But no decent lassies would listen to them, for they knew the Communionists were awful tinks who wanted to break up the home.
Every day as the Cowgate stirred Meg was up at the cheep of dawn, seeing to young Jessie and Geordie for school, getting ready breakfast, snapping back at Mother, Father the old devil lying snoozing in bed, he didn’t go down to the Docks till ten. He swore he could hardly get a wink of sleep because of the old trawl-skipper next door, awful religious and fond of a nip, who thrashed his old wife near every night, singing out hymn-tunes like hell the while. If other folk could sleep through the old skipper’s roar of Rock of Ages, cleft for me as he cleft his old woman under the bed, why couldn’t Father sleep as well?
Alick, Meg’s brother, would get into his clothes, grumbling as usual when he’d only porridge. He was barely Meg’s age, an apprentice-lad down at Gowans and Gloag’s in Footforthie. That might have been fine, the beginnings of a job, but when his apprenticeship was up—well, everybody kenned what happened to apprentices. They were sacked right off when they needed men’s wages, and Alick like others would be chucked on the Broo.
Alick said this morning when Meg sneered that, Ay, maybe to me the same as the others, but not to the dirty college sods. And he said that Gowans took college pups now, with a special apprenticeship, easy as winking, they served the first six months at the Furnace, same as the others, but what happened to them then? They squatted their dowps in office jobs, and put on clean collars and gave out their orders, bloody toffs, though no better than you or me. There’d been two of them in the last two years, training as managers, they weren’t sacked, when the last machinery came into the Works that would do all the doings without working-chaps: you’d still need somebody to oil it about, and they’d keep the mammie’s pets to do that. Another had come a two months back—a black-haired, stuck-up gypsy Bulgar, over-fine to speak to a chap like Alick, he’d get a sock in the kisser sometime.
Meg said Don’t blether, you haven’t the guts; you’re jealous he’s brains and you haven’t, that’s all. Alick snorted Brains? Him? He’s only got swank. And me and the chaps in the Furnaces are planning a little bit of a surprise for Mr Bloody Ewan Tavendale.
—WHO?
Alick said Wash out your lugs. Ewan Tavendale’s the name if you want to know. Here, get out of my way till I get on my boots, the hooter’ll be howling in a minute or so.
So that was where her son worked, was it then? What had She to be stuck-up about? A lassie could bear with old Ma Cleghorn, an orra old bitch but not a bad heart. But the way that that Mrs Colquohoun took on, and looked at you cool, put a body off. And who was she to put on her airs that kept a lodging-house for a living and had her son only an apprentice like Alick?
Meg grabbed her hat and set out for Windmill, the Cowgate slowly unwreathing its fug, up in Royal Mile the lorries were lolloping over the calsays, Paldy Parish littering its doors with weans, snuffy and ragged, kids off to school, scrawling dirty things on the pavements, some throwing filth and cheeking a lassie…. She’d get out of this place, get a lodging somewhere in Tangleha’ or the Ecclesgriegs.
But who should she meet where the Cowgate lane climbed up to the stour and whirr of the Mile than Big Jim Trease the Communionist, red-cheeked and sappy, everybody kenned him and called him Jim when bobbies weren’t looking. But Meg had no use for those coarse brutes the Reds that would do away with the gents and her job, and when Big Jim smiled all over his face twinkling his wee pig eyes at her she made to go by with her nose in the air. He’d a creature with him she didn’t know, thin, brown, ragged, with an ill-shaved face; and Jim cried Meg, I’ve been looking for you. Has your Ma still got that spare bed to let?
Meg snapped Supposing you gang and speir at her? Big Jim smiled at her sappy and kind, she felt half-shamed though the beast was a Red: Right, and we will. Many thanks, Meg.
Would you credit that?—trying to land a Red in the house, maybe rape you and gut you in the middle of the night, as the coarse tinks did with hardly a break, night on night, in that awful Russia. If Ma wasn’t soft she would keep the door snibbed…. Oh to hell, there’s the Windmill tram!
