The Credit Draper

by J David Simons

  “Ye mean, not knowing if ye’ll come back with all yer body parts, if ye come back at all,” said Sandy Balfour, the left full-back. “That’s a fine fucking comparison, Logan. Why don’t ye sit doon and shut up.”

  “Steady, Sandy,” said Archie Campbell, the cooper’s son, captain for the day. “Steady.”

  Avram thought of Bobby Logan going over the top. What it must have been like for him, looking up to the rim of the trench wall at that horizontal line marking the difference between the earth and the sky, between waiting and weaving, between life and death. He remembered how he used to ponder over the lists of the numbers of British casualties in the newspapers:

  Somme 500,000;

  Arras 190,000;

  Messines 108,000;

  Third Ypres 400,000;

  Amiens 360,000;

  But it was the Russians who had lost the most men. One million seven hundred thousand in total. And he could have been one of them. He and Bobby Logan could have been fighting together in the trenches of the Western Front instead of on a football pitch in the Western Highlands. He wanted to tell that to Bobby Logan now. To go over and say how a worrying mother had stopped him seeing what he must have seen. Yet how strange it was that Bobby Logan should be a goalkeeper when what had kept him alive was his destiny to miss bullets rather than to catch them.

  Logan sat down as a knock at the door split the tension.

  “Come in,” Archie shouted.

  The door creaked open. Avram saw it was Willie Maley himself standing at the entrance wrapped up in a large camel-coloured overcoat. The Argyll Thistle players hushed at the sight of the legendary Celtic manager.

  “I’d come in,” the big man laughed. “But there’s no any room.”

  It was Archie who stood up, went over to the doorway. “Archie Campbell. Captain.”

  Maley shook the proffered hand. “Thought I’d pop in to wish you well.” He pulled out a notebook from his pocket, flicked through the pages. “Is there an … an Escovitz here?”

  All attention in the room turned on Avram. Then a hard poke in the ribs from Sandy Balfour beside him. “Go on.”

  Avram stood up. “That’s me, sir.”

  “Just wanted to see your face. And your number.”

  He turned round to show him.

  “Good,” Maley said. “There’s someone outside for you to meet.”

  Roy Begg stood with arms in a relaxed fold across his chest, one shoulder hard up against a side wall, as if his muscular frame were stopping the hut from falling over. He was no longer the sad drunk Avram had last seen in Valentino’s ice-cream parlour. The war was over, the man’s dignity had returned, his eye-patch now as much a testament to battles fought as to any real reason for its loss. Begg and his bravado were back. The man who had pulverised the stuffing out of a punch-bag every day at the rear of the school gym had re-emerged with all his former menace intact. Avram could see it in the tautness in the neck, the jut of the jaw, the stab of the good eye, as the man surveyed the ground like a proud hawk searching for sight of its prey. A scout hungry for talent.

  “Escovitz.”

  “Mr Begg.”

  “Playing on Saturdays now?”

  He tried not to rise to the bait. Solly’s ancient advice. Keep quiet. Minimum politeness. Don’t give him a way in.

  “Lightning isn’t going to strike you down, or anything like that? Or is the Angel of Death going to swoop over you?” Begg waved a hand at the sky as if to signal the direction from which such an avenger might come.

  “It hasn’t happened until now,” Avram couldn’t resist saying. He bit his lower lip. Mistake.

  “Oh, it hasn’t, has it?” Begg said, rising from his lean against the shed. “God looking after you, is He? The little runt who wouldn’t play in the final.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Anyway, I wasn’t the one who didn’t want to play on Saturdays. Mr Kahn stopped me.”

  “That self-righteous bastard with his Jew ways. Sunday is the day of rest in this country. Isn’t that right, boy?” Begg poked a finger directly at him.

  Avram shut up this time and to his surprise Begg relaxed, dug his hands into his pockets, hitched up his trousers. Pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Offered him one.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Heard you’re still useful.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Told them all about you.”

  “Told who?”

