by Millie Gray
“Bacon and egg with fried bread?” Bella wheedled.
“Not unless the boys make it home today – otherwise they’ll be kept for when Rab and Jimmy get here.”
“So what will I be having?”
“Toast and cheese. What else?”
Bella was about to ask if the cheese was (as per usual) “Rat trap”, when the door sprung open and in bounced her two brothers.
“Rab! Rab!” Rachel called out as she jumped up from the floor, where she had been playing with her aunt’s clothes pegs, and raced towards him. “Did you remember my doll?”
Rab swept Rachel up into his arms. “Now do you think I would forget that you wanted a doll? And a real doll with a china face, at that.”
Rachel, her face alight with expectation, nodded her head. Rab lowered her to the floor and then fished out a tissue-paper parcel from his kitbag and solemnly handed it to her.
Tearing off the paper, Rachel gasped when she saw the doll. True, it was much smaller than the one in Parker’s store window that had always tantalised her, but it had such a beautiful face – so much nicer than the bigger doll. Lovingly, she stroked the small doll’s scarlet dress, which was edged with white lace. “Real silk, that dress is,” pronounced Anna. And to add to Rachel’s delight the hair on the doll, which was fastened with a bright scarlet hair-band, bore the same colour as her own – chestnut brown.
“My!” exclaimed Anna. “Now aren’t you the lucky one?” Rachel again nodded and slid her free hand through Rab’s.
“And I suppose I’m too big for a doll,” moaned Bella.
“Aye, you are,” quipped Jimmy. “But here,” and he fished in his kitbag until he came out with two parcels, one of which he handed to Anna and the other, a quarter-pound of Cadbury’s Milk Tray Chocolates, he passed to Bella who grabbed the box impatiently from him.
“She gets a doll and me, yer ain wee sister, only gets the smallest box of chocolates you could buy,” grumbled Bella as she tore open the box and stuffed a chocolate into her mouth.
“Naw,” corrected Rab as he rummaged once more in his bag. “Here’s another box from me because we kent you’d feed your greedy gob with them aw night and never say, ‘Collie, would ye lick to anyone else?’”
Anna was pleased to find a china cheese dish when she unwrapped her present. Something much more useful than chocolates, she thought, and something she’d always wanted. She hoped, moreover, that she would always be lucky enough to have some cheese to keep in it. However, before she could thank the lads, the door opened and in walked her brother Andy, followed by his son Johnny.
“Well lads,” began Andy, “and how did you fare?”
Anna by now was preparing the meal and the bacon sizzled and spat in the large frying pan. “Seems they did okay,” she said, turning to smile at the boys. “Real proud of them, I am.”
“And so you should be. Now, how long are you home for?”
“Just a week, Uncle Andy,” replied Jimmy. “We’re rejoining our ship at Southampton a week tomorrow. Don’t suppose you’ll be getting a start on the same ship?”
Anna huffed before chortling, “A start? Don’t you know he’s been black-balled for two months now?”
Everybody now looked at Andy, waiting for an explanation. “As you will now know,” he confided to the boys, “some companies don’t always treat their crew properly. So me and some others …”
“Mostly him,” Anna declared as she broke an egg into the hissing fat.
“… decided to take on the ship owners and try to get better conditions. They’ve got to understand that we’re no like the darkies – we cannae be treated like slaves.”
“And the result is, he’s been up in court and fined for a breach of the peace. Labelled a trouble-maker and so no company will hire him.” Anna sighed before continuing, “And that’s why his wife, your auntie Rosie, has had to take on a job slaving in the Roperie – just to let him keep his principles and supply him with baccy.”
Andy sniffed, took out his clay pipe and began to fill it with Irish Roll tobacco. Lighting it with a Swan Vestas match and allowing the strong aroma to drift around the room, Andy smirked. “But you lads will have had it easier on the liners.”
“Aye, we liked it fine. Right guid it was being at sea – except when you were seasick going round Cape Wrath,” replied Rab, who was wondering why Johnny was standing there gawping at Rachel.
