‘Who’s the lassie?’
‘Ah don’ think ye ken ‘er. Annie she’s ca’ed. She comes fae Irvine. She’s a’ richt. She isny hauf. Ye’ll see ‘er at the waddin’. If no’ before.’
Conn was still recovering when Angus stopped at the corner of the street.
‘This is the street?’
‘Aye,’ Conn said vaguely.
‘An’ it’s number seeventeen.’
‘Aye.’
‘Richt, Ah’ll take that.’
He took the sack from Conn.
‘Thanks fur yer help then, Conn. Ah’ll be seein’ ye efter.’
Conn started to wave and found he was waving at Angus’s back. There was nothing else that Angus wanted to say.
7
‘Pathetic!’ Jack said, throwing down the paper. ‘That’s the miners goin’ back fur the same money they were gettin’ before the lock-oot. Eleeven weeks they’ve been oot. Fur nothin’. They huvny as mony brains as gi’e them a sair heid, thae miners.’
He said it to the room, as if Kathleen were an eavesdropper. He rose and stretched.
‘Whit will yer auld man say tae that then?’
Working with the iron, Kathleen didn’t look up.
‘The great Tam, eh. Eleeven weeks ago he wis sayin’ they were gonny dae it this time.’ He gave a grotesque parody of Tam’s voice. ‘We’re gonny make it coont this time.’ He laughed disproportionately. ‘It’s always the next time wi’ him, intit? He’s daft enough tae believe in Santa Claus. Ah wonder whit his excuse’ll be this time. Ah’d like tae hear it.’
Kathleen knew she mustn’t answer. If she answered, she would lose her temper, and if she lost her temper, he would strike her. She bore it, knowing he would be out of the house soon. He was putting on his shoes. She wondered if it was guilt that made him like to exit on a quarrel, to put himself in the role of a man righteously storming out of a house in which he could get no peace.
‘He’s supposed tae be a hard man, tae. He’s jist a coomie. Like big Gus. Muscle fae the neck up.’
She considered what skill enabled him to choose the thing that most denied him and attack it. For in a way he was right to be against her father. It was a question of survival. If there had been no Tam Docherties, Jack Daly would never have needed to face what he’d become. He went on and she gave him nothing but silence, letting his words drip on her thoughts like water torture.
‘They divert me, these folk that are a’ worrit aboot the workin’ classes. Like yer feyther. Ah mean, whit guid his it done ‘im. He’s jist a wee nothin’ like onybody else. Whit has he achieved wi’ it a’? He’s right back where he stertit. Runnin’ oan the spot. That’s whit he’s been daein’ a’ his life. Pair wee bugger.’
He had his jacket on. He was waiting for her to respond. He grew tired of waiting.
‘The next time ye’re up at yer mammy’s, ask ‘im whit his excuse is this time. Will ye ask ‘im? Will ye? Whit’s his excuse?’
Her face clenched and her body buckled at the slamming of the door. She waited, opened her eyes. She had expected to weep but no tears came. There was nothing to cry about in what Jack had said. That was the saddest thing. She wondered if perhaps she had no tears left. People had to connect with you before they moved you. Their marriage was monologues set in silence.
She damped the collar of Alec’s good shirt, sprinkling water from the bowl beside her, ironed the cloth meticulously. She buried her thoughts in the mound of washing beside her, pressing out seams, flattening cuffs. So she had no idea how long it was before the knock came at the door.
She was surprised. She crossed and opened the door and was more surprised. He never came. But he was there, looking almost apologetic and suddenly old.
‘Feyther. Come in.’
‘Hullo, hen.’
He took off his bonnet and walked into the room. Her first thought was that something had happened to her mother. But he crossed to the window and she knew at once that he didn’t know why he was here either.
‘Whaur i’ the wee yins?’ he asked.
‘They’re oot playin’.’
‘Aye. So they should be. It’s a guid nicht.’
He threw the bonnet on a chair, turning into the room.
‘Hoo are ye, hen?’
‘Ah’m fine, feyther, Ah’m fine.’
‘Ken, Ah wis jist oot walkin’. There. An’ Ah thocht. Oor Kathleen. Ah’ll go up an’ see her. An’ Ah came up.’
‘Ah’m gled ye did, feyther.’
She went back to her ironing.
‘An’ ye’re a’ richt, then?’
‘Ah’m fine, feyther. Ah’m fine.’
