What the devil was up down there?
The whole column had slowed, came bang to a stop, more Mounties with their wee thick sticks in their hands strung out there across the Mile, rain-pelted, the horses chafing at the bridles, impatient, Christ, rotten to face if a brute came at you. And a growl and a murmur went through the column, what was wrong up there, why had they stopped? Chaps cried Get on with it, Jim, what’s wrong? Syne the news came down, childes passing it on, their faces twisted with rage or laughing, they hardly bothered to curse about it, the police were turning the procession back down into Paldy by way of the wynds. It wasn’t to be let near the Town Hall at all, the Provost had refused to see them or Trease.
And then you heard something rising about you that hadn’t words, the queerest-like sound, you stared at your mates, a thing like a growl, low and savage, the same in your throat. And then you were thrusting forward like others— Never mind the Bulgars, they can’t stop our march! And in less than a minute the whole column was swaying and crowding forward, the banners pitching and scudding like leaves above the sodden clothes of the angry Broo men. Trease crying Back! Take care! Keep the line!
And your blood fair boiled when you heard him cry that, a Red—just the same as the Labour whoresons, no guts and scared for his bloody face. And above his head you saw one of the bobbies, an inspector, give his arm a wave, and next minute the horses were pelting upon you hell for leather, oh Christ, they couldn’t—
Ewan was down in Lower Mile when the police tried to turn the unemployment procession down the wynds to the Gallowgate. He’d just come from a bookshop and was forced to stop, the pavements black with outstaring people. And then they began to clear right and left, the shopman behind cried Come back, Sir. There’ll be a hell of a row in a minute, he was standing on a pavement almost deserted. Then he saw the mounted policeman wave and the others jerk at their horses’ bridles, and suddenly, far up, the policeman of Segget, the clown that the Segget folk had called Feet, not mounted, he’d come by the side of the column—saw him grab a young keelie by the collar and lift his baton and hit him, crack!—crack like a calsay-stone hit by a hammer, Ewan’s heart leapt, he bit back a cry, the boy screamed: and then there was hell.
As the bobbies charged the Broo men went mad though their leader tried to wave them back, Εwan saw him mishandled and knocked to the ground under the flying hooves of the horses. And then he saw the Broo folk in action, a man jumped forward with a pole in his hand with a ragged flag with letters on it, and thrust: the bobby took it in the face and went flying over his horse’s rump, Εwan heard some body cheer—himself—well done, well done! Now under the charges and the pelt of the rain the column was broken, but it fought the police, with sticks, with naked hands, with the banners, broken and knocked down right and left, the police had gone mad as well, striking and striking, riding their horses up on the pavements, cursing and shouting, Εwan saw one go by, his teeth bared, bad teeth, the face of a beast, he hit out and an old, quiet-looking man went down, the hoof of the horse went plunk on his breast—
And then Ewan saw the brewery lorry jammed by the pavement, full of empty bottles; and something took hold of him, whirled him about, shot him into the struggling column. For a minute the Broo men didn’t hear or understand, then they caught his gestures or shout or both, yelled, and poured across the Mile and swamped the lorry in a leaping wave….
That evening the Runner ran a special edition and the news went humming into the south about the fight in the Royal Mile, pitched battle between unemployed and police, how the Reds had fought the bobbies with bottles, battering them from their saddles with volleys of bottles: would you credit that, now, the coarse brutes that they were? The poor police had just tried to keep order, to stop a riot, and that’s what they’d got.
. . . . .
The Reverend Edward MacShilluck in his Manse said the thing was disgraceful, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, more than that, a portent of the atheist, loose-living times. Why hadn’t the police called out the North Highlanders? … And he read up the Runner while he ate his bit supper, and called in his housekeeper and told her the news, and she said that she thought it disgraceful, just, she’d heard that a poor old man was in hospital, dying, with his breast all broken up: would he be a policeman, then, would you say? The Reverend MacShilluck gave a bit of a cough and said Well, no, he understood not— Ahhhhhhhhhhhh well, we mustn’t worry over much on these things, the proper authorities will see to them. And gave the housekeeper a slap in the bottom, well-fed, and said Eh, Pootsy, tonight? And the housekeeper simpered and said Oh, sir—
Bailie Brown, that respectable Labour man, was interviewed and was awful indignant, he said that he fought day in, day out, the cause of the unemployed on the Council, none knew the workers better than he or the grievances they had to redress. But what good did this senseless marching do?—the Council had to impose the pac rates the National Government laid down for it, you could alter nothing for a three or four years till Labour came into power again. The unemployed must trust the Labour Party, not allow itself to be led all astray—And he shot Mr Piddle out on the street, in a hurry, like, he’d to dress for dinner.