“Loves her, so he does,” mumbled Bella as she secreted yet another chocolate in her mouth. “Just stands all the time staring at her. He’s cuckoo.”
No one responded to Bella’s remarks since Anna had now dished up the tea. To the amusement of the whole company, as soon as Bella took her seat, Anna grabbed one of the boxes of chocolates from her and opened it up. “Right, Johnny, I’ve just a bit o’ fried bread to offer you and your dad, but Bella here wants to give you the pick of her chocolates.”
Bella’s mouth was now full of egg, bacon and bread but that couldn’t deter her from trying to retrieve the precious box. To her annoyance, this led to her aunt smartly smacking her across the wrist.
“So,” remarked Andy, who was desperate to be like the boys and join a ship again, “it’s Southampton you’ll be sailing from. Pity you couldnae have got a start on that big new White Star liner. They say she’s taking her maiden voyage out o’ Southampton next month.”
“Aye, she’s a real beauty. Built in Belfast, she was. And they say she’s unsinkable,” mumbled Rab as he gobbled up his food, but before he could continue Jimmy butted in with a dreamy look in his eyes.
“Aye, we saw her. And do you know this? She has no three but four funnels. Rab did ask if we could get a start on her …” Jimmy went on wistfully, “but they said we didnae have enough experience for the toffs that’ll be sailing on her.”
All too soon the boys’ leave was over and as they strode up Couper Street on their way to catch the tram on Great Junction Street that would take them to the Waverley Train Station, they stopped and waved to Anna – whom they considered mother, as she was the only person who really had cared for them.
Rab nudged Jimmy and smiled when he saw their aunt had climbed up onto the coal bunker and was now hanging out of the top of the kitchen window frantically waving a dish towel at them. “Haste ye back!” she called out earnestly but they never heard her greeting, the words being completely drowned out by the howling of the wind.
“Wonder what Rab will bring me back next time?” pondered Rachel, pulling on Anna’s skirt.
“Och, probably a pram to put that doll in,” replied Anna, thinking that Rachel was never going to stop stroking the doll.
* * *
Three weeks later Anna was again sitting at her sewing machine and Rachel was busy picking up the pins that had dropped from her aunt’s hand when the door was flung wide open and in burst Andy.
“Have you heard?” he shouted.
“Heard what?”
“That the Titanic …”
Anna interrupted with a sigh. “I know. She was hit by an iceberg but she’s being towed somewhere. Favourable outcome is what’s expected.”
“Naw,” exclaimed Andy. “The newspapers – they have it aw wrong. She sank. They’re now saying the blasted iceberg hit on the fourteenth of April just afore midnight and that she sank to the bottom of the Atlantic two or three hours later on the fifteenth.”
“What!” Anna was flabbergasted and, being a good Christian woman, was deeply moved by the plight of the passengers and crew of the stricken vessel. “But seeing they had time, the folk must surely have been able to get into the lifeboats,” she managed to mumble while saying a silent prayer.
“You never listen to me, do ye?” Andy challenged. Anna shrugged. “That’s one of the things I rant on about.”
“Aye, and what one o’ your rants would that be exactly?” asked his sister.
“The conditions at sea. Don’t you realise that there’s never enough lifeboats? People get left to drown.”
&
nbsp; “Are you saying the folk on that ship h–have all drowned?” stuttered Anna. Then she added bitterly, “But not the first-class passengers, I bet.”
“Them an all – the men anyway,” nodded Andy. “Because, and rightly at that, it was women and children first.”
“You’re joking?”
“Naw. They’re now saying o’er fifteen hundred have perished – drowned in the icy waters. They’re also saying some bodies will never be recovered.”
“How many saved?” muttered Anna, wondering what would have happened to the crew, especially the lowly stokers like her brothers.
“Just over seven hundred,” replied Andy.
“Oh.” Anna said nothing further as the postman chapped on the door and handed her a postcard. Looking at the handwriting, she gave a deep sigh of relief. “It’s from Rab. Posted in Ireland.”
“What’s he saying?”
Sinking down on a chair, Anna handed the card to Andy.