She knew instinctively that she mustn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t worry him. He looked so vulnerable, so lost, as if the world was a place he had never seen.
‘Ah see ye’re gaun back then,’ she said.
He had lit a cigarette and turned towards the window again. He spoke with his back to her.
‘Aye. We’re gaun back.’
She understood from his voice that she had touched a wound.
‘Funny thing. Ah’ve been in mair strikes than Ah can coont. Ah’ve argied an’ focht wi’ pit managers till Ah wis blue in the face. An’ Ah think Ah’m worse aff than when Ah stertit.’ He blew a jet of air down his nostrils, deprecating himself. ‘This is the feenish.’
She watched his back, aware with sudden panic of what the failure of the lockout meant to him. He had no more hope.
‘Ach, ye’ve aye managed before, feyther.’
‘Before wis before, hen. Och, Ah’ll manage. But it’s no’ goin’ tae happen. Whit Ah thocht could happen. Funny thing. Ah’m fifty-three. An’ Ah micht as weel be ninety. Fur Ah’m by.’
She remembered Jack’s last question going out. That was its answer. Her father had no excuse. He accepted Jack’s definition of himself. The unfairness of it hurt her terribly. She remembered what he had been like, how much he had meant to all of them, how long he had survived complete and unbreakable, it seemed. Standing etched against the window, he seemed to her simply a marvellous man, and no one had the right to make him believe in his failure. She wanted to tell him but there was nothing she could say.
She stood just loving him and understanding at last why he had come. He had always needed to let them see him as he was. He had come to tell her who he was now. And she didn’t believe him. He was making a kind of apology and there was nothing he should apologise for.
‘Ach well,’ he said, turning from the window. ‘Ah’ll hiv a dram, Ah think.’
She watched him helplessly as he lifted his bonnet and felt with his left hand in his pocket.
‘Here, hen,’ he said, and put two shilling pieces on the mantelpiece. ‘Get the weans something wi’ that.’
‘Naw. There’s nae need fur that, feyther.’
‘Take it. Ah’d jist drink it onywey.’
He touched her arm gently on the way out, smiling and saying, ‘Ye’re a guid lassie, Kathleen. Ah’m a wee bit kinna prood o’ ma dochter.’
She lifted the two shilling pieces from the mantelpiece as if to put them away, but instead stood clutching them like a talisman.
It was then she cried.
8
The wedding went well, it was generally agreed. At various points in the evening, the older women informed one another of the fact with some relief, like experienced nurses checking the temperature of a worrying patient. They knew the symptoms of deterioration to look for: the failure of the two sides to mix, withdrawal of the men to the bar, general paralysis round about half past nine. All crises were averted.
Conn took some of the credit. It was the first wedding he had been at since he started going to the dancing. He was old enough to participate fully and young enough to have everybody’s indulgence. He drank beer. He talked with the men. He chatted up every partner, old and young. He abducted elderly women from their groups, among raucous comments of ‘Watch that yin’ and ‘Ah’ll tell yer man.’ He sugge
sted elopement to Mrs Daly. He elicited sixteen-year-old giggles from fifty-eight-year-old Mrs Andrews. He made a date with a girl he had never seen before, one of the other side, and wondered how he was supposed to travel fifteen miles to meet her.
It became like an unofficial coming-out party for him. He was celebrating being a man, and everybody was invited -even Angus, he realised with something like surprise when his brother came up to him at the end of a dance, holding two glasses of beer. Immediately, a lot of things he had noticed during the evening without being aware he was noticing them came together in Conn’s head. The ambiguity of his mother’s expression, as if only half of her was at the wedding and the other half was at a wake. Mick giving her much of his attention. A stranger, obviously a relative of Annie, saying, as Conn danced past, ‘Is the feyther deid then?’ Together, they forced Conn to face the aspect of the wedding from which he had been hiding in movement.
‘Here,’ Angus said. ‘Anchor yerself tae that an’ hiv a rest.’
Conn took the glass and sipped, fingering sweat from his eyebrows.
‘Ye better come through here a meenit an’ cool aff.’
They picked their way among the scatter of people beached haphazardly on their own exhaustion. Tendrils of conversation caught at them as they passed. ‘There’s that auld mairrit man.’ ‘Whit shift are ye oan the morra, Gus?’ Angus led the way into the small room at the end of the hall. It wasn’t lit but with the door open it turned down the volume of light in the dance-hall to a pleasant gentleness. Coats and jackets hung round the walls. A table and some stacked chairs were the only furniture. Conn sat on the table, drinking. Seen from the outside, the hall became a fact.