. . . . .
Lord Provost Speight was found in his garden, stroking his long, dreich, wrinkled face; and he said that this Bolshevism should be suppressed, he put the whole riot down to Communist agents, paid agitators who were trained in Moscow, the working-class was sound as a bell. If they thought they could bring pressure to bear on the Council to alter the rates of the pac, by rioting about in Royal Mile, they were sore mistaken, he’d guarantee that—
. . . . .
Duncairn’s Chief Constable said it wasn’t true the police had run, they’d just given back a wee till reinforcements came and by then the crowd had dispersed, that was all. No, they’d made only one arrest so far, the well-known agitator Trease. And the old man who had died in the hospital had been struck down by one of the rioters—
. . . . .
And the men came back to their homes in Footforthie and Paldy Parish and Kirrieben, some of them walking and laughing, some glum, some of them half-carried all the way, with their broken noses, bashed faces, it made a woman go sick to see Peter or Andrew or Charlie now, his face a dripping, bloody mask, his whispering through his broken lips: I’m fine, lass, fine. Oh God, you could greet if it wasn’t that when you did that you would die….
And all that night they re-fought the fight, in tenements, courts, this room and that, and the bairns lay listening how the bobbies had run, of the young toff who’d appeared when Trease was knocked down and shouted Break down the lorry for bottles! and led them all off when the bottles were finished, him and Steve Selden, and told them to scatter. By God, he’d lots of guts had that loon, though, toff-like, he’d been sick as a dog of a sudden, down in the Cowgate when binding a wound. You wanted more of his kind for the next bit time…. And the wife would say What’s the use of more bashing? and you said a man had to die only once and ’twould be worth while doing that if you kicked the bucket with your nails well twined in a bobby’s liver—
. . . . .
A week later the Daily Runner came out and announced that after a special sitting the Council had raised the pac rates.
Ma Cleghorn heard the story from Chris: Ah well, if that’s how your Ewan feels. I’d never much liking for bobbies myself, though maybe the meikle sumph, you know, was doing no more than his duty, like. Chris said His duty? To bash a young boy—before the boy had done anything to him? And Ma said Well, well, you’re fair stirred up. I’ll think up some sonsy lie as excuse, and tell him the morn to look out other lodgings.
And next morning Ma tackled the sacking of Feet, he’d spluttered a bit and put on the heavy as she told Chris when she came back to the kitchen. But she’d soon settled up his hash for the billy, telling him his room was needed for another, a childe they’d promised it a long while back. He’d told her she’d better look out, she had, and not get in ill with the Force, they’d he
ard things in headquarters about that quean Johns and were keeping an eye on the house already—
Ma had fair lost her rag at that and told him she didn’t care a twopenny damn though all the bobbies in Duncairn toun were to glue themselves on to her front door knocker, the meikle lice—who was he to insult a decent woman who paid her rent and rates on the nail? If my man had been alive, he’d have kicked you out, sergeant’s stripes and all, you great coarse bap-faced goloch that you are. Feet had habbered I wasn’t trying to insult you, and Ma had said Give me more of your lip and I’ll tackle the kicking of your dowp myself, and left him fair in fluster, poor childe, hardly kenning whether he stood on his head or meikle feet, fair convinced he was in the wrong, and packing up his case to get out of the house.—So there you are, lass, and we’re short of a lodger.
Chris said she was sorry, she’d try and get another, and Ma said Och, not to worry about that, some creature would soon come talking around. Chris thought the same, not heeding a lot, though it was a shame to lose Feet’s fee. But he couldn’t have bidden in the house at all after that tale that Ewan had told her—Ewan with a pale, cool angry face, stirred as she’d never seen him stirred.
She was thinking of that when the postman chapped, Ma Cleghorn went paiching out to the hall and silence followed till Ma cried up A letter for you, Mrs Robert Colquohoun.
