She and Pearce gazed down in love and wonder at the sleeping miracle of their lovely wee Isabella. For Kate and her suddenly enlarged family, the third of July, 1883, had ended on a positive note. But in the annals of Scottish history, it was a black day for all too many working-class folk in Glasgow.
Chapter 11
Pearce’s drinking in his off-work hours grew steadily worse, but he was never an uproarious, happy drunk like some of the others in their street. He became morose, silently brooding on the mistakes of his past, his reduced circumstances, and above all the death of Angela, ever ready to lash out at any who crossed him. The children quickly learned to stay out of his way when he came home drunk on a Friday evening, even his favourite Andrew sheltered with Big Betty until Kate knocked quietly at her single-end door with the news that Dadda was safely asleep in bed.
His drinking seriously cut into money available even for the necessities of life and Kate was reduced to searching his pockets, after he fell into a drunken stupor, for whatever coin she could find and hiding it away.
Thus the summer and autumn of 1883 passed. In the winter, diphtheria was rampant in the city and Kate worried herself sick every time one of the children developed a cough. The traditional sugar-coated butter balls to soothe the dry throat of the patient meant no butter or sugar for anyone except Pearce. By February, Kate was beginning to relax. The epidemic was reported as declining, then Andrew started coughing.
Big Betty shook her head sadly at his fever and the development of the diphtheria rash, and in days Andrew was dead.
“How could you be so stupid and so careless?” Pearce ranted at Kate after Andrew’s funeral. “Sugar-coated butter balls. Whoever heard of treating diphtheria like that? Ignorant bog Irish peasants like your Big Betty? You should have had the doctor.”
“With what, Pearce?” Kate shouted back. “With your drinking there’s barely enough to keep food on the table. What was I supposed to pay the doctor with? A doctor won’t come to a house like this where he knows there’s no pay.”
Pearce towered over Kate, then abruptly turned away and strode to the door.
“That’s right. Go and drink yourself senseless. Just as you did the night your favourite son died. Lying in a drunken stupor while Andrew breathed his last.”
He turned, his face ashen, and looked at Kate, but she felt he looked right through her.
“Christ.” He turned away and the door slammed behind him with enough force to shake the whole building.
Pearce didn’t return that night and Kate wondered if he was lying drunk in some gutter.
Next evening, at the time he usually returned from his work at the Fruit Market, Pearce walked in. He was red-eyed and tired looking, but there was no hint of alcohol on his breath. The children promptly fled the house, taking Hannah with them.
“Is there food in this house?”
Kate hastened to scrape together a meal from the scraps the children had abandoned in their flight.
Pearce ate in silence.
“You can feed our children better than this –”
Kate was about to launch a retaliatory attack, but Pearce pulled a pay-packet envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“The men at work offered me drink this night – a sort of wake for Andrew, I think, but I’ll drink no more. I found this on my desk at closing. No-one would admit to it being his money – this is what we are sunk to – use it for whatever you see needful.
After that, Pearce never came home with liquor on his breath, but his brooding presence cast a pall over the house when he was home. Daniel was beaten on any and every pretext, and avoided his father whenever he could.
Gradually, Pearce began to pay attention to Isabella, the youngest child, and the atmosphere lightened somewhat.
On the first Saturday of November, Pearce pushed his chair back from the table after the evening meal.
“This is our last Saturday here. We’re moving to a bigger house.”
The announcement was greeted with a startled silence.
“It’s not too far from here – Garth Street – but it’s a room-and-kitchen. I’ve made all the arrangements. The coalman will move our bits and pieces on his cart.”
“But when will we move?” Kate frowned.
“Next week on Quarter Day, of course. The proper time to end one lease and sign another with the factor.”
“You haven’t talked to me about this, Pearce.”
Pearce’s self-satisfied cheerfulness was beginning to evaporate at this less than enthusiastic reception of his news.
“And why should I? I pay the rent. I bring in the pay-packet that keeps this family fed and clothed.”