‘Hey,’ Conn said. ‘Ye’re mairrit. Whit does it feel like?’
‘Ah’ll tell ye the morra.’
Conn watched another young man ask the girl he had dated to dance. He couldn’t remember her name.
‘Yer wee hoose is a’ right, onywey,’ he said. ‘Ye’re a’ right there.’
‘That’s no’ a’,’ Angus said. ‘Look at this.’
He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a bundle of notes, spreading them with his thumb, like a deck of cards. It was more money than Conn had ever seen. There must have been about twenty pounds, he thought.
‘Where did ye get that?’
‘Ah’m a workin’ man.’
‘Jesus. Ye must be mair than wan workin’ man tae have that kinna money.’
The joke was automatic, grew out of the words, but having said it, Conn found that he had stumbled reluctantly on to a possibility. Angus’s smile wasn’t reassuring.
‘Does a’ yer squad make that kinna money?’
‘They a’ make whit they earn,’ Angus said. ‘An’ there’s plenty mair yet. Listen. If ye ever fancy makin’ some real money, jist let me ken. A special openin’ fur ye. Only brithers need apply.’
They looked across and each surprised the same thought in the other. Neither knew which of them it came from first, but the money took on the significance of a bribe, and Angus put it back in his pocket. Conn looked away. He saw Kathleen and Jack dancing the two-step. They looked happy.
‘Whit dae ye make o’ him then?’ Angus said.
‘Who?’
‘Come oan. The place is hauf empty withoot ‘im.’
Conn drank to avoid talking.
‘It’s no’ believable, is it? Why did he no’ come? Ah kept thinkin’ he was bound tae show up. Whit dae ye think o’ that?’
‘Ye ken hoo he is.’
‘Aye. Tadger came,’ Angus said, watching him pilot the stately bulk of Mrs Daly round the floor. Angus suddenly laughed. ‘Luk at ‘im. He’s like a bit that fell aff her. But ma feyther couldny come.’
‘Don’t let it worry ye, Angus.’
‘Who’s worried?’ Angus said. ‘RIP.’
Conn looked at him and saw that he meant it. It was then that Conn realised how short he himself still was of being a man. What he had been doing during the evening was just a boy’s game. Being a man didn’t mean drinking beer and sharing jokes and pattering girls. It meant being where Angus was. He sat beside Conn now on the table, taking a sip of beer, his eyes quietly reflecting on what was happening in the hall. His carefully laundered white shirt had wilted in the heat, fusing on to his skin, so that it was like a peeling disguise for the hardness of his body. Conn saw his preoccupation as more than temporary. It seemed to Conn he had always had that quality about him of moving along private corridors, an area whose counterpart Conn felt he hadn’t yet discovered in himself. You could always shout but chances were he wouldn’t hear you, whereas Conn heard every incidental noise and was distracted by it. Where Angus found the decision to quietly bury a living father baffled Conn and frightened him.
‘He wid dae the same fur me,’ Angus said. ‘An’ Ah’m gled. Ah’m daein’ whit Ah hiv tae dae. Let him dae the same. Poor bugger. Maybe he’s richt to haud it against me the wey he does. Ah used tae wonder whit the fuss wis aboot. Because Ah punched a few faces. An’ lifted up a few skirts. An’ made some extra bob. But he kent there wis mair tae it than that. Ah’ll gi’e him that. He kent whit it wis daein’ before Ah did. Ye ken whit bothered ma feyther? Ah wisny punchin’ the right faces. Ah didny lift up skirts with proper respect. See, ye ken whit Ah’ve come tae think? Ma feyther still believes in some kinna holiness. At least he’s tryin’ tae. He’s no’ a Catholic, all richt. An’ Christ knows whit he believes. But he believes it strong. An’ whit Ah did wis Ah shat in his wee church. An’ he’s havin’ tae live wi’ the smell. Good luck tae ‘im. Because Ah agree wi’ him on wan thing. Ah’m no’ playin’ fur his team. An’ whit he kens is his team’s gonny lose. An’ Ah’m gonny win. Ah’ve done no’ bad already. Ah’m still comin’ oan. Ah ken who’s side Ah’m on. Whit aboot you?’