His voice cracked with sobs as he read out aloud: “Great news, Auntie. When we got to Southampton I was told to go and join the Titanic as they were a cabin boy short. But I said I wouldnae go unless Jimmy went with me. And know what? I wangled him on too. Have to look out for him, don’t I? Hope to post this card when we stop at Ireland to take on more passengers.”
“Oh, my laddies! They were just bits o’ bairns,” sobbed Anna. “Aye Andy, along with your braw Johnny and Norma’s two, the only laddies I’ll ever have.”
Andy mused before conceding to himself that was only a half-truth, as the two wee lassies she had fostered before taking on Bella, Rab and Jimmy were hers and hers alone as from the day they were born, nobody but Anna had had anything to do with them. But that time was long ago and best left in the past.
Shaking her head and going over to look out from the window, Anna continued, “Just my Johnny, Freddie and Robert left now.”
“But Rab and Jimmy might be among the survivors. We cannae give up hope. Well, no for both of them,” pleaded Andy.
“Naw. If there was any hope, then why is our brother Willie, their father, who would be listed as their next of kin, coming now towards our stair?” was Anna’s bitter reply.
4
WINNING AND LOSING
Although the day was grey and dismal and the dreich weather made you shiver when it appeared to eat into your bones, it had not deterred nine-year-old Johnny Campbell from playing chuckies – a game involving the throwing and catching of pebbles – on the cold flagstones with his best friend, Eddie Cappatelli. In an effort to get some shelter the boys were huddled halfway into the entry mouth of 35 Admiralty Street, the tenement where they both lived. They were so engrossed in the game that neither appeared to be aware that, like Couper Street which was situated just round the corner, their homes had also been condemned as unfit for human habitation.
“Here,” exclaimed Eddie, throwing up the stones and trying to catch all five of them on the back of his right hand. “On the other side o’ the street there – is that no your cousin, Rachel?”
“Aye,” replied Johnny.
“But why’s she walking funny and clinging onto the wall?”
Johnny didn’t answer as he was now standing in front of Rachel. “Why have you no got yer shoes on?”
Rachel, trying to hug even further into the tall stone-built wall that bounded the railway yard, spoke through gritted teeth, “Auntie took them off me.”
“But she bought them just last week. Real braw they were. And they looked just dandy on you,” said Johnny, looking down at her unshod feet.
Rachel didn’t reply. She just shivered – not so much from not having a coat on and only being clad in a thin old cardigan which had no hope of keeping the cold out – but from humiliation.
“And where’s the coat Auntie Anna made for you?”
“Och, Johnny. You think your auntie Anna just does nice things but she’s …” Rachel stopped to think what word she could use to describe Anna and what she had told her she must do. “She’s …” again she stopped. “She’s a … witch … that should be burnt at the stake.”
“What?” Johnny exclaimed. “My auntie Anna’s everybody’s friend and I think she’s just great. So what do you mean by calling her a witch?”
Rachel hunched her shoulders. “Don’t know. But my dad says she’s a witch and should be burnt.”
“Well, that doesnae sound nice. I mean, why would you want to set her on fire? It could kill her, you know. And maybe you wouldn’t miss her – but I would.”
“Oh, Johnny, I liked her too, until she …” Rachel hesitated and looked sorrowfully down before sniffling, “… until she took the shoes and socks off me and told me to go down to the shipyard gates and wait for my dad.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s payday and I’m to tell him it’s getting cold now – real cold – and my feet are blue and frozen so I need shoes and he’s to give me money to buy them – even though they’re already bought.”
Johnny looked down at his own heavy boots. “Could you no ask the Leith Polis Board for a pair o’ boots like mine?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Look!” Johnny continued. “They run yon clothing scheme for poor bairns like us. And I ken they would be sure to give you some shoes … and when they do Auntie wouldnae need for you to beg from your dad.”
Rachel looked down at Johnny’s police-aided clothing boots that had the regulated five holes punched in them so that his mother couldn’t pawn them, and shook her head again. “But Johnny, I just cannae get boots from them …”
“Why no?”
“’Cause I have a working daddy.”
