A Scots Quair

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  You said rough enough that you knew all that, and Norman looked at you queer and said Oh of course, you yourself had been a bit of a Red a while back and belonged to that league that Tavendale had raised. Why had you scuttled? Got the wind up?

  You took him a smack in the face for that, he was at you in a minute, you couldn’t stand up to him, the foreman came running in and pulled you apart: Hey, what the hell do you think this is? Boxing gymnasium? Back to your work, you whoreson gets. And back you both went, b’God you’d given the mucker something to think of, saying that you had the wind up—you!

  It was just that you’d seen the Reds were daft, a chap that joined them never got a job, got bashed by bobbies and was sent to the camps, never had a meek to spend of a night or a shirt that didn’t stick to his back. Och to hell! You wanted a life of your own, you’d met a quean that was braw and kind, she and you were saving up to get married, maybe at New Year and maybe a bit sooner, you’d your eyes on two rooms in Kirrieben, the quean was a two months gone already but you’d be in time if your plans came off; and you weren’t sorry a bit, you’d told her, kissing her, she’d blushed and pushed you away, awful shy Jess except in the dark. So who’d time at all for this Red stite and blether that never would help a chap anyway, what was the use of getting your head bashed in for something worse than religion?

  But that evening you and some of the chaps had a bit of overtime in the works, clearing up the mess of some university loons allowed down to potter about in Castings. You finished gey late and as you came out there was some kind of meeting on at the gates, a young chap up on a kind of platform, speaking low and clear, who could he be? And you and the rest took a dander along, a fair crowd around, Broo men and fishers, stinking like faeces, and a dozen or so of the toff student sods that had messed about that evening in Castings. The toffs were laughing and crying out jokes, but the young chap wasn’t heeding them a bit, he was dressed in old dungarees, all whitened, a chap from the granite-works, no doubt, with big thick boots and red rough hands. And only as you got fell close did you see that the speaker was young Ewan Tavendale himself.

  He was saying if the workers would only unite—when one of the university toffs made a raspberry and called Unite to give you a soft living, you mean? Ewan said Quite, and you a hard death, we’ll abolish lice in the Communist state, and then went on with his speech, quick and cool, the students started making a rumpus and some of the fishers gave a bit laugh and started to taik away home at that, quiet old chaps that didn’t fancy a row. But Norman Cruickshank called out to Ewan to carry on with his say, would he? they’d see to the mammies’ pets with the nice clean collars and the fat office dowps. And Norman called to the Gowans’ chaps: Who’ll keep order?

  Most of the others cried up that they would, you didn’t yourself but taiked away home, you’d your quean to meet and were going that night to look at a bit of second-hand furniture in a little shop in the Gallowgate. Only as you turned the bend of the street you looked back and saw a fair scrimmage on, the whey-faced bastards down from the colleges were taking on the Gowans chaps, you nearly turned and ran back to join—och, you couldn’t, not now, mighty, what about Jess? And you started to run like a fool, as though feared—feared at something that wasn’t yourself, that leapt in your heart when you looked at Ewan.

  Jim Trease said that was one way of holding a meeting, not the best, you should never let a free fight start at your meetings unless it was well in the heart of a town, with plenty of police about and folk in hundreds and a chance of a snappy arrest or so, to serve the Party as good publicity.

  Ewan said Yes, he knew, but he’d taken the opportunity to stir up antagonism between the Gowans chaps and students. Deepening the dislike between the classes. Obvious enough that the day of the revolutionary student was done, he turned to Fascism or Nationalism now, the fight for the future was the workers against all the world. Trease nodded, a bit of heresy there, but true enough in the main. Anyhow, there was no great harm done, Εwan had barked his knuckles a bit, he’d better come up to the Trease house in Paldy and get them iodined. And maybe he’d like a cup of tea.

  Εwan said he would and folded up his platform, the fight was over and the students had gone, chased up the wynds by the Gowans men. But Norman Cruickshank came panting back: All right, Ewan? and Ewan said Fine. Thanks to you, Norman. When’ll I see you?

