‘Come on, Janie,’ Gertie urged. ‘The sawdust’s on the blood now, there’s nothing more to see.’
But there was. Through the sawdust Janie still saw the blood, a small, dark loch submerged between cobbles that had become mountains.
‘Come on. Down to the Green to see Beulah.’
‘Don’t you two be going and bringing lice back from that lousy tinker,’ warned the Duchess, overhearing the suggestion. ‘We’ve got enough troubles without getting some of her lice into the bargain.’
‘Anyhow,’ wee Lil contributed, ‘you won’t find Beulah down on the Green, she’s doing time.’
‘Wee Lil’s a liar,’ Janie hissed, as they ran towards the Green. ‘Beulah’s out. I saw her in the street cadging rabbit skins.’
four
THE Green was as much part of the Lane as the communal pump in the causeway. If you weren’t in the Lane you were ‘down at the Green’. There was no third alternative. Even if there had been, you would have been out of your mind to have chosen it in preference to the Green.
The summer through, the Green’s chair-o-planes, whirling high, blistered with colour and blared with music. The Devil’s Own Din was how the sedate residents of Hill Terrace described it in a protest to the Lord Provost and Town Council, but to the Laners who were the true lovers of the Green it was music.
It was If you were the only Girl in the World sung in a frenzied, birling chorus by the angels and cherubs painted on the awnings of the chair-o-planes; it was the voices of spielers imploring, hectoring you into seeing The Strongest Man in The World, as crowned heads of Europe were privileged to see him, and You that wasn’t a crowned head of any place at all, what in the Name were you standing waiting for, when you could walk right in. A tanner a time. And the best tanner’s worth you’d ever be likely to see this side of Heaven, that is if you were ever likely to get there at all.
It was thin men at coconut stalls wheedling you into three balls for tuppence, and a prize every time.
It was the show’s women in bright headscarves shouting to each other from the steps of their caravans about their washing and their children; of how liver had been ninepence at Auchnasheen last week, but would be less by the time they got to Auchnashelach. Auchnasheen and Auchnashelach, Udale Bay and Duirinish. The bright, far-sounding names of places drifting up through streamers and balloons as bright and remote as themselves.
It was the sound of a smack on a child’s bare bottom and a rising scream of protest.
It was all noise gathered into the chair-o-planes in the centre, held there, and flung over and outwards in a singing crescendo of adoration:
O, O, how I love you,
How I love you,
My dearest Swanee.
The Green had its own social scale. Lord John Sanger’s circus was the cream of its aristocracy. When the circus arrived, the chair-o-planes, the Strong Man, the coconut stalls, withdrew from the centre of the Green and huddled themselves away in a more remote direction, like younger sons knowing their proper place but still dependent.
When winter came and the last circus elephant had trumpeted its way to the station, and the show’s last caravan rumbled along the North Road, leaving only faded, brown circles on the Green’s grass to prove that they had ever been there at all, the tinkers, the third and last grade of the Green’s society, took over.
The show they put on was less spectacular than that of their forerunners. Their caravans were still horse-drawn, shaped like wagons and made of green canvas. Their tents were small and brown. But the tinkers also had the magical facility of rolling far-sounding places round their tongues.
Aikey Fair, ‘Where the ale cost only tuppence and a tanner bocht a gill.’ Raffan Market, its horse sales with brown, furtive tinkers ‘wheezing gajes for jowldie’—taking country men for suckers. Blairgowrie, the great trek southwards to the berry picking, and ‘I’ll show ye the road and the miles to Dundee, Janie.’ Still southwards but nearer home, to the farming lands up Donside way, ‘There’s no place like Aberdeenshire, Janie, and no folk so fine as them that bide by Don.’
And, though Janie had never been beyond the Lane, through her own imagination and through close companionship with Beulah, the Green’s oldest tinker, she knew their ways and their meeting places almost as well as she knew the Lane.
