Kenny Kennedy wiped his hands on his breeches, surveyed his own kitchen with a sigh, as if he were registering its cosiness for the first time. He pulled a chair out from under the kitchen table, set it firmly in front of the fire, opposite a rocker.
“Place your things and sit down.”
Avram did as he was told. Kenny Kennedy fixed his hands on his hips, stared at him with sad eyes, his face struggling with a thought that seemed to be forming in his long skull. He scratched the top of his head, thinly covered by a few streaks of oiled-back hair.
“Wait here,” he said suddenly. “I’ll get Mrs Kennedy.” And he lumbered out of the room.
Before Avram had time to settle, a woman as small and plump as her husband was tall and bony skittered into the kitchen with a bundle of knitting in her hands. Her husband followed, then behind him came a girl of about sixteen. Avram stood up quickly.
“This is the boy,” Kenny Kennedy said.
“I can see that. What’s his name?”
Kenny Kennedy shrugged and his wife dug an elbow into his ribs.
“What are ye called?” Mrs Kennedy asked.
“Avram. Avram Escovitz.”
Behind her mother, the young girl giggled.
“Haud yer wheesht,” Kenny Kennedy said, raising a hand halfway to his daughter.
“Heat some broth, Megan,” her mother said quickly. “And show some politeness.” She put a hand around her daughter’s neck, shoved her forward into the kitchen. “Ye’ll have some barley soup, Avram? And some bannocks? Yer uncle keeps his own dishes here. Special ones.”
It took Avram a few seconds to realise what she meant. “I don’t need special dishes, madam.”
Mrs Kennedy looked puzzled. “I thought it was the Jew custom. Kosher, yer uncle calls it. Isnae that right? Everything has to be kosher. Even the crockery. The knives and forks and spoons. Not that we have any forks, mind. Just the spoons.”
“It’s my uncle’s custom. Not mine.”
Mrs Kennedy scrunched up her lips, made a strange kissing noise as she considered this piece of information. “That’s fine with me,” she said. “Ye can eat off our good Christian plates then.”
Kenny Kennedy settled into his rocker, his wife fussed with the crockery, Megan dragged herself around in her tasks. Avram was left standing like a maypole in the centre of the room until he was called to sit before his meal at the table. Mrs Kennedy scraped up a chair beside him while Megan sat opposite, elbows on the table, her head resting in the cup of her hands, staring at him as if he were a creature that had walked into the cottage from the African continent. For his part, he had never seen hair quite as beautiful as Megan Kennedy’s. Long chain-links of tight blonde curls, reflecting the glow from the fire behind her. From whom Megan inherited such glorious locks he could not begin to guess. Her father hung on to a few loose strands of interminable colour somewhere between grey and ginger, while her mother had an untended mousy fuzz underneath her cap.
“Yer uncle expecting ye, then?” Mrs Kennedy asked.
“I was to meet him at Oban station,” he explained, conscious all the time of Megan’s scrutiny. “I waited for ages but he didn’t turn up.”
“When was Jew Moses last here?” Mrs Kennedy asked her husband.
“Must be ten days gone by. He was on his way up to Glencoe. I think he mentioned the boy might be by.”
Mrs Kennedy chewed her lip. “Yer uncle’s probably hit some bad weather. That’s what’s kept him.”
“I’ll take the lad up to the cottage tomorrow,” Kenny Kennedy said. “I’m passing Glenkura on my way to the castle.”
“Hmmph. That’s settled then,” said Mrs Kennedy. “Stop staring, Megan. Ye’d think you hadnae seen anyone from Glesca before. Ye’ll need to show better manners if yer to work for the Laird.” Mrs Kennedy folded her arms, turned to Avram. “Off to work for the Laird tomorrow, she is. Fourth housemaid.”
“Fifth,” Megan snorted. “A slave.”
“That’s no true,” her mother said.
“It is so. I’ll be the servants’ servant,” Megan said. “Ye cannae get much worse than that.”
“It’s a good start, daughter,” Kenny Kennedy intervened. “Ye should be grateful to her ladyship she took ye. Ye’ve a much better prospect working as a housemaid.”