She caught the thing by the skin of the teeth and got out under the Windmill Brae, ran up the Steps and met face to face young Ewan Tavendale coming down them—three at a time, no hat, in overalls, hands in his pouches, two books alow his oxter, his eyes went over her, why need he be proud? The like of him made you think the Reds right, he needed to be jammed by a wall and shot.
Morning, Meg, he said, Didn’t notice you, and smiled as sweet as a kid at you. Oh, losh, and the things you’d been thinking about him!
And the things Alick said they were doing today—
Gowans and Gloag made metal containers, bolts and girders and metal trestles, fine castings for sections of engine casings, a thousand men working in great rattling sheds built to hold the labour of three times the number in a rattle and roar of prosperity. Ewan Tavendale would think of that now and then, Gowans had flourished just after the War, high wages and bonuses dished out to all, pap for the proletariats. Wonder what they did with the high money then?—Spent it on the usual keelie things, dogs and horse-racing and sleeping with whores, poor devils—it had nothing to do with him.
Hardly anything to do with the others at all, stoking his shot in the Furnaces, stripped to the waist, he stripped brown, mother’s skin, and tightened his belt over shovel and barrow, cleared out the clinkers and wheeled up a load and flung it deep in the whoom of the flame, the Works kittling up as the morning woke, bells snarling hell if the heat now and then went low in one fire or another. In an hour or so Ewan’d be dripping with sweat, and drink and drink from the tap in the rear, water that gushed out again from him, a sponge-like life and tremendous fun. The other apprentices, keelies the lot, didn’t seem anxious to chum up at all, thank goodness, it gave him time to tackle the books of the trade, metallurgy twice as exciting as flints. He stacked the books with his coat in the sheds, till dinner, and went up and scrubbed himself, put on his coat and went down to the Docks with books and a sandwich and swotted up Castings. But the other apprentices stayed behind and laughed and joked in the lavatories, insanitary devils, no business of his.
But this forenoon was the worst he’d faced in the Furnaces, hours clogged with heat, lungs going like bellows, once the foreman Dallas came swearing down, about fires, not Ewan’s, it was drawing fine. He looked at Ewan and gave him a nod Take it a bit easier, Mr Tavendale. Yours is fine. It’s the fires of those other muckers. He’d hardly gone up the steps to Machines when the pimply keelie Alick Watson called out to another of them, Ewan didn’t know his name: D’you know any poetry this morning, Norman?
—Oh, ay, a fine bit. You other lads heard it?—
There once was a gent Tavendale
(Oh-Rahly-the-guff-makes me pale!)
A pimp and a sucker,
A dirty wee mucker—
And his name, as I’ve said, Tavendale.
…. Oh ay, the toff bastard heard it fine, but he didn’t let on, just went on with his work, all the lads laughed, you’d known he’d no guts. Syne Norman Cruickshank sang out another bit, you laughed till you split, a funny sod Norman, about the toff mucker’s mucking mother. He threw down the shovel as he said that, Norman, getting ready for the toff when he louped to bash him, as any body would do when he heard that about his mother. And he heard it all right and gave Norman a look, fair damn well maddening, as though Norman were dirt and not very interesting dirt at that: and went on with raking the clinkers, calm. But Alick you could see was warming up to him, you all warmed up, led him hell’s delight, serve him right with his bloody show-off. Wee Geordie Bruce couped his barrow when he wasn’t looking, and Norman nipped back for the urine pan and slung it right slap in the toff Bulgar’s fire, it sent up a guff that near killed you all and the toff had to stoke it up afresh.
He’d only just finished when the hooter went, Alick Watson had nipped up a minute afore bent on some dev
iltry you could be bound. When the rest of you got up the stairs he was just coming out of the washing-sheds where all the lads left their jackets and pieces. He winked and you knew he’d been up to something, and grinned and waited for Tavendale.
Ewan went in and washed and took down his jacket, and put it on, and put his hand in his pocket…. For a minute, certain, he knew he’d be sick, damned sick, and then swallowed his throat and didn’t think as he washed his hand and wrenched off his jacket. Nuisance—miss most of that section on phosphor bronze now.