“I keep the house clean and snug for everyone. I should have been consulted.”
“Nonsense, woman. This is my business. I have calculated we can afford the extra rent, and I have saved the money needed for the key money and the flitting.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t drunk so much before, we could have afforded a better house earlier– and Andrew need not have died –”
Pearce’s face suffused with blood. He leapt to his feet. Before Kate could move, his open hand slapped her face turning it to one side. The following backhand blow struck her nose and his ring opened a gash on her cheek.
Daniel jumped forward and got between Kate and Pearce.
“Leave Mammy alone, you bastard,” he shouted and kicked as hard as he could at Pearce’s shin. The other children screamed.
Pearce looked in astonishment at Daniel for a moment before grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and forcing him face down across the table.
“We’ll have none of that language in this house,” he snarled, loosening his belt.
Chapter 12
When the November Quarter Day of 1886 came around, right reason or none, and strictly in accordance with Dadda’s wishes, the Kinnon family prepared to move a few streets away to their new home. As yet, apart from Dadda himself, not one of the family had even so much as caught a glimpse of the new and bigger house.
Jenny and Andrew were both weeping as if their hearts would break at having to leave not only all their little pals, but also the only home they had ever known in their short lives. Little Isabella, not quite understanding, wept in sympathy. Hannah, to whom one day was much like another, seemed unmoved. Daniel, determined not to give his father the satisfaction of seeing him cry, managed in the midst of all the excitement to keep a stiff upper lip. That is until at the very last when the children were paraded out of the close for the last time and there in the street, at the kerbside, they saw it. The few worldly possessions which the Kinnons owned had already been piled haphazardly on to one of Murphy’s coal lorries and even then, father was giving final detailed delivery instructions to the carter.
That done, Murphy doffed his bunnet to Pearce, stirred his great Clydesdale workhorse into action and they were off. The last Daniel saw of the coal-lorry as it rounded the corner into the next street was the sawn-off nursing chair wobbling precariously against the head of one of Mammy’s best wally dugs, whose soulful face peered out from a lidless wooden box. As the coal-cart disappeared from view, Mammy, with tears in her own eyes, bent forward, tucked the crocheted knee-rug more firmly round Hannah, already seated in her go-chair, and swallowing back her distress, forced a bleak smile on to her scarred face as she said: “Now then my wee darlings the main thing is not to worry ourselves about all this move. After all, you’ll not be all that far away from your pals. And you, Daniel and Jenny, you’ll still be at the same school. ’Tisn’t as if we were going to another country, though God willing, ’tis fine I would like to be returning to my own Emerald Isle. Ah, well. But mind now what it is I’m telling you ... whatever the new place is like, and according to Dadda, it’s a palace, but be that as it may, we’ll soon be able to see for ourselves, anyway. But just remember one thing is certain and I want you all to hold on to this thought: this is an adventure we’re having.”
When still
there was no answering smile on the children’s faces, Kate was on the point of trying further to boost their spirits when a shout from Pearce caused them all to jump. Dadda had already gone striding ahead, leaving Kate to cope as best she could with the weeping, distraught children, a stubborn silent Daniel, and the ever-active yet un-coordinated Hannah. By the time he had realised his wife and family were not close on his heels, Pearce was almost at the corner of the street. He had turned round to admonish them to move along a bit faster when he saw, to his annoyance, that not only were they not close behind him, they had not even set one single step on the load towards their new adventure and what Pearce himself personally regarded as their heft up the social ladder.
At once his face darkened at the imagined slight and he waved his stout walking-stick at the laggards in a beckoning motion. Of course, it would have been easier and much more effective to have shouted his instructions, in the manner adopted by most local people. However, as always, Pearce Claude Kinnon thought himself well above the manners and morals of the other tenement dwellers. It would never have done for anyone to observe, far less hear Mr Kinnon acting in a coarse manner, devoid of all social graces. No, he had his standards to keep up and it would take more than a few recalcitrant children to make him change his inborn and, as he saw it, socially correct habits of a lifetime.
