue-hure,
And aye she’s dea-hear tae me-e-e-e-e-e-e.’
Jean looked sideways at him, lips pursed, nodding as if she read in him a moral she agreed with. He realised quite suddenly that he really was drunk, but not so drunk that he couldn’t retain sufficient craftsmanship to perform his condition with some degree of style. He closed the door, came into the middle of the floor, swaying slightly.
‘Ma bonny Jean,’ he said, waiting for inspiration. ‘Ma bonny, bonny Jean. Ah was once in Graithnock twice. Today a small boy was found lost late last night. Wearing his bare feet and his father’s boots on. Hurling an empty barrow full of straw. The reward will be a fish-supper, a poke of plates, and a bottle of scones.’ Sitting down. ‘Ah could take a bite maself, Jean. A wee pie and a bottle o’ ink wid be lovely.’
‘Ye’ll have the whusky-hunger, like enough.’
They took it from there. He told King George’s photograph what was wrong with the country. She suggested that Mairtin himself was Britain’s biggest problem. He sang ‘Ah’m wearin’ awa’, Jean, Like snaw when it’s thaw, Jean,’ and then gagged. ‘That’s me awa’ noo, Jean.’ She was sure she would be away before him, and he would have been the death of her.
It was a complicated ritual by two people who would never surprise each other again but found pleasure in the repeated patterns of the past – a conversational dance of death, perfected, nicely timed, delicate as a minuet.
9
For Conn, the house at times assuming strangeness: the furniture like props that didn’t fit the action, inappropriate in its cosiness and complacency; established routines giving suddenly like locks, to show the frustrations that padded in them; a frequent and sometimes frightening sense of transit – to where?
A mid-summer evening, first dark. The top halves of the windows had been taken out, left on the floor. The remains of a long hot day decomposed outside, stenching the house sweetly with the exhalations of the park across the river. In the boys’ bedroom, Angus and Conn lay, steeping in tiredness. It was a Sunday. All day they had ‘run the cutter’, as their mother mysteriously called it, as if rehearsing for the holidays, which would be soon. Angus had been examining the hardening skin on the soles of his feet, pleased with the thought that a fortnight would bring them to their summer toughness, and he wouldn’t need boots again till winter. They spoke little, content to be crooned at by soft sounds, the river quietly coughing over stones, a dog worrying distance.
Kathleen and Mick, with the privilege of earners, could be heard still through in the living-room with their parents. Jenny was sewing, making alterations to a dress which Kathleen had been trying on, and, as she did so, was talking to Kathleen. The dress was for a dance and, using it as an excuse, Jenny was gently finding out about the boy Kathleen was going with – Jack Farrell. They seemed serious about each other and Jenny wanted to know what he was like. She knew the family slightly, they were Catholic, though that wasn’t important to her. To Jenny, a man’s credentials were his nature, and she was concerned simply to deduce the true lineaments of the boy from Kathleen’s inevitably idealised picture. Mick was crouched over the fireplace, whittling a boat-shape from a piece of wood, having ignored his father’s mild observation, addressed to the room, that That boay does a’ his work in et the ribs. He’s goat the ausole like a sawmill.’ Tam himself was finding his way through the paper with a kind of patient bemusement that wasn’t just a matter of failing light. He finally put it down like a parcel he couldn’t get into, saying, There’s nothin’ in the papers nooadays.’ It was as if he half-sensed some plot to keep out of print the things that were really happening.
The street was almost asleep. Through the open window drifted the murmur of the few men who were still at the corner, their faces white, upturned blotches in the shadows.
The sound, when it came, took some time to register, it was so alien to its setting. Tam was first on his feet and over to the window, looking down.
‘Aw Christ,’ he said. ‘No’ that.’
The other three had come to stand behind him. What they saw made the sound they had heard meaningful in retrospect. A big man was crouched against Miss Gilfillan’s window, visible in the faint light that came from it. His hands were held side-on to the glass with his face between, so that he could see into her house. The window was slightly lowered from the top. What they had heard was Miss Gilfillan calling for help. She shouted again, a thin whimper of a word, like the sound a hare makes when it knows the greyhound has it.
‘Yer Peepin’ Tom,’ Tam said. The auld sowl’ll be frichtened oot ‘er wits.
’
He waited, looking over towards the corner. Things seemed to have gone quiet there, as if a conference was in progress. The big man tapped slowly at Miss Gilfillan’s window.
‘When dae they make their bloody move?’
‘She’ll likely be in bed, the pair auld sowl,’ Jenny murmured, and at once regretted it, for Tam was already moving.
‘Tae hell wi’ this,’ he said as he crossed the floor.
Tam. Ye’ll stey where ye are.’ She caught up with him at the door. ‘There’s men oot there. Let them see tae it. You’re bidin’ here.’
‘Go in the hoose, wumman,’ he said angrily and was gone.
They heard the rattle of his heavy boots as he went downstairs. Angus and Conn, who had been unaware of anything happening in the street, had caught the echo of it in their own house – first in the unnatural silence of the living-room and then in the panic of their mother’s voice. They scrambled out of bed, Angus in the lead, and came through in their nightshirts – old shirts which had belonged to their father.
‘Bed, you two! Bed!’ their mother shouted.
But she seemed to forget about them again at once, was too distraught to follow up her threat. They stayed. And in a moment the stray particles of an ordinary night had been precipitated into imminent ignition.
Angus and Conn had arrived at the window in time to see their father emerge from the entry below them and cross towards the man at Miss Gilfillan’s window. The whole family stood looking down on a scene that appeared more distant than it was, stylised, with a formal inevitability: Tam approaching the man, the men at the corner waiting and watching, utterly silent now except for one voice somewhere saying, Tam Docherty’. Behind the children, their mother muttering, ‘Oh my Goad! Can ye no’ get sittin’ in peace at yer ain fire-end. Is this no’ terrible?’
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