The five keelies were waiting for him to come out, they held their noses and capered and laughed, Ewan thought The pimply keelie, I suppose, and walked quietly over to where the five stood. The keelie’s eyes in his thin, dour face didn’t change, scornful of gentry, hands in his pouches, Damn shame, he’s no chance, said Ewan’s mind as he hit him and felt his arm go numb.
Alick shot like a stone from a catapult half across the yard crash in a bowie of lime, Ewan knew he’d be back in less than a minute, the only other dangerous one in the gang the one called Norman, an unscrubbed little swine—about three inches higher than yourself—still, little. And he swung up his left, keelie on the point, he whirled about and went flump in the stour; and it seemed to Ewan suddenly all the day cleared, Duncairn clear, bright and sharp to his finger-tips’ touch, he’d never felt so well or so keen for life, he laughed: and Alick Watson came at him head down.
The foreman and another man heard the fighting back by the sheds and came round to see. The childe with the foreman grunted That’s him: another of those gentry apprentice sods, but the foreman Dallas of course had his favourite, he called out Steady a bit, Tavendale! Ewan dripped blood like a half-killed pig, but he didn’t know that, infighting, they were both thick-streaked with blood and snot, holding and fighting, Alick tried to kick, Ewan felt a stab of pain like a knife, and loosened his hold and Alick broke away—looked, swung, and struck, it caught Ewan’s neck, he gave a queer grunt and twist, the fight finished, queer that silence to Alick and the way the sheds shook.
When Chris woke next morning the first thought that came in her mind was of Ewan. She didn’t lie in bed and stretch as usual, got out and dressed and went down to the kitchen. Outside the early dawn of Duncairn lay pallid on the rigs and rinds of grey granite stretching away to the feet of the morning, east wan-tinted, no birds crying, the toun turning to yawn awake below. Jock came and purred and circled her legs, sniffed and sneezed, but she hardly noticed, taking up Ma’s tea, syne Miss Murgatroyd’s, and so at last gained Ewan’s room.
He lay fast sleep, head bandaged, neck bandaged, she thought He’s so young! as she saw his arm, dimpled and smooth of skin, lying by his side. And then as she went nearer she saw his face, the bruises upon it, the broken skin, the swollen lips: and went soft inside in a blaze of rage. How could they—to Ewan, he was only a bairn!
She picked up one of the apples he’d want and sat down on the bed and shook him awake. He woke with the usual quick lack of blink, but half unguarded for a minute, Chris thought, as though she’d peeped down in his eyes for once to that queer boy-self that so puzzled her. Son of herself but sometimes so un-sib she felt more kin to Meg Watson the maid!
She told him that, idly, as though it were a joke, and he put his hands under his head and considered, and said something about hormones and egg-cells, whatever they had to do with it—I’m not so different; but I want to know things. And I love you up to that phosphor-bronze hair—more than Meg Whatname’ll ever do.
Chris said it was Watson, not Whatname, and Εwan said that was a funny coincidence, wondered if she were any relation of the keelie that had bashed him so yesterday.— Perfect hiding he was giving me, Chris; and I struck it unlucky, head bang on a girder. Fought like a rat and so did I.
Chris said What was it all about?
He lay still a minute, still in that posture. Oh, filth. Nothing you need worry about. They don’t much like me, the keelies, Chris.
She’d heard him use that word before but the queerest thing happened to her now. She said sharply: What’s a keelie, Εwan? Your father was a ploughman afore we were wed, and I was a quean in a crofter’s kitchen.
Bandaged, undisturbed, he lay looking at her. A ploughman’s not a keelie. And anyhow, Chris—
Her heart tightened in a funny way. There was something else. She said Yes?
—Oh—just that though my father was a ploughman and you came from a kitchen—that’s nothing to do with me, has it? I’m neither you nor my father: I’m myself.