  “The gaffer. Willie Maley. Could have another Patsy Gallacher on our books, I told him.” Begg sucked deeply on his cigarette, looked him up and down. “You’ve put on a bit of weight. But Patsy started off light, too, then beefed up. A wee runt, he was. Five foot six. Eight and a half stone, if he was that. But he could still leave them standing. Hard to believe. What do you say, lad? You’re not going to let me down again, are you?” Begg glanced at the referee, a wee stoat of a man who had trotted up to the hut. “You’d better get back inside.”

  “Ready, lads?” the referee asked.

  “Ready,” Archie said, squeezing to the front.

  As soon as Archie set foot out of the clubhouse, a tremendous roar soared through the valley. Avram felt the excitement too, felt it ripple through his stomach, tunnel down into his bowels. Bobby Logan, who was second in line, turned back to the rest of the players with a smile across his face as wide as the Connel Bridge.

  “Come on, you miserable bastards,” he shouted. “We’re going over the top.”

  The afternoon sun stabbed straight into Avram’s eyes as he stepped on to the playing field. The Celtic players, bussed in from the Caledonian Hotel, stood waiting, silhouetted in various positions across the field. The rest of the scene was just a haze of light. He wondered if Kenny Kennedy was out there among the spectators. And his son Jamie come to watch the wee tinker Jew not good enough to marry his sister. And Donald Munro with his pharmacy reluctantly closed for the day. And the Captain, hoping for a victory for the United Free over the Catholics. And wasn’t that Tam MacIsaac who had trekked down to the town, abandoning his flock on the hillsides just to witness the ‘big gemme’?

  An army band accompanied their march on to the pitch. With each beat of the drum, Avram picked up his step while the pipes brought a stirring to his heart he could not readily explain. Was this his music now? Or was he stepping to a universal beat and drone that could not help but move even a poor Jewish boy from Russia? He strode on towards the halfway line.

  He could feel Begg’s one-eyed bigoted stare on his back, Ginger Dodd’s spiteful glare. And the venom of Wallie MacPhee, the quarry guard, who knew not whether to cheer or curse the nephew of the German Jew. There was a warm shout of encouragement from Davey, the driver of the Rail-Motor Service, glad for the time off granted to members of the Caledonian Railway. Over in the makeshift stand, the Laird sat stiff and haughty with the rest of the dignitaries. He saw Willie Maley take his seat on a bench by the touchline. Thanks to Roy Begg, there was not much chance of being loosely marked now. But there could be a trial for Celtic at the end of it. If he managed to score. Just one goal. One goal to save his uncle, to start a business, to play for Celtic.

  But even with all the cheers and pressures swirling around him, Avram’s attention extended beyond the pitch, up over the hillsides of spectators, above the folly that was McCaig’s Tower, across the rooftops of the Oban Distillery and the Oban Arms, past the station and the fishyards and out across the yellow of the stooping whin that spread across the moors to the swirling waters of the Firth of Lorn. From there, his mind’s eye took him across the Connel Bridge to Benderloch and a few miles further to the church at Lorn and to the Kennedy’s cottage where no doubt Mrs Kennedy was frying up her rashers of succulent bacon, and perhaps where Megan had found in her traitorous heart a wish of success for him on this auspicious day. Further north, his spirit rose to the sight of Glenkura with wooded Glen Etive off to the east, while to the west he could hear the wind stroking the harp strings in the abandoned keep in accompanimen
t to Jean Munro’s silent vigil out on the peninsula. At Glenkura, he followed the path that was nothing more than a sheep track to the small cottage by the loch. There he could see Uncle Mendel seated at the table by the window. The candles that had welcomed in the Sabbath dwindled to a hardened wax, and any warmth would have long disappeared from a fire that had burned out and was forbidden to be lit. And Uncle Mendel’s mind would not be on any football match or any wagers or any fancy business project to make waterproof clothing out of airplane fabric. Instead, his lips would move silently as he pronounced the words of the sacred text in front of him; his heart would be fixed on the peace of the Sabbath and his soul would be uplifted by the wondrous God-given beauty of the Scottish countryside that stretched before him bathed in unseasonable winter sunshine.