“I’m a gamekeeper’s daughter is what I am. My only prospect is to find an ugly husband with plenty of gold sovereigns in his pockets.”
“Dinnae mind her,” Kenny Kennedy said, unperturbed by the outburst. He continued to rock silently. Mrs Kennedy picked up her knitting. Megan continued staring.
“Where’s yer wee cap?” she asked the instant Avram had laid down his spoon.
“Dinnae be rude,” her mother said.
“I was only askin’. Jew Moses is never without one on his head or under his hat.”
“He’s just more religious than the rest of us, that’s all,” Avram said. “Most Jews in Glasgow don’t wear those things. I’m not religious at all.”
“So yer not a Jew?”
Avram hesitated. “No … not really.”
“Well, ye either are or yer no. Which is it to be?”
“… I’m not.”
“Whit are ye then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ye must be something. A Wee Free? A Catholic?”
“I’m a … nothing.”
Megan smiled. “A nothing. So ye eat bacon?”
“… Yes, of course.”
“Well, yer uncle disnae. Like it’s a sin or something.”
“It’s not a sin. It’s just against the law.”
“So it’s a crime then?”
“It’s a religious law. Like a commandment.”
“But breaking a commandment can be a crime. Thou shalt not kill. That’s a crime if ye–”
“Yer uncle’s a good man,” Mrs Kennedy interrupted with a fierce attack on her knitting. “Good manners and clean. If truth be told, faither here fair enjoys his company. They talk and play cards. And he always has a wee dram on him.”
“Mither here bought a few bits and pieces from him at the start,” her husband added. “Work-shirts and the like. Saves her going over to Oban. And then he asked if we’d give him bed and board for the night when he’s down in these parts. So we have an arrangement.”
“Do I have an arrangement too?”
“Aye, lad,” Kenny Kennedy said, grinning. “We’ll just put ye up in the byre with the cows and ye’ll be nae trouble at all.”
Kenny Kennedy led him into the cowshed with a lantern, laid out a blanket, dragged over a sack of grain for a pillow.
“Night,” the gamekeeper grunted and the lantern was gone.
A wind whinnied through the cracks here and there, forcing Avram to burrow deeper into the straw to keep himself warm in his thin blanket. Every now and then, he could hear the heavy shiftings of the two beasts tethered in the stalls to one side of him, then a snorting of breath, a settling down to silence. He also heard the Kennedys talking softly, the damping down of the fire, the creaking of the box bed on the other side of the stone wall. Then their lamp went out and the light leaking into the barn disappeared.
Again, there was such a darkness. He closed his eyes, opened them, hardly noticed the difference. There were scurryings among the straw, swift movements in the grass outside, the creaking of branches, the whispering of the leaves in the wind. He could hardly believe that only one night ago he had lain in his bed in a Gorbals flat with Nathan’s light snorings beside him. There was no hum of the city, no clanking of the ash-cans, no late night carriages or pedestrians, no sirens from the foundries. Just an earthy silence in which he could hear the barley filling out the stalks, the mushrooms exploding out of the humus, the moss growing between the drystanes, the flicks of the cow tails keeping the spirits and thoughts of Celia at bay.
Twenty-seven
IT WAS HARDLY DAYLIGHT WHEN HE WOKE to the sound of Megan’s low singing. Wearily, he raised himself on
one elbow. Through the slats of the byre, he could see her hands pumping the udders of one of the cows, squirting the milk into her bucket. She was sat in a squat on her stool on the far side of the swaying beast, the skirt of her smock hiked up to her knees to reveal her woollen socks, some bare shin just below the knee. The same way Mary would sit over her washboard.
Her head suddenly appeared in a twist under the belly of the cow so that her hair hung to the ground in a shiny golden wave.
“Her name’s Fladda, if ye’re asking.”
He wasn’t asking. He laid back down on the grain sack, listened to her heavy breathing, the tinny squirt of the milk against the bucket coming more fiercely now.