All that day and the next Meg didn’t turn up, Ma Cleghorn swore at the lazy limmer and did all the washing-up by herself, and broke two plates in the first half-hour—all through that lazy bitch of a quean! Jock hardly knew where he was after that, his feet more often in the air than not, as Ma kicked him from the range to the dresser and back, he purring like a red-hot engine the while, Chris saw the last act as she brought down a tray—Jock scart his claws in Ma’s sonsy leg and give a loud scraich and shoot out of the window. And the sight was so funny Chris heard herself giggle, like a bairn, Ma rubbing her leg and swearing:
Malagaroused by a cat and forsook by a jade. Will you go to the Cowgate and see what’s come of her?
So down Chris went, not taking the tram, better acquainted with Duncairn by now, down Windmill Brae with its shelving steps, across the Meal Market where they didn’t sell meal, sold nothing, old, a deserted patch, dogs and unemployed squatting in the sun, through Melvin Wynd into Little Mart where the ploughmen gathered in feeing-times in Paldy Fair in the days long syne. They didn’t now, two or three shops littered here, shops everywhere that a body might look, how did they all live and manage a trade? The pavements were sweating a greasy slime as she made her way to the Cowgate’s brink, steps leading down to Paldy Parish.
She’d never been so far into Paldy before, seeing the broken windows and the tattered doors and the weary faces of the women going by, basket-laden, all the place had a smell of hippens, unwashed, and old stale meat and God knew what, if even He knew, Chris thought He couldn’t. And she passed a Free Kirk with a twist to her thought: if there was a God as Robert had believed couldn’t He put it into the heads of those folk they’d be better served filling the wames of their weans than the stomach of some parson clown in a Manse? But then she’d never understood religion, thought it only a fairy-tale, not a good one, dark and evil rather, hurting life, hurting death, no concern of hers if others didn’t force it on her, she herself had nothing to force in its stead.
Robert once had had with his Socialism. And looking around that evil place in the stew of the hottering rising June she minded that verse he’d once quoted in Segget, long ago in that other life:
Stone hearts we cannot waken
Smite into living men:
Jehovah of the thunders
Assert Thy power again!
And dimly she thought that maybe that was what the Covenanters had believed when they faced the gentry in the old-time wars. Only God never came and they died for Him and the old soss went on as it always would do, aye idiot folk to take dirty lives and squat in the dirt, not caring a lot were they letten a-be to rot as they liked. No concern of hers—she belonged to herself as Ewan had told her he belonged to himself, she’d have hated the Covenant giving her orders as much as she’d have hated its enemies, the gentry.
… And all far off from a middle-aged wife looking for a missing maidie, Meg. Where was it Ma said the creature bade?
She found it at last, a deep narrow court, used to the smells she went in and up the stone stairs, chapped at the door and waited and listened. In a tenement near a row was on, furniture crashing, Chris heard a woman scraich and grew white to the lips. Syne she heard a loud voice raised in a hymn:
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done,
Count your blessings, name them one by one
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
>
There followed a final thump on that, somebody cried I’ll ha’e the bobbies on you, and then a door banged: and then a loud silence.
Chris chapped again, heard a noise inside, the door opened, she said: Is Meg Watson in?
The man who opened the door was the same who’d once stopped her in the Upper Cowgate and asked her for sixpence.
They both stared like gowks a minute, speechless, he’d shaved and wore a second-hand suit, over-big for him, bulging at paunch and bottom, the thin brown face didn’t look so starved, cocky and confident till he met her eyes. Now he flushed dark and licked his lips:
Meg Watson’s gone off to look for a job.
Chris nodded. I see. Will you tell her I want to know why she left me? My name is Mrs Colquohoun and if she comes back the morn you can tell her that I’ll say nothing about it.
… So that was who the sulky bitch was, boorjoy and stuck-up—he’d heard the tale, Alick had sloshed her son down at Gowans. A stuck-up toff, he’d said; like the mother, damn her and her glower and her ice-brick eyes.
Meg was feared to go back when she heard from her brother he’d bashed your son in a bit fight at the Works.
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