When Chris got down to the hail there she stood, turning the thing this way and that, all but tearing it open and reading, Chris nearly laughed, she was used to Ma. It’s from Segget, Ma said, and Chris said Is’t now? and took the thing and opened it and read, Ma giving a whistle and turning away and dighting with a duster at the grandfather clock, making on she was awful ta’en up with her work. And Chris read the long straggle of sloping letters and was suddenly smelling, green and keen, sawdust, sawn wood—queerly and suddenly homesick for Segget:
We’ve a new lodger coming on the Monday, Ma. A man that I used to know in Segget, Ake Ogilvie the joiner, he’s gotten a job as a foreman up at the Provost’s sawmills.
Chris started awake. The fog had re-thickened, blanketing Duncairn away from her sight as she stood here dreaming like a gowkèd bairn. Her hair felt damp with the pressing mist veils and the weight of the bag on her arm was lead—funny this habit she aye had had of finding some place wherever she bade to which she could climb by her lone for a while and think of the days new-finished and done, like a packman halting hill on hill and staring back at the valleys behind. She minded how above the ploughed lands of Blawearie this habit had grown, long syne, long syne, when she’d lain and dreamed as a quean by the loch in the shadow of the marled Druid Stones, and how above Segget in the ruined Kaimes she had done the same as the wife of Robert. Robert: and Ake Ogilvie was coming from Segget with his long brown face and his rangy stride. How would he take with a place like Duncairn? How had he gotten the job with the Provost?
Autumn coming down there in the fog, down in the days you no more could glimpse than the shrouded roofs of Duncairn at this hour…. And Ewan—what was happening to Ewan? Once so cool and cold, boy-clear, boy-clever, a queer lad you’d thought would never be touched by any wing of the fancies of men, grey granite down to the core—and now?
In the mirror she saw her face, dim in mist, and smiled at it with a kind dispassion. And what to herself?—just the trauchle of time, the old woman she’d believed herself at first in Duncairn—as she still did sometimes at moments of weariness—or that other quean that refused to die, that moved and looked and stole off her thoughts, and dreamed the daftest of old, lost dreams, blithe as though twenty, unkissed and uncuddled?
Well, time she went into those mists of the future. There was ten o’clock chapping from Thomson Tower.
TWO
Sphene
AS THE DAY awoke great clouds had come out of the North Sea over Duncairn, with them the wind rose and rose, snarling at the gates of the dark, waiting to break through with the first peep of light. And now as that peep came glimmering, far off, beyond the edge of the Mounth, the storm loosed itself over the toun, sheeting down a frozen torrent of water. Sometimes the sleet was a ding-dong fall, and again the wind would whirl and lift, pitching great handfuls into your face though a minute before you had been in the lithe. The Windmill Steps were sheeted in slush, twice Chris slipped and nearly fell as she ran for the shelter of the mirror ledge, low below a first shrouded tram wheeled, moaning, and took the road to the Mile, the lights were going out one by one as the winter morning broke on Duncairn.
In the lithe of the mirror Chris stopped and panted and beat her frozen hands together, hatless still but muffled in a scarf to the ears for that last silly journey down to the doctor’s. She’d finished with him, done everything proper, and now there was surely nothing else. And she felt—oh, she could sleep for a month—like a polar bear, with the sleet for a sheet—
Her hair faint-sprayed by the sleet that went by, not touching the rest of her, she raised her eyes and saw it, half in the dark, half in the light, strange, a strange blind glister and drift high in the lift, a bannered attack going by in silence though you heard the shoom of the spears far down. Stamping her feet to bring them to warmth, she rested a minute, closed her eyes, yawned over-poweringly and achingly, and ceased from that to stare sombre-eyed down at the breaking of the sleet-hunted light. Whatever next? Whatever next?
How could she have known that day in July when she rested here and wondered on things that this would come, that she’d stand here appalled, that she wouldn’t know which way to think or to move? Her mind shrank in a passion of pity a minute, strangely linked with a desire to laugh…. And she shook herself, no time to stand here, with the house above wakening and waiting her—
Oh, let it wait, let it rest awhile while she caught her breath and tried to make out where she’d mislaid that security hers and her own only a short six months before:
Long-mousered, green-eyed, with his ploughman’s swagger, it had seemed to Chris six months before that Ake Ogilvie’s coming had brought to Duncairn something clean and crude as the smell of rain—crude and clean as she herself had been once before a playing at gentry enslaved her, like turning round in a lane at night and meeting one’s own lost self and face, lost a long fifteen years before, smiling with cool and sardonic lips. Not that Ake had anything very young about him, or old-like either, he was one of the kind that seem to stick to one age all their lives, swagger and pipe and clumping feet, met on the stairs as he carried up his kist that Monday morning from the taxi below.