Janie’s ambition was to be a real tinker someday. Meanwhile, under Beulah’s expert eye, she had learned to ‘pick rags’, cadge rabbit skins, stock the ‘swag’ in Beulah’s basket. And given money, Janie could have purchased Beulah’s swag herself, in correct proportion to its selling powers. Shoelaces, buttons, reels of cotton, a line that even the harassed, hard-up cottar wives would not close their doors against. Milk bowls and fancy butter dishes for the more opulent farmers’ wives, brooches and hair-slides for her brosy servant girl, for the great secret was to get round the servant before you attacked her mistress. Bluebirds flying from long sticks for the lawful bairns of both cottar and farm wife, and the unlawful bairns of the servants. It was a fact, garnered from Beulah, that even when money was scarce, it was never so scarce but it would be taken out from the hoard, hidden in some antrin jug, to quieten the roar the bairns set up, when they caught their first glimpse of a bluebird flying from a stick.
One of the intensely happy moments in Janie’s life was a moment like this, when she saw Beulah’s caravan rising high out of the dusk, with the fire burning redly outside it, and Beulah herself coorying over it, stirring her pot.
‘I told you Beulah was out of the nick, Gertie. She’s making rice. I can get the smell of it.’
Janie suddenly realised that she was very hungry. ‘We’ll get some if Beulah’s had a good day gathering rags. She’ll be in a right good humour.’
Beulah was in a good humour. Her release from jail lay largely and benignly over her, smiling in the brown creases of her face, dancing defiance in the jingle of her long, brass earrings. She greeted Janie and Gertie exuberantly:
‘God bless us. Over the bones of my poor Mother that’s dead, I thought you’d gone clean off the face of the earth, Janie. Gospel truth I did. Did you forget your road to the caravan? Or, was it maybe that you found a better friend than old Beulah?’
A protest against such treachery rose to Janie’s lips to be stifled by the smell rising overwhelmingly near and sweet from the pot.
‘No, Beulah,’ Janie struggled for an explanation that wouldn’t offend Beulah too deeply. ‘We didn’t come because we heard you was away for a while.’
‘A while!’ Beulah protested, scandalised by such understatement. ‘Fourteen days without the option of a fine. That’s what I was away for. Fourteen days. And me with no more than a wee hauf and a brown inside me. Not another drop passed my lips. And there’s the God’s truth for you. There, sit you down on the rabbit skins, and I’ll tell you dead straight—between you and me and the mare—without a word of a lie, what’s behind me and the fourteen days.’
Beulah’s spoon stopped stirring, she thrust her face nearer the fire, and Janie held back her breath for the momentousness of a secret.
‘They lift me to spring-clean their jails for them,’ Beulah whispered, her whisper cracking with the injustice of it all. ‘I can be as drunk’s a Lord in November, or even in February for that matter of it, and the Bobbies turn a blind eye to me, but, this is the Gospel truth, the moment the first ray of spring sun blinks through and shows up all the dirt in Barclamp Jail, every Bobby in the force is on the lookout for me. Folk can be robbed in their sleep. Or murdered in their beds. Does the Bobbies care? No! They’re too busy looking for me. They know it will be a feather in their bonnet for lifting me. For there’s none that scrubs out their jail as thorough as I do. Free gratis and for nothing. But it’s the last time they’ll lift me in the spring. I vow that to my Maker. The flat-footed bucks!’
Beulah’s spoon went whirling into action again: the renewed thick smell of rice rising into the air keened Janie’s hunger into a pain. The solution to Beulah
’s problem suddenly seemed so much simpler than the solution to her own hunger.
‘But you could go away in the spring, Beulah. Miles away in your caravan. They couldn’t catch you to spring-clean the jail then.’
The solution didn’t appeal to Beulah. ‘My reputation,’ she said in an offended voice, ‘my reputation as a scrubber has gone before me. South to the Border country. And as far north as John o’ Groats itself. I’ve spring-cleaned all their jails for them in my time. But this is the last time. The very last time.’
‘I’m glad you’re never going back to the nick, Beulah.’
Janie was anxious to atone for offending Beulah, and even more anxious to taste the rice. ‘Honest I am. You’re always so good when you’re making your rice.’
Beulah stared intently at her pot as if all prophecy lay inside it, then lifted her head sharply up from the pot and fixed Janie with her bright eyes:
‘You’re byordinar fond of rice, aren’t you, Bronian?’ Janie, trapped by the glint of Beulah’s eyes and the bright gleam of her earrings, said, staring:
‘I do love your rice, Beulah. It’s the best and sweetest and hottest rice in the world.’