“Well, ye should be asking,” she called out. “After all, ye’ve just lain beside her a full night.” The cow stirred up restless, its flank knocking against the stall. “D’ye no think Fladda’s a strange name for a cow?” The squirting ceased. Her head was back under the slats. “Have ye no a tongue in yer heid?”
He said nothing.
“Yer just wan of those stuck-up Glesca folks.”
“No, I’m not.”
“So ye can speak.”
“All right then. I think Fladda’s a bloody strange name for a cow.”
“That’s because it’s the name of an island, daftie. We name all of our cows after the isles. It’s my faither’s idea. There was Iona and Lunga and Ulva and Gometra and Coll and Tiree. This other beast here is Colonsay. Now, get out of yer kip. Ye could take one of these buckets into the dairy for me.”
“You’re very cheekie for a young girl.”
“I’m past sixteen.”
“Did no-one teach you to respect your elders?”
“Hah! Ye cannae be much older than me. Or ye’d be off to the war with the rest of them. There’s hardly a hair on yer chin. And what there is ye’d hardly call lint in a cowherd’s pocket.”
“Megan.” Her father’s voice from the kitchen.
“Slave here, slave for the Laird. Whit’s the difference?” She picked up her bucket and left.
Avram took the pail into the small milk-house on the other side of the kitchen from the byre.
“Och, ye gave me a right fright,” Mrs Kennedy said when he went back into the kitchen. “I thought ye were Jamie standing there.” She told him there was another child, an older boy, but he’d enlisted a couple of weeks before.
“I pray for him every night,” she said. She was frying up some bacon in spitting lard on top of the range.
“He’ll be back for the harvest,” her husband promised, wandering in with a plunder of eggs cupped into his large hands. “Sit down, lad. Have some breakfast. Then we’ll be off.”
Mrs Kennedy put a plate down in front of him. Avram eyed up the rashers framing the two fried eggs. The bacon was curled up crispy along its edges, glistened greasy in the middle, the colour of a raw burn. He had never eaten bacon before, although Solly swore it tasted better than the pickled brisket from Abrahamson’s the kosher butcher. Suddenly, the laws of clean and unclean animals he’d studied in Hebrew class started to prod at his conscience. He remembered Rabbi Lieberman’s pastry-crumbed lips form the words of warning, his finger pointing to the heavens as he spoke. “Leviticus. Chapter Eleven. Every animal which is not cloven-hooved or which does not chew the cud shall not be clean to you.” That was the rule, complicated as it was to understand given the three negatives in Rabbi Lieberman’s sentence. But the consequences were clear. Cows, sheep and goats were kosher, for their hooves were entirely split and they chewed the cud. And pigs? Yes, their hooves were cloven, but they did not chew the cud. Definitely not kosher. He imagined God hovering in the rafters of this small cottage waiting to punish him for eating this forbidden flesh. The smell was already tickling his nostrils, stirring up the saliva in his mouth. It was a smell he knew from neighbouring houses in the Gorbals to which Madame Kahn responded by slamming the window down and uttering the word ‘Treife’ as if it were the disease tuberculosis itself wafting into her kosher kitchen.
Avram cut himself a piece, placed it slowly in his mouth. The texture was slippery yet pleasing. There was a thick, concentrated, salty yet still meaty taste that awoke a new vocabulary of sensations in his mouth. A non-kosher vocabulary. A Christian vocabulary. A New Testament vocabulary. Tastes that made him know what kosher was because now he was experiencing what it wasn’t. A profound flavour compressed within layers and layers of succulent bloody pig flesh, so unlike the anaemic meat from Abrahamson’s. He chewed slowly, glancing up to the rafters for the punishment that might be inflicted. But none came. He wolfed down his portion and asked for more.
After breakfast, fortified by the pig meat and lard flowing in his veins, he helped Kenny Kennedy load slabs of peat on to his wagon.
“They’re only freshly cut,” the gamekeeper told him. “Ye’ll need to lay them out proper and turn them regularly. If ye dinnae, they’ll be as worthless as the udders on a dried-up cow.”
“What’s ‘lay them out proper’?”
“Yer uncle has a kind of a shed out there. Lay them out flat under that. Not one on top o’ the other. But mind to turn them. And another thing, while I mind …”
Kenny Kennedy disappeared behind his cottage and returned pushing a bicycle ahead of him.