Ay, Mrs Colquohoun, you look bonny as ever. And Chris said that was fine, but why was he carrying the kist? The cabman would surely have given him a hand. And Ake said he’d just had an argy with the billy and sent him off with a flea in his lug, by God he’d wanted a whole half-crown for bringing them up from the Central Station.
Chris said that was awful, cabmen were like that, but Ake wouldn’t be able to carry up the kist on his shoulder further, the stairs drew in. So he lowered it down and syne shook hands and looked her all over with his swagger green glower. Ay, you’ve fairly ta’en with Duncairn. D’you miss the Manse? Chris said Not much. Shall I give you a hand?
Ake looked a bit doubtful, he thought of her still as the wife of Robert in Segget, she saw, genteel and neat and fine and frail—she said Come on! and took hold of an end and Ake did the same, up they went to his room, made ready, and put down the kist in the corner for’t. Syne Ake looked round and out at the roofs: A hell of a place for a man to bide, the toun, though the room looks canty enough. You’ll be gey busy here, no doubt then, mistress?
Chris nearly cuddled him, calling her that, so long since a soul had called her mistress: I’ve a lot to do, same as other folk. But we’ll have a crack on Segget some time.—Ay, faith we will. He had turned away, no frills or unnecessary politeness with him: I’ll be in to my tea, but not to my dinner. I’ve to gang up and see the Provost man.
Chris said that she hoped he’d get on fine, and he said No fear of that.
Ta-ta.
He made himself at home from the first, sitting arguing in the sitting-room with Mr Neil Quaritch, thin, with his little tuft of a beard and his Douglas Scheme (that Ewan called the Bourgeois Funk-Fantasy), Ake beside him looking like a shorthorn bull taking up its spare time on a gossip with a goat. He looked over-real sometimes to Chris to be real as she’d meet him coming in at the door, slow and yet quick, throwing down his feet with a fine and measured stride, the earth’s his, yielding the wall to none in Duncairn. And he’d clump up the stairs and into his room without a sideways look or a thought, he’d paid his fee and the room was his, would he creep up quiet for any damned body?
Chris never saw him at ease in his room. Rousing the first morning after he came she’d thought to make him a cup of tea and take it to him the same as to others. But while she was moving about with the cups and the kettle was singing and Jock the cat purring away for dear life by the range and the caller air of the August dawn coming up the Steps and into the house, she heard a pad of feet on the stairs, and there was Ake at the kitchen door, his mouser fresh-curled, in his waistcoat and breeks, no slippers, his kind never did have slippers Chris minded back to her farmhouse days: Ay, mistress, I thought it would maybe be you. This’ll be your kitchen place, no doubt. Chris said it was—Come in and sit down.
And in he came and sat by the fire and gave the cat Jock a bit of a stroke, and sat and drank the tea that she poured him, not offering to help her as Quaritch would have done, God be here it was a woman’s work, wasn’t it now, who’d ever heard of a man who sossed with the cups? And Ake drank the tea through his curling moustache, and wiped that, and nodded Ay, that’s a good brew. I think I’ll taik down every morning for one. Chris said There’s no need to do that, Mr Ogilvie, I take up cups to the folk that want them. And Ake said Oh to hell with that, he wasn’t a cripple and could come for his own. Besides, he was used to getting up with the light and hadn’t a fancy for stinking in bed. Chris thought And suppose I’ve no fancy for you sitting about in my way in the kitchen? But she didn’t say it, just went on with her work, watched by Ake sitting smoking his pipe—Ay, God, she looked a bonny lass still, a bit over-small for her height, you would say, but a fine leg and hip, a warm bit quean. She’d fair set a-lowe and burned up Colquohoun in her time, you wouldn’t but wonder; and maybe had never yet had a man to handle her as she needed handling.
A Scots Quair Page 64