‘I know you love it. Bless you,’ Beulah answered, smiling contentedly into her pot. ‘And because I know that, something happened to me the day. I was just turning into Birnie’s for my half-ounce of black twist, when a thought took hold of me there where I stood, on Birnie’s doorstep. And a voice said to me, Beulah, you can’t have your half of twist this night: You just can’t have it. Do you know something? Janie is coming to see you tonight. And she’s the bairn after your own heart. And you know how fond she is of a tattie of rice. If you buy your twist you won’t have a brown farthing left to buy rice. And Janie won’t get the fine taste of it on her tongue this night. So I bought the rice and went without my roll of twist.’ Beulah sighed and stirred her pot in silence before she lifted her eyes to Janie. ‘And do you know something, Janie? God above and my Mother that’s dead knows that I didn’t begrudge buying the rice for you. But, all day, my tongue’s been like a bit of bark in my mouth for want of a smoke. And it’s a queer dwamie feeling I’ve got in my head. As if I’m going to fall down on my face any minute. And not rise again. I wouldn’t be sorry to be not rising again with the dwam that’s come over me. I’d be glad. For peace to my bones.’
‘Would a smoke take the dwam away from you, Beulah?’ Janie asked in a panic.
Beulah considered this: ‘It might just help. Might just take the edge of the dwam away from me, like. Give me my second wind back to fight against the terrible things that’s killing me. But where in the world is even a pipeful to be had?’
‘I’ll beg some tobacco for you, Beulah. My Mam’s got some. But she’s out. But I’ll beg some for you.’ Janie sprang to her feet. ‘I’ll beg it from the first man I see. I just won’t come back till I’ve got a pipeful for you.’
Beulah looked swiftly up from her pot as if anticipation had already lessened her dwam.
‘Say it’s for your Grandmother, Janie, Bronian. Her that’s just at death’s door. Say it’s the last thing she’ll need from Man. Or from God either, for that of it.’
Janie flew across the Green, spurred on by Beulah’s promises: ‘Your rice will be done to a T by the time you get back, dearie. And I’ll leave a McPhee’s mark on this little friend of yours, if she knocks back one bit of rice that was meant for you.’
Begging, in Janie’s eyes, was the one distasteful aspect in the tinker’s otherwise perfect way of life. There was no adventure to it, and the only ability it needed was the instinct to pick out the ‘right’ face. Janie had never to beg for her own needs. There were better ways of satisfying them. The surest way to get a penny was to scour the football grounds for empty beer bottles and sell them back to the beer shops at half-rate. A fair bargain, since the bottles hadn’t belonged to you in the first place. More remunerating, but less infallible, was to stand outside The Hole In The Wall on Saturday night, bump into the first drunk man you saw, weep loudly, pretending he had bumped into you. That was usually a sure threepence forced into your palm. Sometimes it was sixpence if the man was drunk enough. For her other needs, Janie confined herself to the dustbins in High Street. The paper she scribbled on came from the bin of MacFarlane, Stationer and Bookseller. Her fruit, usually well out of season, from the Greengrocer’s bin. Her dolls came from further afield, from the City dump. Being completely unselfish, Janie dragged home most of the bits that furnished her Mother’s room from the dump, too. Gertie was truly the sleeping partner, in this business of existing; she shared the profits, while Janie put in most of the capital required. Discrimination, and being on the spot at the right time. Standing here, watching for the ‘right’ face to come up, had none of the excitement of discovering a new shop and its new, unexplored dustbin.
Meanwhile Gertie was curiously watching the renewed energy with which Beulah stirred her pot.
‘You’re feeling a bit better now, Beulah?’