Catching his meaning of the impatient beckoning with his walking-stick, Kate at once gathered her brood around her, but not before she had given them one last word of hope and encouragement for what they obviously saw as a very uncertain future. Bending her face close to them, she looked into two pairs of tearful eyes and the openly rebellious face of Daniel and said: “Right, then, you lot. We had better get our skates on before your poor Dadda bursts a blood vessel or else his walking stick bursts into flames with impatience.” Here the children giggled. “Now, you lot, quick march.”
They set off to walk the few streets to their new and as yet, unseen room-and-kitchen home. At that very moment, Dadda was hastening round the corner of the street, so the now-biddable children, always susceptible to Mammy’s gentle brand of coaxing, made every effort to catch up on Dadda, as all the while their little legs went like castanets and the clatter of their boots echoed off the cobbled street.
Once arrived outside the new tenement building, before which Dadda, a frown of impatience on his face, was already standing, both Kate herself and the children looked with interest at the once-blond, but now blackened with soot and age, fabric of the tall building. To all intents and purposes, it looked much the same not only as the building they had just vacated, but also as a thousand other gaunt tenement structures which abounded in the City of Glasgow.
As the family procession entered the close, already they felt quite at home, for not only did the dank walls look the same as their old close, the smell was exactly the same, being a mixture of cats’ pee, dogs’ shit, stale vomit, and the stench of human excrement issuing from the constantly running lavatory on the half-landing.
With the habit born of years, and almost as an automatic action, Kate and the children stopped outside the first door on the left as they entered the close. Pearce, who had been giving final instructions to the carter for the uplifting, disposal and proper placing of his few sticks of furniture, now hurried into the close after his family. He gave a puzzled frown when he saw them all huddled round the doorway just inside the close.
Fixing his wife with a beady eye, he asked: “Why on earth are you all standing there, like orphans of the storm. This isn’t our old close, you know. This isn’t the house I’ve chosen for you, you know.”
It was Kate’s turn to wear a puzzled look and after pulling her Sunday-best shawl closer to her neck, she replied with a touch of asperity in her voice: “Well, you might know exactly where we’re headed. But since you’ve told us nothing, other than it’s a room-and-kitchen, how on earth can you expect us to know which door it is that we’re looking for?”
Having delivered herself of her protest, Kate then shepherded her brood across to the door opposite. Seeing this, Pearce burst out angrily: “Oh, for heaven’s sake, woman. Did I say that our new home was on the ground floor? Honestly, how stupid can you get? Come on, now, follow me. And quick about it, for the carter is right behind you with the kitchen table balanced on his shoulder. Follow me.”
As her husband made as if to start climbing the stairs, Kate stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.
“Hold on a minute, Pearce. Are you saying that our new home is upstairs? Mind you, I grant you it will be lovely to be one up and that bit removed from the noise and stench of the Saturday night drunks, who as we all know to our cost, use the common close as their nearest and most available lavatory. Oh, yes, one flight up will be just grand. Just one slight matter, we’ll need to take Hannah out of her go-chair. Maybe you could carry the wee darling upstairs and Daniel can hump up the pram one step at a time. All right, Pearce?”
With a face like sour milk, Pearce looked at wee darling Hannah as if he could have wished her at the ends of the earth. Even so, he bent down to untie the leather straps which held her and, that done, he raised his head and looked Kate square in the eyes.
“Just one thing, Kate, before we start climbing the stairs. Yes, the new house is above, but not on the first flight, as you so fondly seem to imagine.”
Kate cocked her head on one side and, with a speculative look on her face, waited for her husband to go on. Her instinct told her what she was about to hear was not in any measure going to be to her liking. Nevertheless, she still said nothing, but the tight, angry white line of her pursed lips already spoke volumes. She did not have long to wait to hear the words she dreaded.