“Right enough. I got ma boots afore my daddy went back to sea,” replied Johnny, admiring his own solid boots.
“Besides,” Rachel went on, sucking in her cheeks. “You know fine Auntie doesnae like charity. And if I get what she’s due from my dad, she says I’ll get to put my fine new shoes back on.”
“Huh!” snorted Johnny. “Could she no have let you wear them down the street and then you could have taken them off at the shipyard gate and hid them?” Rachel shrugged again in resignation. “Look,” continued Johnny, bending down and wiping Rachel’s feet with a piece of rag, “yer feet are aw bloody and bruised and you’re no even halfway to the yaird.”
Rachel was about to reply that Auntie had said lots of bairns had no shoes to wear all the time – but she jumped with fright at the screeching of an unseen train thundering into the goods yard behind the wall. As it clanked to a stop Johnny put his arms round her and whispered, “Don’t be feart. It’s only a train. Now, would ye like me to chum ye down to the docks? I mean, I’m no scared o’ yer dad.”
Rachel sank back against the wall again before shaking her head. Then, wriggling out of Johnny’s arms, she began to pick her way gingerly through the broken glass, gravel and stones that littered the road she had to travel on.
It seemed to Rachel that she had been waiting at the shipyard gates for a long, long time. In fact it had only been half an hour. During that time she had begun to daydream. As always, she dreamt that her mother was alive. Rachel was always so sure that if her mother had lived she would have made a good home, not only for her but her two brothers as well. She knew that they would have had a two-roomed house in 18 Couper Street with linoleum on the floor, real blankets on the beds and furniture you could polish. She never thought of living anywhere else but Couper Street, regarding it as a village where everyone knew everybody and looked out for one another. She also dreamed that if her mother had lived her father would, like Mr Skivington who worked as a welder in the shipyards, have worked hard to support his family. He even might have come home with fish suppers and a big bottle of Vimto instead of going down to the pub.
Rachel was now so engrossed in her make-believe world that she was quite unaware that the men were now racing out of the gates. As they pushed past, she flung herself hard against the wall. All she could now see were legs racing past,
until one set of legs stopped and asked, “Rachel, what on earth are ye doing here, lassie? Dangerous, so it is, for bairns to get in the way o’ men running hame with their pay packets.”
Before answering, Rachel gulped. “Oh, Mr Skivington, Auntie sent me to get money off my dad.”
Mr Skivington looked down at Rachel’s bare and battered feet. “Well, lassie,” he said, scanning the crowds, “he’s always one of the first oot o’ the yard so I think ye’ve missed him.”
“Oh, no!” wailed Rachel. “What can I do? I just have to see him.”
“Well in that case you’d better make your way ower the road to the Steamboat Tavern. For sure that’s where he’ll be.”
Rachel’s eyes widened with horror. “G-go into a pub?” she stammered.
Mr Skivington nodded. “Here, take my hand and I’ll take ye to the door. Then I’m afraid you’re on your own. I dinnae frequent such dens o’ iniquity.”
When Mr Skivington left her at the door of the pub, the sudden realisation that the Steamboat Tavern was a dangerous place, especially for a wee frightened lassie, engulfed her. She took a deep breath and was just about to go into the pub when the door flew open and two drunken men looking for a fight staggered out and tumbled down at her feet. Grabbing wildly at one another, they tried to rise but without warning the smaller of the two retched violently and threw up the several pints of beer that it had taken him all afternoon to down.
Rachel was now in great alarm and, deciding that flight was her best option, turned around but was stopped dead in her tracks. Advancing towards her were two women who appeared, because of their long flowing black robes, to be menacingly floating towards her. Looking into their ghost-like faces, Rachel couldn’t understand why their hair and foreheads were almost hidden by carefully folded wimples. Without a word, both women raised their skirts very slightly before savagely kicking the fallen men.
“Oh, please stop, Sisters,” pleaded the smaller man as he cowered into a ball to protect himself. “Stop it. I promise, so I dae, that I’ll no drink any mair. Besides, kicking a man when he’s down isnae fair.”