‘A thochtie better maybe, bairn. A thochtie,’ Beulah agreed with some reluctance. ‘The thocht of getting a bit of tobacco. Mark you, that’s nearly as good as the tobacco itself lying tight in the bowl of my pipe, and myself drawing away fine and regular, with the good rich spit to it. Now, this is what the thocht does.’ Beulah relaxed, talking slowly and comfortably in rhythm with her stirring. ‘My old Father could break in a colt with the best of them; the Williamsons, the Robertsons, aye, and the Stewarts. Now, when he was lying at death’s door at Raffan Market that was. A wild market that. Such as you won’t see again. At least one of our breed getting killed at it, and a dozen getting broken heads and needing the hospital or women’s care in the tents. That is if we weren’t needing care ourselves. For we fought each other too, you see. God above we did. Nothing personal in it. Nothing at all. Each just for the sake of sticking up for her own man. At the end of the night we were so muddled up that we fought both friend and foe alike. And no offence taken when it was all over. None. We’d bid each other God speed. Tell each other of the best farms for a “touch” on the road. Roll away in our wagons and forget everything till a year passed and Raffan Market came around again. Then we’d suddenly remember what this cove had called us last year, or the names this manashe had spat at us the year before. And, God bless you, before we knew what had happened, we were in the middle of another fight. But it was all just part of Raffan Market, the fights were. And the thing you’ve got for Raffan Market now is a poor thing at its best. No murders. No broken heads. Not a Man Jack in it that does more than commit a breach of peace. A poor thing compared to the Raffan Market I knew.’
‘But what about your old Father, Beulah? Him that started the story? Him that was lying at death’s door?’ Gertie asked, eager for Beulah to go on with her story.
‘Oh, him is it?’ Beulah was not to be distracted from her vision of bygone Raffan Markets. ‘He died in his bed, that’s all. The only McPhee for ninety years to disgrace us by dying in his bed. That was at Raffan Market too.’ Beulah stared into her pot again as if seeing within it all the Raffan Markets she had ever known. ‘Mind you, he was a smart man, my Father. None his marrow when it came to making an old mare look as young and lifey as a two-year-old, tarring its grey hairs, till the rains came or the heat of the sun came and the tar melted leaving the grey hairs and the bald patches for even the blind to see. But of course he’d sold the horse by that time, so it was imagination that made us laugh when the sun came, at the thought of the gaje who had bought the horse. Oh, and he could blow a thin horse up too. Simple enough to do that. But you’ve got to sell the horse quick. Before it does its natural function, and blows out all you’ve stuffed its behind with. But that’s another tale.’
‘I’ve got tobacco for you, Beulah,’ Janie shouted from the distance. ‘I told you I’d get some for you. Look, there’s more than a pipeful here.’
Beulah sniffed the tobacco suspiciously, ‘Scented dirt. Too fine altogether,’ she said, ru
bbing it between her fingers. ‘It hasn’t got the body in it to lie dour and dark in my pipe. This dirt will blaze up like shavings.’
‘A gentleman gave it to me,’ Janie protested, ‘with a hat on and gloves and everything, a real barrie gaje he was,’ she emphasised in Beulah’s own language, proud of her knowledge of it. ‘And I had an awful job to get it from him at all. I’d to tell him my name and address and everything.’
‘And did you?’ Beulah looked up sharply. ‘Your real name?’
‘Yes,’ Janie answered, ‘I haven’t got another name.’
‘You could have given yourself another name,’ Beulah grumbled. ‘Folk that know you don’t need to ask your name. And them that don’t know you have no right to ask it. Mind on that and you’ll walk safe. It wouldn’t have been one of “them”, would it?’ Beulah asked in a furtive whisper.
Janie cast her mind’s eye over ‘them’. ‘No. No, Beulah, it wasn’t one of “them”. This was a big gentleman. The Cruelty Man’s wee with a moustache, I know him. And it wasn’t the School Board Man, he’s got a uniform. And the Bobbies have got uniforms. It wasn’t any of them.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ Beulah was unappeased. ‘ “They” dress up different to catch folk out. Did you tell him it was for your Grandmother?’
‘Yes. He asked her name. I gave your name, because my Grandmother doesn’t smoke. She just hates pipes. Even my Mam has to hide her pipe in the top of her stocking when we go to see Grandmother. He took it all down in a wee book.’
A sudden fury took hold of Beulah. Her wooden spoon clattered into the pot.
‘In the name of God. The Sheriff will have me up in front of him for aiding and abetting. Thirty days I’ll get this time. Haven’t you got a Grandmother of your own, without taking the McPhee name in vain. I wouldn’t spit on the breed of you, bairn. What about your own Grandmother’s name for the gaje’s book?’
The White Bird Passes Page 4