Conn didn’t answer. Angus had been speaking compulsively but not because he needed reassurance, rather because he was so sure of himself that he needed to tell somebody else. He was like a pretender so certain of his own assumption of power that he checks his support not to see if he’ll succeed but just to know who his friends are when he does. Having come back from some kind of exile of his own, he had learned that he could do without anybody except himself. Looking at him sitting easily there, Conn felt him dangerous, just because you didn’t know which way he might move. Whatever he did would be according to his own promptings and not foreseeable. You couldn’t make too many assumptions about Angus.
Conn remembered something that had happened when they were both boys. One of the houses on Wullie Mair’s brae attracted a group of them once when they were going up the country, because the door of the back-garden had a sign saying ‘Beware of the Dog’. They had knocked at the door of the house. Having made sure nobody was in, they climbed on to the wall of the garden and there it was, an Alsatian attached to its kennel by a chain. Two or three of them ventured into the garden and left again quickly. Angus stayed. Determining the length of the chain, he moved in and out of range, teasing and testing, for so long that the others got tired of watching and left, including Conn. When he rejoined them up the road, the sleeve of his jersey was torn but he seemed satisfied. Conn thought that in a way he hadn’t changed. He was still looking for his limits.
Angus brought out a packet of cigarettes and they lit up. Smoking so soon after his exertion made Conn cough.
‘Look at them,’ Angus said.
In the hall they were doing the Gay Gordons. They were all ages, advancing and receding, polkaing past in frantic procession; middle-aged women moving their bosoms around like ponderous pieces of furniture; Tadger sweating harder than he did on a shift; somebody’s children who hadn’t yet fallen asleep hammily mocking the dance since they couldn’t do it; an old couple making a minuet of it; a young boy and girl trying to copy the steps of those nearest them. The fiddlers sounded as if they were going mad. Most of the dancers’ eyes had a look of glazed acquiescence.
‘Ah mean Ah like them,’ Angus went on.
‘Hoo could ye no’? They’re great, aren’t they? But Christ. That’s whit they’ve been daein’ a’ their lives. Dancin’ tae whitever tune gets played. Whit’s ma feyther waitin’ fur? They’re no’ gonny chinge. They’re a’ too guid losers. That’s whit they’re best at. They’ve hud that much practice. Well, no’ me. Ye ken a funny thing? There’s no’ wan body in that hall, or ootside it that Ah ken o’, that Ah don’t think Ah could cope wi’. Ah don’t ken anything that’ll stoap me fae daein’ whit Ah’m gonny dae. Frem noo on, it’s just Annie an’ me. An’ we’re gonny make oot.’
‘That’s mair than a wee bit wild,’ Conn said.
‘Who’s arguin’?’
Angus looked at him and smiled.
‘Hard times, Conn,’ he said. ‘Harder times aheid. You stey among them, ye micht jist get buried in the boadies.’
As the dance came to an end in the hall the small, half-darkened room he and Angus were in seemed to Conn like a threat the others were unaware of. He felt as if Angus had involved him in a conspiracy from which people like Tadger, mopping his face with a handkerchief and laughing, were excluded. They all looked somehow terribly vulnerable, the three young men pretending to hold one another up, the girl repinning a fallen strand of hair, Mrs Daly easing herself into a seat beside his mother and having a flushing, Mick reaching under his chair for his glass of beer. He thought of a phrase his mother used a lot: God save us. Who else? He sensed himself a part of their openness. For beside Angus, Conn seemed to himself to be vague and ineffectual, wanting to go in five different ways at once.
They announced the ‘Drops O’ Brandy.’ A voice at the door of the small room said, There, he’s there!’ Buzz Crawley appeared in the doorway, pulling a partner. Rab Lawson and his girl-friend were there too.
‘Come oan, come oan,’ Buzz Crawley said. ‘This is some time tae be gettin’ fou. Whit are ye? Feart? Annie’s oot here waitin’ fur ye.’
‘We’re gonna hiv the best set in the hall,’ Rab said.
Angus laughed, finished his beer, punched Conn’s shoulder, and went out. As Conn followed them, he noticed that the girl whose hand Buzz was holding was the one he had dated. She gave him a look that said ‘What could I do?’ Conn winked and leaned against the doorway while Buzz and Rab pretended to be pulling Angus across the dancefloor. Buzz was singing, ‘Here comes the groom.’ Rab shouted, ‘We found ‘im, Annie. He wis hidin’.’
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