  —I don’t know, but to hell—sometime. Never heard anybody speak about things as you used to do in the Furnaces. And he asked what Ewan was doing now and Ewan told him he was a labourer at Stoddart’s, and Norman said Christ, what a job for a toff, and Ewan said he wasn’t a toff, just a worker, and Norman said tell that to his grandmother: only, where would they meet again? So they fixed that up, Trease standing by, big and sonsy, with the twinkle in his little eyes and his shabby suit shining in the evening light.

  Mrs Trease held out a soft hand and said Howdedo? … Jim, I’m away out to the Pictures. See and not start the Revolution without me, there’s two kippers in the press if you’d like some meat, the police have been here this afternoon and the landlord’s going to give us the push. That’s all. Ta-ta. Trease gave her a squeeze and said that was fine, so long as nothing serious had happened; and told her to see and enjoy the picture, who was the actress? Greena Garbage? Well, that was fine; and gave Mrs Trease a clap on the bottom, out she went, Ewan standing and watching. And Trease came back and smiled at Ewan, big, creased: Ay. Think her a funny bitch?

  Ewan said No, she seemed all right, was she a Communist as well? Trease gave his head a scratch, he’d never asked her, he’d aye been over-busy, her as well, moving from this place and that, chivvied by the bobbies, her ostracized by the neighbours and the like, never complaining though, canty and cheery—they’d had no weans and that was a blessing.

  Ewan nodded and said he saw that, there wasn’t much time for the usual family business when you were a revolutionist. And Big Jim twinkled his eyes and said No, for that you’d to go in for Socialism and Reform, like Bailie Brown, and be awful indignant about the conditions of those gentlemanly coves, the suffering workers. And Ewan grinned at him, he at Εwan, neither had a single illusion about the workers: they weren’t heroes or gods oppressed, or likely to be generous and reasonable when their great black wave came flooding at last, up and up, swamping the high places with mud and blood. Most likely such leaders of the workers as themselves would be flung aside or trampled under, it didn’t matter, nothing to them, THEY THEMSELVES WERE THE WORKERS and they’d no more protest than a man’s fingers complain of a foolish muscle.

  And Trease made the tea and they cooked the kippers and had a long chat on this and that, not the revolution, strikes or agitprop, but about skies and stars and Ewan’s archæology that he’d loved when he was a kid long ago, Trease knew little or ought about it though he’d heard of primitive communism. He said he misdoubted they’d ever see workers’ revolution in their time, capitalism had taken crises before and would take them again, it was well enough organized in Great Britain to carry ten million unemployed let alone the two and a half of today, Fascism would stabilize and wars help, they were coming, the wars, but coming slow.

  Ewan said he thought the same, for years it was likely the workers’ movements would be driven underground, they’d to take advantage of legality as long as they could and then prepare for underground work—perhaps a generation of secret agitation and occasional terrorism. And Trease nodded, and they left all that to heed to itself and Trease sat twinkling, his collar off, and told Ewan of his life as a propagandist far and wide over Scotland and England, agitprop in Glasgow, Lanark, Dundee, the funny occurrences that now seemed funny, they’d seemed dead serious when he was young. He’d tramped to lone villages and stood to speak and been chased from such places by gangs of ploughmen—once taken and stripped and half-drowned in a trough; he’d been jailed again and again for this and that petty crime he’d never committed, and in time took the lot as just the day’s work; he’d been out with Co
nnolly at Easter in Dublin, an awfully mismanaged Rising that. But the things he minded best were the silly, small things—nights in mining touns when he’d finished an address to a local branch and the branch secretary would hie him away home to his house: and Trease find the house a single room, with a canty dame, the miner’s wife, cooking them a supper and bidding them welcome: and they’d sit and eat and Trease all the time have a bit of a worry on his mind—where the hell was he going to sleep?: and the miner would say Well, look this way, comrade, and Trease would hear a bit creak at the back of the room—the miner’s wife getting into bed: and he and the miner would sit and claik the moon into morning and both give a yawn and the miner would say Time for the bed. I’ll lie in the middle and you in the front: and in they’d get and soon be asleep, nothing queer and antrin in it at all, not even when the miner got up and out at the chap of six and left you lying there with his mate, you’d as soon have thought of touching your sister.