Pearce, with a kicking, restless Hannah now in his arms, peered over the child’s head and in a voice devoid of all emotion, said: “The new room-and-kitchen is on the top floor.”
At this piece of news, there was a sharp intake of breath from the already burdened carter. The man said not a word, but with a great show of injured and betrayed feelings, he lowered the table to the damp floor of the close. Then, fixing Pearce with a fish-eyed stare, he dusted his hands down the length of his leather jerkin and said with great deliberation, in his coarse but telling Glasgow accent: “Here jist a bloody minute, Mister Kinnon, sur. When ye asked me tae humph all yer bits and pieces tae yer new hoose, ye never said a fuckin’ word aboot any four flights of stairs. And because ye yersel’ never mentioned it, I never thought tae ask. Ye see, man, most folk roon’ aboot here when they’re daein’ a flittin’, at least hae the common decency fur tae at least tell the cairter that’s he’s gonnae be daein’ a spot of mountain-climbing. But, see ye, ye sneaky bastard that ye are, ye never let slip a single word aboot me havin’ tae climb up and doon Ben Nevis with yer bloody furniture. And speakin’ o’ which, even with all yer airs and graces, I’ve saw better stuff gettin’ chucked oot at Paddy’s Market.”
By now, Pearce was fit to be tied. Heaving Hannah over so her weight now rested on his left shoulder, thus giving him a better view of the rebellious carter, Pearce said in his usual genteel voice, but one which now dripped with ice and venom: “See here, my man, I’m paying you and paying you well for your services. And as I recall the deal was that you would remove and then reinstate my goods and chattel to my new home. Is that not factually correct, my good man?”
The carter took off his flat cloth bunnet, and with black-rimmed finger-nails enjoyed a good scratch at his balding head. That done, and with a great show of mute insolence, he studied his fingernails, as if seeking, if not actually counting, the day’s crop of head-lice. Only then did he leer up at Pearce and say: “Maybe if ye took the gob-stopper oot yer mooth, I’d ken better what it is ye’re trying fur tae say. But one thing Ah did get ... that ‘my good man’ business. Weel, Ah’ll tell ye this, Mister Kinnon, there’s one thing sure, Ah’m no yer good man. I’m a fine upstanding Irish Catholic and let me tell ye this, boyo –”
Pearce hoisted Hannah back off his
shoulder from where the poor child was already dribbling a stream of saliva down his back, and instead reseated her in the go-chair.
“Right then, Murphy, that’s quite enough of that. We’re not needing to let the question of religion enter the lists, for what we’re talking about is –”
The carter took a red spotted rag from his trouser pocket, and after giving his bulbous nose, which matched the colour of his makeshift handkerchief exactly, a loud blast, he then proceeded to study the contents of the handkerchief in much the same manner as he had done his stock-taking of head lice.
That it was a studied insult was not lost on Pearce. Now free of his burden of Hannah, he advanced towards the man and, tapping the latter on the shoulder with the head of his cane, he said in a voice which, although overly polite, was nevertheless tinged with menace: “That’s quite enough of that, Murphy –”
With a ham-like fist, the carter brushed away the walking stick, at the same time saying: “Mister Murphy, if ye don’t mind, my good man.”
That did it. Pearce saw red. Throwing his stick to the floor of the close, where the steel ferule clattered noisily, he then grabbed the carter by the scruff of the neck.
“Listen you, I’ve met your sort before. No wonder you give the Irish a bad name. You’ll neither work nor want. Now let’s get this straight, I’ve paid you good money, ten shillings of my hard-earned cash, and you’ll take my furniture up stairs to the topmost flight and do it now, do you hear, Murphy?”
The man shook himself free, and with a murderous look in his eyes, said in a voice which carried not only an air of authority, but also the ring of finality: “Listen, yourself, Kinnon. Ah’ve met yer sort before. And if ye want that bloody rubbish carried up four flights of stairs, then there’s little problem and but one answer to it. Do the fuckin’ job yersel’, bastard that ye are.”
Fortunes of the Heart Page 4