  Oban

  1923

  Forty-four

  DEPENDING ON THE DIRECTION OF THE WIND, Avram could smell either the fishyards or the Oban Distillery. Herring or whisky. Mackerel or malt. In the broad east-to-west split of the town this polarisation of odours was the unique distinction of the High Street. As well as hosting the most established shops, of course. He had insisted on the High Street. If there was to be a shop, then it had to be there on the grandest street in town. Not North Street, South Street, George Street or Stafford Street. But Glenkura Waterproofs of the High Street, Oban. The name had been his idea as well. Glenkura. Uncle Mendel had wanted it to be Escovitz. After all, credit where credit due, the elder credit draper had laughingly suggested. But he had overruled his uncle. It was easy to do that then, in the beginning, when Uncle Mendel had been so contrite, so ready to please, so damn grateful. The name was too foreign-sounding anyway, too Jewish, too German. Glenkura. So much better. A sense of place. The setting for Uncle Mendel’s cottage. As well as the name of one of the two distilleries in the region. Not the one at the far end of the High Street, but the Glenkura Distillery inland across the Connel Bridge. Yes, Glenkura Waterproofs. “You cannae be surer – than when yer wearing Glenkura.” That was the slogan. His idea again. Printed on all posters, advertisements and business stationery.

  On this unusually hot afternoon the breeze was coming from Avram’s preferred direction. Off-shore. Bringing with it the distinctive fumes rising from the chimney of the distillery kiln. At some part of each day, the air revealed a certain stage of the mysterious process that turned the barley in the storage towers into the bottles of amber liquid lining up like proud soldiers along the shelves of the Oban Arms. Sometimes it was the clean dusty smell of the stored barley sweeping down the High Street, as if cartloads of newly cut hay had just trundled past his shop. Or perhaps it was the mouldy aroma of the germinating seeds being turned on the stone floors by the maltmen with their wooden skips. At other times, it was the earthy reek of the peat drying the green malt. Or the thick yeasty odour of the ferment that clogged his nostrils and hovered in a cloud over the town until every particle of breath he inhaled was suffused with the sweet cloying taste of distilling alcohol. The angels’ share. That was what the townfolk called the spirit evaporating from the densely-packed casks in the warehouses. But it was not just the angels who shared in this tax-free blessing. For he could always detect a sudden cheer in the voice and a colour to the cheek of the shoppers as they entered the High Street. It was either the angels’ share or the bottled lemonade Donald Munro sold as a successful sideline to his pharmacy business across the street. The secret ingredient to Munro’s brew was just enough whisky to ensure his young customers always came back for more, although they were never quite sure why.

  And here was the man responsible for leading these children to rack and ruin, pig-trotting his frame across the High Street with those small, hurried steps of his, a bottle of whisky in his hand.

  “Is he back?” Munro asked, dressed down to his shirtsleeves but still perspiring in the heat. “I’ve brought him an Islay to taste.”

  “He got back about an hour ago. He’s upstairs.”

  “I’ll join him, if ye don’t mind.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be over so early in this thirsty weather.”

  “Dinnae worry on my account. Jean’s over there minding the counter.”

  “You’re the lucky one. I’ll sell nothing in this weather. Look, I’ll be up shortly. But don’t you two go arguing again.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Munro said, disappearing into the shop.

  He wasn’t so sure if Munro and Uncle Mendel would be fine. It was the whisky that drew the two men together, but pushed them apart at the same time. Uncle Mendel drinking more of it than ever these days, until he got himself well wound-up with his talk of politics and religion, Munro pushing and prodding him with his opposite views like a needle poking a scab. Still, he could hardly complain about Uncle Mendel and his drunken evenings. The man was hardly ever in Oban, splitting his sober time between his socialist work in Glasgow and selling waterproofs on credit to his rounds of customers in the Western Highlands.