  And Ewan laughed and then grew serious and spoke of his work in the Stoddart yard, he was raising up something of a cell in the yard, could Jim dig out a bundle of pamphlets for him? They’d all been Labour when he went to Stoddart’s, but already he’d another four in the cell. Trease said he’d give him pamphlets enough, Stoddart’s was a place worth bothering about, how long did Ewan think he would last before he was fired by the management? Ewan said he thought a couple of months, you never could tell, damned nuisance, he was getting interested in granite. And that led him on to metallurgy, on and on, and Trease sat and listened and poured himself a fresh cup of tea now and then … till Ewan pulled himself up with a laugh: Must clear out now. I’ve been blithering for hours.

  But Mrs Trease came back from the Talkies and wouldn’t hear of it, Jim would need a bit crack and a bit more supper, she thought there was some cheese. Greena Garbage had been right fine, cuddled to death and wedded and bedded. Would Ewan stir up the fire a little and Jim move his meikle shins out of the way? Ta-ra-ra, ’way down in Omaha—

  Trease twinkled at Ewan: That’s what you get. Not revolutionary songs, but Ta-ra-ra, ’way down in Omaha. Mrs Trease said Fegs, revolutionary songs gave her a pain in the stomach, they were nearly as dreich as hymns—the only difference being that they promised you hell on earth instead of in hell.

  And Ewan sat and looked on and spoke now and then, and liked them well enough, knowing that if it suited the Party purpose Trease would betray him to the police tomorrow, use anything and everything that might happen to him as propaganda and publicity, without caring a fig for liking or aught else. So he’d deal with Mrs Trease, if it came to that…. And Ewan nodded to that, to Trease, to himself, commonsense, no other way to hack out the road ahead. Neither friends nor scruples nor honour nor hope for the folk who took the workers’ road; just life that sent tiredness leaping from the brain; that sent death and wealth and ease and comfort shivering away with a dirty smell, a residuum of slag that time scraped out through the bars of the whooming furnace of History—

  And then he went out and home through the streets, swinging along and whistling soft, though he hardly knew that till he heard his own wheeber going along the pavement in front, the August night mellow and warm and kind, Duncairn asleep but for a great pelt of lorries going up from the Fishmarket, the cry of a wakeful baby somewhere. And he smiled a little as he heard that cry, remembering Ellen and her saying that Communism would bring a time when there would be no more weeping, neither any tears…. She was no more than a baby herself.

  A bobby stopped in a doorway and watched him go by: there was something in that whistle that was bloody eerie, a daft young skate, but he fair could whistle.

  It was plain to Chris something drastic must be done to reorganize the house in Windmill Place. With Cushnie first gone and syne Ena Lyon and Ake still seeking about for a job she’d have to get new lodgers one way or the other. But the price Ma Cleghorn had set on the house had made it for folk of the middle-class, except such rare intruders as Ake—and he’d come in search of her, she supposed, much he’d got from the coming, poor wight.

  She asked Neil Quaritch when he came to tea, he looked thinner and stringier and tougher than ever, a wee cocky man with a wee cocky beard, pity his nose was as violent as that. Lodgings?—he’d ask some of the men in the Runner. Especially as they might never see Mr Piddle again.

  Chris said Why? and Neil licked his lips and thought Boadicea probably looked like that. She’d strip well—and damn it, she does—for Ogilvie. Then he pushed his cup over for replenishing, they were sitting at tea alone, and told the tale about Mr Piddle that had come up to the office as he left. Mrs Ogilvie knew this side-line of Piddle’s?—sending fishing news to the Tory Pictman? Well, he’d been gey late in gathering it to-day, doing another side-line down in Paldy, prevailing on a servant lassie there to steal him the photo of an old woman body who had hanged herself, being weary with age. Back at last he’d come to the office, he-he! photo in hand and all set fine, and looked at the clock and saw he’d a bare three minutes to tear down the Mile and reach the train at the Station in time. So he flittered down the stairs like a hen in hysterics and got on his bike and tore up the Mile, and vanished from sight, the Runner subs leaning out from their window and betting on the odds that he’d meet that inevitable lorry right now—it was an understood thing that he’d die under a lorry some day, and be carted home in a jam-pot.