“Yer uncle told me to look one out for ye. I got it off the factor’s boy. He’s off to the war with Jamie. It’s a wee bit rusty. But oil it up, give it a shine and it’ll look braw. Tell yer uncle he can settle with me next time he’s by.”
Avram rubbed his hand over the well-worn saddle. “It’s … it’s … it’s just great.” No-one except his mother had ever given him a present before. Even if it was the rusting hulk of a second-hand bike. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“Dinnae thank me. Thank yer uncle. He’s paying for it. Can ye ride it?”
“I’ve never had one before.”
“Well, the country’s a good place to start. They’ll be no broken bones for falling on your backside. Yer uncle says ye’ll need it for work.”
Kenny Kennedy loaded the bicycle onto the wagon beside the peat, then called into the house. “Are ye ready, Megan Kennedy?”
Gone was the gamine Avram had seen at milking. Instead, emerging from the cottage came a young woman in a dark tartan skirt, a tight little jacket and a white blouse underneath it, secured at the collar with a brooch.
Kenny Kennedy heaved his daughter’s trunk on to the back of the wagon.
“Sit up front, lassie.”
“I want to sit in the back with the Glesca boy.”
“Ye’ll dae as yer telt. I dinnae want yer claes all soiled before ye get to see her ladyship.”
Uncle Mendel’s cottage was a ways off the main track. Kennedy’s wagon leaped and lurched so much in the rutted path across the fields that Avram stepped down and walked among the sheep scattered across the hillsides.
“Mind that dress,” Kenny Kennedy called after Megan who also jumped down from her perch. She hitched up her tartan skirt and ran after him the rest of the way.
He reached the cottage before her. Tucked into a hillside, it was an isolated building made up of drystane walls, a thatched bracken roof supported by free-standing cruck frames. A burn flowed close by, rushing down the slope to a small loch about a quarter of a mile away. Avram called out his uncle’s name as he pushed open the door.
Uncle Mendel had done what he could to make the one room habitable. A tartan rug covered the box bed, a vase of dried flowers sat on top of a small dresser. There was a blackened pot, a kettle and a poker by the hearth, a bundle of newspapers for kindling and no doubt wrapping up herring for the baking. A large girnel took up one corner while a couple of fish liver oil cruisies served to provide the light. A pair of faded curtains hung loosely at the window, their hems soiled where the rain had leaked in. Under the window ledge, there was a table set with a wooden bowl, a milk jug and two simple candlesticks. He noticed a mezuzah had been fixed to the doorframe. He picked up the not
e that lay under the milk jug and read the familiar untidy scrawl.
Boychik. If this note you are reading, I am delayed up north. By Shabbos I will be back.
“This’ll dae,” Megan said as she entered the room. “But it could dae with a sweep.” She picked up a broom fashioned from twigs, thrust it in to his hands. Avram pushed it away, let it fall to the floor.
“I thought you were the fifth housemaid,” he said.
“Suit yerself. So what does yer uncle say?”
“Back Friday.”
“That’ll give ye a couple of days to learn to ride yer bike,” Kenny Kennedy said, stooping under the lintel. He walked over to check the girnel. “Well, I see ye’ve got oats for yer porridge,” he said. “I’ve brought some bannocks, eggs and milk from Mrs Kennedy. There’s plenty of fish in the loch. Can ye sling a rod?”
“I’ve only fished for tiddlers in the canals.”
“Jew Moses will have a line and hook somewhere. Ye won’t starve.” The gamekeeper poked around here and there with his boney fingers, opening a drawer, lifting up a curtain, pressing the slabs of peat lying by the fireplace.
“Aye,” Kenny Kennedy said as he opened another drawer. “Matches. Some tools. Good.” On his way out the doorway, he ran his fingertips over the simple oblong shape of the mezuzah. “What’s this?”
“It contains parchments of holy prayers.”
Kenny Kennedy looked as if he was set to ask another question but instead he just shrugged and said: “Help me get the peat off the wagon.”
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