  Mail order. That had been the way forward. Killed any instinct Avram had to continue with his uncle in the credit drapery business. His idea again. Advertising in the local papers and the national farming magazines. The orders coming in faster than expected, until the demand was too much for Kahn & Co in Glasgow. He had opened this shop here in the High Street, both as a retail showroom and a workshop, point-blank refused any investment from Jacob Stein, would have gladly spat on any bank-draft from the warehouseman had it been offered. He hadn’t needed the money anyway. The Bank of Scotland had been happy to provide him with the capital, a million pounds interest-free if he had wanted, what with the manager being a big fan of the Argyll Thistle. With the new showroom on the High Street drawing in the tourists as well as the locals, business had trebled. Mrs Wallace from Papa Kahn’s shop in Glasgow sent up her daughter Jessie to be the chief seamstress. He’d taken on another three girls locally, what with all the doping of the fabric to be done. Four, sometimes, if there had been a lot of rain.

  “Goodbye, Mr Avram,” Jessie said, squeezing past him now. “Nice to be off early on such a day.” Pleasant lass. Face plain and wholesome like an oatcake. Soft lips. Round hips. Wondered what she got up to at nights when she wasn’t in her bedsit across town. But he knew the score. “Don’t go fouling your own nest.” Good advice, those words of wisdom from the Glasgow steamie.

  “Nice day for a picnic, Jessie,” he called after her. “But not for Glenkura Waterproofs.”

  He sniffed the air. As dry as unleavened bread. Downpours, deluges, cloudbursts, drizzles, mizzles and the famous Scotch mist. That was what he needed. It only took a few drops of rain these days to send farmers and shepherds scurrying for an order form in the latest issue of Farming Monthly, Scottish Agricultural or the Oban Gazette. But these last two weeks of incessant sunshine had not been good for business. Mail orders were down and passers-by did just that – passed by on their way for a cooling bottle of Munro’s refreshing lemonade, hands swatting at the midgies, and never a thought to prepare for the inevitable rain with the purchase of a Glenkura waterproof jerkin.

  It was the perfume he noticed first. That same smell of lavender Madame Kahn had so insisted upon, even when she was away in an internment camp. Then came the shadow cast by the parasol protecting her fair skin from the sun. Pretty, she still was, although the lines of fear and sorrow had etched deeper into her skin. No verbal greeting of course, just the flash of a smile that painted itself quickly on her lips then disappeared. She held out her small, gloved hand for him to take and the grip was tight. After all, these were hands that lashed harshly at horses as they swept her carriage out to her lonely mansion on the peninsula. He felt the small wad of paper pressed into his palm. Her grip released and she touched a finger to her lips. Then Jean Munro turned and crossed back over the street to her husband’s shop.

  He locked the door, switched the sign to ‘Closed’. The paper was packed hard and he had to pick it apart carefully with a fingernail until he had a full sheet spread a
cross his desk. The page was blank but for two delicate lines of handwriting across the fold in the middle.

  Megan Kennedy needs to see you. Urgent.

  Come to my house tomorrow if you can. 3pm.

  Forty-five

  UPSTAIRS IN THE SMALL FLAT, the windows were propped open on the necks of beer bottles. Also open were three bottles of whisky set out on the table in an informal tasting – an Oban, a Glenkura and Munro’s Islay. Avram grabbed the nearest one – the Islay – poured out a glass, swigged it down, nearly spat it right out again.

  “Good God. It tastes like medicine.”

  “An acquired taste that requires no blaspheming,” Munro said, pouring a shot for himself.

  “A certain peatiness there is to the Oban malt,” Uncle Mendel observed in the swirl of a glass containing a darker liquid than the Islay. The man was stripped to his vest, yet his black hat still clung in a sweat to his head. “Add the geshmekt of the sea air, a whiff of herring … and that dry, rounded taste you get with just a hint of bitterness.”

  “A whiff of herring?” Munro snorted. “Is that what ye think, ye daft Jew? It’s the brine that does it. That’s what sets it apart from those land-locked upstarts.”

  “Who are you calling a daft Jew?” Uncle Mendel protested. “Let me tell you something, you Christian … you Christian schlemiel … yes, that’s it. You schlemiel. The finest schnapps of Europe we Jews were drinking long before this Scotland was a nation. Tell him, boychik.”