  Well, it seems that he reached the Station all right, the lorries scattering to right and left and Piddle cycling hell for leather, shooting through the taxi-ranks at the Station and tumbling into the arms of a porter. And the porter asked who he thought he was, Amy Mollison doing a forced landing? Piddle said He-he! and dropped his bike and ran like the wind for the Pictman train, he knew the platform for it fine, he’d to run half-way up to the middle guard’s van.

  Well, he rounded into No. 6 platform and gave a bit of a scraich at the sight, the Pictman train already in motion and pelting out of Duncairn toun. It was loaded up with Edinburgh students, clowning and playing their usual tricks, a bit fed up with their visit to Duncairn, they’d been leaning out to shout things to the porters when Mr Piddle came hashing in sight, head thrust out like a cobra homing like hell to the jungle with a mongoose close on his tail. And they gave a howl and started to cheer, Mr Piddle running like the wind by now to reach the middle brake. The guard looked out and yelled to him to stop, he’d never make it and do himself a mischief. But the van was chockablock with students, they pushed the guard aside, a half-dozen of them, and thrust out their hands, Piddle thought that fine, if only he could get near enough to hand up the Pictman packet to them. And at last, bursting his braces and a half-dozen blood-vessels, or thereabouts, he got close in touch—down came the hands, the students all yelled, and next minute Piddle was plucked from the earth and shot, packet and all, into the guard’s van. And then the train vanished with a howl of triumph, an express that didn’t stop till it got to Perth.

  Chris sat and laughed, sorry for Mr Piddle though she was, poor little weasel howked off like that. Then Ewan came in and heard the tale and laughed as well, ringing and hearty, no boy’s laugh any longer, Neil thought—far from that lad who’d once thought those silly happenings to folk had little or nothing of humour in them. Damned if one liked the change for all that, a difficult young swine to patronize, growing broader and buirdlier, outjutting chin and radiating lines around the eyes—Quaritch knew the face on a score of heads, he’d seen them on platforms, processions, police courts, face of the typical Communist condottiere, cruel and pig-headed and unreasonable brutes with their planning of a bloody revolution tomorrow when Douglasism were it only applied and the maze of its arguments straightened out would cure all the ills that there were of our time: the only problem was distribution, manufacture and function couldn’t be bettered.

  *

  It was as though a great hand had battered, broad-nieved, against the houses that packed Footforthie. Windows shook and cracked, the houses quivered, out in t
he streets folk startled looked up and saw the lift go suddenly grey. Then, belly-twisting, the roar of the explosion.

  Folk tore from their houses and into the streets, pointed, and there down by Gowans and Gloag’s in the afternoon air was a pillar of fire sprouting a blossoming to the sky, it changed as you looked and grew black and then green, blue smoke fringe—Christ, what had happened? Next minute the crowd was on the run to the Docks, some crying the fire had broke out in a ship, but you knew that that was a lie. And John—Peter—Thomas—Neil—Oh God, he was there, in Furnaces, Machines—it was and it couldn’t be Gowans and Gloag’s.

  Then, rounding into the Dockside way you found the place grown black with folk, bobbies there already crying to keep back, forward the left of the Works like a great bulging blister, a corral of flame, men were running out from Gowans clapping their hands to blackened faces, some screaming and stitering over to the Docks to pitch themselves in agony into the water. And as they did that the blister burst in another explosion that pitched folk head-first down on the ground, right and left—Forward, against the green pallor of the Docks, a rain of stone and iron stanchions fell.

  And out of the sunset, and suddenly, the lift covered over with driving clouds.

  . . . . .

  The Tory Pictman got the news from Duncairn over the telephone, clear-the-line, from Mr Piddle he-heing! like fun: all about the charred bodies, the explosion, the women weeping, the riot that broke out against the Gowans house up in Craigneuks when their windows were bashed in by Reds. And the Pictman printed a leader about it, full of dog Latin and constipated English, but of course not Scotch, it was over-genteel: and it said the affair was very regrettable, like science and religion experiment had its martyrs for the noble cause of defending the State. The treacherous conduct of extremists in exploiting the natural grief of the Duncairn workers was utterly to be deplored. No doubt the strictest of inquiries would be held—